Development of ancient scripts

[alon]

Sept 17, 2019 20:31:56 GMT -8 rakovsky said:

Finally, for the Waw, it's relatively straightforward that the name Waw for the letter W means a nail in the sense of a stake. There was a case in the where Israelite soldiers put stakes (waw) on their staffs. And the letter for the nail looks like a long nail, |.
Yes, I understand that you are saying that the Hei means Reveal, but I found Hei meaning "Behold" in some verses like Genesis 47:23 that I cited. In other words, there is a literal meaning of Hei as "Behold" that explicitly shows up a few times in the TaNaKh. I don't mean to be a stickler, but one reason why it's significant is that in John 20 and the other passages, people "behold" the Messiah and His wounds. I guess you could say though that if someone beholds something that they also have it revealed to them, so that the meanings are not mutually exclusive.

Psalm 22, Isaiah 52-53, and Zechariah 11-13 were three passages that I found most clearly referred to the Messiah's crucifixion and resurrection, and they combine the images of piercing the arms of the Messiah. With Psalm 22, I wonder if it hints at the Messiah's divinity. The Psalm is supposed to be on the Star of the Morning, and verse 9 says: "But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts." Maybe this refers to His divinity. The piercing of the arm is in verse 16: "they pierced my hands and my feet." The beholding shows up in the next verse, where the bones or the enemies look at the pierced narrator: "I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me."
This theme shows up in the other Tanakh passage that I mentioned as well.

Behold, look, reveal, see, inspect, discern, eyeball, scrutinize- what do these words all have in common? Again, you are being too narrow in your interpretations. Words almost never translate directly from one language to another. These are all visual terms that might apply when looking through a window. 

"Waw" is an Arabic slur. The "w" is pronounced as a "v" as in "vav." This is not uncommon in languages. Consider the German "jawohl," pronounced "yah-vul."

[rakovsky]

I was thinking that vav was the Ashkenazi pronunciation.

[rakovsky]

In Isaiah 52-53 it sounds like the Israelites will behold God directly. I wonder if this implies that the Servant whom they see is God:

Therefore My people shall know My name;
Therefore they shall know in that day
That I am He who speaks:
‘Behold, it is I.’ ”

7 How beautiful upon the mountains
Are the feet of him who brings good news,
Who proclaims peace,
Who brings glad tidings of good things,
Who proclaims salvation,
Who says to Zion,
“Your God reigns!”
8 Your watchmen shall lift up their voices,
With their voices they shall sing together;
For they shall see eye to eye
When the Lord brings back Zion.
...
Kings shall shut their mouths at Him;
For what had not been told them they shall see,

Then the pictographic image of beholding the arm shows up again:
" Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?"


Then it sounds like the Servant was wounded in the hand:
"Yet it pleased the Lord to [x]bruise Him;
...And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand."

And it sounds like he bled because the life or soul is in the blood as the says IIRC, and Isaiah says:
"And He shall divide the [z]spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,"

So here it looks like Isaiah 52 to 53 fits the pictographic image of YHWH that we discussed. I think that the authors probably recognized this aspect of the pictogram because in part they lived in an era when other cultures like Egypt were still using at least partial pictographic systems.

[rakovsky]

In Zechariah 12, it literally says in Hebrew "They will look on me whom they pierced", and the speaker in the verse is God. I know alot of translations say "on them whom they pierced", but I saw a list of all the verses that have the grammatical phrase in Hebrew used for "on Me whom they..." and the phrase always means "on Me whom they..."

Then in Zechariah 13, someone is asked how they got the wounds "among" their arms and they say it was in the house of their beloved. I guess the wounds could be from Christ's flogging. How else do you think that the wounds in the arms or hands were made in the house of the beloved? I expect that the nail wounds would have been made in the open air. The passage runs:

And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the Lord: and his father and his mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth.

4 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision, when he hath prophesied; neither shall they wear a rough garment to deceive:

5 But he shall say, I am no prophet, I am an husbandman; for man taught me to keep cattle from my youth.

6 And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.

7 Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts:

In any case, I read the passage as meaning that the Shepherd prophet is thrust through and given wounds among the hands or arms and that God is pierced in Chapter 12.

