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Ancient Aramaic Translation of the Eastern Peshitta
#16
ZechariahBY Wrote:Steve, did he ever state that it was lingustics [sic]?

When we're talking about translation, we're dealing with linguistics. <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile -->

ZechariahBY Wrote:I guess then by your reasoning the whole body of literature within Kabbalistic texts that uses these methods as well is pseudoscience? I mean the whole basis for the Sefirot are based on this type of reasoning looking at aramaic rewordings of the roots of words.

Mysticism, by its very definition, is unscientific. It's not falsifiable. It's not predicative. That's not its purpose.

Who claims otherwise?

ZechariahBY Wrote:I would just say that within Judaism it is expected that there are multiple levels of interpretation, this doesn't disqualify the syntactical work that people have done on the "Pashat" level, but we need to understand that this is a different level of hermeneutic and it shouldn't be disqualified simply because it doesn't fit into a western academic scholarly paradigm, both have merit, and both can serve understanding the meaning of the text.

For railing against the "western academic scholarly paradigm" you don't seem to get it. For one, academia is interested in all layers of pardes, but within the deeper levels more interested in their practice as a phenomenon as their premise is experiential.

Academics aside, an hermeneutic that does nothing useful, other than connect random dots with translucent lines to make a big scribble in the middle is without merit or worth. A useful hermeneutic can make relevant sense of a picture that is otherwise obscured, connecting the dots into a bigger image. But enough about theology.

This proposal here is just as tenuous as the John-Kennedy-Abraham-Lincoln "coincidences" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln?Ken...ban_legend) or so-called Ley Lines (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_line). It's plagued with confirmation bias and ignores (or liberally shoehorns) counter-examples.

ZechariahBY Wrote:As we say in Judaism. "Shivim Pnnim L'Torah" The Torah has 70 faces!

Yes, but as a dear rabbi once told me as a corollary to that, "Beware those who wish to 'sod' it all." (Not that I think that this is an example of that.) <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile -->

Peace,
-Steve
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#17
I really like the edenics site also and submitted some words.

Really good stuff.
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#18
Steve,


You are creating an "either/or" interpretation of what I said, and not realizing it is a "both/and" paradigm.

You seem to be jumping to conclusions about his work, because it doesn't fit in to your a priori definitions. It is not your place to judge unfinished work simply because it exists outside of your own categories. Many commentators like the Sfas Emes and others have no problems looking at the text the way that he is. The reason that he isn't translating according to "Linquistics." is because Linguistics is a discipline of study within academia, not a jewish study hermeneutic. He is following the ladder, the former has mores and aspects of study that are determined within that field. Noam Chomsky doesn't have any Sod based Torah commentaries, to my knowledge. <!-- sWink --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/wink1.gif" alt="Wink" title="Wink" /><!-- sWink -->

That being said, I have studied the Ta'amei HaMikra and know that the Masorites followed very strict linguistic rules, but the way those are subdivided by them and the approach that modern academia takes are quite different approaches. They are systems of study that have different seed beds.


"Mysticism, by its very definition, is unscientific. It's not falsifiable. It's not predicative. That's not its purpose.

Who claims otherwise?"


Actually much of the Kabbalistic tradition sees strong connection points between science and Kabbalah. Jewish mysticism isn't trying to just be otherworldly, but actually bring heaven down to earth and understand that this process happens at increasingly hightend levels that are inclusive with human knowledge and the truth of existence. The mystery part happens when we approach the infinite levels of who G-d is, then our knowledge weather mystical or empirical diminishingly becomes musings of a human mind and soul which isn't at a level yet that can comprehend. Rav Kook actually saw it this way. There is an entire book on it, written about his philosophy, called "Between Rationalism and Mysticism."



"For railing against the "western academic scholarly paradigm" you don't seem to get it. For one, academia is interested in all layers of pardes, but within the deeper levels more interested in their practice as a phenomenon as their premise is experiential."



