Download or read book Octateuch The Original Orit written by Scriptural Research Institute and published by Scriptural Research Institute. This book was released on 2020-08-31 with total page 1130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid 3ʳᵈ century BC, King Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt ordered a translation of the ancient Hebrew scriptures for the Library of Alexandria, which resulted in the creation of the Septuagint. The original version, published circa 250 BC, only included the Torah, or in Greek terms, the Pentateuch. The Torah is the five books traditionally credited to Moses, circa 1500 BC: Cosmic Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The first edition was followed by the second, around 225 BC which added the books of Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, which was later known as the Octateuch. This version of the Septuagint was later carried south into the Kingdom of Kush by the Jews fleeing Egypt in 200 BC when Judea was in revolt and the Ptolemys attempted to exterminate the Jews in Egypt. The Octateuch later became the Torah of the Beta Israel community in Sudan and Ethiopia known as the Orit. A number of stories exist to explain the origin of the Beta Israel community, the 'Ethiopian Jews' indigenous to Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan. The recorded story of the origin of the Ethiopian Jews was reported by Eldad ha-Dani in the late 800s AD. Eldad ha-Dani was a dark-skinned Jew from a country south of Kush, modern northern Sudan, who was captured by pagan Ethiopians, and ultimately sold on the coast of what might be modern Kenya or Tanzania, to a Jew from the Parthian Empire, who took him back to modern Iran. He later traveled through the Middle East and the Mediterranean Sea. He claimed that he was from a country of Jews, south of Kush, who were the descendants of the tribes of Dan, Gad, Naphtali, and Asher, who had left Israel during the civil war that split the Kingdom into Judea and Samaria. Modern secular scholars doubt there was a united kingdom of Israel, however, if the civil war did happen, it would have happened in 922 BC when Jeroboam I and Rehoboam split the kingdom of Solomon. If true, this would make the Ethiopian Jews neither Jews, nor Samaritans, but a third branch of the Judeo-Samaritan religions, and arguably, older than the others. The Christian text Kebra Nagast claims that Judaism entered into Ethiopia slightly earlier when the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba traveled to Israel and was impregnated by King Solomon. Her son Menelik I led a group of Jews to Ethiopia when he stole the Ark of the Covenant. Other than the Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, few consider the Kebra Nagast historically valid. Some members of the Beta Israel community claim the Ethiopian Jews were originally members of the Jewish tribes led by Moses that chose not to enter into Canaan with Joshua, and instead traveled south and settled in the land of Moses' Ethiopian wife, mentioned in Numbers chapter 12. A third story of the origin of the Ethiopian Jews, took place shortly after the Greeks had taken control over Egypt and Judea, when King Ptolemy I resettled Judeans in southern Nubia. This would have taken place between 305 and 282 BC, and later the Jews migrated south for various reasons. However they ended up in Ethiopia, they have traditionally used a variation of the Octateuch, which they call the Orit. The Octateuch is documented as being the version of the Septuagint that was published around 225 BC. Like the Ethiopian Christian Bible, the Orit appears to have had sections 'updated' from Hebrew and Arabic sources over the past two thousand years. Octateuch: The Original Orit is a 21st-century translation aimed at restoring the original Orit.

Download or read book Syriac Apocalypse of Ezra and the Arabic Apocalypse of Daniel written by Scriptural Research Institute and published by Digital Ink Productions. This book was released on with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Syriac Apocalypse of Ezra, sometimes called the Revelation of Ezra appears to have been reworked in the High Middle Ages. Another version of the apocalypse has survived in Arabic, but attributed to Daniel not Ezra, commonly known as the Arabic Apocalypse of Daniel. The Arabic version is shorter and appears to be older, likely dating to earlier than the time of Muhammad, while the Syriac version has been reworked into an anti-Islamic apocalypse, likely between 1229 and 1244. The apocalypse includes a reference from the High Middle Ages to Muslims as Ishmaelites, and Mongols as Gog and Magog, forming an alliance and conquering Jerusalem. This idea would not have been conceivable until the Mongols defeated the Khwarazmian Empire, an Islamic Turko-Persian empire in Iran and Central Asia. Before that, the idea that the Mongols could reach Jerusalem was not a consideration. The Apocalypse indicates that the city of Jerusalem was occupied by Christians at the time, which would place the anti-Islamic redaction to sometime between 1229 and 1244. The Latin crusaders had been driven out of Jerusalem in 1187, however, the kingdom of Jerusalem continued to exist, first from its capital in Tyre, and later Acre, however, in 1229 Jerusalem was recaptured, and held until 1244. As the Principality of Antioch was another crusader state to the north, and the name ‘Antioch’ appears to have been added earlier in the Apocalypse, the redactor may have meant it as a piece of propaganda intended to garner support from Byzantine Christians, who had not generally participated in the crusades and had better relations with the Muslims than the Catholics. The older Arabic version of the apocalypse likewise appears to have been used for propaganda, however, was anti-Jewish instead of anti-Islamic, and appears to have been written in Aramaic before the time of Muhammad. Based on the dialect of Arabic, it most likely originated in Palestine, among medieval Christians. The Arabic version is much shorter and is mostly paraphrased from the Gospels and other early Christian works, however, the content of the apocalypse is clearly something that was incorporated into the longer Syriac Apocalypse. While the content of the Arabic apocalypse is repeated in the Syriac apocalypse, it is a direct translation, but a series of paraphases that are reinterpreted in an anti-Islamic way. The longer Syriac apocalypse, which must originate much later than the pre-Islamic Arabic apocalypse, nevertheless, has much more content, most of which appears to have been composed in Neo-Babylonian sometime between 597 and 592 BC. The Syriac apocalypse has many Greek loanwords, confirming it was written in Greek, as well as an Arabic word the Syriac translator chose over a Syriac word, suggesting the Syriac translation was done long after Northern Iraq became Arabic speaking. All known copies of the Syriac Apocalypse can be traced to Iraqi Kurdistan, or the old Christian churches of Mosul, just south of Kurdistan. All of the surviving manuscripts are also in the Eastern Syriac script, and ten of the known 15 manuscripts can be linked to the Rabban Hormizd Monastery, of the Chaldean Catholic church, suggesting that all known copies are derived from the texts maintained at the monastery. The oldest known manuscript is from 1702 and is known as MS Mingana Syriac 11, or simplified to Mingana 11. It was copied on January 16, 1702, by a Hoshabo, son of Daniel, son of Joseph the priest, son of Hoshabo, and bought by Alphonse Mingana in the 1920s. Minanga was a British orientalist who had been born in Ottoman Kurdistan, and in the 1920s made multiple trips to northern Iraq to acquire ancient manuscripts, which later became the Mingana Collection at the University of Birmingham, in England.

