Freethought & Rationalism Archive

stephan huller · 02-05-2012, 04:19 PM

The difficulty may be when yesh started to be used as a noun in Hebrew

stephan huller · 02-05-2012, 04:27 PM

Rule in life - don't try and solve linguistic problems at Target. “He is, it is” = yeshnow

stephan huller · 02-05-2012, 05:12 PM

Driver and Briggs say Ishu is the “Assyrian” equivalent of the Hebrew yesh. Whay is “Assyrian” here? It is not Akkadian or Aramaic which have separate abbreviations

Horatio Parker · 02-05-2012, 06:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

I think is it. This is the real deal. All other 'mythicism' is complete bullshit. This is the mythical origins of Jesus as a divinity. No malice. No veiled attempt to make fun of the religion. Jesus was the yesh. It explains everything especially if Jesus was conceived as being crucified in the form on the lower left (especially if a large stage held up the saltire cross thus forming a chresimon):

Jesus represents the visible part of the invisible God.

Colossians 1:15

Quote:

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

If that's yesh, then OK.

stephan huller · 02-05-2012, 06:23 PM

But I think/suspect that for the Arians Jesus wasn't the Son. Tertullian intimates this was the Marcionite position. As I have noted before I think/suspect that between the Creator/Son/Logos and the Father stood the ousia (= yesh)

stephan huller · 02-05-2012, 08:26 PM

The idea that started the thread = were the Arians arguing that Jesus was a distinct being from the Son, the “substance” of the Father (the Father was before substance)

stephan huller · 02-05-2012, 09:41 PM

I think I have finally found a clue how yeshu was developed from yesh. It's what I was thinking at Target but I was embarrassed I couldn't answer my own question adequately. First the quote from Ibn Ezra Commentary on Deuteronomy 29:15:

Quote:

But with him that standeth here with us this day - the nun of yeshno (that standeth here) is superfluous

So now the Hebrew (my link button isn't working but here is the original book http://books.google.com/books?id=Ljg...ed=0CD8Q6AEwAg

Quote:

Deuteronomy 29:15

כִּי֩ אֶת־ אֲשֶׁ֨ר יֶשְׁנֹ֜ו פֹּ֗ה עִמָּ֙נוּ֙ עֹמֵ֣ד הַיֹּ֔ום לִפְנֵ֖י יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵ֑ינוּ וְאֵ֨ת אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֵינֶ֛נּוּ פֹּ֖ה עִמָּ֥נוּ הַיֹּֽום׃

But with him that standeth here with us (יֶשְׁנ֜וֹ) this day before the LORD our God and also with him that is not here with us this day

What Ibn Ezra is saying - which is completely baffling from the perspective of a Hebrew speaker - is that he questions why yeshno (יֶשְׁנ֜וֹ) should by the third person of yesh or as the author of the translation of Ibn Ezra explains:

Quote:

Yeshno is the word yesh plus the third person pronominal suffix. That suffix is a vav. Thus we would expect yesho rather than yeshno. Hence IE's comment (Krinsky).

You see yad is 'hand' in Hebrew, his hand = yadu. Why isn't yesh similarly transformed into yeshu. Ibn Ezra sees the nun as superfluous. Yet could it be that the Hebrew language was modified with respect to yesh to avoid resulting in the letters of Jesus's name? Curious. I'm not suggesting anything. It's just curious that Ibn Ezra should be wondering about the same thing I was today at Target.

stephan huller · 02-05-2012, 09:54 PM

The reason the addition of this 'superfluous' nun is so significant is that you if one were to follow the normal conjugation of the early text of the Sepher Yetzirah:

Quote:

He made nonbeing (eino) into being (yeshno) (2:5)

would read

Quote:

He made einu into yeshu

Curious that the material itself sounds so much like the alphabetic speculation of the Marcosians:

Quote:

For He indeed showed the mode of combination of the letters, each with each, Aleph with all, and all with Aleph. Thus in combining all together in pairs are produced these two hundred and thirty-one gates of knowledge. And from Nothingness did He make something, and all forms of speech and every created thing, and from the empty void He made the solid earth, and from the non-existent He brought forth Life.

