Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Supposedly the 7 day week was based on there being 7 obviously moving visible celestial objects (5 planets visible from earth plus the sun and earth's moon).

Moses and his family were added to a story about an exodus from Egypt that itself was built on a combination of previous traditions and some kind of allegory for conditions in the 6th century BCE (with the unnamed Pharaohs as a stand in for the Assyrian kings). Also, there is reason to suspect that ...

I see Leviticus 14 also mentions 'bird' sacrifices for the purification of leprosy. No mention what kind of bird. I am guessing these would be wild birds caught in snares. And of course we know of 2 instances, one in Exodus and one in Numbers where wild, migratory quail were consumed.

A quick google gives some 47 appearances of 'fowl' in the JPS version. I'll try to look in more detail later. Anyway, the fowl sacrifices are usually pigeons/doves, according to same quick search. The word תרנגל is definitely later.

The abstract of the scientific paper is Earliest economic exploitation of chicken outside East Asia: Evidence from the Hellenistic Southern Levant Chickens were originally domesticated in China. The authors say they have evidence they became commercially significant in Hellenic Palestine before comm...

I don't think there is a strict parallel between old-time J and E and what contemporary European and Israeli scholars identify as northern and southern. From what I see, the Jacob cycle is considered entirely of northern origin whereas the Abraham cycle southern, in contrast with Friedman who claime...

Nothing new in this video, and like I said, it presents monotheism as an exilic creation, while even Josiah's Yahwism was a monolatry within a polytheistic context. Also, it only gives a simplified version of the relationship between El, Baal, and Yahweh, without mentioning their respective origins....

Yes, Jeroboam 2nd worshiped golden calves. He worshiped Yahweh, in the image of golden calves. The golden calf was a legitimate representation of Yahweh in Israel. As for temples other than Jerusalem - and that only means Jeroboam 2, like many others, did not believe Yahweh's temple had to be unique...

My source is from Thomas Römer's lecture series on Yahweh and his representation. See The God Yhwh: origins, cults, transformation into the only God . There he shows the images of Yahweh from various inscriptions from both kingdoms. The transfer of traits from El to his local son happened in paralle...

What about other (non-genealogical) lists? For instance the lists of kings defeated by Joshua's armies in Joshua 12 or 'the stages of the children of Israel' in Numbers 33?

Also lists of cities in each tribe's territory and so forth, the outcomes of the census in Numbers.