history and myth of Exodus

[SpuriusMaximus]

Maybe, if it were only Greece, but when we see something rather characteristic of just about any ancient civilization, I don't see on what would one base the assumption that Hebrews were different.

The Sumerians and their Akkadian successors for example were closer, and for them too the number 12 was important. They already had 12 zodiac signs, and the 12 (main) gods they corresponded to, but also in their Earthly life they had governments made of 12 people. Heck, even their numbering system was based on 12 and 60.

The Greeks two had 12 main gods living on Mt Olympus. They just seem to be more, because local variations swapped some of them out and replaced them with other gods, but just about any local panteon had 12 of them up on the mountain.

Or to the east we see a distant effect of it in the 12 stages of life in Buddhism, or the mix of 12 and 12 that is the Chinese calendar.

Or to return back to the general area the Hebrews were in, for the Egyptians too, we see the number 12 appear in various myths. And it's not surprising, because it's a multiple of 3 and 4, both important numbers, and 3 being THE symbol for plurality, and most deities coming in triads. But anyway, let's return to 12. E.g., there are 12 stages of the Underworld. E.g., the 12 provinces of the heavens that Ra visits each day. E.g., Imhotep is made to be one of 12 siblings.

I dunno, it seems to me like making something be made of 12 parts is just as likely to be just numerology for the Jews as for anyone else.

 

[pakeha]

...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. ...

Could you walk me through that, please?
I had the impression that the Hebrews were not the only peoples in the Near East to have pork taboo'd.

Sorry, all I have to offer is wiki as an on-line source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_restrictions_on_the_consumption_of_pork

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

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.

Except that's actually things we don't really know. Even the documentary hypothesis, because that's what you're talking about, can't really tell if there actually was a Levite clan at all to start with. Both the Elohist and Jahwist parts actually can be read just as well as meaning that a Levi was pretty much a job description or social position. Nowhere does it say in that part that it was a clan.

The simplest solution for it all, including why it became so scattered, is that simply originally everyone could be a priest. Then they turn it into something hereditary, and of course they retrofit the back story of being a separate patrilineal tribe all along.

And no you don't know there was a clan entrenched in power even in 800 BCE. You don't actually have any documents to support it. You just have some later retrofitted story to paint that picture. And even when you take it apart and take some of those slices as representing an older story, actually it's not clear at all that they actually talk about a tribe or just about whoever got to be priest at the time.

You keep saying "we know X" and "we know Y", but really we don't. That's just BS delusional confabulation, not something you actually know. And just because your border between imagination and what's historical reality is so thin and fuzzy, doesn't turn something you just imagined into something "we know". You can't KNOW stuff by just going into wild flights of fantasy. And not even if you basically out-source the crazy making up stuff to someone else, and basically just trust some other delusional guy's wild flights of fantasy, it still doesn't mean you KNOW it was like that. It just means you're gullible enough to just take someone else's delusions and unsupported handwaving for a fact.

 

[MRC_Hans]

In connection with history, the term "we know" must be used with the outmost care. For ancient History, it should be banned except for the most general of uses (we know that pyramids exist). I'm a WW2 history buff, and you will be surprised to find how imprecise our knowledge of some events even that recent is.

Hans

 

[Oystein]

I think Piggy has been pretty clear more than once that a shorthand expression like "we know" generally comes with an implied footnote that says "...as in we can consider this probable, given the convergence of the little evidence we have, while being alert that any hypothesis about the distant past may well be superceded by better explanations or new evidence".

 

[OCaptain]

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?

Sure.

Last October I began a thread which was supposed to address the broader scope of archaeology as it relates to the Hebrew bible, but it quickly became an argument about the historicity of the Exodus. I will copy and paste some of my more substantive observations here, but will link back to the original thread at the conclusion of this post.

I am presently inclined to see an Exodus event of Yahwists and their families from Egypt to Canaan in ca. 1386 BCE. This would have constituted a group numbering no more than 50,000.

There are synchronisms between Atenist writings of this period and some of the oldest Hebrew writings, chiefly Psalm 104:

http://www.seanet.com/~realistic/psalm104.html

I'll extract the point from it that I wanted to make:

The Eight points of comparison: Psalm 104 and the Hymn to Aten

The following text in [--] is from Psalm 104 while the remainder is quoted translation by J.H.Breasted, from Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. II, Chapters 5 & 6.. and "The Rock Tombs of Tell el Armarna", Archeological Survey, Egyptian Exploration Society (6vol, 1903) N. de G. Davis.

PSALM 104
[20. Thou makest darkness, and it is night, Wherein all the beasts of the forest creep forth. 21. The young Lions roar after their prey, And seek their food from God.] The tradition of Egyptian, Hindu, and Hebrew cultures starts the day at sunset. Today the day normally starts at sunrise.

AKENATEN'S THE HYMN TO THE SUN
When thou settest in the western horizon of the sky,
[1st comparison, verse 20]
The earth is in darkness like the dead.
They sleep in their chambers
Their heads are wrapped up.
Their nostrils are stopped
And none see the other.
While all their things are stolen
Which are under their heads
And they know it not
Every Lion cometh forth from his den
[2nd comparison, verse 21]
All Serpents they sting
Darkness The world is in silence.
He that made them resteth in his horizon.

