Month: December 2020

In the table below, we see the names/titles used of the male and female Adam before the separation of the female from the male in Gen 2:5 to 2:22, after the separation in Gen 2:23 to 4:1, and prophesying their reunification in Gen 1:26 & 27.

The translation of the names/titles used of Adam in the Genesis creation account is inconsistent and illogical.  There are different translations of the same word, and the same translation of different words, obviously done to support the traditional account that the female was made from the male, for the male and to cover up the corruption of the male.  For example:

• In the Hebrew Bible, Adam and ha–Adam are translated as either the general term ‘man’ or the specific name ‘Adam’, and ish איש in Gen 2:23, 24 & 4:1 is translated ‘man’, but in Gen 3:16 as ‘husband’. 
• In the Targum Onkelos (TO), instead of Adam in Gen 1:26 & 2:5, we find anash אינש (with an aleph suffix in Gen 1:26), translated ‘man’ in both cases.  Instead of ish איש in Gen 2:23 & 3:16, we find baal בעל, translated ‘man’ and ‘husband’ in the TO, just like the HB.  Instead of ish איש in Gen 2:24 & 4:1, we find geber גבר , translated ‘husband’ and ‘man’ respectively in both the HB and TO. 
• In the Samaritan Targum (ST), instead of Adam אדם in Gen 2:5 and ha–Adam האדם in Gen 2:7 (2^nd) & 18, we find anash אנש , translated as ‘man’ in the ST, and in Gen 2:5 & 7 of the HB, but Gen 2:18 is translated ‘Adam’.  Instead of of ish איש in Gen 2:23, 24, 3:16, & 4:1 we find geber גבר translated as ‘husband’, ‘man’, and ‘husband’ respectively (Gen 4:1 is not translated), unlike the HB where Gen 2:23, 24, & 4:1 are translated ‘man’, and Gen 3:16 is translated ‘husband’. 

The names/titles used of Adam have different meanings, and indicate changes in his physical characteristics and disposition. 

Before the separation of the female from the male in Gen 2:22, the name/title/race adam אדם (Strong’s 120) means ‘a human being, common person’, or ‘to be red’, that is “from the same as” adamah אדמה (Strong’s 127) that means ‘ground, land, soil’ (see Fact #35), which described the male/female adam as dust/dirt.  Instead of Adam, the Targum’s in Gen 2:5, and the ST in Gen 2:7 (2^nd occurrence) and 2:18, have anash (Strong’s 605), in the form אינש in the TO and אנש in the ST, that means ‘to be weak, sick’.  In Fuerst’s Lexicon p. 125, anash אנש means ‘to be sick i.e. morally bad, ill, figuratively painful, dangerous’.  This provides critical information about the state of mankind when he/she was made from the ground.

After the separation, in Gen 2:23, 24, 3:16 & 4:1 the male is identified as an ish איש in the HB, a baal בעל and geber גבר in the TO, and a geber גבר in the ST.  This reveals that ish, baal and geber have a common meaning, which Rashi confirmed in Exodus 15:3 when he said “Wherever the words איש and אישך occur they must be translated by בעל; so, too, (1 Kings 2:2) ‘Be thou strong and show thyself an איש’ — a mighty person.”  This is confirmed in Fuerst’s Lexicon p. 77, 1st – plural אישי or אנש, ‘strong’ from esh אש  and אשש , like/from geber גבר.  In Fuerst’s Lexicon p. 222-5, Baal בעל means, 1^st – ‘to be big, mighty, strong, master, lord’, 2^nd – ‘lords of the heathen i.e. their conquerors’, and  geber גבר on p. 260 – 1, 1^st ‘to be strong, powerful, capable of bearing arms, to conquer, to swell up, to get influence’, 2^nd – ‘a valiant soldier, a warrior, a man of strength, particularly in opposition to God, and therefore like איש in the sense of one, every one’. 

