A Virtual File Cabinet for Our Studies of Christian Origins & Hebraic Faith
This post contains a question/response from Tabor’s new Circle site, and below that extract is a Claude.ai Prompt/Response. 6/23/2026 – OP’s Question: What are some thoughts out there about the thought that the Maccabees heavily redacted Deuteronomy to support their legitimacy? Response by Annette Cloutier Sean, this is a fascinating line of inquiry. The Hasmoneans/Maccabeans […]
Continue ReadingTimeline of Jewish History by Mattis Kantor published at Chabad.com. This is a very extensive and detailed timeline of Jewish history
Continue ReadingBelow is a summary by Claude.ai of an interview of John J. Collins by Bart Ehrman titled Surprising Origins of Judaism Before Jesus in advance of Collins’ 20-lecture course at BSA in the summer of 2026. The transcript of the interview sent to Claude.ai is in John Collins’ directory in Dropbox. Prompt: Summarize the attached […]
Continue ReadingExtracts from a Forum post at BSA here. Below the extracts is a long Response from Claude.ai. Original Post from a new member: I noticed there are strikingly extensive overlaps between Jewish Apocalypticism and Zoroastrianism, the religion of ancient Persia. These overlapping beliefs include (somewhat simplifying): It seems hard to believe that all of this […]
Continue ReadingFrom ChatGPT on 3/21/2026. This post presents two responses related to the background of the “Assumption of Moses” (AoM) and the relationship to the tiny Epistle of Jude. The subjects in both show the thought of 1st century Christians and their use of a wider range of “books” than what was deemed by Roman Christianity […]
Continue ReadingFrom ChatGPT on 2/18/2026. Modern biblical scholarship widely recognizes that the accounts of King Hezekiah in 2 Kings 18–20, Isaiah 36–39, and 2 Chronicles 29–32 are closely related parallel narratives. Below is a structured explanation of the similarities, what scholars say, and the context in which those statements are made. Below that is a verse-by-verse […]
Continue ReadingBelow is ChatGPT’s summary of Robert Cargill’s “Lecture 4: Babylon and Megiddo” from his lecture series “Cities of the Bible” from BSA. See the transcript, from which this summary was made, in his directory in Dropbox. The summary does not include his talk about Megiddo, but that is in a separate post. Robert Cargill’s lecture […]
Continue ReadingThis is a follow-up post to The Rise of the Maccabees & Synagogue-based Torah Instruction at this site. Scroll below this response for one that incorporates the Quram community. Below is a direct contrast between the Maccabean-era synagogue/Torah-institutionalization model and Second Temple priestly continuity models, keeping the focus on critical scholarship and embedding sources directly […]
Continue ReadingThis is a summary prepared by ChatGPT of a BAR article. Below is a chronological timeline of the major events in Andrea M. Berlin, “The Rise of the Maccabees,” Biblical Archaeology Review 49.2 (2023), with historical and archaeological context drawn directly from the article. The original timeline was expanded to integrate events and developments proposed […]
Continue ReadingPosted 1/4/2025 – In Paula Fredrikson’s YouTube video “When Does Christianity Begin…” during the Q&A a young lady asked Paula if she understood correctly what Paula was saying about Paul being a Judaizer. Paula’s response to the audience began forcefully that the young lady made “a very rich comment” The gist of the question was […]
Continue Reading