My working hypotheses is when the captured Jews of Babylon were planning to return to Israel they collected all the oral camp fire tales they had culturally and made a book about their story to justify 1) their existence 2) their rights 3) their laws and culture.

How much of the folk myths were true as written, likely none of it, but it would have been melded to fit the knowledge of the year. How much was exaggerated and ethnocentric? All of it, they made up the past to govern their future.

This is why nothing claimed as pre Babylonian history for the Hebrews can be discovered by dedicated archaeologists on both sides of religion.

One of my favourite laffs in the series "Famous Fables of Fabulous Foolery and Fuckery with Monotheism".

Mo goes up the mountain, no-one is allowed to come with and see him meeting Big G
Then there are the two different sets of rules that somehow had to be scribbled down on the tablets, which Mo treats with such respect (having just received them from the Creator of the Universe in dictation) that he breaks it .........
The people respond (then and later) with remarkable disrespect even after such "revelation". The tablets contain drivel that everyone already knew ... don't kill (which commandment God then duly tosses out the window a mere few verses later), don't lie (which evidently excludes the pious making up of shit) and such assorted inanities such as "don't pray to other gods".

Hilarious

z8000783 wrote:That's going to be tricky isn't it.

A man goes up a mountain on his own, talks to god then comes back with some tablets of stone which are then destroyed.

John

Sounds almost like Joseph Smith to me, talk about copy-cat!

Berthold wrote:

z8000783 wrote:That's going to be tricky isn't it.

A man goes up a mountain on his own, talks to god then comes back with some tablets of stone which are then destroyed.

John

Didn't he allegedly go a second time to receive new tablets which were then kept in the ark of the covenant?

(and don't some Ethiopians claim they have them?)

Yes, they claim to have them inside a special church built for that exact purpose and there is only one person who is appointed for life as the sole protector of the Ark and nobody else is allowed to even see it. And I have an ocean front property for sale in South Dakota, 200 yds of private ocean front beach, for sale - real cheap!

Dr. Kwaltz wrote:

Berthold wrote:

z8000783 wrote:That's going to be tricky isn't it.

A man goes up a mountain on his own, talks to god then comes back with some tablets of stone which are then destroyed.

John

Didn't he allegedly go a second time to receive new tablets which were then kept in the ark of the covenant?

(and don't some Ethiopians claim they have them?)

Yes, they claim to have them inside a special church built for that exact purpose and there is only one person who is appointed for life as the sole protector of the Ark and nobody else is allowed to even see it. And I have an ocean front property for sale in South Dakota, 200 yds of private ocean front beach, for sale - real cheap!

Yes, well, there's your error: you want people to believe you, you have to put the price up.

Onyx8 wrote:

Dr. Kwaltz wrote:

Berthold wrote:

z8000783 wrote:That's going to be tricky isn't it.

A man goes up a mountain on his own, talks to god then comes back with some tablets of stone which are then destroyed.

John

Didn't he allegedly go a second time to receive new tablets which were then kept in the ark of the covenant?

(and don't some Ethiopians claim they have them?)

Yes, they claim to have them inside a special church built for that exact purpose and there is only one person who is appointed for life as the sole protector of the Ark and nobody else is allowed to even see it. And I have an ocean front property for sale in South Dakota, 200 yds of private ocean front beach, for sale - real cheap!

Yes, well, there's your error: you want people to believe you, you have to put the price up.

Well see that's your problem right there. Real scam artists never put the price there. they figure out how much they can squeeze the potential victim for first and then set the starting price just above the pain limit and let the buyer haggle the price down just enough to be able to afford it, then you close the deal in a hurry and disappear with the money before the sucker realizes what just happened. Rinse and repeat! By advertising the price beforehand, you may not get the most gullible ones and free money is free money, no matter how much!

Peter Brown wrote:My working hypotheses is when the captured Jews of Babylon were planning to return to Israel they collected all the oral camp fire tales they had culturally and made a book about their story to justify 1) their existence 2) their rights 3) their laws and culture.

How much of the folk myths were true as written, likely none of it, but it would have been melded to fit the knowledge of the year. How much was exaggerated and ethnocentric? All of it, they made up the past to govern their future.

This is why nothing claimed as pre Babylonian history for the Hebrews can be discovered by dedicated archaeologists on both sides of religion.

