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Re: Your Criticism is More than I can Bear

Posted By: Mikel Sepovich
Date: Thursday, 27 May 2004, at 7:32 p.m.

In Response To: Your Criticism is More than I can Bear (Charles Pope)

As long as we’re responding in 12 points to each other, allow me to continue the trend:

1) I’ve already read Kramer (and Albright) on the subject. Neither of them ever compared Ninti to Hathor/Tefnut, this was a step you took after they compared Ninti to Eve. As I said, the comparison is baseless. If you want a relevant Sumerian deity, look among the Anuna or greater gods.

2) Strong’s concordance is not a Hebrew dictionary, it is a language study aid. I would suggest (as before) the Alcalay Hebrew/English dictionary which actually is the preference of scholars and English speaking rabbis. (Whenever you study Hebrew, you should always use a Jewish source. This will protect you from simple mistakes.)

3) “Those who have been brainwashed by a lifetime of religious and academic dogma find it difficult to see the obvious. I've been there too brother, so please don't take this the wrong way.” (?)

You have me confused with someone else. I rejected all religious dogma in my teen years, when I learned to think for myself.

If you have never studied linguistics, then you don’t know the precarious nature of this comparison. It simply holds no water without corroboration and should not be taken seriously until corroboration is presented. This is the opinion of scholars of ancient languages, not religious leaders. (I wouldn’t know the opinions of religious folks--I never read their books.)

4) Any translation of any document that departs from that of leaders in the field of linguistics is automatically suspect, especially concerning translations of ancient documents. Authenticity and accuracy are established by multiple translators, no single translator can depart from the consensus with any reliability. Take for example the Mari letters, 20,000 tablets translated and published by a single French man. For decades the translations have been held in suspicion awaiting this kind of consensus, despite his obvious credentials and authority on the subject of Mari.

As for “capturing the Hebrew soul”, this sounds more like a pre-existing agenda or beliefs influencing the outcome. Modern scholars have no knowledge of the ancient Hebrew soul, and never will.

The passage your trying to justify a translation for is early bronze age. We don’t know the souls of anyone in that early time. It is also from a Sumerian source, not a Hebrew (the Hebrew language did not exist at that time, nor did Jews). If David Noel Freedman were specifically endorsing the rendering of this specific verse (which I doubt), he would lose all credibility as a scholar in my eyes having not made these same comments. Luckily for you I don’t find him in the minimalist camp, or I would have a lot more to say about him. No, I think you’ve just borrowed his name to justify this verse.

Your conclusion that Cain was a God departs from the document in question. Adam and Eve gave birth to men, as stated, and according to Genesis 5 and 6-9, they all died. Gods are never mentioned or implied, and in both Sumerian and Egyptian tradition, they were for the most part immortal. What you have done here is create your own version of the story. This is of course a fictional version.

If the writer had intended to mention gods, he would have used the singular or plural of words like el, elah, or eloh (in Hebrew) or dingir, or an (in Sumerian). The writer’s intent was to portray Cain as a man, the son of a man and a woman, who murdered his mortal brother, another man.

I’m not sure how to respond to your comments about faith. I’m not sure what they have to do with any of my comments. All of my sources are academic or ancient in nature, and my responses to you are purely academic.

5) There is no indication in Genesis of the sanitation of myths of other peoples, and frankly, this is a position taken by too many who want easy answers to the mysteries of Genesis. It is an assumption born in the realm of “I don’t know what else to say and I’m too lazy to research so I’ll just guess”. The project you’re undertaking demands a great deal more effort. You’re trying to open the minds of writers who intentionally wrote in brevity. This is difficult for anyone, including scholars.

6) “Amazing” does not equal “truth”. It doesn’t matter how far you go nor how impressive your conclusions, when you alter the originals, you’ve done nothing but create an impressive fiction.

7) “Speculation” does not equal “truth”, but this is a free zone. Everyone is free to speculate at will. (You are not free to call your speculation “truth“.) The “truth” is that the writer of Genesis did not ever mention or imply what the mark was, it is therefore lost, and speculation has little value for such a small component of the story. Be careful not to use your speculation to support a greater point.

8) “Abel” does not equal “Alal”. Before making such a comparison, you should study the syllabic nature of Sumerian or the consonantal nature of Hebrew to make sure the similar phonics stand up to comparison.

For example in Sumerian, “Abel” might be interchangeable with “Adel” if actually found in any text. To the Sumerians, the “b” and the “l” were discreet sounds. In Hebrew, words are built upon roots usually of 2 or 3 consonants. Changing a single letter in the root changes the word itself to one of completely different meaning.

9) Your statement "The Old Testament is written in Hebrew, but it was defintely a work inspired by "Sojourn" in Egypt" is an oversimplification. Since the OT is made up of literally hundreds of different original documents collected over time, we are constrained to identify and evaluate each section by itself.

Parts of the OT, as mentioned, have heavy Sumerian influence, parts have Babylonian influence (from the captivity), parts have Persian influence (such as Esther), and parts are the obvious product of a conflict in the region. The OT is not an Egyptian work, but the influence is evident in many places.

There was considerable enmity between Theban Egyptians and those they called "wretched Asiatics", therefore we should expect much heavier Western Semitic influence than Egyptian throughout the bulk of the OT (hence numerous references to Canaanite deities, issues and customs).

(Your “kings of the highest order” were constantly being kicked around by the bedouin shepherds claiming patriarchal wells, they were in fear of their lives for the sake of their wives, they propped their heads up with stones in the desert, and their accomplishments have been left to us in not a single extra-biblical document, namely the monuments you would expect of kings influenced by Egyptian culture. The patriarchs and their families were overrun, swept away and enslaved by the tent kings of Syria (the Hyksos) who held the Egyptian delta from about 1750-1500 BC. When the Hyksos were chased out, Moses led the people on a route far outside the path of the angry Theban kings who chased after them. It’s possible Moses never came into contact with Theban kings except for his first 40 years of life as one of them.

Esau is the only patriarch with a lineage of chiefs credited to him in the first 5 books.

10-12) Your statement "There is no point of debating the issue until you have considered all of the evidence" has no academic value, since “all the evidence“ is not even discussed in your book. "All the evidence" means all ancient documents available, of which I have nearly 100,000 in my library belonging to the early and middle Bronze age. Your first chapter bears no resemblance to any of it, I therefore have to consider it just another modern fabrication.

I titled my post "illiterate in history" to point out an entire culture that you've left out of your evaluation and the many resulting faults. You've accomplished little more than changing the evidence where it suited you, and you're real points are made with little more than words that sound alike. Scholarship delves much deeper than this.

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