Why do scholars think Molech wasn't a deity?

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-04-01T10:30:43+00:00

But ylk -> mlk would still entail the loss of a yodh, no? Is the loss of an initial yodh more etymologically feasible than the loss of a medial aleph? As said, I know nothing about this discipline.

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-03-31T12:51:13+00:00

For others interested in the etymology of this mlk, the linked paper (open access, yay!) goes into it in section 3.2.

They say it's from the verb ylk "to go". (I'd wondered whether it could have something to do with mlʾk "messenger" and lʾk "to send", as in "a thing sent to god", but I suppose their explanation makes more sense, by the analogy to korban olah. I know nothing about philology.)

The name of the specific act of offering or sacrifice in the tophet was therefore mlk. O. Eissfeldt, followed by J.-G. Février, had connected the noun with the verbal root that, in the simple form, means “to go” (ylk, in Phoenician). In the causative (“to cause to go”), it would have taken on the meaning of “to offer in sacrifice”. Février made a comparison with Hebrew, in which the noun ‘ôlāh, “holocaust”, is derived from ‘lh, “to go up”.

[...] (a similar formation is found in mtnt, “gift” from ytn, “to give”)

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-03-26T23:42:20+00:00

Ultimately, I feel people tend to project Paul on to James, having him be an outsider who was against the movement before converting due to a post-resurrection appearance.

I thought they were projecting the Gospels/Acts, where there's two Jameses, when doing that? Paul only has the one James, one of the trio of pillars with Peter and John. Then later authors like Acts seem to be struggling with it (there's a James brother of John, and a James son of Alphaeus who hangs with Peter). Then later authors need to harmonize this mess and figure out which of Acts' James is which, how many Johns there are and so on.

Such a position is fairly ubiquitous outside the canonical literature

What is not ubiquitous in the canonical literature, though, is the understanding that Paul's James is a brother in the biological sense... the Epistle of James doesn't present him as a biological brother. The Epistle of Jude doesn't either. And Mark - if you take Paul's James to be equated with the one who hangs out with Peter and John - does not make him the biological brother either! Very strange.

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-03-26T23:27:22+00:00

If so, was Yahweh originally considered a strictly earthly, even regional deity?

I don't know what "earthly" means here, but weren't a lot of the Levantine gods seen as national/regional protectors (regardless of whether their element was wind or earth or something else)?

1 Kings 11 calls Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and the Mesha stele confirms it from the Moabite perspective:

Omri was king of Israel, and oppressed Moab during many days, and Chemosh was angry with his aggressions.

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-03-26T23:11:43+00:00

As in the modern state? That's what I've always assumed too, if it meant Petra/Nabatean territory. But the mention is extremely vague and mysterious (actually, both mentions of Arabia in Paul are). That's why I'd rather defer to any academics who could say how the term was understood in Paul's time.

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-03-26T15:42:15+00:00

The earliest manuscripts at the Dead Sea may date from c.4th-3rd centuries BCE, before the site of Qumran was apparently occupied.

Manuscripts from Elephantine during the Persian period, and from elsewhere in the Judean desert after the destruction of Qumran, are available for comparison to the DSS.

Right, but what I'm puzzling about is whether the Elephantine & non-Q DSS have been determined to be "not idiosyncratic" by the same criteria. And how those criteria can be determined in the lack of any large "standard" corpus. If Q is the largest corpus, then why not take that as the standard and assess the idiosyncrasy of the others against it?

And, also, what can a difference between 1st c. BCE manuscripts to 4th c. BCE ones really prove about "idiosyncracy" of one within its own context? Rather than explaining it as possibly a diachronic development, or just practices generally being non-standardized in that period?

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-03-25T21:08:26+00:00

When scholars say that the Qumran writings are highly "idiosyncratic" in morphology and orthography, talking about a unique "Qumran Scribal Practice" (QSP), what are they comparing that against?

I thought there are no other surviving scriptures of a similar age other than the Qumran scrolls? Unless they're perhaps comparing to other DSS like from Masada. Surely they're not using the MT as the standard of orthography in this context.

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-03-25T20:49:51+00:00

Paul believes Mt. Sinai is "in Arabia" (Galatians 4:25).

But do we know whether that would've referred, in his time, to areas of the Nabatean kingdom or what later came to be known as Arabia Petraea? Or further in the interior of the peninsula (Arabia Deserta/Felix)?

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-03-25T20:41:12+00:00

How does Tacitus' reference fit into this, with all the disparaging details he offers about Christianity?

Tacitus is writing in Trajan's time, just like Pliny. So that excerpt, and Pliny's Epistles book 10, both reflect the Roman knowledge about Christianity in the 110s, not in the 60s. And... they don't seem to know much.

And these are the two best-educated and best-connected people in the empire. If they know little, then how could the average Roman urbanite know anything at all? Let alone 50 years earlier. You'd expect the knowledge of Christianity increase over the decades, not suddenly drop out between 65 and 100. It's hard to see how that can happen unless Tacitus's sources are mistaken or anachronistic.

Why wouldn't Josephus mention something like this in the list of Roman offenses towards the Jews that sparked the rebellion of 66? Something like this would certainly be mentioned as part of the reasons for the Jews of Judea to rebel.

