stephan huller

If it's Mead its wrong. If its anyone but an expert on Samaritanism it's probably wrong. For the Samaritans there's only Moses. Musheh (pronounced 'Mushi') and Marqeh.

andrewcriddle

This seems to be an error in Greek not in a Semitic language.
gospel of the ebionites
Andrew Criddle

Diogenes the Cynic

I found it. It is Mead. He cites a Samaritan Midrash which relates the Ta'ab (the Samaritan Messiah) to Noah by way of word play. I don't have time at the moment, but I can post some of Mead's quotations from the book a little later this evening.

Chili

Maybe nobody is proud of it, but I have heard it said that they created the legend wherein storks bring babies if you feed them a Samaritan first, who is led into the promised land and has to die before good things happen to him.

So the message here was: we'll do you all a favor and supply the swaddling cloth to protect the child while enroute to a new home that obviously is missing in your life.

The 'new Noah' is idolworship because Noah was a deceiver who led the children of Israel into the promised land by way of desire as opposed to intuition that is called 'water-walking' by faith alone, and that is what the swadling cloth is all about . . . which is also missing in Matthew because there is no manger there.

Our Jesus worshipers are the same, ask them how good it feels to read a new passage each day because last one withered already as second hand to them.

Notice also the legalism of Matthew opeing with the Recorded lineage and so forth.

stephan huller

The Midrash is modern and the only people who ever wrote about it were Eisler and Mead. It is not indicative of actual Samaritan thought on the Ta'eb. The oldest Samaritan material are the Durran hymns and the writings of Marqe. Ben Hayyim argues that the portions of the latter text which refer to the Ta'eb (the Restorer who is like Moses) come from a later period. This of course doesn't mean that the Samaritans didn't have an expectation for one like Moses until a late period but rather only that the Ta'eb expectation was not originally a part of the Samaritan tradition associated with its founder Marqe (Mark).

I am not sure that members of this forum are aware of this but Ben Hayyim was the greatest scholar on Samaritanism. To show you the current nature of scholarship. He was working on a Dictionary of Samaritan Aramaic before he died. But he was mentally incapacitated before he died (he lived to almost a hundred) and another prominent Israeli scholar basically took over the work and passed it off as his own but the final product was sloppily put together. It sounds like the plot of a Woody Allen film and was I think (with James Brolin's I forget the name). My friend Benny just found out about it and was scandalized. 'But he received the Order of Israel. He must give it back.'

Chili

Well that is the nature of the beast, I guess, and you can read more about it in Rev.13:11- that also came from the old earth and likely never know what water was as the celestial sea what heaven is all about.

DCHindley

I think you mean this passage from Gnostic John the Baptizer (1924):

[p. 21]

THE SAMARITAN TA'EB—A REBORN JOSHUAH OR NOAH.

Now in Samaritan tradition, and it will be remembered that the Samaritans rejected all the Jewish scriptures save the Five Fifths of the Law, their future Redeemer was to be called Joshuah. This Deliverer they called the Ta'eb, the Returner, and they believed he would be a reborn or returned Joshuah. The Ta'eb is the Samaritan 'Messiah.' In this connection a recently translated Samaritan Midrash (B.M. Samaritan MS. Or. 33931) is especially instructive. It understands the title Ta'eb as signifying 'he who repents' or even 'he who makes to repent,' not so much the Returner as the Turner-back of others. It is brought into close connection also with Noḫam, meaning Repenting, and is thus by word-play associated with Noah. Our Samaritan Midrash accordingly brings Noah on to the scene of expected redemption, and becomes a spiritualized version of the Deluge-story, abounding in mystical word-plays. One or two specimens [p. 22] of them may now be given, as the ideas behind them are reminiscent of the John-circle of ideas.

Whereas in the old story Yahveh orders Noah: "Make thee an ark (tebah)," the Midrash makes God say unto the Ta'eb: "Make thee a conversion"—or repentance (Aram. shuba, tubah). And so it continues in many details glossing the original parts of the ark by means of word-play, introducing notions of propitiation, expiation and atonement. A single passage from the original will make this clear, and in reading it we should remember that Samaria was a hot-bed of mystic and gnostic movements of all sorts.

Behold I bring a [flood of] conversion [and] of divine favour upon the earth, to save Israel and gather it from everywhere under the sky. I shall perform my covenant, which I have set up with Abraham, Israel and Jacob. And thou shalt enter into the conversion, thou and thy house and the whole house of Israel with thee; and take with thee all kind of . . . praying and fasting and purification, which thou performest, and take all unto thee, and it shall be for conversion for thee and for them. And the Ta'eb did everything as God had commanded him.

The ark (tebah) saved Noah from the flood of perdition, and the conversion (shubah, tubah) will save the Penitent One (Ta'eb) and all the sons of Israel from the [flood of] perversion.

The 'flood of perversion' is that of 'the cursed aeon.' Among the many Messianic expectations of those days, therefore, was the belief that in the Last Days it would again be as in the times of Noah, as indeed we are expressly informed by Q (Mt. 24:37ff. = Lk. 17:26ff.)

I have to say, though, that Mead was not on the top of his game when he wrote it. He was at his prime in the first decade of the 20th century. This book was 20 years later. Same thing happened to Hugh Schonfield in his old age (when he wrote Essene Odyssy).

Chili

Nice lines, and they are all the same and the short form here is Believe and repent as opposite to Repent and believe.

And the evidence of faith is the life-house boat you are sailing on with all you have and what you are.

The easiest job ever in all of history was that of Inquistor who could hear them coming while singing praises to their Jesus, and that was just the wrong thing to do.

Diogenes the Cynic

That is the quote, yes. Thanks for the extra information,

Cheerful Charlie

I do remember reading long ago that chickens came to Egypt at the end of the Hititte - Egyptian wars. The Hittites sent chickens as a gift to Rameses II's court. The scribes notes of the gifts to Rameses noted that chickens were good for their egg laying abilities.

Cheerful Charlie