Rabbi Rafiki's Forum

Please post your question via e-mail at roehbilly@yahoo.com . If you wish to post it via phone, please call 210-854-5581.

Shalom Qol Y'israel,

The paper on perfection is on hold in lieu of completing a more pressing paper titled, "Rabbi Rafiki's Tool Box". You may read Part 1 below. Please summit all of your responses to my e-mail, roehbilly@yahoo.com. I am asking for those who are good at proof reading to tear my paper apart and send me the corrections. Please put on the remarks "Rabbi Rafiki's Drash Tree". This will cue me to know that the e-mail is legit and not something I wish to click on and trash. Here then is the first installment. I will leave this up for two weeks to allow all to read and red letter it. The "Rabbi Rafiki" explanation is below the article.

RABBI RAFIKI’S TOOL BOX

(How To Study Hebrew Without Knowing The Language)

INTRODUCTION

Many have told me that they wish they could read and speak Hebrew so that they might be able to read Scripture in the “natural” language or the “language of Elohim”. I am not altogether convinced that “Hebrew” as it exists today is the Language of Heaven, but I do agree that the skill of reading Hebrew is essential to any serious studier of Scripture. However, these same people who primarily read, write and speak English as their primary language do not have the luxury of learning a language so different to English. It seems we, the Diasporas Israel, are cursed with stifling time constraints. I am convinced it is a tool of the evil seed. This being the case, I hope to offer my brethren a tool box filled with wrenches, drivers and pullers designed to rightly divide the word of Elohim from its original language. In doing so, it is my prayer that bait midrash discussions might flourish and increasing knowledge of His word negating the deception being flung our way by that evil seed.

A SHORT HISTORY OF HEBREW

This is by no means meant to be a definitive work. My purpose in giving this brief history is to introduce and inform the reader of a few of the tracks our language has taken through out the history of His people.

The scene opens in Chaldee of Ur where Abram, his brothers and parents reside. One fateful night, as an ancient Mesopotamian legend describes, Abram has had his fill of pagan idols and enters the temple dashing down and destroying all their idols. Abram’s father, fearing for his son’s life, flees their quaint little city and runs north. According to scripture, they go to a place called Haran in what is now known as Iran.

Gen 11:31 And Teraḥ took his son Ab ̱ ram and his grandson Lot, son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Ab ̱ ram’s wife, and they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Kena ʽ an. And they came to Ḥaran and dwelt there.

Gen 11:32 And the days of Teraḥ came to be two hundred and five years, and Teraḥ died in Ḥaran.

Terah, Abram’s father, dies leaving Abram with the lot so to speak.

This marks the split in what was known at the time as Chaldeean. This language was only a few generations from the proto language from which all languages on Earth are derived. It was a language that was only dialectally different form the greater language of the Mesopotamian region that might be better known as Aramia. At this time, the language was not known as Hebrew.

Abram continued with his family turning south for he had heard the call, “lech lecha”:

Gen 12:1 And יהוה said to Ab ̱ ram, “Go yourself out of your land, from your relatives and from your father’s house, to a land which I show you.

Please read all of Gen 11 and 12 because one must remember, Abram’s father began the trek to the land of Kena’an. He did not finish the journey and may not have intended to, for he began the walk headed north, not West. We really don’t know why he chose to do this. It could be that he was following the trade routes and/or the areas of water. Ozarka wasn’t around back then.

Abram continues the trek effectively isolating the language he carried with him from the changes about to befall Chaldee of Ur. These changes were driven by cultural pressures imposed by warring nations over the period of several hundred years. Abram, now Abraham, has eked out a nice little tribal kingdom of his own in Kena’an soon to be known as the Promised Land. Yes, he actually does make it within the gifted boundaries. In fact, he makes it to all the way to Hebron.

There he encounters two interesting opposites: Malach Tzadiq vs Bera and Birsha. Go read the Scriptures and see the contrasting themes. The influences of the language in these areas did not press for change of the Chaldee spoken by Abram. Therefore the language remained isolated and nearly pure.

Years passed and three more generations sprout fourth blossoming into the house of Jacob. Through an intended dastardly deed, the first born of Jacob’s love, Joseph, is sold into captivity. There the tender shoot flourishes and effects the crossing over of all the family of Jacob into Egypt. There in the same fertile soil that caused Joseph to prosper, the shoot Jacob increases to six hundred thousand males able to go to war strong. During this time however, linguistic changes are still held to a minimum and the general description of the people hung on them by the Egyptians takes root to be the identifier of a nation and a language, Hebrew meaning one who crosses over. Hmm, I guess our friends to the south were not the first to swim the river.

