(December 2, 2022 at 11:52 am)Anomalocaris Wrote:(December 2, 2022 at 11:26 am)Jehanne Wrote: I don't think that the authors of the Pentateuch had sinister motives; I think that they were just trying to understand and cope in the World that they inhabited.
the abusive overbearing parent who beats his children and rents his/her children out to work for income to him/herself may have, in his/her mind, only the noblest didactic intent and certainly nothing sinister. Whether something should be regarded as sinister depends on the morality, as well as the suggestibility or impressionability, of the observer.
An effective sales collateral must not contradict the prevailing understanding of the world amongst its intended audience unnecessarily, otherwise the efforts of the salesman would be wasted defending the unorthodox world view rather than on selling his ware, which in this case is the privileged authority of the priestly class. So too the genesis would co-opt an account of the past, however vague and in parts mythical, to weave into an advocacy for enlofting the status of the priestly class, to use the above analogy, to overhear upon its people and co-opt their labor for its own benefit.
Consider Julius Caesar's cipher-shifting encryption scheme, which, apparently, was never broken during his day. One mistake that people of our time make with respect to those who lived decades to centuries to millennia ago is to assume that they thought pretty much as we do, and that is a major error; they simply didn't. Government was very simple, as were laws, as was political and social scheming, along with religious faith. In many respects, our ancestors in early history behaved liked high schoolers with those in prehistory probably being akin to those in middle school.