[22. The Sun riseth, they get them away,
and lay them down in their dens. 23. Man
goeth forth unto his work And to his labor until
the evening.]

Bright is the earth when thou riseth in the horizon.
[3rd , 22]
When thou shinest as Aten by day
Thou drivest away the darkness.
When thou sendest forth thy rays
The two lands (Egypt) are in daily festivity.
Awake and standing upon their feet
When thou has raised them up.
Their limbs bathed they take their clothing
Their arms uplifted in adoration to thy dawning
Then in all the world they do their work.. [4th, 23]

All cattle rest upon their pasturage
The trees and the plants flourish

[12. By them the birds of the heavens have their
habitation. They sing among the branches.]

The birds flutter in their marshes, [5th, 12]
Their wings uplifted in adoration to thee.
All sheep dance on their feet.
All winged things fly,
They live when thou hast shone upon them.

[25. Yonder is the sea great and wide. Wherein
are things creeping innumerable. Both small and
great beasts. 26. There go the ships.]

The barges sail upstream and downstream alike.
[6th, 26]
Every highway is open because thou dawnest.
The fish in the river leap before thee.
Thy rays are in the midst of the great green sea.
Creator of the germ in woman
Maker of the seed in man
Giving life to the son in the body of his mother
Soothing him that he may not weep.
Nurse (even) in the womb.

[29. Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled.
Thou takest away their breath and they die.
And return to their dust.]

Giver of breath to animals, every one that he maketh
When he cometh forth from the womb [7th, 29]
On the day of their birth
Thou openest his mouth in speech

[27. These wait all for thee. That thou may give them
food in due season.]

Thou suppliest his necessities.[8th, 27]

When the fledgling in the egg chirps in the shell
Thou givest him breath there-in to preserve him alive.
When thou hast brought him together
to (the point of) bursting it in the egg
To chirp with all his might,
He goeth about on his two feet
When he hath come forth therefrom.

How manifold are thy works,
They are hidden from before (us)
O Sole God, whose powers no other possesseth.
Thou didst create the earth according to thy heart
While thou wast alone
Man, all cattle, large and small
All that are upon the earth
That go about on their feet
(All) That are on high
That fly with their wings
The foreign countries, Syria and Kush,
The land of Egypt
Thou settest every man into his place
Thou suppliest their necessities
Everyone has his possessions
And his days are reckoned
The tongues are divers in speech
Their forms likewise and their skins are distinguished
(For) thou makest different the strangers."

http://katestange.net/egypt/literature.htm

For those who may not know, Akhenaten was considered by the orthodox priesthood to be a heretic, having changed his beliefs to reflect the primacy of the Aten over the other Egyptian deities. In fact, he turned his back on the worship of Amon, making it illegal in Egypt. He moved the capital to the city of Akhetaten (now called el-Amarna).

http://freepages.history.rootsweb.an...aten/index.htm

The Hymn to the Aten was created during that heretical period. What there is no explanation for in the Egyptian historical record, is why did Akhenaten turn his back on his family (changing his name from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten) and turn his back on his gods (making the worship of the old gods punishable by death? His was not a popular move, and certainly, in Egypt at least, did not last beyond his life.

So, the thing that is clear is that these texts are similar enough to conclude that one borrowed from the other. The only unanswered question is from which direction the inspiration was drawn. I have certain ideas about that, but of course, nothing unassailable, and certainly more speculative than I want to get into here.

_______________________________________________________________

I also have independently arrived at a likely Exodus date in the 18th Dynasty.

We can't prove any date for the Exodus. To be fair, given the same high standards, there's little we can prove about the ancient past.

That said, I'm a fan of the circa 1373 BC date. It coincides with the likely death of Amenhotep III and the sucession of Akhenaten to the throne.

This puts several things in context:

1. The mud brick references in the Pentateuch can relate to the construction of Amarna (a site known to have been built out of mud bricks)

2. Amenhotep III lost his first son - Thutmose - as a child.

3. The Hymn to the Aten mimics the imagery and text of Psalm 104 (this has long been established. What is in dispute is the direction of inspiration. ie, did the Yahwists get it from the Atenists or was it the other way around?)

4. The sudden henotheism of Akhenaten can be explained as a fear response after having witnessed the events that inspired the biblical writers to record the dreadful biblical plagues, including the death of his father and brother. He feared the Hebrew god and felt compelled to pay him homage in a very sudden and exclusionary way. This was also not popular among the priesthood at Thebes, who eventually found their way to remove him, sometime around 1349 BCE.

5. There is enough wiggle room in the Egyptian chronologies to massage the transfer of power from Amenhotep III to Akhenaten by a couple decades, especially given the understanding that some sort of co-regency occurred between Amenhotep III and Akhenaten, before the son's heresy began. (see http://ib205.tripod.com/co-regency.html for elements that speak to this).

6. An exodus at this time fits perfectly with the attested timespan between the Exodus and the ascension of Solomon in the 10th century. The Masoretic 480 year span is a formulaic creation (40 x 12), and thus far less likely to represent the actual historical span of time. We have even more reason to doubt it when we become aware of the 440 year span mentioned by the Septuagint text. 440 years from year four of Solomon (Year Four of Solomon being 933, counting backward to 1373 BCE). I will be the first to admit that my date of 1373 is open to change, It has to be. Chronologies are by nature messy.

