Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 3 plus audio

Genesis 3

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/mp3/t0103.mp3

א וְהַנָּחָשׁ הָיָה עָרוּם מִכֹּל חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהִים וַיֹּאמֶר אֶל־הָאִשָּׁה אַף כִּי־אָמַר אֱלֹהִים לֹא תֹאכְלוּ מִכֹּל עֵץ הַגָּן:

ב וַתֹּאמֶר הָאִשָּׁה אֶל־הַנָּחָשׁ מִפְּרִי עֵץ־הַגָּן נֹאכֵל:

ג וּמִפְּרִי הָעֵץ אֲשֶׁר בְּתוֹךְ־הַגָּן אָמַר אֱלֹהִים לֹא תֹאכְלוּ מִמֶּנּוּ וְלֹא תִגְּעוּ בּוֹ פֶּן תְּמֻתוּן:

ד וַיֹּאמֶר הַנָּחָשׁ אֶל־הָאִשָּׁה לֹא־מוֹת תְּמֻתוּן:

ה כִּי יֹדֵעַ אֱלֹהִים כִּי בְּיוֹם אֲכָלְכֶם מִמֶּנּוּ וְנִפְקְחוּ עֵינֵיכֶם וִהְיִיתֶם כֵּאלֹהִים יֹדְעֵי טוֹב וָרָע:

ו וַתֵּרֶא הָאִשָּׁה כִּי טוֹב הָעֵץ לְמַאֲכָל וְכִי תַאֲוָה־הוּא לָעֵינַיִם וְנֶחְמָד הָעֵץ לְהַשְׂכִּיל וַתִּקַּח מִפִּרְיוֹ וַתֹּאכַל וַתִּתֵּן גַּם־לְאִישָׁהּ עִמָּהּ וַיֹּאכַל:

ז וַתִּפָּקַחְנָה עֵינֵי שְׁנֵיהֶם וַיֵּדְעוּ כִּי עֵירֻמִּם הֵם וַיִּתְפְּרוּ עֲלֵה תְאֵנָה וַיַּעֲשׂוּ לָהֶם חֲגֹרֹת:

ח וַיִּשְׁמְעוּ אֶת־קוֹל יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהִים מִתְהַלֵּךְ בַּגָּן לְרוּחַ הַיּוֹם וַיִּתְחַבֵּא הָאָדָם וְאִשְׁתּוֹ מִפְּנֵי יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהִים בְּתוֹךְ עֵץ הַגָּן:

ט וַיִּקְרָא יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהִים אֶל־הָאָדָם וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ אַיֶּכָּה:

י וַיֹּאמֶר אֶת־קֹלְךָ שָׁמַעְתִּי בַּגָּן וָאִירָא כִּי־עֵירֹם אָנֹכִי וָאֵחָבֵא:

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:

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:

טו וְאֵיבָה ׀ אָשִׁית בֵּינְךָ וּבֵין הָאִשָּׁה וּבֵין זַרְעֲךָ וּבֵין זַרְעָהּ הוּא יְשׁוּפְךָ רֹאשׁ וְאַתָּה תְּשׁוּפֶנּוּ עָקֵב:      

טז אֶל־הָאִשָּׁה אָמַר הַרְבָּה אַרְבֶּה עִצְּבוֹנֵךְ וְהֵרֹנֵךְ בְּעֶצֶב תֵּלְדִי בָנִים וְאֶל־אִישֵׁךְ תְּשׁוּקָתֵךְ וְהוּא יִמְשָׁל־בָּךְ:      

יז וּלְאָדָם אָמַר כִּי שָׁמַעְתָּ לְקוֹל אִשְׁתֶּךָ וַתֹּאכַל מִן־הָעֵץ אֲשֶׁר צִוִּיתִיךָ לֵאמֹר לֹא תֹאכַל מִמֶּנּוּ אֲרוּרָה הָאֲדָמָה בַּעֲבוּרֶךָ בְּעִצָּבוֹן תֹּאכֲלֶנָּה כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ:

יח וְקוֹץ וְדַרְדַּר תַּצְמִיחַ לָךְ וְאָכַלְתָּ אֶת־עֵשֶׂב הַשָּׂדֶה:

יט בְּזֵעַת אַפֶּיךָ תֹּאכַל לֶחֶם עַד שׁוּבְךָ אֶל־הָאֲדָמָה כִּי מִמֶּנָּה לֻקָּחְתָּ כִּי־עָפָר אַתָּה וְאֶל־עָפָר תָּשׁוּב:

כ וַיִּקְרָא הָאָדָם שֵׁם אִשְׁתּוֹ חַוָּה כִּי הִוא הָיְתָה אֵם כָּל־חָי:

כא וַיַּעַשׂ יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהִים לְאָדָם וּלְאִשְׁתּוֹ כָּתְנוֹת עוֹר וַיַּלְבִּשֵׁם: 

כב וַיֹּאמֶר ׀ יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהִים הֵן הָאָדָם הָיָה כְּאַחַד מִמֶּנּוּ לָדַעַת טוֹב וָרָע וְעַתָּה ׀ פֶּן־יִשְׁלַח יָדוֹ וְלָקַח גַּם מֵעֵץ הַחַיִּים וְאָכַל וָחַי לְעֹלָם:

כג וַיְשַׁלְּחֵהוּ יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהִים מִגַּן־עֵדֶן לַעֲבֹד אֶת־הָאֲדָמָה אֲשֶׁר לֻקַּח מִשָּׁם:

כד וַיְגָרֶשׁ אֶת־הָאָדָם וַיַּשְׁכֵּן מִקֶּדֶם לְגַן־עֵדֶן אֶת־הַכְּרֻבִים וְאֵת לַהַט הַחֶרֶב הַמִּתְהַפֶּכֶת לִשְׁמֹר אֶת־דֶּרֶךְ עֵץ הַחַיִּים: 

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

It's embarrassing

Most countries in Europe broadcast in more than one language, including English.
I was emailing with a fellow language geek and mentioned this.
RFI
BBC
Deutsche Welle
IBA
RAI
NHK
and others broadcast in more than one language.


Deutsche Welle proudly lists 30 languages.
BBC 27.
NHK 17.
RFI 12.
IBA 12 including Hungarian (Magyar), Romanian, and Ladino.

The US? 
Feh!
We expect everybody to learn English. 
We're also too lazy to learn other languages.

Except for me and people like me, such as the one I was emailing with and those who will be attending the Polyglot Confereing in NYC in October.
http://polyglotconference.com/

If you know of one US media outlet that routinely provides media in languages other than English (or Spanish which is becoming a majority language), let me know and I will collect the links and post them here.
I'm not holding my breath.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

I'm just saying -- I am become Death

Shatterer of --- corporate computer systems.
It happened inevitably, as everything does nowadays, that the anniversary of my signup for FiOS rolled around.
And my account went to a very bad place.


You have to understand that there was some kind of synergy going on in the universe when I signed up.
My copper wire was deteriorating, and Verizon wouldn't fix it.  My ability to connect to the net was shaky.
So I asked Verizon to install FiOS.


It was the hottest summer on record in the DC region.  At the end of June we were having "feels like" temps over 100.
Then the derecho came through.  It wiped out power for a couple of million people from Richmond Virginia almost to Philadelphia Pennsylvania. 
The only reason I survived not having even a working ceiling fan is that on a whim a few months earlier I bought a Victorian-type lady's fan from a website in California that specializes in steampunk clothes and accessories.  So I did have some airflow.
I expected power to be out for as much as 3 days, which happened in the year of Hurricane Isabel, the worst hurricane in the DC region in 70 years.
It took only 22 hours in 2012 and I was lucky at that.


Meanwhile at a Verizon data center, a generator burned up and Verizon was out of commission anyway, so even my copper wire didn't work.
I managed to borrow a cell from somebody I knew, and call Verizon, and tell them not to have the techie call ahead to see if I was there, but just come ahead and install the FiOS.
It was scheduled for Monday, July 2.
But Verizon had the torched data center and hundreds of downed wires to deal with.
I felt blessed when the tech showed up Tuesday, July 3.
So I had Internet again, and the power was back, and I gave a big sigh of relief.



