** you do not have permission to see this link ** agree that:

The Book of Revelation reflects the heavy shadow of the First Jewish-Roman War (66–70 CE) and Rome's subsequent militaristic propaganda

So would it be helpful to look at this exact period, and see if in Revelation there are any traces of the historical peace-keeping and large-scale charity efforts of the nearest kingdom receiving the Jewish refugees? There are two kings involved, and I think it's likely that they may be presented as a composite.

It is academic consensus that in Near Eastern scribal tradition, compressing a multi-generational dynastic arc into a single composite figure was a standard literary strategy. It was often used to preserve political continuity during times of imperial collapse.

For example, it is academic consensus that the Book of Daniel has several historical actions of Nebuchadnezzer's lesser-known son Nabonidus attributed to Nebuchadnezzer in it.

Ancient Near Eastern Literary Antecedents:

Sumero-Akkadian Royal Epics: The Sargon Legend and the Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin fused the separate military campaigns, rebellions, and legal decrees of multiple Old Akkadian rulers into a single archetypal "Sargon" or "Naram-Sin." Scribes used this composite shorthand to create a unified legal precedent for royal authority.

Dynastic Telescoping Mesopotamian scribal historiography — seen in the Sumerian King List and later Aramaic apocalyptic literature (such as the four-headed beasts and composite statues in the Book of Daniel) — routinely collapsed entire royal lineages into one emblematic figure who embodied the state’s complete lifecycle.

Nimrod in Genesis

Scholars claim that Genesis 10 constructs Nimrod as a single primordial ruler out of historical fragments from several Mesopotamian kings (including Ninurta, Tukulti-Ninurta I, and Sargon II), attributing the dynasty to the recognizable or representative name.

Revelation 19:16

¹⁶ On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, “King of kings and Lord of lords.”

It just sounds compositey. Robe and thigh, King of kings and Lord of lords.

Malichus and Rabbel? Is that you?

During the period that scholars commonly ascribe to the Book of Revelation, Nabataean Kings Malichus II (40-70 CE) and Rabbel II (70-106 CE) are the father and son duo that form the peacekeeping and refugee response to the first Jewish-Roman War. Their names work out to King and Lord God Savior, respectively, and I think it's worth exploring, at the least, to see if their good works are not used as a template.

Babatha of the well-known book ** you do not have permission to see this link ** , 2017, by Philip Oxler, Oxford University Press, is one such Jewish person found in the Nabataean kingdom of this period, and her extensive rights there as a Jewish woman are often positively noted by modern scholars.

Revelation 12:6

...and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for twelve hundred sixty days.”

Malichus is written MLK, and, Jesus Christ happens to be written as Yesu MLK in the Peshitta.

This reminds me of Thomas Didymos or other dual names that include a civic alias. So, it's not a totally ridiculous idea to check out at least, I hope. It doesn't take away from any possibility of miracles I think, I think it increases that possibility, and I happen to love the historical archaeological evidence for the mobilization of resources for the refugee people that really saved them from what happened to those that stayed in Jerusalem.

• Malichus II (MLK, meaning 'King')

Governed during the buildup and outbreak of the First Jewish-Roman War. Supplied 6,000 peace-keeping units in 70 AD. I use 'peace-keeping' because if you can take away anything from the first century historians, is that Nabataeans try everything first before conflict but it's just the times.

Nabataea's first client king of Rome, installed by Agrippa's best friend, Gaius Booties. Gaius ofc also installed Agrippa too, somethinh to think about with this fun quote:

Acts 26:28

Then Agrippa said to Paul, “Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?

• Rabbel II Soter (Rabb-El Soter working out to 'Lord God Savior')

Earned his official royal epithet, ‘nyf-dy hyyy w-šyzb ‘m-h "He who brought life and deliverance to his people" by pivoting the state’s economy away from the ending southern merchant route due to Roman action and into massive water harvesting and grain-growing  expansion in the Hauran (Auranitis).

Revelation 18:11-13

And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore, cargo of gold, silver... cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, fine flour and wheat...”

Sounds like an itemized Nabataean custom ledger to me (they were also famous for gold and silver). And it sounds like the Nabaioth/Nabataean-led Arabian products in the Book of Isaiah.

So, Rabbel II Soter moved the Nabataean kingdom capital from Petra to the Hauran/Auranitis at Bostra behind the neutral Decapolis city of Pella, ie having a chronological overlap with the Flight to Pella.

The Mountains

Auranitis' mountains were famous for Nabataean wine production. Auranitis traditionally had been under Nabataean hegemony, but the matrilineally-Nabataean Herodian Dynasty, by the time of Jesus, controlled part of it for a moment under Herod Phillip. Herod Phillip's Trachonitis is mentioned in the Gospel of Luke.

