Can someone enlighten me about SA's argument, please?

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Can someone enlighten me about SA's argument, please?

Post by neilgodfrey »

Secret Alias wrote: Mon Jan 16, 2023 12:44 pm But it doesn't make sense. To continue to claw at something which was acknowledged by ancient Jews.
SA, nor did you respond to my invitation to you to listen to the conference presentations where all the scholars who referred to the Jews and Samaritans in the Persian and early Hellenistic era made it clear the EVIDENCE informs us that Jews and Samaritans had harmonious, friendly, close relations and with no bitter rivalry over religious centres.

(Please do not accuse the one who agrees with the EVIDENCE cited by all the scholars for a common view on the name of Israel or relations between Jews and Samaritans in the Persian and early Hellenistic eras as being the one who has the problem with "reality".)
Secret Alias
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Re: Can someone enlighten me about SA's argument, please?

Post by Secret Alias »

And? Co-workers generally have "harmonious" relationships with their bosses. In fact I would argue that THE ONLY HARMONIOUS relationship humanity is capable of is based on master and slave. Like parenting.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Can someone enlighten me about SA's argument, please?

Post by neilgodfrey »

Secret Alias wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 2:23 pm And? Co-workers generally have "harmonious" relationships with their bosses. In fact I would argue that THE ONLY HARMONIOUS relationship humanity is capable of is based on master and slave. Like parenting.
Listen to the scholars -- but you arrogantly refuse to do so. They are very clear that Jews and Samaritans were NOT in anything remotely like a master-slave relationship but were in equal brotherly status.

You have cut yourself off from all reality in your refusal to even crack open a book or listen to someone with more learning than you when you know they, who know the evidence better than you do, contradict you. You have made yourself a deluded, ignorant, crank, proud of your own self-acknowledgement as "dumb" and "anti-intellectual". You are one of those rare individuals who really does tick all the checkboxes that identify a "fool".

That you cannot conceive of a harmonious relationship with another human being outside of a master-slave relationship puts you outside the bounds of possibility for normal discourse with anyone else anywhere and certainly leaves you no legitimate place in a discussion forum intended for harmonious exchange.

(Like parenting? ... Like parenting an infant, a pre-adolescent child, I think you mean. I shudder at your words. I want nothing whatever to do with you any more.)
Secret Alias
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Re: Can someone enlighten me about SA's argument, please?

Post by Secret Alias »

Parenting is slavery. Of course you have to be altruistic to devote 20 years of your life to the development of another human being. I don't see the revolutionary perspective that any of this provides us. Speak to former residents of Yugoslavia. Everything was great under Tito. Talk to Germans about the 'harmony' and 'idealism' that existed under Hitler. Americans before the civil rights movement. Israelis about life in Israel. Great Britain during the Empire. Irenaeus is said to have brought "peace and harmony" to the Church. Harmony is a meaningless term. Power = order = harmony.
Secret Alias
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Re: Can someone enlighten me about SA's argument, please?

Post by Secret Alias »

I just don't get why it is so difficult for you to imagine a scenario where

(a) the Pentateuch is centrally fixed at Shechem
(b) the Pentateuch is a myth about the origins of the nation of Israel
(c) all historical evidence points to a "kingdom of Israel" around Shechem and a "kingdom of Judah" around Jerusalem

Why is it so difficult to thread the needle from (a) to (b) to (c)? Who made you Arbiter Elegantiae here? You don't like (a) to (b) to (c). Well it makes a hell of lot more sense than imagining that Judah who has a wretched role in the Pentateuch helps make the Jews the stars of the Pentateuch.

No mention of "Jerusalem." That's a big problem.
Secret Alias
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Re: Can someone enlighten me about SA's argument, please?

Post by Secret Alias »

And there's always this thing with you to rub up with someone and feel your skin against people. I like quick dips in cold water. Watching you and Russell engage like pupil and student. It's revolting. You like his theory so therefore there are no hardball questions. You don't like a theory you're clawing tooth and nail. It's this modern subjectivity that's made the humanities a cancer for society. No one is even trying to be objective. It's just one "team" against another.

I am Jewish. I love being Jewish. But I recognize that we were kind of bit players in the early years of the Second Commonwealth (the years you discount as non-existent, the Persian period).
ABuddhist
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Re: Can someone enlighten me about SA's argument, please?

Post by ABuddhist »

Secret Alias wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 7:54 pm And there's always this thing with you to rub up with someone and feel your skin against people. I like quick dips in cold water. Watching you and Russell engage like pupil and student. It's revolting. You like his theory so therefore there are no hardball questions. You don't like a theory you're clawing tooth and nail. It's this modern subjectivity that's made the humanities a cancer for society. No one is even trying to be objective. It's just one "team" against another.
Youer assessment of their interactions as revolting - how is that not subjective? Your refusing to consider evidence which Neil has shown to you - how is that objective?

