The Exodus Myth

[lpetrich]

Or there is actually a whole discipline in Catholic theology called "Josephology." Look it up, I'm not making it up. There are whole tracts and studies into Joseph, the husband of Mary, and his role in universal salvation. And he isn't even mentioned in more than a handful of verses total as doing not much more than being just the guy who married Marry.

I wouldn't be surprised if it includes some gory detail on his marriage to Mary. According to Catholic tradition, Mary was perpetually a virgin, meaning that Joseph had never had sex with her. That is why some Catholics call a celibate marriage a Josephite marriage.

Another thing fun. There was once a monk named Jovinian (died 405 CE) who decided that marriage was as blessed as celibacy. His opinion was declared a heresy by the Church.

I keep comparing theology with Fan Dumb, but yeah, for that reason. If someone spent many years and wrote many pages arguing the role of Captain Pike in saving the galaxy, in the original Star Trek series, via his influence of Spock and Kirk, even most die-hard trekkies would think it's not healthy to be that (A) obsessed and (B) into taking one's own ass-pulls as reality. But you do that for Joseph, they call you Pope John Paul II.

Yep. There's a lot to be said for that.

One finds the same sorts of disputes as to what is canonical and what is not, and one finds some similar analysis techniques.

A notable one is the retcon, short for retroactive continuity. Serial works often end up with lots of continuity problems and outright contradictions, and some fans have created various retcons to reconcile them. Sometimes the creators of the works themselves create retcons, like Pam Ewing dreaming an entire seasons of Dallas. Some notable theological arguments qualify as retcons, like Genesis 1 vs. Genesis 2 creation, Matthew vs. Luke genealogy, etc. Islam has the retcon that previous prophets were proto-Muslims whose teachings got mangled by their followers.

I've found Greta Christina's Blog: Why Religion Is Like Fanfic

 

[Craig B]

I wouldn't be surprised if it includes some gory detail on his marriage to Mary. According to Catholic tradition, Mary was perpetually a virgin, meaning that Joseph had never had sex with her. That is why some Catholics call a celibate marriage a Josephite marriage.

The Gospel of Matthew doesn't seem to agree with "Catholic tradition".

1:22 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, 23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. 24 Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: 25 and knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.

13:55 Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?

 

[lpetrich]

Brothers of Jesus^WP

Followers of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox traditions, as well as some Anglicans and Lutherans, accept the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary and therefore reject the claim that Jesus had blood siblings. They maintain that these "brothers" and "sisters" received this designation on account of their close association with the family of Jesus, but are actually either cousins or children of Joseph from a previous marriage.

 

[Leumas]

I've found Greta Christina's Blog: Why Religion Is Like Fanfic

I wonder what all the atheists and skeptics would say about this miracle.

It is right there for all to see....how can anyone in their right mind deny what they see with their very own eyes.

 

[Rincewind]

Of course, Red/Reed is a bit academic.

Didn't the bible tell us that the Pharoah and his army (now, what was his name?) were chasing the Israelites in chariots - being drawn by horses that had been wiped out in one of the plagues?

I guess this sort of things happen when you're paying attention to keeping your plotlines connected. Just like the impossible birthrate, etc, etc.

 

[Rincewind]

I wonder what all the atheists and skeptics would say about this miracle.

It is right there for all to see....how can anyone in their right mind deny what they see with their very own eyes.

Brilliant!

Yet again, thank you!

 

[Rincewind]

Joe, Mary and the Kid walked to Egypt in what... 2 weeks,.. and then walked back. Along the route Joseph took when his brothers sold him. Etc.
The coastal route was well traveled by all the armies that manuvered in the area, among other things.
The diversion into the Sinai... WTF?

Well, that's what happens when somebody says, "Why don't we take the scenic route?"

I guess satnav wasn't as precise back in the day...

 

[Rincewind]

An open question for y'all:

Joseph with the fancy duds was sold to some traders using camels, wasn't he?

Didn't this happen before the camel was domesticated? Or domesticated in the area?

