ynquirer

Because Paul wished to emphasize that he made use of KP as a name rather than a noun, likewise you write Taylor instead of Tailor?

If so, it had to be very early, indeed. After Paul’s death and before the first synoptic was written? You haven’t gotten much time for the alleged mystification. And, of course, you take for granted that both “entities” were entirely fictitious, for otherwise it ought to have happened when one of the two or both were still alive, or so were people that knew either of them. The latter seems to me too disputable an assumption to call for it in support of your theory.

Obviously? I have read a little about this, and I find of it scarcely convincing. The main charge seems an omission of en between two Greek words, which omission Paul never commits elsewhere. Even though this were true, it seems to me that a scribe’s missing the preposition is more parsimonious an explanation than a wholesale interpolation. Another charge is that Paul would have not surrendered the evangelization of the Jews to Peter, as suggested in the two verses. Well, this is interesting stuff for a thread of its own, but tangent to the present one.

Why not? KP, to be straightforwardly pronounced khf according to the BHS, is rendered petros by the Septuagint in both Job 30:6 and Jer 4:29. The -as ending is fairly frequent in personal names for male in Greek.

Its true that lithos is more common a noun in the Septuagint than petros, but never for KP, which is rendered petros in both its occurrences. Only a few times is petros translation for KP; most frequently, petros is Greek for Hebraic CWR, yet its comparative rarity bestows an allegorical significance on KP that is lacking in CWR.

Strong says that KP is of Chaldee origin. As borrowed from the sandy country of Babylon, KP bears a connotation of scarcity, which is strengthened by its rarity within the Tanakh. Accordingly, to call someone Khfas as a transliteration for KP was somehow to say that he was made of stone, and very scarce as a human resource in the service of the nascent church.

I think there must be a difference. Birth narratives, as by Matthew and Luke, were likely written after the gospel of Mark; the same for resurrection sightings. But do you here mean to imply that Paul’s talk about Cephas was written after the three synoptics?

That’s only a theory. Strong’s bet rather is for Ramah, Hebraic HRMTH with the first HE a matre lectionis for a long A, /a:/ while the latter one a mute consonant, and Greek transliteration Armathaim as in 1 Sam 1:19 and no fewer than fourteen more verses in the same book.

Not from K)P) but from KP.

Check Kittim and Caphtorim: KYTM, transliterated into Kitioi, and KPTRYM, transliterated into Kafqoriim; both in the same chapter as one can kind Cush - Genesis 10.

The image of Cephas as a “rocky pillar” of the early church in Jerusalem is as strong, if not stronger than the petros/petra wordplay, and possibly the remote source of the latter. It is not of Greek but Semitic origin.

spin

Sorry, but it's a non sequitur.

Perhaps you have some crystal ball to date the gospel??

There are various other issues including discourse marking, regularity of use of terminology. What for example does tounantion, 2:7, attach to?? The Galatians are clearly well-versed in Jewish literature, suggesting that there was at least a component of Jews in the community, but wasn't Paul entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised? Why does the writer suddenly change from Cephas to Paul, when this is the only place where this name is used, ie what information is being communicated with this change? What is the purpose of the long-winded statement about roles in 2:7-8 when it is repeated less than twenty words later? And why is the discourse not disturbed when 2:7-8 is omitted?

The Greek deals with two separate issues, first the person who gave the doctrine (petros) and the doctrine on which the church is based (petra). It is wordplay in Greek. It would be simple repetition in Aramaic.

Sorry, this is pure conjecture. You cannot make assumption based on the rarity of a word. You have no idea why a word is rare in a small corpus of language.

BDB gives KP as probably from Aramaic. Jastrow defines the term as "rock, stone, ball".

The "information [about Caiaphas the high priest] just wasn't available to Mark".


Ramah is just the singular. Don't use Strongs. It will cause you pain.

It's basically the same etymology.

K)P) is the Aramaic. Why would you want to propound the Hebrew form borrowed from Aramaic, rather than the Aramaic?

It's not a transliteration. It just uses the Greek form from the town Kition in Cyprus, though when the name was not recognized it gets transliterated, eg Jer 2:10 xettiim and Ezek 27:6 xettiin. Scratch that one.

It is also probable that Caphthor is based on a Greek known toponym, given that it deals with Greeks. A further example of this is KRTY, ie Cretans. You'll have to look a little harder. There may be a few, but they will be exceptions to the rule, making it necessary for you to justify why K)P) or as you will KP gets transliterated with a kappa.

On this pillar I will build my assembly???

You can forget about the pillar stuff. It doesn't fit the sense. There is no wordplay in the Aramaic, as it just repeats the word first as a name then as the thing the name refers to. You are rock and upon this rock I build my church!? It works by association, not repetition.

