The First Step to Proving Christianity Was a Samaritan Sect

[Stephan Huller]

Here is a big discovery - the idea has already been noted in a reputable scholarly source.

"Dustan" is not necessarily a personal name, but means "Friends" in Persian. (Nathan Schur History of the Samaritans p. 63). http://books.google.com/books?ei=dRa2U7 ... persian%22

[Stephan Huller]

The etymology was already assumed in Nutt's translation of Abu'l Fath:

He relates that (apparently about the time of Antiochus Epiphanes) a sect appeared calling themselves Dostan or ' the friends/ who varied in many respects the hitherto received feasts and traditions of their fathers. (p. 51 http://books.google.com/books?id=KVcXAA ... 22&f=false)

(stupid) Stanley Isser can't figure out why Nutter has simply translated the term Dustan as 'friends':

Nutt, p. 51, inexplicably translates "Dustan" as "friends". It would be nice if we could relate these "friends" to the Pharisaic haberim, but Nutt's etymology is far-fetched and obscure. (Isser is so uninformed it is often comical http://books.google.com/books?id=aM0UAA ... 22&f=false)

Indeed Nutt renders another passage:

Whereupon Levi was stoned. His friends dipped a palm-leaf in his blood, and ordained that whoever would read his writings and see the leaf must first fast seven days and nights.

Whereas Nemoy at the behest of Isser:

After Levi was stoned, these men took palm branches' and dipped them in Levi's blood, saying, "This is the one of whom God has said, (Dt. 19.10) 'And you shall not spill innocent blood in the midst of your land."

Clearly then my discovery is not without precedent. It has just been buried or forgotten.

[Stephan Huller]

There may be a relationship between the Dustan and the Haberim.

[Stephan Huller]

The translation of Abu'l Fath used by John Bowman (1977) and Anderson and Giles (2005) also accepted the etymology of Dustan from friends:

He said, concerning himself, that he was the father of all who listened to him, and they were the Dustan (that is. Friends) calling him: "Oh our father," while his disciples were saying: "May God cause the spirit of our father Salyah to pour forth ... (http://books.google.com/books?id=IzUwAA ... wQ6AEwCTgK)

[Stephan Huller]

Look also at the Samaritan Book of Joshua;

... after this manner: the children of Israel, the friends of the Blessed Mount, assembled with the book of Musa, the prophet.

[Stephan Huller]

Here is Bowman's explanation:

The name Dustan probably means Friends , Colleagues , and if so is derived from a Persian expression. The Jewish Pharisees used to call themselves haberim = colleagues . Whether this be the case or not, the fact that Dustan is used again in connection with a sect at least inspired by that of Dusls, points to a connection between the sect of Dustan here mentioned, and that of Dusls (see below in our third extract). p. 179

[Stephan Huller]

And once this is accepted we have to ask - what are the implications of an influential sect from at least the first century BCE which went by a Persian name? Answer - they were probably the surviving remnant of the original interpretation of the Pentateuch which as clearly written in the Persian period (eshdat lamo, pardes as a Persian garden etc). Many Persian features of Samaritans were known to early witnesses including their interest in divine fire.

[Stephan Huller]

I've started to blog about this

http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2014/ ... el-of.html [1]
http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2014/ ... jesus.html [2]
http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2014/ ... sus_6.html [3]
http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2014/ ... _7348.html [4]
http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2014/ ... _8006.html [5]

[John T]

@Huller,

What about the possibility of Christianity having started with Zoroastrianism, did you ever consider that?
Likewise, the universal struggle between the forces of light and of darkness are also found throughout the Dead Sea Scrolls.

[Stephan Huller]

Because it wouldn't explain the identification of the Biblical "heaven of heavens" with the Persian "third heaven" (Garotmana) among other instances of blending of Biblical and Persian religious ideas fire interest especially a "baptism" or immersion of the world in divine (heavenly) fire. Since we know this already took place in the context of Samaritain sects from the time of John Hyrcanus (dustan = Persian "friends" and Gorothenes = garotmana etc) and since these sects are consistently identified as "proto-Christian" (Hippolytus, Pseudo-Clementines it would seem likely that the Marcionites and their apostle didn't invent from scratch the identification of the Biblical "heaven of heavens" with the third heaven with the "super-celestial" abode of 1 Cor 15:48 - 49 (Marcionite recension)