@courtenay I cannot understand on what basis Ancient Hebrew could be called a "corrupt, deprived language"

I don't understand that basis, either. Historically, after King Josiah died in battle against the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho, in 609 BC, the Assyrian empire collapsed at the Battle of Carchemish, (2 Chronicles 35:20-25) Nebuchadnezzar had his turn, to destroy Jerusalem & take over Judah as well as the rest of the Middle East. If you read the Book of Daniel Chapter 7, the Babylonian empire under Belshazzar was taken over by Cyrus the Mede, & his son Cambyses, but more empires were to come, firstly the Achaemenid dynasty, which finally collapsed when Alexander the Great defeated them on October 1st, 331 BC at the Battle of Gaugamela. 

However, the Seleucid Empire, one of these 4 empires was also fighting against the Ptolemaic Empire based in Egyptian territory, with Judea the meat in the sandwich for much of the time. And when Antiochus IV Epiphanes, conflicted with growing Roman power (Daniel 7, 7 - the fourth beast) on his return back to Syria, he took Jerusalem by force and tried to Hellenise or de-Judaise the area, also killing many who preferred Ptolemy. He also spoiled the temple, and interrupted the constant practice of offering a daily sacrifice of expiation, for three years and six months. His heavy-handedness provoked the Maccabean revolt, but finally under Pompey the Great, in 63 BC, the Romans also despoiled the temple, taking over from the Seleucids who held Syria and Lebanon as well as Judea. By that time, the lingua franca had become Syrian Aramaic, still retained as the language in the liturgy of Lebanese & Syrian churches, and maybe by the Samaritans, descended from the Assyrians and Northern Israelites, who intermingled over the centuries, & still living, it would seem, in the West Bank. 

In 70 AD, Vespasian's son Titus destroyed the repaired Herodian temple, and in 132 AD, after the Bar Kochba revolt, put down by the Emperor Hadrian, a shrine was erected there to his Latin god, Jupiter. As early as 610 BC & by 636-637 AD, Arab armies conquered Jerusalem, during the era of the Caliphates, until in 1099 it fell to the first crusade. Since then, the original Phoenician language of Lebanon has disappeared long ago, and now the lingua franca between Türkiye & Egypt, & east to Iraq is Arabic for everyone, though accents differ of course, especially in Syria (Sham or Aram, in the Old Testament.)

But the original Hebrew still remains the liturgical language of the Torah and the Taanach, at Jewish services, taught to their children as well, at Sunday school, I was told. About a decade ago, a group of us went on a visit to the Great Synagogue, arranged by a Sydney University Adult Education course*, to broaden my mind. Hebrew is also used as the official language of Israel, revived much like Irish was revived when Eire, the Irish Republic was formed in the 1920's. The Rabbi in charge explained how they carefully copied out the Torah by hand, on great rolls of parchment, just like they did in Biblical times, and scrolls that fall to pieces are buried, with great solemnity and respect. 

* Sydney Uni at the time, conducted similar day courses, to the Ba'hai temple at Mona Vale, which would have been really interesting to see, the Gallipoli Mosque at Auburn where they had an open day, and to a Buddhist temple as well, I think. 

Posted by: @davidd

This is just following up a discussion @courtenay and I were having on another thread.  (I don't think we are in disagreement, just I am not communicating clearly).

Reading what you've said, I would say we are in disagreement, but it comes down to differences in theological stance, not to miscommunication.

The point was not to say that Biblical Hebrew is debased.  The quotation came from the lecture “Exposition of Genesis D (Genesis 5 - 8)” by Bruce Waltke at Regent College in Vancouver in 1997.

In context, Bruce was saying the Canaanite language was considered the most debased and insidious of languages.  The Hebrew language has its lineage directly from Canaanite.  The Old Testament is written in Hebrew.  Bruce’s point (as I understand it) is that God can take something that has been corrupted, he can then sanctify it, transform it, purify it, and make it holy.  Thus, where Bruce was despairing that all language can be corrupted, in fact the opposite is also true.  God can take something that has been corrupted and take away its corruption, such that it is sacred and holy.  (Think of Jesus touching a leper.  Normally, if you touch a leper you would become unclean, but Jesus touches the leper and the leper becomes clean.)

