Ancient Testaments of the Patriarchs

Author: Ken Johnson
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781975887742
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 170

Book Description
Autobiographies from the Dead Sea Scrolls The Talmud teaches that the ancient patriarchs were all prophets, and that each one of them left testaments for their descendants to read. These contain commands for their children, moral lessons, and prophecy. This legend is not only repeated among the Essene community, but fragments of twenty such records have been found in the Dead Sea scrolls! In this book you will read for yourself the testaments of Enos (Adam's grandson), Enoch, Lamech (Noah's father), Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Levi, Judah, Naphtali, Joseph, Benjamin, Kohath (son of Levi, and father of Amram), Amram (father of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam), and Aaron. You will see many extra-biblical prophecies of the Messiah, including Aaron's warning about the Messiah's First Coming. Brought to you by Bible Facts Ministries, biblefacts.org

The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs

Author: Apostle Horn
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 024412745X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 60

Book Description
The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs;The following twelve books are biographies written between 107 and 137 B.C. They are a forceful exposition, showing how a Pharisee with a rare gift of writing secured publicity by using the names of the greatest men of ancient times. "There were intellectual giants in those days" and the Twelve Patriarchs were the Intellectual Giants! Each is here made to tell his life story. When he is on his deathbed he calls all his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren about him, and proceeds without reservation to lay bare his experiences for the moral guidance of his hearers. If he fell into sin he tells all about it and then counsels them not to err as he did. If he was virtuous, he shows what rewards were his. When you look beyond the unvarnished almost brutally frank passages of the text, you will discern a remarkable attestation of the expectations of the Messiah which existed a hundred years before Christ.

Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament as Part of Christian Literature

Author: Marinus de Jonge
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004496513
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
The primary witnesses of the writings called Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament are, in great majority, of Christian provenance. It has been customary for scholars to look for an originally Jewish form of the documents, reflecting Jewish life and thought in the period between 200 BCE and 100 CE. In this volume, M. de Jonge argues that these writings should, first of all, be studied as documents relevant for Christians. This volume incorporates essays written earlier by the author as well as a number of new chapters. The first part deals with general questions concerning the transmission of the pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament whereas the second part has a particular focus on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Greek Life of Adam and Eve.

Ancient Book of Daniel

Author: Ken Johnson
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
ISBN: 9781456306564
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Book Description
The ancient Hebrew prophet Daniel lived in the fifth century BC and accurately predicted the history of the nation of Israel from 536 BC to AD 1948. He also predicted the date of the death of the Messiah to occur in AD 32, the date of the rebirth of the nation of Israel to occur in AD 1948, and the Israeli capture of the Temple Mount to take place in AD 1967! Commentary from the ancient rabbis and the first century church reveals how the messianic rabbis and the disciples of the apostles interpreted his prophecies. Daniel also indicated where the Antichrist would come from, where he would place his international headquarters, and identified the three rebel nations that will attack him during the first three-and-a-half years of the Tribulation. Brought to you by Biblefacts Ministries, Biblefacts.org

The Ladder of Jacob

Author: James L. Kugel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691121222
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Book Description
Rife with incest, adultery, rape, and murder, the biblical story of Jacob and his children must have troubled ancient readers. By any standard, this was a family with problems. Jacob's oldest son Reuben is said to have slept with his father's concubine Bilhah. The next two sons, Simeon and Levi, tricked the men of a nearby city into undergoing circumcision, and then murdered all of them as revenge for the rape of their sister. Judah, the fourth son, had sexual relations with his own daughter-in-law. Meanwhile, jealous of their younger sibling Joseph, the brothers conspired to kill him; they later relented and merely sold him into slavery. These stories presented a particular challenge for ancient biblical interpreters. After all, Jacob's sons were the founders of the nation of Israel and ought to have been models of virtue. In The Ladder of Jacob, renowned biblical scholar James Kugel retraces the steps of ancient biblical interpreters as they struggled with such problems. Kugel reveals how they often fixed on a little detail in the Bible's wording to "deduce" something not openly stated in the narrative. They concluded that Simeon and Levi were justified in killing all the men in a town to avenge the rape of their sister, and that Judah, who slept with his daughter-in-law, was the unfortunate victim of alcoholism. These are among the earliest examples of ancient biblical interpretation (midrash). They are found in retellings of biblical stories that appeared in the closing centuries BCE--in the Book of Jubilees, the Aramaic Levi Document, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and other noncanonical works. Through careful analysis of these retellings, Kugel is able to reconstruct how ancient interpreters worked. The Ladder of Jacob is an artful, compelling account of the very beginnings of biblical interpretation.