Download or read book Septuagint Joel written by Scriptural Research Institute and published by Scriptural Research Institute. This book was released on 2020-07-26 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book of Joel is generally considered one of the older surviving books of the Hebrew Scriptures, with most scholars dating it to before the Torah was written, or at least heavily redacted in the time of King Josiah. Most scholars accept that Joel was written by a prophet called Joel sometime during the ancient kingdoms of Samaria and Judea, although estimates of when he lived vary greatly. The dominant view is that he lived in the 9th-century BC, however, some place his life as late as the 7th-century. His world was very different from the later Kingdom of Judea that emerged in the 2nd-century BC, as the Israelites of his time were still polytheistic, worshiping the Canaanite Elohim, as well as statues of Iaw (Masoretic Yahweh), the God the Jews and Samaritans would later worship. As it is unclear when exactly Joel lived, it is difficult to place his writing into a historical context, however, he does refer to his temple as being in the Valley of Shittim, which identifies his Lord as Ba'al Hammon (𐤁𐤏𐤋 𐤇𐤌𐤍‎), the Canaanite fertility god. The Temple of Hammon, at the ruins of Tell el-Hammam in Jordan, reportedly sent tribute to Solomon when he was the king, and the town around the city existed from roughly 980 to 332 BC. As Joel mentioned the Valley of Jehoshaphat, it is accepted he lived after the time of King Jehoshaphat, King of Judea between circa 870 and 849 BC. At the time, the region northeast of the Dead Sea, where the Valley of Shittim is located, was under the dominion of the Kingdom of Samaria. Joel also refers to Zion and Jerusalem, which implies a strong connection to the Kingdom of Judah While the Septuagint's Book of Joel makes a clear division between the 'Temple of your god,' and the 'Temple of the Lord,' the Masoretic Texts do not make this distinction, interchangeably referring to a Temple of God and a Temple of Yahweh. Only a few fragments have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, half of which confirm the Septuagint's translation of 'Temple of your god,' and half of which confirm the Masoretic 'Temple of God.' These fragments date back to the Hasmonean and Herodian dynasties, after the Jews had adopted the Assyrian script. As the adoption of the Assyrian script under the Hasmoneans was likely when the name Yahweh was inserted into the Books of the Twelve Prophets, the earlier translation of the Twelve into Greek circa 180 BC likely reflects an older version of the texts. The differences between the versions of Joel found in the Septuagint and Masoretic Texts indicate a significant redaction to names took place between the time the Septuagint was translated circa 180 BC, and the time the Masorites started copying the text in the 4th century AD. The Greek translation of the Twelve Prophets indicates that several Canaanite gods were still named in the books when it was translated at the library of Alexandria, however, most of these names were changed slightly by the time the Masorites started working with the texts, resulting in strange sentences in the Masoretic versions of the Twelve, which modern translators rectify by adding words to their translations that are not in the Masoretic Texts based on the assumption that the words were lost at some point.

