|
Source: (consider it)
|
Thread: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live
|
Robert Armin
All licens'd fool
# 182
|
Posted
So says Exodus 22.18, in the AV. Over the years I've often heard that this is a bad translation, and that "witch" would be better translated as "poisoner" or "medium". However, a quick glance at the different translations on Biblegateway looks as though they are pretty consistent, apart from a couple who link it to bestiality. Do the Ship's cunning linguists have any thoughts on the matter?
--------------------
Keeping fit was an obsession with Fr Moity .... He did chin ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit, and had developed a series of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with ritual movements of the Mass. The Antipope Robert Rankin
Posts: 8927 | From: In the pack | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
|
Posted
Can't comment on the Hebrew without a word study I haven't got time for, but the Septuagint has "pharmakous," which links the person-in-question to drugs and magic (including evil magic, poisoning) done by means of drugs. I'm pretty sure all these things (drugs, healing, un-healing aka poisoning, witchcraft and charms, dealings with the occult) cluster together in the culture of that time, and you would expect to find practitioners using all this stuff together.
[ 31. August 2015, 14:21: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Tortuf
Ship's fisherman
# 3784
|
Posted
If you were really up on your biblical Hebrew you would know that the Hebrew word is properly translated as "Ted Cruz."
Posts: 6963 | From: The Venice of the South | Registered: Dec 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
|
Posted
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
--------------------
Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Can't comment on the Hebrew without a word study I haven't got time for, but the Septuagint has "pharmakous," which links the person-in-question to drugs and magic (including evil magic, poisoning) done by means of drugs. I'm pretty sure all these things (drugs, healing, un-healing aka poisoning, witchcraft and charms, dealings with the occult) cluster together in the culture of that time, and you would expect to find practitioners using all this stuff together.
So I have a lovely Wiccan friend I would rather not kill, but can I use this verse instead as a license to off a few drug dealers?
--------------------
Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Chapelhead
I am
# 21
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I'm pretty sure all these things (drugs, healing, un-healing aka poisoning, witchcraft and charms, dealings with the occult) cluster together in the culture of that time, and you would expect to find practitioners using all this stuff together.
I'm not a cunning linguist (I can provide testimony, if necessary), but a check of Strong's Exhausting Concordance indicates that a cognate word is used in 2Kings 9:22 of Jezebel. Although she did much that was wrong, I don't think there is any evidence that danced widdershins around a bonfire whilst skyclad, so I suspect that, as LC has said, the term was probably used to cover a range of naughty activities.
--------------------
At times like this I find myself thinking, what would the Amish do?
Posts: 9123 | From: Near where I was before. | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Mamacita
Lakefront liberal
# 3659
|
Posted
Couple of thoughts:
My Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV) has only a brief footnote on Ex. 22:18 linking it to "Capital Offenses," which got me wondering about the connection between witchcraft/sorcery (which could be all kinds of mischief) and murder. I find it interesting that most of these translations render the word to implicate only female practitioners. Assuming that is true to the original Hebrew (is it? others here know way more than I!), one assumes also that the verse doesn't mean that male sorcerers were OK. So I'm left wondering if there was a particular type of sorcery that females specialized in -- such as poisoning, as Lamb Chopped's "pharmakous" from the LXX might suggest. I wonder if the real issue, then, was murder?
Further to Chapelhead's reference to Jezebel and 2 Kings 9:22: The verse is quote:
When Joram saw Jehu, he said, "Is it peace, Jehu" He answered, "What peace can there be, so long as the many whoredoms and sorceries of your mother Jezebel continue?"
I suspect this is (1) perhaps linking Jezebel and the prophets of Baal and (2) maybe even a bit of rhetorical flourish.
Neither of those shedding a great deal of light on the question at hand, but musing about it is fun...
[ 31. August 2015, 21:55: Message edited by: Mamacita ]
--------------------
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
Posts: 20761 | From: where the purple line ends | Registered: Dec 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
|
Posted
A guess, but I think the primary issue was idolatry (=appeals to sources of spiritual power other than God) and leading others into same. Murder was secondary, though important. And you would consult a witch/sorcerer/pharmakous for any number of reasons, whether it was to destroy an enemy or to win someone's love. Which is not as innocent as it might seem, since chances are in that culture that the target was married or affianced--not to mention the attempt to take away his/her free will.
--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mamacita:
Further to Chapelhead's reference to Jezebel and 2 Kings 9:22: The verse is quote:
When Joram saw Jehu, he said, "Is it peace, Jehu" He answered, "What peace can there be, so long as the many whoredoms and sorceries of your mother Jezebel continue?"
I suspect this is (1) perhaps linking Jezebel and the prophets of Baal and (2) maybe even a bit of rhetorical flourish.
There may be a bit of "if it's done by calling on the Lord then it's a miracle", but "if it's done by calling on Baal then it's sorcery". After all, the living God is able to work wonders but a lump of rock or metal in a particular shape isn't therefore whatever happened was some form of trickery by the prophet of Baal.
