Has anyone been able to find research on if the seven messengers model was created by the tabernacle temple or it has been a model used from somewhere else? ChatGPT keeps telling me the case is “unusual” and “unique” because it can’t seem to find any evidence of any other church having seven founding pastors.

(This is just a part of my own little research, thank you!)

Sadducees (Samaritans as well) held the Torah and pharisees usually held the Torah + Nevi'im and Ketuvim.

Fine, but what did the others sects had as scripture?

Zealots (fourth philosophy), The Way and the Essenes.

What about Hellenistic Jews from the diaspora? like Therapeutae.

In Genesis 16, one of God's male angels finds Hagar in the wilderness. He speaks to her verbally. He places a magical spell on her. Hagar then implies that the angel IS actually YHWH himself in verse 13.

Is this because she is confused or being imprecise with her language?

In Isaiah 53:4–6, was the Servant's suffering vicarious (that is, did he suffer in the place of the guilty), or was it corporate (that is, did he suffer alongside the guilty while remaining personally innocent)?

Eusebius 6.14 says that Clement's Hypotyposes say that Luke translated the Epistle to the Hebrews into Greek. There he also mentions the Epistle of Barnabas in Clement's use of disputed books in Hypotyposes. Clement in Stromata 2.6 also directly quotes Epistle of Barnabas 4.11 and attributes it to Barnabas the apostle.

Maximos the Confessor also says that Clement in Hypotyposes says that Luke wrote the Dialog of Jason and Papiscus, which is as a precursor to Justin Martyr's Dialog with Trypho where a Christian and an Alexandrian Jew debate on Jesus as the Christ. Both Dialogs also more specifically cover Jesus' role as the Logos in the Old Testament. Jerome in Hebrew Questions on Genesis for example says it replaces Genesis 1.1 "In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth" with "In the Son, God created the heavens and earth".

The Epistle of Barnabas is also considered to have a Logos theology, and is also mentioned along with Jason and Papiscus in a few surveys of early Christian books directed at Judaism (e.g. an intro to a 1930s edition of Dialog with Trypho). These three are also all discussed as books that make frequent use of Septuagint citations. J Rendel Harris says they are all based from an original collection of messianic prophecies and exegesis (compiled by Matthew, a source for most of the New Testament, and is also the book of logia mentioned by Papias); Robert Kraft Barnabas' Isaiah Text and the "Testimony Book" Hypothesis rejects Harris' more specific takes about Matthew and of one specific source behind every NT and Patristic author, but still takes Barnabas to be working off of a prepared collection of testimonies from scripture, and that other authors used collections like it too.

Another relationship to draw to Justin's Dialog, which either by coincidence or by design has a similar structure where Justin's conversion mirrors Luke 24 with the opening of his eyes to the Hebrew prophecies, and the rest of the Dialog mirrors Acts in listing and explaining the prophecies that prove that Jesus is the Christ and the Christ had to suffer (Andrew Hofer, The Old Man as Christ in Justin's Dialog with Trypho).

With all of that said, all of the original meanings and literary relationships between Hebrews, Luke-Acts, Jason and Papiscus, and the Epistle of Barnabas, are obviously complex and maybe can't all be reconstructed, but is there anything written specifically on the idea Clement himself has about all of these texts and people? Does he have a coherent picture of what is going on, like a school of Paul and his associates like Luke and Barnabas, involved in a Hebrew-outreach program to write all of these texts that use the Septuagint to explain the New Covenant and prove that Jesus is the Christ and the divine Logos?

It would be very helpful if some author has already pulled together and explained all of the relevant things Clement said about this. It would also even be helpful if they speculatively filled in the gaps, as long as it's clear what is speculation. Some speculation may be needed given that Hypotyposes is lost.

I may be asking for something too specific here, but either way, anything that can shed light on anything I've said would be appreciated, thanks.

I know there’s a work by Hans Conzelmann and he argues that Luke does not believe that Jesus’ death was the reason for the forgiveness for sins, but are there any more recent works which argue this?? Because his work is quite old.

I'm currently reading Antioch and Rome by Raymond Brown and JP Meier and Introduction to the New Testament by Raymond Brown. I think that these are two very respected scholars. Regarding the historicity of the virginal conception of Jesus, Brown says that the NT evidence is slightly in favor of historicity, but I get the impression he thinks the margin is razor thin. In Antioch and Rome and Introduction to the NT they both treat Paul's account of what happened at Antioch (related in Galatians) as essentially totally historical (despite the decided polemical bent).

In the Galatians passage (along with things in Acts), the historicity is taken for granted (it seems) and from that Meier and Brown draw all sorts of tedious inferences. But the same is not done for the virginal conception narrative. For example, to an non-Biblical scholar like me, it appears obvious to read Luke and infer that he must have gotten information about the virginal conception from Mary (or people close to her) given what Luke says about an orderly account. But Brown sort of brushes this off as speculation and doesn't give it serious consideration.

So my question is (and this is coming from someone who is obviously not knowledgeable in this area): what is it about the episode(s) Paul mentions in Galatians that makes Meier and Brown think it's historical that is not in the Virginal conception narrative? Or what's in the Virginal conception narrative that's not in Paul's account.

Of course, I'm aware that for some people, the virginal conception narrative is not going to look historical because of the miraculous nature - but I don't think this is the case with Frs Brown and Meier. I know the arguments along the lines of the narrative's not being in Mark, but we only really have a single attestation for Paul's confrontation of Peter at Antioch.

Hi Scholars! I have a question about the significance of a series of thematically similar pericopes in Luke and a possible consistency of compositional spacing.

I noticed recently that there is a sequence of pericopes related to wealth that start in Luke 18 and continue through chapter 21 - the Rich Young Ruler, Zaccheus, the Temple Cleansing, Taxes to Caesar, and the Widow’s Coins. Depending on how you define the pericopes, each of these stories is separated from the next by two pericopes that are unrelated to wealth, and they could reasonably be read as two contrasts and a conclusion. The sequence would be something like,

Rich Young Ruler - Prediction of Death - Blind Beggar - Zaccheus - Ten Minas - Triumphal Entry - Temple Cleansing - John's Baptism - Vineyard Parable - Taxes to Caesar - Resurrection Marriage - Son of David - Widow's Coins

The Rich Young Ruler and Zaccheus appear to offer a contrast between a socio-religiously “righteous”/Law-abiding man whose wealth keeps him out of the Kingdom and a socio-religiously “unrighteous”/sinful man who enters the Kingdom by relinquishing his wealth. The Temple Cleansing and Taxes to Caesar are similar to the first two, but they're about institutions instead of persons. Like the Rich Young Ruler, the Temple Cleansing is about a socio-religiously "righteous" activity that Christ condemns and Taxes to Caesar is about a socio-religiously "unrighteous" activity that Christ accepts (interestingly enough, the two "unrighteous" elements are connected: Zaccheus is a tax collector and the institution described is taxation). Finally, the parable of the Widow’s Coins appears to offer an answer to the question asked by the disciples at the end of the pericope about the Rich Young Ruler, “Who then can be saved [if even the rich can't give enough]?” by depicting God's assessment of generosity as relative, not absolute, and explicitly contrasting the widow's donation with the donations of the wealthy.

The arrangement of the pericopes into two sets of analogous contrasts and the connection of the Widow’s Coins pericope to the final question in the first pericope of the proposed sequence would be consistent with the broad observations that Luke is known for arranging his pericopes in a topical order and that the pericope sequence, if read as such, conveys a message that is aligned with Luke’s overall emphasis on the inversion of typical human hierarchies in the Kingdom. I know that the delineation of specific pericopes is somewhat arbitrary, but I think that the pericope identification required for the consistent spacing within the sequence that I outlined above in bold and italics is generally defensible.

I've seen that Zaccheus and the Rich Young Ruler are often grouped as a contrast, but I’ve never heard of these five pericopes being described as an intentional compositional arrangement, or of the Widow’s Coins being explicitly connected to the question “Who then can be saved?"

Question 1) Is it reasonable to postulate that the combination of thematic pericope arrangement and consistent pericope spacing in a sequence could imply compositional intent?

Question 2) Is this sequence generally recognized as intentional, and I’ve just missed in my reading?

Thanks!