The "Original Language" of The Hebrew Scriptures

I'm working on a journal article that examines the historic sound shifts in languages and the implications on ancient genealogies. More on that anon, but for now I'll examine the implications for the concept of the "original languages of scripture."

Leaving aside the New Testament, for which manuscript evidence is overwhelming, I focus here on the Old Testament, known as the Hebrew Scriptures. Our oldest copies of the entire OT date to the 10th century or so, meaning that they are many centuries removed from the time Hebrew was last used as a living language. The Dead Sea Scrolls evince a different script, but essentially the same vocabulary from a millennium earlier. Although some books (such as Job) do contain some words that are considered more archaic then what is in other books, nevertheless the 39 (officially 22) books of the OT--excepting the few Aramaic quotations, phrases, and names--are all in the language we now call Biblical Hebrew.

Is this possible? Can a series of books put into writing over a period of several thousand years all be in the same language?

The rationalistic answer is clearly No. All living languages change, and the Hebrew spoken by Ezra must have differed markedly  from the Hebrew spoken by Abraham. So different, in fact, that they would today be considered totally different languages, akin to the difference between the modern languages spoken by Abraham's descendants--the Jews and Arabs.

But what if the OT was written in a classical Hebrew that originated with Moses? No, even classical languages change. Latin evolved even after it ceased to be a spoken language, going through Late Latin and Medieval Latin stages, until we now have the Latin that forms the base for the International Scientific Vocabulary. Take Arabic, for instance. The Qur'an was put in writing some 1400 years ago, and is still the basis for written Arabic. Yet nowhere in the Qur'an will one find the common Arabic word for language: lughah (from the Latin lingua, 'tongue'). This, along with other classical Arabic words that form important primitive roots in that language (like jins, from genus), is a word imported from Latin some two millennia ago. The original (Koranic) word lisan is not used in written Arabic any more than is its English counterpart tongue, except as the name of a body part. So languages continue to change in little ways, even if their original religious form is kept intact.

This is the sort of change we should find as we read the Hebrew Scriptures from Genesis and Job down through Chronicles and Nehemiah. But it isn't there. The implication is that Biblical Hebrew is NOT the original language of much of the OT. Some earlier form of or ancestor to Hebrew was, and of it now no trace remains. All we have left is a translation.

UPDATE July 2012:
The Scriptures themselves give hints at how language usage evolved over the centuries. Here are a few:

- "Shibboleth" had lost some of its aspiration by Judges chapter 12.
- "Seer" was falling out of use by 1 Samuel chapter  9.
- Some Hebrew words are only found in Chronicles, where they had replaced older words in parallel passages of Samuel and Kings.

Internal Evidence for The Pericope Adulterae

Zähler
This blog is, of course, about whatever interests me. My three favorite subjects, when closely examined, all have a common theme: Resurrecting the past. They are Genealogy, Ancient History, and Ancient Manuscripts. I haven't written on Genealogy here, and perhaps never will; My postings on that subject will be found in other forums. I've touched on Ancient History, and will no doubt go back to it; but today's blog is on Ancient Manuscripts.

I have come to this interest rather late in life, having not studied it seriously until middle age, when the advent of the Internet opened up to me the vast store of knowledge which could formerly be acquired only at great cost. Indeed, by an informed use of the Internet, I am able not only to keep abreast of the latest developments in the comparison and evaluation of ancient manuscripts (technically known as 'textual criticism'), but also to actually add my own contributions.

This is the case in the study before us today, which evaluates the assertion, now assumed to be valid by the majority and most eminent of textual critics, that:

The Pericope Adulterae (John 7:53-8:11), while demonstrably ancient, could not have been present in John's Gospel as he wrote it.

In defending this assertion, Bruce Metzger marshals both External (manuscript) and Internal (stylistic) evidence. Perhaps the best online compilation of external evidence (on the affirming side) is by Wieland Wilker, published here. He alludes to what will no doubt be the best compilation (from the dissenting side) as a work still in progress by Maurice A. Robinson. Unfortunately for the layman, Wilker leaves tantalizing portions of his textual commentary out of reach of anyone not proficient in both Latin and Koine Greek.

