Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Wed Aug 12, 2020 11:01 pm
More warlike eagles:
Hosea 8.1: “Put the trumpet to your lips! Like an eagle [כַּנֶּשֶׁר, ὡς ἀετός] he comes against the house of the Lord, because they have transgressed My covenant and rebelled against My law.”
Habakkuk 1.8: “Their horses are swifter than leopards and keener than wolves in the evening. Their horsemen come galloping; their horsemen come from afar; they fly like an eagle [כְּנֶשֶׁר, ὡς ἀετός] swooping down to devour.”
The natural history implied for this bird in the Hebrew scriptures has it both hunting and scavenging for its food.
The problem is you are assuming a purely Jewish context and a war context that is missing in the surrounding verses.
It is,
as I pointed out, essentially a quote from Job. Job is a Jewish book in the Jewish scriptures, a set of books which the gospels quote or allude to dozens if not hundreds of times each, and this saying appears to be no exception:
Matthew 24.28: 28 Wherever the corpse is, there the eagles [οἱ ἀετοί] will gather.
Job 39.26-30:
26 “Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars,
Stretching his wings toward the south?
27 Is it at your command that the eagle [נָשֶׁר, ἀετός] mounts up
And makes his nest on high?
28 On the cliff he dwells and lodges,
Upon the rocky crag, an inaccessible place.
29 From there he spies out food;
His eyes see it from afar.
30 His young ones also suck up blood;
And where the slain are, there is he.”
Quite to the contrary, it feels like
you are assuming a context in Persian burial practices which the gospels
never reference elsewhere to the absolute best of my knowledge.
You have to show me how the inner rooms and John in the desert represent scenes of War and not rival Christian sects.
The inner rooms and John in the desert are, as I described, part of a digression (one which Luke lacks, incidentally).