Jer. 29:10 -- Dr. Ernst Jenni replies to Leolaia and Scholar

by Alleymom 76 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  OldSoul

  scholar: You forget that I read everything possible

  You are not the first and, I daresay, you will not be the last JW to equate reading with scholarship. What a pity.
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  Satanus

  Read all about it! Read all about it! - "Knocked Out Boxer Claims Victory".

  HS

  Reminds me of saddam hussein's propaganda minister claiming that there were no american troops around, as you could see them in the background. Didn't saddam also claim victory as he was running from rat hole to rat hole? Perhaps if i he could be contacted now, he would still be claiming victory. He and scholar could share beers and victory stories one day

  S
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  OldSoul

  Satanus: He and scholar could share beers and victory stories one day

  I had no idea! When did they start serving alcohol in asylum?
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  Leolaia

  Meloth at Leviticus 25: is not an infinitive

  Oh, do please explain why the verb is not a qal infinitive construct in this text. This should be interesting. What is the basis of your claim that the verb is not infinitive?
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  Narkissos

  Meloth at Leviticus 25: is not an infinitive,

  Scholar, you're getting more stupid than I thought you could.

  OK. If it is not an infinitive please tell me what it is.
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  scholar

  Leolaia

  1. The fact is that 'le' has a wide semantic range of meaning and it is up to the transalor to decide what English preposition should best represent the particular Hebrew phrase in its semantic context.

  2, Jeremiah 29:10 contains an infinitive translated and recognized by the NWT as 'the fulfilling of' and is a semantic unit.

  3. Jenni and his supporters have not quoted any published grammatical rule that dogmatically nullifies a locative meaning 'at' or 'to' in this example.

  4, In Jeremiah 3:17; 29:10; 51:49 these texts appear with le before a place and are translated by the NWT by the English locative 'at'. These examples appear as a dative which was alocative case and thus these phrases must be locative.

  5. It is impossible to understand that if a place has a prepostion which can have a locative meaning that in the majority of instances that that locative cannot be conveyed by the Engkish locative 'at' to convey the natural meaning.

  6. No one yet has stepped forward with the original query from Jenni in full and no one has quoted from any Hebrew grammar a rule that would render the impossibility of 'at' in the forementioned three examples.

  7. The textual tradition beginning with the LXX demonstrates that the dative used in the above text is locative as it is understood by the conventions of Greek grammar.

  8.Jenni published his research on lamedh in 2000 so what were the grammatical conventions that existed prior to that time that would rule out the possibibility of rendering le as locative in the above examples. Are then to argue that it is only now with Jenni's canon that scholars can properly transate le in the Jeremianic examples.

  scholar JW
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  Leolaia

  I wonder if he's going to say that it is not infinitive because in English it's not translated in the NWT as an infinitive: "But if it should not be bought back before the complete year has come to the full for him, the house that is in the city that has a wall must also stand in perpetuity as the property of its purchaser during his generations".

  After all, this is how he argued in post #514 regarding "those phrases that I listed for you in chapter 29 that in English have locative prepositions prefixed to Babylon", even though they were not le-locatives in Hebrew!
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  scholar

  leolaia and Narkissos

  Jeremiah 29;10 has the infinitive construct, Qal, feminine form and is translated as an infinitive 'the fulfilling' in the English NWT. At last, you recognize this construction as a infinitive which is not clearly represented by the majority of English translations', such proper acknowledgement of the infinitive construction would solve Leolaia's linguistic difficulty as to whether 'le' can have a locative meaning in this instance.

  scholar JW
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  Alleymom

  Scholar wrote to Narkissos:
  
  Meloth at Leviticus 25: is not an infinitive, so in Jeremiah 29:10 we have the infinitive form, 'the fulfilling ' which does not appear exactly in Leviticus. What you and Leolaia have failed to recognize that it is only the NWT that recognizes the verbal form as an infinitive and translates accordingly which demonstrates the accuracy of this brilliant translation.

  Neil ---

  The form mel'oth in Leviticus 25:30 is exactly the same as in Jeremiah 29:10.

