Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

Hi Jim,

I have noticed a consistent style to your posts.

Quoting JimStinehart AT aol.com:

> James Christian:
>
> 1.  You wrote:  “The first concrete clue we get [regarding Abraham’s
> native land] is Shem's territory as outlined in Genesis 10:30.”
>
> The Table of Nations is not historically reliable, and it long postdates
> the Patriarchal narratives.

I really admire the amazing ability with which you state things as  
facts with an air of authority but fail to provide any evidence to  
back up your view. It's almost as if you automatically expect me to  
believe everything you state as authoritative with no need to  
demonstrate that it is so.


> 2.  You wrote:  “Whoever made this Greek translation [of Genesis 11: 28]
> seemed to think that translating as 'his land of birth' was an accurate
> reflection of the meaning.”
>
> That Greek translation was done after Ezra’s day.  Ezra radically
> reinterpreted the geography of the Patriarchal narratives (without   
> changing a single
> letter in the text of the Patriarchal narratives itself).

You just did it again. You are really good at this.



> When we get to chapter 24 of Genesis, which you yourself cite below, we
> will see that in the Patriarchal narratives, MWLDT means “kindred”/“
> descendants of a common ancestor”, and does not mean “birth” or   
> “birth place”.

Words in isolation are often meaningless. In italian 'voi' means you.  
'Da' means from. However, 'da voi' most often means something like  
'your house' rather than 'from you'. Often, a literal translation of a  
single word is all that it takes to obscure the meaning of the phrase  
it sits in. So, my admonition is this. Instead of discussing the  
meaning of a single word, why don't consider what the phrase it sits  
in means. The translators into Greek felt it meant homeland/place of  
birth. Taking your literal analysis of the word it is only a simple  
step to see how it works idiomatically and in what way its idiomatic  
meaning is related to its literal meaning. You claimed that this  
idiomatic meaning was only modern. I showed you that your 'modern'  
sense of the word was understood by a group of translators 2300 years  
ago.

You assumptions about Ezra are all well and good and while that helps  
us to understand the viewpoint that you are coming from you cannot  
seriously expect other people to work with the same assumptions if you  
unwilling to prove that they are correct. So, I remain unconvinced.


> 3.  “The next, and possible most important, clue we are given is in Genesis
> 12:1 where Abram is told to 'go out of his land'. Subsequently, Abram goes
> out of 'his land' and to Canaan (not his land).”
>
> Abraham owns no land in Harran.

You just did it again.


> Rather, the facts are clear:  (i) Terakh’s
> family has very recently been in Ur, (ii) then Terakh’s family headed out
> for Canaan (not for Harran), and (iii) then Terakh’s family stopped at Harran
> unexpectedly, due to Terakh being too weak to continue

And again.



> on to Canaan as
> planned.  Given those clear facts, Harran cannot possibly be Abraham’s native
> homeland, nor did Abraham ever own any land at Harran.

I can see your thought process but as it is based on so many  
assumptions which you have failed to convince me of I cannot agree  
with your conclusions at this point.



> The word )RC in Biblical Hebrew has a very broad meaning.  )RC means “earth”
>  or “the earth” or “ground” or “country” or “region” or “the place on
> the earth where a person is at a particular time” or simply “place”.  )RC
> can mean, but usually does not mean, a piece of real estate owned by  
>  a person.

Agreed.

...

purposefully skipped because you keep assuming I will agree with your  
assumptions.

...


> Haran was buried in Ur, where he died.

We don't know that. The record doesn't say. I don't have a fixed  
opinion about where he was buried. Maybe they took his body from Ur  
(the main city) down to Harran (where they lived) to bury him. We just  
don't know. It doesn't say. The problem with building assumption upon  
assumption upon assumption is that then your conclusion is based on a  
very shaky foundation of a series of nested if clauses, the removal of  
one of which would cause your whole construction to collapse.


> Terakh was buried in Harran, where
> he died.

While this may be probable, we don't know that either.



> Abraham was buried in Canaan, where he died.
>
> 6.  You wrote:  “Then, one of the most important clues is Genesis 24.
> Abraham gives
>  specific instructions for his servant to go 'his country' to 'his
> relatives' to choose a wife for Isaac so that Isaac didn't end up   
> marrying one of
> 'the daughters of Canaan'.”
>
> Finally, at long last, you cite a key passage.  Note what Genesis 24: 3-4
> says (per the JPS1917 translation):  “…thou shalt not take a wife for my son
> of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell.  But thou shalt go
> unto my country, and to my kindred [MWLDTY], and take a wife for my son,
> even for Isaac.'”

You have completely ignored the fact that there is a specific  
reference to mesopotamia in his servants destination. How you then  
manage to conclude that his relatives did not live in Mesopotamia in  
completely beyond me.



> Does MWLDT mean “birth” or “birth place” at Genesis 24: 4?  No.  Abraham
> certainly had not been born in Harran.  But Harran is where Abraham’s
> trusted servant properly goes to find kinswoman Rebekah to be   
> Isaac’s ideal wife.
> Rather, MWLDTY means “my kindred”, that is, “my father’s descendants”.
> Many of Terakh’s descendants were now living at Harran, including in
> particular Laban and his sister Rebekah.  The reference to )RCY,   
> translated above as

Your whole discussion is based on a denial of the phenomena of idiom.  
You claim that greek versions we find in the various codices (I  
neglect to call these the LXX, we will probably never know what the  
original LXX looked like) are mistranslations but only provide  
circular logic as your evidence for this.



> “my country”, means “the place where I had stayed with my father’s family
> for some time when my father could not make it all the way back to Canaan”.
>  The only place, outside of Canaan, where any female descendants of Terakh
> were living at this time was Harran.  Given those key facts, and the fact
> that the preceding verse explicitly says that Isaac shall not marry someone
> from Canaan, Genesis 24: 4 is an unambiguous reference to Harran.
>
> Most importantly for us, at Genesis 24: 4 MWLDT clearly means “kindred”/ “
> descendants of a common ancestor”/“my father’s descendants”, and does not
> mean “birth” or “birth place”.
>
> The Greek language Septuagint, which you cited above, mistranslates Genesis
> 24: 4 as follows:  “…you shall go to my country where I was born”.  But
> the trusted servant goes straight to Harran!  Abraham clearly was not born in
> Harran.  Terakh’s family was only in Harran because of the accident that
> Terakh had become too weak to make it all the way to Canaan.    
> Genesis 11: 31-32
>  The Septuagint’s Greek translation of the Biblical Hebrew word MWLDTY (or
> at least the English translation thereof) in the Patriarchal narratives is
> clearly erroneous.  By contrast, the JPS1917 translation of MWLDTY as “my
> kindred” is clearly correct.
>
> 7.  You wrote:  “Jubilees gives us more detail….”
>
> Jubilees is not historically reliable, and it long postdates the
> Patriarchal narratives.

You just did it again. We simply do not know this. The 'mainstream'  
view was that Jubilees was authored in CE. Since the discovery of the  
DSS this view has been abandoned and the new 'mainstream' view is  
considerably different. No doubt, if we found some older manuscripts  
there would be an even newer 'mainstream' view. While I don't, as yet,  
have an opinion of the age of Jubilees we simply do not know how old  
it is.

James Christian




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