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The further I dig into this topic of how much myth is contained in the Bible the deeper a hole I dig for myself. I eventually may never be able to climb out of it.
Now much literature is surfacing about how the mythological Moses came about and untangling this knot makes figuring out Jesus' historicity look like a bowtie in comparison.
Some of it is explored in a monumental new book by DM Murdock on Moses---500 pages of small print that goes into incredible detail of how the Moses mythology emerged from a Bronze/Iron Age plethora of cultures, not just Jewish. And figures like Dionysius get dragged into the mix that makes for a read that is so complex in all its intricacies that it is like trying to solve a murder mystery in which a thousand characters are suspect. Can you imagine trying to figure out who killed the butler when you have to investigate a thousand suspects? I don't think we'll ever truly fathom the extent of how much myth got mixed with historical fact over a period of 3000 years.
There's plenty of literature online dealing with how the Moses mythology came about--Israel's position among an army of pagan nations surrounding her was tenuous. Central to all this is how she interacted with them and how thoughts and ideas on religion got exchanged between Jewish representatives and ambassadors and those of other nations, and from kings and scholars in councils down to slaves chatting with each other on caravans and telling each other stories of their own gods and how the Jewish slaves then told their friends and how all this over centuries eventually and ever so slowly got interwoven into Jewish mythology, religion and lore.
The problem is, where do we stop? With Moses? Or do we have to carry it forward through Joshua supposedly conquering Canaan when history says that all the while Joshua was supposedly battling the Amorites Canaan was actually under tight Egyptian rule with Egyptian armies covering nearly every square mile of it; through Samson, though David, through Solomon, through Elijah right up to the Babylonian captivity when all this storytelling and mythology finally gets written down and somewhere along the way the Israelites finally do somehow get into the land, but exactly how is lost to time.
I believe the Bible is such a complex piece of literature that to truly understand what lies behind its creation would take a historical study the size of a set of Encyclopedia Britannica. I despair of ever comprehending such a book.
The further I dig into this topic of how much myth is contained in the Bible the deeper a hole I dig for myself. I eventually may never be able to climb out of it.
Now much literature is surfacing about how the mythological Moses came about and untangling this knot makes figuring out Jesus' historicity look like a bowtie in comparison.
Some of it is explored in a monumental new book by DM Murdock on Moses---500 pages of small print that goes into incredible detail of how the Moses mythology emerged from a Bronze/Iron Age plethora of cultures, not just Jewish. And figures like Dionysius get dragged into the mix that makes for a read that is so complex in all its intricacies that it is like trying to solve a murder mystery in which a thousand characters are suspect. Can you imagine trying to figure out who killed the butler when you have to investigate a thousand suspects? I don't think we'll ever truly fathom the extent of how much myth got mixed with historical fact over a period of 3000 years.
There's plenty of literature online dealing with how the Moses mythology came about--Israel's position among an army of pagan nations surrounding her was tenuous. Central to all this is how she interacted with them and how thoughts and ideas on religion got exchanged between Jewish representatives and ambassadors and those of other nations, and from kings and scholars in councils down to slaves chatting with each other on caravans and telling each other stories of their own gods and how the Jewish slaves then told their friends and how all this over centuries eventually and ever so slowly got interwoven into Jewish mythology, religion and lore.
The problem is, where do we stop? With Moses? Or do we have to carry it forward through Joshua supposedly conquering Canaan when history says that all the while Joshua was supposedly battling the Amorites Canaan was actually under tight Egyptian rule with Egyptian armies covering nearly every square mile of it; through Samson, though David, through Solomon, through Elijah right up to the Babylonian captivity when all this storytelling and mythology finally gets written down and somewhere along the way the Israelites finally do somehow get into the land, but exactly how is lost to time.
I believe the Bible is such a complex piece of literature that to truly understand what lies behind its creation would take a historical study the size of a set of Encyclopedia Britannica. I despair of ever comprehending such a book.
Well, it is myth. I think of it as "campfire tales", things that the elders taught the youngers about the tribal history. I would place it on the level of Rip van Winkle and Johnny Appleseed. Maybe even King Arthur. No Moses was a fictional character. Even Jesus' myths were made to reflect much of the Moses myth (being in the wild for 40 days, being hidden as a child in a basket.)
The book is mythology. Fiction. While it could be considered "Historical fiction" in a few parts, it remains fiction none-the-less.
I personally do not see it as that good of a quality of fiction, but it remains important to the human mythos. I think there are many books out there which I have enjoyed immensely more than the Bible.
BUT in regards to the Bible as literature, it remains a great example of Life Imitating Art.
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?
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?
Tying it with another thread (titled "What happens to innocent babies when they die"), it's hardly likely that a religion would survive for 2000 years and be adopted by billions if it didn't make sense.
I am not a Christian but it seems that the majority turns to the Bible for guidance and solace, and then there is the minority that. Takes. Every. Word. Literally.
About Peter, I don't think his memory was the problem. His instinct for self preservation overcame his loyalty to Jesus and the crow just reminded him even more forcefully of that. Just as Jesus had foretold.
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?
Of course they could. You are sitting under an information firehose known as the Internet in the early years of the 21st century. You are educated and literate. You live in a world where it is not a death sentence nor even a particular taboo anymore to let the evidence take you where it leads, including away from orthodoxy.
