history and myth of Exodus

[hgc]

Well hell, man, come up with any scenario that's not, for this time and place, and you win a prize!

ETA: As far as odds go, I would give precious little over even-money for Joshua being real. I think it's only somewhat more likey, given the current state of the evidence. Of course, I'd take extremely long odds over Hezekiah being real, because we have Assyrian records about him as well as Judean records, and they match. I'd take equally long odds for a historical Jesus who is crucified by Pilate. As for Moses as lawgiver and Aaron as High Priest of Yahweh, I suppose I'd bet $25 to get $15 that they were real.

What odds are you giving for 2nd Samuel?

 

[Piggy]

What odds are you giving for 2nd Samuel?

3 to 1 to win in the fifth.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

There is an important difference between saying that a story about George Washington is pure fiction and saying that George Washington himself is pure fiction.

The thing, though, is that

A) you don't know exactly what bits they added or distorted to the Moses story. E.g., you don't really know if the Levites (and for that matter everyone else) coming out of Egypt was based on anything real, or just propaganda written in the 6'th century BCE... you know, around the time they actually did get taken into slavery by their neighbours from the other side, to make the case, basically, "we've been enslaved by a big empire before, God will help us again."

These guys distorted history left, right and center. They were not above even drastically changing the character of Cyrus the Great, a guy even they respected and who set them free, when they wrote Daniel. From a guy who just had a moral and religious objection to slavery, and believed in religious freedom, he becomes some superstitious believer in the Babylonian gods (which he as a devout Zoroastrian wouldn't be) and who is just out-maneuvered by God and Daniel. Even about Moses these guys didn't think twice to pull a "look, we found a version 2.0 of Moses's rules" with the Deuteronomy. Who's to say they couldn't pull the same trick with the first one, written half a millennium after the supposed events and already distorted beyond belief anyway?

Basically you don't know WTH Moses originally was. He could have been a lawgiver, or just some respected ancient king that they decide to turn into a conduit for God's laws, or just some preacher who founded their sect. Or whatever, really.

B) stories can start from more things than a real historical character. E.g., from other stories. And frankly, after half a millennium and nothing about it written down, all they have are stories either way. Or just from the message they want to present.

The aforementioned Daniel is a perfect example of someone made up after a couple of centuries, to (A) establish the credentials of a prophet by making him do miracles and predict real stuff (the story, of course, being made up after the event) and then (B) use that established prophet status to give some predictions about the near future.

To hammer the point home, they started from a story about Cyrus, but the main character Daniel is made up. I don't see why they couldn't have ended up making up Moses starting from, say, Aaron.

Heck, we see the same kind of mythicizing a companion even in the modern days, for example with Paul Bunyan's ox, which seems to have taken a legendary life of its own. And make no mistake, the original stories weren't really about the ox.

C) just the fact that some hundreds of years afterwards someone is believed to be a real person, and lots of people believe it, means nothing. Doubly so when it's propaganda told to some illiterate goat herders, who not only are too illiterate to look up the information, but are even forbidden to open the ark and read the stuff for themselves... or discover there's nothing in it in the first place.

E.g., sure, Washington is a real character in some stories, but Sherlock Holmes is still taken for real by millions of people. It only took a couple of decades for letters to start pouring in to that address. And that happened in an age of mass literacy and unprecedented access to information.

E.g., in ancient times the more civilized and literate civilization of the Romans took characters like Aeneas or Odysseus for real, although there was no evidence whatsoever that Homer based them on any real sources or even meant to write about real people. And I mean real enough to base a frikken claim to divine ancestry on them.

And oh, that too involved a mythicized and extra-long journey all over the place, until finally settling up in Latium. I mean Aeneas even ends up in Carthage and even takes a trip to the Underworld on his way there.

E.g., Robin Hood is taken for historical by a surprising number of people, although it seems to have been originally just a generic term for a highwayman. So in that sense you could say that some highwayman existed, in fact lots of robbers existed, but all the details in the story, down to the wrong century and character of his deeds, are made up. You can't really reconstruct a historical Robin Hood from the story. In fact, none of the many bandits all over England who were named robin hoods, seem to have done any of that heroic and patriotic stuff. They were just common bandits.

E.g., even a number of saints like Christopher or Jehoshaphat seem to never have existed (in fact Jehoshaphat may well be the result of hearing about Buddha), but were nevertheless taken for real enough to actually be canonized, and have official dates in the martyrology, and everything.

Etc.

The fact that some people believe person X really existed, doesn't mean jack squat, really.

