question for any linguist

[reyvin]

Gen 17:17 Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall [a child] be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?

Is the above passage one thought or two? As we know there wasn't any punctuation in the original, was this a goof on the translators part?

At any rate, is Abraham asking two separate questions here or just one?

Thanks.

[oldsage_nc]

Gen 17:17 Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall [a child] be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?

Is the above passage one thought or two? As we know there wasn't any punctuation in the original, was this a goof on the translators part?

At any rate, is Abraham asking two separate questions here or just one?

Thanks.

Some translations reder it as one long question using a comma instead of a question mark. I personally think it is two questions, one about himself and the other about Sara. I think it makes grammatical sense that way because one condition doesn't means the other has to be true also.

[John Reece]

Gen 17:17 Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall [a child] be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?

Is the above passage one thought or two? As we know there wasn't any punctuation in the original, was this a goof on the translators part?

At any rate, is Abraham asking two separate questions here or just one?

Thanks.

In the Hebrew text there are two separate questions: there is a [hebrew]H[/hebrew]-interrogative prefixed to the first word in the first question, and there is a [hebrew]H[/hebrew]-interrogative prefixed to the first word in the second question.

The [hebrew]H[/hebrew]-interrogative is the equivalent of a question mark (?), of which there are two in the Hebrew text.