Hebrew Voices #157 – SBL Reactions 2022: Part 1

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Nelson: One of the things Keith is always hammering is, “Language, history, context. Language, history, context.”

Nehemia: Shalom and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I'm here today with Rabbi Dr. David Moster, who has a PhD from Bar Ilan University. He has Rabbinical ordination from Yeshiva University, and he’s the director of the Institute of Biblical Culture, which is BiblicalCulture.org. Shalom David. I’m also joined by Nelson Calvillo, who is a research assistant at The Institute of Hebrew Bible Manuscript Research. Shalom Nelson.

Guys, thanks for joining me. Today we're going to do SBL reactions! I'm excited! David, before we get started, tell us about your Institute of Biblical Culture. What is that?

David: Thanks for asking. I’m the director of the Institute of Biblical Culture, which mostly means that I've been teaching a lot of Biblical Hebrew. I teach Biblical Hebrew classes, they start every few months, and what we basically do, Nehemia, is we start with the Alef-Bet, the alphabet, people who know absolutely nothing - you could know stuff, it doesn’t preclude you - but if you know absolutely nothing, you can come and join, and study the Alef-Bet, and by the end of one year, in ten months, we read the entire Book of Ruth in Hebrew.

Nehemia: Wow.

David: And the students give their own translations.

Nehemia: Wow.

David: So, it goes from zero, all the way to you’re reading the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible.

Nehemia: That’s amazing. That's really cool. So, David, tell us about… we've done this before, but for the people who are new to the program, what is the SBL? And what’s the SBL annual meeting?

David: The Society of Biblical Literature has probably been around a hundred years or more. It’s the academic meeting for Biblical studies. So, it's where mostly professors in seminaries and universities give papers about their research. And you might think, “Oh, that's just going to be a small little conference, maybe like at a small community college, or something.” And then all of a sudden, when it’s combined with the American Academy of Religion Conference, all of a sudden there’s ten thousand people there!

So, every year we go to these cities, and it’s these gigantic conference centers… you could land airplanes in these places. That’s how big they are. So, it’s a huge conference…

Nehemia: Yeah. We don’t want people to do that though!

David: But it really is. There’s a lot for everyone to find in the talks that they want to listen to. There’s really a lot of options.

Nehemia: I actually wrote an article, last year now, we’re now in 2023, and we're talking this year about SBL 2022. It takes place every year in the week of Thanksgiving, which is a really interesting choice. I think it's because the professors who are teaching in universities have vacation, where they get off from school, but I've spoken to people overseas, they're like, “It's the middle of the semester. I can't just take off my teaching responsibilities and fly over to Denver or San Antonio,” or wherever they have it. So, there’s also the International SBL, which is in Europe usually.

David: Right. There might be more plain reasons for that Nehemia. It costs a lot less to have a conference just a few days before Thanksgiving.

Nehemia: Oh, does it? Is that why?

David: Yeah. So, there might just be a practical reason too.

Nehemia: Ah, fair enough.

David: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, I actually wrote a paper this last year - not for SBL, for a conference I did at Budapest - and in the paper, I was citing an article in the Journal of Biblical Literature, which is the journal of SBL, and just to give people an idea of what we're talking about, in Biblical Studies, in the academic arena of Biblical Studies, this is like the Superbowl or the World Series. This is where anybody who's anybody, the cream of the crop comes, and they give lectures.

So, in 1905, someone gave a lecture at SBL that I cited… or I should say, he cited the lecture in his Journal of Biblical Literature paper. He said somebody gave comments and they gave new information that he didn’t have, so he cited it. So, I was curious; when did he actually give the lecture? Because it was published in 1905-1906; so when was the actual date of the lecture?

So, I was able to trace the exact day of the lecture, and I found the itinerary of SBL from 1905, and there were ten lectures or something in the entire SBL. Which is hilarious because…

David: Where was it?

Nehemia: It was in New York.

David: In New York at the Union Theological Seminary?

Nehemia: No. I think it was at Columbia University, if I’m not mistaken.

David: Which is combined with Union, right.

Nehemia: Ah, okay.

David: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, I think that’s hilarious, because now you go to a session and there's four or five lectures per session!

David: Right.

Nehemia: And there's hundreds and hundreds of sessions. There's, I don't know, thousands of lectures probably.

David: Right. And the hard part, Nehemia, is finding the good ones. And that’s what I think we’ll talk about today, some of the good ones we’ve found.

Nehemia: Yeah. I want to do reactions, because even the people who go can't hear all the lectures. And so, between the three of us, did we go to 30 or 40 lectures? I don't even know. Let's say I went to ten a day and there were three main days, and a couple side days, so I want to call it 40 lectures I went to. Something like that.

David: I was probably at 25, 30.

Nehemia: Okay. Alright. Nelson, how many do you think you went to?

Nelson: I think it was about 30 to 35 also.

Nehemia: Okay.

Nelson: And can I just say something about the way Rabbi Dr. David Moster introduced and described the SBL? So, my first SBL experience was last year in San Antonio. Now, SBL had canceled the annual meeting in 2020 because of COVID.

David: Right.

Nelson: So, in 2021, in San Antonio, it was the first time they did it since 2020, and they were getting back into the swing of things. And so, my first SBL experience was… I feel like Denver 2022 was my first real experience.

Nehemia: Right.

David: Yeah.

