Stephen was probably not a Samaritan

There is a claim out there that some of the odd things Stephen says in Acts 7 can be explained by him perhaps being a Samaritan or influenced by their traditions. While I found this idea interesting at first, I quickly came to realize that the specific pillars of the claim are faulty, and it has some major counter-evidence.

Stephen is Pro-David while the Samaritan Tradition is Anti-David. The way Stephen uses Psalm 132 even implies the location of David's Tabernacle not Solomon’s Temple is the true intended location of the Mishkan, not very compatible with the Samaritan Gerizim tradition. Stephen also quotes Prophets the Samaritans don’t recognize like Isaiah and Amos. 

The Samaritan Pentateuch reflects the Samaritan Custom of saying Shehmaa (The Name) instead of Adonai (The Lord) as their stand-in for the Tetragrammaton. Stephen in Acts 7 is definitely following the Jewish custom here, in verses 30-37, 49 and 59-60. 

Some of the things alleged to be explained by textual differences between the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Masoretic Text, like saying 75 rather than 70 people went to Egypt, are just as easily explained by following the Septuagint which is what you’d expect from him being a leader in a Greek Speaking Jewish Community, but more than that so were his accusers which included Jews of Alexandria and Cyrene the specific communities most likely to be attached to the LXX. Stephen’s quote of Amos is another case of him using the LXX. 

As an enemy of LXX primacy and the popular claim that the NT consistently uses it I consider Stephen in Acts 7 the one case where the Septuagint likely is the source material being used.  I believe the overall message of Stephen’s sermon is inspired by the Holy Spirit, but since he’s not an Apostle I wouldn't treat as infallible specific details unique to him or his choice of text. 

Saying Terah died right before Abraham leaves Harran at 75 is not a conclusion you need the Samaritan Pentateuch to come to.  In fact if you aren’t stopping to do the math then it is in all versions the natural assumption since Genesis describes Terah dying and then Abraham being called out of Harran. Now sometimes Genesis does describe things like this out of order, especially when changing which generation is now the Main Character, so this alone isn’t proof Stephen was right on this matter but it does show you can jump to this conclusion no matter which text you’re using. 

The apparent contradiction caused by the math that only the SP lacks is easily resolved by remembering that Genesis 5:32 and 6:10 and 7:13 and 9:18 and 10:1 all list Noah’s sons as Shem, Ham and Japheth while the rest of Genesis 10 clearly treats Japheth as the oldest and explicitly says he is in verse 21. Sometimes the sons are named not in birth order but in an order that lists the one the overall Biblical Genealogy goes through first. So Abraham being listed first in Genesis 11:26-27 repeats that pattern, Nachor seems to be Terah’s first born since he and his descendants inherited Terah’s land in Harran. 

It’s Acts 7:16 that really seems to a casual observer very Samaritan.  Except that the Samaritan Pentateuch doesn’t actually disagree with the Masoretic text on either issue Stephen is alleged to be contradicting the Masoretic Text on. In the SP the first three Patriarchs are buried at Mamre in Kirjath-Arba aka Hebron and Jacob not Abraham bought a field near Shechem from Hamor/Emmor the father of Shechem/Sychem. We also saw in verses 8-9 that Stephen used the term Patriarch primarily of Jacob’s sons, not Jacob and his ancestors. And verse 15 explicitly distinguished the fathers who died in Egypt he’s talking about from Jacob.

Stephen is not directly saying that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were buried in Shechem, the intent to me is clearly to refer to people who died in Egypt and were at first laid to rest there until the Exodus. The actual Hebrew Bible Texts only directly refers to Joseph having his body moved and buried at Shechem on the land bought from Hamor in Joshua 24:32, but it's reasonable to infer others were with him. 

Saying Abrahm bought the field from Emmor is not quite as easy to explain. It could be it was land Abraham intended to buy but it wasn’t carried out till Jacob.  Like how Elisha fulfilled some missions first given to Elijah like anointing Jehu and Hazael. We do know that Abraham had spent time in the area of Shechem in Genesis 12:6 where he did build an Altar.

People just assumed off vibes that saying something unusual about Shechem sounds Samaritan.  I do see some people word this as about Samaritan Traditions not the SP text itself, but whether or not such a tradition exists, it’s not the only way to come to Stephen’s conclusion. The Samaritan tradition is that all of Jacob’s sons were buried at Shechem, not just Joseph, no contradiction on where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were buried. Stephen could be referring to that, or he could be referring to sons and grandsons of Joseph.  The only Shechem based Samaritan disagreement about events involving Abraham is wanting the location of Isaac’s offering in Genesis 22 to be Moreh rather than Moriah, that too involved no textual difference it seems just interpreting them to be the same name, and is irrelevant to anything in Acts 7.

Stephen also doesn't have to be a Samaritan to see himself as a descendent of specifically the Joseph Tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh. I do believe the Samaritans descend from Ephraim and Manasseh not the gentiles settled in the region by the Assyrians as I talked about in a prior post. But they aren’t the only descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh, those who in 2 Chronicles 30 took part in Hezekiah’s Passover I believe became citizens of Judah and thus Jews. 

Another appeal to Samaritan tradition is the idea that God first called Abraham when he was still in Ur Kassidim.  Nothing in the actual Text of Genesis contradicts such a thing, I'm sure you can find plenty of purely Jewish texts depicting God already calling Abraham at Ur Kassidim.  In fact the KJV reading of Genesis 12:1 says " now YHWH had said unto" implying now isn't when this was first said.

Acts 13:17-22 vs 1 Kings 6:1

There is a conflict between the face value reading of these passages that most Bible Literalists don’t want to face, and when they do they have oddly decided it’s Paul who needs to be reinterpreted.

1 Kings 6:1 says Solomon started building The Temple in the 480th year since the Exodus, while Paul says after the 40 years wandering and then the conquest of Canaan then there were 450 years of Judges then 40 years under Saul then David who we know reigned 40 years.

Honestly people prefer just citing 1 Kings 6:1 because it’s convenient, they want to say the total time frame of this entire era is settled by one simple verse and not actually properly divide the Word of Truth, they don't want to actually do the difficult math. 

Adding up the numbers in Judges (and I Samuel) on their own also agrees with Paul, it totals 450 years from the start of the first oppression to the Anointing of Saul. And it also vindicates Jephthah in Judges 11 by showing it was 300 years from the beginning of the first oppression to the beginning of the Ammonite oppression in Judges 10, meaning if anything Jephthah and Paul were rounding down. 

Those numbers were based on math first done by people before me whose names I've forgotten unfortunately, but it was based on including Samson's 20 years as Judge within the Philistine Oppression because he arguably never fully liberated Israel from the Philistines. Which is based on the wording of Judges 15:20. 

I have long favored the approach that 1 Kings 6:1 is excluding the periods of oppression for some ceremonial reason. But as I've become more open to the Amenhotep II Exodus model recently, I decided to revisit these matters and look into how apologists seek to reconcile this from the other angle. 

First thing I found was someone arguing that Acts 13 only reads this way in the Textus Receptus and we should trust the Alexandrian Manuscripts. Naturally I am firmly opposed to that approach.  I’m not a strict KJV Onlyist but I am in agreement with them on the matter of the source texts.  It looks like the Alexandrians sought to reword things so it could conform with a shorter timeline because they liked to shorten Biblical timeframes in Alexandria hence the LXX version of Exodus 12:40-41, or for that matter the LXX version of 1 Kings 6:1 which changed it to the 440th year. 

That’s an issue for the Late Exodusers, I imagine they say once you agree not to take a certain time period passage at face value obviously they would exaggerate not deflate. But since no serious scholar thinks the LXX is the original of 1 Kings 6:1 we see there is sometimes a willingness to deflate. But there are also times when if anything it would serve your agenda to round down your estimate, to say at least this much time had passed.

The other method was arguing that the various Judgeships in Judges overlap. This ignores how things are worded, they record oppression, then rest, then oppression again, then rest again.  Some periods of Rest aren't claimed to be one single Judge, but the general period of rest between oppressions, like the 80 year rest that began with Ehud (it doesn’t actually say he personally was alive that whole time) or the 40 years that began with Deborah. 

Early Exodus proponents want this adding up of years in Judges to vindicate Jephthah; they cite him all the time as a second witness against the Late Exodus model. It is self serving to then read the text of Judges differently after that, and the room for overlaps will still not be enough to fix an over 90 year discrepancy. 

I also think it is possible to conclude a 40 year reign for Saul from The Books of Samuel alone, but it involves the matter of the controversially difficult to translate or even understand in Hebrew opening of 1 Samuel 13, which in Hebrew uses the word for "son" but the KJV obscures that. Of Saul’s 4 sons by his wife, the youngest Ishbosheth is excluded when listing sons Saul already had when he became King in 1 Samuel 14:49 and 31:2. I think 1 Samuel 13 is telling us Saul had a son in the first year of his reign and that is naturally Ishbosheth.  And we’re later told Ishbosheth was 40 when Saul died and he began to reign in 2 Samuel 2:10.

