Monday, October 30, 2023

Saturday, October 28, 2023

Friday, October 27, 2023

There Are Things that Need to be Said

There are things that need to be said, and I intend to say them, or at least try to. First among these things is that the three "Abrahamic" religions have served us poorly, and are continuing to do so. For the common people they are frameworks for belief, but for the elite, for the rich and powerful they are control mechanisms. These control systems allow those who have inordinate wealth to further enrich themselves, and permit those who have power to exercise and maintain it.

Voltaire said, "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." The Catholic Church's response to this was to place Voltaire's writings on the Index of Forbidden Books, not because his writings were untrue, but precisely because they were true. Even as Candide watched a heretic ("one who chooses" what to believe) being burnt at the stake, he continued to tell himself, "this is the best of all possible worlds." Such is the grip of false teachings upon us.

But it was not the best of all possible worlds, nor ever had been. Giordano Bruno taught true science and paid for it with his life, burnt at the stake. Galileo survived only by denying the truth, that the Earth moves around the Sun. They say that he then said, under his breath, "eppoi si muove" ("but it still moves"). They both knew that a better world would have been at least possible, had it not been for the excesses of Abrahamic religion. The many "witches," tortured and killed by the Inquisition, knew it too.

My wife and I spent several days at a place in the South of France that is not far from the battlefield where the Pope's army massacred the Albigensians. That historical event has cast a pall over the place, and you can still feel the anguish of the victims and their families. I felt it myself, and apparently others did, too, because the inn that our friends had bought failed within a year--no one wanted to stay there.

You may or may not choose to believe it, but karma is a very real thing. Terrible prices will be exacted for terrible crimes, and not one of the Abrahamic religions will be exempt. Anyone who denies this, thinking to have special justification from God, is as big a fool as the innocent Candide.

What will my personal response be to all this? I don't know yet. Perhaps it does not matter. But I see "what was" as already gone.

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

There Is Golden Light

יש אור זהוב שזורם לתוך העין השלישית.

My Heart Is Brimming Over

Monday, October 23, 2023

Aging Project LXII

Saturday, October 21, 2023

Prisoner of Hope VII

Thursday, October 19, 2023

Prisoner of Hope VI

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Prisoner of Hope V

Prisoner of Hope IV

Prisoner of Hope III

Prisoner of Hope II

Prisoner of Hope I

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

From Psalm 121

The words of this Psalm, in Hebrew, were running through my head in the middle of the night last night. I knew then that I should post these words.

Monday, October 16, 2023

ָAll Life Is Sacred

Thursday, October 12, 2023

Aging Project LXI

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

170,000 Views and a Vision of Peace

I am in mourning, for those (on all sides) who have died. It is necessary for us to be horrified, not only by what is happening now, but by what has been happening for decades. If we cannot see our fellow humans as humans, then we, as a species, have no future. Peace cannot live, unless it lives in our hearts. Peace cannot come, unless we, each in our own way, do everything in our power to make it come.

Whatever you may think, I assure you that these are not the words of a "Pollyanna:" they are the well considered words of one who has a vision of peace, and hopes to live to see it come. This must be our mantra, our meditation, our action, and our self-fulfilling prophecy: peace will come.

Peace will come.

La paix viendra.

Venos paco.

السلام سيأتي.

השלום יבוא.

Настане мир.

Мир наступит.

La paz viendrá.

Tiocfaidh an tsíocháin.

ᏙᎯᏴ ᏅᎶᏎ

Monday, October 9, 2023

Aging Project LX

Saturday, October 7, 2023

The Names of God II

I used to think that "Adonay" was a first-person possessive; but it is not. It is an example of the so-called "honorific plural." The word is "Adon," and it means "master." The first-person possessive is "adoni," as one would expect. That's what I expected too, and I theorized that the form "Adonay" might have been influenced by Egyptian. But no. Let's see what the texts can tell us. (By the way, the above illustrations are from tanakh.info.)

These verses are translated in my JPS Tanakh as follows:

Gen 24:9 "So the servant put his hand under the thigh of his master Abraham and swore to him as bidden,"

Gen 24:10: "Then the servant took ten of his master's camels and set out, taking with him all the bounty of his master; and he made his way to Aram-naharaim, to the city of Nahor.

Gen 24:12 "And he said, 'O Lord, God of my master Abraham, grant me good fortune this day, and deal graciously with my master Abraham:"

In verse 9, we see that "his master" is "adonayv" (the honorific plural) in the Masoretic Hebrew and in the Samaritan Hebrew. In the Aramaic of the Targum Onkelos, the form is "rabbunayah," which I think is an honorific plural for "his master." The Samaritan Targum is lacking. The Peshitta uses a completely different word, "mar," without any honorific. This is similar to the pattern we've seen before.

In the illustration to verse 10, the same pattern continues: the two Hebrew texts us the "adonayv" form, meaning "his master (honorific plural)"; Onkelos uses "ribbuneyhu," another word with the same meaning, including the honorific; and the Peshitta uses the word "mar," meaning "master," with no honorific. As in the previous verse, the Aramaic of the Samaritan Targum is lacking.

In verse 12 the pattern is much the same: The two Hebrew texts are in agreement, using the simple "adoni," "my master," when referring to Avraham; Onkelos stays close to the Hebrew, using the form "ribbuni"; and the Peshitta has the form "Alaha" for God (no honorific plural) and the simple "mari," "my master," when referring to Abraham.

Our conclusions so far can be summarized as follows: The two Hebrew texts are in agreement, and they do use the "honorific plural." Onkelos, though its language is Aramaic, apes the Hebrew, even using the Hebrew word "Elohim,"which cannot be an Aramaic word, since Aramaic masculine plurals end in "-in," not "-im." Where the Samaritan Targum was available, it used simple, non-honorific forms such as "Elah." The Peshitta uses simple, non-honorific forms such as "Alaha" (cf. "Allah" in Arabic) and "mar." Hebrew thus appears to be quite alone in its curious use of a plural to "honor" a singular.

Thursday, October 5, 2023

The Names of God

In the illustrations above (which are from tanakh.info), we see Gen 1:26,27 in several related texts and languages. The translation of these verses in my JPS Tanakh is as follows:

"And God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.'" 27And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."

Many have asked who God was talking to in Gen 1:26, since He had not yet created humankind. Were there other "gods" with him, who were to be co-creators? This suspicion is increased in the next verse, where "God" is literally "the gods." This is explained by invoking an "honorific plural," which apparently did become a feature of Biblical Hebrew, but seems not to exist in Hebrew's most closely related sister languages, Aramaic and Arabic.

In the illustrations for 1:26, we see that only the two Hebrew texts. the Samaritan and the Masoretic, have the Elohim (plural) form, the Aramaic texts have YeYa, Elah, or Alaha. In the illustration for 1:27

we see the same pattern. And yet all of the texts of 1:26 say, "our image," and "our likeness." In the texts for 1:27, all say "his image," and either "the image of Elohim," or "the image of Elah," or "the image of Alaha."

(to be continued)

Donald Traxler's Poetry