As a male, I find it both a source of frustration and delight that women can think along completely different trajectories at the exact same time. Currently, I am in the delight mode. So I just wanted to take a moment to glory in the feminine mind.
We males think in certain ways about certain things. And in order to change the way we are thinking, we either have to abandon the one way of thinking for the other, or we have to smash another up against it until the winner takes precedence (hey, just because I’m non-violent doesn’t mean my mind works that way!). It is difficult for us to work at a discipline amorphously and it becomes bothersome when hard-fought boundaries are softened or, perhaps, bent into areas they don’t belong according to our classifying, organizing, and compartmentalizing way of thinking. And that is exactly the point at which the female mind shines so radiant.
At the moment, I am reading a short little book called The New Historicism by Gina Hens-Piazza. I knew I was in for a treat the moment I began reading. Here is a biblical criticism which defies normal boundaries between practices and threatens to unite seemingly disparate and differentiated concepts. At least, that is the male reaction. And it is humorous to read that she experienced that reaction as well when she first stumbled into the field. Although, perhaps first
and stumbled
don’t do her justice. She did, after all, spend a great deal of time previous to this book working in Rhetorical Criticism, ANOTHER discipline that moves freely between usually oppositional methods, concepts, and practices.
The past several centuries of modern biblical study were ruled and presided over by men and their male ways of thinking. And, suddenly, in the fourth quarter of the 20st Century (at least for biblical studies), women have stormed into the arena and upset the balance of the whole system. What wonderfully masculine terms and concepts balance
and system
are. And yet what a wonderful turn of events to have the feminine mind finally released from the male structures (another good masculine term) that governed her. In a way, it is alarming. The male can seem to think that the ship on which he has sailed so long on such a proud journey is suddenly under attack. And by unseen assailants! But that is exactly what we men need. If the male can only work within and withstand the forms that male minds present him, what good is he? The rocking and perhaps overturning of our boats is what enables us to build better ships with which to sail and conquer the seas of our discovery. For too long we have considered women unable to lend a hand either to critical scholastic or religious and theological peregrinations, and it has only been to the frustration of our own goals: the acquisition and employment of truer and better knowledge. It is a glory of the woman that she thinks different than the man, just as it is a glory of the man that he thinks differently than the woman. Together, we may serve as checks and balances to our own self-serving interests and perspectives. Together, the sum of two different dimensions of sight can become three-dimensional. I am pleased that such progress is being made in the house of academia, but disheartened that the house of God is lagging so far behind. Not until scripture is taught and interpreted in our churches by as many women as men will a truly holistic picture of what us religious folk call the word of God
be open and available to all. Hey, yo, sista! Bring it!
Behold, beloved reader, I admonish and advise you, if you seek God with all your heart, and do not wish to be deceived; depend not upon men and their doctrine, no matter however old, holy and excellent they may be esteemed; for the divines, both ancient and modern are opposed to each other; but put your trust, alone in Christ and his word, in the sure instruction and practice of his holy apostles, and you will through the grace of God, be perfectly safe from all false doctrines and the power of the devil; and may walk with a free and pious mind before God.
As a Mennonite, I think Menno Simons had some very important—nay, necessary things to say. And while I appreciate the way Menno focuses faith around the words and ways of Yeshua, including the praxis of the apostles and disciples of the early church, I am deeply concerned with his reliance upon Sola Scriptura evident in the phrase above. Whom among us will say, looking at history, that he spoke truly? That after people turned away from outside instruction and sought wisdom, understanding, doctrine, and faith simply and solely through reading the scriptures, that this caused false doctrines to fall away and that it led to better and clearer understanding? Dear reader, whether you are a follower of Yeshua or otherwise, can you honestly say that the mass of Protestants in the world today have found more common ground and drawn closer together in common truth on account of their free
reading of biblical texts than otherwise? Has not Menno’s sincere belief in the illumination provided by scriptural reading birthed a myriad of conflicting interpretations, gave rise to multitudes of contrasting beliefs, splintered those who would follow Yeshua into a plethora of factions, spawned hordes of mystery sects and end-time cults, and cast a great many into what seems to be impenetrable darkness?
One of Menno’s favorite words to describe scripture is plain.