I’ve also struggled with the fact that the model I favored in the past doesn’t have enough time between The Exodus and the first oppression for Joshua to die before the first oppression. Joshua 14:7 tells us Joshua was 40 when he spied out the land during the second year of the wandering in Numbers 13-40, and Joshua 24:10 and Judges 2:8 say he was 110 when he died. Which means he died about 31 years after the start of the conquest and 24 years after when the initial conquest is typically viewed to have ended. And Judges 1 and 2 clearly seem to place his death before the first oppression. 

The Late Exodus proponents who argue against taking 1 Kings 6:1 at face value with the agenda of wanting a smaller time period typically argue it’s a symbolic number representing 12 generations of 40 years. They seek to roughly equate that to 12 generations of 20 years but I could just as easily translate it into 12 generations of 50, 60 or 70 years based on various Biblical significance those numbers have, but 50 is all I’d need, roughly 600 years. I find that logic interesting, but the language of 480th Year still has me feeling it means an exact count.  Their 20 year logic is because we today assume that's when males would start having kids, but Isaac didn't have Esau and Jacob till 60, and Jacob didn't start having kids till over 47. Moses likewise didn't marry Zipporah till he was 40. 

Which got me to wondering why the author of this part of Kings even thought he could know such an exact year?

Remembering the context that this is about The Temple, which will replace The Tabernacle once it’s finished. I think about The Tabernacle rituals that are done annually, particularly Yom Kippur near the middle of each Torah Year. They may have been keeping records of how many times they did each of those. And perhaps during the oppressions they were prevented from observing them by the oppressors. 

And/or maybe they had stopped doing them for a while after the Philistines destroyed the Tabernacle at Shiloh and took The Ark, The Ark and Tabernacle were not in the same place again till Solomon consecrated The Temple. Maybe they were in a sense Levitically in the 480th year until The Temple was consecrated?

So the weight of The Biblical Data definitely supports a longer view of the time from Exodus to Solomon, the face value reading of 1 Kings 6:1 stands on its own.  It takes two or more witnesses to establish something, the face value reading of 1 Kings 6:1 has no second witness. 

To bring some not inspired but still perhaps enlightening Extra Biblical Testimony into this, there’s Flavius Josephus.  He was from a Cohen Family and had access to Temple Records now lost. In Antiquities of the Jews Book 20 Chapter 10 he says based on counting the terms of the first 13 High Priests (Aaron to Abiathar) that it was 612 years from Aaron being consecrated in the same year as The Exodus till Solomon built The Temple. 

Abiathar was deposed early in Solomon’s reign, but we don’t have the exact year, it seems to have been before The Temple construction started. So it could be 480 is really 612. Making a 132 year difference. 

That makes the 16th Century BC date for the destruction of Jericho the most likely conclusion. If we had taken that approach to Biblical Chronology all along then Kathleen Kenyon’s discoveries would have never been a problem. 

The Samaritan tradition actually places the entry into the Promised Land under Joshua in 1639 or 1638 BC.  That’s too ancient to be reconcilable with the other data in my view. 

Of course the Samaritans having that as a calendar start date in the first place is interesting.  Leviticus 25 says to start the counting of the Levitical and Sabbatical years after entering The Land.

Perhaps another factor in 1 Kings 6:1 is in-spite of how it’s worded it's actually starting it’s count of whatever it’s counting with the entry into the land not actually the Exodus. Maybe in a sense they weren’t fully out of Egypt until they were in The Land?  

Aram-Naharin in Judges is clearly the Mitanni Empire, Naharin is what the Egyptians called Mitanni, and so a 1446 BC Exodus is too late for that 8 year oppression under Aram-Naharin to line up historically with when Mitanni exerted influence in Canaan. Critics of The Bible will say Mitanni never actually conquered Canaan directly but that's fine, they ruled it through Canaanite proxies. It's like today calling areas Hezbollah controls ruled by Iran because it functionally is. It was during the reign of Amenhotep II that Mitanni ceded Canaan fully to Egypt. 

I'm kind of growing attracted to identifying the end of this 8 year oppression with Tuthmosis III's Battle of Megiddo in his year 22 or 23.  Judges 3 does not give a lot of details about this oppression or how God helped Othinel end it. The role played by Egypt could easily be a detail left out of the retelling and why it doesn't get the full scale account later liberations do.  

Update May 0th 2026: I've decided to tweak some things. But it still requires more then 480 years form Moses to Solomon.

Exactly what Paul says about Saul's 40 years is not the typical way of saying a King reigned that long, and he doesn't attribute 40 years to David, we get that from the Hebrew Bible. And my Ishbosheth theory also has holes, none of the verses that exclude him from Saul's sons are set before he became King, in fact they all come after the contentious opening of 1 Samuel 13. 

Meanwhile 1 Samuel 7:2 commonly quoted as giving Samuel a Judgeship of 20 years isn't about how long Samuel was a Judge, verse 15 says he Judges Israel all the days of his life, it was The Ark being at Kirathjearim that was for 20 years. Meaning it should be read as saying from the same year Eli died till when David took the Ark out of Kirathjearim 7 years into his reign was 20 years. 

The numbers I was using at the start of this post would put the 8 year Oppression under Aram-Nahrain from 1500-1492 BC when counting back from the conventional dates for Solomon. I now feel compelled to subtract 47 years from that giving us 1453-1445 BC.  But there is still some wiggle room.

So a synchronization with 1457 BC and Tuthmosis III's Battle of Megiddo is plausible. 

Divided Kingdom Chronology

There are a lot of things I no longer agree with the Chronology of Bishop James Ussher on. But I still prefer his timeline for the Divided Kingdom over the more modern reconstructions that move the death of Solomon from 975 to 930 BC. 

One article defending Ussher I am familiar with but can’t entirely endorse their methods is Evidentialism–The Bible and Assyrian Chronology by Larry Pierce for Answers in Genesis from April 2001.  One out of date argument in that article (not really relevant to the main topic hand but still bugs me) is thinking Nabonidus and Belshazzar were different names for the same person, we definitely now know Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus and I don’t think that was unknown in 2001. 

I also recommend a YouTube video by Caleb Howelis about determining the date of the founding of Carthage using the Kings list of Tyre. His agenda is his Fall of Troy chronology I'm not endorsing but it is relevant to assumptions about when Hiram and thus Solomon lived. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuLW2G7O3Cc

In Ussher’s timeline the three year siege of Samaria began in 724 BC and ended in 721 BC. That timeline for the Biblical dates combined with the modern accepted timeline for the Assyrian kings helps resolve an alleged contradiction between The Bible and Assyrian sources; the siege began under Shalmanezer V but ended under Sargon II. The Bible only mentions the name Shalmanezer at the start of the Siege but the Assyrian records we still have are of Sargon II commemorating it's end.

The first issue is Historians now date the siege of Jerusalem in the 14th year of Hezekiah by Sennacherib in 2 Kings 18-19 and 2 Chronicles 32 and Isaiah 36-37 to 701 BC which Ussher’s chronology places in 710 BC when our current understanding of the Assyrian Kings list says Sargon II was still King then.

We know from comparing the Tartan verses, 2 Kings 18:17 and Isaiah 20:1, that a Sargon was also King at this time. Wikipedia currently estimates Sennacherib was born in 745 BC meaning he was about 35 in 710 BC. I think this was Sennacherib leading the campaign as Regent under his father just like how Nebuchadnezzar first pops up in Biblical History campaigning under his father at Carchemish, going off The Bible alone you would have no clue his father was still reigning at that time.

Sargon II was in 710 focused on Domestic affairs in recently re-conquered Babylon leaving Sennacherib in charge back in Nineveh. 

The last verses of 2 Kings 18 and Isaiah 37 skip way ahead out of chronological sequence to tell us how Sennacherib eventually died, they are not saying that happened immediately.

In 2 Kings 20 and Isaiah 39 not long after this, probably the same year, Hezekiah meets with Berodachbaladan/Merodach-Baladan (Marduk-apla-iddina II) King of Babylon.  Even this King's second reign ended before 701 BC, but the setting here fits the context of the end of his 722-710 BC reign.

The Lachish Reliefs on their own give no date.  They could easily be Sennacherib commemorating something he did before he was ever sole King but choosing to leave his father's role out of it.

Sennacherib may have carried out a campaign in Judah during his own reign not recorded in The Bible, Kings and Chronicles keep reminding us they aren’t recording everything.  A fact very relevant to the reason for much of this discrepancy. 

The Bible doesn’t start talking about Assyria (academically called Neo-Assyria) interacting with Israel till the time of Menachem ben Gadi in 2nd Kings 15. But Assyria clearly started taking note of Israel back in the days of the House of Omri as they kept calling this kingdom the House of Omri and it's rulers Son of Omri even when they destroyed it a few dynasties later. And from the records we currently have that seems to have started with Shalmanezer III, but it could have started earlier. 

