The Exodus Myth

Correa Neto said:
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.
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I did not mention it in the last post, but grains of truth can be simply greater understanding of how the story was written. Star Trek is a great example. We get Star Trek because we understand the context in which the show was written. We are the audience it was intended for. We get the themes the show played with such as racism, futility of war, etc.
 
Thats' certainly possibly the best way to see a myth- within its original context and intents.

But it has problems. First, usually we can't actually go back in time and see the world through these people's eyes. We may come close to, but we can never actually reach this. Second, the particular myths we are talking about include a mentality, dogmas and ethics which are - for most of us - outdated, despicable, abhorrent.

The Bible offers a fascinating window to the ethics of thousands of years ago, when genocide, slavery, misogynism and homophobia, among other nasty things were acceptable. Too bad many people nowadays still stick to some of such abominations and use the Bible to justify them, BTW.

So, for those within our specific (and small) sub-set of current culture (secular) the grains of truth you speak about are this window to past minds and eventual citations of real places, people and facts. Historic fiction, perhaps.
 
Correa Neto said:
Thats' certainly possibly the best way to see a myth- within its original context and intents.

But it has problems. First, usually we can't actually go back in time and see the world through these people's eyes. We may come close to, but we can never actually reach this. [ . . . ]
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Especially since, as I've learned today in this thread, we barely scratch the surface of the "original context and intents" of this myth when we consider their origins only as far as the post-Babylonic Captivity authorship/editorship of the Hebrews-in-Egypt texts.
 
Correa Neto said:
Thats' certainly possibly the best way to see a myth- within its original context and intents.

But it has problems. First, usually we can't actually go back in time and see the world through these people's eyes. We may come close to, but we can never actually reach this. Second, the particular myths we are talking about include a mentality, dogmas and ethics which are - for most of us - outdated, despicable, abhorrent.

The Bible offers a fascinating window to the ethics of thousands of years ago, when genocide, slavery, misogynism and homophobia, among other nasty things were acceptable. Too bad many people nowadays still stick to some of such abominations and use the Bible to justify them, BTW.

So, for those within our specific (and small) sub-set of current culture (secular) the grains of truth you speak about are this window to past minds and eventual citations of real places, people and facts. Historic fiction, perhaps.
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One of the reasons I have such interest in things like this is my overriding thought people back then were not stupid. Things were said, written down, became beliefs for a reason. For example many talk about discrepancies in the four Gospels. Some almost treat them like "Gotcha moments" But do those same people think that no one else noticed these problems in the last 1800 years?

Those discrepancies were left there for a reason. The early Christians wanted those discrepancies to be part of their faith. Why? No idea. But if the ancients are anywhere near as smart as I think they are. They had a very good reason
 
Nobody said people back there were stupid. I would say the contrary, even.

But that also means they were capable of making up propaganda fiction, tell lies, etc.

But on the other hand, they were not infallible super-geniuses either. And their audiences all super-geniuses either. In fact, Paul is kinda unkind about how smart or educated HIS audience was. Sometimes a novel is written with a certain audience in mind.

And on yet another hand, a lot of stuff was simply out of their control. They couldn't just recall all Bibles and issue a new corrected edition instead. It's not like it was a modern DRM-ed e-book that you can just revoke world-wide with a button.

The fact is, they actually tried to harmonize that stuff. There are several attempts, in fact at producing a harmonized gospel. But they never caught on, because, see above, it was out of their control. People revered the originals and were unwilling to replace everything with a mash-up story.

And various scribes did try to introduce changes that get the gospels more in line with each other. If you listen to Bart Ehrman, for example, it's actually one of the things he uses as a heuristic for which is the interpolated one between two versions of a text: people tended to make changes that brought the texts more in line with each other, rather than changes that create more conflict.

But again, things were out of their control. You couldn't force some other scribe to use your version, especially if it contradicted their favourite part.

Even for the original choice of texts, the more parsimonious assumption is that they just couldn't, rather than that there's some secret meaning in there. E.g., because each of the churches that Irenaeus helped unite into what would become the Catholic church, had another text they held sacred.

E.g., it's pretty clear that Irenaeus himself favours John for when it comes to arguing stuff based on gospel, while the others appear only when it's time to argue why it's those four gospels that count. Since he was the bishop of one of those churches. It's a safe guess that the church in Lugdunum (Lyon) was going by John.

Mark on the other hand, the general consensus is that it originated in Rome, and had a headstart on the others, so it's a safe bet that you couldn't just toss it away. Not if you wanted your church coalition to include probably the largest Christian population of any city at the time.

And so on.

There's no real reason to assume anything else than that they had no choice but to keep them. You could get a bunch of churches to unite and rationalize around the differences, but I doubt you could get any of them to just dump its holy text and use yours instead. Whatever church was using Matthew and its emphasis that the OT still matters, wasn't going to chuck it away and use Luke instead.
 
HansMustermann said:
Nobody said people back there were stupid. I would say the contrary, even.

But that also means they were capable of making up propaganda fiction, tell lies, etc.

