Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Oppenheimer's essay is quite instructive on this subject - https://books.google.com/books?id=xayoAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA98&dq=%22public+reading%22+samaritan+ten&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBWoVChMIyNCVodm5yAIVySqICh1yXQUj#v=onepage&q=%22public%20reading%22%20samaritan%20ten&f=false A...

"Physician, heal yourself" in Luke 4.23 is, of course, frankly acknowledged as an extant proverb which Jesus is citing. Thanks Ben. I may have made a mistake by posting that example #5, about the dog in the manger who won't let the animals who can eat the grain get access it. While this m...

Unless, of course, one thinks to argue that the expressions found in both Philo and the gospels are themselves evidence of "what was in the air". Here's the problem. When critics, and by extension us as their disciples, note an allusion to something the source of which is unidentified, th...

Are you looking for Greek and Roman roots only? What about Philo? I was thinking of "classics" of Greco-Roman literature, the events and topics of which would be "in the air" in the markets and in everyday lore. Philo, like Plato, was a philosopher, but I don't think he laid out...

The phrase "People of the Land" probably implied something different in the time of the Persian return(s) than it did in Hasmonean times, and again in Roman times. The literary origins of the supposedly Persian era Ezra-Nehemiah and other documents (such as Daniel) makes analysis hard. I w...

There are several layers of irony in Phaedrus, but at face value Lysias as remembered by Phaedrus as recorded by Plato is not arguing that one should genuinely give parties to the needy but undeserving. The argument is that a young person should choose the most eminent of his suitors rather than th...

5) Lucian of Samosata (ca. 125 CE – after 180 CE, maybe as late as 200 CE) refers to the fable twice, apparently as familiar to his readers. Remarks addressed to an illiterate book-fancier , 30, (ca. 170 CE) he writes: “So it is with you [the ignorant book collector]: you might, to be sure, lend you...

These four examples (well, 3 & 4 are related, depending on whether Herodotus/Cyrus was alluding to a saying attributed to a real "Aesop", or "Aesop" is just a collective name for these kind of moralistic animal fables) were all that I could come up with off the top of my head...

4) Aesop's Fables 290. The Fisherman and his Pipe , translated by Laura Gibbs (2002) There was once a fisherman who saw some fish in the sea and played on his pipe, expecting them to come out onto the land. When his hopes proved false, he took a net and used it instead, and in this way he was able t...

3) Herodotus, Histories , book 1.141.1-4, citing Cyrus the Great response to the Greeks who wanted to become allied with him now that he had defeated Lydia, but who had previously snubbed his request that they desert to his side: 1 As soon as the Lydians had been subjugated by the Persians, the Ioni...