Bible, Myth, and History – Page 12 – Gary Greenberg's blog on biblical studies

Did Mark think Jesus was a Davidic Messiah?

Paul, Matthew and Luke all portray Jesus as a descendant of David. Matthew and Luke even provide Jesus with a lengthy genealogical trail showing his Davidic relationship. Mark, on the other hand, has no birth story and does not appear to recognize or accept that Jesus was a descendant of David. Let’s look at the evidence.

Book Review: Paul vs James

Paul vs James by Barrie Wilson ($1.99 from Amazon)

(Note: This is a Kindle book but at last check it didn’t appear to be downloadable to the Kindle device. I used the Apple kindle app to read it. I assume the Android app will also work.)

Paul vs James is an historical novel that explores the conflicts between the apostolic Jerusalem church of Torah-based Christian Jews, originally led by James the Just, brother of Jesus, and the diaspora Pauline church that rejected Torah and promoted unity among Jews and Gentiles. Set shortly after the deaths of the two title characters, as the Romans prepare to march on Jerusalem to put down the Jewish rebellion, the story focuses primarily on Mattai, and his family. Mattai, a Torah-loving rabbi and craftsman who belonged to the Jerusalem church, fears the imminent Roman assault and flees with his family to Antioch, where they establish a new life among other followers of James and the Jerusalem church, and he brings with him a secret document that he kept hidden for over two decades, one which plays an important role later in the story.

As Mattai and the family settle in to the life and rhythms of Antioch, where he and his church members are a distinct minority, the Sabbath service is visited by some followers of Paul’s teachings, among whom are future leaders of the Christian movement, and they came there to recruit members from Mattai’s congregation. This leads to a series of debates and arguments over the correct teachings of Jesus, a debate over whether to follow the teachings of Jesus while he was alive versus the alleged revelations to Paul after the death of Jesus. Wilson imagines that these sort of debates led to the creation of some of the formative documents in early Christianity.

One of the great virtues of this fiction format is that it can transform the trials and tribulations of the characters from sociological abstracts in a lecture to characters enmeshed in society, traditions, worries and concerns. Rather than a dry lecture about how some unknown individual may have written some document, Wilson’s arrangement allows you to see how characters deal with and react to problems as humans, rather than cardboard cutouts. I particularly enjoyed the fleshing out of the story with the frequent insertion of practices, traditions and diversity of thought within the Jewish community that would have no place in a basic lecture about document source criticism.

Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem: Chronological and Narrative Problems

The Triumphal Entry scene in the Gospels depicts a large crowd hailing Jesus as King of the Jews. From a political-historical standpoint, this is problematic. The Romans would not tolerate an unauthorized individual being hailed as the king of the Jews and would likely crack down on such a demonstration and take such a person into custody as soon as possible. The Romans simply didn’t tolerate such actions. However, Mark shows Jesus coming back to Jerusalem day after day with no Roman interaction, although the Romans would have had large numbers of troops stationed in and around Jerusalem during the Passover holiday period. From a literary standpoint, I also note that after Mark depicts Jesus being hailed by the large crowds as the Davidic Messiah that adulation disappears from Mark throughout Jesus’ return visits to Jerusalem. No one during the subsequent visits declares him to be the Davidic heir. Why not?

Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-lists now available for purchase

You can now purchase my latest book at Amazon. Here’s the link.

Release set for “Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-lists.”

Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-lists: The Egyptian Origins of Genesis History, Volume 1: Egypt’s Dynastic Period should be available for purchase sometime in the next couple of days, depending upon how quickly the distributor’s computer’s talk to Amazon’s computers. I expect the book to also appear on the Barnes and Noble site. As soon as I have links, I’ll post them.

Apologies

Sorry about not posting for a while. Between, getting my book ready for release and working on my paper for the ARCE meeting, and other projects, I’ve been very busy. I’m hoping to start posting on a more regular basis after the next couple of weeks and get back to my central mission, posting articles focusing on interesting problems in biblical studies. I also plan to add a page linking to some of my analytic posts as well as some of my articles and papers. In the meantime, you might want to take advantage of the subscription option on this page, which will enable you to receive an alert whenever I post something new.

I’ll be presenting a paper at the annual meeting of the American Research Center in Egypt

I’ll be presenting a paper titled Enoch and Sothis: Is there a link between Genesis chronology and Egyptian king-lists at the annual meeting of the American Research Center in Egypt. The conference will be held from April 12-14 in Alexandria Virginia, just outside of Washington D.C. My presentation will be at 12:45 PM on April 13th. For full details on the conference go here.

