[geocentrism] Re: [Geocentric] Predestination
- From: "Martin G. Selbrede" <mselbrede@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: geocentrism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 16:53:18 -0600
On Jan 31, 2007, at 3:47 PM, philip madsen wrote:
Martin as a bible student you must have considerable angst at the
continuous script with no punctuation or even spaces between
words??? of the ancient handwritten parchments.
-- chuckling to self --
Phil, I think the men who work through the uncial and miniscule
codices, vellums, and papyri have done us an inestimable service in
splitting out the words. HOWEVER... in the 1970s I had some
involvement in the typesetting of copious amounts of sermon texts (in
English) dated in the mid- to late-17th century. This text used the
so-called "long S," which looks like a lower case "F" ( f ) -- except
that the right-half of the crossbar on the f is missing (that is a
VERY subtle difference to the eye -- a true tittle, so to speak). I
had to arrange for the creation of the special font to reproduce the
sermons correctly, and then had to proofread countless dozens of
them. (P.S. -- they're vastly superior and far more Biblical than
modern 21st century sermons). At first, it was a huge pain dealing
with the visual confusion, but after several months, I got used to
the peculiar orthography (which, by the way, "mars" the original of
the U.S. Constitution -- the long S was still in use a hundred years
later). So, one CAN get used to peculiarities until you're able to
read it on auto-pilot.
Maybe I was constitutionally inclined to be able to adapt -- in the
old days of molten lead typesetting, earning money for college in the
early 1970s, I learned to read type that was upside-down and
backwards (upside-down is the right way to insert handset type into
the "composing stick," as it is called). At high school, I'd bet
other students that I could read any book they chose by looking only
at the page's image in a mirror, with the book held upside-down.
Naturally, they all took the bet -- and lost. But typesetters since
Gutenberg had acquired that skill.
Ergo, the skill to read Greek without spaces between the words is
also acquirable. I just don't plan on acquiring it -- I'm content
with today's printed editions of the Greek, replete with accents and
diacritical marks. (The same holds true for the Hebrew -- I use the
Kittel Biblia Hebraica.) Speaking of Hebrew, here's some trivia: when
Cecil B. DeMille had the Ten Commandments engraved onto the tablets
for Charlton Heston to carry down to the big party in the Israeli
camp, he opted not to use Hebrew letters but ancient Phoenician
letters, which he (wrongly) thought antedated Hebrew as a written
language. Puritan John Owen, in the 17th volume of his complete
works, put the kabosh on that faulty construction of philological
history in his still-unrefuted analysis of the antiquity of Hebrew.
Owen demonstrated (with a scholarship far deeper and wider than that
of the skeptics) that the chronology of Cadmus's contribution came
well after the Sinai event, and was derivative of it. In fact, Owen's
most impressive analysis points to the disturbing consequence that
the first phonetic language in human history was the wording
inscribed by God's own finger on the tablets -- that until that
point, ideographic (pictogram or hieroglyphic) written language (not
phonetic language) had exclusively prevailed. Owen's work (in his
Biblical Theology) was left untranslated in its original language for
three centuries, until Dr. Stephen Westcott did an outstanding
translation of it into English in 1994. It represents a most
impressive tour-de-force in theology, and the excursus on the
antiquity of Hebrew is a highlight of it. Of course, his seven volume
commentary on the Book of Hebrews is his really monumental life's
work (the first two volumes are preparation for finally discussing
chapter one, verse one!), and the other 16 volumes of his complete
works are choice examples of Biblical scholarship at its zenith.
Sorry to digress -- I think stream-of-consciousness thinking on this
forum must be contagious!
Martin
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