Steven Avery

Your analogy simply defeats itself with its own absurdity, probably done deliberately and exposing your inability to come up with a rigorous argument.

Principally, I've pointed out that all your "name" stuff has been ambiguous. Why not offer a paper on "Naming Conventions Among the Philistines" or simply acknowledge that you are winging it.

On all your 1 Samuel 13:1 stuff, you've already "corrected" Ben Gershom once, on page 3, so for you to attack the King James Bible here is very tacky, pretending here that this is a King James Bible interpretation issue. As you well know, the KJB is using a long-received and tested and consistent translation of the text that comes from both rabbinics and other ancient and earlier translations of the Hebrew. Thus showing that you really are playing politics here, rather than dealing with a full deck.

So far you are 0 for 2 on the Masoretic text supposed errors.
Let's see if you can avoid striking out.

Genesis 4:10
And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.

You are welcome to try another "correction" of the Bible text.

Every good translation "adds words", and properly so. (Jude 1:1 being a worthy example from the Greek). And I demonstrated that this is the case here, in posts 98, 102 etc. The only "problem" is that you prefer some super-convoluted scenario of multiple scribal errors and completely mixed up stories.

:rolling: Do you know how many of these types of pages we have dealt with. Nickels, Norris, and the rest. One of the posters here brought a ton of these types of claims over to WhichVersion and is still reeling from how flimsy these claims are, and how easy to answer, and how much you can learn if you pay attention. You are showing your own abysmal lack of knowledge about these issues to post yet a second time (despite the formalistic disclaimer) such a site knowing nuttin about the issues.

Naah... you never even gave the supposed RIGHT translation of 13:1, the most elementary aspect of any claim of "mistranslation" .. hmmm.. what happened, cat got your tongue ? .. not only that, you simply discard rabbinics you don't like even when they have a depth of Hebrew understanding far beyond yours, and on Genesis 4:10 you haven't said diddles about nuttin.

Then why are you such an abject failure in trying to make even one good case ?

All this huffing and puffing just to point out that there are some nuances in a couple of Masoretic Text verses. What a strain for so little, although it is always a blessing to go over the Dvar Elohim more excellently.

mata leao.. amen on your response to this one..

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Apikorus

Hmmm...you want us to believe that there is more than one Philistine named Goliath who is from Gath and who did battle with David and of whom it is said "the shaft of his spear was as a weaver's beam." Very well. You should have no problems, then, in believing there is more than one reindeer named Rudolph who is from the North Pole and works for Santa Claus, about whom it is said, "his nose is like a bright shining red light". It's hard when you are forced to look at your own absurd claims in the mirror, eh? It isn't ambiguous at all. Goliath in the Tanakh is always galyat hagiti or galyat haplishti and never hagalyat. Your Hebrew is simply too weak for you to understand what this means. Ah, very sorry. I meant Gen 4:8. The error is in Gen 4:8a, the Hebrew of which is vayomer qayin el-hevel achiv. As I explained, this says "And Cain said to Abel his brother." But the second half of the sentence is missing (but present in the LXX). The KJV again tendentiously mistranslates the Hebrew. So that's now three errors in the Hebrew. The RIGHT translation of 1 Sam 13:1 would be "Saul was one year old when he began to reign, and two years he reigned over Israel." This, of course is absurd. The text is corrupt, as I've said a dozen times.Indeed. But a translation which changes the meaning is lousy, and this is what the KJV is in 2 Sam 21:19 where it adds the words "the brother of," thereby changing the identity of the victim. As I said, I hold no brief for this source. But if you have "dealt" with it in the way you have with me, you can't have made much progress. By the way, is yours the yahoo group which admonishes, "This is a Christian group and JWs, RCs, Agnostics, Atheists etc. etc. will not be allowed to participate in discussions."?? I just bet you guys win all the arguments! Hmmm... by my count, I am 3 for 3. Perhaps you are using some special "Jesus scoring." To recapitulate, I have argued strongly that 1 Sam 17 is a secondary interpolation. (You have hardly begun to address the various points I raised.) I have shown that 1 Sam 13:1 is defective. And I have shown that Gen 4:8a is defective. I notice that you didn't address the fact that the KJV translates the formula "ben-X shanah Y b'malkho" as "Y was X years old when he began to reign" in every instance except 1 Sam 13:1, where the Hebrew is corrupt. I've made excellent cases all around. You're just failing to recognize the obvious, and you have already admitted why. Because you start with the assumption that the Bible is divine and perfect, you are constrained to ignore evidence to the contrary.You can bet your sweet tachat the KJV translators were aware of the significance of the masorah. Still, you conspicuously avoid the question: what does it mean that the masora states that the written text should be ignored in some 1000 to 1500 locations? Another of your ploughmen, no doubt.