7. Also, houses at Amarna had a shrine consisting of fake doorway with red-painted jambs and lintels. (This echoes perfectly the biblical accounts of how the Hebrews spread blood on the door jambs as a sign to the death angel). The shrine held a picture of the royal family (Redford, Donald B. 1984. Akhenaten the Heretic King. Princeton University Press.) This fits in with a 1373 Exodus.

8. Connecting this data with destruction layers identified by Kenyon at Jericho that date to 1325 BCE, this would give us a 40-42 year wandering period. The layer was dated by using the discoveries of 80 scarabs identified with certain Pharaohs, the last of which was - surprise - Amenhotep III. Kenyon used the death date of Amenhotep III to secure that destruction layer. She did not consider the possibility of a 440 year gap between Solomon and an Exodus event, but she did attempt to harmonize the archaeology with the Hebrew Bible. Keep in mind that the 1325 layer is not the famous City IV conflagration. It postdates it. Given that someone came through Jericho and clearly ATTACKED it and burned substantial parts of it, demonstrates that someone was still occupying the city in 1325, when the wandering Hebrews would have come through, according to my Exodus date.

Read "Digging Up Jericho". p. 262 in the chapter "Jericho And Coming Of The Israelites":

"As concerns the date of the destruction of Jericho by the Israelites,
all that can be said is that the latest Bronze Age occupation should, in my
view, be dated to the third quarter of the fourteenth century B.C. This is
a date which suits neither the school of scholars which would date the
entry of the Israelites into Palestine to c. 1400 B.C. nor the school which
prefers a date of c. 1260 B.C.."

This is her specific dating for destruction of Jericho by the Israelites. The third quarter of 14th century BCE would be 1350-1325 BCE. On page 261 she specifically refers to the use of some tombs "c. 1350-1325 B.C."

10. This dating gives time for the Hebrews to grow and form the polity known as Israel, in time to be mentioned about a century later in the Merneptah stela.

The most exciting bolstering of my theory is that, since the Berlin slab inscription that I began my post with puts the name rings in the context of prisoners (while mentioning their ethnic group without knowing their location dueto the fragmentary nature of the pedestal relief that the slab was part of), this inscription says in a very clear way that Egypt had Israelite prisoners at the time of its composition.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=220406

 

[TimCallahan]

Sure.

Last October I began a thread which was supposed to address the broader scope of archaeology as it relates to the Hebrew bible, but it quickly became an argument about the historicity of the Exodus. I will copy and paste some of my more substantive observations here, but will link back to the original thread at the conclusion of this post.

I am presently inclined to see an Exodus event of Yahwists and their families from Egypt to Canaan in ca. 1386 BCE. This would have constituted a group numbering no more than 50,000.

There are two problems here. A group of even 10,000 people suddenly leaving Egypt would have been noteworthy. Yet, we find no mention of it in Egyptian records. An exodus at ca. 1386 is hard to square with the absence of any mention of Egyptian incursions in the Book of Judges. After the time of Akhenaten, Seti I, Ramesses II, Merneptah and Ramesses III all invaded Canaan.

BTW, in another post you mentioned a Bedouin group, 30,000 strong, who left little or no record of their passing, due to the efficiency of their nomadic ways. One problem with this is that a bunch who had lived near the Nile delta for some time would not be efficient nomads; hence, my reasoning that any exodus event involved an insignificant band of escaped slaves.

There are synchronisms between Atenist writings of this period and some of the oldest Hebrew writings, chiefly Psalm 104:

http://www.seanet.com/~realistic/psalm104.html

I'll extract the point from it that I wanted to make:

The Eight points of comparison: Psalm 104 and the Hymn to Aten

The following text in [--] is from Psalm 104 while the remainder is quoted translation by J.H.Breasted, from Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. II, Chapters 5 & 6.. and "The Rock Tombs of Tell el Armarna", Archeological Survey, Egyptian Exploration Society (6vol, 1903) N. de G. Davis.

PSALM 104
[20. Thou makest darkness, and it is night, Wherein all the beasts of the forest creep forth. 21. The young Lions roar after their prey, And seek their food from God.] The tradition of Egyptian, Hindu, and Hebrew cultures starts the day at sunset. Today the day normally starts at sunrise.

AKENATEN'S THE HYMN TO THE SUN
When thou settest in the western horizon of the sky,
[1st comparison, verse 20]
The earth is in darkness like the dead.
They sleep in their chambers
Their heads are wrapped up.
Their nostrils are stopped
And none see the other.
While all their things are stolen
Which are under their heads
And they know it not
Every Lion cometh forth from his den
[2nd comparison, verse 21]
All Serpents they sting
Darkness The world is in silence.
He that made them resteth in his horizon.

[22. The Sun riseth, they get them away,
and lay them down in their dens. 23. Man
goeth forth unto his work And to his labor until
the evening.]

Bright is the earth when thou riseth in the horizon.
[3rd , 22]
When thou shinest as Aten by day
Thou drivest away the darkness.
When thou sendest forth thy rays
The two lands (Egypt) are in daily festivity.
Awake and standing upon their feet
When thou has raised them up.
Their limbs bathed they take their clothing
Their arms uplifted in adoration to thy dawning
Then in all the world they do their work.. [4th, 23]

All cattle rest upon their pasturage
The trees and the plants flourish

[12. By them the birds of the heavens have their
habitation. They sing among the branches.]

The birds flutter in their marshes, [5th, 12]
Their wings uplifted in adoration to thee.
All sheep dance on their feet.
All winged things fly,
They live when thou hast shone upon them.

[25. Yonder is the sea great and wide. Wherein
are things creeping innumerable. Both small and
great beasts. 26. There go the ships.]

The barges sail upstream and downstream alike.
[6th, 26]
Every highway is open because thou dawnest.
The fish in the river leap before thee.
Thy rays are in the midst of the great green sea.
Creator of the germ in woman
Maker of the seed in man
Giving life to the son in the body of his mother
Soothing him that he may not weep.
Nurse (even) in the womb.

[29. Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled.
Thou takest away their breath and they die.
And return to their dust.]

Giver of breath to animals, every one that he maketh
When he cometh forth from the womb [7th, 29]
On the day of their birth
Thou openest his mouth in speech

[27. These wait all for thee. That thou may give them
food in due season.]

Thou suppliest his necessities.[8th, 27]

When the fledgling in the egg chirps in the shell
Thou givest him breath there-in to preserve him alive.
When thou hast brought him together
to (the point of) bursting it in the egg
To chirp with all his might,
He goeth about on his two feet
When he hath come forth therefrom.

How manifold are thy works,
They are hidden from before (us)
O Sole God, whose powers no other possesseth.
Thou didst create the earth according to thy heart
While thou wast alone
Man, all cattle, large and small
All that are upon the earth
That go about on their feet
(All) That are on high
That fly with their wings
The foreign countries, Syria and Kush,
The land of Egypt
Thou settest every man into his place
Thou suppliest their necessities
Everyone has his possessions
And his days are reckoned
The tongues are divers in speech
Their forms likewise and their skins are distinguished
(For) thou makest different the strangers."

http://katestange.net/egypt/literature.htm

For those who may not know, Akhenaten was considered by the orthodox priesthood to be a heretic, having changed his beliefs to reflect the primacy of the Aten over the other Egyptian deities. In fact, he turned his back on the worship of Amon, making it illegal in Egypt. He moved the capital to the city of Akhetaten (now called el-Amarna).

http://freepages.history.rootsweb.an...aten/index.htm

The Hymn to the Aten was created during that heretical period. What there is no explanation for in the Egyptian historical record, is why did Akhenaten turn his back on his family (changing his name from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten) and turn his back on his gods (making the worship of the old gods punishable by death? His was not a popular move, and certainly, in Egypt at least, did not last beyond his life.

So, the thing that is clear is that these texts are similar enough to conclude that one borrowed from the other. The only unanswered question is from which direction the inspiration was drawn. I have certain ideas about that, but of course, nothing unassailable, and certainly more speculative than I want to get into here.

There are a number of other texts in the Bible relating back to previous Egyptian material, other than this hymn. This demonstrates, not surprisingly, the the culture of Egypt had a profound impact on the West Semitic cultures of the Bronze and Iron Ages. You might have to check to see if the hymn to Aton is strikingly different from other Egyptian hymns. If not, then the similarity is more evidence of general Egyptian influence as opposed to influence form Akhenaten's monotheism. In any case, the worship of Yahweh wasn't likely to have been monotheistic until after the Exile (587 - 538 BCE)

_______________________________________________________________

I also have independently arrived at a likely Exodus date in the 18th Dynasty.

We can't prove any date for the Exodus. To be fair, given the same high standards, there's little we can prove about the ancient past.

That said, I'm a fan of the circa 1373 BC date. It coincides with the likely death of Amenhotep III and the sucession of Akhenaten to the throne.

This puts several things in context:

1. The mud brick references in the Pentateuch can relate to the construction of Amarna (a site known to have been built out of mud bricks)[/QOUTE]

So were a lot of cities, such as the storage cities of Pithom and Pi-Ramesses.

2. Amenhotep III lost his first son - Thutmose - as a child.

3. The Hymn to the Aten mimics the imagery and text of Psalm 104 (this has long been established. What is in dispute is the direction of inspiration. ie, did the Yahwists get it from the Atenists or was it the other way around?)

4. The sudden henotheism of Akhenaten can be explained as a fear response after having witnessed the events that inspired the biblical writers to record the dreadful biblical plagues, including the death of his father and brother. He feared the Hebrew god and felt compelled to pay him homage in a very sudden and exclusionary way. This was also not popular among the priesthood at Thebes, who eventually found their way to remove him, sometime around 1349 BCE.

With all due respect, you're making a lot of assumptions based on zero evidence. Events so horrific they would cause a Pharaoh to create a new, monotheistic religion in defiance of the priesthood and the people should have left some evidence. We have a lot of preserved documents from the eighteenth dynasty, not only in the form of inscriptions, but preserved papyri as well. Yet, we have no mention in any of them of anything like the plagues of Exodus.

We would also have to explain why Exodus, Joshua and Judges fail to mention either the Hittite Empire or any revival of Egyptian power after the time of Akhenaten.

