Chris:Galena wrote:Psalm 22:17
Having said that, I would like some scholarly un-prejudicial criticism of what to date is the most mature counter argument that I can find. I want to know what arguments there are, what critique can be supplied against the following paper, link provided. http://www.rejectionofpascalswager.net/pierce.html My purpose here is not to argue back, since I have no authority nor skills to do this, I will simply read all that anybody says, and copy it to my personal library for referencing in the future.
Kindest regards
Chris
If this is your main argument, it has problems.
The reasons he gives that the reading of “they pierced” is false starts with “The Hebrew Text Behind the King James Version”. That is completely irrelevant, and that he starts with it, showing that he thinks it is most important, makes the rest of his arguments suspect, at least.
In other words, he has started with the presumption that a certain ancient translation (KJV) is perfect, or at least its sources, and that everything else is to be measured against it. He has started with a thesis, then marshals evidence to support it, which is working backwards.
He admits that the Nahal Heber scrap unambiguously has the verb כארו, but then he claims “has no known meaning and may actually be meaningless.” That’s an argument from ignorance, a logical fallacy. When the LXX translators, who didn’t have the tools that we have today, came across a word they didn’t know, they then guessed, and in this case guessed wrongly.
Particularly damning to his argument is this paragraph: “A look at the table above also shows the probable cause of the variant: the two words differ only in the final alphabet, the yod of kaari has been changed into the vav of kaaru (or vice versa). Even someone uninitiated with the Hebrew alphabet can see how easy it is to mistake a yod for the slightly longer vav. We know that mistakes of graphical confusion like these did happen and were quite common in the ancient Hebrew manuscripts.” Further he admits that some other manuscripts have כארו so that the Nahal Heber scrap is not the only evidence.
The next paragraph he even makes the argument that just because a majority of surviving manuscripts have a certain reading, that does not automatically mean that they are correct.
Therefore, by his own arguments, כארו could be the correct reading. In other words, he contradicts himself.
Then the author references “P. Kyle McCarter, Jr. in his book Textual Criticism: Recovering the Text of the Hebrew Bible [47] listed the following rules used by textual critics:
”The more difficult reading is preferable: in other words ancient scribes tend to see what they expected to see. Thus the more familiar reading is more often the one that is secondary. Of course, this does not apply to obvious nonsense: "The more difficult reading is not to be preferred when it is garbage."”
The word כארי in this context is garbage. This is an argument against him.
Too often following this rule ends up with garbage. Especially when it comes to following the Masoretic points—all too often the underlying consonantal text has a clear meaning, the points making a mess of things.
“The shorter reading is preferable: scribes tend to expand an ancient text-this arises from their concern to preserve the text as fully as possible thus causing them to keep later glosses, duplications and explanations in the text.”
Irrelevant in this case.
“The reading should be appropriate for its context”
That’s my strongest argument that כארו is the correct reading.
“Be suspicious of readings that "improve" on the text: Readings that offer stylistic improvements, modernize, conform the text to more familiar norms and that resolve contradictions are suspect.”
This rule needs to be taken on a case by case basis. The reading that “improves” on the text may be the correct one and the more difficult reading a “typo”, or it may be the other way around. An example is the reading of כרו—the medieval reading is “to dig”, but the Biblical meaning is “to furnish”, which in the case of a well involves digging, but in other things furnished no digging was involved. Presumably the translators of the LXX came across כארו, didn’t know what it meant, so treated is as a misspelling for כרו which already had changed its meaning to “to dig”. כארי results in a nonsense text. כארו leaves us scratching our heads as to what it means.
A possible meaning for כאר is “to deform” which also fits Amos 8:8 and possibly Isaiah 38:13.
Most of the article is irrelevant to the question as to what is the correct reading of this verse.
Karl W. Randolph.
