CJD

So you say. But your contention is with the story and what is recorded, not with me. You clearly see, then, what Jesus is saying here, and your best rebuttal to him would be: "You're reading into the past." And this from a twentieth-century philosophical monist to a purportedly wise, Jewish man (who knew Torah forwards and backwards). Don't you see yet why I respond at times so intensely? I have contempt for the audacity we moderns exhibit when we judge the ancients according to our own, self-made standards. It is chronological snobbery.

Because he really believed that YHWH revealed it?

I hardly have forgotten how difficult it is to read such an ancient text and make sense of it. What I fear is, you haven't even begun to grapple with the complexities of literary criticism.

No, it wasn't, insofar as what Jesus is claiming in this passage is clearly understood: "So the son of man is lord even of the Sabbath.

It's not that he's beyond legal disputes over the minutae of Torah observance, but this pericope isn't about that, and it's no surprise it sounds the way it does when you put it forward in that way. So long as I grant your premise, guy_683930, I would agree. But I do not grant it.

The basis of the story is indeed 1 Sam. 21. And the interesting thing here is in no way that "Ahimelech is the high priest, not Abiathar, and also David comes alone in the story …." I'm not even sure why that is interesting to you. The interesting thing is that Jesus is using the story to draw a parallel — a parallel between kingdoms and the kingdom work that is being done in both instances.

In 1 Sam. 21, David is on the lam from the king, Saul. But at the time, David was the true king (he was already anointed, and Saul was already deposed by YHWH). We might include this re-telling of David and the holy bread in the category of parable too, for Jesus is inviting his listeners to figure out which roles they are fulfilling in this story (I know this is way beyond the mere scratch that you've offered, but this is what I mean when I say I'm about teaching people how to read).

At any rate, Jesus is clearly saying that he and his followers are like David and "those who were with him." The contenders, the Pharisees, are like Saul's servant, Doeg the Edomite, who ran off to tell on David (1 Sam. 22:9). By referring to himself obliquely as "the son of man…lord of the sabbath," he is simpy making reference to himself in this context with the story of David providing the background as anointed but not yet enthroned. He is the one, in other words, who YHWH will eventually vindicate when he finally does for Israel what he said he will do (restore it).

He is drawing a parallel between kingdoms here, not disputing some legal point of Torah. This is not to say that the legality of certain points are not in view. It is just that Jesus is claiming that this legal point does not undermine his kingdom-actions here (plucking life-sustaining grain on the sabbath). It is for this reason that your thoughts on this subject cannot be granted (for your premise is wrong).

If you are confused, consider the following syllogism:

1. All celestial bodies are made of green cheese.
2. The moon is a celestial body.
3. Therefore, the moon is made of green cheese.

The syllogism is correct. According to the premise, the moon is made of green cheese. But the premise is wrong, which calls into question the conclusion. In this same way, your thoughts on this pericope (Mark 2) are not viable.

If you read maybe a bit more slowly and carefully, you will see that my comment about reconciliation has to do with Jesus' forgiving others, despite his tough words and demands that he made upon others.

I am not concerned with clearing up 'contradictions'; I am concerned with helping people like you read better.

I could care less about the discrepancies you mentioned, since I could care less about what you think I believe regarding the veracity and 'inerrancy' of Scripture. As I alluded to above, if I read on the level of an idiot, then maybe these things would bother me.

And with one, fell swoop you have discredited the entirety of Christianity. Thanks for that. I think I'll go renounce my faith in Jesus and begin to follow you. I am in awe.

Please. I am agitated at ignorance presuming to tell me anything about that which I know far more by comparison. As I said earlier, I am not concerned with contradictions, since I'm not concerned with defending 'inerrancy'. This just goes to show you, some Christians are more freethinking than self-proclaimed free-thinkers.

I'm not against the notion that religions evolve. But maybe get off your high horse for a moment and consider that I may have considered this, and then consider that I have found what many desire to deduct about this to be lacking. Try not to presume as much, and I will treat you with more respect. I promise.

Best,

CJD

guy_683930

You mean things like consistency in logic? That has not changed in 2000 years or 2 million years.

Then Jesus and YHWH don't agree on everything, and you made my point for me.