Download or read book Septuagint 1 Paralipomenon written by Scriptural Research Institute and published by Digital Ink Productions. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid 3ʳᵈ century BC, King Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt ordered a translation of the ancient Hebrew scriptures for the Library of Alexandria. The creation of the Septuagint resulted from this order. It is generally accepted that there were several versions of the ancient Hebrew and Samaritan scriptures before the translation of the Septuagint. The two books of the Paralipomena were translated into Greek and added to the Septuagint around 180 BC after a large number of refugees fled from the war in Judea and settled in Egypt. The two books of the Paralipomena were one book in the Masoretic Texts: the book of Divrei-hayyamim. Subsequent Latin translations were renamed 1ˢᵗ and 2ⁿᵈ Chronikon by Jerome in the 5ᵗʰ century AD. Subsequent English translations of the Old Testament labeled these books as 1ˢᵗ and 2ⁿᵈ Chronicles. The term Paralipomena, which means ‘things left out,’ is similar to the Hebrew name Divrei-hayyamim, which means ‘things in the days.’ The books are a collection of texts from various eras of Israelite history, spanning the era of the old Israelite Kingdoms, circa 1000 BC, through the Persian conquest, of circa 539 BC. Scholars have debated the origin of the books throughout their history, and there is no consensus within Rabbinical literature, Christian literature, or modern scholarship. The general Rabbinical view is that the two books of Paralipomena were written by one author, as Divrei-hayyamim, and then translated into Greek. The dominant early Christian view was that the books were written by Ezra the Scribe, circa 350 BC, however, this view was generally abandoned in Western Europe during the Protestant Reformation. Modern scholarly analysis has no consensus, however, the books do themselves indicate the eras they were compiled, nevertheless, the authors remain unknown. Based on the references within 1ˢᵗ Paralipomenon, the book was compiled sometime after 732 BC, when Tiglath-Pileser III deported the Reubenites, Gadites, and the people of Manasseh to other regions of the Assyrian Empire. The surviving Hebrew text of Divrei-hayyamim does, however, contain a reference to the Temple in Jerusalem as the ‘Temple of the Gods’, which means the original text of the book has to predate King Josiah’s reforms of circa 625 BC, and likely predates King Hezekiah’s similar reforms decades earlier. Both Hezekiah and Josiah are recorded as removing the idols of the gods from the temple, which had by all accounts been in the temple since it was built by King Solomon. The books of Paralipomena differ slightly from the later Masoretic book of Divrei-hayyamim, although the three are generally similar. In 200 BC the Greek Kingdom of Syria under the Seleucid Dynasty took Judea from Egypt and began an effort to Hellenize the Judeans, which included erecting a statue of Zeus in the Second Temple in Jerusalem and effectively banning traditional Judaism. This Hellenizing activity was partially successful, creating the Sadducee faction of Judaism, however, it also led the Maccabean Revolt in 165 BC, which itself created the independent Kingdom of Judea. This Kingdom had a tenuous alliance with the Roman Republic until General Pompey conquered Syria into the Roman Republic in 69 BC. Pomey’s goal was to liberate Greek-speaking communities in the Middle East that had fallen under the rule of non-Greeks when the Seleucids Syrian Empire had collapsed, and he carved up Judea, and Edom to the east, placing Greek-speaking cities under the protection of the Roman province of Syria. He also liberated several smaller communities that had been occupied by Judea, granting them self-government, including Ashdod, Yavne, Jaffa, Dora, Marissa, and Samaria.

Download or read book Ugaritic Texts Ba al Cycle written by Scriptural Research Institute and published by Scriptural Research Institute. This book was released on 1901 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ba‘al Cycle, or Ba‘al Saga, is a collection of stories about Ba‘al Hadad, the supreme god of the Canaanite pantheon in the late bronze age. The Ugaritic Texts are ancient tablets that were recovered from archaeological digs at the ruins of Ugarit, a bronze-age city in northwest Syria, at the foot of the mountain Jebel Aqra on the modern Syrian-Turkish border. The Ba‘al Cycle is generally divided into several sections, based on the groupings of the tablets that were discovered, however, this series of translations is divided into just two sections, Victorious Ba‘al, and Ba‘al Defeats Mot. These divisions are always subjective. Some translators divide the central section regarding the building of Ba‘al’s Temple on Mount Zaphon from the preceding battle with Yam. Others also separate out the intermediate section involving Ba‘al’s discussion with Anat, however, this series is divided based on the apparent shift in source material between the early section and the later section. The earliest section appears to be a translation from ancient Egyptian and includes Egyptian loanwords, as well as numerous references to the houses of the gods, which seems to be a reference to the system of decans used in Egypt from the Old Kingdom onward, to tell time at night. The main section of Ba‘al Defeats Mot, appears to have been translated from an old Akkadian text that retold a Hurrian and Hattic story about two gods descending into the underworld. Many Akkadian, Hattic, and Hurrian loanwords are found in the later section, which are mostly missing from the earlier section, as well as the conclusion. The major exception being the messenger Ủgar, who was a Hurrian psychopomp, like the Canaanite Horon, and Greek Charon. As the city of Ugarit was named after him, this name clearly predates the text itself, and so it cannot be used to date the text. Nevertheless, does indicate that the city was originally a Hurrian settlement before becoming Semitic, which helps to explain why the older second section, appears to be a translation of an Akkadian retelling of a Hurrian story. Additionally, Luwian names are found in the second section, which places the origin of the Akkadian source text to sometime between when the Luwians settled in western Anatolia, generally dated to circa 2000 BC, and when the Hittites absorbed the Hattians around 1700 BC. As the text appears to have then been translated into Egyptian, before Ugaritic, it may trace the route the Hyksos took to Egypt, via the Luwian, Hattic, and Hurrian lands. The first section, Victorious Ba‘al, appears to be a later text, written after 1700 BC, when a massive series of earthquakes destroyed most of the Minoan cities and palaces. The earthquake marks the division between the Old Palace Period and the New Palace Period of Minoan architecture. At the time, there was a significant change in the sky, as the Bull stopped being the asterism that marked the northern vernal equinox, and the Ram replaced him. Unlike the Bull, the Ram was not on the ecliptic, the line in the sky that the sun and planets travel on relative to the earth, but above it. Below the ecliptic, and closer to it, was the Sea Monster, later called Cetus. The battle in the Victorious Ba‘al, was about the storm-god Hadad battling the sea-god Yam, to take over the kingship from the ram-god Attar, and appears to be about the struggle between these two gods to rule the earth after the bull god El had turned over his throne to the ram god Attar. That transition would have happened in circa 1700 BC, and so this text had to be written later than that.

