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Loading...This will be my final post for now on the Old Testament apocrypha. In it I discuss the final (and particularly intriguing) book accepted in the Roman Catholic church, and a few others accepted in Orthodox Christian circles.
Again this all comes from my textbook, The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction (Oxford, 2018).
2 Maccabees
The book known as 2 Maccabees
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A very interesting and informative thread, Professor.
Thanks for offering it to us.
I appreciate it.
Bart, I imagine many Christians are getting tired of being tarred with the “White Christian Nationalist” brush. (The behavior of WCNs is certainly not Christ-like.) How about another word rather than Christian?
I propose “Christianist,” on the pattern of Islamist. Islamist is defined in the new Oxford American Dictionary as “An advocate or supporter of Islamic fundamentalism; a person who advocates increasing the influence of Islamic law in politics and society.” Yep, Christianist seems to fit the bill.
think it is called Evangelist Nationalism. but whatever it is addressed I respond Christian follows God, humble & loves thy neighbor.
1995 Clinton at the Washington Correspondents Club dinner 1st IDed this group.
Nevertheless, from 2015, USA Christianity to the world confirmed decadent & making up its religion NOT based on the anthology BIBLE
“(the first has his tongue cut out and his hands and feet cut off and then, still living, he is fried in a large pan over a raging fire until dead)”
This seems rather unlikely. Do the historians and textual critics believe this is historical? Is there any independent verification for any of this?
I think historians of torture don’t find it implausible. The other accounts we have of this particular event are based on this one. I don’t think we have any way of knowing if it actually happened, but things *like* it probably did.disabledupes{6769bd44b819dcea0031abd65d81506b}disabledupes
Dr. Ehrman,
Is the Gospel of John 1: 2-3 saying there was a Binity Creator-God before there was a Trinity — the Holy Spirit being a Comforter that only joins the Binity to comfort people after the crucifixion of Jesus?
Steefen
It is not saying there was one before the Trinity since it doesn’t mention there being a (later) Trinity.
Do you think the author of Gospel of John is using the Hebrew calendar concept of the beginning?
According to tradition, the Hebrew calendar started at the time of creation, placed at 3761 BCE.
In the beginning (3761 BCE) was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
It is probably incorrect to use today’s science, using dates for Homo sapiens sapiens, or the age of the Sun or the Age of the Universe? ? ?
No, I don’t think so.
John 1: 2-3 added Jesus to the creator-god of Genesis to make Jesus one with God.
To do that a Binity is created. Yes, later, the concept of Trinity is developed.
Genesis 1:1
In the beginning when God created the heavens [the Universe] and the earth…
Is that God plural?
Is it in the beginning when God (the Elohim) created the heavens [the Universe] and the earth…?
Wherever there is Elohim, the notion of Trinity is expanded and Elohim is the Father.
Still, to the original point. It is about what the author of Gospel of John did. He raised Christ. And you probably put this in How Jesus Became God. Author of Gospel of John made Jesus part of the Creator-God.
What the author of Gospel of John did not do is also make the Holy Spirit Creator-God.
Dr. Ehrman you helped me find the verse I’d been looking for!
“…Accused before Aretas the ruler of the Arabs, fleeing from city to city, pursued by everyone, hated as a rebel against the laws, and abhorred as the executioner of his country and his compatriots, he was cast ashore in Egypt.” 2 Maccabees 5:8
Compare:
“In Damascus the governor under King Aretas was guarding the city of the Damascenes in order to seize me, but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands.” 2 Corinthians 11:32-33
Why?
“I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women, as the high priest and the whole council of elders can bear me witness.” Acts 22:4
“For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it.” Galatians 1:13
Aretas is the judge of Jews persecuting Jews. Nabataeans are first introduced in 1 Maccabees 5:25 “…Nabataeans who came to meet him in a peaceful manner…” Strabo and Josephus also call them Softies.
Yet National Geographic says that Aretas was seeking Saul because Aretas was against Jesus’ movement?
2 Maccabees43 He also took up a collection from all his men, totaling about four pounds of silver, and sent it to Jerusalem to provide for a sin offering. Judas did this noble thing because he believed in the resurrection of the dead. 44If he had not believed that the dead would be raised, it would have been foolish and useless to pray for them. 45In his firm and devout conviction that all of God’s faithful people would receive a wonderful reward, Judas made provision for a sin offering to set free from their sin those who had died.
The Catholic church regarding this text as scripture is the justification for belief in Purgatory and for paying religious organizations to pray for the departed. A lot of doctrine from three verses.
I had no idea they were two separate books either, and now you have me fascinated with 2 Maccabees!
No wonder it wasn’t canonized, it reveals the secret of naptha petroleum that was probably legendized earlier in the Bible:
“The pious priests of that time took some of the fire of the altar and secretly hid it in the hollow of a dry cistern
….when this had been done and some time had passed, and when the sun, which had been clouded over, shone out, a great fire blazed up, so that all marvelled.
Nehemiah and his associates called this ‘nephthar’, which means purification, but by most people it is called naphtha.”
Isn’t this very Elijah and the Fire from Heaven coded?
Assyrians are first noted to use incendiary mixtures in catapults, then Thucydides reports a flame-thrower, then the Kestoi gives the detailed recipe for “automatic fire” which is the ancestor of Greek fire that was such a highly guarded improvement that it’s recipe is not known to this day.
I knew bitumen petroleum from the Dead Sea was important to Nabataean trade, but today I learned that Judaea owned that resource, and there was also a naptha well under Jerusalem.