Moses Myth: And You Thought Historizing Jesus Was Tough! (paradise, Islamic, Muslim)

[Daniel O. McClellan]

Originally Posted by Lucidkitty

Negative, the there are no mentions of the Jews before the Greek period.

Actually "Jew" is just an anglicized short form of Judean (a national/linguistic/geographical designation all at the same time), and there are numerous mentions of Judeans dating back to the early first millennium BCE.

Originally Posted by Lucidkitty

That are mentions of people living in that area, but nothing of their religious beliefs.

Not true at all. We have eighth and ninth century BCE inscriptions mentioning YHWH, his consort, and his rule over all the earth (Khirbet el-Qôm, Kuntillet 'Ajrud, Khirbet Beit Lei, etc.), as well as numerous archaeological data that align in various ways with early descriptions of Israelite cultic practice (cultic installations at Megiddo, Arad, Taanach, etc.). Religion and culture are not distinguishable prior to the Common Era, though.

Originally Posted by Lucidkitty

Jewish beliefs were an evolution from Polytheism, to Monolatirsm, towards eventual Monotheism.

Evolutionary models of religious development have been abandoned for decades. This is nineteenth century thinking. Also, it's spelled monolatry, not "Monolatirsm." If you want a good discussion of these different religious -isms, see Mark Smith, God in Translation, pp. 149–80.

Originally Posted by Lucidkitty

You don't actually see the latter until after the Persian period though.

You really don't see it in a philosophical sense until the Middle Ages. Prior to that it's just a more specialized brand of monolatry.

Originally Posted by Lucidkitty

I mean technically you don't even see any evidence of Monolatirsm. If you use the bible as somewhat of a source though you can see that was the case. I think you also have it mixed up. There are no books out there that definitively prove Moses was real. There are a lot of books on the subject that show the history reported in the bible re Kings doesn't have much weight though. I can give you a list if you'd like. The reading can be pretty dry though .

The history follows real events quite closely, there are just many places where characterizations, motivations, and religious ideologies are imposed and invented.

What books have you read in their entirety on the history of corpora like Kings?

[TRANSPONDER]

Lucid Kitty, that's a good post by Daniel McClellan, but I wouldn't answer the last bit or you could find yourself embroiled in a debate about which books and their authors are credible on the subject of Hebrew kings. It would be better to reference shorter websites - even Wiki - that comment on a number of authorities and their views than get involved in discussing boos.

And is it really true that Jews were mentioned back in the 1st mll? Israel, sure, but Jews or even Judeans I am not so sure about.

Later...

The Merneptah stele of 1209 B.C references (it is generally accepted) Israel.
The Moabite mesha stele of 850 mentions Omri, Yahweh and the house of David. Not the Jews or Judea.
The Kurkh monolith of 850 BC in cuneiform is thought to refer to Ahab of 'Sirila-a' (Israel)
Black obelisk, Saba'a stone and Tel dan stele all refer (it is thought) to Omri, Palestine and the house of David. No mention of Jews or Judea.
The Nimrud tablet of 733 BC refers to Yaudaya. This is the first known reference to Judea. Sargon II's prism also refers to Judah.

It seems to me that Judah (or Judea) being used rather than Israel, was related to Israel and Judah becoming two kingdoms in the 700's BC. It is surely going to be a while before people start to talk about 'Judeans' as distinct from 'Israelites' and it is really after Assyria obliterated Israel that 'Judea' became the only Jewish Kingdom there was. Thus, hebrews, Israelites and Judeans (or "Jews") became pretty much synonymous.

[~HecateWhisperCat~]

Originally Posted by Daniel O. McClellan

Actually "Jew" is just an anglicized short form of Judean (a national/linguistic/geographical designation all at the same time), and there are numerous mentions of Judeans dating back to the early first millennium BCE.

I'm referring to the religion, not the people. Understandably this is difficult to do since they are intertwined. However, for this thread I am talking about actual Jewish religious practices.

