Re: Phoenicians


"Agamemnon" <agamemnon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Joe Bernstein" <joe@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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In article <MPG.1e5ee37c650bae8d9898a2@news>, BernardZ
<bernardZ@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <yARIf.506$jo5.286@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
deowll@xxxxxxxxxxxxx says...
[comments on how helpful BAR is]
The origins of the old Hebrew people and texts is open to debate but
that the people and text so named existed is no longer worth debating.
The consensus is in that they did and do. Anyone who wishes to take
the negative stance has some major proving and redefining of evidence
to do. Getting the professionals to change their minds is going to be
a tall order. Calling names doesn't cut it. Physical evidence rules.

Seems I'll have to go look at BAR again. Sigh. Even when they're
right they're annoying, and the amount of hullabaloo they make about
stuff that later gets discredited is obnoxious.

The disconnect between this group and the scholarly world is mind-
boggling. On this group, there is a bunch of trolls who apparently
claim that Judaism was invented by a bunch of Greeks around 200 BC
with no prior material. Now, this is patently bull***. Everything
from archaeology to linguistics to history of Egypt and Mesopotamia
to *genetics*, for crying out loud, argues against it.

The *scholarly* debate, however, is considerably less one-sided.
NB:

One of the biggest critics of the existence of the Old Hebrew people was
Thomas L. Thompson (University of Copenhagen).

http://journalofbiblicalstudies.org/Issue3/Short_Study/on_reading_the_bi
ble_for_history.htm

I think you might find his statement interesting.

I certainly did, after you posted the same link in a reply to me a
month ago. Thompson's article showed me that you had trouble reading it.

The article is essentially a reply to William Dever's rant^hbook
about minimalists and other signs of the apocalypse. Thompson
organises his reply into various headings. I found particularly
noteworthy his heading of (not direct quotes) "Dever singles me out
for saying things lots of people are saying" - because one of the
items listed there is "The Bible is a Hellenistic book".

In other words, Thompson isn't *retracting* the core minimalist
argument, he's saying Dever was wrong to criticise him for it when
everyone and their uncle is saying the same thing. He's saying it's
a consensus.

Now, he's *wrong* about that. But it's hardly a retraction.

Flipside, Thompson never went remotely as far as these loons on sha.
Both he and Nils Lemche have for crying out loud written *histories*
of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Of course he doesn't deny the
*existence* of Judah and the people you're calling "Old Hebrew".
He just denies that they wrote the texts of the Bible.

Me, I think the evidence these guys cite solidly debunks tenth-
century dates but offers strong support for dates in the ninth
to sixth centuries, for the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic
History in particular. They also offer *some* support for their own
much later dates, but frankly, not as much. That said, it looks
like before I read Thompson's <Early History> I need to read
Lemche's <Early Israel>, and I was delayed getting hold of that,
so I can't say much that's final about these guys.

Except that they're not in the same category as sha kooks. Who
would, by the way, have less of a platform if you stopped arguing
with them. Do you really think random passersby are going to
find "Agamemnon" credible unless you intervene? Do you really
think you're going to convince him he's wrong about anything, ever?
I mean, if the guy misspelled your name and you corrected him, he'd
accuse you of beating your mother: he's simply incapable of
acknowledging error.

So what's the point of arguing with him?

Oh dear, dear, dear, dear, dear.

Why dont you answer these following questions if you think the OT was
written before Hellenistic times.

Q1) Why are almost all the kings of Israel and Judea insulted as being
abhorrent and doing evil in the sight of the lord

That's the way the writer saw them and most of those texts did get written
after the guy was dead. If you make it up why not say something good about
your rulers?

1a) Why would any king stand for any of his priests and scribes using such
insults of himself and of his ancestors.


The Priest hood was a powerful class. Taking them on might have been bad
politics. The other issue is that some of the holy write most likely was not
approved by some of the rulers. Running down who had copies of these scrolls
on the other had would have been a problem. You know that what we have know
is only a fraction of what was written. The official kings list is lost as
are a host of other documents that most likely never even got a mention into
the present.

