January 22, 2014 ©Homer Kizer
Printable File
Rereading Prophecy Revisited
Introduction
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In late January twelve years ago, a publishing house offered to publish a POD book if I could get a manuscript to the publisher by the end of March 2002. I had just started the manuscript of A Philadelphia Apologetic (APA) for a different POD publisher, the one that had released seven books for me in 2001, and I doubted that I could complete a second manuscript by the end of March. However, I completed APA in early March, printed three copies, and had these draft copies out for comments with more than half of March remaining. So I hastily dashed off the little book titled, Rereading Prophecy, and had an electronic draft of its manuscript in the publisher’s hands on the last day of March.
The cover photo was one I took of Eastside Cook Inlet setnetters, the sons of friends working gear in 1986.
Early in Rereading Prophecy I addressed the issue of auditors assigning meaning to words, declaring that words do not come with little backpacks telling readers what meaning should be assigned to them, but that readers of inscribed words and hearers of uttered words must assign a meaning to a word based upon the context in which the word [sign or signifier] is encountered; so a word can mean whatever an auditor says the word means, thereby bringing into question whether real communication between people is possible.
At Babel, we find,
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name [shem] for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth." And [YHWH] came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And [YHWH] said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech." So [YHWH] dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there [YHWH] confused the language of all the earth. And from there [YHWH] dispersed them over the face of all the earth. (Gen 11:1–9)
Note: the bricks being made—the linguistic object [signified] for the English word <bricks>—remained unchanged after utterances were confused. What changed was the linguistic icon [signifier] used to represent the bricks; for even the utterance made by a speaker was unchanged in the speaker’s hearing. So the miracle that occurred was the separation of linguistic icon as heard from the linguistic object the icon previously represented. In other words, utterance was separated from meaning, thereby permitting an uttered word to represent any number of meanings, with the example I have used before being that of the word <Sabbath> … in Southeastern Idaho where I spent nine years, the Sabbath was Sunday, and the church was the meeting hall for the local Latter Day Saints’ ward. In the rural communities of Bannock, Oneida, Franklin, Bear Lake, Caribou Counties, there was little diversity of theological belief. There was only one church, one baptism, and one Sabbath—and that Sabbath wasn’t the seventh day of the week, but te mia ton sabbaton (the first [after] the Sabbath).
However, in the area around Canyonville, Oregon, where there are many Seventh Day Adventists, the Sabbath can only be the seventh day of the week. It cannot be “the day after the Sabbath,” the day on which Jesus was resurrected as the reality of the ancient Wave Sheaf Offering (see Lev 23:9–14); the reality of the first handful of the barley harvested and waved before the Lord on the morning of the day after the weekly Sabbath that falls within the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Although Sadducees and Pharisees differed as to when the Wave Sheaf Offering was to occur, for Christians, Christ Jesus as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering settles the ambiguity concerning how to assign meaning to the words of Moses. Rabbinical Judaism has the Wave Sheaf Offering occurring on a fixed calendar date, the 16th day of Aviv, the wrong day-after-the-Sabbath. And Latter Day Saints have the wrong Sabbath day. But within their respective reading communities, their assignment of meaning to inscribed words makes sense to them.
Long ago, when inscription of linguistic icons was new and inscription was considered inferior to utterance, another class linguistic of signifiers existed: unpronounced determinatives that gave to readers the context for inscription of an utterance—that gave readers knowledge that a person hearing an utterance would have had simply by being present when the utterance took place. These linguistic determinatives, again, were never pronounced, never uttered, but told the reader who spoke, when the utterance occurred, where the utterance occurred, and in what language the utterance occurred. Linguistic determinatives are akin to stage directions written in the margins of the text for a play (in translation of cuneiform texts, they are written as lower case superscript). When a reader “reads” the play aloud, the reader doesn’t usually read the stage directions but skips over them unless these directions are germane to the plot of the play—and even then, they are normally skipped.
Over time, however, all languages change: in his Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language, Dr. Samuel Johnson (1755 CE) wrote, “With this hope [of fixing the language], however, academies have been instituted, to guard the avenues of their languages, to retain fugitives, and repulse intruders; but their vigilance and activity have hitherto been vain; sounds are too volatile and subtle for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength” (emphasis added).
Hebrew underwent refining-types of changes during the reign of the kings, with the language of the Northern Kingdom of Samaria departing from the language of the Southern Kingdom of Jerusalem in discernable ways … the antediluvian stories of Genesis that we have today are, I believe, in the language of 9th-Century BCE Samaria. I suspect when the Book of the Covenant was found in the dilapidated temple during the days of King Josiah (2 Kings 22:8), the outer wraps of the scroll were unreadable. Thus, to recover what was damaged, another scroll had to be found and copied, with this second scroll coming from either Bethel or Samaria when Josiah pulled down the altar Jeroboam had erected at Bethel then removed the shrines on the high places at Samaria (2 Kings 23:15–19). Regardless, the outer wraps of the re-copied scroll that was the Book of the Covenant were in the Hebrew of Jeroboam’s kingdom.
