21st Century Bible Hebew -- Nouns in -ach

Genesis 2:5

 

ה וְכֹ֣ל ׀ שִׂ֣יחַ הַשָּׂדֶ֗ה טֶ֚רֶם יִהְיֶ֣ה בָאָ֔רֶץ וְכָל־עֵ֥שֶׂב הַשָּׂדֶ֖ה טֶ֣רֶם יִצְמָ֑ח כִּי֩ לֹ֨א הִמְטִ֜יר יְהוָֹ֤ה אֱלֹהִים֙ עַל־הָאָ֔רֶץ וְאָדָ֣ם אַ֔יִן לַֽעֲבֹ֖ד אֶת־הָֽאֲדָמָֽה:

 

Translation:     But all the growth of the field did not yet exist on land and all grass of the field had not yet sprouted, because **** Gd had not yet caused rain on the earth, and there was no man for the purpose of working the earth.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

שִׂיחַ	growth
טֶרֶם	Not yet
יִצְמָח	sprout
הִמְטִיר	Caused to rain
אַיִן	There was none
לַעֲבֹד	To work

 

First, see if you can find the etnach.

 

Second, why did I translate “caused rain”?

 

Third, notice what la plus the aspectless verb says about people.

 

That’s right, the purpose of having people is to service the earth. This probably makes you think that this second narrative is “about” agriculture, but that’s not true, and the grammar in later verses has consequences that show what it’s really “about”.

 

And finally, how does this verse parallel Genesis 1:2? That’s right. This is another verse that says things at creation were not like they are now. In that case, the dry land and other things we are used to didn’t exist. In this case our attention is pointed at plant life. That’s a spoiler that plants will be crucial to the denouement. So look for this narrative to end only when some form of plant life has played its role.

 

Grammar point: nouns ending in chet with a patach under it, are pronounced –ach not cha. These are all feminine nouns unless they are men’s names. However, say sichat not siacht.

 

absolute	construct	Number
שִׂיחַ	שִׂיחַת	Singular
שִׂיחוֹת	שִׂיחוֹת	Plural

 

The loss of the patach is required in this kind of noun.

 

Answer to the first question: the etnach is under yitsmach.

 

Answer to the second question: notice the classic yod of the hifil.

Kntting -- the retro top

Some time back I posted about the tuxedo seen in a Constance Bennet movie.

I included a chart for a leaf-and-berry motif that I said reminded me of a top my mother had. Well, I used the motif and here is the result. I worked it around the bottom of my sleeveless top with the selvages at the armholes. I also worked a selvage at the collar after doing a checkerboard pattern below and at the shoulders.

I was going to work more bands like this the whole way up, but I decided less was more.  I could have worked it only at the top, between the armholes.




I emailed my photo to my sisters and one of them still has the top that my Mom owned, which this motif reminded me of. I asked her to take photos and here they are. I like this because it's important without being garish and subtle without being reticent.

I can't remember if this top is from the 50s or the 60s but if it's the 60s, it's early on.

The design is way too complicated for me to do a chart but if you want to try it, go for it!!

Fact-Checking the Torah -- the repetition the Danes didn't use

There is one more reason for repetition that Olrik never addressed. Section 58 (Epic Law #1) about clarity refers to spinning off episodes in something I call sidebars, but he didn’t discuss what happens when you come back from the sidebar.

After some sidebars, Torah uses repetition for re-orientation. The Lot and Avimelekh incidents are sidebars after the annunciation of Yitschaq’s birth that emphasizes Avraham’s and Sarah’s elderliness. When we come back from them, Avraham’s exact age is given to remind us what a miracle Yitschaq was. Then begins the story of throwing away Yishmael.

Even more obviously, the Yosef saga is interrupted by the sidebar of Yehudah and Tamar. It’s an important narrative because it sets up what Olrik called the Law of Cascading Contrast, as well as establishing yibum as an ancient practice to make sure that a man had heirs to his property.

But then it has to go back to Yosef, and it re-orients the audience by repeating the line from right before the Yehudah-Tamar incident, about Yosef being sold into Egypt. This is one reason why, unlike Mr. Salomon, I never considered this part of the saga as a parallel doublet – but at the point when I discussed doublets, I hadn’t talked about this kind of repetition so props to Mr. Salomon for inventive thinking.

So some repetitions cope with re-orienting the audience, something Olrik never had to deal with.

Now let’s go back to Samaritan Pentateuch. It has a return-from-sidebar repetition in Numbers 21:12-13. The start of verse 13 copies part of verse 12, that is, it’s a repetition. Why? Because the text has a sidebar copied from Deuteronomy 2:17-19. Why?

The copy of the Deuteronomy verses is one of several examples. In several places in Deuteronomy, where Mosheh is recapitulating Israelite history, he says that X happened. X is an incident from some time back in the 40 years since the Exodus. Most of the time, X is referred to in the book of Exodus. And Samaritan Torah copies what Mosheh says in Deuteronomy into the book of Exodus at the point where X is referred to.

