Saturday, April 11, 2015

It's Pretend to be Jewish Day...




Its Saturday and in Church of God land it's "Let's pretend to be Jewish day." People's Facebook pages are filled with the above meme's on a regular basis when Friday night/Saturday rolls around.  Most of these come from United Church of God folk.  RCG and PCG sheeple don't send this kind of stuff out since using the internet is Satanic, unless of course you are RCG/PCG leaders.....but that's another story.

Ex-church members get tired of the hypocrisy when they see that meme and are now posting this one:


Its one thing to keep a day as "sabbath" to rest and recuperate, but the Church of God has attached so much baggage to the day that it is not a day of rejuvenation.  Being forced to do something does not make it right.

37 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is so true! Why did we pretend to be something we were not? We could not even keep the law they way they wanted us to, it was an impossibility. They church and all church members broke the sabbath from the moment the sun went down on Friday night till it went down Saturday night. They still break it to this day.

Anonymous said...

Ancient religions kept the 7th day Sabbath long before the first old testament scriptures where written. These people worshiped the god Saturn. The COG's condemn mainstream Christianity for worshiping on the day that the ancients worshiped the sun, but don't the COG's worship on the day that the ancients worshiped the god Saturn?

Byker Bob said...

There was most certainly a path for gentile peoples to convert to and participate in the belief system of the Israelites. It is known today as Noachide, or Noahide law, and James does an excellent job of succinctly outlining it in his instructions for gentile Christians following the Jerusalem Council.

Who wouldn't admire Jewish people? The problem is that we were taught to take it all to extremes, to "outJew the Jews", to become uber-Pharisees who were blinded to the point of seeing only one thing: the law. Not the royal law of love behind the law. The Jews have historically enjoyed a deeper and better comprehension of the nuances and administration of that law, and its cultural impact.

I've been asked by some of my Jewish friends how we could possibly derive all of the hatred, the punishment, the anal retentiveness, the repression and deprivation from their customs and culture. The fact is, those were the ingredients that Herbert W. Armstrong brought to the party. Due to his own superficial understanding, and lack of grounding, he made it all into a yoke or burden that nobody could withstand. It was in direct conflict with "My burden is light.", or the concept of great freedom in Christ.

BB

Anonymous said...

"For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:

But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God." Romans 2:28-29

Anonymous said...

"And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD.

And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering..." Genesis 4:3-4

neither of these men were jewish...

Anonymous said...

saturn was a roman god what did not precede the God of the jews...

Anonymous said...

saturn was a roman god what did not precede the God of the jews...

Saturn is the Roman name for the Greek god Cronus, which was a Greek name for the Phoenician god El.

Yahweh first distinguished himself in Phoenician religion, where he was seen as a son of the supreme god El.

Armstrongites, even after they reject Armstrong, seem to have a terrible time appreciating that Armstrong didn't just misrepresent Christianity; he badly misrepresented Judaism.

Biblical Judaism as it is known today was basically grafted onto pre-exilic Yahwism after the captives came back from Babylon and were ashamed of the lack of sophistication of their previous religion (and also because the priestly class needed to justify its existence).

In 800BC, you could have mentioned "Yahweh" and "Saturn" to a knowledgeable Greek philosopher, and while he would recognize Saturn as an ancient deity he would only know of Yahweh as the consort of Asherah and one of a number of peer-gods worshipped by different Canaanite-Ugaritic tribes.

Brian said...

I just have to say that I really appreciate Byker Bob's perspective and the insight he is able to share on separating Armstongism out from Christianity (and Judaism as well). As a regular reader of this blog his writings on his experiences have been very helpful to me.

Ed said...

I stand corrected the god Saturn did not predate the O.T. but the keeping of the 7th day sabbath did predate the O.T. by some ancient religions.

Not Brian said...