The plain meaning. The plain reading. The plain understanding. What is stated plainly. We Anabaptists like to use the word plain,
but what we mean is a turning away/separation from worldly things like materialism, fashion, luxury, hedonism, or dependence on tyrannical and oppressive systems that take away our self-governance or endanger the outworking of our faith by making it subservient to other interests and powers. For Menno, however, plain
was how one approached or understood scripture. Truth was available to all if only we would turn away from the hardness of our hearts, listen, and accept what scripture says. One could take one of Anabaptism’s fundamental criticisms as an opposing example:
Remember also how the early writers contended about infant baptism. Had it been apostolic, and found in the gospel, why should they have thus wrangled?
If such were a true criteria, it would invalidate a great many things Menno himself took to be self-evident. As an example, for some time, the number of Christians who believed in Arianism may actually have been greater than those who believed in Trinitarianism. It took an ecclesiastical debate, whose conclusion was backed up by the excommunication and banishment of any Christian who believed differently through the power of the Emperor, in order to make Trinitarianism the orthodox and valid scriptural interpretation for the church. Trinitarianism is no more contained in scripture or defined by the apostles than infant baptism. Yet Menno would hardly abandon the first.
What Menno overlooked (and what many other Modernists continue to overlook) is the part that one’s own perception, culture, time, experience, language, world-views, etc, play in the formation of meaning. We are, in a very real sense, prisoners of culture and history. Plain
the scriptures may have been to a Palestinian Jew in the First Century. Plain
they are no longer—either to a Radical Dutch Reformer or to us. It is a fanciful delusion, I think, to say that YHWH will bypass our own cultural, historical, and mental structures of thinking and understanding in order to reveal divine truth to us. If that were the case—if YHWH did reveal truth to us which came from outside our own perceptive lens, how could we possibly know it unless we changed and warped it to make it subservient to that lens? The way to true understanding does not come by denying the existence and influence of one’s perceptive lens, but by allowing new ways of thinking and understanding (at least to us) to change our lens. If we want to understand what texts written by Jews in Palestine in the First Century meant, we need to think like a First Century Palestinian Jew. And that will, by no means, involve turning away from outside instruction to simply and naively read the text and see it as we see it.
This is, indeed, a disparagement of Sola Scriptura. Apart from the traditions and doctrines of humanity, no divine meaning or understanding can exist. It may sound pious to say you have rejected worthless human traditions in order to follow, unadulterated, only that which is revealed in the biblical texts, but all you have really done is replaced one human tradition or doctrine with another and pretended to eliminate it from consideration. While I respect Menno on account of many significant insights and the fruits of a faith that was real, I must at the same time gainsay the naively impressionistic method he advocated. It does not befit the one who calls themself a child of YHWH or follower of Yeshua to take scripture so lightly as to think it requires nothing from us other than an honest and open heart in order to yield up its treasures.
I recently plucked Gerhard Von Rad’s commentary on Genesis (English translation) off the shelf to scan his comments on the binding of Isaac, Gen 22. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise for me to find myself immediately at odds with his assessments. The man was an amazing scholar and theologian to whom we all owe a great debt when it comes to the diachronic investigation of scripture, but I’ve found agreement between himself and I either in terms of theology or scholarship (and even of faith) to be sparse (though certainly not as tenuous as others). Commentary on the pericope begins with the statement:
This narrative too, the most perfectly formed and polished of all the patriarchal stories, . . .
