21st Century Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 2:21, more on trop

Genesis 2:21

 

כא ווַיַּפֵּל֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֧ים ׀ תַּרְדֵּמָ֛ה עַל־הָֽאָדָ֖ם וַיִּישָׁ֑ן וַיִּקַּ֗ח אַחַת֙ מִצַּלְעֹתָ֔יו וַיִּסְגֹּ֥ר בָּשָׂ֖ר תַּחְתֶּֽנָּה:

 

Translation:     **** Gd caused a sleep to fall on the man, he slept; He took one of his ribs, He closed the flesh below it.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

יַּפֵּל	He caused to fall
תַּרְדֵּמָה	Sleep, trance
יִּישָׁן	He slept
צַּלְעֹתָיו	His ribs
יִּסְגֹּר	He closed
בָּשָׂר	Flesh, meat
תַּחְתֶּנָּה	Below them

 

“He caused to fall” is the hifil of nafal, to fall, a peh nun verb. As you can see, like many verbs with nun at the start of the root, the nun disappears in the imperfect and the middle consonant takes the dagesh of assimilation.

 

Tardemah is not a common word in the Hebrew Bible. The next chance you have of seeing it is in Genesis 15:12 in the episode about what Jews call The Covenant Between the Pieces. 

 

“Below them” uses a personal ending with the preposition tachat which is part of an urban legend I discuss to death on the Fact-Checking page.

 

This verse has caused an urban legend that men have one rib less than women do. It’s not true.  We all have 12 pairs.

 

Find the zaqef. Which one is it?

 

Now find the revia. It marks a verb in narrative past, creating a new clause. Right before it there’s a word marked with etnach. Where did we see that before?

Right, last lesson. The zg was on one word, and the word before that was marked with etnach.

Revia and zg only mark one word. Or rather one lexical unit. When I get the opportunity to point out the difference, I will.

Fact-Checking the Torah -- "contradictions"

I want you to know that there are source critics who complain about the contradictions in Greek myth. In The Republic, Plato specifically targeted Homer and Hesiod for saying inconsistent things about the origin of the universe and the attributes and activities of the gods.

[Scratchy needle] What’s wrong with this picture?

Homer and Hesiod get credit for recording two oral traditions. Plato is firmly seated in literate classical Greece a century or two later.

The two oral traditions I’m talking about both draw on material from Anatolia, one back in the 3000s or something BCE, the other incorporating a historical event from about 1190 BCE. There is absolutely no reason why they have to say the same things. But Plato didn’t have the background to know that. He died more than 24 centuries ago.

I have a copy of a book I read for the first time when I was 4, D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths. There’s a “family tree” of the named characters. If you read the stories carefully, some people don’t seem to have been born at the time when they were supposedly active. Others are dead.

That evaluation assumes that they were part of a saga or were composed in a literate environment. Agamemnon himself was part of the first writing-dependent culture in Greece. Stories that lead up to his lifetime, especially those which Hesiod recorded after Agamemnon’s death, developed in an oral environment. The fact that they are chronologically inconsistent suggests that they were not developed as part of a saga, but independently. And even if that’s not true, you now know that there is absolutely no requirement that oral narratives obey realtime.

Some Greek myths also use different locations with the same story. Deucalion and Pyrrha, the flood survivors, are said to have landed at four different sites. Each site is important in Greek culture, but each has a different reason for being important. Greek culture is woven from multiple ethnic groups – even the earliest Greek writers admitted that. It’s perfectly reasonable for each group to lay claim to this important landing taking place on its own turf.

Contradictions don’t invalidate the worth of oral narratives to the culture that transmits them.

Back to the “contradictions” in Torah. The most-cited one seems to be the two lists of animals in the flood story. Anybody who sees these lists as contradictions has not done a complete analysis of the story (failing the test of Occam’s Razor). At the end of the flood, Noach makes a sacrifice. What does he sacrifice?

Well, it’s a reach nichoach l’****. Every time this phrase appears in Torah –it also shows up in Yehezqel – it means a sacrifice appropriate to Gd. What is appropriate for a sacrifice to Gd? A tahor animal. Follow me now.

If Noach had taken only one pair of every animal and bird into the ark, then when he made his sacrifice, he must sacrifice the male. But if the female is not pregnant, that ends that species forever. The audience knows first-hand that the tahor animals exist “to this day”. So something else had to happen.

Noach had to take enough tahor animals so that his sacrifice would not end the species. It’s no surprise that the actual number of pairs is seven, Olrik’s Magic Number for religion.

This issue of the pregnant female animal is raised in a different way in Jewish midrash.

This is another example that DH is a product of literate people who failed in fact and in logic at every turn. Apparently practical data like survival of the species played no role in their conclusions. If you were hanging on to contradictions as a last support for DH, you are now hanging in the air with no net.

