Conference taveng::bagels

re .-1...

for the most part, what most (jewish) people call the Tanach - in hebrew, the 
abbreviation for *T*orah (the Five Books of Moses, or Pentateuch), *N*avi'im
(prophets) and *K*etubim (writings, i.e. Psalms, Proverbs, etc) - is identical
to what the rest of the world calls the Old Testament.

The order of the books, esp. the nevi'im and ketubim, are arranged differently
in the jewish versions of the tanach and the 'standard' old testament.

In the standard (non-jewish) versions, the books are arranged in strictly 
chronalogical order, which is not the case in the tanach (esp the ketubim - and 
esp. esp. the megillot)

question: are all 24 books of the tanach in the (goyish) (gentile, excuse
me) old testament??
did any other ones creep in??

				Louuuuuuuuuuuuu

The footnotes and chapter headings are likely to be different. In an OT, these
would likely reflect a non-Jewish interpretation of the text.

Dave

    If you use the Gentile method for naming and numbering the books
    (for example, I Samuel and II Samuel), there are actually 39 books
    in the Tenach (T'nach).  "Editorial comments" and commentaries are
    not actually part of the books, but are there to help up study and
    understand the text and its real meaning.
    
    Originally, the Hebrew Bible did not contain the organizational
    scheme of chapters used today.  That was invented by the Gentiles,
    and are continued to be used today mainly for parallel references.
    Generally, text was referenced/located by parsha rather than by
    chapter and verse.
    
    As it turns out, I have the entire Tenach on my PC at home.  The
    U of Penn distributes copies for around $50.
    
    Brian.

    I think we should keep in perspective (and someone please correct
    me if I mess up the order of this) that the Christian Bible is derived
    from the Seputagint (sp?). The Seputagint was the Jewish Bible (aka
    Tanakh) less several of the so-called "non-canonical" books (Tobit,
    Ezra, etc.) translated into Greek from the Hebrew or Aramaic (I
    can't remember right now which) by the early church plus the Christian 
    Bible translated into Greek, again from either Hebrew or Aramaic.
    
    This "new" Bible wasn't translated into English as the KJV until the early
    17th century (people who translated it and made it available before
    that time generally found themselves burned at the stake for heresy).
    
    Remember too that Seputagint translators had an "axe to grind" if
    you will. Their job was to scour the Jewish Scriptures for Messianic
    prophecies that would support the developing Christian doctrine. They
    also needed a "straw man" (i.e., bad guys) if you will so they zeroed
    in on the Pharisees. The Pharisees were made out to be insensitive,
    uncaring, almost inhumane i-dotters and t-crossers so as to provide
    a good contrast for the "good guys", the Christian "Rabbis". In
    short, a polemic work if there ever was one.
    
    A Rabbi I recently spoke with gave some real insight into the Christian
    Scriptures. He said the Christian Bible is basically a proof-text
    which is a common technique in Rabbinic literature. Thus, we see
    lots of parables and "as prophecized in...." and so on. As I mentioned
    above, the idea was to convince people that the Christian "Rabbis"
    were "right" and the Pharisees were "wrong".
    
    He also said something pretty profound about the Prophets of the
    Jewish Bible. In his view, they were not there to predict 700 years
    into the future (as Isaiah, for example, supposedly did, according to 
    Christian doctrine). They were there to say to the Jewish people, "If
    you continue to do x, some day event y will occur."
    
    He gave a real life analogy.....most people cannot predict accurately
    that there might be an explosion in downtown Manchester, NH tomorrow
    at exactly noon. However, you can increase your chances of accuracy if you
    say, "if someone pours gallons of gasoline on the main street downtown
    tomorrow at say 11:55 a.m. and then lights a match, chances are pretty
    good they'll be an explosion at noontime."
    
    I rambled and strayed a bit but you get the idea I'm sure.
    
    FWIW,
    
    Mark

AAaaaarrrrggh.   Mark, your enthusiasm is admirable, but you have managed
to get wrong just about every possible fact in your little essay.  
For starters, you might want to look in your "American Heritage Dictionary", 
Office Edition, under 'Bible', 'Septuagint' (very cursory information, 
but at least it's not wrong) and 'prophet'.

I used to answer notes like this with detailed factual essays but
I've since come to some conclusions about the usefulness of noting 
as a way to educate the public.  

    Re .5:
    
    Oh well, nobody's perfect.....so educate me off-line if you have
    some stuff in a file somewhere. I'm always glad to have my
    misconceptions corrected.
    
    Hillel was right, ".....and the rest is study."
    