I just have to say that I really appreciate Anon2:07's perspective and the insight he is able to share on separating Christianity (and Judaism as well) from their pre-exilic pantheistic Canaanite/Ugaritic origins. As a regular reader of this blog his writings on his experiences have been very helpful to me.

Anonymous said...

Pretending to be Jewish...the natural result of BI...

Not Brian said...

Ed wrote:

I stand corrected the god Saturn did not predate the O.T. but the keeping of the 7th day sabbath did predate the O.T. by some ancient religions.

You might want to retract that retraction.

There's no evidence that the O.T. or the Jewish 7th day sabbath predated myths involving the god Saturn/Cronos, and every reason to think they were first invented no earlier than the 7th century BC.

Byker Bob said...

It's getting pretty thick around here. My suggestion would be that people do a little research for themselves. You might want to start by Googling Saturn, Cronus, Yahweh, and El.

I also suspect that most readers will probably not value or weight the Roman, Greek, and Canaanite mythologies equally with the Judeo-Christian traditions recorded in the Bible, in the works of Flavius Josephus, and by Eusebius. The mythologies morph and change constantly, depending on your source materials. Certainly we've all learned some valuable lessons from HWA's use of the Hislop cobblings and proof textings based on mythologies. It is not intellectually sound to simply turn around such dubious or bogus materials and then apply them in an attempt to prove the opposite.

YHW, or the Sashu of YHW is also a worthy topic. Interestingly, these names first surface amongst the 14th century B.C. Midianites. Midian was one of the six sons of Abraham by Keturah. It is interesting to note that Jethro, (or Reuel, which is Hebrew for friend of God), Moses' father in law, is described as being a shepherd, and a priest of Midian. The burning bush episode is allegedly set during a time when Moses was tending Reuel's flock. Midianites moved around, and Midian is regarded as being a league of tribes as opposed to a fixed geographic area.

So, there you have it. Believers have a choice, as well!

BB

Not Brian said...

"My suggestion would be that people do a little research for themselves. You might want to start by Googling Saturn, Cronus, Yahweh, and El."

Amen. I wish people would research these things.

"I also suspect that most readers will probably not value or weight the Roman, Greek, and Canaanite mythologies equally with the Judeo-Christian traditions recorded in the Bible, in the works of Flavius Josephus, and by Eusebius."

I could only wish that people would approach the texts for their preferred myth with the same attitude as they approach the myths of others.

"Certainly we've all learned some valuable lessons from HWA's use of the Hislop cobblings and proof textings based on mythologies. It is not intellectually sound to simply turn around such dubious or bogus materials and then apply them in an attempt to prove the opposite."

Well, I'm not so sure about that one. But we can always be hopeful for the future.

I certainly hope you're not calling the works of archaeologists such as William Dever, or Finkelstein & Silberman "dubious or bogus materials."

"YHW, or the Sashu of YHW is also a worthy topic. Interestingly, these names first surface amongst the 14th century B.C. Midianites. Midian was one of the six sons of Abraham by Keturah. It is interesting to note that Jethro, (or Reuel, which is Hebrew for friend of God), Moses' father in law, is described as being a shepherd, and a priest of Midian. The burning bush episode is allegedly set during a time when Moses was tending Reuel's flock. Midianites moved around, and Midian is regarded as being a league of tribes as opposed to a fixed geographic area."

All due respect BB, but these days you've got to go to "dubious or bogus materials" to find anyone arguing for veridical biblical patriarchs like Abraham or Moses. It's been 15 years since the bubbles of textual criticism and archaeology collided and merged. There's no doubt that Canaanite gods such as El, and Yahweh go back even further than the 14th century BC, but that doesn't mean that Jewish monotheism goes back that far. Scholarly consensus these days is that those who came to call themselves Israelites were indigenous Canaanites and Judaism emerged gradually from the Canaanite religion.

If the Hebrew text source materials went back to the 14th century BC, we probably would have found them fragments of them written in cuneiform on clay tablets by now. We haven't.