We are left wondering why the Aramaic K)P) was transliterated into Greek with a kappa. Everything is clear with QYP) as the source of Khfas.


spin

Ben C Smith

While I agree that pivotal points in the story may be more deliberated by the author, I do not think that the net result in either the case of Joseph or the case of the unwilling nudist in the garden is that any line was ignored. I do not hold, nor have ever held, that the waiting for the kingdom line is a Marcan throwaway. I think it was a deliberate, or at least quite natural, effort on his part to connect Joseph thematically with the scribe in chapter 12. Mark wants to paint Joseph as the right kind of Jew, as it were. More on that later.

I do. You and I are both drawing connections; we are just not drawing the same connections.

I agree that Mark has consciously chosen descriptors for Joseph. I disagree that I am tearing his work into little pieces.

You are correct; I did not get that from your words. My apologies for my denseness.

It just so happens that my view is precisely that about Mark, that he was not the originator of this story; he got it from elsewhere (tradition, Petrine preaching, what have you). Mark tries to portray Pilate as a creampuff, but he knew the reality about Pilate, and it peeks through here.

Nevertheless, let us assume for the sake of argument that Mark invented this story wholesale. Even here, the proclivities of the Judaean prefects and procurators still lurk in the background. This can still easily be the truth peeking through, just not specific truth about Pilate personally; rather, general truth about prefects and procurators in general. Mark tries to portray Pilate as a creampuff, but he knew the reality of Roman procurators, and it peeks through here.

IIRC, I previously allowed that the connection between waiting for the kingdom and being not far from the kingdom could be either intentional or just natural on the part of Mark as author. If we pursue Mark as inventor of this story, however, it is more natural that the connection is intentional, right?

Look again at Mark 12.28-34. Look at what it took for Jesus to describe this man as not far from the kingdom. He asks Jesus what the greatest commandment is, and upon hearing the answer (which is thoroughly Jewish and lifted straight from the scriptures) the scribe agrees and adds that to love God and neighbor is better than burnt offerings, virtually every word in this statement being again pulled straight from the scriptures. All he has really done is answer as a good, pious Jew might, and that merits him the tag of not far from the kingdom.

I submit that all Joseph had to do to merit the tag of waiting for the kingdom is to act as a good, pious Jew might. (Mark may indeed be open to accusations of being a little unfair to the mainstream Sanhedrin members here.) Remember that Jesus has in Mark 7.9, 13 accused Jewish leadership of setting aside the commands of God. The exchange in Mark 12 is all about the commands of God, and burying the dead before sunset was a command of God, too, one which Joseph carried out just like Tobit did.

If Mark is inventing, then I suggest he intended this connection deliberately. The content of not being far from the kingdom is not, according to Mark 12, having heard Jesus and followed him around; rather, it is respecting the commands of God.

Agreed, though I may have written this up differently in other posts. And searching for the kingdom here equals carrying out the commands of God (in burying Jesus), unlike most Jewish leaders according to the Marcan Jesus.

As for what you may be reading about Roman law, keep in mind that most of it applied only to Roman citizens (iuxta ordinem). Jesus was not a Roman citizen. Richard Carrier writes:

The crucifixion of Jesus is an example of trial extra ordinem. It essentially means the governor has a carte blanche when it comes to deciding guilt and punishment.

Note well: Pilate had a carte blanche to decide both that Jesus was guilty and what punishment he deserved.

You missed my point. I am saying that Joseph, not actually an ally of Jesus, risked being pegged as an ally of Jesus.

Yes, he risked being considered a sympathizer, even if he was not. Just because pious Jews existed who would bury bodies just to keep the law does not mean that Pilate would assume that such was the case.

I agree. I am trying to assume for the sake of argument that Mark is writing fiction, and am having trouble keeping that assumption pumping on all cylinders. I have also been rather less than clear on some points.

The sense of tension was part of that era. Mark did not have to write about it in order to assume it.

I think it is obvious enough for Brown because Brown also has to deal with Matthew and John. Any discussion of the status of Joseph in Mark will certainly have to explain why Matthew and John make him a secret disciple. Were they innocently and straightforwardly interpreting Mark here, or were they reinterpreting for their own purposes?

Kirby argues with Brown on the basis of historicity. Neither Kirby nor Brown are treating what is plausible for Mark to have meant in the way you and I are.

Fair enough, but I submit that Mark was overwriting the Pilate part whether he was relying on tradition or inventing whole cloth. The historical truth about either Roman procurators in general or probably Pilate in particular is better represented in the Joseph incident; it is hardly unlikely that historical reality will pop back into the picture if one has been trying to play it down.

