Steefen said
Comment 159
Thomas Didymus and “Doubting Thomas” refer to the exact same person: the Biblical Apostle Thomas. [1, 2]The Names of Thomas
Thomas Didymus: “Thomas” comes from an Aramaic word meaning “twin,” and “Didymus” is the Greek word (Didymos) that also means “twin”. The Gospel of John refers to him as “Thomas, called the Twin (Didymus)”.
Hi Steefen! You just made a very helpful correction. You are right that Thomas’ name origin of T’ōmā is Aramaic, not Hebrew:
Serene said
Thomas (Hebrew), Didymos (Greek)
How do we know that Jesus’ Apostles are all Jewish?
Matthew 19:28
Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.'”
It has long been academic consensus that some of the 12 judges of Israelites in the Book of Judges have clearly foreign names:
Othniel, son of Kenaz is Kennizite (Edomite-Canaanite clan)
Shamgar is a Hurrian or Hittite name
Gideon has the second name of Jerubabaal, a Canaanite name
They are given Jewishness after the facto.
As we move closer to the First Century Transjordan, in 1 Maccabees 5:8 (Maccabees is non-canonical to the Hebrew Bible but canonical to the Catholic Old Testament), Aretas, the Nabataean Arab king, is portrayed as exercising judicial authority over Jason, the Jewish High Priest. Again, I think this is the “second verse, same as the first” type story of Aretas IV seeking the Jewish High Priest’s emissary Saul/Paulus in 2 Corinthians 11:32 for the events described in Galatians 1:13.
They are descriptions of actions, not formal titles, like in Matthew 19:28 and Luke 22:30
…you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
When the towns are known that Jesus recruits from, they are historically found to be markedly multi-ethnic trade nodes and border junctions (like the 7 churches of Asia in miniature.) Apostles from Bethsaida would likely have been comfortable with attesting to Jesus’ signs and works to Gentiles, including Simon renamed Peter, who has an actually Hebrew birth name.
I just think it’s interesting that the Apostle Thomas is eager to take the chance that this may violate purity laws, considering that Jesus has um, not been declared alive.
And that this apparently new Apostle may not recognize what Jesus looked like before, like in the many instances of Luke 24:13–35.
** you do not have permission to see this link ** 81.3-82.5
When he said these things, I saw him as if they were seizing him. And I said, ‘What do I see, O Lord? Is it really you whom they take? And are you holding onto me? And who is this one above the cross, who is glad and laughing? And is it another person whose feet and hands they are hammering?’
The Savior said to me, ‘He whom you see above the cross, glad and laughing, this is the living Jesus. But he into whose hands and feet they drive the nails is his physical part, which is the substitute, being put to shame, the one who came into being in his likeness. Look at him and look at me.’
When I looked, I said, ‘Lord, no one is looking at you. Let us flee this place!’ But he said to me, ‘I have told you, “Leave the blind alone!” And you, see how they do not know what they are saying. For the son of their glory, instead of my servant, they have put to shame.
Steefen said
Bart,
Neither the Gospel of Thomas nor the Synoptics contain Thomas’ skepticism regarding the resurrection. Those are attestations that are needed.
QUESTION: Without multiple attestation, is Thomas’ skepticism not historical or is there more to this?
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Zebadiah, son of 👉Ishmael 👈 Judge of Jewish People
2 Chronicles 19
See, Amariah the chief priest is over you in all matters of the Lord; and Zebadiah son of Ishmael, the governor of the house of Judah, in all the king’s matters
The Bible Gateway Cliff Notes:
A “governor of the house of Judah, in all the king’s affairs” (** you do not have permission to see this link **, [http://biblegateway/wiki/Courts, Judicial COURT OF LAW].
** you do not have permission to see this link **
My bolding.
The Question: Could a 9th Century BCE Judean really hear or use the name Ishmael without thinking of the famous son of Hagar in Genesis?
Hint: The 9th C BCE is exactly when the Ishmaelite tribal confederation begins operating in the Transjordan, per written Assyrian records.
Folk etymology implies that this Ishmael name is just a Jewish name that doesn’t nod to any sympathy or even mixed ancestry with the Ishmaelites, and I would like to offer my finest lol. All uses of the name Ishmael in the Hebrew Bible after the Ishmael of Genesis begin appearing exactly after the Ishmaelite confederation begins operating in the Transjordan, using contemporary written records.
Specifically, the first re-appearance of the name Ishmael appears in a trade-favorable Jewish administration, right before the last use of the term Ishmaelite in a trade-unfavorable Jewish administration.
Ishmaelite is an exonym. Son of Ishmael can either be an actual son of someone named Ishmael, or follow the usual tribal endonym ” Son of [Founder] pattern. Using an “Son of Ishmael” endonym would be proper once the lineage is inside the house.