    Mark who_probably_will_never_know_enough

I read this conference for (in part) the education therein. Please don't
hesitate to educate.

I've been told that the N.T. was originally written in Greek.

Dave

>I read this conference for (in part) the education therein. Please don't
>hesitate to educate.


I agree.  To paraphrase an oft-quoted aphorism, all that is necessary for
ignorance to triumph is that intelligent people say nothing.


P.S. Good to have you back, Kathy, it's been a while...

The Septuagint is a translation of the T'nach into Greek.  It was done
by seventy-odd Jewish scholars who were kept isolated from each other.
All their translations were identical.  It diverges from the original
quite strikingly.

The N.T. was written in Greek.

Well, as usual, flattery will get you pretty darn far...
Thanks for the kind words, Sid, and thanks for restoring my faith
in education, everyone.

To expand on what's been said:  The Septuagint is definitely pre-Christian.
There are midrashic accounts of how it came to be written (briefly, Ptolemy(?) 
ordered 70 sages to be locked in individual cells to translate the Jewish
sacred writings into Greek; miraculously they all produced identical 
translations thereby proving the divine nature of the writings).

More likely is that the large and well-established Jewish community of
Alexandria had the translation done because too few people knew Hebrew.

In any case, the Septuagint was produced well before the rise of Christianity,
and is therefore innocent of responsibility for polemical Christian 
interpretations of the Jewish Bible.

It is true that the Septuagint was apparently based on a text that is not 100%
identical to the Masoretic text used by Jews today.  I do not have examples
of the differences handy.  
There are Talmudic discussions about the authority of the Septuagint,
and there is Talmudic awareness that the text differs from what the Rabbis
considered authoritative.   Maybe someone else could look that issue up
and report on it here?

Tobit is not part of Tanach, but Ezra is.  In fact, Tobit, (also much other
Jewish apocrypha) exists only in the Greek (well obviously we have contemporary 
Hebrew translations of it, but you get my meaning).

Side topics of interest here might be " When was the Jewish canon closed?"
that is, what is the earliest date we can find where we know that everyone
agreed that Ezekiel (for example) is part of Tenakh but Enoch (for example)
is not.  I know I entered some replies into a note on that topic a couple-three
years ago.

Oh yes, this note started with a question about differences between the
Jewish bible and the Christian Old Testament.  Actually, you could ask
for differences between the Masoretic version, various other Hebrew bible
sources (like Kittel, Dead Sea Scrolls, etc), the Septuagint and the Vulgate.  
These are the basics; everything that comes later (Wycliffe, KJV, Luther, etc)
is obviously based on these.

Also, the KJV and the Jerusalem Bible (=the Catholic bible) are both 
the 'Christian Old Testament' but they differ from each other.

So as you see, things get complicated fast.  Also, there are 
  gross differences
	(for example, the Jerusalem Bible includes the books of Tobit, 
	Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus (.ne. Ecclesiastes), Baruch, 
	and Maccabees I & II; none of the other religious traditions do)  
  and then there are differences of order within the canon, 
	a previous reply pointed out some of this - for complete list I suggest
	looking at your little blue office dictionary
  and differences of wording within specific books.
  	a complicating fact to remember is that the different 'sources' are
	in different languages.  Sometimes differences between the LXX
	and the Tenakh are caused by a misunderstanding of the original
	Hebrew or Aramaic on the part of the Greek-Jewish translators,
	sometimes by the fact that the translators were probably looking
	at a slightly different version than our present-day Hebrew/Aramaic one.

FINALLY, what alot of people may really want to know is; how do English
translations of Tenakh differ from {KJV/AV/RSV/NJB/Good News Bible/etc}.
And the answer is, It Depends.  Which English Tenakh translation you pick,
and which English 'Christian' Bible you pick.   

    Say rather that this "translation is called the Septuagint, from
    a tradition that seventy or seventy-two translators had worked
    upon it." and that the "Greek translators made nonsense of some
    of the difficult passages of the Hebrew text."  That is, if your
    name is Salomon Reinach.
    
    						Ann B.

Hi Ann, were you talking to me?

You really get off on this Salomon Reinach person - I recall you
mentioning him in notes for years now.  When did he write? Has
his stuff been updated by modern scholars?  Accepted in toto?
Derided? Ignored?  What?

Also, Mark's description of the process of Christian translation,
the writing of Christian scriptures and of his enlightenment on 
the nature of biblical prophecy were all, well, a bit indelicately 
put and seemed somehow misguided.
But wonderfully enthusiastic.