--------------------
Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Chapelhead
I am
# 21
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mamacita:
My Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV) has only a brief footnote on Ex. 22:18 linking it to "Capital Offenses," which got me wondering about the connection between witchcraft/sorcery (which could be all kinds of mischief) and murder. I find it interesting that most of these translations render the word to implicate only female practitioners. Assuming that is true to the original Hebrew (is it? others here know way more than I!), one assumes also that the verse doesn't mean that male sorcerers were OK.
There does seem to be something of 'blame the woman' about the term - something we still find in English with the common expectation that a witch will be female. This seems to continue with the words used in Nahum 3:4-5 quote:
Because of the countless debaucheries of the prostitute, gracefully alluring, mistress of sorcery, who enslaves nations through her debaucheries, and peoples through her sorcery, I am against you, says the Lord of hosts, and will lift up your skirts over your face; and I will let nations look on your nakedness and kingdoms on your shame.
But the other two occasions my concordance shows the word being used it doesn't seem to have a 'female' bias.
Deuteronomy 18:10-11 quote:
No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead.
Micah 5:10-15
quote:
In that day, says the Lord, I will cut off your horses from among you and will destroy your chariots; and I will cut off the cities of your land and throw down all your strongholds; and I will cut off sorceries from your hand, and you shall have no more soothsayers; and I will cut off your images and your pillars from among you, and you shall bow down no more to the work of your hands; and I will uproot your sacred poles from among you and destroy your towns. And in anger and wrath I will execute vengeance on the nations that did not obey.
<Aside>This last quote comes shortly after the one about Bethlehem being small among the cities of Judah, but from whom one will come to rule in Israel, who is from the ancient of days. Funny how we never hear the later verses at Christmas. </Aside>
--------------------
At times like this I find myself thinking, what would the Amish do?
Posts: 9123 | From: Near where I was before. | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Adam.
Like as the
# 4991
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
looks as though they are pretty consistent, apart from a couple who link it to bestiality. Do the Ship's cunning linguists have any thoughts on the matter?
The bestiality references you're seeing are because different translations use different verse numberings for the system. A good reason to never look up isolated verses, but see them in context! NRSV has v. 18 about the sorcerer, v. 19 about the bestiality. In NAB, the sorcery verse is labeled 17, and the bestiality one is 18.
On to the verse in question, however it's numbered.
LC's pointing us to the LXX is very interesting. The Hebrew word is very clearly feminine singular (English translations reflect this with "a witch"). However, the Greek is masculine and plural. The Greek can carry the hew of sorcerer, magician, druggist or poisoner. We see it elsewhere in the Septuagint in two contexts: prohibitions and denouncements like this (both in legal and prophetic contexts); to refer to a court office, of Pharaoh (Exod), Nebuchadnezzar (Dan), and King Zedekiah (Jer). In this latter context, while they're hardly valorized, there's no particular condemnation of their presence. Especially in Exodus and Daniel, it's not so much that they're bad, but that Moses and Daniel (respectively) are so much better. The term is not used of Jezebel in the Septuagint.
The Hebrew word tells a different story. It's the feminine piel participle (think agent noun in English) of the verb kashaph. This word is derived from a proto-Semitic word meaning 'to cut' and, in Hebrew, is exclusively linked with cutting herbs to make potions. So, you can see why the Septuagintal translators may have chosen this word. It is used of (male) court officials, but more commonly found in prophetic denunciations. It also serves as an image for corrupting foreign influence, especially when those influences are figured as female (or actually female, like Jezebel).
There is no one homogeneous unambiguous view of women in antiquity. Alongside the labeling of women as the 'weaker sex,' there is a strand of the tradition that sees women as just as powerful as men, but in mysterious, unpredictable, dangerous ways. I've just been reading Pliny talking about all of the 'magical'* uses to which menstrual fluid and breast milk can be put, to give an example which is pretty far from these texts, but gives a sense.
--
* the magic / medicine binary breaks down very easily.
--------------------
Ave Crux, Spes Unica!
Preaching blog
Posts: 8164 | From: Notre Dame, IN | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adam.:
* the magic / medicine binary breaks down very easily.
One of them was a way of bringing about good or bad results which only really worked by coincidence, and the other was magic.
--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Robert Armin
All licens'd fool
# 182
|
Posted
Adam: quote:
The bestiality references you're seeing are because different translations use different verse numberings for the system. A good reason to never look up isolated verses, but see them in context! NRSV has v. 18 about the sorcerer, v. 19 about the bestiality. In NAB, the sorcery verse is labelled 17, and the bestiality one is 18.
Well, I live and learn. What's the point of having verses indicated, if they're not the same in all Bibles? How often do they vary, and why?
--------------------
Keeping fit was an obsession with Fr Moity .... He did chin ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit, and had developed a series of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with ritual movements of the Mass. The Antipope Robert Rankin
Posts: 8927 | From: In the pack | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
|
Posted
They don't vary much, but they do vary, at least in the OT. I know France (and thus Vietnam) uses a system that is one verse off America's in large bits of the OT, though I don't know the historical reasons this came about. And within English translations, you sometimes get this when the original Hebrew (Greek, Aramaic) had pretty convoluted syntax, and the translators decided that the best way to make English sense of it for this translation is to flip the two bits of the sentence around for general readability. But of course, if the two bits had each their own verse numbering, that's going to result in what looks like screwed-up order when they go to put the little numbers in.
