I'm just sayin -- four thunbs down

The last time I remember believing three tech products deserved thumbs down was in the days of MS Windows 3.1 and the pre-standardization CD chaos. I forget what the third one was. It must have been so horrible I wiped it from my mind. Anyhoo.

Do not get Windows 10 on a laptop. Cortana is a power hog. It will decrease your battery life because you will have to charge more often. You will need somebody technie enough to edit registers to get rid of it.  Get Windows 7 Pro for as long as you can. The reason I stuck with Windows at all is that two of my main work applications will not run under Chrome.

Do not get Microsoft Edge. I like to keep Favorites pinned, but in MS Edge you cannot adjust the width of the favorites menu and it covers up one side of every tab. Like the buttons to reject Facebook Friend proposals. Which is 99% of them now that I have Friended a lot of my family.

Google Oreo on a Nexus 5x has a big problem with notifications. I am getting notifications from Google Play at midnight and at 5 a.m. an hour BEFORE my alarm is set to go off.  If I roll over and hit the button to see what time it is, I get a notification from Google Play. If I walk into a building that has WiFi, I get a notification that there are available WiFi connections. It's too much. I've sent two complaints to Google about this.

Do not share Google Calendar with anybody. It will corrupt your email. I know somebody who works for a school system and he regularly has to make employees bring in their work phones. They thought they could share calendars with their families and instead their emails started getting rejected for "too many IP complaints". So he has to unshare all the calendars and tell them "don't do that again".

So Google, don't take any pride to yourself that you are somehow superior to Microsoft. You both have fundamental problems in my opinion.

I'm just saying....

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Reuss' sources

Reuss makes two claims about Jewish scholars that are typical of Christian scholars.

First, he claimed that the Jewish scholars misunderstood Torah.  He said that the Jewish scholars thought that the issue of not cooking a kid in its mother’s milk had to do with the verse about leaving it with its mother for seven days.

I have looked at Mekhilta Parshah Mishpatim Nezikin Section 20, Sifri Parshah Reh Section 51, Mishneh Torah Hilkhot Maakhalot Asurot 9, Bavli Chullin 108bff, Bavli Shabbat 130a, Tosefta, Rashi on Bavli Chullin 113b, Tosafot on Bavli 103b and 113b, and Midrash Rabbah.  There is no such connection.  If any of you know what source Reuss was looking at, ante up.

I suspect that he used a peripheral work, not in the mainstream, or that he copied from a non-Jewish scholar. I have seen the former in the source criticism of David Strauss (about whom I have a funny story and I’ll tell it if you ask), and the latter, of course, is endemic in the work of Philo, such as in his discussion of the Zodiac.

The second canard is Reuss’ claim that the author did not understand his material, that is, that Reuss understands Hebrew better than somebody who could use it spontaneously enough to invent Biblical text.

The problem, however, is with Reuss.  He claims that in Leviticus, where it lays down the rules and then names animals, it first names a wild animal and then a domestic animal.

The problem is that the sequence of animals is: camel, rabbit, hare, hog.

Camels in Torah are always domesticated, naturally enough, for it happened about the 2700s BCE.  Hares are well-known in Europe as wild game.  Europe held wild-boar hunts in medieval times, as well as hunting wild rabbits.  Reuss’ language may be misleading about what he means, but on the face of it, he seems to have thoroughly mixed up the European understanding of the animal world.  Nevertheless, he claims it’s the Jewish authors who don’t know what they’re talking about.

The canard that the Jews don’t understand their own literature occurs in contexts trying to claim that if they did, they would accept Jesus. Everybody I have known to express this canard knew precious little about Hebrew and nothing about 21^st century Biblical Hebrew.

Notice that I’m not claiming Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus. That would mean Reuss wrote knowing that he was wrong. The secret to urban legends is that they propagate because the transmitters don’t realize they are wrong.

