Johnny Skeptic

Farrell Till says "So if Ezekiel was declaring that Nebuchadnezzar would be the instrument that Yahweh would use to destroy Tyre, why did he say that 'many nations' would be sent against it? A reasonable explanation of the prophet's reference to 'many-nations' can be found in the ethnic compositions of early empires. Empires like Babylonia formed from the conquest and annexation of surrounding tribes and nations, so when an area was assimilated into an adjoining kingdom, the soldiers of the conquered nations served the greater empire. The Assyrian empire, for example, crumbled when the combined forces of the Medes, Babylonians, and Scythians plundered Assur in 614 B. C. and Nineveh in 612. When Haran fell to these allied forces in 610 and then Carchemish in 605, most of the Assyrian territory was annexed by Babylon. In such cases, defeated armies swore allegiance to their conquerers, so the armies of a king like Nebuchadnezzar were actually armies of 'many nations.'

"Literally, then, when the armies of Nebuchadnezzar or Cyrus or Aexander attacked a city or territory, it wasn't just the aggression of a single nation but of many nations. This reality of ancient warfare was reflected in a familiar scenario in the Old Testament in which biblical prophets and writers depicted battles against common enemies as the gathering of 'many nations.' In 2 Chronicles 20:1-4, this allegedly happened when Jehoshaphat was king of Judah.

"It happened after this that the people of Moab with the people of Ammon, and others with them besides the Ammonites, came to battle against Jehoshaphat. Then some came and told Jehoshaphat, saying, 'A great multitude is coming against you from beyond the sea, from Syria, and they are in Hazazon Tamar.'

"Psalm 2:1-2 depicted the 'kings of the earth' as having set themselves against Yahweh and his anointed. Isaiah 13:4 told of a 'tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations' that were gathered together against Yahweh of hosts. Zechariah 12:3 warned that 'all nations of the earth' that were gathered together against Jerusalem would be cut in pieces. Ezekiel himself clearly used this same scenario at times. In the allegory of the two sisters (Oholah and Oholibah), he warned Judah that Yahweh would send against it the Babylonians, Chaldeans, Pekod, Shoa, and Koa, and all the Assyrians. The "many-nations" scenario was a commonplace hyperbolic device that biblical prophets used in their vitriolic denunciations of those who were enemies of Israel and Judah. This device was even used to denounce Judean kings who 'did evil in the sight of Yahweh.' After Nebuchadnezzar had installed a puppet king in Jerusalem and by a strange twist of thinking had come to be considered by some biblical writers as God's servant, Jehoiakim (the puppet) rebelled, and 'Yahweh sent against him bands of Chaldeans, Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites to destroy Judah' (2 Kings 24:1-3), but the last two chapters of this book make it very clear that it was Nebuchadnezzar's army that destroyed Judah and took the people captive to Babylon, but in a real sense it was actually a conquest of 'many nations,' because Nebuchadnezzar's armies were comprised of more than just Babylonians."

Prester John

Companies is singular!!!! and there was i thinking the singular of companies was company. Absolute singular refers to abstract notions? A company of soldiers is hardly abstract.

Sauron

Incorrect, for several reasons:

1. The original name of the city is lost to us. What we are working with is the Hebraicization of a Phoenician city-name, which was then transposed into Greek. So don't pretend we have the original, when clearly we don't have it at all.

2. The act of translating it into Hebrew and then into Greek opens a lot of doors for different versions of the spelling in the destination language. I already gave you one example: The English name Cyrus comes from the Hebrew Kurash. But the original person was Kshatriyah.
Kshatriyah --> Kurash --> Cyrus.

3. For a modern-day example, just look at how many different ways that the name of Islam's chief prophet can be spelled in English: Mohammed, Mohammad, Muhammad, Mahomet, etc. There is only ONE way to spell this in Arabic - only one. But that didn't prevent at least *four* different variant spellings from cropping up in English.

4. Even in the Greek LXX, the original term was "Tyre". What you are obsessed with is a variant spelling of that name, found in one particular book. But we are discussing the LXX - a Greek translation made over 300 years later (at a minimum), by over 70 different people, spanning decades, and which we know to have been riddled with errors. So many errors, in fact, that Jerome had to specifically set out to rectify variant spellings between versions.

Well, no. Actually we don't find that.

Wrong. The Greek word for Syria contains an iota in the word, which your attempt above left out. So the spellings are not that close.

Moreover, the link above is an EXCELLENT example of what I have been trying to explain to you, with regards to Tyre. The link I just gave you indicates that the name "Suria" is most probably of Hebrew origin, related to Strong's 06865. That Hebrew word is tzor, a word that begins with the letter tsade in Hebrew. If you recall, I tried to drill it into your head earlier that this particlar letter in Hebrew represents a sound that we don't have in English:

3. Since the Hebrew name for this city starts with a tsade, it can be transcribed as either Tyre or Sur. The tsadeh has no equivalent in English, but it sounds like crushing the letter "t" together with the letter "s".