Genesis, Gerhard Von Rad, p. 238
Is the man blind? When I translated this portion of Genesis from the Hebrew, I found working with it excruciatingly dull because, narratively speaking, it is immensely laconic. It almost goes out of its way to say as little as possible about what’s going on and to say it in a way that reveals almost nothing of the details of the events or the actions and motivations of its characters. We are left guessing at almost every turn about virtually everything that’s happening! Where is this hill/mount Moriah? How does YHWH show him the way/how does Abraham know they arrived at the right place? What are they doing for three days out there in the wilderness? What does Isaac think about all this? What is Abraham thinking about all this? Did he really say nothing else to Isaac other than YHWH will provide a lamb? What is that supposed to mean? Is Abraham prophesying? Is he making up something to cover up what he’s about to do? Questions about the content of the story abound, but the text gives us almost nothing to work with. One doesn’t have to deal with the Hebrew to get a sense of its austerity. Read this story in English next to virtually any other patriarchal narrative and you immediately sense the dearth of creative expression or literary involvement. What makes it so compelling is not what it says or how it says it, but the moral and ethical dilemma that it introduces in the hearts and minds of its readers (holy wandering Aramean, Bat-man, did YHWH just tell Abraham to slaughter his own son? How could Abraham even think of doing such a thing? Does YHWH get off on this kind of horror?). Synchronically and canonically speaking, of course, there is a tremendous amount of meaning that comes from situating this story at the climax of the entire Abrahamic narrative, but that isn’t influencing GVR’s statement above because he is looking at it in isolation. Perfectly formed and polished
? I say emaciated and soporific.
GVR goes on to categorize the story as a trial, test, or temptation. The supposed purpose of this trial/test/temptation was to see if Abraham truly has trust in YHWH and YHWH’s promise by carrying out the sacrifice of Isaac. Uh—no. I don’t think so. Look, this narrative doesn’t say much of anything. So when it goes out of its way to say something, that speaks volumes. The test isn’t whether Abraham will actually pull the knife on Isaac or not, but whether he will pull it on Ishmael or someone else INSTEAD OF ISAAC. That is why the narrative repeats itself many times over both at the beginning and at the end of the episode (v. 2: take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love – v. 12: seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son – v. 16: your son, your only son). It does this to emphasize that what is important about the sacrifice is not whether it happens, but WHAT PARTICULAR PERSON IS CHOSEN.
In the story, Abraham doesn’t simply take Isaac, his son
–the one YHWH wanted him to take—but also takes two of his boys
(22:3). There are clearly three young men of Abraham’s that are going along for the journey. One of them could be Ishmael for all we know, but the text doesn’t care to tell us. When they arrive at the place, Abraham tells his boys
to stay behind while he and the boy
whom he chooses go on alone. Abraham then places some of the material for the sacrifice on Isaac. This is the moment where the choice is actually made between Abraham’s three boys. The reason Abraham took all three along with him was probably because he had not decided whom he was going to sacrifice. The fact that it took three days was probably because Abraham was stalling. He certainly didn’t want to sacrifice any of his boys,
but the one he didn’t want to sacrifice most of all was Isaac, to whom the promise had been given and whom had been miraculously given to him. Since he had two other boys with him besides Isaac, if he took one whole day to decide whether or not to sacrifice one of those two, and at the end of the second day had sacrificed neither, it would be the third day when the sacrificing of Isaac took place. It is during those two days and up to the moment when Abraham has Isaac carry the wood that the actual test/trial/temptation takes place. Once he gives Isaac the wood, the test/trial/temptation is over—at least for Abraham.
What remains to be seen thereafter is how YHWH responds to Abraham’s obedience in truly taking the one to be sacrificed—the only one—that YHWH asked of him. Will YHWH reward Abraham? If so, then YHWH certainly wouldn’t allow the child to be slaughtered. If YHWH is faithful and righteous, s/he will not reward good with evil. At this point then, it is YHWH who is being tested. Will YHWH prove him/herself faithful and righteous? Abraham certainly believes this will happen, which explains why he tells Isaac that YHWH will give them the animal for the sacrifice. But Abraham’s belief is not enough to establish the faithfulness and righteousness of YHWH. That is something YHWH must do for Abraham and Isaac. When YHWH intervenes and stops the sacrifice from occurring, s/he vindicates him/herself. And this serves as a memorial to all those who come after that just as YHWH saw Abraham’s obedience and faithfully responded to it, so we can be certain that YHWH sees us, is faithful and righteous, and stands ready to deliver us from evil.
And now, when his sons are in the hour of distress you shall remember the Binding of their father Isaac, and listen to the voice of their supplication, and answer them and deliver them from all distress, so that the generations to arise after him may say: ‘On the mountain of the sanctuary of the Lord Abraham sacrificed his son Isaac, and on this mountain the glory of the Shekinah of the Lord was revealed to him.’
