The Cities That Built the Bible

by Dr. Robert Cargill

  12. Matt. 11:23; 16:18; Luke 10:15; 16:23; Acts 2:27, 31; Rev. 1:18; 6:8; 20:13–14.

  13. Cf. Gen. 1:20, 21, 24, 30, and numerous other instances. Note that nefesh is used of all living creatures, not only humans. In Gen. 9:4, nefesh is equated with blood, which also gives living creatures life. Thus, nefesh simply meant “living” in the early HB. It was only later that it came to be understood as the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek “soul.”

  14. Gen. 3:19 states clearly that we humans were made from the dust of the earth “and to dust [we] shall return.” Eccl. 3:19–20 echoes this understanding of death, and 3:21 (“Who knows whether the human spirit goes upward and the spirit of animals goes downward to the earth?”) shows us that various ideas of life after death were being discussed (perhaps by the Greeks). Passages such as Gen. 37:35; Num. 16:30; 1 Kings 2:6; Isa. 14:15; 38:10; and many others mention She’ol as the place that all people go when they die. In fact, Job 14:10–14 offers a descriptive example of how the HB conceives the afterlife: “But mortals die, and are laid low; humans expire, and where are they? As waters fail from a lake, and a river wastes away and dries up, so mortals lie down and do not rise again; until the heavens are no more, they will not awake or be roused out of their sleep. Oh that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would conceal me until your wrath is past, that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me! If mortals die, will they live again?” Following the prevalent worldview of the time, She’ol was considered to be under the ground, which reflects the burial custom in the ancient Near East of burying the deceased in graves or pits, which is practiced today.

  15. For instance, when Saul asked the medium at ‘En-Dor to summon the prophet Samuel from the dead in 1 Sam. 28 (note first that it worked!, and) note that the text first says that the woman saw a “god” (Heb. ’elohim) coming up “out of the ground” (v. 13) and that he appeared not as a disembodied spirit, but as “an old man wrapped in a robe” (v. 14). Note that this is not evidence of transcendence, but of resurrection, which is how many early Jews (and Christians) who believed in the afterlife envisioned it—resurrection from the ground of a living being who looks a lot like the previously living being when he or she died, and not a disembodied spirit. See also Dan. 12:2, a very late Hellenistic Jewish text that states, “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,” referencing resurrection (of both the righteous and the wicked!) and not a disembodied spirit that has been living apart from its host body since the host’s death.

  16. Some have pointed out that this dualistic notion of a soul that can exist apart from the body (especially after death) may have been introduced into what became Judaism by Zoroastrian religious beliefs while the Jewish exiles were in Babylon. As Zoroastrianism was one of the popular religions of the Persians, who conquered Babylon and funded the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, this is a viable possibility; Jews may have been more sympathetic to Zoroastrian influence while in Babylon.

  17. For instance, Edmonds attributes the maxim to the comic poet Menander in Thaïs (Fragments of Attic Comedy, 627). In a footnote, Edmonds explains that the saying was “probably quoted by Menander from Euripides; it is the last line of four in a tragic metre in an Anthology of which some fragments are preserved in a papyrus of the 3rd Cent. B.C.”

  18. Interestingly, Paul’s quotation of Euripides in 1 Cor. 15:33 follows a quotation in 15:32, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,” which sounds like false Epicureanism, but is actually a direct quotation of Isa. 22:13.

  19. Socrates of Constantinople, Ecclesiastical History, 3.16: “Whence did he get the saying, ‘The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow-bellies,’ but from a perusal of the Oracles of Epimenides, the Cretan Initiator?”

  20. See Callimachus: Hymns and Epigrams, Lycophron and Aratus, 36–37, lines 6–9. Read the poem at http://www.theoi.com/Text/CallimachusHymns1.html.

  21. Plato, Apology 40c–e. About 390 BCE, Plato, cites the words of Socrates right before his death: “For the state of death is one of two things: either it is virtually nothingness, so that the dead has no consciousness of anything, or it is, as people say, a change and migration of the soul from this to another place. And if it is unconsciousness, like a sleep in which the sleeper does not even dream, death would be a wonderful gain. For I think if any one were to pick out that night in which he slept a dreamless sleep and, comparing with it the other nights and days of his life, were to say, after due consideration, how many days and nights in his life had passed more pleasantly than that night,—I believe that not only any private person, but even the great King of Persia himself would find that they were few in comparison with the other days and nights. So if such is the nature of death, I count it a gain; for in that case, all time seems to be no longer than one night. But on the other hand, if death is, as it were, a change of habitation from here to some other place, and if what we are told is true, that all the dead are there, what greater blessing could there be, judges?”