As scholars date the story in Josephus‘ AJ 18.5, by 36 CE the war against Herod of Galilee-Peraea and Phillip of Trachonitis, whose buildup starts at the breaking of the marital alliance with Herodias will be won, and Phillip's own troops had been persuaded to turn against the fight, again per Josephus. I've written before that I think that the Parable of the Tenants is written about the Jewish estates in Trachonitis:

The Parable of the Tenants

⁹ He went on to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time...[stuff]

¹³ “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love;perhaps they will respect him.’...[stuff]

¹⁹ The teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them.

I added [stuff].

So that's the wine. The fertile plains of Auranitis supplied the grain, you might even say the Bread of Life considering Rabbel Soter's epithet, "he who brought life..."

The Refuge

The Auranitis plains are bordered by The Lajat, which in Arabic means The Refuge or The Asylum, a lava tube field long known for being a successful place of refuge for the Jewish people. This whole greater region was the presupposed area of the Israelite lost tribes, even.

Revelation 22:1-2

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month..."

Rabbel II Soter built massive stone aqueducts and planted fruit orchards alongside in the new Nabataean capital buildout of Bostra.

The Haraun is also what most scholars believe is being described as the refuge place of Jewish Mandaeans (John the Baptist's followers) first escaping Jerusalem before returning to the world's first water ablution temple area, modern Nasoriyah, in their book The Inner Hawran, also known as** you do not have permission to see this link **

Comparing The Book of Revelation to The Scroll of Great Revelation

Let's see where this Mandaean author think the Jewish refugees went to:👇

joineth to himself a people, and they are called Christians.

... and from Nisrat (Nazareth), a city of the Jews, which is called the city of Qum ...

... because it is a shrine ; for Mercury founded a community in Qum, and Saturn founded a community in Sinai... ...Jews were settled) in the Arab region which is called Basra, which is (also) called Sufat-Zaba ...

👆My large text. Nabataean Bostra is acknowledged as this Basra/Bozrah, it's just a Mandaean spelling variant.

Sufat-Zuba is Mandaean for the adjoining marshes. (Saturn imo might be Aretas, Lover of His People?) Sinai is thought by some credible archaeologists to be the mountain at the entrance of Petra. If so, Sinai is where the The Scroll of Great Revelation says Jesus was ruling from. But Bostra/Rabbel gets the credit for saving people.

Rabbel doesn't save any of his own Nabataeans, so whyyyyy does he consider the refugees that seem to be referenced in his Savior epithet to be "his people"? Mandaeans are settled by Artabanus, but he doesn't consider them to be his people. In West Semitic royal ideology, the Aramaic term 'am ("people") is a legal and covenantal designation, not merely an ethnic one. It's a goose question.

So there are both early Christian (Eusebius and Epiphanius) and Mandaean traditions saying that Jewish refugees went to the general area (Pella is against Bostra, counts as general area) that is the new capital city replacing Petra, of Rabbel II Soter, he who brings life and deliverance to his people. Building up a city when there's new people makes sense.

Bostra even had a thriving "fortified" synagogue that is discussed several times in the Talmud: ** you do not have permission to see this link **

And it's not just the Hauran. By the time of Rabbel II Soter, in some areas of rock graffiti surrounding Petra, it rises to an average of six Jewish names to a Nabataean one.

Petra is acquired in 106 CE. By the early second century, the newly-discovered underground Christian city of Midyat, a city of 70,000 people at it's greatest, will be within or near the ethnically-Nabataean Abgarid Osroene Kingdom's borders, and interestingly, Midyat also had a Jewish prayer room, which is very cool.

Osroene, capital Edessa — a location of the trending Nabu "Lord of Love" religion, home to Gnostic Christianity, home to one of the world's first, if not the first universities, was said to be the first nation to consider making Christianity its official religion, and also people like Bardasain held to some pretty physics-based viewpoints.

Historians attribute the greatest geographical reach of the Nabataean kingdom to Aretas IV and the treasury spend-down on Malichus and Rabbel Soter but considering what they spent it on, whether their stories are similar to, or even helped inspire the Book of Revelation or not, they are my heroes.

How do you create a religion? You merit it.

You are unable to support your claim that the lineage of David went extinct despite some evidence to the contrary. 

This thread is locked, and dansanta2003 is in the process of being banned from the Readers Forum.

Mark 10:10-12

¹⁰ In the house His disciples asked Him concerning this matter again. ¹¹ He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. ¹² And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

Ancient Jews did not had in their customs the possibility of the woman divorcing her husband. Only the man could. Hence, Jesus speaks to a non-Jewish audience, or at least, mixed. Why? I thought Bart said Jesus is just a Jew who had disputes with other Jews inside Judaism. Surely this pericope looks very historical; there is no reason not to believe so, according to Bart's standards. It seems that the non-Jewish Jesus was speaking to a mixed audience.

