Toto

No evidence that I saw, and Walker is not necessarily a source I would rely on for this sort of detail. I think that the supposition is that Aruru became the Hebrew consort of YWHW Asherah. But I thought that Asherah was worshipped in the groves, not in the Temple.

Who would the potter in the house of the Lord in Zechariah be?

Littlejohn

There is another version, still ignored by most scholars, about the death of the traitor Judas. It is given to us by the Barnabas' Gospel: a gospel devoid of credibility (like many other texts) by Catholic apologists, in that it can provide data very compromising.

According to the Gospel of Barnabas, Judas was crucified. Not only this version was more reliable about the death of Judas, but I would add also that he was crucified upside down .....

Greetings


Littlejohn

.

GakuseiDon

IIRC, Freke & Gandy in "The Jesus Mysteries" claimed that betrayal for 30 pieces of silver was "a motif found in the story of Socrates", whatever that means.

(ETA) It looks like that book is now on-line. If you search under "motif found", you can find the claim on page 44:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13074164/T...us-a-Pagan-God

DCHindley

Per Freke & Gandy's Jesus Mysteries (or via: amazon.co.uk), that was the amount that Socrates' followers offered the authorities on Socrates' behalf, which was a betrayal of Socrates' own principals. Plato, Defense of Socrates, 37b-c.

As wigged out as that book is, it still has its use as a reference book. Who knew? :huh:

DCH

GakuseiDon

Thanks, DCH. I think I've chased it down. Plato's "Defense of Socrates" can be found here:
http://www.san.beck.org/Apology.html

Socrates is talking:

If I had money,
I would propose to pay as much money as I could;
for that would be no harm;
but now---for I have none,
unless you wish to propose such as I am able to pay.
Perhaps I might be able to pay you a mina of silver;
so I propose that.
But Plato here, Athenian men, and Crito and Critobulus
and Apollodorus bid me propose thirty minae,
and they will be security;
so I propose that,
and security for your silver will be those trustworthy men.

Perhaps the number thirty is related to the number of Oligarchs, or the number of votes that ended up condemning him. He says earlier:

I am not upset, Athenian men,
at this vote that you have cast against me,
but many things contributed to it,
and it is not unexpected that this happened to me,
but I am much more surprised
by the number of votes on each side.
I did not think it would be by so little, but by much more;
but now it seems if thirty of the votes were changed,
I would have been acquitted.

spin

In the end I haven't got a clue. The word is YWCR, "fashioner/former", which usually means potter and there are no clues to suggest otherwise. The LXX has "smelting furnace" (xwneuthrion), while the Vulgate has statuarius, "statue-maker". It's translated in JPS and NRSV as "treasury", but I can't see where that comes from. So without further influences on the actual text, I'm left with "potter" and no idea why there should be a potter in the Jerusalem temple.

Zechariah gives the impression of being a relatively early book, giving such indications of two messiahs (secular and priestly). It claims to reflect the period of early Persian dominion over the Levant. We don't hear again of the potter in the temple as far as I can see. It may have been an idiom or metaphor, but, whatever the case, the LXX read the text very differently, throwing the coins in the furnace to test the quality of the metal.

I'd rather treat the term as being unreclaimable for lack of substantive evidence.


spin

mountainman

The silver coins of that epoch were minted by Augustus and served for almost 200 years during which time they were debased a number of times by later Roman emperors.

Anyone with a few minutes to spare and an interest in the economic conditions of the Roman empire during the period from 000 to 500 CE could do no better than to have a quick read through the following transcript.

Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire

Professor Joseph Peden, transcript of a 50-minute lecture given at the Seminar on Money and Government in Houston, Texas, on October 27, 1984.

Quote:

Monetary, fiscal, military, political, and economic issues are all very much intertwined. And they are all so intertwined because any state normally seeks to monopolize the supply of money within its own territory. ... ...[...]..... The Roman monetary crisis therefore was closely connected with the Roman military problem. problems become solvable when a ruler decides that something can be done and must be done. Diocletian and Constantine clearly were willing to act to protect their own ruling-class interests, the military and the civil service. Monetary reforms were necessary to win the support of the troops and the bureaucrats, who composed the only real constituency of the Roman state, and the two-tier system was designed to this end. It brought about a stable monetary standard for the ruling group, who did not hesitate to secure it at the expense of the mass of the population. The Roman state survived. The liberty of the Roman people did not

PhilosopherJay

Hi Toto,

I assume that the potter would be the Lord.

Isaiah 16 You turn things upside down,
as if the potter were thought to be like the clay!
Shall what is formed say to him who formed it,
"He did not make me"?
Can the pot say of the potter,
"He knows nothing"?
also 64:8
Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.

The key text is Zachariah 11:

Zachariah seems to be demonstrating that the covenant between God and the Hebrews can easily be broken. They apparently give him 30 pieces of silver to fix it. God is telling Zachariah to give the 30 pieces of silver to him (the potter), so Zachariah just throws it into the temple. God is being sarcastic when he calls it "a handsome price."

Apparently Matthew knows a version of the story where the temple priests buy a field to bury strangers with the money.

Matthew 27:
Matthew says Jeremiah instead of Zachariah. It is possible that he forgot the name of the prophet that the story goes with, or that he actually read the story in a text of Jeremiah instead of Zachariah.

In any case the important thing is that the high priests showed disdain for the lord when they offered only 30 pieces of silver for God to keep his covenant with them. In the Judas story, possibly written by Matthew, the high priests show disdain for God, by offering only 30 pieces of silver for their contract with Judas. Zachariah/Jeremiah, representing the Lord, was only worth 30 pieces of silver to the high priests. Jesus representing the Lord is again only worth 30 pieces of silver to the high priests. Its a parallel (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Toto

Hi Jay - that makes a certain sense, but from what I can read, there is no agreed upon interpretation of this section. It has been speculated that "throw it to the potter" was just an expression; or that the word potter means something else (it is translated as "smelter" in the LXX.)

You would expect that if the Lord were the potter, he would have just said, give it to me.

The interpretation of potter as some other entity in the Temple makes a certain sense, but has no evidence so far.

jakejonesiv

Of course. Joseph and Jesus were both betrayed by Judah/Judas.

Testament of Gad has thirty pieces of gold for Joseph (Gen. 37:28).

"Therefore I and Judah sold him to the Ishmaelites for thirty pieces of gold, and ten of them we hid, and showed the twenty to our brethren:"