The Exodus Myth

[MG1962]

So besides not comprehending sarcasm you do not understand allegories either.... oh well.... carry on!

You have three outstanding claims

Cyrus lied (propaganda as you call it)

Hebrews did not go into exile

Persian Empires were despotic

Let me know when you decide to pony up

 

[Leumas]

You have three outstanding claims

Cyrus lied (propaganda as you call it)

Hebrews did not go into exile

Persian Empires were despotic

Let me know when you decide to pony up

Wrong again! Carry on!

 

[Leumas]

Why not? SOMEONE had to do the local administration and collecting taxes.

Why not the ones who have been doing it for decades under the Babylonian rule and knew how to do it already a lot better than a ragtag unemployed lot of freed slaves who have been slaves for over 60 years and most of them would have been pushing well over 70 (if not 120 according to Ezra/Nehemiah) unless they were born in captivity?

The Babylonians after their rapine they installed vassal kings from amongst the locals throughout the region and other than having to quash a few rebellions here and there now and then they have been effectively and ruthlessly collecting the taxes for decades.

When the Persian defeated Babylon the region by default became theirs and in Cambyses' the region along with the rest of Phoenicia, Syria and Egypt was consolidated under the rule of the Persians.

Why would they not continue with the old vassal infrastructure?

Even if they wished to depose the old Babylonian vassals and install new ones I hardly think that unemployed freed slaves pushing well over 70 who have been slaves for over 60 years at least and have not collected taxes or administered anything ever would be the first candidates on their list.

UNLESS of course these freed slaves were not so unemployed after all but rather well in the employment of the Persians. Which accounts for all the favoring against the "people of the land" and all those thousands of slaves (servants if you insist all of a sudden) and oodles of gold and silver along with all those FIATS to collect and keep the region’s taxes.

 

[Leumas]

Well, I doubt that they would be given all the old loot. More realistically only the priesthood probably got anything, to ensure their cooperation and loyalty to the new masters.

Actually, the holy Tupperware is kinda believable. As I was saying, ensuring the loyalty of the priests would be a perfect way to control the region. Everyone else, yeah, probably wouldn't get much out of it.

I would assume that the "tupperware" and the promise of building them a grand temple eventually, would ensure some some degree of cooperation of the priest caste.

Why not do the above favoritism and amazing philanthropy for the priesthood who are already there among the "people of the land" and know all about the area and have been collecting taxes for decades instead of unemployed freed slaves who have been slaves for well over 60 years and must have been pushing well over 70 at the very least (if not over 120 according to Ezra/Nehemiah) unless they were born as slaves in Babylon?

And of course having been slaves since childhood they knew nothing about being priests since they were slaves and knew nothing about administering or collecting taxes since they were slaves since childhood.

 

[Leumas]

Unemployed freed slaves are not usually given slaves of their own...no? Why were those slaves of slaves not freed too?

Again, more probably they weren't. The matter there is complicated by the fact that most of the ancient people didn't really have a different word for "slave" and "servant". It's only when you find a document actually talking about someone being bought, sold, given, or part of someone's property, that you can be sure it means slave.

Yes...yes.... I heard that casuistic numerous times from people trying to lessen the impact of slavery in the bible. They try to explain how slavery if Jews are doing it is not really slavery but rather a kind of serfdom at worst or debtor employment if we are to be realistic about it. But yet it is really bad slavery if gentiles are doing it to the Jews.... yah... I understand.

Have a look here for a bit of clarification:

The Hebrew term for slave, eved, is a direct derivation from the Hebrew verb la'avöd ("to work"), thus, the slave in Jewish law is really only a worker or servant. The eved differs from the hired worker (sakhir) in three respects: he receives no wages for his work; he is a member of his master's household; and, his master exercises patria potestas over him - for example, the master may choose a wife for the slave and retains ownership of her and he has proprietary rights in him.

Have a look at what Leviticus 25:44 in the Masoretic Text has to say

44 And as for thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, whom thou mayest have: of the nations that are round about you, of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.

מד וְעַבְדְּךָ וַאֲמָתְךָ, אֲשֶׁר יִהְיוּ-לָךְ: מֵאֵת הַגּוֹיִם, אֲשֶׁר סְבִיבֹתֵיכֶם--מֵהֶם תִּקְנוּ, עֶבֶד וְאָמָה.

