basic reading of genesis 1:1

Sorry, Egyptian hieroglyphs is not a language; it is a writing system. I guarantee you, few if any slaves adopted any type of writing system in the ancient world. I've never heard of these languages you describe that make due with only one or two consonants; sounds like rubbish to me. Of course it wasn't; the writing system of Egypt was a mixture of phonetic, pictographic, logographic, ideographic (to name a few) methodologies.Besides, what does it even mean to have 'pictures with words under them'? If the pictures are the writing, how are the 'words' underneath represented?Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

yes, gesenius's lexicon, iirc. infinitives are nouns. please take the authorship issues to the appropriate thread. i made it just for you -- authorship is not relevant in this thread, i do not want to get into the discussion of who wrote the torah -- we are only discussing the words on the page.in any case, i think you'll find that egyptian has little to do with the hebrew writing system. however, you will find that there is a high degree of relation between the paleo-hebrew script and phonetic cuneiform: and between proto-sinaitic and the more modern aramaic script used by the masoretes and modern hebrew: egyptian hieroglyphics, on the other hand, look like this: note that while there were phonetic associations, there are clearly not of the same pictorial derivations. for example, notice that it's not an ox, or ox's head. proto-sinaitic (and cuneiform, btw) however shares the same pictorial origins. this makes sense given that the people writing hebrew lived in close contact with the akkadians/sumerians/babylonians, and the other canaanite nation-states.further, the language also shares many commonalities, including cognates and frequently similar grammar. like i said above, you might want to actually look this stuff up. do some research, or take a class in the subject, instead of just blindly making assumptions based on religious doctrine. i really have no intention of commenting one way or the other on your religious beliefs in this thread, and they are wholly off-topic. however, if the facts of the matter -- and a proper reading of the text -- contradict those beliefs, then it should be noted that this is not a problem with the facts or the proper reading. it is a problem with your (off-topic) beliefs that we're not discussing. this discussion is limited to only to what's on the page, and does not include your baseless and evidently wrong assumptions about where that content comes from.it's just about how to read. whereas egyptian uses entirely different symbols. in the same way that chinese is similar to what i learned in kindergarten, yes. there are pictures... and that's really about it. your bible too, genius.

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כוּשׁ יָלַד אֶת־נִמְרֹד הוּא הֵחֵל לִֽהְיֹות גִּבֹּר בָּאָֽרֶץ

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-- Genesis 10:8

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you should be aware, btw, that i tend to check this stuff before i make random assertions. i'm quite aware of the differences between biblical and modern hebrew (more-so than you i would wager). so perhaps when you see something suspicious, where you think i'm conflating the two, maybe you should pull out your lexicon and see. again, as i wrote in Message 155, titled "worldviews are off-topic",

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that is, except to say that worldviews plays no part in my analysis.

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Just as your reasoning is wrong as it is influenced by your worldview.

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uh, no. you might want to try that again. if there is anyone on this board that you can accuse of reading their own particular worldview into the bible, it certainly ain't me, as i have absolutely zero interest in making it match my worldview. i care about what it says, and not how i can justify those statements against something external.

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and this is probably the prime example. my worldview is informed by a few years of study in the sciences, including biology, geology, and paleontology. i happen to know that the planet is roughly 4.5 billion years old. i thoroughly understand and accept the theory of evolution, and the geologic timescale.

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yet you might notice that i am actually defending a young earth creationist position when it comes to the creation stories of genesis. and i will defend them textually -- genesis 1 is clearly the etiology of the week, and must be literal in its timescale. that is, 6 days, approximately 6K years ago.

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so, you might want to rethink the claim that my worldview is affecting my reading of the text, as the two are completely opposite. in fact, as i have stated many times in these debates over the years, i really couldn't care whether the text is accurate, and having to defend its supposed accuracy is compromising what the text says -- it is using your worldview to inform (or pervert) your reading of the text.

