Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Peter,


In order not to overstep the borders of b-hebrew I will relate my answer to
you to some Hebrew examples, and at the same time I stress how important it
is for everybody to have a sound theoretical framwork for one's
investigations. An understanding of syllogisms is elementary and important.

Your grasp of syllogisms is perfect, and I agree that your syllogisms below
have the correct structure. However, I see that I did not manage to
communicate my principal point to you. The very purpose of a syllogism is
to show the truth of its explanandum, and to succeed with this, two
conditions must be met: (1) the structure of the syllogism must be correct,
and (2) both propositions of the explanans must be true.

Your syllogism (G) is semantically equivalent to my syllogism (D), and both
have a correct structure. What I tried to bring across, however, was that
the first proposition of my example (D) and the first proposition of your
(G) are not true, and therefore is not condition (2) met. YHWH is the only
one who is "the first and the last" in an absolute sense (he is eternal),
but others can be the first and the last in other contexts. The question
was: When Isaiah 41:4 says )A:NI RI$ON WA)A:NI  )AXA:RON UMIBBAL(FDAY )EIN
)E:LOHIM  ("I am the first and I am the last, and beside me there is no
God."), does this mean that Jesus is YHWH when Revelation 2:8 says that
Jesus is hO PRWTOS KAN hO ESCATOS ("the first and the last")? In
linguistics, when we look for a counter-example to an exclusive proposition
(claim), all we need to do is to find *one* situation and make *one*
well-formed sentence where the proposition (claim) does not hold.

Take QOHELET as an example. In this book, chapter 1, verses 1 and 12 we
learn that QOHELET was the son of David and that he ruled over *Israel* in
Jerusalem. Regardless of what we think is the age of the book and who wrote
it, the information given by the author fits just one person - Solomon - so
that was what the author wanted his readers to believe. Solomon could be
said to be *the first and the last*, in the sense that he was the only son
of David who ruled over Israel in Jerusalem. These epitets are not used for
Solomon in OT, but they are used with reference to Jesus in NT. I claimed
in an earlier post, that "the first and the last" were used in connection
with Jesus' resurrection, so he is not necessarily "the first and the last"
in an absolute sense. If it is accepted the the expression refers to his
resurrection, it is at the same accepted that the first proposition of (G)
is false. If it is not accepted that the expression refers to his
resurrection, no one can deny the *possibility* that this is the case,
because resurrection is connected with the expression both times it refers
to Jesus. In this case the first proposition of (G) is doubtful, and
therefore does not meet condition (2) that it must be true. The conclusion
therefore is: The proposition  "All beings which are "the first and the
last" are YHWH", is not proved to be true, so the whole syllogism falls
apart and we cannot raly on the conclusion of explanans.

In OT studies we can from this learn two things: (1) When we are doing
research or arguing about passages we should always try to connect our
conclusions with a theoretic framwork which is logically valid, and
calibrate our conclusions by way of it, and (2) It is extremely difficult,
if not impossible, on the basis of epitets and characteristics, by way of
syllogisms to prove that two individuals with different names, who lived at
different times are ontologically identical.


Regards
Rolf

Rolf Furuli
Lecturer in Semitic languages
University of Oslo




>Rolf Furuli wrote:
>
>SYLLOGISM (C) IS INVALID
>
>All lions have yellow furs
>Petra has a yellow fur
>_______________
>Petra is a lion
>
>YUOR SYLLOGISM (D) IS:
>
>Only YHWH is "the first and the last"
>Jesus is said to be "the first and the last"
>______________________________
>Jesus is YHWH
>
>I don't have the benefit of the Norwegian semester of logic and
>philosophy, and so I don't understand your detailed argument. But it
>does seem to me that the word "Only" makes syllogism (D) valid; for
>"Only A's are B" is logically equivalent to "All B's are A", or more
>mathematically "the set of all B's is a subset of the set of all A's".
>Let's change syllogism (C) to be more like (D):
>
>SYLLOGISM (E)
>
>Only lions have yellow manes
>Petra has a yellow mane
>_______________
>Petra is a lion
>
>This is surely valid, because it is equivalent to:
>
>SYLLOGISM (F)
>
>All beings which have yellow manes are lions
>Petra has a yellow mane
>_______________
>Petra is a lion
>
>For there are lions (female and young) which don't have yellow manes,
>but (for the sake of argument) there are no beings with yellow manes
>which are not lions.
>
>Similarly, (D) (with clarification of "said to be") is equivalent to
>
>SYLLOGISM (G)
>
>All beings which are "the first and the last" are YHWH
>Jesus is (according to the NT) "the first and the last"
>______________________________
>Jesus is (according to the NT) YHWH
>
>and this is a valid syllogism - there is probably no second YHWH who
>is not "the first and the last", but this does not invalidate the
>argument, for the significant point is that there is no "the first and
>the last" who is not YHWH.
>
>Peter Kirk
>
>
>
>
>
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