Consider the example of Doeg the Edomite:
1 Samuel 21:7
Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the Lord; his name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul’s shepherds
But the Talmud explains that the “chief of Saul’s shepherds” is a euphemism. The Talmud scholars explain that Doeg the Edomite was the highest judicial authority in the land, the head of the Sanhedrin, and the highest scholar in the Kingdom of Judah, and that the sheep were his scholars.
Caveat — the Talmud is the 2nd-5th CE trying to explain the 9th C BCE, but the scholars of the Talmud would have a wider oral history and the written records of hegemons to draw from, like that of the Babylonian Exiles.
Could it have been politically incorrect to acknowledge someone of lowly lineage as being higher than the Jewish people? See the justification given for King Herod the Great’s actions regarding his lineage Jewish family, that they mocked his commoner (Edomite) background.
To me this really big euphemism — from “chief herdsman” to “head of the Sanhedrin,” is the legislative body over the Jewish people, raises the possibility that lowly lineage as characterized in the Hebrew Bible, like Edomite (because it is mixed with Canaanite), or Ishmaelite (dismissed slave origin), may be less overtly acknowledged as they started to rise, whereas conqueror lineage (Egyptian, Hittite, Moabite, Ammonite and others), landed kingdom lineage, would not be.
Son of [Founder], like the Son of David:
Luke 18:36-37
Now hearing a crowd going by, he began to inquire what this was. They told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. And he called out, saying, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
“Sons of Aretas,” are the Banu Haritat. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is called the “Daughter of Amram” (Moses’ father) in the Quran. Or like the “Sons of Light”, in the Qumran Essene texts, Light being a personified being in Mandaean cosmology.
I think Ishmael could be the name of Zebadiah’s dad, just that for this century, and considering how tribal business operated as distinct from landed kingdom business, that this may nod at mixed lineage. Again, switching to the endonym tracks if the Ishmaelite tribal confederation intermarried with Jewish or Israelite people in the Transjordan.
Zebadiah, son of Ishmael’s administration of King Jehoshaphat (c. 870-848 BCE) was particularly known for alliance-making. Then the last time we see the word Ishmaelites used is in a closely-following administration, upset that the Ishmaelite confederacy allies across different ethnic groups (Hagar’s is Egyptian):
Psalm 83:5-6
With one mind they plot together; they form a alliance against you—the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, of Moab and the Hagrites…
Then with the Book of Isaiah, it shows familiarity with smaller, emerging tribal confederacies, like that led by the lineages of Nebaioth and Kedar.
** you do not have permission to see this link ** that Yosef the Salit, Ya’akov, Issachar and Benoni don’t have anything to do with the Hyksos in Egypt called Salitus, Yaqub, Sakir-har and Benon — Hebrews come get your Patriarchs.
Luke 22:30
so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel
Now let’s look at this new Apostle Thomas with the Aramaean name again. The Apostle Thomas’s insistence on touching the open wounds of someone who could be a revenant, a ghost re-animating a corpse which was a fear of the First Century Mediterranean, or even a Weekend at Bernie’s disregards purity laws, the highest level of Jewish taboos, the Second Temple ritual purity laws called Tumat Met.
Early Christian history and Syriac texts (Acts of Thomas, Gospel of Thomas) sent him to the Syriac/Aramaean world — specifically Edessa (Osroene), Nisibis, Parthia, and further east.
While Thomas could certainly be Jewish, it’s not implausible that he could be a Syriac/Aramaean sent to witness to the scattered remnants of the northern Israelite tribes. They were widely documented in ancient Jewish memory as having preserved their diaspora communities in those territories.
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.
But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear.
Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.”
** you do not have permission to see this link ** and date to the Neolithic period (c. 4500–3900/3800).
I’ve split my follow-up comment on potential multi-culturalism in the Gospels and copied part of it here, because it explores the circa-Davidic kingdom era to compare it to Jesus‘ time:
What’s really exciting today is finding an academic study discussing the Talmud’s consensus take that titles like chief ‘herder’ and ‘shepherd’ were euphemisms for high placement in government:
** you do not have permission to see this link **, Shawn Zelig Aster, Journal of Biblical Literature
1 Samuel 21:7
Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the LORD; his name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul’s shepherds.
** you do not have permission to see this link ** on Doeg’s knowledge of Torah:
And Rabbi Yitzḥak says: What is the meaning of that which is written: “Where is he that counts; where is he that weighs; where is he that counts the towers [migdalim]” (Isaiah 33:18)? Where is he that counts all the letters of the Torah? Where is he that weighs, who considers all the elements of a fortiori inferences in the Torah? Where is he who counts the towers? This is Doeg, who would count three hundred halakhic conclusions with regard to the purity of a cupboard [migdal] that floats in the air [avir].
Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi says: Doeg and Ahithophel raised four hundred dilemmas with regard to the purity of a cupboard that floats in the air, and they did not resolve even one, an indication of their great knowledge.
While the modern scholar, Shawn Zelig Aster concludes that shepherd in Doeg’s context was likely a title for a military commander. The use of a euphemism, shepherd (of people) for Doeg, imo could be because Doeg is an Edomite that is not related to the Jewish people.
King David’s sister Abigail was even married to an Ishmaelite, and he places his nephew Amasa as commander of the United Monarchy army:
1 Chronicles 2:17
Abigail bore Amasa, and the father of Amasa was Jether the Ishmaelite.
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King David says this to Amasa in 2 Samuel 19:13
And say to Amasa, ‘Are you not my bone and my flesh? So may God do to me, and more, if you are not the commander of my army from now on, in place of Joab.”
A son of an Ishmaelite is King David’s bone and flesh. King Solomon even avenges this patrilineally Ishmaelite family member, Amasa. King David is the king in the Hebrew Bible that explicitly has Ishmaelite and Hagarite officials, peoples who become known as Arabs. Like-wise, the Book of Isaiah, the single-most quoted Hebrew text in the New Testament and again, nicknamed the ‘Fifth Gospel’ for how often this text was present among the early Jesus movement, highlights Arab Kedar, Nebaioth, Midian, and Sela as essential participants in the messianic restoration (Isaiah 42:11, 60:6–7).
Then there is King David’s innovation of dual High Priests, and his appointment of Zadok, which many biblical scholars interpret through the Jebusite Hypothesis. By elevating a priest whose name root matches pre-Israelite Jerusalem priest-kings like Melchizedek and Adonizedek, King David makes a classic move of multi-cultural statecraft.
Many scholars also perceive Zadok’s post-exilic literary assignment of a pristine Aaronid lineage (once this lineage becomes a mandatory requirement in Ezra 2:62) as an instance of fictive kinship — the common Ancient Near East practice of informal adoption into a royal house that became codified over time.
Could it become codified without an informal adoption in the actual time period, or the “over time” part? When according to Josephus, King Herod the Great’s close friend and biographer Nicolaus of Damascus tries to retroactively supply a royal Jewish background for him, even that great friend of the Herodian dynasty, Josephus, mouthes a silent whomp whomp:
Nicolaus of Damascus says that Antipas [Herod’s grandfather] was of the stock of the principal Jews who came out of Babylon into Judea. But this he said merely to gratify Herod and his son, who was king of Judea after him… for Herod was an Idumean by birth.”
— Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 14.1.3
So I wonder if new types of names in the Bible may not always be simply just the result of updated customs, or civic aliases in the lingua franca; I wonder if sometimes new types of names points to multi-culturalism.
And like the ANE “shepherd” title for king, including tribal king, that per Talmud becomes creatively utilized for a subordinate in a multi-tribal confederacy, I wonder if something like the traditional ANE practice of fictive kinship adoption is being described in the Gospels.
Rejoice!
On Apostle Paul writing to the Philippians (the “Epistle of Joy”) during Greece’s first Living God drought in almost 400 years — and the potential encodement of names.
For the other gods are either far away, or they do not have ears, or they do not exist, or do not take any notice of us, but you we can see present here; you are not made of wood or stone, you are real.
— part of a hymn to King Demetrios of Athens, 291 BCE in** you do not have permission to see this link **, by Angelos Chaniotis, Oxford, 2003
As far as I know, there is not a single historical record in the ancient Mediterranean or Near Eastern world of a poor, non-elite person being legally declared or worshipped as a “God” (Theos) or “Son of God” (Theou Huios). Zero. It was an exclusive legal instrument of imperial statecraft.
Not even the very cool Hanina ben Dosa in the 1st century CE — a Galilean charismatic contemporary of early Christians. Rabbinic tradition (b. Berakhot 17b) records that a divine voice (Bat Kol) declared daily:
The whole world is sustained for the sake of My son Hanina, yet My son Hanina is satisfied with a basket of carobs from one Sabbath eve to the next.”
A divine voice calls him “my son,” and yet no religion or even sect sprouts from Hanina ben Dosa. Hanina has no happy hymn, and he’s good at being content with carob. That is because the Son of God is a title.
Assyriologist Dr. Simo Parpola claims to decode Hebrew Bible texts using alphabetic ciphers like ** you do not have permission to see this link **, 2022) analyzes the New Testament for alphabetic ciphers, he claims it yields an overriding word, “King.”
As I’ve written before, I think this might tie directly to Nabataean King Malichus II, whose name literally means “King” (MLK). We do have records of Jewish figures ruling in other kingdoms, right? Like ** you do not have permission to see this link ** (41-48 CE.)