Notice the words עֶבֶד וְאָמָה Ebed WeAmah which means male slave and female slave. Here slave is the only way you can translate it since they are BOUGHT from among the gentiles. But notice how they are translated in most bibles as "bondmen and bondmaids" which is a gentler way of saying "male slaves and female slaves" because the intent is to lessen the impact of the bible regulating, ordaining, condoning and sanctifying slavery.


Now notice what Ezra 2:65 in the Masoretic Text has to say:

65 beside their men-servants and their maid-servants, of whom there were seven thousand three hundred thirty and seven; and they had two hundred singing men and singing women.

סה מִלְּבַד עַבְדֵיהֶם וְאַמְהֹתֵיהֶם, אֵלֶּה--שִׁבְעַת אֲלָפִים, שְׁלֹשׁ מֵאוֹת שְׁלֹשִׁים וְשִׁבְעָה; וְלָהֶם מְשֹׁרְרִים וּמְשֹׁרְרוֹת, מָאתָיִם.

The word עַבְדֵיהֶם (Ebedihem) is a compound word meaning “Their Male Slaves” and it is the plural possessive of the plural of עַבְדֵ (Ebed).

The word וְאַמְהֹתֵיהֶם (WeAmahotihem) is again a compound word that means “And Their Female Slaves” and it is made up of We which means “and” and Amahotihem which is the plural possessive of the plural of אַמְהֹ (Amah).


So I personally think that Ezra 2:65 is saying that those unemployed freed slaves are now owners of 7337 slave men and women.

Even if they were servants, what exactly are unemployed freed slaves doing with 7337 male and female servants? They are unemployed after all so can't they serve themselves? And how are they going to pay those servants if they are not slaves? They are unemployed freed slaves, where do they get the money to pay 7337 male and female servants of their own if they are not slaves?

 

[Leumas]

Jobless poor freed slaves do not have the ability to send Imperial letters to Imperial Courts thousands of miles away and DEMAND Emperors to dig up archives of their Great-Great-Great-Grandfathers so as to advocate them continuing to snob over and be racists against the "people of the land" who they despise and disdain so violently....no?

Considering that there were a lot of scribes among them, yeah, I'd exactly expect that they could send letters. The expensive part was not the paper and ink (well, ok, those too were expensive by today's standards, but not the most expensive part), but the work of an educated scribe. If you could write and had nothing better to do, that part would be pretty much free.

Or briefer: people wrote letters all the time in the ancient world, you know?

Yeh, that is like let's say some deported Mexican from Alabama when he gets back to Chihuahua picks up a pen and paper and writes a letter to President Obama demanding he send him some of the gold from Fort Knox along with orders to allow him to collect taxes from Chihuahua because before he was a "slave" in the USA his grandfather used to be the local bandito of the region and now the incumbent banditos do not like the fact that he is trying to usurp authority over them.

What chance do you think that letter has of ever arriving at the White House let alone being read by the fifth secretary of the secretary of the under-under-under-secretary in charge of frivolous mail and getting chucked in the rubbish bin?

Unless this jobless returnee has more of a story to tell than he appears to be letting on. Then yes he might get some gold and silver and a few servants to boot.

 

[MG1962]

Wrong again! Carry on!

Oh so now you are back peddling from post #451

Hmmmmmmmm very telling

 

[HansMustermann]

Yes...yes.... I heard that casuistic numerous times from people trying to lessen the impact of slavery in the bible. They try to explain how slavery if Jews are doing it is not really slavery but rather a kind of serfdom at worst or debtor employment if we are to be realistic about it. But yet it is really bad slavery if gentiles are doing it to the Jews.... yah... I understand.

I didn't say that. The instructions on how to take slaves in the OT and such are pretty clearly about slavery. I'm just that Cyrus probably wouldn't have given them some slaves, after he just freed the slaves.

I think I'm finally starting to understand where you're going with Ezra, though, namely taking it more seriously than any scholars.

Ezra is a propaganda text, written long after the fact, and then edited some more. And then some more. It contains outright fantastic claims, such as that a Zoroastrian king would be moved by the Jewish god to send someone to remind the Jews who to worship, and more than once at that. (The Jews seem to have really enjoyed that kind of dumb fantasy.) And then a Zoroastrian noble too is all into reading people the Torah. Oh-la-la. Plus stuff like that the two halves of Ezra are essentially the same story repeated with some changes, and arguably then the two halves of Nemiah are the same story all over again. Etc.

