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indagator

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35 minutes ago, bruceq said:
          Reasons that this manuscript may have been written by a Christian scribe:
 

Forgive an off-topic comment, if you will. I have long wanted to thank you, but did not know that you still hung around.

I finished the book I was working on, 'Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah's Witnesses Write Russia,' and you were the biggest help, since you continually posted updates of persecutions there. I am grateful to you for that.

I also took it to heart when you chastised me for 'liking' the contents of apostates, which I had never done much, but resolved to do not at all henceforth. That is not to say that I have not exchanged barbs with the 'house apostate' who resembles, after a time, a big cuddly snarling lovable rabid old teddy bear. And even a Jack someone or other, whe has launched as many as ten petulant complaints in a single day. But 'guest apostates', like a certain one who used to sign off 'he he he )))))' until he discontinued it, apparantly realizing it made him look like a moron, I do not respond to (usually).

It is well that you stay out of it. You have chosen the high road. I recall you saying that you had recently been appointed MS and married not too long ago, and that you wanted to focus on those real priorities. I hope things are going well with you.

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I thought about posting this on the recent thread "Early Christians, the New Testament and the Divine Name," partly because of a question someone posed there on the earliest evidence for Jewish disuse

Forgive an off-topic comment, if you will. I have long wanted to thank you, but did not know that you still hung around. I finished the book I was working on, 'Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah's Witnesse

I understand what you are saying. I, for one, appreciate the theory because it takes some good independent thinking to come up with a theory that is outside the norm. I like testing theories along wit

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10 hours ago, bruceq said:

There is evidence that this fragment may have been written by a CHRISTIAN and not by Jews.

I have just completed a quick reading the book by Frank Shaw recommended by @indagator. I have also done the same for another book recommended to me late last year, "The Earliest Christian Artifacts" by Larry Hurtado. I hope you get a chance to read both books yourself if you have not already.

From what I can see, there is no real evidence that makes this particular fragment more likely to have come from a Christian. It's not just the more likely date that would place the document about 100 years prior to the first known Christian writings, it's also the fact that there is plenty of additional evidence that Greek-speaking Jews used this pronounceable form of the name for hundreds of years prior to Christianity. They had clearly been using it in writing and also pronouncing it too. Before the Greek Scriptures were written, there is evidence that some Jews had already stopped pronouncing the name, but evidence shows that this could not have been true of all Jews all at the same time, everywhere. Perhaps that practice among the Jews had reached a pervasive saturation point some time before Origen and others remarked upon that practice.

BTW, as TTH has also said, glad to see you stopping by.

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I'm sure that "Indagator" has much more background to provide a better answer, but we all learn from questioning, so I will try to take up the question behind the theory: "Could 4Q120 have been written by a Christian?"

First, it's a very interesting idea. To avoid a lot of separate quotes, I'll try to just re-quote a larger section and intersperse comments. These are just my opinions of course, but I'll highlight in orange-yellow if I think the evidence for the statement or implication of the question is not that good, and red if I think the evidence clearly goes against the particular idea presented, and green where the idea appears correct. My comments will be bracketed and in black.

