Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 3:17-18

Genesis 3:17-18

 

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:

 

Translation:    To the man He said Because you obeyed your wife and you ate from the tree that I commanded you saying you shall not eat from it, the ground is cursed for your sake, in pain shall you eat of it all the days of your life.

Thorns and dardar it shall sprout for you and you will eat the wild grass.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

בַּעֲבוּרֶךָ	For your sake
קוֹץ	Thorn[s]
דַרְדַּר	Jerusalem artichoke?

 

We’re not sure what dardar is.  Rashi, the great medieval commentator, said it was cardoon, which seems to be called Jerusalem artichoke nowadays. 

 

I want you to notice that these verses don’t say that people will eat agricultural products.  “Wild grass,” esev ha-sadeh, is a parallel to “wild animals”, chayat ha-sadeh.

 

I have a question for you.  Through the rest of this episode, watch for Gd to kill Adam and Chavvah.  After all, He told them that the day they ate from the tree that He commanded them not to eat from, they would die.  They’re not dead yet.

 

Also notice the parallel of Chavvah bearing and raising children b’itsavon and Adam eating b’itsavon all the days of his life from what the cursed earth provided.

 

And notice that the earth is cursed, and the serpent is cursed, but Chavvah and Adam are not cursed.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Outdoors -- the kids are all right

If you have birds around, listen carefully.
If you hear a cardinal's springtime call, only soft and truncated and mixed up with their sharp anxiety sound, you are listening to a newly mature male cardinal.  They spend a lot of time low in the brush practicing.  Next spring they'll sit in the top of the trees for better acoustics, to announce which patch is their turf.  I've seen my young man in his very bright new adult plumage, on my fence and porch.
If you hear what sounds like cawing on the ground, that's not a crow.  That's probably a young blackbird, following a parent around, crying for food.  The parent hunts fast and stuffs food in the kid's mouth, but one good gulp and it's down the throat, and the kid is crying for more.  Still, this takes less energy than leaving the kid in the nest, finding food, and flying back.
The parents will also be giving the kid lessons in swimming and flying.  The catbirds are doing the same thing.  I've seen their chick land on my fence, teeter a little, and then chase off after the parent again.
The house sparrows are out in their half dozens: wives, husbands, co-husbands, and kids who are learning to fly and hunt bugs.  Welcome them; they love aphids.
You should also hear Carolina wrens.  More bug-hunters: in a couple of months they will switch from their turf-claiming "right here, right here, right here" to a sort of raspberry and a lot of scolding.
The goldfinches are back with their peeping whistle and cheery home-coming song.  They'll be looking for seeds.  They like blue flowers like chicory, and yellow flowers like golden cosmos, but they will also strip zinnia petals to get at the seeds.  They are trolling my yard watching for some cabbage seeds to get ripe, and for the cilantro seeds to brown up.  I suspect they will also mob my horehound for seeds.
And finally, if there's any dead wood around (and to hear this you have to make sure your neighborhood isn't too carefully groomed), you'll hear the hammering of woodpeckers early in the day, alternating with their "whinny".  Count yourself lucky if you hear both calls, each in a different place.  That might mean you have a nesting pair.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Knitting -- Perly Perle tee

I used Perly Perle to knit some sleeveless tees to wear this summer and here's how it turned out.
I knitted them on U.S. #1 needles.  They fit like a glove.  In summer, you probably want your tops loose.
So use #2 or 3 needles, and maybe add 8 stitches when you cable on.
I knitted one sweater with ribs, like what we used to call a "poor boy" when I was a teenager, and another with fine cables about every 16 or 20 stitches.  Calculate carefully before you start so that ribs and cables grow out of your bottom rib and meet the neck ribs at even horizontal spacing on both front and back.
The knitted fabric is a little heavier than your average tee.  That's a little much for summer unless you're going to wear them to the office.  With the boat neck that the instructions produce, these probably are good for the office because they're not too revealing.
You can get a sleeveless tee and a cardigan, bolero, or spencer from a cone.  Perly Perle only comes in cones.
Cones of red come in a heavier weight and it's enough to make short sleeves for the coverup.  For other colors, there's just enough yarn for cap sleeves but that is enough for summer evenings or at the start or end of the season when it might be a bit cool at night.
Perly Perle comes in lots of colors.  If you decide to make a two-color or multi-color tee, you'll have plenty of yarn left for a matching coverup with long sleeves.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Sourcing creation

Now there are two problems with thinking that the Jews copied their Genesis story from a copy of Enuma Elish in the libraries of either Ashurbanipal or Nebuchadnetsar.

