Bibleland in history and archaeology

[A_Nony_Mouse]

One issue raised was there was obviously a Yahu cult in Ugarit due to that god name being found in the library. So of course they were also Jews. They were polytheists just like the ones at Elephantine who also worshiped Yahu. The response was, they did not have a cultural claim on Jerusalem.

The idea of a "cultural claim on Jerusalem" was a 19th c. political invention of the Zionist movement and obviously cannot be used as a discriminant for anything prior to its invention. See both Invention of the Jewish People and Invention of the Land of Israel by Shlomo Sand for details.

And this is just another nail in the coffin of the OT showing it is total fantasy.

[A_Nony_Mouse]

The Elephantine Papyri are something that should be read before referencing. If they are to be accepted then we do not get to pick and choose among their contents. Sufficient fundamental information about "jews" under whatever name is shown to be false that there is no credible intellectual basis for saying, "Everything not shown to be false remains true."

There is a conflict between provenanced papyri and the unprovenanced OT stories. The rational person gives priority to the provenanced material.

Take for example the one which whines about the destruction of the Yahu temple at Elephantine. Considering the OT is discredited by the papyri themselves we learn THE not A Yahu temple was at Elephantine. Not only did it exist but it was built before the Persians arrived. Any other temple would discredit the OT claim of the only temple permitted being in Jerusalem for half a millennia.

On top of that the senders of the claim claim it was built by their ancestors. They do not say the origin of their ancestors nor their own origin for that matter. Those remain unknowns which cannot be answered by the discredited OT. And they report the Persians destroyed all the temples but this one. Admittedly this is inconsistent with other parts of the text but if so, why? Without any OT or any religion related to it, were this any other culture the simplest explanation would be the people at Elephantine were Persians and temple of the Persian god Yahu was spared.

I am NOT not suggesting the very popular, Judaism is Zoroastrianism in another guise. I am simply pointing out the simplest interpretation absent knowing all the lies and nonsense in the discredited OT.

High priest was a common term in ancient times, consider it parallel to Christian bishops or Greek Heirophant. So just because high priest is used in the discredited OT does not mean its use elsewhere refers to anything in the OT. Therefore when this papyri refers to the high priest it fails to mention of which god or gods. It is not permitted to assume the otherwise materially false OT indicates which god. Nor can it be seen as an inference there was another temple of Yahu in Jerusalem.

[semiopen2]

Despite mouse not accepting opinions from noted experts or people with 3 digit IQs -

Ironically the book of Isaiah may help refute mouse's 2nd century theory in th
at 2nd century fragments exist in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Using m's logic this was copied very quickly after the original Alexandrian authors invented it, and the Aryan god forbid, perhaps even before the Greek version was written.

Perhaps you can direct me to your source of the proper paper, not article, identifying the dates of these documents by their bible book name not fragment names. You must have read it to make that assertion. I have looked with no success. I can find all kinds of categorizations but not the very simple one relevant to this discussion, bible book name v date.

Back when I first looked into this many decades ago I found one analysis of one book with the proper carbon dating in the form of 60BC +/- 100 years. I did this because I doubted the author's date claim of 160BC. Only a believer would jump to the oldest date which is within the limits of the measurement.

Therefore you can see why I ask both for your source and why, in general, I do not pay attention to any date claim which does not have the +/- years attached. If you are going to use science use it properly. In the above example 60BC is NOT science. Only 60BC +/- 100 is science. 160BC is a matter of faith. 40AD is exactly as likely as 160BC. That is the science. I do not discuss the results of science in a non-scientific manner.

Anyone wishing to play games with the +/- years issue LEARN about gaussian distributions before doing so. Standard deviations and such are important to the discussion.

One aspect of mouse's theory that puzzles me is how we can account for the obvious different authors and different dates of stuff in the bible.

For example, the Book_of_Isaiah is considered the work of at least three different schools.

