RE: Help! Joseph of Arimathea.
June 1, 2012 at 12:56 am
(This post was last modified: June 1, 2012 at 1:10 am by King_Charles.)
You can't offer credible evidence to the value of scientific truths when you're dealing with ancient history, you just have to try and feel your way to the most likely conclusion, and that involves a lot of educated guesswork. That is the nature of the discipline. If you're of the opinion that he's just a literary device, I'm not gonna stop you, I was just picking on on Minni's point about the Greek Name and offering an alternate reason for the ambiguities surrounding "Aramathia".
As to your second point, the answer to that is actually contained within my post. From the conquest of Pompey in ~ 63 B.C up to 70 A.D. Judea was a client kingdom of the Romans with its own King and allowed a degree of self government - the Sanhedrin still had considerable power over Jewish affairs, and the Jews were allowed to keep many of their practices and were respected. The Romans wanted to rule the Jews peaceably with a collaboration government, and Judea had been a client kingdom of one sort or another for the past few hundred years anyway, so it wasn't a huge issue for them. For various reasons went to shit from 66 A.D. and in the decades that followed the Romans faced three separate uprising from the Jews. In the end the Roman gave up trying the govern them all and effectively ethnically cleansed the area, leading to the Jewish dispora which lasted until a mere 64 years ago.
If you're interested in all this, read The Jewish War, by Josephus. You may be familiar with it because he mentions Christians in like one line, but it really is a very good bit of narrative history about this utterly fascinating period of history.
"The most that may be reasonably said is that inclusion in all four gospel seems to suggest an importance,but it infers nothing. " ~ Yeah I'll agree with that.
As to your second point, the answer to that is actually contained within my post. From the conquest of Pompey in ~ 63 B.C up to 70 A.D. Judea was a client kingdom of the Romans with its own King and allowed a degree of self government - the Sanhedrin still had considerable power over Jewish affairs, and the Jews were allowed to keep many of their practices and were respected. The Romans wanted to rule the Jews peaceably with a collaboration government, and Judea had been a client kingdom of one sort or another for the past few hundred years anyway, so it wasn't a huge issue for them. For various reasons went to shit from 66 A.D. and in the decades that followed the Romans faced three separate uprising from the Jews. In the end the Roman gave up trying the govern them all and effectively ethnically cleansed the area, leading to the Jewish dispora which lasted until a mere 64 years ago.
If you're interested in all this, read The Jewish War, by Josephus. You may be familiar with it because he mentions Christians in like one line, but it really is a very good bit of narrative history about this utterly fascinating period of history.
"The most that may be reasonably said is that inclusion in all four gospel seems to suggest an importance,but it infers nothing. " ~ Yeah I'll agree with that.