Download or read book Dodeka Book of the Prophets written by Scriptural Research Institute and published by Scriptural Research Institute. This book was released on 1901 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-3rd century BC, King Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt ordered a translation of the ancient Hebrew scriptures for the Library of Alexandria, which resulted in the creation of the Septuagint, as well as several other books of Jewish and Samaritan scriptures, including the Book of Enoch, Book of Job, Testaments of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the Dodeka. The Dodeka was not part of the collection of texts the Jews fleeing Egypt carried with them from the Jewish Temple in Elephantine, and is therefore believed to have been translated into Greek later, circa 180 BC. It would eventually be added to the Septuagint as the Book of Dodeka circa 140 BC, and then much later be divided into its twelve constituent books by the early Christians in the 3rd-century AD, subsequently called the twelve minor prophets. The books comprising the Dodeka all date from between 900 and 500 BC, and represent the works of twelve ancient prophets, which in the original Greek translation, represented several different gods. These were not Jewish prophets, but Israelite prophets, mostly living the age before King Josiah banned the old gods, in approximately 625 BC. Most of the books in the Dodeka were written before King Josiah's reforms. The books of Hosea, Amos, and Micah are set during the 8th-century BC, when the kingdom of Samaria fought a series of wars against its more powerful northern neighbor Assyria, ultimately being conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire circa 722 BC. The books of Joel, Obadiah, and Jonah follow, although their exact settings are not clear. The books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah follow, set in the 7th-century BC, as the Kingdom of Judea struggled for its survival between the powers of the time, Assyria to the north, Egypt to the south, and Babylon to the east, ultimately falling to the Neo-Babylonian Empire circa 586 BC. There is a gap in the prophets during the era when Babylon ruled Judea, and they continue with the books of Haggai, and the first half of Zachariah, set in the late-6th-century, after the Persians have conquered the Babylonian Empire. Combining the various Elohim that are appear to have been the text the Greeks translated, including Shaddai (Shaddayin), On (Aven), Dagon, Tirath (Tirosh), Yitzhar, Reshef (Blight), Mot, Hades (Sheol), and Abaddon (Destruction), Ba'al Hadad, Ba'al Hammon, Qetesh Asherah, Sydyk, and Shemesh, it strongly suggests that the text was heavily edited in the Hasmonean era when Yahweh Sabaoth replaced Lord El. Unfortunately, the existing Dead Sea Scrolls shed little light on the situation as they date to the era the edits would have taken place, but are in the script that should only show the edited version. Nevertheless, they are so damaged almost none of the questions about the differences between the Dodeka and Masoretic Texts could be resolved, even if they were in the Canaanite script.

Download or read book Septuagint Hosea written by Scriptural Research Institute and published by Scriptural Research Institute. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 67 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book of Hosea is generally considered one of the oldest surviving books of the Hebrew Scriptures, with most scholars dating it to before the Torah was written, or at least heavily redacted in the time of King Josiah. Most scholars accept that Hosea was written by a prophet called Hosea between 760 and 720 BC, who was most likely from the region of Ephraim, in central modern Israel and the Palestinian West Bank. His world was very different from the later Kingdom of Judea that emerged in the 2nd-century BC, as the Israelites of his time were still polytheistic, worshiping the Canaanite Elohim, as well as statues of Iaw (Masoretic Yahweh), the God the Jews and Samaritans would later worship. In the aftermath of their defeat in the Syro-Ephraimite War, many Israelites appear to have returned to worshiping the ancient Canaanite gods, implying they felt abandoned by El during the war. Hosea claimed that they were not worshiping El, but were worshiping the 'calf of Samaria,' which, archaeologically speaking, is Iaw. Several artifacts have been found dating to the era that depict Iaw as a calf, and include phrases written in Canaanite (Paleo-Hebrew) such as 'Yahweh of Samaria,' and 'Yahweh of the Teman.' Most of these artifacts have been found in the Sinai Peninsula at Kuntillet Ajrud, along the ancient Judean-Egyptian frontier, and are dated to 800 BC. These artifacts also list Yahweh along with several ancient Canaanite gods, including El (God), Asherah, and Ba'al (Lord). The Book of Hosea also refers to the Israelites worshiping gods other than El, which is the main cause of his anger with his people. He repeatedly refers to the Israelites worshiping the Lord (Ba'al), or Lords (Ba'alim), which he also identified as having established the sabbath, meaning the Lords in question were the Elohim, who established the sabbath after creating the world in the first six 'days' in Genesis chapter 1. As the current version of the Torah is accepted as having been compiled at the time of King Josiah, shortly before the fall of Judea. Hosea's writing proves that there were at least two copies in circulation in his time, the version he was referencing, and the Elohist version that those worshiping the Lords were using. These two Torahs are accepted as having been harmonized into the current version before the end of Josiah's time, resulting in the two creation stories and other duplicated stories that have conflicting details.

