Pseudoxristos...I just stumbled upon this thread and your late comment and as Leolaia has disappeared for now I'll reply. The garbage dump tradition truly has no archaeological support, it appears, like Leolaia said, to have been a late attempt (12 th century) to explain the associations of Gehenna with punishment. This simplified explanation that required no embarassing early superstition caught on and has been repeated and enlarged so much that nearly every commentary uses it. I have read a couple more cautious comentaries that say this dump explanation is based upon 'speculation'. The desecration of the holy site in Jeremiah is it's use as a comon cemetery.
Gehenna
by Leolaia 22 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Narkissos
As a side note, the wording of 2 Kings 23 unwittingly reveals the artificiality of Joshiah's Reform in comparison to traditional Israelite religion. Deuteronomistic history considers those cults as unclean, abominable, yet it has to use the vocabulary of ritual uncleanness (to defile = lit. "to make unclean," tm') for desecrating the (politically) "unclean" holy places... Likewise the sacred prostitutes will still be referred to by the root qdsh, just as the Holy of holies. It's easier to rewrite history than to erase the traces of the past in the words themselves...
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peacefulpete
I'm not sure what that means narkissos, can you explain more?
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Narkissos
OK, I'll try to put it backwards:
Most of the OT technical priestly vocabulary is not a an artificial creation; it keeps the tracks of the ancient Israelite religion, which was a diversified system of ritual and worship (including temple prostitution, Asherah worship, Molech/Melech ritual, worship of the dead, etc.). The dichotomies holy / profane, clean / unclean, already belong to this ancient system.
The political Reform of Josiah and the subsequent Deuteronomistic history declare 90 % of this ancient religion (all except the Jerusalem Yahwist temple "orthodox" ritual) wrong and retrojects this view upon the past, using the priestly vocabulary to its own political ends: what was once "holy" and "clean" in other sanctuaries becomes (and always was, in Deuteronomistic perspective) "profane", "unclean" or "abominable".
But when it comes to describe the Reform the two uses (Deuteronomistic and ancient priestly) of the same terms clash against one another: to clean an unclean place (from the Deuteronomistic standpoint) Josiah has to defile it, i.e. make it unclean (in the ancient priestly sense). With this lexical dissonance the Deuteronomist historian betrays his ordinary twist of priestly vocabulary and his general agenda.
The positive name of the "temple prostitutes" (qedeshim, the "holy ones", e.g. v. 7) is a similar evidence of the artificiality of Deuteronomism: they were never an "abomination" before Deuteronism declared them "abominable".
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peacefulpete
Very very interesting. Where did you learn this?
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Narkissos
The translator's eye.
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peacefulpete
I guess that means I'm screwed.
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pseudoxristos
Thanks, peacefulpete and Narkissos.
Both of your comments have been helpful.
pseudo
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Narkissos
PP, I don't know what you mean but what I meant is that these are the kind of things you just can't help to notice when you happen to strive for consistency in Bible translation (an impossible goal in itself): from this standpoint the variations in Hebrew usage then clearly appear, and sometimes it turns quite interesting indeed.
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peacefulpete
I meant that I'll never be able to make such observations as I am not a translator. But it's nice to have friends that are.