Steven Avery

Wow, Api, you seem to be getting a bit desparate. For the second time, why would I work with an absurd pseudo-analogy that only demonstrates that you have no rigorous presentation of your view about the interdependence probability factor ?

You tend to write in a patronizing way to try to cover the weakness of your overall arguments. Superman is a name that internally indicates his nature (when not Clark Kent) and it doesn't have to be haSuperman. Doesn't matter whether you call him "Superman of Smallville" or "Superman of Krypton" either. However, its a bit different with The Incredible Hulk.

So again, I await for you to actually reference in a scholarly article on Philistine names rather than blowing another type of smoke.

Genesis 4:8
And Cain talked with Abel his brother:
and it came to pass, when they were in the field,
that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

It is your perogative to prefer the Greek OT or the Samaritan Pentateuch over the Hebrew Masoretic Text here, however very simply stated I do not view those as scriptures. To make it worse, you will use your animus to the Hebrew Bible to accuse the King James Bible of error, by being faithful to the Hebrew !

Here is the Judaica Press, and Rashi, both of which Api accuses of error.

Genesis 4:8 (Judaica Press)
And Cain spoke to Abel his brother,
and it came to pass when they were in the field,
that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him.

Rashi
And Cain spoke He entered with him into words of quarrel and contention, to find a pretext to kill him. There are Aggadic interpretations on this matter, but this is the plain meaning of the verse.

To take an interesting textual nuance question like this one as a supposed error simply shows your utter desparation. And once the DSS 4QGen manuscript didn't have the reading, the Bible correctors should have dropped this whole rewrite.

Of course you don't have a Tanach text and rummage around anywhere your intellectual "I will decide the Word of God" fancy leads.

No, the King James Bible gives a translation that is faithful to the Hebrew, but you don't like it. It is affirmed by Ben Gershom, and even Rashi strongly supports the idoimatic usage given in the King James Bible.

http://www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=15842&showrashi=true
Saul was a year in his reign (lit., a year old.) Our Rabbis of sainted memory said: Like a one year old, who did not experience the taste of sin (Yoma 22b). It may also be interpreted thus: Saul was a year in his reign, i.e., in the first year in which he was made king (and he reigned two years over Israel), and in the first year, immediately, Saul chose for himself three thousand.

Why in the world you want to look triply silly in trying to demonstrate error ..
1) claiming a Masoretic text error when there is none
2) 'correcting' the men who really knew the Hebrew inside out
3) accusing the King James Bible of being faithful to the Hebrew instead of some Greek OT manuscript

Tis all a real puzzle, but shows what happens to Bible rummagers and correctors.

Actually the text is a smidgen unusual, and like many in the breed of pseudo-scholars we have today, you use that as an excuse to try to declare your superiority over the Word of God. You have failed miserably, Api.

Beyond that, you are getting redundant on 2 Samuel 21:19, there is no new news there.

I post there, however I am not a moderator or anything. If an infidel really is concerned about textual issues, Marty and Will probably will be happy to accommodate. They are extremely well-versed on textual issues and appreciate sincere dialogs and challenges. The forum is mostly designed from a Christian perspective, answering the modern versionists are pushing the alexandrian alphabet soup, the NIV, NAS, ESV, HCSB, TNIV and dozens of other versions, and rejecting the historic Bible

Honestly, Api, when there are multiple hyper-conjectural competing convuluted corruption scenarios, as here, they essentially cancel each other out. You deal with one, they will just create another, so I can't bother with such 'points' too much. They have zilch manuscript support, they require multiple happenstances which also have zilch evidence at all, and are the fantasies of their creators.

All you've shown is a propensity to 'correct' the Masoretic text when it needs no such correcting. What is amazing is that you would be so desparate that these are the verses that you bring out for your supposed Masoretic Text and King James Bible errors.

It means that God used the incredible scribal fealty of the Hebrew Masorah (which you run over rough-shod, changing phrases, and even whole sections of books left an right) as part of His providential preservation of the text.

Erasmus
"I would to God that the ploughman would sing a text of the Scripture at his plough and that the weaver would hum them to the tune of his shuttle."

Tyndale
" Tyndale told a priest, "If God spare my life, ere many years pass, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scriptures than thou dost."

