Donald Traxler's Poetry

Monday, October 9, 2023

Saturday, October 7, 2023

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)

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

Aging Project LIX

Saturday, September 30, 2023

Channeling - II

I was told "Write," and I wrote, in the dark:

There is no reason to fear the coming

changes. We are here to help, not hurt.

When you regain your true identity,

you will then be complete. It is very

simple, and you shall be at

peace. Now allow yourself to sleep.

Who is this from? I don't know--no name was given. I disagreed with the use of the form "shall" rather than "will," and still do, which may be an indication that the text is not from me.

After this, I "allowed" myself to sleep, but it was a while before I was able to.

Friday, September 29, 2023

Gecko

This is a gecko, of which there are many here in Florida. I'm glad that they are harmless, and not as big as alligators, because you can't venture outside without seeing them everywhere. They can move like lightning, and our dog, Betty, stopped chasing them years ago, knowing that she had no hope of catching them.

This is a young specimen, perhaps an adolescent or young adult. He or she is obviously adequately fed, and the many fragments of insect debris on the screen show that she/he is a good hunter.

These reptiles have five fingers and toes on their extremities. They should thus be contrasted with the repto-avian "Bird People," the desiccated bodies of which were discovered in late 2015 near Nazca, Peru (and about which I have recently written). I'm a poet, not a scientist, but I'm guessing that we humans are more closely related to geckos, with their five fingers, than we are to the Bird People, with their three.

It should be noted, by the way, with regard to the Bird People, that their fingers have five joints, instead of the three that we have, thus eliminating the need for an opposable thumb.