 

[TimCallahan]

Well hell, man, come up with any scenario that's not, for this time and place, and you win a prize!
ETA: As far as odds go, I would give precious little over even-money for Joshua being real. I think it's only somewhat more likely, given the current state of the evidence. Of course, I'd take extremely long odds over Hezekiah being real, because we have Assyrian records about him as well as Judean records, and they match. I'd take equally long odds for a historical Jesus who is crucified by Pilate. As for Moses as lawgiver and Aaron as High Priest of Yahweh, I suppose I'd bet $25 to get $15 that they were real.

That strikes me as a good reason to be very cautious with scenarios. The only preserved documentation we have -- prior to Assyrian records mentioning various kings of Israel and Judah, the Moabite Stone and the Tel Dan inscription, which mentions a "king of the House of David" -- is Merneptah's victory stele. So, we know that by ca. 1200 BCE there was a tribal group (as indicated by the determinative preceding the name) called "Israel" living in Canaan among many other groups.

There's no way to prove that Dever's "Proto-Israelite" sites were really inhabited by the ancestors of the Israelites. However, the absence of pig bones in their kitchen middens is a strong indicator of a tribal group that didn't eat pork, probably as a mark of separation to differentiate them from the surrounding peoples.

There are some indications that the Levites or at least those forming the tribe's core came from the south, possibly Egypt by way of Edom. There are other indications that the Danites might have originally been a group relate to the Philistines. However, both of these hypotheses could easily be wrong.

I'm going to look up material on hereditary priesthoods to see if I can find out anything on how they come into being.

ETA: It's also very likely that the 12 tribe confederation was an amphictyonic league centered on the shrine of the ark of the covenant in Shiloh, which according to Friedman, was also the center of the Mushite priesthood, the Aaronids being centered (later) in Jerusalem. When it comes to the stories in Judges and 1 Samuel, I think some of them could be quite historical, though fictionalized, such as the defeat of Sisera, to which is appended a truncated variant of the topos developed more fully in David's dance. At the same time, Samson is pure myth.

 

[I Ratant]

... This is high literature used as an instrument of power.

.
As it was and always shall be, forever and ever, amen.

 

[OCaptain]

.
If you disagree with the 40 years, then there must be other things you disagree with.
How about talking snakes, or talking burning bushes?
That Flood?
The sun stopping in its travels..
How many of these must there be to pretty much prove the whole book is a legend?

I'm less concerned here with the patently miraculous, and more interested in that for which clarification can be offered with regard to a putative exodus.

Sorry if that disappoints you and isn't the kind of conversation you wish to have. Perhaps someone will be happy to have that conversation with you?

 

[OCaptain]

One rationalization I've heard is that nomadic peoples often put their dead up on raised platforms until they are desiccated, then carry their bones with them to certain burial sites.

Of course, the bast explanations are that either there was no Exodus event or that it involved a small band.

I've arrived at that conclusion myself. Tens of thousands makes sense. Think of a more modern example - the Ruala bedoin in Arabia. At the turn of the last century they numbered 30,000 easy, but were so efficient in their wanderings that they left no measureable material remains behind.

 

[I Ratant]

I'm less concerned here with the patently miraculous, and more interested in that for which clarification can be offered with regard to a putative exodus.

Sorry if that disappoints you and isn't the kind of conversation you wish to have. Perhaps someone will be happy to have that conversation with you?

.
There's been lots of discussion about that here, and also nothing concrete confirming it comes out of the discussion.
"Miraculous" and wishful thinking are pretty much the same thing.

 

[Piggy]

That strikes me as a good reason to be very cautious with scenarios. The only preserved documentation we have -- prior to Assyrian records mentioning various kings of Israel and Judah, the Moabite Stone and the Tel Dan inscription, which mentions a "king of the House of David" -- is Merneptah's victory stele. So, we know that by ca. 1200 BCE there was a tribal group (as indicated by the determinative preceding the name) called "Israel" living in Canaan among many other groups.

There's no way to prove that Dever's "Proto-Israelite" sites were really inhabited by the ancestors of the Israelites. However, the absence of pig bones in their kitchen middens is a strong indicator of a tribal group that didn't eat pork, probably as a mark of separation to differentiate them from the surrounding peoples.

There are some indications that the Levites or at least those forming the tribe's core came from the south, possibly Egypt by way of Edom. There are other indications that the Danites might have originally been a group relate to the Philistines. However, both of these hypotheses could easily be wrong.

I'm going to look up material on hereditary priesthoods to see if I can find out anything on how they come into being.

