Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Lisbeth S. Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>]

>
>
> 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
>
Dear Dave,
By 'getting with the program' I meant, getting in the spirit,
er, um, uh, getting in the context of the OT, not the NT, and not
what future readers and interpreters mean.
I doubt there was a concept of a disembodied spirit prior to the Greeks.
Now we are arguing here about the meaning of )wb.
The term appears numerous times in the HB, but without
description. You're only told not to consult them. Then we have
the lovely description of Samuel, who is now one, but visible
to those who have eyes to see. The woman sees an old man
wearing a robe. We are also told in Isaiah 8:19 that they "chirp and
mutter" or something, they make noises anyway.
Now, I would like to know from these instances what makes you
think they don't have a physical body, wear clothes, can look old,
and have a mouth, tongue, etc. to chirp and mutter?
Liz