Sunday, July 12, 2009
On the term hekhal and the Samaritans
The Hebrew word spelt HE-YOD-KAF-LAMED (hêkal, Masoretic hekhal), translated
"Temple" by Macdonald, means "pattern" or better "lay-out". It refers to the set of enclosures making up the Sanctuary, made up of curtains hanging from rods resting on poles, the whole being collapsible and therefore portable. See the elaborate description in the second half of Exodus. This passage is a word for word translation from the Arabic book of 1875, which simply reproduces an authentic old section of the Arabic Book of Joshua, as in Juynboll's edition, translated from Aramaic with the Aramaic being an abbreviated translation from a lost Hebrew original. The Arabic original of this passage has haykal, an absolutely unambiguous word in Arabic that does NOT mean any kind of building, but "skeleton", "plan", "lay-out". This is what is meant by the Hebrew TAV-BET-NUN-YOD-TAV tabnit in Exodus, Masoretic tavnit, meaning a detailed lay-out or set of drawings for such a lay-out, i.e. blueprints. The Jewish usage of "hekhal" to mean a building is secondary. The Jerusalem temple's courts were a stone reproduction of the pattern of curtains, so Jewish usage shifted. No Samaritan text uses the secondary meaning. Of course the lay-out set up is elaborate and detailed, because the prescriptions in Exodus say so. IT REMAINS THAT WHAT IS BEING DESCRIBED IS A SET OF COURTS MARKED OFF BY CURTAINS HANGING FROM RODS. Only the Tent of Meeting had a roof, but it was still a tent and the roof was cloth. In the Jerusalem temple it was a stone cube with a solid roof. I told you how inaccurate Macdonald's introduction was. All this is set out in Boid's article Use Authority and Exegesis.
I repeat that Stephen was murdered for stating that there is no prescription for a stone building in the Torah.
Please note that this is not a matter for disagreement between individuals. The fact is that although Macdonald knew of mss. of the Arabic book of 1875, he never consulted it; and although he lists Yahuda's article in his bibliography, he never consulted that either. The proof is that he shows no evidence of knowing the content of either.
It is true that there is a word in Aramaic spelt h-y-k-l that means a temple building, with an obvious cognates in Babylonian-Assyrian and in Ethiopic in the same meaning. On the other hand, the Arabic cognate has a different meaning. While it can mean the Jerusalem temple in mediaeval and modern usage, this usage is Christian and Jewish in origin and is a loan-translation from the Hebrew word. Its original meaning, still the main meaning even in modern Arabic, is a framework. This leaves the question of the meaning in Hebrew open.
First, note that this is not a Semitic word in origin. It is Sumerian. If it is found in several Semitic languages, that means it has been borrowed into each one, from Babylonian-Assyrian or from Aramaic. It has not stayed in each one from the time of Proto-Semitic.
Now, the usage in Biblical Hebrew is ambiguous. It is not used in the Hexateuch, that is, the Torah and Joshua. It first refers to the sanctuary at Shiloh, which admittedly had doors or gates with hinges; but this is still not necessarily a building, a fact apparently registered from the context by the author of the well-known 19th c. hymn. It is also referred to Solomon’s temple and palace, but as said before, this is another matter. In modern Samaritan Hebrew (1907 is modern) it still does not mean a stone building. The translator working in 1907 made a bad choice when translating this passage into Hebrew from the Arabic book of 1865. To him, the meaning of the Hebrew word would have been what the Samaritans maintain was the original Hebrew meaning, which is the same as the Arabic meaning. Unfortunately, he forgot that the purpose of the book was to turn a well-known voluminous Arabic book into a concise Hebrew book. The book had to be concise because it was composed to be copied out over and over and over and sold to Europeans for ready cash. It had to be in Hebrew so as to sell more copies. It forms a companion work to the well-known book on Samaritan theology and salvific history and dispensations known under many titles and erroneously called the Hilluk by Gaster. This was first composed in Arabic for a visiting scholar from Oxford in 1895. It was translated into Hebrew in 1907 and copied over and over and over. Both books have been what is commonly termed “nice little earners”. There was never any deception. The books were presented as two compendia of essential knowledge, no more. There is complete transparency in the colophons of the mss. (See my book Principles of Samaritan Halachah, Leiden 1989, in the introduction). No Samaritan text refers to Solomon’s temple by the word hêkal (Mas. Hêkhal), because in Sam. usage, the word would not have fitted. It is most often called the Hebrew b-y-t m-k-t-sh, bit maktash (Masoretic bet makhtesh), meaning “the acropolis building”. This name is used regardless of the language of the book. The Aramaic equivalent q-r-m-t. has turned up for the first time in the text to be published in my forthcoming monograph. (Gaster thinks the name to be no more than a deformation of the Hebrew b-y-t m-q-d-sh with some connection with leprosy. It is certainly a pun, but it is an objective description. A name meaning the house of the sanctuary would have been a contradiction in terms, as said earlier, well as being a false term).
