Holiday Next Week and Status

Next Monday is marked on the calendar as Incarnation Day. This blog reviews that date in detail, especially alternative venues near Sychar for the events recorded in the text. We also traveled this past weekend. Our workweek has been short as a result. Current status follows at the end.

Incarnation Day (cal.paleo.in)

Next Monday is marked in the calendar as 'Incarnation Day.' This is of course Joshua's birthday. We normally celebrate this holiday as Christmas.

The difference in date is because of using a different calendar.

This is the first time we have had that date marked in the calendar as the date goes by. Fun.

Note that Joshua's birth was not in public. There was no outside visitors. So public events on the birth date itself should not be expected. These have not been seen in prophetic replays.

But, the birth marks a cluster of 3 different dates. The latter 2 are more interesting.

Joshua was presented in public and named 8 days later. Then at the 40th day, following a passage supposedly from Moses, Joshua was presented in the Temple in Jerusalem.

These latter 2 dates had interesting fulfillment at the 2000th anniversary of Joshua's birth. I suspect his entire life will have 2000th anniversary headlines, but the bulk of those will be later this decade. Let me review how these started in 1998.

Magi Visit

When this story had its 2000th anniversary in 1998, the visiting Magi fulfilled in headline news when the then new leader of Iran traveled from Iran to the United Nations in New York City. He did so on the 2000th anniversary of the 8th day Magi visit.

That Iranian called himself a, "Wise man from the east." Like many others who have fulfilled prophetic stories, he was calling out his own prophetic story.

He made it to the front page of the New York times. Amongst other things, he discussed an approximate month long gap that he would not be able to attend. This was prophetically pointing to the next birth related date, which is 40 days forward from the birth day which had been 8 days earlier. So the math suggests a 32 day difference, in common language a month difference.

Jerusalem Temple

The 40th day from the birth is the next possible related date in the birth season. It is called out and dated in the bibletime.com work, but might ultimately have been the subject of some level of manuscript tampering.

Normally, the text says baby Joshua was taken to the Temple in Jerusalem on the 40th day. At that venue there are some prophetic words spoken over him and his mother.

The text is recording something that most likely happened. But, we have strong reasons to dispute the actual venue.

The Temple in Jerusalem is the home turf of Ananias. He is the primary NT editor, after all. He changed stories to make Joshua appear Jewish, by religion.

Even in a regular Bible, Joshua's religion is easily in dispute. I have run across many articles over the years that use only the Bible to refute the idea that Jesus was Jewish. These articles hang on the contradictions present in the Bible on this point.

The easiest possible alternative to Joshua being taken to the temple in Jerusalem on his 40th day is to think he was taken to some other temple.

The most likely alternative is the temple atop Mount Gerizim, the subject of the story of the Woman at the Well.

Here is a link to video giving a modern walking tour of the ruins atop the summit of Mount Gerizim.

Visiting Mount Gerizim (youtube.com)

In this tour Zahi Shaked takes his viewers around the top of that mountain. You will importantly see the ruins of the Temple referred to in the story of the Woman at the Well.

If you are unfamiliar with this alternative history to the story of Jerusalem, I would strongly recommend taking 23 minutes and watching this video.

Shaked shows ruins of the temple, 12 stones from the Jordan, Abraham's altar, and ruins of a Christian church. His is not being overtly religious, which is very nice. There are also views from the mountain down to modern Sychar and Nablus. The Samaritans still exist in a very small community which he shows at the end.

Shaked pronounces Sychar without a hard 'K' sound, so listen carefully.

Shaked quotes Josephus as indicating that in the first century, the temple atop Gerizim was the same size as the temple in Jerusalem. So Josephus is giving us a secondary witness for the basis for the story of the Woman at the Well.

There really was a competing, equally sized, temple atop the hill above Sychar. It was a major structure. As the video shows, the ruins are still there.

As these were similar sized buildings, they must have had similar sized audiences. So all the things that the text says happened in Jerusalem might just have happened there. Shifting the venue would only take a very few choice inserted words.

