BPR Mailing List Digest: 06/17/00

Philologos
BPR Mailing List Digest
June 17, 2000

Digest Home | 2000 | June, 2000

To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Re: a question
From: bpr-list@philologos.org("Joyce")
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 09:50:40 +1000

Hello,

One thing that comes to my mind is the many times I've seen people use a
Bible verse as the "authority" to do something. This thing they want to do
may not be something in agreement with the Word or the Spirit. But they
will twist it out of context, so they really aren't following the leading of
the Spirit in what they are doing. They use this verse, or the teachings of
a person who teaches this kind of thing, as a covering or the authority for
them to do what they're doing.

Shalom, Joyce

-----Original Message-----
From: "John in NZ" <bpr-list@philologos.org>
To: BPR Mailing List <bpr-list@philologos.org>
Date: Saturday, June 17, 2000 12:00 AM
Subject: [BPR] - Re: a question

>Zelzah,
>The verse speaks alright but what do you think it means? Maybe some of our
>more theological brethren could illuminate us. It is not immediatwely
>obvious to me.
>
>John in NZ
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Zelzah" <bpr-list@philologos.org>
>To: BPR Mailing List <bpr-list@philologos.org>
>Sent: Wednesday, 14 June 2000 5:05 am
>Subject: [BPR] - Re: a question
>
>
>> One verse speakes volumes: Isaiah 30:1
>>
>> "Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take counsel, but not
>> of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may
>> add sin to sin:"

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========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Discussion on "covering"
From: bpr-list@philologos.org
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 07:44:18 -0500

Greetings All,

We will close the discussion on "covering" for the time being, since
in my opinion, we as a group do not seem to be getting anywhere
with the topic. If you wish to converse privately with another
member on the list, email me and I will forward your email address
to the person in question who can then contact you if they so
choose.

Thank you for your understanding,

See http://philologos.org/bpr for additional info.

========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - RadioShack plans lunar mission
From: bpr-list@philologos.org("Moza")
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 08:50:43 -0400

RadioShack plans lunar mission

06/15/2000

By Victor Godinez / The Dallas Morning News

Fort Worth-based RadioShack Corp. said today that it is
partnering with a small Virginia-based space exploration
start-up to put a robotic rover on the moon in 2003
sporting the RadioShack logo.

Dubbed the "Icebreaker," the lunar rover will search for
ice deposits in the permanently dark spots on the moon,
such as craters, in an attempt to locate possible fuel
sources for future space travel.

"It's an unorthodox form of brand sponsorship,"
acknowledged Jim McDonald, senior vice president of
marketing and advertising for RadioShack. "But it's very
difficult in this day and age to break through the clutter."

Under terms of the deal, the giant electronics retailer
will provide LunaCorp with money to finance the expedition.
In return, RadioShack gets to place the company logo on the
rover as well as in several terrestrial venues.

The goal, Mr. McDonald said, is to link the mission to
RadioShack's Web site as well as to create relevant product
placement within the company's 7,100 electronics stores
nationwide.

Web surfers will be able to log on to RadioShack's Web
site and, because Icebreaker will be able to transmit live
video over a broadband connection with mission control,
watch real-time video footage of the rover exploring the
lunar surface.

The video also will be downloaded to RadioShack stores
equipped with RCA's home digital theater demonstrations.

Consumers will be able to experience the "digital next
wave of audio visual technology," Mr. McDonald said. "What
we're trying to do is demystify technology and democratize
space."

LunaCorp, based in Arlington, Va., hopes to bankroll its
mission through corporate sponsorships, government
contracts and other revenue-generating efforts.

For RadioShack and its estimated annual investment of
about $1 million, the payoff should come in the form of
additional exposure. Mr. McDonald said he expects the
company to recoup the investment before the rocket even
takes off.

RadioShack also will benefit from increased sales
representative motivation as a result of the enterprise,
said Mr. McDonald. Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin, for
example, has signed on to help promote the exploration.

When Mr. Aldrin spoke recently to RadioShack sales
representatives, "there was an almost religious reaction to
the speech," Mr. McDonald said.

Mr. McDonald said says that RadioShack is not looking on
this investment as a one-time deal.

"We are interested in a long-term involvement relative to
space exploration,'' he said. "I personally would love to
do something in the realm of live advertising from outer
space or the moon."

RadioShack stock was up 94 cents in midday trading to
$42.56. LunaCorp is privately held.

http://dallasnews.com/latestnews/96603_moon.html

See http://philologos.org/bpr for additional info.

========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Sex Education in Church?
From: bpr-list@philologos.org
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 07:56:53 -0500

Online: http://christianity.about.com

Sex Education in Church?

Dateline: 06/13/00

According to an article written this week by Religion News
Service correspondent, Louise Palmer, churches and
synagogues all across American are offering "faith-based"
sex education to their members. "Faith-based sex education
is taking off across the nation, with the principle that
sexuality is God-given, an integral part of being human, at
its core. Rather than offering a litany of do's and don'ts,
religious leaders are increasingly interested in helping
adolescents see their physicality in spiritual terms."