  I read Hebrew and this year I am reading the weekly Torah and haftorah readings according to the Jewish liturgical cycle. I was reading Leviticus 25 in Hebrew just last night (I am a week ahead in my reading) and I can tell you that Narkissos and Leolaia are correct --- the forms in the two verses are identical.

  Since you do not read Hebrew, may I ask where you got the idea that mel'oth in Lev. 25:30 is not an infinitive? If you are inferring that on your own by comparing various English translations, you are making a mistake.

  Incidentally, I did mean to weigh in earlier. I can understand that you were a little miffed to find that Leolaia had posted your letter to Dr. Jenni without asking/informing you, but you ought to realize that Dr. Jenni is the one who copied it to her. I take it that you are not accusing her of making any alterations in your letter, are you?

  I, for one, appreciated seeing copies of all three letters (the ones from you and Leolaia and the response from Dr. Jenni). I wish you had posted your letter along with Dr. Jenni's response as soon as you heard back from him. The reason I wrote to you was because I was wondering whether or not you had ever heard from him.

  Now, if you are unhappy because you think Dr. Jenni did not address all of the specific points you raised (although it certainly seems to me that he answered to the point), why not write to him again? I have to tell you, I am disappointed in your reaction. The reason I looked up Dr. Jenni's email address and sent it to you was because I hoped that it would be helpful to you to hear from the world's foremost authority on the Hebrew preposition lamed.

  Instead, you seem to be suggesting that Dr. Jenni has so much bias against the WTS that he is intentionally twisting the truth about the use of lamed in Jer. 29:10! I can hardly believe that you would suggest such a thing about a man of Dr. Jenni's stature. Do you really think that a scholar of his repute would compromise his academic integrity because of a supposed bias against Jehovah's Witnesses? Frankly, that just boggles my mind.

  Plus, just to put all of this in context again, in the other thread I brought up the matter of the letter which Jeremiah wrote from Jerusalem to the exiles who were already in Babylon. This included the king, the king's mother, the nobles, many of the artisans and craftsmen, etc. Vessels from the holy temple had also been looted and taken to Babylon.

  The people were distraught, especially because the false prophets were telling them that the captivity would be short, and that the yoke of Babylon would be broken within two years.

  Jeremiah wrote to the people to tell them --- the exiles who were already in captivity --- that they should settle down and marry and plant vineyards because the Lord would remember them and come for them. You want to change this so that the letter of comfort and consolation is meant not for the people to whom it was actually sent (by messengers from Jerusalem to Babylon), but for the exiles-of-the-future who would not even arrive in Babylon for another ten years. This doesn't make sense, Neil.

  You really don't need to know Hebrew or all of this detailed information about the preposition lamed to see that regardless of whether it says "for Babylon" or "at Babylon," either way the letter is a promise to the exiles who were already there in Babylon, some ten years before the destruction of Jerusalem. According to Jeremiah 29, the seventy years had already started, even though Jerusalem had not yet been destroyed.

  Sincerely,
  Marjorie Alley
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  Leolaia

  Jeremiah 29;10 has the infinitive construct, Qal, feminine form and is translated as an infinitive 'the fulfilling' in the English NWT. At last, you recognize this construction as a infinitive which is not clearly represented by the majority of English translations', such proper acknowledgement of the infinitive construction would solve Leolaia's linguistic difficulty as to whether 'le' can have a locative meaning in this instance.

  ROTFL!!! At last? The infinitive form of the verb was never heretofore at issue in these threads! You're simply changing the subject away from your own denial that the verb is a qal infinitive construct in Leviticus 25:30. As such, your "response" is no response to the question Narkissos and I posed you. How is the verb not infinitive in Leviticus? And third, what relevance does the infinitive have with "solving" the proof that the lamed is a static locative in Jeremiah 29:10? As I already pointed out to you a few posts up in this thread, treating the verbal event as the entity that is being spatially located "at Babylon" is highly problematic, and you have yet to address this critical issue.