Q2) Why have no artefacts ever been found that suggest the worship of the
so-called Hebrew god, such as 7 branched candle sticks, prayer boxes,
embroidered preists robes, temples, shrines, stars of david etc.

You need to rethink the list. Robes rot. Shrines of unworked stone as
proscribed are common but who made them is not obvious, etc.

Q2a) Why is it that all the artefacts that actually have been found
suggest that the so-called Hebrews worshiped the same Gods as the
Phoenicians.


That issue is discussed at some length by the prophets who would agree that
it did happen more than they liked. Nice to know you agree.

Q3) Why have no pots or sculptures ever been found depicting bible stories
and patriarchs such as Abraham, the Exodus, Sampson, Solomon and Sheba
etc.

Walk through down town Bagdad holding up a picture of Mohammad. I think you
will figure out the reason. Just make sure you have your will made out
first.

Q3a) How could Adam and his decedents including Noah and Abraham have
recorded the histories of the region if they were nomads and the only
writing that would have been available to them was cuneiform tablets that
would have weighed tonnes and been impossible to transport.


The thought is the tradition got passed on the same way the epics of Homer
did. Not sure what is fact and what is fancy but there are fragments of
archaic culture in the stories that would not have been the norm centuries
later when you want these stories to be made up and written down. Things
like stealing household idols because having them gave you some sort of
extra something. No late date orthodox Jew would have wanted the bleeping
things.


A1) The histories the books of the OT were not written by the Jews but by
their enemies.

So that is why they were fanatic about not accepting a scroll in which even
a one jot had been placed wrong and corrected? They were trying to preserve
the stories told by their enemies.


A1a) The kings would not have stood for these insults and that is why the
priests can have had no part in writing the bible.

Um, which scrolls (books) do you think were first written by Priests? Most
of the Prophets were bleep with the in crowd. That's how you get thrown down
a well and shoved into hollow logs that get sawed in half. The king doesn't
like you.

The kings of Israel and Judea were vassals of Egypt which ruled the whole
of Syria-Palestine from the time of Ahmose I and it was these Egyptian
Pharaohs to whom the so-called prophets reported that insulted the kings of
Israel and Judea who would not do their bidding or worship them as the
living God. The prophets who were agents of Pharaoh wrote the histories
that the books of Kings and Chronicles were based on and this was from an
Egyptian perspective with Pharaoh being made into YHWH.

A2/2a) Because the Hebrew god was created in Hellenistic times by the
scribes replacing all the names of Pharaoh and the Gods of the Phoenicains
such as El and Elioun in the historical records of the Egyptians that the
Septuagint was based on with the Hebrew title of LORD or YHWH since the
Gods of the Phoenicians just like Pharaoh were historical kings who lived
and died and were deified by their people even while alive. These were the
people who ruled the land and that is why the Jews worshiped them as Gods
liked everyone else did.

A3/3a) Because no widely available Jewish religious or historical texts
existed until Hellenistic times, whereas in Greece historical and mythical
texts were widely available available since the time of Homer and there
were plenty of depictions of these the stories and the heroes since 800 BC
and the names of the Greek Gods are written in Linear B inscriptions
dating to 1250 BC. The Jewish religion was made up in Hellenistic times
using texts found in the Library of Alexandria that documented the history
of Syria Palestine and a false ancestry was created for the biblical
patriarchs linked them together with the different tribes that lived in
the land at the time of the Exodus, then another load of different tribes
that lived at the time of the Judges and then the kingdoms of Israel and
Judea were invented and a Babylonian captivity was invented to account for
the repopulation of the land by the Persians and that is why none of the
patriarchs and bible stories are depicted in art since they were never
part of any religion or continuous unbroken historical or heroic tradition
of the land.


On the face of it this is extremely improbable.



Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, writer joe@xxxxxxxxxxx
<http://www.panix.com/~josephb/> "She suited my mood, Sarah Mondleigh
did - it was like having a kitten in the room, like a vote for unreason."
<Glass Mountain>, Cynthia Voigt



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