Why do you so often bring in physical human bodies into your discussions here, such as talking about how a woman's body must be more sexually attractive at a certain age during a discussion about the Pentateuch's originality and impressiveness amnnd here your talking about Neil's rubbing his skin against people and your love of bathing? Such seems to be a non sequitur.
Secret Alias
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Re: Can someone enlighten me about SA's argument, please?

Post by Secret Alias »

In what way has Neil demonstrated that Jews called their nation their land "Israel" before the fall of the temple? I've noted that the last time Josephus used "Israel" or "Israelite" is in connection with the Babylonian Captivity. Instead "Judah" the kingdom is taken to be the place that "Jews" live or come from. Samaritans identify themselves as "Israel" and "Israelites" in the way Jews identify themselves as "Judah" and "Jews." The Pentateuch, a mythical text or a text establishing a mythical origins for the Hebrews clearly connects Israel with Jacob who is buried at Shechem along with the other Patriarchs. It's baffling that any other view could be argued. Neil hasn't presented any evidence to the contrary, namely that Jews identified themselves as "Israel" or "Israelites" before the fall of the temple. Jews were Jews because they were "of Judah" not of Joseph.

Moreover even in the Mishnaic period "Israel" and "Israelite" is not used as a distinctive marker of the Jewish people. The terms are used to describe a broad collection of Torah observers with a strange obsessive negative inference with regards to the Samaritans who are somehow "not Israel but think they are Israel." Samaritan literature consistently uses "Israel" and "Israelite" as self-identification markers. What Torah-based terminology would you propose the Samaritans identified as? "Jews"? Do you think they thought they were "of Judah"? It's so tiring dealing with people who can't even deal with the actual evidence or are ignorant of traditions. What else besides "Israel" and "Israelites" could the Samaritans be? There are no other possibilities.

It's the fatigue of dealing with ignoramuses who don't even want to know things outside of their little crack in the wall. Here is an example. An inscription in a copy of a Samaritan Pentateuch copied in 1339 by the scribe Abraham ben Jacob ben Tabya ben Sa'adah ben Abraham of the Pijma family. It is written in Samaritan majuscule Hebrew characters, and is typical of the Damascene scribal tradition. The Decalogue is indicated by an alphanumeric marking in the margin at the left of the text.
I, Abraham son of Israel son of Ephraim son of Joseph the Nasi, King of Israel (Melekh Yisrael), wrote this copy of the Holy Torah myself for my children in the 629th year of the Islamic ascendancy, corresponding to the 3,200th year of Israelite settlement in the land of Canaan, anno mundi 5993. It is the 74th Torah that I have written and I am now sixty years old. I give thanks to the Lord and entreat him to prolong the life of my children and grandchildren that they may study from it. Amen, amen, amen.
It's so fucking tiring dealing with stupid and willfully ignorant people. It's like people like what they were told and say "we know Jews" and Jews get to determine the rules of terminology. Why? Why does on part of the Hebrew people get to impose their will on the terminology? So fucking annoying and ignorant. Willful ignorance.
ABuddhist
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Re: Can someone enlighten me about SA's argument, please?

Post by ABuddhist »

Secret Alias wrote: Wed Jan 18, 2023 9:54 am It's the fatigue of dealing with ignoramuses who don't even want to know things outside of their little crack in the wall.

[...]

It's so fucking tiring dealing with stupid and willfully ignorant people. It's like people like what they were told and say "we know Jews" and Jews get to determine the rules of terminology. Why? Why does on part of the Hebrew people get to impose their will on the terminology? So fucking annoying and ignorant. Willful ignorance.
Well, I am not the person in this thread who has consistently refused to consider archaeological evidence when said evidence contradicts the literary sources which I trust; you are.

Rather, my general understanding is that archaeological evidence (including inscriptions) should be regarded as more reliable than texts either from later times or surviving in copies only from later times. Later times are also times where authors or copiers could have been led astray by ignorance and bias in their understanding and presentation of the past.

Many thanks, though, for abandoning your fixation with human bodies at least briefly.
Secret Alias
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Re: Can someone enlighten me about SA's argument, please?

Post by Secret Alias »

What "archaeological evidence" am I refusing to admit identifies the "kingdom of Judah" as "the kingdom of Israel"?

Again. We have inherited an understanding of Israelite history from the alleged descendants of the kingdom of Judah. For them "Israel" has a universalist sense about it. My point is just to say why not take a step back and ask why do the Jewish people get the right to define the term "Israel" for everyone. The Jews say things like "Moses was a Jew" (Mel Brooks). "The Jewish experience during the Exodus." Ok. Why do the Samaritans have to prove their tradition and the Jewish understanding is welcomed with open arms? The answer is simply Western observers are familiar with Jews, have Jewish friends, know Jewish books, authors, writers and Jewish culture. It's purely for selfish reasons that we prefer "Jewish truths" over Samaritan ones.
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