Re: A Few Things Which Matt and Inabon Probably Wish Did Not Exist....

On Jul 15, 5:40 pm, Matt Giwer <jul...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[snip]

        Source for what? A negative? There are at least two chronicles of his
campaign of conquest as well as many others which may or may not be derivative
of the chronicles.  The siege of Tyre is in them as the creation of a land
bridge to get to the fortress and its surrender. From there it is reported he
heads to Egypt. If I remember correctly there is some confusion over whether
it was Askelon or another city where he stopped shortly to accept a formal
surrender without a fight. I first came across this absence in a comment on
the inability to explain this lack of mention by jewish scholars.

You're forgetting a few details here. Judea was a part of the Persian
empire - just like all Levant - at Alexander's time. When Alexander
began his campaign against the Persian empire, he conquered Asia Minor
after defeating the Persian forces stationed there. He captured all
the coastal cities and turned inland towards Syria in 333 BCE. He
fought the main Persian army under the leadership of the Persian king,
Darius, at Issus. His tactic of leading a cavalry charge against a
superior opponent forced them to break ranks. Darius, and what was
left of his army, retreated towards Mesopotamia, leaving Alexander
free to continue south. He seized the coastal towns along the
Phoenician and Palestinian coasts. Darius now understood that the
situation was out of his control. As Alexander moved down the
Phoenican coast, he conquered the city of Tyre, which was absolutely
central to Persian naval operations in the Mediterranean. Darius
realized that he could never recover Asia Minor, Phoenicia, or
Palestine, so he sent an offer for a cease-fire. If Alexander would
stop, Darius would cede to him all of the Persian Empire west of the
Euphrates River. So you see, Alexander had no need to conquer what was
offered to him as a bribe for peace - and that included Jerusalem.

There is a narrative in Josephus, Antiquities 11.317-345, though its
veracity is suspect:

        It is amazing how much of Josephus is suspect. I can cite him to confound
believers to no end.

"So when Alexander besieged Tyre, he sent an epistle to the Jewish
high-priest, to send him some auxiliaries, and to supply his army with
provisions; and that what presents he formerly sent to Darius, he
would now send to him, and choose the friendship of the Macedonians,
and that he should never repent of so doing.

        Pardon that I delete the extensive quote.

        Without digressing into the conflicting and unreliable nature of the source,
I know of no other case where a story that first appears four centuries after
an event is taken seriously. There are numerous examples from Christianity
alone where such stories, regardless of how fervently believed, are discarded
on this basis alone.

        Nor is this other than one more story about a fanciful place for which there
is no indigenous archaeological evidence.

Yet you use Josephus to claim there was a temple to Astarte in
Jerusalem. In which book and chapter is that mentioned?

        Addressing the source, in addition to his assertion that there were only 22
holy books in his Yahweh cult

Kings and Chronicles were counted as one book each, thus making the
number 22.

his recitation of Exodus comes either from a
more complete version than is used today or Exodus was not among them or he
had no problem adding material to a sacred book. One obvious example is the
military campaigns of Moses in Nubia on behalf of Egypt in which a person
who, assuming the foundling is successfully passed off as a real birth vice a
foundling, is at best a grandson of the king is called a prince, a line of
succession which 1) did not exist in Egypt and 2) is unique and 3) would have
gotten him  killed as a matter of course by the sons.

That there were lots of pseudephigraphal works around is not exactly
news. This one does not appear to have survived, but others have.

        Believers will now try to make an issue of one or perhaps even two of the
above items and assume that if even one point can be rejected by their
credulous minds that everything they choose to believe is true. This is what
they insist upon with the "similar name" approach. Because a name is similar
in that it can be construed to be the same name then the OT's nose has gotten
into the tent soon to be followed by the entire OT.

Are you by any chance talking about my methods and motivation? If so,
you could not be more wrong even if you tried. My interest is in _all_
of the available evidence, and what can be corroborated - as I have
stated quite a few times now.

        And then there is the venerable objection, you won't believe it because you
hate Jews.

What the hell are you bleating now??? I'm not the one with a load of
anti-Semitic .sigs.

        Bottom line is as always, indigenous archaeological evidence must be produced
before anything it considered seriously.

Coming up once I get around to do it.

The same name, just used as an theophoric element.

        Excuse but Netanyahu is a theophoric name. The name of a god cannot be called
a theophoric name.

Simple question for you: Shamas-shum-ukin contains a theophoric
element. Which one of the words is it? Do you understand what is meant
by theophoric element in a name? And just where did I claim that
Yahweh is a theophoric name?

While I agree it can be the same name if one wants to
assume people who clearly do not behave as Jews really were Jews I see an
unlimited gullibility for glib explanations which do not bear up under scrutiny.

You still haven't responded to my explanation about Exodus 20:7 and
how the verse itself contains the name yhwh... Care to do so?