Exactly 1 year later the FiOS went out. 
I got a tech to come out and it was something outside the house and after a couple of days I was back.
The next year the identical thing happened, and I went to Starbucks, bought a coffee, and used their WiFi to convince Verizon that this was identical to 2013, so the next day a tech came out and fixed it.



2015's incident was even more bizarre.
I could get online.
I could email from gmail.
I could login at Verizon's website.
But it said that my primary email address was at the ISP I had been using in 2012 when I signed up!!!!
It took 3 tries and 4 hours to get their computers to let me change that.
Then it wanted a verification email.
So I clicked the link and it told me it had successfully sent the verification email.
One small problem.
There was NO email in my inbox.
Not on Verizon's webmail, not in the Outlook on my computer.
I tried back for a total of 24 hours with no successful email.
I sent a feedback survey every time.
Finally after lunch I called Verizon's tech support line.
I proved to the guy that between the link to send the verification email, and my inbox, there existed a huge black hole into which the bits were falling.
He said he got their email experts involved.  They could see immediately that I was telling the truth.
It took them like 10 minutes to find out which server was dropping the bits and restore the links.

I'm just shaking my head.  There's no way to tell what horrible thing will happen next June 30.

I'm just saying...
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Genesis 2:4-3:24

For this week, your assignment was to read Genesis 2:4 to 3:24.

There is no archaeological find matching this episode, which I will refer to as the “Gan Eden” episode or narrative.

There are plenty of finds about creating humankind.  One is in Enuma Elish; humans are created by Marduk out of the blood of Kingu, whom Marduk vanquished.

In Atra-Hasis humans were made by sacrificing the god Geshtu-E and mixing his blood with clay, then bringing “the goddesses” into play.  The purpose of humans was to take on the terribly hard work of irrigation imposed on the minor gods.

The scientific material that relates to the Gan Eden episode includes satellite imagery showing that in the region of the Tigris and Euphrates confluence, are a dry riverbed and an intermittent river.  I don’t know what the names of the latter two are, or were.  The episode gives Gichon and Pishon as the names of the two rivers that met up with the Tigris and Euphrates in Eden.

Another scientific tidbit is that edin is a Mesopotamian word for areas east of the current Euphrates bed.  Once they were irrigated and productive.  The Euphrates course changed westward, however, and the work of keeping up the eastern irrigation canals became more expensive than the government could pay for from the produce.  The eastern lands were abandoned and the name for them was edin.  This was in about the 3000s BCE, the Jemdet Nasr period, when desiccation resulted in consolidation of political power in city states which then governed the work of irrigation.

Nothing in the Gan Eden episode discusses irrigation.  It assumes that rain waters things.

The Gan Eden episode is not “about” agriculture at all.  In its 42 verses, agriculture never comes up.  It talks about eating bread “in the sweat of your brow.”   But “bread”, Hebrew lechem, means food in some contexts, “bread” being the base food in Jewish culture.  In similar contexts, some Western narratives use a word that translates as “meat”.  This underlies the translation of the last word of Luke 17:7 from Greek as “sit down to meat,” when what it really means is to go to a triclinium somewhere for a meal at which the servant will recline on a couch.  The “meat” translation suits Victorian westerners, while the Greek refers to giving a servant the same leisure for a meal as his master.

Anyhoo.

Humans ate seeds of all kinds long before agriculture started, including picking and then reaping and finally planting seeds of wheat, spelt, barley, rye, and oats.  By 18,000 BCE humans in southwest Asia were using sickles to collect the seed-bearing grain heads.  There’s no sense inventing a special tool to cut off the heads of grain unless they had long been part of the human diet, contrary to what the “Paleo” diet people will tell you.  By 7800 BCE, the stalks of grain show strong heads that could not simply fall apart in the wind or as animals brushed through.  By 3000 BCE, humans in Mesopotamia were organizing to ensure a supply of water to irrigate their main food source, which also produced the famous Mesopotamian beer.  (Hmmmm.)

But it was hard sweaty work for tens of thousands of years before anybody used a stone mattock to turn over virgin sod and put seeds into the ground on purpose, planning to reap the full-grown crop.