• The abjad form MLK is written in the Aramaic portion of the tri-lingual Titulus: Jesus, King (MLK) of the Jews
• Christ, meaning “the anointed one,” is a direct legal descriptor for a rightful king
• Malichus (root meaning “King”) shares the exact Semitic root with Malchus in John 18:10
As I’ve written before, I think that the use of the name Malchus in John 18:10 could be an impressive code-talker style of cypher with a Transjordan influence, as part of the New Testament’s already-acknowledged literary syncretism.
Mapping the Gospel of John’s Greco-Roman bios onto the originally pre-Islamic Arabian poetry style called the Qasidah, the name Malchus seems to appear at the exact takhallus — the pivot where the name of the author or patron is cleverly embedded, sometimes using a root meaning or homonym. For the Qasidah, it’s traditionally embedded between parts one and two:
Part one, Nasib: Elegiac reminiscence of a person and place now gone
Part two, Rahil: The hero’s challenging journey or trial/ordeal
Part three, Madh/Fakhr: Postscript of intense praise
There’s no alphabetic cipher in this technique, the encodement is just in embedding a name creatively. So I thought to myself: “I wonder if anyone has looked at Paul’s letters for names?”
~400 Years of God-King Tradition in Greece
Though deified kingship goes back millennia, in the Greco-Roman world that Paul addresses at Philippi, Alexander the Great (4th C. BCE) was the first Greco-Roman king to accept honors as the Living Image of Zeus-Ammon in Egypt —bridging Greece (Zeus) and Egypt (Ammon). His successors, both Seleucids and Ptolemies, kept the living ruler cult alive across the Mediterranean under the official title Theos Epiphanes (“God Manifest”).
When empire continues to drift west, Julius Caesar’s stone inscriptions hail him as God Manifest in the Greek East — but never within Rome itself. To Roman elites already accustomed to water-to-wine temple automata, medicated ointments, and signaling towers delivering good news from above, the Emperor was simply a First Citizen.
Culture keeps traveling west, and finally a Roman Emperor, Gaius Germanicus (37-41 CE) declares himself a living God in Rome. Interestingly, the instances where a Roman Emperor sought living divine honors — Julius Caesar, Gaius, Nero, and Domitian basically bookend the event timeline of the New Testament.
The rumors surrounding Gaius Germanicus, nicknamed Caligula, are gross, and it’s also reasonable to note that the rumors and his treatment seem to be not totally dissimilar to the rumors and treatment purported to be received by early Christians in Rome, so I take that with a grain of salt the size of a big thing. Or maybe he got the ring of power problem.
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The Epistle to the Philippians The Epistle to the Phillipians was written to a colony of retired Roman army veterans in Greece (Colonia Augusta Iulia Philippensis). Gaius Germanicus had been immensely popular among military veterans. Gaius was the son of Germanicus — the most beloved military commander among Roman legionaries — and Gaius immediately endeared himself to veterans by doubling military donatives and honoring military wills upon taking power. In fact, Gaius’ affectionate nickname, “booties” had been given to him by his father’s soldiers when he accompanied them on campaigns when he was a toddler, wearing a little soldier’s uniform that his mother made for him, including miniature military boots known as caligae. There may be a few pro-Gaius holdouts here, is what I’m saying.
The Latin name Gaius derives directly from gaudere, meaning “to rejoice” or “be glad.” In this brief letter to Roman veterans, Paul repeats the word “Rejoice!” (chairō /chara) an astounding 19 times. I think that because they are in Greece, which celebrated God-Kings, like with the hymn above, for ~400 years until Rome put it on pause right at that time, and because Gaius was the reason that they were living the good life in military retirement, that Paul may be appealing to fellow divine human appreciators for help here.
Roman state prisons did not supply food, clothing, or legal representation — the Philippians sent Epaphroditus with financial contributions (Phil 4:14–18), funding Paul’s legal counsel, paying off prison guards for better conditions (custodia libera), and securing scribal materials.
As citizens of a Roman colonia holding ius Italicum (the highest tier of legal privilege outside Italy), Philippian elites had direct access to Roman courts to submit formal legal petitions (libelli) or sponsor Paul as legal patrons (patroni). And retired senior centurions maintained active correspondence networks with serving officers, provincial clerks, and imperial freedmen along the Via Egnatia trade route, allowing them to exert back-channel influence on provincial governors.
Wishing everything turns out ok, Paul.
The Book of Revelation – could it use a common composite literature technique to highlight the amazing, large-scale charitable works in receiving Jewish refugees from Jerusalem pre- and post-70 CE?
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?
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.
For example, 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 4,000 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.
• 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 Arabian products of the Book of Isaiah.
Rabbel II Soter even moved his 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.
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) escaping Jerusalem in their book The Inner Hawran, also known as** you do not have permission to see this link **
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 Basra, as 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 Rabbel would get the credit for saving people.
So you have 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) thar 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.
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.
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