The Spirit Hand; the writing on the Wall - Book of Daniel [+Bonus]

[Jim_Duyer]

Spoiler alert: I believe Christians will not have a problem with this post, nor will non-Christians.

I've always been intrigued by the message that was said to have been written on the wall of the palace of King Belzhazzar and that was interpreted by Daniel when the king's advisors could not solve the puzzle. Today we have a popular idiom "The writing is on the wall", that suggests a portent of doom or misfortune, based on the story of Belshazzar's feast in the Book of Daniel.

I was not able to do much with the traditional translation since I had not studied Aramaic, which is the language Daniel wrote in, and was then translated into Hebrew and on into English and other languages. Recently I have had to become proficient in both Ancient Aramaic and Arabic writing, and especially Ancient South Arabic, and so I decided to take another look at it.

I'm not asking anyone to accept this as an alternative translation - the one that King James Version and others provide is fine for those that follow the Good Book. What I am proposing are alternate translations taken from the same words. And the reason for this is that, in many ancient Near Eastern cultures, the scribes would typically furnish two or even three different meanings for a verse, depending upon your level of expertise in the arts of transliteration and translation. The reason for this is simple - they wished to convey as much information as possible with a small number of words, and the fact that Aramaic, Arabic and Hebrew were all written without vowels, without spacing or punctuation of any kind, and without the splitting into verses that we accept today, made it easy for them to do so. Those with, as they say "eyes that see and ears that hear" could pick out this additional information - and the deeper you were into the culture the more you would receive.

I have uncovered the three meanings, and even more, in relation to the writing on the wall from Daniel Chapter 5, and even if you are not a believer you may appreciate the subtle use of encrypted message writing at that period some 2550 and more years ago. I will sincerely try to keep the technical stuff brief.

One of the things that bothered me about the traditional translation is this part: "That very night Belshazzar, the Chaldean [Babylonian] king, was killed. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom", in Daniel 5:30–31. As a historian I know that there was no "Darius the Mede", or at least none that was recorded anywhere, but I would like to believe Daniel's statement. It turns out that all of this is explained by the alternate meanings and the truth is that it was the result of a mis-translation of the traditional version. In all fairness, when the King James group did their translations, Aramaic was not completely known in the West, and much progress has been made in the past 25 years or so. Arabic was even less known in the West of that day - it was very difficult to secure qualified translators to help them.

Daniel Chapter 5 gives us the message the was written on the palace wall by a spirit: Daniel reads the words "MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN" and interprets them for the king: "MENE, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; TEKEL, you have been weighed ... and found wanting;" and "UPHARSIN", your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.
That translation will work with the given characters, but there are three good alternative translations that provide quite a bit more information to confirm the story and set the historical record straight.

We have to ignore the transliteration into Roman of the early Christian writers and recognize these as they were written in the Aramaic and then Hebrew languages. By doing that we learn that these would have appeared in the Biblical text of the Hebrews as: MNA MNA TQL W PRSYN, except without spaces of any kind. The early Christians took TQL and wrote what it sounded like to them, and not the way that it was actually written. In some way we sould be thankful for this, since otherwise we would be struggling to pronounce the text. Without using the Hebrew text from the Massoretic rendering of the Bible, since it is a transliteration of a transliteration, I will give you the original, in Aramaic, and the meanings in that language (which Daniel wrote in, since he was a prisoner in Babylonia).

MNA is written mn' in Ancient Aramaic, with their apostrophe taking the place of the Hebrew A (ayin and aleph), which were included when vowels were added to the Hebrew Bible around 900 A.D., but which were silent and not pronounced originally - merely included for a break point in the singing of the words (the Rabbi sang the text in the Temple worship) and as a pronunciation aid.

mn' = weight in Aramiac, as well as a small coin - equal to a penny. But it also means: portions, part, a fragment, a member of a group, a degree, and to associate with. If we consider a penny as a portion, part or fragment of a larger monetary unit (say $1), these all fit into the same theme.

tql in Aramaic is translated as: to weight something, to evaluate, estimate, to balance. But it equally means: to stumble (fall, trip, error or blunder, a clumsy walk) and bumbler, to blunder, a blunderer. Other meanings for tql include to make a mistake or have trouble, to be burdensome, oppressive, to be sluggish, dull-witten, to burden someone with something and the weight of sin or iniquity. The same word in Aramaic is also devined as one who removes an obstacle to even the level of the field and figuratively to cause one to fall into sin, to become snagged with sin and fall or stumble into sinning.
All of these come from the Aramaic Dictionary Project, a peer-reviewed primary source for Aramaic.

W in Aramaic means and, also, so, then.

Prsy in Aramaic has several interesting meanings:
To uncover, to reveal, to put to shame in public, to be uncovered, revealed, to be exposed to shame, to be reviled in public.
Prsy is also the Aramaic word to define a Persian. Now Wiktionary and other sources tell us that King Belshazzar was a Chaldean (southern part of modern Iraq, ancient Sumeria), but that this is not confirmed but an estimate, and that his country of origin, and that of his Father, is unkown. And yet here we have Daniel clearing this up by telling us that he was Persian, from Iran in other words, and not from Iraq or Chaldea. Which may not seem that important in this instance, but as another clue towards the true origins of the two principal groups that make up the Hebrews and modern Jews, it is very much so.

So what are our three new bits of information that we can safely form from these consonants in Daniel?

1. Your portion or your degree (of guilt) has been weighed and evaluated then, Persian!
2. You and your oppressive associates have become entangled in Sin; it will be revealed and you will be exposed to public shame.
3. Your current value, your weight in silver, is equal to a lowly penny!