I scribed a portion of what he said in the lecture:

“

Man has [Humans have] corrupted the earth.  Every inclination of the heart [is] a vivid portray of the depth and the comprehensiveness of this Human depravity. [He is paraphrasing Genesis 6:5 - every thought of the human heart is evil]

I commented on this in class: when we worked on the N.I.V. [Bruce Waltke was a part of the N.I.V. translation committee], I had a horrible flash of incite.  I discovered that so many words that we wanted to use, we could not use because of a double entendre; they had a second meaning; they were puns.  And they could have an evil connotation.  And at one point we were throwing out words, and I was trying words, and so many of them had this double entendre; that they could be misunderstood until it hit me: ‘every word could be so contaminated with another meaning that you couldn’t talk without thinking evil’.  Every imagination is only evil continually.  Even your hymns could be totally subverted.  It can all take on other meanings. … You can subvert the entire language this way.  It was a frightening thought!

And then I realized that Biblical Hebrew is Canaanite; the most debased, insidious language God used to write Hoy Scripture.  And He can transform it!"

The main issue, as I see it, is something like this. All human languages (whether ancient or modern) have issues of puns, double meanings, words changing their meaning over time, and so on. It's not something that's inherent solely to English, or to Hebrew (ancient or modern), or Canaanite, or any other language in particular. Any language can be used to speak or write of holy things, or evil things, or anything in between. 

And there will always be difficulties (probably near impossibilities) in conveying divine concepts, things that are beyond our full grasp, in human language. Anybody who's ever felt the presence and the love of God even for a moment, or had any other kind of experience of holiness and awe, knows how hard it is to find words adequate to describe or explain it.

But the idea that some (or all) languages are inherently corrupt, and yet God has taken the most corrupt one of them and used it to write Holy Scripture... well, this is where we're talking at theological cross-purposes.

The idea that absolutely everything about human beings is evil, that we are inherently depraved and can think and produce nothing but evil and that our depravity has corrupted the whole earth, is popular in some conservative forms of Christianity, mainly found in the US. It's not the basis on which every single form of Christianity works. I recently read something by a Catholic writer criticising the "total depravity" doctrine of Calvinism by pointing out that in her own tradition, although humanity's tendency to sin is acknowledged, we are still inherently made in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26-27), and that image in us can never be totally lost, no matter how obscured and distorted it is by sin.

C.S. Lewis was of course an Anglican, and Anglican doctrines, while Protestant, originated with Catholicism and are still quite closely related. Interestingly, Judaism — which of course is the religion that the Hebrew Scriptures originated with and most fully belong to — also doesn't have the concept that human beings are totally and utterly corrupt. As far as I understand (not being Jewish myself), it sees us as capable of both good and evil, and of choosing between good and evil. And yes, all too often, whether ignorantly or deliberately, we choose evil. Which is why we need God. (Proverbs 3:5-6, for one example.)

Getting back now to the point about languages... as I was saying, languages — like the human beings who create and use and shape them — can express good or evil or everything in between; can and do change over time; are pretty much incapable of expressing the very highest and holiest concepts; and can easily be misunderstood, or even deliberately twisted for evil purposes. That's the way it is.

But the idea that the Biblical Hebrew language was or is "considered the most debased and insidious of languages" — where does that claim actually come from? If somebody said it in ancient times, that probably says a lot more about that (obviously non-Hebrew) writer's personal prejudices against the Hebrew people than it does about anything to do with the Hebrew language itself.

And out of all the other languages that were around at the time, why exactly were they less corrupt than Hebrew, or than any other human languages?

Seriously, the claim that Hebrew was "the most debased and insidious of languages" is a very strong assertion to make with no credible evidence. It also has uncomfortable echoes of the idea that the Hebrews / Jews themselves (and by extension, their religion) were or are intrinsically corrupt. I don't think we need to go into what that particular concept has led to over the centuries, including things for which we Christians are more than a little at fault (to put it mildly).

