Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

On Thursday 06 February 2003 15:56, Lisbeth S. Fried wrote:
> > 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.

Including Liz Fried?

> I doubt there was a concept of a disembodied spirit prior to the Greeks.

And that assumption is what leads to such...unusual interpretations of things 
like the appearance of Samuel.  Dump it and the text makes a lot more sense 
on its own ground.

> 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. 

That's not what the text says.  You have interpolated the whole "those who 
have eyes to see" thing based on...nothing.  It is clear from a simple 
reading of the text, without any presuppositions about the matter of 
"disembodied spirits," which you appear to be defining in a very narrow 
sense, that the woman saw an apparition of some kind.  Saul didn't see it.  
Why?  Because the apparition appeared to the woman.

> The woman sees an old man
> wearing a robe. 

Yes, *the woman* saw this.  Obviously, an apparition will appear in some form 
that she could see.  The same might be said for a hallucination.  If the 
person next to you is loaded up on LSD and sees a duck sitting on your head, 
do you automatically assume that such a duck MUST have a physical body 
because that person can see it?  Throughout the history of mysticism, 
necromancy and similar practices, apparitions that only the medium or 
communicant can see are well known, and there no reason in the text not to 
conclude that this same sort of apparition (whether real or imagined, I'm not 
going to get into that) happened to the woman.  In addition, the very 
practice of necromancy assumes that the dead are conscious in some form, 
somewhere.  If the ancient Hebrews had no concept of an afterlife, how would 
they attempt necromancy, and why?  This is getting silly.

> We are also told in Isaiah 8:19 that they "chirp and
> mutter" or something, they make noises anyway.

See BDB on that one.  In addition, I would simply point out that if such an 
)WB only appears as an apparition to the necromancer, it is likely that the 
necromancer is the only one who actually "hears" these noises.

> 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?

I repeat: this is getting silly.  This is precisely the kind of 
ultra-literalism that someone else already addressed and you denied doing.  
But that's precisely what's going on here. I won't bother to address it again 
as it has already been dealt with by someone more qualified than I.

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