Yes there were some metaphorical uses behind Son of Man and Sabbath, I will grant you that, but the question at hand is the God of the Old Testament (that is the God who desires certain things of people, like the Sabbath and no work on it) the same as the God of the New Testament, besides having superficial similarities (Son of Man is only introduced in Ezekiel as a concept, and it was almost left out of the Hebrew canon).

But the notion of "without shed blood there is no remission of sins" (Hebrews 9:22, quoting Leviticus 17:11) is one of those minutae of Torah rules. Also, it IS important that he did not get the story right. If he really is, LITERALLY, the son of God, he would know the stories in the bible correctly, because to do otherwise would be a sign of :
1. ignorance, which means he is not perfect.
2. dishonesty, another sign of imperfection.
One thing you should notice is that when Matthew and Luke came by and edited Mark they eliminated the name of Abiathar, precisely because it was a factual mistake.
Based on this way of thinking it could be that YHWH is the one who will be disenthroned, and his servants (the pharisees, who keep his commandments) are playing the role of Doeg the Edomite.

You mean violating the law which at some point someone was put to death over? (Numbers 15:32-36). Note in this story it is Yahweh who commands he be put to death.

1. The Jewish Law was still abiding when Jesus lived.
2. Jesus violated the Jewish Law, by removing rules from the Torah.
3. Jesus is someone who violated the Jewish Law.

What is incorrect about this logic?

Not all of Christianity, just the type that believed a literal blood sacrifice was necessary for the literal salvation of humanity. Try reading Ptolemy's Letter to Flora. It's right here.

I used to be an evangelical, but then I started using my brain and came to my own conclusions.

That eliminates the revelation factor, however.

CJD

No, I mean the fact that you think you know about these things better than a Palestinian of the first century steeped in the teachings of the Torah.

Only if you think Jesus in this pericope somehow goes against Torah (which he isn't).

What's the question at hand again? That YHWH in the old is the YHWH in the new? I suppose the most simple answer is yes, only with flesh on.


First, if it was a factual mistake, then why look at Mark? He was the one purportedly recollecting this stuff. Second, as Abiathar is Ahimelech's son, Abiathar would have been attending the holy site, so that "in the time of Abiathar" is hardly incorrect. Incidentally, Matthew and Luke have other features that vary from the Markan pericope, as well as from each other. Both of them don't simply change the name of Abiathar to Ahimelech, they simply don't include it. Why do you think that is? If they "eliminated" the bit about Abiathar, why didn't they correct it by simply inserting "Ahimelech"? How is deleting the entire phrase a "correction"? What makes you think Matthew or Luke depended on Mark in this instance? Moreover, since it was indeed Abiathar who seeks out David and gives him priestly support (and indeed, is the only priest left), why would including Abiathar (the greater, more pertinent priest in this regard) be out of line? (cf. 1 Sam. 22:18ff).

What I am trying to show, among other things, is that you appear to have not thought about this all that deeply (in terms of what the author is trying to convey here). I am also trying to help you not assume so much. Don't tell me to "notice" this or that. I was "noticing" these things when you were still an unthinking evangelical.

But that's the whole point that Jesus spent his life subverting! That YHWH was not at all pleased with the powers-that-be in Israel.

No, not that the violating of the law demanded such a thing, but that Jesus violated it, and that this pericope is about a dispute over the minutae of some legal point. Read the previous post again — your premise is wrong.

For Jews, yes.

Absolutely wrong.

And therefore, wrong.

It is deductive logic, strained from the syllogism above (a syllogism is neither true nor false). If #2 was granted, then #3 would indeed be true. But as such, it is not, and it is therefore not viable.

So bold. Tsk.

I would emend this again: "I used to be an unthinking and ignorant evangelical, but then I started using my brain and came to my own conclusions."

Please don't lump all those poor evangelicals together, as if your experience is somehow definitive regarding what it means to be 'evangelical'.

You, as is typical among unthinking evangelicals, apparently thought that revelation always comes from the top of Mount Sinai, as if YHWH spoke there and nowhere else, as if revelation is only a vertical event. The evolution of religion is a perfectly normal process when viewed from a sociological perspective, and it hardly undermines the notion of revelation; in fact, it gives a fuller, more substantive picture of how that which exists beyond 'raw data' (if there was such a thing) may work.

CJD

guy_683930

It's the simple argument from authority here, you assume something always correct, and SURPRISE! it comes out to be that way because of circular reasoning. Jesus believed that Noah's flood occured, so that must mean it actually happened as well (Matthew 24:37).

