Alethias

Well, I'm a lurker in BC&H. I have very little knowledge or expertise on the subject matter.

My understanding is that Orthodox Judaism views the level of inspiration of the differing parts of the Tanakh as being different. My Chassidic Rabbi friend down the street tells me that the Torah is inspired letter-by-letter, and the Prophets are inspired thought-by-thought and the books of history/poetry were more-or-less written by individuals impelled by god to write but had the choice of how they wrote.

With this view of inspiration, a textual error in samuel is not all that horribly damning. If you have a less precise view of the level of inspiration and say that the whole thing is inspired by god and aren't precise by what you mean by inspired, then it is a pretty compelling argument to use.

That's my $0.02. Sorry for the interruption.

kais

It seems fairly clear to me that praxeus is arguing an untenable position to begin with. Inerrancy is a harsh mistress.

Apikorus

Sure, gregor. Here's a summary, although hardly condensed:

1. The text of the Hebrew Bible was preserved astonishingly well from the date at which the consonantal text had stabilized, ca. 135 CE, and the date at which the fully vocalized and annotated text was printed and hence fixed for all time in 1524. The scribes who preserved the text with such meticulous care were called soferim (the Hebrew word for "scribes"), and a class of the soferim, the masoretes, added vocalization, trope, and assorted notation to the consonantal text. The text produced by the masoretes, which you can find printed in Hebrew Bibles today, is known as the Masoretic Text (MT). Really, one should speak of an MT family, since there are very slight variations among different texts in the MT family. But as these variations are slight indeed, it shall serve to refer to the MT as a single well-defined text.

2. The text which the masoretes (active ca. 300 - 800 CE?) inherited had not been transmitted with the same degree of care. Accordingly, there is ample evidence for corruption in the MT. Some books of the Hebrew Bible contain a fair amount of corruption. This can be said for Samuel and Hosea, for example. Others, like Leviticus, are almost pristine. It is perhaps no accident that scholars identify Leviticus as a later text than Samuel -- the earliest texts are the ones most likely to have accreted scribal errors.

3. One example of such a corruption is 1 Samuel 13:1, the Hebrew of which reads

ben-shanah shaul b'malkho ushtei shanim malakh al-yisrael

A literal translation of this verse would be as follows:

A yearling was Saul in his reigning and two years he reigned over Israel

This announcement is a standard "Deuteronomistic" form, meaning it is typical of the Deuteronomistic History, a collection of books from Deuteronomy through 2 Kings. The term b'malkho is best translated as "at the beginning of his reign," based on other appearances of this formula. The formula is exceedingly common, occuring some three dozen other times in the Hebrew Bible.

4. If we translate 1 Sam 13:1, following the same scheme as in each of the other three dozen instances of this formula, we find that the text makes no sense. How could Saul be one year old when he began to reign? And how could all the events of Saul's kingship described in 1 Samuel fit into a two year span? Furthermore, this verse is corrupt in all surviving witnesses. The English translations vary wildly on how they treat this verse: see here.

5. The King James Version of 1 Sam 13:1-2 reads smoothly:

(1) Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel, (2) Saul chose him three thousand [men] of Israel...

The KJV deliberately mistranslates the Hebrew of 1 Sam 13:1, since the plain sense translation is absurd. However, in doing this, it becomes necessary to meddle with the second verse, so as to grammatically attach it to the first.

6. There are actually two mistranslations by the KJV here, both deliberate. First, the KJV translates ben-shanah shaul b'malkho = "Saul was a year old when he began to reign" as "Saul reigned one year." The construction b'malkho, which everywhere else (38 other instances) is rendered as "when he began to reign" is here translated instead as "he reigned." But whenever the HB wishes to say "he reigned" it does so differently, either with malakh or vayimlokh. So the KJV translators cleverly and deliberately mistranslated b'malkho to avoid the absurdity of Saul being one year old upon taking the throne.

7. The second deliberate mistranslation comes with rendering the remainder of 13:1 and the beginning of 13:2,

(1) ushtei shanim malakh al-yisrael (2) vayivchar-lo shaul shloshet elofim miyisrael...

as

(1) and when he reigned two years over Israel, (2) Saul chose him three thousand [men] of Israel...

It is clear that the Hebrew ushtei shanim malakh al-yisrael is a separate clause, meaning "and two years he reigned over Israel." The KJV inserts the word "when" which is uncalled for.