[alon]

Sept 18, 2019 10:34:45 GMT -8 rakovsky said:

In Zechariah 12, it literally says in Hebrew "They will look on me whom they pierced", and the speaker in the verse is God. I know alot of translations say "on them whom they pierced", but I saw a list of all the verses that have the grammatical phrase in Hebrew used for "on Me whom they..." and the phrase always means "on Me whom they..."

Zechariah 12:10 (ESV) “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.

I think you are correct. It is God speaking, and He is speaking about His manifestation as Yeshua.

rakovsky said: Then in Zechariah 13, someone is asked how they got the wounds "among" their arms and they say it was in the house of their beloved. I guess the wounds could be from Christ's flogging. How else do you think that the wounds in the arms or hands were made in the house of the beloved? I expect that the nail wounds would have been made in the open air.

Zechariah 13:2-3 (ESV) “And on that day, declares the Lord of hosts, I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, so that they shall be remembered no more. And also I will remove from the land the prophets and the spirit of uncleanness. And if anyone again prophesies, his father and mother who bore him will say to him, ‘You shall not live, for you speak lies in the name of the Lord.’ And his father and mother who bore him shall pierce him through when he prophesies.

You have to read the whole thing. The prophets are removed from the land, so any who prophesy are now false prophets.

When asking about the wounds, the literal translation is "wounds between your hands." This could be anywhere on the torso, front or back.

Dan C

[rakovsky]

Studying the names for God and seeing the pictographic meaning for YHWH and how it linked up with the Messianic Tanakh passages about the Messiah's suffering and resurrection were impressive for me. It made me think that the divine presence and God suffered what was described about Him in the Tanakh passages.

So then having come to this conclusion I wanted to read the sources about Jesus and Christianity from the time of the apostles like John the Evangelist and the time of those who lived in that era like St Photinus, the bishop of Lyons (87 to 177 AD). So I started reading these early writings every day.

[rakovsky]

Did you have similar inspiring discoveries personally for you like I described for me?

[alon]

Sept 18, 2019 16:00:28 GMT -8 rakovsky said:

Did you have similar inspiring discoveries personally for you like I described for me?

I never read a lot about any "saints." But yeah, those kinds of revelations are kind of what happens to us MJ's all the time!

[rakovsky]

Feel free to share something if you like.
Alot of people keep the things to themselves out of fear of embarrassment.

Another example from my life was that I expected that the Tanakh didnt teach the Messiah's killing and resurrection because the Tanakh was written by the Israelites and Jews, and modern rabbis typically reject that interpretation. So it felt revealing to discover that the Tanakh actually does teach this.

[alon]

Sept 19, 2019 13:28:48 GMT -8 rakovsky said:

Feel free to share something if you like.
Alot of people keep the things to themselves out of fear of embarrassment.

Another example from my life was that I expected that the Tanakh didnt teach the Messiah's killing and resurrection because the Tanakh was written by the Israelites and Jews, and modern rabbis typically reject that interpretation. So it felt revealing to discover that the Tanakh actually does teach this.

We are not like that. We think knowledge is to be shared, not hoarded. Here's just a little bit, but the phenominon runs through the entire language.


You mentioned the first word in the Bible: ב’ראשית b’reshit, Bereshith.

B represents a tent or a house. This carries a lot of meaning(s), however b’ as a prefix means “in” or “inside.” So b’reshit starts out saying “in.”

H7225 ראשית rêʼshîyth, ray-sheeth'; the first, in place, time, order or rank (specifically, a firstfruit):—beginning, chief(-est), first(-fruits, part, time), principal thing.
ר- resh, the face, what we see first
א- aleph, the strong or mighty
ש- shin, teeth; grinding; destruction; disorder; chaos
י- yud, the closed hand (with arm), work, effort
ת- tov, the last, to seal; to covenant
The mighty one (God, or in another context could be man) at work restoring order to the chaos to seal the covenant (Adamic in Gen 1:1)

So there we see the closed hand at work to organize, or create the world as we know it. But כ kaf is an open hand or a wing, meaning to open, cover, or allow; to give. כן ken means yes.
כ- kaf, open
ן- nun, swimming fish; activity, life
To say yes is to be open to life or an activity.