Ussher's timeline for Menachem ben Gadi (772-761 BC) would have to make the Assyrian King called Pul the same as Ashur-Dan III. We currently have no Assyrian accounts of him carrying out campaigns in the western Levant, but the mainstream timeline has the same issue with him being Asshur-Nirari V. 

The popular argument that Pul is the same King as Tiglath-Pileser III can't hold up under scrutiny, The Bible consistently distinguishes them. 

As far as apparent references to Menachem still reigning during the time of Tiglath-Pileser in Assyrian records, Tiglath-Pileser could be simply associating this tribute he received from Samaria with the name of the earlier King because that tribute started under him.

Ussher's own specific conclusions about Pul and Sardanapalus are not correct. But he does show based on Kings Lists from Africanus and Eusebius that Sardanapalus seems to have actually reigned in the 8th century BC contrary to the assumption that's supposed to be contemporary with the fall of Nineveh, hindering the current consensus that the name comes from Asshur-Bani-apil. I think the first six letters of Sardanapalus are much closer to Asshur-Dan then they are Asshur-Bani.  Maybe the Asshur-Dans were sometimes called in full Asshur-Dan-apil but we've simply lost the records of that on the Assyrian side.  And Shamshi-ilu could be the brother in-law of Saranapalus referred to in Greek sources. 

The account of Pul in 2 Kings 15:19 refers to no battle happening, so I'm not surprised it escaped any notable documentation under Asshur-Dan on the Assyrian side.  

Shalmaneser III’s reign is currently dated to 859-824 BC or 858-823 BC. 

Assyrian records have some references that have led to a belief that he was contemporary with both the later reign of Ahab and early reign of Jehu (and by implication Jehoshaphat and Jehoram in Judah). But the proper Biblical timeline as counted by Ussher has Jehu end his reign by dying in 856 BC in the 23rd year of Joash son of Ahaziah king of Judah and succeeded as king of Israel by his son Jehoahaz according to 2 Kings 10 and 13-14.. 

The two relevant synchronisms are conventionally dated to 853 and 841 BC. The first being the Battle of Qargar. 

Hazael was still ruling as King of Aram-Damascus in 839 BC in Ussher’s chronology, so him being active in 841 BC is not an issue, it’s only the use of the name Jehu in that year that causes the problem. 

The King of Israel in 841 BC in Ussher’s Chronology is still Jehoahaz. Not only is Jehoahaz the son of Jehu, but the entire Hebrew spelling of Jehu is the first four letters of Jehoahaz. Jehoahaz being called Jehu isn’t just possible, I’d dare call it inevitable. 

Jehu (and by extension his sons and grandsons) being called “Son of Omri” is only treated as in conflict with what The Bible says by the most extreme of obsessed Reddit Atheist contradiction hunters, but usually just for the reason that clearly the Assyrian records did not know or care if that usage was literally genealogically accurate, and I don’t disagree.  But I do want to add that Jehu being an actual grandson or great-grandson of Omri isn’t as Biblically implausible as people assume. We are never told all Omri’s descendants are wiped out, only that Ahab has no male-line descendants left by the time Jehu finishes killing his sons at Jezreel. Ahab had a daughter who became an ancestor to future Kings of Judah including Jesus. But more importantly a sibling of Ahab could have been a parent or grand parent or Jehu. Still once we're dealing with the Dynasties after Jehu's own ends the Assyrians still consistently just call this Kingdom the House of Omri, it's a Exonym the same as use using Greek for the Hellens. 

The Kurkh Stele does not say Hadadezer was a king of Damascus, he has where he ruled exactly left blank.  Biblically there is no Hadadadezer in the time of Omri, Ahab or Jehu, Aram-Damascus was ruled in this era by first a Ben-Hadad and then Hazael. Biblically the name Hadadezer is never linked to Aram-Damascus but to Aram-Zobah in 2 Samuel 8 and 1 Kings 11:23 in the time of David.  Zobah is modern Homs near Hamath, and it’s a leader of Hamath listed on the Kurkh stele between Hadadezer and Ahab. The Biblical Hadadezer would not be the same person as this Hadadezer, but it seems a logical conclusion that Hadadezer was the popular Royal name in Zobah and Benhadad was in Damascus. 

I had leaned toward “Israel” actually reading “Jezreel” here (like with the Merneptah Stele), that would be irrelevant to if this Ahab was king Ahab son of Omri as he did rule from Jezreel for much of his reign.  But I've since learned some scholars dispute this saying either Israel or Jezreel like George Smith, Daniel Henry Haigh, Werner Gugler and Adam wan der Woude. The first two argue it should read Suhala and that it refers to Samhala or Savhala.  Actually now that I see the Cuneiform begins with an S I'm feeling dumb about ever conceding a Hebrew name that begins with a Yot. The Cuneiform is Sir-ila-a-a, I could see that easily being a reference to Serjilla.

I do not believe Israel was ever an Exonym for Israel until the Christianization of much of the Gentile world. But even more definitely not for specifically the Northern Kingdom by anyone but a certain faction of Judahites (the faction responsible for The Hebrew Bible records relevant to this period).

Even in The Bible Ahab is not a name only one person ever had, there is also a False Prophet named Ahab mentioned in Jeremiah. And a generation or two after Ahab's time is exactly when I'd expect other Ahabs to show up, like all those late 6th century AD Arthurs named after the original Arthur, Ahab is considered to have been a successful King by secular standards. And his fame may have spread even outside Israel where he may well have been more popular there then within Israel during the the time of Jehu and his dynasty.

Ahab is also not the only name mentioned here which happens to have been the name of a King of Israel from an earlier period.  There is also Basha son of Ruhubi of the land of Ammon. 

The smoking gun proof this isn't Ahab king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel is that he isn't called Son of Omri or of the House of Omri. We just established how consistently the Assyrians used that for the Northern Kingdom. So the insistence that the actual literal direct son and successor of Omri was the one time a King of Assyria didn't in some way identify them by the name of Omri is absurd. In this case it's the same King of Assyria who called a later King of the same Kingdom "Son of Omri" just 12 years later.  I'm so compelled by this that I would still reject that this could be referring to Ahab Son of Omri even if reading it that way didn't create chronological issues.

This Ahab's army is also too small, there is no way the Northern Kingdom under it's most powerful King fielded a smaller army then Hamath.

So why weren’t Hazael and Jehoahaz at Qarqar?  IDK the then King of Judah isn’t mentioned either no one wants to explain that in the mainstream view? (No one is named a King of Tyre or Sidon either?)  It sounds to me like this alliance was not actually the entire Levant. Hazael is the only one of these three we know was in conflict with Shalmanezer III later, but that was later. 

Theile's chronology has Qargar be the last year of Ahab's reign because even he still couldn't have any more then 12 years between Ahab and Jehu. When you combine that with the mainstream identification of Hadadezer with Benhadad it has Ahab and Benhadad being enemies in one battle and allies in another in the same year.  

One pillar of Ussher’s argument for 390 years from the death of Solomon to the Fall of Jerusalem in 588 BC was his interpretation of Ezekiel 4:9-5.  One can dispute whether or not saying how long the divided kingdom period lasted is the intent of that prophecy. 

But I also did the math myself on all the reign lengths of Judah’s Kings and it came to a total of 393 years and 6 months (plus 10 days in Chronicles), and there is wiggle room for those extra three and half years regarding these reigns not being years to the day no doubt, as well as that some date the Fall of Jerusalem to 586 BC.

Rehoboam reigned 17 years based on 1 Kings 14:21 and 2 Chronicles 12:13 

Abijam/Abijah reigned 3 years based on 1 Kings 15:2 2 Chronicles 13:2

Asa reigned 41 years based on 1 Kings 15:10 

Jehoshaphat reigned 25 years based on 1 Kings 22:42 and 2 Chronicles 20:31

Jehoram/Joram reigned 8 years based on 2 Kings 8:17 and 2 Chronicles 21:5-20

Ahaziah reigned 1 year? based on 2 Kings 8:26 and 2 Chronicles 22:2

Athaliah reigned 6 years according to 2 Kings 11:3 and 2 Chronicles 22:12

Jehoash/Joash reigned 40 years based on 2 Kings 12:1 and 2 Chronicles 24:1 

Amaziah reigned 29 years based on 2 Kings 14:2 and 2 Chronicles 25:1

Uzziah/Azariah reigned 52 years based on 2 Kings 15:2 and 2 Chronicles 26:3

Jotham reigned 16 years based on 2 Kings 15:32-33 and 2 Chronicles 27:1

Ahaz reigned 16 years based on 2 Kings 16:2 and 2 Chronicles 28:1 

Hezekiah reigned 29 years based on 2 Kings 18:2 and 2 Chronicles 29:1

Manasseh reigned 55 years based on 2 Kings 21:1 and 2 Chronicles 33:1

Amon reigned 2 years based on 2 Kings 21:19 and 2 Chronicles 33:21

Josiah reigned 31 years based on 2 Kings 22:1 and 2 Chronicles 34:1

Jehoahaz reigned three months based on 2 Kings 23:31 and 2 Chronicles 36:2

Jehoiakim reigned 11 years based on 2 Kings 23:36 and 2 Chronicles 36:5

Jehoiachin reigned three months based on 2 Kings 24:8 and three months and ten days in 2 Chronicles 36:9

Zedekiah reigned 11 years based on 2 Kings 24:18 and 2 Chronicles 36:11

The way many scholars who claim to be conservative Evangelical Bible Inerrancy Believing Christians justify supporting the reduced Chronology is theories about Father-Son co-regencies. Things like that did happen in the Ancient Near East, I referred above to examples with Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar. 

But in the case of every one of the Bible verses quoted above each King's reign length is defined as beginning with the death of the predecessor, there is no room for interpretation on this. The only time in the history of the Davidic Monarchy we see a son being crowned while the father still lived was before the time period I'm discussing here, Solomon's coronation in the opening chapters of 1st Kings, and in that case David still seems to have died a matter months later at most. 

One of these co-regencies is supposed to be Manasseh reigning for a Decade already before Hezekiah died. The Bible says Manasseh was 12 when he became King, something that can only happen if his father died when he was 12. So the current mainstream view says he was made co-regent at either 12 or 2. The Torah considers someone not a fully emancipated adult citizen till 20, so that's the youngest at which an heir could be appointed co-regent. 

Thiele's chronology also involved a theory that the Southern Kingdom having Autumn New Years and the North Spring New Years.  Autumn New Years were a Pagan Canaanite thing, the main archeological evidence for them begin used in Ancient Israel at all is the Gezer Calendar a city Judges 1 tells us the Canaanites survived in even after the conquest, probably at least till the time of Solomon, and it's in Northern Kingdom territory as a city allotted to Ephraim.  There is no Biblical support for Autumn new years, Rabbinic Judaism's tradition of having multiple new years probably came mainly from Persian influence.

Going back to what interested Caleb Howelis. One popular date for the founding of Carthage is 826 BC which in Ussher's chronology is coincidentally the same year Joash/Jehoash King of Israel invaded Judah under King Amaziah temporarily took him prisoner and pillaged The Temple. Maybe that had some butterfly effect influence on things going on in Lebanon.  813 BC was during the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel and Amaziah still reigning in Judah. 

There is no good argument for The Amarna Letters being before The Conquest.

A lot of people don't understand how complex the Biblical picture of the Judges period is which is why so many people have trouble buying that the Amarna Letters are any period after Joshua.  

All the Authors of those letters are Pagan Canaanites and that's what I'd expect from The Biblical depiction.  The major players are all among cities Judges 1 and other passages (Like Joshua  16:10 and 17:11-12) tell us were still Canaanite at least till the time of David (unless they are arguably outside the range of what was allotted to Israel entirely) Gezer, Megiddo, Jebus/Jerusalem, Sidon and her daughter Tyre.  And it could be more cities were Canaanite then just the ones The Bible specified, Pella in the Trans-Jordan does not seem to be directly mentioned in Scripture at all, but most of the Roman era Decapolis cities were ones that had stayed Canaanite. Gibeon is a uniquely complicated situation.

Jericho was a very important Canaanite city until it was destroyed in Joshua, and their most ancient city. It's complete absence from the Amarna Letters is a huge problem for any model that places the Conquest of Canaan later. The only destruction of Jericho in the archeological record big enough to match what Joshua describes is the one from the 16th Century BC. 

The Israelites entered Canaan as primarily a pastoral nomadic people, for all of the Judges Period a good percentage of them, maybe even the majority, probably didn't even live in cities but preferred the rural life.  Judges 1 clarifies how The Israelites initially mainly took over in the most mountainous regions while the Canaanites held out in the valleys and plains. Lachish was a lowland city so it can be deduced to be one that was still Canaanites for awhile in the Judges period in-spite of not being specifically named as such in Judges 1. 

But the main cities we know were Israelite cities during this period do not have Kings or Mayors who wrote letters to Pharaoh at Amarna.  Lachish, Bethlehem, Kirathjearim and Bethgader in Judah, Gibea in Benjamin, Bethel. Shiloh, Shechem and Tirzah in the House of Joseph's allotment. Japhia and the other Bethlehem in Zebulun, Kedesh-Naphtali and so on.  Some of these cities are mentioned in the letters, some Canaanite Kings claimed sovereignty over them, but Kings do love to claim to be King of more then what they actually controlled in practice.

Labaya is the enigma, he's not really linked to a specific city the way the others are, he's been called the King of Shechem by modern scholars but that's actually a city he's accused to giving to the Apirus and is not depicted as his capital at all.  David Rohl argues for him being Saul and other revised chronologies have tried almost every major Northern Kingdom monarch.  But again Gezer shows that the post Solomon period can be ruled out for Amarna.  And I really don't see Saul writing these kinds of letters to Pharaoh, even during his darker final years.

Labaya could just be a King of one of the Judges 1 Canaanite cities who's Amarna era King isn't specifically known, probably one of the Jezreel Valley ones disputed between Issachar and Manasseh in Joshua 17:11 and Judges 1:27.  If he was working with the Apiru as alleged then he could be a ruler of the Gibeonites.

In my current mindset I'm trying really hard NOT to resort to Revised Chronology, to come up with an Exodus model compatible with conventional mainstream Egyptology (but probably not a typical reading of Biblical Chronology).

But I certainly can't support what is within that framework called a Late Date for the Exodus, which I honestly think is just motivated by a desire for The Ten Commandments film to still be correct. In fact even what most are calling an Early Date for the Exodus I consider too late. That's stuff I'll get into elsewhere. 

I agree however with popular late dater Dr. David A. Falk that Habiru does have a connection to the Biblical term Hebrew but isn't always a 1 to 1 equivocation. However where I disagree is concluding no one would have called the Israelite Hapiru anymore once the Conquest of Joshua was "complete", to the Canaanite living in those cities and plains the Israelites were still outcasts living among them.  The Hebrew Bible is just an account of that history from the POV of those outcasts. 

1 Samuel shows us that the Israelites were still being called Hebrews even at the end of he Judges period and even during the time of Saul.  4:6-9, 13:3-7-19, 14:11-21 and 29:3. 

The notion that the Conquest ever was "complete" in Joshua's lifetime is a misunderstanding caused by some of The Bible's hyperbole.  It was a process that took centuries.

So the Hapiru of the Amarna Letters I believe includes the Israelites, but the Israelites may not be the only people being called that. Another designating I believe the Israelites were apart of but not a 1 to 1 exuviation is the Shasu. 

Also The Tribe of Dan may be explicitly mentioned in the Amarna letters, the Danuna, neighbors to Tyre like The Bible says they became. Yes the King of Tyre mistakenly calls their Tribal leaders "King" but that's a mistake I'd expect.  

The only reason people hesitate to make this identification is all the confusing "Sea Peoples" discourse which sees this Danuna as the same as the Denyen of later Egyptian records. How all the different Dans of the Bronze Age do or do not relate is not something I have settled on a final opinion on. What matters here is EA 151 read on it's own without assumptions implies nothing about a Sea Faring people coming from the Mediterranean. He's just talking about a people near him, in a way that sounds like they are among those being call Hapiru.

Tyre being the only King who mentioned them, fits in well with the unique relationship between Dan and the Sidonians Biblically. 

Zsolt Simon did a good job arguing against this Danuna being Anatolian, but may still in my view be placing them too far north by placing them in Hatay.  I agree that Danuna is in Canaan, I don't believe anything north of Jebel Aqra still counted as Canaan.

Even in the Amenhotep II Exodus model, the period the Amarna Letters documents is still awhile after when Joshua's conquests happened, so I do get tired of hearing some Christians try to insist these letters directly line up with events in Joshua. There should be references to the recent destruction of Jericho and Ai if that were the case. 

There are two places that at face value seem to be singled out as places the Israelites took over in Joshua that seem to have Canaanite rulers still in the Amarna letters. Hazor and Hebron. 

Joshua 11:10-13 describes Hazor as being completely destroyed by Joshua himself, and yet Judges 4 has another Canaanite King named Jabin ruling from Hazor. Maybe the Kings of Hazor writing these letters aren't even ruling from the same Hazor anymore but a new place they've called after the same name.

With Hebron there is the issue of an apparent contradiction between Joshua 15 and Judges 1 on if Hebron was conquered while Joshua still lived or after he died. Joshua 15-19 I believe contain a lot of narrative information from later as it discuses the allotment of the Tribes. The Anakim were driven from Hebron Joshua's conquest in Joshua 11:21-22, but other Canaanites still had control of Hebron who weren't taken care of till later. 

The Anakim were known to the Egyptians, they are not a people only mentioned in The Bible we have Egyptian records of them agreeing with them being a Triarchy. But they aren't mentioned in the Amarna letters, nor is Hebron a Triarchy in the latter.

