Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Secret Alias wrote:For you DCH it is a joke. For John outhouse (who never read the material at the link) it must be real. He must really think it is attached to an atomic bomb.

Read it all a few pages before, and after. Does not help you.

Secret Alias wrote:And of course for the idiotai at this forum, my position presumes that our gospels were not the original texts.

Even though you are still insulting people and I expect that includes me I will try again to engage you in rational debate. I wonder if you have a degree as I read on someone’s blog that you had issues with the academic world.

Now to present a rational argument you need somewhere to start and I assume you start with the Pentateuch.

You have asserted that the Pentateuch was written by Ezra after he returned from the Babylonian exile. There is some dispute when this happened c 457 BCE according to the book of Ezra and earlier according to 1 Esdras and Josephus. It is possible that both forms we have were not completed until after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE.

There is a more generally accepted view that someone who is referred to as the Deuteronomist gathered two older documents generally called the Jahwist source and the Elohist source which represented traditions from Judah and Israel together and extensively extended them with parts of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and maybe Kings and Jeremiah. This is usually dated to reign of King Josiah c 627 BCE. According to this view it was edited again with additions generally called the Priestly source after the Babylonian exile and this may have two layers.

As far as I know no one believes that the whole of the Pentateuch was written by Ezra because there are different literary styles. Therefore if your position is based on your assertion that Ezra wrote the Pentateuch rather than edited it and added to it you should present a case for this position.

Your second assertion seems to be faith based. You seem to believe that God gave Moses the Ten Commandments.

You next assertion is that the Samaritans represent a truer form of Judaism. However their Pentateuch is very similar to the Jewish one while having lots of minor variations and of course the commandment to build an altar on Mount Gerizim. Therefore if Ezra wrote the Jewish Pentateuch he would have also would have written the Samaritan one too. There is no agreement when the Samaritans and Jews went their separate ways but it is likely it was after the Babylonian Exile.

Your fourth assertion is that Jewish people did not discuss their religion and read their religious texts or have them read to them in the first century CE. However as I keep saying you have not providing any convincing evidence for this, while I have provided evidence that Jews were reading or having read to them their religious texts and creating new ones.

Then on this house of cards you assert that no Jewish preacher in the prophetic tradition would discuss the Pentateuch. And to undermine further your position you don’t recognise that the Pharisees were discussing the Pentateuch and adding to it. This is amazing because you are aware of the Talmud where the successors of the Pharisees continued to add to the Torah and the rest of their religious writings.

I would like to an answer to my earlier question – why do you post here?

Secret Alias wrote:For you DCH it is a joke. For John outhouse (who never read the material at the link) it must be real. He must really think it is attached to an atomic bomb.

Funny you should say so, as I just answered a knock to my door and found the FBI asking whether I was a terrorist. I answered "no" but I noticed a lot of black unmarked (= U.N.) helicopters flying high overhead the other day. This is evidence of them having a "time machine" as they obviously had me under surveillance the day BEFORE I uttered the dangerous utterance about Oppenheimer as if he were the Oppenheimer called "Jan". Wasn't he the one who wore the "porkpie" hat?

DCH (tongue now sticking in opposite cheek)

You have asserted that the Pentateuch was written by Ezra

So the pagans and Jews of antiquity. Not an assertion. A tradition.

There is a more generally accepted view that someone

Why does any of this matter for the discussion at hand?

As far as I know no one believes that the whole of the Pentateuch was written by Ezra

ALL OF MY POSTS DEVELOP FROM TRADITION. I don't care if people ignore tradition. It is at least something to work. The entire thread deals with the existing tradition of the Jews.

Michael BG wrote:I would like to an answer to my earlier question – why do you post here?

It is his last place to proselytize his imaginative hurdles, he is shot down everywhere else as a wearing a tinfoil hat "not" made in America.

You next assertion is that the Samaritans represent a truer form of Judaism.

Closer to the truth but this develops from a multitude of sources. The discovery of versions of the Pentateuch which agree or reflect Samaritan doctrine at Qumran is decisive but common sense should have revealed that a long time ago (after all the Pentateuch is set in Samaria and traditional Samaritan sites with no mention of Jerusalem). But again none of these points are material to the underlying argument. Deliberate attempt at distraction. Please go away.

Secret Alias wrote:. The entire thread deals with the existing tradition of the Jews.

That's the damned problem Stephen. WHICH jews ?????????????????????????

There was no orthodox views or orthodox practices, jews were more diverse then early christians which was a type of jew.

Gentiles that ONLY swore off pagan deities were called jews.

Then on this house of cards you assert that no Jewish preacher in the prophetic tradition would discuss the Pentateuch

How do any of these points destroy my thesis? How is Samaritan primacy critical for understanding the people of the Land reference which I notice you have never tackled. I merely offered how I reconstruct history. None of it was important for determining whether the evangelist has in mind a historical incident where an idiotes not only debated the authorities on the proper interpretation of the Pentateuch but claimed to be the messiah while rejecting the authorities. None of these things have ever happened in the history of Judaism (and Jewish history is a long history). Since what is described in the gospel is historically anomalous it didn't happen. This becomes especially clear when (a) we realize that the people of the Land ignored the Pentateuch (b) there were traditional debates in Israel over which Pentateuch was from heaven and Christianity falls on the side of the ledger which is what is usually identified as antinomian (i.e. against the Pentateuch). Indeed the identification of Jesus as 'antinomian' in this manner is reflected in Jewish sources.

When all things are put in their proper context we have to imagine that evangelist championed the people of the land through a description of God debating the Pharisees that never happened. It can't be that Jesus was a 'person of the Land' because by definition he would be illiterate or at least unfamiliar with the Law. It doesn't make sense that Jesus as a person of the Land could have invented an entirely new theology based strictly on the ten commandments. The authority of Jesus, a point stressed in the first story in the gospel, is answered when a demon identifies Jesus as a heavenly power (according to the earliest interpretations of the passage). When all things are put together, the gospel was originally about the second god who gave the ten commandments to Moses announcing the destruction of the temple, the tradition seat of the sacrificial religion of the Pentateuch of Moses. The announcement is clearly to affirm that the true religion would follow. These sorts of things can't be put in the mouth of a prophet or even a messiah, but a God. The entire narrative unfolds in an anomalous manner which is the antithesis of tradition Jewish understanding of the revelation of the messiah.