  22. Plato, Crito 49c.

  23. Plato, Republic 10.12 [613c]. See Plato in Twelve Volumes.

  24. The Greek in Politics 3.8.2 reads: κατὰ δὲ τω̑ν τοιούτων οὐκ ἔστι νόμος: αὐτοὶ γάρ εἰσι νόμος. See Aristotle: The Politics, 240–41 (3.8.2, 1284a lines 13–14). Benjamin Jowett’s translation of this same passage reads: “and that for men of preeminent virtue there is no law—they are themselves a law” (Politics of Aristotle, 93 [3.13]).

  25. Gk. πρός κέντρα λακτίζειν (pros kentra laktizein).

  26. Gk. πρός κέντρα μὴ λάκτιζε, (pros kentra mē laktize). Aeschylus II: Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers, Eumenides, Fragments, 144–45, line 1624.

  27. Note that Paul claims that Jesus said this in Hebrew (Acts 26:14), meaning that it is much more difficult to claim that Paul was simply repeating a popular Greek idiom of the day. If what Paul claims is true, the idiom would have been translated into Hebrew and employed by Jesus, which is less likely than simply repeating a Greek idiom.

  28. Tertullian’s phrase in Latin is Seneca saepe noster, “often one of ours” or “whom we so often find on our side” (Treatise on the Soul 20). Tertullian’s endorsement of Seneca may have been due to the fact that so much of what Paul writes here is similar to Seneca’s work. Seneca’s suicide, which was ordered by the hated Emperor Nero following the Pisonian Conspiracy, a failed assassination plot to kill Nero in which Seneca was believed to have conspired, likely aided in painting him as an early “Christian martyr.” Tertullian’s comment also likely prompted the composition of the Letters of Paul and Seneca in the fourth century CE (which are universally recognized as forged), as Tertullian’s positive reference to the esteemed Roman adviser and tutor to the emperor Nero led many to believe Seneca was sympathetic to Christianity. Bart Ehrman says the Letters of Paul and Seneca were forged to resolve the question of “why, if Paul was such a brilliant and astute thinker, none of the other great thinkers of his day mentions him” (Forged, 91).

  29. Seneca, De Beneficiis (On Benefits) 7.7.3 (Seneca: Moral Essays, 472–73).

  30. Lactantius, Divine Institutes 6:25.

  31. Seneca, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius) 95.47 (Seneca: Epistles, Volume III).

  32. Seneca, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium 95.52 (Seneca: Epistles, Volume III).

  33. Seneca, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium 41.1 (Seneca: Epistles, Volume I).

  34. Seneca, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium 41.2 (Seneca: Epistles, Volume I).

  35. Aratus, Phaenomena lines 4–7, trans. mine. Cf. Callimachus: Hymns and Epigrams, Lycophron and Aratus, 206–7.

  36. In this line (Latin et te quoque dignum finge deo), Seneca actually quotes Virgil’s Aeneid (8.364), which was written between 29 and 19 BCE.

  37. Seneca, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium 31:11, trans. mine. Cf. Seneca: Epistles, Volume I.

  Chapter 7: Alexandria

  1. To see how papyrus is made, watch this video shot at
the Papyrus Museum in Cairo at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCR8n7qS43w.

  2. Acts 6:9; 18:24. Alexandria is also mentioned in passing in 3 Macc. 3:1.

  3. Khater, “Alexandria Hit by Floods.”

  4. The Muses were given specific names and responsibilities for different fields of knowledge and arts: Kalliope, epic poetry; Kleio, history; Ourania, astronomy; Thaleia, comedy; Melpomene, tragedy; Polyhymnia, religious hymns; Erato, erotic poetry; Euterpe, lyric poetry; and Terpsichore, choral song and dance. The Muses were always depicted as beautiful young women usually holding the tool or instrument of their trade. (And before you go and Google it, Erato holds a small kithara, a lyre that charms young lovers.)

  5. Plutarch, Life of Caesar 49.6. See especially n. 552 in Plutarch, Lives, which references Dio Cassius, who mentions that the library was burned, but argues that Cleopatra rebuilt the library, which went on to serve the people for some time. Dio Cassius notes: “After this many battles occurred between the two forces both by day and by night, and many places were set on fire, with the result that the docks and the storehouses of grain among other buildings were burned, and also the library, whose volumes, it is said, were of the greatest number and excellence” (Roman History, 42.38.2).

  6. See the comment made by Socrates Scholasticus of Constantinople in Ecclesiastical History 5.16, which you can read at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/26015.htm. Others have argued that the library was destroyed during the 641 CE Siege of Alexandria, part of the larger Muslim conquest of Egypt in 642 CE; see Lerner, Story of Libraries, 30.

  7. Menecles of Barca, FGrH 270, F9: “He expelled all intellectuals: philologists, philosophers, professors of geometry, musicians, painters, schoolteachers, physicians and others, with the result that these brought ‘education to Greeks and barbarians elsewhere,’ as mentioned by an author who may have been one of the king’s victims.” See Jacoby, “Menecles of Barca.”

  8. Alexandria is credited with this distinction even though parts of the LXX (especially later parts) may have been written elsewhere.

  9. Ameling, “Epigraphy and the Greek Language in Hellenistic Palestine.”

  10. Metzger, Bible in Translation, 15.

  11. James Davila argues that the Letter of Aristeas had to be “old enough to fool Josephus, but young enough for the writer not to have had accurate knowledge of some important historical matters regarding the reign of Ptolemy II” (“Aristeas to Philocrates”).

  12. Josephus, Antiquities 12.1.1–12.2.2 (12:1–118).

  13. Philo of Alexandria, On the Life of Moses 2.25–44, esp. v. 34. Philo continues in v. 38: “And yet who is there who does not know that every language, and the Greek language above all others, is rich in a variety of words, and that it is possible to vary a sentence and to paraphrase the same idea, so as to set it forth in a great variety of manners, adapting many different forms of expression to it at different times. But this, they say, did not happen at all in the case of this translation of the law, but that, in every case, exactly corresponding Greek words were employed to translate literally the appropriate Chaldaic words, being adapted with exceeding propriety to the matters which were to be explained.” Thus, even Philo argues that the Greek translation of every single one of the “Chaldaic” (Heb.) words of the HB was inspired and thus perfect.

  14. Let. Arist. 12–27 makes the gracious king look all the more accommodating and receptive to the Jewish faith by coupling the translation of the HB with a story of how the Greek king emancipated one hundred thousand Jewish slaves taken captive by his father during a campaign into Coelesyria and Phoenicia.

  15. Charles, ed. and trans., Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, 121.

  16. The Letter of Aristeas goes a step farther in the assurance of translational perfection by invoking a curse upon anyone who might change it: they “bade them pronounce a curse in accordance with their custom upon any one who should make any alteration either by adding anything or changing in any way whatever any of the words which had been written or making any omission. This was a very wise precaution to ensure that the book might be preserved for all the future time unchanged” (311).

  17. Charles, ed. and trans., Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, 121.

  18. For instance, D. M. Turpie studied 275 NT passages that quote the HB and concluded that the NT, LXX, and HB agree only about 20 percent of the time. This statistic is telling in itself, as it reveals that many of the NT quotations of the HB are not exact, but rough paraphrases. The NT’s favoring of the LXX over the HB became apparent when, of the remaining 80 percent of the verses where some disagreement occurred, about 33 percent of the quotations agree with the LXX over the HB, while only 5 percent agree with the HB over the LXX. See Turpie, Old Testament in the New, 267–69. Archer and Chirichigno argue that there are 340 places where the NT cites the LXX, but only 33 places where the NT cites from the MT of the HB, so 91 percent of the time (Old Testament Quotations in the New Testament, 25–32).

  19. The Bar-Kokhba Rebellion (132–135 CE) attempted to re-take Jerusalem militantly for Jews. Simon Bar-Kokhba issued letters in Hebrew, even though in one Greek letter (P. Yadin 52:11–15) he admits he has no one on staff who knows how to write in Hebrew, and on his coins, Bar-Kokhba employed Palaeo-Hebrew script in a propagandistic attempt to rekindle the memories of an independent Jewish state. For more evidence of Jewish “re-hebraisation” (a return to traditional ethnic and cultural practices), including de-hellenization and the reestablishment of Hebrew as a linguistic indicator of Jewish independence, see Collar, Religious Networks in the Roman Empire: The Spread of New Ideas, 167 ff. Cf. Tcherikover and Fuks, Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, 47–93.