But those are pretty subjective. While the words and letters may evoke those images, still you could arrange those meanings in many different ways. In this way too they apply to different words spelled the same. Still, when someone says “Ken,” we don’t think “Oh, open hand fish!” We just get the idea of affirmation or compliance. But looking at the term pictographically can give added insights.

But let’s look at Hebraisms. פרי בתן p’ri beten, p’ri meaning fruit, and beten meaning womb. I live right next to a prime orchard region. I never worked in an orchard, but I’ve worked around them and talked with orchardists. They are a lot of work; kind of like when my wife had kids. And kids, like trees grow slow (but faster than you think). So there is some analogy, though granted all fruit doesn’t grow on trees. But I have for instance worked with strawberries, and they too are a lot of work. And I used to have one of the best gardens in the region! It’s still work, whatever you are growing.

womb- ב house of the ת covenant of ן life.

Some say you could make up those meanings and apply them somehow. Maybe. But the ancient Hebrews were an agrarian society, unused to hospitals or other modern conveniences. They birthed livestock. We used to ride or walk through the herd during calving season, looking for cows in trouble. If necessary we would assist, or even pull the calf. (I almost got shot when I put the calf pullers on the doorstep of one of the hands wife when she was due; but that’s another story). Women then however also gave birth at home. So their language exuded a sort of earthy tone. But also one deeply religious. So keeping those things in mind, I’d say my interpretations there are pretty accurate.

I did a Par’shah a while back partly on Psalm 116:3, on the chords of death. To make any sense you must come at it Hebraically, not in the detested pagan Greek. חבלי מות chevley leda is “labor pains.” Leda is labor, or giving birth. Chevley is interesting though. It litterally means “umbilical chord.” Metaphorically it is the agony of giving birth, however through it all that umbilical chord still sustains the infant in what has to be a very traumatic experience. But now let’s move to the end of life.

חבל מות chevel mavet, the umbilical chords of death:

Psalm 116:3 (NKJV) The pains [Lit. cords] of death surrounded me, And the pangs of Sheol laid hold of me; I found trouble and sorrow.

חבל chebel, kheh'-bel; or חֵבֶל chêbel; from H2254; a rope (as twisted), especially a measuring line; by implication, a district or inheritance (as measured); or a noose (as of cords); figuratively, a company (as if tied together); a throe (especially of parturition); also ruin:—band, coast, company, cord, country, destruction, line, lot, pain, pang, portion, region, rope, snare, sorrow, tackling.

Chevel, a form of chevley is used here. Our translations don’t show it, but the term is not ropes, chords, or snares (as usually translated), but the umbilical chords of death. The picture here is that of something sustaining us through the death process as well, bringing us to new life, just as through the birth process. It is a promise of life after death.

Hebrew is a very graphic, actions oriented language shaped by everyday life, agriculture, and wars. It was in the beginning a pictographic language because that is how our minds think. And whether we or even some Jews realize it this carries over to the language today.

[rakovsky]

When I looked for the concept of God or the Supreme God in some ancient cultures, I was able to get a decent idea in the ancient Indian, Egyptian, Sumerian, Chinese, and Turkic cultures, but there were alot of ancient cultures in the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Africa that remain locked by time. One reason is the lack of written records.

The Olmecs were the ancient civilization starting in c. 1500 BC that preceded the Mayans, and they had writing and about 9 major gods, most of whom seem part humanoid and part animal like the jaguar man god. But we haven't deciphered their writing and so we don't know their mythology in detail, we have general ideas like the dragon, bird, and fish gods being associated with the earth, air, and water. So we don't really know if they had the idea of monotheism and/or thought that their gods were all emanations of the one true god.

The results were similar with the ProtiIndoEuropean religion, where we have an idea of the Sky father god originating other gods, but was he born from some other God or did they believe in an ultimate inclusive monotheism with the gods emanating from one God? It seems not clear either because the time when Protoindoeuropean religion started and branched off into other subgroups like the Germanic peoples is in prehistory before they invented major literature.

[rakovsky]

Regarding your last post, thank you for sharing. My outlook is that if such pictographic meanings can be found, then they come from either A) a very primordial stage or aspect of the language, or else reflect B) a mystical inner deep meaning in the words similar to the idea behind gematria.

