The idea of Jesus' re-conquest of the land from North to South is so interesting. I think it kind of echoes the idea of Him reenacting and embodying moments of Israel's history to take His place as the Faithful Israel. Very cool.
Somewhat tangential, but do you see any connection between Micah 5:5 with the phrase "this One will be our peace" when comparing it to Genesis 5:29 at the birth of Noah?
Thanks for this excellent article. It appears that we even see evidence of what these later Jewish sources are doing within the book of Micah itself. The book connects Zion's restoration and the promise of the future Davidic ruler to deliverance from exile in Babylon (4:9-10) but also deliverance from Sennacherib's siege (4:11-13; 5:1-2). The Assyrian and Babylonian crises are thus prototypes of the subjugation of Zion that continue until the birth of the promised ruler and the final deliverance. It's chronologically jumbled, but the Assyrians and Babylonians are prototypes. The final redactors of the book are doing what these later Jewish sources were doing in seeing the deliverance from Assyria and Babylon as essentially one contiguous event.
There is indeed evidence that Hebrew continued to be spoken by ordinary people in the 2nd century CE and even earlier during ΙΕΣΟΥΣ' time, contrary to some older scholarly assumptions.
The traditional view that Hebrew was only a liturgical language by Jesus's time has been challenged by several discoveries:
1. The Dead Sea Scrolls (discovered 1947-1956) contain numerous Hebrew texts that show the language was still actively used for non-religious purposes.
2. Bar Kokhba letters (from the 132-135 CE revolt) include everyday correspondence in Hebrew between ordinary people.
3. Mishnaic Hebrew (also called "Rabbinic Hebrew") emerged as a distinct form of the language that shows signs of natural language evolution rather than just scholarly preservation.
4. Archaeological finds like ostraca (pottery fragments with writing) from the period show Hebrew was used for mundane purposes.
This evidence suggests that in rural Judea and Galilee, Hebrew may have remained an everyday spoken language alongside Aramaic, particularly among more traditionally Jewish communities. This multilingual environment would mean Jesus and his followers might have been comfortable in Hebrew, Aramaic, and possibly some Greek, switching between languages depending on context and audience.
The linguistic situation in 1st-2nd century Palestine was likely much more complex than earlier generations of scholars assumed, with Hebrew remaining a living language for ordinary people well into the 2nd century.
I’m aware of all that. None of it contradicts what I said. Hebrew continued to be used, but the Land was very multilingual, and the best evidence is that Jesus seems to have mostly spoken Aramaic himself, though he probably was functionally trilingual.
I'm not entirely certain on the date of the Gospels.
As far as Hebrew vs Aramaic, the best evidence shows that in the first century CE, Aramaic was more widely spoken than Hebrew within the Land. The other quotes of Jesus we get throughout the Gospels are Aramaic, not Hebrew. Given those data, the most likely explanation is that Mark retains what Jesus actually said, while Matthew alters Mark's quotation to correspond with the Hebrew of Psalm 22, which is exactly the direction you'd expect the later book to do.
I’ve never much cared what my fellow scholars think. I’m more interested in the evidence itself. Not certain because I don’t think the evidence is determinative for Mark and Matthew at least. There are better arguments for a late Luke, but I’m not entirely convinced by those, either.
Mark was written before Matthew and doesn't have Matthew's logia in there. Luke used Mark and Matthew, so it gets many of Jesus' logia from Matthew. The Gospel of Matthew itself may have used a collection of logia for its sayings material that it added to Mark, whether orally transmitted or written.
He may not have known them, may not have had access to them, or otherwise just didn't find them useful with how he wanted to frame his narrative. Regardless of *why*, he *didn't* use them and chose to work mostly with narrative rather blocks of teaching. Matthew and Luke then used his narrative and added the teaching material to it to help readers understand the narrative better.
He simply did not have the Logia from Matthew. Mark was not earlier but in a different place. And the original short ending may reflect the diffificult position they were in when he wrote the text, in Rome perhaps,
Later Greek translations of Matthew were likely harmonized to accord with the other Greek gospels. Such work is never monolithic.
The harmonies on the other hand may have been influenced to some degree by earlier Hebrew text traditions.
Yes. What's the problem? Mark also doesn't quote the entirety of Isaiah because he didn't find that useful for his purpose.
The idea that Mark would put every known tradition or saying of Jesus into his Gospel is nonsense, as is evident from what the Gospels themselves do. John, for example, ends by observing that he has been very selective about what he has written and has left out lots of things Jesus said and did.
Mark had a specific objective in mind with how he shaped his Gospel, and he left out everything that he didn't think worked toward that objective.
Matthew was later translated into Greek according to Mark and perhaps even Luke in line with their Greek. The Hebrew is different, though, and more original than the Greek Matthew.
Matthew was written in Greek based on Mark. Luke post-dates Matthew and used Matthew (in Greek) as is evident from many of the alterations and corrections Luke makes.
The Hebrew versions of Matthew are different yes, in line with what would be expected from Medieval harmonizing translations of the Greek. All the extant Hebrew manuscripts and versions of Matthew give strong evidence of being translations rather than original compositions—they also consistently demonstrate their knowledge of the other Gospels with their various harmonizations to things only known in those Gospels.
> He takes back the hegemony that had been given over to foreign nations (and their gods; see Deut 28:64) but with a different form of conquest that befits his heavenly authority.
So in other words, he takes back the hegemony that had been given over to foreign nations but not really because Israel was still under the Romans. 🤨
Except that each of the four NT Gospels ends with Jesus being enthroned/exalted by the Romans and obtaining authority over the Romans through that parodic exaltation.
Do they? Does Caesar confess that Jesus is the son of God? Does Israel get freed from imperial Rome? The Gospels defer these events to Jesus’ second coming, when all the tribes of the earth will weep, an event that was supposed to happen very soon according to the four Gospels.