What's going on in Hebron in the Amarna letters is itself a matter of controversy, whether it's mentioned at all is a matter of controversy actually, people will say Suwardata ruled Hebron but his capital was mainly Gath.. If Hebron is relevant to letter 366 it sounds very much like it's about Caleb''s clan fighting against the Canaanites over it. 

Chronological Nativity Narrative

It continues to frustrate me how Secularists insist on seeing the two Nativity Narratives as mutually exclusive incompatible accounts even though they are not even claiming to actually depict the same events. Strictly speaking The Nativity is only in Luke. 

As a Nerd with an interest in franchises like Star Wars, Fate/Stay Night, Raildex, Haruhi and Les Habits Noirs I happen to have experience with trying to explain the most Chronological way to consume a narrative not originally told in Chronological order. And it so happens that skill can be helpful in helping people make sense of The Nativity. 

So here is my Chronological reading order.

Luke 1:5-80.

Matthew 1:18-25.

Luke 2:1-38.

Matthew Chapter 2.

Luke 2:39-52.

I have gone back and forth between different opinions on where in Luke 2 to insert Matthew 2, but I’ve settled on this simplest version for now. 

I can’t claim to know the why of all this besides how Matthew is from Joseph’s POV and Luke Mary’s (well also Zacharias and Elizabeth to a lesser extent for John’s Nativity in chapter 1).  Matthew tells stories that hinge on decisions Joseph makes, while Luke focuses on events only Mary could have the most important perspective on. 

Just as those Fictional sagas I mentioned are told out of order for a reason, I likewise think there is a reason Matthew’s Gospel was the first one written, because it’s the most geared toward a Jewish audience and Paul in Romans 1:16 and 2:9-10 said The Gospel is for The Jews first and then The Gentiles.  The Jewishness of Jesus and his family is also apparent in Luke's Nativity account, but Matthew focuses on fulfilments of Prophecy, while Luke is explaining exactly the things readers who aren't already Jewish wouldn't already know. 

Census Before Cyrenius was Governor

So I have become aware of another solution to the Luke 2 Census issue thanks to this PDF.

https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1072&context=sor_fac_pubs

THE CENSUS AND QUIRINIUS: LUKE 2:2 by Wayne Brinale

This answer is on Page 7 of the PDF saying page 48 at the top. 

I shall now Copy/Paste some form it.

Feldman, in his edition of Josephus, states that "Luke 2:2 can be vindicated only if we translate ... , This census was the first before that under the prefectureship of Quirinius in Syria.'  The adjective prötos may mean "first" or "earlier," "former,".

"First census" must be taken in its Hellenistic connotation as the first of two, and then we must expand the clause a little. "This census was before the census which Quirinius, governor of Syria, made."

I don't understand why so many think the well known Census of the Empire taken in 8 BC can't fit this even when they are not identifying it with AD 6. Is it just an apparent lack of a formal "Decree"?

Again Tertullian says Saturninus was Governor of Syria when Jesus was born without any acknowledgment of how Luke seemingly says someone else was Governor.

And an 8 BC Nativity could have the Passover when Jesus was 12 be the first one after Archelaus died. 

Some people have it in their heads that the Nativity wasn't just before Herod died but very soon before, but I don't know where that comes from.  

In Matthew 2 there is all kinds of ambiguity about how much time separates the Birth of Jesus from the visit of the Magi or the Visit of the Magi form when Herod decided to slaughter the innocents.  But more importantly then those gaps we have no idea how long they were in Egypt, it could have been years. 

Luke does NOT name a Specific Governor of Syria.

 First in the actual Greek text of Luke 2:2 the word translated Cyrenius is the last word and Syria the second to last word.  And the word for "governor" is not a noun and should be more literally translated "governing".  In fact the most accurate rendering of the verse should be something like.

"This counting was first made during the governing of Surias Kureniou"

The last two words I chose not to transliterate and represent them as they are spelled in the Greek.

The only reason why Bible Skeptics insist this MUST be the AD 6 Census in-spite of all the ways it's nothing like that Census (Empire wide not local, and while Herod was still King or at least had been less then 2 years earlier) is the name of Kureniou.

In Josephus Quirinus is spelled Kurinios, which, like I would expect, uses more then one Iota.  Also there is no "e".  It is a much more plausible Greek rendering of Quirinus.

I'm not sure how early on this confusion started.  Maybe simply because Luke refereed to the AD 6 Census in Acts 5:37 people made the wrong assumption it must be the same Census.  Or maybe the translation of Luke into Latin played a key role in the confusion, when Translations of The Bible into modern languages finally began to happen after the reformation, they were greatly influenced by the Vulgate directly or indirectly, even the KJV.

But Tertullian in his against Heresies book IV chapter XIX simply states Saturninus was governor of Syria at the time without any acknowledgment that supposedly Luke identifies someone else as Syria's Governor.  That tells me that neither he or his readers had heard of the idea that Luke tells us who the governor was.  (Note, identifying Saturninus would fit it being the 8 BC Census).  And none of the 3 Lustrums of Augustus would have extended into the 19-21 AD Governorship of Gnaeus Sentius Saturninus, so the claim that Tertulian was referring to younger siblings of Jesus being born then doesn't work.  It was the earlier Saturninus who's administration of Syria coincided with a documented Roman Census.

To be exact, Tertullian said that Roman records proved the fact that censuses (he used the plural) were conducted in Judea when Saturninus was governor.  Also in his Apology to the Jews Tertullian clearly dates the Nativity to 3-2 BC saying it was 27 years from the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra.  But that is hard to reconcile with the Saturninus reference.

Since I'm contending that Kureniou doesn't mean Quirinus, what does it mean?

Below is how Cyrene and Cyrenian (of Cyrene) is rendered in various Greek NT verses.  Because these will be using 2 different Greek letters for o, lower case o is Omicron and capitalized O is Omega.

Matthew 27:32, Kurenaion
Mark 15:21, Kurenaion
Luke 23:26,  Kurenaion
Acts 2:10, Kurenen
Acts 6:9,  KurenaiOn
Acts 11:20, Kurenaioi
Acts 13:1, Kurenaios

It's rendered differently almost each time, in total 5 different ways, and Luke used all 5.  So that Kureniou is identical to none of them means little.  Interestingly the last one is almost identical to how the Strongs incorrectly claimed Cyrenius was rendered (Kurenios) with the only difference being the added Alpha.

The differences are all a matter of vowels and what the closing suffix should be.  All of them begin with Kuren just like Kureniou does.

Ending with iou is the same as how Luke renders Jesus of Nazareth in Luke 24:19 (Iesous tou Nazoraiou).

So perhaps Luke 2:2 wasn't referencing the Governor of a province at all but two provinces?

I could also note that when Luke identifies Pilate as Governor of Judea in Luke 3:1 he lists the name of the Governor before the name of the province.

Maybe the verse should just be translated as saying "when a Syrian was Governing Cyrene"?  Or perhaps that a Cyrenian was governing Syria.  Plausible translations are "during the Governing of Syria and Cyrene" or "during the Governing of Syria by Cyrene" or "during the Governing of Cyrene by Syria".  But I feel from everything I've observed above the best translation is "during the Governing of the Syrian of Cyrene".

An Atheist who is unlike me willing to consider the text hasn't been perfectly preserved should consider that a name is missing, that it's saying someone of Cyrene was Governing Syria.  Heck what Tertullian said you could use as evidence Saturninus was named in the texts he had.

The Roman Legion called the Legio III Cyrenacia was based for some reason in Bosra Syria;  Again I note the terminology of Luke properly translated is not necessarily identifying a person as Governor at all.

The last known exploit of this Legion before the time frame of The Nativity (from the timeline of the Legion Wikipedia has anyway), was being involved in a conflict between Rome and Nubia in Egypt in 23 BC.  The next time they show up is AD 7-11 when the Nikopolis fortress is established.

I'm thinking it's possible this Legion carried out the Census in Judea.

Given how often modern translations claiming to be directly translating the Greek are still influenced by the Latin translation, I was prepared to consider the Latin Vulgate perhaps the origin of this mistake.. But to my surprise the Latin doesn't mention Quirinius here, Jerome or whoever actually wrote the Vulgate did not recognize this as a Greek transliteration of a Latin name, it spells the name Cyrino.

haec descriptio prima facta est praeside Syriae Cyrino

According to Google Translate, everything preceding the two names at the end is, "This was the first President of the".  That is distinct from how the Vulgate does make references to Cyrene, but the main distinction there is using an E where that spelling has an I, something that isn't a difference in the Greek.  So the Vulgate translation is mistaken, but I find it fascinating that the educated Latin speakers who made it didn't see it as clearly a form of a specific Latin name.  This may possibly be similar to the version of the verse Tertullian would have read.

