(02-22-2019, 12:59 PM)nili Wrote: Perhaps you could ask your priest to tell you the Hebrew (or Aramaic) word for 'cousin'? I'm aware of nothing other than than, e.g., daughter-of-aunt (בת דודה).
On the other hand, were one to look up the Hebrew word אח in The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon one would find:
- brother, born of the same mother (& father)
- indef.= relative
- ...
Wikipedia reflects the above when it notes: "The literal translation of the words "brother" and "sister" is an objective problem because there are few quotations and because the words have various meanings in the family of Semitic languages."
Well, that priest actually isn't around anymore so I can't. BUT! I did remember him using the term that sounded something like "bendy" or something like that when he was distinguishing the word cousin in Hebrew. Mind you, this was a sermon he delivered some eight or nine years ago and I found it impressive enough to remember it.
In order to give you the word that's used, I would have to take a look at the Gospels in Hebrew. The oldest Gospels that we have, though, to the best of my knowledge, are in Greek. I don't know what scholarship my priest had done but it seems that, in his comment on the Hebrew, his perspective might have been anachronistic (or I also might have misquoted him). The Greek, on the other hand, he may have been right about. I'd have to take a look at it, but I think that Greek has a stricter sense of these words.