ETA: It's also very likely that the 12 tribe confederation was an amphictyonic league centered on the shrine of the ark of the covenant in Shiloh, which according to Friedman, was also the center of the Mushite priesthood, the Aaronids being centered (later) in Jerusalem. When it comes to the stories in Judges and 1 Samuel, I think some of them could be quite historical, though fictionalized, such as the defeat of Sisera, to which is appended a truncated variant of the topos developed more fully in David's dance. At the same time, Samson is pure myth.

Yeah, I agree that caution is in order. But that shouldn't make us shy about having an opinion about which scenario appears most likely.

I wouldn't disagree with any of the above, except to say that the name Samson may have been appropriated, but if so there's nothing that we could say or know about the person who ended up donating his name.

With regard to the confederation, it's difficult to know what forms it really took, because the genealogies were always rewritten to reflect the contemporary political landscape. It would be interesting if more of those survived, actually, because it would help build more complete timelines.

With regard to the conquest stories, it's a pretty safe bet that there wasn't any sweeping of forces through Canaan. These related clans battled their neighbors -- there weren't any clear territory lines, so you'd have some Hebrew cities in one area, and Philistine or Jebusite cities mixed in, and vice versa, and so forth.

But from pigbones and fonts and such, like you say, we can get to a time where some areas can be clearly ID'ed as Hebrew or Hebrew-dominant.

But they had their war stories, and they told them in terms of world conquest and being the will of God yada yada yada. All that Ancient Near Eastern stuff is over the top.

 

[I Ratant]

Yeah, I agree that caution is in order. But that shouldn't make us shy about having an opinion about which scenario appears most likely.

I wouldn't disagree with any of the above, except to say that the name Samson may have been appropriated, but if so there's nothing that we could say or know about the person who ended up donating his name.

With regard to the confederation, it's difficult to know what forms it really took, because the genealogies were always rewritten to reflect the contemporary political landscape. It would be interesting if more of those survived, actually, because it would help build more complete timelines.

With regard to the conquest stories, it's a pretty safe bet that there wasn't any sweeping of forces through Canaan. These related clans battled their neighbors -- there weren't any clear territory lines, so you'd have some Hebrew cities in one area, and Philistine or Jebusite cities mixed in, and vice versa, and so forth.

But from pigbones and fonts and such, like you say, we can get to a time where some areas can be clearly ID'ed as Hebrew or Hebrew-dominant.

But they had their war stories, and they told them in terms of world conquest and being the will of God yada yada yada. All that Ancient Near Eastern stuff is over the top.

.
The apologist/believers seem to follow the same mind path of those that will admit a psychic always fails when tested, but those times when he's not tested, he's accurate.
I see that here, with a direct comparison of the tales in the book with reality failing every time, but taking a bit from here, and an unrelated bit from there, something resembling the book can be sewn together, and therefore makes the book's stories true regardless of the direct failures.

 

[Brainache]

3 to 1 to win in the fifth.

Sorry, no luck; he came forth...

 

[MRC_Hans]

It gets better. If you've ever read one of Velikovsky's books, you'll find that he believed Venus erupted out of Jupiter - as an asteroid no less!

I'm always wondering why we even have to discuss people like Velikovsky. Even taken as pure fiction, his writings are definitely sub-standard.

Hans

 

[Oystein]

...
I'm going to look up material on hereditary priesthoods to see if I can find out anything on how they come into being.
...

This is a question that popped into my mind when I read Piggy's mention of a "thousand years" rule of the Levites: What's really a tribe here? How is kinship to a tribe inherited over time - matrilinearly, patrilinearly? How different were the tribes from one another, in terms of language (dialects perhaps), cult, customs, even genetic or phenotypic appearance? Was it conceivable that people could somehow claim to be Levites to justify some claim to power or whatever, and get away with it? Was there a lot or only a little intermarriage between the Hewbrew tribes?

So in effect, to what extent is it even valid to equivocate the Levites of 50 BCE with those of 850 BCE?

 

[Piggy]

This is a question that popped into my mind when I read Piggy's mention of a "thousand years" rule of the Levites: What's really a tribe here? How is kinship to a tribe inherited over time - matrilinearly, patrilinearly? How different were the tribes from one another, in terms of language (dialects perhaps), cult, customs, even genetic or phenotypic appearance? Was it conceivable that people could somehow claim to be Levites to justify some claim to power or whatever, and get away with it? Was there a lot or only a little intermarriage between the Hewbrew tribes?

