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Jewish Bridegroom --- חתן

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
In what system do you claim this took place? It certainly wasn't in Judaism or under any Mosaic code. In what language would one find the word "xother" or "xathan"?

The Hebrew word for a Jewish "bridegroom" is hatan חתן. The same word is used for the "father-in-law," and the word is directly associated with circumcision:

חָתַן (1) TO GIVE ONE’S DAUGHTER IN MARRIAGE (verhehrathen). Hence part. Kal חֹתֵן a father-in-law, the wife’s father (a husband’s father is called חָם), who gives his daughter in marriage. חֹתֵן משֶׁה the father-in-law of Moses, Ex. 18:1; Jud. 19:4, seq. Fem. חֹתֶנֶת a mother-in-law, wife’s mother. Deu. 27:25.
(2) to take in marriage, hehrathen. Hence חָתָן, חֲתֻנָּה.
HITHPAEL, to give daughters in marriage to one another, [“to give or receive a daughter in marriage”]; to join affinity, followed by אֵת, with any one, Gen. 34:9; 1 Ki. 3:1; בְּ Deut. 7:3; Josh. 23:12; 1 Sam. 18:22, 23, 26, 27; Ezr. 9:14; לְ 2 Ch. 18:1. (Arab. ختن Conj. III. id., خَتَنُ a son-in-law, connection by marriage [“father-in-law”].) [“Further this root signifies, Conj. I. to circumcise an infant; خِتَانُ circumcision, place of circumcision خَتِينُ, مختون a circumcised infant. These significations are shown to be joined together by a common bond, not only by Ex. 4:25 (see below in חָתָן) but also by ختن Conj. I. to provide a nuptial feast, or a feast at the circumcision of an infant, خَتَنُ, خِتَانُ a feast at a circumcision. The primary and genuine meaning may be to cut off, to circumcise, another trace of which is in ختن to diminish, خَتْنُ a cutting off (comp. the roots קָטַן, חָתַךְ, and others which begin with the syllable kat); and then the word used for the festival of circumcision was applied to that of a marriage.” Thes.]

Gesenius, W., & Tregelles, S. P. (2003). Gesenius’ Hebrew and Chaldee lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software (Emphasis mine).​




John
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
[“Further this root signifies, Conj. I. to circumcise an infant; خِتَانُ circumcision, place of circumcision خَتِينُ, مختون a circumcised infant. These significations are shown to be joined together by a common bond, not only by Ex. 4:25 (see below in חָתָן) but also by ختن Conj. I. to provide a nuptial feast, or a feast at the circumcision of an infant, خَتَنُ, خِتَانُ a feast at a circumcision. The primary and genuine meaning may be to cut off, to circumcise, another trace of which is in ختن to diminish, خَتْنُ a cutting off (comp. the roots קָטַן, חָתַךְ, and others which begin with the syllable kat); and then the word used for the festival of circumcision was applied to that of a marriage.” Thes.]

Gesenius, W., & Tregelles, S. P. (2003). Gesenius’ Hebrew and Chaldee lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software (Emphasis mine)​

According to Gesenius, the word for the Jewish bridegroom (hatan חתן) is not only associated with the word for the father-in-law, as the circumciser, but the word (חתן) is also associated with circumcision directly, such that the circumcision feast is related to the marriage feast.

These relationships unite circumcision with marriage. As Ibn Ezra points out, it's traditional (or has been in the past) for a Jewish mother to call her newborn son "bridegroom" (hatan חתן) in association with his circumcision.

According to Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, the letter chet ח represents the chuppah in letter symbolism. The first letter in the word hatan חתן symbolizes the chuppah. The second letter in the word for "bridegroom" (i.e., the circumcised one, the hatan חתן) is the tav ת. The letter tav ת is a ligature. It's constructed of two other letters: the dalet ד and the nun נ. The form of the letter tav ת comes from the fact that a nun נ is slid up next to a dalet ד, the combination of the two letters becoming one new letter ת.

The two letters that make up the tav (dalet and nun) spell the word "din" (dalet-nun דן). Din דן is the word for "judgement." So the tav represents "judgment." Originally (in ktav ivri) the letter was the shape of a cross, the cross being the quintessential symbol of judgment.

The last letter in the word hatan חתן is the extended letter nun ן. The letter nun represents procreation, procreative seed, offspring, or even the organ associated with these things. This is particularly the case when the nun is extended, so to say.

