Which Hebrew language was the Torah ORIGINALLY written in?

[Goy Boy]

Experts,

-I know the difference between Ancient Hebrew, Paleo-Hebrew, and Modern (Aramaic) Hebrew, and Masoretic (vowel points) Hebrew.
-I also understand that the Tanakh was written in at LEAST Modern Hebrew (w/out Masoretic vowel points), and Greek (later), and that certain books have been found in more than one language in places like the DSS caves.
-I also understand that no "originals" exist, nor earlier books/stories that the Torah drew from.

BUT, what I do not know, and cannot find an answer to, is which Hebrew language would the Torah have been written. I do know that early on, the Paleo-Hebrew representation of God's name was used even in Aramaic texts (which is kind of cool!), but Greek is a concrete language, with it's translations not matching the conceptual basis of Hebrew, which was the opposite of concrete.

So in trying to get as close to the original Torah as possible, I am trying to find copies of the Pentateuch books in the language generally accepted as the original. Aramaic script with Greek changes in language structure are quite far from the elegance of Ancient- and Paleo-Hebrew, so I am asking from you all which language am I looking for in a Torah copy?

Once I know this, I can then search out a copy/version of Torah in that language-but first things first.

Any ideas?

TIA

pat
:)

[mir...@actcom.co.il]

On Sunday, October 19, 2014 9:57:35 PM UTC+3, Goy Boy wrote:
http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/
mirjam

[Fred Goldstein]

On 10/19/2014 2:57 PM, Goy Boy wrote:
> Experts,
>
> -I know the difference between Ancient Hebrew, Paleo-Hebrew, and
> Modern (Aramaic) Hebrew, and Masoretic (vowel points) Hebrew. -I also
> understand that the Tanakh was written in at LEAST Modern Hebrew
> (w/out Masoretic vowel points), and Greek (later), and that certain
> books have been found in more than one language in places like the
> DSS caves. -I also understand that no "originals" exist, nor earlier
> books/stories that the Torah drew from.
>

Huh? THe Tanach was written in ancient Hebrew. That language has been
preserved into the modern era for liturgical purposes, with the vowels
inserted to make it easier for those of us who aren't particularly
familiar with it...

Modern Hebrew is not Aramaic. Modern Hebrew is a synthetic language,
created in the late 19th century around the ancient tongue, but with a
somewhat different grammar. It was created by European Zionists who did
not want to use Arabic, the street language of the Mizrachi Jews already
living in the part of the Ottoman Empire that became Israel.

Aramaic was the street language of the middle east in the Roman era, and
while it still has a few native speakers, it essentially evolved into
Arabic.

> BUT, what I do not know, and cannot find an answer to, is which
> Hebrew language would the Torah have been written. I do know that
> early on, the Paleo-Hebrew representation of God's name was used even
> in Aramaic texts (which is kind of cool!), but Greek is a concrete
> language, with it's translations not matching the conceptual basis of
> Hebrew, which was the opposite of concrete.
>
> So in trying to get as close to the original Torah as possible, I am
> trying to find copies of the Pentateuch books in the language
> generally accepted as the original. Aramaic script with Greek changes
> in language structure are quite far from the elegance of Ancient- and
> Paleo-Hebrew, so I am asking from you all which language am I looking
> for in a Torah copy?
>
> Once I know this, I can then search out a copy/version of Torah in
> that language-but first things first.
>
> Any ideas?
>

Your whole history seems wrong. The Torah as we now know it was
basically redacted around 2500 years ago out of various ancient Hebrew
materials. Greek is irrelevant, except of course to Christians, whose
own scripture was originally written in that language, and whose
favorite "Old Testament" translations are based on retranslating the
Septuagint, a Greek translation.

The written glyphs for the Hebrew latters have evolved over time, but
that's typical of written languages.

[Patricia Heil]

I don't know where you're getting your data but I would definitely take Mirjam's suggestion.

BTW the definition of modern Hebrew AFAIK is what Eliezer Ben Yehuda did at the end of the 19th century.
Before that there's Rabbinic/Mishnaic Hebrew.
Before that there's Biblical Hebrew.

That's as far as the language.

Are you talking scripts instead of languages?

Because the script is NOT the language, the script is a representation OF the language.

[malcolm...@btinternet.com]

On Sunday, October 19, 2014 11:29:11 PM UTC+1, Fred Goldstein wrote:
>
> Your whole history seems wrong. The Torah as we now know it was
> basically redacted around 2500 years ago out of various ancient Hebrew
> materials.
>

Presumably. We don't actually have any of these source materials.

>
> Greek is irrelevant, except of course to Christians, whose
> own scripture was originally written in that language, and whose
> favorite "Old Testament" translations are based on retranslating
> the Septuagint, a Greek translation.
>

Greek isn't especially relevant now, but it was extremely important
to Jewish people in middle antiquity. As you say, a translation of the
scriptures was made into Greek. It's valuable because it tells us how
the Hebrew was understood. Also, a lot of the late Jewish scriptures
were written in Greek. You can find these in Catholic Old Testaments.
However the books were rejected as canonical by the council of Yavne,
called after the destruction of the Temple, and one of the reasons
given was that they weren't written in Hebrew. By this time, Christians
had split from Judaism sufficiently to be not affected by the council's
rulings. Protestants also rejected them during the Reformation, so
they are not included in Protestant Bibles. However they are pre-
Christian texts.

[mm]

On Sun, 19 Oct 2014 22:29:11 +0000 (UTC), Fred Goldstein
<fg...@ionaryQRM.com> wrote:

>On 10/19/2014 2:57 PM, Goy Boy wrote:
>> Experts,
>>
>> -I know the difference between Ancient Hebrew, Paleo-Hebrew, and
>> Modern (Aramaic) Hebrew, and Masoretic (vowel points) Hebrew. -I also

BTW, I don't think the vowel pointing is what makes the text Masoretic.
They are there, like Fred just said, below, to make it easier to read
for those who don't know Hebrew, or the given text, well enough.
Masoretic means "traditionall". I think what could be atraditional is
a half-dozen or fewer words in the Tanach that one or more people have
said should be different, though even in those cases, the meaning is not
changed.

>> understand that the Tanakh was written in at LEAST Modern Hebrew
>> (w/out Masoretic vowel points), and Greek (later), and that certain
>> books have been found in more than one language in places like the
>> DSS caves. -I also understand that no "originals" exist, nor earlier
>> books/stories that the Torah drew from.
>>
>
>Huh? THe Tanach was written in ancient Hebrew. That language has been
>preserved into the modern era for liturgical purposes, with the vowels
>inserted to make it easier for those of us who aren't particularly
>familiar with it...
>
>Modern Hebrew is not Aramaic.

Like Patricia pointed out, I noticed that Goy Boy seems to go back and
forth between language and script If I ever finish my reply directly
to him, I think I point that out where it occurs. (Maybe he would have
good explanations for this.) And for that matter other sources or at
least Wikipedia pages mix in the word alphabet, so they're confusing
too. AFAIC, the alphabet, that is, the alephbais, stays the same and
only the script or font has changed over time.

Maybe this is part of that.

Goy Boy refers confusingly to "Modern (Aramaic) Hebrew" as if there is
such a thing, but maybe he's referring to the "Aramaic alphabet" which
does exist, but its use by Jews preceded Modern Hebrew by 24 centuries
and in any case would not be what makes Modern Hebrew modern

I would have tried to research this using only Jewish sources, but I
know from experience that few of them deal with relatively unimportant
things like what script is used when. Wikipedia is not fully
reliable, esp. on controversial topics, and in this case I find it very
confusing too, at least the page just below on Ashuri, but this is what
it says.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashuri_alphabet
Ashuri alphabet (álef-bet ashurí) means Assyrian alphabet and also
refers to the Assyrian script (ktav ashurí) which is the name for a
traditional calligraphic form of the Aramaic alphabet, and a term that
was first used in the Mishnah to refer to either the Aramaic alphabet or
the formal script used in certain Jewish ceremonial items, including
Sefer Torah, Mezuzah, Tefillin also abbreviated as STA"M[1]. It is also
referred to as the "square" script. This is the Aramaic script that
replaced the original ancient Hebrew alphabet, becoming the modern
Hebrew alphabet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Hebrew_alphabet
Following the Babylonian exile, Jews gradually stopped using the Hebrew
script, and instead adopted the "square" Aramaic script (another
offshoot of the same family of scripts). This script, used for writing
Hebrew, later evolved into the Jewish, or "square" script, that is still
used today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_alphabet
Among the scripts in modern use, the Hebrew alphabet bears the closest
relation to the Imperial Aramaic script of the 5th century BC, with an
identical letter inventory and, for the most part, nearly identical
letter shapes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-Hebrew_alphabet
[The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet] began to fall out of use by the Jews in the
5th century BCE when they adopted the Aramaic alphabet as their writing
system for Hebrew, from which the present Jewish "square-script" Hebrew
alphabet descends.

> Modern Hebrew is a synthetic language,

By now, all languages have loan words from other languages.

