Apikorus

I'm perfectly secure in my abilities to read the Hebrew text, Steven. But since you feel I have it out for the MT, the following are all the posts I could find on the b-hebrew forum which refer to 1 Sam 13:1. I can't vouch for the competence of any of these posters, although Yigal Levin (also quoted above) is a Professor at Bar Ilan University:

I couldn't find any posts defending the MT of 1 Sam 13:1. Maybe this is all part of a massive conspiracy?

Anat

I just can't see how all the events that are described as taking place from Saul's anointment till his death, including battles, chasing David in the desert and the time David had spent among the Philistines could possibly fit in 2 or 3 years.

ynquirer

The Septuagint or LXX lacks 1 Sam 13:1; in other words, First Samuel, chapter 13 of the Greek translation of the Tanakh begins at verse 2. Any explanation of the fact?

Apikorus

Perhaps the LXX translator just threw up his hands after being unable to make sense of his exemplar. As I said, the versions are of no help. I recall there are some LXX manuscripts which provide numbers, but these are probably just late scribal guesses.

Indeed. For starters, I'm not certain that the events described in 1 Samuel are historical at all. Was there a King Saul? I don't know. Still, even if we regard all or much of this as fiction, it is clear that the text is corrupt.

Anat

I agree the events may have been fictional, but unless I'm reading fantasy I expect some degree of adherence to what is possible in reality (as it is defined by the belief system of the author).

Apikorus

Anat, your views apparently are close to my own. We can tell that this text is corrupt, independent of whether or not it is historical.

Apikorus

Steven, you aren't going to let this drop again, are you?

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

Api, please don't again try to snow the forum that I had dropped this thread in some incomplete or awkward state at an earlier time, like you tried with the Goliath thread. I called you on that false claims earlier, and you would do better to not play such games.

Sometimes one simply doesn't post for a few days...gasp.
Life goes on.

Please explain your question or claim. Are you saying that a vav will never be shown as a comma, a new clause, rather than placing an "and" in English ?

You lose credibility and my interest when you ascribe to me agreements and positions that I have never taken. Api, please try to be honest in your claims of my position, it is one of the most vital parts of good dialog.

Now if you want to say that the King James Bible (and some Jewish Bibles, if I remember) does not *literally* translate 2 Samuel 21:19, with the words it places in italics, then I will happily and heartily agree. And I have also expressed two similar but differing understandings of why the non-literal translation is accurate (one is on b-hebew).

btw, earlier I asked you for SPECIFIC cases of claimed omissions. You rather cleverly avoided that question with an answer to what I specifically said was not my question ("corruptions"). So again, what other specific WORD OMISSIONS do you claim are clearly demonstrable in the Tanach text? Say, the best three other than this claim. Not a hard question, and I won't ask you for more than three.

Ahh, one omission and also one other corruption, rather a strained view at best. I am curious when the first historical idea of two corruptions arose, do you know ?

So what is your specific claim for the original text of 1 Samuel 13:1 ? Specifically. If you want to do it probabilistically, that is fine. What are the one or two most probables, and what percent do you allot to each.

Or, that might lead some one horribly astray.

Nope. False. One most simply believe the claims of the scriptures themselves. Calling such belief 'magic' shows the confusion of your position.

Sure. Liberal critics and unbelievers generally look at the text with a sort of smug superiority. "Look, let me show you my correction". Yigal is, in my experience, more sincere and forthright than most, however he will be influenced strongly by the corrupted thinking of "standard scholarship".

Nope, I was responding to a very specific claim. Please don't obfuscate.

We were discussing your using a "standard construction" as the basis of a claim of error, even when there is an acceptable alternate understanding of the text construction and the "standard construction" is missing a vital link. (Actually one-to-two links here, as you claim another one is wrong as well).

Your argument would really be substantive in a few other examples, which I will give.

Say the FULL construction was in fact there, and it was rejected by the King James Bible... (perhaps for purported apologetic reasons) .. then you would have a very strong case for King James Bible error.

Similarly, say the FULL construction was there, and it was simply absurd. "Saul started to reign at one year old and reigned for two years." Then you would have a prima facie strong case of corruption and error in the Masoretic Text.

Say the FULL construction was NOT there, and all alternatives were truly absurd. Then you would have a reasonable case.

It would also help if you didn't have to claim two errors in the same verse. That weakens your case as well.

However any "construction" case that really is NOT the construction must be considered a tenuous argument at best.

Api. This is relatively simple stuff.
Please try to receive the hard truth and don't try to play parlor games in obscuring the discussion like above.

My translation is in the King James Bible.

Saul reigned one year;
and when he had reigned two years over Israel,
Saul chose him three thousand men of Israel;
whereof two thousand were with Saul in Michmash and in mount Bethel,
and a thousand were with Jonathan in Gibeah of Benjamin:
and the rest of the people he sent every man to his tent.

Remember, I earlier showed you how "'one year' and 'first year' is used for ben-shanah and you simply skipped over that. Hmmm.

