I'm sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to say I think it is silly the way some people (i.e. Gov Body, and their paid drones like Scholar) reject "worldly" chrnology because they think it differs with their "holy book" chronology -- or more correctly, it differs with their interpretation of their holy book's chronology.
It is no different that how Bible Literalists (not JWs, in this example) reject any history of earth, which goes back more than 6000 years. A giant mountain of clear, corroborated facts demonstrate that the earth is more like 4.5 billion year old (give or take a few hundred million), but some people reject it because "the bible says god made the earth in 6 x 24 hour days, 6000 years ago. Any other explanation is false, flawed, and designed to lead people away from God".
Of course, JWs, and I assume Scholar-wannabe, recognize that such literalism must be incorrect, and chide and mock those literalists. They laugh at how the Fundies can so easily dismiss facts, in favour of devotion to a blind, literal interpretation of Holy Writ. How? By saying that the bible didn't mean what it clearly said, when it said 6 days. The Days weren't really days. The bible fits, with "true science", as it should. Q.E.D.
Until, of course, you point out that there is ALSO plenty of evidence for humans on earth more than 6000 years ago. Then the JWs suddenly are in the other camp; they reject "worldy science" and "human interpretaion" as "unreliable" compared to the literal interpretation of Holy Writ. Think about it: exactly same argument as the Fundies were using in my previous paragraph, except now JWs are on the other side of the fence. (At this point, I fully expect the Scholar-wanabees of the world to totaly not grasp the point and say "well of course, those creative days were symbolic periods of time of 1000s of years (i.e. accepting a non-literal interpretation) but the biblical geneology proves that man's history is only 6000 year old (i.e. demanding a literal interpretaion)" If you are about to say that Scholar, don't bother. You've totally missed the point. You've seen the trees, but missed the forest....again.)
So it is not at all surprising that this wishy-washy mindset allows Scholar to maintain his DoubleThink so well. "539 is a pivotal date, clearly marked in scripture... every one agrees, the bible and worldly historians"... until that leads to a problem meshing an a priori chosen date (607bce) with the rest of the clear facts. Then it is "secular historians are wrong, confused, etc. Bible (literal interpretation) is the only correct history".
To give yet another example: Mormons believe that Native Americans are descended from a tribe of Israel, which migrated to North America way back at the time of the fall of Jerusalem (I could be wrong on that date, but is was way, way back then). Only problem is: there is NO evidence to support this, and LOTS OF evidence to refute this. But the mormons still believe, because it is in HOLY WRIT (Book of Mormon), so it must be true.
It is my understanding that a conversation with a Mormon "Scholar" looks much like this thread: a whole lot of rejection of established facts, cherry picking other facts, in order to derive a priori conclusions. Pointing out factual and/or logical errors to such a Mormon is pointless, because ultimately they believe at an emotion level, not a rational one. Emotion trumps logic, every time.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: Scholar, you would make a pretty good Mormon. You should consider converting; they have better family lives than JWs, and generally more successful business. All around, a better experience. ;)
~Quotes, of the "probably just wasted 10 minutes writing this post 'cause Scholar won't understand" class
Daniel's Prophecy, 605 BCE or 624 BCE?
by Little Bo Peep 763 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Quotes
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Leolaia
Since scholar says it is important to post both the query and reply, I'll post both....
#1 Leolaia's query
You may be receiving a similar query today from another individual, on the subject of the translation of Jer 29;10. The matter has become a matter of discussion on an internet discussion board.
My question relates to the classification of Lamed in Jer 29;10 as a "Lamed experientiae" instead of as a "Lamed adverbiale" in your volume on Lamed. What evidence directly disqualifies Lamed in this text as a "Lamed adverbiale", particularly as a locative (similar to "at")? My impression is that in adverbial expressions, the preposition indicates the orientation of an entity to a spatial or temporal context. In Jer 29;10, the only entities given are the abstract duration SEVENTY YEARS (which would not be located spatially) and the verbal event of FULFILLING the seventy years (which I know of no analogous examples of using Lamed to mark the location of a verbal event with FULFILL). Would this be one fact ruling out a local translation of the Lamed as "at"?