But on the other hand, they were not infallible super-geniuses either. And their audiences all super-geniuses either. In fact, Paul is kinda unkind about how smart or educated HIS audience was. Sometimes a novel is written with a certain audience in mind.

And on yet another hand, a lot of stuff was simply out of their control. They couldn't just recall all Bibles and issue a new corrected edition instead. It's not like it was a modern DRM-ed e-book that you can just revoke world-wide with a button.

The fact is, they actually tried to harmonize that stuff. There are several attempts, in fact at producing a harmonized gospel. But they never caught on, because, see above, it was out of their control. People revered the originals and were unwilling to replace everything with a mash-up story.

And various scribes did try to introduce changes that get the gospels more in line with each other. If you listen to Bart Ehrman, for example, it's actually one of the things he uses as a heuristic for which is the interpolated one between two versions of a text: people tended to make changes that brought the texts more in line with each other, rather than changes that create more conflict.

But again, things were out of their control. You couldn't force some other scribe to use your version, especially if it contradicted their favourite part.

Even for the original choice of texts, the more parsimonious assumption is that they just couldn't, rather than that there's some secret meaning in there. E.g., because each of the churches that Irenaeus helped unite into what would become the Catholic church, had another text they held sacred.

E.g., it's pretty clear that Irenaeus himself favours John for when it comes to arguing stuff based on gospel, while the others appear only when it's time to argue why it's those four gospels that count. Since he was the bishop of one of those churches. It's a safe guess that the church in Lugdunum (Lyon) was going by John.

Mark on the other hand, the general consensus is that it originated in Rome, and had a headstart on the others, so it's a safe bet that you couldn't just toss it away. Not if you wanted your church coalition to include probably the largest Christian population of any city at the time.

And so on.

There's no real reason to assume anything else than that they had no choice but to keep them. You could get a bunch of churches to unite and rationalize around the differences, but I doubt you could get any of them to just dump its holy text and use yours instead. Whatever church was using Matthew and its emphasis that the OT still matters, wasn't going to chuck it away and use Luke instead.
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Irenaus died 180 years before the Bible was codified
 
And sometimes the preachers had a life and death authority for questioning anything about the books!
The mostly illiterate congregations were unable to anything but accept what they were told.
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aikenhead
"The indictment read:

That ... the prisoner had repeatedly maintained, in conversation, that theology was a rhapsody of ill-invented nonsense, patched up partly of the moral doctrines of philosophers, and partly of poetical fictions and extravagant chimeras: That he ridiculed the holy scriptures, calling the Old Testament Ezra's fables, in profane allusion to Esop's Fables; That he railed on Christ, saying, he had learned magick in Egypt, which enabled him to perform those pranks which were called miracles: That he called the New Testament the history of the imposter Christ; That he said Moses was the better artist and the better politician; and he preferred Muhammad to Christ: That the Holy Scriptures were stuffed with such madness, nonsense, and contradictions, that he admired the stupidity of the world in being so long deluded by them: That he rejected the mystery of the Trinity as unworthy of refutation; and scoffed at the incarnation of Christ.[3]"
 
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MG1962 said:
One of the reasons I have such interest in things like this is my overriding thought people back then were not stupid. Things were said, written down, became beliefs for a reason. For example many talk about discrepancies in the four Gospels. Some almost treat them like "Gotcha moments" But do those same people think that no one else noticed these problems in the last 1800 years?

Those discrepancies were left there for a reason. The early Christians wanted those discrepancies to be part of their faith. Why? No idea. But if the ancients are anywhere near as smart as I think they are. They had a very good reason
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The discrepancies don't bother you because you think the ancients had a reason for the discrepancies even though you don't know what those reasons are.
 
Leumas said:
Why can't a legend be just a myth created wholesale for a purpose of something or another…. people have done and are still doing that throughout history.
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I would go one step further.

Why can't a legend be just a myth created wholesale for no purpose other than to tell a story someone made up? Does Paul Bunyan have "a purpose"?

Our problems would then stem from those who believed the story was true and wrote more stories to substantiate it, or interpreted subsequent events as supporting the fiction.
 
MG1962 said:
Irenaus died 180 years before the Bible was codified
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Wow, what a response. And wrong. The Catholic Canon was only finalized at the Council of Trent. :p OK, that was a change in the canon of the OT. As to the NT, the first Council that may have decided on the canon was the Synod of Hippo Regius, 393 AD, so there we're more than 190 years after Irenaeus. The Damasine List, alleged from the Council of Rome, 382 AD, is a forgery.

But Irenaeus was instrumental in getting the four gospels into the canon, and that's what Hans is referring to.
 
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ddt said:
Wow, what a response. And wrong. The Catholic Canon was only finalized at the Council of Trent. :p OK, that was a change in the canon of the OT. As to the NT, the first Council to decide on the canon was the Synod of Hippo Regius, 393 AD, so there we're more than 190 years after Irenaeus. The Damasine List, alleged from the Council of Rome, 382 AD, is a forgery.

