peg writes:
Ancient writers did not have a title for their writings...the opening words WERE the title. In the case of Genesis the title as Moses wrote it was simply
Modulous writes:
You were using the Anglicized/Latinized names from the Greek titles, not the original 'titles'. And other works follow the pattern, such as Enuma Elish. Ancient works rarely, if ever, carried titles in the way that we think of them. Most of the names were given to the works later, and the tendency is to refer to them by the first significant noun or action in the work.
Okay, however given that the original text of the old testament as it was penned by its various authors lacked any vowels and accents that separated words into sentences and clauses and phrases, (it was the Mesoretes that improved word divisions and added vowel points and signs, punctuation marks and verse divisions later), given this how can you claim to know how many of the first few words or opening word the writers intended to be read as part of the title? Is there a known method by which this is done
My view is based on the fact that ancient writers did not use 'titles' for their work.
So if this is the case why do you argue in your posts as follows:
in fact the title is always the first sentence or few lines of words and its the same for all the writings found from ancient times.
These two statement s conflict with each other. On the one hand your arguing that ancient writers did not use titles and on the other hand you argue again that they always used the first sentence or few lines of words as a the title. These statements cancel out each other.
But as I have already mentioned with the bible owing to its non punctuation style of writing we can really not determine which lines or first few words or sentences were distinguished as the title.
Concerning the opening statement of Genesis 1 here is a little bit about it:
This is the Hebrew of Genesis 1:1, the very beginning of the Bible. It is pronounced be-re-SHIYT ba-RA eh-lo-HIYM and is usually translated "In the beginning God created...."
The first word (reading right-to-left) is be-re-SHIYT. It is from the Hebrew root resh-aleph-shin, meaning "head, start, beginning," with the preposition bet on the front, meaning "in, on, at." So this word could be translated "in beginning" or "at start" or "at the head." The Hebrew name for the Jewish holiday Rosh HaShanah is from this same root, and means "head of the year" or "beginning of the year" -- Ha is the definite article "the" and Shanah is "year."
The second word is ba-RA, meaning create, shape or fashion. It is from the Hebrew word bet-resh-aleph.
The third word is eh-lo-HIYM, one of several names for God in the Hebrew Bible.
So a word-for-word translation might be "in-beginning created God."
Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.
Edited by Admin, : Fix quoting.