Toto

Try this, Meta:

The only reason that it seems like a Jumble is because you haven't read the Talmud.

And why would you assume that Apikorus, our resident expert on Judaica, had not read the Talmud?

Metacrock

Meta =>I got it right? I figured it meant something like that. I thought it meant Are you Jewish do you speak Hebrew? But it was beuse of the word yoden or whatever I thought that looked like Jewish. It is I bet! I also love Singfeld and Woody Allen. That has to count for something.


MEta=>That is totally absurd and really unfair. All scholarship revolves around resreach. How else are you going to disseminate research but by linking or cutting and pasting? I did the research you yutz! I spent months digging all of that up reading through thousnads of pages. I even read tuns of Talmudic passages myself. I organized it and typed it all in and its cut form my website. I spent long grueling hours finding just the right quotes, reading all the books an typing it all up so that is totally unfair and dishonest to say that!



Meta =>It's not irrelivant it totally destorys your argument.know why? Because your argument is basically alledging that their readings of the OT were arbitrary and forced. And this shows that those readings were not even their own original findings but were already in existence and actually were Rabbinical readings. NOw that doesn't prove they are right, but it does prove they didn't just read in what they wanted to be there, they took it from the auhtorities they respected!



MEta => Illogical since I just demonstated that they are basically the same reading.


Meta =>right going to subvert it. So you are such a coward that you can't even read the passages to see what the claims are! Edersheim was trianed as a Rabbi. He grew preparing to be one and being trianed by Rabbis. He became a scholar and taught at Oxford. His list is impressive and he certainly knew what it encupassed and it was not just forced out of anything old thing he could find. That list includes basically the same stuff the early chruch claimed. Read the links.

Meta =>No we don't know that. WE know that one guy did. His statement to that affect was based upon what one person told him. But we also have statments by Rabbis in the Middle ages agasint Rashi saying that all the former Rabbis agreed that the SS was messiah. So it was not a majority view until after the time of Rashi!


Meta => Mere assumption not in evidence.


Meta ->He would be banned on my board. That is a really stupid argument, majorly stupid, because the Rabbis who backed Bar Chochba used Isaiah II to back their arguments. Obviously they thought it worked. The Rabbis in the middle ages thought the SS was Messiah, and obviously he had not come yet so they clelary didn't buy that argument. I can understand why you would be upset with Christainity, thinking it cultural imperialism. But don't forget you guys shoved this Chrstian stuff off on us pagans first. My ancesters painted themselves blue and worhipped Goddesses. So Dont come crying to me about it.

MEta ->I find it an index to your mentality that you can't see the obvious difference since the Tyre thing is not a prophesy about an unknown king of tyre and was never intended in the same way "who will the king of Tyre be when he comes?" But it is merely begging the question to assume that they didn't have an open ended Messiah in the SS, and that is backed up by most Rabbis prior to the 19th century.



Meta =>It's obvious that he wasn't, and Jesus is not even in the running by your own admission since the passage is about a scpecific guy, the SS of Is 53 is not! Identity of Tyre was known and set identity of SS is not! get it?


Meta ->Gee duh! they don't reference Canon Streeter or William Ramsay either, because they all wrote in the 19th century. But if you asked them they will say Edersheim was good, and his work still has advantages. I have asked major scholars about his work and he is still respected. He's not up to date and there are some problems with using it, but not so much so that he's just totally out of the running. The problem is merely one of the use of second century materials and assuming that its projectable to prior time. but Guess what? Those same shcolars would think your arugment moronic. Read Sander's work on canon. Moreover STephen Neil did reference and endorse Edersheim.


Meta ->There is nothing wrong with Miller. He's too conservative for my tastes but he's very bright. You aren ot worthy to crawl on the floor and lick his boots. But for the record, you assumpitive idiot, I had those Edersheim books on my shelf since 1979 when I inherited them form my x brother-in-law and I knew them way before I had a computer or knew anything about Miller.


Meta =>Well that's just begging the qeustion. Of course they don't like Christianity if they could think consistantly they wouldn't have been Phrisees. They destoryed the hetermodox faction (which is why they hated Jesus because he was heterodox) so it was a continuation of the squabble between Essenes and Pharisees. Most of the Heterodox became Chrisitians. The others couldn't deny that the SS was the Messiah but they could deny that he was Jesus and to do that they had to forget half the story they had mapped out for what he was suppossed to do. That's why Jews today don't know that they once believed that he would be imprsioned and killed and then come back.


