“Scientific investigation without your religious assumptions”
What are 2 of those “religious assumptions”?
Einstein was a deist. Did he have any “religious assumptions”?

“Random ‘choice’” made by who or what?”
“understand the use of quotation marks around the word ‘choice’?”
Not in the phrase “random ‘choice.’”
What are 2 examples of a “random ‘choice’”?
If Mother Nature decided to make a butterfly out of a mosquito, but didn’t decide to make a ladybug out of a fruitfly, would that be a “random ‘choice’”?

“should be able to understand your own analogy without asking others to explain it”
What’s referred to by “your own analogy”?

“What’s 1 circular argument I’ve presented about the origin of life?”
“Your assumption that it could only result from ‘Mind’”
What statement(s) of mine lead you to think I have an “assumption that it could only result from ‘Mind’”?
Where do you think life came from?
(‘on its own volition, entirely-mindless Matter decided to make a “random ‘choice’” to become life, and voila, spontaneous generation occurred’?)

“the CRAP– the ‘Completely Ridiculous Anthropic Principle.’”
“your need to ridicule does not speak well of your ability to engage in rationale discussion”
It’s not original to me. Do you think Gardner’s use of ‘CRAP’ “does not speak well of” his “ability to engage in rationale [sic] discussion”?

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Finally, regarding FAP, he quotes from a famous polemical review by Martin Gardner in the New York Review of Books (Gardner 1986), which states
“As the authors make clear in their introduction, there is not one principle but four. Each is more speculative than the previous one, with the fourth blasting the authors out of science altogether into clouds of metaphysics and fantasy. … ‘FAP’ (short for Future Anthropic Principle) is more accurately dubbed ‘CRAP’ (Completely Ridiculous Anthropic Principle).”

“it’s just a forced reading on the text”
Is translating g-b-r-h as ‘her husband’ “a forced reading on the text”?

_A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods_ by Michael Sokoloff (2002), 1582pp., on 258-259
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1# g-b-r-a … n.m. man, husband …
1. man: a. general: 
… what (difference) is a man from (other) men? San 65b(25); …
when we were young (we wanted) to become men.
Now that we have grown old (we want) to become children BQ 92b(53);

2. husband: sg. … a certain husband who divorced his wife Pes 110b(15);
… a certain husband who threw a _get_ to his wife among the vats Git 19b(55);
… I want a husband Qid 31b(25);
… her husband went (and) married another woman Ket 80b (7);
… it is permitted for a menstruous woman to be together in one room with her husband San 37a(22);
… (a woman) whose husband is an ‘ant’ Ket 75a(18);
… her mother’s husband Anan 103:18;
pl.abs. … Jewish husbands SSHai 13b(19);
det. … these (men) are our husbands Git 45a(45; O^);
… you should be modest (even) in the presence of your husbands Sab 140b(28);
… they wait for their husbands Ber 17a(48);

3. authority: sg.  … an authority the son of an authority MQ 25b(4);
… you are raising a contradiction between one authority and another Er 82a(l);
… transmits it without (additional) authorities Ket 6a(12);
4. sg. in phrase … euph. for 1st or 2nd pers. pron. I, you [lit. that man; ….

“examples where ‘authority’ is used for a ‘father’ or ‘step-father’?”
Not yet.
It’d be interesting to find out how Catholic priests came to be called ‘father.’

“I have no objection to the translation of ‘husband’; it’s common enough, perhaps especially in translation of Greek or Hebrew”
Do you have any objection to saying Matthew presents Mary’s lineage?

_Saint Ephrem’s Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron: An English Translation of Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709 with Introduction and Notes_ (1993, 2000), on 55

Matthew wrote concerning the genealogy of Mary, from whom our Lord was born.
This was why he began with,
_From David and from Abraham_, according as the promise indicated.
_Not to you and to your descendants as though unto many,
but to you and to your descendant, which descendant is Christ_.
Luke, however [was concerned] only with Joseph, husband of Mary,
and [went back] as far as Adam who is from God,
so that he might teach that he, who in the beginning created Adam,
established the Temple.

“b: Or acc. to some Shem-Tov mss.: ‘the father of Miryam.'”
“Which mss and what word do they use for ‘father’?”
Beats me.

“this discussion is pointless”
Nobody is forcing you to reply.

Charles Cutler Torrey
“thought the Old Syriac gospels were translations made by Jews from Palestine and the Peshitta was also a translation. His own theories of Aramaic originals have been largely rejected by scholars, in large part because of the findings in contemporary Greek texts by Deissmann, Grenfell, and Hunt. Edgar Goodspeed, a linguist and specialist in Semitic languages without peer, extensively criticized Torrey and pointed out how Semiticists disagreed among themselves (DMI). Torrey’s historical view that all of the New Testament was written before 50 CE is not followed by any critical scholars. By the way, he did not think the gospel of Luke, as is, was written in Aramaic, but Greek, though he hypothesized that Luke first arranged Aramaic sources and translated them. Currently the definitive work on this is Semitisms in Luke’s Greek: A Descriptive Analysis of Lexical and Syntactical Domains of Semitic Language Influence in Luke’s Gospel (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament) by Albert Hogeterp and Adelbert Denaux, one of my professors in grad school. Note that Torrey preferred ‘jar merchant’ to ‘potter’, and this is based merely on his assumption “there must have been enterprising tradesmen (not makers of jars) who bought at wholesale and supplied the ever-lively market” (OTG, 96). He presents no evidence of common usage of this word for a ‘jar merchant’ or ‘potter’.”

“the point. גרב, גרבא can rarely mean ‘skin bottle’, ‘jug’, but ‘potter’ is not a typical translation. It seems to have been questionably derived from the fact that a jug can be made by a potter. It’s not very clear to me if that it is a good translation”
Native Aramaic speaker Paul Younan thinks it’s fine.

“Are you aware of this meaning appearing often in other contexts?”
No.

“There weren’t vowel points originally”
“So you admit that the Peshitta is a revision into which mistakes have been introduced?”
All mss. including Peshitta mss. have mistakes.
All existing mss. of the 4 gospels are copies of and differ from the very first Mt, Mk, Lk, and Jn.

As I look at dukhrana.com’s Peshitta lookup tool ‘analyze’ option,
and look at Silver’s transcription of Khabouris
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and the accompanying ms. pics for
Matthew 26:6 (on 63),
Mark 14:3 (on 109), and
Luke 22:10 (on 187),
I don’t see Khabouris differentiating between g-r-b-a as leper vs. potter.
Do you?

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Mark 14:3 – Toen Hij in Bethanië was, in het huis van Simeon, de melaatse, kwam er terwijl Hij (aan tafel) aanlag, een vrouw met een albasten kruik met balsem van de beste en kostbaarste nardusolie. Zij opende die en goot (de olie) over het hoofd van Jezus uit.
       Bethanië – zie de noot bij Mt. 21:17.
       de melaatse – het Aramese woord ‘garbā’ dat we in de Peshitta aantreffen, kan in een niet-Syrisch Aramees dialect zowel ‘melaatse’ als ‘pot’ of zelfs ‘pottenbakker’ betekenen. Bauscher en Paul Younan kiezen daarom voor de vertaling ‘pottenbakker’ en redeneren dat Jezus toch niet bij een melaatse, een onreine voor de Wet, op bezoek zou gaan. Een viertal andere vertalingen van het Aramees houden echter vast aan de vertaling ‘melaatse’. Zie de noot bij Mt. 26:6.
       het hoofd van Jezus – dit is de lezing van de Aramese Peshitta. De lezing van de Griekse NA28, MHT en TR luidt: ‘zijn hoofd’.

google translate:
Mark 14:3 – While He was in Bethany, in the house of Simeon the leper, while He was reclining (at table), a woman came with an alabaster jar of ointment of the best and most precious nard’s oil. She opened it and poured (the oil) on the head of Jesus.
        Bethany – see note at Mt. 21:17.
        the leper – the Aramaic word “garbā” found in the Peshitta can mean “leper” as well as “pot” or even “potter” in a non-Syriac Aramaic dialect. Bauscher and Paul Younan therefore opt for the translation ‘potter’ and reason that Jesus would not visit a leper, an unclean person for the Law. However, four other translations of Aramaic stick to the translation ‘leper’. See note to Mt. 26:6.
        the head of Jesus – this is the reading of the Aramaic Peshitta. The reading of the Greek NA28, MHT and TR reads: ‘his head’.

“He seems to be referring to a polemical criticism of scientists for engaging in metaphysics and fantasy”

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Rebuttal: It is hard to treat these FAP and Omega Point hypotheses seriously. In the New York Review of Books, noted critic Martin Gardner offered this evaluation of Barrow and Tipler’s work:
“What should we make of this quartet of WAP, SAP, PAP, and FAP? In my not so humble opinion I think the last principle is best called CRAP, the Completely Ridiculous Anthropic Principle.”44

“Essentially, I think we’re dealing with something like the anthropic principle:
‘Stronger yet is the final anthropic principle (FAP), proposed by John D. Barrow and Frank Tipler, which views the universe’s structure as expressible by bits of information in such a way that information processing is inevitable and eternal.'”

“There have been many apologetic attempts to argue that Luke (or more rarely Matthew) gives an unusual maternal genealogy. These are apologetic because they are motivated primarily to resolve the obvious contradictions between the two genealogies”
Did Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306 – 373) have that motivation?

