Subject: Re: A biblical digression
From: [email-masked] Mon Aug 26 15:32:28 2002
To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2002 16:50:54 UTC
List-Id: Friends of Rohit Khare <fork.xent.com>

On Sat, 24 Aug 2002 11:07:00 -0700, "John Hall" <[email-masked]>
said:
> Ran across a site which claimed to explain the original meaning of the
> Ten Commandments.  It seems some of those meanings have evolved a bit,
> too.

By "meanings have evolved" do you [or they] mean that the Hebrew words
have changed meaning or that our understanding of the Hebrew words have
changed? Or do they posit a pre-Mosaic form of the laws that had
evolved by time of the Pentateuch?

> In particular, there was a claim that the commandment on stealing was
> actually specifically about 'man stealing -- selling a free man into
> slavery.

This seems bogus to me. A quick check of the text indicates the the
Hebrew word in question is GANAV which elsewhere in the Pentateuch (eg
Gen 44.8) is used to mean steal silver and gold amongst other things.

In July 1999, I made the following comment in response to a similar
claim about the "real" meaning of one of the ten commandments:

"""
> The translations since cause problems at each successive remove

We have the original language versions, though, so this is not an
issue.

> I'm sure most everyone is familiar with the argument that the meaning of the commandment
> is 'thou shalt not murder' rather than 'kill,'

This has nothing to do with successive translations. It is based on our
knowledge of the meaning of the Hebrew word "ratsach". Most modern
translations I've seen translate it "murder" but elsewhere the word is
used
of an animal killing a human (something for which most English speakers
wouldn't use the word "murder").
"""
- http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/july99/0163.html

James
-- 
  James Tauber
  [email-masked]
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