Nelson: Getting to see all the people, getting to attend all these lectures, trying to decide what I want to do, it’s like choosing who’s your favorite parent!

David: Right.

Nelson: “Do I want to go to this one? Do I want to go to that one? Oh! This person is speaking at that one! But I don’t want to miss this one because they have this person speaking, this professor, this doctor speaking.”

And to be among the crowd, to be among the people, to be amongst people who are having to make the same decisions you are in deciding which lectures to go to and which ones to forgo, to me, I feel this was the real SBL experience. Not that I’m putting down what happened in 2021, in San Antonio.

David: Yeah.

Nelson: It just felt like, “Wow! This is my first SBL experience!”

David: Yeah. Because in 2021, half of it was still on Zoom so…

Nelson: Exactly.

David: So, this was in real person.

Nehemia: It was funny, in 2020 there were so many people there, it was online, and you’d have a lecture, and there were 40 or 50 people there. I do Masoretic Studies mostly, which is the manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, and if you’ve got 20 people that’s a good turnout. And there were suddenly 40 people because it’s really easy to go if it’s online. And then in 2021 it was the opposite, there were four people there!

David: Right.

Nehemia: So, in 2020, there were this huge number of people, but it was all online, and it wasn’t the real experience like it was in 2022, and in years before that. Even this year I would say there were significantly fewer people than there were in 2017 or 2018. But it was a good turnout.

David: Yeah, I agree, there was less, but it was still big.

Nehemia: Oh, for sure.

David: The book fair was full… We didn’t mention the book fair or the book sale!

Nehemia: Tell them about the book fair, David.

David: Yeah! This book sale is a world class book sale. Every kind of publisher in Biblical Studies, or most of them, come and set up their booth. And it could be any area of Biblical Studies. It could be, let's say, Eastern Orthodox liturgy. Boom - you have a booth! If you want Jewish Rabbinics, boom - you have a booth! If you want… the SBL, they have their own printing company. There’s so many different printing presses in Biblical Studies, so you can really, just in one room, do a whole lot of shopping.

Nehemia: So, in 2017, I went to an SBL in Helsinki, in Finland, the International SBL. And that’s where there are people from Hong Kong, there are people there from South Asia, India, a lot from Israel. They had a book fair there too, and it was one little hall in the university where they were holding it. And, wow, it blew my mind, because in the annual SBL in the US there are dozens and dozens of little kiosks. I want to share the most interesting book I saw, because I walked two or three times around the SBL exhibition where they’re selling all these books, and look, these companies have to pay, so not everybody is there. In 2021, there were very little, because they’re like, “Why should we pay? Nobody’s going to be here.” They weren’t entirely wrong.

But in 2022, there were a lot of book kiosks, and the most interesting one I saw was a book called - I don’t remember who the publisher was - but it was a book called First-Century Christians in Twenty-First Century Africa, and it was about people in, I want to say Mozambique, but don’t hold me to it, who were trying to follow the New Testament based on their understanding of what a 1st century Jew would have observed as a follower of Jesus. It was really interesting!

David: Yeah.

Nehemia: That was not a book I would expect to find. And then you also have things on the Koran.

David: Oh, yeah.

Nehemia: One year I saw there a table for the Council on Foreign Relations, and I thought, “Wait, I didn’t know that was a real thing. I thought that was just a thing from conspiracy theories that my friends who watch Alex Jones talk about.” And so, I went to one of their lectures, and it was radical left-wing propaganda, I couldn’t believe it! But it’s a real thing.

David: I’ve never heard of it

Nehemia: And I don’t know if that's what it always was. This particular one was.

David: I’ve never heard of it.

Nehemia: You never heard of it?

David: I think you bring up the AAR, the American Academy of Religion. There’s Buddhism, there’s Islam, there’s a whole list of religious booths also, not just Biblical Studies.

Nehemia: I once went to a lecture at the American Academy of Religion, one of their sessions, and it was about white nationalism, which is another way of saying Neo-Nazis. But for some reason nobody wanted to say that, and they’re like, “Oh, we should study whiteness and how it marks bodies.” And I’m like, “What are you guys talking about? What? I don’t even know what you guys are talking about!”

David: You actually said this, or you just thought this?

Nehemia: No, I did say this!

I actually took one of the people who spoke out to lunch, and I’m like, “I don’t understand. What do you mean it marks bodies? What does it even mean?” And I think what they're doing is taking terms from African American studies and they’re trying to apply them. But what does it even mean in African American studies?

So, what I think they’ve done - and look, we do this in a lot of fields. We develop this whole jargon, we develop certain terms. I was talking to somebody just yesterday, and I said, “So what do you do?” And she said, “I study bluh-bluh-bluh.” And I say, “Oh, what’s that?” She’s like, “I thought you have a doctorate. You don’t know what that is?” I said, “I bet…” and this was in something like microbiology. I said, “I’m pretty sure you don’t know what a Hapax Legomenon is.”

Now, I could have just said a unique word in the Bible that doesn’t appear anywhere else, but we developed these terms, I don’t know why, to make us sound more interesting? Maybe to be more precise? But it tends to be less precise, I don’t know. So, we have this jargon where we have these terms that refer to very specific things that if you’re not part of the field you would have no idea what it was.