Pilate never publicly declares Jesus innocent in Mark; he does that in Matthew. In Mark all we have is that editorial comment in 15.10 and a similar one in 15.15; these are authorial comments on what Pilate was thinking, but the author never makes him declare them. The closest he gets is to ask what evil Jesus has done, but a question cannot be pressed as a statement, even though the readers may know from 15.10, 15 why Pilate asked this question.

If Kirby means that the only motivation for a pious Jew to ask that the body of a man be buried at all is a strong belief in his innocence, then he is simply mistaken. In fact, there is so much evidence to the contrary that I doubt that is what Kirby intends here. Rather, I think he is emphasizing burial in a tomb (rather than in a pit).

I think Kirby does, however, misspeak in the following:

But is it very likely that a pious Sanhedrinist would be rushing about on the day before the sabbath during the Passover to have the bodies of the crucified properly buried? As I have indicated, Pilate was perfectly capable of performing the burial with his own means, and thus there would be no offense to the law of God.

He assumes that Pilate would have buried the body (before sunset?). Two things cry out against this, however. First, Pilate was not even aware that Jesus was already dead. Second, Roman practice was usually to leave the bodies rotting on the cross till the crows ate them. Kirby himself quotes Brown on the matter of Flaccus, who refused to take bodies down from the cross even on the eve of a feast.

The issue of whether a pious Sanhedrinist would actually do this is indeed a live one, but it is not on point for our debate, since I am conceding for the sake of argument that Mark may have invented this whole thing. The issue of whether Mark could have portrayed one of the council members as doing this, then, is in the bag, I think. Of course he could have. In telling us that Joseph was waiting for the kingdom, Mark is telling us that Joseph was obedient to the commands of God, unlike the others of his social standing, and therefore quite likely to make certain a dead body was not left out for the crows overnight.

Ben.

Amaleq13

Yes, and the "right kind of Jew" is one that is sympathetic to the preaching of Jesus.

The author didn't just try, he succeeded and reality didn't do any peeking.

I would think such a connection was intentional regardless.

Yes, we have a man who believes the same thing as Jesus, tells Jesus he speaks the truth, and is congratulated by Jesus. I suggest that it is entirely accurate to describe such a man as sympathetic to Jesus and connecting him to Joseph supports my view.

Except the scribe did hear Jesus according to the author:

"And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all?" (KJV, 12:28, emphasis mine)

He heard and agreed. (ie sympathetic: adj. looking upon with favor)

Okay.

I understand your point but I think it sinks your argument.

You agree that requesting the body creates that impression of sympathy but that risk existed whether he actually was sympathetic or not. Regardless, the author certainly knew that the request creates that impression but he makes no effort to disuade the reader from assuming this obvious implication. In other words, there is no indication of what you are saying in the text. Instead, the author lets the obvious implication stand and calls Joseph bold for doing it.

That assumption is not necessary for my argument though there are clearly fictional elements in this part of the story (eg freeing Barabbas). Whether Joseph was historical or fictional, the author chose his words for a reason and wrote with awareness of what he was doing.

My point was that the tension did not exist in the previous scene. The author not only didn't assume it, he turned it upside down.

Kirby argues that the historical truth is that Pilate would not have released the body of a crucified seditionist.

I think authors have more control over their stories than you are suggesting.

"Then Pilate said unto them, Why, what evil hath he done? And they cried out the more exceedingly, Crucify him." (15:14, KJV)

The question clearly implies that Pilate does not consider Jesus guilty of anything and anyone hearing it would know it.

Ben C Smith

Hi, Doug.

I believe we have achieved capacity for this debate. You have made some very good points, points which I will certainly take into account if I ever get around to writing up anything about Joseph of Arimathea.

I apologize if my argumentation seemed scattered at times, and hope the debate was at least a little rewarding for you, as well (even if doing no more than absolutely confirming for you that Ben is out in left field ).

Thanks.

Ben.

Amaleq13

Ben,

I look forward to your, at present, theoretical write-up.

Civil discourse is alive and well at IIDB.

Alive, anyway.

ynquirer

Perhaps it is, and an unnecessary one. See below.

It seems to me that your analysis of the present issue is dependent on your prior beliefs about the context - I mean, when Galatians and the gospels were written and what the writers knew of each other - which I think are tangent to the discussion. If they are not tangent, you ought to be more explicit.

This is a good instance of my previous comment. In this case, your argument clearly fits in another thread.

The wordplay, which so strongly attracts your attention, is in all likelihood a masterful literary hit by the writer of gospel of Matthew. Why are you convinced that either it is in the foundation of Christianity or the foundation is a pure myth?

This word is rare because it entered the Hebrew late, at a time that other words had occupied the semantic place for “stone” and “rock.” Therefore, it is used because of its special connotations rather than its common denotation.

