Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

This spread was faciliated by a pre-existing “King's Highway” which linked Damascus to Arabia. What impact were you refering to Aretas' "unsanctioned war against Herod Antipas" ? The one involving a foreign power attacking a Roman client. Rome had a long history of dealing with foreign in...

Damascus was the original capital of the region (before conquest by the Greeks moved it to Antioch), an important conquest of Nabatea under Aretas III, and the decisive conquest that gave control over Syria to the Romans when Pompey took the city in 63 BC. Damascus was later attacked by the Parthia...

No it's not there. But two things are suspicious about that reference right off the bat. 1. All the coins have Greek not Latin text. 2. That scholarly account of the history of Damascus I cited above does not mention it. In fact that author - who would presumably know all the sources - assumes cont...

It is fun watching apologetic sources bend over backwards to accommodate the basket story. I don't understand why other people would be so willing to rely on it in face of the obvious problems.

And it's a shame no-one has shown interest in the hint I gave at the end of this post.

Maybe I'm missing something but why do you use the term 'expanding his sphere'? Do we really know that he wasn't already in charge of Damascus? After all Aretas III conquered Damascus the prior century, and it may have been dominated by Nabataeans. Damascus was in the tetrarchy of Philip which Cali...

estúpido: We know for sure that an Aretas held control of Damascus briefly just before the Romans arrived in 64 BCE. 64 BCE não 64 CE 64 BCE menos 64 CE é uma diferença de 120 anos. Se Paul desceu do muro em 40 CE é uma diferença de cem anos You're such a show-off, Genghiz. You've been drinking too...

The one involving a foreign power attacking a Roman client. Rome had a long history of dealing with foreign interference. With few exceptions the result was dire for the foreign power. The death of Tiberius meant a transition of power that was one of those junctures when strife can arise, so Vitell...

Sadly, no. The Romans took control of Petra several decades later. That's the complete conquest you are talking about. Some secular historians (not consulting Wiki!) wrote that, before, Nabatea was a client kingdom (or vassal, or allied) to the Romans, but it is never stated, just implied . That sh...

Murphy-O'Connor wrongly associates the situation of Aretas with that of Agrippa (I) and Antiochus (IV) of Commagene, though their circumstances were clearly different, and totally ignores the impact of the unsanctioned war against Herod Antipas. There was no impact of Arteas war against Herod Antip...

But there is something strange about the usage of the verb φρουρεω. The following citations are YLT of the Hebrew and in each LXX instance the Greek translation has a nominal form of our verb, which suggests that in such contexts in the Judeo-christian Greek tradition word indicates a body of soldi...