The sixth creation day in Gen 1:26 – 31, prophecies Yahshua’s incarnation in the flesh, described in John 1:14.  In the HB and ST, gods say “We will make adam in our image, in our likeness . . .”, but instead of adam, the TO has anash אינש, that means to be sick i.e. morally bad, ill, figuratively painful, dangerous.  In Gen 1:27, the ‘sick’ adam is replaced by the perfect male, Yahshua, reunited with the female, and adam is now re-created in the image of gods.  This is the wedding feast of Yahweh’s son, to which only those with wedding clothes are permitted entry in Matthew 22: 1 – 14.

The message of the Genesis creation account is largely revealed in the changing names/titles for adam.  When adam became sick (corrupt), the female was separated from the male to save her, as Yahweh said in Gen 2:18.  The male assumed the name adam after the separation, and the female’s name became ishshah.  Adam identified himself as a mighty one (ish) in Gen 2:23.  He was Assyria who had become ‘lofty, exalted’ (Strong’s 1361 gabahh גבהא that we see in Fact #120 figuratively means ‘toward a ditch’) as revealed in Ezek 31: 3 – 5. 

In the table below, we see that the Targum’s substitute att אתת for ishshah אשה in the Genesis Creation Account. 

In Fuerst’s Lexicon p. 157, it states that ishshah is equivalent to ashsh אשש, and Davies Lexicon p. 71 & 73 indicates that att אתת is the Chaldee form of the Hebrew ashsh אשש.  In Gesenius’s Hebrew Lexicon p. 84, אשש means ‘found, establish, show yourselves firm’.  In Fuerst’s Lexicon ** p. 167, and Davies’ Lexicon p. 71, אשש means 1 ‘to be powerful, strong, to make strong, firm, to establish’, derivitives include the ish איש (a form of esh אש), or 2 ‘to glow, to burn’, Fuerst’s Lexicon indicates it is comp. Aram. את, derivatives are אשה,אש, and אשת.

In my analysis of ishshah אשה in Fact #145, I concluded it means ‘mighty toward fire’, because it is the same as ishsheh אשה (Strong’s 801 65 occurrences) that means ‘offering by fire, made by fire’, that in Numbers 28:9 has a sweet aroma to Yahweh, and the root is the noun esh אש (Strong’s 784) that means ‘a fire’, with the he ה suffix that ‘expresses the concept of movement toward’, thus ishshah and ishsheh mean ‘toward fire’.   Since Yahweh יהוה is like a consuming fire (Exodus 3:2 & 24:17), it isn’t a stretch to conclude ishshah and ishsheh mean ’mighty toward Yahweh’. 

The Lexicon’s give the traditional meaning for ishshah אשה as ‘woman, wife’, which simply identifies a female personage, and fails to encapsulate her power and close relationship with Yahweh.  This broader meaning is found in Davies’ Lexicon p. 66, where it states that ishshah אשה also means ‘to be firm’, and ‘fig. to heal’, in Gesenius’s Hebrew Lexicon p. 77-8, where it says ishshah אשה also means ‘their fire’, or ‘an offering made by fire . . . means to friendly relations betw. God & man’, or ‘support’ (אשיותיה only found in Jer 50:15 where it is translated ‘her foundation(s)/pillars’), and in Fuerst’s Lexicon p. 157, where it says that ishshah אשה also means ‘to be firm, close, firmly fitted together’.  It is obvious that both ishshah and att were translated ‘woman’ or ‘wife’ to support the traditional account that the female was created from and for the male, disquising her true nature. 

In the TO, the basic form of ishshah is אתתא in Gen 2:22, 23, 3:1, 4, 6, 13 x 2, & 15, with the aleph א suffix that in Aramaic indicates the possessive ‘our’.  When created in Gen 2:22 Yahweh gods called her ‘our mighty toward fire’, then in Gen 2:23 Adam and Satan do the same, perhaps revealing a battle for the heart of the ‘mighty toward fire’.  The ‘serpent’, Adam and Satan, claim possession in Gen 3:1, and precede to trick her into breaking Yahweh’s command to not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  In Gen 3:2, 12 & 16 the yod after the aleph in איתתא may indicate a corruption of the female (however ishshah in the ST doesn’t change form in these verses) , after which Yahweh gods call her ‘your mighty fire’ אתתך in Gen 3:17 and Adam and Eve leave the garden of Eden, no longer with Yahweh gods to provide for and protect them.

