This is one of those times when I wish I knew more about what I was writing about.... but according to someone who knows more than I do, the ships from Turkey are a huge event:
Turkey is planning to send three warships to the the Eastern Mediterranean to defend against Israeli vessels if necessary and ensure freedom of navigation for Turkish ships....
"Gaza needs humanitarian aid and Turkey has aid to be sent there," Prime Minister Erdogan was quoted as saying by the National Turk. "And i assure every country of the world our humanitarian aid will not be attacked by Israel anymore like it happened to Mavi Marmara last year," he added.
According to reports, three Turkish frigates from its Navy's Southern Sea Area Command will be deployed with the humanitarian shipments, and if an Israeli military vessel is confronted outside its 12-mile (19-kilometer) territorial waters, Turkish ships have reportedly been ordered to advance up to 100 meters (328 feet) from them in order to neutralize their weapon system. [more here]
Quoting from Parshas Balak:
Ships will come from the Kittites and afflict Assyria and afflict those on the other side, but he too will perish forever. [Balak 24:24]
According to Targum Yonatan, ships from Italy/ Turkey/ Constantine will come to enslave the sons of Ever [Avraham haIvri = Ever].... and their end will be to fall into the hands of Moshiach.....and they will be lost forever.
Please leave a comment because there's so much more to this that I haven't blogged because I can't remember it.
17 comments:
Ah, I commented this back on July 1st on my blog. The Targum Yonatan's Aramaic is a bit difficult here. "Fleets of ships will threaten with all sorts of weapons. They will depart with a large crew from Lombarnia, in the land of Italy. And they will join up with legions that will depart from Costantina (for some reason the Nun is missing) and will afflict the sons of Ever....
Now Yonatan ben Uziel lived in the first half of the 1st century. Constantinople was founded by Constantine 300 years later. So this unpleasant fact has lead many a scoffer to deny that Yonatan ben Uziel ever wrote such a peirush on the Torah. How could he have known the name of a city that did not exist for another 300 years they ask with a grin. The answer of course is that it is part of the Oral Torah. So then they came up with Targum Pseudo-Yonatan who lived a lot later. They even like to quote that the Talmud says that Targum Yonatan wrote Chazal's official Targum on Navi while Onkeles wrote the official Targum on the Torah. When Yonatan ben Uziel was about to translate K'tuvim, HaShem took him so that he would not reveal the Keitz in Sefer Daniel. So the scoffers say,"See he did not write any Targum on K'tuvim or even on the Torah." Whoa there, no where does it say that he did not write his own personal Targum on the Torah which was not the official one of Chazal. So let the scoffers scoff. The only thing missing is ships from Lombardy which are supposed to be leading this parade. At this time PM Berlusconi, while he may be an Araiyot pervert with multiple sex partners, is a friend of Israel. So no ships are coming from Lombardy...yet.
Also, note this post from last year.
I don't remember any of that. And it's only a year ago. Seems like 100 years ago.
Dov Bar-Laib, forget the scoffers. Could you please finish for me that translation you left off in the middle. I have no good sefer with the translation and yours would be a boon. Thanks much in advance!
Lombardi may be represented after all. Turkey is a member of NATO, and where Turkey goes, NATO goes. In fact, do you think Turkey would be brazen enough to try this if NATO wasn't backing him?
Here's something you need to know - the Turks can't fight.
They're blowholes with no brains. You do the math what someone with a lot of hot air and no way of maneuvering in deep waters will resort to *fighting*. It's be brief, bloody and ultimately will fail. Nerve they have, and that's all in their possession.
The aid ships are from Europe and the US i.e. the spiritual heirs of Rome/Italy, so this all fits.
" So this unpleasant fact has lead many a scoffer to deny that Yonatan ben Uziel ever wrote such a peirush on the Torah."
oy.
how about that the gemara, geonim and early rishonim don't discuss the existence of such a targum, that it is similar in language and content to targum yerushalmi, and that we have testimony from someone who saw a targum yerushalmi going by that title, leading to the conclusion that it is a mis-title.
put that together with internal evidence that it is a late composition (not just Constantinople, but for instance a midrash putting the names of Yishmael's wives as the same as the wives of Mohammed), and you have **scholarship** suggesting that the identification was made in error. this is not 'scoffing'. it is scholarship, weighing all sorts of evidence.
if I had a rabbinic text, a Shu"t, from Rav Moshe, which discussed 'pizza'. And no rishon discussed it. But Acharonim after Rav Moshe Feinstein discussed it. And then, at some much later point, it was printed as the Shu"t of Rav Moshe ben Maimon (the Rambam), then it would not be 'scoffing' to say that it is possible that a printer mistook Rav Moshe to be ben Maimon rather than Rav Moshe Feinstein. Even if that leads one to say that the reference to 'pizza' is not written in prophecy.
i second in the vanguard. forget the scorffers, dov bar leib, please reach out to us and among us who do not kno w hebrew. in some places of the world things are pretty bleak, and its articles or explanations like yours that prod us to remember Hashem's Master Plan is there, and we pray its now the time, though i do realise only He knows the time exact. please give us the translation. blessings.
josh your right on target. unfortunelty this kind of tricks are more than frequent
yaak already provided two translations of the Targum, in his post on his blog which he linked to above.
he also analyzes it according to each of the possible translations. and finds it extremely forced, despite really wanting it to work.
kol tuv,
josh
First of all this is the best translation of the Aramaic of the Targum Yonatan that I can come up with:
Fleets of ships will threaten with all sorts of weapons. The will depart with a large crew (population) from Lombarnya and from the land of Italy. And (they) will join up with legions that will depart from Costantina and will cause pain to Assyria and will subjugate all the children of Ever. At their very end, these and these will fall into the hand of Melech HaMashiach, and they will be obliterated forever.
