Galileans, ambiguous oracles, Christians, and the generational prophecy.

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Charles Wilson
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Re: Galileans, ambiguous oracles, Christians, and the generational prophecy.

Post by Charles Wilson »

There *appears* to have been a Calendar War between the City States and Qumran. The Luni-Solar vs. the 364 Pure Solar. Eisenman and Wise, Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered. The Qumran Group is waiting to impose the Solar on Jerusalem when they take over. Eisenman and Wise state that the Qumran Group used the Mishmarot Rotations as a check on various Calendars.

i may repost some notes from an ol' timer, David Christensen, who sent one of those knock-yer-socks-off E-Mails a few years back. (RIP DC, I think...)

His E-Mail was important. Consider: There are 24 Mishmarot Groups. They rotate into Jerusalem each Sabbath. 24 x 7 = 168 days before a Group returns to Jerusalem. That's fine except you don't know any one week that any one Group would be on Duty. Except...You do.

Jehoiarib was on Duty for the Destruction of the Temple and we "know" that date - 10 of Ab, 70 (Josephus and the Babylonian Talmud).

http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/JulianDate.php

Now go to your Julian Day Converter and find out what day that was. You also need a New Moon Table for determining Passover. I'll try and find one in my 1000 bookmarks and <Edit> it here. Count back/forward to the next Sabbath from the Destruction of the Temple and then find the Group you are interested in. Count in groups of 168 days for when that Mishmarot Group was previously in Jerusalem.

E and W comment of the alignments and first Calendars (Gamul is in there somewhere at the start 5000-ish years prior. *Note*: Since our friends the Hasmoneans are given to Jehoiarib, 1 Chronicles 24, which gives the updated List from David, has the Leading Group as Jehoiarib and not Gamul.

From an old Summary:

"If we compute another date based on the Sabbath, we will get some Mishmarot Group coming to Duty. Let's continue with Jehoiarib. If a Julian Date is given for that Sabbath, subtract the Julian Date from the Sabbath Date of Jehoiarib at the fall of the Temple (Make decision as to the Start of the Week or the End of the Week) Divide by 168. If the remainder is Zero, that means that Jehoiarib started (or ended) the week on that date.

Jehoiarib 1720128

JD 1720128.500000 is
BCE 4 June 16 00:00:00.0 UT Saturday
1746840 – 1720128 = 26712. 26712 / 168 = 159. NO REMAINDER.

Jehoiarib was on Duty for the week of June 16, 4 BCE.

The question now becomes, “When did Immer have Mishmarot Service and was it during Passover?

Immer is 7 weeks “ahead” of Jehoiarib – for ease of calculating – and that is 63 days.
1720128 – 63 = 1720065.

JD 1720065.500000 is
BCE 4 April 14 00:00:00.0 UT Saturday

The Dates for Passover: http://www.observadores-cometas.com/com ... sover.html
Compare with the Hebrew/ Roman Calendar, given above. No differences for computational purposes.

April 1 1, 4 BCE.

Immer was on Duty for Passover Week, 4 BCE.

Eisenman and Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, ISBN-13 978-15661-9623-9, p 108”

“In all their timekeeping, the authors of the Qumran Calendars reckoned not only by months, but also by the rotation of the Priestly Courses (mishmarot)...Qumran texts relied upon this 'eternal cycle' not only for their calendar units, but for their chronography and historiography...Every sabbath, month, year and feast bore the name of a priestly family.”

It is easy to show that Immer was on Duty for the 9 CE Passover as well."

Note that I have to check my Maff here as well. Typos in this version...
More later,

CW
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Galileans, ambiguous oracles, Christians, and the generational prophecy.

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Ah, the Damascus Document:

CD-A, columns 1-2, lines 1-21 each: 1.1 ~ And now, listen, all those who know justice, and understand the actions of 2 God; for he has a dispute with all flesh and will carry out judgment on all those who spurn him. 3 For when they were unfaithful in forsaking him, he hid his face from Israel and from his sanctuary 4 and delivered them up to the sword. But when he remembered the covenant with the forefathers, he saved a remnant 5 for Israel and did not deliver them up to destruction. And at the period of wrath, three hundred and 6 ninety years [Ezekiel 4.5] after having delivered them up into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, 7 he visited them and caused to sprout from Israel and from Aaron a shoot of the planting, in order to possess 8 his land and to become fat with the good things of his soil. And they realized their iniquity and knew that 9 they were guilty {men}; but they were like blind persons and like those who grope for a path 10 over twenty years. And God appraised their deeds, because they sought him with an undivided heart, 11 and raised up for them a Teacher of Righteousness, in order to direct them in the path of his heart. ~ And he made known 12 to the last generations what he had done for the last generation, the congregation of traitors. 13 These are the ones who stray from the path. This is the time about which it has been written: «Like a stray heifer, 14 so has Israel strayed» when «the scoffer» arose [Hosea 4.16], who poured out over Israel 15 waters of lies and made them stray into a wilderness without path, causing the everlasting heights to sink down, diverging 16 from tracks of justice and removing the boundary with which the forefathers had marked their inheritance, so that 17 the curses of his covenant would adhere to them, to deliver them up to the sword carrying out the vengeance 18 of the covenant. For they sought easy interpretations, chose illusions, scrutinized 19 loopholes, chose the handsome neck, acquitted the guilty and sentenced the just, 20 violated the covenant, broke the precept, banded together against the life of the just man, their soul abominated all those who walk 21 in perfection, they hunted them down with the sword and provoked the dispute of the people. And kindled was the wrath of / 2.1 God against their congregation, laying waste all its great number, for their deeds were unclean in front of him. 2 ~ And now, listen to me, all who enter the covenant, and I will open your ears to the paths of 3 the wicked. ~ God loves knowledge; he has established wisdom and counsel before him; 4 prudence and knowledge are at his service; patience is his and abundance of pardon, 5 to atone for those who repent from sin; however, strength and power and a great anger with flames of fire 6 by the ‹hand› of all the angels of destruction against those turning aside from the path and abominating the precept, without there being for them either a remnant 7 or survivor. For God did not choose them at the beginning of the world, and before they were established he knew 8 their deeds, and abominated the generations on account of blood and hid his face from the land, 9 from ‹Israel›, until their extinction. And he knew the years of existence, and the number and detail of their ages, of all 10 those who exist over the centuries, ‹and of those who will exist›, until it occurs in their ages throughout all the everlasting years. 11 And in all of them he raised up men of renown for himself, to leave a remnant for the land and in order to fill 12 the face of the world with their offspring. ~ And he taught them by the hand of ‹the anointed ones› with his holy spirit and through seers of the 13 truth, and their names were established with precision. But those he hates, he causes to stray. ~ 14 ~ And now, sons, listen to me and I shall open your eyes so that you can see and understand the deeds of 15 God, so that you can choose what he is pleased with and repudiate what he hates, so that you can walk perfectly 16 on all his paths and not allow yourselves to be attracted by the thoughts of a guilty inclination and lascivious eyes. For many 17 have gone astray due to these; brave heroes stumbled on account of them, from ancient times until now. For having walked in the stubbornness 18 of their hearts the Watchers of the heavens fell; on account of it they were caught, for they did not heed the precepts of God. 19 And their sons, whose height was like that of cedars and whose bodies were like mountains, fell. 20 All flesh which there was on the dry earth expired and they became as if they had never been, because they had realized 21 their desires and had failed to keep their creator’s precepts, until his wrath flared up against them.

So this unflattering description of the people contemporaneous with the Teacher of Righteousness is predicated upon Ezekiel's prediction of 390 years of iniquity upon the house of Israel:

Ezekiel 4.5: 5 "For I have assigned you a number of days corresponding to the years of their iniquity, three hundred and ninety days; thus you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel."

In Ezekiel these years appear to me to refer to Israel's past, not its future, but the Damascus Document must think they apply to Israel's future (relative to Ezekiel's own time); if not, then the 390 years would be just a coincidence. At any rate, at the end of that 390 years, according to the Damascus Document, a confused period of 20 years took place, and then the Teacher of Righteousness was raised up. I have said before that every Jew would know how long it takes for a generation to die out:

Numbers 32.13: So Yahweh's anger burned against Israel, and He made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until the entire generation of those who had done evil in the sight of Yahweh was destroyed.

And the author of the Damascus Document seems to be no exception:

CD-B, column 20, lines 13-17a: 13 And neither for them nor their families shall there shall be a part in the house of the law. ~ And from the day 14 of the gathering in of the unique teacher, until the end of all the men of war who turned back 15 with the man of lies, there shall be about forty years. ~ And in this age the wrath 16 of God will be kindled against Israel, as he said: «There shall be no king, no prince, no judge, no one who 17 reproaches in justice» [Hosea 3.4].

