The Exodus Myth

Sherman Bay said:
Compare Fakelore.
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Link error, my bad. This should be the correct one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fakelore
The term fakelore was coined in 1950 by American folklorist Richard M. Dorson. Dorson's examples included the fictional cowboy Pecos Bill, who was presented as a folk hero of the American West but was actually invented by the writer Edward J. O'Reilly in 1923. Dorson also regarded Paul Bunyan as fakelore. Although Bunyan originated as a character in traditional tales told by loggers in the Great Lakes region of North America, James Stevens, an ad writer working for the Red River Lumber Company, invented many of the stories about him that are known today. According to Dorson, advertisers and popularizers turned Bunyan into a "pseudo folk hero of twentieth-century mass culture" who bore little resemblance to the original.
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If it ain't in LA County, I don't wanna go there!
I pity those driven by religious fervor that travel to the Middle East, where their presence is considered to be fomenting apostasy.
And the crazies that want to "tour" North Korea! Jesus!
 
I Ratant said:
If it ain't in LA County, I don't wanna go there!
I pity those driven by religious fervor that travel to the Middle East, where their presence is considered to be fomenting apostasy.
And the crazies that want to "tour" North Korea! Jesus!
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OK - I'll cancel my invitation...

And if you don't want to visit the Middle East and North Korea, then please don't.

:)
 
ddt said:
Or Adriaan Koerbagh, a contemporary of Aikenhead, in the otherwise liberal Dutch Republic.
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Spinoza died in time.
Spinoza died at the young age of 44 on 21 February 1677 in The Hague, due to a lung illness (perhaps tuberculosis or silicosis, possibly due to breathing in fine glass dust from the lenses he ground). Even after his death, Spinoza did not escape controversy, and in 1678 his works were banned throughout Holland.
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ETA Spinoza was presumably the source of Aikenhead's heresy regarding the authorship of the Pentateuch.
... Neither the Pentateuch (the five books of Torah) nor the prophetic writings or histories were written by God or by anyone serving as God’s amanuensis; in fact, they were not even written by the individuals who, by tradition, are alleged to be their authors or whose names they bear as titles (Moses, Joshua, etc.). The Bible is, in fact, a haphazard collection of very human writings, composed over a long period of time by various authors. These texts were handed down, in copy after copy, through the centuries and finally collected and edited into a single (but not seamless) work by someone in the Second Temple period (most likely Ezra, Spinoza suggests).
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http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2013/septemberoctober/feature/why-spinoza-was-excommunicated
Such ideas were not to the liking of Bible-based Christian sects like the Calvinists of Scotland and the Netherlands.

They derive from Nehemiah 8
1 And all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the street that was before the water gate; and they spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded to Israel. 2 And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, upon the first day of the seventh month. 3 And he read therein before the street that was before the water gate from the morning until midday, before the men and the women, and those that could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive unto the book of the law.
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Thanks for directing my attention to a most interesting figure, Nehemiah.
 
HansMustermann said:
But the problem is that sometimes that kernel is itself a joke or some part of another fiction story.

As I was saying, there is stuff on Snopes or The Straight Dope that originated as fiction or on some satire pseudo-news story, but then started being circulated as real. Hell, I almost cited an article when posting on JREF, but then (as sometimes, but sadly not often, I tend to do) I click on the link for their reference and land on The Onion. Someone had actually used a The Onion story as a source.

The easiest to verify is the story about the spammer found dead with a can of SPAM shoved down his troat, because we actually have the author on YouTube saying that yes, it was a fiction story and published as such. But it ended up debunked on Snopes because it started getting circulated in Emails as true. (According to Snopes it's not even the only story that had that particular trajectory, from fiction straight to urban legend.)

And that is not even taking into account cases when the story was deliberately created as a propaganda lie.

Forget even Bunyan, take the story of Alexey Stakhanov, the miner who supposedly dug up no less than 14 times his quota of coal in a day. Actually not even in a day, but in less than 6 hours. Then a couple of months later, he did 30 times his daily quota in one day.

The guys who arranged the whole propaganda event, including using several workers to dig at the same time and tally their output for Stakhanov too, knew it was fake. But they needed that for propaganda reasons, among other things, to justify brutally raising the miners' (and other workers') quotas. There's a reason for why his name was used for the Stakhanovite Movement, a.k.a., Stakhanovism.

Sure, there are some elements which are technically true. Mining was a real profession. And there actually was a miner named Stakhanov. And there was a pretense of a competition there. And coal was mined.

But in reality it was such a complete fake event, that it could have just as well been written as fiction from the start.
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Thank you, Gentle-persons, for a most interesting and informative thread.

I understand you to be saying, that the "kernel" underlying a story may vary in size and accuracy, from some relevant historic detail, to complete nonsense, and I must agree.

I would add to this that ancient texts are considered to have been preceded by a long oral tradition, in which details may change with each retelling. In the case of a text as old as The Exodus tale this may have preceded the written version by centuries, if not millennia. We have no way of knowing how long the tale of enslavement, escape, wandering, and deliverance was handed down by storytelling before being codified in writing.