But perhaps the most significant linguistic change that occurred under the kings and then during the Babylonian exile was the transformation of linguistic determinatives into regular nouns …
Technically, a determinative is an ideogram marking semantic categories in logographic scripts. In ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs—Moses would have been schooled in reading and writing hieroglyphs—determinatives included symbols for divinities that aided reading an inscription but determinatives were never pronounced. Nearly every word included a determinative that came at the end of the word and preceded any suffixes. However, when Moses wrote as commanded by the Lord to write “‘a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua’” (Ex 17:14), he wrote in a partially alphabetized Semitic language [proto-Hebrew]. If he had written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, there would have been no need for him to recite what he wrote in Joshua’s ears, but because Semitic languages are only partially alphabetized, the reader needs to hear consonant clusters “read” through the insertion of appropriate vowels in the consonant cluster before the text can be read by someone other than the text’s author.
Writing in a Semitic language would have been more efficient than writing in glyphs.
Moses apparently wrote what he was commanded to write in modified Phoenician script: it was not unusual to write several languages using the same script. The tendency not to invent a new script for a language but to use an existing script is seen today in English being written in Latin script, and seen in the ancient world with the Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hittite languages being distinct languages that were written in the same cuneiform script.
Having been reared in the Pharaoh’s household, Moses should have been familiar with the languages of the Fertile Crescent whether written in glyphs, hieroglyphs, or in cuneiform script. Moses would have also used determinatives either preceding or following a word that specified the particular semantic group of the word. Again, these determinatives were not pronounced. It would have seemed logical to Moses to use determinatives when writing proto-Hebrew text in borrowed Phoenician script, and it should have seemed equally logical to use a determinative for the God of Abraham, this determinative being the never-pronounced Tetragrammaton YHWH that aided reading the text he wrote in partially alphabetized proto-Hebrew.
But with the linguistic changes that would have come from five and more centuries of usage without dictionaries to stay linguistic drift, the language spoken by the people of Israel would have been considerably different from the Hebrew written by scribes (most of Israel would have been illiterate), but the Hebrew written by scribes would have differed from the proto-Hebrew of Moses’ generation, with examples of this proto-Hebrew having been found inscribed on cave walls. Thus, scribes then writing in imperial Hebrew would have needed to translate the writings of Moses into the language of the kings in the same way that the Middle English of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ca 1350 CE) needs to be translated into modern English before most English speakers can read this midlands classic of just seven centuries ago. A few lines from the beginning of Sir Gawain will make my point:
Passus I
SIÞEN þe sege and þe assaut watz sesed at Troye,
Þe bor brittened and brent to bronde and askez,
Þe tulk þat þe trammes of tresoun þer wrot
Watz tried for his tricherie, þe trewest on erthe:
Hit watz Ennias þe athel, and his highe kynde,
Þat siþen depreced prouinces, and patrounes bicome
Welne e of al þe wele in þe west iles.
Fro riche Romulus to Rome ricchis hym swyþe,
With gret bobbaunce þat bur e he biges vpon fyrst,
And neuenes hit his aune nome, as hit now hat;
Tirius to Tuskan and teldes bigynnes,
Langaberde in Lumbardie lyftes vp homes,
And fer ouer þe French flod Felix Brutus
On mony bonkkes ful brode Bretayn he settez
wyth wynne,
The thorn character represents “th”; thus the word <þe> is “the.”
If a modern English speaker phonetically sounds out each Middle English word, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight can be read for the sounds of the words remain similar—and this would have been the case when the Book of the Covenant was found in the dilapidated temple in the days of King Josiah, only Moses’ writing would not have included vowels. And with losing the Book of the Covenant for some time, exactly which vowels were to be inserted where would have been unknown.
The reason the Lord instructed Moses to read what he, Moses, wrote in the hearing of Joshua was so that Joshua would know what word was to be formed from the inscribed roots [consonant clusters], all that would have been written. So a missing generation between when a Semitic text was inscribed and when it is again read produces approximations of how the text is to be read; for the vowels inserted between the consonants of the root are merely guesses until enough context is established that better assignment of vowels can be made. And in losing the Book of the Covenant then finding it again, the root consonant clusters that Moses would have written and that would have been copied and recopied throughout the time of the judges would have needed to be artfully translated into the root consonant clusters of imperial Hebrew, with less loss of root clusters occurring than in fully alphabetized languages, but with most loss of nuances and linguistic precision.
