The oldest biblical character who probably existed

[dafydd]

Jews again Matt. Do you ever think about anything else?

 

[Matt Giwer]

They may have existed, but they weren't anything like the "Kings" that they were portrayed as, more chieftans of a tribe. Documents of such ancient times tend to exaggerate.

And the degree of exaggeration is so great it does not matter in the least if there was or was not a real person who was at one time the model. There is no way to distinguish between total fabrication and exaggeration this great. Beyond that religious tradition is the ONLY source of the claim the Septuagint stories contain any greater semblance of fact than did episodes of Xena Warrior Princess.

The other problem is, lets say the character was some local, savage, illiterate bully named David. Judaism is not a creedal religion and never was. Rather is it the ritual/taboo type. It was always quid pro quo as is spelled out in the stories.

So tell me who would have put up with over three hundred arbitrary and capricious rules, violation of which was usually a capital offense for a crumby hilltop? Try another god. It can't be any worse. On top of those rules, what man would tolerate circumcision for a worthless patch of land when the Phoenician gods gave wealth in return for worship?

A religion with these strictures could not have survived without some serious reward from living a life most closely paralleled by Stalin's police state. Not just prohibitions/taboos but behavioral requirements/rituals with grossly disproportionate punishments for violations and a host of enforcers wandering about.

 

[Matt Giwer]

.
The first words in the theme for the movie "Exodus" are the basis..." This land is mine, God gave this land to me..".
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Yup, shure He did..
Years of christian guilt are invoked, with the pogroms and ghettos and all the nasty things that the Jews have suffered since, like, forever.

According to Israel Shahak the first Inquisition in Spain was conducted by rabbinical Jews against Karaite Jews a century before the more famous one.

 

[Matt Giwer]

...
It shows the interrelatedness of the people who occupied the land in and around Israel. I highlighted a fact I found intriguing given the Exodus story.

Assuming one does not have a problem with Africa as the origin of Homo Sapiens then by examining a map one can see the only modern route out of Africa is through bibleland. That means every human being outside of Africa can claim bibleland as the homeland of his ancestors.

The lower sea levels at the time when HS was leaving Africa means the Red Sea was much easier to cross with swimming an option complicates this a bit but bibleland is still the only way out of Africa without getting their feet wet.

 

[Matt Giwer]

Since Hans has already effectively rebutted your claims about the Tel Dan inscription,

A response is not a rebuttal and a rebuttal is not a refutation. When we get to the successful refutation part you be sure to jump in and say something.

I'll just respond to the portion of your post I've hilited. There most assuredly is considerable archaeological evidence of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the Iron Age. This evidence includes the following:

1) Preserved Assyrian documents referring to various kings of Israel and Judah - including Omri and Ahab in Israel, and Hezekiah and Ahaz in Judah. These documents also refer to the cities of Samaria, Lachish and Jerusalem.

2) The Moabite Stone set up by Mesha, king of Moab, in which he refers to Omri and his son, and tells of his struggles against Israel and how he dragged the altar of Yahweh in the dust.

3) Ahab's ivory palace and stables. These were originally thought to be those of Solomon. However, there is no archaeological evidence for that king. The "ivory palace" is so called because of the large number of ivory figurines found in it, indicating Ahab's wealth.

You seem to be conflating evidence of Iron Age kingdoms with that of Bronze Age kingdoms. Of course, the only reference to Israel in the Late Bronze Age, as I have previously noted, is the mention of a people called Israel, among others living in Canaan, in the Merneptah Victory Stele. Neither Hans nor I have proposed the existence of a Bronze Age kingdom of Israel or any historical or archaeological validity of the conquest narrative of Joshua. We have both, further, stated that the only basis for the Exodus would have been a few minor escapes of bands of slaves. My speculation that such escapes may have been conflated with the actual history of the earlier expulsion of the Hyksos is quite independent of Josephus.

Even if all of those were legitimately what the believers claim them to be, and only believers make the implication you are making,

1) It shows there is no greater "historical" content in the Septuagint than is found in episodes of Xena Warrior Princess.

2) The first appearance of the stories in history are in Greek and collected in what it commonly called the Septuagint.

For every other ancient civilization it has been possible for archaeologists to piece together a good idea of the culture. This has been done in the case of Egypt despite the written records being erronius in part as with Herodotus or almost completely wrong as with Genesis and Exodus. Nothing found by archaeologists in bibleland would support the development of a narrative anything like the Septuagint stories if they had never been created.

Rather what we have are a few finds ranging from the ridiculous to the debatable with nothing rising above debatable.

The Tel Dan inscription is like taking the Kensington rune stone and claiming it proves the existence of a Viking kingdom in the Americas perhaps even claiming the kingdom was named Valhalla. Once one claims it was "likely" named Valhalla then one can pull phrases out of any saga that mentioned Valhalla to support the case for the Viking kingdom.

As to Egyptian control of the Levant at the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age, Merneptah's military campaign in Canaan was to reassert a declining influence there. Rameses III reasserted Egyptian power - which had obviously declined somewhat from Merneptah's time - in the Levant for the last time in the 1100s. Even at the height of Egyptian power in the New Kingdom, Egyptian rule in Canaan was one of rather loose control and amounted to having garrisons stationed there to enforce Egyptian hegemony and the payment of tribute by subject kings, who still ruled their own kingdoms and city states. We have evidence for this in the letters of these various kings to Akhenaten in the Amarna Letters.

Whatever one might take the nature of the rule to be military bases demonstrate who is in charge. For most of its empire that is all Rome had. One can take a factual description of garrisons and make it sound most any way one likes.

OTOH we can look at Jerusalem after rebuilt by Rome and find it a Roman city for its roman features. If we look to descriptions of the city before Rome rebuilt it we find pyramids and sphinxes were the most common motifs which are clearly due to the local alliance with the Ptolemeys against eastern Greek empire.

Before that we have no idea as if it existed at all as Alexander did not conquer it or if it existed its surrender was by proxy of the surrender of a city Alexander did conquer.

Going back further we have Herodotus during Persian rule who mentions Palestine seven times but no mention of any Judea nor of people who could have been Judeans.

While the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, it is absolutely not a warrant to assume existence.

Claims of the Septuagint stories being more than a 1st or 2nd c. BC creations in Greek are found only in unprovenanced religious tradition.

Speaking of Herodotus, the father of history, did you know believers say he was not? Rather than say writing history was invented by illiterate goatherds in the hills of Judea who otherwise produced nothing of interest to the world. At least that is the way religious tradition would have it.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Gods making people out of clay isn't just in the Egyptian myth. It's also in a very early Mesopotamian myth, and really, those guys were a bigger influence on the middle East while Egypt was bottled by the desert until the Hyskos invasion. Not to mention the whole trip to Babylon those guys had. Heck, it's even in Chinese creation myths (check out Nuwa's creating people), with different materials in Norse creation myths, and as an intermediate step even in Mesoamerican creation myths (the final step uses a different material again.) Gods creating people out of some construction material is a very common myth, and earth was a common construction material.

You're picking on an element too common to specifically attribute it to Egypt. Egypt is just one of very many who have that kind of myth.

 

[Matt Giwer]

Gods making people out of clay isn't just in the Egyptian myth. It's also in a very early Mesopotamian myth, and really, those guys were a bigger influence on the middle East while Egypt was bottled by the desert until the Hyskos invasion. Not to mention the whole trip to Babylon those guys had. Heck, it's even in Chinese creation myths (check out Nuwa's creating people), with different materials in Norse creation myths, and as an intermediate step even in Mesoamerican creation myths (the final step uses a different material again.) Gods creating people out of some construction material is a very common myth, and earth was a common construction material.

You're picking on an element too common to specifically attribute it to Egypt. Egypt is just one of very many who have that kind of myth.

I am picking what appears most obvious to me, the creation of the Septuagint in Egypt in Greek. There is no point in considering real history prior to the Septuagint's creation. The closest Greek speaking place of learning to Judea is Alexandria. The Ptolemy's political involvement with the ex-Phoenician empire goes back to the first Herod at least. During Cleopatra's time her sister who was in contention for the throne was given sanctuary in Syria. Egypt supported the Maccabes against the armies of Aristobulus which had been hired by two Judeans to take over Judea.

The Maccabe story is usually told as a revolt against Greek ways, sort of a early day clash of the Ayatollahs against civilization with the Ayatollahs winning. However, Josephus clearly recounts the opening of the conflict as between which Greek empire to side with. Of course it does not read exactly like that but it is the closest analogy. For example it does not say they paid for the armies but other records indicate everyone else did. It also indicates Judea was part of Syria because of the progress of the quarrel.

