Bible Study: Isaiah 11

[bob x]

"Jesse" - that is where we get the word "Essene".

Absolutely not. In "Jesse", the ss represents a Shin (the "hushing" sibilant), and a letter 'Ayin (the "glottal stop") comes after the Shin, yish'ay to transcribe more accurately; this root, as juan said, is "to possess". In "Essene", the ss represents a Samekh (the "hissing" sibilant), and an 'Ayin comes at the beginning, 'asayin to transcribe more accurately, meaning "doers" of the law.

 

[bob x]

That is one theory Bob; but I am not dealing in theories.

Of course you are; and in very dubious ones.

The story has been put forward since early times that Jeschu Ben Pandera was Jesus of Nazareth- wrong!

It is entirely explicit that "ben Panthera" was an insulting name for Jesus of Nazareth. "Ben Stada" was a different figure, although at some point confused with "Ben Panthera" since both were objects of derision.

This page relates to the discoveries of Prof. Allegro:

John Allegro's early work was marked by tendencies to draw extravagant conclusions from fragmentary evidence; none of his work has stood up well as more has been learned about the Qumran texts. His later work went off the deep end into outright insanity: you have not quoted to me his theory that the Essenes and early Christians were inspired by hallucinogenic mushrooms, or that most of the Sumerian vocabulary is derived from names for the penis and vagina. While his earlier theories are not as obviously off the wall as his later ones, I repeat that they have not stood up well.

The Talmud does refer a couple times to the anshey 'oseh "men of deeds", the Hebrew equivalent to the Aramaic 'asayin tawratha "doers of the law" (Essenes). It refers to them with respect, and so any identification of "ben Stada", a figure of contempt, with an Essene teacher is intrinsically dubious. A more likely candidate is "that Egyptian", a teacher with claims to be of divine parentage who made a lot of trouble in the early 60's before finally getting killed (together with his followers) in the Jewish revolt; this fellow kept himself hidden and apparently very few knew what he even looked like, and nobody was willing to speak of him by name. In Acts, Paul is asked whether he is "that Egyptian"; in Josephus, we get a scurrilous story of his origin, saying that his mother was seduced by a priest of Anubis who persuaded her that the god was sleeping with her.

 

[bananabrain]

What exactly is this root of Jesse? The text doesn't say it's a literal descendant. He may come in the name of David, so to speak.

the verse is describing the conditions for restoring the davidic monarchy, which is generally understood to be referring to the davidic messiah. now, of the jews around to this day, they will either be cohanim or levites, in which case they belong to the tribe of levi, or "israelites" (like myself) in which they belong either to the tribe of judah (like david) or that of benjamin. judahites would need to, i think, have a family tradition of going back in the davidic line - i personally know several people who have these traditions, so there's not actually a problem for it to be a literal descendant. on the other hand, it certainly *would* be a problem for it *not* to be a literal descendant. hell, it could be me for all i know, albeit i don't feel terribly messianic.

if the prophecy does refer to the fall of the assyrian empire, it's hard to see how it was fulfilled, given that the davidic monarchy was not restored under the second Temple.

I'm not about to pretend I have this prophecy completely figured out, but there are some pretty amazing things that have happened historically that seem to correlate: "the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people"..."and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth" sure sounds to me like the ingathering of Judah to re-establish Israel in 1948.

messianic prophecies are notoriously difficult to interpret and their misinterpretation has been responsible for much heartache and bloodshed. making the state of israel into a prophetic entity, as some have tried to do, only hardens people from necessary compromise. the state may be, as some have averred, "reishit semihat ge'ulateinu", the "beginning of the joy of our redemption", but so far there does not appear to be much cause for complacency on that front.

Ephraim is one of the half-tribes of Joseph, and is historically associated with Britain. Back in the day (750 BC + / -) before the House of Israel was carried away by Assyria, Ephraim had been a political rival to Judah. Now Britain (and by extension the US) are Israel's staunchest allies.

sorry, juan, but i'm afraid that's almost certainly bollocks. it was very popular amongst christian zionists (like lord balfour) in the C19th and early C20th but it also led to such idiocies as interpreting the word "BRIT-ISh" - as the hebrew phrase meaning "the covenant of man", to which my rabbi often cheerily answers: "BRIT-AiN" - the hebrew phrase meaning "there is no such covenant". it's right up there with joseph of arimathea making landfall in cornwall.