(Then again, maybe its my own naivete.  I didn't know anybody thought prophets
were like Jeanne Dixon - types. )

Well, 'lo shabat velo hodesh' but I've got to go see a man about a dog.

	RE: a few

	I have just a couple of minutes to type....

	There's some confusion here, to say the least.  I only want to make
	one or two points.

	The word "septuagint" is quite misleading.  Really, there are _two_
	"things" which are (identically) called seuptuagint.

	First, there is the "original" septuagint.  This is the translation
	which was done from Hebrew to Greek in (about, my memory is going
	to @#$%) the second-third century BCE, in Egypt, by the "70 
	scholars".  Two things are important about this translation:  
	(a) it is a "reasonable" translation, as translations
	go, and (b) it is only a translation of the Torah, i. e., the
	"5 Books of Moses".

	There is a later -- CE -- translation of the Nevi'im and Ketuvim
	into Greek, which _also_ is now called septuagint.  That is, the
	common opinion is that there is ONE septuagint.  This
	second part was done something like 350(?) years after (Kathy -- 
	help!) the original septuagint.  This translation is of dramatically
	poorer quality than the first one (of the Torah). Not only are there 
	many genuine and simple errors of translation, but there are also
	many places in which translations of specific verses were apparently 
	deliberately twisted to reflect Christian theology.

	Oy, translations.  Hebrew just doesn't translate in any
	simple way to English.  If one wants/needs to study the Tanach in
	translation, I would recommend that one simultaneously studies several 
	different English versions, direct translations from Hebrew. Some
	examples:  The JPS translations (both), Arie Kaplan's Living Torah,
	the Koren (publishing house) Tanach, etc.  Compare them all.  (There
	are some notably poor ones, too, such as the Hertz.)

	Reading something like the KJV doesn't make sense.  It's a 17th
	century English translation, of a modern Greek translation, of
	the Koine from the "septuagint" as described above.  If you want
	to have any hope of understanding the original at any level, forget
	the KJV.

don feinbrg

    Re .11:
    
    Wow....good stuff, Kathy. Yes, I guess you can say my entry emphasized
    enthusiasm over accuracy somewhat :-)
    
    Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Ecclesiates included in the KJV?
    
    Also, isn't equating the "New Testament" to the Midrash at least
    a partially fair assessment?
    
    Re .14:
    
    I think Don alluded to what I tried to say earlier (.4) but messed
    up. Or is he thinking of the Vulgate, Kathy?
    
    Thanks again for getting me straight on the order of things.
    
    Mark

re .14:
    I've read part of Bereshit in the Septuagint in Greek, and it's quite
    different from the Hebrew.  Don't ask me how it's different; it's been
    many years and I've forgotten all my Greek.

re .-1:
    Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) is found in all (?) versions of the Bible.
    Ecclesiasticus is considered part of the Apocrypha, but is in the
    Catholic Bible.  As Kathy suggested, look under "Bible" in your
    American Heritage pocket dictionary (mine has a red cover, Kathy).

  "Is equating the Midrash to the New Testament a partially fair assesment?"

No.  That is, it depends on what exactly you are equating -- their
methods? audience? goals? contents? point-of-view? 
themes? what use is made of them?

Like, be more specific.  Also, what is 'partially fair'?  If I equate
an elephant to a mainframe computer because they are both gray and both big,
is that 'partially fair'?

The reason I'm picking on this nit is because you have raised an interesting
subject but in an extremely overgeneralized way.

(I'm going to be out of town for the next week. bye.)

    Precis-ing from my trusty Encyclopaedia Judaica ...

    Septuagint, the oldest Greek translation of the Bible. The designation
    Septuagint, from the Latin septuaginta, "seventy", is based on the
    legend according to which 72 elders of Israel, translated the Law into
    Greek, in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus
    (285-244 B.C.E). This was then deposited in the Alexandrian library.
    The story was embellished with time until the 72 interpreters were
    credited with the entire Hebrew Bible. It was maintained that although
    each of them had worked independently, their finished versions were
    identical and, moreover, superior to the original as a result of divine
    inspiration. 

    It was followed by translations of the other books of the Hebrew Bible,
    during the second century. All or nearly all of it was Eygptian
    origin, but as each component emerged, it was disseminated throughout
    the Hellenistic Diaspora and Palestine. There must have been
    considerable confusion in its transmission, due to the normal scribal
    corruptions and a growing incomprehension of the intention of the
    translators, who had used a rather flexible technique and had not worked
    on a standard original. This may explain the dissatisfaction of the
    Jews for the Septuagint, an attitude which was doubtless aggravated by
    the enthusiastic use of it by the Christians. as a result, new versions
    were made in the course of the second century by Aquila, Theodotion and
    Symmachus.

