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Post by alon on Sept 2, 2019 1:02:21 GMT -8
For Question 2, I wrote that "in Christianity, Jesus was born in Bethlehem under Herod Agrippa IIRC and is considered to be "the vine"." This was incorrect. Gotquestions.org explains that "Herod Agrippa I was the king of Judea from AD 41 to 44. He was a grandson of Herod the Great and nephew of Herod Antipas." Wikipedia notes that before Agrippa became king, he "was allowed to take up residence in Tiberias, and received the rank of aedile in that city, with a small yearly income. ... Following Tiberius' death and the ascension of Agrippa's friend Caligula in 37, Agrippa was set free and made king of the territories of Gaulanitis (the Golan Heights), Auranitis, Batanaea, and Trachonitis, which his uncle Philip the Tetrarch had held, with the addition of Abila."
Here you are touching on an anomaly due to the Roman system of rule that I'd venture to guess very, very ... VERY few believers of any stripe are aware of. After the death of the demented Herod the Great, who left 7 wills but none were recognized because he was basically insane, Rome split his kingdom into 3 parts ruled by his sons. For our purposes Judea and the Galilee are the most important. Herod and his sons after him ruled as client kings. So Israel as a whole was still nominally under Jewish rule, even if they were part of the greater Roman empire. But because of incompetence Rome stepped in and made Judea a Roman province in 6CE. This meant Roman laws, Roman rule by Roman governors, more Roman citizens in their country, Roman architecture and buildings and Roman gods everywhere. The Galilee wasn't made a province until 44 CE. So while Yeshua was in the Galil, He was still on Jewish controlled (more or less) turf. But when He went up to Yerushalayim, He was under Roman authority and control. This is one reason He was fairly safe unless He ventured into Yerushalayim. On the other hand, most of Acts takes place directly under Roman authority.
What is clear to you that Abimelech taking Jeremiah out of the cistern is Christian? I see it as a motif of resurrection, but is that certainly Christian, not rabbinical? LOL, none of this is all that clear to me! But here you make a distinction between Rabbinically Jewish and Christian. This is a false distinction, since Christianity is based on Judaism if for no other reason it has as its basic text a thoroughly Jewish document, regardless which canon you go with. But moreover most of those ideas, such as the resurrection of the Son of Man (and that term itself is extremely common in Jewish apocryphal literature), there being more than one being in the heavenlies who is worthy of worship but who is intimately involved with the throne of the Most High God (sound like anyone you know?), and every other idea Christianity thinks they came up with themselves is found either in the OT or in other Jewish writings before the time of the Christ. I am going to say it again, the more I read and study the more I am convinced there is not one thing that is "new" in the so called "New" Testament! Many of the early church fathers were actually trying to understand these things in their Jewish context. But they were overruled by Constantine and only the most perverse, hate filled and anti-Semetic fathers were left when the dust settled a few centuries later. The Notsarim of course continued from the time of Yeshua and the line of Peter completely apart from the church and with complete understanding of these Hebraic texts in their original context. That is what the modern Messianic movement is trying to recreate.
To us (and historians and scholars as well) Rabbinical Judaism means the Judaism that took form after the loss of the Maccabean Revolt and expulsion from the land. It is primarily Pharisitical, and was the controlling form of Judaism in those centuries following in the diaspora. It forms the basis for most of Judaism and the various sects today. The term Rabbi took on the meaning of a title as opposed to a term of endearment and respect as well as a level of knowledge and accomplishment which it was before. While we will consider what is said in Rabbinical Judaism, we are not beholden to them or their halacha. And those 613 commandments Christians like to so smugly throw at us and say we must keep perfectly all come from RJ. It is the Rabbis interpretation of scripture in  , not a list of commands. If says it, we do it to the best of our abilities. If the Rabbis said it, well, like I said, we'll consider it ... |
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Post by alon on Sept 2, 2019 1:03:22 GMT -8
What do you think about the identity of the beloved in Jeremiah 11? Several times the prophet says he/God is speaking directly to the "men" (which would mean all the people) of Judah. Therefore in vs. 15 where the term "my beloved" is used, I would say this refers specifically to the people of Judah at that time. Like most Bible texts, there is a message there for a specific people and time, and also for peoples of all times and places.One of the most remarkable discoveries for me a few years ago along the lines of mystical insights came from Messianic websites: the meaning of the letters of Hashem, arm, behold, nail, behold. Y ou mean the word picture formed by the ancient pictographic form of Hebrew. The yud, or Y is actually a hand and arm like it is used for work, and the emphasis is more on the hand as the part of His mighty arm that does the work. The vav is a peg or nail, and hey is a window. "yud hey vav hey." So it would read "The Hand revealed the Nail revealed." Even the very name of God points to Messiah Yeshua, our salvation and His work at Calvary.
