Thats a chicken and the egg statement. All i hear when i read such a statement is “id rather bury my head in the sand because my argument is crap” (or simply dont have one).
This is something i have come across in other areas of life…people making excuses for stuffups. Its nonsense, particularly given one is willing to delve deep into scientific interpretations, however, the minute a philosophical defense is put forward…“thats too hard”. Truth is, one isnt willing to figure out why and where the science interpretation is faulty.
Coffee never did anything for me. In college guys would chug it to stay awake during finals week; it made no difference to me.
These days, though, a good caffeine jolt can set of an anxiety attack. Nevertheless, I love coffee – to be specific, I love that other people drink lots and I get free coffee grounds by the gallon to enrich soil both at home and out in the dunes.
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There’s a spot about a billion light years out in the void between the Local Group and the next cluster of galaxies that had three seconds of no events once about seven hundred million years ago . . . 
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Yes.
He wasn’t quoting from the Masoretic text, that’s for certain. The issue with the Hebrew is that the consonants as they stand can be one of three different nouns – a branch, a bed, or a staff. Greek lacks that ambiguity, so the LXX translators had to pick one; hundreds of pages worth of ink has been devoted to arguing why they picked the one they did.
- So your “Yes” is not a concurrence with a fact, it’s an opinion which is what those “hundreds of pages of ink” are.
I really do not understand this. There is nothing wrong with a polemic argument. it is just a description. It is no different from calling someone black or white. It is descriptive.
You challenge people’s beliefs all the time, especially if they are scientific.
Because nine times out of ten science isn’t faulty.(Probably nearer 99 times out of 100)
And this has nothing to do with whether an argument is apologetic or polemic.
Richard
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No, it’s a statement that the dichotomy proposed between a Hebrew text and the Septuagint in that passage is false – there is no conflict. A conflict only appears if on insists that the vowel pointings in the Masoretic text are inspired, something the Masoretes themselves said was not a valid position.
The hundreds of pages of ink aren’t about opinions over there being a problem, they’re about why there is no problem.
That depends on the particular field and the problem at hand, as well as what you mean. One issue that comes to mind is the matter of “galloping glaciers”, a phenomenon that frustrated geologists for years, with lots of papers proposing solutions getting printed. It finally took a pair of young geologists daring enough to risk going underneath such a glacier to not really settle the matter but to narrow things down – and that narrowing showed that something like four out of five journal papers published on the matter were flat wrong.
An awesome thing about science is that all those paper authors read the new research results and promptly began writing new articles with new explanations that fit the new data, nine out of ten of which didn’t fit the next new data (it was fun reading a lot of those articles since most of the authors happily referred back to not just their colleagues’ but their own utterly falsified previous papers [not that any said, “I was wrong” but rather used phrases such as "since it seems not to be the case that . . . "]).
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- Unless. pf course, someone is a literate Jew. You clearly are not.
===== - The dichotomy which @St.Roymond denies consists of:
- Bereshit 47:31 Gen 47:31:
- and
Sorry, but that ignores the issue I explained. Perhaps this will help:
ויאמר השבעה לי וישבע לו וישתחו ישראל על ראש המטה
Do you see the difference? What you cited rests upon opinion – as the Masoretes themselves noted, and any literate Jew would also, the vowels are not inspired; they are an addition to the text. Go back to just the consonants and there is no problem – ῥάβδου is a perfectly good translation of מטה, so as I wrote:
The issue with the Hebrew is that the consonants as they stand can be one of three different nouns – a branch, a bed, or a staff.
Given those facts, there is no problem – the Masoretic vowels show an opinion about which of those three the consonants are supposed to indicate, and the Septuagint use of τῆς ῥάβδου is also an opinion. Thus the passage in Hebrews holds no conflict.
-
Oh you mean like this:
-
Genesis 47:31 - Bible Gateway](Genesis 47:31 - Bible Gateway)
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An amazing amount of consistency.
You’re missing the point: as I said, " ῥάβδου is a perfectly good translation of מטה". “Bed” is on possibility, but so is “staff” – for that matter, so is “branch” but that wouldn’t make much sense.
So basically the English under the Hebrew as you posted is misleading – “…bowed at the head of the staff” is equally correct.
I don’t know why you’re insisting on sticking to an opinion that is incorrect, especially when you’re basing it on Bible Gateway’s interlinear which is notoriusly incredibly biased.
Pot calling the kettle black?
You have a basic premis that dictates your understanding. That makes you as biased as anyone else.
Richard
- I’m missing the point? You’re being sillier and siller. You think I am so obtuse that I don’t know the difference between the masoretic text of Genesis 47:31 and the original Hebrew text of the same verse. And when I quote the original Hebrew text and the Jewish translation given in https://www.sefaria.org/texts, you leap over that fact and assume that I am so obtuse that I don’t understand that the original (non-Masoretic) text of Genesis 47:31 permits “ros hmth” to be translated more than one way.