Edom is the descendents of Esau as I recall being taught, now settled in Russia.

in fact, edom is associated with rome and, by extension, the christian west. russia don't enter into it. in fact esau's people, the edomites, dwelt near petra in jordan.

Moses' wife was a Moabitess, so I am guessing Moab is the nomadic desert shepherds of Arabia

in fact, she was a midianite and, similarly, her father was a priest of G!D and a monotheist, not a worshipper of the moabite idol.

I am not about to say I can interpret this part, other than it sounds a great deal like the description elsewhere of Armaggedon.

and that's why there are loads of maniacal american nincompoops trying to screw up the middle east totally - in order to provoke the "second coming". this is why the israelis are wrong to solicit the support of the evangelical lobby in the US.

"Netzer, Nazaraioi, Nazareni, Nazerini" and then to "Nazareth".

interestingly enough, the word "NoTzRIM", usually denoting christians, literally translates as "splitters"! and the only thing worse than those bastards are the judean people's front.

Wasn't Sampson a Nazarite priest?

nazirite is NOT the same thing. nazir is spelt nun-zayin-resh, whereas a "nazarene" (i.e. someone from nazereth or a christian) is spelt nun-tzadi-resh. it's a completely different word.

"ben Panthera" is a mocking name for Jesus based on the story that he was a bastard son of a Roman soldier: Panther was a fairly common name in Latin, and it made a pun of parthenos "virgin" (the claim was that the Christian story of Jesus being the son of a parthenos was just a garbling, and he was really the son of a Pantheros).

it just goes to show how well the pythons did their research for "life of brian", really.

In "Essene", the ss represents a Samekh (the "hissing" sibilant), and an 'Ayin comes at the beginning, 'asayin to transcribe more accurately, meaning "doers" of the law.

bob, i know you're better at hebrew grammar than me, but isn't the root of the verb "do" 'ayin-shin rather than 'ayin-samekh? or is this piel, which is what it says in my jastrow, or aramaic or something?

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[Bruce Michael]

Of course you are; and in very dubious ones.

No they are direct spiritual perceptions to be read in the "Book of God".

John Allegro's early work was marked by tendencies to draw extravagant conclusions from fragmentary evidence; none of his work has stood up well as more has been learned about the Qumran texts.

What's wrong with the article in Time?

Epiphanius told us that Jesseans was the same as Essenes:

Epiphanius also admits that the Christians were at first called Therapeutæ and Jesseans, an equivalent name, as he explains, for the Essenes.

Gnostic and Historic Christianity

More theories:
Yeshu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

ben-Pandera

In the Tosefta reference to Yeshu, the title ben-Pandera (son of Pandera) is added after the name.

The surname Pandera is not known from any graves or inscriptions, but the surname Pantera (the Latin form of Pantheras, literally meaning Panther) is known, though it is uncommon. For example, a first century tombstone in Bingerbrück, Germany has an inscription which reads: "Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera of Sidon, aged 62, a soldier of 40 years' service, of the 1st cohort of archers, lies here".

Robert Eisler considers Pandera not as a real name but instead as a generic name for a betrayer. He notes that in the Iliad, Pandaros betrays the Greeks by hurling a lance at Menelaus thus breaking an armistice confirmed by solemn oath. His name came to be used a generic name for a betrayer similar to the use of the name Benedict Arnold within the U.S. today. It was borrowed by Hebrew as Pandar and is found in Genesis Rabba 50 in the expression qol Pandar (literally "voice of Pandar" denoting false promises of a betrayer). The form Pandera can be understood to be the Aramaic equivalent. The term "son of Pandera" may therefore be not a patronymic but rather a designation of a class of person, similar to the expression son of Belial. The name also resembles that of Pandareus in Greek mythology and the Toledot Yeshu narratives contain elements resembling the story of Pandareus.