I think KP comes from Proto-Semitic kabid, which yielded kabatu in Akkadian: “to be heavy,” and then kabdu: "heavy." A very old Hebraic word from the same stem is KBD (= “heavy“), with a dageshed KAF - that is, a hard, unaspired sound - plus a non-dageshed BET, that is, a voiced fricative /v/ sound, and a mute DALET, making a total /ka:ve:/. The Hebrews in Babylon found the Akkadian word kabdu, with similar consonants, as being used for heavy bodies in general and massive rocks in particular. Hebrew language borrowed the usage: the massive connotation is detectable both in Jer 4:29 and Job 30:6. The ending DALET was first rendered mute - as in KBD - and afterward lost, and the voiced fricative turned into voiceless fricative, both being labiodental as they were the transition was easy. Later on, /a:/ turned into /e:/, so yielding /ke:f/ - the root for Khfas.

Intriguing. Mark speaks of together the high priest and Pilate at the time Pilate was governor and Caiaphas high priest and you say that the info wasn’t available to Mark? What information, exactly, wasn’t available to Mark?

Ramah is the singular, “hill,” and Ramoth the plural, “hills” - so what? Surely you mean to imply that only one place in Palestine was called in ancient times either Ramoth or Ramah? One Ramoth is repeatedly placed in Gilead - according to all sources east of the Jordan, while one Ramah mentioned in Joshua 19:29 is placed on the coast, not far from Tyre. Which one do you like better - the one on the coast or the one east of the Jordan. You can have either one but not both.

The topic of the whereabouts of Arimathea has been discussed at IIDB. I especially like one of the oldest discussions, here. In addition to taking notice of the basic fact that there is no way to remove the stumbling block of the toponymic Arimathea, some contributors suggested that “hills” in ancient Jerusalem meant the richer part of the city, likewise the rich people at present day live, for instance, in Beverly Hills. Arimathea would so be a way to say, “a man from the rich part of Jerusalem.”

Richard Carrier has contended that Arimathea means “the best disciple,“ as a compound of “ari(stos) mathe(tes),“ with Matheia meaning “disciple town.”

As you see, a lot of speculation as in lack of any evidence. Have you gotten new evidence to contribute? Go post in that thread or open a new one. I’ll enjoy the spectacle.

My Strong for your BDB. Let’s spare the suffering reader another discussion like that one on the Oxford Dictionary as an authority on Latin etymologies.

Do you here imply that Paul didn’t speak Hebrew? And the form wasn’t borrowed from the Aramaic, but from the Chaldee.

This rejection is ad hoc. The real cause is that the Septuagint transliterates the KAF into kappa when the translator knows the KAF - a plosive consonant in any case - to be unaspired, and into a chi when the translator thinks it to be aspired. Whether the consonant was thought by the Masorets as being in one case or the other is signaled by a dagesh: the KAF with a dagesh denotes the hard, unaspired consonant while without it denotes the soft, aspired one. Thus, in Ge 10:4 and 1 Ch 1:7, which is a literal copy of the former, the KAF is dageshed, and the Greek letter chosen for transliteration is kappa. In Jer 2:10, instead, the KAF is non-dageshed and accordingly the Greek transliteration is chi. Ezek 27:6 shows sheer dubitation: the translator knows both the transliterations of Genesis and Jeremiah - but possibly not that of Chronicles, which is probably a later one - and in the dilemma he chooses Jeremiah.

Wide of the mark. Both Deuteronomy 2:23 and Amos 9:7 translate Caphthor into Kappadokias, which is the Greek name. Caphthor is purely Hebrew. And both verses transliterate the KAF into kappa because the constant is dageshed. Strikingly enough, in Jer 47:4, which also contains the name KPTR but the KAF is not dageshed, the translator avoids using it in any form - so as not to clash either with the original Hebrew or previous transliterations in the Septuagint, I think.

Sorry, Cretans is a word that is not in the Septuagint, but in the NT alone. Hence, we cannot check the assumed pronunciation of the KAF, nor, accordingly, test your supposition.

With pleasure. I’ve carried out the following experiment. I sampled chapters 1 to 5 of 1 Chronicles, which as you know contain a number of names. These are my findings:

• Of a total 30 names containing a KAF, in three cases (Malchiram, Bethmarcaboth, and Jachan) a dageshed KAF yields a chi - this is evidence neatly favorable to your theory.
  
  In three cases (Tochen, Sabtecha, and Suchathites) a dageshed KAF yields a kappa - this is evidence favorable to my theory.
  
