stephan huller

I don't mean to pick on you but 'the Bible' isn't the issue. 'The Bible' is little more than a propaganda piece in favor of the supposed sacredness of Jerusalem and mount Zion. The Pentateuch does not make reference to the building of temples of any sort on any site. God originally wanted flimsy, temporary mishkans only. Then apparently he changed his mind. But the Dositheans were there to lay the smack down.

Diogenes the Cynic

The article says it dates to the 6th Century BCE. How are you dating Ezra? He's usually dated to Artaxerxes II (4th Century), although Josephus dates him a little earlier to Xerxes.

Yes, Stephen, of course the Bible is a propaganda piece. I still find it odd that it would make no mention at all of the Samaritan Temple. Wasn't that an elephant in the room to the Judean audience?

steve_bnk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritan

According to the link, te people we call present day Palestineans may be descendents of ancient Jews. Muslim converts.

It goes to show the roots of the current conflcits in the region go far back in history. Jews histically were battling each other as well as others.

stephan huller

The Jewish writings say the Samaritans were a mongrel race - and scholars go along with this. Charlesworth was the first major DSS scholar to say the Samaritan Pentateuch was first - or at least the first to say so prominently. He's dating an Israeli girl apparently. The real question is whether there are any attractive Jewish women - even Natalie Portman's not looking that great lately. The reality is that the modern Samaritans are a mixture of Dositheans and whatever the hell the supposed non-Dositheans called themselves.

stephan huller

Yes Steve many Samaritan family names are found in Nablus and elsewhere.

steve_bnk

Bare with me, I make no claim to being an historian to any degree.

The last 100 years in the mid east becomes more understandable. A liitle better understanding is all I am interested in.

mountainman

Continued from the quote at post # 1:

Iskander

GERIZIM, MOUNT

Later Findings

"Since 1979 major excavations have been undertaken at the site of Mt. Gerizim under the direction of Yitzhak Magen, in the area of the Samaritan temple and settlement.

It is now possible to trace the development of the Samaritan temple, its structure and history, and the cult performed there. Mt. Gerizim served as a religious center which existed parallel to that of the Jerusalem Temple. Various architectural remains, notably carved capitals, date back to the Iron Age.

The excavations brought to light substantial portions of the Hellenistic city, with its fortifications, separate quarters, public buildings, and dwellings. On the top of the hill were fortified buildings and a temple esplanade which was approached by a monumental flight of steps.

From the Byzantine period are the remains of an enclosure and church from the time of Zeno, and an enclosure from the time of Justinian. About 400 inscriptions, most of a dedicatory character, were brought to light in the recent excavations, written in ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Samaritan, with an additional 80 inscriptions in Greek, mostly from the third-fourth centuries B.C.E."

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/...7_0_07198.html


Dating of Samaritan Temple on Mt. Gerizim

http://www.bib-arch.org/scholars-stu...m-response.asp


[Yitzhak ]Magen’s Response

“The questions that occupied scholars until the beginning of the excavations at Mt. Gerizim were: When was the temple on Mt. Gerizim built?

And when did the marriage of Sanballat’s daughter to the grandson, or brother, of the High Priest in Jerusalem take place—in the time of Nehemiah (Nehemiah 13:28) or in the time of Alexander, a century later?

The answers to these two questions leads us to the resolution of the central issue regarding Samaritan-Jewish relations, namely, when did the great split between them occur?


It may reasonably be assumed that the establishment of the temple on Mt. Gerizim marked the parting of the ways between them: The Jews prayed in and sanctified Jerusalem, while the Samaritans prayed at and ascribed holiness to Mt. Gerizim.

The archaeological excavations at Mt. Gerizim proved unequivocally that the temple on the mount was built in the middle of the fifth century B.C.E., that is, most likely before Nehemiah's arrival in 445 B.C.E.

The dating of the temple is based on the architecture that is dated with certainty to the Persian period, the carbon-14 tests that were conducted on hundreds of thousands of the bones of sacrifices from kosher animals that were discovered in the sacred precinct, and the pottery vessels and coins that are dated to the fifth century B.C.E.

An additional temple was built over the first temple during the reign of Antiochus III, c. 200 C.E.”

Duvduv

Where does that map come from which places Jerusalem totally within the boundaries of the state of Israel?

tanya

a. I wonder why they won't eat shrimp? We don't eat them, because of our desire to limit consumption of exogenous cholesterol, but those shrimp would have been nutritious for folks under 40. Life expectancy in those days? Further, had they eaten the "shells", chitin, they would have ingested chitosan, which is not a Japanese surname, but a chemical thought to lower cholesterol according to biochemists at Jahangirnagar University studying rat metabolism, in BanglaDesh...

a-2. Maybe we can't find more evidence of Samaritans because they only had a taboo against shrimp, and not pigs? Absence of pig bones is one of the discriminants sought in excavation of ancient Jewish sites in Canaan.

b. Genetic diseases from inbreeding....Jews are legendary for this: Tay-Sachs, for example.

That people behaved in this fashion 2000 years ago is shameful. That such moronic behaviour, discriminating against menstruating females, is still practiced by Muslim, Jewish, and other odd sects, today, is criminal.

z. I wonder if there were any documents deposited at famous libraries in Libya, Egypt, Greece, Italy and Persia. Perhaps the library at Herculaneum will reveal some secrets....

a. There is little evidence that these ancient texts were COMPOSED in Qumran. More likely, they were brought to Qumran, from points far away. But, why was that site chosen? Perhaps Qumran is just the tip of the iceberg. Maybe there are many other sites, waiting to be discovered, where the ancients buried precious documents....

b. There is no evidence that the authors of these documents were not some sort of minority sect, of which Judaism has had many throughout its tumultuous history.