Read Chapter One of Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-lists

I was hoping to have my new book, Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-lists: The Egyptian Origins of Genesis History: Volume I, the Egyptian Dynastic Period, my follow up to The Moses Mystery, out during February. There has been a couple of minor production glitches and a February release is possible, but it might take another week or two. In the meantime, you can now read Chapter One: The Mystery of the Genesis “Begats.”

Teaser for “Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-lists”

Here’s some information about my next book, Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-Lists: The Egyptian Origins of Genesis History, Volume 1: Egypt’s Dynastic Period. Over the next couple of weeks, I will post a Table of Contents and readable access to the first chapter. So far, the release date is still set for no later than mid-February.

Revealed! the hidden links between
Genesis chronology and Egyptian history

The Book of Genesis contains a 2,300-year chronology of Patriarchal births and deaths, from Adam to Joseph. Most biblical scholars believe the lists were fictional creations but Gary Greenberg, the provocative author of The Moses Mystery, says the birth and death dates contain a disguised but accurate chronology of Egypt’s dynastic history.

Based on a deep and thorough examination of the many problems in establishing an accurate Egyptian chronology, Greenberg makes a compelling case that an alignment of the Genesis birth-death chronology with the High Egyptian Chronology favored by many Egyptologists demonstrates a precise one-to-one relationship between most Genesis birth and death dates and the starting years for Egypt’s first eighteen dynasties and many of its most important kings.

Some of the surprising discoveries in Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-lists

The patriarch Enoch lived 365 years, a puzzling solar reference from a lunar calendar culture. What very important astronomical and chronological event (utilized by Egyptologists) happened in the year he died?
The patriarch Methuselah lived for 969 years, the longest-lived person in the bible. What important Egyptian political period lasted 969 years and ended in the year Methuselah died?
The patriarch Eber’s birth and death dates coincide with the same years in which two of Egypt’s most important and celebrated political events occurred. Find out what they were.
The patriarch Peleg’s name means “divided.” What division occurred in Egypt in the year Peleg died? Which important Egyptian king ascended to the throne in the year Peleg was born?
The patriarch Joseph guided the Pharaoh to unprecedented political power in Egypt. What is the chronological and political correlation between Joseph’s rise to power and the Thutmosid kings?

Long-delayed supplement to “The Moses Mystery” to be released early 2019.

Those of you who read my book The Moses Mystery: The Egyptian Origins of the Jewish People, might recall that a portion of the argument depended on an extensive study of Egyptian Chronology. Unfortunately, since the book was written for the popular market and the full study would have more than doubled the length of the book, the publishers strongly opposed my inclusion of the extra material. After negotiations, the editor agreed that I could provide a significantly abbreviated summary of the material, which I did. In the book, I said I would separately publish the chronological material.

That was about 20 years ago, and life being what it is, I wound up with new book deals and new directions of interest. Earlier this year, I convinced myself to go back to my original research, do a lot of updating, and separately publish my detailed study showing that the author of the Book of Genesis used ancient Egyptian archival material to fashion his chronological history of Genesis, from Creation to the death of Joseph.

This is going to be a massive study dealing with Egyptian chronology, mythology, and history. My initial plan has been to do a three-volume study titled Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-lists: the Egyptian origins of Genesis history. “Volume I, Egypt’s Dynastic Period” is now completed and going through the process of transformation into a book. I expect it to be published no later than February 2019. The first volume is the one that supplements The Moses Mystery. Over the next few weeks, I will release some information about Volume I of the Genesis study.

The second volume will deal with the mythological chronology present in Egyptian king-lists and its relationship to Genesis. This will result in some substantial revelations about the nature of Egypt’s mythological chronology and the Genesis author’s reliance on that mythological chronology. The third volume will deal with the chronology of Genesis Creation and the patriarchal history from Adam to Joseph. I will show that almost all of Genesis history is highly dependent on Egyptian mythology. These last two volumes can be considered supplements to my 101 Myths of the Bible: How ancient scribes invented biblical history.

My original publishing plan called for me to release Volume 2 either in late 2019 or early 2020, and volume 3 within a year after releasing the second volume. Once again, life has intruded and I have just recently contracted with an academic publisher to produce my lengthy and controversial study on the source origins of the four New Testament gospels. The major draft of that book is complete, and I will have to spend time seeing how much editing and rewriting needs to be done and getting it in final shape for publication. That time frame is uncertain I hope that this won’t cause much delay in producing the next two volumes of Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-lists: The Egyptian Origins of Genesis History. More details on the Gospels project in a couple of months.