Clam up, you two.
Yep! 
I am aware of these interpretations, but you have to realize that they were retrospective re-interpretations of Old Testament strictures, albeit for interesting historical reasons. There are many Biblical restrictions on the consumption of seafood, which extended to prohibitions on the use of diving equipment. But by the late Middle Ages, the seafood industry was very important to the economy of eastern Syria, and these reinterpretations of the language were simply a matter of convenience for the ostensibly devout, to adapt Biblical ideology to the practicalities of underwater exploration. At the time, everyone knew what the verses really meant - I mean, obviously it’s just coincidence that the word “divers” is similar to “diverse”, the etymology is completely different. But with time, the more convenient re-interpretation was accepted as canonical.
Awfully breezy in here for some unknown reason…
You really have to go back to the Dead Sea Scrolls as the definitive artifact on divers weight, hence why the scrolls were located in the Dead Sea.
if you used divers weight at Sea, you were Dead to me- G-D
Meh. Just another whale swallows man story. That’s not news. You want news? Come back when you have a man swallows whale story.
While the Bible refers to whales as fish, they are actually mammals, so do not have scales.
That’s not kosher.
Truth. Fish that don’t have scales aren’t kosher!
It may seem weird, but it’s not without antecedent.
2 Kings 6:4–6
They went to the Jordan and began to cut down trees. 5 As one of them was cutting down a tree, the iron axhead fell into the water. “Oh no, my lord!” he cried out. “It was borrowed!”
6 The man of God asked, “Where did it fall?” When he showed him the place, Elisha cut a stick and threw it there, and made the iron float.
The point being that the righteous man can control his own buoyancy, hence using weights is an affront to the Lord.
They are, of course, insects… (at 2:20)
Of course, in modern taxonomy, it’s true that whales are fish. Whales are a subset of mammals, mammals are a subset of tetrapods, tetrapods are a subset of lobe-finned fish, and lobe-finned fish are a subset of fish.
Slightly serious question: I’ve come across the word “divers” before (Shakespeare used it), and I wonder if there is to this day any subtle difference between “divers” and “diverse”. I sort of have the sense that there is.
I used the word “divers” in an essay in and English Composition class once. The teacher corrected it to “diverse”.
You’re the one who says chickens don’t cross roads, aren’t ya?
Some people are skeptical:
The New York Post is worried about the truth?
:boggles:
And then the man sayeth, “Waiteth thou a minute! Whereth ith the silver axe? Whereth the golden? Areth thou shitting me?”
There is some confusion about how King James spelled “diverse”. If he used “divers” who would argue with him?