Jovial (19 April 2014)
"Responding to Pastor Bob on Daniel 9:27 "

Pastor Bob has been drawing attention to the idea that no one has responded to his article on the "he" in Dan 9:27 as if his point is proven by a lack of response.  Actually, I responded to the CONCEPT several months ago as did many other people who chose to air their opinion a while back, but saw no point in arguing on and on about it.  So for most of us that were part of that discussion, there's no need to directly respond to Pastor Bob's specific comments.  But Pastor Bob has been

  • Ignoring my response to this topic, as well as those of others who aired a different view.
  • Acting as if no one ever raised the issue
  • Using the absence of a response as proof of correctness

Woooah - something is really failed in this logic train here, and I could respond to Pastor Bob by quoting one of his favorite lines; "The Absence of Proof is not Proof of Absence".  If we are going to analyze a text on a level so detailed that it hinges on a pronoun, we need to do it in the language it was written in , not English.

Now with all Bob's discussion about the King James and his insistance that the KJV is a good enough text that we can base conclusions on details so minute they frequently fail in translation, I have to ask - are you a KJV onlist?  Are you one of these people who thinks the English text is divinely inspired and therefore supercedes the original language?

There are several things that do not come through in translation.  For example,

  • The English words "to", "for", and "towards" all come from the Hebrew LAMMED preposition. Yet I actually heard someone once argue that my position was wrong because the English text says "to" and not "for", and therefore I was wrong!!!!!
  • The English words "with" , "in", "by" , "on", "near" , "through" all come from the same Hebrew BET preposition.  If your understanding of a text would be different using a different selection of these words, you are probably understanding it wrong or relying too much on the English.
  • Hebrew,Greek and English don't really use the definite / indefinite article in the same way.  Most dialects of Greek REQUIRE a definite article before someone's name, Hebrew forbids it.   Yet often people try to equate a foreign article to the English "the" and prove or disprove theology based on their ENGLISH UNDERSTANDING of a Hebrew or Greek word not used the same as in English.  That is a very bad approach to theology.
  • The prepositional MEM can be translated "from","by","among","since","because","more than", all depending on context and how it fits with the rest of the grammar of the sentence.  You want to hang a doctrine on how this reads in English?  Really?  An argumentative person trying to prove his point would.  But a scholar trying to search for the truth would not.  He would try to udnerstand the text in its context, then derive a conclusion.
  • The Hebrew word "על" can be found translated as any of the following; "on" , "besides", "through", "near", "about","concerning","against", "for", "because" ,"by" or "yoke".  Do you really want to prove or disprove a doctrine , hinging that proof on this single word?  

In short, it is a bad idea to hang doctrine on grammatical words.  Grammatical words do not always translate perfectly into English.  If you are reading the bible in English, derive your understandings on the basis of an ENTIRE SENTENCE and how it flows, with enough detail that grammar does not make or break the sentence and your understanding of it.  Otherwise, you are ripe for a wrong conclusion.

The word "HE" in Dan 9:27 and elsewhere.

That gets me to the word "he".  With all the above examples of grammar not coming through perfectly, should we really even be TRYING to rest an opinion on a single grammatical word?  Obviously not.

In English, we use the following pronouns;

  • "he" = male PERSON.
  • "she" = female PERSON.
  • "it" = any NON-PERSON, inanimate object

Hebrew uses

  • "HOO" (pronounce like "who") which is any masculine object, whether a person or an inanimate object.   Israel as a nation is sometimes referred to as "he".  A pen/writing instrument "עט" might be called a "he" in Hebrew.  The Hebrew "who" gets translated into English as either "he" or "it".
  • "HE" (pronounced like "he" but means "she") which is any feminine object, whether a person or an inanimate object.  The Hebrew "he" gets translated as either "she" or "it".
  • There is no Hebrew pronoun for "it". There is a word "את" that often means "it", but it is used to INTRODUCE a NOUN (but only when used as a direct and definite object), not IN PLACE OF a noun, so it is not really a pronoun and is usually left untranslated into English.
  • Pronouns can be implied in Hebrew, unlike in English.

So anytime you see "he" in English, it could mean "it".  It does NOT have to refer to a person.  The "he" in Dan 9:27 could refer to an inanimate entity, and not to a person.  It might not refer to the Messiah or False Messiah, but might be best understood as refering to the covenant and the effect it will have.  Or it might refer to Israel as a nation or Rome as a nation.  It does not have to refer to a masculine person, as would be understood in English.  Perhaps the translators should have chosen "it" to match English reader's expectancy instead of "he".  They simply translated as they understood the text. 

And in the case of Dan 9:27, the "he" is implied, not explicitely in the text, so perhaps it does not even belong.

So do you really want to "prove" a doctrine based on what "he" means?  Do you really want to analyze it in English and base your understanding on that?  Worse yet, do you really want to argue a position based on a word that was implied - read INTO the text, and is not really in the original language?  Obviously not.  The main reason no one has responded to Pastor Bob on this issue is because most people are smart enough to recognize this problem and not dwell on it and not consider his point worth addressing. 

The translators translated the text as they best understood it. Maybe they misunderstood the meaning of the text and that affected HOW they translated, though most tried not to do that.   But if you want to get down to "proving" or "disproving" a doctrine based on a grammatical word, you need to analyze it in Hebrew, not in English. 

The text is ambiguous at best.  Some people understand "he" to refer to the Messiah, some to the false Messiah.  It should be kept in mind it might not refer to either, and by the rules of Hebrew grammar, could refer to the nation cited previously and not a specific single person.  It may not even belong, since it is an implied part of the text, not explicit.  It really cannot be used to "prove" anything and should not be used that way.  We should be open for multiple possibilities.

Sometimes God fore-announces stuff He does not necessarily want to be easy to understand.  He just wants to record it so that on judgement day He can cite that He announced it ahead of time.  So sometimes He will say it clearly, sometimes He will say it ambiguously, and sometimes He will not say it, depending on His intentions.  Sometimes He says it clearly in one language, but it does not come through clearly in another.  Some verses may have the intent of helping us figure out ahead of time WHEN things will happen, but some may only be intended to be used AFTER we are in the middle of it and are ambiguous enough that they are not crystal clear on purpose for that very reason.  But God knows what He is doing, and had He wanted to say it clearly enough that no one disagreed on what it meant, He could have.

 

Shalom,

Joe