Ancient Book of Enoch

Author: Ken Johnson
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781480102767
Category : Apocryphal books (Old Testament)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The Holy Spirit inspired Jude to quote Enoch for a reason. The Ancient Book of Enoch opens by addressing those in the Tribulation period. It contains numerous prophecies about the flood and fire judgments, and the two comings of the Messiah. It teaches that the Messiah is the Son of God and that He will shed His blood to redeem us and even predicts the generation that this would occur! The book of Enoch prophesies a window of time in which the Second Coming would occur and prophesies that there will be twenty-three Israeli Prime Ministers ruling in fifty-eight terms from AD 1948 to the beginning of the Tribulation period, and much more. Even though it prophecies that the Bible would be created and says we will be judged by our obedience to the Bible, it also makes it clear that this book is not to be added to the Canon of Scripture. The Ancient Book of Enoch recounts the history of the angels that fell in the days of Jared, Enoch's father. It testifies to their marriages with human women and their genetic experiments. This commentary includes a previously unknown chapter from the Dead Sea Scrolls that actually explains how they did their genetic tampering. The commentary is from a fundamentalist Christian view, brought to you by Biblefacts Ministries, biblefacts.org.

The Bible Unearthed

Author: Israel Finkelstein
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743223381
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
In this groundbreaking work that sets apart fact and legend, authors Finkelstein and Silberman use significant archeological discoveries to provide historical information about biblical Israel and its neighbors. In this iconoclastic and provocative work, leading scholars Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman draw on recent archaeological research to present a dramatically revised portrait of ancient Israel and its neighbors. They argue that crucial evidence (or a telling lack of evidence) at digs in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon suggests that many of the most famous stories in the Bible—the wanderings of the patriarchs, the Exodus from Egypt, Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, and David and Solomon’s vast empire—reflect the world of the later authors rather than actual historical facts. Challenging the fundamentalist readings of the scriptures and marshaling the latest archaeological evidence to support its new vision of ancient Israel, The Bible Unearthed offers a fascinating and controversial perspective on when and why the Bible was written and why it possesses such great spiritual and emotional power today.

Testament of Levi

Author: Scriptural Research Institute
Publisher: Scriptural Research Institute
ISBN: 1989604811
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 27

Book Description
The Testament of Levi, like the other Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, is considered to be a Jewish work that was added to by Christians in the Christian era. It is unclear when it comes from, however, fragments of the Testaments of Joseph and Levi have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in Aramaic, dating to between 135 and 37 BC, implying the rest of the Twelve were compiled at the same time. The Testament of Levi also refers to the Book of Enoch, an Aramaic Second Temple era work that was not included in the Septuagint, which implies it was written around the same time as the Books of Daniel and Enoch, which would date it to anywhere between 300 and 100 BC. The surviving copies of the Testament of Levi contain multiple layers of prophecy that was once accepted as being authentic pre-Christian predictions of the coming of Jesus Christ. This view shifted in Western Europe during the Protestant reformation, and the text was assumed to be a Christian era work, and generally dismissed as a forgery. This view shifted by the 1900s, as an Semitic layer of text was found within it that indicated it was originally a pre-Christian work that was later Christianized, and it was then assumed to be a Pharisee work that the Christians had added all the prophecies to. Since the discovery of fragments of the testament have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating to between 135 and 37 BC, and written in Aramaic, the Pharisee theory has been discredited. The Dead Sea Scrolls fragments have also shown that some of the prophecies were present in the Aramaic texts by 37 BC, meaning that the Christians had simply added to the prophecies to indicate they were about Jesus. The original work appears to be an anti-Levitical text, which dismissed the Levitical priesthood, and pointed to an alternative priesthood. As this was not a Samaritan text, it was likely a text written by the Tobian Jews mentioned in 2nd Maccabees, that lived in Seleucid controlled regions.

The Canon of Scripture

Author: F. F. Bruce
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830852123
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
How did the books of the Bible come to be recognized as Holy Scripture? After nearly nineteen centuries the canon of Scripture remains an issue of debate. Adept in both Old and New Testament studies, F. F. Bruce brings the wisdom of a lifetime of reflection and biblical interpretation to bear in addressing the criteria of canonicity, the canon within the canon, and canonical criticism.

A History of the Bible

Author: John Barton
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143111205
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 642

Book Description
A literary history of our most influential book of all time, by an Oxford scholar and Anglican priest In our culture, the Bible is monolithic: It is a collection of books that has been unchanged and unchallenged since the earliest days of the Christian church. The idea of the Bible as "Holy Scripture," a non-negotiable authority straight from God, has prevailed in Western society for some time. And while it provides a firm foundation for centuries of Christian teaching, it denies the depth, variety, and richness of this fascinating text. In A History of the Bible, John Barton argues that the Bible is not a prescription to a complete, fixed religious system, but rather a product of a long and intriguing process, which has inspired Judaism and Christianity, but still does not describe the whole of either religion. Barton shows how the Bible is indeed an important source of religious insight for Jews and Christians alike, yet argues that it must be read in its historical context--from its beginnings in myth and folklore to its many interpretations throughout the centuries. It is a book full of narratives, laws, proverbs, prophecies, poems, and letters, each with their own character and origin stories. Barton explains how and by whom these disparate pieces were written, how they were canonized (and which ones weren't), and how they were assembled, disseminated, and interpreted around the world--and, importantly, to what effect. Ultimately, A History of the Bible argues that a thorough understanding of the history and context of its writing encourages religious communities to move away from the Bible's literal wording--which is impossible to determine--and focus instead on the broader meanings of scripture.