Time Shift scenarios and the New Testament texts

[Secret Alias]

I think you should rename the thread 'Shift Scenarios' as opposed to mere 'Time Shift Scenarios.' It's a little misleading. Like claiming a gulag menu is 'vegetarian' instead of saying they serve barley soup every day.

[Lena Einhorn]

Secret Alias wrote:

I think you should rename the thread 'Shift Scenarios' as opposed to mere 'Time Shift Scenarios.'

Less descriptive, don't you think?
Shifting gears? Shifting language? Shifting the diet in the Gulag?

[MrMacSon]

...the general Roman "mood" probably influenced where the enmity was placed when presenting the new faith to this audience.

Do you think the Romans helped present the new faith to the audience in the 1st or 2nd century (or both)?

But additionally, there was competition between the two monotheistic faiths -- both of whom had miraculously survived the utter destruction of the Jewish war, albeit greatly altered.

It would almost seem to a certainty that Christianity arose because of the destruction.

I think the final devastation after the 2nd War (the Bar Kokhba revolt) was influential in the evolution of the Christian-Jewish dynamic, too.

[MrMacSon]

I think you should rename the thread 'Shift Scenarios' as opposed to mere 'Time Shift Scenarios.'

Well, I did use the term 'shape-shifter' previously in this thread with my tongue firmly in my cheek as I wrote and posted it

[iskander]

Secret Alias wrote:

I think you should rename the thread 'Shift Scenarios' as opposed to mere 'Time Shift Scenarios.'

Less descriptive, don't you think?
Shifting gears? Shifting language? Shifting the diet in the Gulag?

Shifting manure with the help of the loony one.

[MrMacSon]

Shifting manure with the help of the loony one.

• me?

[MrMacSon]

I will add another interesting verse in the New Testament, which seems to possibly hold a connection with the Jewish war against Rome:

Acts 13:1 says: "“Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the ruler, and Saul.”

In this one sentence, there are three, or possibly even four, names very similar to names associated with the Jewish war:

1. Niger was the name of one of the main commanders in the beginning and middle of the war. He is the only person named Niger in all of Josephus's chronicles.

2. Cyrene (a place name appearing in several sections of the NT) was far away from Judea or Galilee, or Antioch, but in North Africa – in present-day Libya – where, after the end of the Jewish War, many of the fleeing Sicarii ("knifemen") settled. According to Acts 21:38, "the Egyptian" was a leader of the Sicarii -- the most violent of the rebel factions, and the one holding out last, on Masada. In the final chapter of the final book of War of the Jews, Josephus writes: “And now did the madness of the Sicarii, like a disease, reach as far as the cities of Cyrene.”

3. Manaen is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Menahem, or Manahem. Menahem was the Sicarii leader at the beginning of the Jewish war. Being a Galilean (and thus born far from Antioch), Menahem could be said to have been “brought up with Herod the Tetrarch,” the then ruler of Galilee.

4. Barnabas, finally. When Barnabas is first mentioned in Acts, he is introduced in the following way: “Barnabas (which means ‘son of Parakleseos’)” (Acts 4:36) Parakletos, which means "comforter", "helper", is in Hebrew -- yes -- Menahem! So Barnabas would mean "son of Menahem."

Added to this conglomeration of rebellion associated names, the names are also in Acts listed in the same sentence, where it is said that they belong to one and the same grouping -- in this case "the church at Antioch."

Again, this is an example of how intricately -- and rarely perfectly clearly -- the New Testament (and Luke and Acts in particular), keeps dropping rebellion-related names and associations, always in subtext. The clearest example of this, of course, is that Luke and Acts manages to name all the main first century rebel leaders up until the beginning of the Jewish war (Judas the Galilean, Theudas, "the Egyptian", and Manaen/Menahem). And yet, the context is never given, and the names are just dropped into the narrative, without much explanation -- and only once for each name.

Cyrene was where the Kitos War (115–117 AD/CE) started.

• "While the majority of the Roman armies were fighting Trajan's Parthian War on the eastern border of the Roman Empire, major uprisings by ethnic Judeans in Cyrene, Libya, Cyprus and Egypt spiraled out of control, resulting in a widespread slaughter of left behind Roman garrisons and Roman citizens by Jewish rebels. Some of the areas with the heaviest massacres were left so utterly annihilated that others were made to settle these areas to prevent the absence of any remaining presence. The rebellions were finally crushed by Roman legionary forces, chiefly by the Roman general Lusius Quietus, whose nomen later gave the conflict its title, as "Kitos" is a later corruption of Quietus."

Cyrenaica

In Cyrenaica, the rebels were led by one Lukuas or Andreas, who called himself "king" (according to Eusebius of Caesarea). His group destroyed many temples, including those to Hecate, Jupiter, Apollo, Artemis, and Isis, as well as the civil structures that were symbols of Rome, including the Caesareum, the basilica, and the public baths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitos_War#Cyrenaica

Then Lukuas, leader of rebel Jews, moved towards Alexandria, entered the city, which had been abandoned by the Roman troops in Egypt under the leadership of governor Marcus Rutilius Lupus, and set fire to the city. The Egyptian temples and the tomb of Pompey were destroyed. Trajan sent new troops under the praefectus praetorio Quintus Marcius Turbo, but Egypt and Cyrenaica were pacified only in autumn 117.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitos_War#Egypt

Judaea

Jewish leader Lukuas fled to Judea.[7] Marcius Turbo pursued him and sentenced to death the brothers Julian and Pappus, who had been key leaders in the rebellion. Lusius Quietus, the conqueror of the Jews of Mesopotamia, was now in command of the Roman army in Judaea, and laid siege to LyddaX, where the rebel Jews had gathered under the leadership of Julian and Pappus. The distress became so great that the patriarch Rabban Gamaliel II, who was shut up there and died soon afterwards, permitted fasting even on Ḥanukkah. Other rabbis condemned this measure.[8] Lydda was next taken and many of the rebellious Jews were executed; the "slain of Lydda" are often mentioned in words of reverential praise in the Talmud.[9] Rebel leaders Pappus and Julian were among those executed by the Romans in the same year.[10]

X During the First Jewish–Roman War, the Roman proconsul of Syria, Cestius Gallus, razed the town on his way to Jerusalem in 66 CE. It was occupied by Emperor Vespasian in 68 CE.[20]

In the period following the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Rabbi Tarfon, who appears in many Tannaitic and Jewish legal discussions, served as a rabbinic authority in Lod.[21]

During the Kitos War, 115-117 CE, the Roman army laid siege to Lod, where the rebel Jews had gathered under the leadership of Julian and Pappos. Torah study was outlawed by the Romans and pursued mostly in the underground.[22] ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lod

[iskander]

Shifting manure with the help of the loony one.

• me?

No

[Lena Einhorn]

MrMacSon wrote:

While the majority of the Roman armies were fighting Trajan's Parthian War on the eastern border of the Roman Empire, major uprisings by ethnic Judeans in Cyrene, Libya, Cyprus and Egypt spiraled out of control, resulting in a widespread slaughter of left behind Roman garrisons and Roman citizens by Jewish rebels. ...
... In Cyrenaica, the rebels were led by one Lukuas or Andreas, who called himself "king"

Interesting!

[MrMacSon]

... In Cyrenaica, the rebels were led by one Lukuas or Andreas, who called himself "king"

apparently there is a passage in the works of Cassius Dio that says this Lukuas was called or called himself 'King of the Jews'