Moses Myth: And You Thought Historizing Jesus Was Tough! (disciple, America, prophet)
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Well, of course it is all a myth ... but I'll say I don't think these stories or characters were ever meant to be taken literally. It's almost as if hundreds of years from now some people decide to make a religion out of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.
Since the thread is about Moses, I will flatly state there is not one speck of evidence of an "Exodus" of hundreds if not thousands of liberated Hebrew slaves leaving Egypt through the Sinai desert to Cana'an.
That is not to say that way back in the Chalcolithic Age (early Bronze Age) an extended family clan migrated from the Levant down to Egypt and then got into some kind of dispute with a local landowner or lord and made their departure through Lake Serbonis ("The Sea Of Reeds") ... which became overblown through the generations and the retelling.
You're right. This was all meant to be allegory and mythology designed to teach moral lessons like Aesop's Fables. It was the favorite style of writing then.
It wasn't until after Constantine that the literalists came in a passed laws saying that this had to be interpreted literally or be executed. After ordering Eusebius to gather the most convincing writings and burn all the rest---we have Constantine's own words to Eusebius:
Quote:
"Search ye these books, and whatever is good in them, that
retain; but whatsoever is evil, that cast away. What is good in one
book, unite ye with that which is good in
another book. And whatsoever is thus
brought together shall be called The Book of
B o o k s. And it shall be the doctrine of my
people, which I will recommend unto all
nations, that there shall be no more war for
religions' sake."
(God's Book of Eskra, op. cit., chapter
xlviii, paragraph 31)
"Make them to astonish" said Constantine,
and "the books were written accordingly"
Quote:
With his instructions fulfilled, Constantine then decreed that the
New Testimonies would thereafter be called the "word of the
Roman Saviour God" (Life of Constantine, vol. iii, p. 29) and
official to all presbyters sermonising in the Roman Empire. He then ordered earlier presbyterial manuscripts and the records of the council "burnt" and declared that "any man found concealing writings should be stricken off from his shoulders" (beheaded)
(ibid.). As the record shows, presbyterial writings previous to the
Council of Nicaea no longer exist, except for some fragments that
have survived.
JUNE
And thus we go from allegory to literal interpretation of the stories of Jesus on pain of death if the law is not obeyed. Constantine didn't fool around. He wanted all this religious bickering to end for the good of his empire. He didn't care which religion it was as long as it did the trick. It was just a quirk of fate that Christianity (which didn't exist as a formal religion until then) was chosen and not Mithraism or we'd all be sitting around debating whether Mithra was real or not.
The interesting thing is the Catholic Encyclopedia is very forthright about all this forgery. Plenty of admissions that will shock Christians if they take the time to actually read the article below and see what the Catholic church admits to doing:
The 60 million dollar question is can people over a 2000 year span be that stupid that they couldn't see through all this nonsense? I mean didn't a part of their common sense---we're talking a couple billion Christians over the last two millennia---didn't some small part of their common sense activate at some point and say, "You know, this doesn't line up with this, and this doesn't make a bit of sense. All this just can't be factual."
I mean I'm just one person, and not that bright, and even I caught onto a lot of this from the time I was a teen. I just basically ignored what my common sense was telling me about did the rooster crow after Peter denied Jesus thrice or did it crow once after he denied him the first time ala Mark? Wouldn't the rooster crowing immediately jar his memory of the promise he made to Jesus?
Not that this helps a whole lot, but I had a dream about the Old Testament. A voice said, "it happened but not that way." Yep, I'm right it doesn't help. However, there may be hope, a way may be found to find out the real story, but it sounds exceedingly difficult. I do have faith that it did happen. Jews may be God's chosen people, but there're not good historians.
*Finkelstein, and actually, he's got a great new book out on the history of the Northern Kingdom that's available for free here. He's got a lot of good stuff, but the majority of it is quite technical and deals heavily with C14 dating and stuff like that.
Well, I wouldn't call the book worthless, Dan. It has some interesting stuff in there. I haven't read it so I can't comment but I sometimes gauge a books' worth partly by the reviews it's gotten on Amazon and hers has a total of 336 reviews. That's more than what authors like Ehrman, Craig and Price get. 183 5 star to 60 1-star. As you know lots of smart people post reviews on Amazon, including Price himself (2 PhD's) and Anne Rice, who's a hell of a writer in her own right and has lately been researching this stuff. Now I've learned not to go toe-to-toe with you as you're too good a scholar, but re Moses let me repeat what I told jeffbase re Moses and get your reaction:
Are you going to disagree with a Jewish professor of archeology at Tel Aviv University?
