Loading...Here I continue my discussion from the previous post of the major themes and emphases of one of the best know of the Apostolic Fathers, The Epistle of Barnabas, which embodies strong attack on Jews for misunderstanding their own religion and misinterpreting their own Scriptures.
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According to this anonymous author, Jews are also wrong to take the dietary laws of the Old Testament literally. God did not mean that his people were not to eat pork or rabbit or hyena, all of which are proscribed in the Torah. The injunction not to eat pork means not to live like swine, who grunt loudly when hungry and keep silent when full. People are not to treat God in this way, coming to him with loud petitions when they are in need and ignoring him when they are not (10:3).
Not to eat rabbit means
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When did gematria and abbreviations become a way used by Jews and Christians to interpret their texts like in Barnabas 9:7? It seems to cause a greater number of interpretations and inspirational source for writing.
(e.g).
וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְהֹ֑ום וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם.
From this Genesis 1:2 phrase מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם, the Hebrew name for Mary מרים is the first two and last two letters of the phrase “hovering over the surface of the waters”. That is symbolic of Mary and the Holy Spirit in Luke 1:35. Mary is symbolically the surface of the waters and the spirit of God is hovering over her.
It’s a good questoin, but I’m afraid I don’t know the answer. I believe the first instance in a Christian text is Revelatoin (666), probably based on a tradition from the late 60s CE. I should know when it started in Jewish circles, but don’t. It became prominent in rabbinic times. I’d be amazed if Luke had that in mind for Luke 1:35, since he almost certainly couldn’t read Hebrew.
Dr Ehrman
Does anyone believe that Jesus was estranged from his family? He often makes derisive comments about families in general (Matt 23:9; Matt 8:22) and his family in particular (Matt 12:48; Mark 3:33). In the one passaage that covers his youth, he’s sarcastic toward his worried parents. I haven’t noticed any passage in which he “honors his mother and his father.”
Yes indeed, it’s a big issues, esepcially in Mark’s Gospel, where they appear to think he has gone out of his mind (Mark 3:21); that’s supported by John 7 where his brothers explicitly are said not to believe in him.
Barnabas is infuriating. The fact that he is so well considered in Christendom is also…. depressing.The conceit and brazen,massive cultural and religious theft reaches a climax with him. It would be hilarious, if it weren’t deceptive, that he even re-defines gematria, a peripheral non-essential interpretive tool, and ignores the Hebrew language. The 318 gematria is the gematria of Eliezer, Abraham’s trusted right hand. As for the foods, Jesus ate kosher. The only thing he rejected was the new Pharisaic handwashing. He pronounced, then, all ( kosher) foods clean even without handwashing. Boyarin wrote a great article about this. Barnabas ignored Jesus to craft his own deluded beliefs in his zeal to erase the Jews, who wrote those scriptures.
I wonder how much of Hebrew Scripture he himself knew.Reading the Septuagint and being ” of the school of Gamliel” mean nothing. Generalising that the Jews misunderstood their own scriptures is the epitome of arrogance.
Can we know how much he knew?
I’m afraid all we have is this one piece of writing. We don’t even know who he was. It’s say it’s clear that he knew the Septuagint extremely well, and that he probably did not know Hebrew, let alone Jewish modes of interpretation. But, then again, neither did his audience (or most Jews at the time, for that matter, since they lived outside Israel).