Download or read book Ugaritic Texts Pertaining to Keret written by Scriptural Research Institute and published by Scriptural Research Institute. This book was released on 1901 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pertaining to Keret, also called the Legend of Keret, or the Epic of Keret is a collection of three tablets recovered from archaeological digs in the 1920s and 1930s at the ruins of Ugarit, a bronze-age city in northwest Syria, at the foot of the mountain Jebel Aqra on the modern Syrian-Turkish border. They date to Late-Bronze Era, specifically estimated to sometime around 1350 BC based on the name of the scribe Elimelek, who also transcribed the Ba‘al Cycle for King Niqmaddu of Ugarit. The story itself is set much earlier, and in a land far to the east of Ugarit, likely along the Khabur River in eastern modern Syria, and the Tur Abdin highlands of southeastern modern Turkey. They tell parts of the story of an ancient Hurrian king named Keret, and his wife Hurriya, unfortunately, the tablets are quite damaged, and there were probably once more tablets to the story. The story begins and ends abruptly, suggesting that there was at least one tablet before and after the surviving tablets.Only part of the story of Keret and Hurriya has been found, on three tablets, all of which are broken, leaving a fragmentary story which is, unfortunately, is missing its beginning and ending, and there may have also been another tablet between Tablets 2 and 3. The surviving story begins with King Keret of Beth Khubur having already lost everything other than his throne. In some respects, the story has parallels to the Book of Job, both at the beginning and at the end, with a parallel to Homer’s Illiad in the middle. It begins with his entire family having died, and him being the only surviving son of his mother. Also, his wife and children have died, although the details of how everyone died have not survived. The Bull god El came to Keret in his dreams and told him to march his army to the land of Ủdủm, and attack the towns and villages, capturing the women that worked the fields and as woodcutters. Then to wait seven days until the king of Ủdủm agreed to his terms, and surrendered his eldest daughter to Keret to become his new wife. While it is not entirely clear where the story is set, the names Beth Khubur and Ủdủm suggest the Khabur River tributary of the Euphrates River, in eastern modern Syria. Beth Khubur is a combination of two words, bt, meaning house or temple in Canaanite, and ḫbr, originally the Sumerian word for river, which was adopted by the Akkadians as the name for two major tributaries of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. The Khabur which was a tributary for the Euphrates has four major sources, three of which are in the Tur Abdin highlands of southeastern Turkey, which is likely what was being referred to as Ủdủm in the story.

Download or read book The Amarna Letters written by Scriptural Research Institute and published by Scriptural Research Institute. This book was released on 1901 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Amarna Letters are a collection of clay tablets found in the ruins of El Amarna, Egypt, in the 1880s. The city of El Amarna was built by the Pharaoh Akhenaten, during his religious reforms in the 1340s BC, but was then abandoned after he died and Egypt reverted to worshiping the old gods. These letters provide a unique glimpse into a period of Egyptian history, that the Egyptians themselves attempted to erase. After Akhenaten's heir Tutankhamen died, his successor Ay was only able to hold the throne for a few years before Horemheb seized it, and attempted to reunite the Egyptians by erasing all records of Akhenaten's reforms, which included erasing Akhenaten's name from almost every record in Egypt. By this period, El Amarna appears to have already been mostly abandoned, and therefore Egyptologists were able to reconstruct the strange story of Akhenaten's reign, in the middle of the New Kingdom era. The Amarna letters were recovered from the royal archives in El Amarna, where they appear to have been archived after having been translated for the royal court. The letters are inscribed on clay tablets in Cuneiform, the dominant form of writing in Mesopotamia, Canaan, and the neighboring cultures in Anatolia and Cyprus at the time. The shape of the Cuneiform logograms used is Akkadian, the parent form of the later Neo-Babylonian, Neo-Assyrian, and Ugaritic forms of Cuneiform, however, the language used in the Letters is not pure Akkadian. The Letters are between various members of the Egyptian royal court, and many different cities and nations across the Middle East, including Babylon, Assyria, Mitanni, and Cyprus, and therefore the language within the Letters is not consistent. Within the letters from Canaanite cities, all of which were subject to Egypt at the time, several transliterated names are also used, which appears to be a direct precursor to the later development of Ugaritic Cuneiform by 1200 BC, which was an abjad similar to the Canaanite script that was developed by 1000 BC, however, used Cuneiform logograms instead of alphabet-like letters. The surviving letters were mostly about trade and diplomacy, however, do include a great deal of information about what was happening in the Middle East at the time. In particular, they demonstrate how limited Egypt's actual control of its Canaanite holdings was, where the governors of cities were constantly requesting military help to defend themselves against each other, the marauding Habirus, and the Hittite-backed Amorites in northern Canaan. The Amarna Letters were written during the mid-1330s BC, during the reigns of the Pharaohs Amenhotep III and Akhenaten, although it is not always clear when in their respective reigns the letters were written, or even which pharaoh was on the throne at the time.

Download or read book Septuagint Lamentations written by Scriptural Research Institute and published by Scriptural Research Institute. This book was released on 1901 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Septuagint's version of the book of Lamentations, is virtually identical to the Masoretic book of Eykhoh, which translates as 'How?' This was a question many were no doubt asking in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem, a city that had stood since before the Amarna Letters were written, generally dated to the 1300s BC. The Greek name of the book, Thrênoe, translates as 'laments' or 'wailings,' and is the source of the common English name Lamentations. To date, fragments of Eykhoh / Lamentations have been found in three of the Qumran caves, all dating to the Herodian Dynasty, circa 37 BC to 6 AD, and all in the Assyrian (Hebrew) script, as one would expect from the period. The texts that survive, generally match the texts found in the Masoretic Texts, with minor spelling variations, however, do have a significant number of deviations where the terms 'adonoi (אֲדֹנָ֖י) and dvn (אדוני), and the name Yahweh (יְהוָ֥ה) and Yhwh (יהוה) are concerned. These two sets of terms are synonymous, with 'adonoi (אֲדֹנָ֖י) and dvn (אדוני) being two ways of spelling the Aramaic and Hebrew term 'my lord,' and Yahweh (יְהוָ֥ה) and Yhwh (יהוה) both being the Hebrew spelling of the name of the Jewish god, however, these terms are not used in the Masoretic Texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls in the same places. Meaning, where the Masoretic Texts reads reads 'adonoi,' the Dead Sea Scrolls may read 'dvn' or 'Yhwh,' and in places where the Masoretic Texts reads 'Yahweh,' the Dead Sea Scrolls may again read either 'dvn' or 'Yhwh.' This is most evident in Dead Sea Scroll 4QLama, in which a large amount of the text of chapters 1 and 2 survive, as these terms are more common in those chapters. As all of the fragments of Eykhoh / Lamentations found among the Dead Sea Scrolls date to the Herodian Dynasty, it seems clear that at that time, Yahweh was considered 'Lord' among Jews, however, there is no evidence of the name being in the text that the Greeks translated a couple of centuries earlier at the Library of Alexandria. The Septuagint does include the name Yahweh, as Iaw (Ἰαω), derived from the Aramaic Yhw, in some early fragments, however, there is no evidence that it was used in the text that the Greeks translated Lamentations from.