The best online compilation of internal evidence (from the dissenting side) is probably by Andrew W. Wilson, who devotes to the Pericope an entire chapter of his online book to The adulteress and her accusers. Inasmuch as he makes statements on intrinsic probability which stand at loggerheads to comments made by Wieland Wilker, I've chosen to devote this blog to comparing the two where their opinions divide.

The first question to be considered concerns Authorship. Here the assertion would be stated as follows:

Internal Considerations point to an author other than the Apostle John.

Wilson devastates this assertion with one telling blow after another, but in so doing he makes no specific refutations of any of the finer points of detail from the affirming side. For instance, Wilker shows Luke to be a possible author, both from external (e.g. nearly a dozen manuscripts place it in Luke's Gospel) and internal considerations (he cites a dozen 'Lucan' words or phrases). Wilson doesn't address these examples directly, but in a general way shows the external arguments to be dismissible, and the internal arguments to be specious. I will not directly address this assertion, but what follows should add a little to the discussion.

The internal question is very much related to the external one. Certainly when the same passages is found in so many different locations within the gospels (a total of 9 different places, with further complications considering the extent to which the entire Pericope is represented), the question arises as to what was its original location--if there was one--and why it didn't stay there. Wilson makes the case for the Pericope belonging right where it is still found in the overwhelming majority of manuscripts, where it is far better suited to the context, and its absence would be more keenly felt, then in any of the locations where it has been apparently inserted.

This argues for a scenario in which the Pericope was unique to John 7-8, but very early on in the transmission stream (certainly by the beginning of the 3rd century), it was dropped from the text of John's gospel in a growing number of manuscripts. Perhaps as early as 100 or so years later, it began to be re-inserted. The haphazard nature in which this was done indicates that the scribes of these later manuscripts were themselves in doubt as to its correct location; perhaps they were going by an independently circulating copy of the Pericope, or more likely (given the wide textual variation of the Pericope wherever it is located), from oral transmission.

The implications of this may at first be startling: over 300 Greek manuscripts--including all extant monolinguals prior to the 8th century--as well as all Italic, Bohairic, and Gothic manuscripts, along with a considerable number of manuscripts in Georgian, Armenian, Syriac, and Sahidic, are all guilty of a major omission.

But actually, what is startling to me is only that the patristic evidence for the Pericope predates the earliest manuscript evidence by two centuries. That says more to the quality of the oldest manuscripts than to that of the earliest fathers.

ALL of the earliest manuscripts exhibit excessive omission or transposition, so the absence of the Pericope in any one of them carries very little weight in my book. Its absence in all of them is significant, but it is not a foregone conclusion that such indicates that the Pericope could not have been in the original Gospel--any more than the apparent absence of KAINAM from Luke 3:36 in P75 leads to the foregone conclusion it is an early 3rd century addition to the text.

It is apparent that, as time went on, manuscripts became less erratic and more in tune with some standard. Whether that standard was an artifice of theological orthodoxy, or simply the closest to the original that could be determined at the time, is hard to prove. Suffice it to say that critical editions of the Scriptures date back nearly as far as the earliest manuscripts, and the critics of ancient times had access to considerably more--one could say dozens or even hundreds of times more--early manuscripts than we do today. And those who did, came to the overwhelming conclusion that the Pericope was canonical. The only confusion (exhibited in a small minority of even the earliest texts where it is found) was over where it belonged, and how exactly it should be worded.

UPDATE: I address this issue again in this post.

Some reflections on American hegemony from Revelation chapter 13

There are various ways people interpret the book of Revelation. One view, recently growing in popularity, holds that the book of Revelation contains no prophecies that we can look to for fulfillment, now or at any time in the future--at least, not in this life.

If this is your position, you won't find anything of value in what follows. If it isn't, read on. In either case, you can't say you weren't warned.