Meta =>cute how they play these little games. when it sutis them they believe their authorities and when it gets them in hot water they don't. One can see clearly from the OT text that the curse was removed because Zerubabell was in the line! that is a priori and cannot be disputed. The curse had to be lifted for that to be true. And the end of Jehoachin contradicts what the curse says so it must have been removed.


Meta =>Doesn't matter, Joseph wan't either. You don't have to be king to be in line for the thorne or for your son to be in that line. All you have to be is the next guy in line.

[ January 23, 2002: Message edited by: Apikorus ][/QB][/QUOTE]

Metacrock

Part II to post by Apikorus:



Meta => You failed totally to prove your point because you actually proved that they didn't have arbitrary readings, you do. You chose one that Jesus cannot fit becasue it was specific for a guy in their day. The SS was not! The SS was open to be anyone and it's debatable who he would be. Tyre is set as to who he was and it was not someone after the time of the prophets. That means you are reading in abritrarily and that is merely a fallacy to assume that just because you do it that they must have. Very very fallacious reasoning and proves nothing.


Meta =>Poor reading skills Apok. That was a rhetorical flouish to counter your rhetroical flourish where you keep asserting that its Jesus when it can't be. you said it says this about Jesus so I said it doens't mention him, and you know it doesn't ! That's called rhetroic, look it up.

Meta =>Yes, I know, you thought "O what a clever boy am i!" but you outclevered yourself, because you did exactly what they did not do and that is obvious! It is so painfully obivious that it hurst to see how limited you are in understanding the problem.


Meta ->aahhaahhahaah, right! and now since you don't even understand my argument you just resort to making up your own straw man. No I didn't say anything like that. I didn't argue typology. I said that your allusions to typology are misplaced, I didn't offer my own. The fact that you can't even dispute the argument I made proves a lot right there.

Meta => No actually I didn't say that. I never argued anything about proving Jesus through typology.


Meta =>O another little rat bag you wants to cultivate the lie that I dont' have a degree. Now I'm suppossed to be hurt or what? I know I was in class. I know the record says I have a Masters degree. I dont' give a shit if you don't know that and wont believe becasue you don't even know enough to be in academia. You couldn't even make in that program. The way you reason they wouldnt' let you in that seminary and you couldn't make the grades it takes to get out of it. the fact that you have to resort to that kind of stupidity rather than argue the issues just proves your position is banckrupt.

besides, too stupid to realize that I didnt' wirte papers every single night so I could take longer on spelling and get editing help. I did in fact find people to proof my papers. I still do. I can do that when I dont' have to answer 45 idiots a night.

BTW I have told Still where I go to school and the chair of my committees name so he knows its real. If you don't believe me ask him. He wont tell you my name, I trust him not to do that but he has the way to know that I do in fact have that degree.



Meta =>Your just making up your own straw man arguments. That's not my argument.


The rest of this is just such childish posturing you aren't even worth wasting my time on.

Metacrock

Part III against Apokrius



Meta =>yea, that's not the problem! The problem is:

1) they were motivated by their fear of Christian doctrine not their knowledge of Greek/Hebrew.

2) The LXX parent MS at Qumran are in Hebrew! Those are the parent documents form which the LXX was made. They agree with it and that proves that that reading was around long before the MT which came basically form the 900's AD. He's just totally confussed and not even understanding the argument.


Meta => Clearly an empty arugment. He doesn't even understand the problem. They wouldn't have to bring anyting into line if the reading tiself didn't already exist. The reading is in Heberw it goes back to the ancient intertestamental period. There is no way they can establish that the MT parent is any more the true reading than the LXX parent. Both are ancient and both are in Hebrew. What that means is that the LXX is generally a good and faithful translation and we should trust it when it renders Alma as parthanos.

Now just ask yourself, if they are chaing that, why would they be chaning it if not to get away from Christian interp? Did they actually believe that the LXX translators didn't know Hebrew? If there is another reading how can they establish wihic is the true one when they were both used at Qumran?

Meta => That's not what Frank Cross said, and it's not what Sanders says. Sanders argues that the Qumran sect used a pluriform text and that they didn't care. It wasn't a problem for them. Now that means that you can't estalbish which reading is the "true" reading.


Meta -> That's just a meaningless comment because that doesn't dispute the fact that there is another text that is in line with the LXX.


Meta =>O thanks for informing us of your habits that's so interesting. Doesn't prove anything about your argument but now we have the illusion that you know something. That is not to prove that Isiah is badly translated in the LXX.


Meta -=>too bad you don't. Because nothing there indicates that LXX is a bad translation.

