by Brian Godawa
God uses Babylon to judge Assyria and Israel
Habakkuk 1:5–6 5 “Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. 6 For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize dwellings not their own.
Then God judges Babylon
Habakkuk 2:16
16 You will have your fill of shame instead of glory. Drink, yourself, and show your uncircumcision! The cup in the LORD’s right hand will come around to you, and utter shame will come upon your glory!
The Destruction of Samaria and the exile of 10 northern tribes by Assyria, 8th century BC
Micah 1:3–7 3 For behold, the LORD is coming out of his place, and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth. 4 And the mountains will melt under him, and the valleys will split open, like wax before the fire, like waters poured down a steep place. 5 All this is for the transgression of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what is the high place of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem? 6 Therefore I will make Samaria a heap in the open country.
Against Assyria (fulfilled: 701 BC against Sennacherib Isa. 37:36)
Isaiah 30:25–28
on the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. 27 Behold, the name of the LORD comes from afar, burning with his anger, and in thick rising smoke; his lips are full of fury, and his tongue is like a devouring fire; 28 his breath is like an overflowing stream that reaches up to the neck; to sift the nations with the sieve of destruction, and to place on the jaws of the peoples a bridle that leads astray.
Revelation 17:16–17 16 And the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the prostitute. They will make her desolate and naked, and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire, 17 for God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and handing over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled.
Examples throughout Revelation of God “allowing” or “giving power” to the wicked: Revelation 6:2, 4, 8; 9:1, 3; 13:5, 7, 14–15; 16:8.
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God has gone over to the Romans, and using them as his means to judge Israel:
Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews 3.8.3 §354
(354) and [Josephus] said [ to God], – “Since it pleaseth thee, who hast created the Jewish nation, to depress the same, and since all their good fortune is gone over to the Romans…”
Flavius Josephus and William Whiston, The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987), 655.
Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews 6.2.1 §110
“(110) And are not both the city and the entire temple now full of the dead bodies of your countrymen? It is God therefore, it is God himself who is bringing on this fire, to purge that city and temple by means of the Romans, and is going to pluck up this city, which is full of your pollutions.”
Flavius Josephus and William Whiston, The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987), 732.
Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews 6.5.4, §311-313
“while at the same time they had it written in their sacred oracles, – “That then should their city be taken, as well as their holy house, when once their temple should become foursquare.” (312) But now, what did most elevate them in undertaking this war, was an ambiguous oracle that was also found in their sacred writings, how, “about that time, one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth.” (313) The Jews took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular and many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their determination. Now, this oracle certainly denoted the government of Vespasian, who was appointed emperor in Judea.”
Josephus even puts his own beliefs about God being with the Romans into the mouth of Titus:
Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews 6.9.1, §411
“[Titus] expressed himself after the manner following: – “We have certainly had God for our assistant in this war, and it was no other than God who ejected the Jews out of these fortifications; for what could the hands of men, or any machines, do towards overthrowing these towers!”
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Joseph’s interpretation of Daniel’s prophecy applied to Vespasian:
Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews 6.5.4, §312-313
“(312) But now, what did most elevate them in undertaking this war, was an ambiguous oracle that was also found in their sacred writings, how, “about that time, one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth.” (313) The Jews took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular and many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their determination. Now, this oracle certainly denoted the government of Vespasian, who was appointed emperor in Judea.”
Flavius Josephus and William Whiston, The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987), 743.
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CHAPTER 8
The taurobolium:
From: Prudentius, Peristephanon, Carmen X, 1011-50: Translation and notes by C. K. Barrett, The New Testament Background (London, SPCK 1956), pp. 96-7.
https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2009/04/28/the-taurobolium/
“The high priest who is to be consecrated is brought down under ground in a pit dug deep, marvellously adorned with a fillet, binding his festive temples with chaplets, his hair combed back under a golden crown, and wearing a silken toga caught up with Gabine girding.
“Over this they make a wooden floor with wide spaces, woven of planks with an open mesh; they then divide or bore the area and repeatedly pierce the wood with a pointed tool that it may appear full of small holes.
“Hither a huge bull, fierce and shaggy in appearance, is led, bound with flowery garlands about its flanks, and with its horns sheathed; Yea, the forehead of the victim sparkles with gold, and the flash of metal plates colours its hair.
“Here, as is ordained, the beast is to be slain, and they pierce its breast with a sacred spear; the gaping wound emits a wave of hot blood, and the smoking river flows into the woven structure beneath it and surges wide.
“Then by the many paths of the thousand openings in the lattice the falling shower rains down a foul dew, which the priest buried within catches, putting his shameful head under all the drops, defiled both in his clothing and in all his body.
“Yea, he throws back his face, he puts his cheeks in the way of the blood, he puts under it his ears and lips, he interposes his nostrils, he washes his very eyes with the fluid, nor does he even spare his throat but moistens his tongue, until he actually drinks the dark gore.