As readers of this column will probably realize, I find
this to be good news. However, I am not sure that Palmer
comes up with much more than anecdotal evidence to support
her headliner. She opens with a colorful conversation
taking place inside a 200-year-old New England church.
There a guessing game is taking place:

"Am I an ovary?" shouts out one seventh-grader.

"Am I a sperm?" blurts another, followed by peals of
laughter.

This exchange of words seldom heard inside a Sunday School
classroom is part of an exercise suggested by the Unitarian
Universalist sex education curriculum. Perhaps not so
surprising when you consider that this is one of America's
smallest and most liberal denominations. The UUs, as they
are informally referred to, have for several years, offered
a curriculum designed to help teen-agers learn to use such
words without embarrassment or shame, as well as to
understand that sex is a legitimate source of pleasure as
well as a mechanism of reproduction.

-- more --

http://christianity.about.com/religion/christianity/library/weekly/aa0
61300.htm

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========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Drasha - Parshas Naso -- Possessive Nouns
From: bpr-list@philologos.org
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 09:41:42 -0500

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 17:38:04 -0400
To: drasha@torah.org
From: Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky <rmk@torah.org>
Subject: Drasha - Parshas Naso -- Possessive Nouns
Send reply to: rmk+@torah.org

Volume 5 Issue 38

There is a seemingly mysterious, if not cryptic, set of verses in this
week's portion. "And every portion from any of the holies that the
Children of Israel bring to the Kohen shall be his. A man's holies
shall be his, and what a man gives to the Kohen shall be his"(Numbers
5:9-10).

The posuk prompts so many homiletic and Midrashic interpretations.
Even after Rashi, the Master of Torah explanation, clarifies a simple
meaning to the verse, he affirms that "there are varying
interpretation from Midrashic sources." Obviously Rashi foreshadows a
need for deeper interpretation.

To that end I will lend my take. What does the Torah mean that "a
man's holies shall be his"? How are holies, his? And what are holies
anyway?

After all, when one dedicates items to the Temple, they are no longer
his holies, they belong to the Temple. A plaque may afford
recognition, but it surely is not a certificate of title. If the
verse is referring to holy items owned by an individual, then it seems
redundant as well. A man's possessions are of course his!

About five years ago, we had the honor of having Senator Joseph Biden
of Delaware deliver a commencement address at our Yeshiva's
graduation. The senator, who was at the time Chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, was a guest of his good friend and well-known
philanthropist, Joel Boyarsky, a member of our local community and
dear friend of our school.

After the ceremony, I had the privilege of riding together with the
Senator in Mr. Boyarsky's stretch limousine, a fully apportioned
vehicle that was truly befitting its prestigious passengers, among
them many dignitaries and businessmen, who frequented its inner
chambers.

As we rode for a while, discussing everything from politics to Israel,
and issues surrounding Jewish education, something in the back corner
of the limousine caught the corner of my eye.

There was a tefillin zeckel, a velvet case that hold sacred Jewish
phylacteries tucked away in the corner of the back windshield.
Protruding from the corner of the purple-velvet case were the retzuos,
the sacred straps that bind a people to their rituals.

I was both amazed and perplexed at the same time. Mr. Boyarsky, as I
knew him, was not a very observant Jew. I was not even sure if he
kept kosher. Yet the tefillin were right there, almost displayed in
open view, in the same limousine in which he closed multi-million
dollar deals with prominent businessmen, and discussed sensitive
issues with the most prominent statesman.

A few weeks later, I visited Mr. Boyarsky in his office. It was there
that I popped the question. "I don't get it. As far as I understand,
you are not observant, and your car is hardly a home to Rabbis. But
yet you keep your tefillin in your car, in open view for everyone to
see? Why?

His terse answer remains with me until today.
"When I travel I take my things. Those tefillin are my things."

The Torah issues a profound decree that defines not only what we have,
but who we are. Those of us who understand that life as fulfilling as
it may appear, how succulent the courses that it serves may taste, is
but a fleeting moment in the grand scale of endless eternity. Who are
we and what do we have.

I saw a bumper sticker that seemed to have survived the NASDAQ plunge
the other week, "The guy with the most toys at the end wins." Wins
what? What are the toys?

The Torah tells us that after all the innings are pitched and the
crowd walks from the packed stadium, we only have one thing. We have
our holies. They are ours. Cars break. Computers crash. Satellites
explode. Fortunes diminish and fame is as good as yesterday's
newspaper.

Only the holy things that we do, only our acts of spirituality,
whether manifested in relationships with our fellow man or with our
Creator, remain. Those holies are ours! They will always belong to
us. That is what we travel with and that is what we take along. In
this world and the next.

Good Shabbos Š2000 Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky

Mordechai Kamenetzky
Yeshiva of South Shore
The Dr. Manfred & Jamie Lehmann Campus
1170 William Street
Hewlett, NY 11557
http://www.yoss.org/ - rmk@torah.org
516-374-7363 x114 Fax 516-374-2024

Drasha web site: http://www.torah.org/learning/drasha

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Drasha, Copyright Š 2000 by Rabbi M. Kamenetzky and Project
Genesis, Inc. Drasha is the e-mail edition of FaxHomily, a Project of
the Henry and Myrtle Hirsch Foundation. Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky is
the Associate Dean of the Yeshiva of South Shore, http://www.yoss.org/
.