    In 245 Origen, completed his Hexapla. the aim being to reconstitute and
    standardize the text of the Septuagint. 

    The first Latin translations did not appear before the third century,
    the most famous being performed by Jerome (345-420)

    The article extends for a few pages.... Anyone is welcome to drop by and
    borrow a few volumes of the Encyclopaedia.

    For those who want to get deeper into the subject, there is a very
    interesting Gemarrah that talks about the translation of the
    Septuagint. Megillah 9A. It quotes a Breisah, about a king called Telmi
    who called together 72 scholars in order to translate the five books of
    Moses. It gives 11 cases where the Septuagint translation was changed in
    order to keep in the spirit of the original.

    That's all for now folks .... I have REAL work to do :-) :-)

    								... Monty

re .15

equating the midrash to the n.t. is way off base

the midrash is a set of homoletic (a.k.a "midrashic") interpretations of the 
tanach, based upon rabbinic traditions.  it was committed to writing by the
tanaim, the rabbis of the first & second centuries, C.E.  the word 'droosh' 
in hebrew implies an interpretation based very loosly, if at all, on the literal
meaning of the text.

the n.t. is (i am by no means an expert on this topic, so please correct me if
i am wrong) the post-old-testament history of the beginnings of christianity.
it happens to take place (at least some of it) during the same time frame as the
recording of the midrash.

                              louuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

    Kathy,
    
    (Concerning .13 and notes previous, for those who've lost track)
    No, I wasn't talking to you, but to .10.  (Notes .11 and .12 are
    a clear case of notes collision.)
    
    Salomon Reinach was an historian, museum director, and all around
    scholar.  His entry in _Who_Was_Who_ is impressive (but not as
    impressive as that of his older brother, although more impressive
    than that of his younger brother.  One of them was a reporter who
    was instrumental in clearing Dreyfus.)  He died in 1930.  _Orpheus_
    and _Apollo_ are his two major works, although he wrote *many*
    others.  He was clearly a man who absolutely leapt of of bed each
    morning with his drive to Find Out Things.  Just reading the
    bibliography for one chapter in _Orpheus_ makes me tired.
    
    Anyhow.  I found a reference to _Orpheus_ in a book whose scholarship
    I don't much trust.  I found _Orpheus_ had last been (updated and)
    published in 1930.  I got it through library search, found the
    reference in question, discovered it wasn't useful, and browsed
    through the rest of the book. ... Overcoming my scruples against
    unauthorized copying, I xeroxed the chapters, "Hebrews, Israelites
    and Jews" and "Christian Origins".  (Admittedly, I've found the
    latter more useful.)
    
    As a major survey work, I would guess that _Orpheus_ has been used as
    a reference and pointer to other references for many other survey
    works on the religions it discusses.
    
    I use it because the xerox sheets fit into a folder on my desk,
    so that it's easy to access, and because while I've found it to be
    occasionally out-of-date, I've never found it to be wrong.
    
    						Ann B.

    Re .19:
    
    I think what I meant was the Midrash and Christian N.T. are similar
    in terms of written style (use of parables, proof-texts, etc). Also,
    both are commentaries on the Tanakh with the exception that the
    Christian "Midrash", if you will, uses its proof-texts from the
    Tanakh to support a view quite opposite from that of the Rabbis
    in the Midrash. 
    
    Another difference is that Christians put their "Midrash" much higher
    on the "sacredness scale", if you will, than the Jews, for whom the 
    Midrash is (and this is the only word I can think of) in a sense a 
    peripheral work - that is, without Torah there could be no Midrash. 
    
    Ironically, the Christians tend to believe that without the N.T.,
    there could not have been an O.T. since, according to their "Midrash",
    the Christian Messiah was pre-ordained so to speak from time immemorial
    and that the O.T. was a small part of a larger Divine plan.
    
    A further irony is that unlike the Christian N.T. the Midrash (as
    part of the Talmud) is an ongoing process and has been so for thousands
    of years whereas the N.T. covers perhaps 100-200 years only. As
    far as I know, there has not been one word written since the last
    book of the Christian N.T. was written that is considered by
    Christianity to be even quasi-canonical. So, unlike the Talmud,
    the N.T. is in effect frozen in time.
    