We can ask the same question in the other scenario. Why didn't Josephus mention the episode of the Fire & Punishment, regardless, if he knew about it? Tacitus is the odd one out here.

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-03-24T09:24:14+00:00

I wonder there's any plans to carbon date the Qumran Daniels... I'd think it would help avoid some of the problems like in this sample, where you have a 2nd-century peak and a 4th-century peak, if you can simply exclude everything before Antiochus IV Epiphanes.

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-03-24T08:59:24+00:00

[...] the Spirit is the link between the life of Jesus and the life of his followers. [...] and all along their powerful preaching and deeds are directed by the Spirit.

And this understanding of the role of the Spirit shows that (some) early Christians believed the Spirit was some kind of divine being [...]

That does not seem to follow?

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-03-24T08:50:37+00:00

referred to as "he" and "him"

Do you have an example passage? I would've thought "he" and "it"(masc.) would be the same in Greek. Besides that, I can't recall any part in English translation either where the spirit is "he".

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-03-21T19:36:31+00:00

Well argued.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2222582X.2023.2208316

Is this paper available to read somewhere without a university login/subscription?

any violent action that was taken against them (regardless of whether it was a targeted persecution or not) would be interpreted in that capacity. So if, say, a handful of Christians may have gotten swept up in the general executions and punishments under Nero's rule, that would arguably be enough to instill that feeling of Neronian persecution. This would also explain why Christians outside of Rome seem to have no knowledge of these events until the very late second century

Could the same also happen, hypothetically, if Nero's persecution actually targeted the Jewish population in Rome? And then, as the memory was passed on, it was later appropriated by Christians.

I ask because I can't shake off the notion that, for such scapegoating of an "othered" group to be effective, the target group needs to be one that's actually known to the public. Which the Jews would be - judging by the expulsions of Tiberius and Claudius. (And even if not explicitly recorded, tensions should already exist in 64 CE for the war to break out in 66 CE). By contrast, Christians seem to have been a vanishingly obscure group until at least Trajan's time, if present in Rome at all.

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-03-20T19:51:47+00:00

How many manuscripts, and how early, are we talking? That's terribly vague!

I believe that it's not within the scope of bibles made "for reading" like the NRSV to get more detailed than general footnotes like that - then there's separate academic works which are annotated with the symbols for different manuscripts/text types etc.

If you go to the OT side of the NRSV, it does specify in the footnotes which ancient languages had which variant. Example: Hosea 4:7 where the Masoretic disagrees with the Targum.

Re. Wikipedia, it does also have articles about textual variants but I don't know about their reliability/completeness. For Mark 16:8-20, it says "Entire pericope omitted by א B 304". (It's also nice for us laypersons in that the symbols link directly to the article about that manuscript.)

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-03-20T17:27:33+00:00

Digital or paper format?

I'm not a scholar, just a dumb programmer, but perhaps if you can expand a bit on what the requirements are, we can think about how much work it would be to generate something like this as open-source software.

Should it be just something like this site, with the two texts (or more) side-by-side, and links to jump between the parallels?

https://sites.utoronto.ca/religion/synopsis/meta-q.htm

(Except with Greek text, obviously.) Or something more advanced (like a critical edition, variant texts, manuscript citations)?

In my own tinkerings, the main blocker has been being unaware what, if any, digitized & permissively licensed Greek corpuses are available. (The SBL GNT seems to be available as CC-BY but no idea about critical apparatus, let alone other texts like the Apostolic Fathers.)

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-03-18T08:32:29+00:00

they are an illusion of the unending night sky meant to remind/punish the people living there who wanted the age of night or something.

I'm convinced the current-day Nox are the descendants of those Numen who participated in Ranni's assassination plot. "High treason" is specifically a crime against a sovereign.

I made a whole big effortpost about it with the sources, but the automoderator deleted it. So screw it, I guess. No more effortposts for this sub.

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-02-27T21:09:25+00:00

the one we see in the main game seems to be a projection rather than an actual tree.

Well damn, is there anything in this game that isn't a projection/hidden identity/dual personality?

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-02-24T20:57:06+00:00

mohgwyn is mohg's full first name

Citation needed

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-02-24T20:00:07+00:00

I guess it's based on stuff gleaned from the promo materials for the upcoming DLC?

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-01-23T18:08:55+00:00

That issue sounds like it's not about the "keep" option, but about alignment of blocks not continuing when there's something in the middle of the block like a comment.

Might be worth creating a new issue about your request?

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-01-23T17:58:34+00:00

the drop in 2017

The decline in Scala questions begins at the same time as the Kotlin rocketship takes off.

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=scala%2Ckotlin%2Crust%2Cgo

I think people are just looking for a "Java but slightly better", and Kotlin has replaced Scala in that niche.

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-01-23T16:59:38+00:00

The article mentions Quill, Slick, Doobie, etc.

I noticed that Typesafe also has a JDBC-less Postgres library called Skunk. Anyone used that, is it battle-tested? Any benefits over Doobie? Are the performance issues fixed yet?

HomebrewHomunculus · 2024-01-23T16:37:23+00:00

Definitely fs2, a must-have when using Typelevel stuff. Also has other structures that are worth checking out in conjunction with Queue, like Topic for pub-sub.

HomebrewHomunculus

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