  In 19 cases (Cheran, Achbor, Issachar, Canaan and Canaanites, Achar, Machir, Maachan and Maachathites, Machbena, Achsah, Rechab, Jeconiah, Berechiah, Shechaniah, Lecah, Chozeba, Micah, Zechariah, Salchah, Michael) a non-dageshed KAF is transliterated into a chi - this is evidence favorable to my theory.
  
  In one case (Zacchur) a name with one KAF yields one kappa and one chi - this evidence is inconclusive.
  
  In four cases (Caleb/Chelub, Cush, Carmi, and Calcol) names sometimes with and sometimes without a dagesh are transliterated into a chi - this evidence is difficult to assess, as the translators are posed with a difficult problem. Thus, for instance, KLB appears 31 times in the Tanakh, of which 17 times it has the dagesh while another 14 it lacks the dagesh; the Septuagint chooses the chi, which is evidence slightly favorable to your theory; still, the translator into English - KJV -, being aware of the problem as he seems to be, chooses either the form Caleb or the form Chelub according to the Masoretic Hebrew. Cush appears three times with dagesh and four times without dagesh, the Septuagint always choosing the chi. Carmi appears eight times: five times the KAF being without a dagesh against three with it; all but one the transliteration is chi, the eighth one the translator omitting the name. Carmelitess, instead, occurs twice, both times with a dagesh, and it yields kappa in both. Calcol has two KAFs, one with dagesh and one without dagesh, and it occurs twice; once the dageshed KAF is transliterated into kappa and the non-dageshed one so is into chi - this is scores a hit for my theory. The second time, both KAFs are transliterated into chi, which is slightly favorable to your theory.

As a summary, chi seems to be more frequent - much more so - because the prevalence of the soft, aspired KAF is paramount: 19 names out of 30. Of the remaining eleven, three hard, unaspired KAFs - four, in one adds Carmelitess - are transliterated into kappa, as I would predict, while another three are transliterated into chi. Another four names, including the very important one Caleb, in which the original Hebrew hesitates between the aspired and the unaspired KAF, shows that the overwhelming prevalence of the unaspired consonant is used by translators as a rule of thumb to decide difficult cases.

Transliteration of KAF into a chi is the outcome of either certainty as regard it is a soft, aspired consonant, as in Issachar and Zechariah, or of doubts as regard whether it is aspired or unaspired, as in Caleb and Carmi. If the writer knows for sure that the KAF is a hard, unaspired consonant, as one may expect from Paul to know of KP as meaning a massive rock, then the natural choice is kappa.

“On this massive rock, used as a pillar, I will support the house for my assembly.” Read Matthew 7:24-25.

This is probably embellishment by Matthew - you’ll not find it in Mark. The original notion was probably simpler. Together with “to be heavy,” Akkadian kabdu means “to be honored.” This connotation was missing in Hebraic KBD, but recovered in KP. Therefore, Khfas shows overtones of something very great and very strong, which supports the church, and someone that deserves being honored. The wordplay with petros/petra is more striking, but just a type of hook in my opinion - very successful, in any event, as your insistence proclaims.

I hope your wondering have met with full satisfaction.

You still have only a few instances of the toponymic Shiloh in favor of this.

spin

Why do you speculate so on my thoughts? What you have convinced yourself about of my convictions bears no resemblance to them.

Still pushing conjecture as to why the term was used. You know little about the available vocabulary of the Hebrew writer. You don't even know the exact meaning of KPYM.

I'll pass over your conjecture as to the source of K)P) (BDB provides Akk: kapu), and note that KP here is used both times in the plural KPYM, which should make you question your analysis.

A name.

Why should I? I'm merely pointing to the fact that there is definitely a Hebrew toponym behind Arimathea, as the Greek suggests. I rejected your statement:

Hopefully, we can put this conjecture of yours to rest as unnecessary, given to ample range of possibilities for a source toponym.

You've been warned about Strong's. (Accidentally left out the "g" and ended up with Stron's. ) And I note you're still refractory over your overgeneralization regarding promagistracies.

No, but did he?

WTF is "Chaldee"? The language of the Chaldeans perhaps?? It was used by people like Genesius for umm,... Aramaic.

There was nothing ad hoc about the rejection. You are fundamentally restating my argument! How does the translator know when a KAF represents the plosive other than through recognition of the word?? Doh!

And when did the Masoretes first use such marking? Obviously after the first century. Greek translators didn't have the luxury of pointed texts. They just had consonantal texts to contend with. Sadly this gets another Doh!

Whoa there, fella. Kappadokia also appears in the Targums for Caphthor, so there is a precedent for the Greek usage. I didn't make any overgeneralizing statements on the subject, so you can't claim I was wide of what I didn't claim.

What on earth makes you claim that? Does it look Hebrew or something? Can you supply a root for it?