Executive summary of postscript: Metacrock is wrong about the nature of the rabbinic recensions.

Not one fucking bit! You can't come to terms with the fact that they confirm the early chruch's reading completely. Just look at the two readings, they are the same! The only difference is that one says this historical guy fits it and the other doesn't. but both see the same sets of expectations and that is clearly proven if anyone wants to read the links.

Metacrock is wrong about what Qumran tells us about the LXX. Metacrock is wrong to assume that the entire LXX was translated with uniform competence.

I didn't assume that, I never said that. I said that there was a pluriform text and you can't establish the MT as th proper text.

Vorkosigan

Not to mention "Ha hahaha O brother"

Metacrock

Meta->O yea right, they dont' have any motive to say that do they? They only have their own guy that they think was the messiah. What do orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jews think of the Lubies? They are the fundies of the Jewish world, rather than fundie, they are Lubies. But it's the same thing! They are the Amreican analouge of the guys who put up the settlements in Israel and take over Palestinian houses and shoot the occupants and than declair that peace is bad. They are fanatics, these are the guys you think have the proper reding of the OT?

You are doing what Apokrius did. You are just saying I can screw with the text so that proves that the Christians screwed with it becasue I can! But that doesn't prove it. to prove that we have to go line by line and passage by passage. That's really tiresome and I don't care to do it. I think you are just falling into a hole.

Now here is what a bunch of respected and conventional Jewish thinkers think about Jesus. Some of them were Rabbis.

Martin Buber

Philosopher

1878-1965







From my youth onwards I have found in Jesus my great brother. That Christianity has regarded and does regard him as God and Savior has always appeared to me a fact of the highest importance which, for his sake and my own, I must endeavor to understand...

I am more than ever certain that a great place belongs to him in Israel's history of faith and that this place cannot be described by any of the usual categories.

Two Types of Faith (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), pp. 12-13.



------------------------------------------------------------------------



J. Carmel

Israeli Teacher and Author







If the prophet Elijah has ridden in a fiery chariot into heaven, why should not Jesus rise and go to heaven?

Cited by Pinchas Lapide, p. 138 in The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1983).



------------------------------------------------------------------------



John Cournos

Novelist and Essayist

1881-1966







Jesus was a Jew -- the best of Jews....

Jesus was not only a Jew. He was the apex and the acme of Jewish teaching, which began with Moses and ran the entire evolving gamut of kings, teachers, prophets, and rabbis -- David and Isaiah and Daniel and Hillel -- until their pith and essence was crystallized in this greatest of all Jews....

For a Jew, therefore, to forget that Jesus was a Jew, and to deny him, is to forget and to deny all the Jewish teaching that was before Jesus: it is to reject the Jewish heritage, to betray what was best in Israel....

I know a number of Jews who believe as I do, who believe it is time that the Jews reclaimed Jesus, and that it is desirable that they should do so...To take three examples among them, one is a novelist, whose books are about Jews and read by Jews; one is an educator, whose work is among Jews and who knows Jews exceptionally well; and one is a scholar interested in Jewish Sunday schools--if he were permitted by the elders he would include among his readings of "gems" of Jewish literature the Sermon on the Mount.

In An Open Letter to Jews and Christians (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938).



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Norman Cousins

Former Editor of the Saturday Review

Born 1912







There is every reason for Judaism to lose its reluctance toward Jesus. His own towering spiritual presence is a projection of Judaism, not a repudiation of it. Jesus is not to be taxed for the un-Christian ideas and acts of those who have spoken in his name. Jesus never repudiated Judaism. He was proud to be a Jew, yet he did not confine himself to Judaism. He did not believe in spiritual exclusivity for either Jew or Gentile. He asserted the Jewish heritage and sought to preserve an exalt its values, but he did it within a universal context. No other figure -- spiritual, philosophical, political or intellectual -- has had a greater impact on human history. To belong to a people that produced Jesus is to share in a distinction of vast dimension and meaning....

The modern synagogue can live fully and openly with Jesus.

"The Jewishness of Jesus," American Judaism 10:1 (1960), p. 36.



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Albert Einstein

Physicist and Professor, Princeton University

1879-1955







As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene....No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.

Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrase-mongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot.

George Sylvester Viereck, "What Life Means to Einstein," The Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929.



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Hyman G. Enelow

President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis

and Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, New York City (Reform)

1877-1934







Jesus was not only born a Jew, but conscious of his Jewish descent.

Jesus realized the spiritual distinction of the Jewish people, and regarded himself as sent to teach and help his people.