5. There is enough wiggle room in the Egyptian chronologies to massage the transfer of power from Amenhotep III to Akhenaten by a couple decades, especially given the understanding that some sort of co-regency occurred between Amenhotep III and Akhenaten, before the son's heresy began. (see http://ib205.tripod.com/co-regency.html for elements that speak to this).

Again, this is speculation only.

6. An exodus at this time fits perfectly with the attested timespan between the Exodus and the ascension of Solomon in the 10th century. The Masoretic 480 year span is a formulaic creation (40 x 12), and thus far less likely to represent the actual historical span of time. We have even more reason to doubt it when we become aware of the 440 year span mentioned by the Septuagint text. 440 years from year four of Solomon (Year Four of Solomon being 933, counting backward to 1373 BCE). I will be the first to admit that my date of 1373 is open to change, It has to be. Chronologies are by nature messy.

But, again, such a date fails to account for the failure of the scriptures to mention any Egyptian incursions, such as those by Seti I, Ramesses II, Merneptah and Ramesses III, all of whom subjugated the peoples of Canaan.

7. Also, houses at Amarna had a shrine consisting of fake doorway with red-painted jambs and lintels. (This echoes perfectly the biblical accounts of how the Hebrews spread blood on the door jambs as a sign to the death angel). The shrine held a picture of the royal family (Redford, Donald B. 1984. Akhenaten the Heretic King. Princeton University Press.) This fits in with a 1373 Exodus.

And during the spring festival of Anthesteria in ancient Athens, people smeared the lintels of their doors with pitch to protect the house from a destroyer that was abroad at night. Likewise, during the Akitu festival in Babylon the temple of Marduk was purified by decapitating a sheep and smearing the walls with its blood. Since nether of these practices are attributable to an event in Egypt, it's most likely that the story of blood smeared on the lintels at Passover is part of a mythic motif common to the general region of the Near East and eastern Mediterranean.

8. Connecting this data with destruction layers identified by Kenyon at Jericho that date to 1325 BCE, this would give us a 40-42 year wandering period. The layer was dated by using the discoveries of 80 scarabs identified with certain Pharaohs, the last of which was - surprise - Amenhotep III. Kenyon used the death date of Amenhotep III to secure that destruction layer. She did not consider the possibility of a 440 year gap between Solomon and an Exodus event, but she did attempt to harmonize the archaeology with the Hebrew Bible. Keep in mind that the 1325 layer is not the famous City IV conflagration. It postdates it. Given that someone came through Jericho and clearly ATTACKED it and burned substantial parts of it, demonstrates that someone was still occupying the city in 1325, when the wandering Hebrews would have come through, according to my Exodus date.

Read "Digging Up Jericho". p. 262 in the chapter "Jericho And Coming Of The Israelites":

"As concerns the date of the destruction of Jericho by the Israelites,
all that can be said is that the latest Bronze Age occupation should, in my
view, be dated to the third quarter of the fourteenth century B.C. This is
a date which suits neither the school of scholars which would date the
entry of the Israelites into Palestine to c. 1400 B.C. nor the school which
prefers a date of c. 1260 B.C.."

This is her specific dating for destruction of Jericho by the Israelites. The third quarter of 14th century BCE would be 1350-1325 BCE. On page 261 she specifically refers to the use of some tombs "c. 1350-1325 B.C."

Again, to substantiate the Book of Joshua, we would have to find that just about every city in Canaan was destroyed about that time. The problem with destruction of cities in the Levant is that everyone building or extending an empire in that region came through the are and messed things up.

10. This dating gives time for the Hebrews to grow and form the polity known as Israel, in time to be mentioned about a century later in the Merneptah stela.

Again, the tribal group called Israel is one of many. They could as easily formed at about the time of Merneptah as having been around for a while.

The most exciting bolstering of my theory is that, since the Berlin slab inscription that I began my post with puts the name rings in the context of prisoners (while mentioning their ethnic group without knowing their location dueto the fragmentary nature of the pedestal relief that the slab was part of), this inscription says in a very clear way that Egypt had Israelite prisoners at the time of its composition.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=220406

I'd need to know a bit more about this document to respond adequately. This link tells me nothing. Do you have another link?

 

[Piggy]

And no you don't know there was a clan entrenched in power even in 800 BCE. You don't actually have any documents to support it. You just have some later retrofitted story to paint that picture.

The Old Judean Torah and the Old Ephraimaic Torah were composed sometime in the 800s BCE, or the 700s at the latest. And they are Levitical documents which contain a lot of mud-slinging. So yeah, we actually do know that the Levites were in power then, and we do have documents to support it.

I know you have a strong anti-historicist bias, but you can't simply ignore the current state of the scholarship.

 

[Piggy]

Could you walk me through that, please?
I had the impression that the Hebrews were not the only peoples in the Near East to have pork taboo'd.

There are other markers besides the absence of pig bones that help identify ancient Hebrew settlements.

Stone bowls, immersion pools, and Hebraic burial style are also key indicators.

And then there's the ever-growing web of mundane archeological evidence which helps reconstruct the migration and settlement patterns of various groups, such as cultural variations in art and tools, writing, even graffiti.

The texts help us to do this as well, but not in the way most folks would think.

There's an unfortunate tendency for folks to determine that a tale is a myth and then conclude it has nothing to tell us about history.