Targum Neofiti, Genesis 22:14cc, McNamara, p. 119
Aaron ben Moshe ben Asher’s Dikdukei HaTe’amim is available on-line in Hebrew and you can probably find Dotan’s critical edition for sale, but there doesn’t appear to be an English translation available. If anyone finds an English version anywhere, like, for instance, at the Internet Archive or Google Books, comment below.
Seforim Online is a digital manuscript repository with a horde of absolutely incredible Hebrew manuscripts in PDF format freely available for download. One of these is a high quality scan of the entire Leningrad Codex (Codex Leningradensis) B19a taken directly from a facsimile edition of the Masoretic text which is the basis of nearly all modern-day bibles. Nothing can replace working with a manuscript itself and this is just like having access to the real thing, but with the added bonus of being able to instantly flip to and zoom in on any portion. Because of the size, however (713 MB), it could take time to locate certain sections, so I’ve put together this table of contents, based on the page numbers of the PDF itself. If anyone can verify what the specific contents are in the End Matter of the MSS other than what is indicated below, please update this TOC with a comment.
Torah
- Genesis – p. 7
- Exodus – p. 67
- Leviticus – p. 117
- Numbers – p. 151
- Deuteronomy – p. 201
- masorah for Torah – p. 244
Prophets
- Joshua – p. 247
- Judges – p. 276
- Samuel – p. 304
- Kings – p. 372
- Isaiah – p. 445
- Jeremiah – p. 495
- Ezekiel – p. 557
- The Twelve
- Hosea – p. 612
- Joel – p. 619
- Amos – p. 622
- Obadiah – p. 628
- Jonah – p. 629
- Micah – p. 631
- Nahum – p. 635
- Habakkuk – p. 637
- Zephaniah – p. 639
- Haggai – p. 641
- Zechariah – p. 643
- Malachi – p. 653
- masorah for the Prophets – p. 656
Writings
- Chronicles – p. 659
- Psalms – p. 736
- Job – p. 798
- Proverbs – p. 823
- Megillot
- Ruth – p. 846
- Song of Songs – p. 850
- Qoheleth – p. 854
- Lamentations – p. 864
- Esther – p. 869
- Daniel – p. 879
- Ezra-Nehemiah – p. 899
- masorah for Writings – p. 930 – 951
End Matter
- graphic designs – p. 952 – 963, 982 – 985
- The Song of the Vine, Moses ben Asher’s original composition – p. 986
For Mit The Destroyer
I was recently asked about the verses from the Old Testament that are quoted in the New as verification or explanation of Yeshua’s Messianic status. My friend had heard (if I remember correctly) that the messianic verses in the New Testament were taken from the Septuagint. The Septuagint, of course, deviates from the Masoretic Text in many places, which explains some of the differences we see in the New Testament’s use of the Old. As a Christian, it is definitely intriguing if the apostles, disciples, and/or witnesses of Christ himself should use a verse to argue for Yeshua’s messianic status that is different than the Hebrew. A lot of questions present themselves in dealing with this situation. And I am far from being able to address most of them. However, I have read some things that would shed light on this discussion and would like to present it briefly here. The particular area I will be focusing on is Matthew’s use of the Greek OT.
In Matthew 12:18-21, the gospel quotes a portion of the Old Testament as proof of Yeshua’s messianic status. The question then is whether Matthew relies on the witness of the Septuagint to verify Yeshua’s messianic status. In order to answer that, I have reproduced data drawn from Paul Kahle’s The Cairo Geniza. Below is the Greek of Matthew 12:18-20 which is quoting Isaiah 42:1-4. After each line of Greek from Matthew (M), I show the Greek from the Septuagint of Isaiah (S). All the DIFFERENCES between what M says and what is in the Septuagint (S) are bolded or noted in the Septuagint line. The Greek text of Matthew used for comparison is the textus receptus
(Stephens 1550). The Greek text of the Septuagint is A. Rahlfs’ Septuaginta, 9th Edition, 1971.
