Hebrew, roots of Cephas Mt. 16:18, John 1:42 כפימ

[Huiou_Theou]

There has been a fruitful conversation going on in Attic Greek vs. Koine Greek on Mt. 16:18, here:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=424

But about post 43, the thread switched to a very interesting side issue – What does Cephas mean, and how do we know from the Hebrew side of the issue.

My Hebrew and Aramaic are novice level, but none the less – I am seeing a strong correlation between the idea of “hollow” or “palm” of the hand and the letter combination: כפ Kaf or Kef…

Pointing, dotting AKA niqquid, was not available at the time of Christ; To test this, I checked a fragment of the dead sea scrolls Hebrew (block script, suggesting it is post Babylonian captivity origin) and didn’t find any.

http://http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/9031/dssisaiah.pnghttp://img88.imageshack.us/img88/9031/dssisaiah.png

So I am trying to determine what can be known about Cephas / Kepha / Kaf…?
From easily obtained sources…

 

[Huiou_Theou]

Hey, Andrew!

Yep, I came into the thread kind of late, regarding the Greek stuff…
Ahhh - BTW - I really enjoy the conversation with you as well… You seem to be a very “studious” type, and I think we’re alike in that…

SO - an idea… Let’s go with this Hebrew stuff…

And a clean thread to do it in…

You said: * I am asking you to find a different word (not kaf/kefym) that has the same characteristics you are using in the apologetic you learned from a third party.

This hypothetical other word (without pointing) needs to be spelled identical in all letters except “ym” (ימ). (Leading letters of usage can be cut off without my complaint! eg: Lamed, uav, etc.)

So what I am asking is if we can find (it may not be an easy task) another root word which has the same issues as KF; and the more examples of the change issue – the BETTER – and stronger the evidence it provides.

Analogically; if we found a word which met these criteria – and which meant say: bird without the ym, and door with the ym – I would be forced to admit that Hebrew CAN and does change meaning based on addition of “ym”. If we found three words that clearly did this – the evidence becomes quite convincing.*

This looks interesting… I’m in!

Great. We’re really in now.

BUT - just a brief thing on the “kef/kaf” thing… Basically, (if I understand you right) you’re saying that back at the time of Christ (for example), one could not necessarily tell the difference - pronunciation-wise - between kef and kaf, because “points” weren’t used?

(just wanting some clarification on this)…

The vowels that pointing gives were not available; so the pronunciation would have been based only on the letters (consonants) given, and the very few vowels that are explicit in the aleph-bet. Everything else had to come either from memorization, contextual clues, or exclusionary reasoning.

I am not advanced enough to be able to precisely identify how much of the pronunciation is detectable from the original – but I do know it was limited.

So, otherwise, we’re looking for some other Hebrew word (or words) that can change in meanging if they are used in singular vs plural?

Yes. And to insure we’re not just chasing copyist errors – we need each test word to be used often enough in the plurals and singular to be able to determine that is the meaning of the word that has changed and exclude conclusions based on any less than 3 examples. (Many readers will not accept it if it has less than 10 examples… but I’m interested in keeping the search simple; for I am looking at whether an idea is reasonable – before jumping to the standard of “bullet-proof” )

–Andrew.

 

[aussie_stockman]

Hey, Andrew!

Ahhhh… brand new thread… feels good… hehehehe

Now, about this kaf/kef thing:

As you know, without the niqqud, “kef” and “kaf” would both be spelled כפ.

BUT - the word in jeremiah and job uses a masculine ending…

The word “kaf” (meaning spoon, palm of the hand, hollow, etc) is feminine, and would require a different ending…

That’s how we know that “kefim” is indeed “kefim” (even without the use of niqqud) - it’s masculine, not feminine, and therefore is the word that is used to mean mountains, crags, etc. “Palms of the hand” or “hollows” (as you were earlier suggesting) would be “kafot” (if I’m not mistaken). That “-ot” ending would be the ending for a feminine dual noun, and kaf (palm, hollow, spoon, et al) is feminine dual…

In other words, we sorta got “lucky” on this one - which is to say, we were supplied with a noun ending on “kefim” which tells us that its masculine. Otherwise, there just wouldn’t be any way to tell if the word were “kef” or “kaf”, (using ancient Hebrew, ie, minus the niqqud).

So, I’m thinking: in terms of figuring out the origin of the word/name Cephas (aka Kephas), it looks like the Hebrew “kephim” is at least consistant with the Aramaic “kepha”, in that they both refer to “rock” of some type.

 

[Huiou_Theou]

Hey, Andrew!

Ahhhh… brand new thread… feels good… hehehehe

Now, about this kaf/kef thing:

As you know, without the niqqud, “kef” and “kaf” would both be spelled כפ.

BUT - the word in jeremiah and job uses a masculine ending…

So, you are saying the masculine ending makes it be rock instead of hand?
I’m not sure how to tell… see the example I gave here:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=9393758&postcount=50

Just as a side note; Other word examples may take some time to find…
So, don’t feel rushed to have an answer instantly – this isn’t about quick solutions, but exploration. I myself have many subtle questions that are bothering me and even though I see connections – I don’t see them clearly enough to be grasp how much is biblical prophecy, and how much is Jesus responding to the popular piety of the day. or even other yet un-thought-of reasons;

There really are things I need to meditate on over a longer period of a month or two (at least.) before I can even be familiar enough with the material to make educated inferences and guesses.