Ta!

 

[Leumas]

Of course, Red/Reed is a bit academic.

Didn't the bible tell us that the Pharoah and his army (now, what was his name?) were chasing the Israelites in chariots - being drawn by horses that had been wiped out in one of the plagues?

I guess this sort of things happen when you're paying attention to keeping your plotlines connected. Just like the impossible birthrate, etc, etc.

Now, that is brilliant.... so many holes and so little time to keep track.

This also reminds me... where did the Hebrews get the animals for all that sacrifice described in Leviticus (and every other book). They just escaped from a country where all the animals were wiped out and went into a desert with no food and no water and not enough doves to even suffice for one week of sacrifice let alone all the cows and gold for tithing and to pay the ransom to save themselves from the Protection Racket Lord. Of course not to mention the scarcity of all that wood that would have been required to burn all those sacrifices so that the sweet aroma of could reach the Lord’s nostrils and please him.

So many plot holes and so little apologetics to plaster over them.

But if you look at the book with the knowledge that all this was meant to bamboozle people with the animals and gold in Israel and to make them HAPPILY and willingly and dutifully give all that stuff to the priests and kings that rule them, then it all becomes quite clear why and who wrote the myths...and when.

 

[Leumas]

An open question for y'all:

Joseph with the fancy duds was sold to some traders using camels, wasn't he?

Didn't this happen before the camel was domesticated? Or domesticated in the area?

Ta!

And long before Joseph the great grandson of Abraham who was given camels in payment for the services of his half sister who was also his wife, when he pimped her off to Pharaoh and became exceedingly rich with camels and slaves and gold all for a few nights with the irresistibly beautiful Sarah.

Genesis 12:16

12:16 And he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she asses, and camels.

 

[Craig B]

And long before Joseph the great grandson of Abraham who was given camels in payment for the services of his half sister when he pimped her off to Pharaoh and became exceedingly rich with camels and slaves and gold all for a few nights with the irresistibly beautiful Sarah.

Genesis 12:16

Happens in Genesis 20 as well. Different king.

1 And Abraham journeyed from thence toward the south country, and dwelled between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned in Gerar. 2 And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, She is my sister: and Abimelech king of Gerar sent, and took Sarah. 3 But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken; for she is a man’s wife.

Not only that. His son Isaac pulls off the same stunt in Genesis 26.

6 And Isaac dwelt in Gerar: 7 and the men of the place asked him of his wife; and he said, She is my sister: for he feared to say, She is my wife; lest, said he, the men of the place should kill me for Rebekah; because she was fair to look upon. 8 And it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out at a window, and saw, and, behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife. 9 And Abimelech called Isaac, and said, Behold, of a surety she is thy wife: and how saidst thou, She is my sister? And Isaac said unto him, Because I said, Lest I die for her.

 

[Leumas]

Happens in Genesis 20 as well. Different king. Not only that. His son Isaac pulls off the same stunt in Genesis 26.

Like father like son.... the acorn does not fall far from the oak tree.

In those days the sons carried on with their fathers' trades.


Now think about how this kind of tall tale could serve the writers and if it gives us insight into who wrote it and why and when.

 

[Rincewind]

OK - I have an answer to my question - found a few moments to research.

From Wiki:

Dromedaries were first domesticated in central or southern Arabia, thought to be around 4000 years ago. In the 9th or 10th century BCE, the animal became popular in the Near East.

The two major proposals for the date of the Exodus are the 15th century BCE and the 13th.

So - I guess it's still an open question.

However, given that the books were probably written around to 8th Century BCE, then you might expect the authors to use contemporary references?

 

[Craig B]

Like father like son.... the acorn does not fall far from the oak tree.

In those days the sons carried on with their fathers' trades.


Now think about how this kind of tall tale could serve the writers and if it gives us insight into who wrote it and why and when.

It's obviously intended to exalt ancestral figures who, if they existed at all, were petty sheiks of clans of nomadic goatherds. But it casts a strange light on the moral values and ethical standards of these early peoples, and those of their descendants who wrote this material down.