Modern Unbelieving Academia
"may we bow as supplicants to those who claim to know some ancient languages, Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic, "correcting" God's Word, whatever their life and faith, they are our new priesthood, because God has not truly given us His Word"

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Apikorus

The analogy seems pretty good. There are even the requisite "interdependences." I understand you find it uncomfortable, but that is another thing. Yes, this is a nice example from modern English. But the Hebrew Bible is not written in modern English. We already have an example of how descriptive terms like "giant" (= Heb. rafa) are dealt with. What you need is to show how your theory works using Iron Age Israelite linguistics, not 20th century English. Can you find support for this usage in the HB? In Iron age Israelite inscriptions?This is another bad translation from the KJV. The Hebrew vayomer means "And he said" and not "and he spoke" (which would be vayidaber). Try again. I don't necessarily prefer the LXX. The LXX may simply fill in the missing phrase in the MT but have no legitimate claim to textual primacy.No, it doesn't. The Hebrew verb amar means "said"; davar means "talked/spoke". Again, your Hebrew is too weak to recognize the difference.I'm well aware of the harmonizing interpretations of the rabbis, and I expect I've sat through many more a daf yomi class than you. The "explanation" here is abjectly untenable. You have about 30 instances in the Tanakh where the formula ben-X shanah Y b'malkho means "Y was X years old when he began to rule" and this is (if memory serves) the sole exception. Clearly the rabbis have the same problem that you do -- they are ideologically committed to proving the divine perfection of the text. Rashi et al. had an excuse, living in an age hundreds of years before the advent of critical methods, assimilation of textual data from Qumran and elsewhere, etc. You don't.There you go, Steven. The pool isn't really so cold! Try dipping in another toe... Yes, indeed they are so appreciative of dialogue and challenge that they have explicitly forbidden Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Agnostics, Atheists, "etc. etc." to participate. On the contrary, in one stroke a rather simple scenario explains a multitude of textual problems. This is what we scientists call parsimony. Your precritical approach is to provide a thousand answers for a thousand questions. Maybe there was another golliath. Maybe one of David's brothers died and so he's listed in 1 Sam as eighth of eight brothers and in 1 Chr as seventh of seven. Maybe we extend the lexical range of vayomer to help understand Gen 4:8a. Maybe the author of 1 Sam 13:1 meant something other than the 30 other examples of the same regnal formula. This is all an exercise in finding excuses, Steven. Ironically, you have so venerated the corrupt text you've inherited that you've no chance to really understand it. Indeed, what you do is to create your own meaning. (This is largely the rabbinic hermeneutic.) Which text is "providentially preserved"? The kethib or the qere, or both? Why? What does it mean that there are two readings of a given word or set of words? Can both be correct? And why do some masoretic texts have about 900 instances, while others have as many as 1500 instances? Was God a little bit sloppy? And that's precisely what you've got, Steven. A bunch of ploughmen singing Scripture.

Steven Avery

It's so stupid I never even bothered going through it. How can you do a probabilistic comparision of family members in wartime Philistine vs Israel with santa's reindeer and expected to be taken seriously ? Even the academy would laugh you out.

Actually the principle issue isn't even the Hebrew Bible usage of names. It is more directly the Philistine usage of names, and I am still waiting for your scholarly reference on that topic. You constantly (snip) the request.

Usually, however some folks far more familiar with the Hebrew than you accept the other as an idiomatic usage here. The fact that you think you know ancient Hebrew than the rabbis is simply your problem. This applies to the next discussion as well.

However you have referenced with approval (if I recall) massive differences in the Greek OT text on these threads. Your position wavers like jelly.

As I showed, you ignore Qumram when it speaks against your redactions.

Your simple scenario does diddles to explain why there are about five major story differences between 1 Samuel 17 and 21, why the story would be repeated twice with differing contexts, and more. It is hard to keep up with the various competing "scribal error" scenarios, and since they have no hard evidence, I don't spend a lot of time on them. When I do look at them, I find that the scenarios are convoluted to the max.

The Masoretic text is one text, gere and ketiv included, with the Masorah expounding and checking and explaining. God has given us the Word in our language today, for the ploughman and shopkeeper, so your contusions on the Hebrew Bible text are only interesting and generally minor. You can ask a Masoretic Text expert like Nehemiah Gordon or Professor Schiffman how they view the qere/ketiv (and the 15-20 different viewpoints thereon) and I will be all ears as to their discussion.

Halleluyah ! Amen..

It is beautiful to hear the Psalms song..

Psalms 19:7-10
The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul:
the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.
The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart:
the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.
The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever:
the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
yea, than much fine gold:
sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Apikorus

How do we even know that the events described took place, Steven? At any rate, we can't meaningfully assign probabilities to these things. And the "academy" laughs with me. If the Hebrew Bible were written by and for Philistines, you might have a point. At any rate, we have no real handle on the Philistine onomasticon. Your request is just an attempt to cloud the issue. Oh I am pretty familiar, Steven. What evidence is there for this "idiomatic usage"? For starters, there's a lot more textual evidence to adduce in the case of 1 Sam 16-18 than in the case of the single missing phrase in Gen 4:8. But, well you see you've got to actually do a little work here, unfortunately. See E. Tov, The Composition of 1 Samuel 16-18 in Light of the Septuagint Version in J. Tigay, Empirical Models of Biblical Criticism (Univ. Penn. Press, 1985). Please refresh my memory. What are you talking about here? The thousands of differences between the Great Isaiah Scroll and the MT of Isaiah? You are laboring under a misapprehension. I never said they were the same story. Rather, they are different stories which involve the same character. But I have asked you, Steven. What do you think? What does it mean to have two different versions preserved within the same text? (Incidentally, Lawrence Schiffman is not a scholar of the masorah per se. His field is late 2nd Temple Judaism and Qumran.)Verily, the ploughmen are bleating.

