Theos-Talk Archives (April 1998 Message tt00091)

Bart Lidofsky <bartl@sprynet.com> writes
>Dr. A.M.Bain wrote:
>
>> The Shema, in the original Hebrew, does not say "the lord is One".
>> Sorry. It says, literally, YHWH ACHAD, which as near as can
>> *accurately* be translated, comes out as "That Which Is is Unity."
>
> What is accurate? It's actually YY AChD, the former being an abbreviation
>for
>the tetragrammaton (YHVH), which, in turn, is an abbreviation for the now lost
>13-letter name of God only used once a year by the High Priest.

No it is not. The Hebrew text has at this point "yod heh waw heh
[tetragrammaton, meaning a four-letter word] a ch d" YY would be
two yods. If the thirteen letter letter name is lost, who says that the
word used is such an abbreviation? How do we not now that whoever
said "13" miscounted? Can we use extant texts, please? What is your
source for this? The Mishnah? Something like Likutei Amarim-Tanya
('Hasidic Kabbalist text)?

> It is usually
>translated as "the Lord", probably given the common form of referring to God,
>"Hashem", or "the name". Literally translated, it means "The Lord One". The
>entire
>sentence translates literally to: Listen Israel, the Lord Our God, the Lord One.
>Now, given Hebrew grammar, the word "is" is implied.

Yes, the verb is always implied. The use of "The Lord" (Adonai) is
commonplace, and is capitalised in the KJV to show where it has been
- NB - *substituted* for YHWH. This is based upon a superstitious
reverence for a word, the usual rendering being "Hear O Isreal, the
Lord our god ..." as it is part of a quotation made to the Israelites,
attributed to God by Moses (according to the account). Readers can
find this in Deuteronomy, 6:4. A useful resource, albeit for KJV only, is
"The Interlinear Bible" Hebrew/English ed. Jay P. Green (3 vols).
Published by Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Also, pub
MacDonald, "Strong's Exhaustive Concordance" which contains every
word in the Protestant KJV together with Hebrew and Greek
dictionaries. There is also a great deal (!) of Bible software, some of
which gives Greek and Hebrew in either transliteration or in the original
[sic] text(s). Baker also do a 4th vol. of the Interlinear giving the New
Testament Greek received text.

Some Jewish or Israelite books which are in Catholic Bibles (such as
The Book of Wisdom) are not in the protestant canon of scripture.
Some which *are* therein are *not* in other versions (in particular the
Peshitta Aramaic N.T.)

> It seems that a lot of
>translators are unaware of Hebrew grammatical rules. For example, in the New
>Testament, many Hebrew phrases are given in the future tense. Which is
>strange,
>because there is no future tense in Hebrew. The imperfect tense doubles as the
>future tense, and can be easily determined by context. The phrases used in the
>New
>Testament are universally quoted out of context.

Not only that, but as mentioned below, are often from Greek, not
Hebrew sources.

A great many are copied from the Greek Septuagint already mentioned.
Paul does this a great deal. Modern scholarship suggests that the
Hebrew original texts from which the Septuagint was made (before the
Masoretic version) vary considerably in places from the currently
received text of the Hebrew "Bible".
>
> This of course ignores the fact that we can only rely on the exact content of
>the Old Testament from the time of the Mazorites...

Not so. There is a complete scroll of Isaiah among the Dead Sea
Scrolls, and there is also the Aramaic Peshitta text, as well as numerous
fragments of unpointed Hebrew writings.
>
Alan (who sniffs a whiff of Rabbinical Judaism) :-)
-------------------
Brought to you from
West Cornwall, UK