Moreover, many of the details in the penteteuch are starkly contradicted by the archaeology.

"The stories of the patriarchs are packed with camels, usually herds of camels; but as in the story of Joseph's sale by his brothers into slavery (Genesis 31:25), camels are also described as beasts of burden used in caravan trade. We now know through archaeological research that camels were not domesticated as beasts of burden earlier than the late second millennium and were not widely used in that capacity in the ancient Near East until well after 1000 BCE. And an even more telling detail—the camel caravan carrying "gum, balm, and myrth," in the Joseph story—reveals an obvious familiarity with the main products of the lucrative Arabian trade that flourished under the supervision of the Assyrian empire in the eighth-seventh centuries BCE." The Bible Unearthed - Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (2002) by Neil Asher Silberman & Israel Finkelstein, pg 37.

Anonymous said...

Melchizedek was the King and High Priest of jerusalem of the jebusi canaanites; Abraham acknowledged His Authority when he paid Him tithes...

Abraham passed this notion on to Yitzaak (Isaac) who subsequently did so to yacob (jacob), and the jews continued in this Tradition...

Not Brian said...

"Melchizedek was the King and High Priest of jerusalem of the jebusi canaanites; Abraham acknowledged his authority when he paid him tithes...Abraham passed this notion on to Yitzaak (Isaac) who subsequently did so to yacob (jacob), and the jews continued in this Tradition..."

Citation?

Or is this merely your own take on it?

Anonymous said...

i use the bible as my source and you use sources derived from men whose knowledge is derived from other sources derived from men before them.

the one constant in this, and has been for thousands of years, and will be long after you and i are mere rotting corpses is the bible and faith in it and there is nothing science can do about it.

my source is legitimate in my eyes just as yours is in your own, and you can bet i wont be belittling and trying to shame you for you beliefs as they in science community are in the habit of doing to the religious.

Anonymous said...

before sciences like archeology there were reactionaries who made it their business to scoff at any words spoken on Gods behalf in order to promote doubt, and that same spirit exists to this very in they who claim to do so in the name of science.

James said...

Anon said:
'the one constant in this, and has been for thousands of years, and will be long after you and i are mere rotting corpses is the bible and faith in it and there is nothing science can do about it.'
____________________________

Its not science that will cause the bible to fail, it is reasoning within the information age. The bible is like any other holy book. Writings that bring power to who is in control.

The bible is what a hoe is to gardening. A tool to work the soil, then plant and reap the harvest.

A farm, a tithe farm such as the ucg uses the same method. Till the ground, throw some seed out and reap what is not lawfully theirs.

Anonymous said...

as the proof of the existence of wind, despite its invisibility, is in its effects, so too is the proof of spirits as indicated by their effects.

scoffing at God, blaspheming, doubting and even faith in Him are just some examples of effects that will outlive all flesh and blood.

Anonymous said...

well there you have it: it is not the bible that is the problem but those who use it to gain advantage over their fellow man; ironically that behavior is also against the teachings of the bible...

Anonymous said...

Did Abraham "Pay tithes" or simply gave him the spoils of war, voluntarily?

Byker Bob said...

It is curious that the Moslems call themselves "An Abrahamic faith". The Jewish faith, although acknowledging Abraham, basically weights the teachings of Moses to a greater extent, and Christians weight Jesus to a greater degree.

Let's face it. Nobody is going to convince anyone here. It is just a discussion. As a community, we've already done some of the most brilliant possible research into and writing on the topic of British Israelism, and the ACOGgers largely put on their blinders, and continue to regard President Obama as an oppressive Gentile who has risen up, even as they await the coming of the Germans to punish a melting pot for forgetting its Israelite heritage and culture.

When corroboration of some alleged detail surrounding Israel is not available independently from the nations surrounding It, some rule that detail out. In this case (and this was even brought out in one of the PBS programs on the Bible), you have the name YHW on 14th century BCE Midianite artifacts. If the Torah provides acccurate geneologies, this would fit perfectly. You would have the nation of Israel, deprived of its culture and heritage, escaping Egypt, and being re-exposed to some version of the God of Abraham by a people spawned by one of the not favored children of Abraham, their "cousins" who had not been enslaved, reacquainting them with some version of the faith of Abraham. The Bible or Torah indicates that there were numerous of these "not favored" sons, who were taught the same faith as were the favored ones, only to be exiled and to grow into large tribes or even nations.

Is there any written record similar to or equal to the Bible or Josephus, produced by the people who allegedly believed in the myths? The findings of Yahweh and El amongst certain ancient pantheons automatically raises the question "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" The problem is, you can't definitively prove either. We are too far removed from antiquity, and cannot positively discern. It becomes partisan at this point, leaving the decision making process to weighing various factors presented as evidence, tempered by the knowledge that "absence of evidence does not prove evidence of absence." Most scientists are following an evidentiary trail, collecting evidence. Mythology is relegated to providing certain insights into the cultures of those days, but researchers are not looking for evidence to support Zeus's actual existence as they have been for the walls of Jericho, the tombs or ossuaries of the apostles, or other artifacts which might provide insights into the Bible, and "Biblegod".

Archaeologists, though they have made much progress in assisting our understanding, face one very frustrating condition. The people in control of much of the holy lands have greatly restricted exploratory digs, because they have a vested interest in promoting their own faith. This is particularly true of Egypt, which figured prominently both in the lives of Moses, and of Jesus. Unfortunately, this condition will probably exist throughout our life times. Archaeologists are learning much, but not as much as they could be learning, because in so many cases they are being restricted from digging in the areas that could provide the greatest wealth of information. Most of the Middle Eastern nations are theocracies.

One of the propensities of human nature is that no matter how definitive facts appear to be, there will always be aspiring Einsteins working overtime to interpret, refute or alter those facts to suit their own beliefs, or nonbelief. We have learned that only fools would extract hard and fast doctrine from prophecy. How much less stable a basis is the long since rejected, mythology from unknowable sources?. The Greeks, Italians, and Middle Easterners no longer base their faith on these pantheistic gods and goddesses. People still do believe in God (alternatively called Allah?) and Jesus, who have largely survived the test of time.

BB

Not Brian said...

"i use the bible as my source and you use sources derived from men whose knowledge is derived from other sources derived from men before them."

Sorry, the people I quoted are archaeologists, digging up the actual evidence. The earth tells a tale, and the tale it is telling is that the bible was initially forged in the 7th century BC. You can mischaracterize primary evidence as a scientific circle jerk if you wish, but merely saying so doesn't change anything.

"the one constant in this, and has been for thousands of years, and will be long after you and i are mere rotting corpses is the bible and faith in it and there is nothing science can do about it."

Both Chinese traditional religion and Hinduism are older than the Canaanite/Judaic religion. If the human species survives, methodological naturalism is going to put all of them on the library shelf next to the once-popular Babylonian, Persian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman myth cycles, among others.

You will be a mere corpse? I didn't think that's something you would have admitted to.

"my source is legitimate in my eyes just as yours is in your own, and you can bet i wont be belittling and trying to shame you for you beliefs as they in science community are in the habit of doing to the religious."

Which is easier to forge, the layers of stratified ruins that make up a tell-mound in the middle east or a story a long time ago?

Your source may remain legitimate in your eyes, and I'm sure it will until you go the way of all flesh. But what of those who come after you? The peer-reviewed consensus of stratigraphy of the middle east will destroy their faith that the bible is not just another myth cycle, full of impossible supernatural events, of which they will never see the likes of, just like all the other myth cycles they already hold to be just myth cycles. The Age of Reason will make it more and more obvious to them that what they know is only as reliable as how they know it. Common sense does not yet prevail, but eventually it will.

Which is better? Wanting to know what is true and accepting it like an adult, or denying it, and running from it, like a child? No one is going to force you to grow up. But you won't be able to stop those who come after you from doing so.

Byker Bob said...

In a way, it is too bad that Israel was a theocracy. Had it been a secular state, people would be less inclined to question what written record we do have available.

That said, at the very least, It does appear that the Torah was revised and edited in the 700s BCE. That, in and of itself, is not breaking news. And there could have even been later editings in the intertestamental period, during the reign of the Hasmonean kings. It was at one time believed that the book of Joshua was written c. 900 BCE in the court of King Solomon as an introduction tying the Yahwist documents together and justifying the unified kingdom founded by his father David. That theory has since fallen into disfavor.

The problem with all of this is that attempts to date the materials can be done in several ways, and there is a measure of speculation involved in each method, just as we have learned with the books of the New Testament. Because documents are subject to deterioration, all of them eventually vanish into antiquity. Therefore, it would be very dificult to state with 100% certainty that the Torah was first written in 700 BCE. The oldest surviving Torah fragments appear to date from 200 BCE. The oldest complete Torah scroll dates from the 1100s CE. Clearly, there is an abundance of wide open space, room for wiggle.

It appears unlikely that evidence supporting dates earlier than 700 BCE could be found, but then, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls certainly shocked the world. This is an interesting topic, but while it can be used to create or raise doubt, it doesn't prove anything definitively one way or another. It's not a flat Earth-round Earth thing, and not even as dramatic and clear-cut as the debunking of British Israelism. Unfortunately, it all boils down to what any of us as individuals find convincing, and therefore believe.

BB

Anonymous said...

if there is evidence that hinduism and chinese religions are older than the canaanite ones you have yet to provide proof either.

the canaanites existence not only has been recorded by the bible, but by egyptian records, and egyptian society are at least as ancient as the chinese.

and it is common knowledge in levantine scholarship that judaism is derived from the canaanite religion, just as the jewish language and alphabet is; the bible corroborates this and adds detailed geneologies and speaks on the existence of two different temples, the evidence of the last is with us to this day.

the fact that people are willing to reject such circumstantial evidence speaks volumes...

Anonymous said...

not sure your peer reviewed science is making much of an impact in the middle east at this time, except where such science relates to weapons;

the last time i checked, the sun has began to set on this "age of reason" by virtue of its ineffectual nature and inability to change hearts and minds...

Not Brian said...

"...it is common knowledge in Levantine scholarship that Judaism is derived from the Canaanite religion..."

I am impressed. I would have thought you would not have liked this idea, that the Judeo-christian religions do not arise from the revelation of a deity, but instead have their source in Canaanite polytheism.

So we can dispense then with the guise that the canonized texts of these religions need necessarily attain to any reliability?

Ergo, claims recorded in the text of the bible are not evidence of anything, except that an anonymous writer made such a claim at sometime not before the 7th century BC.

And here I thought you were just an average buybull thumping troglodyte. Perhaps I was too hasty.

"If there is evidence that hinduism and chinese religions are older than the canaanite ones you have yet to provide proof either. the canaanites existence not only has been recorded by the bible, but by Egyptian records, and Egyptian society are at least as ancient as the Chinese."

Nice straw men. LOL!

I didn't know anyone was in any serious doubt that the polytheistic Hindu, Chinese, or Egyptian religions predated the 7th century BC such that evidence for such needed to be advanced! I did not address Egyptian religion because it is extinct and has no current believers.

Nor was I aware anyone was in serious doubt that the Canaanites and their polytheistic religion predated the 7th century BC.

Meanwhile, the idea that the "Abrahamic" religions or any of their texts are any older than the 7th century BC is in serious doubt among scholars, although, I grant you, not among the average buybull thumping troglodyte. And let's be honest, people like that consider evidence to be superfluous, and totally unnecessary for the acceptance of claims they like, and the rejection of claims they don't. Merely their favor or disfavor of any claim is "proof" enough. So are their weak minds so easily led astray.

"...the bible ... speaks on the existence of two different temples, the evidence of the last is with us to this day..."

Yes, so it does. And yes, we do have evidence for one of them. The other, if it ever existed at all, was a center of Canaanite polytheistic worship, not of Judaic monotheism, which had yet to be invented.

Not Brian said...

"not sure your peer reviewed science is making much of an impact in the middle east at this time, except where such science relates to weapons..."

Well, there are enclaves, such as Israel. It is a sad state of affairs that modernity has made as few inroads as it has into the darkened, medieval, superstitious past that still pervades much of the middle east, and much of Africa too. Do not misunderstand me, I am not say that western customs, values, or way of life is "all that," only that "reason" and "peer-reviewed science" is.

"the last time i checked, the sun has began to set on this "age of reason" by virtue of its ineffectual nature and inability to change hearts and minds..."

Oh. I see. I didn't know our technology and knowledge based economies had begun to dry up and blow away? I was not aware that people were leaving the cities and returning to agrarian subsistence. Tell me more about how the sun has begun to set on the "age of reason"...

Not Brian said...

"This is an interesting topic, but while it can be used to create or raise doubt, it doesn't prove anything definitively one way or another"

In the practice of history, things are anything but binary. Nevertheless, historical claims, just like claims for the existence of Higgs particles, or a new species of dinosaur are generally in doubt, rather than accepted, until a preponderance of evidence raises the probability in scholarly consensus to greater than 50%.

"In a way, it is too bad that Israel was a theocracy. Had it been a secular state, people would be less inclined to question what written record we do have available."

Not so, BB. Scholars are not in doubt because "Israel" would have been a theocracy. In 700 BC what state was not a theocracy? The implication that the historicity of the bible is only in doubt because of some sort of bias being at work is not tenable. No other religious text in western civilization has been given more "benefit of the doubt" than the bible. The bible is in doubt because archaeology, as it currently stands, appears to contradict it very seriously.

"It appears unlikely that evidence supporting dates earlier than 700 BCE could be found...Because documents are subject to deterioration, all of them eventually vanish into antiquity. Therefore, it would be very dificult to state with 100% certainty that the Torah was first written in 700 BCE. The oldest surviving Torah fragments appear to date from 200 BCE."

Not so, for if any fragments of texts predating 250 BC were to exist, it would exist on clay tablets written in cuneiform orthography!

After all, not even Exodus says "god" handed Moses the ten commandments written on papyrus.

"That said, at the very least, It does appear that the Torah was revised and edited in the 700s BCE. That, in and of itself, is not breaking news."

And see the Documentary Hypothesis and the dating of the JEPD sources as textual evidence for sources predating the 7th century BC.

Byker Bob said...

Hey, whatever floats your boat! You seem to want to believe that this is all open and shut, and settled, but there is still great controversy surrounding the topic, more to learn, and all of the relevant evidence is not yet in. The technologies for discovery are still being refined and new ones developed. Scientific method. Test and retest over time. That's what true scholarship is all about.

You do realize that two years ago this month, King Khufu's Red Sea Port was discovered, and guess what was amongst the newly found artifacts? Papyrus manuscripts, in good condition! Some of the best ever seen. 4,500 years old. Khufu reigned in the 2500s
BCE. Rare? Definitely. But it certainly raises a whole new level of possibilities. If Egyptian manuscripts of this vintage were discovered, manuscripts from other cultures such as the Hebrews could also exist.


BB

Anonymous said...


Beware of ever thinking that we live in an “Age of Reason” full of reasonable people, or that we live in an “Enlightened Age” full of enlightened people. That is an old folly, and great tragedies have soon followed such thinking in the past. We live in a sinful time that is quickly getting even worse, and you can be sure that trouble is already on the way.

Byker Bob said...

For Not Brian:

Here, my gift to you. It's something I first ran across in October, 2004. It's a university quality paper written by an agnostic scholar who shares many of your points of view. I think you'll enjoy it because it will fill in some of the blanks and gray areas, enabling you to make a stronger argument next time.

http://www.adath-shalom.ca/israelite_religion.htm

Happy reading!
BB

Not Brian said...

"Here, my gift to you. It's something I first ran across in October, 2004. It's a university quality paper written by an agnostic scholar who shares many of your points of view. I think you'll enjoy it because it will fill in some of the blanks and gray areas, enabling you to make a stronger argument next time."

Thanks for the link, BB.

I also couldn't help but notice the insinuation that my argument was weak and full of holes, and yet without specifying anything that was wrong with it. Care to elaborate?

"Hey, whatever floats your boat! You seem to want to believe that this is all open and shut, and settled, but there is still great controversy surrounding the topic, more to learn, and all of the relevant evidence is not yet in."

Not here to incite riot, or anything, but I just find the above odd, since I made 4 points, the first 3 of which were aimed at comments that seemed to suggest, to my ear at least, that YOU thought things were open, shut and settled! And the 4th point was only in agreement with you. I don't think things are open, shut, or settled. In history and archaeology, questions are only "settled" when they are incontrovertibly found, such as Richard III.

1) You said: "This is an interesting topic, but while it can be used to create or raise doubt, it doesn't prove anything definitively one way or another"

(As though, in general, there are no substantive doubts, and that things are either "open" or "shut"?)

I said: "In the practice of history, things are anything but binary. Nevertheless, historical claims, just like claims for the existence of Higgs particles, or a new species of dinosaur are generally in doubt, rather than accepted, until a preponderance of evidence raises the probability in scholarly consensus to greater than 50%."

2) You said: "In a way, it is too bad that Israel was a theocracy. Had it been a secular state, people would be less inclined to question what written record we do have available."

("...less inclined to question... as though "questioning" [the bible] were a dubious activity, arising from a cabal of properly credential academics, but pseudo-scholars because they're only real aim is to erode the credibility of the bible at any and all costs?)

I said: "Not so, BB. Scholars are not in doubt because "Israel" would have been a theocracy. In 700 BC what state was not a theocracy? The implication that the historicity of the bible is only in doubt because of some sort of bias being at work is not tenable. No other religious text in western civilization has been given more "benefit of the doubt" than the bible. The bible is in doubt because archaeology, as it currently stands, appears to contradict it very seriously."

3) You said: "It appears unlikely that evidence supporting dates earlier than 700 BCE could be found...Because documents are subject to deterioration, all of them eventually vanish into antiquity. Therefore, it would be very dificult to state with 100% certainty that the Torah was first written in 700 BCE. The oldest surviving Torah fragments appear to date from 200 BCE."

(Not sure why you brought up the Wadi al-Jarf papyri. Doing so only seems to counterargue against what you were saying here, that it's improbable that OT texts on papyri would ever be found. My only point was that finding clay tablets, such as those from at Amarna, Ugarit, or Hazor would be much more probable than finding papyri.)

I said: "Not so, for if any fragments of texts predating 250 BC were to exist, it would exist on clay tablets written in cuneiform orthography! After all, not even Exodus says "god" handed Moses the ten commandments written on papyrus."

Byker Bob said...

No, I don't believe that this is open and shut. It appeared to me, by your choice of words that you do. I believe that there is too much that we don't know, or can't know to be drawing the types of definitive, or partisan conclusions that your words have conveyed. Someone with an agenda, or being perhaps a bit kinder, a binary thinker, might express current theories as fact, but it appears most likely that we are at the very beginning of an evidentiary trail, which could end up verifying or debunking some of the basic assumptions about the history of Israel, the history of Judaism, and the accuracy or lack therof of statements in the Torah, or Bible. The opportunity to watch it unfold is both unique in history and fascinating.

Back in 2004, when I was eating, sleeping, drinking and breathing these things, one primary attraction that kept me engaged in the Steinberg paper was David's intellectual honesty, as expressed on page 3 of the paper which I linked:

"The reason for serious scholars coming up with the very different ideas about Israelite history and religion is rooted in the paucity, illusive nature, ambiguity and of the ambivalence of the relevant data. Short of major discoveries of contemporaneous religious and historical texts of the kind we have for pre-Helenistic Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Ugarit, this situation is not likely to change. This results in the field of Ancient Israelite History and Religion being extremely open to academic fadism."

The question as to why we are lacking in texts could be partially answered by several events. Where would official the records of Israel be maintained? Do you think the Temple (Josephus tells us as much) might be a logical repository? And, yet it was sacked, and destroyed, not once, but twice in its history. If the sacred Ark allegedly disappeared, what of the other important artifacts? As for Egypt, which has played very heavily in the history of Israel as well as the Bible, we know what happened to the Alexandrian Library. Scholars have been mourning its loss for centuries.

Some of the archaeologists and anthropologists that people often cite as authorities on the topic of Israel have stated on programs such as Nova that in their excavations, one of the things from which they learn the most is the pottery. Sumerian (non-semitic) people and the later Akkadian (semites) both maintained extensive records on clay tablets and circular seals, in cuneiform writing. So far, nearly 500,000 of this type of specimen have been recovered from various excavations involving Middle Eastern cultures. However, papyrus and animal skin began to come into vogue towards the end of the Bronze Age, due to convenience and compactness. They are less durable, subject to antiquity. The Ten Commandments are described as having been written by God on stone, but the Bible seems to allude to scrolls far more frequently. That plays heavily into the lack of information, as these are more subject to antiquity. It seems logical that Josephus would have had some of these materials available, and that he didn't simply paraphrase the Torah. He was highly regarded as a historian by the Romans, and their emperor.

(break)

Byker Bob said...

(continued)

My reaction to your points:

1). I was, in couched terms, pretty much accusing you of being the binary thinker because you expressed ideas that scholars consider to be theories as fact. (Re-read your opening post)

2). The statement about it being too bad that Israel was a theocracy was intended as tongue in cheek. Of course everybody knows that nations and tribes from that era all had their gods. The proper response might have been laughter at the comic relief. I can't say that I didn't fully expect your actual response.

3). Arguments and counter-arguments are a natural part of a non-binary thinker's thought processes. Am I constantly considering and reconsidering the law of gravity? No. If you drop something heavier than air, it falls. The history of Israel, otoh, is still wide open to discovery and theory.

Finally, do I consider your arguments weak? No. Your posts reflect a level of inquisitiveness that is atypical of most current or former Armstrongites. You are ahead of the curve. I just believe that you are yet in search of greater depth on this topic, and may be rushing prematurely to conclusion. If we were discussing this in person, one in one, I would have walked away after your first few sentences. But, for better or worse, we've got an audience here. Some of them might never have been exposed to this topic. It's best for those folks to at least realize that the history of Israel and of the Hebrew religion is not a settled topic. Not their way, not the science way. In fact, it remains very controversial. We need to remember that the people who believe in Armstrongism often do so because they have been instructed to accept theory as fact. We should not be doing the same thing to them using a different set of theories.

BB

Anonymous said...

in the context of religious myths you did mention the age of reason; surely reasoning and science has done little if any to resolve the political, social and religious conflicts of the world;

racism, child abuse, religious extremism, misogyny, etc. remain and are showing no signs of abating, especially in non western countries.

the bible proposes solutions to all of these things; solutions where reasoning has clearly failed, but frankly as long as we in the west are well fed and in relative safety we think more highly of ourselves and our ability to solve problems than is actually merited.