Is it not possible that "a people" told and retold this tale of their escape from captivity and deliverance to the land of plenty for generations until, when writing became available, the tale had been adapted to the current cultures, (that is Yahweh'ism and Egyptian Pharos), in order to make the tale relevant to the audience?
I do not propose this would happen suddenly, but through continuous change over an undefined long time. Thus the original enslavers of "the people" back in the mists of time would have become "that conspicuous culture over there" (Egypt), the land of plenty turned into Canaan, the people had become the Yawehsts, and the gods had become Yahweh.

The story of Noah has a history similar to this. A tale of a man and his family saved from a flood inherited from a long oral tradition was eventually written down, but has been adapted to the culture of those who did the writing, in two different cultures, hence Noah and Gilgamesh.

This would explain the absence of archeological corroboration or concurrent historical confirmation for the events of The Exodus as written.

The "kernels" would have been lost in deep prehistory.


Thanks again for the interesting read.
 
It certainly is possible that the exodus or the floor were based on SOMETHING, but I think the important part is that we don't have any other evidence to corroborate any of it.

If I'm allowed to provide some reference or suggested reading, I would suggest starting with Bart Ehrman's explanation of the kind of sources that a historian would want:



I would sometimes argue against his conclusions about the historical Jesus, or about how well he actually applies the methods he espouses, but generally, for a layman's introduction to the NT, I would definitely endorse BE.

NB, most of the stuff he discusses or writes about isn't exactly new, nor originating with him. Most of it is actually known in scholarly circles for 200 years. But for actually bringing all that to the layman, yeah, BE is THE source.

ETA: And yes, the video is about the resurrection of Jesus, but it should still give you a general methodology and frame of mind for when you evaluate OT claims too.
 
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ddt said:
Your claims about the genesis of Judaism are, hmm, interesting to say the least. But could you flesh them out a bit? In particular:
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Finally now I have the time that your excellent questions deserve in order to be adequately addressed.

The answers to some of your questions are the subject of various posts I have already posted in many threads all over the forum recently and in the past. (see list below)

I will be using this opportunity to consolidate all the posts and points made in them in a few posts following this one as I tackle your questions one at a time.

So thanks very much for these FOCUSING questions, I appreciate your interest in my hypothesis.

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In fact I have had this idea a while back and I posted about it in this forum here and here.

I read the bible the first time cover to cover at the age of 17 during the summer holidays. Instead of reading Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes which were at the time my favorites I decided to dedicate due attention to the "best book ever written" and see for myself if that was indeed the case. Needless to say that was the beginning of the end of Religion for me. I subsequently read the NT and Quran and other books and concluded that they were all twaddle but with a very specific purpose, which is usually to legitimize an elite group's hold on power and resources.

Centuries later I had occasion to revisit the Bible claptrap in details again for various reasons. This second time initiated a nagging thought that the Bible could not be a product of ignorant goat herders as it is so often described by skeptics. It was too extensive and too clever to be so. Besides, goat herders or even chieftains of tribes or even petty kings of chieftains of tribes, did not have the education or the scribal resources and acumen to instigate such an extensive work of literature. As attested by archaeology, even their artifacts were drab in comparison to the much more spectacular ones of their contemporaries.

Moreover, having read numerous books (some listed below) and realizing that the entire thing is a big lie, I started thinking that there is more to the story than first meets the eye.

I started thinking that maybe instead of it being the delusions and hallucinations of a benighted bronze age group of people trying to make sense of their past, present, and future, it might in fact be the FIRST and ORIGINAL PROPAGANDA with the aim of brainwashing and CONTROLLING a conquered people. A clever propaganda that leveraged the wishful thinking and delusions of people to rally them behind one banner and to create for them an etiological myth that helps to coalesce them under one religion for easier control. (sounds familiar?)

While most of the ancient myths were creations of cultures trying to explain to themselves their OWN origins and to make sense of the world around them, the Bible did not seem to be that for me. Especially when one considers that right from the start Exodus and Leviticus were all about tithing and priest class elitism and control.

Even in the eteological myths of Genesis, it is quite obvious that the emphasis is on how Kings and Priests have the right to control the people. The story of Jacob bargaining with YHWH on the contractual terms of accepting him as his god to the exclusion of others emphasized the 10% tithe that is due to YHWH as part of the contract.

In the story of Joseph, he bamboozled the people of Egypt to become SLAVES to Pharaoh by selling themselves and their lands to evade starving to death. They had to buy the stockpiled food they were forced to hoard years earlier. When they could no longer afford to pay, Joseph made them sell their lands and finally themselves as slaves. However, when his family came to Egypt as illegal aliens they were given choice land and the food of the Egyptian people for free. Also Joseph gave away food to the Priests and made it law that their lands could not be touched. All this screamed at me as a PROPAGANDA.

Exodus and Leviticus are barefaced tenets for how a priest class is to be permanently in control of the lives of the poor hoodwinked who have to keep tithing at every turn of the head on daily, weekly, monthly and yearly bases and every time they breath. Imagine the gains to be made from just the menstrual purification laws alone.