The other fact, as you noted, is that the construction of FULFILL + DURATION (DAY/YEAR) + Lamed-NOUN occurs elsewhere in biblical Hebrew to refer to the completion of a duration PERTAINING to an entity or experienced by an entity. How would you best describe the semantic relation involving Lamed in Jer 29;10. And of course, the stative local sense of Lamed is quite rare overall in Hebrew, compared to its uses as a quasi-genitive "belonging to" and dative.
I would greatly appreciate some input on this question.[Leolaia]
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#2 scholar's query
I am seeking your opinion on how the Hebrew preposition 'le' affixed to Babylon literally as 'lebabhel' should properly be rendered in English. My attention has been drawn and I have some pages from your Die hebraischen Prapositionen, Band 3: Die Praposition Lamed, 2000, in particular page 109, Rubrik 4363 wherein you merely cite Jer. 29:10. On page 279, under Rubrik 919 you give the translation of this phrase as 'fur Babel' or 'for Babylon'.
Apparently your learned opinion on this subject has already been sought as I have a partial quote of a letter from an inquirer whereupon you state: "The basic meaning of 'le' is 'with reference to' and with a following local specification it can be understood as local or local-directional only in certain adverbial expressions". Therefore, from all of your published comments are you saying that it is highly improbable if not impossible, for 'le' has the local or spatial sense in Jer. 29:10 for this is what is being claimed as your position in agreement with Modern Hebrew scholars?
It is a fact that most recent Bible translations render the preposition as 'for' rather than 'at', 'in' or 'to' and is also the preferred opinion of many Bible commentaries. However, the LXX has the dative 'babuloni' not the genitive form and the versions, both the Targum Jonathan and the Peshita use the preposition 'le' with the same meaning as their Hebrew counterpart. The Latin Vulgate has in Babylone with the natural meaning 'at Babylon' or 'in Babylon'. The Geez version has westa babilon, which means 'in Babylon' or 'within Babylon'. So, the local meaning is the one extant in the textual tradition.
The traditional meaning 'at' is preserved in the older King James and in the more recent revised New King James Bible but most recent
Bibles have the majority opinion of 'for Babylon' or its equivalent. The outstanding exception is the brilliant New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures which preserves the traditional rendering 'at Babylon'.
I am aware that this Hebrew preposition 'le' has a wide semantic range and according to Hebrew Lexicons 'le' can mean at, in. to, for, etc.and I have not read of any grammatical rule that would prohibit 'le ' having a local meaning 'at' in the example of Jeremiah 29:10. Is this correct?
I look forward to your answer (in English if at all possible) at your earliest possible convenience.[scholar]
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#3 Jenni's reply
Dear inquierers,
My position concerning Jer 29:10 is to be found in my Lamed-book p. 106-109 (l:Bâbel, Lamed experientiae) and p. 279 (l:fî m:lôt, with translation "erst wenn 70 Jahre für Babel um sind", in agreement with the large majority of the commentaries and lexica). (I strongly recommend to you to learn German or to consult somebody who understands the language.)
More important and decisive for your discussion seems to be the question, wether lamed can have a free local meaning. My explanations are given in Lamed p.256-260 and already in an article "Jer 3,17 "nach Jerusalem": ein Aramaismus, in: Zeitschrift für Althebraistik 1, 1988, 107-111. As I cannot give you a complete translation, I concentrate on the crucial issue for your discussion: Lamed has in classical Hebrew some 360 occurrences of general orientations radiating from the subject ("nach oben" / "nach unten" etc., but not connected with free localities like towns or countries), and all of them in directional sense ("wohin?", to where?) and never purely static-local ("wo?", where?). l:Bâbel could at the most (and only in late books of the Old Testament) directionally mean "to Babel, into Babel", but not locally "at Babel, in Babel", as the Vulgata and the King James Version (wrongly) understood (influenced by other traditions about Israel in the exile).