Yes, they do. In Mark, the crucifixion is the moment the Kingdom of God comes in power, the moment to which Jesus was referring when he speaks of that a few chapters earlier. In Matthew, the book ends with Jesus declaring “all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.” In Luke, the Kingdom is likewise initiated there, and Acts tells of the beginnings of the Kingdom of God’s conquest over all worldly powers. John likewise ends with Jesus as the king of kings, with the task “finished.”
It is a misreading of the Gospels to suggest that they defer these events to the second coming, which is only the final manifestation of something they regard as already having happened in a very real sense.
Also, as Josephus also explains in Antiquities, “Israel” is not under Roman authority, only the three tribes of the Jews. But Israel as a whole (to use his words) “is not subject to the Romans.”
> Yes, they do. In Mark, the crucifixion is the moment the Kingdom of God comes in power, the moment to which Jesus was referring when he speaks of that a few chapters earlier.
In Mark, the crucifixion is the moment of Jesus’ martyrdom and humiliation. It’s the lowest point of the story. Jesus is forsaken by God, darkness covering the whole land, the curtains of the temple are torn (probably symbolizing its foretold destruction). The original ending of Mark according to textual criticism is abrupt, in anticipation of Jesus’ parousia that *will* fulfill what he said about his second coming.
> In Matthew, the book ends with Jesus declaring “all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.”
This has to be interpreted as the beginning of Jesus’ parousia, not its climax or even fulfillment, because we know from Matthew the expectations he had for that:
- the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven (everyone will see it, not a few disciples as in the case of the resurrection)
- all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see “the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven” with power and great glory (insane to say that this happens at the ending chapters of Matthew’s gospel)
- he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other (evidently didn’t happen)
This is how the Assyrians were supposed to be defeated by Jesus, the exorcisms were signs of it, but not its climax. The resurrection too can’t be argued that it liberated Israel from the Romans. It’s why in Acts 1:6 (post resurrection btw) they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” In other words, “when are you gonna save us from the Assyrians?”
> In Luke, the Kingdom is likewise initiated there
Luke still has higher expectations that are nowhere fulfilled in his gospel. These expectations weren’t supposed to happen two thousand years later either: “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place [...] Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man”
> John likewise ends with Jesus as the king of kings, with the task “finished.”
John’s gospel is written to deal with the delay of the parousia. “‘Lord, what about him?’ Jesus said to him, ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!’ So the rumour spread in the community that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but, ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?’” Where does this rumor originate from, I wonder? “And he said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.’” [Mark 9:1] Exorcisms and miracles already happened during Jesus’ lifetime before the crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus can’t be referring to those here. Given that John was at least one of the latest disciples to die, it made sense to believe that at least him would live until the parousia. John felt that this prediction was failing, so he had to fix it somehow in his gospel. Wrt to “it is finished,” I’ve found this to be very helpful: “The same form of the verb occurs in John 19:28: Jesus knew that all things have been finished (tetelestai). Then we are told that in order that the scripture might be finished (teleiōthē), he said, ‘I thirst’. The use of teleō for the fulfilment of scripture is unusual in the Gospels, so when we come to tetelestai in 19:30, we are bound to recall this preceding use of the word. It is not some act (eg., of salvation) that is finished but some argument from scripture. What that argument is first indicated when Jesus, having seen a bowl of vinegar nearby, deliberately complains of thirst in order that the scripture might be finished.”
> It is a misreading of the Gospels to suggest that they defer these events to the second coming, which is only the final manifestation of something they regard as already having happened in a very real sense.
It is the only correct reading actually. Everything else is a cope. A deliverer from the Assyrians who doesn’t deliver from the Assyrians is no deliverer.
> Also, as Josephus also explains in Antiquities, “Israel” is not under Roman authority, only the three tribes of the Jews. But Israel as a whole (to use his words) “is not subject to the Romans.”
“‘All Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice. So the curse and the oath written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out upon us, because we have sinned against you. He has confirmed his words, which he spoke against us and against our rulers, by bringing upon us a calamity so great that what has been done against Jerusalem has never before been done under the whole heaven.” (Daniel 9:11-12)
The idea that "the crucifixion is the lowest point" of the Gospel of Mark is a deeply misguided (and yet somehow common) reading of Mark, which requires entirely ignoring the literary devices and rhetoric of the book itself.
Throughout the book, Mark heavily depends on dramatic irony—what looks like one thing from an earthly perspective is something completely different from a heavenly perspective, and the reader who is clued into what Mark is doing has (heavenly) information that the characters of the story do not.
The passion/crucifixion follows the same pattern as the rest of Mark. Whereas a surface reading may suggest that Jesus is forsaken by God and the darkness covering the land may be seen as judgment or even abandonment, the clued in reader who knows what Mark is alluding to knows better: this is the very exaltation and enthronement Jesus has been talking about throughout the Gospel, the fulfillment of scripture.
The knowledgeable reader knows that "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is the first line of Psalm 22, which proceeds to narrate what initially looks like divine judgment and abandonment but ends with assurance that the speaker is not in fact abandoned but is instead vindicated by God and accomplishing deliverance for the whole assembly:
"Stand in awe of him, all you seed of Israel, for he has not despised nor spurned the suffering of the afflicted one, nor has he hidden his face from him, but when he cried to him for help, he heard!" (Ps 22:23–24)
"The afflicted one will eat and be satisfied; those who seek him will praise YHWH. May your (pl) heart live forever! The ends of the earth will remember and turn to YHWH, and all the families of the nations will worship before you." (Ps 22:26–27)
"All those who go down to the dust will kneel before him, even him who cannot keep his soul alive. A seed will serve him; it will be told of the Lord to the generation. They will come and declare his justness to a people who will be born, that he has done it." (Ps 22:29–30)
Mark's entire crucifixion narrative is shaped by this psalm, which further plays up the significance of the ironic cry from the cross—it looks like abandonment to those there in the moment, but those who know the psalm (and are picking up what Mark has been putting down in the whole narrative) realize that this is the ironic and paradoxical moment of deliverance, enthronement, and vindication.