Foresightful of the scribes to put a dagesh in for the translators wouldn't you think?

Oh, is that so? There just might have been a reason why I mentioned though. You might like to rethink your claim and look at Ezek 25:16 or Zeph 2:5 where you'll find KRYM even translated as krhtwn. Ooops.

When one doesn't have enough information, one's conclusions are often questionable, as in the case with Kition and Crete.

Firstly, I'm not interested in medial KAFs so much as initial KAPs, though good effort on the research. Secondly, working from the MT dagesh seems anachronistic. You'll need to consider a scenario in which the Greek translator had a native Hebrew speaker continuously at his side to check the pronunciations.

The issue of the dagesh is not mentioned at all by Elisha Qimron while talking about Hebrew orthography and phonology in his The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

For me, all that are of interest here are Cheran, Canaan and Chozeba... and...

Prediction based on anachronistic information gives ambivalent indications.

If one has to guess, there seems to be a general trend in ancient Hebrew of aspirating initial unvoiced plosives, for not only is /k/ often understood and transliterated to /x/ in Greek, but also /t/ is theta and /p/ is /f/, from plosive to fricative.

What makes you think that the writer knows that? It seems to me that you are making a post hoc judgment based on texts which do not easily give away their date of writing or the coherence of their writing. Words get reanalysed in antiquity (such as the claim that Nazarene comes from Nazareth), so if QYP) gave the form khfas, then, losing the original source, someone might develop the tradition by making the equally erroneous assumption that khfas came from K)P).

Even your Hebrew source references do not support your conjectured meaning of KP. In both cases the word is plural

This is quite a mysterious interpretation. with the unaccountable "used as a pillar". Do read Mt 7:24-27. The use of the term petra is in contrast to sand ammos as a foundation. Where you get this strange notion of pillar from cannot be gleaned from the texts.

Liddell&Scott should clarify the clear distinction between petros and petra. The first is for something movable (what warriors hurl, leave no stone unturned), the other is something stable ("cliffs,... mass of rock,... stone as material").

Where did this pillar stuff come from?? The pillars of the church??

For this conjectured etymology, you'd have to show evidence of how the original language changed to reflect the changes you propose from earlier Semitic form kabadu to the form when it was supposed to have been borrowed into Hebrew. What other words evince the changes that you speculate upon here?

(As I said, BDB supplies the Assyrian kapu as a cognate along with the Aramaic K)P) -- for which they also give in square Hebrew font KYP).)

Ummm, I thought KBWD was an easy example which shows that the connotation was not missing at all in Hebrew. You know, as well, "honour (KBD) your father and mother." Ex 20:12. Perhaps I didn't get what you were trying to say.

I've made no claim about the origin, merely as to the proper significance of the particular text and its wordplay.

Sadly, you haven't helped.

Nonsense. A simple transliteration of QYP), in which the YOD is seen as a mater lectionis as it frequently is, needs no rocket science to end up with Khfas.


spin

Solo

It was number three written as fictional confusion of the friar (number one) who was not in on the "inner reality" of number two.

It is a code because it is not "light" in the ordinary meaning of the word, i.e. sensory response to some external emitting source. The friar stands for someone who is well-meaning but clueless to what is going inside Juan. John of course is the one to whom "no one has given light". Pardon me for reading the punchline of this tale as having an intentional double meaning.

Well, he was a beggar, wasn't he ? Not that I am suggesting some home-made Greek idiom here; gnosis92 and I had a protracted discussion on the "meaning" of Jesus "choosing" those unto whom he gives his mysteries (in Thomas). Call it fate ! In the original primitive communities Jesus chose you to "reveal" himself. You had no choice in the matter.

The allusion here is to the spontaniety of manic exhilaration that overcomes the subject.


Mark 10:21 Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.

This is Mark at his sliest. It's a well known fact (worth half of Luke's chapter 15) that manics when high are very careless with their money. Voila le contexte!

But it's ok to be skeptical, Ben, really. I am not preaching anything here. You follow what I am saying or you don't follow. You don't have the real context because perhaps you don't have the "profile". Thomas' Jesus says he chooses 1 in a thousand and 2 in ten thousand. Maybe I was chosen and you were not.

BTW, I don't feel I am any bigger than you (or anyone, for that matter) by what I know on that score: the only guarantee of sanity that I have. Actually, it's not even a guarantee, it's more like a checkpoint.

In case you are wondering though, Abraham Maslow wrote well about the tension between "peakers" and "non-peakers" in all religious or spiritual communities (in 'Religions, Values and Peak-experiences'). May be he will convince you better than I that Mark was addressing himself to his audience "differentially".