Download or read book Septuagint Wisdom of Solomon written by Scriptural Research Institute and published by Scriptural Research Institute. This book was released on 2020-06-14 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The final version of the Septuagint was published in 132 BC, which included the Wisdom of Solomon, a book of wisdom credited to King Solomon, circa 950 BC. This book was never copied by the Masoretes, and no fragments of it have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, indicating it was not used much in Judea, if at all. A Syriac version of it is included in the Peshitta, the Syrian Orthodox Bible, which the Syrian Orthodox Church has always claimed was transcribed from the Aramaic text that the Jews translated into Hebrew, however, most modern scholars believe the Peshitta was a Syriac translation of the Septuagint. As a result, Wisdom of Solomon is a text that cannot be proven to have existed earlier than 132 BC, when it appeared in the Septuagint, and some scholars have concluded it was written in Greek at the Library of Alexandria. Wherever it was written, it is a very un-Jewish Israelite text, which contradicts, and occasionally even attacks the Torah. These contradictions are often interpreted as indicators that the writer was not particularly knowledgeable regarding the Torah, suggesting a Hellenized Jew, and therefore, it is generally assumed the book was written shortly before its inclusion in the Septuagint. All of these assumptions are, of course, based on the underlying assumption that Judaism was already standardized before the Greek Era. The books of Maccabees tell a very story. Given the complex religious history of the Second Temple Era, and the fact that none of the Israelites in Elephantine appear to have even heard of Moses in the 5th-century BC, the Wisdom of Solomon does not seem out of place or anachronistic at all, and dismissing it based on contradictions with the Torah seems completely invalid. The Wisdom of Solomon itself appears to have been redacted before the Greek translation, as the first half is about the spirit of wisdom, Sophia in Greek, who is credited with actually doing most of what God (or Yahweh in the Masoretic Text) was credited with doing in the Torah, however, this changes abruptly to crediting the Lord in chapter 11, and Sophia disappears entirely from the rest of the book. Chapter 11 was also the beginning of what scholars call the ‘history’ section of the book, which generally retold the history found in the Torah up until the exodus from Egypt, however, with some differences. One significant difference was the identification of the Lord as the Sun in chapter 16.

Download or read book Septuagint 4 Kingdoms written by Scriptural Research Institute and published by Digital Ink Productions. This book was released on 2019-12-12 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Septuagint's 4ᵗʰ Kingdoms tells the history of the kingdoms of Samaria and Judah from circa 850 BC until the Babylonians conquered Judah circa 600 BC. This era of history is well documented in the historical records of the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Babylonians, and unlike the earlier books of the Kingdoms, is generally accepted by historians. This era included the rise and fall of the Aramean Empire based in Damascus, the rise and fall of the Assyrian Empire farther north, the Assyrian wars against Egypt, and the sack of Thebes, and ultimately the rise of the Babylonian Empire. During this tumultuous time, the kingdoms of Israel, Judah, and Aram, which also appears to have been considered an Israelite kingdom by the prophet Ezekiel, struggled for survival and fell one by one to the expanding empires around them. Before the era of 4ᵗʰ Kingdoms, Samara had established an empire, occupying the Aramean kingdoms of Damascus and Hama in modern Syria, which had ended suddenly when an earthquake had leveled Samaria. The earthquake was mentioned in the Book of Amos, and archaeological evidence of it is found throughout modern northern Israel and the Palestinian West Bank. It is estimated to have been between 7.8 and 8.2 on the Richter Scale, and aftershocks likely lasted around 6 months. In the aftermath, Damascus rose to form its own Aramean empire, occupying Hama, and northern Samaria, as well as Gilead in southern modern Syria, which had been part of Samaria since the division of Israel into Samaria and Judah. However, as Assyria began to expand to the north, Samaria and Aram formed an anti-Assyria alliance, and the Samarian forces were stationed in Aram to help defend the northern border from the Assyrians. Judah was invited to join the alliance, but instead formed an alliance with the Assyrians and invaded and pillaged Samaria and southern Aram. Judah continued to be an ally of Assyria as the Assyrians conquered Aram, Samaria, and Sidon which had also allied with them. Fortunately, as Samaria finally fell to the Assyrians after a three-year campaign, the king of Assyria died, sparking a civil war between rival heirs. This civil war provided Judah with almost twenty years to build up defenses, and King Hezekiah built extensively across his kingdom. Archaeological evidence of Hezekiah's construction projects is common in the region around Jerusalem, and the southern region of the Palestinian West Bank, including the Broad Wall in Jerusalem, and the Siloam Tunnel, which connected Jerusalem with a water source outside the walls of the city. Ancient records of anti-siege artillery on the walls of Jerusalem also exist, likely ballistas or catapults, so, it is clear the Judahites knew they would be next. While the Assyrians did lay siege to Jerusalem according to 4ᵗʰ Kingdoms, they were not able to conquer the city. The Assyrian Annals record the campaign against Judah and record the cities they captured, which did not include Jerusalem, and so historians accept the general account of what happened found in 4ᵗʰ Kingdoms.