This list is part of Project Genesis: Torah on the Information
Superhighway. All are encouraged to redistribute and print, provided
that proper attribution with copyright is given to the author and
Project Genesis, and the reader is referred to learn@torah.org and
www.torah.org . Send email to copyrights@torah.org for full
information.

------- End of forwarded message -------

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========
To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - "To the Chief Musician"
From: bpr-list@philologos.org
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 10:09:30 -0500

I have recently started a study of the Psalms and have
found the Appendices in The Companion Bible to be quite
interesting in regards to this study. The following
information I find to be particularly fascinating. It makes
me wonder if the translators of our modern versions are not
familiar with this "theory" -- perhaps they are and have
disputed it or ignored it altogether? The examples cited in
Isaiah 38 and especially in Habakkuk 3 lend credible
evidence to Bullinger's claims. Why is it important to
properly place the superscriptions and subscriptions? As
Bullinger points out later in his appendices, translators
have always had difficulty in determining the proper
meanings of the titles and headings of the Psalms. Linking
the superscriptions and subscriptions to the proper Psalms
helps tremendously in their translation, and thus in the
understanding of the Psalm itself.

The Companion Bible
Appendix 64
E.W. Bullinger

"To the Chief Musician."

The key to the interpretation of these words has been lost
for over twenty-two centuries.

Commentators and critics have confessed that they can make
only conjectures as to the primitive meaning and use of the
word (for it is only one word in Hebrew) lamenazzeah.

The Ancient Versions attempt a rendering. The Septuagint
has eis to telos = unto, for, or, with a view to the end.
The Arabic, Ethiopic, and Vulgate render it "at the end".
The Chaldee renders it (Ps. 45) "to the praise". The
Talmudists hold that it related to Him Who is to come;
while Aquila (one of the Sept. Revisers, A.D. 130) renders
it "to Nikopoio" = to the giver of victory.

It is clear that a Person was intended by these various
renderings; but they appear to be interpretations rather
than translations. Regarded as the former, they may be
useful in showing us how the Psalms point to Christ; for He
is the end. It is He Who giveth victory; it is He Who is
the Coming One: and, while the book is called Sepher
Tehillim, the Book of Praises, it is He Who "inhabiteth the
praises of Israel" (Ps. 22.3).

All ancient Hebrew manuscripts, with the early and best
later printed editions, show no break whatever between the
lines of one Psalm and another.

The Septuagint translators had been many years in Babylon,
and the oldest among them must have been very young when
carried away thither.

There was none who had full knowledge and experience of
the ancient usages of the Temple worship.

Consequently, when they came to their task some 197 years
after the latest carrying away to Babylon, there was
nothing to show them where one Psalm ended and where the
next began.

Hence, when they came to the word lamenazzeah, "To the
chief Musician", they took it as being the first line of a
Psalm, instead of the last line of the preceding Psalm
which they had just translated. All subsequent Versions, in
all languages, have followed them in this mistake. For
mistake it was, as we may see from the only two examples of
independent Psalms given us in the Scriptures: viz. Isa.
38.9-20, and Hab. 3.

In each of these isolated Psalms we have the true models
on which all the other Psalms are based.

In each case we have
1. The Super-scription, or Title proper.
2. The body of the Psalm itself.
3. The Sub-scription.

In each of these two cases the word lamenazzeah, forms the
sub-scription, and appears at the end of the Psalm.

This is the key thus discovered by Dr. J.W. Thirtle* which
had been lost for so many centuries; and The Companion
Bible is the first edition of the Bible in which the Psalms
are thus correctly presented in harmony with the two Psalm-
models, Isa. 38.9-20, and Hab. 3.

The unspeakable importance of Dr. Thirtle's discovery is
at once seen. For it shows two things :

1. That, whatever the interpretation or application of the
words may be, a Psalm which had this word in the sub-
scription had a use beyond its local, temporary, or
original purpose; and, being considered appropriate use, or
for special occasions, was handed over to the Director of
the Temple worship with any instructions which might be
necessary for its use.

2. That such word or words of instruction, which to-day
stand in the Septuagint and all subsequent Versions of the
Bible as the super-scription, belong, not to that Psalm,
but to the sub-scription of the Psalm preceding it.

This, at one stroke, removes the great difficulty, and
solves the heretofore insoluble problem and impossible task
which all Commentators have experienced, when they
struggled in the attempt to find in one Psalm the
explanation of words which belong to another.

Few problems so difficult and baffling have been removed
by a solution so simple and self-explanatory.

This on feature, which by Dr. Thirtle's kind permission,
has been taken over into The Companion Bible, must greatly
enhance its value and usefulness, making it unique among
all existing editions of the Bible.

* These facts have been discovered, and admirably set
forth by Dr. J.W. Thirtle, in his two works on this
subject, viz. The Titles of the Psalms: their Nature and
Meaning explained (1904), and Old Testament Problems
(1907). Both published by Henry Frowde, Oxford Bible
Warehouse, London.

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