[geocentrism] Re: [Geocentric] Predestination
- From: "philip madsen" <pma15027@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <geocentrism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 3 Feb 2007 10:40:46 +1000
yesithinkitiseasyenoughwhenonegetstorecognisewordswithoutarticulation
Philip.
----- Original Message -----
From: Martin G. Selbrede
To: geocentrism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 8:53 AM
Subject: [geocentrism] Re: [Geocentric] Predestination
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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