26 Matching Annotations
  1. May 2025
    1. Though now in the deepest of his life’s trenches, God is still with Joseph (Genesis 39:21). His fellow inmates, Pharaoh’s former butler and his former baker, both dream symbolic dreams, and Joseph’s skills as a dream-interpreter are put to use. He predicts that the butler will be exonerated in three days and restored to Pharaoh’s service, and that the baker will be put to death. Joseph’s interpretations come true.

      The fate of Joseph, in the Hebrew text the Book of Genesis, chapters 37 to 50, is that of rising from slavery and imprisonment to power, a journey shaped by constant divine intervention from God. Joseph's life is somewhat governed by divine agency. While serving prison time, Joseph accurately interprets the dreams of Pharaoh's former cupbearer and his baker, predicting that the former cupbearer would be restored to his old position and that the baker would die. This is explained by God's presence with him (Genesis 39:21). To his phenomenal guidance to power in the court of Pharaoh, ‘his divine gift’ enables this rise. (https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-story-of-joseph/, accessed 5/10/25). On the other hand, Ferdowsi shapes the Persian hero’s destiny as entirely a product of ethical struggle and human choices in Shahnameh with no gods. CC BY-NC-ND

  2. Oct 2024
  3. Jul 2024
  4. Feb 2024
  5. Oct 2023
    1. Let me illustrate by examining a well-known passage, Genesis 7:17–18, in which the flood comes and Noah’s ark is lifted up above the earth. The example involves the Hebrew syntactic tendency to open each sentence in narrative with “and,” to order the words in parallel clauses by coordination (“and” + “and” + “and”), rather than by subordination (“because,” “so,” or “although”). This biblical syntactic feature, known as parataxis, affects the text’s rhythm, its temporal interpretation, its layers of cohesion and ambiguity. Here is Alter’s rendering of this passage: “And the Flood was forty days over the earth, and the waters multiplied and bore the ark upward and it rose above the earth. And the waters surged and multiplied mightily over the earth, and the ark went on the surface of the water.”
    1. Alter says he avoids the phrase “‘like the son of man’ because of its strong, and debatable, tilt toward a messianic interpretation.”

      Of course Alter's alternate translation of "son of man" allows one a closer meaning of Jews prior to the first century and Jesus, which adds a lot of undue baggage which may be seen as retconning the Hebrew Bible. It is after all, titled The Hebrew Bible and specifically not The Old Testament, thus placing it into the tradition of Christianity.

  6. Feb 2023
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  8. Oct 2022
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  10. Sep 2021
  11. Mar 2021
  12. Oct 2018
  13. Dec 2014