There is evidence that this fragment may have been written by a CHRISTIAN and not by Jews. [Haven't yet come across any such evidence.] Although most scholars say that this fragment was written by a Jew because it is from Leviticus and from the Qumran cav?es. [However, scholars identify it as Jewish not just because it comes from the Qumram caves but because it does not present any of the primary unique indicators of Christian documents from the first century. (see Hurtado, for example)] But did only Jews use the Qumran caves? [All the evidence indicates, Yes, only Jews. There have been several theories about the purpose of the caves and who used them. All of them point to one or more Jewish groups, and there is no evidence of any Christian group who might have used them.] {When the Christians left Jerusalem in 66 C.E. they traveled right past the Qumran cave where this scroll came from "Cave 4" on there way to the mountains of Pella north along the Jordan River}!!!? [Looking at a map of Jerusalem to Pella (see attached picture below) Cave 4 would be many miles out of the way. Jesus indicated that the Christians in Jerusalem should take the quickest route.] The Christians also made copies of the Hebrew Scriptures which they would have translated into Greek the main language of the First Century. [The evidence so far, shows that Christians did not make copies of the Hebrew Scriptures that they translated into Greek. Instead, they appear to have used the LXX which was an already existing translation. There is actually no evidence that they made any copies or translations in the first century, but this does not mean it was not done.] The main reason why this was probably written by a Christian is because the Divine Name in this fragment "IAW" {Iao} is a PRONOUNCEABLE rendering of the Tetragrammaton. [Yes, IAO is a pronounceable rendering of the Divine Name as it had been pronounced by certain groups of Jews for 100's of years. However, I believe that there is no evidence yet that indicates that any Christian in the first century C.E., or even the second century C.E., pronounced or wrote the name this way. This does not mean that they did not, and in fact, I believe that you are right that many Christians did -- but only because especially the Aramaic-speaking Christians would have been following a Jewish custom for which there is a lot of evidence.] A Jew following the custom at the time of not pronouncing the Divine Name would never have written a PRONOUNCEABLE RENDERING as that would go against their traditions. [Except that we already know from the history of the term IAO, that Jews had been using this pronounceable form of the name for hundreds of years. There is evidence that these traditions against pronouncing it were not yet consistent until after the first century C.E.] However Christians did not follow Jewish traditions as Jesus denounced such very strongly. [This statement could be right or wrong, depending on which traditions are being referred to. If we recognize that many Jews were still following the Jewish tradition of pronouncing the name, then I'm sure Jesus would not have condemned that good tradition. Jesus even said of the scribes and Pharisees in Mt 23:3: "Practice and obey whatever they tell you to do."] Jews who wrote the earliest pre-Christian LXX wrote the Tetragrammaton in HEBREW within a GREEK TEXT in most cases making it stand out in order not to pronounce it. [The earliest pre-Christian LXX translations may have initially used IAO. Based on the common use of IAO at the time it is reasonable to conclude that all original LXX translations used "IAO." There is no conclusive evidence that they did not, and no conclusive evidence that they did. But there is evidence that it was earlier than the first century C.E. when IAO was used, and of course any of the other 3 major known LXX variations for the Divine Name. It's possible that some of the LXX translators may have already used "kyrios" in their earliest copies. This means that some would have already been influenced by a tradition not to pronounce the name (in 250 BCE), whether they had used YHWH-square, YHWH-paleo, kyrios, or some other replacement for the Divine Name.]

I'll stop here for now.  

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Only time for a brief reply—sorry. As JWI brings out, certain people have from time to time tried to tie manuscript finds from Qumran to Christianity. All such things have come to naught, and rightly so. A suggestion, bruceq: before forming opinions on a matter, gain the knowledge necessary to do so. In this case, one of the essential points is the testimony of the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily who states that Jews were using Ιαω as the active pronunciation of their God around 50 BC/BCE. Obviously Christianity did not yet exist then. Therefore, the Qumran manuscript would be support for Diodorus' statement. Yet again, all this is in Shaw's book.

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{When the Christians left Jerusalem in 66 C.E. they traveled right past the Qumran cave where this scroll came from "Cave 4" on there way to the mountains of Pella north along the Jordan River}!!!? [Looking at a map of Jerusalem to Pella (see attached picture below) Cave 4 would be many miles out of the way. Jesus indicated that the Christians in Jerusalem should take the quickest route.] 

The reason I came up with this theory of the path was according to terrain maps they would not have taken the "as a bird flies" route because of terrain but would have taken the already existing roads of which the main one went directly east from Jerusalem to the northern tip of the Dead Sea where cave 4 is located then would have traveled up the Jordan river to Pella. People other than Jews used the caves over the Centuries for shelter - why coudn't the Christians have done so as well? Not that any of this really matters but I was just offering a possibility that this MSS may have been written by Christians since the early Church Fathers mentioned IAO as coming from the "Scriptures" and many other indications as presented above such as by Chrysostom and Origen. I realize none in academic circles of Christendom agrees but that does not mean they are correct just because they are a majority view. {As for dates used by scholars obviously nothing is exact and dates can be off by a couple centuries certainly 50 BC to 50 CE is within possiblity for the margin of error}.

However much evidence for a Christian origin can be found here : https://www.academia.edu/30967321/_The_god_Iao_and_his_connection_with_the_Biblical_God_with_special_emphasis_on_the_manuscript_4QpapLXXLevb_?_????_???_???_?_?????_???_??_???_???????_???_??_?????????_???????_???_?????????

