• Mr Fish@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Or the original Hebrew (or Aramaic, I can’t remember) word ‘tsela’ meaning ‘side’ or ‘half’ (the same word used for talking about one side of a double door). Much less sexist than rib.

    source

    • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
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      8 months ago

      Hebrew speaker here, I haven’t heard it used to describe doors (maybe it’s used in professional lingo?), but it’s definitely used for the sides of a polygon, e.g. a triangle has 3 sides = למשולש יש 3 צלעות.

      Worth noting that modern spoken Hebrew is significantly different from biblical Hebrew so it’s not out of the question that the meanings of words have been warped over time. And I’m no expert in either language.

      • Mr Fish@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I haven’t heard it used to describe doors

        It is used in another place in the Bible for this.

        used for the sides of a polygon

        That’s probably a better example. I only picked the doors example because it was the best one that I knew of an instance of the word being used that way.

    • AdmiralShat
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      8 months ago

      “God created Eve from ’aḥat miṣṣal‘otaiv (אַחַת מִצַּלְעֹתָיו‎), traditionally translated as “one of his ribs”. The term can mean curve, limp, adversity and side.”, per Wikipedia

      Different sources somehow use different words, so I’m curious what the actual words were.

      Not an actual argument from your point, as it can still be translated as side, but the video and all other instances I can find differ on the actual words used.

      But this is why language context matters, a word being able to be used in multiple ways muddies the waters of intention when viewed from a perspective of 2500 years later.