NOM

I'm reading a really fascinating book by two biblical archaeologist, called The Bible Unearthed.

Has anybody else read this?

The theme of the book is that all of the archaeology that was once held up as evidence for the Old Testament, after careful evaluation and correlation with newer archaeological evidence, clearly demonstrates that the Bible narrative is dramatically different than what archaeology has unveiled. I'm about 2/3 of the way through but I'll fill in more details when I'm done.

Some highlights:

There is absolutely no evidence of a House of Israel being captives in Egypt and then making a mass exodus. In fact they were all Canaanites from the beginning who filtered into the highlands from the desert and gradually evolved from a pastoral to an agricultural existence.

The Isrealites were never a single group of people that split into ten tribes in two kingdoms. They were two peoples from their inception.

At the time of David and Solomon there were only about 5000 people in the entire "kingdom" of Judah (around the 10th century). Compare this to the 600,000 men, plus women and children of the putative Exodus from Egypt. It did not grow to a sufficient size to be considered a kingdom until the 7th century.

Most of the places named in the stories of Abraham, Moses, and Joshua were either nonexistent or very sparsely populated villages at the time. These places are anachronisms that came from a 7th century author, when they actually existed.

Everything points to King Josiah in the 7th century BC as the creator of the Bible narrative as a piece of political propaganda to frame himself as the new hero king, in the mold of Joshua and David.

The destruction that was attributed to Joshua's domination of Canaan was actually done by other people at other times, or sometimes not at all; many of those places didn't even exist in the time of Joshua.

The Bible authors likely collected the hero legends of various clans within their territory (Abraham, Moses, Joshua, etc) and wove them together into a single narrative that would help unite the people under one king. In order to do this Josiah's seat of government and official home of his national god had to be emphasized as the only authorized place of worship, so all religious competition had to be demeaned and wiped out.

The southern kingdom of Judah was perpetually small, poor, and weak compared to the northern kingdom of Israel until Israel got powerful to really rub up against it's neighbors, which led to its eventual downfall and gave Judah a chance to step in and magnify itself.

All of the great wealth and construction that was attributed to Solomon was actually the work of the true great kings of Israel, Omri and his son Ahab. Yup, the same Ahab, husband of Jezebel, that the Bible derides as the most corrupt leader of all time. The 7th century Bible authors usurped Ahab's accomplishments and reassigned them to Solomon. There is no archaeological evidence that Solomon did anything of significance, including his Temple.

ETA: Changed the estimated population of Judah at the time of David. The book puts it at 5000 people.

Of course, not everyone agrees on the dating of some sites, as demonstrated by some of the people quoted in this article in an Isreaeli new magazine:

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAG ... -1.5466612

Nevertheless, the article concludes that, "The descriptions of King Solomon and David in the bible were probably embellished, to paint a picture of a vast, prosperous kingdom. But the bible's writers typically lived centuries after the period they were writing about. Nor were they beholden to today's principles of veracity, and, as they say, the story is written by the winners."

Why do I feel like quoting Jesse Pinkman after reading through this?

wtfluff wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 15, 2020 4:54 pm

Why do I feel like quoting Jesse Pinkman after reading through this?

Do you mean, “What Good Is Being An Outlaw When You Have Responsibilities?”

or

“Are We In The Meth Business, Or The Money Business?”

Thanks for the summary!

Yes, that's Finkelstein and whats his nose's book. William Dever, a biblical archaeologist is also huge on discussing the incredibly difficult task of identifying anything having to do with the biblical portrait of ancient Israel. Much if not all was written centuries after they had supposedly existed, and written by peoples with an entirely different outlook, theology, etc. In other words, what we are reading from the Bible is the viewpoint of peoples of 500 B.C., not anciently in Enoch and Adam's time. I think its one of the more interesting areas of biblical research myself. Realize the book you read is several years old and probably dated in parts. But the essential core that the historical outlook we get from the Bibie is skewed is probably closer to the truth than not.

I enjoyed that book and still listen to William Dever on youtube. History being inherently uncertain, I appreciate this view, and give it more credence than Bible literalism. At the most, it's based on real archaeology, at the least, it is fascinating.

Hagoth wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 15, 2020 6:22 pm

wtfluff wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 15, 2020 4:54 pm

Why do I feel like quoting Jesse Pinkman after reading through this?

Do you mean, “What Good Is Being An Outlaw When You Have Responsibilities?”

or

“Are We In The Meth Business, Or The Money Business?”

Or

Something about science...

wtfluff wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 16, 2020 7:40 am

Something about science...

"We're going to build a robot!"

Hagoth! What a great and fascinating topic!

And Jesse is a favorite! Be sure to watch him in the series "The Path" where he really gets into the religious BS. But, Breaking Bad is the all time great to be sure. Also happy to seem him in season 3 of West World!

This one could be attributed to RSM:
"Look, I like making cherry product, but let’s keep it real, alright? We make poison for people who don’t care. We probably have the most unpicky customers in the world."