Cleopatra and Julius Caesar had a Daughter

In May of 44 BC Cicero wrote to a friend indicating that Cleopatra (who was in Rome at the time) was pregnant with Caesar's child:

"I am grieved to hear of Tertia's loss of an expected child...(but) I should be glad of such a loss in the case of the queen (Cleopatra) and that [expected] scion of the breed of Caesar.​" [Cicero, ad Atticum, 14:20:2, 14:20:2, 15:1:5, 15:4:4]

There is also a coin of Cleopatra's which shows her suckling a child, usually interpreted to be Caesarion, and marked 'Kupr' (Cyprus).  Cleopatra only acquired control of Cyprus in 43 BC, when Caesarion, who was born in 47 BC, would be too old to be a suckling infant, and her children with Anthony weren’t born yet either.

This additional child with Caesar escaping further documentation is only plausible if it was a daughter, the Romans would not have considered a daughter a potential heir, Augustus had to adopt his Maternal Grandsons for them to be heirs.

You may ask why she's not mentioned in the Donations of Alexandria in 34 BC if she existed and was still alive then since Selene's inclusion implies women aren't left out.  Given the prior traditions of Ptolemaic Egypt I think this Daughter of Cleopatra was planned to simply be married to Caesarion and that's why she wasn't given a Kingdom of her own.  

Now others before me who’ve argued that this daughter of Cleopatra and Caesar existed seek to identify her with Musa the wife of Phraates IV and mother of Phraates V.  And I followed suit the first time I wrote something online about it.  But I no longer think Augustus would have given such a valuable daughter to the Parthians. And if Musa was actually some kind of Royalty and not the Italian Slave Girl historians have assumed her to be, it'd have to be an inheritance more relevant to Parthia not a connection to Egypt and Caesar.

If Augustus did intend to use this daughter for some Dynastic marriage then given her age he’d have done so before 20 BC, the significantly younger Cleopatra Selene was married to Juba in 25 BC (though she didn’t start bearing him children till over a decade later).

The thing is there was another woman named Cleopatra who got married to a Client King of the Roman Empire in 25 BC and whose ancestry is a complete mystery.  Cleopatra of Jerusalem the fifth wife of Herod The Great.  This Cleopatra started having children much sooner then Selene making me assume she was older, because contrary to popular myth no it wasn't normal for women back then to be forced to have children as young as 12-15.  If Cleopatra of Jerusalem was born in 44 BC then she would have been 20 by the time she had her first son by Herod who was also named Herod, the second was named Philip and is the Tetrarch mentioned in Luke 3:1.   And Judea had been part of Ptolemaic Egypt at times so there was a relevant connection there.

Matthew 14:3, Mark 6:17 and Luke 3:19 all say Philip was the name of the brother of Herod Antipas who Herodias left to marry Antipas, in Luke's context the same Philip as verse 1 is clearly the presumption.  But in our Greek Texts of Josephus this was the Herod who was the son of the daughter of High Priest Simon Boethus.  

Because of this many theologians just want to call both these men “Herod Philip” but there is no real evidence either used the other name.  I think it’s Josephus (or our current versions of Josephus) who got Herodias’s husband wrong and also Philip’s wife wrong, I don’t think he was ever married to Salome daughter of Herodias but rather I think he’s the father of Salome.

Herod, grandson of Boethus, was not one of the Tetrarchs, he was actually living in Rome like many other non ruling Herodians at the time.  I’m sure many assume this is why Herodias wanted to change husbands, but this geographical distance makes arranging the swap difficult.  

When Antipas married Herodias he divorced his prior wife who was the daughter of Aretas IV of Nabataea, Aretas went to war with Antipas over this in AD 34 and Philip The Tetrarch gave him assistance, so it sounds like they had a shared grievance.  

I’ve also seen it claimed that in Slavonic Josephus Herodias was married to Philip, but that’s easy to dismiss as altered by Christians and I’m not sure I trust what people say it says, I don't have the means to read it for myself.

So if Salome was a great granddaughter of Cleopatra VII, does the line continue?  She married Aristobulus of Chalcis, a son of her mother’s brother, and had three sons named Herod, Agrippa and Aristobulus.  

Jezreel is New Testament Nazareth.

I'm not questioning the traditional identification of Nazareth because I'm impressed by any New Atheist pseudo Archeological claims it didn't exist till the 2nd century.  I think that Nazareth is perfectly Ancient but probably wasn't called Nazareth originally being one of the villages of Japhia mentioned in Joshua 19:12-16.

The Problem is Matthew 4:13-15's application of Isaiah 9:1 (which I'd often willfully misread in the past) clearly says that when Jesus left Nazareth for Capernaum He was entering the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, meaning where He was before can't be part of either of those tribal allotments.  And both traditional Nazareth next to Japhia and Sepphoris which was my former alternative theory are firmly in Zebulun.  Since NT Nazareth was definitely part of the Greco-Roman era definition of Galilee that pretty much narrows it down to Issachar, possibly including areas originally first allotted to Issachar that Manasseh wound up taking according to Joshua 17:11, Judges 1:27, 1 Chronicles 7:29 and 1 Kings 4:12.

Why is Zebulun seemingly already added to Isaiah 9's definition of Galilee since everywhere else the name of Galilee appears in the Hebrew Bible it's just to the sea of Galilee and thus when talking about west of the Jordan tribal allotments only tied to Naphtali?  Well Isaiah was contemporary with the Fall of the Northern Kingdom when the people of Naphtali were carried away into captivity by Tilgathpilneser King of Assyria, Zebulun however was among the tribes specifically not deported, they are still there for Hezekiah's Passover.  So I think once Naphtali's lands were depopulated the people of Zebulun who had a pretty small allotment originally basically expanded to absorb formally Naphtalite territory.  And that's why I believe all of the 12 Disciples except Judas Iscariot were of the Tribe of Zebulun.

The popular theory that the name of Nazareth is related to Netzer a Hebrew word for Branch used in Isaiah 11 is often criticized on the grounds that the Hebrew letter Tsade usually becomes a Sigma in Hellenic transliteration, so the spelling of Nazareth in the Greek texts of the NT using a Zeta implies the letter for Z used in the Hebrew or Aramaic was probably Zayin.

The bigger problem I have with how the "Branch" prophecies are typically talked about by Christians is that you can't treat two Hebrew words as synonymous just because they wound up being translated into 1611 English by the same word.  The verse that seemingly says this Branch will in some way be actually named The Branch is Zechariah 6:12 which like 3:8 uses tsemach, it's Isaiah who uses Netser.  And unfortunately the only thing those two words have in common in terms of spelling is that both use Tsade not Zayin.

Did you know the medieval/modern Arabic name for the city of Jezreel is Zir'in?  At first glance I found that weird, but it does descend from the same Semitic root that is the core of the Biblical Hebrew Jezreel, the Hebrew word Zerah commonly translated Seed.  And indeed in both Zerah and Jezreel the Hebrew letter for Z is Zayin.  Meanwhile the Hebrew letter for N is sometimes used as a Prefix meaning "we will".  If Jezreel is the Hebrew and Zir'in the Arabic then it could be that in-between Nazareth was the Aramaic?  Meanwhile the meaning of "Branch" is still related poetically.

Joshua 19:18 placed Jezreel in the territory of Issachar which is outlined in Joshua 19:17-23, though it could be that verse is referring to the valley not the city.  Being associated with the border it could indeed be an area that was ultimately taken by Manasseh.  I think in the NT era those tribally of Issachar were called Iscariot and that the family of Mary was probably of Manasseh.

The Prophet Hosea mentioned Jezreel by name four times in total, thrice in chapter 1 in verses 4, 5 and 11, and then one last time in chapter 2 verse 22.  They first speak of YHWH Avenging the blood of Jezreel agaisnt the house of Jehu.  The concept being alluded to there is the Goel/Redeemer of The Torah who is supposed to be a Kinsman.  

But then the other uses of the name are more positive happy ending references.  They also involve Hosea naming one of his sons Jezreel.  I think it's reasonable to interpret Hosea as foretelling that the Messiah who will Redeem Israel will be of Jezreel, and that this is the Nazarene Prophecy Matthew 2:23 spoke of.  Also Paul in Romans 9:25 quotes passages of Hosea that were in the context of those Jezreel prophecies.

Meanwhile the role that Megiddo plays in the history of Jehu in 2 Kings 9:29 and how it parallels Megiddo's role in the fate of Josiah in 2 Kings 23:29-30 and 2 Chronicles 35:22, has me thinking that the avenging of the Blood of Jezreel agaisnt Jehu is tied to the Eschatological role of Megiddo in Zachariah 12:11 and Revelation 16:16.  After all the Valley of Jezreel is also called the Valley of Megiddo.

When Herodotus in Book 2:159 of his histories while discussing Pharaoh Necho refers to the Battle of Megiddo where King Josiah died, he spells the name of Megiddo as Magdolos.  Maybe the Magdalene epithet used in The Gospels actually refers to Megiddo?

