The Book of Enoch is cited in Jude. The citation parallels Matthew 25:31-46. And the (partial) Book of Enoch was among the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is also maintained by the Ethiopian Church, which is why we know the complete text today. Another Ethiopian book not maintained by the Catholic Church is The Ascents of Isaiah, which supplies a date for the execution of Peter by Nero in October, 64 CE. Clement notes that Paul was martyred under the prefects, which was between the time that Nero committed suicide and Galba became emperor, in June 68 CE. You may have heard that Nero martyred both Peter and Paul. This is not true, and the question is why did this become the story.
Just now came across this. I have seen scholars dismiss the Qumran parallels, but I don't feel that it is neutral scholarship.
The question I have which is likely unanswerable, how did the Gospel authors who were native Greek speakers and who likely considered themselves separate from the Jewish community, how did they come across these concepts?
The people who wrote the Greek Gospels were translating other materials that weren't in Greek. Think about the beginning of Genesis:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth
And the earth was lifeless and chaotic
And darkness covered the face of the deep
And God said Let there be light.
And God saw that the light was good.
Notice those Ands? They relate the sentences into a paragraph, and are a Hebrew idiom. Now look at the beginning of the Gospel of John:
In the beginning was the Word
And the Word was with God
And the Word was God
This is tell that the Gospel of John was originally a Hebrew document translated into Greek. Now, the story of Nicodemus depends on a Greek pun that has no Hebrew equivalent, so some argue that John is originally Greek, but see the prologue of Luke, which acknowledges the previous writings and witness accounts "delivered them [those things] to us". This is a description of how the Gospels were written in Greek. Multiple documents were combined to make the received texts, with the Hebrew and Aramaic parts translated into Greek.
Saying that the Christian Scriptures were originally Greek is misleading; while the received texts can claim to be originally Greek, the sources of those texts probably were not only Greek.
Hi Tom, thanks for taking the time to read and share your thoughts.
It's important to remember that Torah was oral for centuries before it was put on papyrus, and the composition of the five books was a late development, not the starting point. Torah doesn't need a book to exist, and there have certainly been countless Jews who knew all or most of the stories, or at least some version of them, long before anyone decided to write them down. So Jesus didn't have to be able to read and write to know what the Jewish scriptures said.
There's no way to know anything about Jesus with any real degree of certainty. But he and his disciples were more than likely illiterate and didn't speak Greek, the language of the educated elite. That he couldn't fund his own ministry and relied on patrons like Mary Magdalene and Joanna is indirect evidence of his poverty.
" , , , , , , , , , , if history had broken slightly differently we’d be reading about the Essenes the way we read about the Christians, , , , , "
I would seriously love to read this scenario, in detail.
Just saying ~ it might be a fun read.
That's an interesting idea. Let me sit with it for a bit.
The Book of Enoch is cited in Jude. The citation parallels Matthew 25:31-46. And the (partial) Book of Enoch was among the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is also maintained by the Ethiopian Church, which is why we know the complete text today. Another Ethiopian book not maintained by the Catholic Church is The Ascents of Isaiah, which supplies a date for the execution of Peter by Nero in October, 64 CE. Clement notes that Paul was martyred under the prefects, which was between the time that Nero committed suicide and Galba became emperor, in June 68 CE. You may have heard that Nero martyred both Peter and Paul. This is not true, and the question is why did this become the story.
Just now came across this. I have seen scholars dismiss the Qumran parallels, but I don't feel that it is neutral scholarship.
The question I have which is likely unanswerable, how did the Gospel authors who were native Greek speakers and who likely considered themselves separate from the Jewish community, how did they come across these concepts?
The people who wrote the Greek Gospels were translating other materials that weren't in Greek. Think about the beginning of Genesis:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth
And the earth was lifeless and chaotic
And darkness covered the face of the deep
And God said Let there be light.
And God saw that the light was good.
Notice those Ands? They relate the sentences into a paragraph, and are a Hebrew idiom. Now look at the beginning of the Gospel of John:
In the beginning was the Word
And the Word was with God
And the Word was God
This is tell that the Gospel of John was originally a Hebrew document translated into Greek. Now, the story of Nicodemus depends on a Greek pun that has no Hebrew equivalent, so some argue that John is originally Greek, but see the prologue of Luke, which acknowledges the previous writings and witness accounts "delivered them [those things] to us". This is a description of how the Gospels were written in Greek. Multiple documents were combined to make the received texts, with the Hebrew and Aramaic parts translated into Greek.
Saying that the Christian Scriptures were originally Greek is misleading; while the received texts can claim to be originally Greek, the sources of those texts probably were not only Greek.
Hi Tom, thanks for taking the time to read and share your thoughts.
It's important to remember that Torah was oral for centuries before it was put on papyrus, and the composition of the five books was a late development, not the starting point. Torah doesn't need a book to exist, and there have certainly been countless Jews who knew all or most of the stories, or at least some version of them, long before anyone decided to write them down. So Jesus didn't have to be able to read and write to know what the Jewish scriptures said.
There's no way to know anything about Jesus with any real degree of certainty. But he and his disciples were more than likely illiterate and didn't speak Greek, the language of the educated elite. That he couldn't fund his own ministry and relied on patrons like Mary Magdalene and Joanna is indirect evidence of his poverty.