What exactly was the differences between the various YHWH based in Samaria, Bethel, Taiman? Did ancient Israelites view that as the same diety with some minor differences or different dieties altogether?

Would it be akin to how Mother Mary is viewed in Catholicism today? Like Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Lourdes?

How was it made sure that it was accurately passed on in its fullness, before the Septuagint was redacted and compiled? How did they deal with variants in the tradition? Did the Hebrew scribes collate their version with the Septuagint after it was written?

Also, I've heard it said that post-hellenization, the Hebrew language's use started rapidly declining, making the creation of the Septuagint "necessary". Was that so?

Hello 👋

Question for those familiar with NT studies: Do we have evidence that some early Christian groups saw Jesus’ death through the lens of Jewish martyr traditions (exemplary righteous sufferer, noble death), rather than exclusively as atonement for sin? Looking for scholarly references or key texts.

It seems to be the scholarly consensus that David may have been a real person (Tel Dan stele), but if so, his life looked nothing like it did in the Bible. But, there are texts that make David look like a very flawed person (i.e. the Bathsheba story, disastrous census, etc.). In historical Jesus research, this is one of the aspects that scholars use to determine if a saying or story goes back to the historical Jesus -- was it embarrassing to the early Christians? If so, it's more likely to be historical.

Using the same logic, wouldn't these flawed David stories make it more likely to be representative of a real person? If I were inventing a hero, I would not give him flawed stories, but make him perfect. I just feel when reading 1 Samuel, this guy seems real.

What is the scholarly perspective on the 70 weeks. I have seen some things about Antiochus but i don't know how one can get 70 times 7, 490 to 167. Needless to say i was wondering how scholars calculate it.

I saw this book (The Bible: As It Was by Kugel) as a book to track differences made in traditions over time. Is there any similar work, more recent than 1999?

Thanks!

So in reading this paper and the author pointed out something interesting about Deuteronomy’s version of the 10 commandments vs. the one in Exodus. In Deut 5:8 there is no connecting ו on the phrase כל תמונה as there is in Exo 20:4. This is important bc that ו makes Exo 20:4 read “or any likeness” while the phrase in Deut just reads “any likeness.” This becomes more important when we look at the whole verse, in Deut 5:8 it reads: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above… You shall not bow down to them or serve them.” Because there is no waw here connecting the 2 this (as argued by the author in the paper) has led some interpreters to read this verse as an “appositional asyndetic phrase” (basically just fancy talk for a side-by-side non connected phrase that means the same thing) and so it should read something like “You shall not make for yourself a carved image that is any likeness of anything that is in heaven above…” so here the likeness is a clarification on what the carved image is, not a separate thing. Now this is important bc the next verse says that you shouldn’t bow down to them or serve them in the plural. This wouldn’t make sense as the word for image and likeness in Deut 5 are singular, and if they are referring to the same thing it wouldn’t make sense to refer to these singular words in the plural. Therefore the argument is made that the them here is referring to the Elohim in v. 7 and that originally the first and second commandment here were one commandment and this is about the images of other gods only and not necessarily about images to Yahweh in particular. The article I pulled this from is “The Aniconic Tradition On Reading Images and Viewing Texts” by Brian B. Schmidt.

During my research, I got the impression that John is quite controversial. I've asked questions about John in various posts and received conflicting information. Depending on who you ask, you get various contradictory answers to the following questions:

Was the beloved disciple more or less involved?

Which narratives can be attributed to the disciple, and which are apologetic elements or derived from other sources, such as the synoptics?

Was John revised several times, and did John go through several stages of development or not?

The questions of who the beloved disciple was and how involved he was are particularly controversial. (Secular scholars would argue that the narratives about the empty tomb and the resurrection sightings are not historical, which raises the questions: Where do these narratives come from? Was the beloved disciple not so involved after all? Were the apologetic narratives added later? Or do these apologetic elements originate from the disciple/were developed by him?)

After all, who the Beloved Disciple was, how reliable he was and which elements and narratives (whether apologetic or not) can really be traced back to him and which cannot is impossible to answer.

I was reading Geza Vermes' "The Authentic Gospel of Jesus" where he discusses the differences between Mark and Matthew's accounts of Jesus entry into Jerusalem. He claims that Matthew re-wrote the account so that Jesus could fulfill the prophecy of riding on both an ass and a colt, despite this being a misreading of Zechariah. There are many other examples of prophecies being fulfilled throughout the Gospels.

How could such deliberate re-writings to appeal to prophecy not have been noticed and jumped upon by Christianity's earliest critics, especially Jews who were well familiar with these prophecies? Certainly, Bible Scholars today talk about them plenty.

How did Christians defend this seemingly obvious contrived nature of these stories? What early writing exists from either side? Or was this topic completely ignored until modern day textual criticism?

In Romans 1:15-16 Paul writes the following:

That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.

My understanding based on some of what I've read about historical analysis is that authors tend not to write things like this unless they are pushing back against some kind of expectation or narrative.

So for Paul to assert that he is not ashamed of the gospel, there must've been some notion within the public consciousness that there was a reason to be ashamed. What might that have been?

Thank you!

How do we know the gospel of Matthew was written in Greek without using Markan Priority?