The problems with the traditional interpretation done by Biblical Scholars are as follows:

Yes, there is a MN in Aramaic that is defined as "to number", but it is not spelled exactly the same. There is no idea of "an end, ending" in mem nun aleph (MN' in Aramaic). TQL (TEKEL) indicates a first person idea of weighing and the found wanting (unbalanced scales) idea is missing. Defining UPHARSIN (W PRSYN) as they do is difficult since the kingdom portion is assumed and not explicit in the text, and there is nothing in the text - no words - that indicate either the Medes or the Persians. But as a general translation we can accept the versions that we see in English Bibles today.

Now the conclusion to the story is the one that gives Archaeologists and Historians a problem. Verse 31 tells us, in the King James Version, "And Darius the Mede took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old." There were a people in Iran called the Medes, and there were kings named Darius, but not Kings of Mede named Darius, and all of the other Darius types lived in very different time periods of history. The whole thing can be cleared up by a fresh translation into Aramaic:

[Just furnishing the source in Aramaic here in order to keep it short:]

w = and, also
dry (DRY in Hebrew) to scatter, to disperse
'ws (WSh in Hebrew) = advisor, supporting members of royal court
mdy' = escape, freedom (Median in Aramaic would be mdy not this mdya).
md = since, after, because
'h = now then, is it not?, here, look!
qbl = accuser, to have a complaint againts, to confront in complaint, adversary, darkness, gloom
mlkwt' = kingdom, realm, kingship, reign. BUT:
mlk = to reign, to advise, give counsel to, to persuade, to promise
wt' = vulture (scavengers that eat dead meat), hawk (aggressive predators that go after live prey), or another large, unclean bird.
kbr = the Kebar river, aka Chebar Canal, near Nippur in Iraq. Nippur was one of the seats of pagan worship in ancient Mesopotamia, home to a large library and many great scholars, known for education and learning. The big leagues as far as councillors and scholars of that day.
šbw = does mean the number seven, but also: a precious stone, a gem of incredible value
n = this very, here [there]
šty = sixty, but also to drink, to be irrigated, absorb water, drunkard, feasting, drinker
n = this very, here [there]
w = and, also, too, like
tr = a small water bird, or turtledove
tyn = urine.

Rather than a Darius, who doesn't appear in the historical records, we have:

And they scattered, disbursed, these advisors & supporting members of the royal court,
Escaped to freedom;
Since, were they not?, being accused, having to confront complaints against them?,
That council of Vultures and Predators
To the Kebar River region, of precious gems, the very same,
Where they became drunk absorbing the waters and being irrigated there,
like small water birds in urine.


What Daniel was trying to tell us is that the "advisors" of King Belshazzar, who could not understand the message on the wall written in Aramaic (they spoke Elamite, as Persians), and were not very bright to begin with, were big fish in his kingdom. Upon the King's loss of his throne, they escaped in a group to freedom. They migrated to Nippur, where these council of Vultures and Predators discovered that, compared to the scholars of priceless value that lived in that home to scholarship, they were now as tiny as small water birds in comparison, and they swam in urine, rather than the divine waters of the pools dedicated to the pagan gods of Nippur.

More details, and certainly more interesting than the traditional story, but there is one part of the story that had me puzzled, I must admit, for several years. And it concerns one of the enlightened ones of the Middle Ages that most people pay very little attention to (other than of course his works of art). And that's the famous artist known as Rembrandt. Rembrandt van Rijn, born Rembrandt Hamenszoon van Rijn, was a Dutch painter, born in Amsterdam, but he happened to be living in or very near the Jewish Quarter of Amsterdam when he painted his version of "Belshazzar's Feast", featuring the king staring in awe as a semi-visible hand wrote the words upon the palace walls. His "advisors" were equally startled and could not translate the message, and so Daniel was called in.

Rembrandt tells us that he approached a senior Rabbi from the Jewish Quarter to help him with the Hebrew phase he wished to use in his painting. What he received was the message in Hebrew, but with the final character in the phrase changed from a "n" or nun, as we normally find in the Hebrew text, and we saw in the PRSYN from above, to the letter "t" or tsade in Hebrew. Please take my word for it - no Rabbi, and especially not one of the top ones in Amsterdam, would make that type of mistake.

Modern Art Scholars, Historians, heck, scholars of all type, have been puzzled over this for hundreds of years. I was puzzled as well until I began to learn how to read and write in Aramaic. Another thing that the Rabbi and Rembrandt did, was to place the letters in a funny order. Rather than horizontal lines running from top to bottom, that were read from right to left, he painted it to be read in vertical rows from right to left.
Rather than MNA MNA TQL W PRSYN, his new rendition gives us:
S W T M N
Y P Q N N
Z R L A A

Here is a copy of his painting with that strange word order painted in:



What? Yes, this first intrigued me many years ago. Why did they do this? Obviously it is a message, but how do we decipher it?

Well, it is in Aramaic, and it is from the Book of Daniel, or in other words the same source, same text, but this new word order and the change of the final letter gives us a new meaning with additional information not found in the Biblical text. But since it was furnished by a Rabbi, we have to accept that there is some truth to it.

Here is that translation (reading each line right to left as is traditional in Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, etc):

mmt = manner of Death. Wow, we're off to a good start. Modern scholars have no idea of what happened to King Belshazzar after he lost his kingdom.
ws = the name of a plant. Not specified which one.
nn = to lull to sleep
qpy = floating state, to float, to congeal in the chest.
a = with respect to, upon
'L = God. This is EL, Creator God of the Hebrews and god of the Canaanites as well.
rz = religious ritual, mystery, secret.

Which "plant" causes one to lull into a deep sleep, a floating state, and then to congeal in his chest? The plant known as Belladonna, used since ancient times to "help" someone to "quickly" reach the afterlife, especially in those in power who have lost the support of their "advisors" (Vultures).

