Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

On Thursday 06 February 2003 14:10, Bill Rea wrote:
> Liz wrote:-
>
> >Dear Jim, Where does it say she summoned his
> >*spirit*?? You can't *see* a soul or spirit, can you?
> >and since the necromancer *saw* Samuel, it was his
> >whole body of course. Sheesh. You gotta get with the
> >program here.
>
> Time for a stupid question from me. If Samuel's body turned up for
> all to see why did Saul have to ask for a description of what the medium
> at Endor saw? Excuse the quotation from the KJV, it says:-
>
> [12] And when the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice: and the
> woman spake to Saul, saying, Why hast thou deceived me? for thou art
> Saul.
> [13] And the king said unto her, Be not afraid: for what sawest thou? And
> the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth.
> [14] And he said unto her, What form is he of? And she said, An old man
> cometh up; and he is covered with a mantle. And Saul perceived that it
> was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground, and bowed
> himself.
>
> If we are going to go down the path of turning our brains off and being
> super-literal, why does the body look like "gods" coming out of the ground?

That's why I asked if it was for real, because the statement is so utterly 
contrary to the text as to be laughable.  In verse 8 it explicitly says that 
Saul asked her to consult a spirit by divination, QFSOMIY BF)OWB, and in the 
next verse the woman complains that Saul has "cut off" all of those with 
)OWBOWT from the land.  As Bill points out, if Samuel appeared bodily, why 
did only the medium see him, and why did she describe him as she did?  Saul 
obviously saw nothing, so it seems absurd on the surface to suggest that 
Samuel was there physically.  But the terms used suggest that the woman's 
skill, if we want to call it that, was in dealing with disembodied spirits 
that were understood to be the disembodied spirits of dead people.  So it 
would appear that Jim (and Bill) is much more "with the program" than some...

-- 
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur