Zealots aka Galileans

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
User avatar
stephan happy huller
Posts: 1480
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 3:06 pm
Contact:

Re: Zealots aka Galileans

Post by stephan happy huller »

It is of interest that the name Iscariot in Syriac is SKRYWTA (סכריותא), which should have a schewa in the first syllable and a short a in the second. The Syriac writers didn't just transliterate what they found in Greek: they certainly had their own ideas about how names should be rendered. If this indicates the source as sicarius, then how the metathesis happened into Greek is hard to understand linguistically. A vowel can be inserted at the beginning if there is a complex consonant cluster at the start of the word borrowed into a Semitic language. For instance, στρατηγος in Acts 16 gets an alef at the front when transliterated into Syriac. But sicarius doesn't have the problem, except perhaps if a reader were confronted with a rendering such as the Syriac and didn't know how to pronounce it.
Thanks spin. This is very important.
Everyone loves the happy times
User avatar
DCHindley
Posts: 3412
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:53 am
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: Zealots aka Galileans

Post by DCHindley »

stephan happy huller wrote:I don't think the interruption was accidental. Irenaeus was accusing the heretics of being zealots. Their practice of 'redemption' is connected with 'zealotry.' There was contemporary objections from the Markan tradition in Alexandria and now the Syntagma of Justin breaks up the critical - and controversial - understanding of redemption which I happen to believe is described in Clement's Secret Mark letter - i.e. the Letter to Theodore.

Note that the Philosophumena does not follow any of the ordering of Book One of Irenaeus save for the description of the Carpocratians as far as I can remember. The Valentinian section is different. The Marcosian section is different. The Simonian section is very different. THe Basilidean section is very different. The Marcionite section is completely different. This has to be explained too as the author is very aware of 'Irenaeus's account. of the heresies.
"Because this better ... muhch behhtter!" (Amanda Bynes, foreign owned counterfeit movie rental store skit)

If Hippolytus saw things "clearer" (read "even more convoluted"), who are we to question his wisdom?

I'd like to see a synoptic parallel of the descriptions of heresies from, say, Irenaeus, Hippolytus and Epiphanius. From the little I've investigated this matter, the details become progressively more weird and the distinctions between "heresies" more confused as time progresses.

DCH
User avatar
stephan happy huller
Posts: 1480
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 3:06 pm
Contact:

Re: Zealots aka Galileans

Post by stephan happy huller »

And for those who are interested the 'zealots' are specifically referred to as qanai (Abot de Rabbi Nathan 7; Numbers Rabbah s. 20 etc)
Everyone loves the happy times
andrewcriddle
Posts: 2817
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 12:36 am

Re: Zealots aka Galileans

Post by andrewcriddle »

Peter Kirby wrote:Following up on our earlier discussion of Epictetus, I have found another text (a quote from Eusebius attributed to Hegesippus) that would lead us to believe that the Zealots were sometimes called Galileans.

http://peterkirby.com/zealots-aka-galileans.html

Cheers.
Hi Peter

In your blog post you mention Porphyry referring to Christians as Galileans. Do you have a source for that or is Porphyry a slip for Julian ?

Andrew Criddle
User avatar
Leucius Charinus
Posts: 2817
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 4:23 pm
Location: memoriae damnatio

Re: Zealots aka Galileans

Post by Leucius Charinus »

andrewcriddle wrote:
Peter Kirby wrote:Following up on our earlier discussion of Epictetus, I have found another text (a quote from Eusebius attributed to Hegesippus) that would lead us to believe that the Zealots were sometimes called Galileans.

http://peterkirby.com/zealots-aka-galileans.html

Cheers.
Hi Peter

In your blog post you mention Porphyry referring to Christians as Galileans. Do you have a source for that or is Porphyry a slip for Julian ?

Andrew Criddle

It's a slip for Julian.

As to Ben Smith's question:
Smith asks, “were the Christians known as Galileans as early as Epictetus?
Or was Epictetus referring to different Galileans, perhaps of the sort who had instigated revolts against Rome?”
The Eusebius quote from Hegesippus confirms that the Galilaeans and the "tribe of Christ" were opponents.
Hence the Galilaeans were those renown as Jewish zealots and could not have been associated with Christians at the time Epictetus writes.
Edward Gibbon confirms this in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 2,Chapter XVI:
Gibbon wrote: Under the appellation of Galilaeans, two distinctions of men were confounded, the most opposite to each other in their manners and principles; the disciples who had embraced the faith of Jesus of Nazareth, 41 and the zealots who had followed the standard of Judas the Gaulonite. 42 The former were the friends, the latter were the enemies, of human kind; and the only resemblance between them consisted in the same inflexible constancy, which, in the defence of their cause, rendered them insensible of death and tortures. The followers of Judas, who impelled their countrymen into rebellion, were soon buried under the ruins of Jerusalem; whilst those of Jesus, known by the more celebrated name of Christians, diffused themselves over the Roman empire.
Hence the answers to Ben's questions IMO are NO and YES respectively.

The answer to all this AFAIK is that Emperor Julian was the first to coin the term as it is applied to the Christians, and he did this because, as far as he was concerned, the Christians were a lawless bunch of Zealots who worshipped the LXX (ancient Jewish stories that had been translated to Greek) and the New Testament (another Jewish story written in Greek) and who, after recently taking over the Roman Empire through the agency of Constantine, had enforced these stories on the entire empire as its "Holy Writ".

Julian continually railed against Constantine and the Christians as "the breakers of [Hellene] tradition". He saw them as "lawless". His execution of "Paulus the Chain" whose misdeeds against humanity during the rule of Constantius, summarised by Ammianus in Book 19,CH 7, was a fitting end for the person who had been responsible at Skythopolis for the torture and death of "numbers without end" of innocent citizens. Julian was reacting to appearance of the lawless state religion during the epoch 325 to 360 CE.
A "cobbler of fables" [Augustine]; "Leucius is the disciple of the devil" [Decretum Gelasianum]; and his books "should be utterly swept away and burned" [Pope Leo I]; they are the "source and mother of all heresy" [Photius]
User avatar
Peter Kirby
Site Admin
Posts: 8034
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 2:13 pm
Location: Santa Clara
Contact:

Re: Zealots aka Galileans

Post by Peter Kirby »

andrewcriddle wrote:
Peter Kirby wrote:Following up on our earlier discussion of Epictetus, I have found another text (a quote from Eusebius attributed to Hegesippus) that would lead us to believe that the Zealots were sometimes called Galileans.

http://peterkirby.com/zealots-aka-galileans.html

Cheers.
Hi Peter

In your blog post you mention Porphyry referring to Christians as Galileans. Do you have a source for that or is Porphyry a slip for Julian ?

Andrew Criddle
Thanks for catching that.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
User avatar
spin
Posts: 2146
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 10:44 pm
Location: Nowhere

Re: Zealots aka Galileans

Post by spin »

spin wrote:It is of interest that the name Iscariot in Syriac is SKRYWTA (סכריותא), which should have a schewa in the first syllable and a short a in the second.
I've just noticed that Codex Bezae also has Gr: σκαριωτης and Lat: Scariotes (here, 8th line from bottom). It's strange that it agrees with the Syriac. Sinaiticus has the initial "i".
Dysexlia lures • ⅔ of what we see is behind our eyes
User avatar
stephan happy huller
Posts: 1480
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 3:06 pm
Contact:

Re: Zealots aka Galileans

Post by stephan happy huller »

Interesting!
Everyone loves the happy times
outhouse
Posts: 3577
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 6:48 pm

Re: Zealots aka Galileans

Post by outhouse »

Peter Kirby wrote:Zealots were sometimes called Galileans.

http://peterkirby.com/zealots-aka-galileans.html

Cheers.
Its what I have always followed, and placed Judas at this cultural movements beginning. being under Herod's rule and the taxation as well as land displacement due to the building of Sepphoris and Tiberius must have left the poverty stricken typical Jew into a pretty harsh existence they were not happy about.

I think in this geographioc place more then any you had a division in Judaism more so then other geographic locations between Hellenist running the show working with Herods hand in hand, and your typical Jew, less Hellenized. [if one can even make a claim of typical Jew]

Maybe not being under the Roman thumb in Galilee left enough freedom for a cultural group that wanted to fight Roman oppression and Hellenism, and they were called Zealots.
outhouse
Posts: 3577
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 6:48 pm

Re: Zealots aka Galileans

Post by outhouse »

Another piece of evidence is the complete opposite types of housing between the Helleistic centers and the Satellite villages that supported them.

Nazareth was a hovel at best, I view as a work camp for the rebuilding of Sepphoris.
Post Reply