Give me some time with the other posts. Kind of busy right now. Thanks.
Edit: It somehow dumped a large part of my reply here. I'll get back and redo it in a bit.
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Post by alon on Sept 2, 2019 1:13:56 GMT -8
For Question 2, to see if it is a Christian/Nazarene text, you would want to find an allusion to a Christian/Nazarene concept. I found five possible allusions. What estimate would you give that each doesn't come from belief in Yeshua: 1. The seven seals the Lord put on the world, vs. the 7 seals on the scroll in Revelation. Maybe 70% chance that it is not a Nazarene/Christian reference? Both 100%2. The burying of the vessels until the gathering of the Beloved vs the burial of the saints until the return of the righteous or second coming. Another 70%? They hid 'em somewhere, so a good chance it is either true or based on some knowledge lost to us other than in such writings as this.3. Abimelech raising Jeremiah vs Yeshua raising the saints and righteous. 45% chance it's not a Nazarene/Christian reference? Whether written by a Nazarene or not, it is 100% a Jewish concept.
4. Jeremiah sleeping in the shadow of the mountain in Agrippa king of Judea's vineyard vs. the blessed repose of the saints with Abraham or in Yeshua the vine's paradise. 80% chance it doesnt allude to Yeshua? Could be a metaphor for Yeshua, or for the underlying Jewish currents and yearning for their land back, or both. Remember, after the Maccabees had finally taken all ha'Eretz back, the Jews only had about 60-70 yrs of autonomous rule. They wanted a lot more than that! That's like being really hungry and getting just a crust of bread. All that does is make you really ravenous!5. The eagle bringing figs from Abimelech to Babylon vs. Roman roads and ships carrying Nazarene righteous teachers from the Israelite fig tree like Peter and Paul to Rome, which is sometimes called Babylon. 55% chance it doesn't refer to Christian/Nazarene concepts? I think it refers to Jewish/Nazarene/Christian concepts. The Jews don't evangelize today, but in the time of Yeshua and before they definitely did.
Based on math principles, I think that the chance that none of those 5 passages would be Christian/Nazarene allusions would be 70% x 70% x 45% x 80% x 55%= only 9.7% chance that none of those are Christian/ Nazarene allusions. I'd say 0% chance of that! All of them were Jewish/Nazarene/Christian principles, or based on those principles. |
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Post by rakovsky on Sept 2, 2019 2:55:09 GMT -8
hey is a window. " yud hey vav hey." So it would read "The Hand revealed the Nail revealed." Even the very name of God points to Messiah Yeshua, our salvation and His work at Calvary. Give me some time with the other posts. Kind of busy right now. Thanks. Edit: It somehow dumped a large part of my reply here. I'll get back and redo it in a bit. [/font][/quote]Good explanation but fyi "Heh" is actually a Hebrew word that means Lo or behold according to Gesenius' dictionary, and there are a few verses like in Daniel where it us used that way. The corresponding paleoHebrew sign was a person with his arms upraised. There is a browser extension for Chrome or Firefox called File Manager that saves your input to these online text boxes so you dont lose it. |
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Post by rakovsky on Sept 2, 2019 3:27:19 GMT -8
You asked about 4 Baruch 3's Greek term: "as in consummation of marriage"? Maybe, but then it would be better said "consummation of the marriage of the Beloved." It could mean completion or fulfillment of Messiah's time before the Second Coming or completion of the beloved people's time in dispersion. So there are different options, none obvious for me.
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Post by rakovsky on Sept 2, 2019 4:04:03 GMT -8
For Question 2 you wrote "I'd say 0% chance of that! All of them were Jewish/Nazarene/Christian principles, or based on those principles."
What I was trying to do was to calculate an estimate of the chance that a Nazarene/Christian wrote at least one part of the document. So I was looking for any specifically Nazarene or Christian passages. And then I looked at the chance of whether each passage was specifically Nazarene or Christian.
To find the chance that at least one passage was Christian or Nazarene, you have to multiply the chances for each being NOT Christian or Nazarene. Does that math explanation make sense?