 

 

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4 hours ago, indagator said:

A suggestion, bruceq: before forming opinions on a matter, gain the knowledge necessary to do so.

Sorry i am not a college professor or anything like that. I just have an interest in the subject and have about 250 books dealing with it and thought i would give my 2 cents as i do enjoy discussing this subject. I have read and studied Shaws book about a year ago and i was just giving a theory as an interesting possibility for discussion.

As for more proof of 4Q120 possibly being of Christian origin please read pgs. 45 - 51 of the following ;

"The use of a form of the Tetragrammaton within the 4Q120 manuscript was admittedly the major reason for classi-fying it as of Jewish origin. In the light of the available in-formation today (such as lowering the date of the common use of the Tetragrammaton and the evidenced longstanding use of Ιαω among Christians], might a Jewish Christian ori-gin of the manuscript, penned sometime during the first cen-tury CE be considered possible? Some positive factors for such a hypothesis are the following"

 

 https://www.academia.edu/30967321/_The_god_Iao_and_his_connection_with_the_Biblical_God_with_special_emphasis_on_the_manuscript_4QpapLXXLevb_Ο_θεός_Ιαώ_και_η_σχέση_του_με_τον_Βιβλικό_Θεό_με_ιδιαίτερη_εστίαση_στο_χειρόγραφ

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1 hour ago, bruceq said:

The reason I came up with this theory of the path was according to terrain maps they would not have taken the "as a bird flies" route but would have taken the already existing roads of which the main one went directly east from Jerusalem to the northern tip of the Dead Sea where cave 4 is located.

I understand what you are saying. I, for one, appreciate the theory because it takes some good independent thinking to come up with a theory that is outside the norm. I like testing theories along with available evidence because it helps to either confirm or weaken the prevailing theories. In this case, I wasn't saying it was impossible that some Christians might have gone a few miles out their way to visit the caves of the Dead Sea, but I was commenting on the "sureness" of the statement about what the Christians, in fact, did. You didn't say that they might have, or that they probably did. You just said that they did travel right past, not just the caves in general, but Cave 4 specifically.

1 hour ago, bruceq said:

When the Christians left Jerusalem in 66 C.E. they traveled right past the Qumran cave where this scroll came from "Cave 4" on there way to the mountains of Pella north along the Jordan River

This is therefore used as if it is solid evidence to feed a theory, when it is conjecture utilized to feed a theory. For that matter, there was a road to Jericho from Jerusalem and we do not know that it touched the Dead Sea and Jordan, even if it might have. Also, it is only extra-Biblical conjecture that the Christians generally fled to Pella. When Jesus said to flee to the mountains, there were actually hills all around Jerusalem, and one of the few directions they could travel "away" from mountains would have been toward the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea. You can see that by looking at the terrain relief map you provided. It seems that someone could have just as easily used Jesus' words as evidence that Christians, in general, would not have immediately traveled to the valley, but would have headed toward mountains and hills instead.

These are interesting ideas about Christians using Qumram and the vicinity, or the date of this particular scroll (4Q120), or the value of the evidence that Church Fathers knew about IAO. The strength and value of such ideas is always worth considering but from what I've seen so far, none of it helps your overall theory. But again, all of the things we state are just opinions here, so I hope you will feel welcome to put any ideas here that you want to consider.

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8 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

When Jesus said to flee to the mountains, there were actually hills all around Jerusalem, and one of the few directions they could travel "away" from mountains would have been toward the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea.

Agree -  however Jesus said to those in "Judea" not just Jerusalem to "flee to the mountains" obviously if they took the words exactly they would not have fled to the mountains around Jerusalem but would have left the province of Judea of which Pella or any of the mountains on the other side of the Jordan would have sufficed.

Sorry about my "wording" it is all conjecture of course i was not an A student in English class. lol..

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2 minutes ago, bruceq said:

Agree -  however Jesus said to those in "Judea" not just Jerusalem to "flee to the mountains" obviously if they took the words exactly they would not have fled to the mountains around Jerusalem but would have left the province of Judea

Perhaps. But telling all the people of Pennsylvania to flee to the mountains would not mean leaving Pennsylvania, but would mean leaving the cities and going up into the hills. (In Judea, the cities were, of course, the focus of Rome's armies, including Masada for example). Surely you didn't think Jesus meant that all the people on the southern borders of Judea near Idumaea would begin heading toward Jerusalem (the quickest route) on their way to Samaria and the mountains of Pella.