Jesus, like other teachers, severely criticized his people for their spiritual short-comings, seeking to correct them, but at the same time he loved and pitied them. His whole ministry was saturated with love for his people, and loyalty to it.

Jesus, like all other of the noblest type of Jewish teachers, taught the essential lessons of spiritual religion -- love, justice, goodness, purity, holiness -- subordinating the material and the political to the spiritual and the eternal.

Who can compute all that Jesus has meant to humanity? The love he has inspired, the solace he has given, the good he has engendered, the hope and joy he has kindled -- all that is unequaled in human history.

"A Jewish View of Jesus", pp.441-442, 509 in Selected Works of Hyman G. Enelow, Volume III: Collected Writings (privately printed, 1935).



------------------------------------------------------------------------



Solomon B. Freehof

Author and Professor at Hebrew Union College

1892-1990







All this vast diversity of opinion has not lessened the vividness of the personality of Jesus. The opposite opinions have not balanced each other into immobility. All the opinions are still staunchly held and ardently defended. The years have not diminished the urgency of the question: "What do you think of Jesus?"

...The significant fact is that time has not faded the vividness of his [Jesus'] image. Poetry still sings his praise. He is still the living comrade of countless lives. No Moslem ever sings, "Mohammed, lover of my soul," nor does any Jew say of Moses, the teacher, "I need thee every hour."

In Stormers of Heaven (New York: Harper and Row, 1931).





Paul Goodman

British Zionist and Author

1875-1949







The charm of his personality has sent its rays all over the world, and infused countless human hearts with the spirit of love and self-sacrifice....Yet the roots of the life and thought of Jesus lie entirely in Jewish soil.

In The Synagogue and the Church (1908), quoted in Jewish Views of Jesus: An Introduction and Appreciation by Thomas T. Walker (New York: Arno Press, 1973 [reprint of 1931 ed.]), p. 25.





Samuel Hirsch

German and American Reform Rabbi and Chief Rabbi of Luxembourg

1815-1899





In order that Jesus' power of hope and greatness of soul should not end with his death, God has raised in the group of his disciples the idea that he rose from death and continues living. Indeed, He continues living in all those who want to be true Jews.

Cited by Pinchas Lapide, p. 137 in The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1983).




Continued with the Lubie view:

[quote]"The purpose would be to test whether Jews are truly committed to living under the Law, or whether they would be tempted to join the false path to salvation (v. 3-6, 7-8, 11). In this Biblical passage, G-d repeatedly commands the Jews to kill this false prophet, lest the evil spread and destroy many souls. (You can go to religioustolerance.org and look up Jewish persecution for many examples of this.)

To be accepted by the people, the false prophet would sometimes pretend to be a righteous Jew who fulfills the Law, but at key moments he would turn against certain details of the Law in order to make the breach (v. 6, 7). This is the reason that verse 1 commands not to add or subtract any details from the Law, and verse 5 warns to remain steadfast with all the traditions of the Law.

In Deuteronomy 17, this false prophet is also described as someone who would rebel against the authority of the judges of the Jewish people, and who should be put to death for his rebelliousness (v. 8-13, esp. v. 12). Who are the judges? The highest court in Israel was the Sanhedrin, which was established by Moses (Exodus 18:13-26; Numbers 11:16-29), and which lasted more than 15 centuries. The members of the Sanhedrin were the rabbis known as "Pharisees" (Pirushim, "those with the explanation"). G-d gave permanent authority to these judges to interpret the Law and G-d's Word, and it is a commandment to follow their decisions without turning even slightly to the right or the left (Deut. 17:11). But the false prophet would challenge the authority of the Sanhedrin, thus revealing himself to be an evil man.[/i]


Meta=>Of course that's if you buy the Talmud which Apokrius says he doens't follow slavishly, becasue that is not in the OT. That is totally a Talmudist thing, and it's of course desinged to keep people from thinking seriously about Jesus by poinsioning the well to begin with.

Meta =>Again you are just distoring things and then assuming that if you can do it that must prove that the chruch did it. That's just straw man guilt by association! A rare synthesis of two different fallacies. The horn is a king of a nation state and it is not Israel. That is usually associated with Greace. Was Jesus the king of Greace? He wasn't even an official king but he was said to be King of the Jews! so obviously the Daniel thing can't apply to him now matter how badly you try to distort it.


MEta ->That is ludicrous. He's "king" over the chruch as God is, not as king of a nation state, and certianly not the one in Daniel. he didn't do away with the Hebrew calender nor did he do anything about the not keeping the law. All of that came with Gentile Christinaity Jesus never said anything about it.