Add to that fact that archeologists have never found any evidence that 3 million people wandered the Sinai for 40 years and Egyptian records from the period don't show any evidence of an exodus of 3 million people out of Egypt or that 3 million Israelites ever occupied Egypt. Such an exodus, archeologists and ancient civilization sociologists say would fracture the Egyptian empire's social and economic structure.
That is a very correct analysis of the subject. Barring Dr. Kitchen and David Rohl, almost no legitimate scholar in the field believes the exodus on a large scale took place. There are just way too many gaps, contrary knowledge, and obvious fabrications to believe that if happened in the way the Bible said it did. That's not to mention that it would make little sense to leave Egypt for a land controlled by Egypt. What you do see if the same Cannanite people likely displaced due to the end of the Bronze age, reappering in the eastern highlands. The only difference really is that the dwelling structures are set up in a more agrarian fashion. Less garish pottery too, if you want to get really technical. However, the settlements are quite small and take a few hundred years to build up. There's no real evidence of a major migration of people in the late bronze age, which you would be able to see in size of settlements.
That doesn't mean that no exodus took place, just nothing of that magnitude. I think there are parallels between the rise and fall of the Hyksos in Eygpt which over time might of become a cultural memory. It could have easily been a reflection of the upper crusts exil in Babylon as well, or a mixture of the two. I would imagine that this goes into the stories of the conquest and the judges as well. How could an Ancient pastoral nomad like people explain the ruins of great cities, for example? Obviously by telling stories about how a great leader of theirs stormed the gates and slayed the occupants. And that's not to say that in some cases that didn't happen. It just didn't happen at once or in the large scale fashion you find in the Bible.
Anyway, sorry for the rant, but I am passionate about this subject .
What do you want me to say, good pastor. I'm willing to look at the evidence besides what's in the Bible, which I wouldn't trust for veracity far as I could throw it. But show me some hard historical evidence in writings written by famous secular scholars like Philo of Alexandria who lived at the same time as Jesus and wrote of Jesus' crucifixion, resurrection and ascension and dead bodies coming out of the grave and appearing to thousands of people before being raptured to heaven and I will believe what you have to say.
The truth is you can't produce a single piece of secular writing. So why should I believe what you have to say? I know: because it's in the Bible and the Bible is the inspired inerrant word of God. Same ol' stock answer from every fundamentalist.
There wouldn't be, because Jesus was simply unimportant to the major scholars of the time. The only reason Josephus wrote about him is because of his interesting the history of the region. A Greek or Roman scholar would have zero desire writing about a man executed for sedition in a part of the Empire where that was a common occurrence. You know what Jesus is likely to have existed? Because he is nothing like what the Jewish messiah was believed to have been. He wasn't a cosmic Judge that came to earth to punish the wicked and reward the good, and he wasn't a fiery leader who slayed the Romans either. He was a poor 1st century peasant that taught for a very small amount of time and was executed without fulfilling any of those things. That's not exactly the more endearing story to craft if you want to gain followers.
And The Gospels contain a lot of embarrassing information that the early believers didn't erase as well. Oh they embellish them as time went on, no doubt. However, the fact remains that they kept stories in there that were not very flattering to their early church leaders or their savior. I mean it's pretty obvious from Mark that Jesus was a follower of John, and struck out after he died. It why the store gets more fantastic as each gospel progresses.
The rooster thing is just one of thousands of contradictions that I could dig up. But let's have a look at the text:
Now, not just two hours earlier Peter makes a solemn promise to Jesus. Jesus says the rooster will crow twice after Peter has denied him. Peter had to have heard the first crow. If he could hear the second crow he certainly could have heard the first. Now why didn't the rooster's first crow jar his memory of his promise to Jesus? Wouldn't it have jarred yours? "Oh, Oh! The rooster crowed...my promise to my master. I'd better honor it."
So where does Mark get two crows, and isn't it reasonable to believe that Matthew and Luke saw the stupidity of two crows and to make the account more believable they changed it to one crow?
How come this kinds of logic doesn't register with 2 billion people. If it can register with me, a person who's not that bright, certainly a few others can ask the same kinds of questions for ALL the errors in logic that the Bible is rife with.
Possibly it's just poetic license is all. The writers of Matthew and Luke are highly educated given the Greek they use is less crude than it is in Mark. It's possible they just thought the story sounded better by reversing the wording is all. It's also conceivable that the early copy of the gospel they copied from had the story written down in the way they did. There are slight variations in the early copies of gospels that don't all match up 100 percent due to minor translation errors.
If we go by Independent attestation, then the story is likely at the core a true one. That doesn't mean each event happened as they say it did, but they did most likely happen. You have to remember that the early Christians didn't just slop **** into a book and believe it without thinking. There are a ton of documents that never made it into the Gospels because they don't have a long literary or oral history dated back to the time of Christ. They were far more methodical in their inclusion and rejection of documents than most people give them credit for.