WHAT DOES REVELATION THIRTEEN BODE FOR AMERICA?

America is known as "the world's only superpower."
As an indication of this unique status, consider that The United States Department of Defense budget, just passed by Congress, is larger than the military budgets of all other countries in the world COMBINED. Thus it could be said of a militarily mobilized America (something the world has not seen in the lifetime of over 90% of its inhabitants), "Who is like America? Who is able to make war with America?"

But these words are not spoken of America in Revelation chapter thirteen. They are spoken of a nebulous kingdom, as anthropomorphically represented by the equally nebulous "Beast". Could this "Beast" be America?

I can't exclude the possibility that in the days to come, America will be at least a part of the Beast of Revelation. But I offer here the likelihood that "The Beast" is a kingdom exclusive of America, and the fact of its future invincibility bodes very ill for the future prosperity of what will obviously have to become the world's FORMER superpower, when Revelation chapter thirteen comes to fulfillment.

Note the following description of the world's coming superpower:

1. It arises from the Sea. The 'sea' in prophecy refers to the Gentile nations. Certainly America could meet this checkpoint, as like no other nation on earth it is a conglomeration of every nation under heaven. But the nations of Europe are rapidly losing their national characters as they themselves are being inundated with immigrants from the world over, even as America was in previous centuries.

2. It has seven heads and ten horns. Horns always represent monarchies in prophecy, and there has never been an American monarchy. However, there are presently TEN European monarchies, THREE of which lost power in the 20th century ( but two of them have since been restored to power). Now it sounds like the Beast could well be Europe.

3. The Beast is of composite character. Its makeup is symbolically represented by:
1) A Leopard.
2) A Bear.
3) A Lion.

Note how such a symbolism could not describe any empire today. The leopard is not a national symbol of any country, but if it were, it would have to be a country in Africa, the only place where the leopard is now native. The Bear primarily symbolizes Russia, which has never been part of a European empire. The Lion could symbolize any number of European countries which use it on their heraldic crests. But totally absent from this conglomeration is the Eagle (which IS part of a composite creature--not a kingdom--in chapter one), the national symbol of the United States (and, I might add, of Austria, on whose crest it appears as a double eagle).

Thus it appears that this superpower to come is larger than any Empire today. The Axis Empire, such as it was--stretching from the Arctic to the Southern Tropics, and holding sway over the North Atlantic and the Western Pacific--surely came close, but it fell before the mobilized might of a single nation, which went on to become the World's Only Superpower. Obviously, for an empire to attain this height of power, and hold it, the United States must either be subsumed into it, or first cease to exist as a military power.

4. It gets its initial power from Satan himself.
This could never be said of the United States. The Founding Fathers, even those who usually considered themselves Deists, could not deny that their country owed both its founding and continued existence to God's providence. Although they attempted to formulate its constitution in purely humanistic terms, the underlying assumption, as stated by the Fathers themselves, was that America could only be governed by the system they had set up if America held firm to its Godly foundations. And for over three hundred years there was no doubt that America was a christian nation. Not so for the new United States of Europe, where God is deliberately excluded from the Constitution, and all religious expression is equally discriminated against. There is already an Empire in the making of which it could not be said that God or Godliness had any part in its founding; and the United States is not a part of that empire in any way, nor does it appear that it ever will be.

5. It initiates a worldwide system of identification for the purpose of regulating commerce.
I mention "the mark of the beast" here because any time a new form of such identification is announced in the United States, officials are always quick to assure the American Public that "this is NOT 'the mark of the beast'." Such an announcement would hardly be necessary in today's secularized Europe. This bodes ill for the continuation of the underlying christian culture of America. In order for this new imperium to go into effect, Christianity will either be subsumed into the New World Order, or will first have been rendered politically powerless. This does not bode well in the long run for Christians who hope to change the world, or at least their own powerful nation, by getting involved in the political process.
* * * * * * *
So we can see that an Empire is coming that will displace America from its present position of hegemony, if it still has it by then.