Meta =->That really shows your ignorance! Jesus never placed himself in the Trintiy, he never said anything about the Trinty! The Trinity is not three God's anyway, it's one God.


Meta ->That is just your blind and lame opinon. You are just gain saying the evidence which is clearly against you becasue it is against you and you can't cope with it.

1) Jesus repudiated the laws of kosher food (Mark 7:18-19). [Compare this to the prophet Daniel's strict adherence to kashrus, in Daniel chapter 1.]


No he didn't! Read it again! He never said not to keep kosher laws.

2) He repudiated the laws of honoring one's parents, and called on his followers to hate their parents; he also dishonored his own mother (Matthew 10:34-36; Matthew 12:46-50; Luke 14:26).


that is a total distortion! he never said anyting of the kind and it just proves that you are not willing to read the text honestly. He did endourse the helping of parents, but in the passage siting he is saying that you must be wiling to stand up against your family if they don't want you to follow the truth. he's saying God is the higher priority to parents and family and that you can't base the truth on what your family says. that is not the same thing as really saying to hate your family. To twist that verse in that manner is the hallmark of one who truely does not care about truth at all.

3) He violated the Sabbath by picking grain, and incited his disciples to do the same (Matthew 12:1-8; Mark 2:23-26).

His own justification is David himself, not a violation.

4) He again violated the Sabbath by healing a man's arm, which was not a matter of saving a life, and he openly defied the rabbis in his total repudiation of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:9-13; Mark 3:1-5). [Compare this to G-d's view of violating the Sabbath, in Numbers 15:32-36, Nehemiah 10:30-32, and dozens of other places throughout the Bible.]

They whole point is to not be legalistic. The fact that you can't understand that shows that you are legalistic. That's his whole point, people are more improtant than rules, don't be slavisly bound to rules follow the spirit of the law rather then the letter. Rabbis have said the same many times.

5) Jesus brazenly defied and disobeyed the rabbis of the Sanhedrin, repudiating their authority (This is recorded in many places throughout the New Testament, but look especially at Matthew 23:13-39 and John 8:44-45)."


He did not. he said they sit in the seat of moses so do what they say. But guess what? Their authority was false, becasue they stole the preisthood form the Levites in the Macabeen times, that's why the Qurman guys rebelled.

Metacrock

yea well there is that. Hmmmmmmmmmmm no wonder he was so pissed off. Oooops guess I pulled another Metacrockism. Well I meant he hadn't read those passages not that he hadn't read any of it. I guess I can see how that was insulting so I apologize.

the hahah thing is just well you know, my own loveable idiomatic Metacrockish way of being a jerk. But I really don't mean it to be insulting.

Apikorus

(1) Metacrock, your statement that I am not "worthy to crawl on the floor and lick his (Glenn Miller's) boots" is laughably telling. Glenn Miller is an internet gadfly, Metacrock, and not a scholar of any repute. That you worship him as some kind of hero is bizarre. At any rate, your hero himself got into a bit of trouble by careless regurgitation of material from tertiary sources (apparently you have learned well from your master!). I had the distinct pleasure of informing him how he had at one point based a key argument in his dating of Daniel on a typographical error in an article by Peter Flint. See my last post in the forum <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=51&t=000041" target="_blank">Need help with Second Isaiah</a> below. In response to my criticisms of his article, Miller took his Daniel pages off line, and, when he found that I was (of course!) absolutely correct, he was forced to rewrite several paragraphs of his essay. Enjoy!

(2) OK, now let's get on to falsifying Metacrock's remarks about Origen. Contra Celsus, book I, chapter LV reads:

Now I remember that, on one occasion, at a disputation held with certain Jews, who were reckoned wise men, I quoted these prophecies; to which my Jewish opponent replied, that these predictions bore reference to the whole people regarded as one individual, and as being in a state of dispersion and suffering, in order that many proselytes might be gained, on account of the dispersion of the Jews among numerous heathen nations...

So Metacrock's assertion that Origen's statement "is based upon what one person told him" is extremely misleading. Origen's own words, which Metacrock evidently has not read (again he relies on tertiary sources, probably Miller), state that he had been engaged in a disputation with "certain JewS who were reckoned wise men". One of these sages, apparently speaking for the group (Origen records no disagreement from the other sages), stated that the eved yhwh was in fact corporate Israel. Though it is an argument from silence, it seems safe to say that had the messianic interpretation of Isaiah 53 been particularly strong among the Jews of Origen's day, he would likely have known of it and would have mentioned it. At any rate, it ain't just one guy!

