Chili

That is what Galilee is all about. Holy rollers after rebirth wherein only the Jesus of Luke and John are presented as those who successfufly completed it and went to heaven, and 'his brother' James went to hell in Matthew and Mark to make its counterpart known, that necessarily must exist to make the opposites known.

steve_bnk

I mean recognizable in form in his times as an evangelical Christian would be today.

The JC character minus the added supernatural trappings would not have been unique in his times. It was what Jewish prophets did in Jewish history, prophesize, often doom and gloom, and being treated badly for it.

There were numerous men claiming to be the messiah.

John Kesler

No. But there is good reason to think that the DSS text (with which the later MT agrees) preserves the original reading. This reading is shorter, and the SP and LXX renderings serve an obvious apologetic purpose, not to mention that the LXX and SP differ about where the additional phrase "the land of Canaan" should appear. The former places it after the reference to Egypt, while the latter places it before the reference to Egypt, an additional clue that the text was added to.

As I explained in the OP and elaborated on in my response to Andrew Criddle, I'm curious if there is a solution to the Egyptian-sojourn problem that is consistent with all the relevant biblical passages. Even if we accept the SP/LXX reading of Exodus 12:40, the Genesis-15 problem remains.

stephan huller

But why would there be a Samaritan solution (or an Alexandrian solution for that matter) which agrees with the MT when neither community had that reading. The Samaritans are almost always to be preferred over all other traditions, then Karaites (of all surviving traditions) at least according to my aesthetics. Marqe was the greatest interpreter of the Pentateuch.

stephan huller

When I meet a member of a traditional ancient religion I get the same same feeling as when I go to an absolutely authentic ethnic restaurant. I get very excited because it's like meeting a living embodiment of a system. I get the same way when making love to women in foreign countries. I still have memories of being in the Middle East in this dark room with exotic modern Arab music. Brazil was something else.

The point is that we have to avoid imposing our Western ideas and presuppositions on a text. It's all about the traditional exegesis and working backwards to the original text used by that tradition.

When I was Brazil I had all these meetings and my translator who also Jewish told me once when I got really flustered about the tardiness of people - 'Yes Brazil is very unprofessional, even the prostitutes fall in love with their clients.' It won't make you laugh until you've stayed in Rio for a week. In my case, a day.

Minimalist

200 years of excavation in Egypt has failed to turn up any evidence of a mass slavery of any Israelites. That tells me that the OT is a bullshit story concocted many centuries later. The trick is merely to figure out when such a story would have served the political masters who concocted it.

Duvduv

And I am sure that 2000 years from now there will be no evidence of human population in Toledo Ohio, Flagstaff Arizona, or any archeological proof of the Mexican American War or 9/11. So what? You can make fun of it all you want. That's your faith.

Vorkosigan

So... you accuse someone of operating on faith while you yourself make confident predictions about 2000 years in the future....

Right.

Anyway, the problem is threefold: (1) not only is there no evidence of Hebrews in Egypt or of any of the events outlined in Exodus, but (2) archaeology suggests that the population now known as Hebrew arose in Palestine and (3) the story as told in Exodus best fits the known situation of a later period, suggesting that is when it arose. It is not merely a question of dismissing the lack of evidence for (1), one must also deal with (2) and (3).

Vorkosigan

Duvduv

These are your theories and you are entitled to them.
Many theories change over time. Even quantum physics is beginning to share ideas with old fashioned mysticism of East and West as we find out that all matter is actually only energy......

stephan huller

If it weren't for the influence of Jews in America and America's influence over Europe after WWII what evidence would there have been for the Holocaust?