The problem with basilikos is that it presumes a textual corruption and thus requires a conjectural emendation, which is kind of a last resort in translation.
Leolaia
JoinedPosts by Leolaia
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Small bit of Coptic homework (can Leolaia help?)
by slimboyfat inthank you leolaia for welcoming me back to the forum, it means a lot.. as part of my homework for next week i need to translate 23:11 of the story of joseph, the carpenter, in sahidic, which says something like (my rough translation):.
michael took two ends of the pure silk cloth and it was precious.
gabriel took the other two ends.
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Would you believe Abraham and Sarah existed before the Bible and King David etc.
by mP inbelievers, take a guess which and explain how this is possible..
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Leolaia
Firstly proto indo means it came from the east towards India way which also happens to pass the NME. You have not shown a source from a completely path. The Europeans copied much from the NME, alphabets, gods and as you shown the entire language has sources from that way.
Again you have only dug back to the Latins which are at the very least 1500 years after El of Canaan. You also mention Greek links. I cant help but see the pattern that your heading further and futher east and closer to the NME. Perhaps continuing the search back from those two cultures will find more semetic sources. By going back 2000 years you are now almost at the border of the NME.
If your assertion was completely correct you should not be moving closer to that part of the world but should be heading away or in a completely incompatible direction.Um, no. You don't really have any understanding of Proto-Indo-European, or linguistics in general for that matter. There are quite a few resources that will help you, however, if you ever wanted to educate yourself about it. Otherwise I have nothing more to say on that subject.
It's great to see you too PP. If only Narkissos were around too, it would be like old days. :)
The cult centers that were associated with Abram are very ancient but seems to be part of the larger myth/legend of a human progenitor.
I think I kind of agree with that. I recognize that there were different cult centers in the Negev, in the highlands, in the Hebron area, etc. that were associated with an Abram as an ancestral figure ("exalted is father" is an appropriate name as well), not to mention Paddan-Aram. The legend in ch. 14 also portrays Abram as a heroic figure. It would seem that different cult centers had different Abram/Abraham traditions which later were consolidated into connected narratives (J, E, P), the bulk of the traditions pertaining to Hebron. We know that the terebinths of Mamre were the home of a tree-veneration cult (which still persisted into Roman times), and the Abram legend might have been one means of legitimizing local cult centers after the Josianic legislation; they could still be held as sacred through association with Abraham, reminiscent of how the Temple Mount remains a sacred site in Islam through its association with Muhammad (displacing or replacing the original sacred context of the site, just as the Jewish veneration of the site may have replaced an original Canaanite Shalem/Zedek cult).
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Leolaia
The most noticeable example of the etymological fallacy I can think of is the rendering of kolasin as "cutting off" instead of "punishment", flatly against the usual use of the word, particularly in parallel eschatological passages, such as this one:
"Even when the martyrs were so torn by whips that the internal structure of their flesh was visible as far as the inner veins and arteries, they endured so patiently that even the bystanders had pity and wept. But they themselves reached such a level of bravery that not one of them uttered a cry or a groan, thus showing to us all that at the very hour when they were being tortured (basanizomenoi) the martyrs of Christ were absent from the flesh, or that the Lord was conversing with them. And turning their thoughts to the grace of Christ they despised the tortures (basanón) of this world, purchasing at the cost of one hour an exemption from eternal punishment (tén aiónion kolasin)....But Polycarp said: 'You threaten with a fire that burns only briefly and after just a little while is extinguished, for you are ignorant of the fire of the coming judgment and eternal punishment (to tés mellouses kriseós kai aióniou kolaseós pur), which is reserved for the ungodly' " (Martyrdom of Polycarp 2:2-3, 11:2; written c. AD 155-160).
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Small bit of Coptic homework (can Leolaia help?)
by slimboyfat inthank you leolaia for welcoming me back to the forum, it means a lot.. as part of my homework for next week i need to translate 23:11 of the story of joseph, the carpenter, in sahidic, which says something like (my rough translation):.
michael took two ends of the pure silk cloth and it was precious.
gabriel took the other two ends.
