The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Hebrew Thought

I've been told that the thinking of the ancient Hebrews was very concrete as opposed to the abstract thinking of the Greeks. This is reflected in the Hebrew language, which uses very concrete terms to convey abstract thoughts, e.g., "anger" is indicated by "nose." Supposedly, the Hebrews did not concern themselves much with ideas of time or with static qualities, but were much more spatially and functionally oriented. So, for example, "everlasting" is a foreign concept to Hebrew thought, and 'olam really means something like "beyond the horizon"; and a Hebrew would think "God loves" rather than "God is love."

So, my question is, how accurate is this understanding of Hebrew thought, and what implications does it have for our understanding of the Old Testament?

A good book on this is Hebrew Thought Compared With Greek, by Thorlief Boman. Another point of variation between the languages is the Hebrew use of “block logic” as compared to the Greek usage of “step logic”; arguing from premises to a conclusion in steps, each step linked to the next in logical fashion (Marvin Wilson, Our Father Abraham—Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith). As one can easily see the Hebrew is a very colorful and poetic language. As with all these types of studies there is a lot to weed through to get to the grass.

Now to answer your question, while it does having a bearing on translation (i.e. God specifically choose this language), it must be weighed with all the other "tools" of proper exegesis to come to a correct translation.