Meat How can we believe in "Magic" - but not Scripture?

[The Revolting Man]

The most interesting statement in that article is

This directly contradicts @Mark C's statements that the ELS indicates the consonants in the Masoretic text have not been changed - if they differ between versions then at least some versions have been changed.

And it sounds like he’s trying to impose a spelling and grammatical rigidity that the language just didn’t have back then. It sounds like Hebrew spelling was similar to early and Middle English, much more phonetic than grammatical.

 

[FollowingHim]

And it sounds like he’s trying to impose a spelling and grammatical rigidity that the language just didn’t have back then. It sounds like Hebrew spelling was similar to early and Middle English, much more phonetic than grammatical.

He isn't making that part of it up, he is repeating Jewish tradition. I've heard it a lot.

Since we're using Wikipedia here, which I see as generally unreliable but likely quite reasonable when it comes to Jewish matters:

An emphasis on minute details of words and spellings, already used among the Pharisees as basis for argumentation, reached its height with the example of Rabbi Akiva (died 135 CE). The idea of a perfect text sanctified in its consonantal base quickly spread throughout the Jewish communities via supportive statements in Halakha, Aggadah, and Jewish thought;[11] and with it increasingly forceful strictures that a deviation in even a single letter would make a Torah scroll invalid.[15] Very few manuscripts are said to have survived the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE.[16] This drastically reduced the number of variants in circulation and also gave a new urgency that the text must be preserved.

So basically, prior to the destruction of the Temple, there were a range of variations in the scripture as evidenced in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the LXX. Then, after the destruction of the Temple, the Jews became really strict about preserving what scrolls they had left. First they went through the scrolls they had rescued and, by majority decision, decided which variations were the right ones, to come to a single authoritative text:

A Talmudic story, perhaps referring to an earlier time, relates that three Torah scrolls were found in the Temple court but were at variance with each other. The differences between the three were then resolved by majority decision.[10]

Then they made really tough rules about how to preserve this single version, rules accurately described by @Mark C - but they only indicate that the order of consonants was preserved from maybe the third century until today, not for all time.

Few manuscripts survive from this era, but a short Leviticus fragment recovered from the ancient En-Gedi Scroll, carbon-dated to the 3rd or 4th century CE, is completely identical to the consonantal Masoretic Text preserved today.[17]

Masoretic Text - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I am learning a lot here, thanks @The Revolting Man. It reminds me of an evening Bible class I did with a Pentecostal church back when I was a university student. Myself and my Catholic flatmate would sit up the back row cross-referencing the teaching with our actual bibles, whispering to each other things like "does it really say that? Look here, it actually says this. Hey, that's really interesting over on the other page. What's he talking about now?" . I learnt an enormous amount about the Bible from those lectures, and much of it was the opposite of what the lecturer said. So thanks to @Mark C for the lecture also!

 

[Mark C]

...after the destruction of the Temple, the Jews became really strict about preserving what scrolls they had left. First they went through the scrolls they had rescued and, by majority decision, decided which variations were the right ones, to come to a single authoritative text...

Then they made really tough rules about how to preserve this single version, rules accurately described by @Mark C - but they only indicate that the order of consonants was preserved from maybe the third century until today, not for all time.

Much was lost with the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.

There was also a LOT of destruction of ancient texts when the famous library at Alexandria was destroyed, And that story, too, has uncertainties and variations (here, I prefer other sources to Wikipedia as well, like even Britannica, but they all seem to agree that whether it was in the time of Julius Caesar, ca. 48 BC, or a 'daughter library' that may have survived as late as the 4th century, much was lost.

But ALL of that precedes BOTH the Masoretic text, by centuries, AND the oldest copies (4th century) of the LXX.

Again - I am not now, nor have I, argued that the Masoretic texts are equal to, much less superior to, the Torah scrolls. Arguably, while they differ, I suspect the same type of flaws in are common to both the Masoretic texts and the Septuagint, although differences in the nature of the language itself must not be ignored. (Greek is a language that inherently accepts multiple pagan deities, and is not suited to expressing some natural Hebrew concepts, and vice-versa. Other examples abound.) Don't forget that the character sets themselves, as well, changed over time.

