Why don't FEs preserve the Jots and Tittles?

No, you tell me why I should believe that God who had preserved the Hebrew OT Scriptures in such manner that Christ was able to say that not one jot or tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled, why the same God would let the same Hebrew OT perish. Timothy obviously had the Hebrew OT, 2Tim. 3:15-16, a copy of it, and of this Paul said under Holy Spirit inspiration that "all Scripture is God breathed". This meant that what Timothy had was equal to the original autographs of the Hebrew OT God delivered to the Jews. Since that being so, tell me when during the past 1900 or so centuries this entirely God-breathed Scripture has passed away or disappeared. And if it has so passed from the scene, as they say, where in the Bible does God prophesy it would happen? Can you not see the hand of God in providence when viewing the Reformation, especially considering that then at that time both the Masoretic text and the Greek NT were handed over to the common people of Europe. Erasmus came with a GNT edition in 1522 that did not even lack the Comma, and Bomberg right after in 1524 and -25 published the Ben Chayim MT. Man, this is no mere coincidence or "chance". It was the providential work of God Almighty.

I thank God for having both the Ben Chayim text and the Scrivener GNT in one and the same volume. There I have THE absolute and final authority and final court of appeal. The one who does not draw near to those sound words of the Lord Jesus Christ found in that volume I will accordingly shun as my Bible commands me to, 1Tim. 6:5.

Harald

 

If you are familiar with the Hebrew text, then you know that there are places where hte Hebrew text must be amended to make sense. Additionally,k you are certainly familiar with the problem of pointing where a Hebrew word can be pointed several different ways with the result that meaning is different. The Hebrew textual issues are actually, IMO, greater than the Greek ones. The reason they don't get talked about very much is because Hebrew is such a difficult language and no one takes the time to learn it. You can't really do much with the back of Strong's concordance.

Does this mean we can expect not to hear any more from you?? Will you please shun us too?? Or were you just kidding about that??

 

I thought the title of this thread was a joke or at least good natured sarcasm. Why would anyone think that jots and tittles should be transferred into English in even the best FE? I am an FEOnly for one simple reason. How can we possibly discuss what God means if one of us doesn't even know what He said. Take this case for example:

Jot (Strong's 2503). ijw`ta ioµta; of Semitic or.; name of the Gr. letter corresponding to the tenth Heb. letter, yod; iota:— letter(1).

Tittle: (Strong's 2762) keraiva keraia; from 2768; a little horn:— stroke(1), stroke of a letter(1).

Jesus said that "one i" or "one stroke" shall not pass... Now we can discuss what that means and its implications for our lives.

Would the listeners to Jesus have understood him to say one letter, one i, one part, one jot, or what? I know what the verse means, it means that not one part of the law shall pass away untill it is all fullfilled. In English, he said "one i", he didn't say "one letter". I completely understand a small but necessary bit of DE in order to translate correctly but when DE is the standard then FE is purposely ignored.

 

You ever hear the phrase "Cross all your "t"s and dot all your "i"s." Or how about "Mind your Ps and Qs"? Do you think these translate well into other languages?? In American English, we know that the first means to make sure you pay attention to the details and the second means to behave. But what about in Spanish or German or French?? Communication is primarily about ideas, not about the strokes on the page.

 

Well said Pastor Larry!

You also wrote:

Pointings different than the jots and tittles. I thought the pointing was added long after Christ's time on earth, somewhere in the 400's. ???

What sort of debates did they have on MasereticBoard.com in 400 A.D. when they "added the pointing" to God's Word?
Rob

 

That's funny Rob.

Did you notice the little word "additionally"?? That means I moved from talking about the jots and tittles to talking about the Hebrew language in general, with respect to preservation and translation. "Additionally" means "and something else needs to be talked about."

Jots and tittles are parts of the language, the script. They have not all been preserved. The Hebrew text is notorious for being problemmatic in some places. That is why the equidistant lettering scheme is foolishness. Yod's take a variety of different forms. In a hollow verb, some forms take a yod and others take a waw. In some cases, the yod completely drops out. In some places, the word has a yod and in other places the same word does not have it. Early Hebrew is different than late Hebrew. In other words, the Hebrew langauge is very plastic in many regards.

When Christ said that not one jot or tittle would pass, he was referring to the content, not the strokes on teh page, just as we might says "cross your Ts and dot your Is" or "mind your Ps and Qs." The literal meaning is far different than how we use it in colloquialism.