By the way, it was PCBs she studies. And I said to her, “What are PCBs?” She said, “I don’t know, I thought you would know.” She’s like, “I study them but I don’t know what it stands for.” And I’m like, “It’s got to be PolyCarbonate, something.” And it was, I don’t know what the “B” was, but...

So, the point is they develop this unique terminology where only they can understand what they’re talking about. One of the beauties of what we can do here, or what I try to do in Hebrew Voices, is to cut through the jargon and try to explain it to someone who isn’t part of this field, who hasn’t been indoctrinated into all the terminology. What on earth are we talking about that would be interesting and important to them?

So, on that note, David, and I’m going to ask you, what was the most interesting lecture that you went to?

David: Alright. So, the most interesting lecture that I went to was in the historical geography section, which I actually started up with a friend, Chris McKinney, and the talk was by… I have here all the details. It was by Lawson Stone from Asbury Theological Seminary. And Asbury Theological is, I believe, in Kentucky. And Lawson was able to bring his knowledge of horses into his interpretation.

Nehemia: His knowledge of what?

David: Horses.

Nehemia: Like university courses?

David: No, H-O-R-S-E.

Nehemia: Oh, horses!

David: Neigh! Neigh!

Nehemia: Horses like the Dothraki and the Huns, okay.

David: Right! So, if you’ll allow me, I know not everybody is going to be watching, but if you’ll allow me to just share my screen for a moment here.

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: What I have for you here is two verses in Joshua 11. In the 11th chapter of Joshua, God tells Joshua that he, Joshua, and the Israelites, are going to conquer the king and the confederation of Chatzor, which in English you might want to pronounce as Hatzor, or something like that.

Nehemia: Hazor, maybe.

David: Hazor. But in Hebrew it’s going to be Chatzor.

Nehemia: Yes.

David: And there’s this really fascinating passage that comes up that Lawson spoke about. And it’s right here, this word “te’aqer.” So, the Hebrew word is te’aqer, I have it highlighted. “And God says,” “Et-suseihem te’aqer.” “Their horses, you are going to aqer.” What does it mean “to aqer?” And all the translations either have “to hamstring” or, “to hough” which I don’t know if I’m pronouncing “hough” right. But what that means is “to hamstring”, that’s in the King James. But everyone after the King James has “to hamstring”, “to hamstring”, “to hamstring”. And what that means is that you take the horse, you chop it at the Achilles tendon, and then it can no longer run, okay?

So basically, what Lawson asked was, first of all, why would you do this? Why would you hamstring a horse? It’s just going to die - a horse that can’t move is going to die. Why are you going to have thousands of horses dying? That’s the first question.

The second question he asked was, wait, aren't horses valuable? And he’s right. If you actually look at different biblical texts, the value of a horse is considered more than the value of a man. So, a horse would be very valuable. What’s going on?

And then finally, isn’t it just mean and cruel to just kill these animals by chopping off their tendons? If you wanted to kill the horse, you should just chop it at its neck. Be kind, don’t kill these horses all at once. So, those are the questions, okay?

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: So, Lawson, his answer was that everybody is misunderstanding the word aqer. It doesn’t mean “to hamstring.” It actually comes from the root of aqarah, “a barren woman”.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: And aqar, “a barren man”. What you’re doing is making the horse barren. You are castrating the horse. So, all of a sudden now, you’re not killing the horse, you’re castrating the male horses. And the idea being, he says it’s not one hundred percent sure, but his idea being that the castrated horses are going to be a lot less wild and valuable to a warrior. You’re basically defunding or incapacitating the military horse, it’s basically what you’re doing. You’re making this horse from a weapon into a horse to maybe help you plow your fields.

And then all of a sudden, you’re not killing the horses, you’re not being cruel to the animal excessively, and you’re making sense of this root aqar. It means by itself “to uproot”, like how you uproot a root.

Nehemia: Right.

David: You’re uprooting a root, you’re barrening a person, you’ve uprooted it, you’re castrated. So that was the talk that I thought was the most interesting and self-contained. And hopefully you and Nelson and the viewers can benefit from that.

Nehemia: So now I’m really interested to see how this is interpreted. Because… let’s see… ah, interesting! Here I’m looking at the website daat.ac.il, I’ll share my screen. So, there’s this website Shvilei ha’Tanakh, and it has different interpretations, different classical Rabbinical commentators. And here Malbam, he says “L’bal yivtechu Israel eleihem be’milchamat’ham,” “But Israel will not rely on them in their wars,” “u’kevar nitz’tvah ha’melech bal yirbeh lo susim” “and the king has already been commanded not to multiply horses.” So, the implication here is he understands “to aqer” as “to neuter” and make it so they can’t reproduce.

David: Or “to hamstring”, and then they die.

Nehemia: No, but why “bal yirbeh lo susim” “You shouldn’t multiply horses.”

David: Right. It’s still not clear. I don’t know if anybody’s ever suggested this, but it’s not clear to me.

Nehemia: It seems to me that’s Malbam’s understanding, but I could be wrong. And you’re right, it’s not that clear. But he should at least cite that as a parallel.

David: Sure.

Nehemia: Or as a possible… Maybe somebody said it before. But no, it is interesting. Why would they always translate it as “to hamstring” when… wait let’s see here. No, so most of the interpreters don’t say a thing about it. But here’s where we should look. So, we have this other verse in Genesis - and you’re right, it always means “barren”, or almost always means “barren”.

Genesis 49:6, “And when pleased they maim oxen.”

