Subject: Re: tc-list Vendyl, ShemTob & Qumran

From: Christian Hoffmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 11:47:17 -0500

Some remark:

I looked the two words up in my pocket Ben Yehuda-Weinstein English-Hebrew-English dictionary.

There the two words are clearly:

bohen (bet-he-nun): thumb
bochen ( bet-chet-nun): touch-stone as even-bochan.

Will this affect the ongoing dispute?

Shalom
--Christian

At 21:07 10.12.98 -0600, you wrote:
>
>I have learned that Vendyl Jones has published some of his false claims
>about Shem Tob Matthew as recently as October of 1998:
>
>	"Rabbi Shem Tov Ben Isaac Ben-Shaprut... wrote a polemic book
>	against Christianity.  Included in this book was a chapter titled 
>	Eben Bohan.  
>

[clip]

>The truth is:
>
>1.  Shem-Tob's entire book is titled "Even Bohan" 
>not just the one chapter that has Matthew transcribed into it.
>
>2.  The book is called "Even Bohan" (the touchstone) while the location 
>at Qumran is called "Even Bochan" (the stone thumb).  They are not even 
>the same Hebrew word (as James Taber has pointed out)
>
[clip]

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From: James Trimm <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 10:59:23 -0600

Yes it does, as James Tabor said:

I too was sorry to see this issue of VJ bulletin and how he was playing so
fast and loose with the facts.  I would add one IMPORTANT point...Even
Bohan and Even BoCHan are NOT even the same words in Hebrew...

One is a place name from Joshua 15:6, and is the Stone of BOCHAN (spelled
with a Chet) the name of a person, son of Reuben, but also meaning
THUMB...and that marker indeed looks like a thumb sticking up, just north
of Qumran...Maybe the guy was tall and called "the thumb" as a knickname,
and the rock got his name.

The other word is Even Bohan (spelled with a Hey), the Smooth Stone or
touchstone (used in Isa 28:16), an entirely different word.

To confuse the two is like maintaining that the words "car"and "cat" are
the same in English...after all, only one letter difference!!

James Tabor

>>the same Hebrew word (as James Taber has pointed out)
James Trimm
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