True Authorship of The Old Testament?

originally posted by: bartholomeo

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: bartholomeo

The coins you linked to were of the family "Frugi" (FRVGI). Piso was not the surname but a first name.

The Calpurnis Piso Frugi coin was minted in 90 BC (probably at the primacy of his wealth & political power, so he would already be an adult, lets say 30 years old, even though that may be a bit young), the fictional Arrius was supposed to have written his works about 100 AD. That would mean that either the grandfather or Arrius (or both) lived exceptionally long lives for their day (90 + 30 + 100 = 220 years).

Not historical. Fictional.

Jewish Eastern Mediterranean society at the time was such that they knew how to read and write and speak in Greek (imposed by Alexander the Great), Aramaic (the common local tongue) and Hebrew (the religious historical tongue). If you were a Roman citizen living in the Eastern Mediterranean, you also probably knew Latin but may not have known Aramaic. At 12 years old, Hebrew boys completed school and began their trade. At the completion of their schooling, they were expected to be able to recite from memory one of the books of the Tanach (usually the book of Isaiah, "Sefer Yeshayahu" in Hebrew - which has 66 chapters). They were a very literate society, especially compared to the modern society that thinks that you can type a search term into Google and it will "prove" the existence of their pet theory.

In regard to the speaking of Greek, please read this Wikipedia link on Languages of the Roman Empire. If Arrius Piso was actually of an aristocratic Roman family, and a Roman citizen, he would have read and written Classical Latin.

Also, the Vatican does not and did not hold sway over all of Christendom. There are Coptic, Alexandrian, Iranian and Ethiopic traditions (among others) which do not share their artifacts or founding documents with the Roman Catholic church. They also have no records supporting the idea of anything but the traditional attribution of sources. It is simply not possible for the Vatican to suppress documentary evidence because it was widespread well before the existence of the Roman Catholic Church and there are other custodians of the documents and relics.

Hey man! I'm not trying to convince you to believe the NT was written by Piso's. I was merely showing you. But hey! If believing in an eternal life after death in some sort of paradise with a fictional character called (god the father) sounds good to you, be my guest. Besides this was all created to give men purpose since the egyptians, which wasn't something they had at the time, to most men back then, it was only this life and it's over. Go ahead believing fantasies, I got no beef with that, besides the NT is so much faker than the OT is not even worth it.

But hey! Don't take my advice: Take this guys'

"For, we do not follow cunningly devised fables."
2nd Peter 1:16

I sure don't.

I was talking about the provenance of the Bible, not theological beliefs (and the OP was about the Old Testament, so we have even drifted from that topic!).

My view is that there is merit in the traditional attribution of authorship of the Old and New Testaments. Too many people dismiss this off-hand and based upon the slimmest of evidence (most of it speculative). They may be right, but one cannot yet dispense with the traditional attribution which comes with a pedigree far superior to modern supposition.