Ah, I get it now. Thanks.

willhud9 wrote:

Agrippina wrote:If it was carved in stone in hieroglyphs, where was it hidden?

Seriously, seriously? You believe that a bunch of superstitious people running away to their family's ancestral lands in the holy land that was promised to them would have allowed someone who didn't speak their language or understand their customs, or write their writing to lead them?

Being that the "Hebrew people" were Egyptian slaves, I doubt that they new how to read, speak, or write their original language, but rather understood Egyptian. Next, if you have read the discourse at the burning bush in Exodus which I know you have, Moses was nervous and told God that the people would never listen to him. The Bible does address this

Explain how genetic tests on archaeological specimens have shown that the people who lived in Palestine were genetically Hebrew long before any Exodus could have taken place.

Explain how the Exodus makes ANY sense at all, when for most of the time period Palestine was under the allegiance of Egypt. The Jews fled Egypt so they could live in...Egypt?

How about: NO.

Thank you Logical B, and others, for pointing out that none of this actually happened so arguing which language Moses wrote about it in is interesting (Zwar) but utterly irrelevant.

Besides, all the arguments about language, Moses parents were nephew and aunt, the aunt being a great-granddaughter of Jacob, so it wasn't that long a time. Jacob--> Reuben-->Jocabed-->Moses; and Jacob-->Reuben-->Kohath-->Amram m Jocabed (his aunt) -->Moses.

Moses' mother being a granddaughter of Reuben would have spoken her family's language, which may have been a form of proto-Hebrew (or Aramaic??)

Hebrew is a Northwest Semitic language, as is Aramaic. I don't know if the split between Canaanite (to which Hebrew belongs) and Aramaic had happened at the time the Torah tells of.

It's a bit of a problem when the Bible is written in Hebrew. It was the Tower of Babel I tell you!!m:lol:

Agrippina wrote:It's a bit of a problem when the Bible is written in Hebrew. It was the Tower of Babel I tell you!!m:lol:

Hebrew and the other Canaanite languages don't differ very much. Saying that some specific text is Hebrew and some other isn't is as impossible as fixating a specific line between Vulgar Latin and Italian (or some other Romance languages), so quibbling about that, without actual linguistic data about the northwest semitic languages doesn't give us very good results at all. Mind you, I'm not really defending the bible here, I'm criticizing bad methodology.

Zwaarddijk wrote:

Agrippina wrote:It's a bit of a problem when the Bible is written in Hebrew. It was the Tower of Babel I tell you!!m:lol:

Hebrew and the other Canaanite languages don't differ very much. Saying that some specific text is Hebrew and some other isn't is as impossible as fixating a specific line between Vulgar Latin and Italian (or some other Romance languages), so quibbling about that, without actual linguistic data about the northwest semitic languages doesn't give us very good results at all. Mind you, I'm not really defending the bible here, I'm criticizing bad methodology.

I understand that. There are no early texts from before the exile, only some fragments which I pointed out earlier. So it's hard to say what language they were speaking. The Tel Dan inscription is in the same language as that early piece of text, an early form of Hebrew, based on cuneiform (I think, I might be wrong).

Based on linguistic reconstruction and such, we should be able to have an idea (not a perfect idea of it, but we'd be in the right ballpark) of when the pentateuch was written. It's unlikely they would switch to a language that fits the bill for a canaanite language while in captivity off among speakers of Aramaic or even more distantly related semitic languages. Certainly it had an impact on Hebrew, but there are linguistic methods of filtering out at least some of that when reconstructing a previous form of the language - especially when you have two languages that are relatively well attested to work with.

The Tel Dan steele is written using the Paleo-hebrew script, which is an offshoot from the Phoenician script. (However, saying that a language is "based on a script" is not to recommend - I understand people do say stuff like that, and I get what they mean with it, but generally, most scripts could with some modifications be used to write most languages, written language is an artificial, consciously created addition on top of spoken language, which is a much more evolutionary thing.)

Would it be fair to say that writing the biblical texts in Hebrew at a time when Aramaic had already become the everyday language was a little like writing stuff in Latin or KJV English today? People often think scripture is too special to be in the vernacular.

A few relevant points:

1. Moses: Clearly an Egyptian name. But then Achilles was a Greek name. Doesn't mean they were the names of real people. Doesn't mean they were not.