It’s been the same for DH these many decades that its transmitters did not realize they were propagating an example of the conjunction fallacy.

So much for the history of DH.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- plural nouns

Genesis 1:14

יד וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי מְאֹרֹת בִּרְקִיעַ הַשָּׁמַיִם לְהַבְדִּיל בֵּין הַיּוֹם וּבֵין הַלָּיְלָה וְהָיוּ לְאֹתֹת וּלְמוֹעֲדִים וּלְיָמִים וְשָׁנִים:

Transliteration: Va-yomer elohim y’hi m’orot birqia ha-shamaim l’havdil beyn ha-yom u-veyn ha-laylah v’hayu l’otot ul’moadim ul’yamim v’shanim.

Translation:     Gd said let there be lights in the raqia of the heaven for separating between day and night; from now on they are for the purpose of signs and warnings and days and years.

Letters in this lesson:

Vocabulary in this lesson:

מְאֹרֹת	lights
אֹתֹת	signs
מוֹעֲדִים	warnings
שָׁנִים	years

So far, I’ve addressed gender in verbs. Lesson 12 on construct state also shows the indefinite of both singular and plural, masculine and feminine nouns.

The plural endings for those also are the plural endings for adjectives. As with most other languages that have such distinctions, the gender and number of nouns and the adjectives that modify them have to agree.

How do you know the gender of nouns in BH? Well, natural gender applies. Things that are masculine have masculine gender and things that are feminine have feminine gender.

Aside from that, most verbs ending in a consonant other than heh are masculine; the name Yehudah falls under the natural gender case.

Nouns that end in qamats plus heh tend to be feminine.

Nouns that end in patach plus chet tend to be feminine in grammatical gender, but they may be masculine in natural gender if they are masculine names.  Noach and Shelach are two examples.

Erets and nefesh have feminine grammatical gender; you’ll notice it when they are used with verbs and adjectives.

Some nouns take either gender and sometimes the meaning changes. Yad means “hand” when it is masculine; it means “support, financial means” when it is feminine.

There are some irregular nouns: daughter is bat and the plural is banot, the construct is b’nat; house is bait, the construct is bet and the construct plural is batey.

I won’t give a list of nouns like this. Harkavy’s dictionary is online free and it shows gender. Download it and place bookmarks for the start of the sections to make it easier to look things up.

Just realize that BH is a lot easier on this subject than Arabic.  You must learn the plural of Arabic nouns with each and every noun, because most of them don’t have the endings in BH, which are called “external plurals”.  A number of Arabic nouns have “internal plurals” of which there are five classes, but a lot of them have “broken plurals” which cannot be predicted.  Count your blessings.

And now I'm going to pick up the pace.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- a maven he's not

Edouard Reuss embodies the same principles of “higher criticism” that Astruc does. He makes his claims based on what he thinks are the principles, applying his “axioms” inconsistently and without regard to the data. His problems come out most clearly in two locations that should have signaled to a person thinking logically, that he was constructing a tower of rubble.

Exodus 23:19 says “you shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.” Deuteronomy 14:21 has the exact same phrase. What does this mean to DH?

There are several ways that DH could jump with this. One is to claim that the phrase in Deuteronomy is, predictably, D, and that it was interpolated into Exodus from D.

There is also a possible claim that both phrases are from P. Why? Deuteronomy 14 is a partial paraphrase of Leviticus 11, leaving out the vermin and adding this phrase at the very end.

Or they could both be assigned to J, because Deuteronomy 14 uses the combined Names of Gd, but it would get no support in Exodus where neither name appears. We don’t have to get wrapped around the axles about this since we know the Names of Gd axiom is based on false facts, as well as being applied inconsistently.

Which way did Reuss jump? He made a circular argument.

He claimed that since Leviticus is from the Babylonian Captivity, it discusses rules applying from then on, and that is why it discusses insects. He cited to Matthew to make this claim. What Matthew says has nothing to do with what happened during the Babylonian Captivity six centuries earlier, unless Matthew is writing a history of the Captivity.