Robert said
irrational polemics.
When might you learn to prefer intelligent discussion?

My dear friend, with a simple AI search the "discussion" can be handled well. We are not scholars but we can get scholastic answers. You have your opinions, I have mind. After passing to the main 10 arguments for David's lineage, I conclude that most of them are weak. 

The main historical arguments that David’s lineage survived are:

1. Jehoiachin and his sons survived the exile (archaeology confirms).
2. Exilarchs claimed Davidic descent for centuries.
3. Post‑exilic genealogies list Davidic descendants.
4. Second Temple Jews expected a Davidic Messiah, meaning they believed the line still existed.
5. Jesus was publicly called “son of David.”
6. Both Gospel genealogies trace Jesus to David.
7. No ancient source claims extinction of the Davidic line.
8. Archaeology confirms the dynasty’s historical reality.

The fact that a group of people claimed Davidic descent that doesn't make it real. As I said, I can claim Napoleon's lineage. And the Gospel genealogies are symbolic. Then again, the absence of evidence that doesn't mean it's evidence for absence; the fact that no ancient sources claims extinction that doesn't mean the lineage continued. The arguments against David's lineage are far more reasonable.

Summary of the strongest arguments against biological descent:

1. Matthew and Luke contradict each other.
2. Both genealogies go through Joseph, not Mary.
3. Luke uses Nathan, not Solomon.
4. Matthew includes Jeconiah, who was cursed.
5. Genealogies are symbolic, not historical.
6. No external source confirms Davidic descent.
7. “Son of David” was a title, not proof.
8. Galilean families were not Davidic.
9. Mary’s Davidic descent is a late invention.
10. Jesus did not fit the expected Davidic king profile.

No real scholar, even Bart Ehrman, believe that the genealogies from the gospels of Matthew and Luke are real. Then again, Galilean families, which we know for sure that Jesus belong to, are not claiming Davidic descent. The evidence is simply not there; it is not historical. It can't be historical. In fact, we have no real historical books on Jesus. 

Steefen said
Let me tell you, nobody writes those parables without having watched it happen.

That's actually a very astute observation. You're correct, but if someone tell a story like the one in the gospel, that doesn't mean it cannot carry another meaning aside the physical action.

Helen Young said
I like the idea that Jesus had traveled all over and had a kind of education. 

From the Christian point of view, Jesus was God. How exactly does God needs education? It is a very silly idea, and it is proposed by the "historical Jesus" lunatics.

Serene said
He's supposed to be the poor one but he doesn't sound like a poor. 

Same as above. There's nowhere in the Gospels that said He was poor. The authors believed He was God. How exactly can one make God poor? It is implied that Jesus could transform rocks into bread in the desert but refused to do so. There are no historical documents that portray Jesus at all, so we have none of them that say He was poor. This idea is simply put a naive invention of people like Bart Ehrman that propose the ridiculous idea of the historical Jesus.

Serene said
I think Jesus may be side-hinting at various times that he knows that the Tetragrammaton is a syncretic deity, adding a deity to Yah?  

I don't mean El the sweet fatherly deity which is already academic consensus.
As far as I can tell, one that adds the Lord of Foreign Lands, YHW-H (Yahu-Ha.)

No, the "father" was the Devil; it clearly say so in the next verses.

dansanta2003 said

Robert said
I am indeed curious if you are able to support your claim or not. I would think this would be more important to you since you made the claim here.

I am not required and I will not.

Not surprising that you are unable to and feel no obligation to support your own claim.

If we were to put a "burden of proof" in the discussion, it will be on you. You need to prove that the Davidic line survived.

I only said that there is pretty good evidence for such, not that it could be proven. Again, not surprised at your attempt at misrepresentarion.

I'm nosurprised that you're unaware of the evidence to the contrary.

Is that evidence happen to be proposed by Bart Ehrman? 🙂

No. I'm not aware of Bart discussing this topic.

I have an ancestor, a French noble who had his head chopped off by Cardinal Richelieu, and his family claimed to be descended from Clovis, the first king of the Franks, whom Dan Brown claimed was descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. So my claim certainly Trump's yours.

Exactly. You don't know who your great-grand-father was, but you know the famous man from your lineage. That's exactly how it works and that's exactly how it would work in the past, thus, reducing Bart's argument to zero. Yes, nobody knows more than his grand-parents, but they will surely be aware if a famous person were in their family even a millennia ago.

Wrong again. I do know who my great-grandfathers were. And, again, your assumption that this is based on any argument of Bart's is incorrect, no doubt just another expression of one of your irrational polemics.

When might you learn to prefer intelligent discussion?