And for THAT VERY REASON, words that start with this letter often get transcribed as beginning with either t, or s, depending upon what the lstener believes that he/she is hearing. And if that listener doesn't speak a language that has such a sound, then their ear won't be tuned to listen for the difference. Happens in Arabic all the time, with English speakers who are first exposed to the letter tsaad - they think they're hearing a t, or an s, or even a z. They're wrong on all three counts.

So now we have TWO Greek words (Suria, Sor) that both:
a. started with a tsade (complex t-s sound) in Hebrew;
b. but got simplified to an ordinary s-sound when transcribed into Greek

Let me see if I understand: you have a new hypothesis that Sur is in Egypt, or very near to it. You couldn't make it work the straightforward way, so now you are casting about, trying to find any other location with a similar sounding name. Fine. Fatal flaws with that hypothesis include the following:

1. The Ezekiel text speaks about Tyre/Sur being a mercantile powerhouse, with trade partners and enormous wealth. There was no such economic powerhouse in that area "fronting Egypt"; no such city with the trade connections listed by Ezekiel. By trying to locate Sur in this new Egyptian location, you make it impossible to match Ezekiel's description above.

2. You referred earlier to the book fo Judith. Let us assume -- for the sake of argument -- that the book of Judith were 100% correct. Now your hypothesis has another problem. The Judith text refers to a rampaging attack by Nebuchadnezzar. However, history records no such campaigns by Nebuchadnezzar on the border of Egypt.

In your flailing about to avoid admitting a failed prophecy in Ezekiel 26, you tried to find another Sur in the area. But you forgot to check it against the secondary requirements.

1. Nebuchadnezzar did not "march towards Egypt" at Carchemish. Sheesh. Carchemish is in northern Syria, on the modern-day border with Turkey.

2. And THAT is precisely why "from the north" makes sense in this verse. Nebuchadnezzar defeated the Egyptian armies at Carchemish in 605 BCE. Carchemish is NORTH of Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre - all on Babylon's list of "must have" properties in the area.

Prior to Nebuchadnezzar, Egypt had been the ruling power in the area, controlling vast lands in Palestine and Syria. But at Carchemish, Egypt suffered a humiliating defeat and was driven out of its lands in Syria and Palestine, and was forced to retreat to the area of the Nile. Unable to take the land back, Egypt had to satisfy herself with merely acting as the instigator or the accomplice to anti-Babylonian movements. Obviously the memory of that battle several years earlier still lingered, and everyone remembered which direction the Babylonian menace came from - the north.

No, in fact Egypt did not. Egypt was kicked out of the area as a result of the battle of Carchemish, eight years earlier. Jerusalem appealed to Egypt, but there was no reason for her to hope for Egypt's help. After getting spanked earlier, Egypt was in no mood to go to war to help some backwater pronvince like Judah. There was precious little to gain from it, especially since renewed Egyptian resistance might encourage Nebuchadnezzar to take his armies into the Nile and bring the fight right to Egypt's own doorstep.

Not true. Entire books (or sections of books) have been devoted to that topic. I own several such books.

Also not true.

<deleted> Tyre figures prominently in the history of Alexander the Great, appears again during Roman times, and on into the time of the Crusades. Jidejian devotes four chapters to the history of Tyre during the same period (post-Nebuchadnezzar) that you apparently found nothing at all.

Or perhaps you're just guessing, because the obvious choice -- a failed prophecy -- is simply not acceptable to you.

Just better than you. Which isn't saying much.

Why do I insist that Tyrians is a noun and not an adjective? Because that's what it is - a noun.

Do you even know what a noun is, meforevidence?

A noun is a person, place, or thing. So are Tyrians a kind of person?

1. Another example. "Pizza, the favorite food of Italians." The word "Tyrians" is just like "Italians" -- a plural noun. See that "s" on the end of both of those words? That "s" means PLURAL. As im MORE THAN ONE. In English, only nouns can be made plural with an "s". So if it's plural, then it's gotta be a noun.

2. Another example sentence for you:
"John Paul II, loved by Catholics around the world"

Guess what, meforevidence? The word "Catholics" is a plural NOUN. You could also discover that it is a noun because there's a real, live VERB there, right next to it. Verbs describe actions or states of being. But only NOUNS can act or do something; adjectives cannot. Therefore, "Catholics" in the sentence above CANNOT be an adjective, because only nouns can love.

3. Consider the sentence "King of the Israelites"

Now about this king person -- is he a king over a bunch of people? Or is he a king over a bunch of adjectives?

Gross mistakes like this is *precisely* why your wigged-out Septuagint hypotheses based on language don't hold water, meforevidence. You don't know enough about languages to be floating such "theories" out there.

I did do more than merely reading it. I also knew *how* to read it, and then I kicked your ass with it.

Sauron

Ah. Trying to get a little sympathy by playing the martyr? Poor lee merrill - everyone is picking on him.

<deleted> You did more than merely "comment." You tried to rebut positions by tossing out affirmative claims in these areas. Here; let's take a look at a couple, to refresh you conveniently short memory:

But not much is known about the creation of the Septuagint. Not much at all…

The standard procedure was to break through, or build a ramp, not pull it down,

in this verse you quoted here: "and with his axes he shall break down thy towers." Horses don't generally assist with axe work…

Discussing ancient map-making:
They did a satellite survey, that is true. But probably not the Greeks or Romans! They had no such scientific interest.