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16 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Perhaps. But telling all the people of Pennsylvania to flee to the mountains would not mean leaving Pennsylvania, but would mean leaving the cities and going up into the hills. (In Judea, the cities were, of course, the focus of Rome's armies, including Masada for example). Surely you didn't think Jesus meant that all the people on the southern borders of Judea near Idumaea would begin heading toward Jerusalem (the quickest route) on their way to Samaria and the mountains of Pella.

Agree but perhaps why Pella is mentioned is because that is where most of the Christians went or perhaps that is where the "Apostles" went - again it is all conjecture. My only point is that the caves may have been used by more than just Jews and therefore Jewish Christians. Most if not all the mss left there were from Jews but why couldn't other religious groups such as Jewish Christians {Apostles} been there. {Likely the Apostles were in Jerusalem in 66 C.E. as just a few years prior the issue in Acts 15 came up they went to the Apostles and elders in "Jerusalem". 

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19 minutes ago, bruceq said:

Agree but perhaps why Pella is mentioned is because that is where most of the Christians went or perhaps that is where the "Apostles" went - again it is all conjecture.

A little off-topic, but I noticed this (for what it's worth) in the Wikipedia article under "Flight to Pella:"

  • The fourth-century church fathers Eusebius and Epiphanius of Salamis cite a tradition that before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 the Jerusalem Christians had been miraculously warned to flee to Pella (Tabaquat Fahil) in the region of the Decapolis across the Jordan River.
  • The authenticity of this tradition has been a much debated question since 1951 when S. G. F. Brandon in his work The Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church provided strong arguments against it, arguing that the Jewish Christians would have been allied to their compatriots, the Zealots; only after the destruction of the Jewish Christian community would Christianity have emerged as a universalist religion.[1] The Christian-Zealot alliance has hardly been taken seriously in theology, but the historicity of the flight to Pella has been controversial ever since.[1]

I'm a little surprised that we would have no evidence of this tradition until quotes from nearly 300 years after it would have happened.

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Well, it's been a while since JWI obtained and read Shaw's book on the Greek form of the tetragrammaton, Ιαω. He says he's given it two full readings. No doubt the book is dense and difficult, but it has much to offer anyone interested in the divine name.

There are many informative features of the work. One of its strengths is setting the mystical use of Ιαω, that is, its use by Gnostics and magicians, in the proper historical framework. Previous scholars—and many current ones still—see Ιαω and immediately think "magic" or "Gnostic" without understanding how those people came to learn of this Greek form of the name. One the the services Shaw does is set that mystical use straight chronologically. No one had ever done that before.

He shows how there is no basis for saying that mystical types used Ιαω until the end of the first century and early second century AD/CE. What is also significant is that Shaw not only postulates that the earliest, NT Christians used this form of the name, and that it was originally in some NT books, but that it was through the preaching work of those first-century Christians that the mystical types picked up on the name and started using it. In other words, this form of the name's best known usage by Gnostics and magicians came about through the zealous preaching work by the earliest Christians, and their using the name in that preaching. He does not state this in the main text but in two footnotes (p. 288 n. 53, 289 n. 57).

This is a fascinating discovery for at least three reasons. It explains why the mystical types suddenly began using that form of the name at the time that they did. It indicates the earliest Christians used the name so much that it became a feature in their preaching work, just like the brothers have been saying on the basis of passages like Acts 15:14. Finally, it provides a previously unknown picture of how the old devil set about, very early on, attacking Jehovah's name and having it removed from the scriptures.

One can wonder why Shaw buried this detail in footnotes instead of placing it in the main text. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that is just too radical for other scholars to see and accept. This thought would be in harmony with his statement elsewhere, on p. 287, where he offers the idea that Ιαω likely occurred originally at Rom. 10. He states, "Naturally, this proposal may come as a radical thought to many who have considered the standard interpretation of Rom. 10.9-13 as definitive, and it may threaten a long-held view about this passage." That sort of encapsulates several other things about his book as well.

There are many other valuable things in the book, but now that JWI has had the opportunity to digest it, I thought the time was ripe to post some of my observations. Others are welcome to respond or post their own thoughts if they have read it, or are considering doing so.

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