    Mark 

re .21

never having read the n.t., i cannot comment on its writing style, so i'll 
take your word on that (unless, of course, someone else comes up with a
different one, in which case i'll choose then)

				louuuuuuuuuuuuuu

    Re .22:
    
    Thanks.....21 is only one person's opinion (mine) but it should give you a
    pretty good idea as to why I'm in this conference and no longer
    involved with the other conferences relating to theology.
    
    Mark

    re .14 (TAV02::FEINBERG)
    
>	First, there is the "original" septuagint.  This is the translation
>	which was done from Hebrew to Greek in (about, my memory is going
>	to @#$%) the second-third century BCE, in Egypt, by the "70 
>	scholars".  Two things are important about this translation:  
>	(a) it is a "reasonable" translation, as translations
>	go, and (b) it is only a translation of the Torah, i. e., the
>	"5 Books of Moses".
    
    	This makes sense, though I never knew this before now.
    
>	There is a later -- CE -- translation of the Nevi'im and Ketuvim
>	into Greek, which _also_ is now called septuagint.  That is, the
>	common opinion is that there is ONE septuagint.  This
>	second part was done something like 350(?) years after (Kathy -- 
>	help!) the original septuagint.  This translation is of dramatically
>	poorer quality than the first one (of the Torah). Not only are there 
>	many genuine and simple errors of translation, but there are also
>	many places in which translations of specific verses were apparently 
>	deliberately twisted to reflect Christian theology.
    
    	An appendix in the 1984 edition of the NWT documents the
    existence of several LXX fragments of canonical texts outside the
    Torah, and says that they've been dated between the mid- to late first
    century, C.E..  They mention a few others, including Aquila's version,
    which date between the third and sixth centuries, C.E..
    
    	The first century fragments were of leather and of parchment, and
    were found in the Judea desert in a cave in Nahal Hever.
    
    	This thought, that the non-Torah LXX was produced soley in the
    common era, is new to me.  Is this really known as an absolute fact, that 
    the rest of the LXX (after the Torah) was produced during or after the
    1st century C.E. (and thus manipulated by Christian translators and
    scribes); or is there evidence the the entire Jewish canon existed in
    Greek BEFORE the 1st century C.E. (though completed after the initial 5
    books were translated by the "70/2")?
    
    	Could the fact that LXX fragments (of books other than the Law)
    dating from the 1st century C.E. have been found be taken as indirect
    evidence that they were copies of pre-Christian works?
    
    	Whenever I've read works by "Christian heavy-weights", like Kittel
    and the like, I've always been left with the impression that the entire
    Hebrew canon existed in Greek before the 1st century, C.E..  Are you
    really saying that this impression (of mine) is unfounded, or only that 
    it's been proven that "Christian" scholars and scribes have gotten their
    hands on the Greek text of the Hebrew canon, and possibly modified it?
    (If the latter, then it doesn't surprise me at all.)
    
    								-mark.

       There is evidence that much--quite possibly most--of the Jewish
       canon was available in Greek prior to the first century C.E.
       
       Remember that there was no official Jewish canon until about the end
       of the first century.  The Five Books were generally accepted as
       sacred (although not necessarily as of directly divine origin--that
       tradition developed later).  In addition, much of the other material
       we have in the official canon was considered special, but not all of
       it was accepted as sacred (e.g. Esther, Ezekiel, Shir Shirim) by
       everyone.
       
       The LXX Pentateuch differs a bit from the Masoretic text.  At one
       time there was a question of whether this was due to translator
       liberties or whether it reflected the existence of alternative
       Hebrew texts. There is evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls that there
       were variant manuscripts in Hebrew, including slightly different
       versions of the Humash, and these correspond to the LXX.  After the
       Hurban (Destruction), the Rabbis at Yavneh standardized the Hebrew
       text.  Later, as the widely circulating LXX was being adopted as the
       de facto official version of the emerging Christian Church, the
       Rabbis commissioned an "official" Jewish translation into Greek that
       followed the Masoretic text.
       
       The LXX, which appears to be what Paul was citing in his letters,
       was preserved by the Church.  Some scholars have voiced the
       suspicion that scribes "improved" it here and there, so that what we
       have today may differ slightly (but perhaps importantly) from what
       was circulating in the first century.
       
       (Interesting side note:  Torah was generally translated Nomos,
       which, according to some scholars,  meant in Greek something very
       close to what Torah means in Hebrew.  Over time, however, the
       meaning of Nomos shifted to be more more like the English word Law,
       and thus, by the time of the late Renaissance, when the Bible was
       being translated into English, Torah was represented as Law rather
       than Teaching.)
       
       					Aaron