There is also the matter of Jesus foretelling He would not be accepted in His "own country", or Hometown in some translations (referring to Nazareth) in Luke 4:24, Matthew 13:57, Mark 6:4 and John 4:4.  Traditional Nazareth and nearby Japhia/Yafa became Christian in antiquity and still have significant Christian populations to this day, in fact they were majority Christian as recently as the British Mandate Census of 1922 and again in 1931.  But Jezreel seemingly never became Christian, it was visited by Christian Pilgrims in the 4th century who depict it as still practicing it's Pre-Christian rites, and then Zir'in was a purely Muslim city.

Now you could argue that Muslims view Jesus as a Prophet so Zir'in accepted Jesus as a Prophet and as Messiah Ben-David when they became Muslim, but that's a very roundabout indirect way to accept Jesus.  When one converts to Islam it is the Prophethood of Muhammad they are chiefly accepting, Jesus just plays a role in that message.  It would be like referring to Christian Europe as Mosaic.

It can also be argued that Jesus meant at the time, clearly all those past Prophets "not accepted in their own town" He had in mind were accepted Posthumously by their Prophecies becoming canonized Hebrew Scripture.  And as a proponent of Universal Salvation I believe everyone accepts Jesus eventually.  So no I would not rule out traditional Nazareth and look for a city that never became Christian based on this argument alone. It again comes down to these Hosea prophecies, can they arguably be viewed as not fully completely fulfilled till everything in Revelation is fulfilled?  I think they can but I don't see it as something to be dogmatic about.

But also just how shocking it is that this city never became Christian even during the Byzantine period when it was the dominant Religion in the region and some Emperors actively sought to persecute those who didn't convert?  Jezreel's stubborn refusal to convert is frankly admirable in that context.

Almah and Virginity

It really does seem like the argument that Almah doesn’t mean Virgin begins and ends with the simple fact that there is another Hebrew word for Virgin, Bethulah and has little substance beyond that.   

But the fact is the first time Almah is used in Genesis 24:43 it's describing a woman previously described as a Bethulah in verse 16.

It is far from unheard of for a language to have more than one word that conveys the idea of Virginity, English has at least two, Virgin and Maiden, with Maiden often being used more poetically.  Modern English of course one can mock and dismiss as virtually a composite language with way more words then we actually need for lots of things.  However Japanese is a much more ancient and for a long time isolated language and so much more comparable to Biblical Hebrew in the size of its vocabulary.

Shojo is a Japanese word that means specifically Female Virgin and is thus also the word for Virginity.  It is sometimes confused with Shoujo, the Japanese word for Girl but the Kanji is different.  In that sense it is pretty equivalent to Bethulah since Bethulah is the Hebrew word for Virgin that the word for Virginity comes from, as well as Bethulah being possibly related to Bath the Hebrew word for Daughter.

Dotei is another Japanese word for virgin.  And I have read contradictory reports on if it is gender neutral or specifically means “male virgin”.  The existence of Shojo does mean that a gender neutral word would rarely be used of a female specifically.  Almah, unlike Bethulah, does have a grammatically masculine form, ‘elem, used in 1 Samuel 17:56 (of David at a time when as far we know he hadn't had sex yet) and 1 Samuel 20:22 where the KJV translated it as “strpling” and “young man”.  The Quran interestingly implies Mary was Trans Masculine and/or Intersex in Surah 3:36.

The idea that Almah just means “young woman” or “damsel” like the Japanese word Otome I can likewise respond to by pointing out there is another Hebrew word with that meaning, na’arah which can’t mean virgin since it’s used of Dinah after she is violated in Genesis 34:3.  And that is still separate from the standard Hebrew words for Girl, Woman and Female.

The poetic use of Almah in Proverbs 30:19 only really works if the word implies being a virgin, that verse is referring to things that are impenetrable.

There is another Japanese word that has been relevant to my speculations about Almah.  Miko is a Japanese word commonly translated as “Shrine Maiden”. Being a Miko never required a lifelong vow of chastity but it at least used to be that Mikos were required to be celibate while serving as a Miko.

The possibility that the Almah referred to some class of women in Ancient Israel who took a ceremonial vow of chastity I think is possible because of Psalm 68:25 and the Alamoth of Psalm 46 and 1 Chronicles 15:20, and it may be the best way to explain the Almahs of the Song of Songs.  It’s also possibly related to the group of women Mariam the sister of Moses led in Exodus 15:20 who also played Timbrels, Mariam was called an Almah in Exodus 2:8.  There were also the Women who served at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting in Exodus 38:8 and 1 Samuel 2:22.  The Timbrel connection could also connect this subject to Judges 11:34.

Now there are other aspects of how the Christian view of Isaiah 7 is criticized, but today I just wanted to focus on the meaning of the word.

Update February 2025: The word being used of Miriam in Exodus 2:8 has a lot of implications.

First of all Wikipedia says the current scholarly consensus is that Almah means woman of marriageable Age, that is clearly refuted by it being used here when Miriam is highly unlikely to be even as old as 10.  I feel I have sufficiently proven that The Bible doesn't want anyone of any gender getting Married younger then 20.

But I've also learned how this Bible Criticism is actually accepted and weaponized by a certain type of Christian, those Septuagint worshipers who think the Masoretic Text was altered by the "Rabbis" to specifically harm Messianic Prophecies about Jesus.  

The first response to that should be how the Septuagint does use Parthenos in ways that contradict it inherently meaning Virgin like using it for Dinah after she's violated in Genesis 34. (And yes even outside how The Bible uses it Greek scholars do not consider Parthenos inherently a word that means Virgin.) Meanwhile the Masoretic text never uses Almah in any way that can be proven to refer to a non Virgin.  

But the second should be that Christians should see significance in Exodus 2:8 using Almah of a girl who has the same name as the Mother of Jesus during a narrative typologically comparable to Matthew 2.  It's like Poetry it rhymes.  The Septuagint however does not use Parthenos in that verse. 

A theory about the Death of James The Just, The brother of Jesus

According to a passage found in existing manuscripts of Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews, (xx.9) "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" met his death after the death of the procurator Porcius Festus, yet before Lucceius Albinus took office (Antiquities 20,9) — which has been dated to 62 A.D.. The High Priest Hanan ben Hanan (Anani Ananus in Latin) took advantage of this lack of imperial oversight to assemble a Sanhedrin (although the correct translation of the Greek synhedion kriton is "a council of judges"), who condemned James "on the charge of breaking the law," then had him executed by stoning. Josephus reports that Hanan's act was widely viewed as little more than judicial murder and offended a number of "those who were considered the most fair-minded people in the City, and strict in their observance of the Law," who went as far as meeting Albinus as he entered the province to petition him about the matter. In response, King Agrippa II replaced Ananus with Jesus son of Damneus.

But early Christian tradition (recounted in Hegesippus) says James was thrown off the Temple in 66-70 AD.  Simeon becoming the second Bishop of Jerusalem is consistently dated to that time. Later post Constantine Christian historians tried awkwardly to reconcile these accounts.

Also, some skeptics of the Historicity of Jesus insist that "who was called Christ" is a latter addition not in Jospehus's original.  But the majority of legitimate scholars reject that.

However, a poster on IMDB's old Message Boards who's username was austenw (who didn't view The Bible to be inerrant) had an interesting theory that it's the name of James that was added latter.

 it's a matter of Greek grammar; the sentence reads:

    "Ananus ...brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was named Christ - James his name - and some others;"

In this quotation, blue = nominative (subject); red = accusative (object), green = genitive (possessive), purple = dative (a difficult one to define, but can be a bit like possessive).

Crucially, the words "his name, James" in the nominative, does not fit into the architecture of the sentence; it could be removed without altering the grammar whatsoever, between the two accusatives "the brother" and "some others".

More importantly, however, the "traditional" theory - that the name James is original and the reference to Jesus is the interpolation - simply can't be correct, because were this to be so, then "James" would have had to have originally been in the accusative, or else he wouldn't have been knit into the architecture of the sentence at all, and the "[was] his name" would have been entirely redundant. This means that the supposed interpolator would have had to go to the trouble of changing a perfectly acceptable accusative case for "James" to the nominative case, and adding "his name", and for no reason whatsoever. Why bother to do this, when he could simply have added the clause "the brother (accusative).. etc", after the name?

However, if "James [was] his name" was originally a marginal note - written in the nominative, playing no grammatical part within the sentence - all makes sense. A later scribe included the marginal note, verbatim, in the only place he could - after the words "the brother of Jesus called Christ" - since nowhere else would have done.

 So basically that would mean it was possibly another Brother of Jesus (not named by Josephus) who was stoned in 62 A.D.  But someone leaving a marginal note later assumed it was the most famous of them.

Two of Jesus half brothers are known to have served as Bishop of Jerusalem. first James from the beginning of the Church until whenever he died. Then Simon from around 69 (Traditions agree he became Bishop just before the Destruction of the Second Temple) till 107 A.D.