2. 'Slavery' of the ancient Hebrews: Quite normal for tribal people to be allowed to live in or near an ancient kingdom in return for providing labour to contribute to building projects. This could have become rather onerous in the course of time hence the Hebrews decided they could do better elsewhere. Later on it was dissatisfaction about forced labour that split the united kingdom of Israel in the time of Rehoboam and Jeroboam.

3. In order to migrate away the Hebrews would have needed their own infrastructure, e.g. flocks and herds plus all of the skills to go with it. Egyptian peasants would soon have died in the wilderness.

4. All ancient peoples, indeed all peoples, have orally transmitted stories. Likely much of the Old Testament is the later written version of stories that were transmitted orally for many generations. Likely it is only in the time of the Hebrew kings and their establishment of a civil service that any significant number of written records were made.

On the Documentary Hypothesis, I'm busy working my way through Wellhausen's book:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis

I'm doing a quick scan through it now, which I hope to finish by the end of next week before I go away, then I'll read it through carefully and take notes, there's a lot more to it than merely the Pentateuch, according to The Prolegomena to the History of Israel it's downloadable from Gutenberg if anyone's interested in taking a look at it.

Are there any references to Moses outside of the OT, that are not taken from it?

John

z8000783 wrote:Are there any references to Moses outside of the OT, that are not taken from it?

John

I've never come across any.

Agrippina wrote:

z8000783 wrote:Are there any references to Moses outside of the OT, that are not taken from it?

John

I've never come across any.

More generally I would ask, did the Israelites' neighbouring peoples have any sort of known historiography? And if so, what points in common did they have with the biblical storyline?

Most of the mythology of Genesis is similar to that of the people surrounding them. The creation stories are vaguely similar, but the stories are all there, Cain and Abel, humans created to help the gods, the flood story and so on.

The actual history is vastly different. The actual "Jewish" history begins with David who was a minor king and most of the book itself was written around the middle of the Ist millennium BCE. I've just started reading the original work about the Documentary Hypothesis, Prologemena of the History of Israel by Julius Wiseman, written in the late 19th century.

He seems to support the hypothesis that the Jewish people evolved out of a group of agrarians who settled on the highlands and were assimilated with other people from whom they adopted religious practices which included the worship of the god JHWH.

I'm not going to comment just yet on his book. I've only done a perfunctory reading of the work, after reading the technical description in Friedman's book, this one does more than merely break down the assembly of the Pentateuch, it goes further to Joshua, Judges and even Christianity.

Thus far, I've read three separate writers work that agree with what my opinion was when I read the Bible, that the religion was formulated during the exile. This does appear to be the accepted hypothesis today. Wiseman's book is the fourth.

It seems that the more I read, the more I find to research on this topic, and the more tweaking I have to do to my original knee-jerk reaction to reading the Bible. It's definitely a far more complex work that just a "load of nonsense" as most atheists discard it. Just how complex I'm only beginning to find out.

In summary, it seems that there were ancient city states in "Israel" during the 2nd millennium. Then something happened around 1200/1100 BCE, all over the area from Egypt to "Iraq." This change brought sociological changes as well as technological and some religious ones. After this settled down, people moved into the highlands of what is now Israel and some of the city states were destroyed.

These people were not of one family but a mixture of all sorts of tribes, including some from the north and south to Syria. They brought with them their traditions and their gods. Eventually, they chose kings in the fashion of the warlords of the other people around them, for example the people of what we now call Iraq. David was the first king for whom there is extra-biblical evidence. He settled a city which became Jerusalem and the capital of Judah. The other tribes established their kingdom to the north, that became "Israel" with its capital Samaria and all of this was combined but not under David, rather under the kings who came after him. This northern kingdom was richer and had bigger land, more cities and had more complex religions. The people of David's Judah were insular, not as well-developed as the northern people and were mostly ignored in the Assyrians' conquest of the region in its Empire building. Then they split, with the 10 northern tribes being permanently removed from the culture of the Judaens. (my spell-checker's fighting that word).

Israel eventually was absorbed into Assyria, Judah was left to carry on, a sure sign that it wasn't a threat. The Babylonians did try to assimilate them but came to an arrangement to install a puppet king who agreed to do their bidding but then ignored the agreement. This caused Judah to be destroyed and the people to be taken into exile.