[wiki]Isaiah identifies itself as the words of the 8th century prophet Isaiah ben Amoz, but there is ample evidence that much of it was composed during the Babylonian exile and later.[3] The scholarly consensus which held sway through most of the 20th century saw three separate collections of oracles:[4] Proto-Isaiah (chapters 1–39), containing the words of Isaiah; Deutero-Isaiah (chapters 40–55), the work of an anonymous 6th-century author writing during the Exile; and Trito-Isaiah (chapters 56–66), composed after the return from exile.[5] While one part of the consensus still holds – virtually no one maintains that the entire book, or even most of it, was written by one person.[/wiki]

The use of anonymous sources such as wikipedia indicates one is at the high school level and uncritically accepts anything.

One would think that a single "school" writing the entire canon would show more consistency and uniformity.

One would think therefore that all science fiction would be show much more consistency and uniformity than it does because it is all science fiction. Rather in reality we know all authors produce different material. We use consistency to identify the same author of different materials such as the letters attributed to someone named Paul.

I did a broad brush address of these inconsistencies in my thread on metahistory. I point out the differences discovered and sworn to by the "Moses wrote the Torah" school -- the one that lasted nearly 2000 years -- are still there regardless of any other view of who wrote them and when. People find what they are looking for. I could exposit things differently. Put up two conflicting but respected academic positions and say things like, obviously they are both wrong.

To repeat, read the source material yourself. Do not adopt what unknown, anonymous sources tell you about the source material. And when anonymous sources like wikipedia give copious but generally improper and useless footnotes never assume they are accurately reporting what is in the material cited. Often you will find the cited material has no relation to what is claimed for it.

Also do not go to obviously biased sources for your information unless all you want to get is confirmation of your beliefs. What you opened with is no different from claiming the Pope is the representative of god on earth and citing the Catholic Encyclopedia to prove it.

You know nothing until you know it yourself.

Despite mouse not accepting opinions from noted experts or people with 3 digit IQs -

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/artic ... monotheism

The doctrine of absolute monotheism is preached in the most emphatic manner by Jeremiah (x. 10; xiv. 22; xxiii. 36; xxxii. 18, 27) and the Deuteronomist(iv. 35, 39), but the Biblical teaching on the subject may be said to have culminated in Isaiah of Babylon. Yhwh, though in a peculiar sense the God of Israel, is still the God of all the world. This prophet's standpoint is uncompromising:

As with the Elephantine Papyri and Josephus the issue is to read the fine sources not what religious sources say about the sources. Anyone who would refer to such a website expecting any possibility of finding anything which might contradict weekend school teachings is not old enough to understand the big words it uses. It is sort of like going to the RNC website to see if there is anything good about Obamacare. What did you expect to find?
Would not an adult seek out a neutral source rather than refer to a partisan source?

Ironically the book of Isaiah may help refute mouse's 2nd century theory in th
at 2nd century fragments exist in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Using m's logic this was copied very quickly after the original Alexandrian authors invented it, and the Aryan god forbid, perhaps even before the Greek version was written.

Perhaps you can direct me to your source of the proper paper, not article, identifying the dates of these documents by their bible book name not fragment names. You must have read it to make that assertion. I have looked with no success. I can find all kinds of categorizations but not the very simple one relevant to this discussion, bible book name v date.

Back when I first looked into this many decades ago I found one analysis of one book with the proper carbon dating in the form of 60BC +/- 100 years. I did this because I doubted the author's date claim of 160BC. Only a believer would jump to the oldest date which is within the limits of the measurement.

Therefore you can see why I ask both for your source and why, in general, I do not pay attention to any date claim which does not have the +/- years attached. If you are going to use science use it properly. In the above example 60BC is NOT science. Only 60BC +/- 100 is science. 160BC is a matter of faith. 40AD is exactly as likely as 160BC. That is the science. I do not discuss the results of science in a non-scientific manner.

Anyone wishing to play games with the +/- years issue LEARN about gaussian distributions before doing so. Standard deviations and such are important to the discussion.

One aspect of mouse's theory that puzzles me is how we can account for the obvious different authors and different dates of stuff in the bible.