M – ιδου ο παις μου ον ηρετισα ο αγαπητος μου εις ον ευδοκησεν η ψυχη μου θησω το πνευμα μου επ αυτον και κρισιν τοις εθνεσιν απαγγελει
S – ιακωβ ο παις μου αντιλημψομαι αυτου ισραηλ ο εκλεκτος μου προσεδεξατο αυτον η ψυχη μου εδωκα το πνευμα μου επ αυτον [no και] κρισιν τοις εθνεσιν εξοισει
M – ουκ ερισει ουδε κραυγασει ουδε ακουσει τις εν ταις πλατειαις την φωνην αυτου
S – ου κεκραξεται ουδε ανησει ουδε ακουσθησεται [missing material] εξω η φωνη αυτου
M – καλαμον συντετριμμενον ου κατεαξει και λινον τυφομενον ου σβεσει εως αν εκβαλη εις νικος την κρισιν
S – καλαμον τεθλασμενον ου συντριψει και λινον καπνιζομενον ου σβεσει [missing material] αλλα εις αληθειαν εξοισει κρισιν
M – και εν τω ονοματι αυτου εθνη ελπιουσιν
S – αναλαμψει και ου θραυσθησεται εως αν θη επι της γης κρισιν και επι τω ονοματι αυτου εθνη ελπιουσιν
As one can clearly see, there is very little that is the same between the Septuagint and the Greek quoted by Matthew. Often times there is material in the verses quoted by Matthew which does not exist in the Septuagint and sometimes there is material in the Septuagint that is entirely missing in Matthew’s quotation. Clearly, Matthew was not depending on the Septuagint of Isaiah for his proof of Yeshua’s messianic status.
The differences between these two versions of the Greek Isaiah are so great that no one can seriously attempt to explain the one text as a free quotation from the other. . . . There can be no doubt that here Matthew quoted a translation of Isaiah which differed from the translation found in the Christian ‘Septuagint’.
Paul Kahle, The Cairo Geniza, p. 251
In fact, according to Kahle, in the critical edition of the Septuagint of Isaiah by Joseph Ziegler, all quotations of Isaiah in Matthew have been noted and they all differ substantially from the Septuagint, which leads Kahle to say that there must have existed a Greek version of Isaiah different than anything that now exists but which was familiar to and used by the early Christians (p. 251). It was this now lost Greek version of Isaiah that Matthew used to prove Yeshua’s messiahship.
The Septuagint of Daniel was almost entirely lost. The version of Daniel that now exists in virtually every manuscript in existence–including all Septuagint manuscripts–is not the Septuagint of Daniel, but is the Greek text called Theodotion
. The Septuagint of Daniel is preserved in only a few manuscripts and has been translated (alongside Theodotion) in the NETS. According to Sir Frederic Kenyon, who studied and published parts of the Septuagint of Daniel when they were first discovered, many quotations from Daniel in the NT and even in the early church fathers come from the Theodotian text (or it’s earlier form), not the Septuagint text (The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, Fasc. 7, Ezekiel, Daniel, Esther, p. X.). It is therefore very probable that if a proof-text is used in the New Testament from Daniel to support Yeshua’s messianic status, this comes from Theodotion. Here, for example, is a place in the NT where the Greek text called Theodotion is quoted word-for-word as proof of Yeshua’s messianic status: John 19:37, quoting Zechariah 12:10 exactly from Theodotion (I did not verify this independently, but base it on the authority of Paul Kahle in The Cairo Geniza, p. 258). The Theodotion text, for the most part, conforms closely to the Masoretic.
So what does this go to show? It shows that the Septuagint was not the only Greek text of the Old Testament used authoritatively in the New in order to verify Yeshua’s messianic status. Rather, many different texts were used. Sometimes these texts agreed with the Hebrew in our Masoretic (Theodotion), sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes texts were used which we don’t even have today (the text of Isaiah used by Matthew). It seems to me that early Christians–including even the authors of the NT–were not all that concerned about preferring a certain text (like the Septuagint) over another (like the Masoretic), but used whatever texts were at hand and available to make their point. And that would seem to mean that early Christians did not so much place the validation of Yeshua’s messianic status on the authority of a written text, but on the authority of the historical witness of the church.