The forms in which att אתת is found in the Samaritan Targum on Tanakh.info, אתה in Gen 2:22, אתהא in Gen 2:23, אתאה in Gen 3:1, 15 & 16, are not found in any Chaldee Lexicon, and they do not match the forms found Samaritanische Pentateuch version die Genesis in der Hebraischen edited by Moritz Heidenheim, where all occurrences are in the form אתתה except Gen 3:17 which is in the form אתתך, with the possessive pronoun ‘your’, on which all the text are in agreement.  As a result, we can’t be certain whether the text should contain the possessive prefix ‘his’ in Gen 2:24, 25, 3:8, 20, 21, & 4:1, or not.

In Gen 3:20 of the HB and TO, Adam ‘called (qara קרא)’ her (ishshah/att translated ‘wife’ in this verse) ‘life-giver (chavvah חוה translated ‘Eve’)’, but in the ST, Adam ‘cried/lamented/complained (zaaq  זעק)’ her appointed name ‘life-giver’.  The word qara, makes it appear that Adam was a god, calling creation into existence the way the gods (elohim) did in Gen 1:5, 8, & 10, but zaaq reveals that Adam was upset with the females power to create life, a more likely scenario. 

From the beginning of time, the fact that females have the ability to bear offspring has caused men great angst.  Procreation – carrying on their lineage is important to many men, especially powerful ones who desire an heir, but before the advent of DNA testing, they could never be 100% certain a child was theirs – a rather dis-empowering state of affairs.

In looking at the History of the Hebrew Bible, the Masoretic and Samaritan texts, it becomes apparent that there are very divergent opinions on the accuracy and reliability of all the source text of the Hebrew Bible, leaving us no option but investigate the matter for ourselves. 

Having studied the Hebrew text of Gen 1:1 to 2:24, we are in a better position to compare the text of the Targums for similarities and differences, to see if they differ from our original interpretation.  We learned some interesting facts in the History of Hebrew Language, the Hebrew Bible and the Targums, which will help us with our study going forward. 

We will use the following Chaldee Lexicons (free in pdf format on archive.org) to analyze and translate the Targum text:

• Lee’s Lexicon, short for ‘A Lexicon of Hebrew, Chaldee, and English’ by Samuel Lee, 1840        
• Fuerst’s Lexicon, short for ‘A Hebrew & Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament’ by Dr Julius Fuerst, 1885                                                                       
• Davies’ Lexicon, short for ‘A Compendious and Complete Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament’ by Benjamin Davies, 1879                                                                                             
• Gesenius’s Hebrew Lexicon, short for ‘Gesenius’s Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament’ translated by Edward Robinson 1907
• Gesenius’s Chaldee Lexicon, short for ‘Gesenius’s Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures’ translated by S P Tregelles 1857  
• Harkavy’s Dictionary, short for ‘Students’ Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary to the Old Testament’ by A Harkavy 1914                                                                                                            

In addition, we will consult with the books Christological Aramaic Grammar by Dr. Gary Staats, and A Short Grammar of Biblical Aramaic by Alger F. Johns, to  assist with Aramaic grammar, prefixes and suffixes.

We will begin comparing the names/titles used for the male and female in Genesis 1 to 4:1 found in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible (HB), the Targum Onkelos (TO), and Samaritan Targum (ST).  We will compare the ST text found on Tanakh.info with the Samaritanische Pentateuch version die Genesis in der Hebraischen edited by Moritz Heidenheim, 1884.  Then we will incorporate the comparison of the text into our study beginning with Gen 2:25.  After we are complete Genesis 3, we will go back and compare the text of Gen 1:1 to 2:24.  