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you will likely find a similar discussion if you follow the OP back to it's originating thread. the proposed gap "theory" is an idea invented as one way to reconcile an old earth and the recent creation story. as i've stated, i have zero interest in doing this. i'm only interested in what the text says. if the position were supportable from the text, i would be okay with it.

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you didn't reply to this message, of course.

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אָרַח

i can't even begin to describe the facepalm here. pictures of picard just don't do it justice.where should i begin in addressing this level of nonsense?should i post pictures with words underneath?i can't even make a sensible-but-wrong-sounding approximation of his argument, with which to begin a rebuttal. what exactly is he on about? this is really getting very tiresome.Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

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אָרַח

Honestly, after reading his post through again, I'm not even sure. He began talking about Egyptian hieroglyphs, then started mentioning things about alphabets and 'aleph' letters, etc.Best I can think is that he believes the Egyptians used some sort of pictogram-only system, under which they wrote wordsusing more pictures no doubt. Of course, you already demonstrated why that is false, as you've shown that certain hieroglyphs represented phonetic values, and so the hieroglyphic system wasn't simply pictographic.Hopefully, he'll come by to clear up the confusion.JonABE:Interestingly, I have no idea how ICANT feels Egyptian hieroglyphs to be relevant to a discussion on reading Genesis, which is written in Hebrew. Edited by Jon, : oops...Edited by Jon, : ABE

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Hi arach, I don't find much in Leviticus, Numbers and Deutronomy to get excited about. This is still under discussion.But are you sure about # 2? So bara sounds like bare'shiyth. They sure don't rhyme.And as you have pointed out several times what the text is what really matters.To me it doesn't really make any difference if it makes sense in English or not.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Jon, Why would I not be here?I simply mentioned the Egyptian hieroglyphs because the people in Egyptian slavery had used some of their system in their system. arach posted a picture with the Ancient Hebrew of that day which has the alef as the head of an ox.You can find a chart Here.You have the Ancient pictures and their meaning and this is the system that would have been used to write the Torah.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

As far as I know, Biblical Hebrew is written with an alphabet, where the symbols have no pictographic significance and are instead purely phonetic. Whatever symbols the Hebrew-speaking people borrowed from the Egyptians, they incorporated them into a system which was entirely phoneticnot pictographic. According to that chart, aleph has no pronunciation, which is just false.

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Wikipedia on Aleph:

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In Modern Israeli Hebrew, the letter represents either a glottal stop, or has no pronunciation besides that of the vowel attached to it. The pronunciation varies among Jewish ethnic groups.

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You should avoid citing sources that are so demonstrably wrong.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

i'm not expert on egyptology, but iirc, the phonetic system was a secondary development from the pictographic system, sort of similar to the development of phonetic cuneiform. well, because he thinks moses wrote the torah, and moses was educated in egypt, so naturally it follows that the torah was written in hieroglyphics.

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אָרַח

Hi arach, Why? It is either a Piel infinitive noun or a Kal infinitive noun, as written.P3M is the type of suffix and masculine. Correct, I was looking at Kal infinitive noun and wrote the information for a pronominal suffix, that was right under it. It is very relevant as Ancient Hebrew verbs were either perfect which was completed action and imperfect which was ongoing action.There were no tenses, period. Well the beit on a noun does not affect the verb to make it temporal. So readability trumps the text. 'that' does not belong I was looking at a KJV rendering when I typed the verse. But ברא. is a verb not a noun. You did not explain anything.You quoted from a textbook and called that explaining. And that is supposed to be...If you had read a little further it gave the prefixes beit, kaf and lamed as prefixes that when placed on a noun modified the noun.It does not say anything about it modifying the verb or anything else that follows it. They are called inseparable prefixes.Give me an example from the textbook that shows a noun with a beit prefix modifying a verb immediately following it. I am well aware of how prepositions can make a verb an infinitive construct.I just can't find where a preposition that is placed to modify a noun can modify the verb following the noun. And they are talking about a verb that is prefixed with a preposition as their examples show. There is one small difference.The preposition is attached to the verb by a maqqef.There is no preposition on the verb in Genesis 1:1, if there was it would be an infinitive construct. If the prefix was a beit it would be a temporal infinitive construct requiring 'when' in the translation. And because it came from a creationist website that makes it true, I think not. You can continue to post and repost but until you present from a text book where the beit on a noun puts the verb following it in the infinitive construct you will not get anywhere.In the day is not temporal it is a specific day. Day is temporal. Because it could mean any day.Day with the beit prefix becomes a definite day and can not be temporal.So with the beit you have a definite noun, not a temporal one. Well I did not make up any rules I simply looked it up. I know I can that is what the text says. Then find a vowel in the Ancient Hebrew you have on your chart. I did look it up and they did not have to use them as the alef and ayin was pronounced in Ancient Hebrew.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Jon, The Bible was not written in Modern Israeli Hebrew.In fact Biblical Hebrew had no vowels until 1000 years ago.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi arach, No it was written in Ancient Hebrew.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

