Chanukah and Maccabees (I)

[A_Nony_Mouse]

See, if you cared to get your hands dirty with what you need to know about, ie linguistics, you'd know that you are making a clueless argument. An analysis of the Hebrew in the DSS would help you to understand your blundering where you shouldn't go. There are various books and papers on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are different dialects and different amounts of Aramaic influence, but this is all inconsequential to your tendentious nonsense. You don't care about evidence and never have.

I was not clear. I would prefer some mention some place of the existence of Hebrew as a spoken language used by the Judeans. Everything I have ever found indicates they all spoke Aramaic natively and Greek secondarily. No "hebrew" ever mentioned. Just a few secular inscriptions using it would go a long way to making the case. A modest surviving sample of the tens of millions of words worth of secular documents would make the case.

You need look any further than the obvious existence of Hebrew dialects among the DSS.

But if you would share your functional definition of linguistics it might help this exchange.

Do you have trouble with the existence of the academic pursuit of linguistics that you need to have the scholarly analysis of languages defined for you??

Then there is the claim of the Septuagint containing "hebraicisms" which has been around for centuries. The Septuagint was a sore thumb compared to classical Greek until a rather large cache of Greek documents was discovered in Egypt in the 1880s using exactly those "hebraicisms."

Can you cite the linguistic evidence for the claim here? No, of course not. You're getting it third hand and know nothing about what you are saying.

Can you give some examples of "hebraicisms"? No, of course not. You have to rely on others' opinions, which you bend to your purposes.

It appears you know what I am talking about with hebraicisms but do not like my conclusions from their existence after they were found to be Koine.

Answer the question and don't try to change the discourse. You made assertions about "hebraicisms". Either you know what you are talking about or you don't. So far you are indicating that you don't.

That came to be called Koine Greek.

Maybe scholars of Greek were not to aware of Koine Greek a few centuries ago, but Koine Greek is not just one variety of Greek. It's a melting pot term

None classical, not the Queen's English, the common usage of the language. This changes what?

Unsurprisingly believers have yet to grasp the obvious even 130 years later. The discovery of Koine Greek reversed the evidence and leaves "hebrew" a pidgin Greek used by Aramaic speakers.

This is utter nonsense spoken by someone totally ignorant of the evidence. I defy you to provide linguistic evidence for this stupidity. This crass, vulgar, racist stupidity.

I intended nothing more than to reverse the argument. The same evidence before and after the discovery of Koine.

Koine wasn't discovered. It was always there. Linguistics has simply provided a coherent basis for understanding the phenomenon.

Simply observing that it changes the conclusion. Again, no literate culture in Judea to have created it prior to the 2nd c. BC so it had to have come from some place other than religious tradition. Keep in mind the "hebrew" version has no provenance.

What does that mean?

See Hebrew is Greek by Joseph Yehuda, Becket Publications, Oxford 1982.

Why don't you show your linguistic prowess and interact both with what Joseph Yehuda says and what the rest of the linguistic community says?

Do you or do you NOT want citations and sources?

I want you to cite your sources, and cite them properly, eg supplying specific pages, giving a specific example from the source. When you use sources the scholar interacts with them so as to show a coherent argument. You need to interact with your sources.

The problem with most sources is they put their religious beliefs before everything. And in this case I mean most. Even when it comes to the fake atheists who call themselves Jews they are bound up in the crime of Zionism and political necessity to support that nonsense. There are so few sources both apolitical and atheist that I can do as well on my own as by reading those with hidden agendas.

Perhaps you can understand the need for interacting with your sources.

...
Beyond the assertion, evidence?? Ever consider the Hebrew script in the DSS?

Ever compare it to 1st c. AD Aramaic from the region? By inspection they are the same within a couple letters of slightly different shape. Given the dating puts scrolls in three groups about 60 years apart slightly different letter shapes are hardly surprising.

I'm well aware of the principal fonts from the DSS. Some texts are dated to the second and third centuries BCE. So, when you claim "[hi=90FFB0]We also have the script called Hebrew being 1st c. AD Aramaic script[/hi]", you need to be able to support your assertion. Go ahead.

Besides look at a Torah scroll today. The tradition of perfect copy could not have existed prior to the existence of that script as that is the criteria of perfect else transliterated copies could be perfect.

?? Ya wot?

...
This confuses two different issues. The menorah was kept in the temple. The hannukah candelabra was used by ordinary people.

That is an interesting belief. If used by ordinary people and then assuming for an annual celebration then there should have been one per home all over bibleland or Judea at a minimum. Even by the expulsion mythology that would be every year from around 150BC to 133AD, hundreds of thousands of homes over nearly three centuries. The place should be littered with them. Archaeologists should be tripping over them. Museums around the world should have many examples dated from that time period. Where are they?

