Back in March I posted a link to the video below, which was created and posted by Dr. Michael Brown.
The video is about how Hebrew is not to be read / translated / interpreted according to the shapes of the original picture-script (“pictographic”) from which the Hebrew letters originated. Dr. Brown is correct. Trying to take the Hebrew words of the Hebrew Bible and retrovert them to their original pictographs and then “translate” them according to picture meanings is nonsense. Imagine teaching your kids to read the alphabetic English letters and then years later tell them they were never really reading, but have to convert words to strings of pictures to “really know” what the letters are saying! It’s akin to making a cake according to a recipe and then suddenly claiming that to really taste the cake you need to eat all the ingredients in their original form. Raw eggs, bottoms up! Now pass me that cup of sugar! Absurd … but yet common.
We know how Hebrew is read. The biblical text of the Hebrew Bible is perfectly readable. It has a grammar that is precisely coherent. It’s, well, a well-ordered written language (thank God).
But that isn’t enough to satisfy the occult impulse in many people. Dr. Brown asks here why the vitriol against his video spewed forth. There’s your answer — the hunger to believe that, when you go back to pictures, you’ve acquired hidden knowledge (the word “occult” means “hidden”). Now, I’m not using “occult impulse” as pointing to anything satanic. That would be equally absurd. Rather, I’m pointing out the impulse to want to know secret things, or know more than your neighbor about something they think they know. It’s an unconscious covetousness — “I’ve figured out something you haven’t” (trust me, you see it in academia a lot).
