extra-biblical legends

[TimCallahan]

. . . (mega snip) . . .
He's not claiming to be just foaming at the mouth, but actually destroying the early church.

ETA: which is really why I was basically getting at: Paul is just writing some uplifting testimonial fiction, on the same "I was evil until I found Jesus" template that's used to this day. Except nowadays people tend to stick to less fantastic stuff than "I was laying waste to the Christian church". Hence my saying that Paul's story may well have a claim to be the ultimate such story. Taken all the way to eleven, and all that

I think we are essentially in agreement. Of course, he could have organized clandestine assaults on the Christian sect.

It's hard to figure where Paul was originally coming from. He could have had such a radical conversion experience - such as what was outlined by Sergeant in The Mind Possessed - which would have swept away all of his vaunted Jewish orthodoxy; or he could have been a poser. He certainly created his own new religion. It would also seem that the followers of James really didn't like or trust Paul.

 

[TimCallahan]

What?
Acts is simply prop-lit?

Yup.

What about Luke's accuracy an historian, then?

That's just DOC's assertion, based on what one 19th. century historian said. Of course, if Luke really was a great historian, then Matthew's nativity story, including the magi and Herod's slaughter of the innocents must be wrong. Well, it is; but DOC wouldn't admit it.

And also Catalunya's favourite creche figure

I'd forgotten about that guy. I wonder if he has pagan origins. Does anyone have any ideas on his origin?

 

[TimCallahan]

Extra-biblical elaboration isn't limited to the New Testament. Midrashic literature abounds. For example, consider this interaction between the wily and deceitful Jacob and Esau, the brother he had so grievously wronged. Returning home from Padam Aram with wives, concubines and children, Jacob hears that Esau is approaching with 400 men and fears his brother will attack him. Instead, Esau proves to be quite gracious (Gen. 33:4):

But Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.

However, in one midrash, it says that Esau intended to bite Jacob's neck and suck his blood, but that God made Jacob's neck as hard as marble. Thus, Esau broke his teeth; hence, he wept (source: Ancient Israel: Myth and Legends Rappaport, Angelo S. 1987, vol. 1, p. 356)

This demonization of Esau helps rehabilitate Jacob, who, as the Bible's trickster figure, is a less than savory character.

Another midrashic elaboration made Joseph's Egyptian wife, Asenath, actually a jewish girl. After being raped by the Horite prince Shechem, Dinah gives birth to a daughter, who is named Asenath (Rappaport 1987, vol. 1, p. 357):

Jacob was greatly worried on account of this illegitimate child. Seeing that his sons hated her and wished to kill her, he wrote her name and the name of his family on a gold plate, placed it on her neck and sent her away. Thereupon the angel Michael came down and led her to the frontier of Egypt. Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh's guard, found her. As his wife Zuleika was barren, he adopted the baby and brought her up. She was subsequently married to Joseph.

So, rather than marrying an Egyptian woman, which would have made his children officially Gentiles, Joseph ends up marrying his niece.

 

[HansMustermann]

Oh, MIDRASH... now that's a whole genre of fanboys inventing canon out of whole cloth

TBH, though, I'm not sure I'd call midrash legend, though. Legends, in my understanding, are more like folklore, while midrash is basically just some (often known) author writing his own fanfic.

Basically, think for example The Book Of Nod. Not only it looks to me like it would qualify as midrash, but IIRC one of the Jewish members of this board also said that it would, a couple of years ago. But I'm not sure I'd call it a legend, since, well, there's not much folklore happening there IMHO. We have a fairly good idea who wrote it, when, and why.

 

[ddt]

So, rather than marrying an Egyptian woman, which would have made his children officially Gentiles, Joseph ends up marrying his niece.

Not necessarily. The tradition that Jewishness is matrilineal is a fairly late invention, after Jesus' times. There's another famous case of a gentile woman in a Jewish genealogy: Ruth, the great-grandmother of David.