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The third category of Ephrem’s writings is his prose work. He wrote a biblical commentary on the Diatessaron (the single gospel harmony of the early Syriac church), the Syriac original of which was found in 1957.

“don’t understand what you’re asking”
I looked at dukhrana.com’s Peshitta lookup tool ‘analyze’ option,
and looked at Silver’s transcription of Khabouris
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and looked at the accompanying ms. pics for
Matthew 26:6 (on 63),
Mark 14:3 (on 109), and
Luke 22:10 (on 187).
I didn’t see Khabouris differentiating between g-r-b-a as leper vs. potter.
I invite you to look at Khabouris, and see if you detect Khabouris differentiating between g-r-b-a as leper vs. potter.

“Why should the Khabouris codex be expected to differentiate between ‘leper’ and ‘potmaker’? It’s in Syriac”
Maybe this would be better: Shimon Jar/Pot/Pottery.

Paul Younan in the thread “Potter in MT 26 A translation mistake”
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November 9th, 2011, 12:23 am:
….in Aramaic the word Garaba (jar-collector, jar-maker, keeper-of-jars, etc.) is a totally different word than Garba (leper). They are spelled with the same consonants, but the vowels are different and the words are pronounced differently.

Here is the relevant entry from Toma Audo’s dictionary: (note: it is a secondary meaning as attested to by Mar Toma Audo below): ….

Mar Toma noted (highlighted in blue) that “garba” is “leper” (“(he) who has leprosy in his flesh”). The secondary meaning, highlighted in red, is “garaba” (“he who has jars (garbe)”).

I have translated “garaba” (jar-keeper) in Matthew 26:6, not “garba” (leper). See the context around the verse, too.

Additionally, it is not only we who have made this connection. It was also noted by Professor Charles C. Torrey of Yale Univesity (professor of Semitic Languages): ….

We are told in Luke 17:12, that the ten lepers stood a distance from Christ while pleading to be cleansed…and we should make this verse in Matthew 26:6 read that Christ walked into a leper’s home, and others were voluntarily present also?

November 9th, 2011, 05:47 pm:
….it could go either way. This was a major issue before vowel points were invented. I can’t rule out “leper”, either, grammatically either one works fine.

Yet, while both can work, it’s the translators job to decide which one makes more sense. The Greek translator decided “leper” made more sense, apparently unaware of the implication of a bunch of people having dinner at a leper’s home. Shimon may have been cured of his leprosy, perhaps even by Meshikha, but we have no record of that. And besides, why would his nickname continue that stigma ?

Add in the factor of the lady with the alabaster jar of fine perfume/incense, and you wonder whether or not the proper way to look at Shimon is that he was associated somehow with fancy vessels, perhaps as his job.

Very important, Akhi, notice that this was part of his name. “Shimon Garaba”, like “Shimon Keepa”. The text does not say, “Shimon, who was a leper”, it literally implies that is how he was known, almost as if it’s a surname. This is very indicative of how it should be translated.

“evidence of this meaning appearing often in other contexts”
The meaning appeared often enough to make it into dictionaries.

_A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods_ by Michael Sokoloff (2002), 1582pp., on 298
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1# g-r-b-a, g-r-a-b-a n.m. jug, bottle (TA … pl. TJ 1S 25:18, Sy g-r-b-a [3 dots over ‘r’ in a boomerang shape pointed to the left; 2 dots over ‘b’ at an angle slanted upward pointing to the right]
LS 130; cf. Akk _gurabu_ A bag CAD G 136, mng.
1)
a. general: sg. _Bo_ 119:20;
b. for wine: sg. … _Sab_ 10b(36);
_Pes_ 36b(40) [expl. BH … 2S 6:19];
_ib_. 52b(19);
_Bes_ 12b(38);
_Meg_ 7a(53);
pl.cs. … ib. 7b(l);
c. for oil: pl. … sixty jugs of oil _BB_ 73b(18; MGG 51:16)

Lit: D. Shapira, IJ 4[1999] 134 [Iranian etym.]; Y: … _Pes_ ib.(BAYTN 79).

2# g-r-b-a [no dots] n.m. troop (…) sg. … a troop came at night and plundered the town _Ber_ 60b(58) [RaH: … OHR ib. 67:28]

3# g-r-b-a [dot to left of, and a dash under, ‘g’;
2 vertical dots under ‘r’;
T shape under ‘b’] n.m. leprosy (TA g-r-b-a [triangle shape pointed downward toward left over ‘g’;
triangle shape pointed to left over ‘b’] TO Dt 28:27, Sy g-r-b-a [a dot above and a dot below ‘g’; dot above ‘r’; two dots over ‘b’ at an angle slanted upward pointing to the right, plus 1 dot below, ‘b’] LS 130) sg. … _Bo_ 74:13 [in a list of diseases]