And I could see this quoted from the boardroom at the COB, probably when they asked Dieter to step down:
"Oh well, heil Hitler, bitch. And let me tell you something else. We flipped a coin, okay? You and me. You and me! Coin flip is sacred! Your job is waiting for you in that basement, as per the coin!"

Another one in the COB boardroom, post meeting with Dieter stepping down and he's talking to Ballard about RMN and DHO:
"What if this is like math, or algebra? And you add a plus douchebag to a minus douchebag, and you get, like, zero douchebags?"

Here's one the could apply to BOM anachronisms:
"Possum. Big, freaky, lookin’ bitch. Since when did they change it to opossum? When I was comin’ up it was just possum. Opossum makes it sound like he’s irish or something. Why do they gotta go changing everything?"

Hagoth wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 16, 2020 8:20 am

wtfluff wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 16, 2020 7:40 am

Something about science...

"We're going to build a robot!"

Since Rubin broached the subject, I'll stop dropping hints, and just cut to the meme.




Admins, feel free to edit, delete, add, subtract as you wish...

Apologeticsislying wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 16, 2020 5:44 am

Yes, that's Finkelstein and whats his nose's book. William Dever, a biblical archaeologist is also huge on discussing the incredibly difficult task of identifying anything having to do with the biblical portrait of ancient Israel. Much if not all was written centuries after they had supposedly existed, and written by peoples with an entirely different outlook, theology, etc. In other words, what we are reading from the Bible is the viewpoint of peoples of 500 B.C., not anciently in Enoch and Adam's time.

It's soooooo helpful to try to get into a post-exile mindset. Royal succession abolished, upper classes made slaves and second class in Babylon, everyone scattered to the winds, the holy city a ghetto. Where was God? How did this happen? When will we be a great people again? Are the answers hiding in our fragmented written and oral histories?

The psalms and Isaiah in particular make a lot of sense with this viewpoint in mind.

Reuben wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 17, 2020 1:04 am

It's soooooo helpful to try to get into a post-exile mindset.

But just as helpful to get into the Deuteronomist mindset of King Josiah, after the Assyrian exile of Israel, and before the Babylonian exile of Judah. He appears to be the main instigator in creating the Biblical narrative and timeline up to his day, and creating the whole House of Israel identity. The Old Testament is chock full o' anachronisms that freeze the storytelling at time at his reign. When the Bible talks about which kings were wicked and which were righteous, that seems to be Josiah setting himself up as the exemplar and only righteous heir to the throne of the combined kingdoms. And he just happens to have possession of the written words of God that have the formula for exactly what you need to do if you don't want incur God's wrath, like all of those unfortunates who came before you, and it is remarkably in line with what King Josiah wants you to do.

Was the creation of the Hebrew nation also the divergent creation of monotheism? Seems like an effort to make some people different and special from most others, the invention of a new unique tribe. This would parallel JS taking all the ideas of past religions and trying to weave it into something unique and special, like kicking out the trinity for the god head. Seems to be part of the tribal formula of success: unique dietary restrictions, special clothing and rituals, our god(s) is stronger than yours.

It never really made sense to me that a man would have 12 sons, and then each of them would have lots of kids and grandkids and eventually become their own separate tribes. Who do they marry and who do their kids and grandkids marry? Are lots of outsiders marrying into these tribes and severing their connections to their other family members outside the tribes? Was there no intermarrying between tribes? Which tribe would the children belong to?

Anyway, if anyone can explain to me how the 12 tribes came in to being that makes any kind of sense at all, please let me know.

RubinHighlander wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 17, 2020 8:01 am

Was the creation of the Hebrew nation also the divergent creation of monotheism? Seems like an effort to make some people different and special from most others, the invention of a new unique tribe. This would parallel JS taking all the ideas of past religions and trying to weave it into something unique and special, like kicking out the trinity for the god head. Seems to be part of the tribal formula of success: unique dietary restrictions, special clothing and rituals, our god(s) is stronger than yours.

Another book I recently read, The Early History of God, talks about the move from polytheism to monotheism, and how Yahweh came to take on the characteristic of other gods and goddesses as they were eventually sidelined and disavowed. The temple in Jerusalem once did many things that were later eschewed as polytheistic, and the kings who supported those traditions were later labeled as wicked.

An Ancient Near East scholar named Simo Parpola also found a strong parallel between the Kabalistic traits of Yahweh and the characteristics of the individual Mesopotamian deities, so a lot of the monotheistic development might have happened in Assyria and Babylon and was then transferred to people's understanding of Yahweh.

According to the authors of The Bible Unearthed, Josiah seized the opportunity to integrate the local scattering of religious worldviews and focus it all on his city, his temple, and his god, and his supremacy as a god-elected ruler. If successful that would give him a lot of power. It was and it did. That meant collecting the remnants of the Assyrian-devastated northern kingdom, crushing out their religious traditions, and bringing it all under one roof. The rewriting of history answered the questions of why people would need to commit themselves to his regime.

Speaking of dietary laws, that was one thing that archaeologically set the Judahites apart from all of their neighbors. No pig bones in their early settlement sites. So, some aspects of their religion obviously reach pretty far back in time.