When the curtains of the temple are then torn, this is both a representation of that temple's future destruction but also an indication that Jesus' death has accomplished the promise of the presence of God beyond the temple itself—this is what John later tries to explain with Jesus' discourse on how worship is no longer localized but rather "the one who worships will worship in spirit and in truth."
When you say "The original ending of Mark according to textual criticism is abrupt, in anticipation of Jesus’ parousia that *will* fulfill what he said about his second coming," that again misunderstands what Mark is doing. Mark ends so abruptly because Jesus' death is the moment of enthronement and exaltation; he doesn't need to narrate beyond it because that's the point. But Mark overshot his readers by a good bit (as illustrated by the fact that even many modern scholars struggle with Mark), so Matthew and then Luke and John and then the scribe(s) who added to Mark's ending felt the need to supplement his narrative with additional material to try to make his point more explicit.
When you say that your reading "is the only correct reading ... everything else is a cope. A deliverer from the Assyrians who doesn't deliver from the Assyrians is no deliverer," you are deeply mistaken. And the easiest way to demonstrate your mistake is to point to when the Gospels themselves were written. If your reading is "the only correct reading," one wonders why the Gospels were written at all. Matthew and Luke were likely written after the events of the Jewish War—and Mark may well have been also. But their authors all seem to think Jesus actually *did* accomplish deliverance somehow. How so, if your reading of them is correct?
Your mistake here is trying to interpret the Gospels themselves from a "historical Jesus" approach—what would the historical figure put forward in the Gospels and the various characters hearing him have thought as these things were happening c. 29–30 CE—and then treating that as what the Gospels must mean. But the Gospels don't work that way; they're already putting forward theological explanations of what Jesus taught and said from their own later perspective. It's incoherent to suggest that these Gospel authors, who are manifestly trying to convince their readers that Jesus was in fact Israel's messiah and did accomplish deliverance, are best read as putting forward a Jesus who in fact failed to do those things.
Historically speaking, you can make that argument about the historical Jesus. But it doesn't work as a reading of the NT Gospels.
Finally, your reference to Daniel 9:11–12 isn't relevant to the point about Israel not being under Roman authority. For one thing, Daniel is written before Roman control of the Levant and is narratively situated in the Babylonian/early Persian period. Secondly, Daniel refers to "Israel" as a whole—that includes the portion not under Roman rule. Josephus is discussing the difference between those Jews (the portion of Israel derived from the southern kingdom of Judah) under Roman rule and the rest of Israel (including non-Jewish Israelites), who he explains are "beyond the Euphrates in great numbers and not subject to the Romans." At a minimum, this is Josephus reminding his Roman readers that Rome could not vanquish the Parthians, and at a maximum, this is Josephus gesturing to the prophetic promises of a large-scale future restoration of the whole people of Israel, including all the tribes of Israel, not just those from Judah, Levi, and Benjamin—most of whom were not living within the boundaries of the Roman empire.
Details matter. Precision matters. Reading these literary works on their own terms matters.
> The knowledgeable reader knows that "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is the first line of Psalm 22, which proceeds to narrate what initially looks like divine judgment and abandonment but ends with assurance that the speaker is not in fact abandoned but is instead vindicated by God and accomplishing deliverance for the whole assembly:
>
> "Stand in awe of him, all you seed of Israel, for he has not despised nor spurned the suffering of the afflicted one, nor has he hidden his face from him, but when he cried to him for help, he heard!" (Ps 22:23–24)
Why stop there? Continue the Psalm.
“All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the Lord;
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before him.
For dominion belongs to the Lord,
and he rules over the nations.”
Was this fulfilled by the cross or the resurrection? No. So the reader of Mark has to find the fulfillment of the rest of the Psalm somewhere else, outside of Mark’s Gospel.
> If your reading is "the only correct reading," one wonders why the Gospels were written at all. Matthew and Luke were likely written after the events of the Jewish War—and Mark may well have been also. But their authors all seem to think Jesus actually *did* accomplish deliverance somehow. How so, if your reading of them is correct?
I’m not a Preterist. They are correct in noticing the imminent Jewish apocalypticism of the NT, but they try to salvage traditional doctrine of inerrancy putting too much emphasis on 70 AD. The conversion of Constantine is more fit than 70 AD. Constantine saw the sign of the man in heaven, and with him all the nations of the earth worshipped God.
> It's incoherent to suggest that these Gospel authors, who are manifestly trying to convince their readers that Jesus was in fact Israel's messiah and did accomplish deliverance, are best read as putting forward a Jesus who in fact failed to do those things.
Their belief that the Kingdom was at hand, that their Messiah was coming back in power to vindicate the martyrs of his followers, this is the underlying context for why Jesus’ ethics are so submissive to hostile powers. God was about to judge the world, so it was fit to wait on the Lord in faith and perseverance, they weren’t Universal rules to be always followed. You can’t split Jesus, or the Bible, from history. The Bible is the history of the struggle of the people of Israel with the Pagan nations and deities. This is how Luke starts his Gospel:
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his child David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness in his presence all our days.” The enemies weren’t “spiritual” but political, the new Assyrians aka the Romans.
> Secondly, Daniel refers to "Israel" as a whole—that includes the portion not under Roman rule.
He talks about “all Israel” in reference to Jerusalem which was his main concern. Josephus was a historian so he had to distinguish between the two, but it seems that for practical reasons “all Israel” just referred to Jerusalem and Judah.
> Details matter. Precision matters. Reading these literary works on their own terms matters.