I recently attended a church meeting in which a biblical professor and Christian believer gave a lecture intending to address several issues that we (and many other churches) are currently struggling with. One of the main arguments that this professor presented was that there really is no such thing as outer defilement. Defilement only comes from within. This was based primarily on a pericope concerning hand washing in Mark, especially chapter 7, verse 15, where Yeshua says there is nothing outside a person that defiles, but what comes out of them. I have two objections to this, which follow below.
First, Yeshua does not seem to me to be a Greek Stoic or Hellenistic philosopher elucidating moral verities or stating absolute truths. I think Yeshua was a Jew from an Israelite community. As a Jew and not a Hellenistic philosopher, his words should not be taken as an absolute truism meaning literally nothing outside a person defiles because defilement only comes from within. Rather, Yeshua is probably speaking within and according to the ancient Judaic concept of water purification. This concept is, roughly, that when you have purifying water, which is flowing or running (sometimes called living
) and a defiled person or object, the defiled person or object does not contaminate the pure water by coming in contact with it. Rather, the defiled person or object is cleansed when it comes in contact with purifying water. The thing that makes water purifying, and thus not susceptible to outside defilement, is the fact that it is running or connected to a some great source beyond it. So, for instance, if you have a bucket of pure water and something defiled falls into it, the water becomes defiled (Lev 11:33). But if you pour the pure water out of the bucket onto something defiled, the defilement does not travel up the stream of water into the bucket and defile the source from whence it came. Instead, the defiled thing is cleansed. I believe this is the particular conception and idea that Yeshua had in mind when he said nothing outside defiles. Instead of meaning that there is literally nothing outside a person that can defile them, Yeshua was saying that he and his disciples were conduits of living
water. As such, when defilement touched them, they cleansed it instead of becoming defiled by it. If, however, they were to corrupt themselves and cease to be conduits of living water, they could certainly be contaminated by outside defilement. So it wasn’t as if outer defilement suddenly ceased to exist, and it wasn’t that outer, physical defilement was an outdated or silly religious belief replaced by the higher or better inner, spiritual focus of Yeshua and Christianity. It was that Yeshua had drunk of a Source, offered that Source to his disciples, and they became springs of living water that cleansed others instead of being defiled by them.
Second, when a Jew wanted to cleanse or purify themselves of defilement, whether inwardly or outwardly, they would enter a place where there was running water and submerge themselves within it. This is exactly what Yeshua did when he was baptised in the Jordan river and his actions would communicate to every Jew who saw him that he was purifying himself from defilement. If Yeshua was not purifying himself from defilement, then what was he doing performing a ritual that meant that to everyone around him and in the culture in which he existed? Unless we are willing to say Yeshua was deceiving both us and them or participated in the baptism ritual for no reason, we must say that he was cleansing himself from defilement. And if so, where was that defilement? If Yeshua was sinless, he had no inner defilement to be cleansed of. If Yeshua was without sin, he was inwardly pure. He could not, therefore, be repenting and cleansing himself of inner defilement. That only leaves outer defilement. But if Yeshua is pure inwardly and is cleansing himself of outward defilement, it proves that his words in Mark cannot mean, literally or Hellenistically, that nothing outside a person defiles. How then could it be that Yeshua, who is a conduit of living water in Mark 7, would be outwardly defiled at his baptism? Simple enough. He hadn’t yet been connected to the Source of the living water. This happened after he was baptised and the Spirit descended upon him. Only after Yeshua was cleansed of his outer defilement could he be fully joined to YHWH and offer those who were defiled a drink from his cleansing cup.
The texts of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament used by most bibles today is called Masoretic (or Tiberian), based on the standardised texts produced by the Masoretes in Tiberias. Nowadays, when one learns Biblical Hebrew, they learn from this text type. The spelling and vocalisation of these texts not only tell the reader WHAT the text is or is not saying (contrary to popular opinion, vowels do change meaning), but tells the reader HOW to say it. This pronunciation, however, was never the only way of reading/speaking the biblical texts.