And it must NEVER be forgotten that BOTH 'whoring wives' had ample reason to modify their texts to push a doctrine (examples abound, particularly in the English renderings, as has been discussed here frequently) and likely did. It is for that reason that I emphasize the ELS and similar "error correction and detection" methodologies, which are generally unique to the Torah scroll renderings. I also suspect, but cannot prove, that if there were deliberate edits (as can be seen in Mark chapter 7, again) they would have more likely have been made by the Pharisees in some 'uncomfortable' prophecies (Isaiah 53 comes to mind, but is hardly unique) in the Naviim.

Then they made really tough rules about how to preserve this single version...

Here, an observation; certainly not a 'proof'. If YHVH is capable of preserving His Word for us, and people will VOCIFEROUSLY argue such in the case of Greek or even English (I know RABID KJV-only types!) - why would be not believe He is equally capable of doing so in His original language? Especially, as I contend, if we recognize that even 'parsings' actually constrain the text - and reduce the actual "information content"?

Finally, this correction:

This directly contradicts @Mark C's statements that the ELS indicates the consonants in the Masoretic text have not been changed...

In this case you evidently mis-read what I wrote. I indicated that there were spelling changes in the Masoretic texts. There are also variations in spelling (which I find VERY interesting) in the Torah scrolls in places as well. And, as I mentioned, in the use of 'et' in places where it is not grammatically necessary. The difficulty may stem from the fact that the Hebrew letters are technically ALL 'consonants' - even some (like alef) which are generally silent and can serve as what we might call vowels, while others like yod (and its English equivalent 'y'), similarly vav, also seem to act like vowels.

Edit: I tend to believe that some of those 'differences' are probably related to the ELS patterns themselves, where the variations, endemic to the language, are part of the pattern that He encoded in His Word.

PS> I appreciate that you demonstrated the concept of providing evidence for assertions, and what it can look like when 'iron sharpens iron.'

 

[Mark C]

You keep repeating an acronym like a mantra. I’m not sure what ELS is or why it is a stand in for Hebrew manuscripts but my question was simple.

Ironic, since the concept of the Torah codes, and some of the math behind it, has been mentioned here on BF many times. Including, very recently (barely a month ago), on a thread which Zec himself commented as if he knew more than he now claims.

What language was the Old Testament written in?

I recently came across the argument that the Old Testament may not have originally been written in what we know as " Hebrew script". I had not heard that view before and wondered if any of you were familiar with it? I know we here are more open to "outside the box" ideas than most. I feel...

biblicalfamilies.org

Based on extensive study of Wikipedia and a bit of Google - this brilliance: He didn't even read what was written RIGHT HERE on BF. But does make the typical knee-jerk assumptions.

Okay, ELS is essentially Kabbalah.

Like someone who can't understand the difference between astronomy and astrology. Much less why Elohim would put 'signs in the heavens' and then condemn soothsaying via the latter. Ignorance is bliss.

You could, and apparently others have, achieved the same results with any large block of text.

I bet you believe 10,000,000 monkeys with typewriters could eventually produce Shakespeare, too.

Maybe even random mutations in organic soup can make a DNA encoder. Who needs God when random combinations will do it?

As I suspected; this was a giant waste of time and I didn’t even spend that much time on it.

Obviously, as your tremendous insight demonstrates. You couldn't even be bothered to read what I actually have written here on BF on the subject, which has NOTHING to do with soothsaying and magic. Much less your juvenile critique. But it does have to do with whether YHVH is capable of producing text which has characteristics which can demonstrate His Divine Authorship. And which demonstrate a level of creative intellect that cannot be matched today.

The original Torah-code-related point in this thread, and others previously, which you also ignored, had to do with textual integrity, and whether copies are accurate -- or not.

And the math matters.

Isaac Newton, BTW, didn't have access to a computer to do the searches, but he had a genuine understanding that there was something there, and he spent far more time looking than you were willing to.

@Mark C , you are an untrustworthy teacher. If you fell for this then you are too simple and uncritical to be attempting to teach others. I hesitate to think what it means if you didn’t fall for it.

