Jagd wrote: ↑Wed Feb 02, 2022 11:52 am
Also interesting how Josephus's accounts of the ancient history of the Judaeans is significantly different from the origin stories in the Torah - it appears both come from the tradition of making up extravagant origins in order to make one's obscure tribe relevant. If the Septuagint (and Tanakh in general) had its origin in Greco-Roman Alexandria, I wouldn't be surprised if they deviced the extraordinary origin stories of their people for exactly that purpose (copy-pasting as many other legends and myths as they can).
Even Philo is famous for trying to make Judaism relevant to Hellenic philosophy and mysticism. It's no wonder that Christianity would emerge and be adopted by non-Judaeans, since it appears Alexandrian Judaism was shaped to be relevant with the larger Eastern Mediterranean cultures (what is Moses but the Judaean mimicry of the Hellenic philosopher-sage, but one that affirms their tribal laws?). Meanwhile, it appears all that was going on in Judaea was the Temple activity alongside rebellions and that's that. I wouldn't be surprised if the stories of the Septuagint-Tanakh would've been utterly unknown to the native Judaeans.
You're welcome Jagd.
Yes, Philo produces an excessive amount of volumes in a seeming void, and Josephus does so as well - if you like reading the latter I can recommend Steve Mason's PACE
http://pace.hypervisions.it/york/york/texts.htm
I have this little itch that Thomas is hinting at Judeans in logion 21:
ⲙⲁⲣ.ⲓ.ϩⲁⲙ said to IS: your Disciples resemble who? he said:
they resemble some young children that are visiting a field which theirs not is.
Whenever if they should come, the slaveowners of the field, they will say it: dismiss your field to us;
themselves they make naked of their presence outward to cause them to dismiss her to them and they give their field to them.
Therefore I say it: if he should understand, the slaveowner in house; he is coming, the man who steals, he will be awake prior to he comes and not permit him to excavate inward to his house of his reign-of king, that he carries his House-gear. - metamorphosis Yourselves However be awake at the beginning of the World, bind you upon your loins in a great Power So-that the Robbers will not fall to path to come toward you.
Since is Need, you look outward toward her; they will fall to her.
Let! him come to be in your middle, a human of Understanding; after that the Fruit split he came immediately, his sickle in his hand: did he cover him up.
He whom there are ears within him to hear, let! him hear.
I'm all in for crazy theories of course; if they lead to nothing then that's that, yet if they lead to something then... who knows
I wouldn't be surprised if the Jewish people originated from Egypt, and made up the grand stories to solidify their identity.
Does Thomas accuse the Judeans of invading a country that "theirs not is"? Chris Albert Wells has a compelling paper on the Abraham narrative being created after the Moses one in order to overrule it, and the entire discrepancies between Elohim and Yahweh, Samaria versus Jerusalem, the 10 commandments versus the 9 ones - there is feud from the very beginning of it all
Yet Thomas attests to taking the Tanakh seriously, he frequently refers to it and his "grapevine planted outside the Father (and being uprooted)" is a telling as his logion 46 where he praises Zedekiah for destroying the temple, Judea, and the entire kingdom - so perhaps the story was accepted and some of it even factual, who knows
There are some MSS on the Septuagint in Greek predating 100 CE, and I'm intend on laying my hand on them all - how much Septuagint has been handed down really, by when? The full versions all are marked all over with the Christian scribal habits such as the diaresis on the u and i, the apostrophe in between similar consonants, the line-ending superlinear replacing the Nu, and I really would very much like to see "a clean one", but all I have so far are scraps.
Justin Martyr accusing the Judaics of getting their parthenos wrong is hilarious of course, although perhaps merely a vain attempt at very crude rhetoric - but how very wrong could a Hebrew get a Greek translation, didn't they care how their beloved and sacred text "got out"?
So my primary goal is to find the earliest Greek Isaiah 7 there is, though I'm taking it very easy these days. I'm working on Philip in a very casual way and that's about it - although I'll always remain inquisitive / nosy
Akhenaten invented monotheism in 1300 BCE but it got killed really quickly, and Elohim with his plural masculine feminine form perfectly attests to the Egyptian basic concept of deity, who always travelled in pairs. There likely are dozens of books about the similarities between Egypt and Judaism, and Moses had some interesting spelling in the Nag Hammadi Library
Back to the topic: I doubt there was much to convert from for the early Chrestians in what perhaps was 100-300 CE: like you say, with only a temple in Jerusalem Judaism effectively limited itself to a local scope - but I know nothing of it all. I'm using these dates because there must be a reason why Jesus got retrofitted to the first CE, and as the only Christian argument is that of priority, so very evident in the dating game they play, it likely mainly is that.
Then we get the main texts which still say Chrestian, although it is very interesting that Bezae has Christianos in Latin
https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-NN-00002-00041/756
versus Chreistianos in the Greek. Did the rebranding start with Constantine? When did Chrestianity start to get managed by the Romans? Were there ever any Jewish converts at all?
Philip speaks of "when we were Hebrews" just as he speaks of "when we were Chrestians" and I'm halfway transcribing the text; it'll be a few weeks before I can present even a half- decent translation but I'm keeping track of time spent, just to see what the effort involved is: I'm guessing 150-200 hours but with my current schedule that'll take a few months. But he's the best record we have, and the likelihood of it being pristine is very high.
He has a few names in it, perhaps those can be related to anything. It is fun how he explicitly points to the Greek using Christos - he really is the missing link
I'll be off for a while. Enjoy!