To: blue-duncan; Forest Keeper; annalex; Kolokotronis; kawaii; Dr. Eckleburg; wmfights; HarleyD
You have said this many times on this thread. Please explain this exchange between Jesus and a scribe. Mar 3:22-24, "And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils..." Beelzebul is not described in any part of the [post-Jamnia] Hebrew Old Testament. It suddenly appears in NT demonology. But its roots can be found in various Jewish Solomonic writings, which are mentioned by Josephus, and which were evidently written in Greek.
Thus, in the Testament of Solomon, an Old Testament psuedoepigraphical pieces, Beelzeboul is identified with Babylonbian god Helel who is associated with Light (hence Lucifer), as the prince of demons.
Nowhere in the Hebrew OT used by rabbinical Judaism and Protestants is there any association between the elusive "Beelzebub" in a variety of name forms with Helel. Judaism did not have developed demonology.
Satan is always portrayed as God's servant in the OT, even though he may be too 'eager' to carry out his duties and is, as you mention at one point, rebuked by God, but not punished.
Clearly, the writers of the NT were aware of the pseudoepigraphical demonology among the Jews in the first century. The only link between the OT and the NT where all of a sudden Satan and the devil become one and the same, can be traced to the 'apocrypha.'
10,033 posted on
02/10/2007 5:57:59 PM PST by
kosta50
(Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
To: kosta50; Forest Keeper; annalex; Kolokotronis; kawaii; Dr. Eckleburg; wmfights; HarleyD
The O.T. had a fully developed sense of evil spirits and "familiar" spirits and how they can inhabit mankind by leave of God. they were told not to contact "familiar" spirits. The Jews performed exorcisms as can be seen with Saul and the calling for a musician to make him well. In Luke 8:1-2, "And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him, And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils," Jesus equates evil spirits with devils which in Greek is demons. The seven sons of Sceba in Acts are just an extension of the Jewish exorcists.
When Jesus is speaking to the scribes, he is also speaking to the multitude and the disciples in and around the Sea of Galilee which is the area of the politically conservative Zealots and the conservative rabbinic School of Shammai which would not be using the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures as did the liberal rabbinic School of Hillel in Jerusalem. As Josephus, the renegade quisling Jew from Jerusalem said, the Hebrew scripture did not have the apocrypha and held a curse on any one who added to the Hebrew canon.
Jesus was speaking to scribes and the multitude who were knowledgeable that Satan, devils, evil spirits and "familiar" spirits were all of the same character from the Hebrew scriptures not the Septuagint or the apocrypha.
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