 

[pakeha]

Like father like son.... the acorn does not fall far from the oak tree.

In those days the sons carried on with their fathers' trades.


Now think about how this kind of tall tale could serve the writers and if it gives us insight into who wrote it and why and when.

This post jogged whatever it is that passes for my memory these days.

About thirty years before this play, Herodotus argued in his Histories that Helen had never in fact arrived at Troy, but was in Egypt during the entire Trojan War. The play Helen tells a variant of this story, beginning under the premise that rather than running off to Troy with Paris, Helen was actually whisked away to Egypt by the gods. The Helen who escaped with Paris, betraying her husband and her country and initiating the ten-year conflict, was actually an eidolon, a phantom look-alike. After Paris was promised the most beautiful woman in the world by Aphrodite and he judged her fairer than her fellow goddesses Athena and Hera, Hera ordered Hermes to replace Helen, Paris' assumed prize, with a fake. Thus, the real Helen has been languishing in Egypt for years, while the Greeks and Trojans alike curse her for her supposed infidelity.

In Egypt, king Proteus, who had protected Helen, has died. His son Theoclymenus, the new king with a penchant for killing Greeks, intends to marry Helen , who after all these years remains loyal to her husband Menelaus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_(play)

Off to find out where Herodotus got the story.

ETA
Hmmm

The Egyptian priests say Paris and Helen were blown off course on their way to Troy and shipwrecked near a shrine of Heracles in Egypt. The servants of Paris took refuge at the shrine and denounced him as a rapist to the local Egyptian official, Thonis. Thonis had Paris arrested and brought before King Proteus at Memphis (113-14). Proteus conducted an investigation and pronounced Alexander guilty; he kept Helen in Egypt and sent Paris home (115). Citations of Homer prove that he was aware of this version (116). This incidentally also proves that the Cypria, a poem of the Epic Cycle, is not by Homer (117). All this leads Hdt. to ask the Egyptian priests whether in their opinion the Trojan War really happened. Menelaus himself told their predecessors that it did, but that the Greeks only learned the truth, that Helen was in Egypt, after the fall of Troy (118). Menelaus went to Memphis to retrieve Helen and was well received by Proteus; but he later fled Egypt in disgrace after sacrificing two children to allay contrary winds (119). Hdt. believes this version and supports it with an argument from probability: if the Trojans had had Helen, they would surely have given her back rather than allow their entire city to be destroyed (120).

http://academic.reed.edu/Humanities/hum110/Hdt/Hdt2.html

 

[Craig B]

This post jogged whatever it is that passes for my memory these days.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_(play)

Off to find out where Herodotus got the story.

ETA
Hmmm

http://academic.reed.edu/Humanities/hum110/Hdt/Hdt2.html

The bit about the contrary winds reminded me of a famous event from the Trojan War.

Misfortunes, including a plague and a lack of wind, prevented the army from sailing. Finally, the prophet Calchas announced that the wrath of the goddess could only be propitiated by the sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter Iphigenia. Classical dramatisations differ on how willing either father or daughter were to this fate, some include such trickery as claiming she was to be married to Achilles, but Agamemnon did eventually sacrifice Iphigenia.

Here we have a secret "marriage" element too, at least in later treatments of the incident. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agamemnon

 

[pakeha]

Well spotted!
That scene gives us yet another 'phantom' motif in Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris

Years before the time period covered by the play, the young princess Iphigeneia narrowly avoided death by sacrifice at the hands of her father, Agamemnon. (See plot of Iphigeneia at Aulis.) At the last moment the goddess Artemis, to whom the sacrifice was to be made, intervened and replaced Iphigeneia on the altar with a deer, saving the girl and sweeping her off to Tauris. She has since been made a priestess at the temple of Artemis in Tauris, a position in which she has the gruesome task of ritually sacrificing foreigners who land on King Thoas's shores.