 

[TimCallahan]

Not necessarily. The tradition that Jewishness is matrilineal is a fairly late invention, after Jesus' times. There's another famous case of a gentile woman in a Jewish genealogy: Ruth, the great-grandmother of David.

Okay, I'll concede that. In fact, it would go for Tamar as well. BTW, do you know when matrilineal descent among jews was instituted? Still, the midrash makes Asenath an Israelite rather than an Egyptian.

 

[ddt]

Okay, I'll concede that.In fact, it would go for Tamar as well. BTW, do you know when matrilineal descent among jews was instituted? Still, the midrash makes Asenath an Israelite rather than an Egyptian.

I don't have a good reference on it, and it seems to have been in flux for a time. The wiki page gives some views throughout the centuries. As to Jesus' times: Josephus has no problems with offspring of mixed marriages, whereas Philo calls them bastards.

As to Asenath, I can see that someone would like to fill in the details and then transform her into an upstanding goy. Hard to do that with Ruth who had already a whole (canonical) book devoted to her life.

 

[pakeha]

...That's just DOC's assertion, based on what one 19th. century historian said. Of course, if Luke really was a great historian, then Matthew's nativity story, including the magi and Herod's slaughter of the innocents must be wrong. Well, it is; but DOC wouldn't admit it.

If you Google Sir Ramsey Luke world class historian, that phrase or variants on it turn up in page after page of Christian apologists' sites. It was one of those unexpected things that turned up in an idle moment's Google search.

I'd forgotten about that guy. I wonder if he has pagan origins. Does anyone have any ideas on his origin?

I've always assumed the origins were Egyptian, given the thousands of little figures found in the excavated tombs.
As for the caganer, who can say? A mocking figure shows up in a lot folklore and mythology. An example could be Thersites.
Or even the Wandering Jew himself?

 

[HansMustermann]

I don't have a good reference on it, and it seems to have been in flux for a time. The wiki page gives some views throughout the centuries. As to Jesus' times: Josephus has no problems with offspring of mixed marriages, whereas Philo calls them bastards.

As to Asenath, I can see that someone would like to fill in the details and then transform her into an upstanding goy. Hard to do that with Ruth who had already a whole (canonical) book devoted to her life.

You'd be surprised what people can invent out of whole cloth, contrary to what the book says. And those guys were at it with such gusto, that it makes the Catholics look tame and sane by comparison.

E.g., since you mentioned Philo, he manages to read so deep into one sentence in Genesis -- I can't even say 'read between the lines', as it's not even a full line -- that he handwaves in a whole second God. An anthropomorphised 'word of god', who's a second god, and everything is done through him. If that sounds familiar, yeah, John just took that idea and said that the Word Of God is just Jesus.

I mean, forget Ruth, inventing a second God in a monotheism, now that's a bigger feat. Not to mention missing the point of monotheism

Speaking of which, incidentally, a lot of midrash follows the same pattern of reading a whole story into a single sentence or phrase taken out of context. A whole lot of it even tells you up-front which sentence, and then proceeds to make up a fanfic story which "proves" that that simple sentence actually was a metaphor for something not even connected to that sentence or the plain meaning of the chapter it was pulled through.

I.e., the Christians didn't really invent even that. Paul's delusional reading a page worth of prophecies about him and his congregation in sentence from Sarah, yeah, I can believe he was educated as a Pharisee. They did just that. Lots. (Though, lest I mislead, in other places he seems not to know how Pharisee 'logic' worked. His is broken in different ways.)

E.g., the invention of Lilith as the first created woman, in direct contradiction to what the book actually says.

But in Ruth's case, there actually is plenty of fanfic... err... midrash around her, filling in a lot of gaps with wild confabulation.