In his article The Samaritan Pentateuch, http://classic.net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Pentateuch,%20The%20Samaritan author J. E. H. Thompson presents the history of the Samaritan Pentateuch.  The Greek’s knew of the Samaritan Pentateuch in the 1^st century AD – “Origen knew of it”, “Eusebius of Caesarea in his Chronicon compares the ages of the patriarchs before Abraham in the Septuagint with those in the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Massoretic Text”, and “Cyril of Jerusalem notes agreement of Septuagint and Samaritan in Gen 4:8” (I 1).  The Samaritan Pentateuch must have been written at the same time as the Targum Onkelos and Jonathon.

Thompson states in his introduction, the fact that the Samaritan community in Nablus had a “recension of the Pentateuch which differs in some respects from the Massoretic has been long recognized as important.”  The Nablus roll was examined by Dr. Mills who indicated it “has the appearance of very great antiquity, but is wonderfully well preserved” (II 1), “the Jews admit that the character in which the Samaritan Pentateuch is written is older than their square character” (II 2), it is written in the same Aramaic “in which the Jewish Targums were written, sometimes called Chaldee” (V). 

Thompson says the Samaritan Pentateuch was missing for a millennium, until 1616 when a copy was purchased in Damascus by Pietro de la Valle, in 1623 presented to the Paris Oratory, then published in the Paris Polyglot, by Morinus, a priest of the Oratory, who emphasized the difference between it and the Massoretic Text, to have the church intervene to settle which was Scripture, and a fierce controversy resulted  (I 2).  The controversy makes it challenging to find unbiased opinions about the Samaritan Targum. 

In assessing the Relation of the Samaritan Recension to the Masoretic Text and to the Septuagint (III), Thompson criticizes Gesenius’s assessment of the differences because it was “founded on the assumption that the Samaritan Pentateuch is the later” (III 1), and “the assumption of Gesenius and of such Jewish writers as Kohn that the Massoretic text is always correct due to mere prejudice” (III 1. 1 c).  He classifies the variations as being due to either accident or intention, providing examples each in the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Massoretic Text, and the Septuagint and Peshitta (III 1 1 & 2).  In his review of the hypothesises (III 2), Thompson states “One has only to compare the Samaritan, Septuagint and Massoretic Text of any half a dozen consecutive chapters in the Pentateuch to prove . . . neither is dependent on the others.” 

Thompson provides a list of recommended books on the Samaritan’s and the Samaritan Pentateuch, all of which can be found in pdf on Archive.org:

• The Samaritan script is found in the Paris and London polyglots.  Walton’s text in the London Polyglot is transcribed in square characters by Blayney, 1790.  (See the paragraph below which contains Abraham Tal’s concern about amendments made by Walton to the Samaritan text published in the London Polyglot in 1657.) 
• Three Months’ Residence at Nablus and an Account of the Modern Samaritans by Rev. John Mills, 1864.
• Fragments of a Samaritan Targum by Nutt, 1874.
• The Samaritans, the Earliest Jewish Sect by J. A. Montgomery, 1907.
• The Samaritan Pentateuch and Modern Criticism by J. Iverach Munro, 1911.

In Abraham Tal’s rendering of the event in The Samaritan Targum to the Pentateuch, Its Distinctive Characteristics and Its Metamorphosis, he confirms the Samaritan Targum was found by Pietro della Vale in the Samaritan community of Damascus, who brought it to Rome in 1616, and nearly 30 years later, in 1645, it was published by Morinus in the sixth volume of the Paris Polyglot.  Since this agrees with Thompson’s account, we can be fairly confident this information is accurate.

In the same paper, Tal alleges that Walton made many amendments to the Samaritan text published in the London Polyglot in 1657, and Walton’s text was used in the Das samaritanische Targum zum Pentateuch published by A. Brull, even though it had been copied in 1514, after Aramaic was no longer spoken in the Samaritan community, and the scribes unfamiliar with the language of the text.  These charges are addressed in the Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Right Rev. Brian Walton, D. D. (1821) which includes Dr. Walton’s Own Vindication of the London Polyglot which is available on archive.org (in pdf) or purchased for a reasonable price from Amazon.  Given the differing opinions, we must test the text and come to our own conclusions, but this is always the case regardless.

