Re: CHAT: Zoroastrian influences on Post-exilic Judaism

    I'm glad to see that I didn't come off looking like a crank!  I think
that I might have been a bit more aggressive than I needed to be.

Steg wrote, regarding ancient texts:

"Hmmm...i thought the definitive Masoretic text was the _Keter Aram-Soba_
(Aleppo Codex?)....or maybe that's the oldest Torah scroll in existence? I
seem to remember that it's also from some time around the years 800-1100."

   As far as the "Masoretic Texts" go, the Aleppo Codex is the oldest and
closest to the source ... but it was damaged in a fire and is sadly
incomplete.  For that reason the (more recent, but complete) Leningrad Codex
is considered the definitive text.

"What do you mean by saying that the Septuagint shows that certain of the
Outside Books "were held equal to the rest of the Law"?"
    When I said "the Law" I was being deliberately vague ... suffice it to
say that the whole history of the canonization of the scriptures is far from
cut and dry, and it is beyond my scope as a scholar to make generalizations
about it.  However, when confronted with the text of the Septuagint, one
must naturally ask questions about why some texts were considered important
enough for inclusion during one period but not in a later period.
     What was it that caused "The Establishment" (whoever they might be) to
change their minds?  Part of the answer would be these Iranian influences...
throughout the Rabbinic period the Persians were still a menace and a large
portion of world Jewry lived under Persian rule (including these folks at
Nippur, IIRC).  It's only natural that the Jews would anathematize those
texts which reminded them of their enemies.  Even during the Second Temple
Period, those Persians who started out as such benevolent despots turned
into real monsters.  However, the whole issue is rather complicated and I
can't claim to understand it myself.
     I'm fairly certain that the threefold division of the Tanakh which you
describe (Torah, Nevi'im, Ketuvim) is relatively recent.  However I wouldn't
put money on it.  My best guess is that it probably dates to the time of the
Masoretes.

"About the Essenes....are you saying that "Sons of Light" and "Sons of
Darkness" are referring to children of divinities?"
     No, I meant to say (but somehow forgot) that the Essenes refered to
themselves as the "Sons of Light" and to their enemies (real or imagined) as
the "Sons of Darkness."  If you ask me, it sounds rather Manichaean.  As
you've said (and you're quite right) bar and ben (and their cognates in most
other Semitic languages) are most often used idiomatically.  Payne-Smith's
"Compendious Syriac Dictionary" has pages of expressions using bar.
Brown-Driver-Briggs has quite a lot on ben, too.  Akkadian uses mar with the
same effect.
     Here's a language-related question: Semitic languages are traditionally
classified as possessing triconsonantal roots.  If that is the case, what is
the triconsonantal root of ben/bar/bin/byn/ibn?  Why does Aramaic have the
consonants b-r whereas everyone else has b-n?  And where does the Akkadian
cognate (if it is cognate) come from?  I genuinely don't know, although I do
know that ben is not the only biconsonantal word in Hebrew (and several
common words, including the PS word for scorpion, have been reconstructed
with four root consonants!).
-Chollie
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