E.g., if you believe just the more or less 'official' midrash, she's 40 years old and Boaz (the guy she's courting) 80 years old, and makes it a desperate quest to have children at all cost. (Because you just know that a woman can't aspire to anything but be a baby mill) Oh yeah, and according to one midrash, Boaz is sterile too. Which kinda makes one wonder why choose an 80 year old, known sterile guy for that Oh yeah, and apparently Ruth is sterile too. In fact, apparently she doesn't even have a womb. (Transvestite Ruth?) Because, you know, if one started making it stupid, they might as well go all the way and make it completely friggen retarded. You know, like having a woman without a womb try to have a kid at all cost, and choose a known sterile guy for that. You can't get much more of an Idiot Plot than that But some prayers from Naomi cure both, including apparently the Lord getting off his ass and growing a womb for Ruth.

As I was saying, don't underestimate how much one can pull out of the ass when writing fanfic

One version makes Boaz die on the wedding night, after doing his duty and impregnating Ruth, and then makes Naomi a foster mother for the child. No, really, the kid then has a mother (Ruth) AND a foster mother (Naomi.) Holy civil union, batman!

They also go to great lengths to be retarded about her qualities. E.g., she's apparently so virtuous that when the other women bend over to glean, she sits down. Yeah, that's got to be an efficient way of doing things

But this is basically just the 'official', canon stories. It is indeed understandable that they wouldn't change her origin, as long as it makes the point they want made.

You have to understand that basically there are no qualifications needed to write midrash, just like there are no qualifications needed to give a fatwa, or to comment on 9/11. The only 'test' is whether you can get enough people to agree with your version, or enough rabbis to make it more or less canon. But there's nothing to prevent you from writing your own midrash that, say, makes Ruth some kind of Super-Girl from outer space

 

[GrandMasterFox]

You'd be surprised what people can invent out of whole cloth, contrary to what the book says.

Yep. This is part of the reason why I constantly laugh at those who push the whole "nobody would invent that".

Another lovely example is the tower of babylon. The commonly quoted midrash version says that in the end of the story god turned them into monkeys. Seriously, how does that make sense considering the point of the story is to explain why are there so many cultures and languages in the world?

It's even more hilariously funny because this is the "hidabrut" (The REALLY pathetic jewish apologetic who try to explain the bible is really scientific) often try say that when scientists discover a connection between some people and apes than they are probably descendants of those particular apes... Yeah...

I mean, forget Ruth, inventing a second God in a monotheism, now that's a bigger feat. Not to mention missing the point of monotheism

I was under the impression that originally the jews were polytheistic up until around the time of exile. Wouldn't the original stories be polytheistic in nature?

 

[pakeha]

...You have to understand that basically there are no qualifications needed to write midrash, just like there are no qualifications needed to give a fatwa, or to comment on 9/11. The only 'test' is whether you can get enough people to agree with your version, or enough rabbis to make it more or less canon. But there's nothing to prevent you from writing your own midrash that, say, makes Ruth some kind of Super-Girl from outer space

I've always thought of the midrash in the same light as the 1001 Nights. I wasn't far off, I see.

 

[HansMustermann]

Yep. This is part of the reason why I constantly laugh at those who push the whole "nobody would invent that".

Another lovely example is the tower of babylon. The commonly quoted midrash version says that in the end of the story god turned them into monkeys. Seriously, how does that make sense considering the point of the story is to explain why are there so many cultures and languages in the world?

It's even more hilariously funny because this is the "hidabrut" (The REALLY pathetic jewish apologetic who try to explain the bible is really scientific) often try say that when scientists discover a connection between some people and apes than they are probably descendants of those particular apes... Yeah...

Well, it looks like we're in agreement about the qualities of midrash

I was under the impression that originally the jews were polytheistic up until around the time of exile. Wouldn't the original stories be polytheistic in nature?

Dunno if that late, but yeah, there are indications that at some point they were no more monotheistic than any other polytheists. Bearing in mind that most polytheists seem to have worshiped only one god or goddess, and often affirmed the supremacy of their own god in prayers to the extent of just stopping short of denying other gods, but still had the basic human decency to play nice and do just that: stop just short of denying everyone else's gods. It was just common courtesy to not pick on other people's gods if they don't pick on yours.

