Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- Vocabulary Review VIII

Vocabulary review

לֹא	No, not
עֵינַיִם	eyes
פֶּן	lest
מִי	Who?
הִגִּיד	told
הֲ	Question marker prefix
כִּי	That, if, when, because
אָנֹכִי	I
שָׁמַעְתִּי	I heard
נִפְקְחוּ	Shall be opened
עֵינֵיכֶם	Your eyes
תַאֲוָה	Desire
נֶחְמָד	pleasant
לְהַשְׂכִּיל	To enlighten
תִגְּעוּ	touch
לְבִלְתִּי	Not to [do something]
עִמָּדִי	With me
יִּתְפְּרוּ	They sewed
עֲלֵה	Leaf
תְאֵנָה	Fig
חֲגֹרֹת	Girdles
קוֹל	Voice
מִתְהַלֵּךְ	Walking around
יִּתְחַבֵּא	He hid himself
אַיֶּכָּה	Where are
אִירָא	I was afraid
נָּחָשׁ	Serpent
עָרוּם	Wise, wily
הִשִּׁיאַנִי	Led me astray
אָרוּר	cursed
מִכָּל	Beyond every
גְּחֹנְךָ	Your belly
עָפָר	dust
שְׁנֵיהֶם	The two of them
עֲרוּמִּים	naked
יִתְבּשָׁשׁוּ	Were embarrassed

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Garden -- June

First, if you're tired of fresh green peas and snow peas, remember my post on freezing.

Second, if you planted beans, make sure you are watering at the proper time.  If you refuse to water in the morning, all the beer in the world won't keep the slugs from eating the tender sprouts.  Water deeply a couple or three times a week, before 8 a.m.

Third, you should be harvesting beets, turnips, parsnips.  The turnip leaves are probably rough and scratchy now, but the beet greens should be dark green with red veins.  Blanch and freeze leaves as well as roots.  Pickled turnips are popular at shwarma stands; try it -- you'll need a beet to make the turnips pink. 

Fourth, read Mike McGrath on pruning in June.  You have to do this NOW.  Doing it next month will destroy next year's flowers.  If you wait until August, you are at risk of stings like this poor woman.  But DON'T PRUNE anything that isn't on Mike's list. 

Finally DO plan next year's seed purchases because you will want to spend your money next month.  By September, the good stuff may be gone and you won't be able to buy in spring.  Not if you want a sustainable garden that will breed more plants like themselves in future.  The only thing you will be able to buy in spring are commercial hybrids and pre-grown sets.  Open-pollinated heirloom plants are cheaper and more hardy and have the old-fashioned flavor.  Planted in compost and watered correctly, they'll give you much more bang for your buck than industrial plants and seeds.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- The Digs

Now we turn to archaeology.  No doubt you have heard that archaeology either confirms the Bible or contradicts it.

That’s an urban legend.  Like most of the urban legends you already saw me bust, it’s based on quoting out of context.

The most important context with archaeology is something called provenance. Where was it found; what’s the date of the layer; how do we know?

The rest of the urban legends you know about archaeology can be solved by three more questions:  when was it discovered; when was it understood; who did the work?

Your favorite source for archaeology might be an author who wrote before the archaeologists made the discoveries that refute her.  The archaeologist has probably moved on, knowing that something new is always being discovered.  You believe the urban legend because you’re stuck with the old information.

Your favorite source might have used preliminary results that have been discredited through use of new tools.  This will come up more than once on this page.

Or, your favorite source might be mass media, which suffers from what I call Heinrich Schleimann-Indiana Jones syndrome.  Finds get popularized in the media, which has a terrible track record when it comes to understanding sciences like archaeology and religious texts like the Bible (what the media mostly knows is quotes out of context and urban legends).  The profit motive also plays a huge role.  With costs rising and revenues shrinking, media has to make spectacular claims to grab attention.  Next time you hear about some archaeological find that says something about the Bible, use your search engine to find the original report by the archaeologist.  You’ll find 99% of the time or more that what the report says isn’t what the media said. 