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Post by alon on Sept 2, 2019 5:01:02 GMT -8
For Question 2 you wrote "I'd say 0% chance of that! All of them were Jewish/Nazarene/Christian principles, or based on those principles." What I was trying to do was to calculate an estimate of the chance that a Nazarene/Christian wrote at least one part of the document. So I was looking for any specifically Nazarene or Christian passages. And then I looked at the chance of whether each passage was specifically Nazarene or Christian. To find the chance that at least one passage was Christian or Nazarene, you have to multiply the chances for each being NOT Christian or Nazarene. Does that math explanation make sense? Mathematically, if even one of those was 0% chance of its not being either/or Nazarene/Christian, then multiplying everything else eve if they were all 99% surely Nazarene/Christian would still yield 0%. |
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Post by rakovsky on Sept 2, 2019 7:49:25 GMT -8
Correct. But none of them look like 100% certainty that they are specifically Nazarene or Christian. It looks like at most 30 to 60 percent certainty. I mean, is something like the earth having 7 seals from God a sign that a text is Christian. It seems not real clear, but maybe a sign.
The text has 5 of these circumstantial potential allusions. The more allusions there are, the more likely it was written by a believer in Yeshua.
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Post by rakovsky on Sept 2, 2019 13:28:15 GMT -8
Now I believe that 4 Baruch is a Christian/Nazarene writing, because I looked at the ending in Chapter 9 again:
Scholars like Herzer who think that the document is nonChristian Jewish theorize that the original document ended at 9:9. But theoretical border line at 9:9 looks like a mistaken, modern artificial one, because
1. The theorized ending at 9:9 looks too abrupt and pessimistic, and begs the question of what the crowd did when they found Jeremiah dead.
2. Two other main characters, Baruch and Abimelech, are still alive, so there should be more things for them to do.
3. The text earlier had numerous references to resurrection like the eagle resurrecting the corpse, so the resurrection of Jeremiah after 9:9 is in agreement with the earlier parts of the text.
4. The basis for the theory that verse 9:10 and after are Christian additions is based on the theory that the earlier part of the text is nonChristian, but this theory in turn is doubtful because actually it looks like some earlier parts could be Christian/Nazarene, like the passage on the seven seals.
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Post by alon on Sept 2, 2019 14:22:30 GMT -8
Now I believe that 4 Baruch is a Christian/Nazarene writing, because I looked at the ending in Chapter 9 again: Scholars like Herzer who think that the document is nonChristian Jewish theorize that the original document ended at 9:9. But theoretical border line at 9:9 looks like a mistaken, modern artificial one, because 1. The theorized ending at 9:9 looks too abrupt and pessimistic, and begs the question of what the crowd did when they found Jeremiah dead. 2. Two other main characters, Baruch and Abimelech, are still alive, so there should be more things for them to do. 3. The text earlier had numerous references to resurrection like the eagle resurrecting the corpse, so the resurrection of Jeremiah after 9:9 is in agreement with the earlier parts of the text. 4. The basis for the theory that verse 9:10 and after are Christian additions is based on the theory that the earlier part of the text is nonChristian, but this theory in turn is doubtful because actually it looks like some earlier parts could be Christian/Nazarene, like the passage on the seven seals. Your conclusion that this is a Christian OR Nazarene FORGERY would probably be correct. This one clearly is supposed to be saying there is more to the book of Jeremiah, and claims authorship of his secretary. It could also have been written by an Ebionite. Regardless, it is false. The mention of "messiah Jesus" is clearly thre to convince people of the messiahship of Yeshua. But winning souls on a lie is a risky thing. |
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Post by rakovsky on Sept 2, 2019 16:19:52 GMT -8
Well, more precisely my question was whether 4 Baruch Chapter 3 alluded to Yeshua, and while the coming together of the beloved seems more likely to refer to the people's regathering, considering based on Chapter 9 that the author is a believer, this part seems to me to allude to Yeshua:
First, Abimelech pulling Jeremiah out of the pit seems a cryptic reference to Yeshua's work of resurrection like Elijah's was.
Second, Abimelech hiding in the mountain's shadow in Agrippa's vineyard seems to allude to Yeshua the vine being in the garden tomb cave right outside Jerusalem. But then, one modern writer said that the King's Garden was near the Mount of Olives, and this location would make sense because afterwards Abimelech got figs, which would tend to be around the Mount of Olives or Bethany. In contrast, the Garden tomb was northwest of the city. But I guess the King's vineyard doesnt have to actually be at the Garden tomb for the analogy to work.
Third, the Lord ascending sounds to me more a reference to Yeshua in particular, more than the Father or Spirit.
Fourth, the figs from the estate on the mountain road suggests to me the story of Yeshua and the fig tree, since the fig tree that was out of season and that He cursed was on the mount of olives where the road from Bethany goes. In 4 Baruch, the figs that Abimelech gets are in season and ripe with milk, then he sleeps, Jerusalem is conquered, he wakes up, and the figs are not in season in the story.
So this discussion has helped me see an allusion that the modern scholarship has missed. Sometimes modern scholarship is very good, but other times it misses things like this and gets confused.
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Post by rakovsky on Sept 2, 2019 17:21:22 GMT -8
For Question 3 (the meaning of Jeremiah waiting in the tomb and the 66 years of Baruch's sleep), let me clarify that it says that Baruch, not Jeremiah, was waiting in the tomb. Jeremiah was serving the exiles in Babylon at this time.
I believe that Baruch being in the tomb is a metaphor for being dead, since whereas he is educated by Angel's while in the tomb in Chapter (below), Jeremiah was educated while Jeremiah remained dead for 3 days in Chapter 9. Here is the part about Baruch in the tomb:
Second, I think that Abimelech's awakening on 12 Nisan, 4 days before the feast of first fruits that symbolizes resurrection, his awakening 66 years into the Babylonian captivity, 4 years before the end of the Exile. Otherwise there is not much sense as to why he would awaken on that day, month and year. It looks like there is a mystical meaning. Supposing that Abimelech points to Yeshua's experience based on his actions in Chapter 3, it seems to me that this could symbolize that Yeshua, the first fruit of the dead, resurrected years before the regathering of the faithful and the General Resurrection. Still. I don't know why the author would pick the number 4. I guess it could be related to 4 Esdras' theory of 400 years between the revealing of the Messiah and the General Resurrection. 4 Baruch has Jeremiah say that after "these times" there will be 377 more years, which I guess is related to the 400 years concept:
Other explanations are not as clear.
It was about 66 years from Yeshua's death to the death of the evangelist John and the centennial of Yeshua's birth. It was almost 66 years from the 70 AD destruction of the Jerusalem Temple to the 135 AD destruction of Jerusalem. As I mentioned in Question 3, Josephus in Against Apion wrote about the knowlegdeable priest Hezekiah who was "about 66", went with Ptolemy to Egypt, and instructed his Jewish followers in their ways. This does not seem like a clear connection to me. I mean, even if the author was going to base Abimelech the Ethiopian on Hezekiah the priest who went to Egypt, there would not be much point in noting the 66 years. Herzer questions why Josephus would say "about 66" when that is not a round number, but I think that it's not very weird for Josephus, who sometimes seems a stickler for details. I guess they could be related, but at least in the case of Abimelech I can see a mystical meaning in the 66 years.
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Post by rakovsky on Sept 2, 2019 18:52:12 GMT -8
If a Christian addition or change, then yes, it might mean "elementary Christian teachings." But if of Jewish origin (as were all the books of the so called "New Testament") it would mean just elementary biblical teachings. As used in Baruch it seems to be a metaphor tieing the juice of the figs still there and the basics of and the prophets teachings still alive within the Jewish community after their return from captivity. After being allowed to return by Cyrus, the Jews rebuilding Jerusalem had to ask for (and received) teachers from those exiles still remaining in what were now Persian lands. They had the "milk," now they needed to relearn the "meat." And the meat could also metaphorically be the solid part of the fig, also (obviously) present. For Question 4. You gave a Good explanation about the fig milk. The three NT verses that I cited showed milk as meaning the elementary teachings, but at that time they were still in the pre-NT period, so it meant learning the TaNakh. Interestingly, this would tie in with the 66 year old priest Hezekiah who was known for teaching Jews in Egypt under Ptolemy. But it looks like Abimelech the Ethiopian who saved Jeremiah from the pit in 4 Baruch is Ebed-melech the eunuch in the king's court who got Jeremiah from the cistern/dungeon (habbowr) in Jeremiah 38:7 (below), so I was mistaken when I said "It says he pulled Jeremiah out of the muddy cistern. That is nowhere narrated in the Tanakh": |
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