One is the modern idea of what a library is.

A lot of nations nowadays have free circulating libraries where people can go, check out books, take them home, read them, and be influenced by them. 

Two hundred years ago, libraries were a cross between this and a bookstore.  The proprietors charged a subscription and the people who paid could come see the latest publications.  The proprietors could use the subscription to pay printing costs for works they felt were important.  Also writers could go around and convince patrons to pay a subscription directly to the writer to pay these costs.  In the first case the profit over and above the printing costs belonged to the shop owner.  In the second the profit went to the writer.  The only way to access material for free was to have the run of the library belonging to a rich person or a minister.  This situation is amply documented in novels written from about 1780 through about 1820 CE and in diaries like that of Fanny Burney.

Before the printing press, people had to pay for a monk or somebody else to make a hand-written copy of a work that was desired for a library.  This is more the scenario of royal libraries and also the Alexandrian library whose destruction was such a catastrophe.  You had to have access to the royal library to read what was in it.

First you have to tell me how Jews got access to the royal libraries.  If you’re thinking that Ezra could have done it, keep reading.

Because the other problem is reading the material once you get to it.

The classic material of Mesopotamia was written in cuneiform from the first use of that writing form up until about 100 CE.  Cuneiform training was restricted to the upper classes, and the only way to join the upper classes was by marriage if you weren’t born into them.

Jews of the Babylonian Captivity served in the military.  Some of them were scribes.  But they wrote Aramaic, the language of Nabonidus, who conquered Babylon and went on to conquer Assyria and its empire.  Not cuneiform.

So the Jews didn’t have access to Enuma Elish, or Gilgamesh, or the Kings list, or Hammurabi’s Code, or anything else written in cuneiform, not when the ancestors of the patriarchs were still living in Mesopotamia, and not during the Babylonian Captivity.  I’ll come back to this again many posts from now.

How hard could it be?  Go.  Read.  I’ll be here when you get back.

Leonard King’s “Easy” Cuneiform Inscriptions https://archive.org/details/assyrianlanguag00kinggoog

Gadd’s Sumerian Reading Book  https://ia600802.us.archive.org/23/items/ASumerianReading-book/Gadd-ASumerianReading-book.pdf

Friedrich Delitzsch’s Assyrian Grammar https://archive.org/details/assyriangrammar00kenngoog

That’s one urban legend down and about 60 more to go.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Bit at a Time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 3:15-16

Genesis 3:15-16

 

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:

 

Translation:    I shall set enmity between you and the woman, between your descendants and her descendants, he shall wound your head and you shall wound his heel.

To the woman He said, I shall definitely increase your pain and your birthing, you shall birth children in pain and desire your husband and he shall control you.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

אֵיבָה	enmity
יְשׁוּפְךָ	He shall wound you
תְּשׁוּפֶנּוּ	You shall wound him
עָקֵב	heel
עֶצֶב	Pain
עִצְּבוֹנֵךְ	Your pain
תֵּלְדִי	[give] birth
בָנִים	Children, sons
תְּשׁוּקָתֵךְ	Your desire

 

We have two verbs in this lesson that have something in common.  The root has a vav in the middle.  “Wound” is shin vav pe and “your desire” is shin vav qof.   I’ll give you the conjugation of a related verb that you will see much more often, qof vav mem which means “arise.”

 

Present

Singular	Plural	Gender
קָם	קָמִים	Masculine
קָמָה	קָמוֹת	Feminine

 

Past

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
קַמְתִּי	קַמְנוּ	First
קַמְתָּ	קַמְתֶּם	Second/masculine
קַמְתְּ	קַמְתֶּן	Second/feminine
קָם	קָמוּ	Third/masculine
קָמָה	קָמְוּ	Third/feminine

 

Future/aorist

Singular	Plural	Person/gender
אָקוּם	נָקוּם	First
תָּקוּם	תָּקוּמוּ	Second/masculine
תָּקוּמִי	תָּקוֹמְנָה	Second/feminine
יָקוּם	יָקוּמוּ	Third/masculine
תָּקוּמִי	תָּקוֹמְנָה	Third/feminine

 

Culture capsule.  Notice that the verse numbers are not yod heh or yod vav.  Those are components of the Name of Gd.  So Hebrew numbering uses different letters that add up to the same thing.  You do the math.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Outdoors -- Summer!

