Loading...Here now is the tenth of my twelve favorite Christmas posts of years gone by, in our celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas.
******************************
Browsing through holiday-season blogs from previous eras, I came across my first small thread on Christmas from exactly six years ago. I had forgotten about this. Some of the material has shown up occasionally in the intervening years, but maybe it’s a good time to repost a bit of it. Here is the first: an account of what we can, and cannot, know about Jesus’ birth. Bethlehem? Virgin? Date? Or even
Get access to Dr. Ehrman's library of 4,000+ articles plus five new articles per week about the New Testament and early Christianity. It costs as little as $2.99/mth and every cent goes to charity!
Unlock 4,000+ Articles Like This!
Hello Bart. I gave a translation question if you don’t mind.
I was reading some translations of Isaiah 53 and I came across a different translation for verse 5 on the Jewish Apologetics site called Jews for judaism that changes the ending of verse 5.
They change it from “upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.” In the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition to their version which reads “the chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his company, we were healed”.
I didn’t find this translation in any other translation on bible gateway and so wanted to ask if this is a plausible or accurate translation. I don’t speak Hebrew and I don’t know how proficient yours is now but still just wondering if this translation is plausible in anything you’ve read or understood about Hebrew
Secondly if it is accurate does it change anything about understanding Isaiah’s “Suffering Servant”?
I’m afraid I don’t know! I’m out of the country and don’t have my reference books with me. It appears that the word that is use — חֲבֻרָ — can mean “friend/companion/buddy” (though not “company” in the sense of having “company” along with you for something you do??) but maybe that’s an alterative vowel pointing for the word for “wounds” or “stripes”? I’m baffled. Maybe one of our Hebrew scholars on the blog can explain it to us?
I have heard you give this information before but it is always good to review it. Thanks!
Do you think that the occupation of “builder” of Jesus and his father could be symbolic? That perhaps the authors were indicating that Jesus is the logos of God and that through him all things were made? That he is a divine architect who became human so it would be fitting for him to be born as the son of a builder and that he himself is a builder who has come to topple the temple and rebuild it within us so as to take humanity back to Eden?
Interesting idea. But it seems unlikely to me. The word that is used is not “maker” or “creator” or even “fabricator” in an elevated sense. “TEKTON” refers to a commonplace occupation, comparable today to something like “constrution worker.” TEKTONs did “make” things — if they worked with wood, then gates and yokes etc., or with metal (blacksmiths”) or “stone” (masons), etc. But they were not thought to be creative specialists bringing fine things into being, but more like those who provided the basic stuff needed by a household. The literary elite placed TEKTONs among the lower, despised (by elites) social classes, so would not be the likely designation for a divine “builder”.