Re: Hebrew Bible and history [again!]

Inabón Yunes wrote:
Why take a hit on Matt when we can all have our opinion.
You sound like Bin Laden, "it is my way or the camelway"
My hypothesis is more daring and very unconventional.

And more importantly is unsupported by the evidence. Ignoring or waving away the evidence doesn't make your "hypothesis" any better.

Further, a "hypothesis" isn't an opinion: please choose which you putting out here in public. Are you stating a hypothesis or are you just spouting an opinion? Do you know the difference?

I argue that the OT was written AFTER-THE-FACT.

Of course it was written after the fact! Unless you believe in foretelling, fortune tellers, and crystal balls which so far as I know no one in this discussion does, then of course it was written after the deeds were done! The difference is that you claim that it is not written by Judeans or Hebrews after the fact, but by Greeks in the Roman period. Huge difference.

The Greeks wrote history as they thought. They picked a nation that may or may not have existed, the Israelites.

Funny thing though, the Hebrew Bible isn't written in Greek, shows incontrovertible signs of being a translation, contains a number of Hebraisms, isn't all history, and even those historiographical elements don't match Greek historiography. So on your take, some authors learned a language that didn't exist, studied another culture to the extent that they could *successfully* imitate that culture, wrote a series of texts displaying a whole history of linguistic development, then translated that into Greek leaving their original Hebrew scraps behind in the sand, and didn't bother to mention this to anyone, meanwhile a whole society suddenly accepted the existence of this people, and not only so, a whole bunch of people suddenly said, "Hey that's us, we've been following the Torah for generations, and we'll undergo persecution, and desecration of our sites, and have our neighbors riot against us all for the sake of perpetuating some unknown Greek's set of lies." Yeah, sure. Say, who's your boss? I'd like to write to that person because if you really are what you say you are, the world is in trouble.

I think it was imaginary, like many other analogies they wrote,

Name some Hellenistic Greek analogies and let's compare then.

but may have been just another small group of Arabs that they met. After they created this OT, the Septuagint, using verbal accounts of different tribes of the area and knowing that the oldest civilizations came from the Middle East, or so they thought, it wasn't long before people started filling the "boots" they created.

Evidence??? Your college debate teacher taught you what that is, correct?


See, the OT came first and the Hebrews came after.
iy
"VtSkier" <vtskier@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1243397909.143062@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Christopher Ingham wrote:

It is tedious to try to reason with extremists. The opinion of
minimalists, such as Matt Giwer, that because much of the 'historical'
content of the biblical literature is so demonstrably concocted, and
ergo the entire corpus must be disregarded as having any historical
value, is grossly simplistic and lacking in discernment. He and his
antitheses the maximalists, who hold the Bible to be unerring, deserve
each other.

Those in the field of Syro-Palestinian studies (what biblical studies
is now called) who don't adhere totally to the minimalist or
maximalist viewpoints proceed with the assumption that much of the
Bible dealing with purportedly historical persons and events is
generally mythology rather than history. Genesis and Exodus are two
cases in point, and any history of the Hebrews, if they existed as a
people at such an early time as encompassed by these books, is
probably wholly unrecoverable. Various other biblical texts clearly do
contain genuine historical components to varying degrees, and it is
the ongoing task of scholars to derive from them whatever objective
evidence there is to be had. [N.B.: The historical study of Israel
and Judea is to be distinguished from attempts to confirm or deny the
supermundane aspects of the Jewish religious. These are separate
issues.]

Israel in the first millenium BCE and earlier was an insignificant and
ever-changing polity, a cultural backwater settled initially by semi-
nomads. It is unreasonable - or stupidly naïve - to demand written
and archaeological evidence on the same order as is available from the
great states which surrounded it. Such textual references (both
biblical and non-biblical) and material remains as do exist agree in
indicating the paramount influence in Israel and Judah of Phoenicia
(the "Sidonians") from the 10th to 8th centuries BCE, of the
increasing dominance of Assyria from the 8th through 9th centuries, of
the total control by Babylonia for the century preceding 539 BCE, and
subsequently of the rulership by the Achaemenid Persians and the
Seleucids until 142 BCE, when independence was achieved by the
Maccabees. (N.B.: This does not address the extent to which first-
century Judaism resembled the religion as practiced by the inhabitants
of the region in these earlier periods, or whether or not the first-
century inhabitants of Palestine were substantially of the same stock
as those who lived in the same area in earlier periods; which are
separate issues.)

In attempting to reconstruct a history of the region in this epoch
some biblical texts are useful, such as those which cover the period
of the monarchy, as several extra-biblical documents name kings of
Israel and Judah. It is not a matter of debate whether or not Israel
and Judah are actually being referred to: in the annals of Tiglath-
pileser, for example, they are always listed as tributaries among a
host of other western states, such as Melid, Unqi, Kummukhu, Gurgum,
Que, Arpad, Sam'l, Carchemish, Hamath, Byblos, Damascus, Tyre, and the
Arabs. The number of resemblences in non-biblical sources to Israeli
and Judean kings named in the Hebrew Bible and, additionally, the
agreement in sequence of said kings in these extra-biblical texts*
cumulatively compels one to infer that there is corroboration of
specific historical elements within the biblical accounts. (N.B.:
This does not address the veracity of other given historical details,
the extent to which first-century Judaism resembled the religion as
practiced by the inhabitants of the region in these earlier periods,
or whether the first-century inhabitants of Palestine were
substantially of the same stock as those who lived in the same area in
earlier periods; which are separate issues.)

Christopher Ingham

* There is some scholarly disagreement over precise dating due to the
slightly differing chronologies in the Masoretic Hebrew text, the
Septuagint, the Lucianic Greek recension, and Josephus.


Hmmm. Thank you.

.

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