For example, the Book_of_Isaiah is considered the work of at least three different schools.

[wiki]Isaiah identifies itself as the words of the 8th century prophet Isaiah ben Amoz, but there is ample evidence that much of it was composed during the Babylonian exile and later.[3] The scholarly consensus which held sway through most of the 20th century saw three separate collections of oracles:[4] Proto-Isaiah (chapters 1–39), containing the words of Isaiah; Deutero-Isaiah (chapters 40–55), the work of an anonymous 6th-century author writing during the Exile; and Trito-Isaiah (chapters 56–66), composed after the return from exile.[5] While one part of the consensus still holds – virtually no one maintains that the entire book, or even most of it, was written by one person.[/wiki]

The use of anonymous sources such as wikipedia indicates one is at the high school level and uncritically accepts anything.

One would think that a single "school" writing the entire canon would show more consistency and uniformity.

One would think therefore that all science fiction would be show much more consistency and uniformity than it does because it is all science fiction. Rather in reality we know all authors produce different material. We use consistency to identify the same author of different materials such as the letters attributed to someone named Paul.

I did a broad brush address of these inconsistencies in my thread on metahistory. I point out the differences discovered and sworn to by the "Moses wrote the Torah" school -- the one that lasted nearly 2000 years -- are still there regardless of any other view of who wrote them and when. People find what they are looking for. I could exposit things differently. Put up two conflicting but respected academic positions and say things like, obviously they are both wrong.

To repeat, read the source material yourself. Do not adopt what unknown, anonymous sources tell you about the source material. And when anonymous sources like wikipedia give copious but generally improper and useless footnotes never assume they are accurately reporting what is in the material cited. Often you will find the cited material has no relation to what is claimed for it.

Also do not go to obviously biased sources for your information unless all you want to get is confirmation of your beliefs. What you opened with is no different from claiming the Pope is the representative of god on earth and citing the Catholic Encyclopedia to prove it.

You know nothing until you know it yourself.

http://www.allaboutarchaeology.org/dead ... olls-2.htm

As far as dating, it appears that pieces of the Great Isaiah Scroll (1Qls-a) have been carbon-14 dated at least four times, including a study at the University of Arizona in 1995 and a study at ETH-zurich in 1990-91. The four studies produced calibrated date ranges between 335-324 BC and 202-107 BC. There have also been numerous paleographic and scribal dating studies conducted that place 1Qls-a at a date range of approximately 150-100 BC.

I wasn't saying this is exact, but the dates sort of contradict your LXX theoyr, if the 4th century dates have any merit you're busted. Especially figuring that there is not a more recent Greek fragment (at least that I am aware of) from earlier than the latest dates.

One also has to wonder whether the LXX has the same granularity as the Hebrew - I sort of doubt it.

Take the Joseph story, how does the Ishmaelite, Midianite crap parse out in Greek? Every single chapter in the bible has similar issues. Does the multiple source concept work? Your writings don't deal with any major issues.

How could anyone but an idiot accept your theory based on what you write and harangue about.

[A_Nony_Mouse]

The Judahite related papyri are written in Aramaic. This is from the 5th c. of Herodotus in the region of bibleland. After him Alexander and all the Greeks. After then Pompey and all the Romans. And still not a single mention of any "hebrew" language, spoken or written.

From archaeology we have Aramaic. The few really old inscriptions require religious archaeologists to identify. They look at where they were found, read the bible so see if the "israelites" ruled where it was found. If so it is declared to be proto or archaeo Hebrew instead of Phoenician.

Again the provenanced papyri are superior to the unprovenanced OT. In the real world, for any other document, if you do not have provenance you have nothing.

[A_Nony_Mouse]

Elephantine, the Passover papyrus

King Darius orders a Passover to be held and gives conditions for its observance and the dates of observance. There is no indication is it an annual affair.

The plain reading, absent the discredited OT, is that Passover is an occasional Persian observance. This is an additional discrediting of the OT. It is contrary to all descriptions of it in the OT. Further the rules given by King Darius are the sum total of all the rules for Passover.