[Slight diversion — as @waggawerewolf27 has also pointed out, the Hebrew language survived down the centuries as the scriptural and liturgical language of the Jewish people, even while it was no longer their day-to-day language, and so it was quite easy for Jewish scholars in the 19th century to revive and promote Hebrew as an everyday spoken language in hope of it becoming a unifying factor in building a Jewish nation, as it eventually did. I cannot think of any other language from the Mesopotamian region with origins going as far back as Hebrew — certainly none of the other languages that were spoken in that area during the time of King David et al. — that has survived in any meaningful form, along with the culture that it originated with, to this day. So how anything about that language can be considered more "debased and insidious" than any other language... really is beyond me.]

Back on topic — also, the idea that God took this "debased and insidious" language and "used it to write Holy Scripture"... well, there we're at theological cross-purposes again.

The idea that God personally dictated every word of the Bible is another concept that's popular in certain conservative forms of Christianity, again mainly in the US. It's not part of what would be considered mainstream Christianity as I know it from Australia and the UK and across Europe. I've done Bible study with a range of teachers and textbooks from a range of different denominations, and always there is the acknowledgment that (for a start) we don't have anything we can consider "the original" texts of either the Hebrew or Greek Scriptures.

More to the point, there's the acknowledgment that these texts were, in every case, written by human beings, each coming from their particular time and place and culture, attempting to write down — in those inherently inadequate human languages — what they understood about God, or had heard from God, or what had been passed down in oral tradition as the history of their people's relationship with God. Most of us would agree those writers were guided and inspired by the Holy Spirit, but it's only fair to say that as human beings, none of them were absolutely infallible. Hence why there are contradictions between some Biblical texts, and different possible interpretations, and so many differing theological opinions among Christians and Jews alike.

So, no, I don't subscribe to the view that the Bible is the result of God taking "the most debased, insidious language and using it to write Holy Scripture." Neither do all Christians of other denominations. Some do, obviously, and some don't.

I'm not saying this to get into an argument about who is right and who is wrong, just to point out that Christianity worldwide is a hugely diverse religion, and it's not wise to assume that one's own preferred theological positions are universally accepted and unassailable.

I'm aware that my own theological positions are non-orthodox on a number of matters, and so when reading something like the Chronicles of Narnia, I try to be mindful of the author's particular theological stance (generally easy with Lewis, since he wrote so much on the topic) and to understand and respect it, even where I don't wholly agree with it, rather than imposing my own views over his on the assumption that mine are just naturally the correct ones.

I was trying to echo this idea.  If Calorman had begun by a group of outlaws fleeing justice (I think from Archenland) across the desert, than this is not the most moral beginning for a society.  However, just as God is able to take something that has been corrupted and restore it, so to, Calorman's poor beginning as a corrupt society does not mean that Aslan cannot redeem something from it.  (My own life is a testimony of something that I have made a mess of, but God can turn around and make something holy from in spite of the mess that I often have made.)  Hope that makes sense.

It does, but it doesn't seem to fit entirely with what Lewis is telling us about the nature of Aslan's country. That's back on the topic of the other discussion, so I'll take it over there.  

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

@courtenay I cannot understand on what basis Ancient Hebrew could be called a "corrupt, deprived language"

I don't understand that basis, either.

I think this is the source of the misunderstanding / disagreement.

Did Bruce Waltke or myself say that Hebrew is a depraved language?

No.

Did Bruce Waltke say that Canaanite was a depraved language?

Yes.

On what basis?

The context was the use of puns, euphemisms, etc. for evil intent. (As @Courtenay pointed out, a language is not evil in of itself, it is how you use it that makes it evil.  Language reflects the culture in which it exists and vice versa.  Thus cultures that do not follow the one true God are likely to have more words that are used for vile concepts.)  If I understand Bruce Waltke correctly, he is saying that there is more language relating to evil practices in Ancient Canaanite than other languages of that time.