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Leolaia
It could indeed also be a hapax legomenon in the corpus of Coptic and Greek; our knowledge of these languages are still incomplete. I wonder if there is a searchable corpus of the Oxyrhynchus texts...I don't think the everyday non-literary papyri are in the TLG, and I think its possible that there are words attested therein that are not found elsewhere.
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Would you believe Abraham and Sarah existed before the Bible and King David etc.
by mP inbelievers, take a guess which and explain how this is possible..
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Leolaia
Well, it is fair to say that some IE languages realize PIE *l as /r/, such as Sanskrit (e.g. * blaghmen "priest" in Sanskrit brahman, Messapian blamini, Latin flamen, etc.). But yes it is all too easy to find coincidental similarities. When I was a kid I used to read Fornander's huge volume purporting to prove that the Polynesian languages were based on Hebrew and Greek. All of that was coincidental.
There is a very lengthy discussion of the etymology and construction of the name Abraham in Thomas L. Thompson's The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives (2002), pp. 22-36. He says in part:
"The name 'brm or 'brhm is unquestionably a West Semitic personal name, both because of its form and the elements from which it is constructed. The form of the name is a sentence composed of a noun in the nominative as subject and a finite verb in the prefect tense as predicate, such as mlkyrm, `myndb, 'lyšm`, 'lysp, etc.; this is to be distinguished in form from those names in which the nominative element is last....An alternative form of this name is 'byrm, which has a yod joining the two elements. Martin Noth has shown clearly that in sentence names such as 'byrm this letter has no significance whatever. We find such names as 'ch'b alongside of 'chychb (Eleph.), but even more important are those examples where the same individual is given both forms: 'bšlm and 'byšlm (1 Kings 15:2, 10 and 2 Chronicles 11:20, 21), 'lplt and 'lyplt (2 Samuel 5:16 and 1 Chr 15:4). This phenomenon is also found by comparing the Hebrew and Greek texts: 'ch'b and Αχιβ (Jer 29:21) and: 'lydd and Ελδαδ (Num 34:21)....
The elements 'b, 'ch, and `m are among the most common elements of Semitic names. The element rm is likewise one of the more common of the verbal elements that are used with theophoric subjects. The root of the verb is rwm and the name 'brm can be translated as "Father is exalted". It can be concluded from this comparison with biblical nomenclature that the name 'brm, both in its form and its separate elements, is to be considered typical of early Hebrew names. Because of this typical character, and the fact that it is a specifically West Semitic form of the name, caution must be used in comparing it with names (even when the resemlence is striking) that are derived from other linguistic groups....
From Ugarit we find names identical to those of the patriarch's. In the Akkadian texts from Ugarit we have the name A-bi-ra-mu. In the alphabetic cuneiform, in texts discovered in 1954, we find the name born by two individuals, abrm alshy and abrm mtsrm, a Cypriot abrm and an Egyptian abrm. That the names are born by individuals who seem possibly to be other than West Semites plays no role whatever in classifying the names as Early West Semitic, and as perfect parallels to the name 'brm. On a hieratic ostracon from the Louvre, dated to the end of the reign of Sesostris I or to the beginning of the reign of Rameses II (c. 1290), we find the name ibrm. As Posener has clearly shown, the name should be transliterated 'brm. A much debated possible parallel comes from the reign of Shoshenk I (945-924 BC) found in an inscription on the outer wall of the Karnak temple. The inscription gives a list of 156 captive towns from the Egyptian campaigns. One of the places listed reads p;chwkrw + place determinative and then ;b;rm`. Breasted, relating the first word to a proposed Hebrew or Aramaic chql, which he understands to mean "fields", translates the place name "Field of Abram"....