(3) Getting back to Isaiah 7:14, Metacrock might take a look at Raymond Brown on the subject ("The Birth of the Messiah", pp. 145-153). Brown writes that the "conception of prophecy as prediction of the distant future has disappeared from most serious scholarship today, and it is widely recognized that the NT `fulfillment' of the OT involved much that the OT writers did not foresee at all." Well said! More from Brown:

"In Alexandria, some time in the last centuries before Jesus' birth, the LXX translator rendered 'alma by parthenos, a Greek word more regularly used to translate betula and which normally means "virgin". The normal rendering of 'alma would be neanis, `young woman'; and it is quite understandible that the post-LXX translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion), which are consistently closer to the MT, employed neanis in Isa 7:14."

Brown goes on to point out, quite sensibly, that the LXX translator need not necessarily have conceived of a virgin birth. Rather, he may simply have been saying that "a woman who is now a virgin will (by natural means, once she is united with her husband) conceive the child Emmanuel."

(4) The figure of 60% proto-rabbinic biblical texts at Qumran comes from Schiffman ("Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls"). Only about 10% are of the Septuagint text type. Many were nonaligned. At any rate, of course the Hebrew Bible at Qumran was pluriform. As for Cross, here's what he says about the LXX of Isaiah ("The Ancient Library of Qumran", 3rd ed., p. 131):

"Isaiah in Greek appears to have been translated from a manuscript quite close to the proto-Rabbinic tradition. However, it was difficult to be certain, since the translation of Isaiah is among the poorest in the Greek Bible."

Cross goes on to say that the LXX of the historical books (i.e. the Deuteronomistic History) is extremely literal. Just as I said, some books of the MT - Samuel in particular - must be corrected to the LXX in many places. Even so, Cross cautions that the LXX is not necessarily superior to the MT, even in the case of the historical books.

(5) Why did Jewish scholars create rabbinic recensions of the LXX? Your paranoid fantasy is that this was a tendentious maneuver whose purpose was to subvert Christian readings of the Hebrew Bible. This is a pathetically uninformed opinion. The fact is that the LXX was evidently witness to a Hebrew exemplar which differed profoundly in many instances from the proto-rabbinic text. For example, the LXX of Jeremiah is about 13% shorter than that of the MT. There are major differences between the LXX and the MT in several other books, including Daniel, Samuel, and even parts of Exodus. Greek was very much the lingua franca (ha!) of much of Palestine (particularly in the north) during the early centuries CE, hence an accurate Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible was most desirable. The problem was that the LXX came from the (by then largely defunct) Alexandrian community, and when the scribes in Palestine and Babylon read it they must have thought "what the fuck is going on here?" - their proto-rabbinic text differed significantly in many ways. So they endeavored to bring the Greek more in line with the emerging normative Hebrew text.

Again, the major differences between the LXX and the MT have nothing whatsoever to do with Christian versus Jewish theology. Even after the Jews had abandoned the Greek entirely and while that text was being transmitted by Christians alone, apparently exceedingly little mischief was made with the text for tendentious "christological" purposes. (Hence hysterical Jewish antimissionaries who insist that the LXX is some kind of "Christian forgery" are laughably misguided. Meet your intellectual counterparts, Metacrock!) Eventually, beginning with Jerome who ca. 400 CE translated the Vulgate of the OT directly from the Hebrew, Christians abandoned the Greek because its pluriformity grew to be a terrible embarrassment. Origen, who was a great scholar, sought to compare and contrast the various Greek versions in his monumental hexapla, which contained six columns presenting the Hebrew, Greek transliteration of the Hebrew (that's one reason we know that YHWH was vocalized as "Yahweh", incidentally), the LXX, and the three rabbinic recensions (Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion).

The abandonment of the Greek (virtually all modern Christian bibles derive from the Hebrew in their OT; Luther himself was a great advocate of Hebraica Veritas, even though he was a vicious antisemite) leads to some interesting problems for Christian inerrantists (don't blow your stack, Meta; I know you're not a fundie!), since to the gospel authors "scripture" meant the LXX. Hence Acts 7:14 says 75 souls went down to Egypt with Jacob, which must provoke some head scratching (and amusing exegetical gyrations) when Christian fundies read their OT, which gives the figure as 70.