A catalog.

Blooming: Privet with that warm heavy fragrance; golden cosmos, cilantro, horehound, chicory, scabious, columbine.  The plain and Japanese honeysuckle should be blooming soon; if they are now, there isn't any close enough for me to catch the fragrance.

Fruiting: mulberry, besieged by birds who can sneak in behind the mockingbird's back, and the more courageous squirrels.  Once in a while I pull a couple for myself.

Feeding: bees on the privet, which is bee-safe because I use no chemicals on my yard, butterflies on chicory, birds on bugs and mulberries.  Also their chicks, of which there are no doubt several.

Singing: mockingbird, catbird, robin, Carolina wren, boreal chickadee, woodpecker, the occasional titmouse, swallows on the wing high over the houses at sunset.  And a scream or two from the blue jay just to remind us he's still there.

Taking wicked revenge.  Starlings like nice solid boxes to nest in.  There's always one who tries to nest in my tool closet, because the door sometimes pops open by itself or in a strong wind.  He's having no luck this year, so he's taken to bombing my white porch, and you know with what.  From the color, I can tell that this starling is also eating mulberries. 

Buying: the Farmer's Market is open.  I went down there and scored strawberries I had to eat by Monday night, they were so ripe.  Throw me into that briar patch.  Also beets and turnips  the perfect size for pickling, kale and collards for freezing, and spinach for crunching.  I didn't plant this year; I'm letting the clover take over and put nitrogen in the soil, and composting weeds to smother the old weeds.  The Market is just a short walk down the hill and a short walk up the hill, and I wore a new tee I knit over the winter from that Perly Perle yarn.  Fits like a glove.  Also my jeans fit even though I've been a slug finishing up projects. 

All in all Sunday was the  most satisfying day I've had in a long time. 
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Enuma Elish

In the beginning of Torah is the creation story.  The urban legend is that this was copied from Enuma Elish and then modified to what we have now.

What is the provenance of Enuma Elish? 

The copies of Enuma Elish come from Mesopotamian sites dating to the 2200s through 1700s BCE, and Ashurbanipal’s library of the 600s BCE, up to the 300s BCE during the reign of Alexander II of Macedon.  The earliest translation is credited to George Smith in 1876.

The mass of discoveries in Mesopotamia in the 1800s CE, including translations by George Smith, astounded the west.  One of them was confirmation of Jonah’s claim that Nineveh was three days across.  Up to Layard’s work at Nineveh, which discovered Ashurbanipal’s library about 1851 CE, it seemed incredible and false to rationalists that a city so ancient could be that size.  From Jonah’s viewpoint, in his times, there was nothing to be surprised at: Nineveh was what the west called a city-state, but the archaeologists, with their schooling in Classical Greek, identified that sort of polity only with the Greeks of classical times, not with Mesopotamia at all.

However, their work swung the pendulum the other way and suddenly everything discovered in Mesopotamia seemed to confirm something in the Bible for two reasons.  One is the admission in Genesis that Terach took his family from Ur to Charan, both ruled by Mesopotamia.  The other is the material in Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Chronicles about the Babylonian Captivity.  Tablets in royal archives at Babylon record a captive Jewish king who had a food allowance.  The provenance of the tablets is the reign of Nebuchadnetsar, named in the Bible as the conqueror of the Babylonian Captivity.

Unfortunately at the time both Victorian prejudices against non-Western cultures prior to classical Greek civilization, and a particular fallacy which I’ll discuss at the end of this section, combined to fasten the pendulum to the idea that, as the scripture of a people originating in Mesopotamia, the Bible had to be a version of Mesopotamian material. 

So the creation story in Genesis had to be a version of the newly discovered Enuma Elish.

There was division about when the Jewish version arose.  It occurred either among the ancestors of the Jews some time in the 1700s BCE. Or it occurred during the Babylonian Captivity.

The 1700s period was more attractive because it allowed an argument that Jewish law was a copy of Hammurabi’s code, which I will discuss later.  If you want to get a jump on it, you can find one of the translated copies of Hammurabi that are on-line.

Unfortunately, part of the likeness of the Jewish creation story to Enuma Elish rested on a Christian interpretation of the construction of Torah, not the Jewish interpretation, and that is a cultural “quote out of context”; I will discuss this in the next lesson.  For now, you can go online and find one of the many copies of Enuma Elish.  You can even look at the cuneiform here.  http://www.sron.nl/~jheise/akkadian/cftexts.html

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved