"Hammurabi, who feared Marduk..." and the fear of God

[Leumas]

OK, so...a more detailed explanation.

[snipped lots of informative stuff]

Now, also keep in mind; for example, take the Hebrew culture for a moment again...Moses throws his staff down and it turns into a snake, then there's the snake that tricks Eve in the Garden of Eden - everyone's familiar with these things on this level.
Catch is, it isn't so clean...the word is nachash, and its a name for serpent.
So?
Well, the root of the word for naw-khawsh is naw-khash', and while the former generally refers to a serpent, the latter refers to divining, or delve into so as to discern, or an omen; point being, it refers to knowledge.

Now, this doesn't refer to wisdom; just knowledge.
Grasping knowledge is like grabbing a serpent; that's the image being given.
Knowledge was considered dangerous and lethal if you didn't know how to handle it; in many of these old cultures (using Hebrew as a sample case).

[snipped more informative stuff]

Nice!

Matthew 10:16

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves : be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.​

Numbers 21:8-9

8 And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.
9 And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.​

2 Kings 18:4

He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had
made : for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it : and he called it Nehushtan.​

 

[JaysonR]

Oh, also...not intentionally, but in a round about kind of way; "morning star" could almost be considered a predecessor to "atheist" - a sort of proto-a-theist, if you will.
It's not the same thing as atheist, but it is relative in social position in some cases (just really glossed up and vilified by the theistic perspective), because it effectively does mean that one thinks they can discern the knowledge of nature and make decisions for governing man without consulting or fearing the gods.

So...one "symbol" for Atheism, ironically, could be Venus.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Brilliant stuff, JaysonR, and it meshes well with what I understand about ancient Semitic cultures. Difficult to relate to, but they definitely had an internal logic of their own.

Thank you very much.

 

[JaysonR]

Indeed welcome TubbaBlubba, and Leumas brings up another relation to nachash I failed to cover.
nchushah (bronze), or naw-khoosh', is rooted from nachash.

That line from Numbers about the bronze pole and serpent appears in the Hebrew as back to back 'nxv nxvt', (serpent bronze, respectively).

Which should probably make that whole imagery more meaningful; especially the following section where the people are condemned for idolizing and priding the bronze serpent pole (worshiping the knowledge itself as an idol).

Given the context of the rest of the discussion; it probably begins to make a bit more sense as to what was being conveyed in that painted imagery of the text.

As to why bronze shares the same root - because, as a metal (of this era), it was of the same caliber as the serpent and knowledge; a thing which could only be rendered to fruition if one knew how to handle it - it was a fine metal requiring more advanced skill to 'divine' its 'temper' (so to speak).

 

[Myriad]

Well explained, JaysonR.

Note that there's a similar mix of worshipful awe or respect, and fear or even revulsion, in the complex and difficult word/concept of "taboo." It refers simultaneously to the sacred (don't touch it because it's too holy for you to be worthy of) and the magically dangerous (don't touch because it's hazardous or unclean), keeping in mind that in those societies that used the original concept, physical illness was regarded as a magical danger.

 

[JaysonR]

Sorry for the segmented responses (one of those busy days)...

Difficult to relate to, but they definitely had an internal logic of their own.

There are so, so many - it's really quite fascinating and beautiful when you dig into it and really try to immerse your head in their way of thinking as evidenced to us archaeologically and anthropologically.

For instance; here's a simple flip that, if you consider the ramifications in conception, is rather far reaching.
The old Hebrew description and reference to time in direction is opposite to how we speak today.

Today, we think of time (not in physics, but in common conception day-to-day) like standing on a path with the past behind us and the future before us; standing upon the present.

However, in their way of conception you have to turn around and walk backwards in that metaphor to represent time; the past lays before you and the future lays behind you, and you stand upon the present.

There's a sort of charm to this, as well, for it makes tangible sense: you can see the past, so that is what you can face. You cannot see the future, so it is to your back (in the LDS thread, I cited a phrase regarding hiding from the face of another being an idiom of shame; here there is a shared cultural value - that of the face and witness or observation).

For even further reaching impacts, like many cultures of the region; the Hebrew concept of time wasn't linear...exactly.

Here's the best way I have figured out as a way to try to convey it:
Take a spiral staircase.
We'll just pretend it only has 4 steps before you have made a full circle starting on the 5th step.
Step 1 and 5 are the same degree position, but at different elevations.

Now, instead of upright like a stairwell, lay it horizontal like Archimedes' screw.

On step 1 and 5, put an event; like Sabbath, as an easy sample.
The idea of Sabbath, or any ritual holiday, (not so much now, but way back in these early times) was conceived like repeating an already done action, but with a new instance.

This is a bit hard to grasp how this works, but the only way I have found that best represents that ancient view of same action, different actors, is like pouring water from a pitcher into a cup, but in so doing, focus on each water molecule as unique and try not to lump it together as "water".

Now when you pour, because the boundaries of the physical objects involved, the water flows in a given range of motions.
When you pour a second time, you end up with relatively the same motions, but the molecules have changed to different molecules - same type of molecules, but different specific individual molecules.

So mix Archimedes' screw with the water metaphor and you start to get how "time" and "action" were conceived.
They were conceived almost like a giant machine - actions repeated by the same roles, but the actors playing those roles would change.

Not only was this often times seen as what just happened, but it became something which was purposefully sought to fulfill.
Why?
Well, mix these ideas with that previous bit about knowledge and god fearing and it starts to make a bit of sense from their viewpoint - this is the age where their civilizations were starting; where they were learning what it means to be a city, a state, a country, nation - many concepts they didn't even have names for, but were forging ahead with anyway.
There was a large amount of uncertainty and the stars clearly moved in a mechanized order, events appeared to have repetition in form within society, grabbing knowledge was a dangerous endeavor and required a right-set approach to avoid harm, and gods were the keepers of all which made this giant machine of existence "tick" along.

It's only a matter of time until someone, from this setting, fiercely is compelled to try to fulfill some role or event because they fear not doing so will off-balance the machine of existence (if you will) and destroy 'everything'.

Under these kinds of considerations, the prophecies are not so much prophecies in the way we think, but more akin to a physicist claiming the probability of an electron reaction under a given setting in the lab (at least; to their perspective), but it's like that and mixed with the idea of a casting call - it's being broadcast that someone not only will, but also needs to, fill this role.

The prophecy is something derived from an extant account, applied forward in role.
It happened before, so therefore, it will happen again anew.
If something happened entirely new; then that cog in the gears just hadn't rotated into action yet, but will again in the future.

"Anew" is a rather big concept as well.

Everyone (at this point, at least) is probably familiar with the Mayan long count calendar resetting at the "end" to a "new" era.

Well; that whole prophecy section in the Hebrew legends where a new land is made and a new go at everything is begun with physical bodies and everything...that is Eden's repeat point on the clock; that's their long-count "new era".

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Again, stellar (no pun intended). I realize there is - by necessity - a lot of speculation and interpretation behind this, but the things you write are incredibly interesting and obviously quite well informed.

It touches on a few things with regard to the thinking of ancient cultures that I have pondered in particular lately - I've had a Roman Republic binge this past week, and it caused me to consider in particular the degree to which the generic we tend to involuntary characterize thinking and civilization as having originated in the Greco-Roman world. That's part Western and medieval scholar-based bias, but in particular it's based on the extent and style of writing in that one particular time and place (that, and perhaps for some reason the amount of marble statues they had comissioned). It's easy to accept characterizations of the Germanic tribes and Celts as uncivilized people who lived simple lives from day-to-day, farming, plundering and little else, but then you realize that we have such little insight into the actual people that the most famous Celt is basically only known from the things Caesar wrote about him. Surely they had great works of poetry, thoughts on life, and unique perspectives on the world that would have been marvelled at today, had they only been written down (compare to how revered Confucius is almost surely as a direct consequence of the fact that the works of other philosophers were annihilated.)

So how does all that relate to Hebrews and ancient Semites? After all, the most famous book in the world is a work of ancient Semitic poetry, philosophy, theology and prose! And that's it, I think - it's easy to forget that's exactly what the Bible is. It's a collection of tales, thoughts and events that went on over a thousand years, and that existed in important contexts. It's not just a bunch of banal moral tales or justifications for conquest; by reading the book as it is and learning as much as possible about the culture around it, we can catch a glimpse of how people thought as we realize what purpose these stories served; some were political, some reinforced social order, some strengthened national identity, others were just good stories.

I've sometimes argued that prophets - some of them, at least, were basically the philosophers of these cultures. This is patently obvious to some degree whenever one reads Ecclesiastes, but also Isaiah, for instance. They considered things such as purpose, the future, reasons, morals, life, death, and tried to make sense of it, what ought to be, and why it was the way it was. Sometimes, ancient prophecies, theologies and such seem so random and incomprehensible, but that's because it's so hard to understand the context they were written in, the assumptions made, the common notions held by people. For instance, your description of pseudo-cyclical time would certainly be such a notion (by the way, it reminds me somewhat of the common descriptions of the philosophy of Heraclitus - of how things change and yet patterns remain), as would convictions of, for instance, the value of a man's life be. Things taken for granted then and now, but in entirely different ways.

I don't really have much to add, I just find it important to remind myself that ancient people were so similar to us, yet existed in such a different context. It is so vital when studying the ancient world.

 

[Leumas]

I don't really have much to add, I just find it important to remind myself that ancient people were so similar to us, yet existed in such a different context. It is so vital when studying the ancient world.

I wish the utilization of the Bible was confined to just studying the ancient world, unfortunately that is not the case.

The Iliad and Odyssey are also precious sources for gaining insight into the workings of ancient mindsets, however I do not hear about any so called PhD students from Greek Mythology seminary universities sifting through a copy of the Iliad and the Odyssey looking for information on how to trace the steps of Odysseus to the cave where he killed the Cyclopes.

Greek Mythologies too are poetically edifying oddities but I doubt there are hundreds of university professors seriously arguing and writing books about Hercules having been a real Greek man while some other historians with PhDs just as seriously trying to explain "scientifically" his labors to snatch the underpants off of Hippolyta the Queen of the Amazons.

Nobody has bothered to forge the panties of Hippolyta nor do I expect to see any such purported girdle taken seriously by millions to the extent of being put on exhibition at the Acropolis. I also doubt that any scientists would seriously convene a commission to carry out DNA analysis on any so called underwear with reconstructive holographic imagery of "imprints" left on it.

The Norse Myths are poetically informative too, but I do not see thousands of Thor worshiping "archaeologists" digging around Nordic countries earnestly and with all seriousness trying to find Thor's hammer nor have I seen any History Channel documentaries about NASA using satellite resources to verify any claims of having located Yggdrasil.

The Biblical ancients were similar to us today the same way the Incas and Aztecs were similar to us today. They were living in about as different a context as the Incas and Aztecs were living in comparison to us today.

Yet I do not see billions of people telling us that an Aztec king who carved out the beating hearts of his captured enemies was justified in doing so because the almighty creator of the universe told him to do so and those enemies of his deserved it because they did not worship that same almighty god and that we only have to understand the cultural context to appreciate the act for the poetry of it.

I have never observed a collection of Inca writings (whatever is left of them after Christian missionaries burnt most of them) in any hotel room I have been in.

I have never watched Fox News reporting of major political and social groups of millions of people empowered by billions of tax free dollars lobbying and influencing governments and legislatures to enforce the Apache laws and to return North America to the Native American moral way of life.

So what is it exactly that is so distinct about the Biblical tall tales that makes so many take their myths and irrationalities as realities? I wonder if it could be a chronic case of Mass Stockholm Syndrome compounded by acute Cognitive Dissonance?

 

[JaysonR]

Firstly, Tubba:
ABSOLUTELY AGREE!
One reason I have taken such interest in Hebrew anthropology (and to an extent the Levant, Middle East and Anatolian anthropology) over a couple decades is because I can't help but feel like the modern religious investment in their productions is a form of cultural rape and whitewashing; their culture, while known variously across the academic specialists in archeology and anthropology, is generally overwhelmingly overlooked and definitely under-taught - considering how much misinformation has been spread regarding their culture(s) [really deserves a plural because there really wasn't a single Hebrew people, but multiples who eventually culminated to one governing entity over time and turmoil].

Again, stellar (no pun intended). I realize there is - by necessity - a lot of speculation and interpretation behind this, but the things you write are incredibly interesting and obviously quite well informed.

Yes, there are axioms in play - notably there is the bias of over generalization and of course no peoples are purely absolute and capable of being singularly summarized; but it serves well enough for cultural reference. (also; good pun )

It touches on a few things with regard to the thinking of ancient cultures that I have pondered in particular lately - I've had a Roman Republic binge this past week, and it caused me to consider in particular the degree to which the generic we tend to involuntary characterize thinking and civilization as having originated in the Greco-Roman world. That's part Western and medieval scholar-based bias, but in particular it's based on the extent and style of writing in that one particular time and place (that, and perhaps for some reason the amount of marble statues they had comissioned). It's easy to accept characterizations of the Germanic tribes and Celts as uncivilized people who lived simple lives from day-to-day, farming, plundering and little else, but then you realize that we have such little insight into the actual people that the most famous Celt is basically only known from the things Caesar wrote about him. Surely they had great works of poetry, thoughts on life, and unique perspectives on the world that would have been marvelled at today, had they only been written down (compare to how revered Confucius is almost surely as a direct consequence of the fact that the works of other philosophers were annihilated.)

There's so much I want to go into here, but it's so varied and diverse.
Instead, I'll just STRONGLY suggest reading The Discovery of Middle Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts by historian Graham Robb.

It is a one of a kind thrusting leap into trying to grasp the virtual vapors of their culture to piece together some understandings - he does an outstanding job!

Also; I have always had an incredibly hard time accepting the idea of primitive Celts, largely because of a simple observation: their breadth.
The Celts spread from Galatia down through the Northern Mediterranean up around Spain and France and of course Britain and some various lands around that region.
That is a bit much to be just a band of bumbling primitives! Anatolia to England!... 0.0

So how does all that relate to Hebrews and ancient Semites? After all, the most famous book in the world is a work of ancient Semitic poetry, philosophy, theology and prose! And that's it, I think - it's easy to forget that's exactly what the Bible is. It's a collection of tales, thoughts and events that went on over a thousand years, and that existed in important contexts. It's not just a bunch of banal moral tales or justifications for conquest; by reading the book as it is and learning as much as possible about the culture around it, we can catch a glimpse of how people thought as we realize what purpose these stories served; some were political, some reinforced social order, some strengthened national identity, others were just good stories.

This is exactly what I work on; the angle I work from.
Here's some material you may enjoy:
https://sites.google.com/site/hgcdaresources/anthropology-resources
That's a list of good anthropology books.

https://sites.google.com/site/levanthebrewculturalrelations/
These are some of my various notes related to the Hebrew culture.
It's not everything I have, but it's bits and pieces of some material pertaining to contexts leading up to the Hebrew period, the timeline of the Hebrew period and some material regarding the period after it.
I don't have Hammurabi, Phoenician, Canaanite, Hittite, and Egyptian notes on there at this time - but those would belong in this section once I get them collected together well enough to slap up on the related materials list.

I've sometimes argued that prophets - some of them, at least, were basically the philosophers of these cultures. This is patently obvious to some degree whenever one reads Ecclesiastes, but also Isaiah, for instance. They considered things such as purpose, the future, reasons, morals, life, death, and tried to make sense of it, what ought to be, and why it was the way it was. Sometimes, ancient prophecies, theologies and such seem so random and incomprehensible, but that's because it's so hard to understand the context they were written in, the assumptions made, the common notions held by people. For instance, your description of pseudo-cyclical time would certainly be such a notion (by the way, it reminds me somewhat of the common descriptions of the philosophy of Heraclitus - of how things change and yet patterns remain), as would convictions of, for instance, the value of a man's life be. Things taken for granted then and now, but in entirely different ways.

They were absolutely philosophers. Ontology was the central driver of the academic pursuit - it was their theoretical physics; the top bill.
Ontology was vital; it discerned the motions of the society as a "machine" and informed how best to go forward in this uncertain experiment (that is grossly generalized and not specific to each sub-set period of Hebrew history, as the individual periods inside of Hebrew history have in themselves influences into textual production which are truly fascinating).

I don't really have much to add, I just find it important to remind myself that ancient people were so similar to us, yet existed in such a different context. It is so vital when studying the ancient world.

Word.

One of my favorite forms of representing this is just language.
The language itself is just so very telling of the mind behind it.

I mean; take the simple phrase to not strike your foot upon a stone - or, don't stumble; in turn - don't be slow, or make haste without obstacle.

But what an interesting way to think of it.
'On palms they shall lift you should you be striking into the stone the foot of yours.' (Psalms 91:12 - in literal translation out of the Hebrew; not contextually translated into English)

The order is even fascinating (sometimes I think Yoda was ripping off Hebrew grammar ).

But really consider that phrase. It's easy to overlook, but the phrase is so tangible - it's not abstract at all; there's nothing in it abstract.
Instead of an abstract statement like we, or the Romans, would produce of something like, 'May/I hope you have speed without trouble on your trip!'; the ancient Hebrew language employed direct tangible means instead of abstract concepts (perhaps there is something, but I've never ran into an abstract so far).

Similarly fascinating is where you see "forever" in English; they had their word for "hidden" (mlwe [ewlm], or ' `o-lawm '), because that was what "forever" was in a tangible context - the thing hidden away; unknown - like not being able to know or see what's on the other side of the horizon.
It's a different kind of forever - it's not a perpetual loop of time, like we think conceptually, but a state of revelation regarding a thing.

 

[Son of Inigo]

Big snip:

There's so much I want to go into here, but it's so varied and diverse.
Instead, I'll just STRONGLY suggest reading The Discovery of Middle Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts by historian Graham Robb.

More snip

I have added that book to my Amazon wish list. Thank you for that.

And I am absolutely amazed by your knowledge. Truly.

Humbly,

Son of Inigo

 

[JaysonR]

Glad to be of help.
...and yes; it is true - my wife would rather hear about anything else than History in the Levant region or the Middle East at this point.
I suppose this is a classic topic for me; growing up in a Christian household and not really just being satisfied with the identity of these unknown Hebrew people as presented in the Christian religious context.

Things didn't make sense; that really bothered me. I don't mean that my faith was in trouble; I don't think I really ever had much faith - or at least, never wanted it - to me the idea of all this metaphysical stuff was a chore; heaven was a tax to my 5 year old brain - not an ideal.
So what I mean by not making sense was the reality - the identity.
Things were radically missing between the gaps; why Israelite and Hebrew? What does that mean? Why a Samaritan; why not a Greek? Why Frankincense, Myrrh and Gold? Why is it a snake (in every case when something is a "snake")? Why so many names or titles for one god? Why don't they all talk about him the same way? What is the "highest point" of the Temple; is that a phrase or is this literally the needle point top of a dome? What is a "morning star"; why is this Latin word -Lucifer- in my English translation of a Hebrew text - what dose "Lucifer" mean and what of the Hebrew meaning is it representing - is it the right word to mean the Hebrew?

On and on...and no one person seemed to have an answer so I just started bouncing around and researching by the only way available back almost 20 years ago...I shacked up and lived with Greek Monks for a while and raided their libraries.
That got me started, and once the internet exploded..well...things got quite a bit easier.

Somewhere along the way I just fell in love with the Hebrew culture itself in a removed way - like a piece of art.

I could go at lengths about their culture and the cultures related to their culture in even small ways...in fact; the shear volume and breadth of how many cultures you end up bumping into by digging at the Hebrew culture is one of the things I find so damnably amazing - I still can't very well wrap my head around it. It's like they reside at the largest intersection of an insanely busy city.

Gah...I'm rambling...

Anyway; happy to help

 

[Leumas]

I've sometimes argued that prophets - some of them, at least, were basically the philosophers of these cultures....

They were absolutely philosophers. Ontology was the central driver of the academic pursuit - it was their theoretical physics; the top bill.

So can we compare the ancient

• astrologers to our astronomers
• necromancers to our pathologists
• exorcists to our psychiatrists
• soothsayers to our economists (well... this one is probably true )

Maybe this video says it all



This one too

 

[Fellow Traveler]

While I am no expert in Hinduism, I have the impression that Hindus look upon their Gods as friends. Of course at the heart of every religion is some impossible hole that can only be explained by magic, nonetheless the Hindus seem to have fewer religious issues.

 

[JaysonR]

So can we compare the ancient

• astrologers to our astronomers
• necromancers to our pathologists
• exorcists to our psychiatrists
• soothsayers to our economists (well... this one is probably true )

I suppose, but to be clear, all I meant by that comment was that the field of what we would call a philosopher today was something akin to the social slot of a physicist for our culture today - in only the means of value - discerning the world around them.

In like fashion; their Priest castes were like our Congress and Senate (in the US).

 

[JaysonR]

While I am no expert in Hinduism, I have the impression that Hindus look upon their Gods as friends. Of course at the heart of every religion is some impossible hole that can only be explained by magic, nonetheless the Hindus seem to have fewer religious issues.

Yep; quite so - which is why the Indus Valley's absense is such a gaping wound for knowledge for us, in my opinion at least, because on one side we have one way of perception and on the other side we have a very different yet related method...Indus Valley may possibly be that grey area between the two, but we won't ever get to know until we can translate their language to something meaningful.

 

[Leumas]

I suppose this is a classic topic for me; growing up in a Christian household and not really just being satisfied with the identity of these unknown Hebrew people as presented in the Christian religious context.

Things didn't make sense; that really bothered me. I don't mean that my faith was in trouble; I don't think I really ever had much faith - or at least, never wanted it - to me the idea of all this metaphysical stuff was a chore; heaven was a tax to my 5 year old brain - not an ideal.
So what I mean by not making sense was the reality - the identity.
Things were radically missing between the gaps; why Israelite and Hebrew? What does that mean? Why a Samaritan; why not a Greek? Why Frankincense, Myrrh and Gold? Why is it a snake (in every case when something is a "snake")? Why so many names or titles for one god? Why don't they all talk about him the same way? What is the "highest point" of the Temple; is that a phrase or is this literally the needle point top of a dome? What is a "morning star"; why is this Latin word -Lucifer- in my English translation of a Hebrew text - what dose "Lucifer" mean and what of the Hebrew meaning is it representing - is it the right word to mean the Hebrew?

On and on...and no one person seemed to have an answer so I just started bouncing around and researching by the only way available back almost 20 years ago...I shacked up and lived with Greek Monks for a while and raided their libraries.
That got me started, and once the internet exploded..well...things got quite a bit easier.

I personally was convinced that the Bible was a load of poppycock after reading it from cover to cover (including the NT). In fact I was ready to chuck it in the garbage after reading Genesis but I told myself that it would be unscientific to judge a whole book by its first few pages and so I persevered. Nevertheless, the struggle repeated itself after every single book, but convincing myself to keep going was the hardest during and after having read Leviticus.

Consequently, I was sure that a myth that has for its heroes, excrement eaters and wife-pimping-cowards and cutthroat-genocidal-brigands is most definitely not a holy anything.

I was quite convinced by the tall tales about talking snakes and donkeys and dragons and ghosts and witches and zombies that the bible is nothing but a myth from a benighted people.

But more than anything, reading the bible assured me that YHWH is nothing but another benighted human construct like Satyrs and Cyclopeses and Voodoo since it is most assuredly not possible for anything worthy of worship to be a being who makes indissoluble real-estate contracts with a human signed by snipping off the tip of his penis and who to coerce people into worshiping him has to resort to threatening them with starvation to the point where they have to eat their children and who orders slavery and rape and genocide and ethnic cleansing. And all that pales in comparison to being an infanticidal, megalomaniacal, homicidal, racist, liar, jealous, lustful, gluttonous, greedy, slothful, envious, vain, pompous, wrathful, vengeful, deceitful, egotistical, malevolent and impotent deity.

 

[Leumas]

Somewhere along the way I just fell in love with the Hebrew culture itself in a removed way - like a piece of art.

I could go at lengths about their culture and the cultures related to their culture in even small ways...in fact; the shear volume and breadth of how many cultures you end up bumping into by digging at the Hebrew culture is one of the things I find so damnably amazing – I still can't very well wrap my head around it. It's like they reside at the largest intersection of an insanely busy city.

Yes.... you could conclude that Canaan was much like an Istanbul or New York of the ancient world.

Canaan was one of those places where numerous traders and trade caravans from almost all the cultures of the surrounding people around it used to merge on their way along the diverse trade routes many of which crossed right at Canaan.

The Canaanites/Phoenicians were themselves accomplished seafarers and well traveled traders who diverged out of Canaan to all corners of the world around them in pursuit of trade and goods and in doing so created settlements of their own in the numerous places identifiable in archaeological digs today (e.g. Spain, Ireland, Italy, South of France, Malta, Canaries, all the North African coast and in fact the whole of the Mediterranean area).

In the process they also brought back more than just goods, but also cultural influences and new ideas. Moreover in their settlements in Africa and Europe and Asia they “married” and in places like Carthage created major cities whose inhabitants in turn went to Canaan for trade with their kin who remained in the original land.

Later Canaan, in its twilight, became the place where a confluence of conquerors from all sorts of risen and fallen Imperialist civilizations have converged when they conquered Canaan as an objective in itself or even as a rest stop along their way to further more important objectives or as a buffer zone between them and their ongoing enemies.

It is not as if Canaan (or actually any place in the ancient world) had Immigration Officers checking visas and passports and no one ever checked social security numbers of people trying to get jobs. There was no AT&T trying to check people’s credit ratings to bind them to indissoluble contracts and thus no one needed people’s mothers’ social security numbers.

Have you visited Athens or Istanbul? Just riding on a bus in one of those cities you will be amazed at the variety of faces and the quantity of what is an obvious diversity of ethnicities yet they all share the same citizenship. On the other hand if you travel further out from the capital cities to villages you will also be amazed at how many dialects and how incomprehensible the language becomes in just a few kilometers. In Italy it seemed to me that villages a few kilometers apart speak totally different dialects.

So, I am sure that Canaan was not a single homogenous culture or language or religion or ethnicity, but a cosmopolitan salad bowl much like Istanbul or NewYork or Rome etc. etc. etc.

 

[JaysonR]

I personally was convinced that the Bible was a load of poppycock after reading it from cover to cover (including the NT). In fact I was ready to chuck it in the garbage after reading Genesis but I told myself that it would be unscientific to judge a whole book by its first few pages and so I persevered. Nevertheless, the struggle repeated itself after every single book, but convincing myself to keep going was the hardest during and after having read Leviticus.

Consequently, I was sure that a myth that has for its heroes, excrement eaters and wife-pimping-cowards and cutthroat-genocidal-brigands is most definitely not a holy anything.

I was quite convinced by the tall tales about talking snakes and donkeys and dragons and ghosts and witches and zombies that the bible is nothing but a myth from a benighted people.

But more than anything, reading the bible assured me that YHWH is nothing but another benighted human construct like Satyrs and Cyclopeses and Voodoo since it is most assuredly not possible for anything worthy of worship to be a being who makes indissoluble real-estate contracts with a human signed by snipping off the tip of his penis and who to coerce people into worshiping him has to resort to threatening them with starvation to the point where they have to eat their children and who orders slavery and rape and genocide and ethnic cleansing. And all that pales in comparison to being an infanticidal, megalomaniacal, homicidal, racist, liar, jealous, lustful, gluttonous, greedy, slothful, envious, vain, pompous, wrathful, vengeful, deceitful, egotistical, malevolent and impotent deity.

Oh the issue of the supernatural elements was never much of a reality for my mind; well before I consciously was aware of critical thinking, I found myself 'in the dark' (so to speak; feeling alone - that I must be missing something that made everything 'tick' for everyone else around me) because at a very early age, when the whole concept of souls and heaven, et. al. were told to me, I could not understand or relate to the descriptions.
All I knew was that apparently I "had" to work on some vague array of odd things for some access to some vague concept of this thing called "heaven" and all I thought then was that I envied my cat for just being allowed to die without anyone pulling it into another life.
So from very early on, I was not very enchanted with the metaphysical construct under which I grew up in...but never-the-less, I had to attend and go along with my parents for years...so that meant I became curious about the actual people behind all of these stories; why were the stories written in the way they were with the words chosen as they were - since clearly it wasn't a divine orchestration.


For me; the value of the this body of various and compiled works is anthropological.

 

[JaysonR]

Yes.... you could conclude that Canaan was much like an Istanbul or New York of the ancient world.

Canaan was one of those places where numerous traders and trade caravans from almost all the cultures of the surrounding people around it used to merge on their way along the diverse trade routes many of which crossed right at Canaan.

The Canaanites/Phoenicians were themselves accomplished seafarers and well traveled traders who diverged out of Canaan to all corners of the world around them in pursuit of trade and goods and in doing so created settlements of their own in the numerous places identifiable in archaeological digs today (e.g. Spain, Ireland, Italy, South of France, Malta, Canaries, all the North African coast and in fact the whole of the Mediterranean area).

In the process they also brought back more than just goods, but also cultural influences and new ideas. Moreover in their settlements in Africa and Europe and Asia they “married” and in places like Carthage created major cities whose inhabitants in turn went to Canaan for trade with their kin who remained in the original land.

Later Canaan, in its twilight, became the place where a confluence of conquerors from all sorts of risen and fallen Imperialist civilizations have converged when they conquered Canaan as an objective in itself or even as a rest stop along their way to further more important objectives or as a buffer zone between them and their ongoing enemies.

It is not as if Canaan (or actually any place in the ancient world) had Immigration Officers checking visas and passports and no one ever checked social security numbers of people trying to get jobs. There was no AT&T trying to check people’s credit ratings to bind them to indissoluble contracts and thus no one needed people’s mothers’ social security numbers.

Have you visited Athens or Istanbul? Just riding on a bus in one of those cities you will be amazed at the variety of faces and the quantity of what is an obvious diversity of ethnicities yet they all share the same citizenship. On the other hand if you travel further out from the capital cities to villages you will also be amazed at how many dialects and how incomprehensible the language becomes in just a few kilometers. In Italy it seemed to me that villages a few kilometers apart speak totally different dialects.

So, I am sure that Canaan was not a single homogenous culture or language or religion or ethnicity, but a cosmopolitan salad bowl much like Istanbul or NewYork or Rome etc. etc. etc.

The part that causes me amazement isn't the hub geographically, as what you outline is quite clearly the case when you look at ancient trade lines.
Instead, it is amazing that the Hebrew culture should remain relatively intact in form considering their capacity and considering their constant destruction and especially considering the constant eradication of so many equally sized (or larger) cultures in the area.

It's just amazing really.
It's like Iraq as New York in the sense of geographical hub slammed with the level of eradication, turmoil and ineptitude taking place.

Their survival in this hub is so strange (no, folks; not divine...just strange); the shear mass of contacts with so many cultures by this one inconsequential culture is the odd part.

 

[Leumas]

I suppose, but to be clear, all I meant by that comment was that the field of what we would call a philosopher today was something akin to the social slot of a physicist for our culture today - in only the means of value - discerning the world around them.

Yes we may stretch things to define Philosophers like Aristotle or Pythagoras to be akin to physicists but it would be a stretch beyond the tensile strength of the hardest material ever invented by science to call the prophets of the Tanakh philosophers let alone akin to scientists of any age never mind ours.

Proverbs (Mishleh) and Ecclesiastes (Koheleb) are not part of the Nevyeem section of the Tanakh, they are part of the Kituveem. They were not written by prophets nor were they prophetic.

No one knows who wrote Ecclesiastes. It is purported to be KING Solomon despite the fact that the book is most likely written in the very late 3rd Century BCE (i.e. 200+). This is well into the Hellenic period and Greek philosophy was well disseminated by then into the entire region let alone in Canaan.

Proverbs is purported to be a collection of sayings from KINGS (Solomon and Lemuel and Agur). It is a patchwork of stuff from the Persian/Hellenic era and lots of plagiarism from Egyptian and Mesopotamian writings of royal scribes in the service of courts and kings.

The major prophets (Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Isaiah) can hardly be called philosophers by any conceptual contortions of semantics. They went around doing crazy stuff and frightening people of the looming doom and gloom for not FEARING YHWH’s threats. The minor prophets (Zechariah, Malachi, Joel, Amos, Hosea, Jonah, Obadiah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Micah, Nahum and Haggai,) again just repeated the threats of gruesome disasters that were supposed to befall people for not genuflecting and sacrificing and groveling sufficiently for YHWH’s liking – hardly philosophical by any contortion of the word.

Of course that is not to mention the End of the World claptrap in most of them which is as much akin to philosophy as dog barking is akin to philosophy.

Where is the philosophy in this bunkum (Ezekiel 4)

4:1 Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and pourtray upon it the city, even Jerusalem:
4:2 And lay siege against it, and build a fort against it, and cast a mount against it; set the camp also against it, and set battering rams against it round about.
4:3 Moreover take thou unto thee an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city: and set thy face against it, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.
4:4 Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity.
4:5 For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.
4:6 And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.
4:7 Therefore thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and thine arm shall be uncovered, and thou shalt prophesy against it.
4:8 And, behold, I will lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn thee from one side to another, till thou hast ended the days of thy siege.
4:9 Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.
4:10 And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it.
4:11 Thou shalt drink also water by measure, the sixth part of an hin: from time to time shalt thou drink.
4:12 And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.
4:13 And the LORD said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them.
4:14 Then said I, Ah Lord GOD! behold, my soul hath not been polluted: for from my youth up even till now have I not eaten of that which dieth of itself, or is torn in pieces; neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth.
4:15 Then he said unto me, Lo, I have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith.
4:16 Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with care; and they shall drink water by measure, and with astonishment:
4:17 That they may want bread and water, and be astonished one with another, and consume away for their iniquity.​

In like fashion; their Priest castes were like our Congress and Senate (in the US).

If you mean that they were self-serving hypocritical corrupt huckstering poltroons then I agree. However, as a CASTE of hereditary ruling class they had more in common with the House of Lords in Britain than an “elected” bunch of shysters who are owned by their puppet masters who pay for their mass bamboozling campaigns (i.e. elections) every few years to maintain their seats of power.