So we have:
Manner of Death:
A plant lulled him to sleep, into a floating state, until it congealed in his chest.
With respect to God (whether or not this was at the command of Jehovah);
that will remain a mystery.

His Vultures, his advisors, appear to have helped him into the sleep from which one does not awaken, prior to their escape to settle in Nippur, where they became little water birds in the Temple pools.

And now we need to put Rembrandt on our list of "enlightened ones"; those who know the answers to some of the secrets that have eluded most of us for hundreds of years.


Now, what about that Bonus? Yes, I spoke of a bonus in the title. Well, you know, since I have studied Aramaic, I just had to examine some of the final words of Jesus Christ while he was on the Cross. They were, and could only have been, in Aramaic, one of the several languages that he spoke, due to the use of the verb šbq, which is in Aramaic and not found in either Hebrew or Greek [or Roman-Latin for that matter].

"And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" — Mark 15:34

Eloi. Aramaic ['l] = God. Technically EL, the name of the Creator God in Genesis. The oi ending is wy in Aramaic, meaning "woe, alas!" and thus perhaps it could be taken as Oh, El! and thus Oh, God!
Because of the Greek syntax, the translators took this as "my". And if it were a Greek saying it would be "my". But he spoke in Aramaic, and in Aramaic it would be Oh or Oh,Woe.

Something that we should consider is that the oi could be an "i" as in certain versions. This could indicate the first letter of the Aramaic alphabet [alaph], which in ancient Middle East cultures signified "the first, the principal, the one, the beginning", with, in Hebrew, Aleph-Tav being the first and last letters of their alphabet and meaning additionally "the first and the last" and Alpha Omega being the first and last of theirs, meaning the beginning and the end. Which would give us "EL (God) the One, or the One God, or God of the Beginnings".

Eloi/Eli is repeated.

Then lama: in Aramaic lama (lm') means: why? It also means lest, almost, except for, and indicates a question.

sabachthani
šbq = to leave, depart from, to leave something left over, to leave behind,
to abandon, leave alone, to permit, allow, to release, let free,
to be left, abandoned, (of an act) to be forgiven.
to be released of an obligation, one that releases, leaves behind
tny = to repeat. to repeat doing something; to repeat what has been learned, to be repeated, to teach a tannaitic tradition (a learned tradition).

I would take this as:
Oh! God!
Oh! EL, the One God!
Why? Why must I leave something left over (unfinished); only to repeat doing it?

And by this I mean Jesus was asking his Father, El, the One True God, why he was chosen to leave at that point, to return to Heaven, with work that he considered unfinished; with something that He felt was left to do? When he would only have to return and repeat doing it again - repeat his ministry on Earth?

And if that is not a confirmation, affirmation, of the promise of a Second Coming, it sure seems to come close in my opinion. Sometimes it is nice to do our own translations and receive as much of the truth as the text has to provide for us.

Happy Sunday. Jim

[Abondance]

I have a Bible whose translation was established by the monks of Maredsous. If the translation remains the same as that of King James ( for this passage), there is indeed a note stating:
"Darius the 1st, king of the Persians, succeeded Cambryses in 521. He effectively divided his empire into satrapies: but what king is this? Historians do not recognize a Medes king by the name of Darius."

So the monks themselves were a little doubtful about this information...

[Jim_Duyer]

Posted by Abondance (here)
I have a Bible whose translation was established by the monks of Maredsous. If the translation remains the same as that of King James ( for this passage), there is indeed a note stating:
"Darius the 1st, king of the Persians, succeeded Cambryses in 521. He effectively divided his empire into satrapies: but what king is this? Historians do not recognize a Medes king by the name of Darius."

So the monks themselves were a little doubtful about this information...

Thanks - I was not aware of the Monk's contributions. The Medes are often lumped in with the rest of the Persians. I would consider them early Iranians, but not Persians per se. They were a strange group and according to the Archaeologists they either had none or left no, writings. I take that with a grain of salt since they claim the same about the early Scandinavians, who originally wrote on wood, which did not stand the test of time. I have, for example, a photo of a runic marking left by a visitor to Queen Boudicca of England, and written sometime around the time the Romans first entered, so their comments that the Anglians and Scandinavians developed runes about 300 AD falls on its face. The markings also describe a comet that hit near France in about 50 BC or so, and can be easily dated.
But the Medes, while successful in their spread of conquest, did not have a Darius.

[Michel Leclerc]

reply to Jim Duyer’s elucubrations.

Thank you Jim. There is a lot to say about the first part of your post – but I leave that (maybe) for later. Let me just intervene for the words of Jesus on the cross.

It is Aramaic – yes. But it happens to be almost modern Arabic as well. That is because in certain parts of their vocabulary and grammar Aramaeic and Arabic remained quite close. Dutch and English, though sister languages, are at quite a distance from each other – yet "help" in English is "help" in Dutch and "help" in Dutch is "help" in English, pronounced almost the same – whereas in German t is "Hilfe" (pronounced "hilfer" (British pronunciation)) and in Swedish “hjälpa” (pronounced "yelpah").

You tend to decipher instead of read – on principle. I stand completely with you when it comes to keeping a healthy critical attitude and not taking earlier interpretations for granted. Yet, because of the pleasure of deciphering, you need not question interpretations when they are self-evident.

The "my God" characters stand for "eloh-i", which plainly means "my God": eloh is the singular of Elohim, which, as we all know, does not mean "God" but "the gods"; -i is the normal suffix-form ending for "my" in both Aramaic and Arabic. (habib-i in Arabic: "my beloved" etc.)

There is no need for a "voy" at all. There is no need for calling the -i (a postfix) influenced by Greek syntax (in Greek the pronoun “mou” meaning "of mine" indeed follows) because the -i postfix for "my" is standard Semitic.