David: “Maim”.

Nehemia: It’s talking about, “u’bi’rtzonam eeqru shor”. And here it’s referring to Simeon and Levi, I believe, is the context here. And it’s talking about Simeon and Levi, how they attack the city of Shechem, and they made it as a play on words with… Shechem is the son of chamor, which is “donkey”, and here it’s shor, another ass, domesticated animal, I’m not really sure.

But let's see how they interpret Genesis 49:6, because that’s going to be… because Rashi doesn’t bother to interpret, or to say anything, to comment on Joshua 11:6, because it’s obvious to him what it means. I guess it’s not so obvious to us though.

Let’s see, 49:6, Rashi, “Ratzu le’aqor et Yosef sh’nikra shor.” Ah! “They wanted to uproot Joseph, who’s called The Ox.” And then he says, “aqru” and then he has a word in French. Ah-ha! “Ishiroto’’r”.

David: “To hamstring!”

Nehemia: “Lichrot gid’ei ha’shuk... ha’shok.”

David: “Gid’ei ha’shuk” is right.

Nehemia: “To cut the tendons of the shoulder.” What do you call that? Do you call that a shoulder on an ox?

David: Right. But these are tendons that you’re walking with.

Nehemia: Right. So, you’re right. So, Rashi interpreted it the way you’re saying the standard interpretation in English is. Then he gives this parallel of Joshua 11:9, “You shall hamstring their horses.”

David: Right.

Nehemia: You’re right - that’s how at least Rashi interpreted it.

David: So, for me the thing I liked the most about this talk…

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: … was that this was a person who actually works with horses. And I’m sure many of your listeners say, “Hey, I work with horses all the time,” not all horses, but personally, the most I’ve ever had with a horse was when we’d go to the dude ranch, and you can get your one-hour circuit, and it was great! I had a great time with the horse, but I don’t really know anything about horses.

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: So, for someone who raises a horse to say, “There’s no point in hamstringing, you’re just going to kill it. This should mean something else,” and then the lexicography lines up very nicely.

Nehemia: I wonder if there’s a way to hurt the horse where it just can’t be used in war, but it can still be used to plow a field. I don’t know the first thing about horses.

David: Right. Well remember, for plowing, think about why do people maim, castrate, the bulls and turn them into oxen?

Nehemia: Because they don’t attack you.

David: Right. They’re much more docile.

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: And so, it’s the same kind of idea here that’s going on in Joshua.

Nehemia: So, I was in Nepal in 2014, I want to say, and I saw these people plowing with a water buffalo, and I said, “Isn’t that a wild animal?” And they said, “Yeah. It would attack and kill you if you got too close to it, but it doesn’t attack its owners.”

David: Wow.

Nehemia: And this had to do with them being Hindus, so I guess they wouldn’t use an ox, but it’s like there’s this loophole where the water buffalo is not considered a cow, so you’re allowed to eat the flesh and plow with it. Even though to me and you it’s a cow.

David: Right.

Nehemia: But to them it’s like a wild cow.

David: I fully understand the process of the loophole, yeah.

Nehemia: Yeah. So, that’s interesting, yeah. So, one thing to note about horses in the ancient world. I don’t know if you mentioned this or if it’s even important. So, I asked this question when I studied archaeology for my undergrad. Why did they always have two horses, or four horses, or six horses on a chariot? And we think of knights in the cavalry as a single horse. Why do you need two horses? And the answer I was given is that the horses weren’t strong enough. By the time we get to the Middle Ages they’ve been breeding horses in Central Asia and Eastern Europe for centuries, for millennia. The Huns and the Mongols, they eventually breed these giant horses that can carry a knight. But in the time of Joshua, in the time of even the Romans, generally the horses couldn’t carry a soldier; they were too small.

David: Yeah.

Nehemia: And so, you needed two of them. And then the classical Roman thing is the quadriga, the four-horse period, I think if I remember correctly, it’s two horses in Ancient Egypt. And then just a really interesting little tidbit - the size of our cars and our roads are based on the Roman roads, and the size of the Roman road is based on the two-horse chariot, or two-horse wagon, cart. And then, our modern trains are based on the same size, so the modern train is based on the size of two horses!

David: Wow!

Nehemia: Yeah, it’s crazy. Today in the 21st century, we still talk about horsepower, and we still have roads that each lane is based on the size of two horses. And I guess it’s two people as well, but specifically the Roman roads had to be two horses wide because a single horse generally couldn’t pull a cart. But I guess other than that, I know nothing about horses.

David: Right!

Nehemia: So, Nelson, I’ve got a whole bunch of lectures that I went to that were absolutely fascinating. Before we get to Nelson actually, David, did you see any interesting books at the book fair that you want to tell the audience about? What was the most interesting book you saw?

David: The most interesting book… there’s one that I ordered, and it still hasn’t arrived, but the one that came, it was Geoffery Khan’s Introduction to… and this is the jargon you were talking about. I’ll explain what this means, Introduction to the Tiberian Masoretic Pronunciation; like, what are Masoretes? And what that basically means, for your listeners, is when you actually open up a one thousand-year-old text of the Bible, there’s a lot more than the Bible to see there; there’s a lot more than just the Hebrew letters. So, all that other stuff that’s involved, that is what he’s writing about, and it helped me because I’m actually learning to change my pronunciation. It’s ever evolving my Hebrew pronunciation, trying to get it as close to the way the Masoretes, the Tiberian Masoretes, would have had. And not everyone has to do that, but that’s what I’m trying to do.

