Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>]

I'm starting to see your point. 'Forever' certainly has that easy to 
understand feel to it. And in English we tend to use always in a similar 
way e.g.'You'll always be the same.'. Perhaps 'forever' would be a good
translation if accompanied by a disclaimer style footnote which explains 
that this word may not always mean forever e.g. the levitical priesthood.

However, even the levitical priesthood lasts for ever in Christian thinking 
as Jesus is viewed as its highpriest. So it is difficult to find even one 
example with future reference that does not last forever. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Kirk [mailto:peter AT qaya.org]
Sent: Thu 11/17/2005 11:25 PM
To: Read, James C
Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Daniel 6:27 (time indefinite) II
 
On 17/11/2005 23:16, Read, James C wrote:

> But Peter, you cannot claim that a person's perspective of 'until I die'
> equates to 'forever'. We all well know that life is short but we just
> don't know how short.
>
Let me clarify. The "until I die" case was of a slave who remained 
enslaved "for ever", which of course in practice means until he or she 
dies. The point of `olam here is that there is no prospect of the slave 
experiencing an end to slavery or going free, for as far as they are 
concerned the slavery is for ever. That is what I meant by the 
subjective aspect of "for ever".

-- 
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/


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>From peter AT qaya.org  Thu Nov 17 19:36:13 2005
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Daniel 6:27 (time indefinite) II
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On 17/11/2005 23:58, Robert Newman wrote:

>...
>
>Response:
>You have unreasonably brushed off the clear examples I've given with respect 
>to past reference. In all honestly, I’ve not gone through every occurance of 
>olam, but seeing as you have brushed off my examples so far, and rejected 
>those given by others I don't see much point in trying to convince you. All 
>the examples I can think of with respect to future reference require some 
>degree of interpretation (like Karls one), and they should be clear to 
>theologians. The context in most cases demands simply 'a long time' that 
>needn't be 'infinite/unending time'.
>Why are the clear examples set in past reference not enough? I mean why 
>would olam signal a broad concept with respect to past reference but only 
>the very specific concept of 'forever' with respect to future reference?
>
>
>
Robert, I have not brushed off the examples of PAST `olam which you
gave, but have accepted that they, and this is also true of your new
ones, are somewhat different from the future examples, such that they
cannot be rendered "for ever" in English. But I continue to insist that
the meaning here is something like "since the very beginning", that at
least in the understanding of the author there was no time before the
beginning of that `olam period. That is more or less a definition of
eternity past. I also wrote "From our modern historical perspective we
understand that many of these things do not actually go right back to
creation, but from the author's perspective they were probably
understood as doing so". So there is no "broad concept with respect to
past reference", but a very specific meaning, something like "ever since
creation, at least as far as we know".

As for examples of `olam with FUTURE reference which cannot be
understood as "for ever", I understand your "All the examples I can
think of with respect to future reference require some degree of
interpretation (like Karls one), and they should be clear to
theologians." as tantamount to an admission that it is only within
certain theological interpretive frameworks that some occurrences of
`olam cannot be understood as referring to eternity, or at least my
"subjective" eternity.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/