Yes, that's pretty much my understanding. From what reading I've done, there seems to be little evidence that the Israelites ever "arrived" in the Promised Land at all. There's no archaeoligical evidence of an invasion or sudden population change at anything like a plausible date. Israelite pottery, architecture, language and literature all show continuity from older Canaanite forms.

All that supports the idea of an Exodus seems to be a few scraps like the presence of the Hyskos as Semitic people in Egypt, Akhenaten's experiment with monotheism and speculation about Moses being an Egyptian name.

The Old Testament blog Biblia Hebraica points out that if there was a Moses he certainly didn't write the Torah as is often believed. If he lived before about 1000 BC, which he surely would have had to, then the Hebrew language it's written in wouldn't have existed and the Torah would have to be a translation of something written in an older language.

logical bob wrote:
Yes, that's pretty much my understanding. From what reading I've done, there seems to be little evidence that the Israelites ever "arrived" in the Promised Land at all. There's no archaeoligical evidence of an invasion or sudden population change at anything like a plausible date. Israelite pottery, architecture, language and literature all show continuity from older Canaanite forms.

It depends on the sort of invasion envisioned. The old fashioned historians and archaeologists had in mind something we can term Indians and Cowboys. Before: All Indians. After: All Cowboys. But most historical invasions were not like that. Most conquerors wanted the locals to go on working for them and paying taxes. Some conquests are completely invisible in the archaeology, for example when Babylon surrendered to Cyrus the Great without a fight.

Of course the Bible encourages the idea that all of those nasty Canaanites were killed off and weren't the ancestors of the later Israelites, honest. I agree this is rubbish. It probably has a lot to do with later generations wanting to be thought of as 'real' Israelites, that is to say the winners of previous conflicts. As for pottery and other artefacts, well nomad tribes invading the area would have no idea how to run the farms, towns etc. They would pretty well have to continue with what was already being used.

There were certainly battles and some cities were destroyed, including some destructions mentioned in the Bible. But the timing does not fit together into a single major event. What is likely to have happened is that different tribes, or groups of tribes, came into the area at different times. Much later an overall conquest narrative was put together incorporating a number of different local stories of tribal victories.

Of course the Bible encourages the idea that all of those nasty Canaanites were killed off and weren't the ancestors of the later Israelites, honest. I agree this is rubbish. It probably has a lot to do with later generations wanting to be thought of as 'real' Israelites, that is to say the winners of previous conflicts. As for pottery and other artefacts, well nomad tribes invading the area would have no idea how to run the farms, towns etc. They would pretty well have to continue with what was already being used.

I disagree, the OT definately indicates the Istraelites did not conquer and eliminate the Canaanites as per divine orders and this 'disobedience' caused them ongoing problems with the Canaanites tribes thenceforth. Of course that IMO is explaining the fact that the victory was obviously not complete as these peoples remained.

Leonidas wrote:There were certainly battles and some cities were destroyed, including some destructions mentioned in the Bible.

Which ones and what's the evidence?

kiore wrote:
I disagree, the OT definately indicates the Istraelites did not conquer and eliminate the Canaanites as per divine orders and this 'disobedience' caused them ongoing problems with the Canaanites tribes thenceforth. Of course that IMO is explaining the fact that the victory was obviously not complete as these peoples remained.

You are of course quite correct. But there are also accounts of the massacre of the inhabitants of specific places, places that later no doubt insisted that they were 100% Israelite because all of the earlier inhabitants were killed.

logical bob wrote

Leonidas wrote:
There were certainly battles and some cities were destroyed, including some destructions mentioned in the Bible.

Which ones and what's the evidence?

The Book of Joshua gives a list of cities that Joshua destroyed and also mentions the settlement of specific tribes in particular territories beyond that. The cities listed are: Jericho, Ai, Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, Hebron, Debir and Hazor. Jericho was certainly destroyed although opinion differs as to exactly when. There is destruction evidence from the excavation of some of the other places such as Lachish and Hebron but so far nobody has been able to put together a case for showing that all of these places were destroyed around the same time.

I recall reading, in a "pop" history review of what the academic consensus of what was historical in OT accounts (sorry, can't recall the title), that most of the "cities of the plain" were already in ruins at the time Israel began to rise, both by biblical chronology & by archaeological evidence, the name of the city of Ai actually meaning "ruin", making a nonsense of the entire biblical story.

If Moses ever existed (and that's a big if), all we would be able to say about him is that he had some connection with Egypt & had a reputation as a lawgiver.

But, in this case, surely we have to go with "mythical" - there's just no way to confirm real existance, and no information with which to reconstruct a putative real person behind the myth.