It is true that the book says Joshua BUILT this hêkal and put everything inside. The main reason this message is being sent today is that it occurred to me after sending the original hasty message that it must have seemed that I was wilfully misreading the plain wording so as to push my own barrow. As said before, I never force the meaning of any text. This is a matter of professional and personal integrity. What Joshua BUILT according to the author was the stone fences and stone boundary markers of the designated sacred area IN which the curtains and Tent of Meeting were then put.
For the sake of completeness, let me repeat that all Samaritans of all denominations since the earliest documentation have agreed that this sanctuary was only intact for about 120 years. After that, there was only the stone boundary markers. The general falling away noted in the last verse of the book of Judges enabled Eli, not of the line of High Priests, to set himself up at Shiloh. (Eli was descended from Ithamar, not Phineas. The Rabbinic texts show great disquiet over this break in legitimate succession. This is the importance of the appointment of Zadok as High Priest by Solomon. Zadok was of the line of Phineas. Händel had read the Torah and seen the significance before writing his oratorio). The same general falling away led to the necessity of the occultation of the curtains and vessels from the earthly plane a few years later.
BUY MY BOOK. SERIOUSLY. WHAT CAN YOU BUY TODAY FOR $10?
"Temple" by Macdonald, means "pattern" or better "lay-out". It refers to the set of enclosures making up the Sanctuary, made up of curtains hanging from rods resting on poles, the whole being collapsible and therefore portable. See the elaborate description in the second half of Exodus. This passage is a word for word translation from the Arabic book of 1875, which simply reproduces an authentic old section of the Arabic Book of Joshua, as in Juynboll's edition, translated from Aramaic with the Aramaic being an abbreviated translation from a lost Hebrew original. The Arabic original of this passage has haykal, an absolutely unambiguous word in Arabic that does NOT mean any kind of building, but "skeleton", "plan", "lay-out". This is what is meant by the Hebrew TAV-BET-NUN-YOD-TAV tabnit in Exodus, Masoretic tavnit, meaning a detailed lay-out or set of drawings for such a lay-out, i.e. blueprints. The Jewish usage of "hekhal" to mean a building is secondary. The Jerusalem temple's courts were a stone reproduction of the pattern of curtains, so Jewish usage shifted. No Samaritan text uses the secondary meaning. Of course the lay-out set up is elaborate and detailed, because the prescriptions in Exodus say so. IT REMAINS THAT WHAT IS BEING DESCRIBED IS A SET OF COURTS MARKED OFF BY CURTAINS HANGING FROM RODS. Only the Tent of Meeting had a roof, but it was still a tent and the roof was cloth. In the Jerusalem temple it was a stone cube with a solid roof. I told you how inaccurate Macdonald's introduction was. All this is set out in Boid's article Use Authority and Exegesis.
I repeat that Stephen was murdered for stating that there is no prescription for a stone building in the Torah.
Please note that this is not a matter for disagreement between individuals. The fact is that although Macdonald knew of mss. of the Arabic book of 1875, he never consulted it; and although he lists Yahuda's article in his bibliography, he never consulted that either. The proof is that he shows no evidence of knowing the content of either.