Both the OT and Christ himself in the NT teach that false prophets can work miracles:

If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a sign or wonder and if the sign or wonder spoken of takes place, and the prophet says, “Let us follow other gods” (gods you have not known) “and let us worship them,” you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. (Deuteronomy 13:1)

For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. (Matthew 24:24)

And yet Jesus also tells us that the Pharisees committed blasphemy against the Holy Spirit for attributing his miracles to Satan:

But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.” Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. “Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can plunder his house. “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. (Matthew 12:24-32)

What Christ in context seems to be this: the Pharisees could be forgiven for blaspheming against him; being what appeared to them a mere man claiming to be the Son of God. However, once he gave them supernatural attestation, they were without excuse. They obstinately refused to accept the truth and attributed his miracles to Satan, knowing that Jesus was working miracles by the Holy Spirit hence equating the two.

What I'm confused about is this seems to imply that a false prophet couldn't perform miracles. The text indicates that what the Pharisees did was unforgivable because they were provided supposedly undeniable evidence, hence refusing to accept the truth. But if false prophets can perform miracles, then simply performing miracles wouldn't be evidence that Jesus was who he claimed to be.

Some might say that Deuteronomy 13 says that the false prophet entices others to worship false gods. But is it impossible for someone be a false prophet and perform miracles without preaching false gods?

Thanks!

Could the reference of Adonai within the context of a prayer for rain, though Adonai has seemingly failed in the matter? If anyone could prove some context thay would be greatly appreciated lt. This is papyrus Amherst 63 btw.

A prayer for rain

Answer me ... From Rash. At my [si]de, Adonai, the river is vanishing; it has become exhausted. And my lord- the river is not rising. Your mind (lit., thought) is a mystery (lit., sealed), Mar. Send to me your cloud. Exalted One, awake for me, awake. Marah, lift up the bucket for me; inspect the canals for me, Marah. Inspect, my god, my queen, the pool; lift up, the bucket. In every generation you rule { in her palaces} in your palaces, {and} and you have proclaimed, I, my bride, you have ordained (lit., apportioned) (the contents of) every waterskin

I hope this isn't too theological. Until now, I was of the opinion that Isaiah refers to dead bodies and doesn't imply any postmortem suffering. After all, Isaiah only speaks of corpses or dead bodies. Since the reinterpretation of Gehenna and the emergence of the belief in hell only occurred later, I was strengthened in this view.

However, I recently saw a couple of videos by Dan McClellan in which he expressed himself in a somewhat contradictory or inaccurate way (English is not my native language, so it's very possible that the error lies with me). He talks about how the doctrine of hell only emerged in the Greco-Roman period, but also says that Isaiah 66:24 contains the first concepts of postmortem punishment. However, in another video, he also says that the passage was later interpreted differently due to the concept of hell. What exactly is true now? Did I misunderstand his point?

I was firmly convinced that Isaiah was only referring to dead bodies and not to a conscious eternal punishment.

24 “And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.”

Deuteronomy, from what I see, seems to promote both monotheism and Polytheism. The classic polytheistic evidence is of course Deuteronomy 32:8-9.

NRSVUE [8] When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods; [9] the Lord’s own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share.

However, also in the song of Moses, it also states

Deuteronomy 32:39 NRSVUE [39] See now that I, even I, am he; there is no god besides me. I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal; and no one can deliver from my hand.

Is there any explanation for such dichotomy, considering the Song of Moses is dated before the Deuteronomistic texts and the reign of Josiah, who implanted the first wave of monotheism (I think). There must be something I am missing.

I've seen multiple dates for the text, including premonarchic. How is that possible? It seems like a mockery of earlier traditions of the Divine Council, noting that they are not divine, but simply creations. If the consensus is Josiah introduced Yahweh only worship, how could a clear example of Yahweh bias be pre-monarchic?

The Tabernacle: A Post-Exilic Polemic Against Rebuilding the Temple

Everyone on this sub knows that Leviticus consists of two parts, the basic Priestly Torah and the Holiness Torah / Holiness Code.

Upon re-reading the article, something hit my head.

Was the Book of Ezekiel itself longer?

Did a longer version of Ezekiel contain the Holiness Code?

Was there a massive debate to move the Holiness Code content from a longer Ezekiel to the Priestly Leviticus?

This would be similar to pulling Deuteronomy away from the Deuteronomistic History and placing it in the redacted Torah.

According to Marcus J Borg in the «earliest layers of the gospel» Jesus did not seem to consider himself specifically as the son of God («Meeting Jesus again for the first time»).

Is this an established view? Or a niche theory? And are we to believe later utterances of him saying «my father in heaven» were either added in retrospect or meant as «our shared father»?

Pretty simple question, why does Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:5 say that Jesus appeared to “the twelve” when they were 11 (yk, Judas being gone and all that)?

I know this isn't *quite* a Biblical topic so if this venue is inappropriate please let me know.

My question is, how much of the heritage of the early church fathers (and later medieval theologians) was rejected with the Protestant Reformation? I know there are many, many Protestantisms so we can start with askign in a more specific way: What aspects of early/medieval theology did *Luther* reject and what did he keep? Lutheranism and most Protestantisms are Nicene, so I assume that most of the writings of the (non-heretical) church fathers would be deemed valid. But what about past that? Would Luther have accepted all aspects of Chalcedonianism? Of Augustine's writings? Aquinases? John Chyrostom?

At *what point* did Luther believe the unbiblical accretions began to corrupt Christianity?