Also, we have very similar elliptical speech in English.

"The Seahawks won one game, then two, then the coach got the folks off the injured list and went 8-5."

This can easily be normal speech, if something special occured after the first fame, (such as the new coach coming in after the first game).

When I referred to b-hebrew, generally they are good in considering that you can't always judge ancient biblical Hebrew by the constraints of modern textbook grammarians. Such as in our recent Goliath discussion. The fact that that aspect of this verse on Saul's reign hasn't been discussed there can perhaps be rectified in the future. Before doing so, it would be nice to have the actual Ben Gersom writing on the verse referred to by John Gill, and any other interesting rabbbinics available.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Apikorus

The Hebrew vav has many uses (conjunctive, disjunctive, adjunctive, emphatic, etc.). What use are you advocating here? Can you cite a parallel elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible? You seem to be making it disappear altogether.

That's right. The KJV adds words which are not in the original Hebrew. On what basis do you think the addition, which has no textual basis in the Hebrew, is "more accurate"?

I prefer not to speculate (although see below). We simply don't know. This is often the case with corrupt ancient texts.

Careful! Carried to its logical conclusion, this could demand that we literalize all metaphors in the Bible. Also, I see no "claims of the scriptures" that they are immune to accretion of scribal error. Indeed, from the Dead Sea Scrolls we know that no two biblical texts are exactly the same. There are always differences, whether due to scribal error or different textual traditions.

The plain sense translation of 1 Sam 13:1 of the MT is

Saul was one year old when he began to reign, and he reigned two years over Israel.

Why do you reject this?

The KJV's translation is a harmonizing one. Let's look at 1 Sam 13 in the Hebrew and the KJV. From the Hebrew, one sees that with the exception of verse 1, every single verse begins with a vav and each vav has a function. The KJV translates each and every one of them, usually as a conjunction ("and") but sometimes as a disjunction ("but," "now," "therefore"). Each and every one except in verse 2. This should tell you something.

The fact that verse 1 is anomalous in this regard is noteworthy. It may have been, as many scholars believe, that verse 1 was a Deuteronomistic insertion.

The reading of the MT is also represented by most versions of the LXX. The Targum Jonathan reads kbr sn' dlyt byh hwbyn s'wl kd mlk = "like a one-year-old who has no sins was Saul when he became king" so clearly this verse was recognized as anomalous by the translator of the Targum and in need of some harmonizing.

This doesn't help your case, I'm afraid. You need to look up the uses of b'malkho in order to understand further. Look up all of them!

How is this obfuscating? I am simply pointing out and obvious and fatal flaw in your hermeneutics. By your logic, if I misspell or omit a word, I can simply claim that the apparent error was in fact a correct but as-yet unattested usage. I can do this with any ancient text.

Apikorus

Here's another example of scribal error in the Masoretic Text, and a corresponding inconsistency in the KJV translation. The MT of 2 Kings 8:26 reads:

ben-esrim ushtayim shanah achazyahu b'malkho v'shanah achat malakh biyrushalam; v'shem imo atal'yahu bat om'ri melekh yisrael

The KJV translation of this verse is

Two and twenty years old [was] Ahaziah when he began to reign; and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. And his mother's name [was] Athaliah, the daughter of Omri king of Israel.

This translation is in fact accurate (although the word order should be "twenty and two" rather than "two and twenty"). Note how the exact same construction is used here as in 1 Sam 13:1:

[NUMBER] shanah="year(s)" [NAME OF KING] b'malkho="at the beginning of his reign" v'="and" [TIME PERIOD] malakh="he reigned" b'="in"/al="over" [LOCATION]

Also note how the KJV correctly (in this case) renders the vav in v'shem as the conjunction "and".

Next, let's look at 2 Chronicles 22:2 in the Hebrew,

ben-arbaim ushtayim shanah achazyahu b'malkho v'shanah achat malakh biyrushalam; v'shem imo atal'yahu bat om'ri melekh yisrael

and in the KJV:

Forty and two years old [was] Ahaziah when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name also [was] Athaliah the daughter of Omri.

This is again an accurate translation of the Hebrew.

Here we have two obviously conflicting verses. In the Hebrew, everything about them is identical with the exception of esrim ("twenty") in the former being replaced by arbaim ("forty") in the latter. At least one of these verses must be in error. The latter is perhaps the most likely to be in error, since Ahaziah's father Jehoram reportedly died at age 40 (2 Chr 21:20), and Ahaziah was his youngest son (2 Chr 22:1). It is hard to understand, to say the least, how a king can die at age 40, and his youngest son immediately succeed him at age 42. Perhaps Steven will proffer a divinely satisfying explanation of this conundrum. Of course if 2 Chr 21:20 is corrupt, perhaps Ahaziah was 42 when he began to reign, in which case the verse from 2 Kings is wrong.

The KJV in both cases follows the MT -- what else can it do? Here is another example of how a meticulous scribal tradition or translation is only as good as the text it inherits. In this case, the MT is -- once again -- obviously corrupt.