The foregoing (if you will, but most won't) suggests that the very word hatan חתן (chet-tav-nun) represents the "judgment" (tav ת) of the extended nun ן, that occurs under the chuppah, the chet ח. The three letters in hatan spell out the fact that hatan represents the "judgment" of the organ of Genitile procreation (the extended nun ן) that occurs under the chuppah. The Jewish wedding is the end of Gen(i)tile procreation and the beginning of a new man, a new form of procreation, and a new epoch in the evolution of God's creation.



John
 

Jedster

Well-Known Member
The same letters, but not the same word. father-in-law is pronounced chotan and bridegroom is pronounced chatan (ch is throat sound that most Westerners can't do)
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
The same letters, but not the same word. father-in-law is pronounced chotan and bridegroom is pronounced chatan (ch is throat sound that most Westerners can't do)

The points are an addition to the sacred text. The words are identical so far as the consonants are concerned. The Masoretes added the points according to their particular prejudice concerning the reading of the text. There's potentially Masoretic Malfeasance involved in the placement of the points.



John
 

Jedster

Well-Known Member
The points are an addition to the sacred text. The words are identical so far as the consonants are concerned. The Masoretes added the points according to their particular prejudice concerning the reading of the text. There's potentially Masoretic Malfeasance involved in the placement of the points.



John
I don't know what your point is.
Take the English word 'draft'. It has 3 meanings that I can think of.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
I don't know what your point is.
Take the English word 'draft'. It has 3 meanings that I can think of.

. . . Then context determines the meaning. But at times the context of a given word can lend itself to multiple readings of the word. . . But still, none of this is particularly important to the point of this thread, which is that the "bridegroom" and the "father-in-law" (both spoken of with the three consonants חתן) are directly associated with the act of circumcision such that even in a Jewish zeitgeist ritual circumcision has a symbolic (grammatical) relationship to an event that occurs on the wedding night.

Btw . . . these ideas are spawned in the thread concerning the nature and function of the hymen in Jewish ritual ("The Hymen doesn't work that way").


John
 

rosends

Well-Known Member
so the Masoretes are now accused of malfeasance because the proper pronunciation of words conjugated from a shared root are different and don't play into your fantasy? You should learn to crawl before you try to run. Have you ever been to a bris? The word chatan, by the way, means "honored person." On the day of the wedding, the groom is the honoree. If you have ever been to services on Simchat Torah, you don't actually think that the person honored with the final aliyah marries the torah, do you? And yet, he is called "chatan torah."
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
so the Masoretes are now accused of malfeasance because the proper pronunciation of words conjugated from a shared root are different and don't play into your fantasy? You should learn to crawl before you try to run. Have you ever been to a bris? The word chatan, by the way, means "honored person." On the day of the wedding, the groom is the honoree. If you have ever been to services on Simchat Torah, you don't actually think that the person honored with the final aliyah marries the torah, do you? And yet, he is called "chatan torah."

The Masoretes are accused of malfeasance (see Masoretic Malfeasance) because they transformed a sacred cipher text given by God into a profane text whose spiritual meaning is utterly lost in the pshat or literal meaning the Masoretes codified as the sole point of the text. The Masoretic text is a funeral dirge for the Living God. It nails God to the wood of the page crucifying the living voice of God because it doesn't bow to the Jewish authorities and their preferred reading of the text. The cantillation it comes from is the Song of Moses, which is a curse against Israel for a crime God foreknew the nation would indulge in: nailing down the living voice of the Torah in favor of traditions associated with the dead letter.


John
 
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rosends

Well-Known Member
The Masoretes are accused of malfeasance (see Masoretic Malfeasance) because they transformed a sacred cipher text given by God into a profane text whose spiritual meaning is utterly lost in the pshat or literal meaning the Masoretes codified as the sole point of the text. The Masoretic text is a funeral dirge for the Living God. It nails God to the wood of the page crucifying the living voice of God because it doesn't bow to the Jewish authorities and their preferred reading of the text. The cantillation it comes from is the Song of Moses, which is a curse against Israel for a crime God foreknew the nation would indulge in: nailing down the living voice of the Torah in favor of traditions associated with the dead letter.


John
That is ridiculous and citing your own blog makes it no less so. You clearly don't know what the Masoretes did, what the pshat is and how cantillation works. A triple threat...
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
That is ridiculous and citing your own blog makes it no less so. You clearly don't know what the Masoretes did, what the pshat is and how cantillation works. A triple threat...