Best Regards,
Br.Bruce

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

the verse is describing the conditions for restoring the davidic monarchy, which is generally understood to be referring to the davidic messiah. now, of the jews around to this day, they will either be cohanim or levites, in which case they belong to the tribe of levi, or "israelites" (like myself) in which they belong either to the tribe of judah (like david) or that of benjamin. judahites would need to, i think, have a family tradition of going back in the davidic line - i personally know several people who have these traditions, so there's not actually a problem for it to be a literal descendant. on the other hand, it certainly *would* be a problem for it *not* to be a literal descendant. hell, it could be me for all i know, albeit i don't feel terribly messianic.

if the prophecy does refer to the fall of the assyrian empire, it's hard to see how it was fulfilled, given that the davidic monarchy was not restored under the second Temple.

It's kind of difficult to draw sharp distinctions between the parts of the language which seem to refer to an idealistic sort of world to come where lions and lambs are pals, and the literal world of a restored Davidic monarchy. After I read the text in context I could see that the lineage is literal, but I can't tell if this neo David character immediately ushers in this utopian age, or if the speaker is just adding the utopian imagery because that's how the sort of narratives in this genre are constructed. IOW, does the new David king rule in this utopian world to come? Does his ascendancy innaugurate the world to come? Or are the fate of the Assyrians, the establishment of the new Davidic line, and the Peaceable Kingdom just the layers of prose that make the cake in this kind of literary genre, and not necessarily mutually co-dependent in any literal sense?

Chris

 

[bob x]

No they are direct spiritual perceptions to be read in the "Book of God".

You can talk yourself into any kind of rubbish that way.

What's wrong with the article in Time?

"Time" is a pop magazine, not a scholarly resource. Any kind of titillating theory is likely to get a lot of play in pop magazines.

Epiphanius told us that Jesseans was the same as Essenes:

I would have to look up what he actually said. He would not have written "Jesseans" for the same reason that the Tanakh never says "Jehovah".

in fact esau's people, the edomites, dwelt near petra in jordan.

And all over the Negev. Early Romans (before "Syria Palestina" was imposed as a name on the whole country) used "Idumeans" (descendants of the Edomites) and "Palestinians" (descendants of the Philistines) interchangeably: both peoples had been forcibly converted to Judaism under the Hasmoneans, but since they were seldom accepted as marriage partners by the Judeans, they tended to interbreed with each other, and with Arab immigrants (there was considerable movement from Arabia into the area well before Muhammad). Herod's genealogy is typical: 50% Arab (his mother was a princess of Nabatea), 25% Palestinian (his father's mother was of a mercantile family in Ashdod), 25% Idumean (his father's father claimed descent from the old royal house of Edom). This mixed ethnicity found it convenient to forget all about having been "Jewish" after AD 70, later largely converted to Christianity and then to Islam, and essentially are the Palestinians of today-- with some more Arab influx in the intervening centuries, of course, but it should not be thought that the "Arab conquest" involved exterminating the pre-existing population and replacing them from Arabia (which has never had that large a population anyway).

isn't the root of the verb "do" 'ayin-shin rather than 'ayin-samekh?

It's a s'in, which is an altered shin (pointed differently) pronounced like samekh: in the proto-Semitic, it was a third sibilant, the "whistling" sibilant intermediate between "hissing" and "hushing" as in the Indic title S'ri; in every branch of Semitic the three sibilants are collapsed to some extent, evidently shin and s'in were the same in the Sinaitic dialect used by the inventors of the alphabet (since they used the same letter for both), but s'in and samekh are the same in Hebrew, although there is the "shibboleth" story in Judges asserting that shin and samekh were merged in Ephraimite dialect. In Aramaic I believe the root "to do" was written with a samekh, will have to check.
I hadn't wanted to go into the minutiae, but you bring out the nerd in me.