- And then when I post all of the bible translations available in Gateway, all but what? two of which? translate “ros hmth” as “head of the bed”, you assert that Bible Gateway’s “interlinear is notoriously incredibly biased.” LOL! Count the translations in Bible Gateway and tell me, do you really believe that Bible Gatewau translated Genesis 47:31 “umpty number of times” and came up with a different translation three times. I am :rofl You obviously didn’t click on either link that I posted, otherwise you’d have seen that Bible Gateway didn’t translate or interpret any of the verses listed in either link.
- And when I post all of Bible Gateway’s versions of Hebrew 11:21, which is similar to the LXX rendering of Genesis 47:31 without identical results to what all versions of Genesis 47:31 in Bible Gateway shiw, you think: so what? the original Hebrew “ros hmth” permits three different English interpretations, therefore all are possible but only the one that captures your fancy is correct.
- Nonsense. Your non-opinion choice of interpretations doesn’t even make sense:
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- Genesis 47:29-31. [New Catholic Bible (NCB)]
- 29 When the day of his death drew near, Israel summoned his son Joseph and told him, “If I have found favor in your sight, place your hand under my thigh and deal with me kindly and faithfully. Do not bury me in Egypt.
- 30 When I lie with my fathers, carry me from Egypt and bury me in their tomb.”
- 31 “I will do as you say,” he replied.
But Jacob demanded, “Swear it to me.” He answered, “I swear it.” And he swore it. Then Israel sank back on his pillow
I don’t add meanings where they aren’t present, skip words that aren’t convenient, and flat out change the meanings of words to fit some particular understanding of a passage.
My basic premise is that the text is given us by the Holy Spirit.
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Yes – you’re insisting that one opinion is correct and the others don’t exist.
I didn’t assume anything, I just responded to what you wrote. You were forcing a conflict where there is none.
Counting translations is meaningless unless you know that English translations will go with a traditional reading nine times out of ten unless a very good argument can be made for changing it. Many don’t even put in a footnote indicating that a different rendering is possible. What counting translations does is show you the bias, not a vote on the text.
Why should I? You posted Bible Gateway interlinear, which I have no reason to respect (quite the opposite), so there was no reason for me to think you weren’t doing the same again.
That’s exactly what you’ve been doing, insisting that only one rendition is possible in order to sustain the pretense that there is a conflict between the Hebrew and the Septuagint, repeatedly ignoring the fact that the Septuagint’s rendition is perfectly valid. Neither one “catches my fancy”; all that “catches my fancy” is that the text be looked at honestly, which you’ve been refusing to do by pretending that only one rendering is possible.
I don’t have a “choice of interpretations”, I just have the text, which is what you’ve been refusing to address before now. You’ve been manufacturing conflict where there is none, insisting that only the rendition that gives the appearance of conflict is possible.
It’s as though an English sentence was written in only consonants, and the end it said “strk wth rd”, and you decided that “rd” has to be “rod” even though those consonants could indicate “red” or “ride” or “reed”, any of which could make sense given context. All I’ve been doing is saying, “You can’t do that; the text is what it is and you don’t get to narrow it down to support something that strikes you as fun to poke at”. In the above example, “red” is probably silly even though in a certain cultural context it could work; “ride” isn’t as unlikely but would still depend on cultural context (and supplying an indefinite article), while “reed” or “rod” both make sense.
Your argument has basically been, “I want there to be conflict so I’m ignoring the fact that the Septuagint translators made a perfectly valid choice”, while mine has been to say they made a perfectly vaid choice.
That’s not even translation, it’s paraphrase.
Yes, I know.
And boy does it cause problems!
Not to mention that even Scripture does not claim it for itself, explicitly… (To do so would be tantamount to self proclamation, “I am right because I say so by my own authority”)
The main drawback being the inaccuracy of words in general and translations in practice. No matter how long you study you will never achieve that perfect understanding, assuming there is only one perfect understanding.
I am sorry, but your approach puts shackles on Scripture (and God).
Not to mention the risk of putting too much emphasis on a single phrase or even word. Scripture is greater than the sum of its parts. You loose sight of the forest by picking twigs.
Richard
- LOL! I posted precisely one interlinear translation … of Hebrews 11:21, which was from Bible. The two links to previously translated non-interlinear versions of Gen. 47:31 and Heb. 11:21 were from https://www.biblegateway.com/. The fact that you imagined, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, that the Bible Hub interlinear version of Heb. 11:21 was the same thing, repeated ad nauseam as Bible Gateway multiple versions of Gen. 47:31 and Heb. 11:21 confirms that you have no criticizing or critiquing either Bible Hub or Bible Gateway information.
- You’ve stepped off the curb and entered La-la Land. ’
- The Septuagint translated Gen. 47:31. That translation was the only version relied on in Heb. 11:21, I have not imposed my opinion, I have merely recognized a difference between the LXX version of Gen. 47:31 and the Torah version of the same verse.