Boid on שקוץ שומם

שקוץ שומם is used more skilfully than you have noticed in the Gospel, and perhaps equally skilfully in Daniel. You’re being too literal-minded and too hasty. The fixed term shiqqûts shômêm can’t have a favourable meaning, not in Daniel and not for the Gospel. The Gospel refers to Daniel. Daniel alludes to II Maccabees. In II Maccabees this is a new codeword. It converts to Ba’al Shamayim (Hebrew) or Ba’al Shemayya (Aramaic) = Greek Zeus Hypsistos, God Most High, the name with which the religion of Israel was explained to the outside world. The author of II Maccabees tells us the setting up of whatever it was was bad. Daniel uses a known codeword. For the codeword to make any sense, it must still be the name of something bad in the eyes of some. The Gospel quotes Daniel, but II Maccabees must have been known. For the Gospel, as for Daniel, the setting up of the shiqqûts shômêm must still be something resembling the historical event in II Maccabees. It must be bad in the eyes of some. This does not mean it was bad in the eyes of the author of the Gospel. I think he saw it as a necessary profanation foretold by prophecy. If you look at my monograph A Pair of Ancient Samaritan Eschatologies, you will see that the term is derived from the Torah. It refers to what must come so as to end long and deep apostasy and bring the new era in. It is bad but good, shocking (shômêm) but devastating (shômêm) causng necessary destruction. It causes revulsion, shiqqûts (Shiqqûts is not a word in the Torah. The noun sheqets, from the same root, does occur, in the meaning of a non-kosher animal. There is a verb as well. This is the ABSTRACT NOUN from the verb, made up for this occasion. It is not a normal word. It is an artificial invention for the purpose of making a codeword. This means you can only take it as it stands: there is no previous usage. Forget about statues of lizards). This revulsion and devastation ends wrong beliefs and wrong behaviour and bad governing and corrupt priesthood. Itclears up the rubbish of what is old (the old bottles) and clears the way for what is to come, so ultimately it is from Heaven (Shamayim). If you wanted to push it, you could say it ends Jewish misanthropy by stating the identification of the God of Israel with the shiqqûts shômêm when it is seen to be God Most High = Hebrew El ‘Elyon אל עליון Consider that the term God the Greatest Good, a title of Jupiter, was taken over by Christ. There are Christian Churches with the inscription Deo Optimo Maximo = to Jupiter Most High or to God Most High.

LATER ADDITION BY BOID:

The sentence at the end should have been “Consider that the term God the Greatest Good, a title of Jupiter, was taken over by christianity”.

I don’t know what to do with this next bit, because it has only just hit me. We are so familiar with the identification of the religion of Israel with the worship of Zeus = Jupiter that I forgot something. The identification in terms of Syrian religion is always with Ba’al, who is identified with Saturn. From memory, I think some Pagan writers in Latin identify the religion of Israel as the worship of Saturn. Saturn is identified with the Titan Kronos in Greek religion, the father of Zeus. Are we to take this to mean that when two well-known persons took on the name Shabbetai or Shabtai (Sabbataios), they were stating that they were teaching the worship of the Hidden God, the father of the Creator? If so, how would this have been expressed in Jewish terms?

I presume you know that Shabbetai Tsvi married himself to a scroll of the Torah, I think publicly.

MORE ADDITIONS:

The meaning of Deo Optimo Maximo is “to (dedicated to) God the greatest good”. This was a dedication formula in the Roman religion, and as I said it now appears on Christian churches.