FrankForum (Frankness IS Forum)

I've been snooping around Jeff Benner's website, ancient-hebrew.org, and I like his idea of mechanically translating the Bible, though I really disagree with much of his translations in Genesis. Jeff's idea is that each Hebrew pictogram carries a meaning to form a "functional" vocabulary rather than the "abstract" vocabulary that western cultures use. I think there is SOME merit to the idea, so I wanted to put it to the test.

I'm not saying these translations are true, just brainstorming.

For lack of a better source, I'll be using Jeff's pictogram chart to loosely derive my definitions. Here.

Lets start with Good (טוֹב):

ט- Tet means basket, therefore to surround, contain, or carry.

וֹ- Waw means nail or hook, and is used as a conjunctive in Hebrew grammar

ב- Bet usually means tent or house, and as a prefix usually means, within

Translation:
טוֹב- Full and within. Therefore something that is 'good' is full within, or complete.

Now Evil (רָע)

רָ- Resh means head, summit, peak, beginning.

ע- 'Ayin means eye, to watch, know, perceive.

Translation:
רָע- High perception, condescension, arrogance.

Now Righteousness (צֶ֫דֶק):

צֶ֫- Tsadi means to follow, hunt, chase.

דֶ- Dalet means door, entrance, enter.

ק- Quph means sun on the horizon, therefore time.

Translation:
צֶ֫דֶק- Follow/pursue the door/entrance throughout time. To follow the path, run the race. To take it a step further, we could say that the light of the sun on the horizon represents the light of truth. In that case, Righteousness would be the pursuit of the truth.




What do you think? Is this doctrinally sound? Contradictory? Is there a better translation?

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Well, I like a lot of what Jeff says, though I wouldn't go so far as to claim the mechanics are the origin of the meaning. I would argue, though, that the letters are indeed functional, and that meaning intended INCLUDES such ideas. Koran actuallly uses the letters the same way: lots of Suras begin with three letters in a kind of lemma or even an acronym idea.

What you've posted is clever. Thing is, can you do it for all the lemmas, and do they fit together? That would be a way of auditing any one of them.

Just playing around with the idea some more, I noticed that it cant be applied to all lemmas, but it does work very frequently. I'll have to learn more Hebrew to see how far it goes. Very interesting indeed though.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Okay, well don't make too much of the appearance. It's pretty clear to me that the Massoretic alphabet WE use, was designed to be pictorial-functional, but those letters look almost nothing like the Hebrew letters of Daniel's or David's or Moses' day. Nor am I too sure that what we today claim were the meanings of each letter, were the original meanings. That's why testing with the lemmas is important.

I was using Benner's Paleohebrew pictographic chart. Haven't those symbols been deciphered? Or is it all still conjecture?

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Well, compare to Gesenius, but I don't know if I can find the chart online. I have the 1910 copy, which has a chart. The online copy doesn't have it. I can't find copies online. This is a politically-charged issue, so everyone disputes with everyone else. That's another reason why I'd just test the assigned meanings, never mind what the characters actually looked like.

Interesting. I did not know that this was a debated issue. I guess the best thing to do would be to familiarize myself with basic Hebrew grammar, root words, prefixes and suffixes, and test the lemmas for commonalities. That would be the only objective way that I know of, but that will also take sometime.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Yeah, it will. Meanwhile, you can speculate in whatever passage you're reviewing. Over time, they will add up and maybe you can revisit.

Hey, beloved: someone just sent me a related thing in twitter, here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s49/sh/8 ... aa388a9fbd

What is your opinion of that site? Looks Mormon to me. I don't know how many of those alleged artifacts are real, but it would be interesting if some of them were. I remember the Colonel saying from time to time that the Native American tribes are a conglomerate of Phoenicians, Hittites, and other Canaanite tribes.

I know that there is some evidence to suggest that the Carthaginians might have visited South America, so why not North America too?

edit

Yeah, Art Bulla is a nut job. I don't know if those artifacts are real, but this guy has yogurt for brains.
https://youtu.be/QtC5Cm8AKqg

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

The only reason was to show the artifacts. Mormons are forever trying to glom onto something to justify their untenable position, esp. since 'brass plates' never existed, and 'moroni' is Greek and Hebrew for 'My Demon', lol.

But I did see similar stuff in Chaco Canyon I think. Wasn't sure.

Turns out I have Jeff's book on Kindle. Haven't looked at it yet.

Bumping this up now: remember the Adinkas? Maybe they are related?