It seemed to me that the Torah is nothing but a legitimization for a divine protection racket with YHWH being the divine Mafia Godfather.

I recognized that the Bible has served well the imperial powers of the Roman Empire as an effective propaganda to hoodwink the various conquered people to bind them into a bundle of willing subjects of a Holy Emperor appointed by their savior king of kings. Later it served those conquered people just as efficiently in their own rapine and subjugation of further serfs and slaves.

So I wondered why couldn't the Tanakh have been written in the first place to legitimize the rule of a foreign power and culture over a conquered and subdued population by usurping their own cultural myths and to absorb their own explanation of the world around them while recasting them in a format that sanctifies the NEW ruling class. Much like it has been used along with a few additions and modifications to subjugate other peoples in different places and in subsequent eras.

Also recalling Isaiah 45 and Ezra and Nehemiah (see later for more details) it dawned on me that here we have some clues as to who really wrote the Bible and why. As to the how I was not quite sure, but subsequent self-edification clarified that too.

A while ago CraigB pointed me to a most excellent web site that has extensive essays on the subject. I read those and became frustrated that my theory which I thought was a unique insight had already been preemptively plagiarized :o and proven and I was not as innovative as I thought.

So even though these are my own independently concluded ideas that I will be supporting within the subsequent few posts in reply to each question you posed, the fact is that you can learn a lot more than I am able to provide you if you go ahead and read the EXTENSIVE material in this web site.

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In anticipation to answering your questions I have already given a few hints to what is to come in a few earlier posts in this thread. I also asked you to watch a few videos in preparations.

I hope that you have watched the following videos:
  • This one is an excellent lecture about the archaeological artifact called the Cyrus Cylinder. It has many excellent and pertinent points
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qIoEevJ6qE
  • This video is about the first anti-Semitic holocaust committed by Europeans. It is a documentary about the Punic wars and the destruction of Carthage. It has many points of interest to the discussion at hand.
    http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fn4EtY8pVnI
  • This one is a documentary about the Phoenicians (= Canaanites) and their interesting but unfortunately all but forgotten history. This has relevance to give an insight of what the "Jews" were like before they were Jews.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBObLQZdeq8
  • This is an excellent documentary about Israel Finkelstein's book (see list of books below) The Bible Unearthed. It has major relevance to the discussion at hand.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9XK3DcQe9s


These are the books that I found were an excellent education about the archaeology of the region....real archaeology not a biblically biased and circular one.
Also read this book about how the Jews are not by any means a RACE. Judaism is a religion that had converts and even used to proselytize before the Romans put an end to that aspect. (see more about this later)
Also these

Here is a list of posts that I have recently posted relating to the subject

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To be continued....
 
Telltale Testimonials To Tall Tales©

Telltale Testimonials To Tall Tales©​

Recently I found myself thinking about what it takes to write a good story. It dawned on me that storytelling is a very subtle and dexterous manipulation of the human psyche. It is a science not so much in the storytelling aspect (which is an art) but rather in the cunning manipulation of human desires and fears and wishful thinking.

When reading a work of fiction or watching a movie I am inclined to turn off my reality-check-meter and lay back and enjoy the “what if” aspect of fantasy and wishful thinking. Nevertheless, there are times when I find myself saying : “oh come on…. that is just ridiculous”. This usually occurs when the narrative violates the Internal Consistency Check (ICC) to absurd levels even for a work of fiction.

For example, I might suspend my understanding of the laws of probability and physics and accept that Bruce Willis might brave curtains of bullets showered towards him by hundreds of semi-automatic rifles from all directions while he is standing out in the open and not be hit even once while simultaneously killing his well hidden attackers from all directions using the one pistol.

I might even ignore it when Tom Cruise plummets 10 stories alongside a building and then in the final few seconds before being splattered on the ground he grabs a ledge with the tips of his fingers and not have them wrenched right off leaving them stuck on the ledge while the rest of his body continues on hurtling to its doom.

I might even swallow that Angelina Jolie …. hang on … that is a bad example. This “swallowing” in the context of Angelina Jolie has set my mind on a totally different track.

Where was I… oh yes… I am even willing to accept the supernatural and metaphysical. All these things are elements that despite being annoying usually promote the flow of the tale and are tools that serve the writer in spinning his yarn.

However, when a story starts to violate the ICC in all aspects I quickly grow tired and just give up. As an example consider a plot where the hero has the supernatural ability to bend space-time. However, despite this ability, the baddy seems to be able to get away with his nefarious plans all the way through the movie. Of course it would be a short and boring movie indeed if the hero just went back in time and stopped the baddy before he even started.

Another example of violating the ICC is when the baddies finally catch the hero after a lengthy chase while shooting and bombarding his car, and instead of immediately proceeding to shoot him in the head like any one of the bombs and bullets would have surely done during the chase, they instead tie him up and leave him all alone so as to eventually escape from some moronic apparatus designed to kill him. Granted, it would not be much of a satisfying story if the baddies get away and the hero is killed.