It certainly was a mystery of mysteries to people who had no external, medical, scientific view of it. I had all the science in the world and it still took me close to two years to connect the dots (I chose not to be medicated).

Jiri

ynquirer

There are ways and means to know. If one sees a word like CWR in Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Judges, both Books of Samuel, both Books of Chronicles, both the Major and the Minor Prophets, including Jeremiah, and the Books of Wisdom, including Job, that it, throughout the Tanakh, with 60+ occurrences, well, one may conclude that the word entered the Hebrew pretty early and was fairly popular among religious writers. If one further sees the word SL( with a like distribution and almost the same number of occurrences, one may conclude that it is as old and was as popular. Now, if one sees the word KPYM, appear only twice, once in Jeremiah and once in Job, one may conclude, not with absolute certainty but with a reasonable degree of likelihood, first, that the word entered the Hebrew rather late, and second, that there must have been good reason for such careful writers to introduce a new word in religious speech.

Sorry, I must confess ignorance of the Akkadian word kapu. It of course is not kappu, a true Akkadian word that means “palm (of the hand)” and “wing” and is the origin of the Hebraic KP, “palm (of the hand),” too, so making a false friend for KP = “rock.”

There are one Bel-kap-kapu and another Igur-kap-kapu among the list of the earliest Assyrian kings; Bel-kap-kapu is said to have founded Assur the capital of Assyria an independent state ca. 1900 BC - though others date him ca. 1700. However, the meaning of -kapu remains unknown according to all accounts I‘ve checked; perhaps yours know better. It doesn’t look Semitic, though. Some suggest that kapu might be Sumerian and as such was borrowed by old Turkish and Magyar (as meaning “gate, door”, so making a another false friend for “rock“). Yet the Sumerian word for “door” is simply ka, and even if a transition toward kapu could be suggested, Assur is too far to the north in the Upper Tigris for Sumerian to inure such influence.

IMO the ending word in the name Bel-kap-kapu is Indo-European: a toponymic in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh is Kapu Castle, with kapu meaning “protector.”

Caiaphas? Thus, according to you, Mark didn’t read Josephus but knew of Pilate courtesy of Philo. Hmmm… What still strikes me as odd is the suggestion that, provided that there was an outstanding Christian that bore the high priest’s name, another outstanding Christian, and an enlightened one, like Mark, didn’t knew thereof.

The problem is not with the name, but with the place. For if there is no place in unequivocal correspondence with the name, then the patronymic is probably a fake. Spot a place, if you can.

The overgeneralization was yours: “No procurators at all in charge of the government of provinces before Claudius” - remember? I’m only too eager to reopen the discussion as soon as you like.

We really don’t know but for his own statements. Throughout the Pauline corpus he seems to have command of the Law, and this he must have acquired through reading the Torah. Well, he perhaps did not read the Torah but the Targums, right? But what is the evidence that he read Aramaic? I don’t need concrete evidence to believe that. Do you?

Chaldee is an equivocal word, but my use of it is unequivocal. The Oxford Dictionary defines “Chaldee” as “the language of the Chaldeans; also the biblical Syriac or Aramaic.” If I say: “… the form wasn’t borrowed from the Aramaic, but from the Chaldee,” it is quite clear that I point at the first meaning of the word, Chaldea being a Hellenistic name for the southern part of Babylonia, also according to the OD. Perhaps you haven’t heard of Late Babylonian as a literary language? Or else you mean to imply WTF Late Babylonian was, it was a dialect of Aramaic?

These comments show you haven’t quite understood my use of the Masoretic text together with the Septuagint. My poster on David was intended to evince this. Little can I add here.

In reference to pronunciation of transliterated names, the Septuagint and the MT are witnesses to each other. The Septuaginters were closer to the time the Tanakh was written, and accordingly to the pronunciation the writer had in mind, but in all likelihood, living in Alexandria as they lived, their Hebrew was poorer - as you guessed. The Septuaginters, moreover, attempted a transliteration that could be understood by Jews wherever, many of whom did not spoke Hebrew, while the Masoretes tried to be faithful to the original text and subjacent pronunciation and used the LXX - written roughly a thousand years before - as a guideline.

Both the Septuaginters and the Masoretes got confused too frequently when dealing with unsolvable problems, and errors and omissions may not be discarded. But, whenever one finds the Septuagint and the MT “in agreement” as regard pronunciation of a name, one can feel reassured that such pronunciation remained stable for a thousand years, as happens with the name David (with a short /i/), prior pronunciations of it (with a long /i:/ as suggested by the matre lectionis in DWYD occurring in Chronicles) notwithstanding. Likewise, if I find a chi in the Septuagint and the same name contains a non-dageshed KAF in the MT, I can fell reassured that the KAF of that name has remained a soft, aspired one for a time span that covers together the inscription of the Caiaphas ossuary and the writing of Galatians. And the same for names both containing a dashed KAF in the BHS and transliterated into kappa by the Septuagint, for they show a long-lasting, unaspired pronunciation and confirmation that not every KAF needs be transliterated into chi.