Iphigeneia hates her forced religious servitude and is desperate to contact her family in Greece. She wants to inform them that, thanks to the miraculous swap performed by Artemis, she is still alive and wants to return to her homeland, leaving the role of high priestess to someone else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iphigenia_in_Tauris

The New World Encyclopedia suggests the story of Helen is simply a retelling of a part of the Rig-Veda*

Helen or Helene is probably derived from the Greek word meaning "torch" or "corposant" or might be related to "selene" meaning "moon".[12]

If it has an Indo-European etymology, it is possibly a suffixed form of a root *wel- "to turn, roll"[13] or "to cover, enclose" (compare Varuna, Veles), or of *sel- "to flow, run." The latter possibility would allow comparison to Vedic Saraṇyū, who is abducted in RV 10.17.2, a parallel suggestive of a Proto-Indo-Asian abduction myth.

The name is in any case unrelated to Hellenes, as is sometimes claimed ("Hellenes" being from the root *sed- "to sit, settle").

I've never found the Vedas to be particularly interesting, but Saraṇyū^WP seems to be a possible source for these stories, both of the OT and Homer.

In any case, the RV apparently dates from 1,700 to1,100 according to Wiki.

I daresay the idea of Vedic sources for the OT tales has been amply explored- off to find more.




*
http://www.ancientvedas.com/chapter/10/book/17/

 

[HansMustermann]

Most great legends have little kernels of truth hidden in them.

I'd really like to see that supported. Because I hear that a lot, but nobody can actually offer more than, basically, their unwillingness to accept that some stuff is fiction. You don't see some actual historical support to show that, yeah, there is independent and reasonably plausible confirmation for the events in those legends.

Or when you narrow it down, that kernel is really something trivial and insignificant. Like you get 'yeah, but there were highwaymen in England' as the "kernel" for Robin Hood, or 'yeah, but there were woodcutters' for Paul Bunyan.

Or just a lot of handwaving and confabulation when you get into myths like Hercules. But that makes it not a supported conclusion, but a premise. People take it as a premise that this or that aspect of the myth would be true, and then the supposed evidence is actually the conclusion of that premise.

So, yes, I would like to see that claim supported before we base anything on it.

Sometimes those kernels can give hints to the origins of the story. It is reasonable to assume Exodus did not spring into life fully formed. Perhaps the original tellings of the story (unrecorded) pointed to a more conventional story.

While this is indeed possible and plausible, we don't even know if that story itself has any truth in it, or was fiction, or was the story of a very unrelated travel (e.g., someone's business or diplomatic trip). There are plenty of stories that you'll find on Snopes or The Straight Dope as being circulated as something that actually happened, yet started as fiction stories. Or as parodies on The Onion and the like.

Nor that when rewriting it they kept any of the parts based on reality.

 

[MG1962]

I'd really like to see that supported. Because I hear that a lot, but nobody can actually offer more than, basically, their unwillingness to accept that some stuff is fiction. You don't see some actual historical support to show that, yeah, there is independent and reasonably plausible confirmation for the events in those legends.

I guess it must be a case of perspective. I grew up beside a culture with at least an extant culture of 20,000 years, virtually all of it oral. One of the legends (dreaming) that I was taught, was a story of the day the sea fell from the sky.

Now on the surface of it, a fairly unlikely event, just a story, nothing more. The thing is a growing body of geological evidence suggests the tribe who saw this event were survivors of a massive tsunami that impacted the area about 1000 years ago.

They lived slightly inland of the coast and saw the Tsunami cresting the coastal hills and pouring into the low lying areas.

 

[Correa Neto]

I would be very cautious regarding the "grains of truth" at the core of myths...

There are grains of truth inside Star Trek too, after all- planets, stars, nebulae, spaceships and humans are real. Note also that real planets are cited, as well as real facts from human (and Earth's) history. Despite all these grains of truth, Star Trek is 99.9999% fiction. Star Trek is one of the many campfire stories of our days.

And just like the Bible, full of contradictions.

And Kirk was the best captain. <- That's a period.