Then Reuss claimed that since Deuteronomy is from the time of the destruction of the temple, people would have ignored insects because they could eat domestic animals whose owners had been taken into captivity. D is actually attributed to Josiah’s reign, 30 years before the Babylonian conquest. Bleek’s Einleitung which established the DH claim about D, was published when Reuss was 24. It’s hard to see how Reuss could get this wrong and still claim to be an expert in the DH version of Jewish history.

Again, Reuss had made up his mind as to what he thought, and he retrofitted his reasons to correspond, but they are illogical or have no factual basis.

The modern assignments are: Exodus to E (despite the absence of either Name) and Deuteronomy to D.

In these locations, however, Reuss makes two claims consistent among Christians and particularly Protestants.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- "hayah" idioms

Genesis 1:14

 

יד וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי מְאֹרֹת בִּרְקִיעַ הַשָּׁמַיִם לְהַבְדִּיל בֵּין הַיּוֹם וּבֵין הַלָּיְלָה וְהָיוּ לְאֹתֹת וּלְמוֹעֲדִים וּלְיָמִים וְשָׁנִים:

 

Transliteration: Va-yomer elohim y’hi m’orot birqia ha-shamaim l’havdil beyn ha-yom u-veyn ha-laylah v’hayu l’otot ul’moadim ul’yamim v’shanim.

Translation:     Gd said let there be lights in the raqia of the heaven for separating between day and night; from now on they become signs and warnings and days and years.

 

I’ve talked about va-y’hi, based on the imperfect of hayah, as meaning something quite different from what translations say.

 

The same thing is true for v’hayu based on the perfect aspect, and all the forms like it in every person and number and gender.

 

This will become clearer in later verses where you will see it, but what it does is mark a point in time when something comes permanently into existence or usage. The translation for that is “from now on”.

 

In the last lesson, I translated this verse to bring out the fact that l’ has similar meaning every time this verse uses it.

 

The translation above brings out another feature of hayah l’ in every aspect – and even with the aspectless verb hyot. Hayah l’ means “become”. So if Torah has li-hyot l’, it means “for the purpose of becoming”.

 

It’s not clear to me why there is no l’ with the last word. I know from studying the rest of Torah that yamim with no number means “year”, not “days”; it’s a solar year, a specific number of days. When it has a number like “forty”, it’s more like “days”; there’s one place that has shnataim yamim, “exactly two years in days”.

 

It’s important that the heavenly bodies were not set up until now. The passage of time was known by alternation of light and dark, not by the heavenly bodies, for three days. The number three is a “magic number” in oral traditions, like in Grimm’s fairy tales. Axel Olrik wrote about the “magic number” principle as The Law of Three because that number is so prevalent, but he included under it numbers like seven or twelve.

 

Putting the creation of the heavenly bodies after the first set of three days de-emphasizes them. They are not gods. Gd did not need them to do His work. While the calendar can run from now on, it is more important to give light to, for example, the newly created plants.

Now some more on nouns.

 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

I'm just saying -- trending shmending

So I just confirmed why I have no interest in buying a microwave.

I was staying with somebody and went to fix myself some rice and veggies.

It took 20 minutes to cook in the microwave what I could cook on my stove in 10 minutes. Microwaves don't save time and because of their electricity demands, they don't save money. They're not trendy any more and they are not only not indispensable, they're a waste.


I bought the veggies at the grocery because the restaurant food was hopeless. It took me 5 meals to eat up some General Tso's chicken and there were only two measly pieces of broccoli in the entire order. Restaurant food is not healthy and it's too expensive. Create the experience in your own home instead of beating your brains out trying to get a table in a trendy restaurant.

I heard a real estate advisor talking out of both sides of her mouth on the radio this morning, one second admitting that trends change fast and the next saying you have to keep up with trends when selling your house.