But of course this is not the case. A text is simply an artifact, like a shoe or an ax or the foundation of a building. It tells us as much as we can glean from it when we put it into context.

History does not approach texts by asking if they are fact or fiction, or by trying to "remove the mythic bits" in order to discover the facts which remain.

Instead, you ask the same questions you ask of any other artifact: Who made this? When was it made? Why was it made? How was it used? Was it altered, and if so, by whom and when and why? Those kinds of questions.

For the stories we're looking at, we have 4 distinct epochs of tales, so to speak.

There is the Old Myth, which has no historical connection, such as the stories of creation, of Adam and Eve and the snake, Noah and the flood, the Nephilim (mighty offspring of gods and women), the Tower of Babel, and so forth. These tales have their parallels in the surrounding cultures.

These stories are often explanatory, providing reasons for the existence of nature and life, why snakes have no legs, why women have painful childbirth, why there are many languages, where rainbows come from, why a sabbath is observed, and so forth.

Then there are the Tales of the Patriarchs, especially Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. These stories are overwhelmingly centered on describing the relationships between groups and tribes, who is blessed and who is cursed, who was generous to whom, who paid for land, who refused payment for a favor, who married whom, who are the sons of adultery or incest, who came from where, why that city was destroyed, who saved whom's bacon, and of course who has a covenant with God and what does that covenant promise.

The names may have come from true ancestors, or they could be place-names that have come to be mistaken for personal names, or even other sorts of archaic words so mistaken, or leftover from mythology, who knows. If there is any truth to those tales (e.g. if the ancestors of the Hebrews were from Mesopotamia or from present-day Syria) it is impossible to distinguish amongst all the myth and propaganda, barring some sort of independent archaeological confirmation.

Btw, a story from any of these cycles of tales could be written or re-written at any time, just as people write new versions of folk tales today. So just because a story is about the Old Myth doesn't mean it was composed before another story about the Patriarchs.

Anyway, then there is the Epic History, the stories of the exodus from Egypt and the conquest of Canaan. The Hebrews did wage war to expand their territory across Canaan, no doubt about that. But these are epics built around that, and in true Ancient-Near-Eastern style, they're full of boasting and exaggeration and smears and lies and reworking of old myths into the shape of the story they want to tell.

Archaeology has shown that an exodus of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt did not occur. The Hebrews, or proto-Hebrews at least, were native to Canaan by the 1200s BCE.

At some point, probably well before 1000 BCE, a Hebrew clan came to power which traced its origins to Egypt, and to leaders with Egyptian names, and which told a story about having to depose the clan of Benjamin with the help of the 2 strongest tribes in the Hebrew confederacy because the Benjaminites raped and killed a Levite's wife/concubine, and who claimed to have introduced the first code of Law (spoken by God, of course).

When we look at those stories, we don't ask "Are they true or not?" but rather "Why would these people write this stuff?"

The people who wrote it -- or composed it, more accurately -- were Levites, and it was the official history of their group, which might have been commissioned by a king, or written by a clan that was vying for power it had lost, or both at the same time!

The next stage is the Political History, which blends in with the Epic History during the era of the Judges, then moves into stories of the warlord Saul -- it's entirely possible that, even if Moses did exist and did write a law code, it was only for a subgroup of the tribes, and Saul, if he existed, was the first one to unify the confederation -- then the Davidic monarchy, and the divided kingdom of Israel and Judah.

The bulk of this material is not mythic, and the mythic portions occur early. Which is not to say you don't get God and miracles and such, you do, but that's not the same as myth.

It's full of propaganda, too, but by the time of the stories of the kings of Israel and Judah, we're on solid historical ground in terms of names and years, although ancient sources are full of discrepancies on matters like these.

There's a lot of debate about that fascinating merge zone between the Epic and Political Histories.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

The Old Judean Torah and the Old Ephraimaic Torah were composed sometime in the 800s BCE, or the 700s at the latest. And they are Levitical documents which contain a lot of mud-slinging. So yeah, we actually do know that the Levites were in power then, and we do have documents to support it.

I know you have a strong anti-historicist bias, but you can't simply ignore the current state of the scholarship.

It has nothing to do with being anti-historicist, and just with being against taking confabulation for historical truth.

Yes, we know that the old Elohist and Jahwist parts of the Torah are about that old, but as I was saying, there is nothing in there that needs Levi to be the name of a tribe instead of some other qualification. You can't just support two claims out of four (that it was around that time, and that some Levi guys were the priests, and that it actually was a tribe, and that it actually has anything to do with the tribe actually being descendants of some guys coming from Egypt some half a millennium ago) and just handwave the third and fourth under the basically lie of "we know that". No, we don't really.

Which leads us to my first problem with such discussions, that being that people almost never support their whole claim. At best what's supported is a much lesser subset of it, and at worst what's supported is something irrelevant.

The second problem I have isn't even as much with speculation, but with then trying to pass some wild speculation for "we know that", effectively erasing the information of how frikken shoddy the whole edifice gets. It's statistically unsound and dishonest.

