The Talmud describes centuries of Rabbinic opinions about who, when, where of Job. Some placed him in Egypt, some Edom, some Arabia. Was he a Jew or not? Some say he lived at the Exodus, others, said time of Abraham, others said Jacob. The imagination is the only limit. Other more grounded Rabbis understood the story and character as allegorical. Bava Batra 15a:15
peacefulpete
JoinedPosts by peacefulpete
-
10
Why GB Distorts the Story of Job
by raymond frantz inhttps://youtu.be/lpwusxk8ckc?si=d4nb1ciwccql8dox.
a man, like new gb member jody jodele, dripping in wealth—$20,000 rolex, freemasonry ring, cushy life in upstate new york—pontificating about job’s suffering.
it’s a fair jab to question how someone so detached from hardship might approach a story of utter loss.
-
-
-
10
Why GB Distorts the Story of Job
by raymond frantz inhttps://youtu.be/lpwusxk8ckc?si=d4nb1ciwccql8dox.
a man, like new gb member jody jodele, dripping in wealth—$20,000 rolex, freemasonry ring, cushy life in upstate new york—pontificating about job’s suffering.
it’s a fair jab to question how someone so detached from hardship might approach a story of utter loss.
-
-
peacefulpete
The 'book' of Job is an anthology of story and poem, utilizing the common character Job to express philosophical concepts of the authors. "Job" is a cue name meaning 'persecuted', some have also suggested "where is Father(God)". It's possible both ideas were in mind when legends about the figure were written.
-
47
What does God eat ?
by stan livedeath inbeans ?
( human beans ).
to those of you that believe in god: do you all believe the same thing ?.
-
-
peacefulpete
I ran across another interesting passage in Joseph and Aseneth. The work is Jewish (100BCE-66CE), it is surprising to some (even researchers) in depicting the patriarch Joseph as an emanation/Great angel in human guise. Other writers of the later second Temple period also understood Moses, Aaron, Enoch and Melchizedek and others similarly. What is interesting in relation to this thread and the op question, is the honeycomb given by the angelic being to Aseneth at her conversion to Judaism.
In this story Joseph is called the 'son of God', and the great angelic being that (spoilers) turns out to be Joseph offers Aseneth to be new by eating, "the bread of life and drink the cup of immortality",
Joesph then feeds her hneycomb that miraculously appears in her room:
4. And Aseneth went into her inner room and found a honeycomb lying on the table; and the comb was as white as snow and full of honey, and its smell was like the breath [2] of life. 5. And Aseneth took the comb and brought it to him; and the man said to her, "Why did you say, 'There is no honeycomb in my house?' And lo, you have brought me this." 6. And Aseneth said, My lord, I had no honeycomb in my house, but it happened just as you said: did it perchance come out of your mouth, for it smells like myrrh?" [3] 7. And the man stretched his hand out and placed it on her head and said, "You are blessed, Aseneth, for the indescribable things [4] of God [5] have been revealed to you; and blessed too are those who give their allegiance to the Lord [6] God in penitence, for they shall eat of this comb. 8. The bees of the Paradise of Delight [7] have made this honey, and the angels of God eat of it, and no one who eats of it shall ever die. 9. And the man stretched his right hand out and broke off a piece of the comb and ate it; and he put a piece of it [8] unto Aseneth's mouth. 10. And the man stretched his hand out and put his finger [9] on the edge of the comb that faced eastwards; and the path [10] of his finger became like blood. 11. And he stretched out his hand a second time and put his finger on the edge of the comb that faced northwards, and the path of his finger became like blood. 12. And Aseneth was standing on the left and watching everything the man was doing. 13. And bees came up from the cells of the comb, and they were white as snow, and their wings were irridescent -- purple and blue and gold; [11] and they had golden diadems on their heads and sharp-pointed strings. 14. And all the bees flew in circles round Aseneth, from her feet right up to her head; and yet more bees, [12] as big as queens, settled on Aseneth's lips. 15. And the man said to the bees, "Go, please, to your places." 16. And they all left Aseneth and fell to the ground, every one of them, [13] and died. 17. And the man said, "Get up now, and go to your place;" and they got up [14] and went, every one of them, to the court round Aseneth's tower.