A more infuriating violation of the ICC is when the hero shoots the baddy and then turns his back to the presumed dead body to attend to the injured heroine meanwhile the baddy proceeds to get up and shoot the hero then escape. This usually occurs when the movie is still half way through, or even more infuriatingly at the end of the movie to set us up for a sequel.

One might ignore that the police and colleagues of the hero are killed by the hundreds, but the baddies always seem to fail to kill the hero. More frequently in these stories it seems that even though the hero is able to kill hundreds of the bad guy’s cronies – usually with a single bullet – he somehow always fails to drop the baddy until the end of the movie or not even then if a sequel is in the plans?

Granted, all this can be tolerated and overlooked in a work of fiction. However, when you spot these artifacts being used in news reports or works that are purported to be non-fiction you must immediately perk up and pay attention because you are about to be hoodwinked. The above sort of things in a work claimed as representing reality is what I call the sure Telltale Testimonials To Tall Tales (T5).

As it is with every human artifact ever devised, the artistic-science of storytelling can enhance the human condition or it can be usurped by hucksters in the service of their schemes.

The Bible, is replete with T5 in almost every book and every chapter. Many have been mentioned in regards to Exodus in this thread. I have also pointed out a few in the myth of Abraham. Other threads have pointed out the T5 in the Noah flood myth.


When it comes to physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, geology, geography, archaeology, sociology, anthropology and history, the Bible fails abysmally on all levels. But what is more of a T5 is that even when we disregard all of the sciences and even with full allowance for the supernatural and the metaphysical, the Bible still fails the ICC.

Take for example the point made by Rincewind about Pharaoh giving chase in chariots drawn by horses that have been all killed just a few chapters earlier in the story. Or consider that the Hebrews are said to have had cattle even though they were slaves in a Egypt whose entire live stock was wiped out a few chapters earlier along with the horses.

Let me point out another instance of the subtle T5 that can be missed by a casual reading of the Bible. Take for example the Story of Joseph. Any person who is familiar with normal political plotting and devious machinations that go on in big offices let alone in royal courts would laugh heartily at the T5 that is clear throughout the story.

Nevertheless consider the part towards the end of the story where Joseph is the one that sets up a 20% tax system in Egypt right after he has already strong-armed all the land out of the people and forced them to enslave themselves to Pharaoh. He also set the law to make it impossible for Pharaoh or anyone to tax or challenge the Priestly Class. Of course all the while he is using NEPOTISM to give away parts of the choicest land and of the food stockpiles of the people of Egypt to his illegal immigrant family.

What is the T5 here? Can you imagine that the Empire of Egypt that has been going on at least 2000 years before the supposed Joseph not having a taxation system and not knowing how to stockpile food for the lean years? Can you imagine their hoary priestly class that has been in control of Egypt and its people for 2000 years before the supposed Joseph having to rely on Joseph establishing laws to protect them? Can you imagine that none of these well experienced hucksters and shysters knew how to interpret the dream or even if not at least extract the supposed interpretation out of a prisoner and claim it for his own? The number of times I had bosses claim my work as theirs to gain favor with their bosses would make me laugh long at such a story.

What annoys me sometimes is the claim that the Biblical stories could not have sprung fully formed out of nowhere, there must have been some kernel of fact or even distant tribal memory upon which the story was built, they say. Even atheists and scientists sometimes try their hand at sanding away the veneer of the supernatural and religious in order to bare the hollow core of historicity in the story.

It staggers my mind why none of these very same people try to do the same for the story of Hercules or Aeneas or Jason the Argonaut or Bilbo the Hobbit or Harry Potter. Maybe Joseph Smith really met an angel called whatever but there was no golden tablets. Maybe L. R. Hubbard saw the remains of an alien ship in a volcano and built upon that to create his myths. Maybe Tolkien found some archives about Middle Earth in some cave in Scotland and then he made up the Rings stuff. Zeus may have been an alien who had a phaser gun but they made a legend about him being a god who shoots lightning? Why are these claims any less ridiculous than the ones made by some SANE people about parting the sea or the pillars of fire and smoke?

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.

Other than Mormonism and Scientology which are living examples of wholesale fabricated religions that are today being believed and followed and even actively proselytized for by millions of bamboozled and willingly hoodwinked Cognitive Dissonance sufferers, consider this little story about two young little girls that lied their teeth off and hoodwinked even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the writer of no less than Sherlock Holmes the quintessential skeptic. The religion they fabricated out of the blue is still till today being followed by “people”.

In my opinion when you start detecting T5 in a story being peddled as facts and history you really ought to follow the money trail and to where it leads. Who does the Tall Tale benefit?

In the case of the biblical tall tales I can jolly well believe that the hoaxes of Ezra have their purposes in serving the Emperor who sent them and financed them and gave them FIATS (not the cars of course) to spin the fabric of the PALL they would eventually lay over the hoodwinked brains of over 5 billion people today.

Think about this for a minute. The epoch of Ezra was not an age where there were typewriters or word processors. People had to write the scrolls out by hand letter after letter dipping a reed in an expensive and hard to obtain ink pot and making sure the ink does not run or spill all over the expensive and hard to obtain parchment or papyrus.