At any rate, you are still utterly misguided in your understanding of the nature of the rabbinic recensions. It may well have been that in exceedingly rare cases the recensions may have been tendentiously anti-Christian - though there is no strong evidence for such a claim - but clearly the overwhelming motivation behind the recensions was the vast difference between the LXX, which was witness to a Hebrew exemplar in the Alexandrian tradition, and the proto-MT, which was of the Babylonian text type.

(6) Of course it is true that the early Christians inherited much of their messianic framework from currents in late second Temple Judaism. The Qumranians, for example, who held in a dual messiahship (see below), seemed to embody the apocalyptic eschatology of the early Christians as well as the hypernomianism of rabbinic Judaism. It's still all wildly beyond the plain sense of the text, as Raymond Brown himself stresses!

(7) The overwhelming majority of DSS scholars still strongly hold in a dual messianism at Qumran. This interpretation was at one point challenged based on what likely was a misreading of a line in the Damascus Covenant in which the words mashiach aharon v'yisrael (messiah of Aaron and Israel) appear. It is tempting to read this as a reference to a single messiah who distributes over both Aaron and Israel. But let's read what Cross has to say (TALOQ, p. 188):

"Confusion has been introduced by a reading in CD XIV, 19: [m$y]H 'hrwn wysr'l. It is to be read `the messiah of Aaron and the one of Israel'. This constitutes no problem in Hebrew grammar, as recognized long ago by Ginzburg. The expression cannot mean anything but the (priestly) messiah of Aaron and the (secular) messiah of Israel. The expression Aaron and Israel regularly refers to the priestly and the secular division of the community. A single priestly messiah would be called simply `the messiah of Aaron'. Further confusion has been created by the following phrase: ykpr 'wnm [ ]. The verb is singular. But it must be taken as a passive, yekuppar."

Thus, the phrase ykpr 'wnm should be vocalized as yekuppar avonim - atonement of sins will be made. Were instead avonim the object of the singular active yekapper, meaning "he will atone for sins", then avonim would be preceded by the particle 'et. Cross's conclusion: "So the case is clear. The putative single messiah is a phantom of bad philology."

Incidentally, Metacrock, getting back to Cross's earlier point regarding mashiach aharon v'yisrael, there are several examples one can adduce in which this construction clearly refers to two distinct entities. From the Hebrew Bible itself, we have Gen 14:10's melekh s'dom vaamorah - literally "king of Sodom and Gomorrah" but clearly the meaning is "kingS of Sodom and Gomorrah" or, equivalently, "king of Sodom and king of Gomorrah". Judges 7:25 presents us with rosh orev uzev - "head of Oreb and Zeeb", which must be read as "headS of Oreb and Zeeb". Among the Qumran corpus itself, we have War 3:12-13's shem yisrael v'aharon which can only mean "nameS of Israel and Aharon". See also the Aramaic text 4Q246 at 1:6.

(8) The identity of deutero-Isaiah's eved YHWH is abundantly clear. The servant is explicitly identified as Jacob/Israel in Isa 41:8 and elsewhere (several times). Indeed, there is not a single time in all of deutero-Isaiah where the servant is explicitly identified with anyone other than Jacob/Israel.

Since Duhm's late 19th century identification of the four "servant poems" in deutero-Isaiah (42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12, though their boundaries are somewhat ambiguous), scholars have committed massive deforestation in an attempt to identify the servant of these poems. In the narrative sections, though, the servant is explicitly identified as Jacob/Israel, and it seems sensible to test the hypothesis that Jacob is also the servant of the poems. Gerald Larue (whose excellent though dated book "Old Testament Life and Literature" is available online here at II!) points out that there exist several strong parallels between the servant of the poems and Jacob/Israel in the narrative (See Larue OTLL, ch. 23):

• Both are formed in the womb by Yahweh, 49:1, 5; cf. 44:2, 24.
• Both are chosen by Yahweh, 42:1, cf. 41:8 f.; 43:10; 44:1; etc.
• Both are sustained by Yahweh, 42:1; cf. 41:10.
• Both are to be a light to the nations, 49:6; cf. 42:6.
• In both Yahweh is glorified, 49:3; cf. 44:23.

