>>9377418 (pb #12001:me)
>>9377275 (pb #12001)
To the bible seeking anon I was talking in bread #12001:
As I said before, this is a big topic so I'm staying mach 3 and @ 10,000ft. I will do my best to lead you to water, but it will be up to you to drink. This braindump may seem a little random and unorganized. But these are the things that woke me up.
First and foremost, Jesus was very active in the OT. You can identify him by "the word of the Lord", "The Angel of the Lord", and "Commander of the army of the Lord". You probably were not taught that in churches. I wasn't. Once you absorb this, ask yourself: What else has my church omitted?
2nd: There is no single translation you can read that is 100% accurate. Languages do not tranlate words or thoughts 1:1.
From here on out, I will only be talking about OT.
Modern translations (NASB, ESV, KJV, NIV, etc) use the Masoretic Text (MT) as their OT. The MT text was purposedly altered by Rabbi Akiba (and others) to water down messianic prophecies. [Justin Martyr confronted a rabbi about this in Dialogue with Trypho]
One of the attacks (((they))) use is to shorten the history since creation. This allows them to say Jesus arrived too soon to be the Messiah (Read the epistle of Barnabas). A compressed timeline also allows them to say Shem and Melchizedek are the same person. So what? What is the big deal? If Abraham tithed to Melchizedek(Shem), then it means the pristhood of Melchizedek is not distinct from Levites. Therefore Jesus' priesthood is Levitical... And he would not have been from the tribe of Judah.
The Septuagint (LXX) corrects this timeline. (So do the Samaritan Pentateuch and Josephus) So it must be added for your spiritual understanding & growth. A good, free version can be found here: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/
<Hurr Durr, but Greek was not the original language
Why is the LXX important? Why was it created? After the Babylonian captivity and return, the Hebrew language was dying. Only the elites understood it well enough to read and write. You see hints of this in Nehemiah 8 & Ezra 7. (This is the point in history where the Hebrew alphabet changed to the block letter style, but vowels would not be added for another 1,000 yrs) About 100 years later (~340BC), Hellenism swept the world and the Greek language flourished. Hebrew lang continued to decline. The LXX was partially created (~250BC) out of necessity.
Extra Biblical Texts Suggestions.
Read 1 Enoch, Jubilees, Jasher, 'Deuterocanonical/Apocryphal' books, pseudepigraphical books (Testament of Solomon, Baruch, etc)
<Hurr Durr, those were not written by the people bearing the book names
<Hurr Durr, those were written centuries after those people lived.
So what. Don't impose the modern value of putting pen to paper on ancient authors. Wide literacy is only a recent phenomenon. We have always had civilizations that were almost totally illiterate. But we have never had civilizations that have not passed down verbal history and stories. Read these extra biblical texts and judge for yourself.
sources:
Douglas Woodard - Rebooting the Bible
Tim Law - When God Spoke Greek
Michael Heiser - Unseen Realm, Reversing Hermon
Kristofer Carlson - Hidden in Plain Sight