billd89 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:22 pm
All this also presupposes many father-warriors raised sons to be soldiers. Perhaps. If so, my Melchizedekian thesis looks iron-clad: Battle-God Melchizedek as a Divine Warrior-Intercessor (c.275 BC) morphed into a Logos-Saviour Cult (100-75 BC) about 3-4 generations later. These Roman Egyptianized Jews and Samarians -descendants of the mercs- venerate the same ancestral 'god', Melchizedek, but its a flagging faith. Perhaps, Alexandrian Melchizedekians took flight c.38 AD for Byblos and colonies of Asia Minor, where Christianity appears? There's a synthesis in Epistle to the Hebrews, it must be explained.
Sikh-like Egyptian Jews who haven't fully adopted Hasmonean doctrinal innovations.
There is Alexandria, then there's Leontopolis. The latter is an independent community. I think, deliberately left out of historical treatment. The hypothesis is that with Caesar's victory and Rome's accession to power in Egypt, Egypt's traditional military forces are obsolete. The Legions take over. Some theoretical or ceremonial military role for the Leontopolitans disappears.
You could even mark this as a shift in power, among Egyptian Jewry, from Leontopolis decisively to Alexandria. The former fully committed to the House of Onias, the latter split between Leontopolis, Jersualem and Greco-Roman culture. In all the persecutions of Jews in Alexandria, which Jews do the Alexandrians find fault with?
Wars I 9:3-4
Now, after Pompey was dead, Antipater changed sides, and cultivated a friendship with Caesar. And since Mithridates of Pergamus, with the forces he led against Egypt, was excluded from the avenues about Pelusium, and was forced to stay at Asealon, he persuaded the Arabians, among whom he had lived, to assist him, and came himself to him, at the head of three thousand armed men. He also encouraged the men of power in Syria to come to his assistance, as also of the inhabitants of Libanus, Ptolemy, and Jamblicus, and another Ptolemy; by which means the cities of that country came readily into this war; insomuch that Mithridates ventured now, in dependence upon the additional strength that he had gotten by Antipater, to march forward to Pelusium; and when they refused him a passage through it, he besieged the city; in the attack of which place Antipater principally signalized himself, for he brought down that part of the wall which was over against him, and leaped first of all into the city, with the men that were about him.
4. Thus was Pelusium taken. But still, as they were marching on, those Egyptian Jews that inhabited the country called the country of Onias stopped them. Then did Antipater not only persuade them not to stop them, but to afford provisions for their army; on which account even the people about Memphis would not fight against them, but of their own accord joined Mithridates. Whereupon he went round about Delta, and fought the rest of the Egyptians at a place called the Jews' Camp; nay, when he was in danger in the battle with all his right wing, Antipater wheeled about, and came along the bank of the river to him; for he had beaten those that opposed him as he led the left wing. After which success he fell upon those that pursued Mithridates, and slew a great many of them, and pursued the remainder so far that he took their camp, while he lost no more than fourscore of his own men; as Mithridates lost, during the pursuit that was made after him, about eight hundred. He was also himself saved unexpectedly, and became an unreproachable witness to Caesar of the great actions of Antipater.
Again we encounter a story by Josephus that leaves us wanting.
I am convinced Josephus either contained the story of these militants and Christians, and was redacted and interpolated in multiple rounds (along with all the rest, i.e.: Origen). Or, Josephus himself is writing history as apology for critics of the Jews. As if the so-called Sicarii are the main story, and are being pushed into the background. I also think Josephus is therefore deliberately vague on the differences among Egyptian Jewish factions.
Let's call it a hypothesis. We don't know if it's true, but a Sikh-like colony of militant Jewish cultists who exist outside of the Hasmonean novelties then moving to "beyond Jordan" by the Christian era explains a lot.
I hate to add more to this, but let's not leave anything uncovered.
I think Josephus is lying that Ptolemy Menneus killed his son Philippion. I think Philippion married Alexandra the Hasmonean and the pair fled, and they ended up as the parents of Bazeus, where Philippion is the Tiridates II usurper in Parthia, which Armenian history identifies as owing taxes to Rome through Herod.
This means that Bazeus (Zamaris) is the son of a Hasmonean princess, and Mariamne Boethus as Helena is an Oniad. Making Izates the union of Sadducee and Boethusian factions. Thus an object of interest for these Jewish-Egyptian "Sikhs".
In other words, my hypothesis is that the Jews split into Hasmonean and Egyptian factions after the revolt against Seleucia. In Batanea, among a Sikh-like band of Egyptian Jewish warriors, they identified the family of Adiabene as a reunion of the original schism and interpreted it - via Hasmonean eschatological literature - as the redemption of zion.