Different languages use different names, _when the names mean
something_. As yhwh is the 3rd person masculine causative of hwh,
meaning "he causes to be", it also follows that the name is slightly
different in Aramaic. Also note that names change in different
languages, even when the meaning has been lost. Your name, Matt, comes
from the Hebrew name Mattiyahu "Yahweh has given", but even the full
English version Matthew is no longer spelled as in the Hebrew
original.

        Matthias actually. So the source is Mattathias of the Maccabe stories.

Wrong again. Mattathias is the Greek form of Hebrew Mattiyahu.

Thus
there is no yahoo involved. Yes I am aware of a believer tradition of tracing
it to Matitiyahu. This is not different from their insistence that 1 Maccabe
was originally in "Hebrew" even though the all four books exist only in Greek.
As this revolt is dated to the mid 2nd c. BC it reduces the time to change
from speaking Hebrew to speaking Aramaic to less than a century.

Names are pretty conservative in nature. Josephus, for one, is
Latinized version of ywsp.

        What sort of fascinates me is the "I am who am" for YHWH and "wrestles with
god" for Israel does not appear to register on believers that those
explanatory meanings of the names means the text could not possibly have been
written for people who spoke the language. How could they not know the
meanings of the names?

'hyh '$r 'hyh is not "I am who am", it means "I shall be what I shall
be", as 'hyh is in qal imperfect. It is not where the word yhwh comes
from, as that is - as I already said - the 3rd masculine causative of
hwh and means "he causes to be." Those are two different names, it is
as simple as that. You are the one who does not know the meaning of
the names, it appears.

But it makes perfect sense to give the meanings of the
names for people who do not speak the language such at the Greeks. Such
explanaitons fit perfectly into the Septuagint. Such explanations must be
absent from the "hebrew" version if it is to be taken as the original. They
are not. Why would "hebrew" names need explanation to hebrew speakers? The
meaning was forgotten? Then how explain the root meanings in the name are
found in the language?

See above for where your misunderstanding is. Since your argument is
built on a false premise, demolishing your premise is all it takes to
demolish your argument. Your not knowing the languages involved makes
for such elementary mistakes as the above one of yours.

How would you know, since you've obviously never actually bothered to
read the book?

        Upon what, other than disagreeing with traditional religious explanations you
champion, do you base that assertion? It is not as though what you are
espousing are your own, original conclusions. Ideas passed down from
generation to generation for centuries that no one can trace to any source at
all are hardly a credible response to what I have posted.

Upon your very simple view of the Bible as a monolithic text. Reading
it with a critical view shows that it is anything but monolithic. The
evidence is all in the text, but since you appear to be completely
unaware of it, the conclusion is that you have never read the book.

Though for some very polytheistic texts in the Bible
you do need to be able to read Hebrew, as for example Psalm 82 is not
translated correctly. In the original Hebrew it reads: 'lhym ntsb b'dt
'l bqrb 'lhym '$pt, God stands up in the Assembly of 'El, amongst the
gods he judges.

        You miss the big one with the 5000+ translations of Yahweh Elohim as "lord
god" when clearly elohIM is plural.

Again, your lack of being able to read the language leads you to a
wrong conclusion. 'lhym is, indeed, a plural, but there is a way of
figuring out whether a simple plural or a pluralis maiestatis (the
royal "we") is in use. If a singular is meant, the verb connected to
the word is singular, if plural, then the verb is plural. For example,
in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God ('lhym, plural noun) created
(br', singular verb).

If one assumes the (incredible) meaning of
Yahweh as I am who am (I be who be, in Ebonics) "I am who am of the gods of
OH" does not bear the translation Lord any more than Elohim bears any
translation to any word in the singular form.

One assumes very wrongly, as I demonstrated above.

        As to needing to read "hebrew" that is where I came in. A version of the
Septuagint in an original language is not mentioned until nearly three
centuries after the Septuagint is mentioned in history. And the problem does
not end there. The mention is "in their language." Their language at the time
of these mentions was Aramaic and it is known to have been Aramaic centuries
before these mentions. These mentions do NOT mention any language preceding
Aramaic.

Again you ignore the Hebraisms of the LXX. Let's see...

Genesis 2.17: "But from the tree of knowing good and evil do not eat,
because in the day you eat from it by death you shall die." -
translated literally. That "by death you shall die" is not how a Greek
writer would express it, but is a case of a literal translation of the
Hebrew intensifying infinitive absolute. This is not the only instance
in the LXX where the intensifying infinitive absolute is translated
literally.

And that is only one of the types of Hebraisms found in the LXX.

That means Judah, as I already said. As I keep repeating, learning the
languages would be rather useful when trying to read them....

        In this context you are saying Judah was a god?

In the word means Judah, as the phrase where it is found is mlk yhvdh,
king of Judah. I know you can't read Hebrew, but could you try and
read English??? Nobody except you is talking about any gods. Try and
remember that you asked me what the word for Judah was in the text,
and I answered it was yhvdh. How do you get any gods out of that is
beyond me...
.

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