When Ben Yehuda coined new words for new things, he often did so from
Arabic, which has many cognates with Hebrew. so, I presume, he figured
that modern Arabic words for *new* things are likely to be the same
words (that is, cognates with the same relationship) to that Hebrew
which would have been created if Hebrew had been an evolving language
the many centuries before Ben Yehuda started his work.

For many other words he coined, well yes, he created them from Hebrew
words for related ideas. Some that use only t he ideas and not the
sounds, and some that are something like the English word linoleum or
the newer one coraplast.. I guess it's fair to call these words
synthesized, but calling the whole language synthetic seems to me to be
misleading. Unless you have other reasons to say that.

Especaillly since other languages do the same thing, especially with
technical terms.

So I don't see Modern Hebrew as much more synthetic than other common
languages.

>created in the late 19th century around the ancient tongue, but with a
>somewhat different grammar.

We need Mirjam or Jay or any of the Israelis who used to post, but afaik
the grammar isn't different.

I think word order is often different (Is that right?) but that implies
to me that a specific word order was never a requirement of Hebrew
grammar, except to the extent that the sentence should be
understandable.

I forget what the verb forms are called, that are of the same level as
hitpalel, poel (sp?), nifal (sp?) (What are these called, in general?)
but in Modern Hebrew about half of these forms are not used. That's a
big change but it's not a difference in grammar.

BTW, if someone used one of the forms that are no longer used, what
percentage of Jewish Israelis would understand it? My guess is most,
but that's surely a guess. ?????

I may well have included mistakes. What am I leaving out and what have
I said that is wrong?

I didn't know that. Is King James an exception? Doesn't KJ's
introduction say it comes straight from Hebrew?

>The written glyphs for the Hebrew latters have evolved over time, but
>that's typical of written languages.

For sure.
--

Meir

[mm]

On Sun, 19 Oct 2014 18:57:35 +0000 (UTC), Goy Boy
<pat.t...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Experts,
>
>-I know the difference between Ancient Hebrew, Paleo-Hebrew, and Modern (Aramaic) Hebrew, and Masoretic (vowel points) Hebrew.
>-I also understand that the Tanakh was written in at LEAST Modern Hebrew (w/out Masoretic vowel points)

"at least Modern Hebrew"?? Modern Hebrew began around 1880 CE I think
it was or a little earlier, when new words for newer things were
devised, and when the number of verb forms used was, by design or not,
limited to less than what one finds plentful in the Tanach, for example.
The Tanach was not written in Modern Hebrew.

> and Greek (later),

Maybe just a typo on your part, but I woudn't say it was ever written in
Greek. You could as easily say it was written in English. They are
both translations. The Septuagint translation of the Torah into Greek
is noteworthy and especially valid because all 70 translators agreed,
but it's still a translation. The now-accompanying translation of the
Nach, the Nevi'im and Ketuvim, the Prophets and the Writings has an
unknown translator or translators and doesn't deserve the same respect.
They're referred to as part of the Septuagint, but they're not.

> and that certain books have been found in more than one language in places like the DSS caves.
>-I also understand that no "originals" exist,

Yes, Torah scrolls last only 3 or 400 years iirc, so it's surprising
there is anything left from even 2000 years ago, let alone 3300 years
ago. The Dead Sea Scrolls were unusual, to say the least, because of
where they lay, a place with the right atmosphere, and the fact that no
one touched them.

>nor earlier books/stories that the Torah drew from.
>
>BUT, what I do not know, and cannot find an answer to, is which Hebrew language would the Torah have been written. I do know that early on, the Paleo-Hebrew representation of God's name was used even in Aramaic texts (which is kind of cool!), but Greek is a concrete language, with it's translations not matching the conceptual basis of Hebrew, which was the opposite of concrete.

I don't know what "concrete" means here.

>
>So in trying to get as close to the original Torah as possible, I am trying to find copies of the Pentateuch books in the language generally accepted as the original. Aramaic scrip.

The original Aramaic script?? What does that mean? Why would it be
original? Aramaic script was not the script or language of the Torah.
Neither Jews nor Israelites used Aramaic or its script until our first
exile, to Babylonia.


On my first trip to Israel at the Israel Museum I took a picture of a
chart on the wall of about 10 different scripts Jews have used over the
years, but I double-exposed the whole roll. ;-( and don't have it. On
my second trip, I think that area was being remodeled. I have to go
back.

I'll bet a chart like this is available in a book or even on the web,
but I don't know where.

Of course now, scores or more of scripts are in use all at the same
time, on store fronts and in advertising, and it's a real challenge**
for me to read some of the letters that some use, but this is a whole
other topic. Sorry. **More than a challenge. A couple letters I
just couldn't figure out.

>with Greek changes in language structure are quite far from the elegance of Ancient- and Paleo-Hebrew, so I am asking from you all which language am I looking for in a Torah copy?

Probably Paleo-Hebrew script. Do you have reason to think otherwise?
When you say "which language", don't you mean "which script", "which
font"? You seem to use language and script interchangeablly some
times.

>Once I know this, I can then search out a copy/version of Torah in that language-but first things first.

I don't think you will ever find a paleo-Hebrew version of the Torah or
the text of the Torah, unless perchance someone composed one recently
and retrospectively. Would you have any use for that?

By Torah, you mean a scroll, right? Not a book with paper pages and a
spine? Kosher scrolls cost thousands and I don't think posul ones are
available.

OTOH, there is one version of the Chumash which has three columns, the
English, the pointed Masoretic text in Hebrew, and a photograph of the
text from a Torah. Much more affordable.

Or you can get a book with just photographs of a Torah scroll. They're
probably expensive because their pages are large and there's not great
demand, Even most shuls don't have more than one, afaik. Called a
tikkun, for some reason.

But both of these use the script that's in use today.

>Any ideas?

Why do you need a particular script?
>
>TIA
>
>pat
>:)

--

Meir

[mm]

On Mon, 20 Oct 2014 00:18:49 +0000 (UTC), malcolm...@btinternet.com
wrote:

>On Sunday, October 19, 2014 11:29:11 PM UTC+1, Fred Goldstein wrote:
>>
>> Your whole history seems wrong. The Torah as we now know it was
>> basically redacted around 2500 years ago out of various ancient Hebrew
>> materials.
>>
>Presumably.

We're doing more than presuming. We have a source who says so.

>We don't actually have any of these source materials.
>>
>> Greek is irrelevant, except of course to Christians, whose
>> own scripture was originally written in that language, and whose
>> favorite "Old Testament" translations are based on retranslating
>> the Septuagint, a Greek translation.
>>
>Greek isn't especially relevant now, but it was extremely important
>to Jewish people in middle antiquity.

When is middle antiquity? Can you give years, numbers?

It was important to Jews who spoke Greek. It wasn't important in
antiquity to Jews who didn't speak Greek.

> As you say, a translation of the
>scriptures was made into Greek. It's valuable because it tells us how
>the Hebrew was understood.

Yes.

>Also, a lot of the late Jewish scriptures
>were written in Greek. You can find these in Catholic Old Testaments.
>However the books were rejected as canonical by the council of Yavne,
>called after the destruction of the Temple, and one of the reasons
>given was that they weren't written in Hebrew. By this time, Christians
>had split from Judaism sufficiently to be not affected by the council's
>rulings. Protestants also rejected them during the Reformation,

Was that because the Protestants were trying to be more Jewish, less
adulterated (I'm not sure how to phrase this)?. That is, more
authentic than Catholics.

> so
>they are not included in Protestant Bibles. However they are pre-
>Christian texts.

--

Meir

[Herman Rubin]

On 2014-10-19, Fred Goldstein <fg...@ionaryQRM.com> wrote:
> On 10/19/2014 2:57 PM, Goy Boy wrote:
>> Experts,

>> -I know the difference between Ancient Hebrew, Paleo-Hebrew, and
>> Modern (Aramaic) Hebrew, and Masoretic (vowel points) Hebrew. -I also
>> understand that the Tanakh was written in at LEAST Modern Hebrew
>> (w/out Masoretic vowel points), and Greek (later), and that certain
>> books have been found in more than one language in places like the
>> DSS caves. -I also understand that no "originals" exist, nor earlier
>> books/stories that the Torah drew from.


> Huh? THe Tanach was written in ancient Hebrew. That language has been
> preserved into the modern era for liturgical purposes, with the vowels
> inserted to make it easier for those of us who aren't particularly
> familiar with it...

Languages are not preserved that well; this is the case even in
modern times. Hebrew did not become a liturgical language until
the time of the Second Temple and the compilation of the Tanakh.
In First Temple days, there was relatively little liturgy, and
Hebrew was the spoken language of the people.

> Modern Hebrew is not Aramaic. Modern Hebrew is a synthetic language,
> created in the late 19th century around the ancient tongue, but with a
> somewhat different grammar. It was created by European Zionists who did
> not want to use Arabic, the street language of the Mizrachi Jews already
> living in the part of the Ottoman Empire that became Israel.

> Aramaic was the street language of the middle east in the Roman era, and
> while it still has a few native speakers, it essentially evolved into
> Arabic.