Nobody takes it THAT seriously. Well, no historians, in any case.

 

[HansMustermann]

Why not do the above favoritism and amazing philanthropy for the priesthood who are already there among the "people of the land" and know all about the area and have been collecting taxes for decades instead of unemployed freed slaves who have been slaves for well over 60 years and must have been pushing well over 70 at the very least (if not over 120 according to Ezra/Nehemiah) unless they were born as slaves in Babylon?

Well, realistically, most of the priestly caste would have remained the same. I don't think any historian actually proposes that the existing caste was uprooted wholesale and replaced with something entirely different.

I'm pretty confident that even the Jewish scholarship on the matter is more like that most of the returned scribes would form the new Pharisee group. Which then was at odds with the Sadducee priestly caste for the next more than half a millennium, rather than neatly replacing them.

 

[Leumas]

I think I'm finally starting to understand where you're going with Ezra, though, namely taking it more seriously than any scholars.

I am doing no such thing.... quite the contrary... I am trying to debunk it altogether as nothing but propaganda (as you agreed below). Have a look at this post that talks about all the T⁵ and this post too where I discuss the impossible timeline and contradictory narrative.

It is the scholars who take it seriously. If they did not then they would not be saying things like

Wellhausen named Ezra, the post-Exilic leader who re-established the Jewish community in Jerusalem at the behest of the Persian emperor Artaxerxes I in 458 BC, as the final redactor.[41]

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[5] (an act that the Book of Ezra attributes to Cyrus[6]), as the text refers to the restoration of cult sanctuaries and repatriation of deported peoples.

The return to Zion (Hebrew: שִׁיבָת צִיּוֹן, Shivat Tzion, or שבי ציון, Shavei Tzion, lit. Zion returnees) is a term that refers to the event written in the biblical books of Ezra-Nehemiah in which the Jews returned to the land of Israel from the Babylonian exile following the decree by the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great, the conqueror of the Babylonian empire in 538 BC, also known as Cyrus's Declaration.
Although the term was first coined after the destruction of the Second Temple (mentioned in the Song of Degrees Psalms 126:1), it was attributed to the event of the return of the Jews from the Babylonian exile to the land of Israel after the destruction of the first temple, following the decree of Cyrus.

I think you are mistaken when you say

Nobody takes it THAT seriously. Well, no historians, in any case.

Have a look at this web site.... you will see who takes it seriously and how seriously they do take it.

I am the one who does not take it seriously and am trying to point out that no ragtag aged Jews returned to Judea after 70 years of slavery to take over an incumbent population to rule over them and reject marrying from them and who had Imperial FIATS and Imperial support and Imperial looted treasures and ability to influence Imperial political and taxation policies.

No Ezra could have been a Judean freed slave returned 190 years later to Judea to order all returnee freed slaves from decades earlier than him to divorce their wives and throw them away along with their children to the wolves.

No Ezra could have been a Judean taken away from Jerusalem as a slave who returned after 190 years of Babylonian slavery to suddenly assume utter and total authority over the incumbent population disrupting their lives and their families and to have authority to suddenly read the Torah to the locals who seem to have never been reading it all those decades.

I am the one trying to point out that if there is any historicity kernel in the book of Ezra/Nehemiah then it is only as a PROPAGANDA written to bamboozle and hoodwink the locals to accept the authority of "Ezra" who was in fact nothing but an IMPERIAL MISSIONARY sent over to establish a NEW ORDER OF THINGS.

Ezra is a propaganda text, written long after the fact, and then edited some more. And then some more. It contains outright fantastic claims, such as that a Zoroastrian king would be moved by the Jewish god to send someone to remind the Jews who to worship, and more than once at that. (The Jews seem to have really enjoyed that kind of dumb fantasy.) And then a Zoroastrian noble too is all into reading people the Torah. Oh-la-la. Plus stuff like that the two halves of Ezra are essentially the same story repeated with some changes, and arguably then the two halves of Nemiah are the same story all over again. Etc.

Then you and I are utterly in agreement!

Although I go a little further than you…. Since it is a Propaganda as we both agree I am trying to figure out who benefited from that ancient elaborate hoax.

That is why I look at this and postulate that perhaps there is more to this T⁵ than might at first be gleaned by the Biblically biased, inculcated, indoctrinated and vitiated mindset.

The Priestly source, one of the four main sources of the Torah/Pentateuch in the Bible, is primarily a product of the post-exilic period when the former Kingdom of Judah had become the Persian province of Yehud.[23] Also during this Persian period, the final redaction of the Pentateuch took place.

I remind you of Richard Carrier's admonishment in this video at minutes 00:21:12 to 00:22:35 and in particular minutes 0:45:55 to 0:48:10

I ask everyone to please pay real attention to minutes 0:45:55 to 0:48:10 in the video below because the list given on the overhead display is so exactly applicable to Ezra/Nehemiah. Also watch minutes 1:05:11 to 1:07:33 to see how CDAC (Cognitive Dissonance Assuaging Casusitry) tries to reject reality.

Much like Acts was a Historical Fiction being peddled as real history in effect rewriting history to serve a propagandizing purpose, so must have Ezra/Nehemiah been written with a purpose.

I am proposing that the purpose was much like the one of Acts.... to make people accept a lie.... namely that Persian Overlords trying to establish a new religion are nothing but the old religion's priests returned to take their rightful place as the rulers of the illegitimate usurpers who are the "people of the land" who took over during the vacuum created by the Diaspora from which they now have returned to resume the rightful worship of YHWH and to keep fleecing the “people of the land” with every breath they take and every move they make because YHWH said so according to Moses.

By the way…. Much like Acts in the NT is just one from among various books of Acts that did not make it into the NT canon so is Ezrah/Nehemia just one book of many that have not made it into the Tanakh canon….. see this site

The books of 1 and 2 Esdras are not part of the biblical canon. First Esdras is part of what is considered theApocryphal/Deuterocanonicalscripture. Second Esdras is an apocalyptic work and is consideredpseudepigraphal. Except for some Greek Orthodox, Episcopal, or Lutheran Bibles, 1 and 2 Esdras do not appear in most Bibles. Authorship and dating of 1 and 2 Esdras are somewhat problematic, and some scholars place the writing of certain portions of 2 Esdras as late as the 2nd century AD. “Esdras” is another form of the nameEzra, which means “help.”

The Roman Catholic Council of Trent in 1546, which officially recognized several books of the Apocrypha, listed “the first book of Esdras, and the second” as part of the biblical canon. However, these are the books we normally call “Ezra” and “Nehemiah” today and are not to be confused with the pseudepigraphal 1 and 2 Esdras (which appeared in theVulgateas 3 and 4 Esdras).

There are some historical problems with 1 and 2 Esdras. In the narrative of 1 Esdras, the reign of the Persian King Artaxerxes incorrectly precedes those of Cyrus the Great (c. 559—529 BC) and Darius I (Darius the Great, 521—486 BC), although some believe this is simply a literary device called “prolepsis” in which a person or event is assigned to an earlier period or represented as if it had already occurred. First Esdras appears in theSeptuagintas an expanded book of Ezra, containing four additional chapters. It is an account of King Josiah’s reforms and history of the destruction of the temple in 586 BC and chronicles the Jews’ return from Babylonian captivity under Zerubbabel. This book was said to be known by Josephus (born AD 38).

Second Esdras was written too late to be included in the Septuagint and, therefore, does not appear within the more prominent canon (Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox). Second Esdras is also known by many other names, making it difficult to track fully. For example, 2 Esdras contains portions known in some circles as 3 Ezra, 4 Ezra, 5 Ezra, and 6 Ezra. The Ethiopian Church considers 4 Ezra to be canonical, whereas the Eastern Armenian Church labels it as 3 Ezra. Further, some scholars believe these books were written by several authors, including some possibly as late as the second century AD.

Second Esdras is often referred to as the Jewish Apocalypse of Ezra and contains seven visions of Ezra dealing with his angst over the pain and suffering inflicted upon Jews by Gentiles. Some scholars believe the book was written shortly after the AD 70 destruction of the temple in Jerusalem during the reign of Emperor Domitian (AD 81—96). While there is a definite tone of sadness in this work, there is consolation regarding ultimate retribution. There are six Messianic references within 2 Esdras.

