offa

Offa; Please be attentative my fundie friends, I used Josephus as a source and not Thiering.

Thanks,
Offa

Baidarka

Yuri:
I am quite pleased to find your enthusiastic voice presenting what could be ground breaking work in a rational manner. The idea that an early Jewish/Christian text could have escaped the attention of the Church and survived into our time in an obscure back water is very exciting.
I have a question about the Magdalene Gospels. I see that the story of the nativity story of John the Baptist is a included in this Gospel. I recently sent a post to this site titled "Zechariah ben Zechariah?" about the nativity of John in Luke.

“According to Jewish custom a son is never named after his father. It is doubtful that anyone has ever met a Jew named Aaron Jr. If Zechariah had named John after himself John would have been known as Zechariah ben Zechariah ( a dubious name).
Does any one have any evidence that this custom was different any where among the Jews of the first century?
Can we safely dismiss this story as a fabrication?
Is this proof that the writer was unfamiliar with the people he was writing about?”

Since this episode is also in the Magdalene Gospels, do you see it as Jewish/Christian? Since I posted this it has been pointed out to me that I am referring to an Ashkenazic prohibition and that this does not apply to the Sephardic Jews. Is there evidence that would support the idea that 1st century Jews named sons after their fathers so frequently that the neighbors would expect it?

Baidarka

Geoff Hudson

Especially if the father Zechariah was dead when John was born. Zechariah was silenced by having his tongue 'loosened' by the High Priest (they were expert butchers remember) who overheard his prayer at the alter of incense (not the alter for burnt sacrifices - an alter that Zechariah probably rejected if you follow the theme of his prayer about the Spirit). How else was he made unable to speak? The story was very real indeed. Wasn't there a prophet Zechariah who was killed between the alter and the Sanctuary (Lk.11.51)?

In Luke, Zechariah's prayer in the temple has probably been moved by an editor from the time before John was born to after. He would have known that his wife was pregnant after five months, hence his joy at the expected birth.

Geoff

Baidarka

Geoff:
I appreciate that all scripture can be looked at as fiction and it is quite interesting to rewrite ever thing to any scenario one may wish, but what is the point of this exercise. I understand why the Gnostics rewrote Bible stories to fit their own theologies (some Gnostics went as far as to make Jesus the good serpent in the Garden of Eden and to re-cast God as a monstrous ignorant demi-urge), but what are you up to and what are you basing it on? I guess that the main problem I’m having with your posts is that you don’t back up any of your wild ideas. I like wild ideas as well as the next guy, but remember that Sherlock Holmes didn’t just tell who done it he told us how he figured it out!

Geoff Hudson

At least my ideas are grounded in reality, but
those you quote above are not. Do you agree that there was a prophet Zechariah who was executed between the sanctuary and the alter? Could that person have been the same as John the Prophet's father? Read the theology behind Zechariah's prayer. It contains some pretty revolutionary stuff for the time that would undermine the whole system of temple worship.

Geoff

Baidarka

Geoff
62Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child. 63He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone's astonishment he wrote, "His name is John." 64Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue was loosed, and he began to speak, praising God. 65The neighbors were all filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things. 66Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, "What then is this child going to be?" For the Lord's hand was with him.

Zechariah's Song

67His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:
68"Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
because he has come and has redeemed his people.
69He has raised up a horn[4] of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David
70(as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
71salvation from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us--
72to show mercy to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant,
73the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
74to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
and to enable us to serve him without fear
75in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
76And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
77to give his people the knowledge of salvation
through the forgiveness of their sins,
78because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
79to shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace."
80And the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the desert until he appeared publicly to Israel.


I know that you rewrote this passage so that Zechariah was conveniently dead but Luke has him writing, talking and singing. Having a discourse with you is like playing poker with a feller who keeps inventing new rules.

Baidarka

Geoff
I’m not saying that you’re wrong I’m just asking for more info.
Are you basing some of your ideas on books you have read? Which books?
Have you figured these things out yourself? How?
I believe that you are sincere and that you have spent a lot of time and energy developing your scenarios. You may have discovered some great truths but I can’t tell because you only give us your conclusions with minimal explanation.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Thank you, Baidarka!

<strong> That's for sure...

But keep in mind that I originally stumbled upon the Magdalene Gospel while I was investigating the textual background of the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. Here's a text that's for sure Jewish/Christian, and that escaped the attention of the Church (after all, it was copied by Rabbis only). And yet, you would hardly find any professional NT scholar today who's shown any interest in the Hebrew Matthew... I say the whole NT guild is a bunch of sleep-walking zombies who've been programmed only to pay attention to what they've been programmed with.

<strong> That's not an easy question. I'll admit that I've not been aware of these complications before...

<strong> Well, there you go... So this reluctance to name sons after their fathers may just be a relatively late Ashkenazic thing.

But, in general, I would say that the early authors of Luke would not have been so likely to invent such a detail if it was in contradiction with the customs that were prevailing at the time. These authors of Luke certainly do show considerable awareness of the Judaic customs and traditions of their times.

Boismard has analysed this part of the Magdalene Gospel in some detail, and he found a lot of material there that seemed to him as precanonical. If you read French, you might wish to investigate this angle.

<strong> I really don't know off hand. I'd need to look into this matter some time later.

Thanks for your encouraging comments though.

All the best,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

That's the same thing that I've said to Geoff already. Obviously he's got some highly complex theories that he thinks somehow explain these textual and exegetical matters better than other theories. The only question is, What are they? Where do they come from?

As all of us know, NT scholarship can hardly be described as a brand new field that has just popped up recently out of nowhere. In my many years of research, I've constantly seen various scholars expound more or less the same theories, sometimes even without any references to the work of others.

And also, often enough NT scholars have been know to reinvent the wheel over and over again... So it's very useful to keep this historical perspective of who came up with what theory and when. Myself, I don't even know what I would have been doing if I didn't discover the works of Loisy some years ago. He opened up my eyes on great many things about NT history, and he also based much of his research on the work of others.

So this is our joint challenge to Geoff now. How much reading have you done in this area in the past? Who do you consider as your main mentors in NT studies? Are you sure you're not trying to reinvent the wheel in some way?

Best regards,

Yuri.

NOGO

Hi Geoff,

I would like to know where this text about John comes from.

Thank you
NOGO