I'm not really citing a blog so much as the ideas presented in the blog. You're not so much practicing Judaism, but rather, practicing the practices of Judaism.



John
 

rosends

Well-Known Member
I'm not really citing a blog so much as the ideas presented in the blog. You're not so much practicing Judaism, but rather, practicing the practices of Judaism.



John
That bit of semantic gymnastics keeps you warm? You cited the blog by putting a link to it. The goal is for people to go to the thing you cited and read it. I practice Judaism because I adhere to the tenets and rituals of Judaism. It isn't about practicing practices; that's just more silliness on your part.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
That bit of semantic gymnastics keeps you warm? You cited the blog by putting a link to it. The goal is for people to go to the thing you cited and read it. I practice Judaism because I adhere to the tenets and rituals of Judaism. It isn't about practicing practices; that's just more silliness on your part.

The foundational ritual (according to Rabbi Hirsch, with others) for Judaism is circumcision. Abraham took a knife to the organ through which Gentiles fancy their privileged birth. Jews are not to draw their privilege through phallic-progeny, but through faith. And yet practical Jews have turned the very scar representing the fact that Judaism isn't about fleshly progeny, but spiritual offspring (conceived through faith), into a sign of fleshly privilege, in effect, completely inverting the very symbolism of the foundational symbol of Jewish faith. The necrotic scar delimiting the phallus as a source of privileged birth, is glorified not for the fact that it renders the serpent powerless to father his offspring, but as though that very scar is the sign of being born through Abraham's phallus, and thus being a good, fleshly, practical, Jew.

Once the very foundation of Judaism is inverted, corrupted, destroyed, all the other symbols are drained of their blood and meaning rendering Judaism a farce of biblical proportions.

Take unleavened bread. It's associated directly with the Passover, and circumcision. The ancients, particularly in the bible, understood the symbolic relationship between making bread and making love. The leaven was the leftover from the last batch. It's like the semen through which the line of progeny are drawn. A good loaf of bread could draw its line back through the leaven that may have come through many generations of bread. The leaven from a good loaf of bread was like a good race horse. It was studded out to produce great bread far and wide.

But Moses said to eat only unleavened bread in relationship to the Passover, and circumcision. Cut off the previous line and start a new man, a new loaf of bread, unassociated with the previous line, the Gentile bread, whose pedigree was related to a good line passed on through the semen of the bread, i.e., the leaven. Cut off the line of the previous loaf. Stop the pro-genital procreation of the bread from the previous batch. Eat unleavened bread. Bread cut off from the previous line, which, always passed through the leaven, which, in symbol, is a sign of sin, and contamination.

Eat a new bread. Bread uncontaminated by Gen(i)tile bread-making processes; privileging, as they do, the leaven, and the pedigree of the leaven.

The very people who are supposed to fancy their relationship with God apart from ethnic or phallic (fleshly) pedigree, who are supposed to be born sons of God apart from ethnic or fleshly pedigree or precedent, ala the Gentiles, turn the sign of the destruction of phallic progeny (as emblematic of divine privilege) into the emblem of their great relationship to Abraham, and thus God.

Those freed from the Fall into animal flesh, through the destruction of the organ of the Fall into animal flesh, the serpent, the phallus, have crowned the serpent with a necrotic corona and turned around and worshiped the creature flesh rather than the Creator; they've turned Jewish ethnicity, identity, their phallic relationship to Abraham, into an idol of breath-taking (so to say) magnitude. The mark that marked the death of the phallus has become a crown resurrecting the authority of the phallus before the thorns of the necrotic crown have even cut deep enough into the truth of the matter to require burial or resurrection. . . Which is a fancy way of saying Jews have become the serpent's privileged offspring (born of a crowned phallus) when Abraham intended them to become his nemesis. . . Abraham didn't cut deep enough into the flesh even as Jewish exegetes don't cut deep enough into the Torah scroll.



