The True Meaning of the Bible

[pood]

Unfortunately, the next word, the, is going to be more difficult.

I love Thailand and the Thai people. I love the Thais approach to Christianity -- it's to sing Jingle Bells (off-tune) today.

And I love the Thai language. For starters it has no word for "the." If God knew what he was doing he'd have written the Bible in Thai instead of King James's English.

I suppose the Thai people are a bit frustrated that their simple language seems to be the exception to the rule that all languages are equally complex. Thai has no word for "the", no markers for verb tense or even plurality; "King" and "God" are the same word.

To make up for this simplicity, Thais have no less than seventeen syllables that can be thrown onto the end of a sentence to express the speaker's mood or his attitude toward the listener. It has a bewildering variety of pronouns, some of which can be used as either 1st- or 3rd-person, 2nd- or 3rd-person, or even any of the three persons. Before meeting with the King, Thais need to memorize some new pronouns spoken only to him.

Maybe that's why they don't believe in Jehovah or Allah or Beelzebub or whatever His Name is. Too many new pronouns would be needed.

I believe a number of languages, most prominently perhaps Russian, omit definite and indefinite articles. Also in Russian, the double negative is not just permitted, but required.

From what you write above it sounds like Thai is just as complex as any other language, just in a different way, given the bewildering use of all those syllables.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The true meaning of the Tanakh is a self reflection on faith and identity in the face of Babylonian captivity.

For the fan fiction New Testament, it starts off as a plea, desperately blurting out "We're not a cult!" and tries to justify their cult's existence much more than that of their alleged prophet.

Uh-huh.

I'm sorry if this doesn't fit in with your "understanding" of the Tanakh or Fan Fiction Testament.

When I was studying the Tanakh in college, I pinpointed the time most of the Tanakh was written without actually being taught it explicitly, simply because the text in the Tanakh pointed that way. People often read too much in the message of the words (or worse yet, their own interpretation of the words) instead of the message/intent of the author.

The Tanakh is the holy book of a beaten people.

 

[RIS]

I'm sorry if this doesn't fit in with your "understanding" of the Tanakh or Fan Fiction Testament.

That alright, sir, it makes no difference to me. Not sure about the Fan Fiction reference. Sarcastic analogy?

When I was studying the Tanakh in college, I pinpointed the time most of the Tanakh was written without actually being taught it explicitly, simply because the text in the Tanakh pointed that way. People often read too much in the message of the words (or worse yet, their own interpretation of the words) instead of the message/intent of the author.

The problem with higher criticism is that it's so terribly unsophisticated, but what you were taught is pretty simply destroyed with one Hebrew word. Pim. They didn't have a clue what the word meant until 1907 when it was excavated in the ancient city of Gezer. Translations older than that like the KJV translated pim as file at the one place it occurs, 1 Samuel 13:21. It isn't a file, it's a weight measure. The weight system in question was discontinued when the kingdom of Judah fell in 607 BCE. In other words the word was forgotten until 1907.

William G. Dever, professor of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology, says: “[It] cannot possibly have been ‘invented’ by writers living in the Hellenistic-Roman period several centuries after these weights had disappeared and had been forgotten. In fact, this bit of biblical text . . . would not be understood until the early 20th century A.D., when the first actual archaeological examples turned up, reading pîm in Hebrew. . . . If the biblical stories are all ‘literary inventions’ of the Hellenistic-Roman era, how did this particular story come to be in the Hebrew Bible? One may object, of course, that the pîm incident is ‘only a detail.’ To be sure; but as is well known, ‘history is in the details.’”

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I'm sorry if this doesn't fit in with your "understanding" of the Tanakh or Fan Fiction Testament.

That alright, sir, it makes no difference to me. Not sure about the Fan Fiction reference. Sarcastic analogy?

It certainly isn't canon, so it is fan fiction.

When I was studying the Tanakh in college, I pinpointed the time most of the Tanakh was written without actually being taught it explicitly, simply because the text in the Tanakh pointed that way. People often read too much in the message of the words (or worse yet, their own interpretation of the words) instead of the message/intent of the author.