There is no need either for conjuring up a verb tny ("to repeat") either because those three letters t, n, y are completely normal grammar in Semitic and stand for, respectively:
t: the verbal ending -ta of the perfect tense 2nd person singular --> sabaka meaning "to leave" (root SBK): sabakta: you left
y: the -i postfix for the 1rst person singular which we know already, and which not only can mean the possessive pronoun "my", but also the direct object "me"
n: a consonant which is regularly put between the -a endings of the verbs in the perfect and the -i postfix: sabakta-n-i: "you left me", regular Aramaic and Arabic

li-ma or le-ma: indeed "for-what", hence why

eloh- eloh-i, le-ma sabakta-n-i

god-of-mine, god-of-mine, for-what leftest (thou) me --> my god, my god, why have you left me?

Plain English, because plain Aramaic. No need for further hidden meanings, as far as I am concerned.

Reading ancient texts is NOT moving from the inscription to the interpretation, but from the inscription to the language, and on the basis of the language to the interpretation. And continuously juggling with probabilities.

I hope you can read this last phrase as advice. I do admire your tenacity and zeal.

I have myself created 486 poetic equivalents in Dutch of the 486 ghazals of the 14th-century Persian poet Hafez – and I assure you, for each ghazal– and with the help of six full-fledged 1000plus-page commentaries of all poems in Persian, my recreations went through at least a dozen versions. Understanding the language (14th-century poetic Persian), and weighing probabilities.

[Jim_Duyer]

Thank you Michel Leclerc. You have the background in grammar that I lack, or choose to ignore if you wish to know the truth. I have found by experience that when translators feel that the syntax is not just right or that the author or scribe made errors, it often means that he or she intentionally did this in order to obfuscate the meaning that they wished to provide inside of ordinary seeming text.
We're both going from a verbal response, recorded in Greek, by observers.

BTW IMHO Dutch and English are closer than Germany, certainly, but I believe that it is due to the nearness of the Anglians to the Dutch, both physically and by their association of descendants.

I believe, and your mileage may vary, that one crucial point in the entire story of that period of history is the animosity between the ancestors of Jesus, in the area of the original Kingdom of Israel in the North, and the Arabic associations of the Judah group in the South. I further believe that the Galilee area was much closer to the Syriac Aramaic and in addition the Mesopotamian Aramaic than the southern group near Jerusalem. I don't buy the Bethlehem in the area near Jerusalem notion, for instance, since there was a perfectly good Bethlehem in the North as well.

I would posit this. That the traditional translators choice of "forsaken" for šbq is what I would call a "push". As in, they pushed the meaning that they wished to see, and still do. And why? Because the other options, which I provided, hint at the fact that his ministry was not completed while He was here on Earth. And I believe that one could find some agreement for that. I believe that if you take the time-span between Abraham's death and the birth of Jesus, you will come up with the same number of years from the Resurrection until his Second Coming, which I have calculated at 2030.

I further believe that the reason that He was taken early was because there is a much, much longer picture involved here - with events spanning many thousands of years. Chaos has its time, Order its own, and while one is sent to correct the actions of the other, in later periods this becomes reversed.
Jesus was not allowed to finish all that he wished because the long-term plan is to allow Chaos to have its time, after which Jesus will return to set things right. And this return, circa 2030, may indeed seem like the final battle to those observing.

Another question that has always puzzled me is why the Church would allow an idea of "forsaken me" to be put out there? How did He forsake anyone? Forsaken as in allowing him to be put to death? Nonsense - He knew and told all who followed him that this was upcoming. Forsaken as in not allowing Him to convert those Kenite Scribes and other converts to a belief system more in line with what was originally to have been? Again, nonsense. He knew that this would fail to come to pass.

So the forsaken doesn't strike me as making any type of common sense. Not allowing Him to finish, withholding something for the next coming, that makes more sense for someone in a great deal of pain to question His Father about.

The Elephant in the room is how they plead the case for the trinity, when one of the three did not know what was coming up, and had planned on having more time to finish his ministry = that's a story for another long day, and probably not from me.

Ecclesiastes has Old South Arabic for much of the underlying language. And later Arabic (but not Persian variety) for the rest. I can provide much evidence for that. And the very name gives us "the riddle solver", which is a very good nickname for Queen Seba (Sheba in Hebrew) as the authoress of the book. In addition to swapping riddles with Solomon, she contributed this Book.

Job, written before Aramaic or Arabic existed, has a Hittite form of Sumerian as its base.

[In case you are wondering, I have re-translated all three of these books, verse by verse, a very time-consuming chore but not as difficult as your Persian works.]

Habakkuk, when translated as Ha for the, gives us a form of Baraq, which is appropriate because the entire book speaks of the final days of Israel, at a future date that is fast approaching. It was written in Aramaic, and in my opinion by the wife of Isaiah, whose name we do not know? Nonsense, her chosen name appears in the text itself on several occasions - it is The Expositor, the explainer. She refers to herself three times by this name in the text.

Persian Arabic, I think you might agree, is quite different from Old South Arabic as spoken and written in the area of Yemen-Ethiopia in the early period of its use. I believe that if our scholars had been familiar with OSA, they might not have claimed a Persian influence in Ecclesiastes. I don't hold it against them that this was not known in their day. But we are modern man. We use the tools that we have today.

Again, a pleasure to swap ideas.