Also there were only handfuls of people who could read let alone write and much less frequently compose literature of thousands of words.

Most people were too busy trying to not drop dead from hunger or disease or to prevent their children from being snuffed out by all sorts of things or being snatched off to slavery or worse.

Only a handful of people had the time, knowhow and means to afford to write anything more than a bill of sale or title deed. What kind of person sits hour after butt numbing hour to write the stuff which he knows is pure claptrap? With all that education and free time and means he decides to fabricate pure hogwash just to peddle it off on people as real facts and real events... why?

And while he was doing all that, who fed him, clothed him and kept him supplied with the accoutrements of the trade? Who supplied him with records and archives for references? It’s not as if there were public libraries just for anyone and everywhere.

In this day and age we have printing presses and we have more educated INDIVIDUALS like Joseph Smith who forged this hoax not long ago and L. Ron Hubbard with his nonsense and whoever wrote the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Claude Vorilhon a.k.a. Rael who wrote this twaddle.

However, in the less enlightened ages individuals like the above would have been patronized by kings and placed in courts with nearby libraries. However, their imagination and acumen for fabricating would have been pressed into service for more cunning and sinister goals.

But be assured their imaginations for creating sagas would have been no less developed than Tolkien or Arthur C. Clark or Virgil or Homer or Lucas or the people who wrote the Upanishads or the Zoroastrian Vedas.

Now ask yourself how possible is it that a group of prisoners carried away by the sadistic killers called soldiers of a brutal despotic empire would survive a trek of thousands of miles to be enslaved in a strange land and yet their descendents are educated and informed and are allowed to maintain their archives and scrolls? How likely is it that these slaved descendents are then decades later able in any possible stretch of human folly to be favored by another despotic Emperor who rapines the conquerors? Which is more likely do you think, that those slaves are educated and informed and well supplied with scrolls during their slavery waiting for another despot to UNCONDITIONALLY free them to go back to their country of origin out of the kindness of his despotic heart, or that there is a T5 here as blatant as any in many other tall tales?

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To be continued....
 
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A couple of fine essays there Leumas thank you very much. Informing, educating and entertaining, you should be head of the BBC.
 
I'll join the group of admirers of your dedication and passion, Leumas.
 
HansMustermann said:
It certainly is possible that the exodus or the floor were based on SOMETHING, but I think the important part is that we don't have any other evidence to corroborate any of it.
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It's also possible that that exodus was based on NOTHING, and the lack of evidence doesn't disprove that.
Leumas said:
Recently I found myself thinking about what it takes to write a good story. It dawned on me that storytelling is a very subtle and dexterous manipulation of the human psyche. It is a science not so much in the storytelling aspect (which is an art) but rather in the cunning manipulation of human desires and fears and wishful thinking.
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Another factor we should not overlook, sometimes the story tells more about the mind of the storyteller than current events. Warped minds write warped stories, fanciful minds write fantastic stories.
 
ddt said:
1) Where did the stories come from that Nehemiah, Ezra et.al. compiled to be the Torah? Did they exist, or did Ezra invent them out of whole cloth?

2) In particular, where do the doublets come from that are so frequent in the Torah?

3) How do you reconcile the fact that the Samaritans have a Torah that is very, very similar to the Jewish one?

4) What were the Jews before Cyrus? Polytheistic? Henotheistic?

5) In particular, is your claim that Judaic monotheism was not so much invented by the Jews themselves, but was taken over from Zoroastrianism?
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This post in another thread has relevance to all the above questions. I am still working on the next installments of answers....soon I promise.

But in the meantime this should be interesting (also see objections against it in the thread)
Leumas said:
What I have always been most bewildered by is the level of animosity and disdain this theocracy had for the people of the society from which this theocracy is supposed to have sprung. If the creators of this theocracy were really kith and kin of the Canaanites, why hold such UNENDING and IRREVOCABLE abhorrence to them?

They time and again write in the Bible about what an abomination the Canaanites, Jebusites etc. etc. are and how it is a sin bigger than blasphemy to even leave them alive let alone live along side them or marry from or to them.

Deuteronomy 20:16-18
However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods,and you will sin against the Lord your God.​

Some may argue that the Judeans having been the winners of a revolution against the UPPER CLASSES wanted to separate themselves from them by casting them as an out group. But this is a phenomenon that is not observed in other class revolutions before or since. Nor is it a viable explanation economically, anthropologically, sociologically or politically.

Besides, the above explanation poses a major dilemma. How are these lower classes able to suddenly acquire the education and acumen to compose such an extensive work as the Bible? The explanation that they just modified existing works will not work since we are back to the original question how and where did they get the education to modify the works they could not even read to become a recurring polemic against the Canaanite general population with stories such as Exodus and Genesis and so forth?

If this theocracy was an evolved philosophy indigenous to the local population with perhaps minor or even major influences from some foreign sources then why does the Bible go out of its way to adamantly and irreconcilably separate the followers of the theocracy from the general population from within which these writers are members and kin.

Why would the writers of this theology ABHOR so much the local population to the extreme extent where they invent an etiology that makes themselves descendents of foreigners and slaves from foreign lands who had to massacre and wipe out the local populations before they could set foot in the land?

