Biblical Clarifications...

[Blaise (imported)]

My comment was not about Jews but about Christians who insist that their way of reading the Hebrew Bible is the only way to read those scriptures. Not only fundamentalist Christians but some other Christians as well can act as if our way of reading scripture is the only way.

However, the Hebrew scriptures that we Christians call the Old Testament make perfect sense if one does not read them from a Christian point-of-view. Of course, Christians understand the life of Jesus within our interpretation of Hebrew scriptures. I am not arguing that reading scripture as a Christian is invalid. I am arguing that it is one of many ways of reading the Hebrew Bible.

This is an important theme in current theological studies. A good, concise introduction to the problem is Whose Bible Is It? by the distinguished Christian historian Jaroslav Pelikan.

[Paolo]

Can everyone see why I'm not a Christian? There's just too much bickering over simple little things Moving from the flesh to the spirit can't happen when bickering is in control.

What would happen if Christians gave up the bickering and decided instead to grow together in Christ?

Then they wouldn't be Christians anymore, they'd be sensible, rational people.

[philorchites (imported)]

Then they wouldn't be Christians anymore, they'd be sensible, rational people.

That's more than a bit unfair. I know lots of Christians who are sensible, rational people. And many who are not, by the way, but that is true of the general population, so far as I can tell.

[philorchites (imported)]

Figuring out how to pronouce a word from Hebrew spelling is difficult. At least this is what my friend who studies Hebrew telle me. He notes that we probably do not have a clear idea how to pronouce biblcal Hebrew. In biblical Hebrew, we do not write most vowels or we write them ambiguously because vowel letters double as consonants. Remember how Latin uses V to represent both the consonant V and the vowel U. Some Hebrew letters do the same kind of thing.

I believe that the standard scholarly convention is that the unpronouced Hebrew name for God is probably either Yahweh" or "Yahuweh". However, I understand that יַהְוֶה" was not the only vowelized Hebrew spelling of the sacred name for God appearing in scholarly sources in the 19th century. It is strange that we debate how to pronouce a name that we are not supposed to pronounce.

There actually is no Biblical requirement not to pronounce the "Tetragrammaton," the four consonants which are used for the name of the God of Abraham given to Moses at the burning bush. It certainly was the practice of the Jews long before Christ not to pronounce the name. The vowel points supplied are for the title, Lord or "Adonai" in Hebrew. The oldest Jewish translation that we know of, the Septuagint, uses the Greek word for Lord, which is "Kurios."

We don't know who decided to vocalize YHWH using the vowels of "Adonai,"

resulting in "Jehovah," or in its Latin form, "Iehove." Interestingly, when Jerome had to use some form of the name, he put "Adonai" (See Ex. 6:3 in the Vulgate). Evidently he had no trouble reading the Hebrew correctly, and understood the Jewish convention. "Jehovah" does read the vowels of "Adonai" correctly, softening the inital "a" to a "schwa" or short "e" sound, and ignoring the consonantal "yod" at the end.

My point is, "Jehovah" is not as bad a botch as the scholars today like to say it is, and (as I said before) has been in use for so long as to be an established and acceptable usage, regardless of its intrinsic merits.

Was the worship of Jehovah originally a phallic cult? There is no evidence of that. I suspect that this is only someone's guess in an attempt to explain its connection with circumcision. There were lots of phallic cults in the ancient world, and not surprizingly, they were as popular with women as they were with men. I don't think this theory, even if true, accounts for the exclusion of women from the priesthood of ancient Israel.

[Blaise (imported)]

Philorchites,

Thank you for your posts on the sub-topic. Such post draw me to this forum again and again.

Unlike you, I lack any expertise to risk sharing an opinion, even though I did rashly share one or two opinions. First, I stand corrected in suggesting that the Yahweh cult was a phallic one and that I recalled reading that it was. On reflection, I cannot recall reading that notion. Stating that was an immediate and groundless opinion. I regret voicing that opinion.

I presume that ancient religious names and practices endured into the biblical period. Of course, the Hebrew prophets themselves opposed phallic cults—the poles on high places. Frank Cross Moore wrote an influential essay about the origin of the Yahweh cult that I read a long time ago. I ought to know better.

Second, your comments about the name Jehovah interest me simply you are the first person whom I have encountered who argues in favor of using that name. I suppose that I have always wondered how we knew the way to sound ancient languages. My friend who studies Hebrew told me that his teacher at Hebrew University recommended that the way to learn Hebrew is to first learn Arabic because we base Hebrew grammars on Arabic ones. I imagine that the pronunciation of words in Aramaic, which descended from Hebrew, might not be an entirely reliable guide to sounding Hebrew. One recalls that Judeans ridiculed Galilean pronunciation. Recall the narrative of Peter’s denial in the Christian gospels where the slave girl (I believe) identifies Peter as a follower of Jesus by his dialect.