There are numerous implications in this view:

1) The United Nations will no longer be headquartered in New York City, so far from the seat of its future power. Does this mean that they will leave quietly, abandoning their multi-billion dollar complex on the East River? More likely it means that New York City, already the repeated target of terrorist attacks, will be so effectively destroyed that the UN will be forced to seek a new home. This does not bode well in the long run for plans to rebuild the World Trade Center, or investments in the Financial Sector headquartered on Wall Street.

2) Investors following the philosophy of "always bet on the growth of America" have been right over the long term, but such a philosophy is doomed to fail if America itself loses its present position as a military, economic, and political superpower.

3) The repercussions of this happening will be staggering on a global scale. Without the stabilising influence of American hegemony, anarchy will break out everywhere. The emergence of a ruler who can provide security and prosperity--at the price of liberty--will be virtually inevitable, thus ensuring the rise of the Kingdom of the Beast.

By the way, America's doom is sealed by just one passage in Zechariah chapter twelve:

"For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city will be captured, the women ravished, and half the city exiled . . . . Then Yahowah will go forth and fight against those nations. . . . and Yahowah will be king over all the earth."

America, if it still then exists, will be one of those nations.

Interpretation of the Meggido Mosaic

A note to my readers (all 12 of you):

For quite some months after I started this blog it remained unknown to blogdom, but recently I've been picking up some hits. Perhaps this will motivate me to figure out how to post links, which so far I've been unable to do.
So I haven't been doing very well at documenting my quotes, one of which is referred to below. I'm moving this up from the comments section as it deserves a post of its own.
---------------------

Bouke Slofstra said...
Hi,

I guess this translation is from my website.
And I guess (shame on me) that I overlooked one detail: the khi-rho sign could be a Christ-sign (according to one source), but it could also be a centurio-sign,
see my updated website:
link

Best regards
Bouke Slofstra
--------------------
I did as Bouke suggested, and found his website as it exists on 20 Dec 2005 to be by far the most comprehensive on the Megiddo Mosaic (but not that I've checked any of the others recently). I'm inclined to favor the latter interpretation, but I wonder what evidence there might be from that era to favor the former.

We have to be careful in saying "X was found in C century, and not in B or D century, therefore it must not have existed in A century." Such maxims tend to become self-fulfilling when a find that might otherwise have proven to be the first of the A century to contain X was therefore assigned to Century C.

I'm no expert on ancient Greek abbreviations, but I do know my church history, and a centurion being named as a brother in Christ is pretty earth-shattering to some people's concepts of ante-Nicene ecclesiology, and worthy of a discussion all of its own.

I'm no expert on Koine grammar either, but the nomina sacra strike me as distinctly appositive. If anyone can show me evidence that the definite article on a proper noun can be assumed in English translation, I'd be glad to consider it. In my experience it always goes the other way, and the article is dropped in translation. OK, I guess you could say QEOS could be a common noun here, but that's the whole point; many names could be common nouns (some couldn't, because they were uninflected), and the article served to show that they weren't. In that case the translator usually inserts an indefinite article or pronoun, right?

I'm not enough of an expert on Theology to consider the ramifications of a Monophysite identification for the Megiddo congregation, but there are definite implications for Arianism. Arianism was not so much a denial of Christ's divinity as of his unity with the Father, which Monophysites took to the other extreme. An Arian could perhaps say "The god, Jesus Christ," but never "God--Jesus Christ." A Monophysite probably would, but so could a Trinitarian.
Again, remember I'm a historian, not a theologian, and I'm mostly limited in my understanding of Arian theology to what their opponents wrote about them.

I'll keep an eye on this situation as it develops, but I direct every body to Bouke's blog for the details.

UPDATE MAY 2013
Well, I certainly have more than 12 readers now (that was the number on my site-counter when I wrote this post--it now reads 41,120)! But I should give the links I now know how to insert:
My original article
My update, now superfluous
 Bouke's article

This is one of the best articles I've seen explaining the coming inflation crisis

Bernanke Confuses Depression Cure With Disease

Peter Schiff

An article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal discussed how self-proclaimed "Depression buff" Ben Bernanke claims understanding of how the Fed caused the Great Depression and precisely what he would do to prevent such a calamity from reoccurring under his tenure. Not only are his assertions naïve and egotistical, but flat-out absurd.