And let's me illustrate what's statistically wrong with it. Consider the induction chain:

P1: probably A
P2: if A, probably B
P3: if B, probably C
P4: if C, probably D

Now let's say each of those is actually a pretty reasonable proposition. In fact, let's say chances are about 3 out of 4 that we're right about each step, which is pretty darned good for something that happened 3000 years ago. (And definitely more solid than the wild confabulations used for Moses or Jesus, since most of those aren't even supportable probability claims, but mistaking one's own incredulities for probabilities.) But the probability of the whole chain being true however is actually only 0.75*0.75*0.75*0.75=0.31. We're actually only about 30% likely to be right about the whole thing leading to D. I.e., more than twice as likely to be wrong than to be right.

Going "we know C, therefore probably D" just serves to mislead that C is established fact, and hide how shoddy the whole edifice actually is. It's pretending to have a solid foundation, when past a point it's really building castles on clouds.

 

[Belz...]

As you said you want to keep this thread dedicated to your topic—so I can leave it there—but let me add just one point—the repeat of what is recorded will substantiate the whole.

Well, that's terribly convenient.

 

[Piggy]

It has nothing to do with being anti-historicist, and just with being against taking confabulation for historical truth.

Yes, we know that the old Elohist and Jahwist parts of the Torah are about that old, but as I was saying, there is nothing in there that needs Levi to be the name of a tribe instead of some other qualification. You can't just support two claims out of four (that it was around that time, and that some Levi guys were the priests, and that it actually was a tribe, and that it actually has anything to do with the tribe actually being descendants of some guys coming from Egypt some half a millennium ago) and just handwave the third and fourth under the basically lie of "we know that". No, we don't really.

Which leads us to my first problem with such discussions, that being that people almost never support their whole claim. At best what's supported is a much lesser subset of it, and at worst what's supported is something irrelevant.

The second problem I have isn't even as much with speculation, but with then trying to pass some wild speculation for "we know that", effectively erasing the information of how frikken shoddy the whole edifice gets. It's statistically unsound and dishonest.

And let's me illustrate what's statistically wrong with it. Consider the induction chain:

P1: probably A
P2: if A, probably B
P3: if B, probably C
P4: if C, probably D

Now let's say each of those is actually a pretty reasonable proposition. In fact, let's say chances are about 3 out of 4 that we're right about each step, which is pretty darned good for something that happened 3000 years ago. (And definitely more solid than the wild confabulations used for Moses or Jesus, since most of those aren't even supportable probability claims, but mistaking one's own incredulities for probabilities.) But the probability of the whole chain being true however is actually only 0.75*0.75*0.75*0.75=0.31. We're actually only about 30% likely to be right about the whole thing leading to D. I.e., more than twice as likely to be wrong than to be right.

Going "we know C, therefore probably D" just serves to mislead that C is established fact, and hide how shoddy the whole edifice actually is. It's pretending to have a solid foundation, when past a point it's really building castles on clouds.

This kind of thinking is entirely backwards.

As I said, you can always find alternative explanations for every single piece of evidence used in reconstructing historical events.

And you're reading things into my posts that I never said, as well.

If you want to offer an alternative explanation, then you have to come up with a scenario which accounts for everything we know and is at least as likely as what I've described. No one here has done that so far.

And let's look at the assumptions my scenario makes and see if they're all that outrageous:

• The Levites promulgated stories to explain their leaders' Egyptian names and origins because their leaders had Egyptian names and origins and everyone knew this. (Note that I never say they were descended from Levi, and I've noted more than once that Biblical genealogies are manipulated to suit the politics of the day.)

• The Levites constructed a justification story to whitewash a coup against Benjamin because there really was a coup against Benjamin involving the Levites, the Judeans, and the Ephraimites.

• The Levites appear to be culturally and ethnically Hebrew because they are.

• They hold no land because they moved north from their lands in the south in order to seize power within the Hebraic confederation by allying with Judah and Ephraim against Benjamin.

• They later invented the exodus story as a justification for their position as priestly leaders who live off tribute from the other tribes.

• The priestly lines of Judah and Israel trace their affiliations back to the leaders Moses and Aaron because those affiliations are real.

• The conflicting stories about Moses and Aaron exist because Mushite and Aaronite groups used them in their battle for power.

• The Historical Epics of the Levites are exaggerations composed to glorify their heroes.

• No matter how nasty the fight got between the Mushites and Aaronites, no one ever claimed that Moses did not write the first law code, and no one ever claimed that Aaron was not high priest, for the same reason US Democrats don't claim that Bush was impeached over the Iraq War -- these were simple facts that couldn't be fudged, even though lots of other stories are made up or distorted.


As you can see, these are not wild-eyed speculations about odd and weird improbabilities.

In fact, they are the most ho-hum, boring, mundane explanations you can think of for that time and place.

So in this case, assuming what is most likely among our choices, considering the entirety of evidence, not looking at each point through a soda straw, we come up with a scenario in which the Levites are Egyptian-influenced Hebrews (either through proximity and marriage or actually residing in Egypt) who apply an Akhenaten-eque political strategy in Canaan -- introducing a single code of law and establishing themselves exclusively as priests of the Most High God -- to great success and end up reigning for a millennium.

That is not crazy speculation. It follows very neatly from the evidence that's currently available.

Is it correct? I have no idea. But it is the most likely scenario we've got.

If you have another which fits ALL the evidence by using assumptions which are MORE LIKELY, not less, then you have another contender. If not, then not.

