Evidence of Hindu Religion on the Theory of Chomsky\u27s Transformational Grammar

The purpose of this paper is to broaden the links to Noam Chomsky, the American linguist in order to show that he is not only a product of his own professors or immediate surroundings, nor from links he willingly made to the 17th-19th century scientists and philosophers but also further back to the Hindu mathematician linguist Panini. Individual studies were made in the past to each of these aspects separately but this paper brings concepts together to form a network of similarity of ideas that stands ultimately in contrast to another reality of understanding, that is, two sets of networks. Panini was a Hindu linguist and the Colonial upsurge in Sanskrit studies brought Westerners in contact with this grammarian. What became clear from this paper is that past history and ideas have a pop-up role to play when scientists are at loss what to do or say in their description of science. The scientist is not working purely empirical but his/her epistemology is subconsciously or unconsciously molded by “prooftext” statements of great minds in the past that aligned with the lifestyle choice of the scientist. Chomsky pulled together in his linguistic description statements from scientists that support his own idea. Understanding Hindu religion better, enabled one to see lines of correspondence with the theory and axioms of Leonard Bloomfield and further, also with that of Noam Chomsky in his design of the Transformational Grammar. Knowing more about Panini and his disciples brought one ultimately to understand the epistemology behind transformational grammars and to realize that the conflict with Traditional Grammar is more than a formal or functional one but rooted deeper in a difference of monotheisitc Judeo-Christian epistemology, on the one side, with deistic philosophies or pantheistic Hindu epistemology on the other

A Presentation of 4QLXXNum in Comparison with the LXX and MT

Texts from Qumran received attention in publications and research since their discovery. The text under investigation here is no exception. There are some serious questions to consider in relation with this text: What can this Qumran text tell us about the relationship with the consonantal text of the Masoretic Tradition? What can it tell us about its relationship with any of the Ancient Translations? What can it tell us about its relationship with the so-called LXX or Septuagint? And what can it tell us about the condition of the Septuagint in the pre-Christian era? What scholars may not have realized, is that 4QLXXNum is able to tell us something about the conditions of the Hebrew Vorlage in the pre-Christian period related to the existence or not of one canonical perceived and applied text. Textual variety over millennia is no secret nor surprise. Close correlation of texts over millennia is a noteworthy surprise. It appears that 4QLXXNum is the survival of a pre-Antiochus Epiphanes text-form of the Septuagint (pre-164 BCE) which was more literal and in line with the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition than the Greek text-form that survived in post-Epiphanes times through Christian hands. Since 4QLXXNum is aligning so well with the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition (a period of nearly 1148 years) the stability of these two texts calls for a canon form to have existed almost identical to the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition from which the literal translation was made. It implies that this form existed already at Qumran. Any deviation from this standard is later and due to degenerative scholarship. Wevers is correct, he did not reconstruct the original Septuagint of Genesis for the Göttingen edition. He reconstructed the post-Epiphanes degenerative product and what was preserved through Christian hands, and not the original, of which 4QLXXNum is an example

Pig Taboos in the Ancient near East

The cardinal study on the topic of pig eating in the Ancient Near East, is the work of Billie Jean Collins (2006). She focused basically on the issue as it relates to the Hittite cuneiform texts but did also probe sideways to other nations and the Bible, albeit minor comments. This study wishes to stand on the shoulders of Collins, adjusting some statements, adding other aspects from Archaeological sites and Gerhard Hasel’s explanation of Clean and Unclean in Leviticus 11. What was found in this presentation, is that chronology as backbone in the Scriptures, if taken seriously, could explain the presence or absence of pig eating practices also among the Hittites and Egyptians (the New Kingdom). This research has investigated Collins’ contribution of Hittites and Pig Consumption, Pigs in Hittite archaeology, Pigs in Egypt, Pigs in Mesopotamia, Pigs in Zoo-archaeology at Hesban in Transjordan, Pigs at Sites in Canaan, Pigs as Offerings in Hittite Rituals, Pig Taboo Rules in the Ancient Near East, Pigs as Medical Use in Mesopotamia, Pig Taboo in the Old Testament by Ackerman (1992) and Collins (2006), Pig Taboo among Later Greeks, Pig Taboo in the Old Testament by Gerhard Hasel (1991,1994). Whereas the other Nations around Israel display an S-curve or down-trend and up-trend in the appearance and disappearance of evidence for the taboo against pig-eating, among the Israelites it was a straight line unchanged. For that matter, the sojourn in Egypt, the Exodus from Egypt, the presence in Assyria, the presence in Babylonia or Egypt later during the exiles and Persian periods, should be taken into consideration for observations from cuneiform texts, from papyri or pyramid texts or from the travel descriptions of Herodotus. The biblical reality of Israelites living in these domains under consideration and the evidence or absence of taboos against pig-eating from the same areas and times, necessitate re-evaluations of the data