So now back to my sheep.

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 2:20, lamed alef verbs

Genesis 2:20

 

כ וַיִּקְרָ֨א הָֽאָדָ֜ם שֵׁמ֗וֹת לְכָל־הַבְּהֵמָה֙ וּלְע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וּלְכֹ֖ל חַיַּ֣ת הַשָּׂדֶ֑ה וּלְאָדָ֕ם לֹֽא־מָצָ֥א עֵ֖זֶר כְּנֶגְדּֽוֹ:

 

Translation:     The man gave names to all the domestic animals and the flyer of the sky, and all the wild animals; but for the man -- no help opposite him did he find.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

מָצָא

He found

 

See the conjugation of yatsa.  Matsa is identical, except in the imperfect, because yatsa has that yod at the start which disappears in the imperfect, while matsa has a mem which never disappears. This is more like bara except that it doesn’t have that weird central resh.

 

Imperfect

 

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
אֶמְצָא	נִמְצָא	First
תִּמְצָא	תִּמְצָאוּ	Second/masculine
תִּמְצְאִי	תִּמְצֶאנָה	Second/feminine
יִמְצָא	יִמְצְאוּ	Third/masculine
תִּמְצָא	תְּמְצֶאנָה	Third/feminine

 

Notice that this is NOT the same word as matsoh, the unleavened bread of Passover.  Matsoh ends with a heh, not an alef.

 

We have the opportunity here, so let me point out something from the Mechon Mamre site on trop. You see the zaqef qatan and the zaqef gadol in this verse. They are both disjunctive. Well, right before the zaqef gadol, there’s an etnach.

 

The “zg” only ever and always marks a single word. But before the “zq”, there’s a phrase and before that there’s a revia.

 

We’ll see this again if we get the chance to compare two other trop, but I might have to do a special lesson on that because one of them is extremely rare. I don’t think there’s been one so far but I have been paying attention to other things.

Fact-Checking the Torah -- a new fallacy?

You’re reading this because you want to know what to do now that your favorite urban legends, as well as those of other people, have been discredited by facts or logic.

One is that you could cry interpretationism. That’s a fallacy which says you don’t have to take my same fundamental positions and therefore you don’t have to agree with me that the way to interpret Torah is as the basis of Jewish law and culture.

You’re right. But interpretationism cuts both ways. I’ve been in online or other conversations where the other party expects me to agree with them, no matter what they say to bolster their claims. One tried calling names because what convinced him (commentaries based on bad translations) didn’t convince me.

But of course, that’s not you. You wouldn’t call names.

Interpretationism comes from the field of criticism, mostly the field of art criticism. It says the critic doesn’t have to take into account the artist’s upbringing or lifestyle at the time a work was created, in writing a critique.

That means the critique wholly relies on the critic’s point of view.

So what? They have freedom of speech.

Of course they do. What they don’t have is freedom of belief – my belief. They’re not entitled to shape my opinion if they rely on outdated information, commentaries or bad translations.

In fact Joel Baden of Yale is taking DH into the field of art criticism, but with a difference.

First, Baden assumes the four documents. That’s not exactly starting from scratch, and you now know that the concept is false in a number of ways.

Second, as Susan Niditch points out, Baden preserves a Grafian isolation (my phrase, not hers) about which I’ll say more a few posts from now.

Third, Baden retains the redactor, which DH only needed because of its presumption of the four documents.

Fourth, Baden holds that some parts of Torah contradict others. A-ha! You say.  You never talked about what DH definitely calls contradictions.

No more I did. That’s for next week.

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- "bring"

Genesis 2:19

 

יט וַיִּ֩צֶר֩ יְהֹוָ֨ה אֱלֹהִ֜ים מִן־הָֽאֲדָמָ֗ה כָּל־חַיַּ֤ת הַשָּׂדֶה֙ וְאֵת֙ כָּל־ע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וַיָּבֵא֙ אֶל־הָ֣אָדָ֔ם לִרְא֖וֹת מַה־יִּקְרָא־ל֑וֹ וְכֹל֩ אֲשֶׁ֨ר יִקְרָא־ל֧וֹ הָֽאָדָ֛ם נֶ֥פֶשׁ חַיָּ֖ה ה֥וּא שְׁמֽוֹ:

 

Translation:     **** Gd formed from the earth every wild animal and all flyers of the sky, He brought [them] to the man for the  purpose of seeing what he would call them; all that the man called them, a living soul, that was its name.

 

This is the hifil.  MEMORIZE IT, it is one of the top 30 verbs and means “bring”.