Easy. KPTR is an exact match for Caphthor.

You may claim gotcha. Well done. Yet as you say: as I didn't make any overgeneralizing statements as regard our topic, so I have nothing to rethink of it but thank you for the references instead. See the next comment for further analysis.

The name KRTYM illustrates the point very well. As far as I now know, the word KRTY, plural KRTYM, appears ten times in the Tanakh. It is translated into Krhtav and Krhtwn only in Eze 25:16 and Zeph 2:5. The other eight times the Septuagint renders: Xereqqi (5 times, in 2 Sam, 1 Kings and 1 Ch), Xeleqi (once, in 2 Sam), Xetti - but not Kition - (once, in 2 Sam), and even Xolqi (once, in 1 Sam). KJV gives for all these forms the word Cherethites or Cherethims (once, for Eze 25:16, which clearly Hebraizes). In other words, both the majority of the Septuaginters and the KJV - as all other Christian versions of the OT - refuse to translate KRTYM into Krhv, -tov. Why?

The answer seems to be this. KRTYM are depicted in context as a people living in the seacoast, close to the Philistines, that is, not in an island but in Palestine. Whoever they were, they were not Cretans proper. The translators of those passages in Ezekiel and Zephaniah made a risky choice, since to call a people living outside Krhth Krhtev was a little awkward to say the least. Perhaps it was their privilege since they translated Prophets. But historical books, as Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, mightn’t run such a risk.

As soon as the translators of the historical books decided that KRTYM did not mean Cretans, they realized that it was an unknown name to them. Accordingly, they had to choose a new name in Greek. What did they choose? Whatever the differences from Xereqqi to Xeleqi, Xetti, and Xolqi, all of them share the chi as a transliteration for the KAF. They didn’t know what the name really was, but on account of superficial knowledge of Hebrew and lack of the Masoretic dagesh they a) believed that most if not all the KAFs were aspired, and b) overgeneralized that KAF must yield chi in Greek.

Thank you. The difference from initial to medial consonants is irrelevant in an agglutinant language like Hebrew. In KRTYM the KAF is initial, while in HKRTYM it becomes medial.

The Dead Sea Scrolls do not have a parallel MT. To my fairest understanding, what he has done with the Scrolls is the job of the Masoretes without the Greek parallel as a guideline. Very hard work, indeed. In any case, you may invite him to participate in this forum.

Because of the KAF being initial? That neglects that Hebrew names admit prefixes.

I’d rather say that prediction accuracy when the Septuagint and the MT are at odds is much harder than when they walk in agreement.

Well, perhaps.

Mine is not a proposition of fact, but a conditional one. Sometimes the writer does know, sometimes he doesn’t; still sometimes he may think he knows while he doesn’t. What I simply mean is that, if he knows that the KAF is aspired, he will for sure translate it as chi. If he doesn’t know, he will most probably transliterate it as chi as well, because of the higher frequency of aspired as compared with unaspired KAFs in Hebrew. Finally, only if he knows for sure that the KAF is unaspired, he will transliterate it into kappa.

Proof that my judgment is not post hoc is the fact that I make predictions that come down to be false - as well as others that come to be true. That’s called the hypothetical deductive method. Some think it is the scientific approach to every problem.

If - a big “if” - QYP) gave the form khfas, then you might be right.

Do you mean that KP is not the singular of KPYM? Please clarify.

The building is a metaphor of the community. A large community affords a big building as a metaphor. A big building needs a safe foundation. The foundation is a structure that transmits loads from the building to the underlying ground. The bigger the building, the deeper the foundation must extend underground. The foundations of very large buildings often penetrate to the bedrock. Now, in the sand the bedrock for all practical purposes is inexistent. It is much safer to have the bedrock in the surface. On that account, a building hewn into the rock would be the safest one, like those in Petra of the Nabataeans. In that particular case, the pillars, or at any rate one of them, would be part of the rock itself.

I’ll wait for clarification of the issue of kapu before working on this any more. When both you and me have ancient words with well-known meanings, we’ll talk about transitions and changes, ok?

“Heavy” is Kbd - if you understand what I mean to say - while the word in Ex 20:12 is KBd. It is neither the same pronunciation nor the same word . If I am right, in Kf one has both connotations together.

That would be fine if you did not have a contemporary inscription QP) alongside QYP).

But you have it. Explain it otherwise than saying that anything goes.