It’s also true that what we know about the Greeks nowadays gives an entirely different perspective on Troy than Schleimann’s claims.  That’s the march of information thing I talked about a little earlier.

So here’s how the archaeology postings will go.  I’ll discuss the find involved in the urban legend and give its provenance as far as I can find out what it is.  That includes not only the time period and political area that the find belongs to, but also when the archaeologists found it and when it was translated, if it was a text.  Most importantly, I will point out the finds that were reinterpreted after the urban legend got started.  Because archaeology, like other sciences, never stands still, and later finds can contradict earlier claims or at best force re-evaluation of them.

The people who preserve and pass along the urban legends either don’t understand the archaeology, or don’t follow up to see if the find has been re-evaluated.

And I will begin at the beginning, for which read Genesis 1-2:3.  IN the beginning….

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 3:13-14

Genesis 3:13-14

 

יג וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהִים לָאִשָּׁה מַה־זֹּאת עָשִׂית וַתֹּאמֶר הָאִשָּׁה הַנָּחָשׁ הִשִּׁיאַנִי וָאֹכֵל:

יד וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהִים אֶל־הַנָּחָשׁ כִּי עָשִׂיתָ זֹּאת אָרוּר אַתָּה מִכָּל־הַבְּהֵמָה וּמִכֹּל חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה עַל־גְּחֹנְךָ תֵלֵךְ וְעָפָר תֹּאכַל כָּל־יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ:

 

Translation:    **** Gd said to the woman what is this you have done and the woman said The serpent led me astray and I ate.  **** Gd said to the serpent Because you have done this you are cursed beyond all the domestic animals and beyond all the wild animals, you shall go on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

הִשִּׁיאַנִי	Led me astray
אָרוּר	cursed
מִכָּל	Beyond every
גְּחֹנְךָ	Your belly
עָפָר	dust

 

“Led me astray” has the root nun shin alef making it one of those n-verbs that loses the nun in some forms.  In fact this is the hifil which, you remember from lesson 76 on Genesis 3:7-8, is what binyan?

 

I was going to give you ’khl before but better now than never. 

 

Present

Singular	Plural	Gender
אוֹכֵל	אוֹכְלִים	Masculine
אוֹכֶלֶת	אוֹכְלוֹת	Feminine

 

Past

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
אָכַלְתִּי	אָכַלְנוּ	First
אָכַלְתָּ	אֲכַלְתֶּם	Second/masculine
אָכַלְתְּ	אֲכַלְתֶּן	Second/feminine
אָכַל	אָכְלוּ	Third/masculine
אָכְלָה	אָכְלוּ	Third/feminine

 

Future/aorist

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
אוֹכַל	נוֹכַל	First
תֹּאכַל	תֹּאכְלוּ	Second/masculine
תֹּאכְלִי	תֹּאכַלְנָה	Second/feminine
יֹאכַל	יֹאכְלוּ	Third/masculine
תֹּאכְלִי	תֹּאכַלְנָה	Third/feminine

 

Answer to quiz: hifil is causative.  It’s one of those causatives that isn’t automatically a form of the meaning of the paal, because the paal means “reject.”  Psychologically, somebody who is led astray is led into doing wrong, so you could say that Chavvah is afraid that now Gd will reject her.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- not over yet

Because I named the last episode "epilogue" you might think it was THE last episode.

It's not. 

The archaeology stuff starts this week.

What I have been doing this week is linking the old articles together.

I was doing that at first and stopped. 

So you have a couple of choices.

You can to go the Fact-Checking link and read article #1, then go through the rest of them, bookmarking when your eyes fill up and start spilling over, so you can pick up where you left off.

With 77 posts, that could take a while.  You would have the time on vacation but you will have better things to do then.  Not to mention "honeydew" lists to work through.

If you give up on it by July, you can watch for a new page on the blog which, if I get there, I plan to call Deep Digging Books.  I'll post the projected catalog if it comes off.  It will include a single PDF combining the legal posts that I finished putting up last week.

You've been warned!

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- epilogue

Come on, I know you’re dying to say it.