The alternative form used in Genesis: 'brhm, needs further discussion. Gen 17:5 offers a derivation of the name by means of a wordplay between hm and hmwn, interpreting 'br hm to mean "Chief of a multitude'. For this meaning the tradition seeks an etymology in 'b-hmwn gwym. This, however, is the popular etymology. The linguistic etymological derivation seems rather to be rm from the root rwm. De Vaux, in commenting on this popular etymology, points out that, since the tradition clearly no longer understands the original meaning of the name, the name itself must be considered as very ancient. That it is ancient can be demonstrated by early uses of this name, and names with the same form and similar elements, in extra-biblical sources. The converse of De Vaux's conclusion, however, is equally important: that the tradition (at least that dealing with the meaning of Abraham's name) is necessarily later than the earliest extant use of the name; i.e. that the earliest usage cannot be equated with the biblical usage. This is especially significant since, as Fichtner has shown, the etymologies of Genesis can hardly be considered late reconstructions but belong among the early traditions of the Bible. They are, for example, found only in the narratives dealing with traditions about the time before the monarchy....L. Hicks (Abraham 15) is in all probability correct in seeing 'brhm as an Aramaic expansion or variant of 'brm. Just as Aramaic rht is equivalent to Hebrew rwts, and bht to bwš so rhm is an expansion of rwm. While the form 'brhm is usually explained as a dialectal variant of 'brm, it is not understood in Genesis as merely a variant form. In Gen 17:5 new meaning is given to the patriarch along with the new name...Thus 'brhm functions as a cue name, carrying in its meaning the Yahwistic promise that the patriarch will become a great nation. To say that 'brhm is used in Genesis as a cue name still recognizes that it is a real personal name, and that in some of our narratives it may perhaps have been original. It is, nevertheless, quite possible that this form had nothing to do with the earliest level of our narratives and that it was first introduced by J as an integrating factor of his theology of promise". -
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Leolaia
This wasn't even the original NWT rendering. The verse used to have the expression translated as "authoritative advice". I guess that was deemed too weak. The explanation you quoted seems to depend on etymology than usage; this might be another example of the etymological fallacy (I don't know what the usage is...I haven't done a word study). The word "regulate" carries a sense of control that goes beyond exhortations, advice, and admonitions; "control by means of rules and regulations". In other words, mind control.
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Would you believe Abraham and Sarah existed before the Bible and King David etc.
by mP inbelievers, take a guess which and explain how this is possible..
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Leolaia
Your not telling the full picture. You only showed from some scholar that the word "elder" came from a Germanic word which i cant recall. El is a 4000 year old word, while im sure you will agree your Germanic source is at best 1000 years. Even if we add an error of 500 years that still leaves quite a considerable gap of 2500 years. Im sure you will agree that the Germanic word itself is based on another word from another language and culture. Until we follow that back further and see that it does not converge with the middle east its not appropriate or honest to make the claims you are stating. The question now becomes where did that German tribe get the word from ? What is its origin etc ?
This isn't a mystery. The etymology of the word "elder" is well-known and traceable to Proto-Indo-European through normal linguistic principles. It wasn't borrowed from Semitic; it is a Germanic word meaning "old person, senior, parent" derived from the root meaning "old" (Old English eald, Old High German alt, Old Norse aldr, Gothic altheis), which itself originally had the sense of "grown up, grown tall" (cf. Latin altus "high", Old Irish altae "brought up"), cf. Gothic alan "to grow up", ultimately from a root *al- meaning "to grow, raise, bear" (Greek althomai "grow, heal", althaino "heal", Latin alere "to nourish, rear", alescere "to grow up, prosper", almus "nourishing", Old Irish alim "to be nourishing", altru "nursing father"), etc. You can look this up in any reference work. There is no reason to seek an origin elsewhere. You were led to do so because of a supposed phonetic similarity ("el" in "elder") and a belief that there was an inherent religious meaning to "elder". I pointed out that both these things arose only in the English word; the match of El and elder results from a vowel change that occurred only in Old English (the original vowel sound was "a" as the other Germanic cognates show) and the supposed "religious" meaning resulted from the use of ealder/ealdor to translate Latin ecclesiastical terms like presbyterus, and even then this was only a secondary sense of the word. So there is no evidence to substantiate your speculation, much less any historical linkage with an ANE deity. I already covered all this a year ago.