Other famous unsupported claims:
You don't take war horses to battle an island fortress!

But we apparently don't even have ruins above ground.

Then there was:

• your whole backpedal/fiasco over the definition of "soundings";
• your refusal to accept the location of Phoenician as ruins as being under the modern city;
• your description of the "proper" way to attack a city, which did not hold up under scrutiny;
• your unsupported claim that sound waves (generated by dynamite!) used in geologic echolocation tests for oil must have the same resolution as those used for archaeology, because god knows there couldn't possibly be any refinements of the technique to account for different tasks or types of echolocation work;
• your claim that a city wall was militarily best if it were straight, in spite of being told about Fort Ticonderoga;
• your related claim that an irregular shaped wall was more expensive, which was accompanied by precisely ZERO mathematics to show that;
• still another related claim that erecting a wall would be hard in this circumstance;
• a collection of ignorant and uninformed statements about ancient navigation, which Gullwind used to beat you practically to death with;
• your claim that Alexander either killed or enslaved the entire population of Tyre;
• your disastrous claim that "skeptics" used to doubt the existence of the Hittites, which was thoroughly destroyed in a positively radioactive set of responses from the other participants;

<deleted>

1. I don't *have* to be an expert - I am quoting experts. I am not killing your argument, they are.

2. You have no references, except yourself - and when you're asked for proof, you wave your hands and pretend not to hear.

You set yourself up as an expert when the rest of us proved your "comments" wrong with sources. You made that worse, when you refused to accept the expert evidence that we offered that refuted your claim.

Sauron

Sigh. It's a collective noun. Quiz: which of these is correct:

1. People is coming to attack Tyre (singular)
2. People are coming to attack Tyre (plural)

1. People isn't paying their fare share! (singular)
2. People aren't paying their fare share! (plural)

If it were an ordinary singular noun -- as you claim -- then the correct answer in both pairs would be #1. But that doesn't sound right, does it?

There's your answer: it's a collective noun that behaves grammatically as a singular, but contextually as a plural.

See the above. The Hebrew word here is another collective noun.

They're ALL contextually plural.

Read my response to Sven again.

Sauron

Let me guess:

1. lee merrill posted the same assertions over there at TWeb;
2. for his effort, he got shot down there as well;
3. he ignored that inconvenient fact; and
4. he has resurfaced here to post them again, deliberately oblivious to seeing them refuted earlier.

Am I right?

lee_merrill

Sure it is! Sure they are. So then this rule that was proposed, as stated, does not work, and it is also not even a sure rule.

Here is an example:

"I saw three men go into the store where they met two Marines, and then they went to their car and drove away."

Who did? The Marines?

No, the three men.

Regards,
Lee

Sauron

Wrong. Because of the contextual point that you are avoiding, the rule *does* work. See the definition I posted.

And knowing full well that you didn't have a clue what I was talking about, see also the definition of "collective noun" I provided.

Unfortunately, your example doesn't include any collective nouns. Both men and Marines are ordinary nouns, made plural. Your example is merely a case of noun-antecedent confusion, and illustrates zero about collective nouns.

I can loan you a sledgehammer, if you're really determined to bash yourself to death in a public forum. :rolling: :rolling: :rolling: :rolling:

Sauron

Having thought about this last night, I realized that your example backfired for not one, but TWO reasons. Let's look at it again:

"I saw three men go into the store where they met two Marines, and then they went to their car and drove away."

Your example isn't really that confusing. The subject of the sentence is the personal pronoun "I". The direct object (and the topic) are "three men." Since the topic of the sentence (three men) didn't change, then it was obvious from the grammar that they were also the ones who drove away. In order to get the Marines to drive away, the sentence would need to be re-worded:

"I saw three men go into the store where they met two Marines, who then went to their car and drove away."

But in the current configuration of your example sentence, there is no confusion. And in a language like Hebrew (or Latin) where the case of the word changes based upon its grammatical function, this sentence would not be confusing at all. You can say the words in any order you want, as long as you have the case endings (or case markers) correctly attached. The case endings are what the Koren bible (mentioned earlier) provides: full voweling for the words, to remove ambiguity about grammatical position in the sentences.

You also need to differentiate between honest ambiguity and ambiguity caused by bad grammar. Example:

"Hovering in the air with lights flashing, John watched the UFO for several minutes before it disappeared from sight."

This isn't honest ambiguity caused by multiple nouns in a conversation; this is ambiguity simply caused by bad grammar. It makes John appear to be floating in air wearing some kind of flashing lights. The "hovering" phrase in the beginning of the sentence attaches itself to John because it appears closest to John in the sentence.

SOOOO....................

Having brushed aside that little diversion, we're right back to where we started. There are multiple plural nouns introduced by Ezekiel, including collective nouns that act like plural nouns by context.

Your move, lee merrill. :thumbs:

lee_merrill

Hi Sauron,

Well yes, and then the rule fails...

Regards,
Lee