That biased opinions exist about the Samaritan text should come as no surprise, since the conflict between the Jews and the Samaritans may go back to “the time of Judges (1100 – 1025 BCE) . . . the beginning of the Samaritan Schism” according to David Steinberg in The Origin and Nature of the Samaritans and their Relationship to Second Temple Jewish Sects.  Steinberg reveals that the foundation of their conflict is their common heritage with the Samaritan’s considering themselves to be direct descendants of the line of Aaron, whereas the Jews consider the Samaritans to be gentiles.

The conflict between the Jews and Samaritans is evident  in the New Testament.  The Jews had a negative attitude towards Samaritan’s, even accusing Yahshua of being one in John 8:48.  The Samaritans did not receive Yahshua on his way to Jerusalem because he was a Jew in Luke 9: 51 – 56.  Both Jews and Samaritans were conditioned by their priests and leaders to hate and avoid contact with each other.

It is a sin to show favouritism James 2:9, God does not show favouritism Acts 10:34, all are equal before Yahweh Gal 3:28.  In his parable of the ‘good Samaritan’, Yahshua spoke of a Samaritan showing mercy for a man who had been robbed and beaten, and he commanded his disciples to ‘do the same’ in Luke 10: 30 – 37.  When Yahshua healed ten lepers, only a Samaritan, a foreigner, returned to thank him, to whom it said “your faith has made you well” in Luke 17: 11 – 19.  A Samaritan woman was surprised when he spoke to her at a well, asking her to give him a drink, and he said if she asked, he would have given her ‘living water’, and revealed himself to her as the prophesied Messiah in John 4: 7 – 29.  Yahshua showed no favouritism based on nationality or gender, and we must follow his example. 

According to Wikipedia’s article Targum Onkelos, although authorship  is often attributed to ‘Onkelos’, many scholars believe it was Aquila of Sinope, who made the Greek translation before he converted to Judaism, then wrote the aramaic translation called the Targum Onkelos in the 1^st century or early in the 2^nd century, under the direction of Rabbis Yehoshua and Eliezer.  Some of the language dates to the late 4^th and early 5^th centuries, because it underwent “its final redaction” at that time.

The article states the “Onkelos’ Aramaic translation of the Pentateuch (Five Books of Moses) is almost entirely a word-by-word, literal translation of the Hebrew Masoretic Text”.  A strange way of stating the relationship between the text since the Onkelos was written centuries before the Masoretic text.  The Targum Onkelos contains supplemental material in the form of aggadic (non-legalistic exegesis) paraphrase to minimize ambiquities and obscurities, usually where the original Hebrew contained an idiom, homonym or metaphor which could not be understood otherwise.  For example, the translator replaced ‘human-like’ characteristics of God, for example “my face” is replaced with “from before me” in Ex 33:23, and “beneath his feet” is replaced by “under his throne of glory” in Ex 24:10, but as we have discovered in our word studies to-date, the Hebrew text has a broader meaning that is deficient in English translations. 

The article lists 25 “more notable changes”, of which the 4 below impact our study of Gen 1 – 3:

• Genesis 1:2 Aramaic: וְאַרְעָא הֲוָת צָדְיָא וְרֵיקָנְיָא, in Hebrew characters [= “…and the earth was devastated and empty”], instead of “…and the earth was without form and void.”
• Genesis 2:7 Aramaic: הות באדם לְרוּחַ מְמַלְלָא, in Hebrew characters [= “…and it became in man a speaking spirit”], instead of “…and man became a living soul.”
• Genesis 3:5 Aramaic: וּתְהוֹן כְּרַבְרְבִין, in Hebrew characters [= “…and you shall be like potentates”], instead of “…and you shall be like gods.”  Explained in Reference 25 “The literal words used in the Hebrew text are: ‘and you shall be like elohim.’ The word elohim, however, is a Hebrew homonym, having multiple meanings. It can mean either God, angels, judges, potentates (in the sense of ‘rulers’ or ‘princes’), nobles, and gods (in the lower case). In most English translations of Genesis 3:5 it is rendered as “gods’ (in the lower case), and which, according to Onkelos, is a mistranslation and should be translated as ‘potentates’.”
• Genesis 3:15 Aramaic: הוּא יְהִי דְּכִיר מָה דַּעֲבַדְתְּ לֵיהּ מִלְּקדְמִין וְאַתּ תְּהֵי נָטַר לֵיהּ לְסוֹפָא, in Hebrew characters [=”…he (i.e. Eve’s offspring) shall remember what you (i.e. the serpent) did to him at the beginning, but you (i.e. the serpent) shall hold it against him at the end”], instead of “he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

The change to Gen 1:2 and many others are mentioned in the Raymond Apple’s Book Review of Onkelos on the Torah: Understanding the Bible Text in the Jewish Bible Quarterly.  In Gen 1:14 ‘for ancient days’ becomes ‘for counting days and years’.  Apple discusses at great length the fact that throughout the Pentateuch, elohim is changed to YHVH, with the exception of Gen 1:27 where the phrase “in the image of God” was too well known to be altered, and where a pronoun is attached to elohim, such as ‘our God’. 

We see in the explanation of the rabbinic exegesis about the two names of God, their lack of understanding of the Messiah’s position in the God head from the beginning of time, which they change to suit their doctrine.  Anthropomorphisms are avoided by replacing “God did” with “the word or glory of God did”, and passive “it was done before God”, except in Gen 1:26 it is left as “let us make man in our image”, again because this verse is too well known.   Unfortunately, what resulted was an inconsistent mix of redaction for similar words, making the Targum Onkelos a translation of questionable value.

In his article What Is the Masoretic Text?  The Beginners Guide, author Ryan Nelson opens with “Most Jews and Protestants consider the Masoretic Text the authoritative Hebrew Bible . . . written sometime between the seventh and tenth centuries AD . . . most English translations of the Old Testament are based on the Masoretic Text”.  Nelson’s states that the Masoretic text “was based on the meticulously preserved oral tradition and the best available manuscripts of the original Hebrew text”.

By Nelson’s account “manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible were lost in the destruction of the second temple in 70 AD, so the rabbinic community began transcribing the oral tradition”, and “about a millennium before the Masoretic text was finished, rabbis began notating the original Hebrew with punctuation and additional letters to help readers correctly interpret the text”.  He states that “the Mishnah preserved the oral tradition in written form”.

According to Nelson, “by the ninth century . . . a popular Jewish sect known as the Karaites (‘readers’) was advocating for Jews to abandon the rabbinic tradition and read the ‘unadulterated’ (or rather, uninterpreted) Hebrew Bible . . . to save the Hebrew Bible . . . the Masoretes  produced a new copy . . . they used rabbinic tradition to add the most intricate system of punctuation and stress marks anyone had ever seen . . . so there could only be one way to read and understand it; the same way rabbis had for centuries.” 

Nelson makes this all sound perfectly wonderful, however as Katharine Bushnell stated in her book God’s Word to Women, “when we speak of the Bible as inspired, infallible and inviolable, we do not refer to our English version, or any mere version, but to the original text . . . written without any spaces between words in totally different looking letters from those we call ‘Hebrew’ at the present time; and the language as first written contained no vowels.” (#5). 

As Bushnell explains “Hebrew . . . was practically a ‘dead language’ as early as B. C. 250 . . . in the absence of expressed vowels, its pronunciation was likely to become lost.  So the Scribes took four consonants, ‘a h w and j’ and inserted them into the text to indicate vowel sounds . . . (that) in the end led to confusion” (#6).  She considers these changes to be “uninspired” (#7), added by Jews who were “bitter opponents of the teachings and of the spirit of Christianity”, and “held women in utter contempt” (#8).  She demonstrates how “the Word might be changed into insipid nonsense, perhaps, by the manipulation of two or three consonants of a vowel less language” in #9 – 15.