Prior to the standardisation of the Hebrew manuscripts, there were two other types of pronunciation called Palestinian and Babylonian. Masoretic Hebrew altered and changed the pronunciation of Palestinian and Babylonian Hebrew in order to standardise the reading. Once the Tiberian type was established, Palestinian and Babylonian manuscripts were changed or altered to conform with the Masoretic. The Masoretic, however, did not escape alteration itself based on the Palestinian or Babylonian, which were older. Over several centuries, the Masoretic was changed to conform to Palestinian and/or Babylonian while Palestinian and/or Babylonian was being changed to conform to Masoretic. The result of that normalisation and harmonisation process between all three types was a new eclectic text based on no actual manuscript, but which itself became a textual tradition. This text was widely printed in the early days of the printing press and for quite some time was the authoritative and official Hebrew text. It was often mistaken to be Masoretic. Manuscripts which actually were Masoretic, Palestinian, or Babylonian were then altered to conform to this new eclectic text so that by the 13th and 14th Centuries, almost all Hebrew manuscripts represented this new eclectic text. That text was named Ben Chayyim after the Jew who was responsible for getting it printed and is the primary text used by the makers of the King James Bible for the Christian Old Testament. About a century ago, the Ben Chayyim text was abandoned for the Masoretic text type, which is what we use today. The Masoretic text type, however, does not preserve the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton (YHWH). Instead, it inserts vowels representative of various other words like Elohim or Adonai. There do exist, however, fragments of manuscript in earlier Palestinian and Babylonian pronunciation. These texts offer us a glimpse at what the Name looked and sounded like before the Masoretes began their work.
The picture above is a transcription of part of MS 594 of the Jewish Theological Seminary as taken from Paul E. Kahle’s The Cairo Geniza. It contains the last part of Qoheleth and the first part of Lamentations in Palestinian Hebrew. A later scribe added Masoretic pronunciation to the manuscript in a different colored ink, but preserved the original Palestinian reading. In the transcription, the Hebrew with Palestinian pronunciation is given in the upper portion while the Hebrew with Masoretic pronunciation is given in the lower. This particular piece comes from Lamentations 1:9, but can also be seen with the same vocalisation in Lamentations 1:11 of the MS. Palestinian vocalisation is new to me, so I don’t know about the proper pronunciation. Looking at how it is used on other words in the manuscript, it does show up in places where qamets exists in the Masoretic, but it also shows up in places where there is a chireq and even shureq in the Masoretic. Curiouser and curiouser. Unfortunately, Palestinian manuscripts unmolested by Masoretic harmonisation are few and far between and those who study them fewer and further. When I master Hebrew, I’ll come back to this. Otherwise, comments are open for those much more learned than I in these matters.
As it has been pointed out time and again, the way most people learn biblical Hebrew nowadays is basically the same way it’s been taught for the past several centuries. At a superficial level, all the Hebrew Grammars out there (and there are A LOT) give the impression that this is by no means a stagnant pool regurgitating the same pedagogical methods again and again. Unfortunately, that impression is deceiving. The crucial point about this is that these methods are not very helpful and in most cases very unhelpful. One begins learning biblical Hebrew and is suddenly thrust into the Masoretic pointing system, which controls and dominates their entire learning experience. The problems are:
- The Masoretes were masters of their linguistic craft and their pointing system is thus profound and difficult, which makes learning biblical Hebrew laborious, difficult, and unnecessarily confusing.
- The Masoretic system is a late invention applied to the Hebrew and thus should really be considered a SECOND LANGUAGE in addition to Hebrew.
- The Masoretic system was designed to fix/standardize/define the meaning of the Hebrew according to the way it was understood during THE MIDDLE AGES. Are we to believe against all evidence that in over half a millennium and more, the way the biblical texts were understood didn’t change? The standardizing pointing system by its very nature tends to limit and control what the text can or can’t say.
- The Masoretic system is BY NO MEANS THE ONLY WAY the Hebrew was vocalized at that time or before, so it should not be taken as the true and only way of vocalizing the consonantal text now. The standardizing pointing system by its very nature tends to limit and control how the text says what it says.
- Reliance on the later pointing system for defining, controlling, and interpreting ancient Hebrew means that when one actually approaches ancient Hebrew, they face unnecessary difficulties.
- The entire Masoretic system is based on the concept of a fixed/standard/defined canon of ACCEPTED (and thus by negation, REJECTED) collection of texts and the form of those texts therein. The ancient world from which the Hebrew texts originated knew no such limitations.
