Old Greek was studied by Danny’s guest, Ammon Hillman.
Ammon, was not impressed with my local Dallas Theological Seminary Greek program, so he found a better place to teach him Old Greek.
I’m up to 54:27 of 3 hours and 26 minutes.
After studying, he presented a paper on medicinal drugs and recreational drugs, say circa 50-150 CE.
He was told to take out the part about recreational drugs.
The thing about this is that he had gone into an area not translated by many people. So his subject matter was worthy but the subject matter was dangerous. Academia could appreciate him going into an area where few had trod and it opened up the world of 50-150 CE as it relates to drug use, medicinal and recreational.
A second thing he brought up was that Ancient Hebrew had a smaller word count than Ancient Greek. Now, we all know that the Dead Sea Scrolls did include fragments from the 5 books of the Torah, but Ammon’s position is that the Septuagint was not a translation of the Hebrew Torah, it was written in Ancient Greek at the time of the creation of the Septuagint.
Maybe while the compilers of the Septuagint were making up the Ancient Greek Torah, they also wrote a Hebrew Torah and that is what was found in the DSS manuscripts of Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers and Deuteronomy that were in Hebrew.
I would say the 70 Hebrew scholars brought whatever Ancient Hebrew source documents to Alexandria; BUT, how complete was their Torah and how many traditions did they have to join together–priestly source, Yahwist source, Elohist source, Deuteronomist source?
Okay, I’m reminded of reading The Bacchae. The women go into a frenzy at the end of the play.
Ammon brings up an instance where a man’s daughters on high and he has to ask someone to create an antidote to bring them down.
Snake venom was used as drugs. Maybe that’s why Medusa has so many snakes coming from her head.
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Check this out: Learn Ancient Greek from a tutor charging $35 to $125 an hour.
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@Robert
Do you teach Ancient Greek on wyzant?
Danny
We were earlier talking about the DSS and how the HEBREW was back translated from Ancient Greek.
Ammon
None of them were written in Hebrew.
The Old Testament is a work of the 3rd century and it’s originally in Greek (NOT Hebrew which was a liturgical language)
Eve from Genesis is the should that a Bachant makes.
Christ is a pharmaceutical term.
Nonas writes a paraphrase of Gospel of John.
I will p/u at 1:24:06 of 3:26.09
…but Ammon’s position is that the Septuagint was not a translation of the Hebrew Torah, it was written in Ancient Greek at the time of the creation of the Septuagint.
Maybe while the compilers of the Septuagint were making up the Ancient Greek Torah, they also wrote a Hebrew Torah and that is what was found in the DSS manuscripts of Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers and Deuteronomy that were in Hebrew.
Actual Hebrew scholars will laugh at this. There are ways to tell that the LXX is the translation and not the other way round. For one thing the translators of the LXX frequently translate Hebrew idioms they don’t understand literally rather than express the same thought in Greek. You will find that Ammon has no Hebrew.
Stephen
You will find that Ammon has no Hebrew.
Steefen
As if I do not already know that Ammon had a required course in Hebrew during his studies.
Stephen
Actual Hebrew scholars will laugh at this. There are ways to tell that the LXX is the translation and not the other way round.
Steefen
Leave that comment under the video. Maybe you will get a response. Then we can pick up your opinion which usually is not reliable.
Ancient Greek has 250,000+ words
Ancient Hebrew has 8,999 wirds
After discussing this with Chat GPT 4, I want to share the following.
Chat said:
Ancient Greek: 250,000+ may be accurate if counting all forms and variations; a more conservative estimate for distinct words is around 50,000–60,000.
Ancient Hebrew: 8,000 is a reasonable estimate for Biblical Hebrew, reflecting distinct roots and words.
Thus, while the numbers provide a general sense of the scale, they reflect different counting methods and contexts.
Steefen:
So we still have 50,000 to 8,000
Chat:
2. Ancient Hebrew Vocabulary Estimate
The figure of 8,000 words for Ancient Hebrew refers primarily to:
The vocabulary of Biblical Hebrew (the Hebrew used in the Tanakh).
Distinct roots and words, not counting variations due to inflection or derivation.
