Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

... a characterization redolent of Barnabas 9.6 - the author allows Abraham’s circumcision to serve in the first instance (chronologically earlier) as righteousness by faith. Thus, with the deployment of “sign” and “seal,” words that would likely naturally trigger circumcision’s association with the ...

I'm with those who think that the "builders of the wall" in CD are (or at least include to a significant extent) the Pharisees... Ok, I want to discuss this hypothesis but I want to be clear, I'm not willing to discuss the hypothesis that "builders of the wall" are Pharisees and...

... there was no consistent identification of Miθra with the sun. The Mesopotamian sun-god Šamaš, who was venerated as judge and lord of justice and righteousness, may have influenced the identification, although it is doubtful whether Miθra borrowed his position as divinity of the seventh month ...

And by the way, along with the usual reasons I've seen for supposing that the DSS refer to the Pharisees (the builders of the wall = the Pharisaic "fence" around the Torah; the "smooth things"/halaqot wordplay on the Pharisees' "halakhot"; laxity on niece marriage and d...

An example of what I'm seeing in CD and what I'd like to see said about the Pharisees in Onias' time (assuming for the sake of discussion that they existed then) is what Josephus says about the Pharisees during Salome Alexandra's time in War 1.5.2: 2. And now the Pharisees joined themselves to her, ...

I'm going to have to give this some more thought, since I realized only recently that I had a thirty year blind spot on this. In the meantime, what do you think? Alright, so I don't think the Damascus Document is about the Hasmonean period either. I think it's about Tobiads . I don't have a complet...

Sure, fornication and such could have been rife among the "aristocracy" in Hasmonean times, but was it? I don't know. What if the "aristocracy" were wicked in that way but we don't have any source telling us they were? I mean, we have probably enough information about Hasmonean ...

For me, the princes of Judah are members of the ruling class (that is contemporary with the DSS sect). Not necessarily kings per se . More like an aristocracy. They could be kings but we see the author prefers to call them princes . In other words, I think we can't conclude that the princes of Juda...

I realize now that I've been confused. I've been taking you to mean that the princes of Judah were foreign kings, and I've been assuming that the "kings of the peoples" and "kings of Greece" referred to the princes of Judah (rather than to their ways). The first part is what I w...

I realize now that I've been confused. I've been taking you to mean that the princes of Judah were foreign kings, and I've been assuming that the "kings of the peoples" and "kings of Greece" referred to the princes of Judah (rather than to their ways). The first part is what I wa...