stephan huller

I happened to be sitting in a dentist chair trying to distract myself with Google when I saw a dangerously misleading entry in Kittel's Theological Dictionary:

You see most assholes reading this entry would be drawn to a theological conclusion consistent with the normative understanding of what Christian baptism is supposed to be - i.e. merely an extension of the Jewish proselyte rituals and many of you must be thinking to yourselves - why should I believe this Stephan guy over a guy with a Phd in theology (Kittel).

The answer is that most of the work done by guys with PhDs in theology is lead by their inherited presuppositions. I bet when Kittel looked at his Hebrew dictionary and saw that tbl had no contact with the Pauline understanding of a 'death baptism' he walked away smiling. After all, systematizers like everything simple and straight forward. Yet this intellectual laziness has cost us dearly.

As I have noted many times in this forum, the Pauline system has to come from somewhere. It couldn't have just been invented by a guy named Paul out of thin air. Religion doesn't work like that. There has to be some kind of basis in the existing Jewish theological framework. That's why Paul makes explicit reference to the crossing of the sea where Christians are said to have been typically 'baptized' (= tbl) in the cloud and the sea (1 Cor 10).

Of course here again we seem to hit a dead end. The Israelites didn't drown in the sea. So it is that Kittel and others are also very comfortable sticking with the existing recension of the 1 Corinthians which identifies the 'Israelites' as the type of the Christians undergoing baptism. Yet the problem with this again is that Paul also says that the Christian rite is a death baptism. Kittel makes it seem that we can exclude tbl as a source for this concept because the idea of 'sinking, drowning or perishing' never shows up with tbl references in Hebrew. But surely this fucknuts must have had an inkling to check how tbl was used in Jewish Aramaic - the language that the first Christians certainly spoke and which was the language of the Scriptures they used (= targumim).

And look what happens when you do searches for tbl in Jewish Aramaic, my friends. Jastrow connects tbl to tby and related terms in Jewish Aramaic which means - you guessed it - to sink or to drown, and it is the term most often used for the fate of the Egyptians in the sea. Here's Sokoloff's dictionary (I can't find the link to Jastrow) http://books.google.com/books?id=WdN...page&q&f=false

I have to stress over and over again also that everything that is promoted about the baptism being suited to the Israelites crossing the sea is ridiculed by Jews and Samaritans (I was reminded of this at an Applebee's with my Samaritan friend quite recently). The Jewish and Samaritans rightly note that water never touched the Israelites as they were crossing at the end of the seventh day. That's part of the miracle. The only people who touched water at the crossing where the Egyptians who drowned, sank and perished. Christians we must remember connect baptism with the eighth day, the day the Israelites were already standing on land and most notably the day the Egyptians drowned.

Perspicuo

I think this is an excellent subject to discuss, Stephan. What dictionary is not a mere instrument of propaganda and justification?

stephan huller

Indeed it gets worse. I was looking up the word taba today in my Hebrew dictionary today and I found it is used in Exodus 15.4 in the perfect tense טֻבְּע֥וּ = 'are drowned.' So I don't know what Kittel is thinking here. Perhaps he isn't convinced that טָבַע = to sink, drown is connected with טָבַל = to dip. Clearly Jastrow sees a connection but he's Jewish. He probably isn't aware of the implication in Christian theology. That's why he isn't covering it up. Of course Jewish scholars are just as guilty of avoiding certain arguments because of their theological implications. Yet in this case it is the Christians who are guilty.

It is interesting to note that everyone uses Gerhard Kittel's theological dictionary but when I looked up his Wikipedia entry it says he as a strident anti-Semite who joined the Nazi party http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Kittel. I wonder if being an anti-Semite might have affected his ability to reason out the Semitic background for primitive Christian concepts. You think? :constern01:

That's the point of this thread. Beware of other people's presuppositions!

andrewcriddle

This argument has been made before. See Some Anti-Semitic Assumptions in the TDNT by Maurice Casey. (Only 1st page freely available).

Andrew Criddle

stephan huller

Wow! Andrew you made my day. Whenever it can be pointed out that an expert thinks the same way as an idiot like me it either proves (a) I have the potential to be as Casey or (b) Casey has the ability to be as demented as me. In this case you'd have to go with (a) because the article was peer reviewed. The dentists here in America (or the part of America at least) are so different than in Canada. The hospitals too. They're like country clubs. But then you get the bill ...