I believe the "gathering in" of the Teacher refers to his death, after which there are to be 40 years until God takes out his wrath upon Israel. This same 40 year period seems to be the topic in another scroll, as well:

4Q171, column 2, lines 4b-9a: 4b But they who hope in YHWH will possess the land. Its interpretation: 5 they are the congregation of his chosen ones who carry out his will. A little while, and the wicked will be no more [Psalm 37.10]. 6 ~ 7 I will stare at his place and he will no longer be there. Its interpretation concerns all the wickedness at the end 8 of the forty years, for they will be completed and upon the earth no [wic]ked person will be found. 9a And the poor shall possess the land [Psalm 37.11] and enjoy peace in plenty.

The elimination of the wicked seems to be destined to come at the hands of a Messiah:

CD-B, column 19, lines 10-11a: 10 These shall escape in the age of the visitation; but those that remain shall be delivered up to the sword when there comes the messiah 11a of Aaron and Israel.

But wow, are those forty years ever suspicious or what?? On the Qumran side of things, the Teacher is supposed to die, and forty years after his death God's wrath is to be kindled against Israel, after which idyllic times will prevail and the poor will inherit the earth. On the Christian side of things, Jesus supposedly died in around AD 30, right after making a prediction involving a generation, and forty years after his death God's wrath was kindled against Israel and Jerusalem fell to the Romans... except, of course, nothing very idyllic happened after that.

I do not think these two situations can be directly related, since the 390 years of Ezekiel are fewer than the 490 years (70 "weeks") of Daniel; but the same eschatological game is being played, it would seem. Again the theme of a last generation arises, this time in the guise of the death of the Teacher of Righteousness, which begins the countdown of "about forty years" until the end. The Qumran scrolls seem to be earlier, on average, than Christianity, so that fact plus the fact that it was probably very hard to work out an exact chronology in antiquity could explain why the Qumran group referred to Ezekiel while the later rebels referred to Daniel: the number of years since the Babylonians conquered Judea has increased.

But that motif of a Teacher dying 40 years before the end... something is going on there. What if Jesus' purported life was originally imagined during a slightly different time period, and was moved to around AD 30 in order to make the 40 years work out pretty much perfectly?
Last edited by Ben C. Smith on Sat Feb 10, 2018 6:55 am, edited 3 times in total.
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lsayre
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Re: Galileans, ambiguous oracles, Christians, and the generational prophecy.

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Would those who practiced the utmost in living a life of righteousness fraudulently move their Teachers date of death to 30 CE in order to make the 40 years work out pretty much perfectly?
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Re: Galileans, ambiguous oracles, Christians, and the generational prophecy.

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lsayre wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 10:30 am Would those who practiced the utmost in living a life of righteousness fraudulently move their Teachers date of death to 30 CE in order to make the 40 years work out pretty much perfectly?
Not sure, but that is not what I am suggesting. I do not think that the Teacher and Jesus are the same person; I think they may be two people who are playing the same kind of eschatological game with scriptural prophecy. Both basically are announcing the advent of the last generation of people to live before the end comes.

Unless by "those who practiced the utmost in living a life of righteousness" you meant Christians, a connection I would not necessarily make; I mean, I am sure there were plenty of honest, forthright Christians doing their level best to live a moral, ethical life, but the Christian record is too full of forgeries and fabrications to inspire me to let the whole lot of them off the hook and assume no one would make such a move.
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Re: Galileans, ambiguous oracles, Christians, and the generational prophecy.

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and forty years after his death God's wrath was kindled against Israel and Jerusalem fell to the Romans
Not true for the Acts of Pilate, Josephus and a variety of other sources that put the death at 20/21 CE. The date in Luke is suspicious as Luke is a secondary document (by Luke's own admission oddly enough). Again someone edited the texts to achieve a particular arrangement, to follow a particular timeline.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Galileans, ambiguous oracles, Christians, and the generational prophecy.

