Posted on 12/28/2013 7:17:56 PM PST by Phinneous
How can this thing be divine?!?
The Pentateuch, if divine, is full of mistakes from the very first word (we're talking Hebrew here...the basis of the Greek/Latin/English translations everyone in the world uses.) How could that be?
Example: In the beginning G-d created, in the Hebrew version, is actually literally "In the beginning OF... G-d created" There are thousands of examples of the Pentateuch making no sense in its grammar or syntax. So how do we know how to interpret it even on a literal level?
Well... behold, the Oral Torah...
The link is to an hour-long class (in English y'all) on the rational proofs of an Oral Torah (the Mishnah) given to Moses concurrently with the Pentateuch. Rabbi Kelemen is a great speaker so pastors, etc will have loads of sermon material from this...
I don't care about the "old english" or even if there is an old english.
What I care about, regarding the Bible, is if it is understood the way thee LORD desired it to be understood, as it was written for our instruction.
Neither do I care about some oral tradition of the Hebrew. Even the Midrash is now written, AFIK, not orally transmitted. Nor is it inspired, God-breathed, as is the written Hebrew, Aramaic (Daniel Chapters 2 throu;gh 9), and Koine Greek (plus some Sanskrit/Persian words like "paradise," or other words rendered in then-current languages and understood by the writers).
Okee dokee, but this is the religion thread. We’re believers. Does stock Christianity believe in G-d speaking in Hebrew and Hebrew being the language of the world before others were begun? If not— wonderful (it’s like any other break of Christianity from its Jewish “source.” If so, then how do you reconcile Jews reporting that their own Hebrew-written Torah, the basis of your translations, has anomalies that require further explanation. It is not a coherent G-dly guide as written in Hebrew. Is the position that it required a glossed-over translation to be a fulfilling guide?
Well, Phin, I would hope for the level of faith that would, in fact, do just what you described, if that was genuinely God and not a distortion brought from some other source. If I were not sure, if it seemed uncharacteristic based on what I knew, I’d ask God for some way of being surer.
I hope you can bear with me spelling out God. If you feel the most respect is paid to Him by the polite hyphen, go ahead and keep on doing it. I want to maximize His name and so do spell it out. If someone printed this out and willfully disrespected it (unlikely, and please don’t do that of course) that is their responsibility not mine. (And still it wouldn’t be unforgivable and God would kindly teach them a lesson through the consequences, if they were willing to learn.)
I do believe that you, yourself, look like a person who is making efforts towards the best of what is in his knowledge to honor God. If in fact you’re looking for salvation and not just to keep out of trouble (the second one need only be for warning’s sake not to your own pride, and should be secondary in a holy life) you have looked to the correct deity. What Christians preach is not a different God but more details about God. And Christianity began as a Jewish story, not a gentile story. We gentiles are the B team. You Jews are the A team, and only because the A team bowed out did God go to the B team (seeking that the A team would see and rejoin the event).
I would agree there has to be a spiritual augmentation to the biblical texts to make sense of them. It’s not just Hebrew that has ambiguity issues. Greek does, Latin does, English does, any human language in this mortal coil does. Where we disagree is the nature, ministry, and content of the spiritual augmentation. You’re applying the only spiritual augmentation you’ve heard of, which is this “Oral Torah.” We Crazy Christians too believe in a way it’s “Oral” but from the mouth of God through His Spirit in a spiritual way, and ministered to any serious student of His word.
Anyhow, I wish you blessings as you keep on seeking to carry out the will of God. If you look to God for salvation from a state of sin (i.e. being renewed from missing the mark to righteousness, to put it in positive terms) you will be favorably answered. God is not fundamentally mean. As Someone you might not think a lot of said, if you ask your father for an egg, will he give you a scorpion? Or if you ask your father for a loaf of bread, will he give you a stone?
The thing I would add as a Crazy Christian is that you’ll also learn sooner or later that God did it for you through, yep, the cross of Christ.
I wish you every blessing of God.
