TFC-TIU Radio 31-Dec-09

[Ognir]

http://theinfounderground.com/archives/ ... -Ognir.mp3

Show 1: Rafeeg
Show 2: The Ogster
Show 3: David Pidcock

Post them as soon as they arrive :lol:

Happy New Year to One and All

Noel

[mgt23]

ill relay them on the shoutcast link as they come up. see sig

[joeymaclover]

Ognir finally explains what that bulge in his underwear is!  Interviews Tzipi Livni and Ben Bernanke.
DBS talks about his favorite show "Shalom in the Home".
Rafeeq discusses his recent stock buys in Google and Goldman Sachs.
David Pidcock reviews two family movies, a must see for the holidays("There is no brainwashing here"); Avatar and Inglorious Bastards!
Another show you can't miss, when it's posted!!!!
 :mrgreen:  :mrgreen:  :mrgreen:

[Ognir]

Part 2 with me posted http://theinfounderground.com/archives/ ... -Ognir.mp3

Still waiting on the 2 other parts

[Ognir]

Actually the audio I posted is both parts 1 & 2

Pidcock is here http://www.iamthewitness.com/audio/Davi ... 1-2010.mp3

[Christopher Marlowe]

Not too much new here. Pidcock brought up an interesting point about the Old Testament in re: Ishmael. Genesis 16:12 "He shall be a wild man: his hand will be against all men, and all men's hands against him: and he shall pitch his tents over against all his brethren." Pidcock says that verse was possibly misinterpreted, and that all hands might not be against Ishmael, but rather with him.

I found a site that translates the Hebrew, word for word: http://biblos.com/genesis/16-12.htm

Hebrew   /Transliteration   /Strong's/English
וְה֤וּא                    /ve·hu           1931            he
יִהְיֶה֙                     /yih·yeh           1961            will be a
פֶּ֣רֶא                     /pe·re            6501         wild
אָדָ֔ם                     /a·dam,            120            of a man
יָדֹ֣ו                     /ya·dov            3027            his hand
בַכֹּ֔ל                     /vak·kol,            3605            everyone
וְיַ֥ד                     /ve·yad            3027          hand
כֹּ֖ל                     /kol                    3605             and everyone's
בֹּ֑ו                     /bov;       
וְעַל־                     /ve·'al-            5921              unto
פְּנֵ֥י                     /pe·nei            6440           the east
כָל־                     /chol-            3605              of all
אֶחָ֖יו                     /e·chav            251              his brothers
יִשְׁכֹּֽן׃                     /yish·kon.            7931           will live

I didn't notice the word "against" up there. Did you? Interesting.

I found another page discussing this common translation: http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=1212

Place or manner? נפל על פני in Genesis 25:18

I've recently had reason to get aggravated again about the way some modern translations mistreat Ishmael and his kin, specifically in their translations of Genesis 25:18. In the English translation tradition, three renderings of the last clause of Genesis 25:18 compete for translators' allegiance:

    * ... and they [the Ishmaelites] lived in hostility toward all their kin.
    * ... and they [the Ishmaelites] settled near all their kin.
    * ... and he [Ishmael] died near all his kin.

So which of these translations has the best claim to representing the author's meaning? For a semi-lengthy discussion, please follow the "read more" link below.

The Hebrew text of Genesis 25:18 reads:

    וישכנו מחוילה עד שור אשר על פני מצרים באכה אשורה על פני כל אחיו נפל

Some modern translators take the conjunction of נפל and על פני in the modern English sense of "fall upon," as in, "raiders fell upon the caravan and stole all their spices." Thus, for the second part of the verse, we get translations like:

    And they lived in hostility toward all their brothers. (NIV)

With only slight variations in wording, the NASB, Message, NLT, NCV, HCSB, and the other members of the NIV family (NIrV, TNIV) all give their readers some variation of this translation.