8. Verse 2 should begin "And Saul chose for himself three thousand from Israel...". The "and" at the beginning comes from the Hebrew letter vav in the opening word of vs. 2, vayivchar = "(and) he chose". Grammatically, this construction is known as preterite plus vav-consecutive, and it is very common in biblical Hebrew. The meaning is not seriously affected by failing to translate the vav -- vayivchar could sensibly be translated simply as "he chose," although the vav is of course there. So perhaps it should not be too surprising to find that the KJV fails to translate this vav. Except, that is, for one inescapable and damning observation: in virtually every case in which a verse in the Hebrew begins with a vav (whether or not it is a so-called vav-consecutive), the KJV translators directly translated the vav, either as a conjunction, adjunction, disjunction -- whatever. If you look at the KJV of 1 Sam 13 and compare to the Hebrew, you'll see this immediately. Every single verse in the chapter except for verse 1 begins with the letter vav -- 22 out of 23 verses -- and each and every one of those vavs is translated ("and," "but," "now," etc.). A cursory inspection of the rest of 1 Samuel -- which must have at least 650 verses, over 80% of which (conservative estimate) begin with the letter vav -- reveals that 1 Sam 13:2 is the only instance in which the KJV translators failed to translate the vav. This is quite peculiar!

9. Ben has found one other example in all the Hebrew Bible of this sort of thing, in 1 Chr 10:12. I'd guess there must be a few more, but clearly the rule that the KJV translates these vavs is satisfied to something like 99.8% accuracy. There are thousands of sentences which begin with a vav in the Hebrew Bible. Why did the KJV translators fail to translate the vav in only a tiny handful of cases?

10. In the example which Ben alertly identified, it is not necessary to treat 1 Chr 10:11-12 as a single sentence. One could just as well translate these verses as

(11) And all Jabesh-Gilead heard all that the Philistines did to Saul. (12) And all the valiant men arose and they took away the body of Saul...

But the KJV instead reads,

(11) And when all Jabeshgilead heard all that the Philistines had done to Saul, (12) They arose, all the valiant men, and took away the body of Saul...

Truth be told, I don't have an explanation for why the KJV translators opted for this rendering. It may have been that they wanted to emphasize the simultaneity of the hearing and the action -- who knows. But one thing about this example which is conspicuously missing in the case of 1 Sam 13:1-2 is its grammar. The verb vayishm'u which opens 1 Chr 10:11 is again in the preterite + vav-consecutive form. This allows one to translate it as "and (when) they heard". But there is no such construction in 1 Sam 13:1. The verb malakh in 1 Sam 13:1b is in the qal perfect. The claim that somehow the vav in vayivchar in 13:2 has migrated to the middle of 13:1 is baseless and indeed ludicrous.

11. So we are left with the following hypothesis. The fact that the opening vav in 1 Sam 13:2 was left untranslated -- something virtually unheard of in the KJV -- provides strong evidence that the KJV translators recognized a problem with the underlying Hebrew in 1 Sam 13:1. It is no accident that this verse is corrupt in all surviving witnesses. One plausible reconstruction of this verse would be

ben-X shanah Shaul b'malkho v'Y ushtei shanim malakh al-yisrael

which is to say

Saul was X years old when he began to reign, and he reigned Y+2 years over Israel.

In the NASB and NLT, for example, X=30 and Y=40. In the RSV, X and Y are left blank, as ellipses.

12. As an added bonus for KJV lovers, here is a KJV qere list page, which identifies all the places where the KJV fails to translate the written text of the Hebrew Bible but instead translates the qere, or spoken form, which is written in the masorah. Which words are God's words -- the ketiv or the qere? Or both??

Alethias

An interjection. I'm curious. What level of inspiration is being discussed here? praxeus, or whoever wants to respond, is it being claimed that this book of the bible was inspired letter-for-letter, word-for-word, or thought-for-thought, or at some other level? If thought-for-thought or lower is being claimed, what is the problem with accepting that there is some textual corruption here? And if you are claiming word-for-word or better, that claim goes against what rabbinical scholars for the text claim, If I Remember Correctly. I apologize for not having sources handy on this one. It is outside my expertise and i am going solely on memory here. Thanks in advance for clarifying this for me.

gregor

Wow, thanks Apikorus.

I really appreciate the class outline for Masoretic Text 101. I'm continually impressed with the level of knowledge here (and miss spin's input).

Kudos as well for greater decorum in the face of presupp haranguing.