Nehemia: By the way, that book is available as an open-source book online for free.

David: No, the other one. There’s another one, not the giant one, the two-volume one. The two volume one, yes, that’s available.

Nehemia: Oh, you’re talking about the short little one?

David: The little one, yeah. That’s the one I got, because that’s not online as far as I know.

Nehemia: Yeah, okay. But then he expands it in much greater detail. We’ll put a link to that on the page for this episode.

David: Can I make a personal plug?

Nehemia: Please.

David: Actually, I forgot to mention - the most exciting thing at the book sale was my own Biblical Hebrew reference cards that are finally coming out, and I’ll just share the screen for those of you that can see.

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: Here it’s on Amazon, the Biblical Hebrew Grammar Card, and this is basically everything I know about Biblical Hebrew grammar. It’s on an eight-page foldout like a menu, and if you want to study Biblical Hebrew, this is really going to help you no matter what textbook you use. Whether you have a one-on-one teacher, or whether you have a grammar, this really is going to have every single major topic for you.

And the second card that was at this book sale was the Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary Card, which is basically 1,600 of the most common verbs and nouns in Hebrew. And this is actually what they look like, you can see here.

Nehemia: Nice! I really recommend these to people if you’re trying to study Biblical Hebrew, it’s really helpful. Instead of flipping through grammar books… it’s almost like a cheat sheet.

David: Right.

Nehemia: Look, when you study these languages, you use index cards.

David: Right.

Nehemia: So, you’re just bringing us into the 21st Century. I remember I had these handwritten index cards when I studied Biblical Greek, and I had hundreds of them, and it was painful.

David: Yeah. Okay, that was for sure the most exciting thing, hands down, for me!

Nehemia: Of course, yours is the most exciting thing, for sure. I would say this - it’s definitely the most useful thing! Because you might pick up a book, whatever book, First Century Christianity in Twenty-First Century Africa, fascinating book, but then as a practical guide for life, or something you can use practically is really what I want to say; this is much more practical. If I’m studying Hebrew and I'm looking, “Oh, wait a minute, what is the plural form? I don’t remember. How does it end?”

David: Yeah.

Nehemia: And, “What’s a piel?” or whatever. As I’m studying, or as somebody who is studying as a beginner, it could be very useful.

David: This was my COVID project!

Nehemia: Ah! Yafeh!

David: So, it was really nice to see it end. Because we were talking about the field, how there was no conference, and then there was a half conference, and now we’re back. It was good for me to see the COVID era stuff be finished and now move on to the aftertime.

Nehemia: Nice. Alright, I’m going to get to some of the lectures I went to, which are absolutely fascinating. But first, I’m going to let Nelson go. Nelson, what was the most interesting lecture you went to? Besides mine of course!

Nelson: Of course, besides yours, Nehemia! I’ll have to go to my second most interesting lecture!

David: Second most, yeah! Mine too! Mine was the second most, Nehemia!

Nehemia: Thank you! But of course.

Nelson: So, one of the most interesting lectures I attended was a lecture by Professor Ohad Cohen. I’ve been taking a Biblical Hebrew course based off of a curriculum that was created by this scholar, Ohad Cohen, and his lecture in particular was talking about a very interesting linguistic phenomenon in the language of Aramaic, which is a sister language to Hebrew.

So, many of the listeners will know that, Nehemia, you’ve talked quite a bit about the name of God, and you’ve talked about His name, what it means, and where His name comes from. And you’ve taught that His name comes from a combination of three Hebrew verbs, hiyah, hoveh, yihyeh, “He was, He is, He will be.”

And I want to speak specifically about the last verb there, yihyeh, “He will be,” and it’s spelled in Hebrew Yud-Hey-Yud-Hey, and God’s name is spelled Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. So, what was interesting about this lecture is he was talking about a phenomenon in Aramaic that is similar to “He will be”, yihyeh, except in Aramaic it’s spelled Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. So then in the Aramaic language, the third person masculine singular verb “He will be” is spelled exactly like the four-letter name of God.

Now, the thing he was talking about is, in the Persian period of Judea, in Judea at the time of Ezra, the time of Nehemiah, during the Persian period when they have come back from Persia, they’ve been allowed to come back to their homeland, they’ve rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, and so we’re talking about the Persian period during this time.

And what you find is within ostraca, which are writing on pieces of potsherd, and even in the Hebrew Bible, you see that in Judea, which was where Aramaic was the administrative language and the lingua franca of the entire Near East at that time, you find that the Judeans seem to have a problem with that particular Aramaic word, with spelling it Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. And the way they would spell it, they would spell it Lamed-Hey-Vav-Hey.

And I want to bring an example. You two have shared your screens, I want to share my screen here.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Nelson: So, I’m going to share my screen and I’m going to go to the Book of Daniel. I’m going to share my screen here. Okay, so I have up here Accordance, and I have up here three panels. I have up here on the left the Hebrew Bible and then I have two English translations on the right, NASB and the JPS. And so here, this particular verse, this is Daniel 4:22 - as you can see, 4:25 in the Christian layout of the Bible – here, this is a verse that’s in Aramaic, this is Daniel describing a dream that the Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar, had.