So "not adding or removing from the torah" is not a commandment of the torah? So if I wanted to, I could chuck the entire old testament, based on your reasoning.

First of all, Jesus never claims to be God. The closest the Bible ever gets to describing Jesus in exalted terms is as the Logos of God. Second of all, suppose I had a group of people who obeyed my every command. I make a list of rules for them, and say they shouldn't add to or remove from those rules. Suppose 200 years later my followers still exist, and some guy comes along, he may be a very good guy in himself, but he comes along and changes a bunch of things I described as commandments, and he says he represents me. Because he changes a bunch of my rules, it requires circular reasoning to assume he represents me.

It's not "in the time of Abiathar". It's "when Abiathar was the high priest"

Matthew and Luke delete several scenes from Mark, like the scene where Jesus uses spittle to heal a blind man's eyes and he sees men, but they look like trees. (Mark 8:22-26). Some events in Mark were expanded upon by Matthew and Luke (like the resurrection scenes, there aren't any in the original Mark, which ends with merely the empty tomb).

It is a correction since it doesn't contradict with the story in 1 Samuel. Why would I think Matthew and Luke used Mark? Do you not know ANYTHING about higher literary criticism of the Bible? Have you not heard of Q? It's like if I wrote a paper and a bunch of other people took that paper and took out snippets of it and rearranged them.

Well, Abiathar was Ahimelech's son, so he was not high priest. And no, it isn't since Abiathar is not particularly relevant to the story. In all regards, it is a minor mistake, which is probably based on a poor translation used by Mark and/or Jesus. But if I would consider someone to be LITERALLY the son of the one REAL god, vs. all the other sons of gods who were merely metaphorical gods (like Perseus, Dionysius with Zeus, etc.), I would expect it to have NO mistakes in it at all. And if it is an infallible divinely inspired story of this individual, I would expect it to have no mistakes at all either. If you start excluding things Jesus said because of what you consider literary inventions, perhaps the whole story of Jesus is a literary invention?

Evangelical translation: You haven't come to my conclusion, which is the correct conclusion, so you couldn't have thought about it.

Actually, I have put quite a bit of thought in to it, and while the story has interesting metaphorical and mystical properties which I still like, I don't consider the story, that is the whole evangelical miracle-ridden, it happened then but not now stuff, to be factually accurate.

Because they were following the rules he established regarding the sabbath? That's a very hypocritical, capricious deity you have there.

It's wrong because you say it is. These points were probably ignored by early Christians simply because they weren't interested in the minutae of the law, which is what YHWH was focused on, rather it was a mystery religion focused around mystical concepts of dying to the sensual (psychical) body and being born into a spiritual body (Cf. 1 Corinthians 15).

Jesus was a Jew.

Because you say it isn't.

Evangelicals are often intelligent people, but there is a certain section of their minds where they have to shut off all reasoning faculties in order to not be punished in a concentration camp for all eternity.

How about if YHWH didn't speak there at all? Wouldn't that undermine Judaism at least? If he didn't at all, would you want Jesus to be YHWH's son? If YHWH did give the Torah (which I doubt) one of those rules was not to add or remove from the commandments. In general, if I wanted to remove one of those rules and proclaimed that in conservative churches, they would throw me out and declare me a heretic.

How about the evolution of people? Paul in Romans makes it clear that he believes that by one man came death (Romans 5:13-15). Since that is not literally true, it wouldn't be literally true then that by one man came the resurrection of the dead then either? Evolution works with Christianity only if you ignore the verses which actually DEPEND on Adam being the literal first human and that no death existed before that.

It may not undermine personal revelation, but then that's not what the revealed religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are about. They are about God revealing himself to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Mohammed, etc. and after the book (Bible, Tanakh, Quran, etc.) that contains the revelation is completed, THAT'S IT. That's what the notion of "people of the book" is all about. All revelations by future individuals in these religions (at least their exoteric, non-mystical side, and those aspects are often treated as heretical by the religious authorities) are treated at best with suspicion and at worst as heresy.

CJD

What I am saying is a little more humble than that: Don't be so quick to discredit something ancient, especially when you are so far removed from it (and may not even be thinking in the same categories as the ancients were).

No, I simply meant that Jesus is nowhere recorded as violating this principle.