That’s it! This must be what I was thinking of, either the beer or some furniture polish with the same name. Olde E. is often purchased with an after-snack. The photo shows what? That’s granola I believe, very fiberous granola.
Agreed; but just because someone's a believer doesn't mean that their mentality (say 'engineer' vs 'artist') doesn't impact their viewpoint/perceptions.
Does stock Christianity believe in G-d speaking in Hebrew and Hebrew being the language of the world before others were begun?
Some denominations do, some don't… and some don't care (i.e. thinking what impact would this have on life if it were true vs if it were false? None.
).
If so, then how do you reconcile Jews reporting that their own Hebrew-written Torah, the basis of your translations, has anomalies that require further explanation. It is not a coherent G-dly guide as written in Hebrew. Is the position that it required a glossed-over translation to be a fulfilling guide?
Let's flip things around: if God scrambled language at the Tower of Babel, then does this hinder him from revealing himself in ay particular language? If it does then you are working toward a case that God is either not-omnipotent and/or not-omniscient — moreover, that would almost necessitate considering the the Greek translations of the old testament (the Septuagint) to be a perversion.
Indeed, as befitting a religion that had a "go tell everyone" commandment, Christianity has been very involved in learning new languages (to preach or translate); to embrace the viewpoint of Hebrew as a holy language is perilously close to requiring the entire Mosaic Law to be followed — this was soundly rejected in Jerusalem by James, Peter, Paul, Barnabas, Simeon, and other early-church leaders. (See Acts 15)
Is the position that it required a glossed-over translation to be a fulfilling guide?
What do you mean by "glossed over"? Translations can get tricky because languages usually aren't static. For example less than 200 years ago the word 'unicorn' wasn't equated with a horse-like animal; but a rhinoceros. (see Webster's 1828 Dictionary.) And that's just one word, not dealing with sentence-constructions or punctuation usage. (Which has also changed, even here in America in the last 200 years.)
Is the Authorized King James a bad translation because it used 'unicorn' 400 years ago? Some people today make that argument because a "unicorn" [horse-creature] doesn't exist.
Considering all that change in one language over the span 400 years and the impact on a very modern translation (at the time it was done) is just the "output" end of the translation function, and the input is multiple languages over thousands of years*, and a bible translation isn't a trivial thing.
Phin, God has greatly honored the Jews. They are stewards of the oracles of God. You Jews have kept enough of the sense of the scriptures that where ambiguities have arisen in the Hebrew, they have been ironed out in translations to more-specific languages such as Greek and Latin (and even English).
But again as I have pointed out. It’s God’s Holy Spirit that is doing this.
Hey Shark. Let’s remember the Holy Spirit here. This is what is in fact filling in ambiguities. And you’d even expect that out of a God that wants to turn us from our scholarly pride to a humble acceptance of His teaching.
P.S. In a way I can also believe that the “Oral Torah” doesn’t make sense to gentiles (or in fact to Christians of any background).
I like Jewish food and I Googled for gefilte fish last night. (I live in Nashville, TN and wish they had a source of pickled herring, another Jewish favorite of mine. The major grocery here, Kroger, knows naught of it, though only a few hundred miles north in Lexington, KY you can readily get it.)
In doing so I came across some Reform Jewish magazine writing. Now I know you aren’t Reform, you are Orthodox, but Reform still often tries to keep a sense of their Hebraic roots though with a decidedly liberal take on the Torah. Well, I came across a sockdollager, and I hope the Reform (who didn’t disagree) didn’t distort it in the rendering. The “evil inclination” (yetser hara) is supposed to be held under control and yet NOT extinguished, as it is responsible for motivations to such things as getting married and building houses!
Well I will confess gladly this is where a Crazy Christian will go TILT. And if we’re supposed to understand that, no we don’t. Well we do, in a way, but we see it as where sinful human philosophy might go. Something that is commonly polluted by sin might be seen as being due to sin. Or all sacrifice might be seen as obedience to this impulse (whereas Christianity boldly posits that it is not, there is such thing as sacrifice to the pure good). Christians look at this thing from the upside. We’re sinners being saved, and so our sin will become less and less as we live (if we’re being serious about the Lord). And sin is the negative that reflects the lack of the positive, which is God’s righteousness.