Meanwhile, back at the Chaldee ranch, drastic changes have been occurring to the language originally spoken by Abram. These changes include pronunciation, character set and thought changes. The most profound of all three was the change in the thought being of one of a concrete language to one of a more abstract language. It began tending toward a more linear train rather than a cyclic one. Though the Babylonian culture was becoming stronger and diverse, the price was costly being that of the soul of its people.

We leave this snapshot to change scenes with the tracks of the two languages, Chaldee/Aramaic and Hebrew diverging off into the sunset as we turn and look to the east. The sight of our people’s oppression being lifted as they left Egypt 400 years later, their trek through the Sini and late arrival to the land of promise dims as the light of the post King Sol years come into view. Israel is split into two kingdoms one north and one south. The northern kingdom bares the name Israel. The southern stands strong as Judea.

The northern kingdom becomes steeped in paganism. Ephraim’s actions become more and more overt enticing her sister into the same paganism. The stench rises to The Father’s nose leaving nostrils flaring in anger. In 722 BC He has had enough. Priests are now turning their back to the Ark of The Covenant to prostrate themselves before pagan idols carved into the temple walls. The stench can no longer be ignored and The Echad expels the northern kingdom scattering them to the four corners of the Earth.

Judea is not ignored. They too would be taken from the land of promise some scattered, but many to be held captive in Babylon. Yes, that same Babylon from which the two trains, each carrying their cargo of language and culture, departed from so many years before. The two divergent tracks finally intersect again. The Babylonian language called Chaldee meets the language of Israel called Hebrew. In the short seventy year captivity, the language, culture, and thought of two differing worlds melds in the minds of the Hebrews, into an alef-tav soup that is neither Hebrew, Chaldee nor Aramaian. Instead, as Judea is allowed to leave Babylon to return to Israel, it has become a completely different language called to day Classical Hebrew. It is a language that borrows the characters of the Aramaic without the vowels and spells out a transliterated Hebrew. The culture is racked with superstitions and laws not mentioned in the nation’s constitution, The Torah. The thought process too has changed. It now looks much more western taking on a more linear/abstract mind set, leaving behind the more innocent, and child like concrete/cyclic one. This then is what we are left with as the Brit Chadasha/Apostolic text is being compiled most probably in the Aramaic rather than Hebrew.

Many more changes are taking place in Israel today in the reviving of the language. It is now written in script forms. The pronunciations are changing and others have been dropped altogether. Adaptations to other languages have been made because of modern articles such as computers, MP3 players, and medical machines and so on. The language written and spoken in Israel today is Hebrew, but it is distant from the original tongue spoken by our father Abraham, for the lengthy track taken by the language has circled the mountain many times. (to be continued)

END OF PART ONE

WESTERN VS EASTERN THOUGHT

The thought process change did not occur over-night in Babylon alone, although it was drastically accelerated in the seventy years of the captivity, it began in earnest around the time of the split of the Northern and Southern Kingdoms of Y’israel.  As is recalled in the Scriptures, Shelomoh’s kingdom split because of the “King Lear” like absenteeism of the wisest and richest king ever to have reigned in Y’israel.  He had become lackadaisical and was not paying attention to what was going on in his own kingdom.  His draw to pagan women was his down fall, and it resulted in the kingdom falling into the hands of his son, Rehab’am who reigned in the Southern Kingdom called Yahudeah and Yaroḇʽam who reigned in the Northern kingdom called Y’israel.

1Ki 11:26 And a servant of Shelomoh, Yaroḇʽam son of Neḇat, an Ephrayimite from Tserĕḏah, whose mother’s name was Tseruʽah, a widow, also lifted up a hand against the sovereign. 

Please note who this man was.  He was an Ephrayimite.  Because of this and the blessing of Abraham, multiplication, through Ya’acov of we get:

Eze 37:16 “And you, son of man, take a stick for yourself and write on it, ‘For Yehuḏah and for the children of Yisra’ĕl, his companions.’ Then take another stick and write on it, ‘For Yosĕph, the stick of Ephrayim, and for all the house of Yisra’ĕl, his companions.’

Eze 37:17 “Then bring them together for yourself into one stick, and they shall become one in your hand.

Eze 37:18 “And when the children of your people speak to you, saying, ‘Won’t you show us what you mean by these?’