--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Adam.
Like as the
# 4991
|
Posted
I don't think I know of any in the NT (except for verses that are skipped in some translations but not others). The OT has quite a few, though.
Different translations of the psalms are rife verse numberings that off by one as different translations vary on whether or not to count titles as verse 1 or not number them. Most translations are eclectic in moving between the MT and the LXX depending on what gives better meaning, and that can lead to different numbering. Add to that that some translations re-arrange verses. This could be for English style, or it could be a judgment that verses got rearranged during the text's early history. The NAB seems to rearrange verses a lot.
--------------------
Ave Crux, Spes Unica!
Preaching blog
Posts: 8164 | From: Notre Dame, IN | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
|
Posted
There's a big chunk in Samuel and another in Daniel, iirc, that's rearranged in the NJB. I had to give up using the NJB and find another version when I was reading those books with a commentary. (Although I did go back and reread the NJB version to see what I thought after reading the RSV/NRSV).
--------------------
Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Elephenor
Shipmate
# 4026
|
Posted
There are some numbering discrepancies in the NT which don't turn on missing verses. The one I have come across most regularly is at the end of 2 Corinthians, where the KJV divides into two verses what Greek and Latin NTs (and presumably most other languages?) count together as 13:12. Modern English translations have reached different conclusions which consistency is most important to maintain, so the final famous verse of the epistle ("The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all. Amen.") is 2 Cor 13:13 in some but 2 Cor 13:14 in others.
--------------------
"Man is...a `eucharistic' animal." (Kallistos Ware)
Posts: 214 | From: UK | Registered: Jan 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
blackbeard
Ship's Pirate
# 10848
|
Posted
Back to the OP.
What follows is Not Nice. If you are of a sensitive disposition, don't read on. If you do read on, have a bucket handy in case you need to vomit.
Ancient Israel was surrounded by nations where the religious practices included something Extremely Horrible. Human sacrifice. Of one's own children even. There are a few echoes of this in the OT, where it is of course condemned in the strongest terms, though on the whole the topic is mentioned only with reluctance.
It seems to me to be probable that witchcraft, whatever form it actually took and by whomever practiced, was in some way part of the religious practices associated with the above. If that's the case, then its condemnation in the OT is to be expected. ... as with certain other practices (such as gender reversal as in cross dressing or certain Dead Horse issues). If that's the case, then the OT should not be taken as a guide to more modern practices which are not implicated in the above.
For what it's worth.
Posts: 823 | From: Hampshire, UK | Registered: Dec 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
So I have a lovely Wiccan friend I would rather not kill, but can I use this verse instead as a license to off a few drug dealers?
Using it to off a few dealers in drugs that are dangerous to users with no redeeming value, especially if the dealers tend to life-endangering violence, is probably closer to the original meaning than is offing harmless women just because of what name they call themselves by.
Of course one must be aware the legal system has changed a bit and modern governments disapprove of the offing of dangerous drug dealers by anyone other than the government.
But I doubt ancient Israelis had free reign to declare someone a poisoner/sorcerer and off him or her.
Posts: 5830 | From: Texas | Registered: Jan 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
|
Posted
If you take it to the local council of elders at the city gate and they agree, sitting as a legally constituted court. Of course, you're aware that anyone bringing false charges is subject to the same projected penalty that would have been inflicted on the accused... of course you are. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
|
Posted
For some reason I've this vision of the elders gathered at the city gates.
"Ms Davies, you've claimed that the law of the land can not over rule your judgement of who can and can not get married. You're wrong, the law of the land can make that decision and you've got to live with it in doing your job.
"As punishment we deny you the right you would deny others. You're not allowed to marry, again."
--------------------
Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
|
Posted
Some....interesting former friends of mine believed that the 'pharma' root of witch here meant that modern pharmaceuticals are demonic.
--------------------
Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
| IP: Logged
|
|
Mamacita
Lakefront liberal
# 3659
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
For some reason I've this vision of the elders gathered at the city gates.
"Ms Davies, you've claimed that the law of the land can not over rule your judgement of who can and can not get married. You're wrong, the law of the land can make that decision and you've got to live with it in doing your job.
"As punishment we deny you the right you would deny others. You're not allowed to marry, again."
--------------------
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
Posts: 20761 | From: where the purple line ends | Registered: Dec 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
|
Posted
I think, sometimes, we work a little too hard to put modern values on these passages. Sometimes a witch is just a witch. These days we hate drug dealers and think witches are cute little ladies who grow herbs and make amusing wind catchers. But I imagine in biblical times a drug dealer was just someone with a market stall who sold funny mushrooms and odd things to smoke. Poisoners were murders with no further criminal charges needed.
Witches, then and now, try to effect change in the universe through their own acts, whether through potions they make or chants they've learned or dances around fires. Whether they really can or not or whether it's for "good", or not, they try to usurp God's power. I would guess that the Jewish God -- who is a jealous God -- hates that.
Posts: 6817 | Registered: May 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
Printer-friendly view