The problem with higher criticism is that it's so terribly unsophisticated, but what you were taught is pretty simply destroyed with one Hebrew word. Pim. They didn't have a clue what the word meant until 1907 when it was excavated in the ancient city of Gezer. Translations older than that like the KJV translated pim as file at the one place it occurs, 1 Samuel 13:21. It isn't a file, it's a weight measure. The weight system in question was discontinued when the kingdom of Judah fell in 607 BCE. In other words the word was forgotten until 1907.

William G. Dever, professor of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology, says: “[It] cannot possibly have been ‘invented’ by writers living in the Hellenistic-Roman period several centuries after these weights had disappeared and had been forgotten. In fact, this bit of biblical text . . . would not be understood until the early 20th century A.D., when the first actual archaeological examples turned up, reading pîm in Hebrew. . . . If the biblical stories are all ‘literary inventions’ of the Hellenistic-Roman era, how did this particular story come to be in the Hebrew Bible? One may object, of course, that the pîm incident is ‘only a detail.’ To be sure; but as is well known, ‘history is in the details.’”

Who said the Tanakh was written during Roman years?

 

[RIS]

It certainly isn't canon, so it is fan fiction.

How many canons are there?

Who said the Tanakh was written during Roman years?

I don't remember. Some guy named Bob or Rob. What did they teach you in the scam?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It certainly isn't canon, so it is fan fiction.

How many canons are there

Just the one.

Who said the Tanakh was written during Roman years?

I don't remember. Some guy named Bob or Rob. What did they teach you in the scam?

Whatever you are smoking, you need to cut back.

 

[Swammerdami]

As I MIGHT have mentioned in another thread, the ancient measures of silver intrigue me. Both the 5000(?) year-old Sumerian system AND the 1000+ year-old English system define weights of silver as multiples of the weight of a standard grain of barleycorn! IF we assume -- counterfactually! -- that the barley grain weight was constant, then 1 shekel = 7.5 pennyweights and there are 32 shekels per troy pound.

The problem with higher criticism is that it's so terribly unsophisticated, but what you were taught is pretty simply destroyed with one Hebrew word. Pim. They didn't have a clue what the word meant until 1907 when it was excavated in the ancient city of Gezer. Translations older than that like the KJV translated pim as file at the one place it occurs, 1 Samuel 13:21. It isn't a file, it's a weight measure. The weight system in question was discontinued when the kingdom of Judah fell in 607 BCE. In other words the word was forgotten until 1907.

William G. Dever, professor of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology, says: “[It] cannot possibly have been ‘invented’ by writers living in the Hellenistic-Roman period several centuries after these weights had disappeared and had been forgotten. In fact, this bit of biblical text . . . would not be understood until the early 20th century A.D., when the first actual archaeological examples turned up, reading pîm in Hebrew. . . . If the biblical stories are all ‘literary inventions’ of the Hellenistic-Roman era, how did this particular story come to be in the Hebrew Bible? One may object, of course, that the pîm incident is ‘only a detail.’ To be sure; but as is well known, ‘history is in the details.’”

Who said the Tanakh was written during Roman years?

This discussion caught my eye. A typical modern translation of the cited Tanakh verse reads "The fee [for sharpening] was a pim (two-thirds of a shekel) for the plowshares ...", so a pim weighed 120 grains; all is consistent. KJV mistranslates pîm: "Yet they had a file for the mattocks ..."

It was somewhat before the time of the Captivity that the Greek world began using drachm and stater as units of silver weight, though these were still nominally related to the 180-grain shekel. IIUC, Judah still used shekel at the time of the Hasmonean dynasty.

Unfortunately none of this sheds light on the question of when the pîm coin or term fell into disuse. But I did want to contribute what little I could.

ETA: To be clear, the 1 pîm = ⅔ shekel identity does not seem to be in dispute. What is weird (coincidence?) is that the most ancient Sumerian shekel and the earliest Phoenician shekels weighed only about ⅔ (i.e. 1 pîm) of a standard 180-grain shekel of Canaan. Scholars have no agreed explanation for this discrepancy beyond the guess that the link to barleycorn weights was only "nominal."