1. At the same time that Antiochus, who was called Epiphanes, had a quarrel with the sixth Ptolemy about his right to the whole country of Syria, a great sedition fell among the men of power in Judea, and they had a contention about obtaining the government; while each of those that were of dignity could not endure to be subject to their equals. However, Onias, one of the high priests, got the better, and cast the sons of Tobias out of the city; who fled to Antiochus, and besought him to make use of them for his leaders, and to make an expedition into Judea. The king being thereto disposed beforehand, complied with them, and came upon the Jews with a great army, and took their city by force, and slew a great multitude of those that favored Ptolemy, and sent out his soldiers to plunder them without mercy. He also spoiled the temple, and put a stop to the constant practice of offering a daily sacrifice of expiation for three years and six months. But Onias, the high priest, fled to Ptolemy, and received a place from him in the Nomus of Heliopolis, where he built a city resembling Jerusalem, and a temple that was like its temple concerning which we shall speak more in its proper place hereafter.

There are certainly other ways to read it but it is a conflict between two empires not ayatollahs against civilization. It starts with no religion issues at all.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, maybe looking at real history may be a good start in any case.

For a start, which Egyptian creation myth? There are at least three major ones, and several lesser known ones, and they vary across their three thousand years of history.

In at least one version of the Ennead, humans aren't made by Ra, but by Khnum. In other versions, humans are born from the tears of Ra. Or in another myth, everything just comes into being because Ra has the power to make something exist by just saying its name. (Strangely reminiscent of God saying "let there be..." in Genesis, but too bad it dosn't have the extra step of making humans in a different way.) And others contain countless variations, as each city had a different patron god, and each made their own god a little more important. E.g., in one version Ra makes Ptah, and Ptah makes the other gods. Heck, in another version, Ptah made Ra.

So, really, which cult do you propose they got their creation from, and how do you support it being exactly that cult? If you're saying you know it's copied specifically from the Egyptians, surely you can support that.

Plus, you know, there's a reason why "cum hoc ergo propter hoc" is a fallacy. Just noticing one coincidence and postulating that there's no need to look at anything else, is cute it its silliness, but ultimately still silly.

 

[ddt]

Yet after all of this there is still not a single bit of evidence of the existence of the Septuagint stories prior to the appearance of the appearance of the Septuagint.

As there is no evidence of anything prior to the Greek Septuagint much less what it might have consisted of if anything there is no rational reason to assume there was anything older.

As no rational person would make such an assumption the rational person must proceed with the evidence as it exists, that the Greek Septuagint is the original creation.

The oldest manuscript we have of the Iliad is the Venetus A from the 10th C. AD, so we must conclude that the claim that the Iliad was conceived in the 8th C. BC as nonsense, as well as the claim that the Athenian authorities first had it written down around 500 BC.

Oh, and the Dead Sea Scrolls have significant portions of the Bible in Hebrew, and are more-or-less contemporaneous with the Septuagint.

 

[ddt]

It is written in Phoenician which is, except for believers, the same as what they want to call Hebrew. The transliterations are well known. W and V are not interchangeable. When the Septuagint was transliterated into "hebrew" aka Aramaic V was used. The letters are not interchangeable in the original Greek either.

You keep harping on this V/W distinction. Could you point me out where in the Phoenician alphabet or in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet I find the corresponding letters?

Could you also point out which letters Ancient Greek or early Koine would use? You refer to the Septuagint, and that was compiled in the 3th/2th C. BC in Alexandria.

The original letter that represented the W-sound was the Wau or Digamma. It was still in use at the time the Homeric poems came into being, but had disappeared by the time it was put into writing (thus causing early linguists to think that Homer's metrum had errors). And oh, I forget, Homer's Iliad was actually written in the 10th C. AD.

The Upsilon represents a U-sound, a vowel. Its pronunciation as an "F" or "V" in diphtongs is a Modern Greek development.

The Phi is sometimes transliterated as an "F", but in Ancient Greek really was an aspirated P, thence the usual "PH" transliteration. The development into an "F" again is Modern Greek.

Lastly, the Beta is soundly a B in Ancient Greek. Modern Greek pronounces it as a "V".

All of these phonological developments took place in late Koine, after the Septuagint was written.

So I'm at a loss which Greek letters you refer to. AFAIK, the Greeks had letters for neither of them

 

[Matt Giwer]

The oldest manuscript we have of the Iliad is the Venetus A from the 10th C. AD, so we must conclude that the claim that the Iliad was conceived in the 8th C. BC as nonsense, as well as the claim that the Athenian authorities first had it written down around 500 BC.

Oh, and the Dead Sea Scrolls have significant portions of the Bible in Hebrew, and are more-or-less contemporaneous with the Septuagint.

As with ALL ancient manuscripts the evidence of its time of creation is oldest mention of it. No one EVER claims the oldest copy indicates anything but the date of the oldest copy.

This sort of thing can be thought by an interested high school student yet believers are always trying to pretend something that for a fact they know is not true should be justification for their belief in the religious tradition of the origin of their religious texts.

Please do better.

 

[Matt Giwer]

...

So, really, which cult do you propose they got their creation from, and how do you support it being exactly that cult? If you're saying you know it's copied specifically from the Egyptians, surely you can support that.

Plus, you know, there's a reason why "cum hoc ergo propter hoc" is a fallacy. Just noticing one coincidence and postulating that there's no need to look at anything else, is cute it its silliness, but ultimately still silly.

This is only one of many things from ancient times that has interested me and ancient history and archaeology are not my primary interests. Although I have been considering the issue over decades it cannot be described as for decades. I catch material as I come across it not as a dedicated research project.

So yes, I am aware of that fallacy and several others that are quite easy to fall into on this subject. There are other chances for mistakes that are even greater such as the ideas being accepted as true by others. That has claimed way to many when talking about things with a religious connection.

At the moment my risk has been over-reaching because of past successes. I have found I can correctly predict what I will find. The Maccabe war is an example. Up to about a year ago I considered it a war against civilization by ayatollahs.

Around then I picked up enough material from other sources to find serious problems with that. I predicted I would find evidence it was a proxy war between the two Greek empires. It was only a couple months ago that I had to time and inclination to actually read Wars of the Jews start to finish rather than skim and scan to find other things. And there it was in the first paragraph of the first book, the description of a proxy war.

Then Alexander's conquest of Hyrcania, Ptolemy III(?) protection of the first Herod and a few other things fell into place.

So yes the risk of accidental connection being considered causative is always there. However I am using the scientific method of developing hypothesis to explain facts and then making predictions to test them. The theory that explains the greatest number of facts I take to be the best.

No matter how erroneous one thinks my theories are they can only be compared to other theories which explain the same facts.

The problem with believers is they take religious traditions as facts, things like "Jews lived there for centuries and created these stories." I cannot find any source for that but religious tradition and no independent physical evidence that differs from my Kensington runestone analogy to Tel Dan.

So facts have to be limited to those in evidence and no more than what they are.

As to which creation story, should I some day find one connected with the Serapis temple I expect it to be very close -- prediction there. The versions of the early stories such as creation sound to us less silly than the complex ones of truly ancient civilization. After Theogony the Greeks didn't do much with the silly parts but developed those things which sound less silly to us. Instead of gods begatting and warring the Greeks developed themes of the interaction of men with gods and what happened because of that interaction. Their better ones were tragedies. Damn near every interaction with the gods in the Septuagint stories is a tragedy one way or another. Gods are unforgiving so things always go wrong eventually.

So I see Greek literary aspects in the Septuagint. I also see history in it, invented by Herodotus in the mid 4th c. BC and unlikely filtering into bibleland until after Alexander. That certainly moves the creation date forward also considering there were no Judeans for Alexander to conquer.

Greeks and Egyptians were also influenced by those others but having stronger cultures one way or the other they reimagined the stories to a locally popular style. Bibleland is the place of border conflicts between Greek empires before the Septuagint appears. So from both sides the influences are Greek on top of the older Syrian and Egyptian. Herodotus is the one who wrote of Syria Palestine. So what I am claiming is rather a minor addition, existing mythological themes told with a Greek influence. That is actually very little.

BUT you are certainly correct to dismiss all of that as speculation as there are still to many loose ends. However it explains much more than any believer theory -- as if believers had theories. Believers start from the full-blown divinely inspired tradition and subtract as little as possible. For some reason they think that makes the religious tradition other than a religious tradition. Its origin is only a religious tradition with or without the god parts. The nature of the contents is a separate tradition which is equally fanciful.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, I'm certainly not a believer in the Bible or the OT as historical narrative. It still seems to me kind of silly to claim that a common myth that existed all over the middle east for thousands of years, must come via a specific Egyptian version of it. Why would it need to? That basic kind of creation myth already existed among the Canaanites which already were there, and some of who would later (take your pick when) redefine themselves as Hebrews, as well as in some mighty empires that were a bigger influence there than Egypt ever was and for a while even ruled the area. Why would it need to be copied from Egypt in 200 BC, when it was already common in the area since 3000 BC at the very least?

It's not a problem of particularly trusting the Bible or that has anything to do with the Jews as such. Look at it this way: There was a huge blotch of semitic population that spanned the middle east since the rise of Akkad and its displacing the original Sumerians. We can even see an evolution from Akkadian towards proto-Hebrew in, for example, the Ebla tablets. (But bear in mind that here I'm talking about "Hebrew" as a language rather than necessarily a religion. That stuff is a millennium before the supposed "Moses".) So, really, there was a people there with all sorts of traditions, myths, and all the rest of human stuff. At some later point (take your pick of date) some decided to make their own monotheistic religion and be dicks about it, others not so much. Why do you need to assume that they necessarily had to copy the Genesis from Egypt instead of using the more local and available stuff?

Don't get me wrong, it's just fantasy stuff either way. I just don't see why it has to come from a specific Egyptian version.

 

[I Ratant]

...
Such things make Lord Occam turn in his grave.
...

.
Occam's razor is attributed to the 14th-century English logician, theologian and Franciscan friar Father William of Ockham (d'Okham) although the principle was familiar long before.
Not a member of the nobility.

 

[I Ratant]

Assuming one does not have a problem with Africa as the origin of Homo Sapiens then by examining a map one can see the only modern route out of Africa is through bibleland. That means every human being outside of Africa can claim bibleland as a
homeland stopover on the way from the homeland of his ancestors.

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.
ftfy

 

[I Ratant]

"Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were" goes around the world looking at creation myths, and gods and things.
The cranky old fogeys that thunk up that stuff shure had active imaginations!

 

[TimCallahan]

A response is not a rebuttal and a rebuttal is not a refutation. When we get to the successful refutation part you be sure to jump in and say something.



Even if all of those were legitimately what the believers claim them to be, and only believers make the implication you are making,

1) It shows there is no greater "historical" content in the Septuagint than is found in episodes of Xena Warrior Princess.

2) The first appearance of the stories in history are in Greek and collected in what it commonly called the Septuagint.

For every other ancient civilization it has been possible for archaeologists to piece together a good idea of the culture. This has been done in the case of Egypt despite the written records being erronius in part as with Herodotus or almost completely wrong as with Genesis and Exodus. Nothing found by archaeologists in bibleland would support the development of a narrative anything like the Septuagint stories if they had never been created.

Rather what we have are a few finds ranging from the ridiculous to the debatable with nothing rising above debatable.

The Tel Dan inscription is like taking the Kensington rune stone and claiming it proves the existence of a Viking kingdom in the Americas perhaps even claiming the kingdom was named Valhalla. Once one claims it was "likely" named Valhalla then one can pull phrases out of any saga that mentioned Valhalla to support the case for the Viking kingdom.



Whatever one might take the nature of the rule to be military bases demonstrate who is in charge. For most of its empire that is all Rome had. One can take a factual description of garrisons and make it sound most any way one likes.

OTOH we can look at Jerusalem after rebuilt by Rome and find it a Roman city for its roman features. If we look to descriptions of the city before Rome rebuilt it we find pyramids and sphinxes were the most common motifs which are clearly due to the local alliance with the Ptolemeys against eastern Greek empire.

Before that we have no idea as if it existed at all as Alexander did not conquer it or if it existed its surrender was by proxy of the surrender of a city Alexander did conquer.

Going back further we have Herodotus during Persian rule who mentions Palestine seven times but no mention of any Judea nor of people who could have been Judeans.

While the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, it is absolutely not a warrant to assume existence.

Claims of the Septuagint stories being more than a 1st or 2nd c. BC creations in Greek are found only in unprovenanced religious tradition.

Speaking of Herodotus, the father of history, did you know believers say he was not? Rather than say writing history was invented by illiterate goatherds in the hills of Judea who otherwise produced nothing of interest to the world. At least that is the way religious tradition would have it.

I notice that in this entire post you did not respond to the points I actually made concerning preserved ancient documents (inscriptions, cuneiform tablets, etc.) regarding the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Among these, along with others, are the Moabite Stone, set up by Mesha, king of Moab, referring to Omri, king of Israel and Sennacherib's chronicle, telling how he devastated the land of Judah and shut King Hezekiah up in his capitol city Jerusalem. These records considerably antedate Alexander.

So, tell me, to whom was Mesha referring if there was no kingdom of Israel when he erected the Moabite Stone, and to whom was Sennacherib referring in his chronicle when he tells of crushing Hezekiah's revolt and shutting him up in his royal city, Jerusalem, if there was no kingdom of Judah at the time?

 

[Matt Giwer]

Gday,

BYT meaning "house" is like English "ville" or "borough" or "ton" - meaning a place, not a dynasty.

BYTShMSh is BethShemesh meaning a place, and also the group of people who live there.

BYTLHM is Bethlehem meaning a place, and also the group of people who live there.

BYTEL is BethEl meaning a place, and also the group of people who live there.

BYTDWD is BethDavid meaning a place, and also the group of people who live there.

All of these refer to places, and/or groups of people who live there.

Nothing to do with a the existence of Shamesh or Lehem or or El or David.
But it's too late now - it's widely (and wrongly) accepted as evidence for David, when it fairly clearly is not.
...

But on the other hand we have BYT YHWH for Temple of Yahweh and BYT STRT for Tower of Strato instead of Temple of Astarte because everyone knows the Judeans were monotheists. Because everyone knows that it would be improper to point out that next to the Antonine Fort in Jerusalem was a temple to Astarte so it must have been one of those towers of Strato.

One might think believers would eventually wonder who was Strato and why did he have so many towers? Herod built Strato a tower in Caesarea.

Of course if the believers are simply flustered by the presence of a temple to Astarte in Jerusalem in the 1st c. AD then must be a tower of the great and powerful Strato.

This is not a matter of a grudging admission that the goddess was worshipped into the 3rd c. BC. This is a fact that she was worshipped in Jerusalem in the 1st c. AD despite all the BS about monotheism. They were clearly polytheists problem is the women did not write down their religion. Nor did the Greeks or Romans ask the women about their religion.

As one wag put it the Yahweh temple had to be at a lower level than Astarte's because if it were the other way around visitor's to Yahweh's could look down and see the priests screwing the priestesses in divine worship of the goddess.

 

[TimCallahan]

But on the other hand we have BYT YHWH for Temple of Yahweh and BYT STRT for Tower of Strato instead of Temple of Astarte because everyone knows the Judeans were monotheists. Because everyone knows that it would be improper to point out that next to the Antonine Fort in Jerusalem was a temple to Astarte so it must have been one of those towers of Strato.

One might think believers would eventually wonder who was Strato and why did he have so many towers? Herod built Strato a tower in Caesarea.

Of course if the believers are simply flustered by the presence of a temple to Astarte in Jerusalem in the 1st c. AD then must be a tower of the great and powerful Strato.

This is not a matter of a grudging admission that the goddess was worshipped into the 3rd c. BC. This is a fact that she was worshipped in Jerusalem in the 1st c. AD despite all the BS about monotheism. They were clearly polytheists problem is the women did not write down their religion. Nor did the Greeks or Romans ask the women about their religion.

As one wag put it the Yahweh temple had to be at a lower level than Astarte's because if it were the other way around visitor's to Yahweh's could look down and see the priests screwing the priestesses in divine worship of the goddess.

Could you give a reference for this? The latest evidence of Ashtart / Anath being worshipped alongside Yahweh, that I know of, goes back to the Elephantine papyri. Of course, Asherah figurines were quite common before the exile.

 

[Matt Giwer]

Well, I'm certainly not a believer in the Bible or the OT as historical narrative.

But the fact that it reads like a historical narrative does put its creation after the invention of the style of historical narrative.

It still seems to me kind of silly to claim that a common myth that existed all over the middle east for thousands of years, must come via a specific Egyptian version of it. Why would it need to?

It may come from any place. I simply gave what I presently suspect based upon what I have found so far. I really do not care where it came from. I simply pointed out the Egyptian in response to the mention of the serpent by someone else. I have not found a serpent/tree association any place else but in fairness I have yet to find the complete story associated with this rather famous image.
http://www.giwersworld.org/images/eden-full.jpg
I have no idea if it has any connection at all to any part of any creation myth nor was it my intent to imply it beyond as a response to a similar joke.

As I say, there is a risk to success. I was talking about the Septuagint stories being backstories for the Yahweh cult nearly two years before I discovered the Ptolemeys had previously successfully created Serapis.