The Gan Eden episode is not mainly, let alone exclusively, about agriculture.  It mainly revolves around use of the term mot yamut, which you first saw in the posts about the death penalty, and that usage set up an expectation that controlled the narrative.  That is next week’s lesson.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 3:22·24

Genesis 3:22-24

 

כב וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהִים הֵן הָאָדָם הָיָה כְּאַחַד מִמֶּנּוּ לָדַעַת טוֹב וָרָע וְעַתָּה פֶּן־יִשְׁלַח יָדוֹ וְלָקַח גַּם מֵעֵץ הַחַיִּים וְאָכַל וָחַי לְעֹלָם:

כג וַיְשַׁלְּחֵהוּ יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהִים מִגַּן־עֵדֶן לַעֲבֹד אֶת־הָאֲדָמָה אֲשֶׁר לֻקַּח מִשָּׁם:

כד וַיְגָרֶשׁ אֶת־הָאָדָם וַיַּשְׁכֵּן מִקֶּדֶם לְגַן־עֵדֶן אֶת־הַכְּרֻבִים וְאֵת לַהַט הַחֶרֶב הַמִּתְהַפֶּכֶת לִשְׁמֹר אֶת־דֶּרֶךְ עֵץ הַחַיִּים:

 

Translation:    **** Gd said behold the man has become like one of us to know good and evil and now lest he put out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever…

**** Gd sent him from Gan Eden to work the earth that he was taken from.

He pushed out the man and He established, away from the east of Gan Eden, the keruvim and the flash of the sword that revolves to guard the road of the tree of life.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

עַתָּה	Now, at this time
יִשְׁלַח	He put out
יָדוֹ	His hand
גַּם	also
לְעֹלָם	forever
יְגָרֶשׁ	Push out, divorce
יַּשְׁכֵּן	establish
לַהַט	flash
חֶרֶב	sword
מִּתְהַפֶּכֶת	revolves
דֶּרֶךְ	Road, path

 

Can you identify what binyan mithapekhet is?  Can you tell me why it is used?

 

Notice that Gd wouldn’t have to worry about people suddenly being able to live forever if He had created them to be immortal. 

 

Notice that I didn’t translate keruvim.  The only thing we know about them, from Exodus, is that they had wings and a front and back, and that the keruvim on the cover of the ark faced each other.

 

In the next lesson I’m going to give you the whole text for chapter 3 and a link to the audio.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Garden -- July

Gardener nirvana!
If you have a flower garden, you have hosta, lilies, gladioli, and in my yard, it's hydrangea.
They survived Snowmageddon and I did as Mike McGrath said and did not prune in 2014.
This year my hydrangea are gorgeous!
Veggies:  ZUCCHINI!  You should be seeing those huge golden blooms.  Don't forget to look under the leaves.  If you don't pick the zucchini while they still stick up from the plant, they will hide under the leaves and by the time you see them, they'll be as long as your arm.
Beans should be showing pink flowers -- if you have been watering in the morning.  If not, your beans have been eaten by slugs.
Herbs should be going to seed.
Tomatoes should be showing flowers and you might have some cute little green tomatoes.
Cukes -- if these survived the bunnies -- bunnies like nothing better than tender cuke shoots -- should be flowering and you might even have some baby gherkin pickle sized fruits.
Notice how most of these things flower yellow.  Bees love them.  Plant these and calendula and golden cosmos to attract and feed the bees, which will then thank you by fertilizing your stuff so you get the fruits.  DON'T USE PESTICIDES OR FUNGICIDES.  Creating death traps are a horrible way to say "you're welcome" to bees. 
And best of all: in July you should be ordering your non-hybrid, non-GMO, open-pollinated seeds from reliable vendors so you can plant annuals next year.  Even if you bought these this year, and they are going to seed, you still want new seeds for new genes.  What's more, some plants are biennials.  If you left some cabbage or their relatives in the ground to go to seed, they won't flower until next year.  You need new seeds to grow new food or flowers from biennials, let alone to create a healthy gene pool.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- why philology doesn't work

About 1905 a famous cuneiform scholar named Sayce wrote a pamphlet claiming that Shabbat developed out of Mesopotamian practice documented on cuneiform tablets from the time of Cambyses II.  (Remember what I just said about cuneiform.)