According to the British Library, the first complete printed text of the Mishnah was compiled around 200 by Judah the Prince, becoming the earliest authoritative body of Jewish oral law, containing the teaching of rabbinic sages.  The Mishnah supplements the Torah which are the first five books of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, that form the basis of Jewish written law.  Around 500 AD the rabbis added the Gemara (‘sea’ of learning) to the Mishnah called the Talmud (‘teaching’).  https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/first-complete-mishnah

That the Jewish law was compiled by a man with the title ‘prince’ could only mean the Sanhedrin had been reestablished, after being destroyed along with the temple in 70 AD.  According to the Jewish Virtual Library, the Sanhedrin had been the supreme religious body in Israel before the destruction of the temple, headed by a president, title ‘prince’, and vice president, titled ‘father of the court’, with 69 sages, to total 71 members, which according to Hellenistic sources, the Sanhedrin was a political and judicial council headed by the country’s ruler.

The fact that the Sanhedrin, the very people who had Yahshua put to death, are the authors of the Massoretic text of the Hebrew Bible, is very disturbing.  Bushnell’s claim that they were “bitter opponents to the teachings and spirit of Christianity” is all the more poignant.  Yahshua rebuked the Scribes and Pharisees, saying that Isaiah prophesied about them teaching as doctrine the precepts of men, nullifying, disregarding, seting aside the word of God for the sake of their tradition in Matt 15: 1 – 9 and Mark 7: 4 – 13, and he said “you are of [your] father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.  He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.  Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own [nature], for he is a liar and the father of lies.” John 8:44.

In a University of Calgary writeup on the Mishnah, it states “Mishnah can refer in a general way to the full tradition of the Oral Torah, as formulated by the Rabbis in the first centuries of the Common Era”, confirming it was “compiled by Rabbi Judah the ‘Prince’, before his death around 217 C.E.”  However, it contradicts “to a view that appears in many histories and introductions” that the traditions were written down, “but merely determining and organizing of a fixed text that was subsequently disseminated by memory”, likely because, as Nelson stated, it was “a forbidden project: transcribing the oral tradition.”  https://people.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/TalmudMap/Mishnah.html

The New World Encyclopedia (NEW) states the Massoretic text (MT) is “the Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible (Tanakh)’, also used in Protestant Bibles, and in recent decades Catholic Bibles.  The MT was copied, edited, and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7^th and 10^th centuries AD.  The Hebrew word mesorah refers to the transmission of Jewish tradition, including the markings of the text and marginal notes in manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible.  The MT has numerous differences compared to the Septuagint (and the Samaritan Targum as we discuss in the section below).  https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Masoretic_Text 

According to NEW, the Hebrew word masorah (מסורה, alt. מסורת) is “taken from Ezekiel 20:37 and means originally ‘fetter’.  The fixation of the text was considered to be in the nature of a fetter upon its exposition.  When, in the course of time, the Masorah had become a traditional discipline, the term became connected with the verb (‘to hand down’), and was given the meaning of ‘tradition’”.  But looking at masoreth and related words below, I believe it means ‘taking captive with false instruction’.

The word masoreth מסרת (Strong’s 4562 1 occurrence) means ‘bind, gird, harness, hold’, used in Ezek 20:37 in the context of Yahweh using the rod to bring Israel into the bond (masoreth) of the covenant, but there is evidence against this text being inspired.  The root asar אסר (Strong’s 631 70 occurrences) means ‘to tie, bind, imprison’, found in Isa 61:1 prophesying the Messiah who will “. . . proclaim to the captive’s liberty and to imprisoned (asar אסור) opening of the eyes/prison (peqach-qoach  פקח קוח).”  The root masar מסר (Strong’s 4560 2 occurrences) means ‘commit, deliver’, from a primitive root that means ‘to sunder, set apart, or apostatize’ – apostatize means ‘renounce religious or political belief or principle’, or mosar מסר (Strong’s 4561 1 occurrence) means ‘instruction’. 