And here I’ll read it from the JPS over here, this is Daniel 4:22, 4:25 in the English layout. It says, “You will be driven away from men and have your habitation with the beasts of the field. You will be fed grass like cattle and be drenched with the dew of heaven: seven seasons will pass over you until you come to know that the Most High is sovereign over the realm of man, and He gives it to whom He wishes.”

And so here, you can see that one of the words Daniel uses is the word leheveh, and it’s here, it says, “Ve’im-cheivat bara leheveh medorach,” “And with the beasts of the field will be your habitation.” So here, the verb is being used with habitation, “your habitation will be,” leheveh.

And so even though this is Aramaic, this is one of the things Ohad Cohen was talking about, this is a very interesting phenomenon you see with how the Judeans in Jerusalem used this verb; they spell it, as you can see here, Lamed-Hey-Vav-Hey. And it’s usually spelled Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. Now of course, I’m talking about just the consonants, not taking the vowels into consideration.

Nehemia: Right.

Nelson: But just on the surface, the spelling Lamed-Hey-Vav-Hey conflicts with the typical Aramaic spelling of Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. And so, what his lecture was about was… So, scholars have tried for centuries, and there’s still very recent scholarship on the subject, they've tried to answer the question, why is this verse spelled with a Lamed instead of with a Yud, as it usually is in Aramaic?

And so, he talked about a number of the explanations scholars have given through the decades, but what he noted was that none of the explanations came from a historical perspective. So, his lecture was laying out from his research and his scholarship, what is the historical reason for why the Judeans did not spell it Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey?

And it may seem obvious why, but it was really interesting to hear his description and his layout of what was going on in the history of Jerusalem during the Persian period. He talked about the melting pot, the Canaanite melting pot with the Judeans and the Edomians, which is just the Latin way of saying Edomites, and the Canaanites who were to their north and to their west on the coast. And he described how one of the reasons why this may have come about was a combination of things. Possibly one, this idea about taboo with writing the name of God, when it was not specifically in reference to the God of Israel, and the second, probably having to do with this mixing pot with the Pheonicians, the Canaanites mixing with the Edomians, because he noted that you see this verb used by the Jews in Elephantine. And the Jews in Elephantine were Jews who had migrated to Egypt during the period of 2 Kings; they migrated to a region within Egypt. And on their ostracon, on their writings, the ones that are still extant, they write out this verb Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey.

So, he proposed maybe it was a combination of things, not just the taboo but also a combination of the Canaanite mixing pot. And we also see this; he noted something that scholars don’t note, which is he brought the Book of Nehemiah. So, I’ll go over here to another tab, and I’ll read this from Nehemiah. This is Nehemiah 13:23 and 24, and I’ll read from the JPS version here. It says, “Also at that time,” Nehemiah speaking, “I saw that Jews had married Ashdodite, Ammonite, and Moabite women; a good number of their children spoke the language of Ashdod and the language of those various peoples, and they did not know how to speak Judean.”

And it’s interesting, because he provided his own translation. Here he says that “Also at that time I saw that Jews had married,” he doesn’t use the word “Jews”, he uses the word “Judeans”. And I actually like that; I think that fits a little bit better, talking about the specific inhabitants of Judea who have come back to what was the Kingdom of Judah.

So, we see from Nehemiah that there is this mixing pot with other cultures, other peoples, and this was, of course, was what led to Ezra saying, “No, no, no. We cannot have history repeat itself.” So, you can go to the Book of Ezra and read about what he has the inhabitants do. But it was very interesting to hear somebody bring a historical perspective of why we see this phenomena.

Now, he admitted, like a good scholar should I think, that he is not a hundred percent sure that his suggestion or his theory was correct, because, Nehemia, you and I were there and you even asked him a question about this verb specifically and how it conflicted with his theory about there possibly being a taboo with writing the name that way.

But it was just very, very interesting to hear somebody talk about this subject from a historical perspective. And the reason why I say that’s interesting is because I think we’re all friends with Mr. Keith Johnson here, and one of the things Keith is always hammering is, “Language, history, context. Language, history, context.”

Nehemia: I wonder where he got that?

Nelson: It was refreshing to hear somebody talk about the history, the language, and the context in a way that scholars before him may not have given as much attention to.

Nehemia: So, I also had Ohad Cohen’s lecture as one of my top most interesting lectures. I would say that he convinced me without any doubt the exact opposite of what he was trying to argue. And to me… so look, I actually proposed this in 1994 when I took a course at Hebrew University, Introduction to Biblical Aramaic, and I learned about the form leheveh, which should be by all rules of Semitic languages, yeheveh. And I said, “Oh, maybe this is a disambiguation. Maybe they’re trying to make the word sound different than the name of God.” That’s not to say that Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey was pronounced yeheveh, but that it’s too close for comfort. That’s what I suggested.

And so, we say, “Le’mah ha’davar domeh?” “What is a similar thing?” In modern Rabbinical Judaism, in Orthodox Judaism, they don’t even say Elohim, they say Elokim, and they won’t say El, they’ll say Kel to refer to God. El is the short form of Elohim.

David: And Nehemia, how do you write the number 15? What should it be, and what do people write?

Nehemia: Ah, so I think that’s different. The number 15 should be Yud-Hey but they write Tet-Vav, so it should be ten plus five.

David: Yud-Hey being Yah, Yah, the name of God.

Nehemia: So, I think they do that so it’s not confused with the name of God.

