Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

iskander wrote:See attached file

Good quote.

rakovsky wrote:

JoeWallack wrote: JW:
Thanks for posting this spin so I can give the appearance of arguing against you.

Why do you want that?

This issue should be an event at the Special Apologetics Olympics, navigating the obstacle course to get from "like a lion" in Hebrew to "pierced" in English =

Dr. Michael Brown recounts a debate he had where the issue came up:

JW:
Well there's 9 minutes and 7 seconds of my life I'll never get back. All of your details show you know the offending word does not mean "pierced" in English yet you always conclude that it does. Is that what belief in Jesus has done for you. Now you realize you can not defend the English "pierced" so you try and make someone else do the dirty work. Brown makes all the same mistakes/omissions you do.

So what exactly is your argument that "pierced" should be the English translation. Why is this so hard for you to present?


Joseph

Psalm 22:17, Hebrew Text, "Like A Lion". Determining Who's Original And Who's Lion? Nahal Hever Fragment

rakovsky wrote:

iskander wrote:See attached file

Good quote.

Summary

A fascinating discussion of the kabbalistic image of a nursing god, its historical context, and its theological implications.

One of Kabbalah’s most distinctive images of the feminine divine is that of a motherly, breastfeeding God. Suckling at My Mother’s Breasts traces this idea from its origins in ancient rabbinic literature through its flourishing in the medieval classic Sefer ha-Zohar (The Book of Splendor). Taking the position that kabbalistic images provide specific, detailed models for understanding the relationship between God and human beings, Ellen Davina Haskell connects divine nursing theology to Jewish ideals regarding motherhood, breastfeeding, and family life from medieval France and Spain, where Kabbalah originated. Haskell’s approach allows for a new evaluation of Kabbalah’s feminine divine, one centered on culture and context, rather than gender philosophy or psychoanalysis. As this work demonstrates, the image of the nursing divine is intended to cultivate a direct emotional response to God rooted in nurture, love, and reliance, rather than knowledge, sexuality, or authority.

“This book is an accessible work, ideal for anyone seeking a spirituality that centers on a positive relationship between humanity and God.” — Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual

Ellen Davina Haskell is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5588-sucklin ... easts.aspx
I don't understand why anyone could object to a ' personal ' interpretation of the Messiah.

I am well aquainted with all the issues you listed like #1:

1) Near unanimous Hebrew of "Like a lion".

As you probably know, the counterargument by apologists is that what you are calling the "Hebrew" is in fact the texts that the Masoretes copied and handed down in the post Christian era, and that according to Jerome and others, the scribes were altering the texts in reaction to Christian interpretations.
The problem here I see is bias. At face value, neither the Hebrew-based Vulgate of Jerome nor the post-Christian Masoretic texts are free from bias. If the scribes handed you a pack of scrolls that looked like the Nahal Hever one and asked you to copy them, my guess is that someone like you or Spin would be tempted take the initiative to "correct" KARU and turn it into KARY (like a lion), because you see that as the "correct" reading. You have already given several excuses for you to take that initiative: (A) that KARU does not make sense to you, (B) that the Ys and Us in the fragment are confusing or ambiguous, and (C) that you imagine no physical harm has come to the narrator in the passage. I would add a third (C) that you have an overall idea that Christian readings of the texts drawing connections to Jesus are incorrect, and so your preference is to not see such similarities. That is, Masoretes with a similar outlook might easily not be taking the material simply as a piece of dry text as a purely neutral observer asked to simply copy the lines drawn on the page.

In any case, what I am most interested in are the questions I asked you in bold at the end a few messages ago (10:42 AM).
(viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1978&start=20#p62138)

Well there's 9 minutes and 7 seconds of my life I'll never get back.

I think by now you and I are both familiar with the arguments presented on both sides to say what the text means or how it is spelled, and so there is not much more info to be gained at this point with the given materials. Of course, finding more ancient fragments like the DSS saying KARU would helpful, but for me it would not show anything new because based on the LXX I think that they already said something like that. So I think you and I don't really need to read more info on the topic. I can understand from what you are saying that sometimes in Nahal Hever the yods are drawn like a waw, but in the case of KARU, it certainly is drawn long and dark to look like waw. So I think you are raising an interesting point. But I wish that you would make your point more strongly, showing that definitely sometimes the Ys are drawn like Us. The photograph does not seem to show the images so clearly that I can tell that this is done. When I enlarge the picture on my screen, maybe in the Yod delta yoda, the second yod is a ' next to a soft l smudge, or maybe as you and spin are saying, that second yod is written as a waw.

I think that this counterargument on your behalf needs more clear fleshing out, namely: Where clearly in the NH fragment did the scribe definitely, clearly, and thickly draw a yod as if it were a long waw, and in what percentage of such places did he do this?

Otherwise I and the audience are just left with the tenuous thesis that "Yes, the scribe wrote KARU in thick bold letters, but he "could" have drawn the U as a mistake because he "could" be making that kind of confusion of yod and waw elsewhere in the document".

