Samaritans number at most, 1,000-2,000 people.The biggest difference between Samaritans and Israelite belief is that Samaritans believe that the “place that God will choose” mentioned in Deuteronomy is Mount Gizrim in modern day Palestine/West Bank, while Jews believe it is Jerusalem. Because the “place that God will choose” is the only place Israelites can offer…

Bart Ehrman’s comment on the interesting death narrative of Jesus given in the Gospel of Mark: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) In the crucifixion narrative of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Of course, his quoting of the 22nd Psalm…

God’s co-enthronement of Jesus at his right hand is one of the foundational concepts of earliest Christianity. There is general agreement that the Hebrew Bible text from which this idea is taken is Ps 110:1 (C.H. Dodd, According to the Scriptures: The Sub-Structure of New Testament Theology, 120–21; Jean Daniélou, Études d’exégèse judéo-chrétienne (Les Testimonia),…

Article Studies on the reception history of the Bible demonstrate how the same text could be constantly re-coded by Jewish and Christian communities as they interacted with the text, established its meaning, and filled in its gaps. Typ ically, sacred texts have been used as guides for moral behavior, but also to understand a community’s…

David Carr argues that the Genesis 1 account is using both Genesis 2-3 and Psalm 104 (and other works/traditions), writing in The Formation of Genesis 1-11 that: the creation account of Genesis 1 interacts with several identifiable precursors outside it, namely the Enuma Elish epic, Psalm 104, and (countering some recent treatments) Genesis 2– 3.…

See Abraham and Melchizedek: Scribal Activity of Second Temple Times in Genesis 14 and Psalm 110 by Gard Granerød (2010, De Gruyter), which gives a very thorough and original analysis of Psalm 110 and its reception history. Essentially the messianic reading of the psalm is only the third interpretation in its reception; prior to this…

Kugel, “How to Read the Bible” (2007), does a short write-up in pp.471-472, in reference to the popularity of Ps 23 (via the KJV in America) at funerals, where it is understood to indicate something about life after death. The key phrases are “the valley of the shadow of death,” and “I will dwell in…

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Introduction 📜Many Christians will use or cherrypick early Jewish verses, and often exaggerate it to make it look like it’s talking about Jesus, this is what many early church writers did. Psalm 22, which was not a prophecy, was not about the messiah, and doesn’t even talk about a person’s hands and feet being “pierced”.…

Andrew Macintosh’s “The Spider in the Septuagint Version of Psalm XC.9” (JTS, 1972). He suggests that the OG originally read as τὰ ἔτη ἡμῶν ὡς ἐμελέων, with μελετᾶν as a normal Greek equivalent of Hebrew הגה (sigh). But ἀράχνην may have crept into the text, perhaps via a marginal note, on account of the similar…

Carroll Stuhlmueller writes:Book One (Pss. 1-41) consists almost exclusively of ‘Psalms of David’ (except Pss. 1-2, 10, and 33) and is dominated by laments. Book One reflects the decadent or, at best, the despondent state of religion after the return from exile, as seen in Haggai and Isa. 56:9-57:13; 63:7-64:11. The fact that the royal…