[A_Nony_Mouse]

Taking Judea as merely a Romanized Greek form of Judah, Tiglath-Pileser III refers to tribute from Azriau of Iuda circa 735 BCE (see eg Pritchard, ANET, p.282). The name Azriau is an Akkadian representation of Azariah aka Uzziah. Sennacherib has left an account of the siege of Jerusalem while Hezekiah was king (ANET, p.287). So in Assyrian records there are two Judahite kings, Azariah and Hezekiah with Yahwistic theophoric names, indicating an ascendancy of the Yahwistic cult in Jerusalem well before the fall of Jerusalem.

Unless the claim is Azar and Hezek are names of Judahite gods it would seem the "ah" is all that is left to suggest a theonym. More properly iah perhaps but from a language without vowels the ia v a is arbitrary for English spelling. As noted Netanyahu is a theonym. One would expect Azariyahu and Hezekayahu to be used for theonyms.

Pardon if I have yet to discover your level of reading comprehension.

[semiopen2]

Elephantine, the Passover papyrus

King Darius orders a Passover to be held and gives conditions for its observance and the dates of observance. There is no indication is it an annual affair.

The plain reading, absent the discredited OT, is that Passover is an occasional Persian observance. This is an additional discrediting of the OT. It is contrary to all descriptions of it in the OT. Further the rules given by King Darius are the sum total of all the rules for Passover.

However this appears three centuries before you claim Exodus was written, moreover it reads similarly to Exodus. This seems to be a serious blow to your theory of LXX being the original bible,

http://cojs.org/cojswiki/The_Passover_P ... e,_419_BCE

Personally, I'd be delighted if this was the first Passover but that is far from obvious.

[A_Nony_Mouse]

Elephantine, the Passover papyrus

King Darius orders a Passover to be held and gives conditions for its observance and the dates of observance. There is no indication is it an annual affair.

The plain reading, absent the discredited OT, is that Passover is an occasional Persian observance. This is an additional discrediting of the OT. It is contrary to all descriptions of it in the OT. Further the rules given by King Darius are the sum total of all the rules for Passover.

However this appears three centuries before you claim Exodus was written, moreover it reads similarly to Exodus. This seems to be a serious blow to your theory of LXX being the original bible,

http://cojs.org/cojswiki/The_Passover_P ... e,_419_BCE

Personally, I'd be delighted if this was the first Passover but that is far from obvious.

Honestly I miss your point. What might be the problem if three centuries later a Persian custom is incorporated into the Moses fiction? Moses, Exodus, the Torah, ALL is fiction. When the fiction was created is the only point of interest here. How does a fantasy created one, two, three or a dozen centuries later bear upon this being a one time observance ordered by the Persian king?

Remember Moses was not taken seriously by Josephus six centuries later. Perhaps Josephus knew of the Persian origin of the custom.

[semiopen2]

Elephantine, the Passover papyrus

King Darius orders a Passover to be held and gives conditions for its observance and the dates of observance. There is no indication is it an annual affair.

The plain reading, absent the discredited OT, is that Passover is an occasional Persian observance. This is an additional discrediting of the OT. It is contrary to all descriptions of it in the OT. Further the rules given by King Darius are the sum total of all the rules for Passover.

However this appears three centuries before you claim Exodus was written, moreover it reads similarly to Exodus. This seems to be a serious blow to your theory of LXX being the original bible,

http://cojs.org/cojswiki/The_Passover_P ... e,_419_BCE

Personally, I'd be delighted if this was the first Passover but that is far from obvious.

Honestly I miss your point. What might be the problem if three centuries later a Persian custom is incorporated into the Moses fiction? Moses, Exodus, the Torah, ALL is fiction. When the fiction was created is the only point of interest here. How does a fantasy created one, two, three or a dozen centuries later bear upon this being a one time observance ordered by the Persian king?

Remember Moses was not taken seriously by Josephus six centuries later. Perhaps Josephus knew of the Persian origin of the custom.

The papyrus is the first time we hear of the holiday. As the link I gave states -

What we do have is references to familiar practices associated with the holiday, such as refraining from working and not eating leavened bread. As opposed to Yedaniah’s letter soliciting permission from the Persian governor to rebuild the Elephantine temple, this letter does not indicate any divergence from the practices prescribed in the Torah.

My point is simply that this contradicts your assertion that the law was written independently and without sources by the Jews who wrote the LXX three centuries later.

Your assertion is further contradicted by textual analysis of the Jahwist source where there apparently are only seven plagues originally which were later expanded to ten by the Priest.

http://www.clt.astate.edu/wnarey/Religi ... lagues.htm

The current idea is that the Jahwist

In the first half of the 20th century it was believed that the Yahwist could be dated to c. 950 BCE,[5] but later study has demonstrated that portions of J cannot be earlier than the 7th century BCE.[6] Current theories place it in the exilic and/or post-exilic period (6th–5th centuries BCE)

Note that the 5th century is consistent with the papyrus.

I mentioned above that your theory fails to consider the complexities of the Hebrew source. After some thought on the subject, my guess is that you are simply ignorant of even the most basic tenets of biblical studies. Everybody knows that this stuff is not literally correct (or as you say ALL fiction), that's not really the issue. You have specifically said the Tanakh was originally written in Greek in the 2nd century BCE and later copied into Hebrew - that is just not correct.

[A_Nony_Mouse]

{quote="A_Nony_Mouse"]Elephantine, the Passover papyrus

King Darius orders a Passover to be held and gives conditions for its observance and the dates of observance. There is no indication is it an annual affair.

The plain reading, absent the discredited OT, is that Passover is an occasional Persian observance. This is an additional discrediting of the OT. It is contrary to all descriptions of it in the OT. Further the rules given by King Darius are the sum total of all the rules for Passover.{/quote]

However this appears three centuries before you claim Exodus was written, moreover it reads similarly to Exodus. This seems to be a serious blow to your theory of LXX being the original bible,

http://cojs.org/cojswiki/The_Passover_P ... e,_419_BCE

Personally, I'd be delighted if this was the first Passover but that is far from obvious.

Honestly I miss your point. What might be the problem if three centuries later a Persian custom is incorporated into the Moses fiction? Moses, Exodus, the Torah, ALL is fiction. When the fiction was created is the only point of interest here. How does a fantasy created one, two, three or a dozen centuries later bear upon this being a one time observance ordered by the Persian king?

Remember Moses was not taken seriously by Josephus six centuries later. Perhaps Josephus knew of the Persian origin of the custom.

The papyrus is the first time we hear of the holiday. As the link I gave states -

Yes it is it the oldest mention we have of it. From this we learn enough to connect it with the Exodus version with the unleavened tacos (unless it is implicitly referring to beer) and such but also to learn the original has nothing to do with the Exodus Passover.

What we do have is references to familiar practices associated with the holiday, such as refraining from working and not eating leavened bread. As opposed to Yedaniah’s letter soliciting permission from the Persian governor to rebuild the Elephantine temple, this letter does not indicate any divergence from the practices prescribed in the Torah.

My point is simply that this contradicts your assertion that the law was written independently and without sources by the Jews who wrote the LXX three centuries later.

Your assertion is further contradicted by textual analysis of the Jahwist source where there apparently are only seven plagues originally which were later expanded to ten by the Priest.

http://www.clt.astate.edu/wnarey/Religi ... lagues.htm

The current idea is that the Jahwist

Please no anonymous wiki crap.

The whole Yahwist debate requires you to buy into one of the creation dates for the OT stories and adds nothing as all the problems I mention in my thread on the Metahistory of the bible creation arise and make any conclusions impossible. In this case whatever the people who believe in Moses wrote the Torah choose to believe about Y and P and whatever once the creation date is 6-5th c. that cannot be what they are seeing. If you wish to stick with Moses wrote the Torah then I can introduce a simpler explanation of problems people had after Moses translating from the original Egyptian hieroglyphs if I were to concede against all reality Moses is other than a myth.