PS
"Reading ancient texts is NOT moving from the inscription to the interpretation, but from the inscription to the language, and on the basis of the language to the interpretation. And continuously juggling with probabilities."
Understanding ancient texts is IMHO more of an empathetic understanding of the author's intent, developed through context, experience in similar texts or works by similarly placed authors, and then using a calm head, clear of agendas, to decide, after first obtaining certain words that have only one clear meaning, what the overall theme is.
What the traditional Biblical scholars seem to have done is to work backwards - from what they assume the authors meant to say, they go so far as to change the spelling of words, sometimes to the point that they are no longer recognizable, in order to arrive at that preferred result. This is bad science.
I first translate an entire Chapter, or close to the entire chapter. I glean which words have basically one meaning, or one definition with perhaps the options simply expanding or expounding upon that. And from there I examine the various meaning choices to determine which fits with those core, or substantiated meanings. Until I get to that point I truly have no idea what to expect, and I have been surprised beyond belief on many occasions.

In any event, we are not dealing with moving from an inscription to a language - we are dealing with a Greek recording of what the observers "heard" spoken in the type of northern tribal Aramaic dialect more commonly found in Syria and parts nearby than anything employed in Jerusalem at that time. When the scribes there complained of His country ways and his origins in the north, it was just that - animosity formed a thousand years prior between the tribes of the North and those of the South, and His pronunciation and colloquialisms gave Him away.

[Jim_Duyer]

Perhaps I owe an apology to Michel Leclerc - sorry if I seemed too bull headed.
I will say this and then I will post no more - no additional topics, no comments - no translations, nothing, on the topic of Biblical verses.

First - this is Aramaic, and not Arabic. They are different.
Second, if you have the English word airplane, your foreign language translator might search for his words for air and plane, and try to puzzle out the best meaning. What he would not do is search for a, i, r, p, l, a, n, e, and try to mash those together. We have a perfectly good answer in tny.

Third, the t for ta meaning to leave is not in the Aramaic lexicon that is published, neither is the y for my, nor the n for a construct of first person action.

They may exist in Arabic, they probably exist in hundreds of other languages, none of which Jesus uttered on the Cross.
Sorry, that's the truth.

And to close, I was not suggesting that mine is the only interpretation. What I was clearly suggesting was that mine is an equally valid and acceptable translation in Aramaic for the words that were uttered. Each person will of course freely chose what or which, if any, he or she chooses to believe.
Of course, in the first fifteen hundred years of the Bible being in circulation this would not have been a problem, since the various Churches did not allow the common folk to know what it said in full.

And only in the past 50 years or so have translators from the general public been able to discover the fact that there are many alternative meanings for each word, and no reason given for the one answer that they chose to publish, without notice that this is "one" of the possibilities.

Jim

[Michel Leclerc]

Quoting you, Jim:
“Understanding ancient texts is IMHO more of an empathetic understanding of the author's intent, developed through context, experience in similar texts or works by similarly placed authors, and then using a calm head, clear of agendas, to decide, after first obtaining certain words that have only one clear meaning, what the overall theme is.
What the traditional Biblical scholars seem to have done is to work backwards - from what they assume the authors meant to say, they go so far as to change the spelling of words, sometimes to the point that they are no longer recognizable, in order to arrive at that preferred result. This is bad science.”

That may be bad science. But what you claim to do and what the Biblical scholars claim to do is the same.

My proposal (and any serious philologist’s proposal) is: try to translate what is there. In order to do so, you first of all need linguistic science. You need to know the language. Not just pick a dictionary — the language as a whole. And use this knowledge of what the texts say as such as a fact against which you need to check your hypotheses about myths, religions, hidden meanings, esoteric interpretations etc. We are living in times where anything goes in the mythological field (understanding “mythology” here as "science of myths”): the most exciting but unproven or unprovable statements. Language is one way of checking the "mythomania"; it is not the other way around.

Again simply said: there is no need for your mythological elucubration about what was intended with SBQTNY, because it is simply West-Semitic (in a large sense) for “you left me”. Instead of speculating about what it might have meant because the authors of the Gospels spoke Greek, I would try (and suggest you to try) another approach. It is increasingly believed by serious scholars of the Gospels that what the Aramaean Christian faithful have always claimed: i.e. that the Gospels were originally written in Aramaean, that the present-day Aramaean version of them used in Aramaean Christian churches is the closest to the original and that the Greek Gospels the Eastern Roman Churches use and the Western translated into Latin are translations into Greek from the Aramaean Gospels, the extant, existing, living, Aramaean Gospels. The Eli Eli le-ma Sabaktani and the Thalitha qum Aramaean passages in the Gospels were left in Aramaean by the translators because they were the words of the Lord and not just any words of the Lord: the one (thalitha qum) demonstrating that Jesus had the power to heal the sick and the other one (sabaktani) that He did NOT have the power to keep himself out of harm’s way. (Forgive me, a little bit of extended theology on my behalf, mythomaniac maybe.) Now my suggestion: go and find a person belonging to one of the two main Aramaean Christian churches. Probably this person may also speak one of the wo main dialects of modern Aramaean. Ask him/her what the quoted phrase means. Ask him/her whether sbqtny might not mean something else and suggest to this person your interpretation. That would be a “proof of the concept”. At the very least, it is something you should not exclude from the documentation of your interpretation. And – if I may add – it would strictly be within the boundaries of "knowing the language”.

I have two questions to you about other statements.

First: what do you mean by "a Hittite form of Sumerian”? A form of Sumerian written in Hittite? But Hittite used (apart from using its own extraordinary simplification of cuneiform) the same cuneiform as was used for Sumerian and Akkadian — three languages only related if we apply the Nostratic hypothesis to Sumerian (Bomhard does, but it is controversial). Hittite and Akkadian are Nostratic, because Hittite is Indo-European and Akkadian is Semitic. So please explain.

In another passage you claimed relatedness for Persian and Elamite. That is not wrong because Elamite – if it is related to the Dravidian languages, which is controversial but which I hold to be possible – would then be a Nostratic language; and Persian, being an Indo-European language, most certainly is. But claiming this relationship per se between Persan and Elamite is the same as claiming the relationship between Old Japanese an Old English. Yes, they are related, but only because they are both Nostratic. What does this link prove?