That basic kind of creation myth already existed among the Canaanites

Speaking of whom I have never come across a single archaeological find of any inscription indicating there were ever any people who were called or who called themselves Canaanites. Arkies have identified the Phoenicians cities by their own names and of course the Hellenes of Joppa but nothing remotely like it for "Canaan." In fact the only usage I have found of that word among arkies (who should know better) is as a generic reference for the region much as I use bibleland.

In other words the Canaanites in addition to the Philistines are another fictional people invented by the Septuagint creators. Of course anyone who is not a believers will produce physical evidence of the ancient usage of the word not a one off find on some inscription which could as easily been where the Septuagint creators found the word.

which already were there, and some of who would later (take your pick when) redefine themselves as Hebrews, as well as in some mighty empires that were a bigger influence there than Egypt ever was and for a while even ruled the area. Why would it need to be copied from Egypt in 200 BC, when it was already common in the area since 3000 BC at the very least?

Speaking of people who are found only in the Septuagint, Hebrews are among them as are Israelites. Only the name Judea/Judean has actually had people who called themselves that known to real history. Arkies find no such names in bibleland until the Greek period where Judea begins to appear.

A lot of this is unlearning because so much has been spoken so commonly and with such authority that it takes a while to realize they are also found only in fiction. And as from Josephus, 'Jews who take their name from their land Judea.'

It's not a problem of particularly trusting the Bible or that has anything to do with the Jews as such. Look at it this way: There was a huge blotch of semitic population that spanned the middle east since the rise of Akkad and its displacing the original Sumerians. We can even see an evolution from Akkadian towards proto-Hebrew in, for example, the Ebla tablets.

I have a whole other set of references which point to the consensus among linguists that what is called Hebrew is really Phoenician found where the Septuagint says the Jews lived. Of course believers are still wont to make claims about differences before spelling and grammar were standardized.

A more interesting example is from Ugarit with a phonetic version of cuneiform to represent Phoenician. At least there we find the oldest mention of the minor god Yahweh. How the folks in the hill country married Ashara off to that nere-do-well is still a mystery.

(But bear in mind that here I'm talking about "Hebrew" as a language rather than necessarily a religion.

That is why I pointed out only believers claim it is other than Phoenician.

That stuff is a millennium before the supposed "Moses".) So, really, there was a people there with all sorts of traditions, myths, and all the rest of human stuff. At some later point (take your pick of date) some decided to make their own monotheistic religion and be dicks about it, others not so much. Why do you need to assume that they necessarily had to copy the Genesis from Egypt instead of using the more local and available stuff?

But they were not monotheists. The first simple declarative sentence for monotheism is found in the Koran. The Judeans were never monotheists unless you want to insist there really was a famous person named Strato who had towers in Tyre, Jerusalem, and Caesarea. BYT STRT Temple Astarte next to the Antonine Fort in Jerusalem which was on the "temple mount" and all kinds of things follow from that.

We have only one god is not the same as there is only one god. The Christians used the term true god but the proper translation is true and false god in the sense of true and false patriot or lover. It meant not fickle as were the other gods. I believe in one god has the sense of faith and trust and is definitely not, I believe there is only one god. In fact the entire concept of refusing to worship other gods is nonsense if they in fact did believe there was only one god.

But if the Judeans had been monotheists they would have been the only monotheists in the entire world. They would have been the strangest people in the entire world. It would have been the one thing that made them different from other savages on the periphery of the empire. But no one mentioned it.

Before Islam the most the Christians did was demote the pagan gods to demons when they had to explain how they could work cures and answer prayers just as well as Jesus.

Of course once Islam made the declaration Jews and Christians were quick to jump in with US TOO! for the all credibility it gave them.

Lots of people disagree with that so great their indoctrination. I challenge them to simply quote the clear statements of either or both Jewish and Christian monotheism. The one thing that differentiates them from all the other people in the one area where it was supposed to matter, their god, one would expect statements of it to litter their literature. One would expect their detractors to use it to set them apart, condemn them, to ridicule them. "How poor are the Jews? They can only afford one god!" But we find no such thing even when they were secure in their own territory to say what they wanted.

Don't get me wrong, it's just fantasy stuff either way. I just don't see why it has to come from a specific Egyptian version.

I did not mean to give the impression it had to come from them. I simply expect to find it from them.