So in effect, to what extent is it even valid to equivocate the Levites of 50 BCE with those of 850 BCE?

Interesting questions. I'll provide some answers to some of them when I get the time, hopefully sometime this evening. And I'd like to read what Tim finds as well.

 

[davefoc]

I've arrived at that conclusion myself. Tens of thousands makes sense. Think of a more modern example - the Ruala bedoin in Arabia. At the turn of the last century they numbered 30,000 easy, but were so efficient in their wanderings that they left no measureable material remains behind.

I am not sure what your view is with regard to all this. It seems like you might be arguing that some aspect of the Exodus story is true. If that is the case what aspect and when did this occur?

 

[tsig]

.
The apologist/believers seem to follow the same mind path of those that will admit a psychic always fails when tested, but those times when he's not tested, he's accurate.
I see that here, with a direct comparison of the tales in the book with reality failing every time, but taking a bit from here, and an unrelated bit from there, something resembling the book can be sewn together, and therefore makes the book's stories true regardless of the direct failures.

Their argument seems to be that yes the events in the story are false but the overall story is true.

 

[I Ratant]

Their argument seems to be that yes the events in the story are false but the overall story is true.

.
Which isn't puzzling, considering they want the story to be true, but the mental gymnastics required to reconcile the "inerrancy" with reality should be a signal that there is a fundamental flaw with the book, and therefore with what the book promotes.
That obviously intelligent people have promoted the book over the ages is a good indicator of the ability to fool oneself when one desires something... personal salvation, or power.

 

[TimCallahan]

Yeah, I agree that caution is in order. But that shouldn't make us shy about having an opinion about which scenario appears most likely.

I wouldn't disagree with any of the above, except to say that the name Samson may have been appropriated, but if so there's nothing that we could say or know about the person who ended up donating his name.

I'd need a whole new thread just to deal with Samson. In my book Secret Origins of the Bible, I devoted a lot of material to Samson (or, in Hebrew, Shimshon, "sunlight") as a solar hero. I could also start a thread on the historicity of the stories in Judges. I'll have to think about that.

With regard to the confederation, it's difficult to know what forms it really took, because the genealogies were always rewritten to reflect the contemporary political landscape. It would be interesting if more of those survived, actually, because it would help build more complete timelines.

We can infer from the existing 6 and 12 city amphictyonic leagues in Greece that the multiples fit months of the year. That we have in the patriarchal tales two other 12 tribe confederacies is also an indicator of such a system.

With regard to the conquest stories, it's a pretty safe bet that there wasn't any sweeping of forces through Canaan. These related clans battled their neighbors -- there weren't any clear territory lines, so you'd have some Hebrew cities in one area, and Philistine or Jebusite cities mixed in, and vice versa, and so forth.

But from pigbones and fonts and such, like you say, we can get to a time where some areas can be clearly ID'ed as Hebrew or Hebrew-dominant.

But they had their war stories, and they told them in terms of world conquest and being the will of God yada yada yada. All that Ancient Near Eastern stuff is over the top.

Some of the stories in Judges have a ring of truth abut them. Specifically, I would include in these, the following: Ehud's assassination of Eglon, Deborah, Barack and Sisera; Jephthah; and the story of Micah, the Levites and the Danites. That said, there's literary embellishment in Eglon's assassination, elaborating its crude and scatological aspects; a repeated literary motif in Sisera's mother awaiting his return; and a literary / mythic topos of the rash vow in the story of Jephthah.

 

[Piggy]

This is a question that popped into my mind when I read Piggy's mention of a "thousand years" rule of the Levites: What's really a tribe here? How is kinship to a tribe inherited over time - matrilinearly, patrilinearly? How different were the tribes from one another, in terms of language (dialects perhaps), cult, customs, even genetic or phenotypic appearance?

Ancient Hebrews were patrilineal.

There are many differences between Israeli and Judean culture, but their kinship customs were pretty much the same.

If you recall, Judea was the realm of the Southern tribes, centered around the Dead Sea. It's not the best land, a lot of desert and mountains. For much of this time the Philistines occupy a good bit of the Mediterranean coast to the west. The Sinai is to the south, and then Egypt beyond that. Mesopotamia, who covets the Mediterranean lands no matter who rules Mesopotamia at the time, is to the east with the Edomites and Moabites and others in between.

Above them is Israel, the realm of the Northern tribes, centered around the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee. This is fertile land, lots of rolling hills, tributaries to the Jordan, and seacoast too. To the north, Syria is what we might call a frenemy, depending on the politics at the time, and to the northwest, empires like the Assyrians had their eyes on the Mediterranean as well.

