Why would a 1st Century nobody want to believe a Jesus story?

by Terry 26 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  zannahdoll

  Terry, didn't the Dead Sea Scrolls prove Septuagint was real?

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls

  The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of about 900 documents, including texts from theHebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in the West Bank.

  The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include the oldest known surviving copies of Biblical and extra-biblical documents and preserve evidence of great diversity in late Second Temple Judaism. They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic andGreek, mostly on parchment, but with some written on papyrus.[1] These manuscripts generally date between 150 BCE and 70 CE.[2] The scrolls are traditionally identified with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes, though some recent interpretations have challenged this association and argue that the scrolls were penned by priests in Jerusalem, Zadokites, or other unknown Jewish groups.[3][4]

  The Dead Sea Scrolls are traditionally divided into three groups: "Biblical" manuscripts (copies of texts from the Hebrew Bible), which comprise roughly 40% of the identified scrolls; "Apocryphal" or "Pseudepigraphical" manuscripts (known documents from the Second Temple Period likeEnoch, Jubilees, Tobit, Sirach, non-canonical psalms, etc., that were not ultimately canonized in the Hebrew Bible), which comprise roughly 30% of the identified scrolls; and "Sectarian" manuscripts (previously unknown documents that speak to the rules and beliefs of a particular group or groups within greater Judaism) like the Community Rule, War Scroll, Pesher (Hebrew pesher ??? = "Commentary") on Habakkuk, and the Rule of the Blessing, which comprise roughly 30% of the identified scrolls.[5]
• 

  Pistoff

  It has always been a religious duty for Jews to be able to read, understand, and interpret the Torah.To this day, they do so. My Jewish friends' children stand up and read Torah before their congregations.They read the Torah to the congregation in Hebrew when they are welcomed as independents into the congregation and when they pass the bar/bat mitzvah rite of passage.The Torah is the beginning of their learning.This requirement for literacy and abstract interpretation is part of the reason why Jews have always been so successful, despite the fact that they have always and universally been treated as a despised minority in the diaspora. If it wasn't for the Torah, the Jews would have disappeared many centuries ago as a people, just like so many others have. Where are the Babylonians? The Romans? The Torah has protected the Jews.

  Please produce proof that 1st century jews were literate, on the whole. The TRADITION says so, but it also says Moses brought down tablets from the mountain, and that God killed children because they made fun of a bald man.

  To think that the poor, oppressed jews were on the whole literate and had personal copies of the TNK does not mesh with any historical data from the period. This is a myth.

  Reading, writing and ownership of scrolls was for the wealthy.
• 

  BurnTheShips

  Pistoff. Having a personal copy is not a requirement for literacy. By that time period, the synagogue had become the center of Jewish worship. Synagogues had written materials.

  From Max Dimont's work on Jewish history: "Jews, God, and History" (which I happen to own),

  Queen Alexandra's reign, brief as it was (78-69), has been called a Golden Age. She instituted vast social reforms. Upon the advice of her brother, a rabbi, she founded free elementary schools and made primary education compulsory for boys and girls. In the first century before Christ, in a world full of illiteracy, illiteracy among the Jews in the tiny kingdom of Palestine was for all practical purposes banished.

  Also, from "Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine", Catherine Hezser

  Between the Maccabean period and the first century C.E. first efforts to establish the text of the Hebrew Bible seem to have been undertaken and the knowledge of the Torah became at last theoretically available to larger sectors of the population beyond the traditional realm of the priests. This development went hand in hand with a larger spread of literacy necessitated by the emergence of an independent Jewish State: "The Jews of the period were becoming independent, requiring them to acquire the skills of their new mini-empire, one of which was literacy". This Jewish literate culture in which written texts were widely used was established in Hellenistic times and this literate culture was mostly based in cities: "Literacy often goes hand in hand with urbanization". Either those who are literate move to the cities or life in the cities requires the inhabitants to acheive certain reading and writing skills.

  In Luke Chapter 4 in the NT (which I happen to own MANY copies of), we see a man raised as a tekton (carpenter) pick up a scroll at his local synagogue....

  The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
  "The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
  because he has anointed me
  to preach good news to the poor.
  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
  and recovery of sight for the blind,
  to release the oppressed,
  to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

  Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."

  BTS
• 

  excito-are

  One of the most wealthy, powerful, well looked after countries in the world today have people flocking to Christ. 100 million Fundamentalists and growing in the USA. Poverty and illteracy are really not the reasons people flock to Religion.
• 

  Quillsky

  excito-are.......

  One of the most wealthy, powerful, well looked after countries in the world today have people flocking to Christ.

  Okay. Which one?

  Are you referring to the little Bible Belt strip of the US? If so, firstly that's not a country on its own, and secondly then what you mean to say is "maintaining its belief in", not "flocking to".

  The vast majority of the most wealthy, powerful, well looked after countries in the world today DO NOT have people "flocking" to Christ-faiths. Check your stats please.
• 

  Quillsky

  Poverty and illteracy are really not the reasons people flock to Religion.

  Wealth, health and literacy aren't causing to people to flock to religion either. The opposite, in fact. (I have numbers to prove this, would you like to see them?)

  So what is it? All I can think of is that in the absense of socio-economic or cultural factors, then fear or mental instability are causing people to flock to religion, if indeed people are flocking to religion. What else could it be?
• 

  tec

  Because of the hope and mercy and love being given them.

  Tammy