Download or read book Septuagint Proverbs written by Scriptural Research Institute and published by Scriptural Research Institute. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book of Proverbs is generally attributed to King Solomon, who is explicitly referred to as the author of some of the proverbs. A number proverbs are known to have been copied from older collections of proverbs, most notably the Instruction of Amenemope, which was apparently written by Amenemope son of Kanakht sometime during the Ramesside Period between 1300 and 1075 BC. The Instruction of Amenemope, also called the Wisdom of Amenemopet, was an Egyptian New Kingdom era piece of wisdom literature that is generally considered a masterpiece within the genre. The Instruction of Amenemope was rediscovered by Egyptologists in 1888, after being lost for around 2400 years. Subsequently, eight partial copies have been found, ranging in estimated dates ranging between 1069 and 500 BC. The unnamed wife of Solomon who was the daughter of and Egyptian Pharoah, was likely the daughter of the last native Egyptian Pharaoh, Usermaatre Amenemope, who would have most likely carried a copy of the Instruction of Amenemope into Israel with her. The name Amenemope seems to have been quite common in ancient Egypt, and it is unlikely that the pharaoh was named after the scribe who wrote the Instruction, but, no doubt an Egyptian princess would have taken something to give her new barbarian husband, and a book called the Instruction of Amenemope, a name identical to her father's would have been a valuable gift, especially the part about not chasing after women other than his wife. Apparently, Solomon was selective in the parts of the Instruction that he chose to follow.

Download or read book Septuagint Jeremiah written by Scriptural Research Institute and published by Scriptural Research Institute. This book was released on 1901 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book of Jeremiah was likely added to the Septuagint sometime before 165 BC, as it does not appear to have been influenced by the Hasmonean redaction found in the Masoretic Texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Book of Jeremiah is one of the least standardized texts of the Septuagint, with more than one Greek translation surviving, and not all copies of the Septuagint using the same version. The Masoretic and Peshitta versions are also different, resulting in multiple versions of the Book of Jeremiah. These versions all include essentially the same text, however, organized into different chapter structures. These variant readings appear to date back to the Aramaic source-texts that the Greek and Hebrew translations are based on. It is unclear if the Syriac version of Jeremiah in the Peshitta was a copy of an Aramaic Jeremiah, or translated from one of the Greek versions, however, is similar to a Greek version, meaning either it was translated from the Greek version, or was the source for the Greek version. There were attempts to standardize the Septuagint and Syriac precursors to the Peshitta, and so it is unclear which version influenced which. This question of which order the chapters of Jeremiah should be in, is similar to the question of which order the books of the prophets should be in. In the Septuagint, Jeremiah follows Isaiah and precedes Ezekiel, which is the same order as in the Masoretic Texts, however, in the Peshitta, Jeremiah is the first of these three books. In the Masoretic Texts, the 'Twelve Prophets' follow the three 'Latter Prophets,' however, in both the Septuagint and Peshitta, the Twelve precede the Three. It is not in question that the twelve were translated as the Dodeka before being added to the Septuagint, however, the question of when Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Baruch were translated remains a question. Isaiah appears to have been partially redacted by Simon the Zealot before being translated into Greek, and therefore the translation likely took place sometime between 145 and 140 BC. However, Jeremiah does not show signs of Simon's edits, and so likely predates the Maccabean Revolt. According to rabbinical tradition, Jeremiah came before Isaiah in the scriptures before the Hasmonean era, which supports the Peshitta's book structure, and explains why the Greeks would have translated it before Isaiah. The first 24 chapters of the various books of Jeremiah, all follow the same order, implying that these were the original Book of Jeremiah. Likewise, the final chapter, chapter 52, is always the same chapter, implying it was added on later. Chapter 52 appears to have been extracted from another book about the history of Judah, and may have originated in the lost Chronicles of the Kings of Judah, which was mentioned in 3rd Kingdoms (Masoretic Kings). Chapters 25 through 51 follow different orders, however, all appear to have been based on Aramaic source-texts. The Hebrew translation maintains many Aramaic words mixed into the Hebrew, while the Greek has transliterated Aramaic words, which had to have originated in an Aramaic source. It is unclear which so many chapter structures exist, or if they were present in the Aramaic texts, however, other differences between the Greek and Hebrew texts are clearly inherited from the Aramaic, implying the divergent chapter structures originated in the Aramaic texts as well.

