Questions I have had about the Bible recently...

[FlatAssembler]

So, I have studied the Bible a bit recently, and I posted some questions about it on various Internet forums. So, I thought I might share it with you guys...

Why does Psalm 137:4 ("How will we sing the song of the Lord in a foreign land?") mean? Was there some common superstition back then that religious songs must not be sung in a foreign land? How does that make any sense? The most sensible answer I received is that "song of the Lord" is supposed to be a joyous song, and that it is inappropriate to sing it while in exile.

In Vulgate in Matthew 2:23, it says "Et veniens habitavit in civitate quæ vocatur Nazareth". Why is it "civitate" (ablative) and not "civitatem" (accusative)? He came INTO Nazareth, so it should be an accusative, right? Well, it is a detail of Latin grammar.

In Vulgate, Matthaeus 4:23, it says "et prædicans Evangelium regni". Shouldn't it be "regno" (dative) rather than "regni" (genitive)? He was talking the gospel TO the kingdom. I also asked that on StackExchange. Basically, the "regni" here is "kingdom of Heaven", not Israel.

In Matthew 27, why does Vulgate call the graves of people who rose from the dead along with Jesus "monumentum", while calling Jesus'es grave "sepulchrum"? The answers I received on Quora were invariably trying to deny Matthew 27 actually says that Jesus was not the only person who rose from the dead that day, which is nonsense. So, I asked that question on StackExchange as well. The answer I got there is basically that it is a very literate (morpheme-by-morpheme) translation from Greek.

In Judith in Vulgate, why does Jerome transliterate the name "Arphaxad" with 'ph', but he transliterates "Holofernes" with an 'f'? Both were the same sound, right? Well, Nick Nicholas, a Quora user who seems to know a lot about Greek and Latin, said the following:

This is a very good question, and a quarter hour googling did not give me an answer. And as with a lot of religion-related questions on Quora, you’ve gotten non-answers to date here.
(...)
What I think happened, based on the above, is: Jerome was a conscientious scholar, who stuck with existing, Greek-based transcription norms for Hebrew, and maintained consistency in his translation. So even though he translated Arphaxad from the Hebrew <’Arpaḵšad> in Genesis, and from the Greek <Arphaxad> in Judith, he kept them both consistent as <Arphaxad>.

On the other hand, when he came across <Olophernēs> in the Greek text of Judith, with no Hebrew precedent elsewhere in the Bible, he seems to have had a thinko, and transliterated it semi-phonetically from the Greek of his time. Jerome kept the hypercorrect h- of “whole-ophernes”, which Diodorus Siculus (or his scribes) had already put in—even though the /h/ was no longer pronounced in the Greek of his time either.

In Vulgate in Jacob 5:14, it says "Infirmatur quis *in vobis*?". How is that grammatical? Should not it use the partitive genitive "vestrum" instead of "in vobis"? Or at least "inter vos"? I received literally no answer neither on Quora nor on StackExchange, I do not know why.

Vulgate in Matthew 27:46 translates "Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani ?" as "Deus meus, Deus meus, *ut quid* dereliquisti me ? ". Why does it use "ut quid" instead of the usual Latin word for "why", "cur"? Furthermore, how exactly can "ut quid" mean "why"? Some Bob Zisk says the following, which I have no idea if it is true:

Quid alone has a long history as an interrogative meaning why.

In case you do not know, quid was the usual Latin word for what. "What is your name?" was "Quid nomen tibi'st (=tibi est)?".

In Judith 8:34 in Vulgate, it says: "Et revertentes abierunt.". What could it possibly mean? "And they left while returning."? Is not that self-contradictory? Some James Hough answered this:

No, remember that Latin is NOT in the same word order as English, and that we get the meanings of words from their endings not their place in the sentence! Thus this would just be saying, “they departed to return from whence they came.”

Now, obviously, they are some far more clear ways to say "they departed to return from whence they came." in Latin, if it is even grammatically possible for "Et revertentes abierunt." to mean that. I also asked that question on StackExchange, and got similar comments.

Which language does the word "sandal" come from? I have always assumed it is a Germanic word related to "sand", as sandals are usually worn on beaches. Now I see the word is mentioned in Judith 10:3 in Vulgate: "induitque sandalia pedibus suis". Short answer is we do not know, it perhaps comes from a name of a type of tree in some Dravidian language.

In Judith 13:31 in Vulgate, it says “Benedicta tu a Deo tuo in omni tabernaculo Jacob”. Who is that Jacob and why is it in nominative and not genitive? I received literally no answer, neither on Quora nor on StackExchange.

In Judith 14:17, why did everybody strip off their clothing ("sciderunt omnes vestimenta sua") when they heard Holofernes died? Was that some kind of custom back then? If so, it was definitely a weird one. The best answer I have got is this:

You have mistranslated the word “sciderunt.” It means “they ripped”, or “they tore”, or “they rent.” It does not mean “they stripped.”

I assumed "scindo" means the same as Croatian "skinuti" (to strip). Because, you know as they say, if you do not know what some word in a foreign language means, and you cannot guess it by breaking it into parts, try guessing it based on your native language. Then I asked on Quora whether the Croatian word "skinuti" was indeed related to Latin "scindere". Some David Mandić said this:

Skinuti (imperfective skidati) means “take down/off” generally, but its original meaning was “tear off” as well (s- “off”, kidati “tear”). But I think that’s related to Engl. shoot, Ger. schießen < PIE *(s)kewd-/(s)kud-, not to Lat. scindere, Ger. scheiden.

So, apparently, this time trying to guess what the word meant based on the context and the languages I already knew led me into the wrong direction.

[Duty]

Tip of the iceberg IMHO.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

So, your chief issue with the Bible seems to be Latin grammar cases.