Yet the Septuagint translators did not see things the same way:

    κατὰ πρόσωπον πάντων τῶν ἀδελφῶν αὐτοῦ κατῴκησεν

As their use of κατοικέω to translate נפל shows, the Septuagint translators read this verse as a perfectly peaceable and fully geographical comment about the Ishmaelites' residential zone. They did not impute intranecine hostility to the Ishmaelites, as do the modern translations quoted above. Among modern translations, the NJPSV, NRSV, ESV, and CEV (non-exclusivley, as I haven't checked every single translation!) follow the Septuagint's understanding of the Hebrew text and render the clause in question something like:

    they camped alongside all their kinsmen. (NJPSV)

Jerome seems to have understood the Hebrew verb נפל as a specific reference to Ishmael himself, not to the Ishmaelites in general—it does appear in the masculine singular, after all. Thus in the Vulgate, we read:

    coram cunctis fratribus suis obiit

Not surprisingly, the KJV and its modern "updates" like the NKJV follow the Vulgate, and give readers a clause resembling:

    and he died in the presence of all his brethren. (KJV)

In light of the entirely peaceable Septuagint and Vulgate translations, why do several modern translations read hostility into the Hebrew text of Genesis 25:18? Admittedly, some biblical writers used the word נפל to denote raids, as in Job 1:15 (but not with על פני, for which see below). Also, to be fair to these translators, the highly-regarded Köhler-Baumgartner lexicon lists "to raid, fall upon" as a possible translation-equivalent for נפל. However, KB places this sense last in a list of eight possible senses for נפל, and its list of examples does not actually correspond to the meaning suggested. Thus, under the heading "to raid, fall upon," KB includes the following (omitting redundant passages or those where the very presence of נפל depends on emendation):

    Josh 11:7 — So Joshua and his army came upon them ... and fell upon them (ויפלו בהם).

    Judg 7:12 — The Midianites and the Amalekites and all the easterners camped in the valley (נפלים בעמק) like a swarm of locusts ...

    1 Sam 29:3 — Since he deserted (מיום נפלו) to me I have found no fault in him to this day.

    1 Sam 31:4 — So Saul took his own sword and fell upon it (ויפל עליה).

    2 Kings 7:4 — So now, let's desert to (ונפלה אל) the Aramean camp; if they spare our lives, we will live ...

    Jer 21:9 — Those who go out and surrender to (ונפל על) the Chaldeans who are besieging you will live ...

    Jer 39:9 — Then Nebuzaradan, leader of the rab-tabachim, deported to Babylon the rest of the people who were left in the city, and the deserters who had deserted to him (הנפלים אשר נפלו עלו), and the rest of the people who were left.

In the examples given, only one verse uses נפל to mean "to raid" (Josh 11:7). Judges 7:12 narrates a hostile situation, but the sense of hostility comes from the context, not from the verb נפל, which simply relates to the aggressors' geographical position. More verses use נפל to mean "to desert, surrender" than to mean "to raid, attack," but I know of no English translation that proposes "they [the Ishmaelites] surrendered to all their kin" in Genesis 25:18!

One must also consider the use of על פני, which generally means "near" (some have proposed "east of," but I think that gets too specific). Search Accordance, BibleWorks, or Logos for נפל together with על פני in the same verse, and then take out the verses where פנה clearly functions as a noun rather than part of a compound preposition, and the verses where נפל and על פני appear in separate clauses, and you will have only Gen 25:18 and—maybe—Jer 9:21; Ezek 29:5 left. In the latter two passages, the phrase על פני השדה appears; to me, it's not clear whether we should read פני in these two verses as part of the compound preposition על פני or as a noun in construct with השדה — as "upon the field" or "upon the [sur]face of the field." The decision doesn't make much semantic difference, and certainly no possible way of reading Jer 9:21; Ezek 29:5 gives any warrant for reading hostility into the collocation of נפל and על פני in Genesis 25:18.

Maybe I should look at this differently. Might the compound preposition על פני carry a hostile connotation when its object is a person or group of people? This hypothesis is a little harder to test, since testing it requires combing through 207 biblical appearances of על פני, sorting out those where על פני is more preposition + noun than compound preposition, and so forth. I did the spadework while writing Dynamics of Diselection, and I discuss the results on pp. 71–73, in conjunction with the comparable phrasing in Gen 16:12: "he shall dwell (שכן) near (על פני) all his kin."