 

[bananabrain]

It's kind of difficult to draw sharp distinctions between the parts of the language which seem to refer to an idealistic sort of world to come where lions and lambs are pals, and the literal world of a restored Davidic monarchy. After I read the text in context I could see that the lineage is literal, but I can't tell if this neo David character immediately ushers in this utopian age, or if the speaker is just adding the utopian imagery because that's how the sort of narratives in this genre are constructed.

and that, in a nutshell, is exactly why it is incredibly difficult to interpret messianic prophecy and why the whole business is so fraught with difficulty.

to clarify a bit, the understanding is generally that there are in fact *two* messiahs, the first being the moshiakh ben yosef from the half-tribe of ephraim (son of joseph) who is probably being alluded to in the earlier mention. he is supposed to fight in the apocalyptic war of gog and magog and, i believe, die. after victory, the moshiakh ben david would then emerge, be confirmed by a reconstituted sanhedrin and rebuild the Temple. to some people's way of thinking this *is* the World to Come, but to others this is a completely other, afterlife-type scenario. because this is aggadah and prophecy there is no set interpretation and multiple levels on which it can be understood.

mixed ethnicity found it convenient to forget all about having been "Jewish" after AD 70, later largely converted to Christianity and then to Islam, and essentially are the Palestinians of today-- with some more Arab influx in the intervening centuries, of course, but it should not be thought that the "Arab conquest" involved exterminating the pre-existing population and replacing them from Arabia (which has never had that large a population anyway).

which is presumably why palestinian arabic shows such strong pre-modern influences from hebrew. it seems we are more closely related than one might think.

In Aramaic I believe the root "to do" was written with a samekh, will have to check. I hadn't wanted to go into the minutiae, but you bring out the nerd in me.

ooh bob, that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me on this board. hehehe.

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[Bruce Michael]

You can talk yourself into any kind of rubbish that way.

"Time" is a pop magazine, not a scholarly resource. Any kind of titillating theory is likely to get a lot of play in pop magazines.

.

And you're free to talk yourself into any kind of rubbish you like too- I'm all for freedom.

I don't think you read the article..

Blessings,
Br.Bruce

 

[bob x]

I don't think you read the article..

It's fifty-year-old speculation by an extravagant theorist.
Much more has become plain about the ideology of the Essenes in the intervening time. They were strict legalists of the type that Jesus abhorred: one of their texts says that the Sabbath should be observed until all circumstances, that even if an animal falls in a well on the Sabbath, you should not pull it out until the next day; this is the clearest parallel to the gospels, with Jesus specifically repudiating the Essene position as absurd. Their position that coins with human faces on them should not even be handled is somewhat paralleled in the "Render unto Caesar" passage: again, Jesus is against the Essene position. The "two Messiahs" passage now has more context to interpret it: the Essenes used meshiach "anointed" in the generic sense, for any "anointed" official, and were expecting that when Israel would be restored, there would be a true high priest, the Messiah ben Aaron, and a true king, the Messiah ben David; the "banquet" text mentioning both emphasizes that the high priest outranks the king. The whole point of the text is thus that the Messiah ben David is not really very important; it was to the priests that they were looking, for a restoration of Israel.

 

[juantoo3]

in fact, edom is associated with rome and, by extension, the christian west. russia don't enter into it. in fact esau's people, the edomites, dwelt near petra in jordan.


in fact, she was a midianite and, similarly, her father was a priest of G!D and a monotheist, not a worshipper of the moabite idol.

I stand duly corrected.

Thank you to everybody for the expansion on the subject, including the nerdy parts.

 

[bob x]

"in fact, edom is associated with rome and, by extension, the christian west....
Thank you to everybody for the expansion on the subject, including the nerdy parts."
OK, a little more nerdiness: because Herod (see #26) was Idumean on his father's father's side (from where he derived his dubious claims to be a rightful ruler), "Edom" was used in 1st-century radical Jewish literature as a shorthand for the Herodian royal family, and collaborators with Rome in general. Afterwards, with the specific connection to the Herodian family now meaningless, it became a code-word for the Roman empire, when you wanted to denounce the government without having government agents able to readily notice your treason: compare the use of "Babylon" for Rome, as in Revelation and associated early Christian literature, before Christianity made its terms with the Roman regime. After Christianity took over the empire, the usage of "Edom" in rabbinical literature then naturally transferred to a code-word for "Christendom".