We clearly see the Hebrews shared divine associations with honey. The golden/yellow life-giving food was associated with solar deities from deep antiquity. The Samson (Son of the Sun) story features honey. The manna (food of the angels) taste like honey, the resurrected Jesus eats and offers honeycomb to his disciples and here Joseph the incarnate great angel makes explicit that angelic honeycomb gives immortality.
-
9
1 Thessalonians 5:3....Prophecy ?
by HereIam60 ini've always had difficulty understanding how watch tower interprets 1 thessalonians 5:3 as prophetic of a future event - that the nations will unite in a (false) cry that they have achieved 'peace and security' which will signal the start of the great tribulation.
whenever i've read that passage i got the sense that it is simply stating a general principle... that when people are complacent and off-guard, thinking everything is o.k., peaceful and secure then sudden unexpected events hit them harder and they don't know what to do.
when i was first coming in (1980s) i well recall the "true peace and security" book that made a big deal about the un having declared 1986 'the international year of peace'.
-
-
peacefulpete
HereIam60....You are dead on correct. The writer was insisting upon the suddenness and unpredictability of His coming. This was in response to the apparent delay and growing disillusionment. It also shows no awareness of the 'sign' in the Gospels, but that is another topic. The WT however did not invent their misapplication of the phrase in 1 Thess.. Here is a thread in which I posted Olof Jonsson's research. In that thread there is another link to another thread with details of the WT development of the idea.
The UN, was the WTS given special knowledge?
-
7
Hole in the Wall
by peacefulpete ina recurring motif is generally used by writers to connect stories and characters to the past or suggest parallels.
the gospels and acts are filled with them.
an example of this is found at acts, 2 cor, 1 sam and joshua.
-
-
peacefulpete
Yep. The assumption of historicity still dominates the discussion. Even among secular scholars it seems the default position due to traditional (theologically biased) scholarship is a core element of historicity. Relatedly, the assumption of an oral transmission stage is postulated to explain contradictions while preserving that core. Neither assumption shows awareness of the intertextual and novella nature of the texts.
-
7
Hole in the Wall
by peacefulpete ina recurring motif is generally used by writers to connect stories and characters to the past or suggest parallels.
the gospels and acts are filled with them.
an example of this is found at acts, 2 cor, 1 sam and joshua.
-
-
peacefulpete
AnonyMous....Many years ago I did some research on the claim of direct reuse of story elements from Euripides and other famed playwrights. I came to the slightly more nuanced conclusion that rather than conscious 'copying' it was more of a case of drawing from a milieu of imagery and idiom for the storyline. Your illustrating that with popular superhero fiction is a pretty good parallel. There is just no way to honestly overlook the emulation of Homer, Euripides or Ovid in the Luke/Acts narrative for example, but at the same time I found the Jewish writer Artapanus had similarly drawn from this literary body of work for his stories about a superhuman/divine Moses hundreds of years earlier. The miraculous prison escape scene for example:
"The king of the Egyptians learned of Moses' presence, summoned him and asked for what purpose he had come. He responded that the master of the universe had ordered him to release the Jews. When the king learned of this, he confined him in prison. But when night came, all the doors of the prison opened of themselves and some of the guards died, while others were relaxed by sleep and their weapons were broken." (On the Jews, fragment three).
The point being, the NT was not unique in drawing motif and idiom from the Greco-Roman literary world.
The 'letters' of Paul represent a complicated case of likely fragmentary material having come through at least 2 phases of expansion and redaction. Dating the material then gets very subjective. The usual model, that 'Paul's' version of his conversion (and escape through a window etc.) predates the Acts version, might be correct but then again, a number of well-respected scholars have reversed that order and suggest the differences reflect community recensions of inherited traditions rather than a conscious refutation/rewrite. (I'm inclined to describe it, regardless direction of influence, as a more direct revision because of inclusion of the otherwise irrelevant detail in both Acts and 2Cor. of the use of a "basket") That dates much of the finished 'authentic' Paulines to the 180s or so. That is a minority view but a scholarly one. The more we dig the less confident we are that anything reflects an historical core that we crave for reconstructions of Christian origins.
-
7
Hole in the Wall
by peacefulpete ina recurring motif is generally used by writers to connect stories and characters to the past or suggest parallels.
the gospels and acts are filled with them.
an example of this is found at acts, 2 cor, 1 sam and joshua.
