Scriptural Research Institute

4th Maccabees is a philosophical interpretation of 2nd Maccabees. It was added to the Septuagint in the 1st-century AD, however, it could have been written anywhere between 140 BC and 100 AD. This text includes more details regarding the torture of the Israelite youths from 2nd Maccabees, which may have come from Jason of Cyrene's original five-volume version of Maccabees. The author of 4th Maccabees accepts the flying horsemen of 2nd Maccabees as...

In the mid-3rd century BC, King Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt ordered a translation of the ancient Hebrew scriptures for the Library of Alexandria, which resulted in the creation of the Septuagint. It is generally accepted that there were several versions of the ancient Hebrew and Samaritan scriptures before the translation of the Septuagint. The two books of Ezra were translated into Greek and added to the Septuagint before 200 BC when a large...

L'Enseignement d'Amenemopet est un ancien texte égyptien qui a pour la plupart survécu jusqu'à nos jours, datant de 1550 à 1350 avant notre ère. Elle est également appelée Enseignement (or Sagesse) d'Amenemopet, selon la façon dont le nom égyptien Amen-em-ope ia été prononcé. La littérature de sagesse égyptienne a inspiré plusieurs livres israéliens anciens, notamment le Deutéronome, les Psaumes, les Proverbes et la Sagesse de Joshua...

The Book of Tobit appears to be from an older sect of Judaism, likely the one led by the 'false priest' Tobiah, who was expelled from the temple by Ezra when his genealogy could not be proven in 2nd Ezra. 2nd Ezra was the version of Ezra used by the Pharisee sect which emerged under the Hasmonean Dynasty, while Tobit, along with Enoch, Jubilees, and Job appears to have primarily been used by the Essenes sects. The Book of Tobit is generally viewed...

The term Paralipomena, which means 'things left out,' is a general translation of Divrei-hayyamim, which means 'things in the days.' The books are a collection of texts from various eras of Israelite history, spanning the era of the old Israelite Kingdoms, circa 1000 BC, through the Persian conquest, of circa 539 BC. Scholars have debated the origin of the books throughout their history, and there is no consensus within Rabbinical literature, Christian...

The life of Harkhuf is one of the better-documented lives from the era of the Old Kingdom era of Egyptian history. Harkhuf lived during the reigns of kings Merenre I and Pepi II of the 6th Dynasty, at the same time as the more famous Weni, whom he may have mentioned in his autobiography. Like Weni, he is primarily known from the inscriptions on his tomb, however, unlike Weni, he only seems to have had one tomb. On the front of his tomb were carved...

1ˢᵗ Maccabees tells the story of the Maccabean Revolt against the rule of the Seleucid Empire in the 2ⁿᵈ century BC. The content of 1ˢᵗ Maccabees appears to be a Sadducee text, as it gives all credit to the self-declared high priests that led the rebellion against the Greeks, occasionally mentioning the sky-god Shamayim or the earth-goddess Eretz. It also omits the names of the other gods that 2ⁿᵈ Maccabees and 3ʳᵈ Maccabees mention...

The origin of the Book of Judith has been debated for thousands of years, and is often assumed to have been written in Greek as anti-Hellenic propaganda during the Maccabean Revolt. It isn't clear why an anti-Hellenic book would have been written in Greek by an Aramaic-speaking people, however, no ancient copies of it survive in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Phoenician (Samaritan / Judahite). There are Hebrew translations, however, they are dated to the middle...

Both the Greek translations of 1ˢᵗ and 2ⁿᵈ Ezra, and the Hebrew translation of Ezra (2ⁿᵈ Ezra), contain relics of an Aramaic source-text, unfortunately, the Aramaic Book of Ezra-Nehemiah is lost. The difference in the surviving Aramaic words within the Greek 1ˢᵗ Ezra, and Hebrew Ezra (Greek 2ⁿᵈ Ezra), it appears that the two versions of Ezra already existed in the Aramaic versions. The differences between 2ⁿᵈ Ezra and Masoretic...

The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor is the earliest known surviving story of a shipwrecked sailor, and as such is the forerunner of many stories of nautical adventure encountering strange magical creatures, from Homer's Odyssey to Sinbad the Sailor. In a broader sense, it is generally considered the oldest piece of Egyptian fiction to survive to the present. Only one copy has been found to date, a single papyrus manuscript that resides at the Hermitage...