John
 
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rosends

Well-Known Member
The foundational ritual (according to Rabbi Hirsch, with others) for Judaism is circumcision. Abraham took a knife to the organ through which Gentiles fancy their privileged birth. Jews are not to draw their privilege through phallic-progeny, but through faith. And yet practical Jews have turned the very scar representing the fact that Judaism isn't about fleshly progeny, but spiritual offspring (conceived through faith), into a sign of fleshly privilege, in effect, completely inverting the very symbolism of the foundational symbol of Jewish faith. The necrotic scar delimiting the phallus as a source of privileged birth, is glorified not for the fact that it renders the serpent powerless to father his offspring, but as though that very scar is the sign of being born through Abraham's phallus, and thus being a good, fleshly, practical, Jew.
So you impute motives, create a symbology and then judge based on fiction. Not so impressive.
Once the very foundation of Judaism is inverted, corrupted, destroyed, all the other symbols are drained of their blood and meaning rendering Judaism a farce of biblical proportions.
You then extend your invented metaphor in order to draw conclusions. Since they are built on sand, they have no foundation.
Take unleavened bread. It's associated directly with the Passover, and circumcision. The ancients, particularly in the bible, understood the symbolic relationship between making bread and making love. The leaven was the leftover from the last batch. It's like the semen through which the line of progeny are drawn. A good loaf of bread could draw its line back through the leaven that may have come through many generations of bread. The leaven from a good loaf of bread was like a good race horse. It was studded out to produce great bread far and wide.
That is distasteful both literally and metaphorically. Making bread and making love? Is there a yeast infection involved?

I was going to go through the rest of your drivel and point out its levels of ridiculous, but I can't figure out where to start -- it is all completely meaningless.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
I was going to go through the rest of your drivel and point out its levels of ridiculous, but I can't figure out where to start -- it is all completely meaningless.

You could start by telling us all what the symbolism of a mohel severing the membrane of virginity with his fingernail (periah) means in your understanding of the process? Or is there no symbolism involved? He just does it cause it's what he does?



John
 

rosends

Well-Known Member
You could start by telling us all what the symbolism of a mohel severing the membrane of virginity with his fingernail (periah) means in your understanding of the process? Or is there no symbolism involved? He just does it cause it's what he does?



John
Why are you looking for the symbolism? This reflects a lack of understanding of how Jewish law works. You could just read the rambam on the matter http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/932327/jewish/Milah-Chapter-Two.htm or a summary of some other laws http://www.dailyhalacha.com/m/halacha.aspx?id=467 . By calling the membrane a "membrane of virginity" you are already starting with a bizarre agenda. There are levels of understanding and they build on each other. However you are trying to jump to a symbolic level which ignores what the essence is. I can pull out a Shulchan Aruch and learn the laws inside with you if you would like. How is your Hebrew?
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
Why are you looking for the symbolism? This reflects a lack of understanding of how Jewish law works. You could just read the rambam on the matter http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/932327/jewish/Milah-Chapter-Two.htm or a summary of some other laws http://www.dailyhalacha.com/m/halacha.aspx?id=467 . By calling the membrane a "membrane of virginity" you are already starting with a bizarre agenda. There are levels of understanding and they build on each other. However you are trying to jump to a symbolic level which ignores what the essence is. I can pull out a Shulchan Aruch and learn the laws inside with you if you would like. How is your Hebrew?

Jewish law is not itself the spirit behind the law. Nor is obedience to the law fulfillment of the spirit of the law. The law is merely the rules that must be observed in accordance with the spirit of the law. To assume that observing the rules of the law through slavish obedience is the same as acknowledging (or fulfilling) the spirit of the law is to turn the law into an idol drained of its life-blood.



John
 

rosends

Well-Known Member
Jewish law is not itself the spirit behind the law. Nor is obedience to the law fulfillment of the spirit of the law. The law is merely the rules that must be observed in accordance with the spirit of the law. To assume that observing the rules of the law through slavish obedience is the same as acknowledging (or fulfilling) the spirit of the law is to turn the law into an idol drained of its life-blood.



John
This is a statement which is at odds with Jewish understanding. You are outside of Judaism and have the right to say these things. Just don't expect them to be at all useful when talking to a Jew.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
This is a statement which is at odds with Jewish understanding. You are outside of Judaism and have the right to say these things. Just don't expect them to be at all useful when talking to a Jew.

Ironically, only a Jew could have even an inkling concerning anything I've said.



John
 

rosends

Well-Known Member
Ironically, only a Jew could have even an inkling concerning anything I've said.



John
Now, that's hilarious. Oh, wait...are you going to pull one of those "True Jew" arguments where you decide that only a Christians is a real Jew and those who call themselves Jews don't count?

Hilarious.
 
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