Monotheism is really what happened when the a-holes got to stop giving that courtesy, and even want to kill everyone who doesn't share their fanboyish obsession with that character.

HOWEVER, I'm talking about Philo of Alexandria here, who lived in the 1st century CE. While we're not sure of the exact year of birth and death, at some point in the middle of it all he took part in an embassy to Rome, circa 40 CE. So, you know, thereabouts.

By then it's waaay too late for any Jewish polytheism. Even taking your cutoff point, the Babylonian exile was circa 587–538 BCE. (We know the end date because it was Cyrus who did it after the fall of Babylon.)

So, you know, Philo is well over half a millennium too late for any kind of Jewish polytheism

And earlier acknowledging polytheism is a bit irrelevant for Philo anyway, since that's not where he finds his second deity in. He's not trying to reconstruct some old religion, like modern neo-paganists are. If he did that, he'd probably get to something more historical, like re-discovering the wife of his God.

He's reading the holy book of his monotheism, and out of just his own reading 'between the lines' (in as much as you can do that within a single line), he manages to end up rationalizing the existence of a One True Creator God, and, erm, The Other True Creator God, so to speak.

He goes so far to make the Father god so above everything, even above human likeness or human possibility to imagine him, that he ends up having to find a SECOND God that is in human shape and the humans can perceive.

To be fair, that trend didn't start with him, but was already a trend within that monotheism and a culture of glorifying who's the more rabid fanboy. Their God had gone from a down-to-earth God that talks to people all the time (even if in dreams and visions), to something so awesome that he can't even talk to humans because they're not prepared to receive his voice. Other than a few chosen ones, everyone else got the "bat kol", or, I kid you not, the DAUGHTER of God's voice. Which was already kind of a sentient and independent entity.

They were already putting God on so high a pedestal, that more and more entities were needed to get from God to you.

Philo just kinda takes that to the logical conclusion. It would probably be called deconstructing it these days, if not for the aspect of being, as far as we can tell, dead serious about it.

So kinda we have a curious case of going so far into monotheism, as to actually wrap around and come out more polytheistic than most actual polytheists

 

[HansMustermann]

To return to Ruth, though, it seems to me like the midrash does manage to alter the story's meaning and her origin concept.

The original origin concept is pretty much 'just a random foreign girl who wants to become a Jew and obey the Jewish customs." And the story say: yes, that's ok.

The midrash is going overboard with giving her qualities above those of actual Jewish women. (E.g., that gleaning stupidity is contrasted to the other women gleaning there, who were Jewish.) And even a miracle from God as a clear sign of approval. So basically from just another foreign girl, she becomes some kind of Super-Girl, who is good enough to be allowed to convert.

 

[TimCallahan]

Concerning Ruth: Along with midrashim there were also targumim, rewrites of the books of the Bible in Aramaic. In his book The Bible Against Itself, Randel Helms notes (p. 9) that the Targum of Ruth goes out of its way to explicitly say that Ruth and Boaz did not have sexual relations on the threshing floor (when Ruth uncovers his "feet"). The targumim were being composed throughout the Second Temple Period (515 BCE – CE 70) and into the Middle Ages. The Targum of Ruth was probably of early medieval origin. In the process of translating Ruth into Aramaic, the translator could not resist the urge to correct and clarify according to acceptable doctrine. Thus, the Targum of Ruth says (v. 3:8):

And it happened at midnight that the man shuddered and trembled, and, as a result, his flesh became as soft as a [boiled] turnip. Though he perceived a woman sleeping at his feet, he subdued his evil inclination and did not draw nigh unto her, just like the righteous Joseph, who refused to draw nigh unto the Egyptian woman, the wife of his master; and just like the pious Paltiel, the son of Laish, who placed a sword between himself and Michal, the daughter of Saul and wife of David, refusing to approach her.

