The Hidden Bones Apocalypse: The Marker, Its Message, and their Hiddenness

Charles R. Lightner ORCID iD

Issue: Vol.9 No.3 March 2023 Issue  Article 1 pp.72-133
DOI : https://doi.org/10.38159/erats.2023931 |   Published online 24th March 2023.
© 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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There is an unusual phrase that occurs only fourteen times in the Hebrew Bible. Those fourteen occurrences mark the accounts of ten highly consequential days. The essential messages of those ten accounts, when taken together, create and convey a unified and coherent communication. The presence of the phrase, its uniqueness to those days, and the message it creates, are hidden in translations. Readers of the biblical text in English, Greek, Latin, and German versions have no reason to associate the ten marked days. The phrase and its message are effectively hidden even from those who use the Hebrew text; having been obscured by the tradition of interpretation extending through rabbinic literature and commentary. The message created by reference to those ten marked days is representative of early Jewish apocalypse literature. This paper identifies and analyses the marker phrase, identifies the days that it marks, interprets the message created, demonstrates the hiddenness of that message, and argues its character as an apocalypse.

Keywords: Hebrew Bible, Apocalypse, Bible Translation, Early Rabbinic Literature, Rabbinic Commentary

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Charles R. Lightner – After a career in various finance-related positions, the author began rabbinic studies at the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York in 2001. He received rabbinic ordination from AJR in 2008. He currently studies, writes, teaches, and acts as rabbi in Westfield, New Jersey, where he lives with his wife, Sharon. They have three children and seven grandchildren.

Lightner, C.R.”The Hidden Bones Apocalypse: The Marker, Its Message, and their Hiddenness,” E-Journal of Religious and Theological Studies, 9 no.3 (2023): 72-133. https://doi.org/10.38159/erats.2023931

© 2023 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Publishers. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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