You also seem to confuse my contrasting western academic study with Jewish thought to mean that I am anti academic. I am not, in fact I hold an undergraduate degree in Spanish and have taken linguistics classes myself, I see a ton of value in academic and higher critical studies, but also see huge mental gaps in the fields and with the scholars. I think that higher critical studies takes a different approach at times and isn't as inclusive as you suggest. Academics for the most part don't really study PARDES unless they are Jewish academics. I know several academics who think the Talmud is a redacted document and don't consider it an academic source. Due to the Documentary Hypothesis, most in higher critical studies don't even see the Torah as having been written by Moshe and therefore studying other layers of the text according to rabbinic hermeneutics don't really apply. How many scholars do you know who use the Middot of Hillel who aren't jewish?...very few. One could even look at the Anti-semitism within the Jesus Seminar. Another good example might be that several academics believe the Synagogue system developed post 70 C.E. I even heard the head of Jewish studies at KU suggest this theory, and he actually excavates synagogues in Israel! Not only does this theory fly in the face of the book of Ezra, Nehemia and the New Testament, but also Jewish tradition. Also many of the other discoveries being made at Migdal prove this theory to actually be pretty flawed. There is a tendency in much of higher critical studies to not even study in house sources on subjects as reliable history. What we are talking about it not a mutually inclusive view of the Academy and Textual / Religion, but a mutually exclusive one mostly created by many within academia. Again I am not against being academic but it looks different in a Jewish setting than a non Jewish one.

So let me be clear, I think because of the higher critical studies of 19th Century created a thought process that was "empirical" in some cases it created Anti-semitic ways of approaching academia. Most notably the Tubingen school exhibited much of this thought during this time period and leading into WWII. This evolved into people seeing Jesus and his followers as a bunch of illiterate Jews who didn't speak Hebrew or Aramaic, but really were somehow a grassroots backwater religious system. We know this isn't the case, but much of these thoughts are still taught within academia today and even seminaries! I think having academic acumen is great, but to be honest I trust Jewish academia on these subjects more because there is a lot more open-ness to actually include the tradition, because we understand that Language is an oral tradition. therefore we know tradition isn't just to be disregarded as un-imperical.


"Academics aside, an hermeneutic that does nothing useful, other than connect random dots with translucent lines to make a big scribble in the middle is without merit or worth. A useful hermeneutic can make relevant sense of a picture that is otherwise obscured, connecting the dots into a bigger image. But enough about theology."

Steve, who are you as a linguist, not a Rabbi, Pastor, theology professor, or anybody who spiritually leads people, who teaches as a biblical scholar, qualified to decide what is useful? You study the construct of language not the human soul. You may be a fantastic linguist, but you are not the judge of what is useful or could impact somebody's life especially when it is based on a valid method of exegesis within Jewish tradition. It is ok to maybe question gregoroyfi's findings and tweak his work, which would be like iron sharpening iron. I don't think it is ok to totally disqualify the large amounts of time and work he has put in especially when his basis has merit. Even if he were wrong on a few points you could lovingly point it out to him, not tell him what he is doing it worthless. It seems unfair to do so.
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#19
Zechariah,

Let's get down to the practical benefits of this type of work.

Have you done any study of Gregory's work to date? And if so, can you give me one or two of the best examples where this type of work has brought forth a better clarity or more correct rendering of something said or taught in the Scriptures, where without this type work it would have been left obscure, or without the right meaning in your estimation, as given in the standard translations?

Just one or two examples will do, thanks.
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#20
Shlama Thirdwoe,

I know you asked Zechariah, but if you wish, I can provide some examples of what I believe to be at least helpful. My work is not in any way a claim to superiority, like so many others. Nor is it even an attempt at more clarity. It is a translation attempting to show the common concrete action meanings that all root words have in common. Most translations are attempts at taking what the Hebrew or Aramaic said, and rendering it in a way we today can understand; taking the ancient way of thinking and bringing it into today's way of thinking for us to understand.

Steve showed this when he wrote about the word nacham in Hebrew. He mentioned that it means 'comfort', and I definitely agree with that, for that is what we understand it to mean today. Translations of that Hebrew word will reflect what the word means to us today.

My translation attempts to take our minds back to the way the ancients might have thought, what it would have meant to them back then. Using that same example, nacham, according to its concrete meaning, is said to mean, according to Strongs, 'properly, to sigh', also according to the Theological Workbook of the Old Testament, 'The origin of the root seems to reflect the idea of "breathing deeply," and according to Gesenius, 'properly, onomatopoet. to draw the breath forcibly, to pant, to groan'.

The letters I believe help define these meanings, and so in my translation I render this word as 'sigh', which happens to capture the action one does whether in a positive way, as a sigh of relief, and refreshment, or in a negative way, as a sigh of regret. In English one would see the words 'Comfort' and 'Regret' and see them as having nothing to do with each other. In Hebrew though, they are the same word.

Another interesting example (to me) is the word for 'Mother', aleph,mem. If one were to read all of the occurrences of this word in an English translation, there would be one instance no one would be able to find. It is found in Ezekiel 21:21

For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he made his arrows bright, he consulted with images, he looked in the liver.