I know all about the various christologies of the NT. I am saying what I think Jesus was doing, and we're simply arguing over interpretations here. And yours seem to be about as nuanced as the Skeptics Annotated Bible. Go ahead and look up all the allusions and direct quotations of Ps. 110 in the NT. Read them carefully. Then try to read the Psalm in its original context, and then think about what those authors were attempting to say about Jesus. Either the early Christians were not monotheists, or they thought something else was going on with this messiah from Nazareth.

Obviously irrelevant, since Jesus, according to the pertinent texts, didn't do this.

...epi Abiathar archiereôs...

Sorry about your luck, there. Enlighten us as to how you produced your rendition, if you'd be so kind (i.e., show us how "Abiathar" is a subject and not an object in the Greek. Do show us too where you found that being verb.) You do know that epi could even be rendered "before"?

I think it's actually called "higher criticism." "Literary criticism" is something a little different. So no, I don't know ANYTHING about "higher literary criticism."

Oh, he was high priest all right, just not at the time Ahimelech was (obviously).

It is absolutely relevant to the story. David had already garnered prophetic support through Samuel. Now, with Abiathar coming to his aid, the true king had gained priestly support as well. Very important indeed.

Even it were a mistake on the level you desire to reckon it, I still do not see the need for such a downward spiral. The hare doesn't chew the cud?! So what. The biggest obstacle you face in this matter (granting your conclusion) is how to deal with the complexities of the manuscript tradition. How do you know for certain where and when the so-called 'error' crept in? (I am not granting your conclusion, of course, I am merely questioning your 'certainty').

Hardly. I merely am trying (nicely) to say: Unless you have a higher degree in biblical literature, you should start shutting the hell up. Look, no doubt you have thought about it, but you're not responding like someone who has studied the texts in question beyond the mere 'Skeptics Annotated' level.

That's great. Thanks.

YHWH is known to haved said (in the TNK) that he prefers obedience and a contrite heart over against ritualism. I think the heart of the matter was always the matter.

No, it's wrong because I've shown it to be such. As is so very typical, and rather tiring, I offered a perfectly plausible explanation of what is going on in this pericope, and how it may have been understood in its original context, and you, the skeptic, have not only not offered a viable alternative, you haven't even attempted to counter the argument I've put forth. Why? Because you're more concerned with an apparent contradiction than with understanding the intent of the text. What's it like to go through life with no inclination to understand things like this beyond the surface?

Case in point. The great, eschatological end for Paul is physical. And this is on the surface (despite what Mr. Carr and maybe three other people think).

Funny. Paul (though not an 'evangelical') said the same about skeptics in Romans 1: adokimon noun and the like.

How do you know that the first homo sapiens wasn't given a command by God and subsequently broke it? For that matter, why couldn't it have been Australopithecus to have broken the command of God? Incidentally, what "verse" demands that "no death existed before that"?

This is probably the best point you've made thus far. But you've forgotten one perspective: there is the existential (the "personal" as you've phrased it); the objective or normative (God revealing himself, etc.); but there is also the situational, or sociological (the revelation as revealed among us). To say that Christianity is an objectively revealed religion and "That's it" is not exactly true. There's other criterion, but we'll hardly agree on how convincing that 'evidence' is. We could go on about this, and I'd really like to get into Rorty and James and Whitehead, and maybe even a little Aristotle via Aquinas, but alas, this is not the thread for all that.

Best,

CJD

guy_683930

So, if people 20000 years ago thought the earth was flat, I shouldn't try to discredit it because it happened 20000 years ago and I am so far removed from the context.

Because you say he isn't and it would destroy your beliefs if he was. So the person killed in Numbers 15 was just killed for the heck of it? Your god is fickle if he kills a person for violating the sabbath and then has a change of mind and decides to have his servants do the same thing he was commanding against.

John 10:34
1 Corinthians 8:4-5
1 Corinthians 15:28
I am not claiming the bible has a unified christology. However, there are no statements I have been able to find that could be used to describe emanations from God (Colossians 1, Hebrews 1). And no, early christianity is not as monotheistic as you think. The notion of having intermediary beings like the Logos shows up in writings by Jews like Philo, but he makes the distinction of referring to the one true god as "The God" while the logos is referred to as "God". Also, let's look at verse 1 of Psalm 110: "The Lord said to my Lord, ..." so it uses the term lord in two places. The first refers to YHWH, but the next is merely a title of honor. Besides, what verses are you referring to? I could find one in Matthew 22, but that was it. Could you give me a list of other places.