All languages ultimately are based on earlier languages and evolve, sometimes they substitute certain hard/soft forms of consonents when adopting the word. Eg PTR and MTR as the core consonants of mother and father in latin. Many romantic languages swapped a F for P and we see the same pattern in english. The TH sound has replaced T as well. All i was trying to show in the EL case is that the use of L or R is a common form for god or godly things. L and R are related and often exchanged. We can this pattern in many words where these sorts of consonant swaps happen as if a formula is present in migrating the word.
You are perfectly entitled to indulge in sound symbolism, but this is not linguistics. There is no evidence that the "l" sound alone carries a specific meaning, much less for "godly things". The relationship with meaning is arbitrary (other than instances of onomatopoeia); there are so many words in all the Indo-European and Semitic languages that have this sound (or both "l" and "r" since you regard them as interchangeable, which doubles the number of candidates) that you can come up with almost any meaning you want. I can easily pull together a list of words from Indo-European that "proves" that "l" refers instead to negative, disgusting things.
It is extremely easy to find chance similarities between unrelated languages: http://www.zompist.com/chance.htm. One therefore needs a methodology to distinguish between meaningless chance similarities and meaningful linguistic relationships.
Your statement here I thought was most telling:
I await your reply why the similiarity exists at all ? You have not explained the chance conicidence...
That says it all. You believe chance coincidences require explanations. They don't. But for you, any similarity, no matter how coincidental, is meaningful and requires explanation. I see this tendency often in your posts, where you find persuasive the most tendentious kind of proposed parallels. It doesn't matter how strained or unlikely the parallel is, if there is any imaginable similarity whatsoever, it is meaningful.
I, on the other hand, believe that similarities can happen without any direct relationship (whether through coincidence or through commonplaces), and so additional evidence is often required to assess the likelihood of a relationship.
Really of all the names the two characters could have, its pure chance they are very similar and in one case almost identical ? What are the odds it must be a very large number. The simple answer is of course the newer form(Abraham and Sarah) copied the older one(the Hindu tradition).
I don't find the phonetic similarity as impressive as you. The initial consonant in "Abraham" has no parallel in Brahma, and the parallel with "Sarah" must ignore half of the Sanskrit name. No philologist I know of has suggested that the names are not Semitic but borrowed from an Indo-Iranian language. To substantiate the parallel, I would want to see similarities in role and function, and not just commonplaces. So for instance, if Sarah is based on Saraswati, then I would expect that Sarah is associated with flowing water and wisdom. But this isn't the case. Nor do I find the similarities with Brahma very weighty. But more importantly, I question why you assume that the Hindu tradition here is the older one. In this case, the Hebrew patriarchal tradition seems to be older. The references to Abraham and Sarah in the patriarchial narratives, Micah, and Deutero-Isaiah date to the exilic and early post-exilic periods at the lastest (e.g. 500 BC). Hindu religion was not monolithic but underwent extensive development over centuries. The pairing of Brahma and Saraswati dates to the Puranic period (AD 300-1200), and the Brahma Purana is thought to date to the tenth century AD. In earlier Vedic Hinduism, Brahman was a more general genderless cosmic spirit; Brahma, as one of the Trimurti, was a later mythological development that adopted roles and traits from Prajapati, Brahaspati, and the pair of Yama and Yami. In the Vedas, Saraswati proper was not the consort of any of these deities but was a personified river goddess. Then in the later Vedic and post-Vedic period Saraswati became conflated with other deities, such as Vak, the daughter and wife of Brahaspati/Prajapati, as well as Ila and Bharti. Then when Brahaspati/Prajapati became identified as Brahma, Saraswati/Vak became the daughter of Brahma (note that Sarah was the sister, not daughter, of Abraham). So I am doubtful that any such pairing of Brahma and Saraswati even existed at the time the Pentateuch was finalized, much less at the (possibly pre-exilic) time when the Yahwist and Elohist materials and the underlying oral traditions underwent development.
