According to biblical scholars, the Torah's genealogy for Levi's descendants, is actually an aetiological myth reflecting the fact that there were four different groups among the levites – the Gershonites, Kohathites, Merarites, and Aaronids ; Aaron – the eponymous ancestor of the Aaronids – couldn't be portrayed as a brother to Gershon, Kohath, and Merari, as the narrative about the birth of Moses ( brother of Aaron ), which textual scholars attribute to the earlier Elohist source, mentions only that both his parents were Levites ( without identifying their names ).

According to several biblical scholars, Benjamin was also originally part of this single tribe, but the biblical account of Joseph as his father became lost.

According to Hugh S. Pyper, the biblical " founding myths of the Exodus and the exile, read as stories in which a nation is forged by maintaining its ideological and racial purity in the face of an oppressive great power ", entered " the rhetoric of nationalism throughout European history ", especially in Protestant countries and smaller nations.

According to the biblical history, one of the first acts of Cyrus, the Persian conqueror of Babylon, was to commission the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple, a task which they are said to have completed c. 515.

According to the biblical history Ezra and Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem in the middle of the 5th century BCE, the first empowered by the Persian king to enforce the Torah, the second with the status of governor and a royal mission to restore the walls of the city.

According to the biblical narrative, Abraham fell on his face and laughed when Elohim imparted the news of their son's eventual birth.

" According to Martin Noth, at the Southern Palestinian stage of the growth of the Pentateuch tradition, Isaac became established as one of the biblical patriarchs, but his traditions were receded in the favor of Abraham.

According to some biblical scholars, the findings at Nag Hammadi have shown Irenaeus ' description of Gnosticism to be largely inaccurate and polemic in nature.

According to Herbert C. Brichtothe, writing in Reform Judaism's Hebrew Union College Annual, the family tomb is the central concept in understanding biblical views of the afterlife.

According to the biblical First Book of Kings, when David was old, " he could not get warm.

According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar, where they resolved to build a city with a tower " with its top in the heavens ... lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the Earth ".

According to the biblical etymology, the city received the name " Babel ", from the Hebrew word " balal ", meaning to jumble.

According to Dirk Bax, Bosch's paintings often represent visual translations of verbal metaphors and puns drawn from both biblical and folkloric sources.

According to Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition, the biblical Mount Sinai was the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments.

According to several biblical scholars, Benjamin was also originally part of the house of Joseph, but the biblical account of this became lost ; Benjamin being differentiated by being that part of Ephraim which joined the Kingdom of Judah rather than that of Israel.

According to Genesis, three biblical couples are buried there:

According to the biblical commandment, a blue ( Hebrew תכלת, tekhelet, tək · ā '· leth ) thread ( Hebrew פתיל " pəthiyl ") known as " tekhelet " itself, is included in the tzitzit.

According to the musicologist Donald Burrows, much of the text is so allusive as to be largely incomprehensible to those ignorant of the biblical accounts.

According to the biblical story, God commands Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice.

According to the biblical narrative in, Cain treacherously murdered his brother Abel, lied about the murder to God, and as a result was cursed and marked for life.

According to one hypothesis, Ugaritic texts might solve the biblical puzzle of the anachronism of Ezekiel mentioning Daniel at ; it is because in both Ugaritic and the Ancient Hebrew texts, it is correctly Danel.

According to some biblical commentators, Asiaticus is the " commander " referred to in Daniel 11: 18, where it says that " a commander will put an end to his insolence " ( NIV ).

According to the UPCI, repentance requires the repentant sinner to take the next biblical steps toward forgiveness and reconciliation to God: water baptism and the baptism of the Holy Ghost. See under headings " Repentance and Emotion " and " Relationship to Water and Spirit Baptism " in Bernard, David K. Furthermore, repentance must be accompanied by " Godly sorrow ".

According to many scholars it only comprises a small number of monosyllabic lexical roots, including the personal pronouns and a few other deictic and auxiliary items.

According to some scholars Ali ibn Yusuf was a new generation of leadership that had forgot the desert life for the comforts of the city.

According to most Muslim scholars, the Ark of the Covenant has a religious basis in Islam, and Islam gives it special significance.

According to some scholars, he was more interested in spirituality than in critical text study, which was a specialty of many scholars at JTS.

According to textual scholars, this is really the Jahwist's account of the reunion after Joseph identifies himself, and the account of the threat to enslave Benjamin is just the Elohist's version of the same event, with the Elohist being more terse about Joseph's emotions towards Benjamin, merely mentioning that Benjamin was given five times as many gifts as the others.

According to this view, the story of Jacob's visit to Laban to obtain a wife originated as a metaphor for this migration, with the property and family which were gained from Laban representing the gains of the Joseph tribes by the time they returned from Egypt ; according to textual scholars, the Jahwist version of the Laban narrative only mentions the Joseph tribes, and Rachel, and does not mention the other tribal matriarchs whatsoever.

According to F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, " the widely observed unity of form and point of view ... and general resemblance in linguistic detail throughout the sequence are broadly suggestive of the work of a single author ," though other scholars see Lamentations as the work of multiple authors.

According to the editors of the 1897 Easton's Bible Dictionary, some scholars believe the name " Malachi " is not a proper noun but rather an abbreviation of " messenger of YHWH ".

According to these scholars, there was something they variously call " earliest Buddhism ", " original Buddhism " or " pre-canonical Buddhism ".

According to some scholars, the philosophical outlook of earliest Buddhism was primarily negative, in the sense that it focused on what doctrines to reject more than on what doctrines to accept.

According to some scholars, Howard's conception of Conan and the Hyborian Age may have originated in Thomas Bulfinch's The Outline of Mythology ( 1913 ) which inspired Howard to " coalesce into a coherent whole his literary aspirations and the strong physical, autobiographical elements underlying the creation of Conan.

According to scholars including Neil Forsyth and John L. McKenzie, the Old Testament incorporates stories, or fragments of stories, from extra-biblical mythology.

According to a number of scholars, the Christ story contains mythical themes such as descent to the underworld, the heroic monomyth, and the " dying god " ( see section below on " mythical themes and types ").

According to Lorena Laura Stookey, " many scholars " see a link between stories in " Irish-Celtic mythology " about journeys to the Otherworld in search of a cauldron of rejuvenation and medieval accounts of the quest for the Holy Grail.

According to non-Orthodox Jews and critical historians, Jewish law too has been affected by surrounding cultures ( for example, some scholars argue that the establishment of absolute monotheism in Judaism was a reaction against the dualism of Zoroastrianism that Jews encountered when living under Persian rule ; Jews rejected polygamy during the Middle Ages, influenced by their Christian neighbors ).

According to one pair of scholars, " The actual authorship of the three maxims set up on the Delphian temple may be left uncertain.

According to scholars Carole Kismaric and Marvi Heiferman, " The golden age of detective fiction began with high-class amateur detectives sniffing out murderers lurking in rose gardens, down country lanes, and in picturesque villages.

According to scholars, dhimmis had their rights fully protected in their communities, but as citizens in the Islamic state, had certain restrictions.

According to Western scholars the older sections of the Book of Enoch ( mainly in the Book of the Watchers ) date from about 300 BC and the latest part ( Book of Parables ) probably was composed at the end of 1st century BC.

According to his letters, he was associated with the Venetian natural philosopher, Giulio Camillo, but, apart from this, he had a less active association with Italian scholars than might have been expected.

According to pre-Meiji scholars, his reign spanned the years from 1348 through 1351.