We don't know much about Joses or Jude however.  Jude we know had later descendants, two grandchildren who were alive during the reign of Domitian, and Judah Kyriakos who was the last Jewish Bishop of Jerusalem. Though the start of his period as bishop of Jerusalem is not known, Judah is said to have lived beyond the Bar Kokhba revolt (132-136), up to about the eleventh year of Antoninus Pius (148 A.D.).

Matthew 27:56 refers to some of the Women at the Cross when Jesus was crucified.  "Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's children."  Mark 15:40-161 refers to the same first two women, but the third is simply a woman named Salome, (the only time that name is used in the New Testament).  Luke doesn't name the women at all.  John's Gospel in chapter 19 alone informs us clearly that Mary the Mother of Jesus was there.

Joses is a shortened form of Joseph.  The only other Joseph refereed to as Joses in The Gospels is the half-brother of Jesus (and an ancestor of Jesus in Luke's genealogy).  At face value John's Gospel is the only one that obviously tells us the Mother of Jesus was among those women. 

I think in Matthew and Mark, the Mary mother of James and Joses is the same as the Mother of Jesus, but why is she not refereed to as such?  Maybe because of the events of Matthew 12-13 and Mark 6 the narrative voice ceases to refer to Jesus biological relatives as such after he effectively temporarily disowns them.

Why name only two of her four other Sons?  Who knows, but in Mark a later references to clearly the same Woman refers to only one.  James and Joses are the two oldest in the list of Jesus brothers.

As far as the more popular view of making the mother of James and Joses the same as Mary the Wife of Cleophas/Clopas.  Cleophas/Clopas I feel is likely the disciple (probably one of the 70 but not one of the 12) Cleopas from Luke 14, the Road to Emmaus.  He's probably the same generation as the 12.

That view conflicts with making this person the same as the Alpheaus who is the father of the James and Jude among the 12.  Cleopas being a parent of any among the 12 is unlikely.  The tradition making Clopas the brother of Joseph has it's origin among those early fathers seeking to deny the siblings of Jesus were of Mary.

Certain authors devising alternative history theories have sought to say that Joseph of Arimathea was an uncle of Jesus, and one that he was the same person as James the half-brother of Jesus.  Logically it would make more sense if you want to make him a half-brother of Jesus to go with Joses.

Joseph of Arimathea is introduced in essentially the same narrative that deals with the Women at the Cross.  I think it would make sense to use the full name when referring to him and the shortened form when referring to someone else as a relative of him.  The last verse of Mark 15 refers to Mary only as the mother of Joses while finishing the narrative of Joseph of Airmathea arranging the burial of Jesus.

There is also the fact that this responsibility Joseph of Arimathea takes, burying the body, is one that in Jewish Custom belonged to the nearest living relatives.

The only problem with that theory is that the traditional assumption is none of Jesus brothers became Believers till after the Resurrection.  We know none were when John 7 occurs, half a year before the Crucifixion.  That fact refutes any theory reliant on making any of the 12 Disciples the same as any of the people refereed to as his siblings (a strategy used by some both for and against them being children of Mary).

But a lot can change in 6-7 months.

He could have moved from Nazareth to Arimathea (I agree with the theory that NT Arimathea is one of the OT Ramah or Ramaths, or perhaps Ramoth which was in Issachar in 1 Chronicles 6:73 and thus near Nazareth), sometime after their father died. But it's also possible Arimathea was an epithet not meant to identify a city, there is a lot of speculation involved here.

If Joses was Joseph of Airmathea then he was in the Sanhedrin.  Antiquities 20.9 does not explicitly say this half brother of Jesus was a Sanhedrin member, but the over all theme of Josephus in depicting these murders leading up to 70 AD is about people that were prominent but against doing a violent revolution against Rome.

Catholics like to argue the references to these four brothers and unnamed sisters are using the words loosely, referring to cousins or close friends or something.  The Greek words for brother and sister are sometimes used in similar senses, I've seen interesting theories about Lazarus, Martha and Mary of Bethany, but context tells us the difference.

Mark 6 is about contrasting a strict literal definition to one that widens it.  As I said above Jesus effectively disowns His biological family who didn't yet believe in Him, and said His true family are those who believe in Him.

And if the New Testament writers felt this word for brother could apply to a cousin, as is popularly suggested.  Why not use it of John The Baptist who is more undisputedly then anyone else in The Gospel narrative a cousin of Jesus?  Maybe they'd say he's not a first cousin, he'd be second at the closest.

Another attempt to reconcile this with the perpetual virginity heresy is to say they are sons Joseph had by a different wife.  Because these same people are uncomfortable with acknowledging polygamy still went on in Judaism at this time, they insist a wife who died before he married Mary.  But if Jesus isn't the First-Born Son legally to both parents then He isn't the rightful Heir to David.  Yes a younger son superseding the actual First-Born is a common theme in Scripture, but if Jesus were an example of that the Gospel writers, especially Matthew, would have stressed it.  Those supercedings happen to help show how God doesn't really care about the formalities of The Law.  But Jesus himself had to be a perfect fulfillment of The Law.

The wording in Mark 6 of "the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him."  Starts with Mary and doesn't even mention Joseph (who is generally theorized to have died by then).  That tells me these siblings are siblings via being also sons and daughters of that same Mary.

Some will use that James the Brother of Jesus is called an Apostle by Paul in Galatians to prove he's one of the 12.  I already showed why these individuals can't be counted among the 12.  Apostle applied to any eye witness of the Resurrection.  Which is why Paul used it of himself calling himself the last Apostle.  And in Roman 16 identifies as among the Apostles a couple not even mentioned anywhere else in Scripture.  Paul also distinguishes this James from the 12 in 1 Corinthians 15.

Matthew 1:25 says of Joseph.  "And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son." This verse isn't just saying he didn't know her before, it also clearly tells us he did know her after.

The Disappearance of The Altar of Incense.

The Author of Hebrews (who I believe is Paul but I won't belabor the point here) in chapter 9 talks about the Menorah and the Table of Shewbread in the Holy Place, and then The Golden Censer and The Ark in the Holy of Holies.

There is a common claim that this is an error or contradiction because many people assume that by "Golden Censer" the Author must mean the Altar of Incense even though you would use completely different words for that. Revelation 8:3-5 and Hebrew 7:13 use completely different words for Altar.  The word for Incense is related to this word for Censor but distinct.

This is the only time this precise Greek word for Censer is used in the New Testament, Revelation 8 does use a different word. However the Septuagint uses this word twice in 2 Chronicles 26:19 and Ezekiel 8:11 where a Hebrew word for Censer is what it's translating.

The problem is the definition given to this word in the Strongs Concordance will say it means the Altar of Incense, but that's wrong, the Strongs is mistaken in this case.

Because the word or phrase "Golden Censer" doesn't appear in the Hebrew Bible anywhere some might mistakenly think there are no Golden Censers in the Pentateuch.  The Hebrew word for "snuffdishes" in Exodus 25:38 and 37:23 is the same word used for Censer in Leviticus 10:1 and 16:12.  Later 1 Kings 7:50 refers in the KJV to Censers of Pure Gold.

Now it is true that normally even Censers would not be in The Holy of Holies either, but one is taken into The Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur as made clear by Leviticus 16:12.  And I believe the rituals of Yom Kippur are the thematic focus of much of Hebrews especially in this section even if it's not being mentioned by name.

The main argument of those who refuse to accept this explanation, both among Bible Skeptics invested in seeing a contradiction here and Apologists who try to imagine some more creative explanation, is that if the Golden Censer is just the Golden Censer then why is the Altar of Incense completely missing?  

The simple answer is the Author didn't mention it because they didn't feel like it.

I honestly could just end it with that, but I'll continue.

I once noticed that the Arch of Titus depicting Titus and Vespasian's Triumph after conquering Judea in AD 70 shows the Menorah and Table of Shewbread as spoils of war but the Altar of Incense is missing.  Then I read Josephus's account of that Triumph in Wars of The Jews Book 7 Chapter 5 Section 5 and noticed that he likewise mentions The Menorah and the Table of Shewbread but not the Altar of Incense.

At the very least these other First Century depictions of the contents of The Temple show leaving out the Altar of Incense during this period was not unique to Hebrews.

However I now have a theory that an Altar of Incense was never in Herod's Temple.

The Books of Maccabees and Josephus describe an Altar of Incense being included in the Purification of The Temple that marks the first Hanukkah.  But Antiochus Epiphanes' plundering of The Temple wasn't the last one to occur before the New Testament era.

Josephus in Antiquities of The Jews Book 14 Chapter 7 describes Crassus's plundering of all the Gold in The Temple right before he's killed.  This plundering is in truth principally why Herod's renovation of The Temple was necessary.  I think for whatever reason the Herodian renovation neglected to include The Altar of Incense.

The Maccabees Books describe their Menorah as still having the Three Legged base that the Pentateuch describes, but the Menorah on the Arch of Titus has an Octagonal base showing it's Hellenistic influence.