There were continual battles in this area, which connected Europe with Africa via the Mediterranean coast, involving all of the different groups and nations I've mentioned above, and many more, with shifting lines of occupation and influence, the rise and fall of powers, over centuries.

Various semitic groups, who shared similar languages and cultures, lived in this area around the 1200s BCE. They were settled in various small settlements and surrounding farmlands with vague and shifting tribal territories.

Men in any one village or town would get wives from neighboring villages that belonged to the same tribe, or a closely allied tribe. Children of those marriages were part of the father's tribe.

During the 1100s BCE a confederation of tribes rose to power in that region, eventually controlling a territory about the size of the island of Corsica along the southern coast of the western edge of the Mediterranean Sea, connecting Egypt and Africa beyond it to what is now Turkey and the rest of Europe.

But they did not hold well-defined territories in the way countries do today. There was simply no way to do that back then. To control a territory simply meant that you had a lot of settlements there and you were well armed and trained, but people from other tribes would have towns here and there in the same region. You either made agreements with them over the use of springs, grazing rights, and such, or you ran them out, or decided not to put up a fight and hope they didn't try for more territory.

The actual details of the relationships among these various tribes are largely lost to history. We can use archaeology (including the study of ancient literature), linguistics, and DNA-empowered genealogy to reconstruct them to some extent, but that effort is still in its infancy, I think.

To get an idea of what they looked like, you could explore the paleontology and anthropology. I really don't know anything about that, though.

As far as language, cult, and customs, they were very close, with notable differences that varied in all sorts of ways. What foods did they eat or not eat? What were the names of their gods and mythic characters? To what extent were they influenced by the cultures which bordered their territories?

Early Hebrew culture was Canaanite culture, "Ugaritic" culture. Discoveries in Ugarit, which thrived in the northern region of this area in the 1300s and 1200s BCE, have provided us with a lot of information about the lives and beliefs and stories of the people who lived around there.

The group that rose to power in the 1100s traced their origins back to a common ancestor, Abraham -- whom some groups later traced back to Mesopotamia, while others traced him back to what's now Syria.

But the thing is, genealogies at that time weren't fixed. If you made a pact with a neighboring tribe, well, your story changed so that it turns out you have a common ancestor. If you later got into a war with that tribe, the story changed again so that their ancestor was a child of incest, or was cursed by god, or committed some atrocity, or whatever.

And you'll see this in the various accounts preserved in the Biblical literature. The tribes themselves were fairly stable through patrilineal lines, but the Hebrew coalition shifted and changed, and the official story of lineage shifted and changed with it.

Was it conceivable that people could somehow claim to be Levites to justify some claim to power or whatever, and get away with it? Was there a lot or only a little intermarriage between the Hewbrew tribes?

So in effect, to what extent is it even valid to equivocate the Levites of 50 BCE with those of 850 BCE?

It would not have been possible to simply claim to be a Levite clan.

Levitical status was strictly inherited. And local people knew who these families were.

There were a lot of bennies (as well as responsibilities) that went along with being a Levitical priest (which is redundant for Levitical Yahwism). No one could slaughter a lamb or calf without bringing it to you to kill, and you got part of it.

So, for example, when all sacrifice was centralized at the Temple under Hezekiah, this meant that all the non-Zadokite priests (the Zadokites were the subclan of Aaronites who controlled the Temple worship in Jerusalem) now had no legal source of meat, because they could not themselves hold land.

So when we're talking about the political battles which so heavily influence this literature, we have to understand that these battles are bare-knuckle brutal.

As for their history, we know the Levites are firmly entrenched, and battling each other for power, in Hebrew society in the 800s BCE, when they wrote the Old Judean and Ephraimaic Torahs.

There is no serious reason to doubt that the two main factions of Levites -- Aaronids and Mushites -- reigned as co-priests in Jerusalem around 1000 BCE.

And if their epic histories are built around a core of actual history, they are the group which established the first law code for the confederation as well as the enduring line of high priests of Yahwism maybe sometime around 1200.

Before that, given what we know about them, it seems that they lived to the south and either actually lived in Egypt for a time or intermingled with the Egyptians while living in Sinai.

 

[Piggy]

We can infer from the existing 6 and 12 city amphictyonic leagues in Greece that the multiples fit months of the year. That we have in the patriarchal tales two other 12 tribe confederacies is also an indicator of such a system.

I don't know that we can infer much of anything from Greece when it comes to the ancient Hebrews.