Steven Avery

We can take that as an acknowledgment that spin doesn't even have one example and scholarly reference, much less yet dozens of significant examples as implied, to offer.

The problem spin has is that the Vulgate (also the Syriac Peshitta) is generally in harmony with the Hebrew Bible, against the Greek OT .. in fact it was deliberately translated by Jerome in Israel from the Hebrew with Jewish scholarly help. And Jerome was well aware of Greek OT failings.

Therefore the crytpic response from spin.

(Combined with his usual obfuscatory arrogance.)

Shalom,
Steven Avery

spin

No, you can't. You can take it as an indication of what the sources are. You can take a look for yourself.

andrewcriddle

It has been suggested that the Qumran community were opposed to keeping the festival of Purim because by their calendar it would always have fallen on the Sabbath.

Since they rejected Purim they also rejected the book of Esther.

Andrew Criddle

Gamera

I'm happy to use the same standard we apply to determine the historicity of any personage in antiquity. It's really that simple. Short of some tendentious self-fullfilling standard (such as only nonbiblical texts are valid), it's clear Jesus's historicity has the same or better evidentiary support as Socrates, Pericles, and the whole pantheon of historical figures that populate our history classes.

What I reject are false and self-serving categories that X is an historical text and Y isn't. There appears to be no categorical difference between Acts, or the gospels and any biographical. historical text of the period.

The Pope's views are always entertaining, but hardly dispositive to say the least among post-modernists like me. Perhaps you disagree and are attracted to ex cathedra pronouncments? I've noticed you tend to make them.

Steven Avery

This Vulgate-Greek OT issue just came up on the TC-Alternate forum where Yuri K had made a similar error to spin, associating the Vulgate with the Greek OT, without evidence or reference.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TC-Alt...t/message/1315
And there are also many other versions of LXX, such as the Latin Vulgate

So it was corrected here

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TC-Alt...t/message/1316
[TC-Alternate-list] Septuagint, Jerome and the Vulgate

Unlike spin, Yuri accepted the correction.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TC-Alt...t/message/1318
Yes, I shouldn't have put the Latin Vulgate in the same class as LXX,
because the Vulgate is closer to the MT.

The discussion could have gone further, as the Clayton Stirling Bartholomew earlier post really didn't help much. From my understanding most of the Vulgate OT was a direct translation of the Greek rather than being in any large sense an update of any existing Latin (and/or Greek) OT. If there is significant scholarship and verse examples that demonstrate otherwise I would like to know the references, sections or verses.

For example is there any section of text such as in Jeremiah or Esther where the Masoretic Text and the Greek OT are very different where the Vulgate doesn't align with the Hebrew Bible ?

Now the much earlier translated Vulgate New Testament was an update of the Old Latin, using the Greek as the fountainhead. And I think that fact sometimes leads to confusion when discussing the Tanach.

(There was no Hebrew NT to work from even if Jerome had known Hebrew at the NT translation time. Jerome was in Rome during the NT endeavor and in Bethlehem for the later Tanach translation. In that later period he knew of an NT Hebrew Gospel in circulation in Antioch purported to be from Matthew but different than our canonical Matthew.)

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Hi Andrew,

Isn't there a related idea that they were antagonistic to the
Hasmonean lineage of the Jerusalem religious establishment.

http://www.baptistcenter.com/Journal...rn%20Jesus.pdf
Setting Jesus Free from Postmodern Reconstructions:
Was Jesus a Galilean Jew or a Jewish Hellenist

The scrolls gave evidence of a community antagonistic toward the
religious stablishment of Jerusalem.

That might see that as sufficient cause to forego Esther.

Could you explain how it is calculated that Purim would always fall on a sabbath by one understanding of the Essene calendar ? Short of the modern invention of floating sabbaths (lunar sabbath) I do not see how that is possible.

Shalom,
Steven

spin

praxeus is proposing to turn something I said into a hard and fast rule. Listen: "The Vulgate often agrees with the LXX over matters". Note the magic word "often". That doesn't mean "always". It doesn't mean nearly all the time. It doesn't mean the majority of the time. Our apologist extrordinaire has now reinvented what I have said due to his own difficulties not this time with Greek or Hebrew but with the English language. What's worse, he will now fart on relentlessly about his strawman as though his sorry life depends on it.




spin

spin

But you don't. You play a different game. You say, I won't believe anything about anyone unless you believe my guy. And it really is that simple.

You have attempted to trot your lack of knowledge about various historical figures out and bleat that you can do what those who do not accept the historicity of Jesus do.

At least you've dropped Alexander from the silly list.

What difference would you draw between Marcion and Ebion?

What is according to you historical and not historical?? Spend a bit of time. Do these terms have meaning to you? Are you prepared to abandon historical research in your efforts to either have your guy admitted to the clique or else reject everyone?

Does it mean anything to you to use evidence from the past to put figures into a category of known people of the past, ie people who from all the evidence we have can be said to have existed? (This notion complements those who cannot be said to have existed, some of who can be said not to have existed.)

So you cannot see any genre differences between them?

What do you do with texts such as the infancy gospels? Are they also not categorically different from any biographical or historical text? How would you handle the Acts of Pontius Pilate or the Letter of Abgar?

Post-post-modernists want to deal not only with metaideas.

It seems hard for one to consider that you can divine much when you don't really say much more than make your appeals for treating the gospels as historical evidence (without ever indicating for what period). This is done by reducing all historically validated texts and ignoring anything but texts.

I have difficulty seeing what evidence you will accept which will be able to distinguish Ramses II from the Prince of Egypt.


spin

andrewcriddle

The Qumran scrolls (And works such as Jubilees and Enoch) appear to support the idea of a 364 day (52 week) year in which the Xth day of the Yth month always falls on the same day of the week.

(If and how this calendar was modified to prevent it drastically falling out of step with the seasons is not clear)

Andrew Criddle

Steven Avery

Thank you, Andrew. Appreciated.

Let's not be concerned for now about the necessary season adjustment. One might conjecture an 'orphan month' added to a year every 25-years or so. Even if there is no direct evidence it would solve the problem.

However the above has other concerns as well. This would also require months having a fixed number of days, irrespective of the observation of the new moon. (An alternative would be an ancient Hillel-type calculation combined with a partial month but this is very difficult to conjecture sans evidence.) And apparently the first month could begin at various phases of the moon since 364 days will not divide at all close to equally by the figure close to 28.5 that represents one lunar cycle.

So if this was the master calender for holy days this would be very hard to correlate with Biblical festivals in general (not just Purim) which are dependent on the new moon as well as the day of the month. Do those who see this as the master calendar have any theories how the Qumran community would get around this for festivals like Passover and Yom Teruah ?

Also is there any hard evidence that the sabbath day falling was related to the lack of Qumran Esther ? Or is this a theory whose evidence is the 364-day calendar, which is then used to conjecture the sabbath falling on the Purim day without there being a specific notation of a problem.

I realize these are a little detailed, however any assistance on this would be helpful. Frequently folks write on the calendar issues without looking for a consistent picture and I am wondering if that is involved in the Purim sabbath theory. Plus it is interesting to try to get an overview of how such a calendar as proposed could fit into a Hebrew Bible understanding if it was the master calendar for special days.

Shalom,
Steven