🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <EGEv0s.Fn...@deshaw.com>,  <mi...@aishdas.org> wrote:
[replying to me]
>In soc.culture.jewish Jacob Love <jl...@engin.umich.edu> wrote:
>: The authors of the article base their conclusions on the notion that
>: there is a fixed text of the Hebrew Bible which can be relied upon for
>: such purposes.
>
>I'm not sure this is a flawed assumption. If the current text, regardless
>of history, must be relied upon for halachah, why not for codes (if I
>believed in their value) as well?

As I have already pointed out a dozen times, if you have to rely on the
text you find printed in any book being accurate to the extent of
matching fully consonant for consonant with anything else, then you
have nothing, "halakhic" or otherwise. Have you ever actually examined
any of the Masoretic manuscripts such as the Leningrad Codex, the
Aleppo Codex or one of the the three Erfurt manuscripts? Do you know
how the text you find in the Miqra'ot G'dolot was actually assembled?
I'll give you a hint: none of them match to the precision you would
need to verify the "codes" nonsense. So be careful before you claim
that halakhah requires a notion that such precision exists, because
instead of merely being without an idiotic theory, you may be without a
basis in halakhah.

Again, regardless of what your religious position may be, there is no
doubt whatsoever that the Masoretic text which scribes *attempted* but
*failed* to precisely reproduce is based on an earlier text which had a
much more fluid system of spelling. Indeed, it is partially because of
the fluidity and ambiguity of Hebrew spelling that the Masoretic work
became necessary.

>This only addresses Drosnin's book. The point made in the original
>book "Hamaymad Hanosaf" (The Added Dimension) is that they have a
>model for predicting the frequency of such patterns in Hebrew
>text. And the model works -- for the Samaritan text, for war and
>peace in Hebrew, for random permutations of verses, etc...

My understanding is that this is not true. In fact, I'm not sure how
any comparative work could be done since I don't believe the digitized
texts actually exist for manuscript comparison. (I would be happy to
receive correction on this point.) However, if you are merely 
claiming that some form of "codes" can be reproduced via this method,
I don't disagree. As Brendon McKay has stated repeatedly, *any* text
of sufficient length can be made to yield up "codes."

>However, when looking at the current, halachically accepted, text
>of the Torah, the number of finds jumps by orders of magnitude.

There is no such thing as "the current halakhically accepted text of
the Torah" if you mean by that some precisely accurate text no matter
how much you want one to exist. Today's scribes rely on a Tikkun (a
standard text) which is in turn based on the printed texts which were
the product of the press of Daniel Bomberg (a Christian) working from
expertise supplied by Jews who converted to Christianity. This version
was produced before the best texts became available for study; in
particular, it was produced without any knowledge of the Aleppo Codex
which is believed to be the text upon which Maimonides based his model
Torah scroll.

>Therefor, no single "code" has any value, since it may be one of
>those findable in any text. It's the number of them in total that
>raised eyebrows.

Well, keep raising those eyebrows, because if enough texts are tested
you will soon be finding ones that have even more codes! What are 
you going to do then--decide that War and Peace must be more holy
than the Bible because we can find even more codes?

>Frankly, I think the whole trend into experimental religion is not
>what Judaism is about.

I really don't understand what this means or what it has to do with
the topic. But maybe I don't want to know.

-- 
-----------------------
Jack F. Love
Opinions expressed are mine alone, unless you happen to agree