Sheshbazzar

Hard to quantify a "level of inspiration", without clearly defining what "inspiration" is

Under the category of "whoever wants to respond", I'll here contribute my views. Letter-for-letter, word-for-word, thought-for-thought, and in other senses, I account all writings as "inspired", and any "textual corruption" evident, enters in through the same agency and is also "inspired", and is responsible for the inspiring of threads such as this.
The Scriptural text was from its composition intended to inspire men, that this forum even exists is evidence of its effectiveness in accomplishing that task.
Do you disagree with a "letter", a "word" or a "thought" of the text? does finding its "contradictions" reveal something to you? By these you are inspired to write your questions? views? and conclusions?

The Tanaka reads in one way, the LXX in another, and the KJV in yet another, and many diverse "versions" in yet other ways, we read, we compare, and we choose this or that reading as the "better" one, and this or that spelling, this or that thought or mode of expression as the "better" one, and our thoughts and opinions are thereby inspired and molded whether we choose to brand ourselves as atheist or believer, we are inspired by what we read, hear, see, and experience, to speak, and to write, and Do yet the more.
Some men have been so inspired thereby as to do good works, and some by the same writings, to do evil.

"And if you are claiming word-for-word or better, that claim goes against what rabbinical scholars for the text claim, If I Remember Correctly."

Rabbinical scholars have no absolute nor unquestionable authority inherent in their opinions, it is my observation that the very paradigm in which they operate tends to render them both blind and deaf to many of the truths that are evident to free men who are on the outside of their invisible cage.

Alethias

I asked the questions because I was having a difficult time understanding why it even mattered. As far as personal beliefs, I would have to believe that a god existed to think it inspired anything, and I don't.


Agreed. Treating different parts of the bible as having different levels of inspiration is an alternative paradigm that I don't think most christians have considered. I was kinda curious how praxeus-Steven viewed this since he self-identifies as a messianic believer in his profile.

Steven Avery

Yes, letter-for-letter would be the most accurate.

It varies. I can send you privately or in another venue some discussions on this. Also the blank spots and omissions in the summary above of 1 Samuel 13:1 for anybody who really wants to look closely at the "best case" error claim in the Masoretic Text. However, I am withdrawing from public dialog with Api on any topics, for reasons he and the moderators should fully understand.

It's a fine question. In both Jewish and Christian circles it has been a matter of intense discussion, with folks like John Gill, John Owen amd Francis Turretin and others involved on the Christian side. Offhand I have less knowledge and remembrance of who took what positions on the rabbinic side, but there was and is a whole range of views.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Sheshbazzar

Phrasing my inquiry then more as an ancient philosophical question, do you then not believe in the existence of reality? that form and force of reality in which we live, and move and have our being?
By assigning no name, names, nor attributes of deity, is that reality in which the worlds move, and in which all human endeavors are conducted, then by mans denial consigned to non-existence?
Living upon a world in a continuum held into being by an unseen force, I perceive a force at work, maintaining the past, creating the present, and promising the future, shaped and molded therein, I become as I am, and you as you are, imprinted by forces and events that are beyond our knowledge or ability to control, impacted upon every side by the pressures being exerted by reality, we become what that reality makes of us.
Thus it appears to me, that while you may deny the existence of the active power of inspiration if it so pleases you, yet you will still be molded and employed in its service, deny the existence of reality, if it so pleases you, and you will still live, move, and have your being within the boundaries established by a power that is greater than men.
I experience and know little, you, perhaps far more than I, and mankind collectively, far more than either of us, but reality experiences all things, knows every mans thoughts, all of what was, all of what is, and all of what shall yet be.
Are you knowledgeable? experienced? sentient? able to out-think, out-plan, and out-maneuver reality? Do your best then.

spin

I'm coming out of reclusion to say that this thread is a very one-sided affair. I've just taken the effort to read it through. Praxeus has poured scorn over Apikorus, he has ridiculed him, he has insulted him, all in the effort to stave off the inevitable, ie the fact that he hasn't got a single response to the analysis that Apikorus has clearly put forward in this thread.

Someone analysing a text in a language which is arcane to us -- and ancient Hebrew is arcane to us -- must depend heavily on comparisons within the available corpus of language use, here the text. Fundamentally, the vast bulk of Hebrew we have from the ancient world has come from biblical texts and there is not a whole lot of that to provide wide support for linguistic analysis. We have to work from what we can reconstruct of the grammar, of the stylistics, of the idiom. It is essential that we work on what can be learned from the similarities and differences in texts.