Because you don't want him to, he didn't.
epi,p {ep-ee'}
1) upon, on, at, by, before 2) of position, on, at, by, over, against 3) to, over, on, at, across, against

There are many meanings for the term epi and it is based on the context of the statement.

Look here. It is a possible term that can be used.


You use red herrings. Even if what Jesus said was a correct statement regarding Abiathar and his relation to being high priest, it is still based on a situation of him REMOVING from the torah.

How do you know there is any certainty to anything you believe if your beliefs are based on a book that contains errors in it? Do you know anything about falsificationism?

You're obviously agitated, so you are resorting to threats, and argument ad baculum. You assume I do not know anything beyond the mere "Skeptics Annotated" level because I question the relation of the Old Testament to the New Testament. First of all, you act as if the SAB is somehow incorrect that there are contradictions in the bible. They are not. That means it was written by people. People who do not always agree with one another. That means that there is not an objectively real God that all of these people are describing, since all of them cannot be right.

But weren't the pharisees being obedient to YHWH and the law by requiring noone to work on Saturday?

I have looked at the analysis you have made. First of all, you have to work around the contradiction and deny that one could ever be there, while I merely accept there is a contradiction.


No it is not. You ignore Paul's duality of flesh and spirit (Galatians 5:17), his saying that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of god" (1 Corinthians 15), his considering of flesh to be evil (Romans 7). Also, his lists of visions of the risen Christ do not make any distinction of the types of visions granted to him vs. those of the other apostles (1 Corinthians 15). Paul would not want the resurrection in the flesh since he does not like flesh.

You use Paul when it's convenient for you and ignore him when it's not. Yet you consider Paul to have written divinely infallible texts.

Romans 5:12: "12Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned"

Second of all, that model you were referring to about Australopithecines is flawed. At what point along the chain did they gain a soul? Do all animals have a soul? While you could form a religion around such ideas, Christianity is hard pressed to adapt to it. So, in this new model is that God decided to use evolution, say explicitly that the earth and the heavens are very young (Exodus 20:11), and then after scientists discover that the earth is billions of years old and that humans evolved from non-human creatures, beings Christianity taught did not have a soul, it is revealed by your god that your god used evolution over a very long period of time. A simpler explanation would be YHWH does not exist and he was merely a creation of humans.

The problem with that objective revelation as you refer to it is that revealed religions try to limit that, while the evolutionary model would allow for continual objective revelations.

So, if someone wanted to add new texts to the bible, you'd be okay with that?

Finally, you did not comment on my link to Ptolemy's Letter to Flora. What it shows is that there were Christians by at least in the 2nd century who discovered contradictions between the old and new testaments, and found ways of dealing with them without merely sticking their heads in the sand.

guy_683930

Let's move on to a different section of this that is testament-independent:

This by itself would disqualify the "sinless sacrifice" criteria based on Leviticus. Yes, in most bibles, you will see the word "yet" in between "not" and "going", but the earliest copies of the text have it like this. Considering it says he went in secret, the wording without "yet" makes more sense based on the context. CJD, I know you're going to explode with the next two:

YHWH, based on some reason that's not very clear, slaughters 70000 people for this (v. 15).

YHWH still slaughters 70000 people in this version. Why the change from YHWH to Satan? It reflects the influence in the religion from Persian ideas, since 1 Chronicles was post-exilic and 2 Samuel was pre-exilic. Pre-exile, YHWH could do both bad things and good. After considerable time with exposure to Persian ideas, God had to have someone else perform the bad things, an adversary (ha-satan) (not an adversary to God at this point). So maybe groups like Marcion and the gnostics had a better understanding than you, who has to bury his head into the sand and ignore contradictions to please a god, who, based on your text, used to do things that after the exile could only be assigned to the adversary, ha-satan. So the question for you is, why would you WANT to make Jesus' father YHWH? He doesn't seem like a very good character at ALL!

guy_683930

CJD-

I noticed you didn't respond to my response to your arguments. That's OK, I guess. Maybe you didn't see it or you were offended. I found something new when looking at Psalm 110:4:

"The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, "You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchiz'edek.".

