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Yes, came across this for years now. The way I often put it in simple terms is that, the modern day King James Version bible was written based on the Masoretic Text (MS) which was the first known official Hebrew Bible, but it was written some 900 years, or so AFTER the time Jesus was said to have walked the earth. By that time, the Jews, on a whole, unlike their Old Testament predecessors, had become hard core monotheists and there is no doubt, this played a huge role in their copying and compiling of their ancient religious history. In doing so, when they got to Deuteronomy 32:7-9, to remove the unsavory idea that their god could possibly have had sons, they replaced "sons of God" with "children of Israel" which is what was later carried over in the King James Version Bible and subsequent translations. There was only one glaring problem. Israel was NOT a nation or even close to being one when the nations were [allegedly] divided as told in Genesis 10 or 11 (too lazy to look it up). How then were the nations divided "according to the Children of Israel" (which does not even make sense) when Israel was not even a nation as yet and we were not even at Abraham?
The Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew, over a thousand years BEFORE the MS) scriptures called them "angels" to get around the embarrassment, but the yet, older Dead Sea Scrolls, lists them as "sons of God." That version has a label CONSISTENT with other contemporary myths of the older ancient world, where it was believed that the supreme deity had a wife and children that made up a divine court. In some of the older Psalms, we read of this court of gods known as the assembly of El or the assembly of the Elohim (the gods) where in one episode, Yahweh arises and condemns the others gods for their lethargy in governing their nations and shows him basically usurping El.
So, it went in this order:
1. Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS)
2. Septuagint (LSS)
3. Masoretic Text (MS)
4. King James Version
Toss in the Psuedopigripha, notably the extremely popular First Book of Enoch, and things become VERY interesting.
Deut. 32:
8.When the Most High gave nations their lot, when He separated the sons of man, He set up the boundaries of peoples according to the number of the children of Israel.
Rashi's Commentary:
When the Most High gave nations their lot: When the Holy One, Blessed is He, gave those who provoked Him to anger their portion, He flooded them and drowned them [i.e., that was their lot].
when He separated the sons of man: When [God] scattered the Generation of the Dispersion [which built the tower of Babel], He had the power to remove them from the world [altogether], but He did not do so. Rather, “He set up the boundaries of peoples,” [i.e.,] He let them remain in existence and did not destroy them.
according to the number of the children of Israel: [God let man remain in existence] for the sake of a [small] number of the children of Israel who were destined to descend from the children of Shem, and [the sake of] the number of the seventy souls of the children of Israel who went down to Egypt, He “set up the boundaries of peoples,” [i.e., He separated man into seventy nations with] seventy languages.
What source would you be prepared to accept if it served to contradict your most profound beliefs? And of course no source could ever be erudite enough for that. I became aware of all of the facts that I posted many years ago. Which is how I knew which subjects to look under to support my points. I simply quoted Wikipedia as a means of establishing that I wasn't making this stuff as I go along.
8.When the Most High gave nations their lot, when He separated the sons of man, He set up the boundaries of peoples according to the number of the children of Israel.
Rashi's Commentary:
When the Most High gave nations their lot: When the Holy One, Blessed is He, gave those who provoked Him to anger their portion, He flooded them and drowned them [i.e., that was their lot].
when He separated the sons of man: When [God] scattered the Generation of the Dispersion [which built the tower of Babel], He had the power to remove them from the world [altogether], but He did not do so. Rather, “He set up the boundaries of peoples,” [i.e.,] He let them remain in existence and did not destroy them.
according to the number of the children of Israel: [God let man remain in existence] for the sake of a [small] number of the children of Israel who were destined to descend from the children of Shem, and [the sake of] the number of the seventy souls of the children of Israel who went down to Egypt, He “set up the boundaries of peoples,” [i.e., He separated man into seventy nations with] seventy languages.
What source would you be prepared to accept if it served to contradict your most profound beliefs? And of course no source could ever be erudite enough for that. I became aware of all of the facts that I posted many years ago. Which is how I knew which subjects to look under to support my points. I simply quoted Wikipedia as a means of establishing that I wasn't making this stuff as I go along.
However, whoever wrote the article could have made it up...
What's the matter?...You don't understand this?...I quoted the sages commentary on that verse...The chapter is talking about past occurrences...And noting certain seemingly coincidental occurrences...I don't see what has you befuddled...
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