Students of the Hebrew Bible are familiar with hapax legomena. A hapax legomenon is a word that appears only once in the Bible. These words are difficult to translate into English because, in most cases, their meanings are unknown. And there are many hapax legomena in the Hebrew Bible.
Recently, Samuel Arbesman, a senior scholar at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, wrote an article in which he said that the occurrences of hapax legomena can be explained by Zipf’s Law.
Read more about Zipf’s Law. Here is the link: Zipf's Law
My blog has moved to my new web page. Visit the new site of my blog, read my post today, then subscribe to my blog and receive all my posts as they are published. My new site is Dr. Mariottini.
Topics: Samuel Arbesman, Zipf’s Law, George Kingsley Zipf, Hapax Legomena
Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary
No comments:
Post a Comment