Zindiiq

Yes, the word is being treated as a singular despite the plural structure.

The Hebrew plural is used in two ways -- (1) quantitatively to indicate number, as we would expect, and (2) as an intense, or extense, form of the singular. For example, the word הרים hareem (singular הר har) could refer to mountains or one big mountain. So אלהים eloheem is just describing God's nature as being a big god.

Another word found in the Bible and used in the plural with singular meaning is בהמות behemoth* (Job 40:15) (singular בהמה behemah), which means here a large beast, not beasts. This word has found its way into English as a singular noun.


Some words are never used in the singular, I suppose because they refer to big things. Two example are the word חיים khayeem (or commonly transliterated as haim or Chaim in English), meaning 'life'; and the word שמים shameem (which like אלהים eloheem occurs in Genesis 1:1) meaning sky.

Speaking of 'shameem' this brings up the interesting case of the plural English word 'heavens' as it sometimes translated. It seems to me that, while plural, this word is treated as a singular. I don't think that anyone (or any Jew or Christian anyway) who uses the word, and believes in a heaven, thinks that there is more than one heaven. This is probably an influence of the Hebrew.

--------
*( ות oth, like ים eem is a plural structure)

Sheshbazzar

I couldn't help but to recall this verse which seems to get posted here almost daily,

A little more searching also turned up these verses;
And these translations of the Greek texts also seem to indicate the plural
It appears that someone, at least in the past, conceived of there being more than just one "heaven".
There are more similar verses but these should be sufficient for posing the question.
What is your opinion on these verses?

Zindiiq

1 Kings 8:27, +2 Chron 2:6 and 6:18
As I said, the word for sky, or heaven, in biblical Hebrew is never used in the singular, so I do not think that the usage of the syntactic plural is necessarily indicating more than one heaven. I believe it is used to indicate the vastness of of the sky/heaven.*

As far as "the Heaven and the Heavens of Heavens," again, I do not think that it is implying more than one heaven. It sounds very much to me that it being used figuratively to emphasize the idea that God is so big, so great, that not even the vastness of heaven can contain him (so how could be possibly dwell on the earth).

Maybe you could compare it to the English structure of repeating a word for emphasis:

"He has millions and millions of dollars."

Another word I just thought of that is always in the plural is פ�*ים (paneem) face. Now, some people may be two-faced figuratively speaking, but no one literally has more than one face. So, I suppose the logic here is that the face is the most prominent part of the body. Who knows.:huh:

---------
*A thought just occurred to me that the word 'skies', in modern English, is also frequently used -- "look up to the skies!"


I got to get to bed now, so I will look into the New Testament verses tomorrow.

mountainman

How about some further ROMAN context?

Quintilius Varus Florus, Epitome of Roman History – II, 88 tells us Trajan crucified 2,000 Jews of the town Emmaus in the early 2nd century. Other sources tell us he was responsible for the genocide of the Dacians. An inscription in Temple of Augustus, Ankara, Turkey records Trajan: “Three times I gave gladiatorial shows in my own name, and five times in the name of my sons or grandsons, in which shows about 10,000 men fought to the death”. These are ROMAN QUALITIES: - not Barbarian. Life was short and brutish for large numbers back in the first and second century. A perfect time period from which to fabricate a novel type of Galilaean.

Barnabas is Eusebius dabbling in an earlier century.

The ancient historical evidence is telling us that the cross makes an appearance in the christian archaeological record in the fourth century, and no earlier. What is the mainstream explanation for this tardiness in the chronology of the use of the cross outside of the wonderful world of Eusebius?

Best wishes,



Pete Brown

mountainman

Nag Hammadi document 2.5: (UNNAMED TEXT) - On the Origin of the World.

The 1ST HEAVEN: mentioned once
The 6TH HEAVEN: mentioned three times
The 7TH HEAVEN: mentioned four times
The 8TH HEAVEN: mentioned eight times

Amaleq13

Your wholly unsubstantiated assertion that Eusebius wrote Barnabus certainly not withstanding and, more immediately relevant, contrary to Pat's assertion, the evidence laid out establishes that "stauros" was used to describe folks nailed to a "tau-shaped" device in the 1st century. The use of that term in the Gospels neither supports nor even suggests the claim that was made.