In his Ancient Hebrew Timeline, Jeff Benner parallels Biblical events, alphbets, inscriptions, Hebrew Bible’s, and Translations https://www.ancient-hebrew.org/biblical-history/ancient-hebrew-timeline.htm.  Benner’s timeline reveals early Semitic (Hebrew)  was pictographic, and evolved into Paleo-Hebrew (middle Semitic) that resembled the Phoenician alphabet, and was used by Israel until the Babylonian exile in the 6^th century BC, when it evolved into Aramaic (late Semitic script).  The Greek adopted the middle Semetic alphabet in the 10^th century BC, that evolved into the modern form in the 9^th century BC, and in the 4^th century BC Jewish scholars translated the Torah into Greek, known as the Septuagint. 

In Benners Ancient Hebrew Timeline, he states “The Hebrew language ceases as their native language (135 AD).”  In the 1^st century AD, the Torah was translated into Aramaic, named the Targum Onkelos after its alleged author, and the prophets were translated into Aramaic by Jonathon Ben Uziel, named the Targum Jonathon.  In the 2^nd century AD, the writings and prophets were translated into Greek, in the Septuagint.  In the 3^rd century AD, the Talmud was written in Aramaic (the Late Semitic script) and the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament were translated into Aramaic, titled the Peshitta, and translated into Latin by Jerome (the Vulgate) in the 5^th century AD.  In the 7^th century AD, the English language adopted the Roman alphabet.

Benner indicates that vowel pointings were added to the Hebrew (Modern Semitic) in the 10^th century AD, and the oldest known Hebrew Bible was written in modern Hebrew by the Jewish Masorites.  In the 15^th century AD, the Gutenburg Bible became the first Bible, a copy of the Latin Vulgate, printed on moveable type, and in 1611 the King James Bible was published.  In the 19^th century AD, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda started a revival of the Hebrew language, which became the official language of the newly established state of Israel in 1948.

Steve Rudd divides the history of the Hebrew language into four periods based on the evolution of the alphabet https://www.bible.ca/manuscripts/Septuagint-LXX-Hebrew-ancient-earliest-writing-Bible-scripts-alphabets-origin-Mosaic-heiroglyphic-Paleo-Aramaic-Masoretic-Jewish-Greek.htm.  First, Joseph borrowed 22 Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols as the character alphabet for each sound in the Hebrew language called hieroglyphic Hebrew (Abstract).  Second, the 22 letters were simplified into “Paleo-Hebrew” in the time of Samuel, which was used until the Babylonian captivity (Abstract).  Third, Aramaic Hebrew was adopted, “derived from the Hebrew alphabet they replaced” (#9).  After Hebrew went extinct about 300 BC, a fourth Hebrew alphabet was invented by the Masoretes in 600 – 900 AD that added vowels, known as ‘Masoretic Hebrew’ (Abstract). 

There is consensus among religious scholars and historians that Jesus and the Apostles spoke Aramaic, and whether he knew Hebrew or not is debatable.  According to Steve Rudd, at the time of Jesus, the Jews in Judea spoke Aramaic (not Hebrew) and Greek was the language of commerce (Abstract).  Britannica contradicts itself, stating that Aramaic replaced Hebrew as the language of the Jews as early as the 6^th century BC, confirming that the books of Daniel and Ezra are written in Aramaic, and the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, yet claims that Hebrew remained the language of religion, government and the upper class.  Wouldn’t scripture have been written in Hebrew if this was true?

There are contradictory claims about the extinction of the Hebrew language, but the evidence supports that when the nation of Israel went into captivity in Babylon, Hebrew fell into disuse and was replace by Aramaic Hebrew, which is the language the Targums were written in.

In the next article we will take a closer look at the the history of the Massoretic text, for a fuller understanding of it’s history, language, to assess it’s reliability.  Then we will do the same for the Targum Onkelos and the Samaritan Targum.