Steven Avery

However your original argument was fully probabilisitc. Some backtraking.

Thanks. Exactly my point. You were blowing smoke on your "Goliath" assertions. Backtrack #2.

One of Tov's weaknesses is his overreliance on the Greek OT, although I do appreciate that he used that as one factor to support the verbal reading in Psalm 22:16. Overall, textually I far prefer the viewpoint of Professor Schiffman, which has been counterpointed against that of Tovs.

Genesis 4:8

So David slew two Goliath's ? At two times in his life ? Both of whom were from Gath, weavers beam spears, etc ? And this is only mentioned in 2 Samuel ?

(This is why I don't bother with all the details of competing convoluted redaction theories)

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Apikorus

No, I did not assign any probabilities here. I merely pointed out that the coincidence was too much to bear. There's no sense in trying to estimate its probability. You've got a confluence of data (some "interdependent," as in the Rudolf analogy) which all point to the same figure. LOL! I pointed out that there is no cause to presume that the lexical range of galyat within the HB includes anything other than a proper name. If you have evidence to the contrary, please present it! I assure you Tov is well aware of, and regularly adduces, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Targumim, etc. I am unaware of anything Schiffman has written specifically on 1 Sam 16-18. Do you have a reference? What do you claim to have proven with regard to Gen 4:8? No. You are the one who dreams of multiple goliaths. The original story is from 2 Sam 21:15-22, where the four sons of harafa b'gat (= "the giant of Gath") were slain by David's mighty men. One of the sons was named galyat. The etymology of galyat (or saf, another son of the rafa) is of course uncertain, but it clearly functions as a proper name in the HB. At any rate, a different story involving galyat propagated at some point -- one in which he is killed by the young stripling David. This story displaced whatever originally lay in its place in 1 Sam 17 -- presumably a story in which the mighty man of valor David (cf. 16:18) kills ten thousand or more Philistines (cf. 18:7). It's a rather simple hypothesis which at one stroke explains numerous internal contradictions and difficulties. It is also corroborated to some extent by the evidence from the LXX, which transmits a very different (but, as well argued by Tov, distinct) version of 1 Sam 16-18.

Steven Avery

Which is a probabilistic argument.

Back to acknowledging the salient issue, which you once called a 'red herring'

Yet you just ackowledged "we have no real handle on the Philistine onomasticon.". Ergo, it is your presumption that this is NOT a descriptive or family name that is deficient.

Of course. And in a sense he would like to integrate them into some new Tanach. (see BAR interview some years back). As such he is an enemy of the Received Text, and not just in the handful of verses where you ply your corrective tendencies, much more wholesale.

Professor Schiffman views the Masoretic Text as a received text and does not correct it from the Greek OT, DSS, etc. See the same BAR interviews some years back.

That the DSS evidence was water off a Api back.

So then why do you insist that it is only a proper name and cannot have any family or descriptive aspects ?

That two vastly different stories about David and Goliath circulated and one became chapter 17 and another 21 ? That's simple ??? And the Chronicles parallel account must have its own "simple" explanation ??? And with barely a shred of textual evidence ? except straining with great difficulty through 400 AD confused and conflicting Greek OT manuscripts. Oh, what a web.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Apikorus

No, not in any formal mathematical way. Your insistence on providing a priori probabilities is silly in this context. Tell me, what do you think of the Jesus Seminar's use of probability? The point is, there is a confluence of several descriptors which all point to the same character. The "multiple goliaths" theory remains laughably untenable. I await indications that galyat functions as anything other than a proper name. LOL! Yes, is that why Schiffman refers to the argument in favor of the originality of the introductory paragraph to 1 Sam 11, found in the Qumran scroll 4QSam(a), as "quite convincing" (if unique)? (RTDSS, p. 175). Please restate this "evidence." I think you may be confused. Again, I say that there it is used as a proper name in all occurrences in the HB. Look, the name Daniel means "El is my judge". It also functions as a proper name. If you can provide evidence that galyat is used as something other than a proper name, as I demonstrated in the case of rafa, please present it. Scholars of folklore can adduce countless examples of exactly this sort of thing.