I think what Jesus was referring to in Matthew 22 was perhaps that he was referring to himself as a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. That is also referred to in Hebrews 5:9-11:
That is actually very interesting, since this is the description of Melchizedek in Genesis 14:18:

This is the description given in Hebrews 7:1-3
The writer of Hebrews makes Melchizedek like a son of god as well, and goes on to say (v. 7) that he was superior to Abraham. What does all this have to do with the difference between the Old Testament deity and the New Testament deity, you may ask?

Deuteronomy 32:8-9:
In many translations you will see two differences : instead of divine sons, it would be sons of Israel, and also adding "own" after Yahweh, in order to make it not sound polytheistic, however this is closer to the earliest texts. However this verse shows that the Old Testament itself gives a picture, one that the Jewish establishment tries to hide, of there being a higher god than Yahweh, and early Christianity definetely could have known that and it very easily can be interpreted as knowing of the higher god than Yahweh.

CJD

I'll tell you what I was offended at (well, not really offended, just perplexed):

But you were the one who brought up Abiathar to begin with!! The rest is just bantering. Your original points were that 1) Jesus was taking something away from Torah; and 2) His (or the writer's) mentioning of Abiathar was a contradiction.

You were shown wrong on both counts. Strongly with respect to #2, and given a more plausible and viable understanding than your own with respect to #1.

CJD

Notsri

For what it's worth, guy, I would tend to disagree with this interpretation of the Deuteronomy text (though I do realize that it's a view held by a number of scholars: Otto Eissfeldt, Mark S. Smith, et al.).

It seems far more likely to me that "Most High" and "Yahweh" simply represent an example of parallelism across the lines. Clearly the two words attained some degree of paired fixity in Hebrew poetry, as the couple appears elsewhere a number of times (e.g. 2Sam. 22:14[=Pss. 18:13]; Pss. 21:7; 91:9; 92:1). Granted, in each of these cases the parallelism occurs between the cola or half-lines, but this is not a problem really, as parallelism between the lines is not at all unusual. In other words, Deut. 32:8, 9 would not or does not present an anomolous or atypical poetic technique by extending the symmetry beyond the half-line.

It should, perhaps, also be noted that biblical texts such as Gen. 14:20; Pss. 47:2; 83:18 explicitly identify Yahweh with Most High.

As for the text-critical "sons of God" // "sons of Israel" issue, I haven't quite made up my mind on the subject, though I'm actually leaning more toward "sons of Israel" right now. If it's retained, it creates a very nice textual symmetry.

In the Hebrew there are three lines of poetry, each consisting of two half-lines. Viewed in terms of that stichometry then the text is structured liked the following:

When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,

when he separated the sons of man

He set the borders of of the peoples,

according to the number of the sons Israel;

For the portion of Yahweh is His people,

Jacob the lot of his inheritance.

Notice that in the first three half-lines a parallelism occurs between nations // sons of man // peoples, and in the next three half-lines, another triadic parallelism occurs with sons of Israel // His people // Jacob; and, of course, the former triad compliments the latter. (The number three actually figures even more prominently in the text: there's also the parallelism of inheritance // portion // inheritance; the last three cola contain the emphasis by the threefold use of proper names: Israel, Yahweh, Jacob; and, in the Hebrew text, the accentual meter is 3 + 3 in all three lines.)

Now, on the other hand--and this is why I'm still undecided on the issue--if sons of Israel is authentic to the text, then the terms "His people" (one word in the Hebrew) and "Jacob" help to determine "sons of Israel's" signification. Sons of Israel, like the other two, would (seemingly) have to refer to the entire nation. However, the reference in v. 8 to the division of the nations apparently looks back to Gen. 10, where the peoples are divided into roughly seventy in number. Of course, Ex. 1:5 suggests that seventy emigrants, descended from Jacob, went to settle in Egypt; and it's this verse that's often adduced for a proper interpretation of our text in Deuteronomy. However, a true parallelism would not occur then, as I see it anyway; "(seventy) sons of Israel" does not correspond to "His people (generally)" and "Jacob[=the entire nation]." So then how should text be interpreted, if "sons of Israel" is being used generically and therefore does not have reference to Ex. 1:5 (which also means v. 8 probably would not refer back Gen. 10; we should probably remove the number "seventy" from our minds altogether)??

In any event, I suppose I'll have to give this subject more thought; hope you will too.

Regards,
Notsri