I never rejected the holy-spirit's involvement — just pointing out that ambiguities can arise from language-drift. (The whole point of the Tower of Babel was to confuse the language[s] of man, forcing a dispersal… the idea of a 'holy tongue' flies in the face of Revelation, where God is praised in heaven by people from every nation/tribe/tongue... it's can also lead to "magic-wordism".)
“Sorry, but you missed hte point.”
I didn’t miss the point. I made the point.
“The English we speak today is often ambiguous, and is not handled the way other languages are that conjugate the verbs, and deline the nouns, such that the meaning of a sentence can be known rather than misunderstood.”
Sorry, I have no idea what you know or don’t know about languages, but English reigns supreme in the world precisely because its vocabulary is so vast and accuracy is so easily achieved by its use. Also, English speakers DO conjugate verbs. Hence, “to be” becomes “is” and “are” and so forth. Also, the example you used in your post was about pronouns and not about either verbs or nouns.
“I don’t care about the “old english” or even if there is an old english.”
What you care about is irrelevant.
“What I care about, regarding the Bible, is if it is understood the way thee LORD desired it to be understood, as it was written for our instruction.”
“thee LORD”?
Again, I didn’t miss the point. I made it.
Hey, nothing personal, Jerry. ;^)
The Masoretic texts weren’t around at the time of Paul, so do you mean the texts from which the Masoretic texts were derived?
Jerome believed the LXX was a flawed translation, because it differed so greatly from the MT. But the Dead Sea Scrolls contained proto-Masoretic texts, but also several other textual traditions, including an original Hebrew text from which the LXX was evidently translated... and translated very well.
I should have said “mesorah”, yes.
There is some dubiousness to the Dead Sea Scrolls’ authorship to this day. I’ll trust Paul’s words in Romans 3:1-2.
What has been preserved through the Dead Sea Scrolls varies wildly from book to book. In teaching Hebraic books, my approach generally includes a brief survey of the extant and recorded manuscript traditions, and depending on the book, Qumran can contribute a great deal or very little. I was reading up on Proverbs a few weeks ago—the DSS are of marginal use—IIRC, bits of four copies preserved cumulatively totalling about 10% of the text and between the four covering a total of one significant textual variant and a handful of minor ones. The Greek manuscript tradition is a dog’s dinner—good luck on establishing a critical apparatus that will point one firmly in the direction of the original translation (no doubt it could be done, either by one very good and devoted scholar investing at least the better part of a life-time, or less satisfactorily by a team of scholars, but there is no indication that this will happen soon). One of the major prophets—I believe it is Isaiah—is about 10% shorter in the LXX.
I haven’t seen it (with the possible exception of a scene or two a good 20 years ago) and recall hearing it discussed only vaguely. I am an ignoramus when it comes to film culture, living largely by a clever statement made by a pontificating classmate many years ago: there are two sorts of films, films starring John Wayne [who was baptized on his death bed and has a grandson who is a priest] and some of the worst films ever made.
That said, I have four stock observations that usually suffice to cover popular historical portrayals of Catholicism:
When an institution has had several billion members, pretty well every heinous thing that you can think of has been done by at least one person at some time.
With two notable exceptions, every Catholic has problems. As Solzhenitsyn noted, the line dividing good and evil runs through every human heart. The Church is there to help one apply the medicine that God gives to help resolve the problems, but this is a life long process even for those who embrace the medicine, and not all Catholics are exemplary in this department (major understatement).
This includes Catholic clergy, so much so that it is miraculous that the Church has survived those entrusted with managing temporal things on earth. Pius VI said a great deal when he told Napoleon “You silly little man. If we and our priests could not destroy the Church in 1800 years, what makes you think that you can do it.”
But given all of these things, popular culture tends to exaggerate and unhistorically concentrate the flaws of the Church, probably in part out of a desire to make the Church look bad, in part to make ourselves look good, and in part because it makes for a more interesting plot line.