In the first half of the 20th century it was believed that the Yahwist could be dated to c. 950 BCE,[5] but later study has demonstrated that portions of J cannot be earlier than the 7th century BCE.[6] Current theories place it in the exilic and/or post-exilic period (6th–5th centuries BCE)

Note that the 5th century is consistent with the papyrus.

I mentioned above that your theory fails to consider the complexities of the Hebrew source.

Assuming there was a Hebrew source assumes your conclusion. The only historical evidence of a "hebrew" source is a known forgery. Archaeologically there is no "hebrew" found in bibleland outside of the DSS. You have a very long way to go before that sentence can be taken seriously.

After some thought on the subject, my guess is that you are simply ignorant of even the most basic tenets of biblical studies. Everybody knows that this stuff is not literally correct (or as you say ALL fiction), that's not really the issue.

It is an issue that one cannot approach fiction as other than fiction. One cannot approach it as though it were other than fiction. The stories cannot be treated as either historical or religious documents or as anything but intended fiction.

You have specifically said the Tanakh was originally written in Greek in the 2nd century BCE and later copied into Hebrew - that is just not correct.

Just not correct must be preceded by evidence of a whole mess of things which are not in evidence starting with a literate culture and the existence of a hebrew language outside of the DSS. I will await your presentation of those two points before me move on to the other things implied by that assertion based upon a forgery.

In the last couple of days this spinning character in disagreeing and personally attacking me has provided an alternate line of evidence that the LXX/OT is total fiction as I have been saying. As it is fiction we then look at it and analyze it from the point of view of fiction writers.

In doing so we find copious examples. We have historical events which tell stories and teach morals which is historical fiction. Call up your cable guide, find some movies and TV series and see that is what is done. A historical setting to tell a romance or adventure or comedy is what fiction writers do.

If you have watched or read enough historical fiction you are certainly aware of another trick, throwing in some commonly known historical person, event or thing to add verisimilitude to the story. In fact often the foundation of a story. And giving that person, event or thing a different meaning than commonly held. See any series trying to make a buck or a pound on a story told too many times such as the recently ended Merlin or the much more enjoyable Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. The currently running Reign is loose as a goose with historical context.

So tell me why in the 2nd c. reimagining the Persian celebration of Passover from the 5th c. and unknown number of years later and putting it into a tale about the fantastical Moses the Hebrew rather than Moses the Hyksos is a problem for you?

I know of one common mistake people make. That is assuming items discovered in modern times disappeared from history and human knowledge the moment after they were created. Because they disappeared they were unavailable to later writers to use as inspiration or that the same information did not exist in other forms. Instead our best knowledge of ancient times is that most of this information was not only available in ancient times but likely well known until the parchments were repurposed into hymnals. Seriously rotten away for lack of interests and funds to recopy them. Alexandria is about the worst place in the world to put a library given the humidity and cost of copying.

So there is no reason to suppose this was the only Passover ordered by the king, nor that it was only ordered for Elephantine, nor that it did not become a local custom and remain so after Alexander. We do not know. Because we do not know we cannot assume a conclusion which matches the desired conclusion. The reasonable assumption is of the average or normal. Things happened in bibleland just as they happened every place else in the ancient world with no special pleadings. Assimilation of foreign customs has many examples. Kings made proclamations just as presidents and PMs make today. No reason to assume any particular one was different without evidence that it was different.

BTW: What in the above indicates I am unfamiliar with what others have said about this subject? Disagreeing is not an issue as everything you say or allude to or infer has an academic opposition. I am not aware I have come up with anything new in opposition to religious beliefs about the OT. All I have done is put those disagreements together in a different way.

In fact I have copied from the "written after Babylon" school. All they did was pick a major event without a shred of evidence and declare that is when. I picked the Maccabe revolt as a major event with only the Egyptian support and city built for the high priest in exile as an indication not as evidence. I am largely derivative what is in the academic literature. And I know it.