Repetitions after sidebars occur in sequence with the narratives; they are not copied from outside that book or from far-distant points in the oral tradition. The SP Numbers repetition has this feature; the sidebar itself was copied from elsewhere.

Most of the copying from Deuteronomy has the common feature of not making a liar out of Mosheh. If he said it in Deuteronomy, Samaritan Pentateuch makes sure that nobody can say he is lying.

Oral narratives support narrator credibility in-line with the narratives that disturb it. The disturbances are fantastic incidents. The support mechanisms are localization, rationalizing repetitions, and use of the certainty epistemic with something culturally or visibly present. That’s not what the statements in Deuteronomy are, and the X’s in Exodus are either not incredible, or else they carry their validation with them without the copying from Deuteronomy.

The issue seems to be that Deuteronomy is the most authoritative book of Torah for Samaritans. That’s understandable because Deuteronomy is the one book in Torah that talks about “the place which the Lord shall choose”. Samaritans interpret this to be the Twin Peaks, based on what is probably a case of horizon decay in oral transmission, which I talked about some time ago. But the copying into Exodus doesn’t have the hallmarks of repetitions in oral transmission. I suggest that this copying occurred after the Samaritans put their Pentateuch into writing – whenever that was. They’re in the oldest manuscripts documented by von Gall, from 1000-1100 CE. We know that the great Bar Rabbah of the 200s CE tried to revitalize Samaritan culture. That leaves a lot of time for the copying to happen.

By the way, there might be some sense to the copying from Deuteronomy into Numbers if it followed the pattern of the copyings to Exodus. It doesn’t. Numbers is recapitulating part of the journey. Deuteronomy 2:17-19 is a header for a description of peoples in the Holy Land. There’s no issue here of keeping Mosheh from looking like a liar. I'm not going to speculate on the reason for the insertion; you're welcome to do so although I suggest finishing this blog before you do.

One more bit about repetitions and then I'll move on. 

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- vocabulary review 4

Remember, the words above the line are high-frequency.

אֵלֶּה	These
הִנֵּה	Behold
שְּׁבִיעִי	seventh
נָתַתִּי	I have given, set, placed
הִנֵּה	Behold!
כִבְשֻׁהָ	Dominate it
אָכְלָה	Food
יֶרֶק	Green (n)
שִּׁשִּׁי	sixth
יְכֻלּוּ	They were completed
צְבָאָם	Their host
מְלַאכָה	melakhah
יִּשְׁבֹּת	He rested
שָׁבַת	He rested
יְקַדֵּשׁ	He “sanctified”
תוֹלְדוֹת	Generations, births
הִבָּרְאָם	Their being created
עֲשׂוֹת	creating

 

Garden -- hydrangea time

We've had like 7 inches of rain since May 1 and my hydrangea loves it.

I don't know if you can tell on your screen but this bunch at the bottom front center is half pink and half purple.

Others on the left are blue purple.







I didn't snap all the flowers because my phone battery gets low when I use the camera, but I think you've seen enough.










This plant was here when I moved in. I have no idea how old it really is, maybe 30 years old. I think there is only one plant but there might be two. At any rate, that one blossom shows how amazing hydrangeas are, that the same flower can have two colors.

Fact-Checking the Torah -- my parallel doublet candidate?

This post is going to run longer than usual, and you’ll see why if you look at the comments from last week’s post. Mr. Salomon indirectly showed me that I had given no definition for “goal” and I’d better do that, after I go over my candidate for a possible parallel doublet.

Parallel doublets conflate two oral narratives, while they are still being transmitted orally, into a single narrative with more than the usual number of characters and incidents, with multiple geographical settings, and with more than one motive driving the plot. Conflation occurs because the independent narratives have the same goal, which eventually blurs the distinction between the narratives. Olrik insisted on reserving claims of parallel doublets for cases when the researcher could point to an external source giving one of the original narratives without a hint of the other.

So I cannot prove that I have identified any parallel doublets in Torah. I have pointed out parts of Torah that look like a repetition promoting credibility, or emphasizing the importance of an issue, or illustrating the Law of Ascents. But with no ancient versions of Torah lying around with the separate parts of what might be the parallel doublet, what I say in the rest of this post is strictly conjectural. 

In Exodus, a series of episodes has the apparent goal of providing tablets of the Israelite laws from Gd through Mosheh’s mediation. They fall in two parts and hinge around the Golden Calf episode.

In the first part, the elders go part way up Sinai and have dinner there in Gd’s presence, then they go home and Mosheh stays on the mountain 40 days and nights, eventually coming back down with tablets “written with the finger of Gd.” Before he leaves the mountain, Gd promises the Israelites that they will have His angel as a sacred presence among them.