Speaking of Gen 16:12, you wouldn't think any translator could possibly turn שכן into "raid, attack." True ... but they can take שכן, which ordinarly denotes "settling," "staying," or "dwelling" in a particular place, then gloss it as "live" (as in "I live in Moorpark, California"), then slide over into the common English use of "live" to mean "behave" or "conduct one's life"—a sense that finds very slim, if any, attestation in biblical Hebrew (see, for example, Job 29:25, "And I lived (ואשכון) like a king among them," and possibly a few passages from Proverbs 1–8). Then Gen 16:2 can become:

    ... and he will live (שכן) in hostility toward (על פני) all his brothers. (NIV)

See also the NASB, NLT, and maybe the ESV (so ambiguous in English that I cannot classify it with confidence). NCV actually translates שכן as "attack," with no lexical justification whatsoever, and the Message paraphrases "always at odds with his family." The CEV manages to twist the phrase inside-out, and translates ועל פני כל אחיו ישכן as "[he] will live far from his relatives"!

Maybe a summary table would help at this point.
   Gen 16:12b    Gen 21:18b
Hebrew
   ועל פני כל אחיו ישכן    על פני כל אחיו נפל
LXX
   καὶ κατὰ πρόσωπον πάντων τῶν ἀδελφῶν αὐτοῦ κατοικήσει    κατὰ πρόσωπον πάντων τῶν ἀδελφῶν αὐτοῦ κατῴκησεν
Vulgate
   e regione universorum fratrum suorum figet tabernacula    coram cunctis fratribus suis obiit
Luther
   und wird gegen alle seine Brüder wohnen.    er ließ sich aber nieder gegen alle seine Brüder
KJV
   and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren    and he died in the presence of all his brethren
Louis Segond
   et il habitera en face de tous ses frères    il s'établit en présence de tous ses frères
ASV
   and he shall dwell over against all his brethren    he abode over against all his brethren
RV 1960
   y delante de todos sus hermanos habitará    y murió en presencia de todos sus hermanos
NIV
   and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers    and they lived in hostility toward all their brothers
NIV fn
   and he will live to the east of all his brothers    and they lived to the east of all their brothers
NRSV
   and he shall live at odds with all his kin    he settled down alongside of all his people
NVI
   y vivirá en conflicto con todos sus hermanos    allí se establecieron en franca oposición a todos sus hermanos
BDS
   mais il assurera sa place en face de tous ses semblables    il vivait en hostilité avec tous ses semblables
HCSB
   he will live at odds with all his brothers    he lived in opposition to all his brothers
CEV
   your son will live far from his relatives    Ishmael had settled in the land east of his brothers
ESV
   and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen    he settled over against all his kinsmen
NCV
   he will attack all his brothers    they often attacked the descendants of his brothers

At least the NIV and other such translations consistently tar Ishmael and the Ishmaelite with the brush of hostility. I cannot fathom why the NRSV translators turned שכן into a term of hostility but translated נפל peaceably.

Between Gen 16:12, where שכן can hardly be mistaken for anything but "dwell, settle," the Septuagint evidence, and the near-complete lack of demonstrable linguistic support for the "hostile" translation of Gen 25:18, I have to conclude that the peaceable translations get closest to the author's lexical intentions. I also have to wonder where the hostility-imputing translation came from, and why it persists. My instinct tells me that stereotypes about Bedouin Arabas coming out of 19th-century Orientalism carry a lot of the responsibility here, but I do not have any evidence (yet) to support that thesis.

I'm at a loss as to why this was commonly understood and translated to mean "against", setting up this strife between Ishmael and his brethren.

This little tidbit got my attention, so I checked it out and thought I would share with y'all. I didn't want to make a whole new post for this, but if anyone has any other info on this subject (like a knowledge of Hebrew and or biblical idiomatic expressions), I'd be interested in reading what you have to say.