Hi
I don’t believe the stories of the Bible. Someone is lying!
Why would a Jew want to live among Samaritans at the time stated?
The New Testament wants us to believe all the ridiculous made-up stories, that has as much truth in them as is spoken by politicians, and clergy during sermons. Christians think they are the bee’s knees, when it comes to the Bible, Bible study, and Jesus, but they can become so unbelievable when rewriting from Christian text that is both inside and outside the Bible. And believe they have the proof that will sort out the unbelievers once and for all! We have all read the biblical story of Mary and Joseph on their way home to Nazareth from the Passover festival at Jerusalem, when Jesus was aged 12 years. When after a day travelling back from the Passover, they find Jesus is missing. Luke 2:41-52
It’s a story fraught with danger, as Jesus and family had to make their way through Samaritan land, they have to run the gauntlet of being in the land of the Gentile enemy.
Mary at the time if we are to believe Christian text, of both Catholic and Protestant writers, as well as Jewish customs on marriageable ages for girls. The Madonna would have been about 25-year-old. The tricky bit is determining the age of Joseph; however, the Christians have the answer.
Joseph, we are told by Christian sources, had died before Jesus set up his ministry, and according to Christian sources, which says he died at age 111* years old. [*A Coptic fragment from the history of Joseph the Carpenter in the collection of Duke University library] If we say that Joseph died, say when Jesus was 25 years of age, that would make Joseph 86 years old when Jesus was born. (I am being nice here, if I took the average 12-30 = 18/2 = 9, which would make Jesus age 21 at Joseph’s death. 12 is the age of Jesus when Joseph was last heard to be alive, 30 is the age Jesus was when he started his ministry. This would make Joseph 90 years old when Jesus was born, or aged 102 when Jesus was 12.)
If we agree that Joseph was 86 years old when Jesus was, born, according to whichever Christian source you believe. Then Joseph was aged 98 years old, when Jesus was 12 years of age. (However, as I said, the Christians authors are not précised at what age Jesus was when Joseph died, let alone knowing when Jesus was born. The Christian text just states that Joseph died before the start of Jesus’ ministry.) However, my problem is with Joseph having to walk from Nazareth to Jerusalem or even Bethlehem, which is about 105 Km and 115 Km respectively as the crow flies or 200 to 210 Km by the shortest rout. As well as the days spent avoiding Samaria. This is what a Christian site says on the matter of Jesus navigating Samaria: John said Jesus “had to go” through Samaria. Pastor Roger Frederickson wrote, “He did not need to save the three days He could gain by passing through this ill-regarded province rather than crossing the river and going up the eastern desert route…. The Father had sent Him into the whole world—not just part of it.” https://cor.org/leawood/gps-guide/jesus-had-to-go-through-samaria
The highlighted emphases are mine. Furthermore, the pastor does not seem to like Samaria, the ill-regarded province.
However, according to the Bible they would have had to run the gauntlet to get to Jerusalem/Bethlehem, which could have double the distance already mentioned above. For an old man, that was quite a hurdle to accomplish, never mind having to leave the rest of the party travelling back to Nazareth; to return to Jerusalem, to look for Jesus, which we are told took three days to find him in the Temple Luke 2:41-52. Just for the little bar-stewart to say, “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” One can ask why the saintly dysfunctional parents did not look in the Temple first—they knew the little Bâtard was illiterate. (I have used the French form of the word to be polite… One must also agree that any parent would go berserk with their 12-year-old child he/she did not come home, and stayed out for days.) It seems that only the biblical scribes knew Jesus was literate?
Then the three supposedly walked home to Nazareth alone, without company of family and friends to run the gauntlet once more. I honestly don’t believe a word of this story, about an old man 98 + years old could walk the distance, which was hilly and known as bandit country. Someone is lying! We have Jewish tradition, biblical scholarship, biblical scriptures all telling that Galilee was home to Samaritans, the supposed enemy.
The story of Jesus, and family and friends avoiding Samaritan land is idiotic to say the least; when the provinces of Galilee, and Samaria were as one, as the people were all Samaritans, except in this story, the Jesus family is Jewish. It was the Romans who broke down the defunct kingdom of Israel/Samaria to make the two provinces. Which some eight-hundred years earlier, Israel had been renamed Samaria by King Omri (884 BCE – 873 BCE) during his reign.
What is a supposedly Jewish family living in the heart of bandit territory, and living with the Gentiles, better known as the Samaritans in Galilee of the Gentiles or Galilee of the Nations. Whom the Jews called Gentiles/pagans, enemy, Shomronim {שומרונים}, which means inhabitants of Samaria, and Kutim, suggesting that they are the descendants of Mesopotamian Cuthaeans 2 Kings 17:24. Who settled in Samaria after the Assyrian conquest, and replaced the northern tribes of Israelites, more than seven centuries before Jesus’ birth. However, today, the Samaritans know themselves as the Israelite Samaritans, the descendants of the Israelites that did not go into Assyrian captivity c. 721 BCE. 2 Kings 17:24
A more feasible story would be the Jesus family annually travelled to Beit Lechem HaGalilit/Bethlehem in Galilee for the festival of the Passover, some seven miles west northwest from Nazareth. Which the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) archaeologists have strong evidence that is the place that Jesus was born. Israeli archaeologists say that Bethlehem in Galilee during the 1st-century was inhabited. Whereas Bethlehem in Judah was uninhabited in 1st-century CE. Joseph could have paid his taxes, and gone to the Bethlehem Passover with other Gentiles of Galilee on the back of a donkey, probably a talking Donkey at that! One has also to remember at the supposed time of Jesus, the Jews were confined to Judaea, the Roman diaspora had not yet begun? What do you say?
Cofion
R&I – FS
Jero Jones
Article URL : https://breakingnewsandreligion.online/discuss/