Aramaic became the lingua franca of the western half of the Fertile
Crescent in the time of the Second Assyrian Empire, and remained so
until the Arabic invasion. Arabic belongs to a different branch of
the Semitic languages.z

>> BUT, what I do not know, and cannot find an answer to, is which
>> Hebrew language would the Torah have been written. I do know that
>> early on, the Paleo-Hebrew representation of God's name was used even
>> in Aramaic texts (which is kind of cool!), but Greek is a concrete
>> language, with it's translations not matching the conceptual basis of
>> Hebrew, which was the opposite of concrete.

>> So in trying to get as close to the original Torah as possible, I am
>> trying to find copies of the Pentateuch books in the language
>> generally accepted as the original. Aramaic script with Greek changes
>> in language structure are quite far from the elegance of Ancient- and
>> Paleo-Hebrew, so I am asking from you all which language am I looking
>> for in a Torah copy?

I see no way of deciding this. According to Tov, see his _Literary
Criticism of the Hevrew Bible_, the Qumran scribes were copying
different general types; I beleive four, but I only remenber three,
"Masoretic", Samariatan, and Septuagint. There are differences, but
the general framework is the same.

>> Once I know this, I can then search out a copy/version of Torah in
>> that language-but first things first.

>> Any ideas?

Get a time machine, and go back to ancient times and see. Even
this might not be enough, as Tanakh, and Torah, had many sources.
Tov provides evidence that the scribes often "corrected" what
they were copying to what they thought should be there. So what
you are looking for may not even exist.

> Your whole history seems wrong. The Torah as we now know it was
> basically redacted around 2500 years ago out of various ancient Hebrew
> materials. Greek is irrelevant, except of course to Christians, whose
> own scripture was originally written in that language, and whose
> favorite "Old Testament" translations are based on retranslating the
> Septuagint, a Greek translation.

> The written glyphs for the Hebrew latters have evolved over time, but
> that's typical of written languages.

The paleo-Herew letters were found along with the "Assyrian" font now
used. This makes no difference.



--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558

[Arthur Kamlet]

In article <slrnm4ag8d...@skew.stat.purdue.edu>,

Herman Rubin <hru...@stat.purdue.edu> wrote:
>
>Get a time machine, and go back to ancient times and see. Even
>this might not be enough, as Tanakh, and Torah, had many sources.
>Tov provides evidence that the scribes often "corrected" what
>they were copying to what they thought should be there. So what
>you are looking for may not even exist.

And in quite a few spots in the Bible, the Masorites retained
the written "tradition" but added an instruction to the reader,
to have the reader read the word differently, often affecting meaning.

=====================



In The Talmudic tractate "Sotah" which defined the specifics of
how a man who suspects but cannot prove his wife is having an affair,
can bring her to the priest who will say certain words, often described
as a curse, and the woman wil swear to that curse or oath by saying
Amen. Amen.


So the sages asked, can this be recited in the language of the day
or must it be recited in Hebrew?



And the sages ask about other situations as well, As a rule, then, if the
Torah says so and so will say these words, "[words]" then they must
say precisely these words and have them be said in the language of
the Torah, presumeably Hebrew, while if not so stated in the Torah,
they may be said in the language of the day.


The sages 2000 years ago had a really good idea what language they
knew to be the langauage of the Torah and they did not feel any
need to go into further detail.
--

ArtKamlet at a o l dot c o m Columbus OH K2PZH

[mirjam]

On Monday, October 20, 2014 3:24:12 AM UTC+3, googy wrote:
Thank you Meir , but you don`t need me , the so called question was such a mish-mash of unrelated words terms and no real question ,,,,, that i sent him the to the site on whish he can see the one of the oldest sources of our Tanach ,,,written in Hebrew most of which i can read , understand as can many Hebrew speakers like ,,,,
I don`t know who it was here who called my langugae a Synthetic one ,,,, hahaah it is a new language built on ancient roots with some adaptations that were needed over the 3000 + years that it was spoken and written ,,,,
I assure Mr sunthetic that shake spear had no idea what a Telephone was ,,,, But Every person in the world knows what HALELU JAH is and it comes from Our ancient HEbrew written Tanach ,,,

mirjam
mirjam

[mirjam]

Ps at the times when they were translated into Arameic or Greek it was because those were the Lingua franca of their times ,,,,,
mirjam

[Shelly]

On 10/20/2014 5:00 PM, mirjam wrote:
> Ps at the times when they were translated into Arameic or Greek it was because those were the Lingua franca of their times ,,,,,
> mirjam
>

I used to worked for a French company. Every three months I would go to
a suburb of Paris to visit the headquarters. I used to tease them that
English was the new Lingua Franca. They agreed (much to my surprise).

--
Shelly

[malcolm...@btinternet.com]

Some things make you a bit cynical.

For example birah shouldn't be the Hebrew word for beer. The Egyptians provided the
pyramid workers with beer, so the ancient Israelites must have been expose to the
concept. It could be mia lechem (bread water) or something like that.

[Fred Goldstein]

On 10/21/2014 9:25 AM, malcolm...@btinternet.com wrote:
> On Monday, October 20, 2014 9:57:27 PM UTC+1, mirjam wrote:
>> On Monday, October 20, 2014 3:24:12 AM UTC+3, googy wrote:
>>
>> Thank you Meir , but you don`t need me , the so called question was such a mish-mash
>> of unrelated words terms and no real question ,,,,, that i sent him the to the site on whish
>> he can see the one of the oldest sources of our Tanach ,,,written in Hebrew most of which
>> i can read , understand as can many Hebrew speakers like ,,,,
>>
>> I don`t know who it was here who called my langugae a Synthetic one ,,,, hahaah it is a
>> new language built on ancient roots with some adaptations that were needed over the
>> 3000 + years that it was spoken and written ,,,,
>>
>> I assure Mr sunthetic that shake spear had no idea what a Telephone was ,,,, But Every
>> person in the world knows what HALELU JAH is and it comes from Our ancient HEbrew
>> written Tanach ,,,
>>

Shakespeare apparently coined, or was the first to use in writing, a
fairly large number of words -- the English language "as it is spake"
owes him quite a lot. We modern anglophones understand his language
quite a lot better than what was written a century before him.

My point is that Ben Judah modernized Hebrew, compared to the biblical
form, by tweaking the grammar and adding a lot of words. So while it is
recognizably Hebrew, it is quite a different dialect, just as modern
English is not what it was 600 years ago. But in the case of Hebrew, it
did not evolve, like English, from centuries of street use; there was a
preserved ancient language and it had a lot of catching up to do.

> Some things make you a bit cynical.
>
> For example birah shouldn't be the Hebrew word for beer. The Egyptians provided the
> pyramid workers with beer, so the ancient Israelites must have been expose to the
> concept. It could be mia lechem (bread water) or something like that.
>

Going back to the original question, it is likely that the poster was
confusing the language itself with the glyph-set used to write it, and
really meant the latter.

[Herman Rubin]

On 2014-10-20, Arthur Kamlet <kam...@panix.com> wrote:
> In article <slrnm4ag8d...@skew.stat.purdue.edu>,
> Herman Rubin <hru...@stat.purdue.edu> wrote:

>>Get a time machine, and go back to ancient times and see. Even
>>this might not be enough, as Tanakh, and Torah, had many sources.
>>Tov provides evidence that the scribes often "corrected" what
>>they were copying to what they thought should be there. So what
>>you are looking for may not even exist.



> And in quite a few spots in the Bible, the Masorites retained
> the written "tradition" but added an instruction to the reader,
> to have the reader read the word differently, often affecting meaning.

>=====================

[Talmudic references deleted.]

> The sages 2000 years ago had a really good idea what language they
> knew to be the langauage of the Torah and they did not feel any
> need to go into further detail.

They BELIEVED it to be the true original language of the Torah.
Tov gives good evidence that this is not the case, and that the
original Torah, if it even existed, was in a language whose
meanings changed over the FEW centuries before the destruction
of the Second Temple.

Evem in the Talmud, they knew that certain items, such as which
vowels had letters "strengthening" them, may have varied from the
days of the Great Assembly. However, these rarely change meaning.
What they did not realize is that words often change meaning, even
in a short time. Even with printing and television, we have had
many changes in the meaning of English words since most of us have
been alive.

To put it bluntly, we do not know what the original Torah was,
and even if we did, we would have problems with the meaning.
Looking at the various available versions, we can see that much
of it seems to be clearly stated, but even here. there is a question
of meaning. One, which I believe is the plot in _East of Eden_,
is the meaning of the clause in God'a stetement to Cain,
"timshel bo." The grammatical form is second person singular
imperferct. I believe that even in modern Hebrew it can mean
you {!, may, will) conquer it, where the ! means imperative.
This has been argued by the sages.

[Goy Boy]

Sorry for the confusion.

I meant the written language (script), and not anything spoken. Ancient is the glyphs, paleo- is the characters that look somewhat like what we call "biblical Hebrew" (without vowel points, not square, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-Hebrew_alphabet), with whatever we're calling Masoretic text (added vowel points and other interpretations).

For example, YHWH in paleo-Hebrew was used for G-d even when the square, Aramaic-style script was adopted (if that helps).

If it helps with context, this is one of hundreds of examples (yes, I realize that 'Ancient Hebrew' tends to be an umbrella term):

https://s-media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/originals/c9/d4/28/c9d428c9b426cc780baf3a1e7efdc935.jpg

The one where Aleph is a bull's head is what I call Ancient Hebrew.