Originally Posted by Daniel O. McClellan

Not true at all. We have eighth and ninth century BCE inscriptions mentioning YHWH, his consort, and his rule over all the earth (Khirbet el-Qôm, Kuntillet 'Ajrud, Khirbet Beit Lei, etc.), as well as numerous archaeological data that align in various ways with early descriptions of Israelite cultic practice (cultic installations at Megiddo, Arad, Taanach, etc.). Religion and culture are not distinguishable prior to the Common Era, though.

None of them actual mention the beliefs though, on that we have to go with a lot of assumption on how their beliefs manifested.

Originally Posted by Daniel O. McClellan

Evolutionary models of religious development have been abandoned for decades. This is nineteenth century thinking. Also, it's spelled monolatry, not "Monolatirsm." If you want a good discussion of these different religious -isms, see Mark Smith, God in Translation, pp. 149–80.

Tell that to people who study the field and still utilize it. Religions develop over time and don't remain static. There is always going to be some form of evolution there. Monolartism is also the plural form of Monolarty . I have the book actually, but thank you for mentioning it.

Originally Posted by Daniel O. McClellan

The history follows real events quite closely, there are just many places where characterizations, motivations, and religious ideologies are imposed and invented.

What books have you read in their entirety on the history of corpora like Kings?

I think "quite closely" is a bit of an exaggeration. It follows events, but it how closely is up for debate.

[~HecateWhisperCat~]

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA

Lucid Kitty, that's a good post by Daniel McClellan, but I wouldn't answer the last bit or you could find yourself embroiled in a debate about which books and their authors are credible on the subject of Hebrew kings. It would be better to reference shorter websites - even Wiki - that comment on a number of authorities and their views than get involved in discussing boos.

And is it really true that Jews were mentioned back in the 1st mll? Israel, sure, but Jews or even Judeans I am not so sure about.

Later...

The Merneptah stele of 1209 B.C references (it is generally accepted) Israel.
The Moabite mesha stele of 850 mentions Omri, Yahweh and the house of David. Not the Jews or Judea.
The Kurkh monolith of 850 BC in cuneiform is thought to refer to Ahab of 'Sirila-a' (Israel)
Black obelisk, Saba'a stone and Tel dan stele all refer (it is thought) to Omri, Palestine and the house of David. No mention of Jews or Judea.
The Nimrud tablet of 733 BC refers to Yaudaya. This is the first known reference to Judea. Sargon II's prism also refers to Judah.

It seems to me that Judah (or Judea) being used rather than Israel, was related to Israel and Judah becoming two kingdoms in the 700's BC. It is surely going to be a while before people start to talk about 'Judeans' as distinct from 'Israelites' and it is really after Assyria obliterated Israel that 'Judea' became the only Jewish Kingdom there was. Thus, hebrews, Israelites and Judeans (or "Jews") became pretty much synonymous.

Not to my knowledge there isn't. That's one of the reasons that there is skepticism about the age of Judaism. You have a lot of archaeological support showing Pagan practices. However, beyond a handful of references to YHWH, we have no real knowledge of any possible monotheistic beliefs.

[cupper3]

Originally Posted by Lucidkitty

None of them actual mention the beliefs though, on that we have to go with a lot of assumption on how their beliefs manifested.

One only needs to look at the first commandment to see that monolatrism existed with the then Jewish tribes.

The long form:

I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me, and showing loving kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
— Exodus 20:2-6

Yes, I know, there is mixing of the second commandment in there. All it does is emphasis that the Jewish Yahweh wants to be recognized as the prime god. The Greeks had their Zeus, although Zeus was not as paranoid about the other gods as Yahweh is demonstrated to be here.

Religions do evolve.

[TRANSPONDER]

Originally Posted by Lucidkitty

Not to my knowledge there isn't. That's one of the reasons that there is skepticism about the age of Judaism. You have a lot of archaeological support showing Pagan practices. However, beyond a handful of references to YHWH, we have no real knowledge of any possible monotheistic beliefs.