The limited number of extant texts compared to Greek.
Acts 19:12. Greek
As a rule of thumb, if the English word contains (ch, r, t) you might to look it at as being derived from the word Christ.
Ancient Hebrew is not a medical language. Ancient Hebrew was a language spoken by the Hebrew priesthood who the Hebrew people didn’t really have much respect for. If you want to speak ancient Hebrew you better have lots of real life experience religiously sacrificing animals in the desert. Ancient Hebrew scholarship is being an actor who reads a script for a cartoon movie.
Acts 20:7-12 is a passage to look it in Greek, and Acts 19:11-22. (Concepts of the healing powers of the Catholic relics.)
You can see that in verse 10, ψυχὴ psyche is translated KJV English as life. Now everybody knows in medical language that psyche refers to the mind, brain. Psychology. The word has more than one meaning. The different meanings should not contradict within the correct understanding. What do psychologist do? They prescribe drugs. I should know, I was expected to become a psychologist in my 20s. I said no, I don’t believe in this profession and would rather be a normal working class person psychiatrist truck driver soldier.
Now the word psychiatrist is made of the words psyche, hand:power of Christ.
So yes, you can even see within the modern English how the word Christ is a medical term. Christ the great physician. Luke 4:23, John 5:31-32.
@Robert:
the wild claim that he does about the Hebrew of the Torah being a translation of the LXX.
Steefen:
Ptolemy II Philadelphus
reign: 284 BCE to 246 BCE
He authorized the Septuagint.
According to tradition, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (the Greek Pharaoh of Egypt) sent seventy-two Hebrew translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel—from Jerusalem to Alexandria to translate the Tanakh from Biblical Hebrew into Koine Greek, for inclusion in his library.
= = =
According to Aristobulus of Alexandria’s fragment 3, portions of the Law were translated from Hebrew into Greek long before the well-known Septuagint version. He stated that Plato and Pythagoras knew the Jewish Law and borrowed from it.[26]
26: A. Yarbro Collins, Aristobulus (Second Century B.C.). A New Translation And Introduction, in James H. Charlesworth (1985), The Old Testament Pseudoepigrapha, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company Inc., Volume 2, ISBN 0-385-09630-5 (Vol. 1), ISBN 0-385-18813-7 (Vol. 2), p. 831.
Again:
portions of the Law were translated from Hebrew into Greek long before the well-known Septuagint version.
Is Yarbro Collins making a wild claim ? ? ? Are Hebrew scholars laughing at her?
I did not say the Hebrew of the Torah which existed before the Septuagint was a translation of the LXX.
AS the prior post by me states: portions of the Torah were already translated into Greek.
Hillman’s words are at
starts at 47:15
and
starts at 1: 16: 40
“When you read the Septuagint it reads as GReek with Greek idioms, it does not read as a translation.”
Video Comment:
Wow. I thought I was looking for things to disprove Ammon and his claim that the Greek Bible came first, instead I am finding things that would plug right into his story. I was reading about the Septuagint, and it said “The full Greek title derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates that “the laws of the Jews” were translated into the Greek language at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–247 BCE) by seventy-two Hebrew translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.”
So I think to myself wow there’s a letter that backs up the fact that translators were sent to translate the original Hebrew Bible so more people could read it, disproving Ammon’s claim. Then I click on the link to read more about this letter itself.
“The letter describes the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible by seventy-two interpreters sent into Egypt from Jerusalem at the request of the librarian of Alexandria, resulting in the Septuagint translation. Some scholars have since argued that it is fictitious.”
“The inconsistencies and anachronisms of the author, exposed by many 17th-century scholars were collected and presented by Humphrey Hody (1659–1706), Hody placed the writing closer to 170–130 BC. Modern scholarship is unanimously with Hody.”
“In 2001, Bruce Metzger writes:
Most scholars who have analyzed the letter have concluded that the author cannot have been the man he represented himself to be but was a Jew who wrote a fictitious account in order to enhance the importance of the Hebrew Scriptures by suggesting that a pagan king had recognized their significance and therefore arranged for their translation into Greek.”
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