Read more:http://www.gotquestions.org/first-second-Esdras.html#ixzz3Boj4wGl8

 

[Leumas]

Well, realistically, most of the priestly caste would have remained the same. I don't think any historian actually proposes that the existing caste was uprooted wholesale and replaced with something entirely different.

I'm pretty confident that even the Jewish scholarship on the matter is more like that most of the returned scribes would form the new Pharisee group. Which then was at odds with the Sadducee priestly caste for the next more than half a millennium, rather than neatly replacing them.

From this web page:

The Pharisees (/ˈfærəˌsiːz/) were at various times a political party, a social movement, and a school of thought in the Holy Land during the Second Temple period, beginning under the Hasmonean dynasty (140–37 BCE) in the wake of the Maccabean Revolt. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Pharisaic beliefs became the liturgical and ritualistic basis for Rabbinic Judaism (commonly known as simply Judaism).

From this web page:

The Rabbis, who are traditionally seen as the descendants of the Pharisees, describe the similarities and differences between the two sects in Mishnah Yadaim. The Mishnah explains that the Sadducees state, “So too, regarding the Holy Scriptures, their impurity is according to (our) love for them. But the books of Homer, which are not beloved, do not defile the hands.”[20] The Sadducees thus accuse the Pharisees as the opponents of traditional Judaism because of their susceptibility and assimilation into the Hellenistic world. When synthesized, one can discern that the Pharisees represented mainstream Judaism in the Hellenistic world, while the Sadducees represented a more aristocratic elite. Despite this, a passage from the book of Acts suggests that both Pharisees and Sadducees collaborated in the Sanhedrin, the high Jewish court.[21]

According to Josephus, the Sadducees believed that:

• There is no fate
• God does not commit evil
• Man has free will; “man has the free choice of good or evil”
• The soul is not immortal; there is no afterlife, and
• There are no rewards or penalties after death

The Sadducees rejected the belief in resurrection of the dead, which was a central tenet believed by Pharisees and by Early Christians. The Sadducees supposedly believed in the traditional Jewish concept of Sheol for those who had died.

Political
The Sadducees oversaw many formal affairs of the state.[10] Members of the Sadducees:

• Administered the state domestically
• Represented the state internationally
• Participated in the Sanhedrin, and often encountered the Pharisees there.
• Collected taxes. These also came in the form of international tribute from Jews in the Diaspora.
• Equipped and led the army
• Regulated relations with the Romans
• Mediated domestic grievances.

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, yeah, sounds like we're largely in agreement about Ezra. I do think that it might refer to some historical events, like that some slaves were allowed to return, but, yeah, I don't think any reputable source actually thinks some guy could just come over and tell everyone to divorce and disown their children. It's very improbable.

That said, though, I still don't think it probable or plausible that some Zoroastrian king would try to create a new heretical religion that contradicts Zoroastrianism. It seems to me more likely that just later a group would try to claim such authority, in the same way as Jonah or Daniel make a point of the unexpected conversion of a foreign pagan king. Basically I wouldn't take that part seriously, because it simply contradicts everything we know about the Achaemenid dynasty.

They might try to appease the local population by claiming to be chosen by their local deity (see the cylinder claiming that about the Babylonian gods), and a sacred-text-thumping local bigotted ruling class might take it as confirming their delusions, but it's just simply not paralleled anywhere else that they'd actually create a new religion for that. Nor is it easy to see why would they.

 

[Craig B]

By the way…. Much like Acts in the NT is just one from among various books of Acts that did not make it into the NT canon so is Ezrah/Nehemia just one book of many that have not made it into the Tanakh canon….. see this site

Please explain.

The Roman Catholic Council of Trent in 1546, which officially recognized several books of the Apocrypha, listed “the first book of Esdras, and the second” as part of the biblical canon. However, these are the books we normally call “Ezra” and “Nehemiah” today and are not to be confused with the pseudepigraphal 1 and 2 Esdras (which appeared in the Vulgate as 3 and 4 Esdras).

Am I misunderstanding you? They are different books, not the same book. And if some books were admitted and others not, so what? How does that support your hypothesis?

More generally, your theory would require that the whole early Tanakh was concocted as a hoax by Achaemenid agents. All at once more or less. Are you stating that? And if not, how did these books originate?