Re: CHAT: Writing on the wall (was Re: Re: CHAT: pacifism(

On Sunday, December 21, 2003, at 01:27 AM, John Cowan wrote:

> Ray Brown scripsit:
[snip]
>> which is actually given in the KJV of verse 28.  As for _Peres/ Phares_,
>> I gather there is an Aramaic word _peres_ meaning 'divided'; but some
>> have taken it as _paras_ (a weight of half a mna) and others have seen
>> a connexion with _Paras_ (plural _Pharsin_) "Persians".
>
> Of course, a weight is also a monetary unit in the ancient world, and
Indeed, just as the Brit pound sterling was once a 12 ounces of silver
(the old Roman pound weight being of 12 ounces).

> the _American Translation_ of 1931 by Cyrus Gordon et al. rendered the
> phrase "You have been quartered, halved, and cent to perdition".
Neat   :)

>> Hopefully, the Semiticists on the list can comment on the Aramaic.
>>
>> What we do have, of course, is Daniel's _interpretation_ of the writing.
>
> It's always been my impression that Nabu-kudurri-usur's wise men didn't
> "understand it" not in the sense that the words were unintelligible,
> but in the sense that the *sentence* was unintelligible.  Similarly,
> when Frodo says to Gandalf "I cannot read the fiery letters", he means
> he can't understand the language, not that the letters themselves are
> unrecognizable.
Yep - but verse 8 says they could neither _read_ the writing nor explain to
the king what it meant.  That seems to me to imply at least as great a
difficulty as that felt by Frodo.
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On Sunday, December 21, 2003, at 08:50 AM, dansulani wrote:

> On 20 Dec, Ray Brown wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> Hopefully, the Semiticists on the list can comment on the Aramaic.
>
>     I'm not really a Semiticist, but I'd like to add to the discussion
> something of what Jewish tradition says on the subject.
>     In the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin, page 22), there is
> a discussion presenting various opinions concerning the writing.
> All seem to agree that the words were encoded in some way
> (aleph written as tav, bet written as shin, etc; various
> rearrangements of the letters; including writing in a matrix form;
> some even opt for encoding _and_ matrix representation.
> The debate concerned which code was employed.)
Interesting.

>     In other words, before the king's wise-men could even
> try to interpret the writing,  they first had to decode it in order
> to get the words contained in the message, something they couldn't do.
Yes, the passage does seem to me to suggest that there was a problem
just reading the text before they could hope to attempt any interpretation.

[snip]

>     Also, the equivalent formula, in Hebrew, (albeit without "shekel")
> can be found in the Mishna (admittedly codified much later than
> the time of Daniel). In masechet Eduyot (chapt 3, mishna 3),
> in a discussion of the weight of fleece to be given as an offering
> to the priest, it states "mana  mana  ufras", meaning something
> like " apportioned thus:  a portion and half a portion".
That's very interesting - it's very similar to the Daniel passage.

> As I understand it,
> the "mana" here referred to a standard weight of about 400 grams
I asume the same as the Greek 'mna'.

> and  "pras" (word-initial [p],  if following a vowel, [f] ) meant
> "half of that"
...which is ne the meanings I suggested.

Thanks - very interestin.

Ray
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