And you are an asshole. But I'm not surprised you weren't able to even see enough to be able to ask the right questions.

As far I’m concerned we’re done here.

Finally, you got ONE thing right.

 

[BiblicalLiteralist]

So how does one know which version is the oldest without trusting the magical science of radiocarbon dating, which is the same science that says everything is much much older than the Bible says?

 

[FollowingHim]

Radiocarbon dating is sound for a few thousand years, provided it is done carefully. Radioisotope dating methods have many flaws and become highly questionable very quickly when they are used for dates >10,000 years or so. But for working out if a manuscript is 200 or 1500 years old, radiocarbon dating is sound. Can explain the science if that would be helpful.

 

[Mark C]

So how does one know which version is the oldest without trusting the magical science of radiocarbon dating, which is the same science that says everything is much much older than the Bible says?

...for working out if a manuscript is 200 or 1500 years old, radiocarbon dating is sound.

Whether or not the date is correct (and whether or not this is really year 5784 since Adam, etc) was not my concern (certainly not the OP in the thread. ) Neither is which text is allegedly older, since what we know for certain is that none of the existing texts are the Original.

The question should be what rendering is most faithful to what He Wrote.

And how can we KNOW, so best to "study, to show yourself approved"?

I have contended that THE major key, IMHO, to that understanding is internal consistency.

Does an alleged 'translation' contradict itself? (For example, say one thing about marriage in one place and something contradictory in another?) What can we learn from studying those differences? I.e., do we correct the error, or throw it out?

"Carbon dating" is only one tool that may be of use. There are others, and, I contend, better, in that determination; NONE of them perfect.

As an engineer, with a background in what are called "error correction [ and detection ] codes," or ECC, I know that we can design codes and modulation techniques that enable data to be sent, received, recovered, and even corrected, from things like a radio signal, a magnetic disk, optical disks or tape drives (both my own specialty) and thus recognize the significance of the things we can see in history and in the various texts we have of Scripture that appear to have similar characteristics.

Scribal notations in many texts (which Yahushua referred to, rendered the "jots and tiddles," in some English renderings of Matthew 5:17-19) are just one example of such. And they are almost NEVER rendered in those English translations.

The example I have frequently referred to here on BF (and elsewhere, at greater length) that I personally find perhaps the MOST persuasive, is the "information density" of the original Hebrew text, particularly in Bereshiet (Genesis) 1. The letters, without spaces as Written, can be "parsed" or read in multiple ways, depending on where we choose to break the words, but only in the original language.

When we do that, we see that "Bereshiet bara Elohim et hashamayim v'et haeretz' as the Masorites 'parsed' it (and they are not alone - that's how most do it, having been taught) can also be read to produce other intelligible sentences in both Hebrew and related Aramaic. And those renderings produce information like (but not limited to - there are at least seven I know of) "the creator of man" and the "creator of fire" is Yah, to a statement that He is the Healer as well.

Just what does that prove? I leave that to each of us, as students. But I contend that the "information density" of that original text is astounding - to the point of even appearing Divine.

And a field of engineering mathematics for communication and data storage has attempted to quantify just how much information can be "stuffed" into a given "communications channel" (like a wire, and optical stream, or a bunch of text characters) and then recovered. (See "Shannon's Law," or theory, if you prefer.) [Aside: BTW, the very best human codes ever designed can't TOUCH the information density of a bit of the DNA double-helix! And they don't approach Shannon's limit, either.]

And they aren't a "proof" of Who Wrote them.

But they impressed me enough, as a skeptical engineer, to study His Word, as actually Written, as best I could, for myself.

 

[Mark C]

...continued...

ELS (Equidistant Letter Spacing) is another such tool.

No, you don't have to accept any mumbo-jumbo about predicting the future (although I do recognize He has anointed 'prophets' - so why could He NOT?) because that is NOT the POINT.

Patterns like "Yod-hay-vav-hey" and 'torah' [tav-resh-hey] in His Torah, at remarkable intervals (7, and 7x7+1) don't have to do with astrology or divination, but DO seem to indicate much more than those who don't understand statistics and likelihood would care to admit.