Was there some actual argument in that? Why do you conflate the two cultic items?

Since the 9 style are not littering bibleland, are unknown from that period, it was obviously not a custom in the beginning.

Evidence is what makes assertions start being arguments. So far you have provided no evidence and are full of assertions.

That is all fine with me and now that I have seen the rules you wish to play by I ask you to produce the evidence for all the assertions you have made. If you have no basis for your disagreement then there is nothing to discuss.

You need to make specific requests at the appropriate point where you find evidence lacking.

As there is no evidence save a forgery by a criminal dubbed Aristeas regarding the origin of the Septuagint by whatever definition we use for the name no one knows where it came from.

We do know there is no evidence of a literate culture in Judea (if you disagree produce the evidence) of a literate culture in Judea prior to the 2nd c. BC. So if Judea is considered the origin then we have the earliest possible date being after the appearance of a literate culture.

Do you consider, as there is evidence for Hebrew being used from the 3rd century BCE that it came out of a vacuum born fully formed in the 3rd century??

But when you now talk of 2nd century BCE (wrongly) you have changed your tune from 1st century CE. We've now moved the goal posts back a few hundred years and you have nothing to bleed about.

Pardon but some discussion groups are loose, others quite strict, your attitude nearly academic. I await learning from your properly sourced posts. I certainly have much to learn from someone who can rattle off proper citations without a second thought.

When you come peddling piffle we require you to get a bit more coherent and logical and less off the wall.

Please take this opportunity to give proper citations for all of your claims such as dialects in the DSS to the level you are asking me to provide.

Calibration underway.

[spin]

When you come peddling piffle we require you to get a bit more coherent and logical and less off the wall.

Please take this opportunity to give proper citations for all of your claims such as dialects in the DSS to the level you are asking me to provide.

Calibration underway.

Due to your base ignorance, you do the only thing you can: you try to shift the burden after you have made the first substantive claims.

As to dialects in DSS Hebrew, Elisha Qimron, The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Scholars Press, Harvard, 1986, makes the distinction between what he calls DSS Hebrew (the dialect of most of the unique texts from Qumran), Samaritan Hebrew, and Mishnaic Hebrew on p.47, and gives examples of differences as he goes through the grammar. Martin Abegg, "The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls" in The DSS After 50 Years, eds Flint & VanderKam, Brill, 1998, talks of the distinction on p.327 between biblical Hebrew and Qumran Hebrew in order for students and teachers of the former to understand how the latter differs. He then indicates distinctions as he goes through the grammar.

Now where is the evidence you need to provide for your assertions?

► Claim 1:

As with prophecy this indicates the other Septuagint stories were written after the Maccabean victory. There are so many indications the "hebrew" is the translation once compared to real history it is surprising so few have noticed it.

Evidence needed.

► Claim 2:

Another fun fact is the nine candles but arch of Titus what one assumes is the most important candleholder from the temple has only holds seven. So it is also an unanswered question as to when the Hannukah thing started.

Evidence needed to show that the menorah and the hannukah candleholder are the same thing.

► Claim 3:

Another problem is the "bible scrolls" found there are abbreviations of the Septuagint versions of the same scrolls. And the Masoretic is an abbreviation of the Qumran versions. And there is nothing in the Masoretic which in not in the Qumran which is not in the Septuagint. This points to the Septuagint being the original.

Evidence needed for the first claim. Logic needed for the assertion that the shorter text is newer, as seems to be the logic of everything in the Masoretic is contained in the LXX. And given that the earliest texts we have (the DSS) are in Hebrew and are hundreds of years older than the earliest LXX manuscripts, what linguistic reasoning do you have to support your claim that the Septuagint is the original??

Quid pro quo.

[spin]

Here's the lad peddling the same junk 9 months ago with Acharya S.

[A_Nony_Mouse]

Imagine three versions of War and Peace, the version published by the author, the Reader's Digest version and the Cliff Notes version. Imagine someone declaring the Cliff's Notes version is the original. Just imagine.

[A_Nony_Mouse]

In the issue of ancient customs there are many surprising things. In his book as the weight of Jewish history Israel Shahak recounted the abrupt imposition of civil rule rather than proxy religious rule in eastern Europe by recounting the story of a rabbi who poisoned a rabbi visiting from eastern Europe for spreading a custom in violation of Jewish law and custom. The poisoner faced murder charges rather than paying the customary fine. This is the way it had been and similar powers were held by bishops. This really has nothing special to do with Jews it was just to point out it didn't happen until the late 19th c. in some parts of eastern Europe.