“But quoting out of context means taking only part of the words and you did that all the time while you supposedly were busting urban legends that quoted out of context.”

Two things.

Two millennia ago, the top rabbis of their generation looked back and saw that Jewish legal decisions had been reached by various methods, all of which depended on not just the wording of Torah, but also the sequence of verses and a number of other features.  They codified these 13 methods and gave Rabbi Ishmael the credit for them.  I discussed some of them under the names of gezerah shavah or qal va-chomer.

These principles do not require that all the verses used be end-to-end in the text.

I was telling you the conclusions drawn by the expert rabbis based on these principles, and what verses the principles are based on.  I was not making decisions for myself – and I told you when I was speculating and didn’t have a backup in Jewish law.

The people who create urban legends will tell you that the rabbis throw quotes into their discussions all the time and so “why shouldn’t I?”

The rabbis were not giving the quotes as deciding factors.  The rabbis were orienting their comrades to a section of Torah as the basis for a suggestion to be discussed and either accepted or rejected.  Sometimes it didn’t work and no decision was reached by the time the Talmud was written down.  Then you have to turn to Mishneh Torah, Shulchan Arukh, and later codes of Jewish law, to see if a decision ever came down.

Second thing.

I never used verbage taken out of context to mean the exact opposite of what it meant while in context.  Or pretended that it had a verb when it didn’t. 

When somebody quotes out of context, challenge them for book, chapter and verse.  If they can’t tell you where they got the quote, they are creating (or transmitting) an urban legend.  Reject it.  That will take care of about 80% of the people who throw quotes at you.

If they give you a citation, check it.  Check the whole paragraph.  Check the whole chapter.  Mostly, like Samuel Levine, you will find that they didn’t quote correctly, or that the context contradicts what they claimed.  Reject it.  That will take care of another 16 of 100 people who throw quotes at you.

If you have been studying Hebrew for this last 19 months, read the material in Hebrew.  You will likely find that they relied on a translation, and a bad one at that.  Reject it.  That will take care of about 3 more of 100 people who throw quotes at you.

The other person – will probably check out as right.  But you will only know that because you’ve done your homework.  And then you will BE that person.

Now let's dig into another Biblical  topic -- the archaeological digs.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 3:11-12

Genesis 3:11-12

 

יא וַיֹּאמֶר מִי הִגִּיד לְךָ כִּי עֵירֹם אָתָּה הֲמִן־הָעֵץ אֲשֶׁר צִוִּיתִיךָ לְבִלְתִּי אֲכָל־מִמֶּנּוּ אָכָלְתָּ:

יב וַיֹּאמֶר הָאָדָם הָאִשָּׁה אֲשֶׁר נָתַתָּה עִמָּדִי הִוא נָתְנָה־לִּי מִן־הָעֵץ וָאֹכֵל:

 

Translation:    He said who told you that you are naked, did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?  The man said, the woman that you gave with me, she gave me from the tree and I ate.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

מִי	Who?
הִגִּיד	told
הֲ	Question marker prefix
כִּי	That, if, when, because
לְבִלְתִּי	Not to [do something]
עִמָּדִי	With me

 

Notice that “did you” is ha-min.  The ha is a prefix that says a question follows.  Learn it, you’ll see it again.

 

“With me,” ‘imadi, means “accompanied by me”, NOT “by means of me” which is in an earlier lesson.  But notice that it is a special form.  The normal forms for “with, accompanied by” are based on the fact that et, the direct object particle, is also the preposition “with.” 

 

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
אִתִּי	אִתָּנוּ	First
אִתְּךָ	אִתְּכֶם	Second/masculine
אִתָּךְ	אִתְּכֶן	Second/feminine
אִתֹּו	אִתּהֶם	Third/masculine
אִתָּה	אִתּהֶן	Third/feminine

 

Now go back and compare the forms above with lesson 28, on Genesis 1:17.  There’s only a vowel change between them.  Again, if there were no vowels, you would know which one was meant because “accompanying somebody” here is going to be used in completely different circumstances from when you see somebody, touch somebody, etc., that is, the accusative case.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved