Israel as "occupiers" and other bull poop

[SoonerCoug]

Originally Posted by Oxcoug

Pompous archeology profs who like to make declarative statements aside, saying there is no evidence for is not the same as saying there is any evidence "against."

Isn't that pretty much what I was saying?

Originally Posted by MudphudCoug

It's also difficult to 100% exclude the possibility of Jewish captivity in Egypt, but I think the evidence suggests that it's extremely unlikely to have occurred in the way the Bible says it occurred, if it occurred at all.

I didn't say there was evidence against it. But a complete lack of evidence for such a massive event does call the event into question. Lack of evidence is a very good reason to doubt something (and also a bad reason to completely exclude something). I won't exclude the exodus, but I don't see a reason to believe in it.

The only reason I would choose to believe in Moses is to make my fellow Mormons feel at ease with having me in sunday school.

[Oxcoug]

You've stated grounds to be neutrally agnostic about it. I don't think you've stated any persuasive grounds for actively doubting it.

There is simply no reason to disbelieve the existence of Moses. There may be no corroborating source to confirm it, but it's far more of a stretch to say that the Israelite elders concocted this elaborate character in such full color and detail than it is to accept that he existed.

As you are probably aware - there is nearly zero evidence for Jesus Christ outside the Bible. And yet there is about as much documentary evidence for Christ as there is for Socrates. And no one ever questions the existence of Socrates.

I think it's a fairly shortsighted thing for anyone to say "the workings of our academy have not provided us with multiple points of corroboration for X historical claim, I will therefore dismiss it as a fairy tale." I thought the discovery of Troy might have got us past that impulse.

The point is - the workings of our academy have also not provided us with any positive cause to DOUBT the Exodus. More importantly, they have not provided any alternative explanation for Israel's origins. There is no plausible case to make that runs "we can confirm Israelite historicity back to Solomon... but before that it's myth." Why? Solomon is only a few hundred years after Moses. How does Moses become myth? Just because some professor can't find his signature on anything?

[SoonerCoug]

Originally Posted by Oxcoug

You've stated grounds to be neutrally agnostic about it. I don't think you've stated any persuasive grounds for actively doubting it.

What if the same author claims that people once lived to be 900+ years old and that God kills people who practice coitus interruptus? Is that a good reason to question his credibility?

[Oxcoug]

of the Bible. There is no "he" or "she" whose credibility can be questioned. It's a team, a community of authors with different agendas who sometimes contradicted each other. In the course of construction aggregated details and inflections like the ones you've mentioned are easily manipulated. But full narratives with historical detail about a fully formed character - concerning whom there is also a deep and compelling oral tradition - rich in descriptive personality, flaws and even idiosyncrasies, is less likely to have been formed from nothing.

Little items like the ones that you've pointed to can easily be explained by the dozens of people who handled the narrative with different normative or didactic intent.

[Oxcoug]

Does Homer's use of weirdo deities at all times undermine the fundamental historicity of the actual Greco-Trojan conflict?

Does the absurd retelling that Achilles was invincible on all but a spot on his heel mean that Achilles didn't exist? Or that Troy itself didn't exist?

Obviously, no. I don't think the principle is any different.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by Oxcoug

Does Homer's use of weirdo deities at all times undermine the fundamental historicity of the actual Greco-Trojan conflict?

Does the absurd retelling that Achilles was invincible on all but a spot on his heel mean that Achilles didn't exist? Or that Troy itself didn't exist?

Obviously, no. I don't think the principle is any different.

Yes. And it cuts both ways. Which is why the Canaanite genocide shouldn't be used as a justification for any modern day action. (Responding more to Indy's post than yours.)

[Spaz]

Originally Posted by MudphudCoug

Maybe some people refuse to see that scriptural authors sometimes incorporated their own views and made God in their own image (hence the multiple personalities of God in scripture).

Have you ever noticed contradiction in scriptures? What's your explanation? Mysterious nature of God? Mysteries that we will understand someday but cannot understand today?

The interesting thing is that you are doing exactly what you are accusing the scriptural authors of doing. You're incorporating your own view and making God in your own image, thereby limiting what he is "capable" of.

Why is it so hard for you to accept the probability that God is beyond your understanding? That his view, which includes the immortal life, is different from yours, and that therefore what is moral to him may seem immoral to you? Is it not logically possible that the genocide of Canaan was, in an eternal perspective, good for the canaanites?

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

Yes. And it cuts both ways. Which is why the Canaanite genocide shouldn't be used as a justification for any modern day action. (Responding more to Indy's post than yours.)

You're absolutely right - that genocide shouldn't be used as justification for anything. On the other hand, the Canaanite genocide doesn't change the Divine claim Israel has to the area.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by Spaz

You're absolutely right - that genocide shouldn't be used as justification for anything. On the other hand, the Canaanite genocide doesn't change the Divine claim Israel has to the area.

So what means do you believe are justified in exercising the "divine claim" on the land?

The Palestinians believe they have a divine claim also. Are you not bothered by the concept of a "My God is greater than your God" game resulting in violence?

[Oxcoug]

I think I BELIEVE it on some level - I think that there is something in Israel's covenant with G-d that gives them a special bond with the lands surrounding Jerusalem. But I don't stake that as the case for their current possession of Israel. And I don't think it's required to justify the state of Israel.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Oxcoug

There's absolutely no reason to not believe Exodus.

Archeology, as I'm sure you know, is a hugely inexact process of chasing history through rocks, bits of pottery and the deliberate intent of many historical figures to mask or misrepresent their own legacies. It almost never arrives at anything that can be called "certain."

Given how routinely Ramses II defaced earlier monuments to claim credit for things he had not done it would only be surprising if, in his absolute control, he had allowed any trace of his humiliation vis a vis Israel to survive for posterity. The dude was obsessed (as were all pharaohs) with packaging his legacy - and any evidence of what happened with Moses would have left him a laughingstock.

The burden of proof here is really on the skeptics to explain it away. The Israelites entered Canaan from somewhere. We know that. Israel maintained long and active ties with Egypt for centuries afterwards. We know that. So all the marks of historical plausibility are there, and there is nothing in the archeological record to refute it.

Pompous archeology profs who like to make declarative statements aside, saying there is no evidence for is not the same as saying there is any evidence "against."

The professor quoted by Sooner is not doubting there was "an Exodus." It's more likely than not that a leader who came to be called Moses if he was not then so called led a branch of Hebrews formerly under Egyptian control into the Sinai where they wandered for some years, finally winding up in Canaan. And that this event turned out to be momentous in terms of establishng ancient Israel. But what was probably much more momentous is the generation of the mythical interpretation of that event.

The analogy to the Iliad is quite precise and is actually an acknowledgement of the Pentateuch's limited historicity. There's no reason to not believe there was a "Trojan war" (maybe not called that then) or several similar wars between Greeks and more sophisticated and culterally advanced inhabitants of Asia Minor, probably bronze age proto Hellenistic peoples like the barbaric long haired "Greeks" or Achaeans themselves who laid siege to Troy in the Iliad. There is even substantial archeological and geographic evidence to corrorate the Iliad (compare the Book of Mormon, for a contrast).

But Achilles and his personality and interactions with the Greek gods are not historical, nor is even his character as we know it, and the same is true for Agamemnon, Odysseus, Helen, Paris, and the others. They are demonstraby mythical, just as are the specifics of Moses' and Aaron's and Joshua's characters and personalities, parting of the Red Sea, the burning bush, etc. are mythical by any empirical standard available.

The Iliad and The Old Testament have very similar claims to historicity. Some three-thousand years later, the comparison seems quite exact. Moreover, at this snapshot in history they are neck and neck as to which is the most important book ever written in terms of its influence and as a result the cultures that it begat.

I trust an Oxford educated young man is not a Biblical literalist. That would be really freakish.