You need evidence to support your mantra in order to even approach claiming to offer an "explanation" for anything (according to you, "everything" ) but I don't find it all that surprising that the humiliating means by which they believed their savior was executed did not become considered appropriate symbolism for a very long time or that artifacts, in general, are scarce prior to the transition of the religion from being considered a crime.

mountainman

The evidence that we have no crosses from the (purported) time of Barnabas but that christian crosses appear after the chronology of Eusebius is distribution of evidence that the Eusebian fiction postulate implies.


Hundreds of thousands of sons and fathers were crucified by the Romans from the time of JC (55 BCE) for hundreds of years. Will you pass me your opera glasses please, I just cannot make out this renegade Galilaean called Jesus amongst all these dead bodies? I take it you have the "christian glasses" on like most other researchers? I dont have mine with me.



Best wishes,



Pete Brown

Zindiiq

Eph. 4:10, Rev. 12:12
As far as these verses, and others where the word sky/heaven appears in the plural, my somewhat educated guess is that it is an influence of Hebrew.

Here are two excerpts from Bible dictionaries that would agree with me.

2 Corinthians 12:2-4
As for these verses, and the text from the Nag Hamadi that mountain man linked to, I really don't know. I don't know what the author of this passage intended. It very could be that the authors of those texts believed in more than one heaven or different levels of heaven.

My main intention in this thread was to point out that the Hebrew plural is used in two ways -- to refer to number and to refer to intensity. This is a fairly established fact. Elohim, when referring to the one "God," is being used in an intensive fashion, and not a plural. This becomes apparent when we see, as Toto noted, that the Hebrew verbs of which Elohim is the subject, are in the singular. It becomes more apparent still when we note the verses in which elohim appears with the first person pronoun, such as Psalms 81:10 and Exodus 20:2 (אָ�*ֹכִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ , anokhi yahvah elohaykha*, I am the Lord, your God). In these verses the first person singular pronoun (anokhi, I) is used, and not the first person plural (anakhnu, we). So anyone claiming that the plural word Elohim is proof of more than one god, or a trinitarian godhead, or whatever else, is either not familiar with biblical Hebrew or deliberately being misleading.

*When the Hebrew plural ים eem takes a possessor pronoun the ם mem drops out.

Amaleq13

Seneca the Younger says otherwise. Or did Eusebius forge that as well?

Jeffrey Gibson

Specifically “I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made in many different ways: some have their victims with head down to the ground; some impale their private parts; others stretch out their arms on the gibbet” (Dial. 6 [Cons. Marc.] 20.3)

So too -- i.e. saying otherwise -- does Herodotus in his report of the way the satrap Artayctes was crucified by the Athenians at the Hellespont: “They nailed him to planks and hung him there. And they stoned Artayctes’ son before his eyes”

Then there's Josephus note that there was no fixed pattern for crucifying people -- much depended on the sadistic ingenuity of the moment.

Quote:

When they [the fugitives] were going to be taken [by the Romans], they were forced to offer resistance, and when the fighting ended it seemed too late to sue for mercy. Scourged and subjected before death to every torture, they were finally crucified in view of the wall [of Jerusalem]. Titus indeed realized the horror of what was happening, for every day 500—sometimes even more—fell into his hands. However, it was not safe to let men captured by force go free, and to guard such a host of prisoners would tie up a great proportion of his troops. But his chief reason for not stopping the slaughter was the hope that the sight of it would perhaps induce the Jews to surrender in order to avoid the same fate. The soldiers themselves through rage and bitterness nailed up their victims in different postures as a grim joke, till owing to the vast numbers there was no room for the crosses and no crosses for the bodies (JW 5 §449–51).

And then there are the pre Barnabas references to condemned to be crucified carrying a patibulum -- a transverse beam -- to the place of execution (on this, see Martin Hengel, Crucifixion) -- a book I guarantee you Pete has never read) These references make no sense make no sense unless a cross had a cross-piece attached either at the top of an upright or just below the top.

So ... so much for Pete's claims to be familar with the evidence, let alone what it does and doesn't show.

But of course, these too are all Eusebian forgeries and interpolations!

Jeffrey