Robert said

I am indeed curious if you are able to support your claim or not. I would think this would be more important to you since you made the claim here.

I am not required and I will not. If we were to put a "burden of proof" in the discussion, it will be on you. You need to prove that the Davidic line survived. 

I'm not surprised that you're unaware of the evidence to the contrary.

Is that evidence happen to be proposed by Bart Ehrman? 🙂

I have an ancestor, a French noble who had his head chopped off by Cardinal Richelieu, and his family claimed to be descended from Clovis, the first king of the Franks, whom Dan Brown claimed was descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. So my claim certainly Trump's yours.

Exactly. You don't know who your great-grand-father was, but you know the famous man from your lineage. That's exactly how it works and that's exactly how it would work in the past, thus, reducing Bart's argument to zero. Yes, nobody knows more than his grand-parents, but they will surely be aware if a famous person were in their family even a millennia ago.

Helen Young said
I have an ancestor who signed the American Declaration of Independence, and another who came over on the Mayflower, (he wasn't a Puritain however).

Correct; despite that you don't know more than up 3 generations of your family, probably up until your grand-grand-parents, you surely know about your famous ancestors from the history, even if they go up until 500 years ago. If Jesus was indeed a descendant of David, He definitely would know so. 

The terms Israeli, Jew, and Hebrew overlap and converge in interesting ways. I'm not sure if I understand it all.
Jesus was definitely called an Israelite. But I'm not sure if that's in the bible or when the designation was first recorded.

They don't, really, you just been exposed to pro-Jewish propaganda. Hebrews were a people 1 millennia prior the ancient Jews; they wrote the Mosaic Law and many other. This was considered scripture by many people in the area, including non-Jews. Jew comes from 1 tribe of Israel, Judah, who happened to be a dominant one. But there are 11 tribes more! Jesus was an Israelite, yes. If He was Jewish, that's up to debate. Sold scholars say He was. Some other people say He wasn't, I mean, He literally destroyed them.

Robert said
You're still misconstruing the various potential meanings of the phrase 'beyond the Jordan'. 

Ah, the rivers, that were always natural borders... 

Imo Revelation makes "the son and the father one" by mushing together Christ + Lord God Savior (this is what the names of Nabataean Father and Son Kings Malichus and Rabbel Soter effectively mean.)

Revelation seems to talk about the public works post 70 CE that are concurrent with accepting the Jewish refugees into Auranitis, Petra, Adiabene, and Edessa, big water and grain projects. Ofc I think the underground city Midyat, or something like it, is mentioned.

Steefen:
So, while we're checking, Simon bar Kokhba can be put to the test.

• Moses presided over these 70 elders as the head (Nasi).
• This created a supreme council of 71 members, establishing the exact blueprint for the Great Sanhedrin that lasted for centuries. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]

• First Linguistic Mention: A council of elders (referred to as a gerousia or early council) is mentioned during the Hasmonean period under King Alexander Jannaeus up until 76 BCE. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]
• First Concrete Record: The first definitive historical record of the formal institution called the Sanhedrin comes from the Roman historian Josephus in 57 BCE. At this time, the Roman governor Aulus Gabinius legally divided Judea into five political and judicial districts, each overseen by a synedrion. [** you do not have permission to see this link **]

Restore the Sanhedrin in the early first century C.E. still doesn't sound right.

Response:

• Puppet Leaders: The Roman authorities, rather than Jewish law, frequently appointed and dismissed the High Priest (the head of the Sanhedrin).
• Political Fractures: The council was bitterly divided between the aristocrat ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
• Loss of Capital Power: Around 30 CE, Rome stripped the Sanhedrin of its authority to independently execute capital punishment.

What does Encyclopedia Britannica say or what does google say?

My Rebuttal:

#1 would be nonsensical in 30 CE.

#2 Jesus dropped that ball.

#3 A temple descending from Heaven was not plausible.

#4 Re-establishing the Sanhedrin? Well, let's try to understand that.

Google, help us out, please.

Rome was still the empire over Syria with Judea inside of it.

= = = =

The correction should be Rome was still the empire over the province of Judea.

Still, the world did not change, Jerusalem was still under Rome.

= = = =

#2 In traditional Judaism, the Messiah (Mashiach) is expected to rebuild the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. This act is considered one of the defining signs that the true messianic era has arrived.

The temple was still under Herod the Great's renovation. This reason is acceptable to anyone else? If so, how could it have been done?

1) Wait for the end of Herod's renovation. 

2) Destroy the Temple, then build another one?

Rome was still the empire over Syria with Judea inside of it.

= = = = =

11:14 of Video: 
Why Jews Rejected Jesus as the Messiah: What Jews Truly Believe about the Messiah
YouTube Channel: Past Decoded