Weird.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

The most sensible answer I received is that "song of the Lord" is supposed to be a joyous song, and that it is inappropriate to sing it while in exile.

I guess that would be a gentle way of putting it.  The narration is pretty explicit. In 1-3 a pow train is described as hanging it's harps in sorrow along the banks of the river when their captors ask them to sing the songs of zion in 4.  From 5 onward the author says he'd rather forget how to play, how to speak, even.  He recalls the day that jerusalem fell and ends the psalm fantasizing about the deaths of his captors children.

They eventually move beyond those misgivings, historically speaking, as people in diaspora tend to do. They found a way to keep singing.

[FlatAssembler]

So, your chief issue with the Bible seems to be Latin grammar cases.

Weird.

Boru

That is called low-level criticism.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

So, your chief issue with the Bible seems to be Latin grammar cases.

Weird.

Boru

That is called low-level criticism.

From you or from me?

Boru

[FlatAssembler]

That is called low-level criticism.

From you or from me?

Boru

From me. Questioning meanings of Bible verses (including the grammar) is called low-level Biblical criticism. That is how you get a deeper insight into the Bible. Similarly to how assembly language programming gives you a deeper insight into how computers work.

[Drich]

So, I have studied the Bible a bit recently, and I posted some questions about it on various Internet forums. So, I thought I might share it with you guys...

Why does Psalm 137:4 ("How will we sing the song of the Lord in a foreign land?") mean? Was there some common superstition back then that religious songs must not be sung in a foreign land? How does that make any sense? The most sensible answer I received is that "song of the Lord" is supposed to be a joyous song, and that it is inappropriate to sing it while in exile.

got to remember alot of the psalms were songs of joy and thanks giving. others were laments and prayer recorded during captivity. for instance the book of kings 1 and 2 are a period of where the jews are captured sold into slavery, repent as a people and god restores them a generation goes by and the cycle repeats. 
in this case you have a lament, that is saying how can we sing songs of worship and praise while we are here in a foreign land as slaves (where the people do not support or love God as they do.) the passage asks how can we sing of the joy of the lord when nothing in the foreign land is of god. we know this to be the indisputable case as the rest of the passage frames it out to be so:
Psalm 137
1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
    when we remembered Zion.
2 There on the poplars
    we hung our harps,
3 for there our captors asked us for songs,
    our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
    they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord
    while in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,
    may my right hand forget its skill.
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
    if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
    my highest joy.

---

and i can not help you with any of the vulgate passages as i study the koine/hebrew bible.

[Gwaithmir]

So, I have studied the Bible a bit recently, and I posted some questions about it on various Internet forums. So, I thought I might share it with you guys...

Why does Psalm 137:4 ("How will we sing the song of the Lord in a foreign land?") mean? Was there some common superstition back then that religious songs must not be sung in a foreign land? How does that make any sense? The most sensible answer I received is that "song of the Lord" is supposed to be a joyous song, and that it is inappropriate to sing it while in exile.

got to remember alot of the psalms were songs of joy and thanks giving. others were laments and prayer recorded during captivity. for instance the book of kings 1 and 2 are a period of where the jews are captured sold into slavery, repent as a people and god restores them a generation goes by and the cycle repeats. 
in this case you have a lament, that is saying how can we sing songs of worship and praise while we are here in a foreign land as slaves (where the people do not support or love God as they do.) the passage asks how can we sing of the joy of the lord when nothing in the foreign land is of god. we know this to be the indisputable case as the rest of the passage frames it out to be so:
Psalm 137
1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
    when we remembered Zion.
2 There on the poplars
    we hung our harps,
3 for there our captors asked us for songs,
    our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
    they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord
    while in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,
    may my right hand forget its skill.
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
    if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
    my highest joy.

---

and i can not help you with any of the vulgate passages as i study the koine/hebrew bible.

Perhaps it was politically incorrect at the time to pray to your own god in a foreign land. Some extant ancient correspondence shows the writers praying to strange gods while in countries other than their own. There might have also been a belief that gods only held sway in the countries in which they were chiefly worshiped.

Henotheism - Wikipedia

[Drich]

got to remember alot of the psalms were songs of joy and thanks giving. others were laments and prayer recorded during captivity. for instance the book of kings 1 and 2 are a period of where the jews are captured sold into slavery, repent as a people and god restores them a generation goes by and the cycle repeats. 
in this case you have a lament, that is saying how can we sing songs of worship and praise while we are here in a foreign land as slaves (where the people do not support or love God as they do.) the passage asks how can we sing of the joy of the lord when nothing in the foreign land is of god. we know this to be the indisputable case as the rest of the passage frames it out to be so:
Psalm 137
1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
    when we remembered Zion.
2 There on the poplars
    we hung our harps,
3 for there our captors asked us for songs,
    our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
    they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord
    while in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,
    may my right hand forget its skill.
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
    if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
    my highest joy.

---

and i can not help you with any of the vulgate passages as i study the koine/hebrew bible.

Perhaps it was politically incorrect at the time to pray to your own god in a foreign land. Some extant ancient correspondence shows the writers praying to strange gods while in countries other than their own. There might have also been a belief that gods only held sway in the countries in which they were chiefly worshiped.

Henotheism - Wikipedia

read verse three it tells you why. they could not sing songs of joy to their tormentors. 4 how can we sing these(joyful songs) while made slaves in a foreign land.

Imagine being captured by ISIS or the taliban forced to work as a slave have you life threaten by beheading with a dull bayonet like the reporters that jihadi john beheaded. then told to sing the national anthem like whitney houston did during the super bowl.. or lee green wood's proud to be an american. could you do it and mean it when you lost hope of life itself? could you do it just so they could mock you?