If there is something specific in the film, I might be able to address it—but the above is usually a good start.
Misspelling--doubletapped the "e" which error is serendipitous.
"I AM" is one word in Hebrew, and one word in Greek, but two words in English. Without knowing a lot about linguistics, I can tell you what that means.
And if I were to use the phrase "you are" in modern English, old or new, that would be ambiguous without context, whereas in Hebrew or Greek or King James' English it would not.
I knew what the author of post #2 meant, and cavilling over "Olde English" and "thee Lord" serves no purpose to this topic, and I don't intend to waste any more bandwidth over it.
“I knew what the author of post #2 meant, and cavilling over “Olde English” and “thee Lord” serves no purpose to this topic, and I don’t intend to waste any more bandwidth over it.”
I was right. The point was made and made correctly from the beginning and you’ve been wasting our time since.
I wouldn’t try to issue a biblical translation based on the DSS; their main significance to me for biblical translation is that they establish three things:
1. There were diverse versions of the Hebrew bible.
2. The LXX isn’t a poor translation of the Masoreh, but an excellent translation of another traditional version of the Hebrew bible.
3. Certain books of the LXX “deuterocanon” (”apocrypha”) were actually written in Hebrew, and thus, even the term “deuterocanon” isn’t accurate.
(A fourth interesting discovery is that John’s gospel’s prologue is his interlinear interpretation of an older, non-canonical prophecy.)
Interesting points—
Though I would respond
(1) It would be better to speak of different manuscript traditions of the various Hebrew texts. The texts weren’t circulating in codex form for a very long time, and with the exception of the Samaritan stuff I haven’t seen anything strong enough to call a group of anything a version—which implies a conscious choice.
(2)
(a) to speak of the LXX in conjunction with the Masoretes is an anachronism. The Masoretes codify a version of the Hebrew text, which in their judgment is the best that can be done at the time, long after the septuagintal translations are made;
(b) the LXX is not the product of a single translator, so speaking of the quality of the LXX as a whole is an over-generalization;
(c) given the fragmentary nature of what survives from the non-Masoretic tradition and, in many cases, the lack of critical editions of the LXX which makes it difficult to determine what variations from the MT are due to the original translation and what are due to copyists, it is usually impossible to say more than that when the LXX and the MT part company, some of the time the LXX is supported either by other Hebrew traditions or by alternate pointing of the consonantal text employed by the Masoretes, which indicates that in some of the other cases where the LXX deviates from the consonantal text it likely reflects the ancient Hebrew text from which it was translated;
(d) Rabbi Ishmael stated ca. 110 that “Just as the rock is split into many splinters, so also may one biblical verse contain many teachings”—I think that looking to the LXX as containing one teaching, the MT another, and digging around these and the consonantal text for more is the best approach.
(3)Technical terminology is often not as precise as one would like, and even when it is precise, the prima facie meaning of the words and the best technical usage of the words may deviate. I agree that in theory one might come up with a happier term than deuterocanon, but am grateful enough to at least have this term.
(4) I am intrigued as to your fourth point—what DSS text are you pointing to, and is there a commentary or article to which you might direct me?
(5) The DSS are also important to me in that they give a perspective of how well various textual traditions preserved text. I am of the opinion that, in general, of all ancient texts for which we lack the autograph, the gospel of John is by far the one for which the text is most certain; the synoptics trail John, but a great deal of their uncertainty is linked to cross-contamination, so the uncertainty is a rather minor problem; with regards to the rest of Scripture, the certainty is less and varies from book to book, but as these books are meant to support the gospels, the variation is of secondary concern. Analogously, in the Jewish writings, the Torah is in the best shape, and from a Jewish perspective, by far the most important writing.
I don’t find much to disagree with among those points.
And on further independent research, I would like to retract my own point 4: What had been presented to me as “fact” is apparently mere speculation. There is no DSS passage identical to any verses from John 1; Rather verses 1-4 and 9-13 simply appear to be citations to an older source, and similar in many ways to prophecies found in the DSS. While the speculation may be warranted, I had understood it to be, and presented it as, documentary fact.
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