So how did Jesus deliver from the Assyrians, again? Was the Gospel of Augustus Caesar about his spiritual conquest? Why does Jesus answer his disciples in Acts 1 that “it is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority?” Don’t they know that it was all fulfilled? Jesus didn’t know that he had already delivered them from the Assyrians? That the kingdom was already restored? Aren’t these important “details”?
No need to exert myself. The original wording of the Gospel of Matthew was Greek, so translating that into Hebrew can't get closer to the original wording. I've spent enough time on the question; I just haven't spent much time with those manuscripts because they're late (medieval) products that aren't really germane to research on earlier Christianity.
It has not been "well demonstrated" that those manuscripts are "definitely closer to the original wording." A few people (mostly George Howard) initially investigated and argued that, and those arguments have been weighed and found wanting by more rigorous scholarship. Here's some helpful reading for you on the subject:
It’s the best scholarship on those materials, so yes, it should be convincing, though I understand why some may be unwilling to recognize that since it’s so appealing to imagine that they’ve discovered something even more ancient than the Greek. But a closer examination by anyone who knows these languages well enough shows that’s just wishful thinking, unfortunately.
You misunderstood my previous comment. I didn’t say I hadn’t invested much time on the question. I said I hadn’t invested much time Shem Tov’s version of Matthew in general. The reason for that is that once sufficient time is devoted to investigating whether it’s ancient, it’s apparent that it’s not. And once that’s clear, the only reason to spend significant time with it is for studies of the medieval period, which is much later than what I’m generally working in. I haven’t spent much time on late Latin translations, either, but that’s because they don’t have much to say about what the original documents themselves said.
I love that you see and can articulate the importance of the Assyrian conquest to the New Testament writers.
Rabbi Aharon Lavi in his book “SEVEN” explained that the 50-year Jubilee described in Leviticus 25 has not been practiced since the Assyrian conquest due to the inability to return to family land. In fact, he goes on to say the “Biblical Jubilee” timing is unknown in the modern era.
The Rabbi makes clear that the first few verses of Isaiah 61 are referring to the 50-year Jubilee. This being the case then, Jesus in a Nazareth Synagogue reading Isaiah 61 as Luke describes in chapter 4 is significant. His declaration must be coming to a 2,000-year anniversary sometime in the next decade. I except your books and insights are very timely.
Jesus is not just proclaiming the 50-year Jubilee with his reading of Isaiah 61. He's proclaiming the Grand Jubilee of Daniel 9, which is a 500-year Jubilee.
Hmm, interesting. Likely both. Well, for what it is worth sometime in the next decade we will cross 2,000 years since the event or 4 segments of 500 years if we decide to count it that way. Either way I doubt the timing is a coincidence.
" My appointed times are these" Leviticus 23:2b NASB
Do you see any connection to Daniel’s Beasts potentially illuminating these “King of Assyria” allusions? Or, if not, are the 4 beasts mentioned in Daniel (and made use of in Revelation) relegated to Judah/Judean/Southern Kingdom oppression whereas Assyria is distinct and focused on Northern Kingdom oppression?
Good question. The best evidence indicates that in the first century they tended to interpret the four beasts as Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece, and Rome. So it starts after the Assyrian empire is already past. But if you do want to connect Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon to Assyria, I don't think that would be out of bounds given how Babylon and Assyria tend to get treated in these sources—Babylon just carries forward Assyria's conquests.
I don't do any work with it, to be honest. It's certainly interesting, but as a medieval translation from Latin to Hebrew, it's just not all that useful for thinking about earlier periods.
I’m sorry to burst your bubble on this, but the Hebrew version reflected in those manuscripts is a medieval translation, not an ancient witness to an earlier text. That’s been rather firmly demonstrated. Moreover, the original Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek, not Hebrew, and it builds on the Gospel of Mark. (Papias’ comments about an earlier Hebrew Gospel is manifestly about something other than our Gospel of Matthew, which doesn’t match his description.)
Scholars who go along with their church's dogma (compare Mt 28:19 Constantinian Church Greek with Hebrew and earlier and majority Eusebius' texts) do not deserve that much trust when it comes to establishing authenticity of any given text. (Comp. e.g. Rev 20:5a apparatus and the common renditions in your bibles. Obvious addition as in Mt 28:19)
The idea of Jesus' re-conquest of the land from North to South is so interesting. I think it kind of echoes the idea of Him reenacting and embodying moments of Israel's history to take His place as the Faithful Israel. Very cool.
Somewhat tangential, but do you see any connection between Micah 5:5 with the phrase "this One will be our peace" when comparing it to Genesis 5:29 at the birth of Noah?
I don't think the similarity in wording is accidental.
Thanks for this excellent article. It appears that we even see evidence of what these later Jewish sources are doing within the book of Micah itself. The book connects Zion's restoration and the promise of the future Davidic ruler to deliverance from exile in Babylon (4:9-10) but also deliverance from Sennacherib's siege (4:11-13; 5:1-2). The Assyrian and Babylonian crises are thus prototypes of the subjugation of Zion that continue until the birth of the promised ruler and the final deliverance. It's chronologically jumbled, but the Assyrians and Babylonians are prototypes. The final redactors of the book are doing what these later Jewish sources were doing in seeing the deliverance from Assyria and Babylon as essentially one contiguous event.
That is a beautiful answer to a good and difficult question. Thank you for this.
"69 Comments" Nice
There is indeed evidence that Hebrew continued to be spoken by ordinary people in the 2nd century CE and even earlier during ΙΕΣΟΥΣ' time, contrary to some older scholarly assumptions.
The traditional view that Hebrew was only a liturgical language by Jesus's time has been challenged by several discoveries:
1. The Dead Sea Scrolls (discovered 1947-1956) contain numerous Hebrew texts that show the language was still actively used for non-religious purposes.