Imperial Hebrew doesn’t use linguistic determinatives; so what were translators [scribes] to do with these extra words found in Moses … what they did that is of importance to endtime disciples was produce linguistically awkward sentences that seek to mimetically represent the speech of the Lord, the God of Abraham. They gave the God of Abraham a name that was too sacred to pronounce—why was this name to sacred to pronounce? Because it had never been pronounced. It wasn’t pronounced in the days of Moses, nor anytime since. Why? Because this “name” was a linguistic determinative and NOT a name: it was an ideogram denoting a semantic category, that of the divine.
After the House of Judah’s exile to Babylon, priests and scribes elevated monotheism to the status of an idol, the only idol that Israel was to worship. And the linguistic determinative that identified the divine was treated as a singular noun and assigned singular verbs, thereby creating linguistic nonsense.
Endtime disciples receive an Old Testament text that frequently uses the construction, YHWH your [Israel’s] Elohim, translated into English as LORD your God. But Elohim [Strong’s #H430] is the regular plural of Eloah despite being assigned by imperial Hebrew translators linguistic singleness, thereby taking singular verbs. El [Strong’s #410] is the Semitic singular form of God. And Eloah is the Hebrew equivalent to the Arabic name for God, Allah. Both are cognates, and both deconstruct to <El + ah>, with the /ah/ radical representing aspiration or breath; thus, Allah/Eloah deconstruct to <God + His eternal breath>. But again, Elohim is the regular plural of Eloah; so Elohim deconstructs to <[El + breath] + [El + breath]> an undeterminable number of times, with the number of times established by the Tetragrammaton YHWH, which deconstructs to <YH + WH>, with the glottal stop again representing aspiration or breath …
Consonants are formed through the interruption of breath, interruption of the vowel stream. The glottal stop interrupts breath at the very back of the mouth, before the mouth can serve as a sound chamber. Thus, the glottal stop, inscribed as the letter /H/, is really a soundless letter used to represent aspiration or rough breathing on a near consonant. Plus, consonants as interruptions of the vowel stream tend toward silence. A consonant cluster is absolutely silent. A vowel stream or several vowel streams have to be added to a consonant cluster before “silence” is transformed into words, with the vowel streams coming from breath that represents life. An inscribed Semitic language text is lifeless until read; until a human person inserts his or her breath of life into the text in a manner analogous to Elohim [singular in usage] breathing His breath into the nostrils of the man of mud. So a theological reason exists for Moses writing in a proto-Semitic language rather than in hieroglyphs.
Sometime during the Exile, priests and scribes, knowing that the Tetragrammaton YHWH had never been pronounced, assigned vowels to the Tetragrammaton that reflected the theological tradition they had received that stood in opposition to their idol of monotheism … in lieu of pronouncing the Tetragrammaton, they began to sing the word <Adonai> when they encountered the always unpronounced Tetragrammaton in Holy Writ. Allegedly, the word Adonai represents the vowels that would have been inserted into the Tetragrammaton if the consonant cluster would have been pronounced—and if we were to combine Adonai with YHWH, we would get (still unpronounced) the following: <YaH d~n WaiH>, which would read, Yah and another such WaiH, with Yah now not being a contraction for the Tetragrammaton, but physical or visible face of the conjoined deities forming the Tetragrammaton that is again, a linguistic determinative denoting a semantic category or class, that which is divine.
No rereading of prophecy is possible without understanding Hebrew style poetic construction in which the initial presentation of a thought or of a narrative scene forms the physical shadow and copy [mirror or chiral image] of a spiritual thought or narrative in the manner of “night” preceding “day,” darkness preceding light, the creation of Yah preceding the creation of God the Father, the God Israel never knew, with Yah being the deity that interacted with humanity as the God of Abraham, the God of the living (Matt 22:32), the Logos [’o Logos] that was God [Theos] and that was with [pros] the God [ton Theon] in primacy [arche] (John 1:1) and that created all things physical (v. 3). It was Yah that entered His creation as His unique Son (John 3:16) not to condemn the world but to save it—
And Jesus cried out and said, "Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has Himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that His commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me." (John 12:44–50)
The Logos who was God left His word [’o logos which I spoke] with His disciples as the judge of unbelievers and doubters, but the words that Jesus spoke were the Father’s words—and it is these words that determine who receives eternal life, or life outside of space-time.
The Apostle Paul wrote, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:5–8 emphasis added).
Elsewhere, Paul wrote, “Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one” (Gal 3:19–20 emphasis added).