It was during the 50 year exile that the history was written. It was assembled and combined into one document along with other already existing pieces of writing, including some of the prophecies which foretold the exile (not unexpected considering that they'd lived with political turmoil for 500 years)and the others that came later and foretold more conquer, the Greeks and the Romans (fairly obvious from their actions in the world around the Jews) Some of these prophecies are believed by Christians to be foretelling Jesus, when what the 'Messianic' prophecies are really all about is a "king" along the lines of David who will save them from the Romans and return their homeland and religion to the greatness they believed existed during the time of David. Everything sort of settled down again when the Persians took over and set their eyes on Greece, the Jews who'd by now figured out what they wanted from their religion and because they also had a history, returned to Judah where the Persians helped them to rebuild their temple.

The Persian influence in the history is fairly obvious when you read where it's pointed out, such as the Gilgamesh/Noah's flood story, the putting of Moses in a basked (Sargon) and the creation stories.

Then the Jews were overrun by the Greeks, which caused Hellenism to influence their culture and brought education to them. and finally the Romans who sent them into the exile from which they now want to return.

That's a quick summary of the history that I've been able to put together from my reading.

Sheesh, please don't tell me to read the Koran, a year of this is too much for me. But it's interesting. A little like unravelling a tapestry and having to untie the knots to find the original pieces of thread.

Interesting, could you provide specific examples of extra-biblical creation accounts? I know the biblical account has paralells with a Sumerian myth, but that seems to be all about it. Anyway, the creation accounts are not what most interests me, since i regard them as pure myth. I'm actually interested more in the stories of the Patriarchs, which could be regarded at least to have a historical core. Through these histories is made the claim that the Israelites are close kin to a number of peoples living in their inmediate vicinity, that is the Arameans and the peoples of the Jordan East Bank. If these peoples have similar stories it could be at least established whether they contain some history.

jparada wrote:Interesting, could you provide specific examples of extra-biblical creation accounts? I know the biblical account has paralells with a Sumerian myth, but that seems to be all about it. Anyway, the creation accounts are not what most interests me, since i regard them as pure myth. I'm actually interested more in the stories of the Patriarchs, which could be regarded at least to have a historical core. Through these histories is made the claim that the Israelites are close kin to a number of peoples living in their inmediate vicinity, that is the Arameans and the peoples of the Jordan East Bank. If these peoples have similar stories it could be at least established whether they contain some history.

Unfortunately I'm a little pressed for time, as today is my last free day before we go away on holiday, so I can't go into a long discussion right now.


The Babylonian exile not only gave the priests and "historians" of the Jewish people a lot of time to invent their history and to formulate their religion, it also influenced both the history and the religion. Try getting hold of a copy of the books I've mentioned, the Wiseman one is available on Gutenberg, the others on Amazon.

You might find some answers on these sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabonidus_Chronicle
http://www.livius.org/cg-cm/chronicles/chron00.html

The clay tablets from Babylon confirm the date of the destruction of Jerusalem, and contain other information about Babylon.
If you want mythology, there are dozens of websites about this.

To draw one comparison, from Babylonian mythology on Cain and Abel:

The Sumerians 'saw' another dispute between the minor gods Emesh (summer) and his brother Enten (winter). Each of these brothers had specific duties in creation - like Cain the farmer and Abel the herdsmen. The god Enlil put Emesh in charge of producing trees, building houses, temples, cities and other tasks. Enlil put Enten in charge of causing ewes to give birth to lambs, goats to give birth to kids, birds to build nests, fish to lay their eggs and trees to bear fruit. And the brothers quarreled violently as Emesh challenged Enten's claim to be the farmer god.

Some reading about the influence on Judaism:
http://www.realdevil.info/1-1-1.htm

Creation myths:
http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Ca-Cr/Creation-Stories.html

In the meantime, if you ask specific questions, I can give quick replies. I'll be a little more organised when I get back from my trip. Must rush jusr now.

"...my original knee-jerk reaction to reading the Bible. It's definitely a far more complex work that just a "load of nonsense" as most atheists discard it. Just how complex I'm only beginning to find out...."

LOL

Lion IRC wrote:"...my original knee-jerk reaction to reading the Bible. It's definitely a far more complex work that just a "load of nonsense" as most atheists discard it. Just how complex I'm only beginning to find out...."

LOL

Why's that funny?