2. Bar Kokhba letters (from the 132-135 CE revolt) include everyday correspondence in Hebrew between ordinary people.
3. Mishnaic Hebrew (also called "Rabbinic Hebrew") emerged as a distinct form of the language that shows signs of natural language evolution rather than just scholarly preservation.
4. Archaeological finds like ostraca (pottery fragments with writing) from the period show Hebrew was used for mundane purposes.
This evidence suggests that in rural Judea and Galilee, Hebrew may have remained an everyday spoken language alongside Aramaic, particularly among more traditionally Jewish communities. This multilingual environment would mean Jesus and his followers might have been comfortable in Hebrew, Aramaic, and possibly some Greek, switching between languages depending on context and audience.
The linguistic situation in 1st-2nd century Palestine was likely much more complex than earlier generations of scholars assumed, with Hebrew remaining a living language for ordinary people well into the 2nd century.
I’m aware of all that. None of it contradicts what I said. Hebrew continued to be used, but the Land was very multilingual, and the best evidence is that Jesus seems to have mostly spoken Aramaic himself, though he probably was functionally trilingual.
Eatablishef scholarship was mostly wrong on the matter for well over a century.
You (as your scholars) believe Matthew (and fo r you of course Mark) and Luke were written after 70.
Right? So you tell me these scholars are reliable for their senseless reasoning?
I see Mt 27 Eli (see ShM), Mk 15 Eloi.
Would he not speak Hebrew in the David's city?
I'm not entirely certain on the date of the Gospels.
As far as Hebrew vs Aramaic, the best evidence shows that in the first century CE, Aramaic was more widely spoken than Hebrew within the Land. The other quotes of Jesus we get throughout the Gospels are Aramaic, not Hebrew. Given those data, the most likely explanation is that Mark retains what Jesus actually said, while Matthew alters Mark's quotation to correspond with the Hebrew of Psalm 22, which is exactly the direction you'd expect the later book to do.
So you are not certain? Perhaps because you don't want to get scolded by your fellow scholarship.
I’ve never much cared what my fellow scholars think. I’m more interested in the evidence itself. Not certain because I don’t think the evidence is determinative for Mark and Matthew at least. There are better arguments for a late Luke, but I’m not entirely convinced by those, either.
As long as all were written after 70, we are safe.
Safe? What do you mean? And I think there's a good chance that Mark at least was written before 70, not that it makes a difference for our safety.
Chance? I see it more as a threat to the scholarly establishment. To the traditionalists, too, but they are blind and can't see the axe on their tree.
So what is your suggestion on how these (Matthew's) Logia Kyriou entered into Mark, Luke, and Matthew?
Mark was written before Matthew and doesn't have Matthew's logia in there. Luke used Mark and Matthew, so it gets many of Jesus' logia from Matthew. The Gospel of Matthew itself may have used a collection of logia for its sayings material that it added to Mark, whether orally transmitted or written.
And why would Mark not use the Hebrew Logia?
He may not have known them, may not have had access to them, or otherwise just didn't find them useful with how he wanted to frame his narrative. Regardless of *why*, he *didn't* use them and chose to work mostly with narrative rather blocks of teaching. Matthew and Luke then used his narrative and added the teaching material to it to help readers understand the narrative better.
He simply did not have the Logia from Matthew. Mark was not earlier but in a different place. And the original short ending may reflect the diffificult position they were in when he wrote the text, in Rome perhaps,
Later Greek translations of Matthew were likely harmonized to accord with the other Greek gospels. Such work is never monolithic.
The harmonies on the other hand may have been influenced to some degree by earlier Hebrew text traditions.
"...or otherwise didn't just find them useful..."
Are you hearing yourself?
Yes. What's the problem? Mark also doesn't quote the entirety of Isaiah because he didn't find that useful for his purpose.
The idea that Mark would put every known tradition or saying of Jesus into his Gospel is nonsense, as is evident from what the Gospels themselves do. John, for example, ends by observing that he has been very selective about what he has written and has left out lots of things Jesus said and did.
Mark had a specific objective in mind with how he shaped his Gospel, and he left out everything that he didn't think worked toward that objective.
Matthew was later translated into Greek according to Mark and perhaps even Luke in line with their Greek. The Hebrew is different, though, and more original than the Greek Matthew.
Matthew was written in Greek based on Mark. Luke post-dates Matthew and used Matthew (in Greek) as is evident from many of the alterations and corrections Luke makes.
The Hebrew versions of Matthew are different yes, in line with what would be expected from Medieval harmonizing translations of the Greek. All the extant Hebrew manuscripts and versions of Matthew give strong evidence of being translations rather than original compositions—they also consistently demonstrate their knowledge of the other Gospels with their various harmonizations to things only known in those Gospels.
You keep reiterating that same assumption that seems to be very weakly established by these hoax studies you referred me to.
Hold fast to your churchal scholarship. It impresses me the longer the less.
> He takes back the hegemony that had been given over to foreign nations (and their gods; see Deut 28:64) but with a different form of conquest that befits his heavenly authority.
So in other words, he takes back the hegemony that had been given over to foreign nations but not really because Israel was still under the Romans. 🤨
Except that each of the four NT Gospels ends with Jesus being enthroned/exalted by the Romans and obtaining authority over the Romans through that parodic exaltation.
Do they? Does Caesar confess that Jesus is the son of God? Does Israel get freed from imperial Rome? The Gospels defer these events to Jesus’ second coming, when all the tribes of the earth will weep, an event that was supposed to happen very soon according to the four Gospels.
Yes, they do. In Mark, the crucifixion is the moment the Kingdom of God comes in power, the moment to which Jesus was referring when he speaks of that a few chapters earlier. In Matthew, the book ends with Jesus declaring “all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.” In Luke, the Kingdom is likewise initiated there, and Acts tells of the beginnings of the Kingdom of God’s conquest over all worldly powers. John likewise ends with Jesus as the king of kings, with the task “finished.”