If one is a religious Jew or Christian attending seminary or yeshiva and believes in a certain fixed, inspired collection of texts and form of texts in agreement with the collection and forms as the Masoretes passed on, this is not detrimental, but for the scholar, the seeker of truth, or any secular, liberal arts education, such limitations cannot be accepted or inculcated.
The solution? A focus on the consonantal text with an emphasis on the Masoretic pointing system, not vice versa. Use more than just biblical texts. Don’t be confined by the HB/OT. This way, one first learns how to deal with the consonantal text on its own terms and, thereafter, begins using the Masoretic system as a further way to limit, define, and interpret. Here is a brief suggestion of how that might be done using the verbal Binyanim as an example.
Introduce Qal (Q), Niphal (N), Piel (Pi), Pual (Pu), Hiphil (Hi), Hophal (Ho), and Hithpael (Hit), describing what they communicate. Then introduce the Perfect, Imperfect, Imperative, Jussive, Cahortative, Participles, Infinitives, and Waw Consecutives, describing what they communicate. Run through exercises asking them what is what and what means what until everyone seems to have the binyanim and parts of speech down. Then begin teaching a list that says what a word is and what it could be if it is a strong “root” plus whatever prefix, suffix, or other. Have students work through consonantal words only and identify what the word HAS TO BE based on those rules. Then have them work through consonantal words only and identify what they COULD BE based on those rules. Begin only with strong roots. Here, for example, are some rules:
- root only = Q/Pi/Pu
could be: Q/Pi/Pu 3ms Perfect, Q/Pi 2ms Imperative, Pi/Pu Infinitive Abs, or Q Active Participle
- root with Yod between 2 and 3 radical = Hiphil
- root with Waw between 2 and 3 radical = Qal
could be: Infinitive Abs or Passive Participle
- Nun + root = Niphal
could be: 3ms Perfect, Passive Participle, or Infinitive Abs
- Yod + root = Imperfect or Jussive
could be: Q/N/Pi/Pu/Ho 3ms Imperfect or Q/N/Pi/Pu/Hi/Ho Jussive
- Mem + root = Participle
could be: Pi/Pu/Ho
- Taw + root = Imperfect
could be: Q/N/Pi/Pu/Ho 3fs or 2ms
- Alef + root = Imperfect
could be: Q/N/Pi/Pu/Ho 1cs
In this way, relying solely on the consonants, students begin to understand what a verb is and what it could mean without ever having to deal with vowel points. After they have mastered this, have them move from identifying what words are to giving possible interpretations of those words based on those rules. ONLY AFTER ALL THIS is Masoretic pointing introduced. This enables them to narrow down what a word is or could be based on the consonants to what the pointing makes it to be. Not only will this help students understand how the pointing restricts meaning, but it will enable them to make meaningful decisions about the language based on the consonantal text BEFORE turning to the pointing. In the end, what this will do is free them from the limitations and restrictions imposed by the pointing, enable them to approach the Hebrew text on its own terms, have greater and easier recognition of the Hebrew, and make plainly evident for them the part that either they or the Masoretes play as interpreters in the meaning of the scriptural text.
It never ceases to amaze me how incoherent almost all bible translations are when it comes to the name(s) of God. What’s wrong with YHWH? What’s wrong with Eloah? What’s wrong with actually representing the form or kind of name used by the text? This whole LORD/Lord/God/GOD and other nonsense (like HaShem) is just incomprehensible. What’s so hard about translating In the beginning, Elohim
?? That’s what the text actually SAYS. Why is the Tetragrammaton—what the scriptures actually USE—anathema? Are we better than the texts? No English translators seem to have memory loss or SWRS (Sudden Word Replacement Syndrome) when it comes to the names of deities in other ancient religious texts. It’s only when you open up a translation of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in almost all English bibles that it becomes impossible to read a rendering of the actual name used by that text. Is it so hard to put a little comment in the introduction saying no one knows what ‘YHWH’ means or how it was originally pronounced, so we recommend saying ‘Adonai’ or ‘Yahweh’ when you read it
? What is this Hebrew-deity-name-phobia that seems to have overwhelmed the entire English-reading world?