“Afterwards, the flamens draw the corpse, stiffening now that the blood has gone forth, off the lattice, and the pontiff, horrible in appearance, comes forth, and shows his wet head, his beard heavy with blood, his dripping fillets and sodden garments.
“This man, defiled with such contagions and foul with the gore of the recent sacrifice, all hail and worship at a distance, because profane blood and a dead ox have washed him while concealed in a filthy cave.”
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Prohibition of drinking blood for Jews:
Leviticus 17:13–14
13 “Any one also of the people of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn among them, who takes in hunting any beast or bird that may be eaten shall pour out its blood and cover it with earth. 14 For the life of every creature is its blood: its blood is its life. Therefore I have said to the people of Israel, You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood. Whoever eats it shall be cut off.
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Titus’s hatred of the Christians:
“Feuillet states that “the Jewish war and the destruction of Jerusalem… are of tremendous importance because they mark the definitive independence of the Christian religion from that of Israel, thereby preparing the way for the advance of the Church
among the pagans of the Gentile world.” It is likely, however, that Titus actually intended the opposite effect: to destroy Christianity in the process. Since apostolic Christianity was so tied up with Israel and the temple, Titus apparently hoped to crush both Judaism and Christianity with the destruction of the temple. According to Sulpicius Severus (ca. AD 400), whose “authority is undoubtedly Tacitus,” we learn that “Titus is said, after calling a council, to have first deliberated whether he should destroy the temple, a structure of such extraordinary work. For it seemed good to some that a sacred edifice, distinguished above all human achievements, ought not to be destroyed…But on the opposite side, others and Titus himself thought that the temple ought specially to be overthrown in order that the religion of the Jews and of the Christians might more thoroughly be subverted; for that these religions, although contrary to each other, had nevertheless proceeded from the same authors; that the Christians had sprung up from among the Jews; and that, if the root were extirpated, the offshoot would speedily perish” (Severus 2:30). Tommaso Leoni notes that “very few have doubts… that the version of the Christian chronographer [Severus] should be preferred” over Josephus’ account, which states that Titus tried to prevent the burning of the temple (Jos., J.W. 6:4:3 §236–43).44 J. Barclay (1996: 353) argues that “this notorious feature of Josephus’ account is certainly ‘economical with the truth’ and possibly a complete fabrication.” Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Divorce of Israel: A Redemptive-Historical Interpretation of Revelation Vol. 2 (Dallas, GA: Tolle Lege Press, 2016), 57-58.
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CHAPTER 10
Symeon and the Ebionites:
“Simon [spelled in other manuscripts as Symeon] led the Ebionite believers across the Jordan to Pella. This same Simon led them back to Jerusalem after the war. By this time, the Jewish Christians were viewed as traitors by the rest of the Jews. They weren’t allowed synagogue membership and they were actually excommunicated. There is a dramatic perspective on this Pella tradition which contends that these Ebionite refugees establish the link to early Christianity.
Randall A. Weiss, Jewish Sects of the New Testament Era (Cedar Hill, TX: Cross Talk, 1994).
The texts of the Ebionites:
“Modern research has generally differentiated between an Aramaic Gospel of the Nazoreans and a Greek Gospel of the Ebionites. Both originated in the first half of the second century, are inclined to paraphrase like the Targums, and are greatly dependent upon the canonical Matthew, which probably derived from Jewish Christian circles in the Great Church...
“specific tendencies of heretical Ebionitism (vegetarianism, hostility toward the sacrificial cult, opposition to Paul, etc.) are reflected in these fragments…
“It seems to me that an Ebionite "Acts of the Apostles" underlies this outline of the development of the history of salvation. According to Epiphanius, one chapter of this Ebionite "Acts" may have been called "The Ascents of James". For the Ebionite self-consciousness and their particular view of history the Ebionite "Acts" was of fundamental significance. The texts claim to be documents deriving from the physical descendants of Jewish Christians belonging to the original church in Jerusalem…”
Hans-Joachim Schoeps, trans., Douglas R.A. Hare, Jewish Christianity: Factional Disputes in the Early Church (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 14, 16-17.
Gospel of the Ebionites:
Epiphanius writing about the Gospel of the Ebionites: “And on this account they say that Jesus was begotten of the seed of a man, and was chosen; and so by the choice of God he was called the Son of God from the Christ that came into him from above in the likeness of a dove. And they deny that he was begotten of God the Father, but say that he was created, as one of the archangels, yet greater, and that he is Lord of angels and of all things made by the Almighty, and that he came and taught, as the Gospel (so called) current among them contains, that, ‘I came to destroy the sacrifices, and if ye cease not from sacrificing, the wrath of God will not cease from you’.”
Montague Rhodes James, ed., The Apocryphal New Testament: Being the Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), 10.
“The matter of these Judaic-Christian gospels, namely, the Gospel of the Ebionites, the Gospel of the Hebrews, and the Gospel of the Nazoraeans has been called the most irritating problem in the NT Apocrypha.