Kind regards
E. Jenni -
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AlanF
Very good, Leolaia!
I'm sure that scholar pretendus will not volunteer any of this information, or comment on it.
AlanF
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Alleymom
Leolaia --
Thank you very much for posting the two queries along with Dr. Jenni's response, which I will definitely be saving. I appreciate the effort you put into this. It was kind of Dr. Jenni to respond.
If you wouldn't mind satisfying my curiosity, could you explain how it is that you have a copy of Scholar's letter and how it is that you know you both received replies from Dr. Jenni on the same day? Has Scholar been emailing you?
I would like to know what Neil thinks about this response from the scholar who is considered the foremost expert on Hebrew prepositions.
Marjorie
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stillajwexelder
Is my grammar correct - there is nomiitive,vocative,accusative, genitive , dative and ablative cases so the argument revolves around the case of the word and whether it as at , in etc Babylon
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Satanus
Heh heh.
S
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stillajwexelder
that is a wicked laugh satanus
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Leolaia
Alleymom....The two of us emailed him independently and when Jenni sent his reply, he sent a single reply to both email addresses and included scholar's original query in his response. He didn't include my query, but of course I already had a copy of it.
I was amused that scholar referred to the NWT as a "brilliant" translation when writing to Jenni; such a value judgment is exactly the sort of thing that scholar thought might tip Jenni off that the query concerns JWs and might prejudice him against them. As you might recall, scholar claimed that Jenni was biased by Jonsson's query because Jenni had made a clear connection between the query and JWs.
stilla...Well, not being a Hebrew scholar, I'm actually not sure whether prepositional prefixes in Hebrew are to be treated as full prepositions or as bound case morphology (as in Greek case suffixes). Prosodic and syntactic evidence would indicate whether these "prefixes" have any free status, as clitics or free prepositions. Maybe Narkissos might know the relevant facts here....for instance, could any constituents intervene between the noun and the preposition? In any case, the semantic case of the lamed preposition is usually dative in that it has a Goal or Recipient theta role (e.g. "pertaining to something, belonging to something, going to something/somewhere, etc.). A locative semantic role, on the other hand, does not imply motion to, from, or across a location, as is often appropriate for lamed. Jenni says that his corpus study of biblical Hebrew shows that a static-local interpretation of lamed is unattested for the particular construction involved in Jeremiah 29:10.
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Narkissos
stilla...Well, not being a Hebrew scholar, I'm actually not sure whether prepositional prefixes in Hebrew are to be treated as full prepositions or as bound case morphology (as in Greek case suffixes). Prosodic and syntactic evidence would indicate whether these "prefixes" have any free status, as clitics or free prepositions. Maybe Narkissos might know the relevant facts here....for instance, could any constituents intervene between the noun and the preposition? In any case, the semantic case of the lamed preposition is usually dative in that it has a Goal or Recipient theta role (e.g. "pertaining to something, belonging to something, going to something/somewhere, etc.). A locative semantic role, on the other hand, does not imply motion to, from, or across a location, as is often appropriate for lamed. Jenni says that his corpus study of biblical Hebrew shows that a static-local interpretation of lamed is unattested for the particular construction involved in Jeremiah 29:10.
The particles l(e), b(e), k(e) are functionally full prepositions, although morphologically "sticking" as prefixes to the noun (or infinitive verb) they introduce (and only to it, to answer Leolaia's question).
Biblical Hebrew is not a flexional language (=> the "cases" such as nominative, accusative, usually do not appear in its morphology), with some comparatively rare exceptions (as in English, cf. who, whom, whose) which are probable vestiges of an older Semitic flexional system (as still exists in Arabic). E.g. the paragogic or final -ah for an accusative of direction ("to" implying movement): for instance you can have bavelah instead of lebavel, meaning "to Babylon" (Jeremiah 29:1,3,4, etc.).