David: Well, isn’t that what…

Nehemia: No. Here we’re talking about pronunciation, you’re talking about writing.

David: Yeah…

Nehemia: Also, if you write Yud-Hey as a number, and I’ve found manuscripts that write Yud-Hey as a number, but it creates an ambiguity, whereas Tet-Vav, which is nine plus six, meaning it brings you 15, so it’s an ambiguity there.

Here, I think it’s different. The example I was going to give… and tell me if you’ve ever heard this, David. I grew up with Jews, Ultra-Orthodox Jews who instead of saying “ginger ale”, they would, no joke, they would say “ginger kale” because El is the Hebrew word for God and they wouldn’t say El unless they were reading a Hebrew text in the Synagogue in a formal context. So, they said, “Oh, we know ale, in ginger ale, isn’t the name of God, but it’s too close for comfort, so we’re going to say ginger kale.”

So, my suggestion with that background was, “Maybe they said leheveh instead of yeheveh because it’s too similar to the name of God.” And the professor said, “Absolutely not, and here’s how we know. If you look at other dialects of Aramaic, the Lamed of leheveh is there in words that have nothing to do with Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey.” So, for example in Talmudic Aramaic, “He will say” is laymah. So why isn’t it yaymah? Which is short for yaymar, it’s the way they pronounced it, maybe they had a rhotic “R”, I’m not really sure. So, yaymar becomes yaymah, which is then pronounced laymah in Babylonian Aramaic.

So, there you’re saying that it has something to do with Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey? Obviously not. So Ohad Cohen addressed that in his lecture. He said, “Oh, that’s 800 years later. I’m talking about in the Persian period.” Yeah, but it’s a phenomenon in the same language that’s survived! I mean give me a break.

And by the way, the whole background for this, for those that don’t know Semitic languages, is that in the future form, or what’s sometimes called the prefix form or the imperfect form, or the imperfect tense or mode, you have these four prefixes, Alef, Yud, Tav, Nun which are prefixed to the verb in the future form. So, if you add an Alef, it means “I will”, if you add a Tav, it’s “you will” or, “she will”, and if you add a Nun, then it’s “we will”. And the Yud that we’re talking about is “he will”. And the point is that in Babylonian Aramaic, the Yud is replaced with a Lamed even though in other Semitic languages it’s a Yud. And that’s not unique.

In Syriac Aramaic it’s replaced with a Nun; and Syriac Aramaic wasn’t spoken by Jews. This was the Aramaic of the Gentiles of Emesa or Homs in modern Syria, northern Syria. So, in Syriac they would say something like, and I don’t know the vowels, but it would be something like Neheweh or Neheveh. So where does the Nun come from? And that’s for all verbs, not just for “he will be”. It comes from… we have four letters that switch between them - Lam’nar, Lamed-Mem-Nun-Resh. So, the Nun in Syriac Aramaic is related to the Lamed in Babylonian Aramaic. It’s the same letter, essentially, pronounced differently, based on their dialect “L”, “N”. It’s very common in many languages, not just Semitic languages.

And so, he brought up a fascinating argument, which I’ve suggested myself decades ago. Not in as erudite and scholarly way as he did in his lecture, but he convinced me of the opposite. And the strongest proof against his argument… and he brought this evidence! I was looking for the slide just now on my phone. I couldn’t find it; I thought I took a photo of it. But he brings examples in Edomite Aramaic, or in Edomite let’s say, because it’s a name, and you’ll have someone named after… we have names that begin with “Yeho-”, Yehonatan, and they have names with the word Qos. Qos is the name of the Edomite God. And if there’s a verb, and I don’t remember the exact example, but there are verbs that are combined in the name. You’ve got the theophoric element, Qos, just like we would have Yeho, and then they have like, yiten, but it’s not yiten, it’s liten with a Lamed. So, what are you telling me? They’re trying to disambiguate the word natan? Or whatever the word was, I don’t remember, maybe it was lakach, I don’t remember the exact example. But it was a Lamed in place of the Yud, of the AYTaN letters in a name, in their dialect of Aramaic.

Nelson: Nehemia, I believe I…

Nehemia: I shouldn’t say, “their dialect of Aramaic”, in the Edomite language because it’s a name so I don’t know what language it is; it could be just Edomite. Do you have the example, Nelson?

Nelson: I do, I believe I have the slide. Can I share my screen?

Nehemia: Yeah, please. Oh, this is exciting! Oh gosh, this is so exciting! Let’s see it! Alright! Oh, this is beautiful! So, he calls, “YaQTeL plus Divine Name.” So, YaQTeL are the letters Quf-Tav-Lamed, or Tet-Lamed of the root, that’s how scholars write a generic form. And the Yud is the prefix which means “he will.”

And by the way, these vowels… ignore my vowels here because I have no idea what the vowels are in a name that was written thousands of years ago that isn’t written with vowels. “Ya’adriel, Yakne’el, Yishma’el”, well, Yishma’el we’re pretty sure of because we have that name in the Bible, “Yiti’el, Yirmiyahu”. So, the Yud is “he will”. And then all of a sudden, we have, “Qos’yatay”, “Qos will bring.” “Qosyevarech” or maybe it’s “Qosi’brach”, I obviously don’t know. Qos will bless, Qosdili. So, these are examples where it has the Yud.