The word 'parting' is the only time this word is translated this way. Why? Because to translate it as 'mother of the way', would not make sense to us today. However, it did back then, for the word 'Mother' in Hebrew expresses the action where one branches off into more than one. My translation will reflect that, attempting to put the mind of the reader back into the ancient way of thinking...again, not as something to be thought of as superior, but as a tool for getting into the mindset of the ancient peoples.

Here is an explanation given by Edward Horowitz in his book 'How the Hebrew Language Grew', that gives the premise I am building upon:

How Two Letters Become Three

ROOTS WERE PROBABLY,
ORIGINALLY TWO LETTERED


...Scholars are fairly convinced that back of these three lettered roots lie old primitive two-lettered syllables. These two-lettered syllables represent some simple primitive action or thing. It does seem quite clear that there existed a bi-literal or two-letter base for many, if not most, of our three lettered roots. However, this can never be proven absolutely in all finality because the original Semitic language is lost beyond all recovery...


TWO LETTERED ROOTS
BECOME THREE LETTERED


The small number of two-lettered syllables began to be highly inadequate. In order to obtain additional words they would add a third letter to the primitive two-lettered root, by this means creating new words. This new word would generally have a sharper, more specialized sense that the primitive root. We are not sure exactly how this process was carried on, because it took place so very long ago in prehistoric times.

All this sounds like mere words; let us now get down to examples and to making ourselves very clear.

A simple illustration of the transformation from two to three-lettered roots is to be found in the group of words that have gimel-zayin as the first two letters. All of this group had the fundamental meaning of cutting with, of course, different shades of meaning. It is easy to see clearly how they are related, and in all likelihood, they were developed from the primitive two-lettered root, gimel-zayin.

Here is the list:


gimel,waw,zayin cut
gimel,zayin,resh cut, also - with metathesis gimel,resh,zayin, the root of gimel,resh,zayin,nun -axe
gimel,zayin,ayin cut
gimel,zayin,zayin to shear (sheep)
gimel,zayin,hey cut
gimel,zayin,mem a locust, one who eats the produce and thus effectively cuts it from the field.
gimel,zayin,lamed rob, to violently tear something away from somebody.


Each of the words in turn gave rise to many other words. For example from gimel,zayin,resh -cut we have mem,gimel,zayin,resh,hey -an ax, gimel,zayin,resh,hey -a decree. From gimel,zayin,ayin we have gimel,zayin,ayin -the stock of a tree; what's left after all the branches have been cut off. From gimel,zayin,zayin -shear, we have gimel,zayin,hey -sheared wool. gimel,zayin,hey is the root of gimel,zayin,yod,taw which means ?hewn stones?. From gimel,zayin,lamed we have gimel,zayin,lamed,hey -robbery.

Do not be surprised if so many of these comparatively few two-lettered roots mean to cut, to split, to slit, or slice. AFTER ALL, EVERYTHING THAT PRIMITIVE MAN DID IN THE WAY OF MAKING A LIVING FOR HIMSELF AND HIS FAMILY IN SOME WAY OR OTHER INVOLVED A CUTTING ACTION, whether it was wounding animals, felling trees, digging into the earth to plow or to find water, fighting his enemies, or dividing the prey that he brought home. The word ?cut? in the Kaufman ?English-Hebrew Dictionary? has over a hundred Hebrew translations, and actually there are even more...


In my translation, I am doing this very thing, with the exception of keeping every two letter root (what I call a marriage root) having its own distinct word. Every word with the gimel,zayin root I render as some form of shearing. Every word with the pey,resh root I render as some form of separating. Every word with the bet,resh root I render as some form of hewing. Every form of the gimel,dalet root I render as some form of slicing. Every form of the tsade,qof root I render as some form of constricting. These are just a sampling of the hundreds in my database. When it is all finished, I hope to have every word linked to the common everyday actions they might have been derived from.

As Zechariah mentioned, if anyone has any suggestions as to word definitions, or how to make this as user friendly as possible, I definitely welcome them.

Ronen
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#21
ZechariahBY Wrote:because it doesn't fit in to your a priori definitions.

We'll get back to this in a sec. <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile -->

ZechariahBY Wrote:That being said, I have studied the Ta'amei HaMikra and know that the Masorites[sic.] followed very strict linguistic rules, but the way those are subdivided by them and the approach that modern academia takes are quite different approaches. They are systems of study that have different seed beds.

The flaws of the Masoretes are, today, well understood. Simply because some portions of methodology are superficially similar ("different seed beds") this does not mean that they are actually covalent.