It is true that there is a word in Aramaic spelt h-y-k-l that means a temple building, with an obvious cognates in Babylonian-Assyrian and in Ethiopic in the same meaning. On the other hand, the Arabic cognate has a different meaning. While it can mean the Jerusalem temple in mediaeval and modern usage, this usage is Christian and Jewish in origin and is a loan-translation from the Hebrew word. Its original meaning, still the main meaning even in modern Arabic, is a framework. This leaves the question of the meaning in Hebrew open.
First, note that this is not a Semitic word in origin. It is Sumerian. If it is found in several Semitic languages, that means it has been borrowed into each one, from Babylonian-Assyrian or from Aramaic. It has not stayed in each one from the time of Proto-Semitic.
Now, the usage in Biblical Hebrew is ambiguous. It is not used in the Hexateuch, that is, the Torah and Joshua. It first refers to the sanctuary at Shiloh, which admittedly had doors or gates with hinges; but this is still not necessarily a building, a fact apparently registered from the context by the author of the well-known 19th c. hymn. It is also referred to Solomon’s temple and palace, but as said before, this is another matter. In modern Samaritan Hebrew (1907 is modern) it still does not mean a stone building. The translator working in 1907 made a bad choice when translating this passage into Hebrew from the Arabic book of 1865. To him, the meaning of the Hebrew word would have been what the Samaritans maintain was the original Hebrew meaning, which is the same as the Arabic meaning. Unfortunately, he forgot that the purpose of the book was to turn a well-known voluminous Arabic book into a concise Hebrew book. The book had to be concise because it was composed to be copied out over and over and over and sold to Europeans for ready cash. It had to be in Hebrew so as to sell more copies. It forms a companion work to the well-known book on Samaritan theology and salvific history and dispensations known under many titles and erroneously called the Hilluk by Gaster. This was first composed in Arabic for a visiting scholar from Oxford in 1895. It was translated into Hebrew in 1907 and copied over and over and over. Both books have been what is commonly termed “nice little earners”. There was never any deception. The books were presented as two compendia of essential knowledge, no more. There is complete transparency in the colophons of the mss. (See my book Principles of Samaritan Halachah, Leiden 1989, in the introduction). No Samaritan text refers to Solomon’s temple by the word hêkal (Mas. Hêkhal), because in Sam. usage, the word would not have fitted. It is most often called the Hebrew b-y-t m-k-t-sh, bit maktash (Masoretic bet makhtesh), meaning “the acropolis building”. This name is used regardless of the language of the book. The Aramaic equivalent q-r-m-t. has turned up for the first time in the text to be published in my forthcoming monograph. (Gaster thinks the name to be no more than a deformation of the Hebrew b-y-t m-q-d-sh with some connection with leprosy. It is certainly a pun, but it is an objective description. A name meaning the house of the sanctuary would have been a contradiction in terms, as said earlier, well as being a false term).
It is true that the book says Joshua BUILT this hêkal and put everything inside. The main reason this message is being sent today is that it occurred to me after sending the original hasty message that it must have seemed that I was wilfully misreading the plain wording so as to push my own barrow. As said before, I never force the meaning of any text. This is a matter of professional and personal integrity. What Joshua BUILT according to the author was the stone fences and stone boundary markers of the designated sacred area IN which the curtains and Tent of Meeting were then put.
For the sake of completeness, let me repeat that all Samaritans of all denominations since the earliest documentation have agreed that this sanctuary was only intact for about 120 years. After that, there was only the stone boundary markers. The general falling away noted in the last verse of the book of Judges enabled Eli, not of the line of High Priests, to set himself up at Shiloh. (Eli was descended from Ithamar, not Phineas. The Rabbinic texts show great disquiet over this break in legitimate succession. This is the importance of the appointment of Zadok as High Priest by Solomon. Zadok was of the line of Phineas. Händel had read the Torah and seen the significance before writing his oratorio). The same general falling away led to the necessity of the occultation of the curtains and vessels from the earthly plane a few years later.
BUY MY BOOK. SERIOUSLY. WHAT CAN YOU BUY TODAY FOR $10?
Email stephan.h.huller@gmail.com with comments or questions.