Larue goes on to remark, "On the other hand there are differences. Whereas the prophet speaks of rebellious, discouraged Israel (40:27; 41:8-10; 48:4), he finds the anonymous servant to be undismayed and faithful (42:4; 50:5-9). Furthermore, whereas Israel is to be redeemed (43:1-7), the servant is to be the instrument of redemption (49:5)." But this is easily explained, as there are two Israels of which deutero-Isaiah speaks. One is "greater Israel" which had repeatedly faltered and failed to heed YHWH's commandments. The other is Israel the servant group - the notionally faithful remnant, which was, very likely, deutero-Isaiah's audience. Through the piety of the remnant, all Israel would be redeemed. Incidentally, DtIsa himself uses the plural avdei (servantS):

• ...zot nachalat avdei YHWH v'tzidkatam meiti n'um-YHWH
• ...This is the heritage of the servants of YHWH and their vindication from me, says YHWH. (Isa 54:17)

Furthermore, trito-Isaiah picks up on this theme, and again uses the plural avadim:

• shuv l'maan avadekha shivtei nachalatekha
• Return for the sake of your servantS, the tribes of your inheritance (Isa 63:17)

See also Isa 65:8-9:

• koh amar YHWH kaasher yimatzei hatirosh baeshkol v'amar al-tashchiteihu ki brakha bo ken e'eseh l'maan avadai l'vilti hashchit hakol v'hotzeiti miyaaqov zera umiyehudah yoreish harai viy'reishuha b'chirai vaavadai yishk'nu shamah
• So says YHWH: as new wine is found in the cluster, and (YHWH) says: do not destroy it, for there is blessing in it. So will I do for my servantS' sakes, that I may not destroy them all. And I will bring forth seed from Jacob, and from Judah an inheritor of my mountains and my elect shall inherit it and my servantS shall dwell there (Isa 65:8-9)

So quite clearly it is for the sakes of the corporate servant group (l'maan avadai) that the entire group - what I call "greater Israel" - will not be destroyed. This accords perfectly with my reading of DtIsa. The collective servant group is the "new wine" found amid the "cluster" (= greater Israel). The seed that is brought forth is from Jacob/Judah. This is the seed promised to the servant group in Isa 53:10. The faithful remnant would redeem greater Israel, and their seed would repopulate the desolated hills of Judah.

You've got to be a frikkin' moron to think that DtIsa or TrIsa was writing about events 550 (or 400 - see below) years in the future.

Of course, there are major scholars who would disagree. Klaus Baltzer, in his recently-released Hermeneia commentary on deutero-Isaiah (a work of considerable importance!), makes a strong case that the provenance of DtIsa is not the early exilic period (as assumed by Duhm and many others) but rather the mid-to-late Persian period, ca. 400 BCE. Furthermore, Baltzer identifies the servant as Moses! (Baltzer's overall analysis is brilliant. He makes the utterly novel proposal that DtIsa is to be read as a liturgical drama, and that it was in fact performed as a play in six acts.)

(9) The Hebrew word you are searching for to describe rabbinic ordination is smicha. So you have a meshugge rabbi who is into Jesus? How nice for you! (And why do you reflexively inoculate your rabbi against the skepticism of Tovia Singer? Do you think I am some sort of Jewish antimissionary? A true apikorus is far more formidable than some pathetic antimissionary!) Of course, when I spoke collectively of "the rabbis", emphasizing that not a one of them identified Jesus of Nazareth as the messiah, I was referring to the usual gang of Jewish sages: the tannaim, the amoraim, the saboraim, the geonim, the medieval rabbanim, and even the modern gedolim. Sorry, Meta, but your meshugge rabbi is not among the gedolim.

(10) Postscript: Your guess that "yoden" (sic) has something to do with "Jewish" is exceedingly clever! Alas it also is completely wrong! Apparently you are confusing what little Yiddish you have heard for Hebrew ("Yidden" means "Jews", from the Hebrew "Yehudim"). Just to set the record straight, the word you were fumbling for, "yodea" is a verb meaning "I/you/he know(s)". As in ata yodea shum davar.

(11) Postpostscript, regarding your excuse "I'm not Jewish, I don't speak Hebrew": You don't have to be Jewish to know Hebrew, Metacrock - you just have to be properly educated. Alas I must politely decline your kind invitation to interrogate the chair of your "committee" as to your theological prowess. Indeed I shall happily stipulate that he must proudly regard you as a parade example of his institution's finest graduates! Now what degree did you get? A BH.D. (Biblical Hebrew Deficiency) perhaps?

[ January 26, 2002: Message edited by: Apikorus ]</p>

Kosh

The argument certainly makes sense, but it
presupposes that YHWH does exist, and that
the prophecies of the OT really were prophecies
(as opposed to being written after the fact).
And those are big stretches...

Muad'Dib

Out of curiosity, did you mean the following to be also lovably idiomatic, or should they be interpreted in a non-obvious way to avoid taking them as insults? Or are they meant to be read as they stand?

[ January 24, 2002: Message edited by: Muad'Dib ]</p>