In your most recent post above, you refer twice to “Persian Arabic”. Astounding. What do you mean by that? Persian is an Indo-European language, Arabic a Semitic one, and hence they are both Nostratic. But.. "Persian Arabic" would then compare to "Hebrew Russian”, or to "Latin Oromo”..? If you mean "the Persian form of Arabic": that has a certain meaning, i.e. as the "Persian pronunciation of Arabic” (which exists of course, because the text of the Qur'an is read by Persan speakers, and quite a number of the great Persian mystics and philosophers have partially written in Arabic, and those texts are obviously read by Persian speakers). Well, I can tell you that this "Persian Arabic" sounds a little like “English French", i.e. by an English speaker of French who knows the language well but keeps certain peculiarities when pronouncing French, which everybody more or less accepts because it happens to be “the way educated Brits speak French”. When the Iranian president meets the Saudi Crown Prince he speaks Arabic and the Saudi Prince has a a few inner smiles about his pronouncing the language but for the rest conversation goes smoothly. Hence please, Jim, what do you mean by "Persian Arabic"?

[Jim_Duyer]

Job was a Hittite-Hebrew. Abraham was a Hurrian-Amorite-Hebrew. From their origins.
Persian flavored Arabic. As in not only the pronunciations but also the word choices and some definitions being different from the Arabic used in the far south, and almost completely different than what they call the Old South Arabic, but was actually used much earlier than Arabic in that region and some of their words were taken into the Arabic but were spelled differently.
Yes, Hebrew Russian, Persian Arabic, Southern United States English, London English vs the Yorkshire Dales.
Each of these groups had their own localisms and word choices even though they spoke the same language, and of course pronunciation was different. Jesus would have spoken in the northern - Syriac - version of Aramaic as opposed to that spoken in the Edom area of the South. And again we are still speaking about a spoken phrase.
I could ask an Aramaic speaker from, as you suggest an Aramaic Christian church member. Two problems. First they have their dogma and they don't wish to hear new ideas. Second, there were no Christians until AFTER the crucifixion, and in fact some years later, so their knowledge of how pre-AD Aramaic was used may not be as sufficient as you believe it to be.
And English French or Persian Arabic is not getting us any closer to the Aramaic spoken at that time, is it?

Would you use a Middle Ages English speaker to 'splain to you what the WWF Wrestlers were saying when they talk smack? Or a Frenchman or Arab? Not if you wished to get something approaching a legitimate answer.
But enough - I answered your questions on technical aspects but I will speak no more of religion of any type.

[Michel Leclerc]

I will briefly reply to your points (?) Jim. As interlinear remarks in blue. This will be my last reaction to your posts. It seems to me that you just do not accept any scientific authority but your own. In my eyes as a linguist, that is not a trustworthy stand.

Posted by Jim_Duyer (here)
Job was a Hittite-Hebrew. Abraham was a Hurrian-Amorite-Hebrew. From their origins. I challenged your Hittiite Sumerian. You repeatedly mix up ethnical or political denominations, languages and writing systems.
Persian flavored Arabic. Hardly in Jesus’ times. A number of Persian words were “arabicised” after the conquest of Persia by the Muslim forces, but that is later than your time frame. As in not only the pronunciations but also the word choices and some definitions being different from the Arabic used in the far south, and almost completely different than what they call the Old South Arabic (“called” is the correct qualification: it is basically a different Semitic language (cf. Yemen), but was actually used much earlier than Arabic in that region and some of their words were taken into the Arabic but were spelled differently (correct).
Yes, Hebrew Russian, Persian Arabic, Southern United States English, London English vs the Yorkshire Dales.
Each of these groups had their own localisms and word choices even though they spoke the same language, and of course pronunciation was different. Jesus would have spoken in the northern - Syriac - version of Aramaic as opposed to that spoken in the Edom area of the South. And again we are still speaking about a spoken phrase. The only factual proof we have of the "spoken” utterances is their written form; hence knowledge of the spoken forms is far weaker than of the written form. You might have a point if your interpretation of the phrase were a better reading of the characters than the traditional one, adducing evidence from a "spoken" form. What you do is to introduce an extravagant and unnecessary reading of the written form and refer to the "spoken" form we can only guess at to justify it. That is like saying that the real meaning of "To be or not to be, that is the question” is: “apiculture has become a hazardous trade”.
I could ask an Aramaic speaker from, as you suggest an Aramaic Christian church member. Two problems. First they have their dogma and they don't wish to hear new ideas. New ideas are not necessarily good ideas. Why are you presuming how they might react? My experience of one of their biblical scholars was: beyond any reproach. Second, there were no Christians until AFTER the crucifixion, and in fact some years later, so their knowledge of how pre-AD Aramaic was used may not be as sufficient as you believe it to be. To me Donald Trump’s American English (post-9/11) is the same as Bob Dylan‘s American English in “Masters of War”.
And English French or Persian Arabic is not getting us any closer to the Aramaic spoken at that time, is it? You do not seem to understand what I meant. So be it.

Would you use a Middle Ages English speaker to 'splain to you what the WWF Wrestlers were saying when they talk smack? Or a Frenchman or Arab? Not if you wished to get something approaching a legitimate answer. Probably you mean: “Would you use the WWF Wrestlers to explain what a Middle Ages English speaker meant by "speaketh”? Well, I would rather use those wrestlers than Japanese sumo wrestlers.
But enough - I answered your questions on technical aspects but I will speak no more of religion of any type.