Was Torah written in one of these, originally?

does that help? :)

thx

pat
:)

[mm]

On Wed, 22 Oct 2014 17:32:26 +0000 (UTC), Goy Boy
<pat.t...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Sorry for the confusion.
>
>I meant the written language (script), and not anything spoken. Ancient is the glyphs, paleo- is the characters that look somewhat like what we call "biblical Hebrew"

I hate to keep bickering, but who is this "we"? I don't know how
professional archaelogists or linguists or whoever studies this stuff
speak, but if any Jew that I know said "biblical Hebrew" he'd be
referring to the language, the choice of words, verb forms, etc, and not
the script/font at all. And also, by the time the Jewish Bible
existed (500 BCE?, earlier if you don't insist on its final form but
still no earlier than the last book was written) the script in use was
not the ancient one. I'm sure you know that the Torah is only part,
the oldest part, of the Jewish Bible.

>(without vowel points, not square, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-Hebrew_alphabet),

Also, for any who might have forgotten, I meant to mention before that
Paleo here just means ancient, as in paleontologist or paleobotany, and
has nothing to do with Palestine. I can easily imagine Palestinian
Arabs claiming paleo-Hebrew was their original alphabet, and should be
called paleo-Arabic. (Perhaps this sarcasm is inappropriate in a
serious thread. If so, Pat, pleaes forgive me.)

> with whatever we're calling Masoretic text (added vowel points and other interpretations).
>
>For example, YHWH in paleo-Hebrew was used for G-d even when the square, Aramaic-style script was adopted (if that helps).

Of course it was. The text wasn't changed when the script changed.
Just like when I buy a new typrewriter and it has a different font than
my old one, I still spell words the same.

>
>If it helps with context, this is one of hundreds of examples (yes, I realize that 'Ancient Hebrew' tends to be an umbrella term):
>
>https://s-media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/originals/c9/d4/28/c9d428c9b426cc780baf3a1e7efdc935.jpg
>
>The one where Aleph is a bull's head is what I call Ancient Hebrew.
>
>Was Torah written in one of these, originally?

I wouldn't be surprised. I didn't have the energy to look any
further than those wikip pages I cited, but I noticed that none of them
made any reference to a time before 1000 BCE. I took t hat to mean that
the authors of those pages don't claim to know anything about years
before 1000 B. (Maybe the footnotes would take you to some more
info.)

But I'm no authority on this and I don't think anyone else here is
either. It's not something normally discussed in Hebrew school or
yeshiva, any more than someone with a Ph.D in American History and a
thesis about the Declaration of Independence would spend time on the
script used in the D of I and how its different from what is used now.
Or someone writing about the Magna Carta woud spend time on its script.
It's the content that interests most people. I'm sure some are
interested in scripts/fonts, like whoever wrote the wepage above, but I
don't know who they are.

>
>does that help? :)
>
>thx
>
>pat
>:)

--

Meir

[malcolm...@btinternet.com]

On Wednesday, October 22, 2014 9:11:37 PM UTC+1, googy wrote:
>
> >Was Torah written in one of these, originally?
>
> I wouldn't be surprised. I didn't have the energy to look any
> further than those wikip pages I cited, but I noticed that none of them
> made any reference to a time before 1000 BCE. I took t hat to mean that
> the authors of those pages don't claim to know anything about years
> before 1000 B. (Maybe the footnotes would take you to some more
> info.)
>
> But I'm no authority on this and I don't think anyone else here is
> either. It's not something normally discussed in Hebrew school or
> yeshiva, any more than someone with a Ph.D in American History and a
> thesis about the Declaration of Independence would spend time on the
> script used in the D of I and how its different from what is used now.
> Or someone writing about the Magna Carta woud spend time on its script.
> It's the content that interests most people. I'm sure some are
> interested in scripts/fonts, like whoever wrote the wepage above, but I
> don't know who they are.
>

The paleo-Hebrew script was last used seriously in the bar Kochba revolt,
but in an archaising context, as legends on coins. The only exception
is the Samaritans, who still employ a variant.

The Masoretic script seems to be Aramaic in origin. The Pharisees were
the aggressive modernists of their time, and might have insisted on
it to make some sort of political point. It dates from about the
Babylonian exile, thus about the same period that secular scholars
date the emergence of the Torah in its more or less stable current form.

[mm]

On Thu, 23 Oct 2014 00:38:28 +0000 (UTC), malcolm...@btinternet.com
wrote:

Well, you sound like an authority all right, but the OP has a right to
know that since you've been here you've posted dozens of posts on
various topics which were full of mistakes or nonsense. And lots of
others which might have been, but no one here knew for sure. You're
something like the boy who cried wolf, except you don't talk about
threats but about things which could be facts but aren't. If I were in
his shoes, I wouldnt' take seriously anything you say on this subject.

--

Meir

[mirjam]

have you looked here ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_alphabet

[Yisroel Markov]

On Wed, 22 Oct 2014 17:32:26 +0000 (UTC), Goy Boy

It seems likely. There's a debate in the Talmud as to the script God
had used for the tablets. AISI, all parties to the debate agree that
k'tav Ashurit (the "square script") is a later development, but some
insist that God, Who is outside of time, had used it anyway. And the
same Sages declared that this script has to be used for the scrolls of
the TaNa"KH for them to be valid for public reading. But that decree
doesn't mean that Moshe rabeinu's Tora scroll was written in Ashurit.
I believe it was written in paleo-Hebrew, and most likely without the
"helper letters," too. And even if it wasn't, the private scrolls
likely were.
--
Yisroel "Godwrestler Warriorson" Markov - Boston, MA Member
www.reason.com -- for a sober analysis of the world DNRC
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"Judge, and be prepared to be judged" -- Ayn Rand

[malcolm...@btinternet.com]

On Thursday, October 23, 2014 6:19:56 AM UTC+1, googy wrote:
>
> Well, you sound like an authority all right, but the OP has a right to
> know that since you've been here you've posted dozens of posts on
> various topics which were full of mistakes or nonsense. And lots of
> others which might have been, but no one here knew for sure. You're
> something like the boy who cried wolf, except you don't talk about
> threats but about things which could be facts but aren't. If I were in
> his shoes, I wouldnt' take seriously anything you say on this subject.
>

Arguing from authority is probably the most elementary philosophical
mistake you can make.

[mm]

On Fri, 24 Oct 2014 13:26:14 +0000 (UTC), malcolm...@btinternet.com
wrote:

I don't think arguing FROM authority is the same thing as being an
authority and answering a question.

Nonetheless, I said "But I'm no authority on this and I don't think
anyone else here is either. " and you replied right after that
paragraph.

It was reasonable for me to think you were playing the role of an
authority. But if you weren't I'm glad to know that now.

If you werent' speaking as an authoritiy, I guess you were speaking as
an average man who has posted dozens of articles on various things that
were full of mistakes and nonsense, and I repeat that if I were in the
OP's shoes, I wouldnt' take anything seriously that you say on this
subject There's a price to be paid for guessing wrong so many
times, and never discussing the criticism you get afterwards. .
--

Meir

[malcolm...@btinternet.com]

On Friday, October 24, 2014 2:39:40 PM UTC+1, googy wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Oct 2014 13:26:14 +0000 (UTC), malcolm...@btinternet.com
> wrote:
>
> >On Thursday, October 23, 2014 6:19:56 AM UTC+1, googy wrote:
> >>
> >> Well, you sound like an authority all right, but the OP has a right to
> >> know that since you've been here you've posted dozens of posts on
> >> various topics which were full of mistakes or nonsense. And lots of
> >> others which might have been, but no one here knew for sure. You're
> >> something like the boy who cried wolf, except you don't talk about
> >> threats but about things which could be facts but aren't. If I were
> >> in his shoes, I wouldnt' take seriously anything you say on this
> >> subject.
> >>
>
> >Arguing from authority is probably the most elementary philosophical
> >mistake you can make.
>
> I don't think arguing FROM authority is the same thing as being an
> authority and answering a question.
>
> Nonetheless, I said "But I'm no authority on this and I don't think
> anyone else here is either. " and you replied right after that
> paragraph.
>

That's not quite arguing from authority, but it's within a whisker
of it. Some people know more than others. However it's rare that
the facts of a matter cannot be established by a reasonably
intelligent person with access to publicly available information.
Saying that only a person who is recognised (presumably by some
other authority) as an authority can answer a question is the argument
from authority.

>
> It was reasonable for me to think you were playing the role of an
> authority. But if you weren't I'm glad to know that now.
>

I was giving information that I can establish to my satisfaction.

>
> If you werent' speaking as an authoritiy, I guess you were speaking as
> an average man who has posted dozens of articles on various things that
> were full of mistakes and nonsense, and I repeat that if I were in the
> OP's shoes, I wouldnt' take anything seriously that you say on this
> subject There's a price to be paid for guessing wrong so many
> times, and never discussing the criticism you get afterwards. .
>

There are such things as mistakes. You can get a date wrong for
example, maybe by mistaking the 18th century for the 1800s, and
there's no issue that this has happened. But there are also things
which are accepted by some group, but rejected by the vast majority
of people outside that group. Sometimes it's best to qualify to
make the situation clear, but failure to do so doesn't make a statement nonsense.