He is then stating that Hebrew is derived from the ancient Canaanite language (I can not confirm this, as I do not know much about ancient Canaanite - I only ever learned the Hebrew alphabet and a smattering of basic Hebrew words that allowed me to use basic exegetical tools in the the Old Testament - so I can not even say I know much about Hebrew, much less Ancient Canaanite).  But given that Bruce Waltke is a highly respected scholar on Ancient Hebrew, I am accepting his word that Hebrew is derived from Ancient Canaanite.

Assuming this last paragraph is accurate, than the Hebrew scriptures were written in a language that is near identical to Ancient Canaanite.  Bruce says Ancient Canaanite was "the most debased, insidious language".  But Hebrew is not a 'debased, insidious language', in spite of its origins; it is the language God used to write Holy Scripture.  My assumption is that this means, as the Canaanite language was adopted by Abraham / the Hebrews under the influence of the LORD, that it was sanctified - the words referring to abhorrent concepts disappeared (as you need words for the things that you speak about; things that you do not talk about need less vocabulary).

You can witness this in the practice of the English language.  There are a lot of slang for various sinful activities.  If you are outside the community where that sin is practiced, it is often surprising to find out how many words there are to refer to that particular conduct and sometimes to the various intricacies of it.

This then makes sense of Bruce's quotation.  He was in dismay because in translating the Hebrew to English for the NIV (I think it was the 1984 version he was referring to in the quote), there were so many words that the committee was wanting to use, that could not be used because they now had a double meaning that would spoil the translation.  He was running into this problem all the time.  He was reflecting on it and saw it as a manifestation of the fact that "every thought of the human heart is evil" - that all language can be corrupted.

For him, the counterpoint is that God is able to redeem all language.  The Canaanite language was apparently foul and evil, reflecting the culture that it communicated.  Into this culture came Abraham, a man following the one true God.  To communicate with the locals, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would have had to adopt the local language to some degree.  This would explain in part why Hebrew looks more like Ancient Canaanite and less like Ancient Sumerian (Abram was originally from the city of Ur in the Sumerian civilization).  But Abraham followed the one true God, as did his descendants, and under the influence of the LORD, the Hebrew language became something that was not foul and evil.  (Again, the words used reflect the culture - and thus language develops new words to embrace the concepts that it needs to communicate in its culture.  @Courtenay pointed this out when she commented that modern Hebrew is almost unchanged from Old Testament Hebrew, but it has added new words for concepts that did not exist in Ancient times - I'd use 'Nuclear Fission' as an example.  The same would be true for the Ancient Israelites.)

The Holiest book written was written in Hebrew. But Hebrew was a language derived from the Ancient Canaanite language. Bruce's point is that God can take something that is not holy (Canaanite language) and transform it and make it holy.  He makes all things new (Rev 21:5).  The corruption of humanity is not the last word, the redemption of God is the last word.

This is similar to the Early Church converting Pagan Temples into Church buildings.  In the 1st to 4th Centuries, Christians mostly met in house churches.  But at some point around the 6th and 7th centuries, Christians met more publicly and during this time they would repurpose pagan temples.  Apparently, the Pantheon in Rome, the Parthenon in Athens, and the Temple of Hephaestus were all used as buildings for Christians to Assemble for worship.  I have heard people say that this shows a compromise in Christians and that we were apostatizing at that time.  Most Christians though have (rightly I think) said that the Christians were realizing that just as God could make a new person from the old, fallen person, so too He can sanctify a building that had once been used for pagan worship and use it to make His name known throughout the earth.  This does not make Christians, or church buildings unholy, or compromised, rather it shows that God can transform what was evil and make it good - and in so doing a building that was once used for evil can now be used for the greatest good.

Thus none of this is to say that the Hebrew language is unholy, debased or anything like that.  That is not what I am saying and I am certain that is not what Bruce Waltke is saying either.  I have the highest respect for the scribes and Rabis who meticulously preserved the Hebrew scriptures (with remarkable accuracy - the Dead Sea scrolls witnessing how little they changed in over a millennia).