[Jim_Duyer]

I spent yesterday afternoon going over my offered translation of the words on the Cross. I finally found, but only on Christian owned sites, a report that makes it clear that MY could be as equally correct as is Oh.
So I will give you the My. It changes nothing about your sushi knife cutting up of the text into bits that fit what you wish. I stand by my findings. Good day to you as well.

For your information, by Hittite Sumerian, I mean that Hittites, as did Hurrians and Akkadians and Assyrians and a great many other peoples, used Sumerian cuneiform for their writing, in the early period. Job was Hebrew, but he was from the area of the Hittites near the bend of the river in modern Turkey. So he uses phrases from the Hittite language to flavor what he wrote in Sumerian, with Sumerian cuneiform as the written form. Many early Hebrews lived where the commerce was happening - the bigger cities all over Anatolia and the Levant. Abraham was a scribe in Ur and he worked there in his early period. His father's family were Amorites, as were most of the early Hebrews, but his mother was Hurrian.

Christian translators called these people Hittites in their translations of the Bible because the Hurrians had not yet been identified as a people. But Amorite-Hurrian is the correct mix for Abrahams tribes in the beginning. Even the early rulers of Jerusalem, (Melchezidek as well) were Hurrians. If you study the two main splits of Amorites, the two main tribal groupings, you will understand the North (unrighteous) and South (righteous) split that led to the story of Cain as being of the evil group that wandered into the far south of the land where Egyptian assets were mined, to later be added into the story as the Kennites. And why Jesus said "your father is not my father". Your father is of the Devil. Northern Hebrews vs Jerusalem Hebrews, the old angers and ill feelings of the split into two groups early on, and the hand of which author happened to be writing at that time - all of this influenced everything they wrote. Jesus knew that the scribes and government workers and Rabbi of Jerusalem had been polluted by the influx of the families of Moses - Kennites from the beginning, and with Yahweh (Baal) as their father, while EL was the Father of Jesus.

Goodbye

Someday perhaps you can explain, if only to your own satisfaction or perhaps only to yourself, why any translator of ancient languages would choose to slice and dice a word form when a perfectly good answer lies in the longer form that is in front of them?

[Jim_Duyer]

To the rest of the readers here (other than Mr LeClerc) I would like to say this.
Don't be afraid to propose a new translation of anything that has been "taught" to you, to us.
New ideas are put forward, challenged with evidence, and decided upon - that's how science works. Unfortunately, in today's world those who "vote" or peer-review any work are going to do nothing but stick together and protect the ideas that they have put forth in the past. They will offer no constructive criticism and will tolerate no input from those whom they deem "amateurs".

If you see what they put out up to now, and no new ideas come forth, then that's what you will have forever.

If you examine my topics to date, I have gone into areas in many languages from ancient times - with fresh eyes, and offered translations that are equally likely, but also equally likely to be shot at from the traditional scholars who don't like the boat rocked - their boat that is.

Have the courage to try - look at everything translated and offered to you as "truth", no matter which book it comes from. See if it makes any sense to you when you take it apart and look under the hood so to speak.

And if it does not, speak out. Thank you.

[Delight]

Posted by Jim_Duyer (here)
To the rest of the readers here (other than Mr LeClerc) I would like to say this.
Don't be afraid to propose a new translation of anything that has been "taught" to you, to us.
New ideas are put forward, challenged with evidence, and decided upon - that's how science works. Unfortunately, in today's world those who "vote" or peer-review any work are going to do nothing but stick together and protect the ideas that they have put forth in the past. They will offer no constructive criticism and will tolerate no input from those whom they deem "amateurs".

If you see what they put out up to now, and no new ideas come forth, then that's what you will have forever.

If you examine my topics to date, I have gone into areas in many languages from ancient times - with fresh eyes, and offered translations that are equally likely, but also equally likely to be shot at from the traditional scholars who don't like the boat rocked - their boat that is.

Have the courage to try - look at everything translated and offered to you as "truth", no matter which book it comes from. See if it makes any sense to you when you take it apart and look under the hood so to speak.

And if it does not, speak out. Thank you.

You grace us with your work IMO.

Jesus knew that the scribes and government workers and Rabbi of Jerusalem had been polluted by the influx of the families of Moses - Kennites from the beginning, and with Yahweh (Baal) as their father, while EL was the Father of Jesus

I apologize for not having absorbed the history you mention. In your interpretation, is the Old testament a "Yahweh" book? Would something like the Dead Sea Scrolls or Nag Hammadi be an EL book?

The whole story about sacrifice of Christ is more looking to me now as a major justifying EVIL religious doctrine. It makes us believe it is true that a loving "god" would demand it. A FATHER sacrificing his son for any reason seems insane.

What I see is that this emphasis on the "forgiveness of sins" is like a "cremation of care" through shedding blood. This would be from a vastly different purpose when the "god" is an intradimensional ghoul.

I do not accept that it is GOOD that "Jesus shed his blood for us". The "Old Religion" rites as practiced by those Lee Merritt call the Phrygians or Amorites now seem to me to be infiltrating all religion. What is your understanding of EL and sacrifice?

[Jim_Duyer]

Thank you for your kind comments!
Sometimes I get on a soapbox, because I am really sick and tired of scholars (not any on PA of course) who perch over a site that is discovered for decades without releasing anything to the public (the ones whose donations pay their stipends). Gobekli Tepe = 50 years and now they say they will be covering it up for future exploration - Dead Sea Scrolls - untold decades and still we do not have the full picture released to us. They "claim" that they need to do grammatical and lexicography analysis on it prior to publishing, but what it really means is they don't wish to let us know what is going on.