[Goy Boy]

On Thursday, October 23, 2014 6:33:09 AM UTC-4, mirjam wrote:
> have you looked here ?
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_alphabet

Yes! Great page, but it doesn't cover the predecessor language. There is a lexicon here that shows the relationships: http://ahlb.ancient-hebrew.org/ahlb-rev2.pdf

Examples of this script's alephbet are here: http://education.ancient-hebrew.org/documents/module1-chart.pdf

I'm not talking about something as simple as fonts. Aleph was once an ox head before it was converted/evolved into a line with a 'less than' symbol through it. So there are at least 3 original 'generations', I think:

1. Ancient Hebrew: pictograph/pictogram (see alephbet link above), with things like an ox head, a snake, a stick figure with arms raised, etc.
2. Paleo-Hebrew: More straight lines, less curves, shown pretty well here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-Hebrew_alphabet (Phoenecian influence)
3. Modern Hebrew: The square-ish, Aramaic style that we see today; the text the Masoretes added vowel points to (like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/Alefbet_ivri.svg/500px-Alefbet_ivri.svg.png )

One author (http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/2_video.html) suggests that Modern Hebrew isn't very Jewish, as it has been modified by Aramaic (script) and Greek (Concrete nouns) words/ideas/concepts. The video at the start of this paragraph makes a more meaningful case than I am here.

So I still wonder if the ancient Hebrew was in use, and faded out, too early for Torah, or whether the stories the Torah used in it's collection (texts of the time that were either copied directly, or used to influence the Torah's stories) were in the ancient Hebrew, and not in the first drafts of the Torah.

Well, OK, I can't say 'drafts' when there is the action/concept of 'canonization', but let's just say that to the original question, which language (written) would Moses, given his years he was alive in local context, have most likely written the Torah in (or those other authors & redactors)?

Again, I am in search of answer after reading a quote that said that Moses would not be able to read the Torah today as it is written. Before I found out about the evolution of the written language, I thought blindly that the Biblical Hebrew we read today was the same since forever!

But if not, and Greek influences added concepts not used in written ancient Hebrew, then one can't help but conclude that a measure of changes/errors/ambiguity was involved in making allowance for Greek word structures/roots, which were then made worse by the Masoretes.

The follow-up question to this one, if it can be answered, is naturally: "Given that no translation is 100% accurate, and it went through a few-especially the significant Masorete version in the bibles today, then what % of the Torah of today is exactly the torah of the first draft?"

But you can't even ask that one until you know which language Torah STARTED OUT AS, right? And that is the simple question of this thread, as originally posted...

Thanks to everyone for pursuing what I thought would be a drop dead easy question.

pat
:)

[Goy Boy]

This document gives a great overview of the difference between Ancient, paleo, and modern Hebrew written language, with pictures and examples of each:

http://www.mechanical-translation.org/files/downloads/1-About.pdf

It may help lend context to the discussion... It cites Paleo-Hebrew as being adopted by the Greeks in 1200 BC...

[Arthur Kamlet]

In article <6f7f9644-90c7-462c...@googlegroups.com>,

Goy Boy <pat.t...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Again, I am in search of answer after reading a quote that said that
>Moses would not be able to read the Torah today as it is written.

Somewhat OT but perhaps this is the story you recalled:

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/624196/jewish/Is-It-Really-the-Torah-Or-Is-It-Just-the-Rabbis.htm



Scroll down to Moses and Rabbi Akiva

[Goy Boy]

What confuses my simple question are things like this:

Jeff Benner published an Ancient Hebrew Torah (http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Hebrew-Torah-Jeff-Benner/dp/1602645949/ref=la_B002EQHRP4_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415133181&sr=1-8) but nobody has told me, nor can I find it mentioned anywhere, that any fragments or larger have been found of the Torah in this language (written language/script).

So... Is there a basis in reality, or is translating the Torah to pictographs just a fun exercise, or...?

TIA!

[Shmaryahu b. Chanoch]

Fred

What I think that he is referring to is that there are those who believe that the post Babylonian Hebrew was written with Aramaic script vs. Paleo-Hebrew. And that the use of the Aramaic script has corrupted Hebrew. Likewise the translation of the Tanakh into Greek introduced pagan concepts into Judaism.

BTW, there are some who believe that Paleo-Hebrew was the earliest form of an alphabet from which the Phoenicians copied then spread to the rest of the world.

On Sunday, October 19, 2014 6:29:11 PM UTC-4, Fred Goldstein wrote:
> On 10/19/2014 2:57 PM, Goy Boy wrote:
> > Experts,
> >
> > -I know the difference between Ancient Hebrew, Paleo-Hebrew, and
> > Modern (Aramaic) Hebrew, and Masoretic (vowel points) Hebrew. -I also
> > understand that the Tanakh was written in at LEAST Modern Hebrew
> > (w/out Masoretic vowel points), and Greek (later), and that certain
> > books have been found in more than one language in places like the
> > DSS caves. -I also understand that no "originals" exist, nor earlier
> > books/stories that the Torah drew from.
> >
>
> Huh? THe Tanach was written in ancient Hebrew. That language has been
> preserved into the modern era for liturgical purposes, with the vowels
> inserted to make it easier for those of us who aren't particularly
> familiar with it...
>

> Modern Hebrew is not Aramaic. Modern Hebrew is a synthetic language,
> created in the late 19th century around the ancient tongue, but with a
> somewhat different grammar. It was created by European Zionists who did
> not want to use Arabic, the street language of the Mizrachi Jews already
> living in the part of the Ottoman Empire that became Israel.
>
> Aramaic was the street language of the middle east in the Roman era, and
> while it still has a few native speakers, it essentially evolved into
> Arabic.
>

> > BUT, what I do not know, and cannot find an answer to, is which
> > Hebrew language would the Torah have been written. I do know that
> > early on, the Paleo-Hebrew representation of God's name was used even
> > in Aramaic texts (which is kind of cool!), but Greek is a concrete
> > language, with it's translations not matching the conceptual basis of
> > Hebrew, which was the opposite of concrete.
> >
> > So in trying to get as close to the original Torah as possible, I am
> > trying to find copies of the Pentateuch books in the language
> > generally accepted as the original. Aramaic script with Greek changes
> > in language structure are quite far from the elegance of Ancient- and
> > Paleo-Hebrew, so I am asking from you all which language am I looking
> > for in a Torah copy?
> >

> > Once I know this, I can then search out a copy/version of Torah in
> > that language-but first things first.
> >
> > Any ideas?
> >
>

[Patricia Heil]

I would think more of Benner's work if it wasn't hosted at his home but at academia.edu or a university website.

I'm always the one to say question authority, so this doesn't mean I think it would necessarily support his work if it had been done academically, but even I know that it's crucial to tell where you got the stuff and what gave you the ideas for what you did.

That's why the bibliography for my Fact-Checking page on my blog runs to 30 pages printed out. Use it.

Also, Jeff's own authority has to be questioned.

So where does he list his sources? Can you provide a link to a copy of that? Realize that scribd only provides limited previews so people here may not have access to that, if it's in the copy posted on scribd. You have to understand, that he has to have prior information, unless he invented everything he wrote from the ground up. If he has prior sources, it's plagiarism not to name them. If he doesn't, how did he come up with his concepts? Don't tell me he did it by simple inspection. Not when he's using a non-Hebrew text.

And Why does he say all his verses were taken from the NIV bible? This is the mistake Jean Astruc made when he invented Documentary Hypothesis; he did all his work based on a French Bible translation. How can Jeff support his work as a representation of Hebrew if he can't cite to the Massoretic text as a source?

THERE ARE NO EARLIER SURVIVING FRAGMENTS, not prior to Qumran, and those date to 150 BCE.

Except for the priestly blessing on the Ketef Hinnom amulets from the time of Jeremiah.

Give the source for the quote you are talking about. There's no sense asking us for any kind of authoritative answer on a quote we don't have access to. Even giving us the quote isn't enough. That's called quoting out of context and it's a fallacy. It's been used time out of mind to pretend that Torah and Tannakh say the opposite of what they say.

You have the influence backward. The Greek alphabet developed out of the left-to-right version of Ugaritic cuneiform syllabary at about the same time as Hebrew writing developed out of the right to left version of the same syllabary. This is in Cyrus Gordon's work on Ugaritic, the 2nd edition of which came out in 1998, not long before he died. I recently bought a copy.

There is no answer to your question about percentages. There will never be an answer. Not until somebody develops a time machine and goes back and finds out.

[Herman Rubin]

On 2014-11-05, Shmaryahu b. Chanoch <Omeg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Fred

> What I think that he is referring to is that there are those who
believe that the post Babylonian Hebrew was written with Aramaic script
vs. Paleo-Hebrew. And that the use of the Aramaic script has corrupted
Hebrew. Likewise the translation of the Tanakh into Greek introduced
pagan concepts into Judaism.

> BTW, there are some who believe that Paleo-Hebrew was the earliest
form of an alphabet from which the Phoenicians copied then spread to
the rest of the world.