That the Targum had to go to such lengths to deny any possible sexual activity between Ruth and Boaz indicates that its author saw without a doubt that sex was clearly implied in the original Hebrew version of Ruth. Of course, the bit about Paltiel not having sex with Michal is also a pious fiction.

 

[HansMustermann]

To be fair, though, the 'canonical' midrash also goes out of its way to make poor Boaz all holy and righteous there

 

[HansMustermann]

BTW, since now it occurs to me that it could come out the wrong way, I'm not saying "poor Boaz" because he didn't get some extramarital nookie in the barn, but because in the midrash then they go and kill him on the wedding night to make the point that Ruth totally just wanted to do her duty to make a heir and not just some sex. You know, because he doesn't remarry after that. Seems a bit harsh to kill the guy for that

 

[GrandMasterFox]

Well, it looks like we're in agreement about the qualities of midrash

Oh, yes. Unlike most people here, the majority of my experience had a lot more to do with jews than christians, so believe me moronic drashes are about as common to me as a needle in a needle stack.

Other favorable examples are when dear eli decided to send off bears to kill the kids who mocked his boldness, one midrash states that he did it not because they mocked him, but rather because their parent had sex in yom kipur... How on earth did they figure that out?

<snip>
So, you know, Philo is well over half a millennium too late for any kind of Jewish polytheism

Again, in complete agreement with you. My point was that you gave it as an example for something that is in contradictory to the story's original intent. I was wondering if perhaps it's possible it was the original intent to imply some form of polytheistic connection even if that wasn't the most accepted at the time.

Something like, if you have a series of movies\books, and they start to differ more and more from each other until at some point due to low ratings, they decide to bring someone to "go back to the original spirit" of things, if you get my drift.

 

[catsmate]

If you Google Sir Ramsey Luke world class historian, that phrase or variants on it turn up in page after page of Christian apologists' sites. It was one of those unexpected things that turned up in an idle moment's Google search.

I believe this whole line of nonsense started with the United Church of God and their house rag The Good News which regularly used supposed extra-biblical "evidence" to shore up their beliefs. DOC (whom I believe is affiliated with that xian sect) regularly quotes their nonsense.
The lies xians try and pass off about Ramsay start with his supposed atheism and equally mythical conversion to xianity (I think this lie began with Geisler and Turek, also often quoted by DOC, who edited a Ramsay quote to support their lie).
Hell many xian websites don't even manage and get his picture correct, using the image of the other famous William Ramsay.

 

[Tacita]

Other favorable examples are when dear eli decided to send off bears to kill the kids who mocked his boldness, one midrash states that he did it not because they mocked him, but rather because their parent had sex in yom kipur... How on earth did they figure that out?

It was baldness (I'm sure it was just a typo on your part) and the apologetic version I read was that they were not kids but rather "youths" and old enough and in large enough quantities that he felt his life was in danger.

 

[TimCallahan]

It was baldness (I'm sure it was just a typo on your part) and the apologetic version I read was that they were not kids but rather "youths" and old enough and in large enough quantities that he felt his life was in danger.

Healthy hair was a sign of vigor and, by implication, virility. For example, Absolom, before his revolt against David, used to cut his long hair every year and offer it as a burnt offering (that must have smelled wonderful!). After he drives David out of Jerusalem, Absolom copulates with all ten of David's concubines, "in the sight of all Israel" (2 Sm. 16:22). Thus, just as a healthy head of hair was seen as a sign of virility, so baldness was seen as a sign of impotence. So, in saying, "Go up [i.e. "Get out"] you bald-head," (2 kgs. 2:23) the brats were calling Elisha "limp d---."

A to the apologetic that they were youths, the word na-arim could indeed mean either boys or youths. However, the phrase used in 2 Kgs. 2:23 is qetanim na-arim, "lesser lads," meaning that "small boys" is the correct translation, and the apologetic interpretation that Elisha was being menaced by a gang of teenage toughs and in danger of being assaulted is a pathetic rationalization. He killed a bunch of bratty little boys for impugning his masculinity.