New Biblical Research

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Beth

Hey all!

A few of you know that I have been working on some independent research for the past several years.  

I have recently loaded it up a web site that makes it available to all who want to access it.  

It may require a bit of a time investment to look it over and to absorb the implications, but I have tried to make it as easy to 'grok' as possible, so maybe it won't be too bad.

Let me know what you think.

The main address is: http://www.fireonthewateronline.com

Peace,
Beth
Become a Critical Thinker!
"Ignorance is the greatest of all sins."
                   --Origen of Alexandria

chohan

Quote from: Beth
Let me know what you think.

Hi Beth,

I gave the material a read and found it very captivating. In fact, I plan to return and give it a another slower read as time permits. You've done a tremendous work imo which contains tons of great info yet remains easy to read and follow.

Whoever designed the web site deserves a 'hat tip' also.

The downside is this may be a hard sell for those still trapped in a biblical, religous belief system.

I look forward to the remainder of Part Two. Best wishes and keep up the good work.

cheers,
cho

Beth

Cho,

Thanks for your comments!  I have been working on this project for over four years now...(not counting the previous years that were all 'prep' years...) It has also taken quite a bit of time to make such a complex topic easy to read...I hope that it goes over well.

QuoteWhoever designed the web site deserves a 'hat tip' also.
Why...thank you again... :P   I was a bit afraid it would be too simplistic for most people, but I know little to nothing about web design and wanted something that was easy to set up and easy to navigate!  Religion scholar I most definately am...but internet guru I am not!!  But I must also thank Adrian as well, for without his help I am not sure whether it would have ever made it into cyberspace...

I will keep posting in Part II as I get the essays finished...I will post all updates here FYI...

Peace,
Beth
Become a Critical Thinker!
"Ignorance is the greatest of all sins."
                   --Origen of Alexandria

astralp

great web site.  I was raised catholic and for a long time believed the bible.  Around two years ago i started questioning if it was the truth or not.  I came to the conclusion that it was fiction and now this just put the nail in the coffin.  

it really sucks that sooo many people were tricked into believing that the bible is fact.  What a weird world we live in.
"turf off your mind relax and float down stream.  it is not dying."-The Beatles

Gandalf

astralp_

Well, its not so much about 'fact' and 'fiction'.

the bible may be full of 'facts' but these facts are not to do with the literal interpretation of the bible, which is what I assume you mean about it being 'fiction'.

I'm just about to give it a read (yes Beth, at last!), but I know from the outline that its a great theory.

Doug
"It is to Scotland that we look for our idea of civilisation." -- Voltaire.

Beth

astralp,

Doug is right to clarify that distinction.  There are, no doubt, many 'factual' items in the Bible.  For example, we know from outside sources that 'Sennecherib' was actually King of Assyria, but that does not mean that his person actually had any contact with the 'Israelites'.  

So, it is not 'Sennecherib' that is 'fictional' but the 'Israelites'.  Our view of ANE 'history' has become so woven through with biblical scripture, that I have often wondered exactly what ANE 'history' would look like without the bible.  

But, I think what you are speaking about specifically, are the actual bible stories that are underlying the tenets of the religion itself.  And these stories are probably totally fiction.    I couch that statement with 'probably' because I am being beset with the whole, 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence' thing, but when you look at my research, any discerning mind can see that they are fiction!

Thanks for taking a look at it astralp, and you too Doug!
Become a Critical Thinker!
"Ignorance is the greatest of all sins."
                   --Origen of Alexandria

taoita

Thank you for this work, I am finding it really helpful to read.  Could you clarify for me please about the three consonant roots of words...if there are no vowels, how are there regular phonemes? Or is it that the phonemes take on meaning through their sense/force in Proper nouns, phrases and the blending of words - word play?

Beth

Quote from: taoitaThank you for this work, I am finding it really helpful to read.
You are most welcome!  :D  
QuoteCould you clarify for me please about the three consonant roots of words...if there are no vowels, how are there regular phonemes?
Well, there are vowels in a way!  aleph, hey, vav, yod, and ayin are all consonants but can also act as vowels.  These letters, however, primarily serve as prefixes, infixes and suffixes to the tri-consonant roots that give rise to the different verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. that make up the Hebrew language.  I am not sure that scholars know how the language was actually spoken pre-first century ce, except by the consonantal sounds, but due to the structure of the vocabulary, written Semitic did become a problem in later centuries, i.e., because a single tri-consonant root may be the radical base of more than one verb or noun, even with the prefixes, infixes and suffixes, many words with different meanings looked and sounded exactly alike.  Some early Kabbalists such as Abraham Abulafia used this to their advantage claiming that there was an endless number of possible translations of the texts.  Oh, and also consider that ancient langauge was oftentimes written without separation between the possible words, and you really have a giant puzzle, full of a myriad of meanings to choose from!!!

To solve this problem, in the seventh-eighth century c.e., the Masorites, a Jewish family, invented what is now known as the vowel pointing system, made of dots and dashes that are used primarily below each consonant.  While this made Biblical Hebrew phonetically systematic, it also concretized Semitic biblical scripture into only one primary translation.  Strip away the vowels, however, and Semitic scripture opens up to a lot of other possible interpretations.  

There is a very radical theory, with which I concur, that the texts actually originated in Greek, and what we have now as the Hebrew Bible is ultimately a translation of that Greek version.  This is not, however, a straight away theory; there are certainly some other factors to consider, such as knowledge of Semitic when the texts were being written.  Was this a working knowledge, or was this only a cursory knowledge?  Was fluency even necessary?  I don't think so, not with the known lists of proper names and meanings. And then, of course, these lists were probably used to create the bilingual wordplays that are foundational to the structure of scripture. Of course, the lists were written in Greek, with Semitic meanings, so it isn't really clear just how the lists were compiled.  All we know about the people that were known to have used the lists, is that they were all Greek speaking, Greek educated writers, who show no evidence of even knowing Semitic language, until Origen in 3rd century ce.  Because they all used the LXX as their resource, there was no question of which meaning went with which sentence.  In other words, the LXX was necessary to know, for sure, what the scripture actually said.  A Semitic version of scripture cannot be found until the last part of the first century ce or the early to mid-second century ce.  And then there was the Latin Vulgate, translated primarily from the LXX, both of which were later used to create the Hebrew Bible.

There is also another theory, again very radical, and again with which I am very tempted to agree with, and that is what we know of as "Hebrew language" is actually a synthetic tri-consonantal language created by Greek scholars for esoteric/expositional/allegorical, purposes. The lists could then have been originally created with a scattering of Semitic meanings, creating a vocabulary that grew over the centuries, which then eventually gave rise to a full Hebrew Text of the Bible.  It is also my, yet once again radical theory, that the Dead Sea Scrolls are not evidence of a pre-existing Semitic version, but were rather, the first attempts at creating a Semitic version from the Greek LXX.

Taoita, this reseach and its implications is going to muck up a lot of well laid theories and practices.  It may take a while for philologists to catch on, and then even longer to determine what was actually going on.  If, that is, we can ever know. But first, the comfort of traditional understandings will have to be suspended until we can figure out what was actually what.

I hope I answered your question sufficiently at the beginning of this response!  I do tend to ramble...you have to be careful with me sometimes....ask me what time it is, and I may tell you how to build a clock...or two! :wink:

Peace,
Beth :D
Become a Critical Thinker!
"Ignorance is the greatest of all sins."
                   --Origen of Alexandria

astralp

yeah i was talking about the stories which people base a religion on as fiction.
"turf off your mind relax and float down stream.  it is not dying."-The Beatles