Of course, Jesus would not recognize the name Jesus. However, we conventionally use that pronunciation. If we use that convention about the name of Jesus, we could use the Jehovah convention.

Again, I am way out of my water on this one. You obviously, know much more than I do. I envy those of you who understand languages.

I recall reading that Saint Augustine, who did not know Hebrew and apparently knew little Greek, complained to Jerome, who knew both Greek and Hebrew, about some aspects of Jerome's translations.

Ted

[Blaise (imported)]

The tiny bit that I know about Jewish interpretation of scripture undermines simple assumptions about how Judaism apprehends itself. For example, there is a distinction between oral and written interpretation that adds nuance to Judaic grasp of its scriptures. For example, the Hebrew Bible has many proscriptions backed up by death penalties. Yet, rabbis and sages almost universally oppose the death penalty.

[philorchites (imported)]

Yes, I am in the minority in the academic community in defending the use of "Jehovah." I came to the position after hearing a few budding seminarians attempt to preach sermons about "the word of Yahweh." I had to agree with the folks in the pews who found this new usage rather bizarre, however scholarly it might be. Jehovah they knew and believed in, but who was this Yahweh??

Later, I worked on a committee revising a particular hymnal. Those who had an academic background were embarassed by the use of "Jehovah" in many of the songs, regarding it as backward and unscholarly. Their proposed substitutes were much more awkward on the tongue, however, and so I came to appreciate the poetic and musical beauty of this form of the divine name.

Finally, I learned enough about the history of Hebrew as spoken language to know that there is no evidence to prove beyond doubt that the scholars' "Yahweh" was the correct pronunciation. Jehovah was the guess of scholars of yore, and Yahweh is the guess of today's scholars, but either way, it's a guess. So far as I can learn, Jehovah is a usage dating back at least 500 years, and was for generations "the common European pronunciation of the Hebrew tetragrammaton," as Princeton's John D. Davis wrote in his "Dictionary of the Bible." For the common man, it still is. Remember the famous words of Ethan Allen when he demanded the surrender of Fort Ticonderoga, "in the name of the Lord God Jehovah and the Continental Congress!"

Would Jesus recognize himself as Jesus? Don't discount the possibility. Jesus lived in a part of the world where people commonly spoke two or more languages. Jesus could read Hebrew and speak Aramaic, and there is no reason to think he could not speak Greek, the most widely used language of his time and place. The Romans had been around the area long enough for Palestinian Jews to pick up a functional knowledge of Latin. The Greek form of his name, "Jesous," appears in the Septuagint as the Greek equivalent of "Joshua," so Jesus certainly could have recognized himself as "Jesous." Since the Latin pronunciation of "Jesus" is virtually the same as the Greek, I think he would have answered to any Roman who addressed him as "Jesus."

[philorchites (imported)]

The tiny bit that I know about Jewish interpretation of scripture undermines simple assumptions about how Judaism apprehends itself. For example, there is a distinction between oral and written interpretation that adds nuance to Judaic grasp of its scriptures. For example, the Hebrew Bible has many proscriptions backed up by death penalties. Yet, rabbis and sages almost universally oppose the death penalty.

Yes, that is true. In fact, if you read the Bible carefully, you cannot find much evidence that the death penalties of the Mosaic code were ever enforced. That is an argument from silence, of course, and may not mean much. Some have argued that the death penalty was invoked symbolically, you might say, simply to indicate the gravity of the offense, but no judge was bound to apply it.

Similarly, there is the "lex talionis" ("an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth") which is usually cited as evidence of how barbaric and primitive Moses was. In fact, the text and its context show that it was simply a requirement that damages and losses be adequately compensated for, monetarily;a principle we uphold today. Israel did not become a nation of eyeless or toothless men.

In sum, I learned one thing in my studies. Beware of "truisms," the things scholars and others toss off as being so obviously true, they don't need any proof. Many times such "truisms" don't turn out to be true, when subjected to careful study.

[Blaise (imported)]

Philorchites,

Recent archeological evidence indicates that Jesus did live near a Hellenistic city. I do not know if he were literate. The Gospel of Luke indicates that he was literate. I think that John Crossan says that any Galilean worth his salt (wages) would know some Greek. Galilee was becoming much more shaped by Hellenistic Roman culture during the life-time of Jesus. It was not the backwater that historians had supposed. I do not know how widely used Latin was in Galilee during that time. However, I like your take on the matter.

Even more, I like your warning about scholarly truisms. Look at how much geology changes as facts interfer with beautiful theories. Good advice.

Ted

[n3rf (imported)]

Well old softee and all ea. I unerstand that Jesus was highly educated, more so than most. That the High Priest that followed the Family to Egypt did the tudoring and after that he came back he entered the Samarian Closter at the Black Sea to get the Higher Education. I forget the details, but I would say He was very higly educated./Johan [email protected]