And then he has other examples where the Yud is swapped out with a Lamed. Instead of “Ya’adriel” he has “La’adriel”. “Lantzerel, Qos’la’alef”, Qos’la’alef is an interesting word, it means something like “Qos”, being the God, “will be strong,” or “Qos will train”, or something like that, “Qos will be mighty”. “Qos’lita’a”, I don’t know what “lita’a” is, do you know what that word is? I don’t know that word off the top of my head, Yud-Tav-Ayin, or maybe it’s just a word in Edomite that I don’t know. “Qoslinhar”, which is probably “Qos will give light”. “Qoslintzor”, “Qos will give brightness” or, “will guard”, rather. “Qosla’az”, “Qos will be mighty.” “Qosla’aqov”, that’s beautiful! It’s the name Jacob combined with Qos, and it’s not Ya’aqov it’s La’aqov! Because there’s something in these Semitic languages where the Yud gets swapped out with the Lamed in Babylonian Aramaic and in Edomite, and here, I don’t know if we can necessarily say Edomite Aramaic, because it’s a name. But it’s an Edomite dialect.

And then in Syriac Aramaic it’s swapped out with a Nun, which is a related pronunciation to the Lamed. So, this to me definitively proves that leheveh has nothing to do with Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, it’s just something that happens in these Semitic languages where the Lamed prefix replaces the Yud. What do you think David?

David: I think it’s probably both.

Nehemia: You what?

David: I think it’s probably both. I think what you’re saying makes a whole lot of sense, this is just a regular phenomenon of the language, but I don’t really see a lot of scribes writing Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey…

Nehemia: Ah!

David: So, it might be a scribal thing too.

Nehemia: Okay. Possible.

David: Scribal or language; it’s probably both, that’s my guess.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: But I don’t know, this is all new to me, this Edomite stuff.

Nehemia: So, in another lecture by Esther Eshel, which is in the same session, she had these Edomite ostraca, which are pieces of pottery where people would write on the pottery because paper was expensive and parchment was expensive, and it had Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey! And it was clear in the context that it means “he will be”, it had nothing to do with the name of God.

David: You’re right.

Nehemia: So, some people did write it, but you’re saying a Jewish scribe would be hesitant to write Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. But here’s the thing, David, he could have written Yud-Hey-Vav-Alef.

David: Right, the Lamed. Yeah. So Nehemia, I’m not saying it’s not right, I’m not going to die on this hill if you’re asking. I don’t think it’s very clear, you’re right. But we could talk about scribes… if someone’s writing a letter or a contract in the middle of the Judean Desert, that’s one thing. But let’s say you’re in Jerusalem and you’re writing the Book of Daniel for the Temple Court, maybe you’re right.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: So, I see both as possible. I like both. That’s my thought. Okay.

Nehemia: Yeah. Anyway, it was a beautiful lecture that he gave, and it was a good lecture. I just think he convinced me of the opposite. And look, I would like it to be right. It’s a very attractive argument to say that there was this disambiguation as a way of expressing sanctity for the name. My background here, by the way, you can see the Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey and Elohim are in different shades of ink. This is a 13th century Ashkenazic Torah scroll. If I move aside you can see some other examples.

David: Other way, other way.

Nehemia: No, so here for example… oh, it’s backwards!

David: Move the other way, no, the other direction! Good, now you can see it.

Nehemia: I know, but you can see another example here next to my shoulder, on the second to last line, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey Elohim.

David: Yeah.

Nehemia: It’s a different shade of ink, and this 13th century northern Europe, it’s a different story, from a town called Hereford. Here they clearly wanted to show sanctity and reverence for the name, so they left a blank space and filled it in afterwards with a different batch of ink, and over the centuries the inks became a different color. Originally, they were probably the same color.

So, it’s very attractive to me, this idea that they wanted to show the letters Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, even when they don’t refer to the name of God, that they had this meaning. But you have all these names that you have the Lamed in them and the names have nothing to do with Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey… Qosla’az, “Qos will be powerful”, or “will be mighty”, I don’t know. I’m convinced more than ever now of the opposite.

David: Nehemia, you’ll rename the podcast, “Edomite Voices Pronunciations in Hebrew”.

Nehemia: No, but why is this relevant for Hebrew Voices? Because Hebrew is a Semitic language, and you’ve got to look at the other Semitic languages to learn things about ancient Hebrew.

David: For sure, yeah. I think you’re right on with that.

Nehemia: But I want to share some of the most exciting lectures that I went to. So, one of the most interesting lectures I went to was by this Danish Christian who lives in Israel, and he did a systematic survey of Messianic Jews in Israel. And this was really interesting to me, because I’ve been hearing for decades about, “There’s all these Messianic Jews all over, and so many people are coming to believe in Yeshua,” is the way it’s always presented. And I don’t ever know what the real numbers are, it’s really hard to know. And I think this was his approach, “Okay, how many are there actually in Israel?”

So alright, guys, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for joining me. Rabbi Dr. David Moster… David, what’s your website?

David: My website is BiblicalCulture.org, and if you’re interested in studying Biblical Hebrew, my courses are every few months, every six months at the current point. So, whenever you hear this, within a few months, if you’re interested in taking a year-long course, we’re going to go. So, you’re more than welcome to join!

Nehemia: And thank you Nelson of the Institute for Hebrew Manuscript Research. Shalom.

David: Shalom.

Nelson: Shalom, gentlemen.

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