[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Well, let me come to the party late but still with good wishes for a happy fete day, Legate.

Thank you. And to you too, alatar.

Well, I suppose I would say that original intention for the original readers--listeners really, as all the Pentateuch began as Oral Law--comes down to us through a long line of redactors, starting with the change over two generations between the Prophets and the Scholars, way back centuries before the Second Temple fell, 70 CE and that's a very intersting switch in the nature of those whose inheritance it was to preserve the Law. And, if that original intention was so clear, how come the theme of disobedience and willful refusal to follow God's way had to be hammered home so often, and how come there's such a rich tradition of interpretation and analysis? I suppose this question is very similar to alatar's line about "missed it by this much."

There's also an argument to be made that it is more difficult to understand a contemporary book than one written two hundred years ago, as more is involved in interpretation than just the very important aspect of literal definition. Look at how easily LotR has been given several contradictory readings and how for some it is a reactionary tome and for others a very modern, forward looking book. And look at Tolkien's own Foreword where he gives a very stark 'interpretation' of the story had it truly had parallels with World War II. To continue with the hoom, harooms, it's very easy to miss the forest for the trees.

That's true. But the way I put it in the post before I think the books written in different circumstances are more difficult to read - when you don't know much about the time when they were written. Because of the reasons I stated. It's true that when you know about the circumstances, it may be easy for you to abstract some "time-specific" things, like for example now I am reading a book about Mahatma Gandhi written by a Czech author during the era of totality here, and I know which things to relativise or to take with reservations (although I am aware that even this may be dangerous, as I possibly can't know all). But still I think the contemporary books are easier to understand just because of that. And what you say for example about Tolkien, and I believe it concerns even the biblical story by the time it was narrated in its first times, and that's also about the "clear intention" and the things you speak about in the first paragraph, it was prone just to the "wilful interpretation", as much as everything is.
Nevertheless, I never said the story has just one correct interpretation or something like that. That would be the biggest nonsense. But I simply say that there are certain criteria - and the disobedience, wilful refusals and such things you mention prove it - that there are some borders where the interpretation simply becomes wilful and untrue to the central message of it (also in the case you take the Bible as canon, be it just OT or both or in any other cases, you can actually apply this on any set of books, even on Tolkien - then you have to count with the single stories' interpretations being coherent with the message of the book as a whole). Now I must say I also mix some "criticism" into it, simply saying that there are things which I believe cannot in any way be based upon the concerned text. Anyway, actually I believe there may be situations when one interpretation may be appropriate while in a different situation it would not be. Look even into the biblical canon itself! There are some really contradictory things inside it. But that's what it is - and that's actually what I believe makes it still "live" and gives it some possibility of "dialogue". Aside from, whenever I am already speaking from personal opinion, the Holy Spirit, which makes it possible to convey some message to you. But that's purely Christian view now.

Yet, for all this, I think we have different points of view about intention and original meaning, which will likely never meet.

Who told you that? At least I was not able to "decipher" what is your point of view about intention and original meaning, not in the way that the result would tell me it's totally different from mine and that they can never meet.

Well, just for the sake of discussion as this is really getting tangential to the topic, I'm not sure where exactly the story of the Tower of Babel "starts" in the Hebrew, because the chapter and verse numbers are an invention of Christian exegesis.

Of course. But just for the sake of discussion, the point is that the story speaks, at least in this sentence, which is seemingly important (well, after all, it apparently caught the eye of those who divided the chapters), speaks about "all the earth". And it's definite that the point of the story concerns all people, be they male or female.
As for where it starts, one might take a look at it, but I would personally think, who knows, because it's put into the one whole by the redaction(s?) and one would have to try to find out by some signs, or actually, conclude where it theoretically might have started. Fortunately that's not our task at the moment anyway. At least not mine.

And I'm just a little bit intrigued by the fact that, of all the historical contexts and interpretations offerred of Babel on Wikipedia, only an apocryphal one, from the pseudepigrapha, The Third Apocalypse of Baruch, actually mentions women by word, with a rather stark story about the cruelty of the Tower's instigators: Wiki on Babel.

That's, I would say, an usual way it goes for the apocrypha. With the later age when they were written, one of the things they do is that they "fill in" these things which a reader would usually think about when using some logical conclusion, finding out that it seems the tale misses something. Like for example that women are not mentioned there.


On topic for a change: Mac, I'd agree with some of the things you say, mainly I really am not sure, as you say, whether to see Eru's action as aimed against Númenor primarily. If anything, I would say it was like "All right Manwë, if you ask, I will take Valinor out, and just by the way it will destroy Númenor, how lucky it happens to be so close to the great rift, two flies by one hit, at least." But that's going too far in one direction and I think that won't still be the proper answer for the question.
In any case, on the other hand, even the "I will rip the world apart and look, as collateral damage it destroyed Númenor" explanation does not seem satisfactory, as Eru would surely know so we cannot label it as "accident" and the story even makes one think that it was not a mere "accident", right? Now I am a little exaggerating of course, but in any case we cannot avoid the question "so why did Eru do this?" and cannot just say "it just happened to be that way". Or so I would think.