andrewcriddle

Hi Spin

FWIW I was. (Though a rather old one)

I was paraphrasing (maybe badly) Gesenius Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon as translated by Tregelles p 657 in my reprint.

What Gesenius actually says is Although both Dharma and you seem to see a substantive difference between what I said and what you said, I'm not clear what it is.

IIUC we were both saying that to acquire through ones work, is a standard derived meaning of the word.

Andrew Criddle

spin

Sorry, culpa mea. I was working from your "transliteration" and got the wrong idea.

I was responding to Dharma and working from the first line he cited from you:

Which in itself didn't seem to cover the range of significance of ($H, whereas your citation above from Genesius makes the particular significance transparent.

And you do UC.


spin

Chris Weimer

anders - you are correct in your assumption about the beliefs of other deities of the bible, for the early Israelites were henotheistic, but to assume that Abraham or Moses were gods is absoluteley ludicrous. If they were gods, why did they act like mere mortals, not to mention that they trace their lineage from Adam which means "man".

Sheshbazzar

There is some evidence that some early Israelites were henotheistic, to conclude that all were, is an unwarranted stretch, comparable to suggesting that Americans are all monotheistic.

jonesg

And the purpose of all this is to create God's's , ??

that way there is no need to contemplate God.

Ego is a funny thing, transparent in its motives.

Chris Weimer

You're right, my bad. It's only the majority of them were (thanks for the great analogy).

spin

Sure is.

spin

Dharma

Mr. Winkler identifies the tetragramaton YHWH in terms of elementals, very basic religion. In which Yod is identified with air, W is identified with earth...people can check "magical" texts which attempt to separate the letters of the tetragrammaton as elementals...this is magic 101. Generally, the earth element is female, i.e. mother earth...

Dharma

Aryeh Kaplan is quite a well respected Hebrew scholar, his translation is NOT incorrect...I don't think that mystic Rabbis who dedicated their life to studying the Torah and meditation and wrote the Sefer Yetzirah describing the divine creative attributes of Abraham is incorrect.

So someone has got to be wrong according to you, only you seem to be correct...can I ask you if you are a respected scholar of Hebrew -- are you capable of questioning the writers of the Sefer Yetzirah? I never made such a claim and did quote from translations which are from respected Hebrew scholars. It seems that many Rabbis would disagree with your translation and would think twice -- thrice before they disregarded the Sefer Yetzirah and it's interpretation.

Again, surely you jest in saying that Abraham is not a diety (i.e. divine being):

1)Abraham was called an Elohim -- surely Jews would never use a term of God for a human even in respect -- something akin to blasphemy, didn't Jesus anger many Jews for calling himself a son of God?

2) Abraham according to rabbinical texts survived being cooked in fire by Nimrod...hmm, kind of divine..

3) Abraham is described as "creating people" in the Torah, by many Jewish Rabbinical translators.
4) Abraham talks in a counsel of Gods.
5) Abraham has a son as if by magic, after he needs Viagra and Sarah needs estrogen therapy...
6) His sons will form HUGE NATIONS!
7) Abraham born from UR KASDIM, NOT just Ur the city, which is meant to be fire of the kasdim.


Now taking all this evidence of his divinity from the Bible as well as other rabbinical texts, it is YOU who have the burden of proving that Abraham was human and not a God myth.

spin

I don't know this person from a bar of soap and you don't encourage me to find out more.

We are dealing with what the text meant in antiquity, not what a mystic derived from it in the middle ages.

If I had jested, I would have used a smilie.

You need to learn a little about linguistics as well as Hebrew before you can comment.

We are dealing with biblical material not rabbinical work which was written long afterwards. Rule: earlier can influence later not vice versa.

You haven't been reading the thread. You would know that this is not biblical -- although as you point out later sources read the text that way.

And Enoch spoke to God, as did Moses. SFW?

Oh ridiculous. The text shows that God fulfils his promises.

Naff.

Look, you are not reading the text. B)WR K$DYM in Ur of the Kasdim. The text plainly refers to a place, where Haran died.

You've provided no evidence from the bible. You've supplied rehashes of much later interpretations.

I don't claim Abraham was a man. The best we can say was that he was a part of Hebrew tradition. Certainly not a deity. The tradition is happy enough to tell us that Abraham died. This is certainly considered to be a prerogative of ordinary living beings, not deities.

If you want to deal with the text then do so. Show that you can read it and not just regurgitate someone else's predigestion.


spin