The point here is not to criticize the Hebrew language, but rather to show that God is able to purify language.  Canaanite was an extremely 'unclean' language - but God could take something so corrupted and redeem it - and use it as part of His perfect plan.  "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption."

Posted by: @davidd

I think this is the source of the misunderstanding / disagreement.

Did Bruce Waltke or myself say that Hebrew is a depraved language?

No.

Did Bruce Waltke say that Canaanite was a depraved language?

Yes.

On what basis?

The context was the use of puns, euphemisms, etc. for evil intent. (As @Courtenay pointed out, a language is not evil in of itself, it is how you use it that makes it evil.  Language reflects the culture in which it exists and vice versa.  Thus cultures that do not follow the one true God are likely to have more words that are used for vile concepts.)  If I understand Bruce Waltke correctly, he is saying that there is more language relating to evil practices in Ancient Canaanite than other languages of that time.

Ah, right, I think I understand better now. If I'm reading this right, Bruce Waltke is stating that the ancient Canaanite language was the most corrupt and debased language of its time, but God took it and "purified" it into the Hebrew language that God used to write Holy Scripture. Is that it, more or less?

I did misunderstand this earlier as a claim that Hebrew itself was the "the most debased and insidious of languages", so I'm glad to have that cleared up.

However, the assertions Waltke is making are not entirely matters of provable historical fact, but theological claims, with which some Christians agree and some do not. That's all I'm getting at, really. 

Again, there are those who take the stance that God did not literally dictate the scriptural texts; human beings wrote them, in human languages that are no more inherently pure (or corrupt) than the humans who create and use those languages. Hebrew is a fascinating language, but the idea that it was somehow specially and divinely purified from a "debased" ancestral language is a statement of theological belief, rather than something that professional linguists and historians would attempt to claim, since there's no objective proof of it.

The fact that a language can be used to write or speak about debauched concepts and practices, does not make that language inherently corrupt (though it may suggest something about the culture whose language it is). There are parts of the Hebrew Scriptures that talk pretty frankly about horrible or uncomfortable matters. They're written in the same language that is used for the beautiful and lofty passages that we prefer to quote much more often. 

And again — changes in language, and in meanings of words, happen all the time in every language over decades and centuries. Some of these changes actually entail a negative word becoming more positive, not always a formerly positive word coming to mean something debased. For example, "silly" in English originally meant happy or blessed, not foolish — whereas "fond" originally meant foolish, yet has come to mean affectionately loving. That of course is why we need new Bible translations from time to time, and expert historians to decipher the meanings of ancient languages in their original contexts. But there's nothing necessarily inherently horrifying about that.

Posted by: @davidd

He was reflecting on it and saw it as a manifestation of the fact that "every thought of the human heart is evil" - that all language can be corrupted.

There's a non sequitur in that statement. "Every thought of the human heart is evil", if we take it as absolute fact, would mean that all human language IS corrupted, not merely "can be". And as I said, the idea that all of humankind is completely depraved, in every single thought and action, is the basis of certain forms of conservative Protestantism. It's not the basis of every single Christian theology that exists.

In fact, the Bible passage being referenced there is Gen. 6:5, which refers specifically to the state of humankind before the flood and the building of Noah's ark. (Which, to be clear about, some Christian theologies take as a factual historical event, and others see as fable and metaphor.) Again, I'm no expert on Jewish theology, but from what I can gather, Jews in general do not take that statement in the early part of their Scriptures as conclusive proof that all human beings, to this day, are entirely corrupt and incapable of thinking or doing anything good at all. Nor do all varieties of Christianity — just some of them.

And once more, I'm not going to engage in debate over who is right or who is wrong. Just wanting to make clear that some of these assertions about the Hebrew and Canaanite languages, and the origins of the Bible texts, and the nature of the human heart, are statements of theological opinon rather than absolute provable fact — and there are some matters on which Christians of different denominations and traditions can only agree to disagree. I'm guessing Bruce Waltke himself must have discovered this repeatedly on the NIV translation committee.