semiopen

Having a non Jewish wife, the descent laws have a personal interest for me. Evidently, a person was considerd Jewish if he had a Jewish father until say 300 CE, then it started going through the mother. Theoretically, today, the mother can be a convert in which case her children would be Jewish. The traditional (ultra orthodox) view is that Judaism was always passed down through the mother, but this is really shaky.

Israelites were also forbidden to marry Moabites, but the Talmud goes through an amazing song and dance to prove that only applies to Moabite men not women. Assuming David existed, and this is still an assumption, the Moabite law presumably wouldn't have been written yet, leading to interesting questions like why put that in at all, and/or why not make it more explicit about male and female Moabites.

I've never heard of David being a Benjamite before. Boaz was Ruth's husband, he seems to have been from Judah. Saul was a Benjamite.

After the fall of Israel, certainly more Israelites migrated to Judah than were exiled. This resulted in the tribes being completely mixed up. The line of David was clearly gone (or at least completely obscurred) shortly after the return from the first exile.

The lack of a geneology check on Jesus that IAJ mentions is amusing. Provable direct descent from David would be a great point to mention on a date, if you can't score after mentioning that forget it.

bacht

If Paul was preaching a spiritual Son of God who never walked this earth many Jews would've turned away (stealth polytheism)

If Paul was preaching a martyr messiah many Jews would've been confused or uninterested (no fulfillment of God's promises of liberation)

If Paul was preaching a universal saviour hidden in the Hebrew scriptures then he wouldn't care if Jews ignored him, he was fishing for gentiles anyway

show_no_mercy

All three make sense of Paul.

storytime

Well, the scribes were adept at making excuses for the sins in those stories. Even God was sometimes repentent at the hand of the scribes.

Why do you think they didn't have the messiah coming through the lineaged "anointed" Levites instead of David? Seems David in the story recognized the authority of the priestly Levites in his administration.

Whether David existed or not, that's the story woven for their purpose. I guess we'll just have to watch Joseph try and scratch his way through it.

I think I confused Saul with David in their tribal affiliations.

bacht

Thanks

The one I forgot was part of the official version: the end of the world was near, and Christ was coming soon, so Paul worked to gather the harvest of gentiles before the Day. This would've been understandable to apocalyptic Jews who were not strictly exclusive/xenophobic/legalistic (if there were such people). The stumbling-block here would be the lack of exoteric scriptural descriptions of Paul's "spiritual" messiah, ie his new midrash.

IamJoseph

That geneology is determined by the mother is correct and appropriate. Perhaps science will one day vindicate this factor. It derives from Genesis, which separated the female from the male - expressly for reproduction and again being as one. That the mother has rights transcendent of the father concerning the offspring's spiritual future is also affirmed in Genesis, with Rebecca ruling over Isaac, and Sarah over Abraham - both decisions being initially grevious to these great male prophets, but who later acknowledged them as vindicated provisions. Thus Abraham was told, 'WHATEVER SARAH TELLS YOU TO DO - DO IT'. A secret every good marraige depends on.

The dance was brilliant in its legal oratory and won the case. Since only the Moabite men perpertrated the crime, why also blame the women who took no part? The arguement was won on the law, 'ONLY THE SOUL THAT SINNETH IT SHALL PAY'. We see from this that one can strive even with God where the intension is good, and that laws can also be a means to test humanity how they interpret it. Thus, 'FOR THE CROOKED HE MAKES THE ROAD CROOKED AND FOR THE STRAIGHT HE MAKES THE ROAD STRAIGHT'.

Incorrect. The Moabite law preceded David by 250 years, as does the laws from Moses.

This sounds correct.

One must interpret the words correctly. Mixed and unknown dispersal is not the same as clearly gone. It also says 'I will gather you from the four corners of the earth'. Israel was also seen as clearly gone by many.

There are at least two errors in the Gospel genealogy, acknowledged now by chrstian scholars.

semiopen

There are problems in other genologies, this link discusses both the "Country" and "Western" testaments.

http://www.awitness.org/contrabib/torah/gen.html

You hold Christians to a very strict standard, but seem to willing to overlook equally glaring issues in the Hebrew bible.

Just a general note, your overall world view conflicts with consensus thinking in many different academic branches.

Regarding the origin of the Pentateuch. The first known occurance of written Hebrew is the Gezer Calendar from the 11th century, and that may well be written in Phoenician.

The oldest passage in the Pentateuch is the Song of the Sea (vayosha) that is generally dated from the 11th to the 9th century. My impression is that everything else is High Monarchic Hebrew or later.

You are proposing an entire writing of this at least 200 years earlier than the "earliest" dates. A partial rendition of the Pentateuch is argued by a few scholars (who are usually Evangelical Christians) but even this position is very difficult to maintain.

This view seems to require that Israel had an identical written language to the Canaanites even after many hundreds of years in Egypt. Also after the "return" to Canaan, there are no archeaological examples that show any discernible differences between Israelite and Canaanite artifacts and culture.

Your view, for a completion of the Pentateuch during this time, is many times more extreme than their extreme opinions. This is untenable from a linguistic, archeological and text critical perspective -at least three different disciplines.

Note that your opinion on this is one of you more mainstream offerings.

bacht

Interesting, I haven't heard this before. The story in Kings/Chronicles only mentions the deportations from Samaria to Assyrian territories, and the re-population of the north with non-Hebrew peoples.

The last named descendant of David in the OT seems to be Zerubbabel in the late 6th C

semiopen

Keeping in mind that I'm wrong more often than I'd like...

The Assyrians would have deported a certain portion of the population, probably upper class people from the cities. The rest would have largely remained in place. Of those who were candidates for deportation, many of the ones who wanted to avoid this would have gone to Judah, in addition to some others who didn't want to live under Assyrian rule.

This is confimed archeologically with the population of Judah and Jerusalem expanding dramatically during this period. Thomas Thompson suggests that it was only under Assyrian vasalage that Jerusalem was able to become a viable petty kingdom.

Exilic figures from the bible are generally grossly exaggerated. The deportations to Babylon have the entire population of Jerusalem exiled at least two different times.

The repopulation issue is also interesting, where foreign elements were deported to Israel and eventually Judah. These peoples are eventually integrated into the receiving society and consider themselves native, As Clivedurdle has pointed out here, there is some doubt about the "returnees" from the Babylonian exile actually being Israelite.

Zerubabel may be an example of this. Assuming there was a lack of someone with IAJ's refined judgment in that era, his lineage is not completely clear. If the Davidic line was considered dangerous by the Persians, presumably they could have easily substituted someone else. The question here is moot, of course, as his line did not survive.

bacht

Yes, I'm familiar with the idea that Judah received refugees from the north, it seems plausible though unattested in the OT afaik. The whole period before Alexander is kind of murky.