Confusion stems from the fact that the title “Gospel of the Ebionites” is never used by the Fathers. Rather, it is the creation of modern scholarship to reference a specific source cited by Epiphanius. He quotes from “The gospel which is called with them (viz. the Ebionites) according to Matthew which is not complete but falsified and distorted, they call it the Hebrew Gospel …” (Haer. 30.13.1). He further states that the Ebionites “also accept the gospel according to Matthew. For they too use only this like the followers of Cerinthus and Merinthus…”
William L. Petersen, “Ebionites, Gospel of the,” ed. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 261–262.
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Ebionite denial of Christ’s deity:
Eusebius reports in his chapter entitled: “The Heresy of the Ebionites.”
Eusebius of Caesaria, Church History 3.27.1-2
“The spirit of wickedness, however, being unable to shake some in their love of Christ, and yet finding them susceptible of his impressions in other respects, brought them over to his purposes. These are properly called Ebionites by the ancients, as those who cherished low and mean opinions of Christ. For they consider him a plain and common man, and justified only by his advances in virtue, and that he was born of the Virgin Mary, by natural generation.”
Randall A. Weiss, Jewish Sects of the New Testament Era (Cedar Hill, TX: Cross Talk, 1994).
“Epiphanius writing about the Gospel of the Ebionites: “And on this account they say that Jesus was begotten of the seed of a man, and was chosen; and so by the choice of God he was called the Son of God from the Christ that came into him from above in the likeness of a dove. And they deny that he was begotten of God the Father, but say that he was created, as one of the archangels, yet greater, and that he is Lord of angels and of all things made by the Almighty, and that he came and taught, as the Gospel (so called) current among them contains, that, ‘I came to destroy the sacrifices, and if ye cease not from sacrificing, the wrath of God will not cease from you’.”
Montague Rhodes James, ed., The Apocryphal New Testament: Being the Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), 10.
“The Person of Christ. As the Righteous One (saddiq), the only man who has completely fulfilled the law, Jesus has been appointed to be the Christ (Hippolytus, Origen, Epiphanius). "Had another likewise fulfilled the precepts of the law, he too would have become Christ, for by like deeds other Christs (Christoi) could occur," reports Hippolytus concerning their faith (Philosophumena 7.34.1 f.).
“Jesus, moreover, fulfilled the law as man, not as Son of God but as Son of man. He was consecrated for Messiahship and endowed with the power of God not through real preexistence but through the act of adoption which was announced in Psalm 2:7 and which occurred at the time of his baptism, i.e., through the Holy Spirit present in the water of the baptismal bath. This "adoptionism" – in Recognitions 1.48 it is said that Jesus is he qui in aquis baptismi filius a deo appellatus est ("who in the waters of baptism was called Son by God”).”
Hans-Joachim Schoeps, trans., Douglas R.A. Hare, Jewish Christianity: Factional Disputes in the Early Church (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 61.
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CHAPTER 12
The Feast of Unleavened Bread:
Leviticus 23:6–8
6 And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the LORD; for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. 7 On the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work. 8 But you shall present a food offering to the LORD for sev
en days. On the seventh day is a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work.”
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Gischala’s capture of the inner temple from Eleazar:
Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews 5.3.2, §98-105
“On the feast of unleavened bread, which was come, it being the fourteenth day of the month Xanthicus [Nisan], when it is believed the Jews were first freed from the Egyptians, Eleazar and his party opened the gates of this [inmost court of the] temple, and admitted such of the people as were desirous to worship God into it. (100) But John made use of this festival as a cloak for his treacherous designs, and armed the most inconsiderable of his own party, the greater part of whom were not purified, with weapons concealed under their garments, and sent them with great zeal into the temple, in order to seize upon it; which armed men, when they were gotten in, threw their garments away, and presently appeared in their armor. (101) Upon which there was a very great disorder and disturbance about the holy house; while the people who had no concern in the sedition, supposed that this assault was made against all without distinction, as the zealots thought it was made against themselves only. (102) So these left off guarding the gates any longer, and leaped down from their battlements before they came to an engagement, and fled away into the subterranean caverns of the temple; while the people that stood trembling at the altar, and about the holy house, were rolled on heaps together, and trampled upon, and were beaten both with wooden and with iron weapons without mercy. (103) Such also, as had differences with others, slew many persons that were quiet, out of their own private enmity and hatred, as if they were opposite to the seditious; and all those that had formerly offended any of these plotters, were now known, and were now led away to the slaughter; (104) and, when they had done abundance of horrid mischief to the guiltless, they granted a truce to the guilty, and let those go off that came out of the caverns. These followers of John also did now seize upon this inner temple, and upon all the warlike engines therein, and then ventured to oppose Simon. (105) And thus that sedition, which had been divided into three factions, was now reduced to two.”