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Secret Alias wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 12:45 pm
and forty years after his death God's wrath was kindled against Israel and Jerusalem fell to the Romans
Not true for the Acts of Pilate, Josephus and a variety of other sources that put the death at 20/21 CE. The date in Luke is suspicious as Luke is a secondary document (by Luke's own admission oddly enough).
Well, quite. Which is why I wrote:
Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 10:08 amBut that motif of a Teacher dying 40 years before the end... something is going on there. What if Jesus' purported life was originally imagined during a slightly different time period, and was moved to around AD 30 in order to make the 40 years work out pretty much perfectly?
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Secret Alias
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Re: Galileans, ambiguous oracles, Christians, and the generational prophecy.

Post by Secret Alias »

Life in the fast lane. Sorry
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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Charles Wilson
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Re: Galileans, ambiguous oracles, Christians, and the generational prophecy.

Post by Charles Wilson »

Ben C. Smith wrote:I do not think these two situations can be directly related, since the 390 years of Ezekiel are fewer than the 490 years (70 "weeks") of Daniel; but the same eschatological game is being played, it would seem.
But that motif of a Teacher dying 40 years before the end... something is going on there
Caesar's Messiah:

"What is the conclusion to the forty years of wandering in the New Testament? Since the Gospels end shortly after Jesus' death, where is the conclusion to Christianity's forty year Exodus recorded? The answer is found within War of the Jews.

"To conclude Christianity's forty-year cycle, Josephus links the date of Jesus' crucifixion to the date he established for the destruction of Masada. Josephus "records" that the year the stronghold was destroyed was 73 C.E. Scholars, citing archeological evidence, often date the fall of Masada to 74, not 73 C.E. They may well be correct, but Josephus was interested not in recording history but in creating mythology. He therefore entitled the chapter that contains the passage describing Masada's destruction as follows:

"'Concerning the interval of about three years: from the taking of Jerusalem by Titus to the sedition of the Jews at Cyrene. '

"Josephus does not need to be any more precise than he is in the phrase "about three years." If his time span is inaccurate, and it surely is, who had been there to point out his error? Josephus is only interested in using "history" to convey his message. In this instance, he wishes the reader to believe that Masada fell three and a half years after the destruction of the temple, that is, in 73 C.E.


"Josephus then gives the day and month of the conclusion to the siege at Masada.

"'They then chose ten men by lot out of them to slay all the rest; every one of whom laid himself down by his wife and children on the ground, and threw his arms about them, and they offered their necks to the stroke of those who by lot executed that melancholy office; and when these ten
had, without fear, slain them all, they made the same rule for casting lots for themselves, that he whose lot it was should first kill the other nine, and after all should kill him- self. . . . Those others were nine hundred and sixty in number, the women and children being withal included in that computation. This calamitous slaughter was made on the fifteenth day of the month Xanthicus [Nisan].'

"Josephus records that the fourteenth of Nisan is the day when the Jews celebrated Passover. The Gospel of John states that Jesus was crucified on the thirteenth of Nisan and arose on the fifteenth. The fifteenth of Nisan, 73 C.E., is forty years to the day after Christ's resurrection. Only readers of both the Gospels and Josephus would be aware of this exact forty-year time span.

"In other words, the Gospel of John establishes the date of Jesus' resurrection as the fifteenth of Nisan, 33 C.E., and Josephus establishes the date of the end of the Jewish war as the fifteenth of Nisan, 73 C.E. It is only when the two works are read together that readers are able to understand that it was, just as Jesus had predicted, exactly forty years between the two events. Again, either Josephus inadvertently recorded something truly supernatural, or the two works had been aligned to create this effect..."
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Re: Galileans, ambiguous oracles, Christians, and the generational prophecy.

Post by Charles Wilson »

Very Important Follow-Up Note:

Atwill concludes that Josephus used the Book of John and also wrote Wars... (in Hebrew) which is seen as being composed in 75-ish.

THEREFORE, SOME MATERIAL FOUND IN JOHN DATES TO THIS TIME PERIOD.

No contradiction here (Look at Dio, Epitome). It's simply that "Sources" often do not give their date of composition. Determination of date is derivative.

Nonetheless, breathtaking.

CW
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Re: Galileans, ambiguous oracles, Christians, and the generational prophecy.

Post by Giuseppe »

I was thinking about the more probabile origin of the generational prophecy:

1) some apocalyptic prophets said: "oracle of the LORD: the end is coming"

2) the LORD is "Jesus" for the Christians

3) therefore: Jesus said: "the end is coming".


Question: was the Galilee in the presumed time of Jesus walked by apocalyptic prophets like the point 1 more than the same Judea?
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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