Towards a Text-Analytical Commentary of Daniel 9:24

This paper investigates Daniel 9:24 in various ancient versions. The methodology that is used is not the conventional Eclectic Text Method but a reversal back to the Standard-Text Method due to the strong link that 4QDana provides with the modern Hebrew textual form with an error margin of less than 1%. It was found that the Ancient Versions, such as Old Latin, Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, Origen, Jerome in the Vulgate, Coptic, Syriac all tried to discover the Standard-Text that we are privileged to hold in our hands today, but that Library robberies, cultural antagonism, persecutions, book-burning practices, made it difficult to get access to good originals and seemingly the degenerative copies at Qumran provided the only avenue for the versions. Many of the variants originated due to slips of the hands, eye, ear, tongue and memory. It was not their intention to create a new text or to deviate from the text freely. They simply had no choice. The Standard-Text Textual Analysis Method brings these processes in the degenerative character of the versions, which they share with the degenerative character of the scribal practices of Qumran, to the front. Whereas the Eclectic Text Method leads to nihilism since it makes the reader the creator of his/her own text by self-reconstruction, the Standard-Text Textual Analysis Method places the text to be analyzed next to an objective ruler (the consonantal text of the Masoretic Tradition) and forces the reader to compare differences but also encourages the researcher to discover and see how the variant originated. This was done with various Versions including Latin, Greek, Coptic for Daniel 9:24. One cannot miss the clarity of understanding the origin of the variants. As compared to the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition, they stand in a degenerative position as far as form is concerned. As far as interpretation is concerned it was found that scholars understood Daniel\u27s prophetic times in the correct way using the year-day principle but that the heathen interpreter Porphyry wanted to read events and times back to Antiochus Epiphanes much to the frustration of Jerome. It was found that the Arabic Jewish commentator in the 10th century also suggested the year-day principle for Daniel 9:24 or 490 years for the days. Keeping these rules in mind opens up startling discoveries for the modern interpreter of Daniel who only up to this time has read Daniel through the glasses of the heathen interpreter Porphyry

Critical Evaluation of a Smart-phone Movie Project for University Students

Smart-phone movies were utilized for examinations at Kyungpook National University, Sangju Campus for the Freshman English Second Language course, and the results were analyzed. Students employed many movie genres: religious influences; sports; reality; news; factual; sitcom; police procedural; horror; traditional fantasy legends; slice of life; military; science fiction; romance; Bildungroman; gangster; instructional genre; and disaster genre. They worked many hours outside the class producing short English movies with enjoyment. Written content and performance were important for exams. The teacher, as a DSL (Digital Second Language) generation person, was surprised by the DFL (Digital First Language) generation producers. Even though the smart-phone is an excellent motivational tool for young learners, yet looking at the necessity for them to develop a proper philosophy of life one must be aware of the danger to prioritize image above text since it has cognitive implications for the long-term memory and creative aspects of the brain. The future successful teacher will utilize the mobile-learning utility to make them research with electrical-learning tools enabling them to self-construct through a process of deconstruction and reconstruction with cognitive sensitivity fulfilling the old traditional behavioristic objectives. A literature review notably revealed an upsurge of related studies by Korean scholars recently

A Conversational and Compositional Grid for Freshman University Students

The purpose of this paper is to put together a tool for Freshman University Students with an ESL level, which will assist them to avoid errors in syntax precision and sentence generation. Both these aspects are problematic for students with a SOV language as mother-tongue who then have to produce with a SVO challenge. When their own language is a post-positional language as opposed to English as a prepositional language, that situation may complicate matters for these students even more. The grid is designed in such a way to allow the student to start from the left and work his way to the right selecting one item from the list constructing a meaningful communication as he/she goes along. The overall intention is towards greater precision and correctness, raising the level of accuracy in syntax and other grammatical aspects. The grammar selected for this purpose is the traditional grammar chosen for its simplicity, stability, and continuity functional in millennia of grammar didactics. The role of transformational-generative grammars are not overlooked but none of the recent grammar approaches in sentence grammar, discourse grammar, HPSG (Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar), universal grammar or syntax grammar could serve the purpose of designing this tool except sequencers or DM (discourse markers) discussed by Heine (2013). The limitation to this study is that the Conversational Grid tool has not been tested yet and that task calls for another future article describing the results of experimentation utilizing this tool

Another Cuneiform Tablet from Drehem in the Ur III Period

Although M. Sigrist and others spent some time in translating cuneiform texts at the Siegfried Horn Museum, there was one more unpublished Drehem tablet in the James White Library Archives and another tablet. The Adventist Heritage Center of the James White Library of Andrews University in Berrien Springs, MI, obtained this tablet from a private collector, George Barr Suhrie (1905-1985) in 1976. This text dates to the 45th year of Šulgi which is 2050/49 BCE. It is an economic text listing animals brought for various deities: En-lil; Nin-lil; by at least three individuals from Nippur to Drehem. Lugalazida was the son of the king, Ursukkal was a wine attendant and Šešdad was a temple-administrator. A large number of animals, bull, cows, sheep, ewes, kids, goats, equids, were received by Ilum-bani in 2050/2049 BCE. Two texts from the Oriental Institute of Chicago: Text 235 = A4977 and Text 417 = A2978, are dating also to Šulgi’s 45th year with the order of the items in the year formula identical to AUAHCCT 1 Reverse line 12. Biblical chronology is an exact science and according to strict biblical reckoning, with the 4th year of Solomon as 970 BCE, Jacob was born in 2080 BCE, 30 years before this tablet. The influence of the Ur III dynasty, with Šulgi deifying himself, can be seen in Jacob’s household and others with him, when he asked them to “put away the foreign gods among you, and purify yourselves, and change your garments,” Genesis 35:2. Of course this event was a decade or two after this tablet because Esau got married in 2040 BCE and Jacob left afterwards