Twitter Quitter

I haven't used Twitter in quite awhile myself. Most times because when I do want to post something, I need more characters than Twitter allows.

 

Hello, I am also new. Listed when registering as "Seeking Christ" altho I am in actuality Jewish - but this was not offered as a sign-up option. I am 70 years old, took OT and NT courses in college and have made Bible study my avocation.

 

It turns outs that by not registering as "Baptist" I am prevented from participating in all of the interesting forums, even the thread on editions of the Hebrew Bible - something I actually know something about*. So I am bailing out of this website and will probably not be back.

* The Stuttgart Biblia Hebraica, while earning the reputation as the most scholarly edition, has its weaknesses. For one thing, it evidently is an imperfect transcription of the Leningrad Codex (the Dotan edition and the Westminster internet edition claim to be better proofed); more importantly, it is so chockablock with mostly unhelpful footnotes that it tends to distract and confuse the general reader. The text of the Hebrew Bible is so uniform from edition to edition that the differences among them (and there are a dozen or so) are less obvious than the differences among multiple editions of the KJV. There are bits of the Hebrew Bible text that are, to be blunt, just plain garbled - ungrammatical, misspelled, ambiguous or simply jumbled - in all editions, and only conjecture or external tradition offers clarification - it cannot be helped.

If you want only the Hebrew text, without an accompanying translation, there are many choices. The Koren edition has the distinction of being entirely worked up in Israel, both edition, typography and printing, and the typeface is considered especially attractive; it was done circa 1965 (some editions include maps and diagrams). More recently, circa 2002, the Jerusalem Crown edition, published by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, reproduces the surviving text of the Aleppo Codex, filling the gaps with the text of the Leningrad Codex, using an even more (my opinion) attractive typeface. Among an almost endless number of Hebrew editions published in Israel is the Simanim edition, edited by the Jerusalem Simanim Institute and published by Feldheim (2008); 'simanim' means 'signs' and in this case the edition makes enormous efforts at very clear printing with exquisitely clear vowel points and cantillation accents (it also includes, in Hebrew, a table of paragraphs, of Bible chronology, and some maps).

If you want an edition with both Hebrew and English, also many choices. Koren published 'The Jerusalem Bible' (not to be confused with a Roman Catholic version of the same name) of its lovely Hebrew with a modern English rendering by an American-Israel professor on facing pages. The Jewish Publication Society of America similarly publishes its recent (circa 1985) English translation with the Leningrad Codex text (from the Westminster database) in parallel columns in the JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh ('tanakh' is the Hebrew acronym for the Bible - Torah, Niviyim (prophets), Ketuvim (writings)). There is also the ArtScroll Stone Edition Tanach, a weighty volume produced by a distinguished and very Orthodox Jewish publishing house (circa 1996); the Hebrew text is in a clear comfortable typeface, but the facing English is all in italics - and more than that, very closely adheres to the Hebrew sentence structure and Orthodox affectations (e.g., what everyone identifies as "The Lord" is here referred to as "Hashem" - literally, "The Name"), also diagrams, chronologies and maps. There are also some 'interlinear' editions - cut and paste jobs with the Hebrew text taken from the Biblia Hebraica main text and above each word its English rendering, since this is done in the Hebrew word order it may add to your vocabulary without clarifying the overall meaning.

For textbooks I have a lot of appreciation for Alexander Harkavy's Student's Hebrew-Chaldee Dictionary, The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew-English Lexicon, Mandelkern's Biblical Concordance (which is entirely in Hebrew, each word found by its root), the Englishman's Hebrew Concordance (reprinted from 1843), and the Ben-Yehuda's English-Hebrew-English Dictionary (small paperback). I suggest, if you live in or visit a big city, go to a Judaica bookstore and browse for the Bibles and the assisting books.

 

I have no idea what "other forums" there are where I could participate. All I see from this webpage are Baptist Only fora.

A warning to other newcomers: Don't be candid when asked about your affiliation.

Your loss. I see on one thread some Baptists groping for the meaning of a NT reference because none of them really understands a bit of Jewish ritual. On some other threads similar dithering where I could make a helpful contribution.

 

And yet you post in the Baptist only sections...

Obviously ownership has its privileges, but surely you can carry out administration of the site without engaging in debate in the baptist only sections.

 

Welcome back, Jason.

 

Well let me apologize. I seem to have conflated your username with Ben W. Please forgive me for that.

 

Your level of humility impresses me. *laugh*