Her other problem is she had to point out that trendy stuff isn't high quality. Bamboo floors -- NOOOO.

Then she talked about a trend to use wallpaper not paint. Do you know how much it costs to replace wallpaper, even if you're going to stay with wallpaper instead of paint? MUCH more than just  painting over a paint color you don't like, because you should take off the old paper first.

Why? Because mold and mildew breed in every imperfection in the wallpaper. You MUST get rid of the mold and mildew and replace the wallpaper, not just put another layer on. Unless of course you like spending months with a doctor finding out why you're so desperately sick or experiencing mental disturbances.

And you have a kitchen and bathroom. NEVER wallpaper these high-humidity rooms.

When a real estate "professional" tells you to spend $$ following the trends, fire him or her. Paint the walls light colors because it won't show through when the next person comes in and does a fresh paint job. Take out the nylon carpet and put down hardwood tiles. HARDWOOD. Not bamboo or pine. Except the kitchen and bathroom which get linoleum. Plant cheap hardy bright flowers for curb appeal. Bring plumbing or wiring up to code so it's not a money pit. Get an inspection to catch any stoppers that the buyer's inspector would find.

But don't get wrapped around the axles spending YOUR money to suit somebody else's idea of what's trendy. That's crazy talk. No matter what you're talking about -- food, decorating, clothing...

I'm just sayin'...

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Reuss and the Third Pillar

Edouard Reuss, teacher and colleague of Graf, clarified that his role in the process of “higher criticism” was to advance French Protestant scholarship. He waited until the 1870s, possibly assuming that the Catholic church and French monarchy would not allow him to publish. But after the Franco-Prussian war, when his home of Strasbourg became part of Prussia, he began to publish his History of the Scriptures, about the same time as Wellhausen published.

Reuss, like Graf, operated on the premise that a science is a study; he did not at all pretend that he practiced Cartesian science, he admitted he was pursuing theological studies. His avowed purpose was to let the French public in on what the theologues had been discussing amongst themselves for about 30 years. This jumps his readers over Astruc and into the heat of battle. Which could have been a good thing but…

Reuss adopted the Names of Gd criterion, which you know is false.

One of his specialties was the third pillar, repetitions, which he said was a sign of differing documents.

Reuss betrayed his own principle, however. He uses the first repetition of the concept of sefer toldot in Genesis 2:4 as a conclusion of text from E, while assigning the next part to J. He uses the repetition sefer toldot in Genesis 5:1 as an introduction to a part of E, after material that comes from J. They are dividing marks, but they divide differently.

He uses the eleh toldot of Genesis 6:9, 11:10 and 27 as introductions for material from E.

But he says Genesis 25:19 is an interpolation to E by an editor who realized that such a thing was missing.  That redefines this repetition as NOT marking a changeover from E to J or anything else – it’s inside a section from P.

He also makes a different claim for Genesis 37:1-2. He claims that it is an interpolation, “Yaaqov lived in …K’naan, this is the history of Yaaqov”. (This is not the modern assignment.)

What’s more, Reuss does not see eleh toldot in Genesis 25:12 as a change in documents. (It does change documents in modern assignment.)

It’s obvious that Reuss believed in repetition as a signal of a change of documents only when he believed that a particular part of Torah is a different document from what preceded it. It is a sign that Reuss split out the documents, then went back and decided that certain phrases have significance for splitting. This is the same bad methodology used by Astruc.

Since Reuss did not apply the “repetitions” axiom consistently, these claims have to be ditched. I don’t say that DH has to adopt the definitions and descriptions I will give later. I say that there’s a doctoral dissertation in examining DH claims about other repetitions to see if they are based on fallacies, outdated information, or inconsistent application of axioms. If so, they have to be ditched.

But bad methodology isn't Reuss' only problem. I'll discuss another one next week.

© Patricia Jo Heil, All Rights  Reserved