We have plenty of evidence to show that it was one of the early
alphabets, but not the earliest. The alphabet was spread largely,
but not solely, by the Phoenecians.

Ugaritic, which was a major language in southern Syria until the
city of Ugarit was destroyed about 1200 BCE, used a 32 character
alphabet converrted to cueiform, so it could be written on clay
tablets. Many of the Psalms come directly from the Ugaritic psalms,
appropriately cleaned of polytheism.

But the alphabet does not have much to do with the language.
Etruxcan is written with the well-known Latin characters, as
is this posting, and was used as late as the second century CE,
but only recently have we found bilinguals giving us some of
the languagge. There is no convincing relationship between it
and any other known language, and we are highly familiar with
its character set.

> On Sunday, October 19, 2014 6:29:11 PM UTC-4, Fred Goldstein wrote:
>> On 10/19/2014 2:57 PM, Goy Boy wrote:
>> > Experts,

>> > -I know the difference between Ancient Hebrew, Paleo-Hebrew, and
>> > Modern (Aramaic) Hebrew, and Masoretic (vowel points) Hebrew. -I also
>> > understand that the Tanakh was written in at LEAST Modern Hebrew
>> > (w/out Masoretic vowel points), and Greek (later), and that certain
>> > books have been found in more than one language in places like the
>> > DSS caves. -I also understand that no "originals" exist, nor earlier
>> > books/stories that the Torah drew from.

I believe that all versions of the Tanakh found in the caves were
written in Hebrw characters, paleo or modern. This does not mean
that they agree.

>> Huh? THe Tanach was written in ancient Hebrew. That language has been
>> preserved into the modern era for liturgical purposes, with the vowels
>> inserted to make it easier for those of us who aren't particularly
>> familiar with it...

>> Modern Hebrew is not Aramaic. Modern Hebrew is a synthetic language,
>> created in the late 19th century around the ancient tongue, but with a
>> somewhat different grammar. It was created by European Zionists who did
>> not want to use Arabic, the street language of the Mizrachi Jews already
>> living in the part of the Ottoman Empire that became Israel.

The Jews in the Middle Ages presereved a slightly modernized
version of Biblical Hebrew, while they essentilaly used dialects
of local languages. Yiddish is mainly German written with
Hebres characters, and Ladino is Spanish so written. There
was a version of Arabic in North Africa so written.

>> Aramaic was the street language of the middle east in the Roman era, and
>> while it still has a few native speakers, it essentially evolved into
>> Arabic.

Arabic is as old as Hebrw or Aramaic; it belongs to a different
part of the Semitic languages/

....................

>> Your whole history seems wrong. The Torah as we now know it was
>> basically redacted around 2500 years ago out of various ancient Hebrew
>> materials. Greek is irrelevant, except of course to Christians, whose
>> own scripture was originally written in that language, and whose
>> favorite "Old Testament" translations are based on retranslating the
>> Septuagint, a Greek translation.

>> The written glyphs for the Hebrew latters have evolved over time, but
>> that's typical of written languages.

[mm]

On Wed, 5 Nov 2014 18:58:28 +0000 (UTC), Patricia Heil
<paj...@verizon.net> wrote:

>
>
>And Why does he say all his verses were taken from the NIV bible? This is =
>the mistake Jean Astruc made when he invented Documentary Hypothesis; he di=

>d all his work based on a French Bible translation.

Wow. No wonder it's nonsense.

I didn't know this, but I know some people think their translation is
the real thing, the bee's knees.

> How can Jeff support h=
>is work as a representation of Hebrew if he can't cite to the Massoretic te=
>xt as a source?=20

Much good stuff snipped.
--

Meir

[mm]

On Tue, 4 Nov 2014 21:56:10 +0000 (UTC), Goy Boy <pat.t...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>What confuses my simple question are things like this:
>
>Jeff Benner published an Ancient Hebrew Torah

Terminology is very important.

Your "an" in your sentence just above makes your sentence incorrect.

He published a book called, fairly or not***, _Ancient Hebrew Torah_.

He did not publish a Torah, or an ancient Torah, or an ancient Hebrew
Torah.

He published a book that contains (I assume) the text of the Torah.

A Torah is not a book**, it's a scroll made of parchment, with words
written in the proper ink, etc.

**And no book is a Torah.

***I see that he has confused one of the reviewers of the book on this
very matter,, the 4th one on the url below, who thinks the book is a
Torah, and that's why the author shouldn't have named the book what he
did. And possibly he included text inside the book that was misleading
in the same way.

> (http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Hebrew-Torah-Jeff-Benner/dp/1602645949/ref=la_B002EQHRP4_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415133181&sr=1-8) >but nobody has told me, nor can I find it mentioned anywhere, that any fragments or larger have been found of the Torah in this language >(written language/script).

Even with inspection every several years and repairing damaged ink, etc.
Torah scrolls are only usable for 250 to 300 years and they are usually
buried after they can't be used anymore. That's why the Dead Sea
Scrolls were such a big find, because they were left in what turned out
to be a near-perfect storage location, so they survived, even though
they were fragile. They were stored only about 2000 years ago. I have
never heard that anything survived from the original Torah wittten about
3300 years ago.

More importantly, I don't think any linguist anywhere would use language
or written language as a synonym for script. We already have at least
two words for the form the words are written in, script and font.

Language refers to Hebrew, Greek, Spanish, Esperanto, Klingon, etc., not
the script in which the language is written. Is that not right?

The Torah was originally written in Hebrew, as it has been ever since
and as it is now. The language was and is Hebrew, no matter how the
individual letters were or are shaped. (And btw, if it's not written in
Hebrew, even if it's on a scroll on parchment with the proper ink, etc.
it's not a Torah. It might be a translation of the Torah written on
parchment with special ink. But it's not a Torah.)

When you talk about "the language the Torah was originally written in"
you sound like you're trying to rewrite history. I'm sure I've pointed
this out once already, but you keep doing it. So you don't sound like
you're being careless with English. Rather you sound like your
attacking the history of the Jewish people and our ancestors the
Israelites who received the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Do you want to sound
like that?

There are other people, some Arabs especially, who deny other parts of
Jewish history, and you sound like you're in league with them.

>So... Is there a basis in reality, or is translating the Torah to pictographs just a fun exercise, or...?

First, "translating" is the wrong word. If each letter in the Hebrew
alephbet was at one time a pictograph of something, in the very first
Torah it was used as a letter, not whatever that something was. It was
one of 22 letters, that perhaps were once used as pictorgraphs but in
the Torah were always used as letters. When you take a text and
change its font from Times New Roman to Miriam to Franklin Gothic, to
italics, do you call that translating? I don't. Translating is the
word used when going from one language to another, and your use of
"translating" here shows again that you think the ancient Hebrew font
was a different language. It wasn't. It was just a different font, or
script^^

^^I guess I don't like the word script because I'm used to it as meaning
cursive, the choice other than hand printing.

Back again to your line quoted above:
Is that what the author of the book at the top does?

Did anyone here disagree that there was an earlier font that was
different from what's used now. So if you use an actual earlier font
that was used to write a Torah, there's a basis in reality, but at the
same time, it's mostly just a fun exercise. A historic novelty. It
won't add anything to anyone's understanding of the Torah.


I havent' been reading for a while, but has anyone pointed out to you
the name of every Hebrew letter is similar to a Hebrew word, and the
image of that word can in the case of most of the 22 letters still be
seen in the letter in the common fonts or maybe all the fonts used
today. I used to know them all but there isn't time for all of them
anyhow. Here are a couple. Daled is similar to delet, which means
door. If you know how a daled is made, it's something like a door.
Resh is similar to rosh, which means head. The letter resh is sort of
shaped similarly to a head, at least its round in back while deled is
square. Better yet is yud which is similar to yad, which means hand.
I think a yud is quite a bit like a hand. Beit or bet is not just
similar but identical to the word for house, and a bet still looks
something like a house, though of course it's a lot like resh with an
added line across the bottom. Gimel is like gamal, the word for
camel, I think mem is paired with mayim but I forget how one makes a
pictogram of water.

But this too is for the most part a historical curiosity. It won't help
anyone understand the Torah or anything written later than it was.

So if you have a word that's spelled daled resh vov resh, it doesn't
mean door head word head or anything related to that. It means
freedom. Whether it's written in "square" font or ancient font.

And dror is written with a daled, two reshes, and a vav, because those
letters have the sounds that when written the right order, sound like
dror sounds. Nothing to do with door or head or whatever the vav once
meant. It's all about sounds.

>TIA!


--

Meir

[Goy Boy]

On Thursday, November 6, 2014 3:52:59 AM UTC-5, googy wrote:
> Rather you sound like your attacking the history of the Jewish people and our ancestors the Israelites who received the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Do you want to sound like that?
> There are other people, some Arabs especially, who deny other parts of
Jewish history, and you sound like you're in league with them.

Hey, wait a second. I have no agenda. I saw the pictographs (head of an ox, person's face, man with arms raised, etc. in the 'alphabet' Benner was using (gave link), and asked if anything like it was used to represent anything in the Torah (hope saying like that doesn't offend), but the above can be taken like you're either:

1. advising me to say it differently as not to offend, or
2. telling me that I've got some kind of agenda either pro-Arab, or anti-Jewish...