He hewed, as it were, immense column or colossal pillars, out of the intangible air, and from the empty space. And this is the impress of the whole, twenty-one letters, all from one the Aleph.

stephan huller · 02-05-2012, 09:58 PM

I know this sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, but why did the 'superfluous nun' get added into Hebrew vocabulary? You can see it plain as day when you put ayin and yesh back to back:

Quote:

yad (hand) yadu (his hand)
yesh (something) yeshnu (his something)

Why did that nun get added to the word that is always used to describe the firstborn creation of God? This can't be coincidence.

stephan huller · 02-05-2012, 10:26 PM

Trying to get to the manner in which scholars explain this 'superfluous nun'

Quote:

Copulae from Existential Particles

The NWS existential particles, Hebrew yesh, Aramaic itay (later it), Ugaritic /'£ and their negative counterparts, develop copular functions, most fully in Aramaic. In this capacity, they appear with pronominal suffixes (or, in Ugaritic, with the subject markers of the suffix-conjugation verb) to indicate the logical subject. There are in fact but a handful of examples in Biblical Hebrew and just three known in Ugaritic,156 though such usage is more common in Mishnaic Hebrew, probably under Aramaic influence.

Examples are: Biblical Hebrew: 'et-'aser yesno po 'immanu 'with those who are here with us' (Deut. 29:14); 'im-yesno ba-'ares 'if he is in the land' (1 Sam. 23:23) Ugaritic: 'tf 'mn mlkt 'I am with the queen' (KTU 2.13:15); 'mn mlk ... 'tf 'I am with the king' (KTU 2.30:14); i iff atrt 'where is Athirat?' (KTU 1.14: IV: 38)157 Biblical Aramaic: 'im-bisra' la"itdhi '[whose dwelling] is not Biblical Aramaic: 'im-bisra' la"itdhi '[whose dwelling] is not with the flesh' (Dan. 2:11) This construction became extremely common in Aramaic, as we find already in l54Prochazka (1988: 226). Rubin Studies in Semitic grammaticalization p. 44

Is Rubin suggesting this is an Aramaism? More from another source:

Quote:

On the other hand yeš is often analyzed as if it were a verb, either the present of haya or something essentially equivalent (Chayen and Dror 1976, Berman 1978, Doron
1983, Shlonsky 1997). While the motivation is clear (the paradigmatic relation between
haya and yeš), it is also obviously the case that yeš is not a verb. It appears to be a noun as does its negative eyn. The subject agreement paradigms for yeš and eyn resemble the possessor agreement paradigm for nouns:

no agreement yeš eyn gan ‘garden’
1st pers. sing. (yeš- n- i) (eyn- en- i) gan-i
2nd pers. sing. masc. (yeš- xa) (eyn- xa) gan-xa
2nd pers. sing. fem. (yeš- n- ex) (eyn- ex) gan-ex
3rd pers. sing. masc. yeš- n- o eyn- en- o gan-o
3rd pers. sing. fem. yeš- n- a eyn- en- a gan-a
1st pers. plural (yeš- n- enu) (eyn- enu) gan-enu
2nd pers. plural masc. (yeš- xem) (eyn- xem) gan-xem
2nd pers. plural fem. (yeš- xen) (eyn- xen) gan-xen
3rd pers. plural masc. yeš- n- am eyn- am gan-am
3rd pers. plural fem. yeš- n- an eyn- an gan-an

Aside from the unique (e)n “infix” in some of the forms, the suffixes on yeš and eyn are
clearly identical to the nominal suffixes. On the other hand, the non-third-person forms
are very rare, especially for yeš (Schwarzwald 1982); it is striking that they are all listed
in the prescriptively oriented dictionary Even-Shoshan (1985), but the non-third-person
forms of yeš are not included in the descriptively oriented dictionary Choueka (1997).

Speakers of Hebrew typically use circumlocutions to avoid these forms, but occasionally
the third person forms are used with non-third-person subjects. (Examples a–c are spoken examples reported by Schwarzwald 1982, and d is a song lyric.

So the 'superfluous nun' is called an 'infix' by scholars. You learn something new every day.

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02-05-2012, 04:19 PM	#161
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	The difficulty may be when yesh started to be used as a noun in Hebrew

02-05-2012, 04:27 PM	#162
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	Rule in life - don't try and solve linguistic problems at Target. “He is, it is” = yeshnow

02-05-2012, 05:12 PM	#163
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	Driver and Briggs say Ishu is the “Assyrian” equivalent of the Hebrew yesh. Whay is “Assyrian” here? It is not Akkadian or Aramaic which have separate abbreviations

02-05-2012, 06:23 PM	#165
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	But I think/suspect that for the Arians Jesus wasn't the Son. Tertullian intimates this was the Marcionite position. As I have noted before I think/suspect that between the Creator/Son/Logos and the Father stood the ousia (= yesh)

02-05-2012, 08:26 PM	#166
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	The idea that started the thread = were the Arians arguing that Jesus was a distinct being from the Son, the “substance” of the Father (the Father was before substance)

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