yes, i'm well aware that you do not appreciate the bible. yes, actually, i am. as i wrote in Message 242,

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you should be aware, btw, that i tend to check this stuff before i make random assertions. ... so perhaps when you see something suspicious, ... maybe you should pull out your lexicon and see.

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of course, this was about modern vs. biblical hebrew. but it applies generally, too. i don't just randomly say stuff -- i go check to make sure i'm right. in this case, i happen to know that this is a perfectly acceptable phrasing because i modeled it directly on something already in the bible. this was done simply by looking for something that generally is translated with my desired reading, and checking the forms. in this case, the first example searching for "when" and "began" in the KJV gives me:

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כִּֽי־הֵחֵל הָֽאָדָם לָרֹב עַל־פְּנֵי הָֽאֲדָמָה

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-- Genesis 6:1

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now, the verb form i gave you might have been incorrect. but as far as i'm aware, a qal infinitive (as לָרֹב is in the example verse) form of ברא would take exactly the same consonants, as every other qal infinitive form of ברא i'm aware of in the bible does. but there aren't any with a ל prefix that i'm aware of, so i can't really be sure. poetry doesn't have to rhyme. in fact, poetry in hebrew rarely rhymes. however, if you analyze the psalms, you will find that they do use words that sound similar (have similar consonants/roots), and typically use repetition strongly. granted, as you are obsessed with making the text gibberish. i'm quite content to understand the hebrew grammar. you seem to be locked into mechanically translating one word at a time in order to understand the text.

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אָרַח

no, they didn't. the paleo-hebrew script is strongly derived from the other ad-jab alef-bets of the area, which in turn are strongly derived from sumerian phonetic cuneiform. the modern hebrew alef-bet (with which the DSS and MT are both written) is strongly derived from aramaic, which is in turn strongly derived from the other canaanite ad-jabs (in turn from cuneiform). egypt plays zero role that i'm aware of. but feel free to start a new thread discussing this topic. it is not on topic here. the origin of the symbols is not any more relevant to the torah than it is to the words we're writing now.you see, the latin alphabet we use is strongly derived from greek, which is strongly derived from the phonetic canaanite ad-jabs. in fact, it's easier to see the derivation from ox-head to "A" than it is from ox-head to alef.

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אָרַח

Good thing I never said that it was. Too bad you don't know how to read your own sources. According to your source (PDF), the modern value of Aleph is silent. This is demonstrably false, as are other claims on that bogus little cheat sheet you linked to. That, of course, is false. The Hebrew language used in the Bible most certainly had vowelsall languages have vowels.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Hi arach, You mean it can't be a finite verb with a lamed prefix as stated on page 600 of An introduction to biblical Hebrew syntax By Bruce K. Waltke, Michael Patrick O'Connor?Or a verbal complement, supplying a verb to "complete the main finite verb? Page 606 The Jews say the alef in Ancient Hebrew was an ox's head I don't know if it was or not but it sure looks like the head of an animal that resembles an ox.I am not convinced you always look it up and understand it when you do look it up. I have now.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."