In the second part, Mosheh has broken the tablets in his rage over the Golden Calf episode, Gd is very angry, and Mosheh goes back up the mountain for two reasons. One is to appease Gd, and this results in the statement of the Thirteen Attributes of Gd, all of which have to do with His mercy. This time Mosheh has to cut the tablets out of rock himself and do all the engraving. Gd warns the Israelites that His angel will go among them, and to act carefully, because an enraged angel might destroy them before Gd can exert His mercy. In sorrow, the men stop wearing their ornaments; this all seemingly takes place at Horeb.

The only way you can say that a multitude of characters are involved, is to contrast the elders in the first part with the “mixed multitude” who sparked the Golden Calf incident; and point out the sudden elevation of Yehoshua to the position of Mosheh’s personal assistant, who announces the Golden Calf incident to Mosheh. Before this Yehoshua was the winning commander in the battle with Amaleq.

You don’t have the feature of turning aside from the denouement to start the other narrative in the conflation. Mosheh succeeds in getting the tablets the first time. His breaking them is the excuse for him having to go up the mountain the second time.

What this actually resembles is two versions of a story, the second of which is told to preserve narrator credibility by being more rational. It’s incredible that the elders would all but see the face of Gd. It’s incredible that Mosheh could actually get physical stone tablets with writing on them that Gd put there.

Now, when Mosheh is rehashing Israelite history since the Exodus, in Deuteronomy 10:4 he does say that the second set of tablets also was written by Gd, contrary to what the post-calf part of the Exodus narrative says. But that’s not the confusion of a parallel doublet because he also specifically says that he spent two 40-day periods in the mountain and got two sets of tablets. What he says in Deuteronomy 10 is that touch of the fantastic in every oral narrative, only he has pasted it over top of the rational side of the old narrative.

I can’t prove this is a parallel doublet, but I ain’t even worrying ’bout that.

Now that definition. Olrik does not say this in the same words in his book, but a goal is whatever happens that is immediately followed by the denouement. There’s no sense continuing the narrative once the goal has been reached.

So in the Yehudah-Tamar episode, the goal was for Yehudah to have sons, but righteous ones, unlike Er, Onan and probably Shelah. Getting Yosef to Egypt is crucial to his having sons, but the Yosef narrative doesn’t wrap up at that point, it goes on for quite a long time. The real goal is for him to support his family in Egypt, and then their cushy life is contrasted with the Oppression that immediately follows at the start of Shemot.

There really is an important component in the Yehudah-Tamar story relative to Yosef, and I’ll mention it in about a month.

One more repetition that Olrik didn't discuss...

21st Century Bible Hebrew -- more idioms

Genesis 2:4

 

ד אֵ֣לֶּה תֽוֹלְד֧וֹת הַשָּׁמַ֛יִם וְהָאָ֖רֶץ בְּהִבָּֽרְאָ֑ם בְּי֗וֹם עֲשׂ֛וֹת יְהוָֹ֥ה אֱלֹהִ֖ים אֶ֥רֶץ וְשָׁמָֽיִם:

 

Translation:     These are the births of heaven and earth at the time of their being created, on the day of the Lord Gd creating earth and heaven.

 

Vocabulary in this lesson:

אֵלֶּה	These
תוֹלְדוֹת	Generations, births
הִבָּרְאָם	Their being created
עֲשׂוֹת	creation

 

The verb hibaram illustrates how the aspectless verb that takes prepositions works. This form can take object suffixes as well as prepositions.

 

When this form of aspectless verb takes the prefix b’, the meaning is “at the time of Xing”.

 

Hibaram is nifal. We know that nifal reflects a legal decree. So this is not just a making, it’s obedience to a decree.

 

The pronoun suffix is for the direct object of bara, “heaven and earth”.

 

The rabbis noticed that with the first verb it says “heavens and earth”, the same formula used with bara in Genesis 1:1, and with the last verb it says “earth and heaven”. They used this to show that neither heaven nor earth was premier in importance.

 

Now, there’s an urban legend that this is a second creation narrative and there are hints as to why people thought so in some of the verses. But here are two clues.

 

One is the use of the aspectless verbs. Nothing happens in this verse to create the world; creation is a given.

 

Second is ba-yom.  We just got through seven days of creation. Why does it say “on the day”?

 

Two reasons. One is that “on the day” is a literal translation. Literal translations have created more urban legends about Torah than you can shake a stick at. Literal translations ignore idioms. Here, we have an idiom for “at the time”.

 

Second is that oral traditions consist of multiple narratives, each self-contained although they may stack up into sagas. There is absolutely no requirement that any narrative in a single oral tradition be consistent with any other narrative.

 

If you ever read Robert Graves’ compilation of Greek myth, you saw this in action although he and the scholarly tradition he worked in never realized it. A given hero or god may have, not only multiple names, but also multiple progenitors. Aphrodite’s father could be any of several Greek gods. Other aspects include four different places in Greece identified as the resting place of the box in which Deucalion and Pyrrha survived the Greek flood story.

 

The point of narratives in an oral tradition is to teach something about the culture transmitting the tradition. We’ll get to the point of this narrative many verses from now.