That is a very correct analysis of the subject. Barring Dr. Kitchen and David Rohl, almost no legitimate scholar in the field believes the exodus on a large scale took place. There are just way too many gaps, contrary knowledge, and obvious fabrications to believe that if happened in the way the Bible said it did. That's not to mention that it would make little sense to leave Egypt for a land controlled by Egypt. What you do see if the same Cannanite people likely displaced due to the end of the Bronze age, reappering in the eastern highlands. The only difference really is that the dwelling structures are set up in a more agrarian fashion. Less garish pottery too, if you want to get really technical. However, the settlements are quite small and take a few hundred years to build up. There's no real evidence of a major migration of people in the late bronze age, which you would be able to see in size of settlements.
That doesn't mean that no exodus took place, just nothing of that magnitude. I think there are parallels between the rise and fall of the Hyksos in Eygpt which over time might of become a cultural memory. It could have easily been a reflection of the upper crusts exil in Babylon as well, or a mixture of the two. I would imagine that this goes into the stories of the conquest and the judges as well. How could an Ancient pastoral nomad like people explain the ruins of great cities, for example? Obviously by telling stories about how a great leader of theirs stormed the gates and slayed the occupants. And that's not to say that in some cases that didn't happen. It just didn't happen at once or in the large scale fashion you find in the Bible.
Anyway, sorry for the rant, but I am passionate about this subject .
Thaaaaaaaank you, Lucidkitty. Now if you could just convince the good pastor Vizio and jeffbase of this fact.
I'm perfectly open to the likelihood that some sort of departure took place from Egypt to somewhere. The numbers of Israelites are probably from the hundreds to a few thousand. I mean people were settling all sorts of places back then. It's not inconceivable that a few hundred goat herders worshipping a deity they called Yahweh wandered into Egypt and settled somewhere out of sight of the Egyptians or that the Egyptians saw them but they were so small in number that the Egyptians said, "Aww, just let 'em be." Maybe after a few hundred years they decided to seek greener pastures and departed. But all the malarkey found in Exodus about God sending plagues and parting the Red Sea and wandering in Sinai for 40 years is just too much. They probably took a wrong turn somewhere that added a month to their trip and a month, as the famous fish story goes, grew into 40 years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucidkitty
There wouldn't be, because Jesus was simply unimportant to the major scholars of the time. The only reason Josephus wrote about him is because of his interesting the history of the region. A Greek or Roman scholar would have zero desire writing about a man executed for sedition in a part of the Empire where that was a common occurrence. You know what Jesus is likely to have existed? Because he is nothing like what the Jewish messiah was believed to have been. He wasn't a cosmic Judge that came to earth to punish the wicked and reward the good, and he wasn't a fiery leader who slayed the Romans either. He was a poor 1st century peasant that taught for a very small amount of time and was executed without fulfilling any of those things. That's not exactly the more endearing story to craft if you want to gain followers.
And The Gospels contain a lot of embarrassing information that the early believers didn't erase as well. Oh they embellish them as time went on, no doubt. However, the fact remains that they kept stories in there that were not very flattering to their early church leaders or their savior. I mean it's pretty obvious from Mark that Jesus was a follower of John, and struck out after he died. It why the store gets more fantastic as each gospel progresses.
What I am having trouble with is that a man who is crucified is not news in the Roman empire. A man who is crucified, setting off darkness for 24 hours, a great earthquake, and zombies rising from the grave and appearing to thousands of people in Jerusalem, the man rising from the dead and appearing to 500 people and then ascending into the sky in front of hundreds of witnesses---all this would have immediately set off reverberations all over the Roman empire. At the very least all the contemporary historians, certainly a scholar as reputable as Philo of Alexandria would have written something to the effect, "There was a Jesus fellow who was crucified and reports are circulating all around Palestine that he rose from the dead and stayed with his disciples for 40 days before ascending into the skies under the power of his god." Something---anything, no matter how small just to show that such a powerful series of miracles did not go unnoticed.
The irony--rather, the truth is that these events went entirely unnoticed by everyone likely because they just never happened. The stories were invented as the gospels were being written, hence the wide diversities in the descriptions being recorded. The authors likely had to pump up the stories to make Jesus appear divine so that pagans would more readily accept him as a god instead of just a wise man as he initially was portrayed.