Download or read book Septuagint Isaiah written by Scriptural Research Institute and published by Scriptural Research Institute. This book was released on 1901 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the Book of Isaiah, he lived during the reigns of several Judahite Kings including Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, spanning the late 700s and early 600s BC, working as a prophet for possibly more than 80 years. The Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds both report that he was killed by King Manasseh, who ruled between 687 and 643 BC, however, the stories differ somewhat. In the older Jerusalem Talmud Gemara, complied between 350 and 400 AD, reports that Isaiah was killed when a tree he was hiding in was cut down on the orders of King Manasseh, while the later Babylonian Talmud Gemara, complied between 400 and 500 AD, reports that King Manasseh had Isaiah sawed in half, not the tree he was hiding in. In both cases, King Manasseh ordered the execution of Isaiah as a heretic because he had claimed to have seen God, while in the Torah Moses claimed no one could see God and live. This seems inconsistent with the reports in 4th Kingdoms (Masoretic Kings), in which Manasseh was a polytheist, as polytheists could see at least some of their gods, such as the sun, moon, and earth. Therefore, it is more likely that if Manasseh did have Isaiah executed, it was because Isaiah denounced his rule of Judah, as Isaiah’s final chapters are clearly a denouncement of Judah, and could not have taken place before Manasseh’s time. The stories of how Isaiah died in the Torahs were likely copied from the earlier Lives of the Prophets, generally dated to the 1st-century AD, which also was later used by Muslim scholars who recognize Isaiah (أشعياء) as a prophet even though he was not mentioned in the Quran or Hadith. As Manasseh could not have executed Isaiah until after the death of Hezekiah, who Isaiah was closely allied with, Isiah could not have been killed until after 687 BC and must have been killed before 643 BC. It is reported in Rabbinical literature that Isaiah was the maternal grandfather of Manasseh, which, if true, would mean Isaiah was the father of Manasseh’s mother Hephzibah, and thereby father-in-law of King Hezekiah, which would support Isaiah’s claim to have been a major prophet in the time of Hezekiah’s father Ahaz’s reign, between 732 and 716 BC. Therefore his rise to prominence as a prophet must have taken place during the reign of King Jotham, circa 742 and 735 BC, and likely his predecessor king Uzziah between 783 and 742 BC. This indicates that Isaiah was in his 90s or older when Manasseh had him executed, which makes his climbing a tree unlikely and supports the alternate report, that Manasseh had him sawed in half, and not a tree he was hiding in. The book of 4th Kingdoms reports that Manasseh killed supporters of his father Hezekiah’s religious reforms, which would have undoubtedly included Isaiah, and therefore, while the execution of Isaiah is not itself found in the Septuagint or Masoretic Tanakh, it is implied. Archaeological evidence has shown that at the beginning of the era of Isaiah, the Kingdoms of Samaria and Judah went through considerable changes. When Uzziah reigned in Jerusalem, the larger Kingdom of Samaria to the north was the wealthiest and most populous nation in Canaan and had occupied the kingdoms of Aram and Hama to the north, giving the Samarians a dominant position in the region, occupying most of modern northern Israel, the northern Palestinian West Bank, eastern Lebanon, and western Syria. At the time, the coastal cities of Sidon and Tyre continued to be independent, as well as Judah to the south, and Moab, Ammon, and Edom to the southeast. This era of wealth and prosperity was suddenly and dramatically ended by a magnitude 8 earthquake circa 760 BC, which would have caused aftershocks for up to a year. Entire cities were leveled, and the Dead Sea fault Zone was radically altered, causing a drop in the water levels and a general drying of the Arabah region to the south of the Dead Sea.

Download or read book Testament of Adam written by Scriptural Research Institute and published by Scriptural Research Institute. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Testament of Adam is an early Christian work, which likely drew from older Jewish and Sethian sources. It has survived into the present in multiple languages including Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Karshuni, Ethiopic, Armenian, and Georgian. The original text was likely in Aramaic or Syriac, although Greek is also a possibility. The oldest surviving copy is from the 9th-century AD, however historians are confident that it influenced the 'Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan' and other early Christian works, as well as early Islamic works, and are therefore confident is dating it to the 2nd to 5th-centuries AD. The fact that it includes the prediction that the world was about to end in fire, dates is reasonably conclusively to the 2nd-century AD, when that belief was common among Christians.

Download or read book Book of Eve written by Scriptural Research Institute and published by Scriptural Research Institute. This book was released on 2019-10-19 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book of Eve, more commonly called the Slavonic Life of Adam and Eve, is the Old Slavonic version of a work believed to have been written in a Semitic language, as there are terms transliterated into the Greek, Latin, Armenian, and Slavonic versions from a Semitic language, however, it is not known positively which language as the original text is lost, and so far, no fragments have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls that can be firmly linked to it. The closest text discovered to date among the Dead Sea Scrolls would be the Genesis Apocryphon scroll, written in Aramaic and generally dated to between 37 BC to 50 AD. The Book of Eve is by far the shortest surviving version of the Life of Adam and Eve, and most of its contents are also told in the Latin and Armenian versions, however, from the opposite view. In the Latin Life of Adam and Eve and Armenian Penitence of Adam, Eve is tricked a second time by the devil, who has come to her disguised as an angel, however, in the Book of Eve, she recognizes the devil and ignores him. This is the exact opposite of what the Latin and Armenian versions report, and this opposing viewpoint is also found when Eve asks Adam to kill her in the Latin and Armenian version, but in the Slavonic versions, it is Adam who brought up the question of killing Eve. The obvious conclusion is that someone decided to redact an older Latin or Armenian version of the Life of Adam and Eve, and created the Book of Eve, a version in which Eve was more heroic, however, this cannot be the case. The Book of Eve includes the name of the angel Ioil, which appears to be derived from the Apocalypse of Moses' Jael, however, the stories in the Book of Eve are not in the Apocalypse of Moses. Additionally, the Book of Eve includes a transliteration of the word Elohim, a word not found in any of the other surviving translations. The presence of the word Elohim confirms that the Book of Eve was translated from a Semitic source, and, that the 'powers' in the Latin and Armenian versions were originally Elohim in the Semitic version.