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Sunday, October 23. 2011

From today's Lectionary: Debating theology

Matthew 22:34-46



22:34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together,

22:35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.

22:36 "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"

22:37 He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'

22:38 This is the greatest and first commandment.

22:39 And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'

22:40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

22:41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question:

22:42 "What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David."

22:43 He said to them, "How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,

22:44 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet"'?

22:45 If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?"

22:46 No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Posted by Bird Dog at 05:33 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0)

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... except that the Christian author - perhaps an assimilated Jew - has mistranslated the original verse (Psalm 110).

In the original there is a clear distinction between "The Lord" - meaning G-d - and "my master".

The first is written as the unpronounceable tetragrammon YHVH.

The second is written as the word "adoni".

Out of piety, Jews say the word "adonai" - which roughly translates as "supreme ruler" and is obviously based on the same root as "adoni" - instead of saying the tetragrammon.

But this root is never used in Biblical text for God.

Despite the gospel's claim, it is unlikely that this argument stumped the educated pharisees - although it probably worked well with the assimilated, ignorant Jews who were first drawn to Christianity, since many of them could not read Hebrew, but had heard God referred to as "adonai".

It makes no sense related to the original psalm, which uses two distinct words and in no way implies a godly messiah.

The original Greek gospel repeats this error, using the word kyrie for both instances of "lord".
#1 Ben David on 2011-10-23 08:27 (Reply)
BD:

You are a font of knowledge!
#1.1 Bird Dog on 2011-10-23 08:32 (Reply)
Interesting. This gentleman says "In the Massorah, there are one hundred and thirty-four places in the Hebrew text that Masoretic scribes changed YHVH, the Tetragrammaton, to Adonai!" He has a long list but it includes Ps 110:5.

He has a rather compelling argument that it does pertain to the messiah.


http://www.messianicart.com/chazak/yeshua/psalm110.htm
#1.2 jdgjtr on 2011-10-23 09:45 (Reply)
Not sure what is meant by "Masoretic scribes" since the word "Masorah" just means "tradition" - or in this context, "received text".

There were several non-literal translations that the translators of the Septuagint agreed upon to avoid confusing Greek speakers - but I'm not sure this is one of them. If so, it would confirm my theory that the New Testament authors were already far enough away from Hebrew source to know the Psalm only in its Greek version.
#1.2.1 Ben David on 2011-10-26 06:12 (Reply)
The received "Masoretic text" we have is full of the YHVH tetragrammon. So the text itself was not redacted.

When speaking aloud, Hebrew readers substitute the word "adonai" for the written YHVH as a matter of course.

But the text itself was not changed by any scribes.
#1.2.2 Ben David on 2011-10-26 06:20 (Reply)
Re: "It makes no sense related to the original psalm, which uses two distinct words and in no way implies a godly messiah."

QUOTE Psalm 110:1:
It is interesting that scholars have often not paid close attention to the text of Psalm 110 or the places it is quoted in the New Testament, and have stated that it shows that Christ must have been God. The well-known Smith's Bible Dictionary contains an article on "Son of God," written by Ezra Abbot. He writes:

"Accordingly we find that, after the Ascension, the Apostles labored to bring the Jews to acknowledge that Jesus was not only the Christ, but was also a Divine Person, even the Lord Jehovah. Thus, for example, St. Peter.[Abbot goes on to say how Peter said that God had made Jesus "both Lord and Christ."]"

We believe Abbot's conclusion is faulty because he did not pay attention to the exact wording of the Hebrew text. Even scholars who contributed to Smith's Dictionary of the Bible apparently agree, because there is a footnote after the above quotation that corrects it. The footnote states:

"In ascribing to St. Peter the remarkable proposition that 'God hath made Jesus JEHOVAH,' the writer of the article appears to have overlooked the fact that kurion ("Lord") in Acts 2:36 refers to to kurio mou ("my Lord") in verse 34, quoted from Ps 110:1, where the Hebrew correspondent is not Jehovah but adon, the common word for "lord" or "master." St. Peters meaning here may be illustrated by his language elsewhere; see Acts 5:31 [where Peter calls Jesus a "prince," etc.]."

The footnote is quite correct, for the word in Psalm 110 is the word for a "lord" or "master" and not God. Thus Psalm 110:1 gives us very clear evidence that the expected Messiah of God was not going to be God himself, but a created being. The Jews listening to Peter on the Day of Pentecost would clearly see the correlation in Peter's teaching that Jesus was a "man approved of God" (v. 22 - KJV), and a created being, the "my lord" of Psalm 110:1 which Peter quoted just shortly thereafter (v. 34). The use of adoni in the first verse of Psalm 110:1 makes it very clear that the Jews were not expecting their Messiah to be God, but were expecting a human "lord."


Just another perspective....

I have no god in this academic fracas. To suggest otherwise would be to imply a dogma, but alas, much of my thinking is ahead of me. This is a wonderful topic though. I'm looking forward to digging in a bit and seeing where the I'm lead along this path. In the meantime, I stand, in faith, on the Rock of my salvation and proclaim Jesus Lord.

Thank you BD and BD for leading me into some engaging reading this morning!
#2 Jephnol (Link) on 2011-10-23 12:40 (Reply)
Yikes! Had a bit of a comma buzz in the mix there! I swear I spilled coffee on my keyboard. No joke. My wife left me. I'm tired. I misspelled 'BLACK' in the first grade in my haste to be done with the public spectacle I was forced to become at the behest of my huge teacher. I was scarred for life and lost the capacity to edit before publishing. Damn...commas vex me.
#2.1 Jephnol (Link) on 2011-10-23 12:49 (Reply)

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