About 1910-1915 two other famous cuneiform scholars showed that Sayce misrepresented what the Cambyses-era tablets said.

The first three verses of Genesis 2 tell about the first Shabbat and Gd’s rest from the melakhah that He performed.  The usual translation of melakhah is “work,” but that’s far too vague a term.

In Jewish law, melakhah is the forty less one, or 39, categories of things that are prohibited to be done on Shabbat, either for pay or for free, for oneself or for others, whether it’s your normal occupation that you get paid for or not.  The only time this prohibition can be violated is to save any human life that is in imminent danger.

The one thing that is not prohibited on Shabbat is avodah, the sacrificial service in the temple or tabernacle.  Torah requires avodah on Shabbat.  The confusion is that in modern Hebrew and in some places in the Bible, avodah is indeed used for something that falls in the category of melakhah.  That doesn’t change the fact that the “m” word not only appears in the creation story, but also in the Ten Commandments where Shabbat is discussed.  Melakhah and Shabbat are almost indissolubly linked.

Sayce looked at an inscription that discussed a prohibition on work and claimed that it was equivalent to Shabbat.  The inscription doesn’t use anything even approaching the “m” word; it also did not use a cognate of shabbat that meant a cessation from work.  There was no such word in Sumerian, Akkadian, or the Aramaic used in Babylonia in the time of Cambyses.  (Note that restriction on provenance.)  Except what was introduced into Aramaic from Jewish culture, by for and about Jewish culture.  A concept I will bring up again much later.

Clay and Barton showed, within 5 years, that the cuneiform text limited the prohibition to kings, seers, and physicians, and didn’t apply it to the entire population.  Sayce committed the famous “quoting out of context” fallacy, both textual and cultural, that I used in summing up urban legends about Jewish law.  In fact Shabbat applies to all Jews.

The tablets with such prohibitions applied them to specific dates of the Mesopotamian month: 7, 14, 19, 21, and 28.   Sayce performed sampling bias by ignoring the 19^th.  He also ignored the legal definition of Shabbat, which has nothing to do with specific days of the month but with every 7th day, no matter what day of the month it falls on.

Sayce probably combined the dates of the prohibitions with a tablet which prescribed sacrifices on the same specific days of the month, except for the 19^th.  This tablet prescribed sacrifices at specific phases of the moon; the Mesopotamian religious calendar was based on the lunar cycle.  The 19^th is not the date of a specific lunar phase.  Again, the requirement for avodah on Shabbat is tied to the seventh day, not to specific days of the Jewish month, even though the Jewish month is tied to the lunar cycle.

Clay and Barton pointed out that no known Mesopotamian legal system prohibits work by commoners on specific days.  The code of Hammurabi had just been discovered and translated when Sayce wrote; it, too, does not record a prohibition for commoners to work.

Clay and Barton pointed out that the Mesopotamian term shabbatum to which Sayce cited, strictly applied to the full moon on the 15^th day of the month.  No relationship exists between shabbatum and words for stopping work in the languages I referred to earlier. 

The oldest known references to Shabbat in Jewish literature, ignoring arguments about the age of Torah itself, are from Amos and Hoshea.  Amos and Hoshea wrote in the Holy Land 2 or 3 centuries BEFORE Cambyses II ruled.  Whatever the Jews of their time thought about the origin of Shabbat, the reference precedes the provenance of the Cambyses tablets and presumes that the audience is familiar with the term, otherwise there’s no point in bringing it up.  (I’ll say more about this concept much later on the blog.)

What Sayce did was common for the times and involves the study of philology, which still leads researchers to draw false conclusions from words taken out of verbal or historical or cultural context.  But we’ve seen that before, so it should not surprise you.  And you’ll see it again much later.

Since the rest of the argument about Enuma Elish involves material I’m not ready to present to you yet, I’m going to move on to the second episode in Torah.  For next week, read Genesis 2:4 to 3:24.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved