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James is a real challenge for me as I wrestle with the grace vs works concept.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dusty Rhodes
Which Books Of The Bible Are The Hardest To Understand?
I didn't think any of them were necessarily hard to understand, any more than Edith Hamilton or Bullfinch are difficult to read--mythology is mythology.
Please go away. We're trying to have a discussion here.
Which book(s) of the Bible do you find the hardest to understand?And why?
From a scholarly point of view, Job is by far the most difficult to understand, because it has the greatest number of loan words and phrases from other languages, especially from Sumerian and Akkadian (the Sumerians wrote Job, not the Hebrews).
From a scholarly point of view, Job is by far the most difficult to understand, because it has the greatest number of loan words and phrases from other languages, especially from Sumerian and Akkadian (the Sumerians wrote Job, not the Hebrews).
Is there an accessible Sumerian codex translation containing recognisable portions of Job that I can read? Can you guide me to where I might obtain it? This is as big as the Dead Sea Scrolls containing verifiable portions of the Old testament!
Which book(s) of the Bible do you find the hardest to understand?And why? Revelations is the hardest book to understand for me with all of its allegorical inferences.Leviticus,trying to understand all of the laws.
That could be a hard question to answer. I mean what may be hard for me may be easy for you. So, I think that it may be really up to the individual. But revelations, is hard for me also due to the language and symbols.
Making it still more difficult is that much or all of it has yet to happen. Prophecy is much more recognisable after it has occured. The prophecies of the coming of Jesus in the Old Testament were very hard to understand until after they actually happened. Some are so blind that they can't recognise them even now.
Isaiah and Revelation are both very difficult for me because of all the symbolism.
I spent two years studying Isaiah and understand your frustration. There is so much there, but we can't discern most of it clearly from our present understanding. Like Revelation, I think it is because a lot of it hasn't happened yet. It is interesting BTW to compare Isaiah in the Jewish Tanakh with the Christian Old Testament.
Is there an accessible Sumerian codex translation containing recognisable portions of Job that I can read? Can you guide me to where I might obtain it?
S N Kramer has a nice translation of the Sumerian version written about 4,500 BCE or about 2,400 years before the birth of Abrahm.
There's also an Akkadian version from about 3,200 BCE.
The Date of the Prose Tale of Job Linguistically Reconsidered,” HTR 67 (1974): 17-34; R. H. Pfeiffer
That's a nice article there.
The Book of Job in the Context of Near Eastern Literature,” ZAW 82 (1970)
That discusses a number of versions of Job from various cultures, many which predate the Israelites.
The phrase bene-elohim only appears 5 times in the entire Old Testament. It appears twice in Genesis 6 (the Deluge) and then it appears three times in Job.
As part of a disinformation campaign, the Douay bible and a few others translate bene-elohim as the "sons of heaven" for very obvious reasons.
The correct translation is "sons of the gods" however since most people incorrectly insist that elohim is singular, it would be the "sons of god."
That of course raises serious questions since supposedly god's "only begotten son" was allegedly crucified.
The “sons of the heavens” would be rendered in Hebrew as bene-ha’shamayim so obviously that is a grotesquely incorrect translation.
The Akkadian phrase El Shaddai appears 31 times in Job. Outside of Job it only appears in Genesis.
El Shaddai is incorrectly translated as "lord almighty" and that is based Jerome's mistranslation of the word as omnipotens in the Latin Vulgate.
The Sumerian and Akkadian civilizations were so ancient that Jerome was never aware of their existence, nor was he aware of their languages. In fact, no one was aware of their existence until about 150 years ago.
The correct translation is "Lord of the Mountain." The mountain would be in the Sinai. El Shaddai was a "serpent god" whose cult symbol was two serpents intertwined around the Tree of Life, what we know as the caduceus or the symbol for medicine.
Every time Abrahm, Isaac or Jacob are blessed and told to be fruitful and multiply into a multitude of nations, it is El Shaddai, not Yahweh or the elohim or Yahweh and the elohim who is doing the talking. Every time there is an issue of “barren females” it is El Shaddai who tells them they will have children. Every time the patriarchs bless their children they invoke the name of El Shaddai.
El Shaddai was the son of El in the Ugarit pantheon and his brothers were El Elyon, Yam, Mot and Yahweh.
If we compare it to the Akkadian pantheon,
El = Enki
El Elyon = Marduk
El Shaddai = Ningiszida
Yam = Gibil
Mot = Nergal
Yahweh = Mekizide (Melchezidek is "The Anointed of Mekizide" who was the Priest-King of Yaru-salem -- Jerusalem)
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