But you'd be a fool to dismiss things you don't understand just because someone else has used it in a way not in accord with His intention (sex, anyone?)

 

[The Revolting Man]

Ironic, since the concept of the Torah codes, and some of the math behind it, has been mentioned here on BF many times. Including, very recently (barely a month ago), on a thread which Zec himself commented as if he knew more than he now claims.

What language was the Old Testament written in?

I recently came across the argument that the Old Testament may not have originally been written in what we know as " Hebrew script". I had not heard that view before and wondered if any of you were familiar with it? I know we here are more open to "outside the box" ideas than most. I feel...

biblicalfamilies.org

Based on extensive study of Wikipedia and a bit of Google - this brilliance: He didn't even read what was written RIGHT HERE on BF. But does make the typical knee-jerk assumptions.


Like someone who can't understand the difference between astronomy and astrology. Much less why Elohim would put 'signs in the heavens' and then condemn soothsaying via the latter. Ignorance is bliss.


I bet you believe 10,000,000 monkeys with typewriters could eventually produce Shakespeare, too.

Maybe even random mutations in organic soup can make a DNA encoder. Who needs God when random combinations will do it?


Obviously, as your tremendous insight demonstrates. You couldn't even be bothered to read what I actually have written here on BF on the subject, which has NOTHING to do with soothsaying and magic. Much less your juvenile critique. But it does have to do with whether YHVH is capable of producing text which has characteristics which can demonstrate His Divine Authorship. And which demonstrate a level of creative intellect that cannot be matched today.

The original Torah-code-related point in this thread, and others previously, which you also ignored, had to do with textual integrity, and whether copies are accurate -- or not.

And the math matters.

Isaac Newton, BTW, didn't have access to a computer to do the searches, but he had a genuine understanding that there was something there, and he spent far more time looking than you were willing to.


And you are an asshole. But I'm not surprised you weren't able to even see enough to be able to ask the right questions.


Finally, you got ONE thing right.

Don’t be bitter Mark. Some of us just didn’t get the right decoder ring in our cereal boxes.

 

[The Revolting Man]

But I contend that the "information density" of that original text is astounding

What. Original. Text? Could you please engineer a response to that question?

 

[Mark C]

What. Original. Text? Could you please engineer a response to that question?

Thanks at least for 'please.' The sarcasm I'll try to ignore, in the spirit of midrash.

A: The text I have already quoted:

"Bereshiet bara Elohim et hashamayim v'et haeretz"

even in the modern character set, and even in the Masoretic text. All you have to do is take out the spaces between the Hebrew letters, and look at re-parsings. Remember that the result does NOT have vowels.

 

[The Revolting Man]

Thanks at least for 'please.' The sarcasm I'll try to ignore, in the spirit of midrash.

A: The text I have already quoted:

even in the modern character set, and even in the Masoretic text. All you have to do is take out the spaces between the Hebrew letters, and look at re-parsings. Remember that the result does NOT have vowels.

So, at the bottom of all of this, your original texts are the Masoretic and their violence against Isaiah? You don’t have anything other than that?

 

[Mark C]

Don’t be bitter Mark. Some of us just didn’t get the right decoder ring in our cereal boxes.

Perhaps there's a reason He told us (and Daniel) that some things would be "sealed up" and "hidden" until the End Times. The computer technology to do the number crunching didn't even exist until the last few decades. (Or, I suspect Newton might've found it. )




Aside: In the early '80s, the encoding/decoding algorithm that was used in the CD, or "Compact Disc," defined by Philips and Sony (which I saw at conferences in that era, including a very memorable one called "ICASSP") was practically unbelievable. It was called "Reed-Solomon" coding, and claimed to be able to recover data from an audio file that was equivalent to drilling a 1/4" hole in the disc. It took an entire dedicated microprocessor chip to implement, and was integral to the eventual release. Myself, and the other more senior engineer that were privileged to see it were actually amazed they shared it with the conference, and talked so openly about it. Far beyond the scope here, but look up old terms like "Maximum Likelihood Decoding." (It's now at the heart of some "natural language" models and speech decoding.)