Tbickle wrote:So, my knowledge is somewhat limited here. Do we actually know what was written on the first set of tablets?

One of the rules was "And my priests shall celebrate".

Unfortunately, that one got misremembered and that is why priests are supposed to be celibate...

God made sure to have Moses write down how priests were to be paid, mustn’t forget god is in that detail.

BBC documentary ' Discovery.Who.Was.Moses.2001.DVDRip.XviD ' is a great source giving scientific explanations for the split of the Red Sea and all other weird stuff Nile's turning into red and things like. I could never thought that there could be rational explanations for such huge scale natural events but scientists are better than prophets

I once saw a documentary that scientifically tried to explain the parting of the Red Sea as a consequence of the volcanic explosion of Santorini. Lucky lucky Moses.

Leonidas wrote:

logical bob wrote

Leonidas wrote:
There were certainly battles and some cities were destroyed, including some destructions mentioned in the Bible.

Which ones and what's the evidence?

The Book of Joshua gives a list of cities that Joshua destroyed and also mentions the settlement of specific tribes in particular territories beyond that. The cities listed are: Jericho, Ai, Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, Hebron, Debir and Hazor. Jericho was certainly destroyed although opinion differs as to exactly when. There is destruction evidence from the excavation of some of the other places such as Lachish and Hebron but so far nobody has been able to put together a case for showing that all of these places were destroyed around the same time.

The book I've got in front of me is Testament by John Romer. He claims that pretty much the whole of Canaan was destroyed round about 1200 BC by tribes originally from Asia, sweeping southward and ending up with a defeated invasion of Egypt. If that's true then the Israelites can't really claim credit for any destruction at that time.

He also says that, at that time, both Jericho and Ai would have been deserted for several centuries. Although the first excavation of Jericho in the 1920s dated a destruction layer to around 1500 BC, later work using carbon dating showed that this was wrong by a millenium and that, although destroyed and rebuilt several times, the city was a ruin from about 1600 BC onwards.

logical bob wrote
The book I've got in front of me is Testament by John Romer. He claims that pretty much the whole of Canaan was destroyed round about 1200 BC by tribes originally from Asia, sweeping southward and ending up with a defeated invasion of Egypt. If that's true then the Israelites can't really claim credit for any destruction at that time.

He also says that, at that time, both Jericho and Ai would have been deserted for several centuries. Although the first excavation of Jericho in the 1920s dated a destruction layer to around 1500 BC, later work using carbon dating showed that this was wrong by a millenium and that, although destroyed and rebuilt several times, the city was a ruin from about 1600 BC onwards.

It isn't true although that's the story told in many modern history books. What you are referring to are the wars between the Egyptians and the 'Sea Peoples'. There were two sets of wars, the first involving the Pharaoh Merneptah the son and successor of Ramesses II. Ramesses II was a conqueror and ruled Egypt plus right up into Syria. As often happened with ancient empires once the strong man died there was a revolt of the vassal peoples. Major enemies of Merneptah were the Libyans from north west of Egypt. The others were allies of the Libyans from Syria/Palestine trying to regain their independence.

Merneptah himself devastated the area of Israel/Palestine, not invading tribes. He did this as a way of surpressing the rebels and one group of rebels was Israel. Merneptah tells us about this himself in what is called the 'Israel Stela' because it is the oldest mention of Israel anywhere. Israel was already present in the area. Any Conquest or Exodus, if they really happened, must have been long before. This fits very well with a much older destruction of Jericho and Ai.

There's much speculation about the causes of the Bronze Age collapse, but it's clear that there was a huge amount of destruction. In that context, even if there's evidence of destruction at a city the Bible says was destroyed it doesn't look as if the Israelites destroyed it.

Yes, the Menerptah Stele shows Egyptian strikes against Canaan. On the other hand, we know the Sea Peoples destroyed Ugarit after the death of Merneptah. Several decades later Ramesses III accepted/permitted their settlement in Canaan. The struggle between the two ebbed and flowed.

The Merneptah Stele shows Israel as a nomadic or rural people present in Canaan - it designates others as nations or cities, but not Israel. This doesn't support the idea that the Exodus/Conquest happened earlier unless the Israelites had then been displaced by the Sea People - a theory which has no evidence in its favour and which would cause almost as much of a challenge to the Biblical account as accepting there was no Exodus.

Along with the cultural continuity in Canaan I think the best explanation is that the Israelites were native to Canaan.