But Irenaeus was instrumental in getting the four gospels into the canon, and that's what Hans is referring to.
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As a ghost?
 
ddt said:
A Holy Ghost if you like. :rolleyes: Would you also give such lame responses if I'd say that Tycho Brahe was instrumental for the establishment of Kepler's laws?
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Tycho Brahe was not instrumental, his data was. Tycho is famous for having one of the wackiest versions of the Solar System ever committed to paper.
 
MG1962 said:
Tycho Brahe was not instrumental, his data was. Tycho is famous for having one of the wackiest versions of the Solar System ever committed to paper.
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Yes, analogies are not perfect. But very likely, without Brahe's data, Kepler would not have come up with his three laws.

Irenaeus was very influential in pitching the idea of having four gospels. That idea was quite uncontroversial after him. Most of the dispute about the NT canon was about which letters to include, and whether to include Revelation, not about which gospels.
 
It is interesting that the real life kernels of these legends always forms the non-supernatural portions of the legend, and not the supernatural aspects that are also typically added on to the legend. So Paul Bunyon may be based on real life characters who were lumberman too, but I doubt they were 20 feet tall and blew a hurricane when they exhaled.
 
MG1962 said:
Tycho Brahe was not instrumental, his data was. Tycho is famous for having one of the wackiest versions of the Solar System ever committed to paper.
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No. It was a model of rationality compared to the fully geocentric version imposed by the Church.
What was condemned in 1616 by the Sacred Congregation held in the presence of Pope Paul V, as "absurd, false in theology, and heretical, because absolutely contrary to Holy Scripture, "was the proposition that "the sun is the centre about which the earth revolves''; and what was condemned as "absurd, false in philosophy, and from a theologic point of view, at least, opposed to the true faith,'' was the proposition that "the earth is not the centre of the universe and immovable, but has a diurnal motion.''
And again, what Galileo was made, by express order of Pope Urban, and by the action of the Inquisition under threat of torture, to abjure in 1633, was "the error and heresy of the movement of the earth.''
What the Index condemned under sanction of the bull issued by Alexander VII in 1664 was, "all books teaching the movement of the earth and the stability of the sun.''
What the Index, prefaced by papal bulls, infallibly binding its contents upon the consciences of the faithful, for nearly two hundred years steadily condemned was, "all books which affirm the motion of the earth.''
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https://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/White/astronomy/retreat.html

ETA According to wiki
It can be shown that the motions of the planets and the Sun relative to the Earth in Brahe's system are mathematically equivalent to the motions in Copernicus' heliocentric system, but the Tychonic system fit the available data better than Copernicus system
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http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tychonic_system Of course the only "data" which the Church's favoured system "fit" were the "data" in the Scriptures.
 
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MG1962 said:
As a ghost?
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Not only what DDT already said, but as I mentioned, Irenaeus was instrumental in uniting a few churches into what would become the Catholic church. That's not even controversial or anything.

And it's also rather uncontroversial mainstream scholarship that different churches at the time favoured wildly different gospels. Matthew for example seemed to be the most popular single gospel to go by. Even Irenaeus himself confirms that in Against Heresies 3.11.7: Most churches used just one gospel, while some apparently used more than four. Marcion used just one too, and that was the first one to come up with a codified bible.

Which already gives us a pretty good idea for why such a coalition of churches would include 4 gospels even though they might contradict each other a bit.

But there's even a more perverse reason in there, if you read what Irenaeus actually wrote. In opposing the gnostics, one of the arguments he makes is precisely that yeah, but the apostolic churches have multiple streams of attestation, so essentially that confirms that their version is true. He obviously needed more than one gospel for that to work.

At any rate, there is nothing controversial that the idea of the four gospels together, and they being the only ones that matter, first appears in Irenaeus and is mainstream since that point. It's not something that was decided at Nicaea or Trent. As DDT already said, they quibbled about which epistles and other writings to include, not about which gospels.

But, of course, actually dealing with actual history is harder than doing short sarcastic quips ;)
 
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Not that moving the date upwards would change the point that those gospels already existed, and different churches favoured different ones.

Irenaeus doesn't write four new gospels, in which case they might say the same things, he endorses 4 EXISTING gospels. For whatever reason you wish to believe he endorsed exactly those 4. But nevertheless they're (4 of many) EXISTING texts. And not only existing as in recently, but existing for a century, which is more than enough time for a LOT of people to become familiar with them as they were. And they already had those discrepancies. He couldn't just rewrite them to agree with each other, because people were already knowing one gospel or the other.

Moving the date of choosing the 4 gospels into the 4'th century would not change anything there. If anything, it would give even more time to those 4 gospels to become entrenched in the minds of even more Christians. Hence make it even less possible to just replace them with some harmonized version.

So with or without Irenaeus, that brings us back to the same point: the most parsimonious hypothesis is just that. They were existing texts, which were already read in church to thousands of people, and it was easier to just accept the discrepancies than try to force a new gospel onto everyone.

There is no reason to take the view that there's some intentional secret message in there.
 
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