Re: To Garamond: Genesis Commentary

Apologies if this is a dupe.

On Sun, 16 Dec 2007 21:36:14 -0500, Zoe wrote:

On 15 Dec 2007 19:34:01 GMT, Garamond Lethe <cartographical@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

snip>

[Zoe said]
What do higher critics say "deep" means, please?

[Garamond said]
Obviously, none of the above invalidates divine inspiration. However,
I do think it presents a few issues for a literal reading. If the
original translators into English had rendered Tehom as Neptune (and
that's an awful translation for several reasons, but bear with me),
then I think you'd have no trouble in concluding the passage was not
to be taken literally. However, I think the translators tried to
capture what was closer to the poetry of the text -- and I think
"deep" is a wonderful choice -- with the understanding that it would
*not* be taken literally.

<snip>
Your thoughts?

[Zoe said]
I think there are at least two ways to approach the many accounts
found worldwide with regard to creation and/or the flood, not to
mention the pervasive use of the word "Sabbath" in cultures worldwide.
One way is to suggest that they all (Hebrews included) copied each
other's legends. Another way would be to suggest that there was an
original true event which got corrupted as time passed. And the fact
that certain accounts are so widespread would lend credence to the
idea that something worldwide had indeed occurred.

If the second option is chosen, how does one recognize which is the
original true account, of which the many variations are but a
reflection of the true? For me, it is by weighing any indicators of
authenticity that surround a particular account. The Bible has, imo,
these indicators of authenticity.

Back to you....

I was trying (and failed) to ask a much narrower question: Should this
one particular word (Tehom/Tiamat) be given a literal interpretation?

I don't know. Why is a Babylonian term being used to understand a
Hebrew term? I am not versed in philology so would you kindly explain
why?

From wikipedia, fount of all knowledge....

<q>
"Tehom" is a cognate of the Babylonian Tiamat, the monstrous mother of
the gods. In the bible it is treated as proper name, always being used
without a definite article.
</q> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehwom

And Miriam Webster's take on cognate is:
<q>
of a word or morpheme : related by derivation, borrowing, or descent
</q> http://tinyurl.com/yo5zbz




Meanwhile, I will attempt to explain my perspective, fully expecting
correction if I err.

;-)


I would not look at how a word is used in another country (say, France)
in order to understand the meaning of a word in the English language.
And I'm not talking about the origin of a word now, but the common usage
of a word within the context of a particular community. Neither am I
talking about the varied meanings that can be given a word, as applied
by translators.

It makes more sense to me to understand a word by seeing how it is used
within the same language, rather than going to another language to
determine its meaning. I think I would get a more accurate meaning of a
word by studying how that word is used by the same writer or within the
same community of writers. They would best know what they mean when
they use a word.

No disagreement here.


Also, if "deep" is being understood nonliterally to refer to chaos, then
what does "earth" mean in a nonliteral sense? And what is the
nonliteral meaning of "void" or "form" or even "God"? Or are we making
only certain words nonliteral? I do think God established order upon
chaos, but I'm not sure this particular verse is the one for that.
Maybe it is, but if it is, then we'd need the nonliteral interpretation
of the surrounding words, too.

All excellent points, and I hope to (eventually) cover them.


So, to sum up (or maybe that's reiterate) the way I've understood
scripture is by letting writers from the same community expand on each
other's writings. That's what I mean by the Bible interprets itself.

But my point is the translation you're reading is not faithful to the
words carefully chosen by the author.


We've come to look at the Bible as a single book and therefore feel the
need for outside commentary. But the Bible is actually a compilation of
different writings -- commentaries, if you will -- so that it should be
possible to get the most accurate understanding of terms used by
cross-referencing within these commentaries.

But not if the translation is masking the original language.


As to waters, the writer of that first verse in Genesis appears to
explain himself, imo, when he parallels "face of the deep" and "face of
the waters" followed by "dividing the waters" and next "separating the
waters from dry land."

As I understand it (and corrections are always welcome), there's no
support for thinking the author of this passage thought that Tiamat was
a real god. On the other hand, I assume there was a perfectly good word
in Hebrew for "oceans" that could have been used, if indeed that was the
literal state of the world at creation.

an ocean is identified within the context of land. In the beginning, if
taken literally, there was only water, no land, so I don't think that
the Hebrew word for "oceans" whatever that term is, would have been
used. Actually, so far, I've not come across a translation that uses
the word "oceans". "Sea" is used, always in the context of land. It
makes sense to me that waters without the context of land would aptly be
called "waters" or deep waters, or merely "deep."


If the above is correct (and it might not be), then the only
interpretation remaining is a metaphorical one: the conditions at
creation were *like* those that are brought to mind by this Babylonian
word.

I hope, by now, you have answered my query as to why one would try to
view one community's perspective through the perspective of another
community.

And I hope the above has made clear that I'm not attempting a Babylonian
interpretation of Genesis.

I know I would be very upset if someone were to take a word
from my writing and interpreted it via someone else's writing, instead
of reading further into my own writing to get my true meaning.

So let's look at what we've done: We've moved from an English
translation to the historical study needed to determine the original
word (as best we can tell), we've done further study to determine how
that word was used both in the Hebraic and surrounding cultures, and
thus we're closer to understanding the intent of the author of the text.
This is hard, inexact work. It's much easier to stay with one
translation and state certain parts are not open to anything other than
a literal interpretation. But the effort can be worth it, and I think
it is here.

If you'd like to put forward a contrasting view supporting a literal
reading, I'd be happy to hear it.

I have no scholarly reviews to offer you. But if my reasoning above
makes sense, why reject it?

I'm making three claims here:

1. The word Tehom is a direct borrowing of the Babylonian Tiamat. (Not
unlike English borrowing "Poseidon" from Greek.)
2. Even though there were available Hebrew words for "ocean" or
"waters", Tehom was chosen instead.
3. A translation of "Tehom" to either "waters" or "deep", while
traditional, is simply not as accurate as it could be.

It looks like lots of ink has been spilled trying to discover if Genesis
copied, was inspired by, borrowed from, or simply used the same
vocabulary as the creations myths of the surrounding nations.
Fortunately, I don't have to argue any of those positions. All I think I
need to do is demonstrate that Tehom is a proper name and, taken
literally, it means "one of two Babylonian god present at the beginning
of time". As that doesn't appear to be what the author of this passage
intended, I'll conclude that the author did not intend a literal reading.

Here are two examples to confuse things further.

If I needed to translate "The Poseidon Adventure" into Chinese, I might
choose to change it to the Chinese equivalent of "The Ocean Adventure".
That's not an exact translation -- "Poseidon" tarts up the title a bit,
and we're losing that. A Chinese scholar who wanted to get a deep
understanding of the title couldn't rely on "ocean"; she'd have to go
back to "Poseidon" and then figure out what that terms means in our
culture.

If we instead need to translate "True Love and Chaos", then the Chinese
equivalent of "confusion" will probably do just fine. Chaos was a Greek
god too, but that association has almost vanished.

So, we have two words that originally started off as the names of Greek
gods. A literal interpretation of "Poseidon" will preserve that sense.
A literal interpretation of "chaos" probably shouldn't. Where does Tehom
fall in relation to these two?

Again, from wikipedia:

<q>
In the bible [Tehom] is treated as proper name, always being used without
a definite article.
</q>

And that's why I think a literal interpretation has to drag in the
Babylonian pantheon. I think such an interpretation weakens the text.

David Tsumura's _The Earth and the waters in Genesis 1 and 2 : a
linguistic investigation_ is in the library. I'll see if I can pick it
up tomorrow.

.

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