Though he claims to have studied The Great Depression in depth, Bernanke is completely clueless as to its actual cause. However, he is partially right about one thing: the Fed did help create the Depression, but for the opposite reasons Bernanke believes. The Fed-induced credit boom of the roaring 1920's laid the foundation for the inevitable bust that ushered in the Great Depression. Bernanke has mistaken the disease for the cure, and his antidote, were it ever administered, would prove to be economically fatal to the U.S. economy.

The mistake made by the Fed during the 1920's was expanding the supply of money and credit too rapidly. However, as increasing productivity prevented consumer prices from rising, the Fed was unconcerned about the inflation it was creating. Instead, the excess money and credit that spilled into financial and real estate markets caused asset prices to rise, which resulted in claims of a "new era" (sound familiar?). The bust of 1929 led to the Great Depression of the 1930's not as a result of Fed tightening, as Bernanke claims, but due to the misguided economic policies of the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations. By preventing market forces from efficiently correcting the imbalances created during the inflationary boom of the 1920's, the Federal Government turned what otherwise would have been a normal, though severe, cyclical recessionary bust, into what became known as The Great Depression.

During the 1920's the British pound, then the dominant world currency, was under pressure. In an effort to prevent British inflation from causing the pound to weaken against the dollar, Federal Reserve Chairman Benjamin Strong decided to increase inflation in the United States as well. By debasing the dollar along with the pound, their relative values could be maintained, thus preserving the illusion of pound stability. Through competitive devaluation, Great Britain exported its inflation to the United States, much the way the U.S. now exports its inflation to China and Japan.

However, the money and credit supplied by the Fed unexpectedly produced the speculative stock market bubble of the roaring 1920's. When Benjamin Strong died in office in 1928, his successor George Harrison (not of Beatle's fame) understood the problems and addressed them by correctly tightening monetary policy, reversing the inflationary expansion that occurred under Strong.

It is to this action which Bernanke objects and for which he blames the ensuing Great Depression. However, the problem was not that stock and real estate prices collapsed, but that they rose so much in the first place. It was not the mistakes of Harrison that caused the bust, but those of Strong that produced the false boom, making the subsequent bust necessary.

Had Harrison allowed the monetary expansion to continue, as Bernanke suggests he should have, the result would have been hyper-inflation, which would have produced even more dire economic consequences than did the bursting of the bubble. The problem is that Bernanke, like Harrison, will soon replace Greenspan, the modern version of Benjamin Strong (though a more accurate comparison may be to Montague Norman, the governor of the Bank of England during the 1920s.). However, unlike Harrison, Bernanke will likely make the wrong policy choice.

Ben Bernrnake believes that credit expansions need never end - that a boom can be prolonged indefinitely simply by printing enough money. The fact that the incoming Fed chairman believes such nonsense is similar to a cold-war president having believed he could win a nuclear war. However, Bernanke's finger will not be on the button, but on the printing press: and he seems itching to crank it up as he is convinced he will win the deflation war.

When asset prices are too high, credit out of line with savings, and consumption out of line with production, serious economic imbalances result. Curing those imbalances is a painful but essential process. In attempting to prevent the adjustments from taking place, Bernanke will do far more harm then good.

As a result of his confusion, Ben Bernanke wants to cure the disease by killing the patient. The best analogy is to a heroin addict continuously shooting-up to avoid the unpleasant reality of withdrawal. He may "succeed" but only by dying. In economic parlance, hyper-inflation is the monetary equivalent of a drug overdose, and Dr. Ben (Kevorkian) Bernake seems dead set on administering it.



December 8, 2005

Peter D. Schiff
President/Chief Global Strategist
Euro Pacific Capital, Inc.
www.europac.net