Page 98 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

CHAPTER 3 “RANDOMNESS” AND “COLD”
CHAPTER 3 “RANDOMNESS” AND “COLD” 77 77

relating to “random occurrence” twice, thus ensuring that no one doubts
that in the mind of the storyteller this seemingly random “occurrence” is
not random at all, neither should it be perceived as such.

From all these examples, it becomes clear that randomness is represented in the
Bible by the root combination K.R.H.

3.4 “Randomness” and “Cold”

Section 3.2 introduced two concepts of entropy : the physical-systems entropy,

developed by Boltzmann and related to the Second Law of Thermodynamics , and

the statistical concept of entropy, developed by Shannon and related to informa-

tion theory. It was emphasized that the first concept is tightly related to heat and

temperature, while the second measures the amount of randomness in a distribu-
tion of probabilities.
In the previous section 3.3, the concept of randomness, as perceived by the
scriptures and expressed in Hebrew by variations of a single basic root, K.R.H, was
introduced and amply demonstrated.
“Randomness” and “cold” are interrelated concepts, emanating from two con-

cepts of entropy that, although separately developed, are by now agreed upon by
most scholars to be realizations of a single concept of entropy.
The answer to this question, however, is less obvious: How is it that the Hebrew
language treats the two concepts, random and cold, as one and the same, using
the same root to refer to these intuitively altogether different concepts?

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• Why are “cold” (karah, a noun) and “occurred” (karah, a verb) read
and pronounced the same, and also written by the same sequence of
letters (karah)? 9
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• Why are mikreh (occurrence) and mekareh (a place with cool air—
Judges 3:20, 24), written by the same sequence of letters?
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• Why are kareh (occurrence) and karah (cold) written the same?
Comments
The modern Hebrew verb for “to cool” is le-karer, based on the root K.R.R. This
root does not appear in the Bible, neither any other verb for “to cool.” The modern
adaptation of the Hebrew language is based on various nouns and adjectives that
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appear in the Bible, like the nouns karah and kor (both meaning “cold”) or the
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adjective kar (cold).