-
-
peacefulpete
I see too late that I wrote 1Cor rather than 2 Cor in my last comment. Sorry
-
7
Hole in the Wall
by peacefulpete ina recurring motif is generally used by writers to connect stories and characters to the past or suggest parallels.
the gospels and acts are filled with them.
an example of this is found at acts, 2 cor, 1 sam and joshua.
-
-
peacefulpete
Actually Aretus did not have jurisdiction, despite many apologist efforts to suggest otherwise. Trying to place Aretus in the context of Acts makes no narrative sense either. Saul is a brand new convert but somehow a King of a neighboring land has such anger he plotted his capture. It just doesn't work in the Acts context. It opens questions about direction of influence between the finished Paulines and Acts. Some have suggested the Corinthians version was a revision of the Acts story. The enemy unsurprisingly is an 'archon' of the world in 1 Cor, and equally unsurprisingly the bad guys are 'the Jews' in Acts. Both are consistent with the overall themes in those books.
It certainly stands out as an addition to the list of traumatic near death experiences in 1 Cor., so it might represent a pretty late Paulinist effort to harmonize with Acts by someone with poor knowledge of first century politics. I'm sure the transmission/textural history is complicated however you look at it.
-
7
Hole in the Wall
by peacefulpete ina recurring motif is generally used by writers to connect stories and characters to the past or suggest parallels.
the gospels and acts are filled with them.
an example of this is found at acts, 2 cor, 1 sam and joshua.
-
-
peacefulpete
A recurring motif is generally used by writers to connect stories and characters to the past or suggest parallels. The Gospels and Acts are filled with them. An example of this is found at Acts, 2 Cor, 1 Sam and Joshua.
In Joshua 2 the King of Jericho seeks the Jewish spies but is saved by Rahab:
3 So the king of Jericho sent this message to Rahab: “Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house...15 So she let them down by a rope through the window, for the house she lived in was part of the city wall. 16 She said to them, “Go to the hills so the pursuers will not find you. Hide yourselves there three days until they return, and then go on your way.”
In 1 Sam 19 The Saul the King of Israel seeks David but is saved by Micah his wife:
11 Saul (the King) sent men to David’s house to watch it and to kill him in the morning. But Michal, David’s wife, warned him, “If you don’t run for your life tonight, tomorrow you’ll be killed.” 12 So Michal let David down through a window, and he fled and escaped.
In 2 Cor 11 the Nabatean King Aretus seeks to kill Saul but is saved by unnamed others:
32 In Damascus the ethnarch of Aretas the King was watching the city of the Damascenes, wishing to seize me, 33 and through a window in a rope basket I was let down, through the wall, and fled out of his hands.
In the Acts version/expansion of the story the enemy has shifted to "the Jews" and is saved by his followers:
23 After many days had gone by, there was a conspiracy among the Jews to kill him, 24 but Saul learned of their plan. Day and night they kept close watch on the city gates in order to kill him. 25 But his followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall.
Clearly the stories are intertextually related .
As a side note, I thought the rest of the David story interesting, David and his wife have a life size 'idol' in their home to slip into the bed to look like David. ???
-
4
The Pella Deception: Watchtower May 2025
by raymond frantz inhttps://youtu.be/4otnshkqdbi?si=5ilzez_lxqscp1ww.
so, in the latest may 2025 study watchtower, the writers of this magazine, they have another go at revising church history for their own ends.
they take a well-documented historical event—the flight of christians from jerusalem before its destruction in 70 ad - and twisting it into a convenient narrative to reinforce blind obedience to organizational leadership.
-
-
peacefulpete
The writer of the Martyrdom of Isaiah seems to draw from this motif as well.
7. And, when Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saw the lawlessness which was being perpetrated in Jerusalem and the worship of Satan and his wantonness, he withdrew from Jerusalem and settled in Bethlehem of Judah.
8. And there also there was much lawlessness, and withdrawing from Bethlehem he settled on a mountain in a desert place.
9. And Micaiah the prophet, and the aged Ananias, and Joel and Habakkuk, and his son Josab, and many of the faithful who believed in the ascension into heaven, withdrew and settled on the mountain.
10. They were all clothed with garments of hair, and they were all prophets. And they had nothing with them but were naked, and they all lamented with a great lamentation because of the going astray of Israel.
11. And these eat nothing save wild herbs which they gathered on the mountains, and having cooked them, they lived thereon together with Isaiah the prophet. And they spent two years of days on the mountains and hills.