======
I apologize for not having absorbed the history you mention. In your interpretation, is the Old testament a "Yahweh" book? -------
The earliest book written was the Book of Job. We know that because of the words that he used in Hebrew - they were a form of very old Hebrew that ceased to be used after a certain point (when Aramaic became the standard) so we can date it to about 1500 BC. However, I can date it to 2000 or so BC due to the Sumerian references that he includes. He adored EL. When the next book was written, Genesis, we begin to see that the worship of EL has moved more towards the north of Mesopotamia, nearing Syria (and Harran of Abraham's family homeland) and now he is referred to as EL Shaddai.

No matter what scholars tell you, Shad in Hebrew means breast, and the ending indicates a plural. This refers to twin or two mounds, which are a landmark in a region along the north of the Euphrates River, somewhat south of Emar. At this point some of the tribes went south, as far as Egypt, and lived there for hundreds of years.

I won't keep going on the history as it is long, but at the time they left Egypt, Moses encountered some previous Amorite (Hebrew) tribes who worshiped God under the name Yahweh, and at that point we read from Yahweh - (in Exodus) Noah and Abraham and Isaac knew me as El Shaddai and not as Yahweh. That's when Yahweh worship not only came to be but it took over the temples of the area of the southern kingdom of Judah (Jerusalem area).

Some in the northern Kingdom of Israel still worshiped EL, and that was the start of a war that continued down to the days of Jesus, whose mother's people originated in that northern area of Galilee.

------ Would something like the Dead Sea Scrolls or Nag Hammadi be an EL book? Jesus, who was not a Gnostic, along with the Gnostics and the Mandaens who still lived in that area before migrating to Iran and Turkey, knew that Yahweh was not the Creator. Not only did he have a different name, he acted differently. He was all about taking - and was very brutal. That's why Jesus said "your father is of the Devil, and your father is not My Father." The Kennites (family of Cain) had infiltrated the scribal positions in the Main Temple and began to worship the contributions more than the Holy Word. The Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi would be closer to the EL authors, but they were extremely verbal about not liking Yahweh and they associated him with an evil spirit - something like Baal (Satan). Jesus was very angry at them for polluting the Temple with money collections and for changing some of the translations of the Old Testament and generally for being unrighteous. He taught peace vs Yahwehs eye for an eye. And they took him out early for that. It's the basis for my translation that Jesus was asking why he had to leave early when he would only have to return to finish what he started, as I offered above.
He will be returning in 2030. Yes, I have extensive, and I mean years of extensive evidence for that. So we don't have too long to wait.

-----------------
The whole story about sacrifice of Christ is more looking to me now as a major justifying EVIL religious doctrine. It makes us believe it is true that a loving "god" would demand it. A FATHER sacrificing his son for any reason seems insane.
-------- To this day, the Jews have a folk saying that involves taking a short form of the name of Jesus in Hebew and having it curse him and wish his lineage never existed. I won't repeat it - it's vulgar and demeaning. They still hate Jesus and the idea of Jesus. That's the truth. Until our Christian leaders accept this and quit apologising for them, we will find ourselves in a problem upon his return.
El (God)understood that Jesus needed to leave and that upon his return there would be a great battle between the forces of darkness and light. El needed the sacrifice so that Christianity could become established. But my God, El the Creator, is a loving God and not a murderer of women and children as Yahweh commanded. ------------

---------------
What I see is that this emphasis on the "forgiveness of sins" is like a "cremation of care" through shedding blood. This would be from a vastly different purpose when the "god" is an intradimensional ghoul.
--------- I will soon publish the words of Job, as he encoded them in the text of the Old Testament. There was no "original sin". And El walked with the sons of Adam down the river to upper Syria where one group - the unrighteous clans of Cain, separated and flourished in Iraq and Iran at first and later in Egypt and Southern Arabia before moving in to Jerusalem. The other main tribal group took the Euphrates fork of the rivers and settled into Syria and Canaan - the Abrahamic group. Cain was Cayne, a female, and she murdered Abel after having his child. That was the beginning of the rift that has continued down to this day. Of course the Yahweh group rewrote this out of the Bible.
--------------------------

I do not accept that it is GOOD that "Jesus shed his blood for us". The "Old Religion" rites as practiced by those Lee Merritt call the Phrygians or Amorites now seem to me to be infiltrating all religion. What is your understanding of EL and sacrifice? --- You are correct not ot accept what we have been sold. El has plans that span many thousands of years. We will be part of the final one, upcoming, but we will have to fight alongside Jesus against the forces of darkness. It will not be - Oh, here He is, now we go to Heaven. It will be more like onward Christian soldiers.
I will give you a spoiler - in the year 2030, and I know the month and the approximate date but not the "date and hour that nobody knows except My Father", the entire region of modern Israel and Gaza, up to Jordan and north to Syria,and south to Yemen, will cease to exist. El knows this and it has to happen. Sixty days or so (I believe 60 but it might be off slightly), Jesus will return. Satan had his turn. Jesus was sent down to straighten things out. He did part of that. Now Satan has his turn again with this destruction of the Holy Lands, and then Jesus returns for his turn. It has to be. That's why I don't worry about serious nuclear war in the Middle East - it can not happen until the event that has been planned, and that is in 2030. -----------

And no, this is not from some verse in the Bible. This is from Every Verse in the Entire Books of Job, Ecclesiastes and Habbakuk, which I have painstakingly translated, word by word - a work of some many, many months, along with several sections of four other books in the Old Testament. They all agree, they all give additional details, and they all explain it the same way. All of them are sad that they had this prophecy, because it is their homelands after all. None of this stopped them from passing it on to us, and nothing has or can stop me from getting the word out.

Jim

Is it sad that our Biblical Scholars are no better than our “peer-review” scholars at telling the truth to the general public? Yes it is, to me. And why such a crappy Christian as myself, who believes in only four or five of the books of the Old Testament, has to be the one to get it out is beyond me. But every time I try to set it aside something comes up to tell me to keep going. So I am and I will.