Hopefully I can assume the former, and not the latter. If you still have a problem with my asking, then we can take it offline so you can actually talk to me directly and dispel any assumptions you have about me personally, my motives, or my actions.

Your call.

[Goy Boy]

On Wednesday, November 5, 2014 1:57:44 PM UTC-5, Patricia Heil wrote:
> There will never be an answer.

Thanks, Patricia! I'll leave it at that, then. I guess I have to assume that Benner's alphabet of pictographs, and his application of it to Hebrew, is mostly, if not all, imaginary.

Thanks again!

Question dropped.

[mm]

On Thu, 6 Nov 2014 08:41:28 +0000 (UTC), mm <mm2...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
.......

>
>He published a book called, fairly or not***, _Ancient Hebrew Torah_.
>
>He did not publish a Torah, or an ancient Torah, or an ancient Hebrew
>Torah.
>
>He published a book that contains (I assume) the text of the Torah.
>
>A Torah is not a book**, it's a scroll made of parchment, with words
>written in the proper ink, etc.

One thing I don't want hidden in "etc." is that that a Torah has to be
hand-written by a Jew trained to be a scribe and behaving as a proper
scribe for holy writing.

>**And no book is a Torah.
>
>***I see that he has confused one of the reviewers of the book on this
>very matter,, the 4th one on the url below, who thinks the book is a
>Torah, and that's why the author shouldn't have named the book what he
>did. And possibly he included text inside the book that was misleading
>in the same way.
>
>> (http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Hebrew-Torah-Jeff-Benner/dp/1602645949/ref=la_B002EQHRP4_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415133181&sr=1-8)

>.....

>
>More importantly, I don't think any linguist anywhere would use language
>or written language as a synonym for script. We already have at least
>two words for the form the words are written in, script and font.
>
>Language refers to Hebrew, Greek, Spanish, Esperanto, Klingon, etc., not
>the script in which the language is written. Is that not right?
>
>The Torah was originally written in Hebrew, as it has been ever since
>and as it is now. The language was and is Hebrew, no matter how the
>individual letters were or are shaped. (And btw, if it's not written in
>Hebrew, even if it's on a scroll on parchment with the proper ink, etc.
>it's not a Torah. It might be a translation of the Torah written on
>parchment with special ink. But it's not a Torah.)
>
>When you talk about "the language the Torah was originally written in"
>you sound like you're trying to rewrite history. I'm sure I've pointed
>this out once already, but you keep doing it.

The antecedent to "this" is unclear or worse. What I meant is: I'm
sure I've pointed out before that you mix up the words language and
script, and other words. . I didnt' mean that I've said before you are
trying to rewrite history. I hadn't said that before, and I only did
this time because you hadn't taken to heart my earlier statements about
using the right words. And I wanted you to know that I said them for
serious reasons, not because I nit-pick about Englsh usage.

....

> If each letter in the Hebrew
>alephbet was at one time a pictograph of something, in the very first
>Torah it was used as a letter, not whatever that something was. It was
>one of 22 letters, that perhaps were once used as pictorgraphs but in
>the Torah were always used as letters. When you take a text and
>change its font from Times New Roman to Miriam to Franklin Gothic, to
>italics, do you call that translating? I don't. Translating is the
>word used when going from one language to another, and your use of
>"translating" here shows again that you think the ancient Hebrew font
>was a different language. It wasn't. It was just a different font, or
>script^^

.....

>
>
>the name of every Hebrew letter is similar to a Hebrew word, and the
>image of that word can in the case of most of the 22 letters still be
>seen in the letter in the common fonts or maybe all the fonts used
>today. I used to know them all but there isn't time for all of them
>anyhow. Here are a couple. Daled is similar to delet, which means
>door. If you know how a daled is made, it's something like a door.
>Resh is similar to rosh, which means head. The letter resh is sort of
>shaped similarly to a head, at least its round in back while deled is
>square. Better yet is yud which is similar to yad, which means hand.
>I think a yud is quite a bit like a hand. Beit or bet is not just
>similar but identical to the word for house, and a bet still looks
>something like a house, though of course it's a lot like resh with an
>added line across the bottom. Gimel is like gamal, the word for
>camel, I think mem is paired with mayim but I forget how one makes a
>pictogram of water.
>
>But this too is for the most part a historical curiosity. It won't help
>anyone understand the Torah or anything written later than it was.
>
>So if you have a word that's spelled daled resh vov resh, it doesn't
>mean door head word head or anything related to that. It means
>freedom. Whether it's written in "square" font or ancient font.
>
>And dror is written with a daled, two reshes, and a vav, because those
>letters have the sounds that when written the right order, sound like
>dror sounds. Nothing to do with door or head or whatever the vav once
>meant. It's all about sounds.

For that matter, every letter in the English alphabet can be traced back
to a pictograph, the same pictograph that corresponding Hebrew letters
are traced back to.

It's no coincidence that the letters in the English alphabet correspond
closely to the letters in the Hebrew alelphbet. (X, Y, and Z are
additions from Greek, but I think they are the only ones. And that's
why they're at the end.)

So when Abe Lincoln gave his address at Gettysburg, and started out
"Four score and seven" the F in Four descended as much in English as it
would in Hebrew from a pictograph for peh, which means mouth in Hebrew
and sounds exactly like or at least very similar to the name of the
Hebrew letter peh/pei. (Which, without a dagesh, is the same as the
letter feh/fei, which sounds like the F in English). And the R in
Four descends as much in English as it would in Hebrew from a pictograph
for rosh, head (that I went over before.)

But that doesn't mean that when Lincoln used the word "four" he was
saying anything about "mouth head" English letters do not mean what
the pictograph that probably preceded them meant, just as Hebrew letters
do not mean what the pictograhy that probably preceded them meant. In
both English and Hebrew and any other language that uses the alphabet**
or the alephbet***, they are just representations of sounds.

**French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, German for the most part, and
loads of others.

***YIddish, Ladino, Hebrew-Arabic, ancient Aramaic and probably modern
Amamaic.


Another Hebrew letter whose meaning I know in Hebrew: Ayin, eye
If I knew more Hebrew, there would probably be others.


--

Meir

[mm]

On Fri, 7 Nov 2014 08:05:58 +0000 (UTC), Goy Boy <pat.t...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Thursday, November 6, 2014 3:52:59 AM UTC-5, googy wrote:
>> Rather you sound like your attacking the history of the Jewish people and our ancestors the Israelites who received the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Do you want to sound like that?

You didn't answer this question. Saying you have no agenda is NOT an
answer to this question. Do you want to sound like, SOUND LIKE, you
are attacking the history of the Jewish people and our ancestors the
Israelites, and that it was they, our great, great... grandparents who

received the Torah at Mt. Sinai.

>> There are other people, some Arabs especially, who deny other parts of
>Jewish history, and you sound like you're in league with them.
>
>Hey, wait a second. I have no agenda.

I didn't say you did, and I don't think you do, but I said you sound
like you do. I used the phrase "sound like" FIVE times in the previous
post, in every sentence. So you'd know I'm only talking about what you
*sound* like, and not about what you're thinking or about any agenda.
But I guess it wasn't enough to stop you from thinking that.

>I saw the pictographs (head of an ox, person's face, man with arms raised, etc. in the 'alphabet' Benner was using (gave link), and asked if anything like it was used to represent anything in the Torah (hope saying like that doesn't offend),

I wasn't offended before, or now**. But I wanted you to hear and
understand what I wrote.

**Because I think you're either just careless in which word you use, or
for one reason or another you think that some words mean the same thing
even when they don't. Regardless of which it is, what I'm worried
about is not your writing to me but your saying these things to other
people, who will, for example, think you mean and think you are correct
that someone other than a Hebrew-speaking Israelite transcribed the
Torah in the first place.

> but the above can be taken like you're either:
>
>1. advising me to say it differently as not to offend, or

I want you to say it differently in order to be accurate. You've
been interchanging language and script like they are the same. A
language is something like Hebrew or Gaelic or Arabic or English or
Esperanto or Klingon. There are many different fonts, or scripts if
you like, for English and Hebrew and Arabic and probably for all
languages, but the caligraphic style of the letters doesn't make it a
different language.

>2. telling me that I've got some kind of agenda either pro-Arab, or anti-Jewish...

I'm saying that's what it sounds like. When you claim or say words that
seem to mean that the original Torah was written in a different
*language* from what it's written in now, In other words, that the
original Torah wasn't written in Hebrew, you sound like Arabs who claim
they were living in the land of Israel before Jews.

>Hopefully I can assume the former, and not the latter.

As you can see, if you change number 2 from the way you phrased it, it's
about number 2 also.

> If you still have a problem with my asking, then we can take it offline

I don't see any need to talk offline. I have no secrets from the
people here and maybe others can help explain to you what I'm trying to
explain, or maybe they can... well from prior experience, the most
likely thing is that someone wills try to convince me that your motives
are good, but motives are not the issue. Still, I'm sure there are
other ways they can help me, and you.

> so you can actually talk to me directly

I thought I was already talking to you directly.

