Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Wow. Thanks for all that, DC. I'm amazed how tech savvy most people are these days. It's all over my head. Take my TV, for example (which I bought used at a thrift store for five bucks six years ago and is still going strong -stronger than the fancy new flat screen TV a friend gave me that conked ou...

Is it that your work computer doesn't have some version of the free Adobe Reader, or that your employer frowns on reading PDFs on the job? I doubt my employer would mind if I read PDFs (I doubt they are even aware that I use the internet as much as I do), but I don't know anything about Adobe Reade...

DC wrote: But again, for the one who seeks truth, and accepts the wisdom relayed to me by Metatron the prince, behold a mere 71 page chronological reconstruction of the various legendary returns and/or governors, compiled from the RSV translation of the Hebrew text. While it is simple and unsophisti...

Ben wrote: Right, but Deuteronomy is okay with the spilling of the blood of cattle and other sacrificial animals apart from the sanctuary. So Deuteronomy is simply allowing the eating of the meat of nominally sacrificial animals without it constituting a sacrifice, just as eating deer is allowed wit...

I think that Deuteronomy 12.15-16 is simply allowing the eating of meat. It is not a sacrifice. The older view was that every time one ate meat, it had to be a sacrifice. Deuteronomy is saying that one can eat meat without it being sacrificial, but all sacrifices must be offered at the place of the...

The documents closest in time to the Elephantine papyri would be the books of the Hebrew Bible themselves, right? How do you read the evidence in the Hebrew scriptures? How are altars outside of the Jerusalem temple treated? (Did you read Joshua 22?) The last time I studied the OT regarding this ma...

What is your overall impression of the evidence? Well, in the big picture, what does the opinion of the rabbis matter? The Jews who built, attended and served in the Temple of Onias were presumably fine with it, and it looks like rabbis were at worst iffy about it. And in any event, their opinion w...

M. Men. 13:10: “I take upon myself an olah” - he must offer it in the Temple. And if he offered it in the Temple of Onias (A temple made by Onias in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis, contemporary with the Second Temple in Jerusalem), he has not fulfilled his obligation. “I take upon myself to offer a...

Can you give some examples of this acceptance? The Mishnah (Menahot 13.10) prohibits any priest from Leontopolis to serve in the temple in Jerusalem and rejects the validity of any sacrifice or Nazirite vow made in Leontopolis; it grants that a vow to sacrifice specifically in that temple is fulfil...

I've seen datings for Ezra as late as 398 BCE (https://books.google.com/books?id=F78pDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT54&dq=ezra+nehemiah+dating&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZgI3mqejaAhVLyoMKHfdICmkQ6AEINDAC#v=onepage&q=ezra%20nehemiah%20dating&f=false), so perhaps Deuteronomy was not in force in...