JoeWallack wrote:So what exactly is your argument that "pierced" should be the English translation. Why is this so hard for you to present?

My opinion based on the LXX and on the DSS, written before the current Christian - Rabbinical debates started, is that it said Karu and meant "gouged with a pointed object". This is confirmed on the basis of the meaning of the Greek word used elsewhere in the LXX. To gouge someone's hand with a sharp object effectively pierces their hand.

I welcome you to look at my website where I laid out the argument in detail.

iskander wrote:

A fascinating discussion of the kabbalistic image of a nursing god, its historical context, and its theological implications.

One of Kabbalah’s most distinctive images of the feminine divine is that of a motherly, breastfeeding God. Suckling at My Mother’s Breasts traces this idea from its origins in ancient rabbinic literature.

The word Spirit in Hebrew is grammatically feminine (eg. Gen. 1). I think this was a partial reason why some people over the centuries occasionally imagined that God's "Spirit" was feminine and distinct from his fatherliness.

iskander wrote: I don't understand why anyone could object to a ' personal ' interpretation of the Messiah.

As I understand it, Orthodox rabbis do still hold to the idea of the Messiah being an individual.
Many modern Reformed rabbis I think see the concept of the Messiah as being nonpersonal or indistinct and instead as an allegory, ideal image, or model for any righteous Jew. I suppose the Reformed are not as strict and conservative about traditional interpretation of verses.

rakovsky wrote:

JoeWallack wrote:So what exactly is your argument that "pierced" should be the English translation. Why is this so hard for you to present?

My opinion based on the LXX and on the DSS, written before the current Christian - Rabbinical debates started, is that it said Karu and meant "gouged with a pointed object". This is confirmed on the basis of the meaning of the Greek word used elsewhere in the LXX. To gouge someone's hand with a sharp object effectively pierces their hand.

I welcome you to look at my website where I laid out the argument in detail.

JW:
As Chief Inspector Clouseau used to say, "Now we are getting somewhere!". I'm only going to consider what you write here.

For starters you say that the DSS has "karu". It does not. There is no extant Hebrew of the time that has the Hebrew letters for "dig" (even if you take the offending word to finish with a Vav). That's your first problem. So you need to explain why you say the "DSS" has "karu" when it does not.


Joseph

Psalm 22:17, Hebrew Text, "Like A Lion". Determining Who's Original And Who's Lion? Nahal Hever Fragment

rakovsky wrote:

iskander wrote:

A fascinating discussion of the kabbalistic image of a nursing god, its historical context, and its theological implications.

One of Kabbalah’s most distinctive images of the feminine divine is that of a motherly, breastfeeding God. Suckling at My Mother’s Breasts traces this idea from its origins in ancient rabbinic literature.

The word Spirit in Hebrew is grammatically feminine (eg. Gen. 1). I think this was a partial reason why some people over the centuries occasionally imagined that God's "Spirit" was feminine and distinct from his fatherliness.

iskander wrote: I don't understand why anyone could object to a ' personal ' interpretation of the Messiah.

As I understand it, Orthodox rabbis do still hold to the idea of the Messiah being an individual.
Many modern Reformed rabbis I think see the concept of the Messiah as being nonpersonal or indistinct and instead as an allegory, ideal image, or model for any righteous Jew. I suppose the Reformed are not as strict and conservative about traditional interpretation of verses.

Indeed, why should HaShem not be thought of as a mother? Mother God is fine by me.
A Jewish woman is now the mother of God for some , and Israel is the mother of God for some. Fine by me too,
See attached file

JoeWallack wrote: I'm only going to consider what you write here.

OK, so you are basically saying that I need to copy and paste the text of my webpage here before you will consider what I have to say?
Let's save the forum the space, by you just clicking the link.

You ask: "So you need to explain why you say the "DSS" has "karu" when it does not."
On the webpage I cited I gave many examples where the Tanakh uses an alternate spelling of a word that repeats a vowel where the original does not. So K'aru in that pattern would be a version of Karu, because it would be repeating the "a".

My main question to you:

Let's say that the mainstream apologists were right in their interpretation of the passages in the Tanakh regarding the Messiah getting killed in the 1st c. AD and resurrecting. Would this affirmative conclusion make it more likely than not that indeed in the 1st century the Messiah was killed and resurrected?

I understand that from your perspective, the verses do not say this. But since from my perspective they do, should my conclusion about the passages require me to accept that the Messiah did come and get killed in the 1st century?

Yay, rakovsky's back and stirring things up again with his friendly but no holds barred tone. My favorite religious Russian. I like what you're saying about the Ps. 22 issue, particularly the extra aleph thing (in other words in the OT) and the dug/pierced translations in the LXX and Peshitta. Let's say you are right. In my view then it would not be a prophecy about Jesus (or anyone) but cherry picked imagery that was seen by Christians as pertaining to Jesus after he was crucified (like Is. 53).