Well, I wouldn't call the book worthless, Dan. It has some interesting stuff in there. I haven't read it so I can't comment but I sometimes gauge a books' worth partly by the reviews it's gotten on Amazon and hers has a total of 336 reviews. That's more than what authors like Ehrman, Craig and Price get. 183 5 star to 60 1-star. As you know lots of smart people post reviews on Amazon, including Price himself (2 PhD's) and Anne Rice, who's a hell of a writer in her own right and has lately been researching this stuff. Now I've learned not to go toe-to-toe with you as you're too good a scholar, but re Moses let me repeat what I told jeffbase re Moses and get your reaction:
Are you going to disagree with a Jewish professor of archeology at Tel Aviv University?
No, I agree with Dr. Herzog (but being Jewish doesn't mean anything). There may have been some people in Egypt who moved into the Northern hill country and brought with them a charter myth about deliverance, but there may not have been. I'm not saying the exodus is historical, I'm saying you can't unilaterally dismiss is as a fairytale just because that sells books on Amazon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte
Add to that fact that archeologists have never found any evidence that 3 million people wandered the Sinai for 40 years and Egyptian records from the period don't show any evidence of an exodus of 3 million people out of Egypt or that 3 million Israelites ever occupied Egypt. Such an exodus, archeologists and ancient civilization sociologists say would fracture the Egyptian empire's social and economic structure.
I know. As I pointed out, no such thing ever happened.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte
Now I know from your bio that you're Mormon. How committed you are and how able you are to separate your faith from evidence is something we all don't know. But my feeling is that you believe the Exodus to have taken place.
I do not, as I have already stated.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte
Would that be a fair assumption?
No.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte
And if you do, do you also believe everything in Genesis right back to Adam and Eve? If you do, on what basis do you believe this? You may have addressed Adam and Eve in previous posts. I can't remember so forgive me if my memory fails.
You're probably right. I was speaking more figuratively in that Moses, according to some mythicists likely developed as a legend the way the Dionysius did.
I suggest you check out J. Z. Smith's Drudgery Divine and then take that knowledge back to those mythicist theories with you. That should help with all that parallelomania.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte
I'll check them but I'm trying to stay from apologetics.
And there is not an apologetic word in any of those books. You're imagining things. These are the leading critical scholars in the field.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte
They have an agenda: to shore up a crumbling Christian faith and their opinions are always slanted.
No one who has ever read a word of any of these authors could ever characterize them this way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte
If you can say they have concrete historical proof that the Exodus took place, whether or not it was led by Moses, then I'm interested. But I would wonder why their proof conflicts with the general consensus among archeologists that the Exodus was not a real event.
These are the archaeologists and biblical scholars who establish the consensus, and they promote no "proofs" that conflict with anything. You're imagining things. Get your head out of the mythicist claptrap and read some actual scholarship.
You're right. This was all meant to be allegory and mythology designed to teach moral lessons like Aesop's Fables. It was the favorite style of writing then.
This is way off base.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte
It wasn't until after Constantine that the literalists came in a passed laws saying that this had to be interpreted literally or be executed.
That's not true at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte
After ordering Eusebius to gather the most convincing writings and burn all the rest---we have Constantine's own words to Eusebius:
And thus we go from allegory to literal interpretation of the stories of Jesus on pain of death if the law is not obeyed. Constantine didn't fool around. He wanted all this religious bickering to end for the good of his empire. He didn't care which religion it was as long as it did the trick. It was just a quirk of fate that Christianity (which didn't exist as a formal religion until then) was chosen and not Mithraism or we'd all be sitting around debating whether Mithra was real or not.
This is pure nonsense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte
The interesting thing is the Catholic Encyclopedia is very forthright about all this forgery. Plenty of admissions that will shock Christians if they take the time to actually read the article below and see what the Catholic church admits to doing:
October 31 1517 The Otterman Turks begin the take Israel by way of Beersheba.
October 31 1917 General Allenby begins to take Israel back by way of Beersheba.
400 years to the day, and also when Martin Luther did his thing and Da Vinci did his.
430 years later after 1517, Israel became a nation again.
Their nation only repeated what happened when they became a nation when the walked out of Egypt.
The first people they fought was Ai, war was declared the day they became a nation.
The Exodus has begun in our lifetime and we have seen it, what the first Exodus was pointing to, was only the last Exodus that we have seen, and who would be so bold as to say that it is not a miracle?
There was absolutely no chance of Israel claiming Israel again, but through the horrendous acts of Hitler and the world, Israel, became a nation again, a people exiled for thousands of years returning and doing the impossible.
The fact that the Exodus happened in our lifetime, is much more bigger than people crossing a little water, they have crossed vast oceans and returned.
Up until 1947 and 1948, I may have given Exodus doubters a pass, but not now since I have seen it with my own eyes.
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Now if you could just convince the good pastor Vizio and jeffbase of this fact. 