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Small bit of Coptic homework (can Leolaia help?)
by slimboyfat inthank you leolaia for welcoming me back to the forum, it means a lot.. as part of my homework for next week i need to translate 23:11 of the story of joseph, the carpenter, in sahidic, which says something like (my rough translation):.
michael took two ends of the pure silk cloth and it was precious.
gabriel took the other two ends.
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Leolaia
Wow, that would be a big goof if holosilikon was interpreted by way of an English word. Well, as a loanword, the most obvious source would be Greek of course. The word resembles such compounds as holostèmòn "consisting all of warp-threads", holosphurèlatos "consisting all of hammer-beaten metal", holokhalkos "consisting all of copper", holokhrusos "consisting all of gold", etc. So this appears to be a similar word describing the material from which the object was made. I checked the TLG and did not find holosilikon as an attested word. The Greek word for silk was sèrikos (Latin sericus), as in Revelation 18:12, so holosèrikon would have been the expected form. I'm kind of stumped on what silikon could otherwise signify. The only contender that comes to mind is Latin silicius "of, pertaining to silex", but a cloth made from flint powder doesn't make much sense at all to me, and we would have to presume that it was then loaned into Greek and then into Coptic. The passage is reminiscent of the Testament of Abraham 20:10: "And immediately Michael the archangel stood beside him with multitudes of angels, and they bore his precious soul in their hands in divinely woven linen". The burial story of Adam in the Greek Life of Adam and Eve mentions both linen and silk: "Then he spoke to the archangel Michael, 'Go into Paradise in the third heaven and bring me three cloths of linen and silk (sèrikas, c.e. of surikas)'. And God said to Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael, 'Cover Adam's body with the cloths and bring oil from the oil of fragrance and pour it over him' " (40:1-2). So "silk" does make contextual sense, so I wonder if it is possible that sèrikos was not the only form but if other dialectal forms of the loanword existed. But other burial stories emphasize the radiant nature of the clothes and one uses the phrase "garments of light" (Encomium of Eustathius, 128.27-28), so I wonder if the compound is one that refers to the whiteness, brightness, radiance, fiery nature, etc. of the clothes (maybe in that sense clothes made from a fiery material like flint might just barely be intelligible), e.g. hololeukos "entirely white". I notice that Roberts & Donaldson have "a shining wrapper" instead of "a precious silken napkin" (M. R. James) in their translation of the passage in question.
I notice that the book is extant only in fragments in Sahidic but is complete in Bohairic and Arabic. If I were you, I would try to find out what word the Bohairic text has in that sentence, and also what word the Arabic uses. That might help narrow down the meaning. Consider too the possibility of a textual corruption.
ETA. Also the word basilikos "royal, kingly" comes to mind, and royal clothes would also make sense in the context. But holobasilikos sounds utterly bizarre as a neologism (unattested of course) and I can't think of a plausible corruption that would produce holosilikon, unless perhaps a conflation of something like hololeukon basilikon > holosilikon. *shrug*
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Would you believe Abraham and Sarah existed before the Bible and King David etc.
by mP inbelievers, take a guess which and explain how this is possible..
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Leolaia
My point was its amazing that the names Abraham and Sarah can found there, with some similarities.
They aren't. Sanskrit names with phonetic resemblance to the two Hebrew names are found there. Whether there is an actual connection between the names or not depends on how philological and comparative evidence is assessed.
Linguistics are hairy stuff for layfolks like us. All too often what seems a remarkable similarity in English has no relationship in the native tougues.
Well I had a long discussion with mP last year on how the English word "elder" has nothing to do with the Canaanite deity "El", but the phonetic similarity alone is enough to convince him that the words are historically connected.
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Does the Bible contradict itself?
by exwhyzee inour old jw friend who is about to shun us says,there's nothing in the bible that contradicts itself?.
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can anyone think of certain scriptures that could prove otherwise?.
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Leolaia
I am trained in literature and linguistics, but not in biblical scholarship per se, so in that sense I am an informed layperson.
What is the link to your forum? I don't really post elsewhere too much, but I might be interested in the discussion. :)