It is a misreading of the Gospels to suggest that they defer these events to the second coming, which is only the final manifestation of something they regard as already having happened in a very real sense.
Also, as Josephus also explains in Antiquities, “Israel” is not under Roman authority, only the three tribes of the Jews. But Israel as a whole (to use his words) “is not subject to the Romans.”
> Yes, they do. In Mark, the crucifixion is the moment the Kingdom of God comes in power, the moment to which Jesus was referring when he speaks of that a few chapters earlier.
In Mark, the crucifixion is the moment of Jesus’ martyrdom and humiliation. It’s the lowest point of the story. Jesus is forsaken by God, darkness covering the whole land, the curtains of the temple are torn (probably symbolizing its foretold destruction). The original ending of Mark according to textual criticism is abrupt, in anticipation of Jesus’ parousia that *will* fulfill what he said about his second coming.
> In Matthew, the book ends with Jesus declaring “all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.”
This has to be interpreted as the beginning of Jesus’ parousia, not its climax or even fulfillment, because we know from Matthew the expectations he had for that:
- the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven (everyone will see it, not a few disciples as in the case of the resurrection)
- all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see “the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven” with power and great glory (insane to say that this happens at the ending chapters of Matthew’s gospel)
- he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other (evidently didn’t happen)
This is how the Assyrians were supposed to be defeated by Jesus, the exorcisms were signs of it, but not its climax. The resurrection too can’t be argued that it liberated Israel from the Romans. It’s why in Acts 1:6 (post resurrection btw) they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” In other words, “when are you gonna save us from the Assyrians?”
> In Luke, the Kingdom is likewise initiated there
Luke still has higher expectations that are nowhere fulfilled in his gospel. These expectations weren’t supposed to happen two thousand years later either: “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place [...] Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man”
> John likewise ends with Jesus as the king of kings, with the task “finished.”
John’s gospel is written to deal with the delay of the parousia. “‘Lord, what about him?’ Jesus said to him, ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!’ So the rumour spread in the community that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but, ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?’” Where does this rumor originate from, I wonder? “And he said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.’” [Mark 9:1] Exorcisms and miracles already happened during Jesus’ lifetime before the crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus can’t be referring to those here. Given that John was at least one of the latest disciples to die, it made sense to believe that at least him would live until the parousia. John felt that this prediction was failing, so he had to fix it somehow in his gospel. Wrt to “it is finished,” I’ve found this to be very helpful: “The same form of the verb occurs in John 19:28: Jesus knew that all things have been finished (tetelestai). Then we are told that in order that the scripture might be finished (teleiōthē), he said, ‘I thirst’. The use of teleō for the fulfilment of scripture is unusual in the Gospels, so when we come to tetelestai in 19:30, we are bound to recall this preceding use of the word. It is not some act (eg., of salvation) that is finished but some argument from scripture. What that argument is first indicated when Jesus, having seen a bowl of vinegar nearby, deliberately complains of thirst in order that the scripture might be finished.”
> It is a misreading of the Gospels to suggest that they defer these events to the second coming, which is only the final manifestation of something they regard as already having happened in a very real sense.
It is the only correct reading actually. Everything else is a cope. A deliverer from the Assyrians who doesn’t deliver from the Assyrians is no deliverer.
> Also, as Josephus also explains in Antiquities, “Israel” is not under Roman authority, only the three tribes of the Jews. But Israel as a whole (to use his words) “is not subject to the Romans.”
“‘All Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice. So the curse and the oath written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out upon us, because we have sinned against you. He has confirmed his words, which he spoke against us and against our rulers, by bringing upon us a calamity so great that what has been done against Jerusalem has never before been done under the whole heaven.” (Daniel 9:11-12)
The idea that "the crucifixion is the lowest point" of the Gospel of Mark is a deeply misguided (and yet somehow common) reading of Mark, which requires entirely ignoring the literary devices and rhetoric of the book itself.
Throughout the book, Mark heavily depends on dramatic irony—what looks like one thing from an earthly perspective is something completely different from a heavenly perspective, and the reader who is clued into what Mark is doing has (heavenly) information that the characters of the story do not.
The passion/crucifixion follows the same pattern as the rest of Mark. Whereas a surface reading may suggest that Jesus is forsaken by God and the darkness covering the land may be seen as judgment or even abandonment, the clued in reader who knows what Mark is alluding to knows better: this is the very exaltation and enthronement Jesus has been talking about throughout the Gospel, the fulfillment of scripture.
The knowledgeable reader knows that "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is the first line of Psalm 22, which proceeds to narrate what initially looks like divine judgment and abandonment but ends with assurance that the speaker is not in fact abandoned but is instead vindicated by God and accomplishing deliverance for the whole assembly:
"Stand in awe of him, all you seed of Israel, for he has not despised nor spurned the suffering of the afflicted one, nor has he hidden his face from him, but when he cried to him for help, he heard!" (Ps 22:23–24)
"The afflicted one will eat and be satisfied; those who seek him will praise YHWH. May your (pl) heart live forever! The ends of the earth will remember and turn to YHWH, and all the families of the nations will worship before you." (Ps 22:26–27)
"All those who go down to the dust will kneel before him, even him who cannot keep his soul alive. A seed will serve him; it will be told of the Lord to the generation. They will come and declare his justness to a people who will be born, that he has done it." (Ps 22:29–30)
Mark's entire crucifixion narrative is shaped by this psalm, which further plays up the significance of the ironic cry from the cross—it looks like abandonment to those there in the moment, but those who know the psalm (and are picking up what Mark has been putting down in the whole narrative) realize that this is the ironic and paradoxical moment of deliverance, enthronement, and vindication.