 

[The Revolting Man]

Thanks at least for 'please.' The sarcasm I'll try to ignore, in the spirit of midrash.

A: The text I have already quoted:

even in the modern character set, and even in the Masoretic text. All you have to do is take out the spaces between the Hebrew letters, and look at re-parsings. Remember that the result does NOT have vowels.

Moses did not write in that form of Hebrew. Any codes inserted into it would have been jumbled beyond recognition as the text was translated into newer forms of Hebrew, some of which are not even intelligible to those fluent in other forms of Hebrew.

ELS requires a belief that the Masoretic text is the original text. It is a defense of Judaism and an argument against Christianity. The only thing you’re engineering is a mechanism for confused Torah keepers to renounce Christ as ELS’ MAIN CLAIM is that anti-Christian rabbis were prophesied in Genesis.

 

[Mark C]

PS> This is a link to about the best "overview" I found readily on-line, and linked in that earlier thread:

Reading the Torah with Equal Intervals. a review by Prof. Daniel Michelson Department of Mathematics University of California, Los Angeles.

Torah Codes

"Unfortunately, when it comes to very small or large numbers, people often lose common sense." He gives an example or two.

What comes to mind for me is election rigging: does one have to compute the odds, or know what 12 standard deviations looks like in order to recognize that when EVERY 'vote count' after a mysterious wee-hours shutdown and blackout shows unbelievable numbers of votes for the guy who was way behind at that point suddenly wins by Just Enough?

We should learn to recognize both the "Divinely Miraculous," and the Utterly Rigged, and hopefully even learn some discernment, to "be not deceived."

 

[Mark C]

Moses did not write in that form of Hebrew. Any codes inserted into it would have been jumbled beyond recognition as the text was translated into newer forms of Hebrew, some of which are not even intelligible to those fluent in other forms of Hebrew.

ELS requires a belief that the Masoretic text is the original text. It is a defense of Judaism and an argument against Christianity. The only thing you’re engineering is a mechanism for confused Torah keepers to renounce Christ as ELS’ MAIN CLAIM is that anti-Christian rabbis were prophesied in Genesis.

I Bow to your self-impressed Truly God-like Intellect. You say it, Master Moderator, we must be humbled.

Enough already:

As far I’m concerned we’re done here.

Would that you could actually tell the truth at least about that.

PS> @FollowingHim Samuel, I should have known better.

 

[Mark C]

Finally, for those who are here in the Ghetto, expecting honest midrash and perhaps even an attempt to "reach out" to those who come, not from a background in the "Whore Church", but the "Whore Synagogue" - an apology on behalf of those who find some things "offensive".

Like this:

ELS requires a belief that the Masoretic text is the original text. It is a defense of Judaism and an argument against Christianity. The only thing you’re engineering is a mechanism for confused Torah keepers to renounce Christ as ELS’ MAIN CLAIM is that anti-Christian rabbis were prophesied in Genesis.

Ignoring the factual flatulence, and even the unbecoming insult to those who know more about His Word than that individual,
APOLOGIES.

Biblical Families should be far better than that.

As one who has had any number of friends who were rabbis, Conservative Jews, Orthodox Jews, and even Presbyterians and Roman Catholics, and has found that there are ways to address Scripture to enjoy 'midrash' on Scripture with any of those of good faith, I recoil at crap like that.

If being Revolting is what constitutes advocacy for a jesus christ that is not only more Greek than Hebrew, but "did away with" the Word - no wonder they reject that.

 

[The Revolting Man]

Finally, for those who are here in the Ghetto, expecting honest midrash and perhaps even an attempt to "reach out" to those who come, not from a background in the "Whore Church", but the "Whore Synagogue" - an apology on behalf of those who find some things "offensive".

Like this:

Ignoring the facual flatulence, and even the unbecoming insult to those who know more about His Word than that individual,
APOLOGIES.

Biblical Families should be far better than that.