Apikorus rightly looks at the similarities of the verse in question with other statements regarding kings coming to power. This is an obvious and a necessary step in trying to understand the text. Does this verse fit what can be found when compared to the other kings? Praxeus dismisses this approach, complaining that you cannot reduce the language to formulae, without showing any way that he can know anything about the verse without comparing it to other similar verses or parts thereof. Praxeus, because he doesn't like the conclusions drawn from good procedure, rejects that procedure. This is understandable, but pointless. He says we must forget the rather strong linguistic resemblance with all enthronement statements in the Hebrew bible because those similarities don't agree with Praxeus's a priori commitments to a superceded translation.

Here is just one example of a parallel text (with a very literal translation):

(I won't enter into the length of Saul's reign, though the NRSV supports Apikorus's analysis.)

The relationship between the two verses above, both in structure and in purpose, ie to narrate the beginning of a reign, hopefully should be obvious to all. Unfortunately, it's not obvious to those who want the text to be flawless. Despite the fact that they have the same purpose, they can't have the same structure, otherwise one would have to admit that there is a disturbance in the Hebrew text.

Instead, one points out the fact that the first two words on the verse, bn-$nh has a meaning when taken together, and that refers to a young animal, a "yearling". So starts the recuperation of the flawless text: we must be dealing with an unsignalled metaphor. (Saul "was one-year in his reign, pure, and that purity was like a one-year-old child.") Why? Well, if it weren't a metaphor, then there would be a textual flaw, so it must be a metaphor. It can't be like the other forty descriptions of the enthronement of kings, the job which this verse fulfills.

Where linguistics, as a discipline which analyses how languages work, progresses in its scientific efforts, ie more recent analyses tend to be more accurate than older ones, in that our knowledge of the languages and language mechanisms improve, Praxeus turns back to older analyses because they are more likely to agree with him, due to their lack of linguistic knowledge and their understandable desire to make sense of an arcane text. (Linguistics as an analytical discipline is relatively recent, so one can't expect -- say -- medaieval authors to have an understanding of how a language works. These early writers are extremely important because they can preserve ancient understandings, but one cannot depend on their textual analyses.) Analysts these days do not have to force a text to make sense, when one can see that the text has been corrupted, as in the case of 1 Sam 13:1. Sadly, however, the significance of the term "linguist" is lost on Praxeus, who commits the anachronism of calling scholars who worked on the KJV several centuries ago "linguists". No, they were not linguists. They had none of the benefits of a coherent analysis of how languages function. They were philologists who may have had an excellent understanding of the Hebrew language for the time, but lacked any understanding of linguistics, a discipline which started raising its head in the 19th century and flowered in the mid 20th century, steadily developing its descriptive and analytical powers up to today.

But of course it may not be a metaphor if Praxeus can support this view as well:
Unfortunately, the Hebrew doesn't support this type of sense stretching. The text clearly says bn-$nh, son of year, and it is assumed to be one year. This, ie bn-X $nh, is how all the enthronement verses give the age of the king when he was enthroned. The verb in its form deals with the start of the action, ie when Saul "started to reign", as the KJV gives in all other examples. (If Praxeus wants to argue that bn-(X)-$nh doesn't indicate an age, despite the fact that it is so widely used in the HB to indicate age, he needs to show what clues there are in the text to justify his anomalous reading. He has carefully ignored all opportunities to do so.)

It's interesting how Praxeus can support these two conflicting views about the first part of the verse at the same time, ie that it is a metaphor and that it is literally about one year. It should be clear that he is ready to use any argument, no matter how contradictory, in order to protect the sanctity of his flawless text.

The woes of Praxeus continue, because he chooses to ignore the way the KJV translates the construction found in all the other exemplars, ie "and he reigned X years over Israel", as with Rehoboam "and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem" or with Jehoash "and he reigned 40 years in Jerusalem". Praxeus instead goes with those early scholars who had similar commitments to his, ie that the text had to make sense, though they couldn't contemplate corruption. These scholars who Praxeus follows insert a conjunction "when" into the structure despite the fact that they don't do it in any of the other examples of the enthronement description. When you start manipulating the text things can often get complicated, for now we also have to ignore the conjunction at the beginning of the next verse to get this:

We have the hanging statement, "Saul reigned one year", which has no reason for being, though it appears in English to be at least grammatically correct though without relevance to the discourse. In order to keep up the pretence of grammatical correctness, one has to stick a "when" into the verse and then ignore the following conjunction (w-) at the beginning of 1 Sam 13:2. He has to pervert the text three times rather than accept that the text seems to have lost a little information, how old Saul was when he started his reign.

Much of the substance of what I have said has already been pointed out by Apikorus, who has done an excellent job in this thread. I've just tried to spell out the implications for Praxeus, whose act up to this point has been one "...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

Back to reclusion.


spin