  20. E.g., Exod. 10:19; 13:18; 15:4, 22; 23:31.

  21. See Aristophanes, Birds, line 145.

  22. Portions of the following originally appeared in my article, “Bible Secrets Revealed, Episode 4: ‘The Real Jesus.’”

  23. Cf. Isa. 36–39 and its parallel in 2 Kings 18–20.

  24. The definition of betulah as “one who has not yet had sex” is evident in the story of the punishment for men caught raping a woman in Deut. 22:28–29, as the woman is described as a “virgin” (, betulah) prior to the rape, but as a “young woman” (, na‘arah) after the rape. Gen. 24:16 even defines betulah specifically as one who has not had sex: “The girl (, na‘ar) was very fair to look upon, a virgin (, betulah), whom no man had known (, yada‘ ).”

  25. Gen. 24:43 is the only other time, out of nine total instances, that ‘almah is translated in the LXX using the term parthenos.

  26. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 67.

  27. It is worth noting that beginning in Dialogue with Trypho 71, the “proof” that Justin Martyr offers Trypho that his apology of Jesus’s virgin birth is correct lies in his claim that the Septuagint is a perfect translation of the Hebrew text! He claims the differences between the two versions are the result of Jews removing portions of the text from the Hebrew version, and not because the Septuagint may be flawed in portions of its translation. Of course, Justin Martyr bases his reasoning on the assumption that the story of the Septuagint’s perfect translation as told in the Letter of Aristeas (written around 125 BCE) is true. Still, the fact that Justin Martyr is pitting the text of the Septuagint against the Hebrew once again demonstrates that there were acknowledged differences between the two versions, and that many of the Christian claims about Jesus were only made possible by quoting the Septuagint’s translation.

  28. Cf. Mark 12:20–23; Luke 20:29–32.

  29. Dan. 2:4b–7:28 is in Aramaic, but this is not entirely unexpected, as these chapters tell stories of Daniel and his experiences in Aramaic-speaking Babylon and were likely composed at a time when Jews spoke Aramaic as their primary language. Ezra 4:8–6:18 and 7:12–26 are also in Aramaic; these chapters largely preserve the text of several letters sent from Aramaic-speaking Persia, and the narrative in between the letters is simply preserved in Aramaic as well. There is also a single Aramaic place-name in Gen. 31:47. T
hus, Jer. 10:11 stands out, as it is an Aramaic verse likely inserted into the middle of Jeremiah’s prophecy by a later editor.

  30. In fact, the roots of the two words (‘avad) and (’avad) are homonyms in Aramaic (and Hebrew for that matter), because the letters that begin both of the words are called “glottal spirant consonants,” commonly called “gutterals,” which had lost their consonantal sounds by the time the LXX was written. (For those of you nonlinguists, ’aleph () and ‘ayin () are the silent letters in Hebrew and Aramaic that get mixed up all the time when you first learn Hebrew and Aramaic vocabulary.) And because they were silent and frequently mixed up, the author of this verse utilized the similarly sounding Aramaic words for “make, create” (, ‘avad) and “perish, destroy” (, ’avad) to create a pun warning against the worship of idols: “The gods who did not make (, ‘avad) the heavens and the earth shall perish (, ’avad) from the earth and from under the heavens.”

  31. The 13-inch-high Prism of Esarhaddon, located in the British Museum, mentions Manasseh of Judah as a loyal vassal of the Assyrian king Sennacherib’s son and successor, Esarhaddon. The Prism of Esarhaddon, discovered in Nineveh, dates to 673–672 BCE. Col. 5, line 55 of the hexagonal clay prism mentions “Ba‘lu, king of Tyre, Menasi, king of Judah.” Cf. ANET 291. Manasseh is listed among twenty-two other kings who provided tribute in the form of raw materials to Esarhaddon for his various building projects. Esarhaddon’s son, Ashurbanipal, also names Manasseh as a loyal vassal who actually assisted the Assyrian king in his war against Egypt.

  32. “Outside the number” means it was not among the canonical psalms as determined at least by the composition of the LXX.

  33. See Harrington, Invitation to the Apocrypha, 185. For an excellent commentary on 2 Esdras, see Early Jewish Writings, http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/2esdras.html.

  Chapter 8: Jerusalem

  1. For more information, visit http://www.tweetyourprayers.info/.