> and dispel any assumptions

Talking TO you wont' dispel any assumptions. I will read carefully
anything you write about this.

>you have about me personally, my motives, or my actions.

I'm not talking about you personally, or your motives. Only your
actions, meaning the words you say. Regardless of your motives or if
you have no motive, it's bad for me and other Jews if you or anyone
speaks in inaccurate, misleading ways of the sort I've pointed out in
this thread.
>
>Your call.
>

I wrote a long reply, in large part to help you out, but you only
replied to 6 lines and didn't' reply about any of that other stuff.
Did you agree, disagree? Want more details or want to rebut something
I said? Do you see why accurate terminology is important in real life,
not just theory?
--

Meir

[malcolm...@btinternet.com]

On Wednesday, November 5, 2014 6:57:44 PM UTC, Patricia Heil wrote:
> On Tuesday, November 4, 2014 4:55:27 PM UTC-5, Goy Boy wrote:
> > What confuses my simple question are things like this:
> >
> > Jeff Benner published an Ancient Hebrew Torah (http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Hebrew-Torah
> > -

> > JeffBenner/dp/1602645949/ref=la_B002EQHRP4_1_8s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415133181&sr=1-> > 8) but nobody has told me, nor can I find it mentioned anywhere, that any fragments or larger have > > been found of the Torah in this language (written language/script).

> >
> > So... Is there a basis in reality, or is translating the Torah to pictographs just a fun exercise, or...?
> >
> >

> I would think more of Benner's work if it wasn't hosted at his home but at academia.edu or a
> university website.
>
> I'm always the one to say question authority, so this doesn't mean I think it would necessarily
> support his work if it had been done academically, but even I know that it's crucial to tell where
> you got the stuff and what gave you the ideas for what you did.
>

From the blurb
'The Hebrew word often translated as "God," is a picture of an ox head, representing power, and a shepherd staff, representing authority. These two letters, when combined into a word, mean "one of power and authority."'

That's got all the hallmarks of medieval and later Jewish thinking.

However presumably the Torah was once written in the old script.

>
> Not when he's using a non-Hebrew text.
>

I don't think he's back translating from NIV to Hebrew, then putting the Hebrew in the old
script.

>
> And Why does he say all his verses were taken from the NIV bible? This is the mistake Jean
> Astruc made when he invented Documentary Hypothesis; he did all his work based on a
> French Bible translation.
>

No, that's not a mistake, it's a limitation of Astruc's scholarship. You don't have to know
everything to be able to give a qualified opinion on a subject, though you're always
vulnerable to a fluent speaker saying "the original simply cannot support that interpretation".
However in the event, plenty of fluent Hebrew speakers, even nowadays native speakers,
have accepted the Documentary Hypothesis as likely. So the objection really is an ad hominem
(the opposite of the argument from authority).

(Just to clarify, though I accept DH, I'm not saying that because some native speakers accept
it, all non-native speakers must also accept it on those grounds).

[malcolm...@btinternet.com]

On Thursday, November 6, 2014 8:52:59 AM UTC, googy wrote:
> I think mem is paired with mayim but I forget how one makes a
> pictogram of water.
>

In the handwritten Hebrew script, mem looks like the waves of the
sea.

[malcolm...@btinternet.com]

On Friday, November 7, 2014 10:57:39 AM UTC, googy wrote:
>
> It's no coincidence that the letters in the English alphabet correspond
> closely to the letters in the Hebrew alelphbet. (X, Y, and Z are
> additions from Greek, but I think they are the only ones. And that's
> why they're at the end.)
>

Hebrew has 22 letters, English 26. So logically there should be at least
one more.
>

[Herman Rubin]

It is more complicated than that. Things have to be traced from
Semitic, Phoeniciean which is essentially the same as Hebrew, through
Greek, through Latin, and then the additional changes to English.

The Semitic languages have consonantal roots, but the Indo-European
languages do not distinguish between consonants and vowels in their
roots; for example, p_t has a separate meaning for each vowel inserted.

Anyhow, the Greeks converted some of the consonants into vowels,
aleph to a, heh to e, heth to European long e, iota to i, but also
keeping the y sound. ayin to o. Teth became theta, dropped in Latin,
samekh became xi, which gave us x. Vav was dropped from Greek, but
came in through Etruscan as f, and also the h came back in.
Latin also introduced a c and essentially dropped the k, which was
kept in late Latin for Greek words. Both u and y come from the Greek upsilon.

Later, i and j were separated. as was u and v, and w added.

The Greek alphabet had 24 characters, four of which were not
carried over. and Latin had letters coming from Etruscan, which
got them from Greek before the alphabet was pared down and from
the original Semitic. Like Topsy, the alphabet just grew.

[Shelly]

On 11/9/2014 7:42 PM, Herman Rubin wrote:
> Like Topsy, the alphabet just grew.

"growed" :-)

--
Shelly

[mm]

>On Friday, November 7, 2014 10:57:39 AM UTC, googy wrote:
>>
>> It's no coincidence that the letters in the English alphabet correspond
>> closely to the letters in the Hebrew alelphbet. (X, Y, and Z are
>> additions from Greek, but I think they are the only ones. And that's
>> why they're at the end.)

Of course numerically, yud means 10, as one can see in the days of the
month and the year, etc. Iota is the 9th Greek letter now but
originally it was the 10th, corresponding to yud, but the Greeks stopped
using two of their letters, and iota appears to have been bumped up to
9th.

(The other letter no longer used had a slot higher than 10.)
--

Meir

[mm]

On Mon, 20 Oct 2014 00:24:35 +0000 (UTC), mm <mm2...@bigfoot.com> wrote:

>Is King James an exception? Doesn't KJ's
>introduction say it comes straight from Hebrew?

To answer my own question, Yes, I came across it again, maybe the KJV's
entry in wikipedia, but whatever it was it gave pictures of the title
page and what followed right after of the KJV and it does say it was
translated from the original Hebrew (meaning btw the Masoretic Text).

Patricia just wrote something where she said "I don't believe that". I
forget if that was on this subject, or maybe someone else cast doubt on
whether it was really based on the original Hebrew, but that's what it
says. on its title page or right after.
--

Meir

[malcolm...@btinternet.com]

Lancelot Andrews seems to have been the informal lead translator
of the sub-group assigned the first books of the Bible, and could
read Hebrew. So it's unimaginable that he wouldn't have consulted
the Hebrew text.
However the group didn't work with a bald Hebrew text and grammar
book, they consulted other translations, both ancient and then modern.

[Fred Goldstein]

An explanation I've heard of the origins of the King James is that it
basically started from the Geneva translation, with several hundred
changes made to make it more royalty-friendly.

While they may have consulted the original Hebrew, I suspect they were
more influenced by the Septuagint.

[Herman Rubin]

It is my understanding that they started with the Wycliffe translation,
which rejected the Catholic translations based mainly on the
Septuagint, and went back to the original Hebrew.

> While they may have consulted the original Hebrew, I suspect they were
> more influenced by the Septuagint.

This seems very unlikely, considering the hostility between
the Anglicans and the Catholics, and the previous work of Wycliffe.

[malcolm...@btinternet.com]

They printed every word which appears in English but not in Hebrew in
a different typeface. They were concerned about fidelity to the Hebrew text.
It's a much less nakedly ideological translation than most modern ones,
but not performed by angels in a vacuum.

The Geneva Bible was a big influence, but they took out all the silly footnotes.
I don't know about the Septuagint, but of course that's an excellent resource
for telling us how the Hebrew was understood by people living in ancient times.

[Fred Goldstein]

On 12/9/2014 2:55 PM, Herman Rubin wrote:
> On 2014-12-09, Fred Goldstein <fg...@ionaryQRM.com> wrote:

...

>> An explanation I've heard of the origins of the King James is that it
>> basically started from the Geneva translation, with several hundred
>> changes made to make it more royalty-friendly.
>
> It is my understanding that they started with the Wycliffe translation,
> which rejected the Catholic translations based mainly on the
> Septuagint, and went back to the original Hebrew.

Both may be true. (This per the wackypedia so take it with a grain of
salt:) Wycliffe was the first English translation, not printed, and
banned in 1409, though it still circulated, so it may have set the tone
of later translations. Tyndale did an English bible, published in 1539,
which Henry VIII approved of. When Mary returned England to the Roman
Church, some English Protestants moved to Geneva and published the
Geneva Bible, based on Tyndale (vs. Wycliffe per se). The King James
translators were instructed to be more friendly to the Church of
England's structure.

[malcolm...@btinternet.com]

On Tuesday, December 9, 2014 7:53:52 PM UTC, Herman Rubin wrote:
>
> > While they may have consulted the original Hebrew, I suspect they were
> > more influenced by the Septuagint.
>
> This seems very unlikely, considering the hostility between
> the Anglicans and the Catholics, and the previous work of Wycliffe.
>

Protestants didn't reject the Septuagint, as far as I'm aware.
The Catholics published the Douai Bible in English, which the
King James scholars would have tended to react against by
rendering any ambiguous verses with the contrary meaning -
I suppose, I haven't actually checked to find any examples.

However King James himself was a secret Catholic sympathiser,
his mother had been executed by Elizabeth, after all. It was
all quite complicated.