Why go out of their way to make themselves conquering foreigners who have more ties with Babylon and Egypt than they have with the Canaanites who are after all their kinfolk and their ancestors?

Look at this verse Genesis 9:18
And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.​

Look at how the writer explicitly mentions Canaan as the descendents of Ham rather than Shem (i.e. not Semites). Also notice that in this verse all the sons are mentioned but none of their descendents are mentioned except for the Canaanites. Why such prejudiced singling out? Besides the Canaanites are Semites, so why does the bible cast them as Hamites?

In Genesis 9:24-27 it even makes the Canaanites the subject of a permanent and irrevocable curse for being descendants of Ham who supposedly violated his father during the father’s drunken stupor.
{9:24} And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. {9:25} And he said, Cursed [be] Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. {9:26} And he said, Blessed [be] the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. {9:27} God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant​

Notice the above curse in details. It does not apply to Ham per se. Rather it applies to Canaan..... Ham had many other descendents (Genesis 10:6 see spoiler below) but the ones to be made Slaves (not servants as translated see the spoiler below) to Shem are the Canaanites. Also notice how it is only to Shem and not to Japheth who also is assigned to be lower on the CASTE scale than Shem. And God is said to be lord of Shem not of Noah or Japheth and Shem.

Genesis 10:6 And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan.​

Notice that Ham is supposed to be the father of Cush which is Ethiopia today; in other words Blacks. And this is the Biblical verse combined with 9:27 above that justified for many centuries enslaving the blacks in the warped and vitiated brains of the Europeans.

Notice that the translation in the above verses form KJV is “servant” but in fact the Hebrew word is עֶבֶד (Ebed) which is Slave in English when translated honestly. The KJV Bible almost invariably translates the word to “servant” to lessen the impact that the bible ordained, condoned, regulated, prescribed slavery on all levels whether Hebrews of Hebrews (limited by Jubilee laws) or Hebrews of Gentiles (permanent and unfettered).



So these Canaanite descendents who are a clan of the Canaanites go so much out of their way to portray the Canaanites their brothers and neighbors as ACCURSED HEINOUS BLACKS who are not even from the same descent as themselves. They despise them so violently and adamantly so as to prohibit at pain of death any intermarriage with them and COMMANDS their UTTER EXTIRPATION.

Moreover, this is not just something that is only in Exodus and Judges and Joshua and so forth, rather it is right there in Ezra. If Zerubabbel and Ezra et al where returnee captives from Judea then they were Jews descended from Judah since as far back as 1200 BCE at the very least. Also Judea should have been fully Jewish since at least 1000 BCE at the very least. When the Babylonian carried away the elites they did not empty Judea of its Jewish inhabitants, they just carried away leaders and scribes and priests. In other words these returnees in around 500 BCE are returning to Judea that is inhabited by Jews for at least 500 years if not more.

So why does Ezra whale and tear his hair and garments and despair for days when he hears that the returnees are marrying from the Jewish population? Why does he despise them so much? Why such adamant need for SEGREGATION and prohibition of intermarriage? Why does he command at pain of excommunication that everyone should THROW AWAY their CHILDREN and wives who are from the population of Judea?

Ezra
{6:21} And the children of Israel, which were come again out of captivity, and all such as had separated themselves unto them from the filthiness of the heathen of the land, to seek the LORD God of Israel, did eat,

{9:11} Which thou hast commanded by thy servants the prophets, saying, The land, unto which ye go to possess it, is an unclean land with the filthiness of the people of the lands, with their abominations, which have filled it from one end to another with their uncleanness.


{9:1} Now when these things were done, the princes came to me, saying, The people of Israel, and the priests, and the Levites, have not separated themselves from the people of the lands, [doing] according to their abominations, [even] of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. {9:2} For they have taken of their daughters for themselves, and for their sons: so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of [those] lands: yea, the hand of the princes and rulers hath been chief in this trespass.

{9:3} And when I heard this thing, I rent my garment and my mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down astonied. {9:4} Then were assembled unto me every one that trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the transgression of those that had been carried away; and I sat astonied until the evening sacrifice.

{10:3} Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives, and such as are born of them, according to the counsel of my lord, and of those that tremble at the commandment of our God; and let it be done according to the law. {10:4} Arise; for [this] matter [belongeth] unto thee: we also [will be] with thee: be of good courage, and do [it. ]

{10:5} Then arose Ezra, and made the chief priests, the Levites, and all Israel, to swear that they should do according to this word. And they sware.
{10:10} And Ezra the priest stood up, and said unto them, Ye have transgressed, and have taken strange wives, to increase the trespass of Israel. {10:11} Now therefore make confession unto the LORD God of your fathers, and do his pleasure: and separate yourselves from the people of the land, and from the strange wives. {10:12} Then all the congregation answered and said with a loud voice, As thou hast said, so must we do.​

I think here is another one of those T5 situations that ought to make us sit up and pay more attention to what REALLY is going on.