Eze 37:19 say to them, ‘Thus said the Master יהוה, “See, I am taking the stick of Yosĕph, which is in the hand of Ephrayim, and the tribes of Yisra’ĕl, his companions. And I shall give them unto him, with the stick of Yehuḏah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in My hand.” ’

So these two Rehab’am and Yarob’am continue the sickness began by Shelomoh with his craving for strange women. 

1Ki 12:21 And Reḥaḇʽam came to Yerushalayim, and he assembled all the house of Yehuḏah with the tribe of Binyamin, one hundred and eighty thousand chosen brave men, to fight against the house of Yisra’ĕl, to bring back the reign to Reḥaḇʽam son of Shelomoh.

1Ki 12:22 But the word of Elohim came to Shemayah the man of Elohim, saying,

1Ki 12:23 “Speak to Reḥaḇʽam son of Shelomoh, sovereign of Yehuḏah, and to all the house of Yehuḏah and Binyamin, and to the rest of the people, saying,

1Ki 12:24 ‘Thus said יהוה, “Do not go up or fight against your brothers the children of Yisra’ĕl. Let every man return to his house, for this matter is from Me.” ’ ” So they obeyed the word of יהוה, and turned back, according to the word of יהוה.

1Ki 12:25 And Yaroḇʽam built Sheḵem in the mountains of Ephrayim, and dwelt there. And he went out from there and built Penu’ĕl.

Now Rabbi Rafiki, what in the world does all this have to do with Eastern and Western thought and why do I care any way? 

Actually, it has everything to do with Eastern and Western Thought.  As Shelomoh began and subsequent kings continued to let influences from other nations into Y’israel, these nations brought with them a new methodology of thought.

 It was cultured in the kingdoms spawned by the mixing of Esaw, who is Edom, with Canaanite nations as well as Arab nations.   These nations became more and more imperialistic developing a thought process that required exactness of calculation for they wanted war.  But at the same time it looked for more abstract ideas.  It was linear, defining complete ends of incidents in time.  It would be likened to the exactness of classical mechanics verses the randomness of quantum mechanics.  In the classical view things begin and end completely with precise times.  At the end of these time periods there is no future for the thing in question.  A rock can be slung from a sling in a precise trajectory be it calculated or reasoned from experience.  It hits the desired target, effects the damage desired and the incident is precisely over.  However, though this is a concrete object and concrete effects a philosophical discussion of the event can then be carried on to learn and study how to improve this military model. This then is Western thought. 

On the other side of the coin of thought we have the Mid-eastern.  I clarify this from Eastern because this thought is altogether different from the two we are discussing and does not enter into the equation of our discussion of Hebrew.  This Mid-eastern or more precisely named primal thought is one that can be likened to quantum mechanics in our analogy.  One takes the same stone; launches it from the same sling and hits the same target.  However, a discussion about how to improve it is not near as important as the discussion of when it might come back and hit the launcher.  This seems strange to our western mind, but it is not to the primal mind.  For in the primal mind everything has a cyclic component to it.  “What goes around” might just in deed come around”.  It is a concrete thought in that everything is described by concrete objects, but life in general is cyclic.  An ox has attributes of strength, steadfastness and leadership.  It therefore is used to describe the Ever Existing our creator Elohim.  Though there is abstractness in the reasoning, it accepts the abstract without having to explain it.  Many things are simply taken as a child might do with out explanation, without question.  Elohim spoke and it was.  He has declared us righteous because of our faith, and so we are.   He is a plural singularity and so He is.  What more explanation do we need?  Yet this last one because of our western tainted minds is one of the most hotly debated statements in Scripture. 

Understanding the contrasted view of the two different methods of looking at the same grain of sand is what is needed as we attempt to return to the mind and thoughts of the scribes of Scriptures.  Remember, that He inspired most all of the scribes of Scripture to write down their flavor of His desired word.  It is only in the dictated pen of Moshe that we might find a word for word expression from the mouth of The Most High.  Even in these first four books of Scripture we find that we are looking at a more primal mind set rather than the corrupted western view.  Because of this, it is imperative that we endeavor to return to the child like mind of the early Chaldeean.  We must return to the time when we are told it is this way and we simply accept it.  His Ruach must guide us in the studies of Scripture as we venture into the Hebrew/Chaldee language for it is this Ruach that causes us to accept by faith what we do not clearly understand.  It is also the same Ruach coupled with faith that lets us know that life does not end with the death of body but some how continues in His presence.  Defining His words through the ancient Hebrew eyes opens a window of understanding that can not possibly be attained by linear thought.  For example, when is an object of equal measure of height, width and length not a cube or a pyramid?  Ya got to think out of the linear box for this answer!

END OF PART TWO