Re: Heidegger: Re: Esse

----- Original Message -----  From: "allen scult" <allen.scult@xxxxxxxxx To:
<heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc:
<heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 5: 21
PM Subject: Re: Heidegger: Re: Esse


Allen quoth:
To the All-knowing, All-powerful Catman,

I'm afraid you're out of your depth again. ( But then again, most  cats
can't swim at all. )-- thinking something IS the case because  you want it
to be the case.

There is (and as far as we know never was) any original of the  Gospels in
"copula-less Aramaic. " All we have are the Gospels in  Syriac (that is,
Aramaic in Syriac characters--a bitch to read for  those of us who only know
Aramaic in Hebrew characters) in what's  called a "retro-translation" from
the Greek, produced by the Syriac Christians.

Jud:
Because the original Aramaic sections of the OT were copied into Syraic [the
Peshitta]  using Syraic letters does not mean that it ceased to be Aramaic,
for the two languages where  virtually indistinguishable, Syraic being a
dialect of Aramaic that happened to have been written with a different
writing system, much like the dual use of Cyrillic and Latin in  some parts
of the modern Balkans. In fact you yourself describe Syraic as: "Aramaic in
Syriac characters. " So I don't quite 'Geddit' when you deny that the
Gospels were  written in Aramaic just because of the  Syraic characters in
which the Aramaic retro-translation was written?  I write my diary in
Cyrilic but that doesn't mean that it is no longer English does it?

According to Encyclopaedia Britannic Aramaic had replaced Hebrew as the
language of the Jews as early as the 6th century BC. Hebrew was only revived
as a spoken  language in the 19th and 20th centuries and is the official
language of Israel.  Certain portions of the Old Testament--i. e. , the
books of Daniel and Ezra--are written in Aramaic, as are the Babylonian and
Jerusalem Talmuds. Among the Jews, Aramaic  was used by the common people,
while Hebrew remained the language of religion and government and of the
upper class. Jesus and the Apostles are believed to have  spoken Aramaic,
and Aramaic-language translations (Targums) of the Old Testament circulated.
Aramaic continued in wide use until about AD 650, when it was supplanted  by
Arabic.

My whole point is that if the words spoken by Jesus were in Aramaic and his
words were set down using Greek then there were bound to have been critical
mistakes made  in translation, for Aramaic does not have a copula, which
would have forced the translator to indulge in the very [discombobulating in
English - not Hebrew] periphrasis which you are guilty of  later in this
message, when you translate the  Hebrew "ZehHooh Goofi" "This. . . IT. . .
My Body" for the phrase though accurate,does NOT reveal [or confirm to the
contrary] the possible metaphoricity that Jesus [IMO] was using when he
said the words over two thousand years ago, though it may be perfectly
acceptable [and understandable]  in modern day Tel Aviv.

In any language such a phrase would have to be accompanied by a manner or
tone or gesture which indicated whether the bread was merely to be taken as
a metaphorical  representation of his body, or that he meant that the piece
of bread that he held in his hand and pointed to literally WAS actually his
own flesh. It doesn't need much of a stretch of the  imagination to perceive
that the disciples around him would have seen that it wasn't ACTUALLY his
body, which patently still sat on the stool before them,  but he was
speaking figuratively,    in the same way that in describing a  car accident
in which we have been involved,  we might pick up the salt-cellar and say:
"This is my car" and then moving the pepper-pot towards it  say: "This is
his car. "

Allen:
Furthermore the "is" of the copula is easily produced in Hebrew and  Aramaic
by simply adding another indicating pronoun for emphasis to  the declaration
. So what Jesus probably said was something like:

ZehHooh Goofi ( literally "This. . . IT. . . My Body). In plain  English,
the copula in the Hebrew is unmistakable: " This IS my  body. "

Jud:
Thank you for confirming my analysis  with your speculation concerning the
words of Jesus, for if you are right, you have just proven that the IS word
is not necessary  to establish the simple presence of the bread [as
Heidegger would  have it] for the 'IT' in Hebrew is NOT a verb of existence
[whether it is a 'stand in for a missing copula or not] but an emphatic
referent to the thing previously named or  indicated [the bread, ] and if
you are wrong, then you have confirmed with the periphrasis as a device to
exhibit the existential modality of the bread as being that of Jesus'  body.
In other words you are suggesting that Jesus is saying that he is a piece of
bread in human form. There is not one shred of evidence that Jesus used this
'emphase à la déclaration' or meant to be taken literally.


If of course Jesus had said: "My body [is] this" as he pointed to the bread,
then the modalic  switch would have been thrown, and Jesus would have been
saying that his body existed in the modality of a piece of bread, which
[from a transcendentalist point of view] would have been a better way of
putting it. My own view is that it would have been quite clear to those
present that Jesus was speaking metaphorically and that he would be just as
appalled as I was when I observed  twenty-five years ago  in Liverpool
black-clad nuns herding their small charges to the communion rail while
admonishing them,
"Don't chew the Baby Jesus."
A little later, kneeling for communion, receiving the sacrament
on the tongue, many of the children's faces were puckered up in revulsion as
the muttering priest placed the thin wafer of the carpenter's flesh into
their mouths.

Strangely enough Heidegger had a similar problem to Jesus, for if  Jesus WAS
saying that he existed as a human body and as piece of bread
contemporaneously,  we can now see why Heidegger was forced to invent Dasein
to avoid the same trap of double-existence - an accusation  that Jesus could
have shrugged off  [had he been pressed] by pleading his Godhood, but
Heidegger could not have achieved,  in spite of all his wiliness' and his
divine status in the eyes of his thurifers. Hence the thirteenth disciple at
Heidegger's Last Supper- an Apostle of Ontological Obfuscation  far falser
than Judas - 'Dasein.'    :-)



Jud Evans.





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