Biblical Hebrew Forum

[fred burlingame <tensorpath AT gmail.com>]

Hello Yigal:

Thanks for taking the time to present your recent comments.

I offer my response below.

The mishna of the large Jerusalem talmud appears assembled and composed by a
large number of the rabbinic community, in judah and galilee, in the hebrew
language, circa 100-200 a.d.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_Talmud


http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0019_0_19546.html

The new testament ("n.t.") (whether true or false) appears to describe
Christ's mission at that time (30 a.d.), as confronting this very rabbinic
community in judah and galilee. According to the text of the n.t., Christ
repeatedly challenged the rabbis about their oral traditions that
subsequently became the mishna and their Jerusalem talmud.

Christ (according to n.t.) was not sent to china or boston or to the jews in
diaspora in athens, but to jerusalem rabbinic community, which communicated
in hebrew.

Since, as you confirm, the academic community today assumes, via scholarly
convention, that the masoretic text ("m.t.") represents the language of
moses some 2 millennia earlier, i don't see any reasonable impediment to a
similar assumption about the n.t., gospels.  In other words, if the m.t.,
establishes the original "lashon ha-kodesh" of torah, despite the lapse of 2
millennia, does not the Jerusalem talmud imply the language used to document
and communicate the n.t., to the primary target of Christ (aka
pharisees)? After all, the n.t., story recites that Christ became the most
important event in the history of the hebrew speaking people.

As for backwards translation efficacy, I would observe that science today
utlilizes dna studies to supplement written genealogy histories.
Such science appears to recapture past history with present work.

I note that some believe i have entered the realm of the surreal with my
posts. Please feel free to disregard this message if you share that opinion
... :)

Regards,

fred burlingame

On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 1:04 AM, Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il> wrote:

> Hi Fred,
>
>
>
> Mt. 10:5-6 does, indeed, quote Jesus telling his apostles to preach to the
> Jews. Presumingly, this is what they do. But after the Crucifixion, some of
> the apostles, especially Paul, change the mission of the church and begin
> preaching to gentiles. Now whether the Gospel of Matthew itself was
> originally meant for Jews or for gentiles can be debated. Most of Paul's
> epistles, Romans included, were addressed to Greek-speaking Jewish
> communities. So they would have been written in Greek. The fact that
> Western
> Jewish communities were Greek-speaking is well-documented. They also read
> the Tanakh in Greek - that's why the Septuagint was produced in the first
> place, and why Christian-Jewish missionaries such as Paul (who came from
> just such a community in Tarsus) were so much at home there. Most of these
> communities were wiped out during the Diaspora Rebellion in 115-117. After
> that time, as there were less Greek-speaking Jews around and most of those
> who were had become Christians, the Jews "back east" (in what was left of
> the Levantine communities and in Babylon, which was outside of the Roman
> Empire) did indeed reject Greek. That's where the Talmud was produced. But
> this has nothing to do with the question at hand.
>
>
>
> There were no synagogues in Jerusalem in 100 CE (AD).
>
>
>
> You also (in a different post than the one below) seem to be confusing
> "Hebrews" with Hebrew-speakers. The NT text often uses "Hebrews" to mean
> "Jews", but this is no indication of the language that those Jews were
> speaking. The same goes for "Greeks". In the NT, "Greeks" are gentiles,
> whatever language they spoke.
>
>
>
> As to the purpose of the list: it is to study the biblical Hebrew language.
> This means the Hebrew language that the existing books of the Bible are
> written in. We know that we do not have the "original" text of any of these
> books, but, following scholarly convention, we use the MT as the "default
> text", assuming that it represents an unbroken tradition of transmission
> among Hebrew-readers of the text. We argue about whether and to what extent
> the Mesoretic vocalization also represents such a tradition. We use
> existing
> texts, such as the DDS and the LXX as evidence of other readings, and yes,
> the NT quotes of OT passages are certainly relevant. However, we then must
> consider if these quotes are really intended to be direct quotes or
> paraphrases, and what was changed in translation. As has been stated many
> times over the past few hours, we do not have an "original" Hebrew of any
> NT
> book, so that even if there had been one, there is really nothing to
> discuss. As I've already stated, "back-translating" the Greek NT into
> Hebrew
> (by the way, it would of course have to be 1st century Hebrew of which we
> know very little, not the Iron-Age or Persian Period Hebrew of the Tanakh)
> could be an interesting exercise, but little more.
>
>
>
> By the way, there are several such translations of the Apocrypha, Josephus
> and the like, and there are major difference between them. No serious
> scholar of, say 1 Maccabees or Judith would base his research on a modern
> Hebrew translation rather than the Greek, even though both books were
> apparently written in Hebrew.
>
>
>
>
>
> Yigal Levin
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: fred burlingame [mailto:tensorpath AT gmail.com]
> Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2010 5:02 AM
> To: Yigal Levin
> Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] the hellenization of isaiah
>
>
>
>  Hello Yigal:
>
>
>
> Thanks for your comments.
>
>
>
> I offer the following response.
>
>
>
> 1. Pretermitting the veracity of the statements, the new testament ("n.t.")
> nonetheless recites its purpose to communicate the good news to the jewish
> people of judah, first and foremost. Matthew 10:5-6; Romans 1:16.
>
> 2. I cannot imagine the hebrew people in a synagogue in jerusalem in 100
> a.d., responding with favor to the following scenario. A Christ missionary
> arrives and begins to preach by first holding up and reading from an Isaiah
> hebrew scroll; and then holding up and reading from a Matthew greek scroll;
> all the while pronouncing a new and improved truth based on the greek
> language document. The greeks you will recall desecrated the temple and
> tortured the hebrews during the maccabean period. Certainly, the massive
> talmud that followed the n.t., period was authored in hebrew, never in
> greek. The hebrews just do not appear inclined towards greek language in
> their sacred documents, then or now.
>
>
>
> 3. As for the purpose of re-translating the greek to hebrew n.t., I would
> inquire as to the purpose of this forum? Is it not to share, foster,
> discover and increase the participants' understanding of biblical hebrew?
> Is
> not disagreement extant and common amongst and between the septuagint, dead
> sea scrolls and masoretic texts, both as to form and content? And yet such
> conflict prevents not the flourishing of this forum's discussion about the
> old testament hebrew. Why therefore would a 2010 hebrew re-translation of
> the greek manuscripts, suffer any less credibility as an "original
> document"
> or source material, than the 1010 a.d., codex leningrad, or the 110 b.c.,
> isaiah scroll?
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> fred burlingame
>
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