Glad to have you exploring with me…
–Andrew.

 

[aussie_stockman]

So, you are saying the masculine ending makes it be rock instead of hand?

Well, “hand” (kaf) is a femine noun, and it would have at “-ot” ending…

so, if the author had intended to say "palms (hollows, indentions, whatever), he would have written (essentially) “kfot”, not “kfym”… “kfot” would have told us for sure that the author was referring to “palms”, not “rocks”…

Unfortunately, I think this sort of puts a damper on the original idea…

BUT - I’ve got to say, I really like your creative and “investigative” thinking very much. When I read that scripture from Job, talking about goats hiding in caves, etc, I thought “this guy might really be on to something, because the other places mentioned here are all ‘concave’ places, like he says”… I mean, yeh, a “hollow” would have fit perfectly in that list…

but alas… I think we’re stuck…

 

[aussie_stockman]

Hey, buddy…

I need to add something, and this is important…

Earlier, I said that “kaf” (meaning “palm of the hand”) was DUAL FEM…

That dual form is used for a variety of nouns, usually things like “body parts” - hands, feet, eyes, palms…

the ending for THAT is indeed “-im” ("-im" or “-ym” is the DUAL ending for both MASC and FEM)… It means “two of…” ie, two hands, two feet… or a pair of hands, a pair of feet… it’s very specific like that…

So - one might think that kpim (“kafim”, without the points) COULD mean “two hollows”…

BUT - using the meaning of “hollow” (or “spoon”, for that matter), it would not use the DUAL FEM ending. Why? Well, we can only have TWO eyes, TWO hands, etc, but there can be a bunch of spoons or hollows. The dual ending is for a very specific usage only…

In other words, “kpot” would be “hollows or spoons”, “kpym” would mean (either) "a pair of palms of the hands (ie, “clapping his hands”) OR “rocks”…

So, that would mean that Job 30:6 would HAVE to mean “rocks”, not “hollows”

(I hope all this is as clear as mud…

 

[Huiou_Theou]

Well, “hand” (kaf) is a femine noun, and it would have at “-ot” ending…

so, if the author had intended to say "palms (hollows, indentions, whatever), he would have written (essentially) “kfot”, not “kfym”… “kfot” would have told us for sure that the author was referring to “palms”, not “rocks”…

Unfortunately, I think this sort of puts a damper on the original idea…

So, in Numbers 7:84 – “… שנימ עשר כפות זהב…” Which ends in tav, and the Uav/Vav is the letter I presume you are calling “o”. So, we are sure they meant hands/cupping there … I agree…

But that still ignores that there are passages where the same ending exists and it clearly means “hands” in the plural; and there are instances of the word “hand”/“spoon” that don’t appear to have either a masculine or feminine ending…

If it is a dual, then we have the issue about the original passages that are supposedly “rock” being either feminine or masculine. It is therefore possible that they mean hand, also…

BUT - I’ve got to say, I really like your creative and “investigative” thinking very much. When I read that scripture from Job, talking about goats hiding in caves, etc, I thought “this guy might really be on to something, because the other places mentioned here are all ‘concave’ places, like he says”… I mean, yeh, a “hollow” would have fit perfectly in that list…

but alas… I think we’re stuck…

Why? I don’t quite understand.
The ‘im’ ending is clearly used for the plural, and not just the dual.

 

[Huiou_Theou]

I have been looking at the way Hebrew language evolved; or rather, what examples it absorbed. The letter form we have today is a stylized version of the an earlier form; it comes from Babylon and is called “block script”.

Just as Hebrew took on a new shape in Babylon, the earlier form, I think, took its’ shared it’s idea with Egypt. Palo Hebrew, which dates back to the time of King David and before (most of the old testament words come from this time period), are actually influenced heavily by the association of the Hebrews with Egypt – examples of the association date all the way back to the time of Abraham;

Egypt used pictographic writing – eg: heiroglypics. The shape of the letters convey ideas; not phonemes. Phonetics was a later development – I don’t think it surprising, then, that the points/vowels/nikkut didn’t exist in hebrew writing – they weren’t needed.

Special symbols had to be used in Heiroglypics to indicate phonetic usage…
Usually to sound out foreign names – and the Hebrew’s didn’t seem to bother. (But I’m still studying.)

The two letters used in Keph, eg: kaph and Fe/pe, are notably curved.
It turns out that the words having these letters are about curved things, and in particular the curled mouth and hand.

Kaph, for example, is also said to be the leaf of a palm tree.

The palm tree ideally grows straight and tall, but the long palm leaves arch and bend. Other palm leaves fan out like a hand…
The words for palm branch, and curved basket, also uses kaph.
Kaph is about anything curved or bent.
It is the shape of a cupped hand – and represents anything looking like that.

Think about it – the palm has curved leaves, and produces food.
Kaph and Fe/Pe – hand & curve + mouth – makes sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:P...wtih_Dates.JPG/220px-Palm_tree_wtih_Dates.JPG

Here’s a little comparison of the pictographic palo hebrew idea-grams and the later Babylonian block script.

www.joinedtohashem.org/sh/PictogramLesson.pdf

I’m not doing a detailed study of this persons accuracy, or rather, their precision – but I am suggesting it as a reason to solidly ask the question as to why the word Keph would have anything to do with rock at all.

It’s pictographically, un-related.
Do you have any ideas? (Or anyone else?)