Moreover, if Ezra et al were returnee captives who were allowed to just get up and leave for pity’s sake or for political convenience so as to get rid of potential trouble, then how can one explain the fact that these people managed to take over Judea from its incumbent inhabitants?

Where did they get the finances to rebuild a temple? How did they survive the trek back without being blundered and pillaged and enslaved again by the countless marauders and highwaymen along the way in one of the most dangerous routes at the time?

That is of course if we disregard that the Babylonians would have stripped them of all and any scrolls or riches their parents had 70 years earlier when they were extirpated and enslaved and forced to make the trek the other way.

Yet we read in Ezra that these ragtag freed slaves left to fend for themselves on their way back to Israel were (Ezra 2:64) 42360 people who as freed slaves still managed to carry with them their own slaves (slaves of slaves) 7337 strong with 200 singing slaves. And they made the trek back on 736 horses, 245 mules, 435 camels and 6720 donkeys.

But that is not all. When they arrive these freed slaves who themselves are owners of slaves also could afford to donate to the temple 61000 drams of gold ( = 262.3 Kg), 5000 pounds of silver, and 100 priestly garments. And that is just the donations they made, presumably they had a lot more than that to make such donations.

But that is not all. We are also told that Cyrus ordained that the coffers of Babylon should be emptied of all the gold and silver and precious tupperware (Ezra 1:6) that they have blundered almost a century earlier (Ezra 1:4) and given back to the returnee slaves so as to restock the coffers of Judea’s temple that Cyrus ordered to be rebuilt (Ezra 1:2) out of the goodness of his despotic heart and sympathy for these returnee descendents of slaves that he found it more expedient to just let leave instead of having to control them as rebellious slaves.

Furthermore, none of these treasures (Ezra 1:7-11) and riches and gold and asses and camels and female slaves of slaves were blundered along the way. Those 42000 returnee slaves must have also had shields and swords and trained soldiers among them that were able to fend off all those brigands frothing at the mouth for at least the thousands of female slaves of slaves.

Another thing that screams T5 is that those 42000 were all men. So did they have women and children that were not numbered? If not then I can understand why they wanted to marry from among all those filthy heinous Canaanites who were still living in Judea.

Also, when these returnee slaves reach Judea, they are approached by the local population who beg them to allow them to participate in the rebuilding of the Temple, which is their all consuming raison d’être. But instead of being happy for the help and extra funds and so forth this is how they respond (Ezra 4:1-3):
{4:1} Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the children of the captivity builded the temple unto the LORD God of Israel; {4:2} Then they came to Zerubbabel, and to the chief of the fathers, and said unto them, Let us build with you: for we seek your God, as ye [do;] and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assur, which brought us up hither. {4:3}But Zerubbabel, and Jeshua, and the rest of the chief of the fathers of Israel, said unto them, Ye have nothing to do with us to build an house unto our God; but we ourselves together will build unto the LORD God of Israel, as king Cyrus the king of Persia hath commanded us.​

Now, is that the kind of thing conducive of neighborly harmony? In fact it did not, and those neighbors who are supposed to be one and the same people – if those returnees were really returned descendents of Jewish slaves taken captive 70 years earlier from among those people – did try to stop them once they realized that they are not who they are pretending to be.

Here is another T5. Those returnee slaves who own their own slaves and gold bullion are not just super rich and powerful, they are also privy to Imperial court correspondence back and forth with Darius' and Artaxerxes’ Imperial Courts. They know what machinations are going on behind their backs and they themselves are corresponding with Darius directly (Ezra 4:11).

They even have the cojones to ORDER Darius to search the archives of Cyrus (Ezra 5:17) and to carry out what Cyrus has commanded.

And what is more astounding is that this Theocrat of Ahora Mazda obeys the demands of these Theocrats of YHWH (Ezra 6:3) and commands at pain of death to anyone who does not obey that the Temple of YHWH should be constructed without delay or obstruction and he even goes as far as SPECIFYING THE DIMENSIONS of the temple and to send over even more gold and silver and precious Tupperware.

We are not finished yet with the T5 (Ezra 6:8-10). This despotic Zoroastrian Emperor ordains that all taxes and tributes from the region should go to those allowed to return slaves trying to build a temple to a foreign god. This Zoroastrian Despot, instead of collecting taxes and tributes and all the money he can possibly blunder from his conquered regions and peoples, orders that the coffers of Babylon should be given to YHWH and even all the taxes of the region should go so as to build the temple and maintain the priesthood and theocracy of this foreign god of freed slaves. Look how poor these poor slaves were Ezra 8:24-30, and this is only some of the holy Tupperware.

I think this says it well enough Ezra 6:14
And the elders of the Jews builded, and they prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. And they builded, and finished [it,] according to the commandment of the God of Israel, and according to the commandment of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia. {6:15} And this house was finished on the third day of the month Adar, which was in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king.​

(Ezra 7:11-26) Why would the Theocratic Despotic Emperor of a Ahura Mazda blunder imperial coffers, and give imperial fiats and imperial protection and forgo taxes from an entire region in favor of some descendents of slaves and to help them build a temple he designs himself for a foreign god?

