In Pirqê Abhôth (Pirkei Avos ('A) | Pirke Avot (MH)) [1] (yes it's a footnote you may want to check out), we are given a useful piece of life advice by a certain ben Bagh-Bagh [2]:
"turn it over and over [the Tora], and study it for all is in it, and look upon it until old age, and move not from it, for there is no better portion [text] for you".
This is then followed up by a shorter piece of advice from ben Hē-Hē:
"[one's] reward is proportional to [one's] effort"
Which brings me to the next point, I think some people take the "turn it over and over" part of ben Bagh-Bagh advice literally, and try find extremely novel ways to interpret the Tôrā, take this platform for example, do a search for Tora/Torah and there seems to be an abundance of posts regarding Torah Codes, yes, that method of looking of looking for prophecies after they have happened, already well-parodied by John Safran.
Spoofs aside, is there any merit to this method of interpretation? Or is a better question whether the Tôrā was ever intended as a book of prophesies? My hunch is based on the actual word Tôrā, it is based of the trilateral root of Y-R-H ירה (with equivalents in Akkadian=waru and Aramaic=Y-R-Y), teaching, and the realisation here, of this root, means the teaching of laws.
While there are some prophetic parts in the Tôrā, they are more couched as rules for how events are likely to play out should the Children of Israel stray from its teachings, such as for example engaging in idol worship and witchcraft.
If any of you reading, are adherents to the Bible Codes school of thought, I would love to hear a refutation of the clip I posted above. I would be especially interested to hear what the Tôrā has to say about the upcoming fork on the first day of August.
Šhālôm:)
P.S. In upcoming posts, I would like to discuss the relationship between personal freedoms, Tôrā and the blockchain, while I am writing that up I will post some of my old writings.
===========
FOOTNOTES
===========
[1] I use proper ye Old Hebrew transliteration, from the period when Hebrew reached its phonological apex during the second temple period when the language offered the greatest variety of sounds, and when the 'ôthîyôth and niqqûdh, consonants and vowels, had a singular and direct corresponding relationship of one sound to one letter, meaning there were no redundancies in terms of doubling of sounds i.e. there were no affricates or diphthongs; where in effect all you are doing is recombining two sounds to make a different letter, which while amusingly can add ambiguity and puns based off of these ambiguities, is not particularly useful for a language where you are trying to get a message across clearly.
.
Also you will have noticed that I have gone for gold with interestingly shaped-lines above (and later you will see also some dots below) letters and written Pirqê Abhôth, this system allows me to transliterate in a way that is still easily readable to English-speakers, but for the phonology-diehards and grammar-sticklers maintains that differentiation; a better system would be to use the IPA but honestly who has time for that?...OK...but just this one time.../pIrqə ɑβɒθ/
.
All the while, I am well aware that the above may come across as intellectual snobbery, like "who are you to force people to use good old proper Hebrew?", so I also offer the 'Ashkenaz ('A) and then Modern Hebrew (MH) variants in easy transliteration (without the not so commonly used symbols above consonants or vowels) for ease of reference when the pronunciation is significantly different; Sephardic Hebrew (I am referring to Baghdadi/Iraqi, Yemeni and Afghani (specifically for the qāmēs (kometz | kamatz))) is far closer to the pronunciation mentioned above i.e. Hebrew in its fullest and most glorious expression, hence no specific transliteration.
.
Another thing to point with the transliteration is that it is designed with pronunciation and not Hebrew spelling in mind, so I will not be adding an "a" or "h" or "w" or "y" (אהוי) when they are used as matres lectionis...never mind the post title, I am still aware of how people are going to find this content
.
[2] http://www.mechon-mamre.org/b/h/h49.htm - this is the Yemeni edition of the Mishnā, which concurs with the book version of Qafih's translation of Maimonides' Judeo-Arabic commentary; I like this version because of the wording והגי בה, which is not present in the 'Ašhkᵉnaz editions, and makes it clear what is being talked about.
ה,יט [כא] בן בגבג אומר, הפוך בה והפך בה, והגי בה דכולא בה, ובה תחזי, סיב ובלי בה; ומינה לא תזוז, שאין לך מידה טובה יותר ממנה. בן האהא אומר, לפום צערא אגרא.