Yes. On the topic, whether the Jews of the 10th c BC on were called Jews or not, is not really relevant. The argument is really about Moses and whether the story in Exodus is feasible, even as mytholigized history.

I can say that previous discussions have proposed the Hyksos, Akhenaton and Hatshepsut as being of the time of Exodus, but that didn't work and the favourite "Hard -hearted Pharaoh" is Ramesses II, who had chariots, unlike most previous Pharaohs (1) and whose first son died would you believe. In fact Ramesses was so long lived that he outlived most of his sons and the next king, Merneptah, (of Israel stele fame) was 16th in line and a fair old age when he came to the throne.

Also, apart from Philistia not even being there in Ramesses' time so the Hebrews would not need to shirt around it to enter Canaan from the East, Egypt, after the battle of Kadesh, secured control of Canaan up to the Syrian border. If the Hebrews had been conquering the tribes who lived there as per Exodus, you'd think that the governors would write to Egypt to complain, as they did in the Amarna letters.

So, a word about the Saudi site. While it is possible to construct an itinerary based on the wanderings and the sunken land bridge on the eastern branch of the Red Sea can be made to look like the obvious place for a crossing, if God is going to part the sea he can create a land -bridge anywhere he likes. The supposed relics of the Moses camp site are not actually as good as they are cracked up to be, and I really don't find the Jebl Laws site persuasive after scrutiny of all the facts, not just the ones that look good.

(1) I know that 'kings' is a better title, Pharaoh being a Bible -derived term meaning more 'government' derived from 'Pa'ro' "Great house". But Pharaoh has a long tradition and sounds great. It makes 'Kings' sound pretty run of the mill, by comparison.

[Hawkins]

The Bible is the only human book (if you think so) written explicitly (pay attention to the word explicitly) using the method of human witnessing backed by multiple accounts and martyrdom of direct witnesses.

Today we do the same kind of witnessing. Our daily news are propagated in the same fashion of multiple accounts (multiple number of trustworthy news media). We however, use video and audio recordings to achieve the same effect of martyrdom to "enhance" the validity of witnessing. No human witnessing, especially in ancient times, can be made to be more valid than those direct witnesses martyred themselves for what is said and done.

That being said. The question here is who is copying from who, or rather whether it is a copy.

The nature of history (= his story) is that it is a conveying of message through the hands of humans. Humans wrote texts for other humans to believe with faith that whether a truth is spoken or not. Basically, if a writing language is a lasting language from BC till AD, then one can hardly conclude from the texts that who is copying from who, as the date the texts were written may not be precisely identified.

Is it a copy?
Ancient scripts may contain prophecies which one can hardly tell what that prophecy means to say. So even when you can precisely date the texts to be long before Moses, the texts can still be a prophecy made for Moses. So that boils down whether you believe a prophecy can be written down that way or not, a prophecy exists or not.

In a nutshell, history invites faith for a subjective interpretation.

[TRANSPONDER]

The operative words there are "trustworthy" and "witnesses". Investigation of witnesses whose stories do not stack up results in their testimony being deemed worthless. The same applies to newsmedia, history books and indeed any method of making claims. This thread is looking as the supposed testimony of Moses to the exodus and, like a number of previous threads, is finding it dubious. One point that I find very telling is the mention of avoiding Philistia. Philistia wasn't settled until long after these events. Moses wouldn't even have heard the name.

And to save yourself the trouble of posting, claiming prophecy or a few hints from God takes the book out of the realm of witness statements and into the real of fanciful claims.

[june 7th]

Folks, just s reminder that the thread has to remain on topic.

Thanks!

[Daniel O. McClellan]

Originally Posted by june 7th

Folks, just s reminder that the thread has to remain on topic.

Thanks!

How was my post off-topic? It was directly responding to a different post that you've not deleted, and both are directly related to biblical historicity, which is the main theme of this thread.