Ron Maimon

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I like translating the Hebrew of the Bible, and I think it can be done accurately and honestly, better than extant translations, so long as you ignore the theologically minded people completely. They generally are not honest enough, you can't trust anything they say.

	835 reputation	bio	website		visits	member for	1 year, 3 months
314 badges		location	New York City		seen	May 17 at 6:19

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Apr 23	comment	Who was Moses supposed to say sent him, “Ehieh” or “Yahweh” Except "Ehieh" is not "hayah", so the difference is much bigger than waw to jud.
Apr 3	comment	What else can “Fifteen cubits from above” in Gen 7:20 mean? -1: The original Hebrew had no dots at all, these were added in the Middle ages. The word "Milema'la" is not obscure, and no other construction of this form has any special thing associated with it. The construction is straightforward, and it doesn't seem like a contraction of "min lema'la" which is what is implied by this answer, which doesn't even sound grammatical and certainly doesn't appear anywhere.
Feb 27	comment	Does Exodus 22:28 call for child sacrifice? @warren: it wasn't a misnote--- I meant Reuben. I was thinking of the story of Reuben sleeping with Jacob's concubine, the thing that makes him "unstable as water" and unsuitable for an inheritance. This is over-masculinity. The Judah was a brain-glitch, I know the stories.
Nov 10	comment	Who was Moses supposed to say sent him, “Ehieh” or “Yahweh” Oh, I see! You think the "post-hoc" etymological justification for the name is being done here by the same author! It's the redactor, the person who put the J/E together this way, who is making the post-hoc justification by the juxtaposition, neither J nor E gives an etymology for Yahweh, and the etymology is implicit, not parallel to neither J nor E stuff (although it's in a similar spirit). This answer is incorrect--- the "J part" and the "E part" are in different voices, the seam is obvious and clunky, and this is the first place where they start to agree on the name of God.
Nov 10	comment	Who was Moses supposed to say sent him, “Ehieh” or “Yahweh” The downvotes are funny, as this is certainly the correct answer, and no amount of political pressure will change my mind.
Nov 9	comment	Who was Moses supposed to say sent him, “Ehieh” or “Yahweh” I agree, it's like the other stretchy folk-etymologies, but this one is not so ridiculous (neither is noach), because "Yahweh" sort of sounds like a nonexistent conjugation of to be, which mangles the future and past tense. But they don't sound very much alike, you are right. I have already explained the main point, that it is one more place that you can clearly see the JE authorial division in Genesis/Exodus.
Nov 9	comment	Who was Moses supposed to say sent him, “Ehieh” or “Yahweh” This answer is incorrect, I am sorry to say. There is nothing masculine or feminine about either ehieh or yahweh.
Nov 4	comment	Did Moses have an Egyptian name? Except that it doesn't sound like that, except stretchingly.
Nov 4	comment	Did Moses have an Egyptian name? The active is "Moshet", not "Moshe". The etymology is totally wrong.
Nov 4	comment	How different is Biblical Hebrew from modern Hebrew? The problem with this answer is that it takes a native Hebrew speaker about ten seconds to get used to the "vav ha-hipuch" (which just sounds bombastic and snobby) and the shifted meaning of "liglosh" (which is manifestly obvious--- it clearly means spreading out, not skiing). The analogy to Shakespeare's English is perfect, one does not make mistakes more than a handful of times (which are easy to fix, since there is plenty of commentary), and it is ridiculous to insinuate otherwise. All Israelis are forced to read the Bible in school at least, and there is no chance of major confusion.
Nov 3	comment	Why does God say he only revealed his name, Yahweh, to Moses? @FrankLuke: I do not cite authority to support positions, I also don't read books (other than original sources), so my knowledge is all self-derived. This means I make an occasional mistake, but not very often, and much less than the phony-baloney so-called experts. Sorry to not be able to oblige.
Oct 26	comment	Does Exodus 22:28 call for child sacrifice? Conflict of interest disclosure: I am firstborn.
Oct 26	comment	Why is a singular verb used to describe both Moses and Aaron? I added the Hebrew text to your examples, to make the answer self-contained, I hope this is ok.
Oct 26	comment	Why is a singular verb used to describe both Moses and Aaron? @MonicaCellio: No, it's much less different, it's about as similar as Shakespeare's English (Early modern English) is to modern English. Aramaic is about as different from modern Hebrew as Old English is from English. The Hebrew language essentially was close to frozen at the Biblical form for thousands of years, since it was only used in worship and religious texts. This question gives one of the genuine difference between them.
Oct 26	comment	Why is a singular verb used to describe both Moses and Aaron? Thank you for the examples, you are right, I accepted, and deleted my answer! I am surprised I missed those examples on reading, although there are only a handful, I should have noticed. It's an odd thing that the number verb mismatch happens in these cases, but I understand now that it is a genuine parallel construction which is absent in modern Hebrew.
Oct 26	comment	Why is a singular verb used to describe both Moses and Aaron? The sentences I am pointing out are not compound, and they don't allow subject verb disagreement (or subject pronoun disagreement). I don't need a Hebrew grammar, I'm a native speaker! I know what is grammatical and what isn't intuitively, and my intuition matches nearly all the ancient text, so there isn't much change. It's all fine in terms of agreement except for the Moses/Aaron crap. Please compare these to GKC, the examples in GKS are of the form "Those plural things/people that are X, do Y to this person/thing", which I feel is fine, and has nothing to do with my issue.
Oct 25	comment	Did women contribute to the temple in exodus 35:22? @warren: The chances are exactly 100%, because it is right. You can check with any Hebrew speaker, or learn Hebrew yourself (it's not any harder than any other language nowadays). Usually collectives of hundreds and thousands of people are monumentally stupid, and it is easy to exceed them with honest reading and independent thinking. What is difficult is exceeding other honest independent individuals, but in this case, there is nothing to fear, except from King James (that mighty translation) which obviously was made with the input of somebody exceedingly honest (perhaps Marlowe?).
Oct 25	comment	Does Exodus 22:28 call for child sacrifice? I accepted this answer, although I disagree with this. I have a dark-feeling regarding firstborn sacrifice after close-reading Genesis/Exodus/Leviticus, the stories repeatedly make firstborns look murderous and undesirable, and it looks like a setup for a firstborn sacrifice tradition. But when the sacrifice comes in the E section, the child is saved by grace of God, and sacrifice is forbidden. I fear that the earlier J text demanded child-sacrifice, and that J makes this the source of Hebrew magical power, and that only after E is it forbidden. These verses made this suspicion explicit.
Oct 25	comment	Does Exodus 22:28 call for child sacrifice? I am not sure, I wasn't sure. There is a theme of the firstborn male being inferior (Kain/Esau/Judah) because overly-masculine, killing firstborns is a natural extension. I was looking for archeological exegesis--- showing the practice was absent before the first exile, or perhaps that it was present then banned during the first exile. I can't say Monica's interpretation is wrong, but your interpretation is not great--- Samuel is "given" to God (Heb:titen), while the firstborns are "redeemed" (Heb: tiphdeh ), which is different, and from context has connotation of a killing sacrifice.
Oct 25	comment	Did women contribute to the temple in exodus 35:22? @warren: There is a lot of aversion, Song of Solomon is usually rendered relatively mildly compared to the Hebrew, although there it doesn't talk about sex organs directly, mostly about breasts, faces, and annointing oils.