Cut our ancient forebears some slack, they did the best they knew how to do with what they had.
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Moses was clearly an invention of a small, inconsequential tribe of desert goat herders who had expansionist ideas, and needed to invent themselves as super humans... ala the Nazi's and their pretend Aryan ancestry baloney.
The myth is a compendium of other mythological beings from that time and place, with a mix of neighboring real history thrown in.
Good story, but I am totally amazed that there are still billions of people who think it is real. But then, good stories tend to do that; L. Ron Hubbard proved that with inventing Scientology, and Joesph Smith with Mormonism.
Moses was clearly an invention of a small, inconsequential tribe of desert goat herders who had expansionist ideas, and needed to invent themselves as super humans... ala the Nazi's and their pretend Aryan ancestry baloney.
The myth is a compendium of other mythological beings from that time and place, with a mix of neighboring real history thrown in.
Good story, but I am totally amazed that there are still billions of people who think it is real. But then, good stories tend to do that; L. Ron Hubbard proved that with inventing Scientology, and Joesph Smith with Mormonism.
Good Point.
Tribal warriors will invent a warlike god who, of course, favors them and fights on their side. They will come to associate rituals and beliefs with maintaining this deity's favoritism. They will force this belief on their captured slaves and conquered territories.
I like the "Super-human" analogy, because the god of the Bible is nothing more than a super human , but limited by egotism, mental and personality disorders. He is more fit for a tribal ruler, demanding sacrifice, worship and obedience, showing favoritism to his own tribe, as opposed to an all loving omnipotent being. His own god -sized EGO destines him to repeated mistakes and failures. He is far from perfect, exhibiting an overriding inferiority complex which manifest as demanding no other gods come before him, and that everyone take one day off a week to worship him and him alone. Not to mention the required tithes, sacrifices made to him and him alone. He even goes so far as to provide ten rules for life, the first 4 being solely about him and how he is to be treated.
Moses, like the Jesus Resurrection myth, lacks on key detail: Where is the body ?
According to the Moses myth, this great ruler was buried in secret by God when he died. Kind of far fetched, if a local leader and ruler who was supposedly so revered, in Jewish tradition, grave sites are very important. But in mythology, wee see a recurring theme of a character being taken away by deities and buried in secret. Kind of convenient, is it not? No Body, no grave, no shrine but sadly, no proof. No proof that the person ever existed. Why would God not want to build a shrine to Moses, using such location as a sacred place ? Or why would the tribesmen themselves not build it? Perhaps, because it was never real.
Kind of like King Arthur.
As for the Jesus myth, the key piece of evidence which is missing to this day is the actual burial spot of Jesus. No one seems to be able to agree on where this miraculous event happened. I have said before that if such a thing happened, then the location would be the top shrine and place of pilgrimage, and people would have been lining up with gold in hand waiting to die and be buried in the same spot. It would have attracted every superstitious person in Rome and Judea, which was darn near everyone ! But this sacred location remains lost, not even the experts and the scholars can place where it is. Such an important location would not be lost to generations, unless, off course, if never existed.
The further I dig into this topic of how much myth is contained in the Bible the deeper a hole I dig for myself. I eventually may never be able to climb out of it.
Now much literature is surfacing about how the mythological Moses came about and untangling this knot makes figuring out Jesus' historicity look like a bowtie in comparison.
Some of it is explored in a monumental new book by DM Murdock on Moses---500 pages of small print that goes into incredible detail of how the Moses mythology emerged from a Bronze/Iron Age plethora of cultures, not just Jewish. And figures like Dionysius get dragged into the mix that makes for a read that is so complex in all its intricacies that it is like trying to solve a murder mystery in which a thousand characters are suspect. Can you imagine trying to figure out who killed the butler when you have to investigate a thousand suspects? I don't think we'll ever truly fathom the extent of how much myth got mixed with historical fact over a period of 3000 years.
There's plenty of literature online dealing with how the Moses mythology came about--Israel's position among an army of pagan nations surrounding her was tenuous. Central to all this is how she interacted with them and how thoughts and ideas on religion got exchanged between Jewish representatives and ambassadors and those of other nations, and from kings and scholars in councils down to slaves chatting with each other on caravans and telling each other stories of their own gods and how the Jewish slaves then told their friends and how all this over centuries eventually and ever so slowly got interwoven into Jewish mythology, religion and lore.
The problem is, where do we stop? With Moses? Or do we have to carry it forward through Joshua supposedly conquering Canaan when history says that all the while Joshua was supposedly battling the Amorites Canaan was actually under tight Egyptian rule with Egyptian armies covering nearly every square mile of it; through Samson, though David, through Solomon, through Elijah right up to the Babylonian captivity when all this storytelling and mythology finally gets written down and somewhere along the way the Israelites finally do somehow get into the land, but exactly how is lost to time.
I believe the Bible is such a complex piece of literature that to truly understand what lies behind its creation would take a historical study the size of a set of Encyclopedia Britannica. I despair of ever comprehending such a book.
What is it that you want us to say? Do you want to argue? Would it help? I've had these discussions with you. You have never given me any impression whatsoever that you're interested in truth -- but only what you want to see.
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.
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