Quote:
Originally Posted by Derek41
Well technology has improved a lot since 2000 years ago, so historical evidence is what we relying upon, along with "the book".
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The bible is filled with errors and contradictions. The text itself even contains errors that took 2,000 years to correct, and even then only after Ugaritic texts had been discovered and translated.
That the Hebrews were polytheists is unmistakably clear, since it is plainly stated that Terah was the chief priest at the temple in the city of Ur, whose principal deity was Ninurta. Ninurta was a deity in a pantheon of twelve gods consisting of Enlil and his sons and a daughter, Ninurta, Adad, Utu, Nin and Ianna, and Enki and his sons Enzu, Ningishzidda, Nergal, Dumuzi and Usimu.
The pantheon of twelve was most like Proto-Indo-European in origin, since every culture from the Gaelic and Celtic tribes in the British Isles, to the Norse and other Scandinavian groups, south to Egypt and east to Mojendaro and Harrapo in Pakistan-India and every group in-between worshiped the same pantheon of twelve and always eleven men and one woman, albeit with different names. Ianna was known as Ishtar, Ashera, Isis, Aphrodite and Venus in other cultures.
The fact that Terah, Abram and Serai (their Sumerian-Akkadian names before being changed to the Canaanite Abraham and Sarah -- and that's a big clue in and of itself) go to Haran is not the least bit shocking or unexpected, since Haran was the principal city for Ninurta in the Hurrian Kingdom.
Only later did cultures, including the Hebrews, shift to henotheism, which is taking a deity in the pantheon of twelve and elevating that deity above the other deities.
It was only
after the Babylonians became monaltrists that the Hebrews wanted to become monaltrists, too.
The Hebrews-Israelites-Jews are not monotheists. Monotheism is the worship of one god: there is only one god, there never has been any other gods, and there never will be any other gods.
The Old Testament states in no uncertain terms there
are other gods, and even names the other gods by name, and often on more than one occasion.
As a christian, one would have to reject the Old Testament in order to truly be a monotheist.
In their shift to monaltry, the Babylonians adopted the Sumerian-Akkadian god Enzu, whose name translated into Marduk in the Amorite language.
After adopting Marduk as their national god, the Babylonians embarked on the task of completely re-writing their mytho-historical texts.
As they copied the older Sumerian-Akkadian texts, where ever it was Enlil or Enki or Ningishzidda, Ninurta, Utu, Nin or Nergal who did something, the Babylonians replaced the name with "Marduk", so that it was Marduk who did everything from the creation of the heavens and Earth, to the creation of man, the deluge and anything else. The Babylonians also assigned all of the attributes of the other gods to Marduk. Although they sometimes over-lapped, all the gods had a particular expertise or attribute in something: Nergal in mining and metallurgy, Ningishzidda in the stars, planets, calendars and time-keeping, Ninurta in warfare and weapons, others in writing and record-keeping, ship-building and navigation, agricuture, and wisdom and kingship. They gave all those things to Marduk.
The Hebrews did basically the same thing.
The Hebrews worshiped the same pantheon as the Ugarits, which consisted of El the chief god, plus El Shaddai, El Elyon, El Berith, Asherah, Baal, Mot, Yam, and even Yahweh among others.
The Hebrews also embarked on a scheme to re-write their mytho-history, but not to the extreme the Babylonians did. Where ever it was Enlil or Enki or Ningishzidda who did something, they simply replaced the name with
elohim. Where ever El Shaddai (actually a Sumerian word), El Elyon or El Berith appear, the Hebrews try to claim they were one in the same with Yahweh.
I suspect it had a lot to do with the social fabric. The Amorite kings brought in foreigners from everywhere to function as civil servants, run the courts, collect taxes, engage in commerce, keep records, educate the elite and perform arts. The Hebrews were a much more tightly knitted group wary of foreigners.
We know from historical records in Ugarit that Egypt pushed its hegemony and exercised suzerainty in the Levant. So, while the Hebrews might have thrown off the yoke of the Egyptians, so did everyone else in the region, and there was no exodus, except for Egyptian administrators and military leaving the Levant.
We know from the Ugaritic language, that Hebrew is Ugarit without the case endings for the accusative, nominative, dative, genitive, locative and vocative.
That would only be possible if Hebrews were in contact with Ugarit for several centuries, and given that Ugarit was destroyed circa 1300 CE, that destroys any claims of an exodus, not to mention the Hebrews copied Ugaritic poems and myths virtually word-for-word.
That's what the historical evidence tells us.
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