You could have someone who wanted to find a name for a new word so in his head he combined picture meanings and associations and then announced a new word. Like he wanted to think of something that people watched and was strong, and so he combined Hei and Aleph for behold and strong. But I think that in linguistics it typically didnt work that way. If you talk on alot of linguistics forums they can do a better job than I can explaining why it doesn't typically work that way.

I think that it could work sometimes on a mystical way similar to Gematria. I think that the name YHWH works with the arm behold the nail behold. This comes across to me as a paranormal inner meaning in Hashem more than as a result of how the language works. The explanation for Hashem that God gave Moses seemed to be about "I am Who I am", not about arms, nails, and beholding.

Another example of where the mystical meaning is found pictorally came up in the rabbis' discussion about Pesach.
The Chabad.org website entry on the letter Pey says:

There is a famous teaching of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev11 which explains the meaning of the Passover holiday (Pesach). “Pesach” literally means peh-sach, “the mouth (peh) talks (sach).”On Pesach, the mouth talks about the wonders and miracles of G‑d. Pesach represents the antithesis of Pharaoh, who, as the Megaleh Amukos12 explains, signifies peh-ra, a “bad mouth.” Pharaoh was someone who denied G‑d’s providence in every act of nature. Our mouths were not given to us to slander or denigrate others, but to speak of G‑d’s greatness and wonders.13

However, it was actually very hard for me to find other cases of rabbis using this kind of pictoral gematria, so to speak.

[rakovsky]

Let me know if you want me to link to other discussions that I had online.
I like hearing people's inspiring or fascinating story about God.

Mod note: We have to be careful linking to other sites. Even Messianic sites often teach things against our SoF. And linking to other discussion boards is forbidden. In some cases that could be allowed, with permission. But that would involve me extensively going through the site and evaluating it, as well as evaluating the merits of making the exception. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm lazy! Well, in my defense I'm also busy, and it is easy to get bogged down with that kind of thing. So unless it is something you really think we could benefit from AND the site will pass muster as agreeing with our SoF it's best not to. But thanks for asking.  Dan

[alon]

Sept 20, 2019 15:17:50 GMT -8 rakovsky said:

I think that it could work sometimes on a mystical way similar to Gematria. I think that the name YHWH works with the arm behold the nail behold. This comes across to me as a paranormal inner meaning in Hashem more than as a result of how the language works. The explanation for Hashem that God gave Moses seemed to be about "I am Who I am", not about arms, nails, and beholding.

ֶא ְה ֶיה ֲא ֶשׁר ֶא ְה ֶיה Ahayah Asher Ahayah, usually translated “I AM THAT I AM,” but the aleph prefix indicates a first person singular future tense. So the more accurate translation is “I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE,” or “I WILL BE WHAT I AM BECOMING.” Given that everything in the OT points to Yeshua, this actually makes more sense.

ֶא aleph, the Mighty One
ה hei, to reveal or see
י yud, closed hand and arm, work
ה hei, to reveal or see

א aleph, the Mighty One
שׁ shin, teeth, tearing down, destruction, chewing, grinding, testing
ר resh, the face, front of the head

א aleph, the Mighty One
ה hei, to reveal or see
י yud, closed hand and arm, work
ה hei, to reveal or see

God revealed, His works revealed; His testing humanity to show His face to us (get to know us and us Him); He will be revealed when His work is revealed (Yeshua Ha’Moshiach, God revealed to us).

You could obviously parse this out differently, but the idea would be he same. Always remember too that context, in this case the context of Moshe speaking with God at the Burning Bush as well as all of biblical history is important. Our interpretation has to fit scripture. But that it can be broken down like this at all is a miracle. For instance, what if the aleph was not a prefix but stood alone as a word? Kind of messes up the message. Then “I AM THAT I AM” would be the true meaning. That is a passive statement, “This is Me.” But “I WILL BE WHAT I AM BECOMING” is much more Hebraic. It shows action, a work in progress on God’s part. Not that He will experience personal growth. But He will progressively reveal Himself. And He will manipulate history and humanity (as when we chew food) so as to bring us His Messiah at the right time and in the right conditions.

“I WILL BE WHAT I AM BECOMING”

[rakovsky]

Good discussion.