When the curtains of the temple are then torn, this is both a representation of that temple's future destruction but also an indication that Jesus' death has accomplished the promise of the presence of God beyond the temple itself—this is what John later tries to explain with Jesus' discourse on how worship is no longer localized but rather "the one who worships will worship in spirit and in truth."
When you say "The original ending of Mark according to textual criticism is abrupt, in anticipation of Jesus’ parousia that *will* fulfill what he said about his second coming," that again misunderstands what Mark is doing. Mark ends so abruptly because Jesus' death is the moment of enthronement and exaltation; he doesn't need to narrate beyond it because that's the point. But Mark overshot his readers by a good bit (as illustrated by the fact that even many modern scholars struggle with Mark), so Matthew and then Luke and John and then the scribe(s) who added to Mark's ending felt the need to supplement his narrative with additional material to try to make his point more explicit.
When you say that your reading "is the only correct reading ... everything else is a cope. A deliverer from the Assyrians who doesn't deliver from the Assyrians is no deliverer," you are deeply mistaken. And the easiest way to demonstrate your mistake is to point to when the Gospels themselves were written. If your reading is "the only correct reading," one wonders why the Gospels were written at all. Matthew and Luke were likely written after the events of the Jewish War—and Mark may well have been also. But their authors all seem to think Jesus actually *did* accomplish deliverance somehow. How so, if your reading of them is correct?
Your mistake here is trying to interpret the Gospels themselves from a "historical Jesus" approach—what would the historical figure put forward in the Gospels and the various characters hearing him have thought as these things were happening c. 29–30 CE—and then treating that as what the Gospels must mean. But the Gospels don't work that way; they're already putting forward theological explanations of what Jesus taught and said from their own later perspective. It's incoherent to suggest that these Gospel authors, who are manifestly trying to convince their readers that Jesus was in fact Israel's messiah and did accomplish deliverance, are best read as putting forward a Jesus who in fact failed to do those things.
Historically speaking, you can make that argument about the historical Jesus. But it doesn't work as a reading of the NT Gospels.
Finally, your reference to Daniel 9:11–12 isn't relevant to the point about Israel not being under Roman authority. For one thing, Daniel is written before Roman control of the Levant and is narratively situated in the Babylonian/early Persian period. Secondly, Daniel refers to "Israel" as a whole—that includes the portion not under Roman rule. Josephus is discussing the difference between those Jews (the portion of Israel derived from the southern kingdom of Judah) under Roman rule and the rest of Israel (including non-Jewish Israelites), who he explains are "beyond the Euphrates in great numbers and not subject to the Romans." At a minimum, this is Josephus reminding his Roman readers that Rome could not vanquish the Parthians, and at a maximum, this is Josephus gesturing to the prophetic promises of a large-scale future restoration of the whole people of Israel, including all the tribes of Israel, not just those from Judah, Levi, and Benjamin—most of whom were not living within the boundaries of the Roman empire.
Details matter. Precision matters. Reading these literary works on their own terms matters.
> The knowledgeable reader knows that "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is the first line of Psalm 22, which proceeds to narrate what initially looks like divine judgment and abandonment but ends with assurance that the speaker is not in fact abandoned but is instead vindicated by God and accomplishing deliverance for the whole assembly:
>
> "Stand in awe of him, all you seed of Israel, for he has not despised nor spurned the suffering of the afflicted one, nor has he hidden his face from him, but when he cried to him for help, he heard!" (Ps 22:23–24)
Why stop there? Continue the Psalm.
“All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the Lord;
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before him.
For dominion belongs to the Lord,
and he rules over the nations.”
Was this fulfilled by the cross or the resurrection? No. So the reader of Mark has to find the fulfillment of the rest of the Psalm somewhere else, outside of Mark’s Gospel.
> If your reading is "the only correct reading," one wonders why the Gospels were written at all. Matthew and Luke were likely written after the events of the Jewish War—and Mark may well have been also. But their authors all seem to think Jesus actually *did* accomplish deliverance somehow. How so, if your reading of them is correct?
I’m not a Preterist. They are correct in noticing the imminent Jewish apocalypticism of the NT, but they try to salvage traditional doctrine of inerrancy putting too much emphasis on 70 AD. The conversion of Constantine is more fit than 70 AD. Constantine saw the sign of the man in heaven, and with him all the nations of the earth worshipped God.
> It's incoherent to suggest that these Gospel authors, who are manifestly trying to convince their readers that Jesus was in fact Israel's messiah and did accomplish deliverance, are best read as putting forward a Jesus who in fact failed to do those things.
Their belief that the Kingdom was at hand, that their Messiah was coming back in power to vindicate the martyrs of his followers, this is the underlying context for why Jesus’ ethics are so submissive to hostile powers. God was about to judge the world, so it was fit to wait on the Lord in faith and perseverance, they weren’t Universal rules to be always followed. You can’t split Jesus, or the Bible, from history. The Bible is the history of the struggle of the people of Israel with the Pagan nations and deities. This is how Luke starts his Gospel:
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his child David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness in his presence all our days.” The enemies weren’t “spiritual” but political, the new Assyrians aka the Romans.
> Secondly, Daniel refers to "Israel" as a whole—that includes the portion not under Roman rule.
He talks about “all Israel” in reference to Jerusalem which was his main concern. Josephus was a historian so he had to distinguish between the two, but it seems that for practical reasons “all Israel” just referred to Jerusalem and Judah.
> Details matter. Precision matters. Reading these literary works on their own terms matters.
So how did Jesus deliver from the Assyrians, again? Was the Gospel of Augustus Caesar about his spiritual conquest? Why does Jesus answer his disciples in Acts 1 that “it is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority?” Don’t they know that it was all fulfilled? Jesus didn’t know that he had already delivered them from the Assyrians? That the kingdom was already restored? Aren’t these important “details”?
