Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Kirk Lowery <klowery AT wts.edu>]

This posting was bounced to the moderators. I can't figure out why. 
Anyway, I'm forwarding to the list.

This message is from Liz Fried in response to Bill Rea.

Kirk
b-hebrew co-chair

> Subject:
> RE: [b-hebrew] nefarious nefesh
> From:
> "Lisbeth S. Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>
> Date:
> Thu, 6 Feb 2003 16:31:42 -0500
> To:
> <b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org>
>
>
> > 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?
>
>
> Dear Bill, et. al.
> I would not presume to read the bible other than supra-literally.
> Otherwise, I would be assuming what the writer *actually* meant,
> rather than assuming that he *actually* meant what he *actually* said.
> Therefore, she saw gods, or a god, coming out of the earth.
> Nifty, eh? A god differs from mortals only in their immortality,
> not in their corporality.
> That's the whole point of the Adam and Eve story, the Gilgamesh
> story, etc, etc.
> I think the notion that gods are incorporeal is Greek. The Greeks had
> the idea that God had to be perfect and that since matter is
> corruptible, then God could not be material. I don't know whether
> that applies to the gods on Olympus or not.
> Liz

--
Kirk E. Lowery, Ph.D.
Director, Westminster Hebrew Institute
Adjunct Professor of Old Testament
Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia

Theorie ist, wenn man alles weiss und nichts klappt.
Praxis ist, wenn alles klappt und keiner weiss warum.
Bei uns sind Theorie und Praxis vereint:
nichts klappt und keiner weiss warum!