 

[TimCallahan]

The earliest preserved document involving anything that can be related to Levitical ritual is a silver scroll bearing the Aaronic benediction. It dates from the seventh century BCE. This benediction goes:

May YHWH bless you and keep you. May he lift up his countenance upon you. May he give you peace.

So, we know that by some time between 600 and 700 BCE some of the ritual of the worship of YHWH (or Yahweh) was in place. As to what degree that validates the early institution of the Levitical priesthood is hard to say.

I find the idea that anything in the worship of Yahweh comes from Akhenaten to be highly doubtful. This theory was floated by Sigmund Freud in his monograph "Moses and Monotheism." I read it some time ago and found it very freudian, but not in the least based on either history or archaeology. Once again, the problems with tying the Levites or even just Moses to Akhenaten are as follows:

1) From inscriptions, Asherah pilar figurines and reading in 1 and 2 Kings how many times the Asherah had to be removed from the temple by reforming Yahwist kings, its plain to see that Yahweh, like any other self-respecting Semitic deity of his day, had a wife. Jeremiah's chagrin at the Jews pouring out libations to the "Queen of Heaven" i.e. Ashtart, and, particularly, their rebuttal to him (Jer. 44:16 - 19) shows that, along with Yahweh, the Jews were also worshipping Ashtart. Monotheistic leanings wee to found among some of the prophets, but even some of these visualized Yahweh in the guise of a bull (see 1 Kgs. 22:10 - 12). There is also evidence that before the Exile the worship of Yahweh was henotheistic. He wasn't seen as ruling any land but Israel (see 2 Kgs. 3:26, 27).

2) the time frame is all wrong for deriving the worship of Yahweh from that of the Aton. Akhenaten died in 1334 BCE, after which time the worship of the Aton was stamped out. The earliest mention o a tribal entity called Israel, only one of many in Canaan, is Merneptah's Victory Stele, Merneptah reigned 1212 - 1202. Thus, we would have to have an Exodus event ca. 1334, over 100 years before we first hear of an entity called Israel as even a small contingent of those tribes inhabiting Canaan. So, the worship of the Aton, reformatted as that of Yahweh, would have to have survived among peoples who had no particular reason to worship it for over 100 years. While that's possible, it's also a bit tenuous.

3) The stories in Judges, depicting the loose, pre-monarchial tribal confederation, i.e. the formative years of the people called Israel, are set in a world devoid of either Egyptian or Hittite influence, i.e. the world after the death of Ramesses III, ca. 1150 BCE. This time frame doesn't match a minor exods afterthe death of Akhenaten.

4) The pre-Israelite village sites discovered by Dever and others date from the 11th. and 12th. centuries, further supporting an Israelite origin ca. 1200. Again, this is inconsistent with a Levite imposition of monotheistic or even henotheistic political power ca. 1330.

 

[Belz...]

If you want to offer an alternative explanation, then you have to come up with a scenario which accounts for everything we know and is at least as likely as what I've described. No one here has done that so far.

I think this is where you and Hans disagree.

 

[Piggy]

I find the idea that anything in the worship of Yahweh comes from Akhenaten to be highly doubtful.

So do I, for what it's worth.

The Levites do not appear to have introduced Yahwism, nor does Yahwism appear to come from Egypt.

What they may have introduced was a political idea -- consolidating official worship under a single priesthood of a single God in order to reduce threats to power.

 

[Piggy]

I think this is where you and Hans disagree.

If anything, Hans has a wider view of what is known that I do.

I put much less stock in Campbellian analysis than either Hans or Tim, for example.

When I talk about what "we know", I'm talking about the archaeological evidence, including the text. I'm certainly not talking about conclusions drawn from the texts alone, and I'm also not talking about the majority of conclusions drawn from anything.

What I'm saying here is that the strongest evidence is convergence -- which is to say, a coherent scenario which explains all the artifacts, including the texts, in a way that doesn't involve reaching for highly unlikely explanations.

 

[Oystein]

Hans, Piggy,

I understand a difference between you two thusly:

Hans says that Piggy's hypotheses can't be said to be real, true, whatever as their probability of being wrong is greater than their probability of being right. For example, 30% for being right, 70% for being wrong

Piggy says it is the most right hypothesis if it has the highest probability going for it among all candidates. In the example, his hypothesis might habe 30%, and others would have only 20%, 10%, 1%, 0%. Or he is asking for the >30% hypothesis.


I can sympathise with both positions. Piggy's becomes untenable if the most likely hypothesis has, say, less than 5% probability of being true - in which case we are really lost in the dark.


Personally, I like Piggy's approach, with the understanding that the hypothesis might not actually be right. I still like it, of it makes me understand how these peoples tended to "tick". And also as a tool to put into perspective the even less likely propositions.


Thinking in terms of philosophy pf science, another nice feature about having a in incumbant hypothesis is of course that it may enable us to make falsifiable predictions and thus faces scrutiny. I'd like to see challenges - not just you saying what is probably not right, but daring to come up with a plausible positive alternative.

 

[TimCallahan]

. . . (snip) . . . I put much less stock in Campbellian analysis than either Hans or Tim, for example. . . . (snip) . . .

Just out of curiosity what do see as the Campbellian analysis in which I put stock? If possible, give me a specific example of my doing this.