Do you actually read what you are referring to? Weak material. Polemic without much substance.
Don't exert yourself. Not firmly. The Hebrew is definitely closer to the original wording. And this has been well demonstrated.
As you said, you probably haven't spent enough time on this question.
No need to exert myself. The original wording of the Gospel of Matthew was Greek, so translating that into Hebrew can't get closer to the original wording. I've spent enough time on the question; I just haven't spent much time with those manuscripts because they're late (medieval) products that aren't really germane to research on earlier Christianity.
It has not been "well demonstrated" that those manuscripts are "definitely closer to the original wording." A few people (mostly George Howard) initially investigated and argued that, and those arguments have been weighed and found wanting by more rigorous scholarship. Here's some helpful reading for you on the subject:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-testament-studies/article/abs/vorlage-of-shemtobs-hebrew-matthew1/B6D554321EA38AA5BA02DBA91B596164
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/opth-2016-0041/html
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43723705
You don't expect this garbage to be anyhow convincing, don't you.
It’s the best scholarship on those materials, so yes, it should be convincing, though I understand why some may be unwilling to recognize that since it’s so appealing to imagine that they’ve discovered something even more ancient than the Greek. But a closer examination by anyone who knows these languages well enough shows that’s just wishful thinking, unfortunately.
I remember you saying you haven't invested much time on the question. I'd stick with that if I were you.
It'd be unwise to claim things you haven't done enough research about.
You misunderstood my previous comment. I didn’t say I hadn’t invested much time on the question. I said I hadn’t invested much time Shem Tov’s version of Matthew in general. The reason for that is that once sufficient time is devoted to investigating whether it’s ancient, it’s apparent that it’s not. And once that’s clear, the only reason to spend significant time with it is for studies of the medieval period, which is much later than what I’m generally working in. I haven’t spent much time on late Latin translations, either, but that’s because they don’t have much to say about what the original documents themselves said.
I am sorry, I thought you had deleted my comment and then blocked me from responding again.
Here, this is the (or an) assessment of a friend of yours:
https://youtu.be/f_ps5e8PECc?si=9FxtRpMWZODIGbOc
And here someone else's:
https://youtu.be/eBVqiqujUn8?si=9Fz3lci8Vi7cOh7u
Looking into the Aramaic:
https://youtu.be/MsnwulQE8bA?si=5ktQc8-LmJTGZTSp
Regarding a mistake in the Greek (and in Howard's translation from the Hebrew into English):
https://youtu.be/Od2AWrNHNkY?si=x63T5alOM2XBUvcL
A valid question altogether:
https://youtu.be/16qL1hV3SMg?si=tIVvT5pMnyhDzgKV
I love that you see and can articulate the importance of the Assyrian conquest to the New Testament writers.
Rabbi Aharon Lavi in his book “SEVEN” explained that the 50-year Jubilee described in Leviticus 25 has not been practiced since the Assyrian conquest due to the inability to return to family land. In fact, he goes on to say the “Biblical Jubilee” timing is unknown in the modern era.
The Rabbi makes clear that the first few verses of Isaiah 61 are referring to the 50-year Jubilee. This being the case then, Jesus in a Nazareth Synagogue reading Isaiah 61 as Luke describes in chapter 4 is significant. His declaration must be coming to a 2,000-year anniversary sometime in the next decade. I except your books and insights are very timely.
Give it some thought!
Jesus is not just proclaiming the 50-year Jubilee with his reading of Isaiah 61. He's proclaiming the Grand Jubilee of Daniel 9, which is a 500-year Jubilee.
Hmm, interesting. Likely both. Well, for what it is worth sometime in the next decade we will cross 2,000 years since the event or 4 segments of 500 years if we decide to count it that way. Either way I doubt the timing is a coincidence.
" My appointed times are these" Leviticus 23:2b NASB
Do you see any connection to Daniel’s Beasts potentially illuminating these “King of Assyria” allusions? Or, if not, are the 4 beasts mentioned in Daniel (and made use of in Revelation) relegated to Judah/Judean/Southern Kingdom oppression whereas Assyria is distinct and focused on Northern Kingdom oppression?
Good question. The best evidence indicates that in the first century they tended to interpret the four beasts as Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece, and Rome. So it starts after the Assyrian empire is already past. But if you do want to connect Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon to Assyria, I don't think that would be out of bounds given how Babylon and Assyria tend to get treated in these sources—Babylon just carries forward Assyria's conquests.
I found the Hebrew Matthew (according to the text preserved by Shem Tov) has very interesting and enlightening details.
How do you work with it? What are your experiences with the the differences between the Greek and the Hebrew?
(I regard the second as closer to the original text than the 4th century texts (and additions) as we have them.)
I don't do any work with it, to be honest. It's certainly interesting, but as a medieval translation from Latin to Hebrew, it's just not all that useful for thinking about earlier periods.
These manuscripts are no way a translation from Latin (or Greek) back to Hebrew.
They are better and closer to the original than the extant Greek.
I’m sorry to burst your bubble on this, but the Hebrew version reflected in those manuscripts is a medieval translation, not an ancient witness to an earlier text. That’s been rather firmly demonstrated. Moreover, the original Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek, not Hebrew, and it builds on the Gospel of Mark. (Papias’ comments about an earlier Hebrew Gospel is manifestly about something other than our Gospel of Matthew, which doesn’t match his description.)
Scholars who go along with their church's dogma (compare Mt 28:19 Constantinian Church Greek with Hebrew and earlier and majority Eusebius' texts) do not deserve that much trust when it comes to establishing authenticity of any given text. (Comp. e.g. Rev 20:5a apparatus and the common renditions in your bibles. Obvious addition as in Mt 28:19)