Who was the “intermediary” that put the Law into place? Was this intermediary not the God that took the fathers of Israel by the hand to lead this nation out from Egypt? About this God, Paul wrote,
For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. (1 Cor 10:1–6)
The author of Hebrews wrote,
For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. For He finds fault with them when He says: "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more." (Heb 8:7–12)
In this the author of Hebrews cites the prophet Jeremiah,
Behold, the days are coming, declares [YHWH], when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares [YHWH]. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares [YHWH]: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, 'Know [YHWH],' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares [YHWH]. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jer 31:31–34)
Plus, the author of Hebrews wrote,
Therefore, as the holy spirit [to pneuma to ’agion] says, "Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, 'They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.' As I swore in my wrath, 'They shall not enter my rest.'" Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called "today," that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion." For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was He provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter that rest, as He has said, "As I swore in my wrath, 'They shall not enter my rest,'" although His works were finished from the foundation of the world. For He has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: "And God rested on the seventh day from all his works." And again in this passage He said, "They shall not enter my rest." Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again He appoints a certain day, "Today," saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. (Heb 3:7–4:11)
Again, who was it that led Israel out from Egypt, and who was provoked with the fathers of Israel for forty years, and who declared that they should not enter into His rest—and where is this passage found?
Oh come, let us sing to [YHWH];
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise!
For [YHWH] is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
In His hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are His also.
The sea is His, for He made it,
and His hands formed the dry land.
Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
let us kneel before [YHWH], our Maker!
For He is our God,
and we are the people of His pasture,
and the sheep of His hand.
Today, if you hear His voice,
do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your fathers put Me to the test
and put Me to the proof, though they had seen My work.
For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, "They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known My ways."
Therefore I swore in My wrath,
"They shall not enter my rest." (Ps 95:1–38)
David was a very good poet, and Psalm 95 is in classic Hebrew style construction of thought-couplets that themselves reflect the physical/spiritual aspect of Hebrew style poetics … in going from verse 8 to verse 9, the narrating voice of the psalm moves from physical [the voice of David] to spiritual, the voice of the Rock that stood between Israel and the army of Pharaoh, with this Rock being—according to Paul—Christ Jesus, the intermediary that gave Israel the Law, that was the Creator of man and of all things physical, that was the God of Abraham, the God of physically living ones. For again, who was it that loathed that generation?
And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, "Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is [YHWH] bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?" And they said to one another, "Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt." Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the people of Israel. And Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes and said to all the congregation of the people of Israel, "The land, which we passed through to spy it out, is an exceedingly good land. If [YHWH] delights in us, He will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against [YHWH]. And do not fear the people of the land, for they are bread for us. Their protection is removed from them, and [YHWH] is with us; do not fear them." Then all the congregation said to stone them with stones. But the glory of [YHWH] appeared at the tent of meeting to all the people of Israel. And [YHWH] said to Moses, "How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they." But Moses said to [YHWH], "Then the Egyptians will hear of it, for you brought up this people in your might from among them, and they will tell the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that you, O [YHWH], are in the midst of this people. For you, O [YHWH], are seen face to face, and your cloud stands over them and you go before them, in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. …” (Num 14:2–14)
Again, who said what to whom? To whom did Moses plead for the people’s lives? Was it not the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night that went before the people of Israel? Was it not the intermediary—in Paul’s words—that gave to Israel the Law? Was this intermediary not then the God of Abraham, the God of living ones, not the God of dead ones? Indeed, this is the case—and the reality that the people of Israel screwed up linguistically when imperial Hebrew scribes transformed a linguistic determinative into a naming icon, a noun, singular in number.
God is one, but <one> denotes unity as well as numerical singleness. And in the conjoined Tetragrammaton YHWH, two deities functioned as one deity as a man and his wife were one flesh in the beginning—and are to be one flesh before God as the inner self and the outer self of a human person are one person.
Israel is one nation as a man and his wife are one flesh, with circumcised in the flesh Israel forming the spiritually lifeless shadow and copy of circumcised of heart Israel. These two nations of Israel have the same Head, the Rock that is Christ Jesus and that was the God of Abraham, the Creator of all things physical. So biblical prophecies about Israel pertain physically to the nation that is circumcised in the flesh, but pertain spiritually to the nation that is circumcised of heart, thereby breaking down the barrier of circumcision that separated natural Israel from the remainder of the natural world [from Gentiles].
In Rereading Prophecy Revisited, I will develop how Hebrew style narration discloses through the things that have occurred knowledge of invisible spiritual things that cannot otherwise be known to mortal man, with those things that Yah, the God of Abraham, did revealing those things that God the Father will do in the heavenly realm in dealing with circumcised of heart Israel.
The outwardly circumcised nation of Israel never knew the Father, the God of dead ones and the God that raised the crucified man Jesus from death. Early-on, greater Christendom understood but didn’t understand the construction of the Tetragrammaton. You will, if you continue reading, know more than any human teacher of Israel: you will know more than I know, but then, I too will know more than I know as I rewrite a manuscript I constructed in haste twelve years ago.
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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."
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