Hebrew Henotheism

Originally posted by KneverKnight
Interesting.
So now, we have some Christians insisting on THE WORD OF GOD as being unvariant; but their beliefs are based on text which does vary, or at least gets interpreted in different ways.
Can it get any better? 😛

Biblical Hebrew (before the Masoretic text) has no vowels; five Hebrew consonants can sometimes be used as vowels; the original text has no punctuation and is evenly spaced; Hebrew is based on a consonantal root system in which all words with the same (usually 3-letter) root are related in meaning, no matter the order of letters in the spelling of the different words.

According to Marc-Alain Ouaknin, in The Burnt Book: Reading the Talmud—

“The Book of the beginning is illegible and meaningless. Before the book can be read, it must be composed; the reader is actually a creator. Reading becomes an activity, a production. And so an infinity of books are constantly present in the Book [Torah]. There is not one story but many stories.

“The first function of the reader is to introduce breaks between the letters to form words; between certain words to produce sentences….”

So even the Masoretic text provides only the conventional “surface” reading of the underlying Hebrew—they had to decide where to put the vowel-points that they created. I wonder how much of the “particularity” of Christian hermeneutics goes back to a reliance on the Greek Septuagint.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
That is something I don't fully understand.

Actually, that’s why I am re-reading Potok’s book (it’s been a number of years since I first read it): he discusses the model of the covenant—but I’m not there yet (too many books going at once, as a result of my “monkey-mind” ). As I remember it, it goes something like this (actually, I’m doing a kind of light-fingered midrash-from-memory here):

The model is that of a treaty between a strong nation (king) and a weaker one. Because of the imbalance of power, the negotiations may be somewhat skewed, but in order to preserve the peace, the strong party allows the weaker party some input, some points. However, because the final agreement is most favorable to the stronger negotiating party (e.g., God), that party is likely to see less need to ever renegotiate. Although either party can at any time “sue” to uphold the contract, all contracts are subject to interpretation, and hence, argument. “I know that is what the words say, but that is not how they ought to be understood. They should be read this way…”

God: “Why would I want to read it that way; I meant it the other way.”

Israel: “Well, maybe we need to find another God.”

God (not being himself a henotheist perhaps): “There are no other Gods!”

Israel: “Maybe, maybe not. But, you know, when we get done telling our side of things, you’re not going to be popular with anybody.”

God: “Exactly what is it you want?”

🙂

Originally posted by vistesd
So even the Masoretic text provides only the conventional “surface” reading of the underlying Hebrew—they had to decide where to put the vowel-points that they created. I wonder how much of the “particularity” of Christian hermeneutics goes back to a reliance on the Greek Septuagint.

The Masoretic text also includes editorial changes to harmonise more fluently with the editors' beliefs. The allocation of vocal values caused this view to rise to the surface of the text, to the detriment of alternative readings.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
The Masoretic text also includes editorial changes to harmonise more fluently with the editors' beliefs. The allocation of vocal values caused this view to rise to the surface of the text, to the detriment of alternative readings.

Yes, I should've said, "what they thought was, or decided ought to be, the conventional surface reading..."

Originally posted by vistesd


So even the Masoretic text provides only the conventional “surface” reading of the underlying Hebrew—they had to decide where to put the vowel-points that they created. I wonder how much of the “particularity” of Christian hermeneutics goes back to a reliance on the Greek Septuagint.

Maybe quite a bit, here's a rather repulsive (in my view) site that claims the Greek Septuagint is the "last word."

http://www.christianseparatist.org/ast/hist/mt.htm

Originally posted by KneverKnight
Maybe quite a bit, here's a rather repulsive (in my view) site that claims the Greek Septuagint is the "last word."

http://www.christianseparatist.org/ast/hist/mt.htm

Ugh. I don’t know what all the Dead Sea scroll collection contains. I’m also not a historian. I suppose one Jewish response would be that the soferim (the scribes) have been doing Torah scrolls over and over again with great faithfulness, and not in the Masoretic text. Who knows. The Torah scrolls read in the synagogue are unpointed text, not the MT. What I was trying to indicate in part is that Jewish hermeneutics is not based on the Masoretic text per se, so that the argument of “Masoretic text versus Septuagint” seems to be a red herring.

I do suspect that some of the reason that the LXX lost favor with Jews was because of the Christian reliance on it. But, again, a Jewish hermeneutics true to the Hebrew language would only look to the LXX or the MT (or the Aramaic “Targums” ) as a guide for one possible reading.

Trying to force the Jewish approach into the same framework as a Christian one which asserts a “one-and-only-right” reading, in any language—and then to use the MT or the LXX or any other version comparatively to show that the Jews have the wrong reading—sets up a straw man. Note that I have never said—with the exception of the Shema (and even there, not too strongly)—in any case that this is the way Jews read this passage.

Thus far, I have found the following (notes for a thesis, apparently) http://engmann.20m.com/about.html—

"With Qumran, we now have manuscripts almost a thousand years older which are Masoretic. Most of the scrolls which came from Cave IV are of this textual type and represent biblical books such as Isaiah, Ezekiel, the Minor Prophets, as well as some fragments of the Law and Historical books. Norman Geisler and William Nix state that the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls have dismissed any remaining doubts about the fidelity of the Masoretic Text by providing scholars with hundreds of manuscripts including almost every book of the Old Testament, which antedate the extant Masoretic manuscripts by a thousand years. The results of scholarly comparison reveal that the Masoretic Text and the various text types of the Dead Sea manuscripts are substantially identical."

Unfortunately, these notes are about the same argument that is not of much interest outside the Christian paradigm of Biblical scholarship (e.g., “Old Testament” studies), or academic historians wanting to compare these particular versions. The author claims that the Masoretic text became the “official Hebrew Bible.” The most that could be said is that the MT became the official pointed text, and text with marginal notes. That does not mean it ever became the “one right” reading.

Another note: the Talmuds (written version of the Oral Tradition) predate the final Masoretic text, and the traditional rabbinical hermeneutics is embedded therein. (Note: the Talmud presents rabbinical argument, not academic treatises on the meaning of Torah passages: one rabbi says x, another says, y, another says maybe x but why not z? Often the arguments are not resolved. Even if they are resolved in the written Talmud, they are open for re-visitation in ongoing Torah study talmid torah.)

Why is it so hard for some to understand that Jewish hermeneutics just doesn’t play by the same rules as conventional Christian hermeneutics, and is totally unaffected by such strawmen as “MT versus LXX”?

EDIT: This is not to say that it would not be an extraordinary historical event to find the original Isaiah text, for example. Also, the text of the Torah scrolls is the Torah strictly defined: the first five "books of Moses." I actually was shown a slide of a page of the oldest Qumran Isaiah text--it had things written in the margin, scrawled beteen the lines.... The Hebrew professor who showed it said that we have no idea who wrote all that: was it part of the original, was this copy transcribed poorly, how much of this was commentary, etc.?

Originally posted by vistesd
You’re not really studying Torah if you don’t bring your own torah to the task (also, traditional Torah study is done as argument between at least two people).

This is awesome.

Nemesio

Originally posted by Nemesio
This is awesome.

Nemesio

It certainly is 🙂

Originally posted by stocken
It certainly is

The Jews went from henotheism to monotheism. The Persians went from monotheism to henotheism. Did the two spiritual currents cross over at some point in time? What did the Jews learn in Babylon? What did they forget?