1. So the question persists,"Where is Lombarnya?"
2. Also what are these and these? These (number one) could refer to the large crew from Lombarnya and Italy. And these (number two) refers to the legions that come from Costantina (Constantinople or Istanbul). These (number one) today would refer to ships from Edom, and these (number two) today would refer to ships from Yishmael. So the ships from Turkey are from Yishmael. The ships from Edom (Lombarnya and/of Italy) have not shown up yet. I personally thought that the ships would come from Greece, but Papandreou turned out to be a Mentsch and stopped the flotilla ships from leaving Greece in early July. Thank you PM Papandreou.
3. Also is Assyria today Syria? Are the Turks causing Syria pain?
My second note is to Josh Waxman. I agreed with you that the Gemorrah is silent on whether Yonatan be Uziel wrote a peirush on the Torah. But that does not mean that he did not write one. Secondly I do not know why the Geonim and the early Rishonim do not refer to this peirush. Yet, the witness that you brought down on your website who saw the Targum Yerushalmi going by the title of the Targum Yonatan lived in the 16th century. He most certainly could not have known which was which, for both Targums were written at least 900 to 1600 years earlier. Also the book that this witness reported this error in was a book that the Mechaber, Rav Yosef Karo, wanted to burn for heresy. The order to burn all copies of the witness's books was sitting on the desk of Rav Karo when Rav Karo passed away. You would have to agree that if the Mechaber wants to burn your book, you lose credibility for being a witness to an error. I believe that the author who claimed to see this error was Azariah dei Rossi, and the book that Rav Karo wanted to burn was "Me'or Einaim". Now I am no fan of book burning, but when the Mechaber of the Shulchan Aruch wants to burn your book, YIKES!
Haven't watched it, but here is a Rabbi Glazerson video of the Torah Codes: Egypt and Turkey
again, oy.
"Secondly I do not know why the Geonim and the early Rishonim do not refer to this peirush."
So what is your evidence that it existed then? Why should you assume that it existed, and then have to create **prophecy** as an explanation for an anachronism in language, among other anachronisms. indeed, an anachronism which is not labeled as 'I am hereby saying this as prophecy' and which would have confused the HECK out of any reader throughout the generations, including in the generation of the purported author? do we see genuine neviim, who authored sifrei Nevuah, use later terms for places?
that Chazal and Rishonim don't speak about such a sefer, and don't quote it and discuss it, at least not by that name, should be rather telling. it should be a red flag. but it is something you airily dismiss as 'I don't know why...'
Yes, that witness did not live at the same time. But he could know that it was a Targum Yerushalmi by knowing the content of other targum yerushalmi texts. And meanwhile, Rishonim (such as Tosafot) DID speak of Targum Yerushalmi as an existing text, and not a fragmentary one. see my discussion here of that Tosafot.
You live much after Onkelos, hundreds and hundreds of years. But it would be silly to say that you could not identify a Targum Shmerl as really a Targum Onkelos.
As regards your ad hominem on this witness, perhaps another comment. I have to sign off for the moment.
Even if that picture of 4 Turkish frigates is real, it hardly represents so big a threat as that referred to by YBUziel, where fleets join legions. One drone can wipe these 4 off the face of the earth. I only hope Israel doesn't lose gumption from misplaced mercy. Turks can be quite cruel - and genocidal to boot.
to followup on the point of Azariah de Rossi, the reason contemporaries sought to ban his book, Meor Einayim, was because they disliked his methods and conclusions. That is, for instance, subjecting the aggadah in the Talmud to historical inquiry. for instance, pointing to historical records that Titus died a normal death, rather than death by gnat in the brain, such that the aggadah cannot be taken literally. or conflicts between statements of Chazal and science.
They did not seek to ban him because he was a LIAR who sought to invent facts out of whole cloth. They sought to ban him because they thought that his methodology and conclusions were theologically wrong and dangerous.
There is, therefore, no reason to assume that this witness is deliberately LYING in his testimony of what he saw.
(Others whose persons or works were **actually** banned by other frum rabbis include the Ramchal, the Baal HaTanya, and the Rambam.)
The Rambam says to 'accept the truth from he who says it'.
I think what is happening here is that you already have decided what your conclusion **should** be, and are finding and believing as most convincing whatever arguments will bring you to your desired destination. (related: see here.) The brain as a rationalizing muscle can surely come up with such reasons.
I'll close by noting that there is nothing theologically dangerous with concluding that the Targum Yonasan is a post-Talmudic work, any more than concluding that Rashi al haTorah is a post-Talmudic work.
kol tuv,
josh
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