ZechariahBY Wrote:Actually much of the Kabbalistic tradition sees strong connection points between science and Kabbalah.

Yes some say they see a connection, but this does not demonstrate one. Theology and philosophy are not sciences by their very nature.

ZechariahBY Wrote:You also seem to confuse my contrasting western academic study with Jewish thought to mean that I am anti academic. I am not, in fact I hold an undergraduate degree in Spanish and have taken linguistics classes myself, [...snip...]

This entire paragraph is a nice apologetic, but it does not actually express any evidence for your argument.

In fact it's actually a very good example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, especially with how you characterize things ("I see a ton of value in academic and higher critical studies, but also see huge mental gaps in the fields and with the scholars"). <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile -->

At this stage in your learning, I will not be able to change your mind -- so I will not try.

ZechariahBY Wrote:Steve, who are you as a linguist, not a Rabbi, Pastor, theology professor, or anybody who spiritually leads people, who teaches as a biblical scholar, qualified to decide what is useful?

And here's the place where we re-visit a priori assumptions. Specifically wrong ones about me. <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile -->

Peace,
-Steve
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#22
Quote:What I wish to show is how various words in Hebrew are related by their roots, and how each of the words meanings are related in some way to our senses of sight, taste, smell, touch, and hearing. ? Ronen

Languages were to an extent defined by synaesthetes ? people whose brains are connected such that seeing a colour or feeling something triggers activity in parts of the brain that handle speech.

For example, when I see the colour yellow, I feel like speaking the sound [e turned upside down]. When I see red, I feel like someone just said [o]. As a result, I was born with my own language, which sometimes coincides with Hebrew but usually not. One synaesthete does not have the same connections as another, so we should expect a whole lot of inconsistency in the way Hebrew relates sight, taste, smell and touch with its various two-letter roots, also because it has loanwords.

Quote:My work is not in any way a claim to superiority, like so many others. Nor is it even an attempt at more clarity. ? Ronen

Having your work accepted as scientific by people with good reputation would make it useful for a wider readership. Scientific method is a quality standard that forces us to produce something useful and prevents us from authoring something harmful. Here, you have spent a whole lot of time creating an impressive work that, perhaps, you would be happy if someone actually read and benefitted from reading. It is like trying to sell a car that looks like a new Volvo, Mercedes, Lexus or whatever and saying: "My car is not in any way a claim to superiority, like so many others. Nor is it even an attempt at road safety or efficient transport."

If I may state a wish-list:
<!-- s:whatthat: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/whatsthat.gif" alt=":whatthat:" title="Whats That" /><!-- s:whatthat: --> By means of the design of your publication, keep reminding the reader that the roots is only one piece of the puzzle to understand the meaning of the text, for example by making a trilinear of 1) Hebrew text with the given two-letter-root in bold, 2) meaning of the root, 3) translation which aims to represent the true meaning of the text.
<!-- s:lookround: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/lookround.gif" alt=":lookround:" title="Look Round" /><!-- s:lookround: --> Document all choices that contradict your stated method and supply references to works that influenced your decision.
<!-- sSad --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/sad.gif" alt="Sad" title="Sad" /><!-- sSad --> If your explanation is far-fetched, it is better to accept that some words cannot be explained based on two-letter roots. Omitting unreasonable transrootions would give your work more credibility and avoid many crazy misunderstandings.
<!-- sConfusedigh: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/sigh.gif" alt="Confusedigh:" title="Sigh" /><!-- sConfusedigh: --> Try to not rely on edenics.

I love to hear about new one-man-translations of the bible and I pray that you will be successful!
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#23
Thank you for your thoughts Sestir.

Quote:My work is not in any way a claim to superiority, like so many others. Nor is it even an attempt at more clarity. ? Ronen

I probably did not word that as I intended. I just am trying to say that I know that what I am producing will not be easily understood until those who read it get used to the framework.

I plan on making use of some of your suggestions, for example, when I start producing a teaching series where I teach the principles as we work through the Tanach word by word, I will be sharing other's ideas on word meanings, at least to a certain extent.

As far as it being accepted, I can only say that if I can duplicate similar concrete meanings behind words containing the same root, again and again, it will be less and less a farfetched idea. I know of others who have done similar work with some words, but I am not aware of anyone that has attempted to do so with every single word in the Tanach and Peshitta.

There are words that I have not seen (yet) any connection to other words sharing the same root, and so for now, those words I have rendered in a traditional way with an ~, to indicate that I currently have not seen a connection, and further study is needed.
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