Re: Ignorant people & diacritics

On Dec 4, 2004, at 5:46 PM, caeruleancentaur wrote:
> Speaking in an historical context you may be right about the
> corvée. But speaking in the Biblical context (which I believe we
> are doing), "slave" is the word to use.  The word "`ebed"
> means "slave" pure and simple and that is the word used in the
> Bible and so understood for several millennia.  Under the Mosaic Law,
> slaves had certain rights.  As I read the story in Exodus the
> Egyptian rulers didn't give any rights to their "day laborers."  This
> is only one example of many in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures of a
> theological concept overriding an historical fact.
> Charlie
I respectfully disagree.  In my experience, _`eved_ covers all of the
semantic range of the English terms "slave", "servant", and "indentured
servant".  And in the compound _`eved hamelekh_, 'servant of the king',
it denotes a high government official.


-Stephen (Steg)
  "verbing weirds language"
      ~ calvin (& hobbes)