As one who has had any number of friends who were rabbis, Conservative Jews, Orthodox Jews, and even Presbyterians and Roman Catholics, and has found that there are ways to address Scripture to enjoy 'midrash' on Scripture with any of those of good faith, I recoil at crap like that.

If being Revolting is what constitutes advocacy for a jesus christ that is not only more Greek than Hebrew, but "did away with" the Word - no wonder they reject that.

There’s nothing wrong with that statement. The Jews are a favored remnant of Israel but if they reject Christ then they are in error. The religious claims of individuals who reject Christ are false.

And Jesus was fine with the Greeks. He healed them, they were in his inner circle (at least Hellenized Jews), and that doesn’t even touch on the Samaritans. Jesus was a faithful Jew, not a Jewish supremacist.

 

[Earth_is-]

This causes me to wonder if certain Christ rejecting Rabbi's later altered parts of the Hebrew text during the Christian era as part of their rejection of YAHWEH.

I now wonder if the Septuagint is more trustworthy than the Masoretic text, seeing that it is older and wasn't maintained by people who we know for a fact explicitly rejected the Son of Man.

The “Old Testament” quotes that Yahushua and the Apostles referenced almost always match the Septuagint. But if you check the Masoretic Text - at times - it’s very different.

I don’t think when the Apostles were around that the Hebrew and the Greek Septuagint were different. I think the Masoretic Text - which is what most modern English translations are based on - became a slightly altered text - sometime after the destruction of the temple in the 1st century. I also believe both of the Two Houses of Israel have stuff hidden from us. The Vatican (northern kingdom) and the Talmudic Jews (southern kingdom). Can’t prove it, however.

 

[KarenJeanLovesYHWH]

While Arthur C. Clarke turned out to have been a new-age (early on) reprobate, he did pen a few truly notable insights. One of them, upon which I based part of the thesis in this midrash, was,
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

I contend he could have seen that by reading the early chapters of Exodus, and the 'magicians' of Pharaoh.

And not to forget Joseph who claims to take part in “divination” Of sorts

”And Yosĕph said to them, “What deed is this you have done? Did you not know that a man like me indeed divines?”“
‭‭Berĕshith (Genesis)‬ ‭44‬:‭15‬ ‭TS2009‬‬

Berĕshith (Genesis) 44:15 And Yosĕph said to them, “What deed is this you have done? Did you not know that a man like me indeed divines?” | The Scriptures 2009 (TS2009) | Download The Bible App Now

And Yosĕph said to them, “What deed is this you have done? Did you not know that a man like me indeed divines?”

bible.com

But the point here had to do with 'rituals' and procedures that seem us to be nothing but Biblical 'superstition,' or worse, and that thus have no value to today's enlightened, modern, oh-so-advanced 'society.'

As an engineer, who spent an entire career working to design circuits that in many cases can't even be seen with the naked eye, and sometimes employ even-more-invisible RF emanations that are even more invisible to our senses, it occurred to me that, without modern instruments (from network analyzers and oscilloscopes to DVMs) I couldn't even debug a failure in most of 'em, "post-apocalypse," without my tools.

And 5 GHz cellphone signals wouldn't have even been visible to a $50,000 scope that I used only a couple decades ago.

Yet YHVH once sent mankind a 'plague' or malady that was essentially a public humiliation. It seems to have been intended to allow His people, at least, to "clean up the camp," and put the unclean (tameh) out where they couldn't infest others. And what the Bible called "tzaraat" (again, NOT = "leprosy", or Hansen's Disease) hasn't been seen on the planet for many centuries. Why?

Can you even imagine a swamp full of lying, filthy scum politicians having the skin on their bodies flake off and being compelled (by Who?) to announce that they are "unclean, UNCLEAN!"? No? That speaks volumes.

We don't see that mechanism either.

What we see instead is an injection with invisible ingredients, allegedly to fight an equally invisible "virus" that causes people to be unclean in a way never seen before, but which often kills them. While they attempt to put OTHERS, who won't volunteer to be similarly unclean, 'outside the camp.'

But that's now pretty much the whole, fetid, world.

Could there be a message here?

Would you mind explaining this message for those of us attending to understand this very educated conversation