Here is a hypothesis that I think might shed some explanation:

I think that the returnees were not Jews. I think they were Zoroastrians even if they were perhaps Canaanites. I think they were MISSIONARIES to establish a religion in the region that is pretending to be from the region so as to be more readily accepted.

Much like Christian missionaries today try to pose Jesus as a god of the people they are trying to convert whom they have always known but have called him by a different name.

Much like the Christian missionaries have done in the past and are still doing today; they usurped with pertinent and major modifications and embellishments the local religion concentrating on a single deity with favorable attributes. They then imbued this god with features (or he may already had some) similar to Ahura Mazda and despite having a different name for all intents and purposes he is Ahura Mazda.

The Zoroastrians believed that their mission in life was to gather all the human race to Ahura Mazda’s worship because in the final battle against his nemesis, Angra Mainyu, he will win if all the human race is on his side.

Why do we understand that Christian Missionaries have always and still go to foreign lands and people in the wake of conquests (even in Afghanistan and Iraq they are doing it as we speak) and give them Bibles and try to set up at least house Churches if not full ones, but yet we do not believe that this could have been done by Zoroastrian Missionaries at the behest of their head Theocrats the Emperors of Persia when this sort of thing was sooooo much easier to do then than nowadays?


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after this now my other thread postings are delayed :(
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Rincewind said:
Fascinating.

Leumas - are there any non-Biblical accounts that can help understanding what's going on?
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Read the material on this web page. It has a lot of stuff about the archaeology too.

Also watch this video that I cited before.

The facts are that very little in the Bible is attested by archaeology. All we know is
  • The Babylonians did invade the region as they did all over.
  • The Babylonians and Assyrians did have a policy of extirpating ruling classes from the regions they conquered.
  • Cyrus is CLAIMED on a propaganda cylinder written by Babylonian priests of Marduk to have restored the worship of their gods and their temples.
  • The Cylinder's text has traditionally been seen by biblical scholars as corroborative evidence of Cyrus’ policy of the repatriation of the Jewish people following their Babylonian captivity. (an act that the Book of Ezra attributes to Cyrus)
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  • This interpretation has been disputed, as the text identifies only Mesopotamian sanctuaries, and makes no mention of Jews, Jerusalem, or Judea.
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  • Archaeology shows that Israel was not a desolate barren region after the Babylonian invasion and it continued on as well as any place does after a major rapine by invading despots.
  • Archaeology shows that worship of many gods was the religion of the region before and after the Babylonian invasion.

I think that the Bible is the equivalent of the cylinder.... propaganda written by Cyrus appointed priests of another god just like those of Marduk's in praise of Cyrus.

Whether the cylinder is just pure propaganda written by a despotic imperial conqueror trying to whitewash his image for the people he conquered or whether there are any facts to it that this conqueror of conquerors is in fact a real nice guy is up to you to decide.

We do know that kings tended to use propaganda (i.e. lies) all over the region before and after Cyrus.... so I wonder why Cyrus would be any NOBLER? Could it be wishful thinking influenced by circular reasoning?

What I would like to see is someone reasonably explaining all the T5 all over the Ezra tall tale some of which I have pointed out in the above post.

Why are some people willing to see and accept the T5 in the Exodus tale or the Noah tale for what they are yet not this Ezra tale? What is special about it?

Also I would like someone to give me a reasonable explanation to the quite puzzling extent of polemic that the Bible has against the Canaanites if the writers were Canaanites.

Why such extreme attempts at even accepting to be descended from slaves from Egypt and Babylonian illegal immigrants and genocidal racist ethnic cleansers rather than Canaanites who do not like the rest of the clans of Canaan?

Why such intensive and acerbic distortion of almost all facts as attested by archaeology proving that the Israelites were just Canaanites? Why such adamant efforts to negate any possibility that the Israelites were from Canaan?

Why all this fiction about wholesale genocide and pimping patriarchs who did not even have a piece of land to bury their dead in?

Why slaves out of Egypt when they were Canaanites there all along and all they had to say was that they were oppressed Canaanites who toppled their oppressive classes for instance instead of descendants of Babylonians who were enslaved in Egypt and freed by an Egyptian prince to go and massacre and holocaust the Canaanites in order to take over their land?

It is almost like if Alexander were to try claiming that he was Egyptian rather than accept being Greek along with Athenians.


Rincewind said:
And a question - is your "soon" anything like Paul Bethke's?
:D
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:D

I am having a lot of things going on these days that require a lot of moving around and thus no time to sit down and concentrate.

But I have answered most of the question already many times over all over the place. All I really need is to reformat them and add a few new materials so as to make it worthwhile and not just rehashing of the old stuff.

And this subject requires research and checking of facts so as to not make a fool of myself like when I said that Germany is named after Germanicus :( .

So if you want good stuff, you'll have to excuse my tardiness. I do have to attend to matters that pay for the electricity before I use it to create the posts. :(

I am really dedicating much of my free time to this subject now and my wife is already too angry. I also am missing out on contributing to other threads in which I would have actually liked to put my one (not even two) cent's worth.
 
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