The aspectless verbs are

הָבִיא

הָבֵא

Progressive

 

Singular	Plural	Gender
מֵבִיא	מְבִיאִים	Masculine
מְבִיאָה	מְבִיאוֹת	Feminine

 

Perfect

 

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
הֵבֵאתִי	הֵבֵאנוּ	First
הֵבֵאתָ	הֵבֵאתֶם	Second/masculine
הֵבֵאתְ	הֵבֵאתֶן	Second/feminine
הֵבִיא	הֵבִיאוּ	Third/masculine
הֵבִיאָה		Third/feminine

 

Imperfect

 

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
אָבִיא	נָבִיא	First
תָּבִיא	תָּבִיאוּ	Second/masculine
תָּבִיאִי	תָּבֶאנָה	Second/feminine
יָבִיא	יָבִיאוּ	Third/masculine
תָּבִיא	תָּבֶאנָה	Third/feminine

 

Now that you’ve seen this conjugation, notice that va-yave looks more like a version of the aspectless form than the imperfect. It shows up 50 times in all of Tannakh, 18 of which are in Torah. A feminine form shows up 3 times, none of which are in Torah. I’m not sure what it is, unless it’s the lamed alef form of the narrative necessity. I mean, you have to admit, if Gd had not caused Adam and Chavvah to meet, a whole lot of history wouldn’t have happened.

DIY -- dryer balls

I know some of you are laughing. When you're done, keep reading

I forget where I heard of these, but I found a website selling them and bought a box of half a dozen for less than $13.

A couple days later I sprinkled essential oil of sweet orange on two of them and threw them in the dryer with six bathsheets.

The towels came out terrific, just as soft as with those dryer sheets full of chemicals. IIRC, if you use more balls, things get softer.

I had actually washed another 4 bath towels and nine kitchen towels, and those went in the next load.

This is a DIY post because there are instructions on the web to make your own. You start with all-wool fingering weight yarn, which means dryer balls don't shed plastic that gets into the ocean.

You wind them up, put them into pantyhose to keep them from unwinding, and put them through a hot cycle in the washer. This makes the wool hackle together; you're basically turning the balls into felt.

But I don't have any pantyhose so I bought my balls.

The next question is do they pay for themselves. They cost about 2/3 the price of a 250 count box of Bounce. You'd have to do more than 300 dryer loads for the dryer balls to be cheaper than the Bounce. The dryer balls would have to last at least six years at one load per week.

If you're just starting out with your first place, or you have to do more than one load a week, or you can't put up an umbrella clothesline like the one I have, they probably would pay for themselves. Because of the clothesline, I don't always use my dryer.

But you can customize the fragrance of your fresh-dried laundry by using different essential oils with your dryer balls -- lavender, bergamot, cedar, davana, frankincense, myrrh, geranium, neroli, patchouli, rose, ravensara, sandalwood, vetiver, and ylang ylang are all available. Some of them are pretty expensive, but it only takes half a dozen drops to scent your balls.

You can resume laughing.

Fact-Checking the Torah -- equal treatment

You should have a big question after my last post. I pointed to drift in material in Samaritan Pentateuch as a sign of a languishing tradition. Why isn’t the position of the slander stories the same thing?

As usual, I have several answers for that.

First, focusing on the slander stories would be cherry-picking, a form of sampling bias, which is a fallacy. I gave two other issues that identify Samaritan Pentateuch as a languishing tradition. It’s also important for you to know that Samaritan Pentateuch has the slander narratives in the same place and sequence as Jewish Torah. The Samaritan Pentateuch continued languishing after the narratives came to rest in their current position.

Second, when was the last time you read Numbers 21? Go ahead. Read it. I’ll be here when you come back.

Numbers 21:14-20 is a classic survival in Olrik’s terms. If I had that time machine I keep asking you for, I could go back to 1628 BCE and move back and forth between then and 597 BCE. I could catch the narrative in its fullest form, and then watch it languish to these few verses. I never said there was no languishing material in Jewish Torah and in Narrating I point out other examples as they come up.

Finally, we have the same issue I discussed more than a year ago about the similarities between Talmud and Jewish Torah that identify both as oral traditions.  Originally, Talmud was transmitted only by word of mouth, except for notes as prompts for memory. It was eventually all written down to keep it from being forgotten.

When the Jews in Babylonia stopped speaking Biblical Hebrew as their vernacular, it is natural to think that their children began to have trouble remembering Torah – and all the rest of the oral tradition. The Jewish authorities no doubt started writing the material down from their own memories, helped out by elders who still spoke the mame loshn of their youth. There’s no doubt that some of the narratives languished over the millennium before the captivity. It’s how the human mind works. What did make it into writing, became the “scroll of Mosheh” that Ezra had when he brought the Babylonian Jews back to the Holy Land.

So once again, similar situations involve similar processes and have similar outcomes. And we have the external evidence in Samaritan Pentateuch of a waystation in the tradition, a point of departure, which is identical in both daughter traditions, one of which languished in more extreme ways afterwards.

So what is going on with DH in the 21st century?