This may also have been the venue for the events when Joshua was age 12. Again, knowing that Sychar had a temple matched in size to Jerusalem is enough evidence to support our general hunch that the inspired text was tampered as to venue. Sychar, the region of Abraham's ranch, at the bottom of this mountain to the east, is much more likely to be the inspired venue for these events.

In the video Shaked notes that the ruins of a Christian church atop the mountain suggest early Christians knew of important early Christian history that took place there. That history, of course, is not in the Bible.

Early Christians that selected this venue to build a church would likely have known historical details now covered over by Ananias and his heirs.

Edits In Moses

The stories at Joshua's 40th day follow a passage in Moses dealing with the cleansing of a mother who has had a son. At the 40 day mark she was to bring an offering to the priests for her cleansing (Leviticus 12:1-5).

This fundamental passage is disputable for various reasons. The Moses era passage is probably not inspired, added by Ezra to create an offering for the priests.

Inspired or not, it was in the public text when Joshua was born. He had not yet recovered the inspired forms. So then the issue shifts to another question. How much did his family follow the public religion? We all face the same problem now.

As the video above points out, modern Samaritans only accept the first 5 books of the Bible and none of the additional OT books. So they may have been following edited Moses, even if not the rest of the OT. So offerings at the Temple might have been directed to the temple at Gerizim.

Using this line of reasoning, that temple at Gerizim would become the place where the prophetic words over Baby Joshua were spoken.

Travel

We traveled to visit friends in eastern Washington last weekend. We returned on Monday back to western Washington.

We are expecting to be in Kent, Washington, perhaps across the winter. So, we brought back some computer gear that had been in storage. In particular we brought the multi-monitor setups that had been stored. One set goes with Ryan's laptop, the other set goes with our big computer. We also brought back a table for use in the shop.

It is taking us a few days to rearrange the shop and setup some of this gear. So we have not done much regular work this week.

Ryan has been debugging the new website styles which we found are having trouble on older Safari browsers. Apple these days is about as bad as Microsoft was 20 years ago.

I have also nearly finished rewriting the code for handling the tagging for Bibles. Bible quotes are being done very differently than in the past. I hope to be able to put Bible quotes into blog posts. It will be perhaps another week before we are confident enough in this new code to post it online.

Western Washington

For those familiar with western Washington, you probably know Kent is located south of the airport south of the city of Seattle.

If there is anyone on this blog in the region who would be interested in a face-to-face meeting, please let me know. We should be able to make that happen.

We might also be able to schedule some sort of weekly meetings. Perhaps for the 2023-24 school year. This would be easier for us if someone wanted to host meetings within, say, an hour+ drive from Kent. Maybe live streams? Let me know if interested.

Voron Status

Last week I loaded software on the new Voron printer. As part of that build step, the machine was powered up for the first time.

I realized at that point that there are some AC power related mods that I needed to apply to the printer before going forward.

1) One of the power supplies needs a safety guard over exposed AC power screw terminals.

2) The bed needs better wiring management to prevent the AC power wire from chafing the aluminum panel used as the divider between the print area and the electronics. The printer design called out plastic for this part. In Sanladerer's video of this build he melted the plastic version of this part. The kit came with an aluminum part that cannot melt. But, it can chafe the AC power wires that pass through that part. A grommet is an easy fix, but tricky to install. Best done now.

3) The bed needs to be removable without turning the printer over and without taking apart the electronics bay. This so there is better access to the heated bed's safety fuse.

4) The AC power switch needs to be moved from the far back to the front, and replaced with a lighted switch. This so it can function like an Emergency Power Off and pilot light. When not moving the print head, the machine is absolutely silent. The AC powered light in the switch works as a trustworthy indication of AC power being on.

These mods should be done by the time this blog goes out. Once these are done I will turn to the problem of printer calibration.

Though everything seems a little crazy, we continue to make steady progress. Normal work should resume next week.

More Later,

Phil