What was interested and which Shahak set up as sort of a plot twist was revealing what the poisoned rabbi was promoting, the Bar Mitzvah. An invention based upon a story about the young Jesus in the temple story. Oddly the only christian sacrament observed by Jews but also, as proven by the responses this post will get, one believed to have existed for thousands of years even though there is no mention of it prior to the 19th c.

Unfortunately Shahak is dead so everyone will take it out on me for bringing it up.

[spin]

Ban.

[stephan happy huller]

I think your arguments will instead be met with indifference because you don't cite the original sources. No one will take an outlandish theory seriously around here unless its backed up with lots of evidence. You're a child wearing adult clothes. When you grow up you will give up promoting this nonsense. The fact you don't know how unsophisticated all of this appears to outsiders speaks volumes. Even those conned by a successful con man end up admiring his sophistication. You're a fourth rate hustler. No one cares about any of this. This isn't Germany before the War.

[A_Nony_Mouse]

http://www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alex ... ews-1.html, read along with me.

Speaking of Maccabes, Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Bk 1, Chap. 1, Para 1

There was a conflict over the right to rule all of Syria between Ptolemy and Antiochus Epiphanes. There arose a sedition against rule by Antiochus Epiphanes in Jerusalem. Antiochus supporters get kicked out of the city, go to Antiochus to get an army which conquers Judea. After the conquest, not before, the temple is defiled and customs suppressed. Onias who had kicked them out is given honored refugee status in Egypt. An replica of Jerusalem and its temple are built for Onias to rule. This recounting is not contradicted by 1,2 Maccabe. The Saturday School version with Antiochus starting the problems is found no place in the literature.

It starts quite prosaically with a border conflict between two Greeks. Factions in Jerusalem pick sides in the conflict. The pro-Egypt side at first gets the upper hand which results in the Seleucid armies reclaiming rule of the land and exercising the normal rights of conquest. When we look at other aspects of this conflict we learn Egypt and Sparta were conspiring against the Seleucids. And as Egypt was sponsoring the Maccabe resistance (Judah Maccabe, Judah the Hammer, a nom de guerre) it is unsurprising to find the Maccabes making nice with Sparta in the form of a letter to them addressing them with their highest compliment, brothers in Abraham. Ridiculous in fact of course but FDR praised Stalin's efforts in the war for democracy. Hypocrisy is expected in time of war.

Of course it does not explicitly say Egypt supported the Maccabes. However in every other case in history where the president or king or whatever-in-exile was given refuge it was given in some degree. It is quite reasonable to assume this was like all the rest in history.

Of course Saturday school omits the Egyptian support for the Onias side of the war entirely and certainly offers no historical context for it as a border war. Certainly Shule does not mention the entire story of the 9 candles.

So if we jump to the end of Maccabe and just read its description of the worship ceremony as supposedly conducted do not find any animal sacrifices. We find singing and dancing and laurel leaves. All in all going by the description only we would assume it to be a ceremony for Dionysius or Adonis. It is certainly like nothing else in the Septuagint. The closest is everyone dancing naked and screaming in Solomon's time. This sounds positively refined and also one of a kind. As this would be pre-Septuagint times it may represent what it was like before all the bloodlust sacrificing started.

[A_Nony_Mouse]

I think your arguments will instead be met with indifference because you don't cite the original sources. No one will take an outlandish theory seriously around here unless its backed up with lots of evidence. You're a child wearing adult clothes. When you grow up you will give up promoting this nonsense. The fact you don't know how unsophisticated all of this appears to outsiders speaks volumes. Even those conned by a successful con man end up admiring his sophistication. You're a fourth rate hustler. No one cares about any of this. This isn't Germany before the War.

As to indifference, I have hit counters on my website. It is not unpopular. Some of the articles come out in the top ten google returns.

If your opinion is correct then I am wasting my time here and the attention you and others give me is working against you. You all should simply ignore me. That way, should there be some interested in discussing the subjects the threads will not be clogged with pointless critiques which I obviously ignore for absence of alternate explanations of the evidence.

BTW: You don't play the condescending old geezer very well. You need practice. I have a cast iron hide earned the hard way in decades in DC. I know who I am.

Be that as it may the forum area is texts and history of the Jewish kind. It is not about the jewish religion. There are other forums for religious discussions. You really could say I am off topic as no one has presented any evidence the OT is a jewish text in the time frames I have been discussing. So technically I am not discussing jewish texts. If that is the case I can suggest they might have been sponsored by the Chief Priest-in-Exile Onias in the city Ptolemy built for him.

This is not a discussion of the religion per se but you post as though you have a dog in the fight for Judaism as something special. It is all appearances of course as you have yet to post your opinions of the evidence so I have no idea how to address your issues. Please take a stab at it. Name-calling is not an adult position.

[stephan happy huller]

You have no position so what is left for anyone to say? I can't take nonsense seriously