Made in Alexandria: The Origin of the Yahweh Cult

[A_Nony_Mouse]

I want to compare them to the kingdoms as described in the bible. If they were not as described in the bible then there is additional evidence the stories were made up.

Why? Would you compare Camelot to Alfred the Great's court?

I would only compare the claims in the relevant documents to the archaeological record.

Fiction is always easier....it is not restrained by reality. We know there was no major population center at the site of Jerusalem in the 10th century when, according to the OT, it was the capital of a far-flung empire. Horseshit. It was, at best, a miserable little village but more likely was nothing more than a fortified manor house for the local war lord. The whole raison d'etre for the site is the Gihon spring which was the only reliable water source in the area. We don't have any idea what it was called but we know it was not a city...or even a respectable sized town. Judah, in the 9th and 10th centuries could not support that level of urbanization. It was a region of pastoral nomads.

If that is your position then you cannot claim the Taylor prism is in any way related to it. The prism clearly refers to another Jerusalem. It refers to a Jerusalem which matches that on the prism.

As to pastoral nomads, not that either. That invention is from those trying to salvage the bible from the jaws of reality. It is an attempt to claim nomads arrived and settled down and they were the original Hebrews/Israelites or whatever. That is not the case.

The land was settled by farmers, grape and olive growers, and a some sheep and goatherds. There is no apparent record of any nomadic phase nor of the arrival of any new group nor of any radical change in the local culture. This goes back some 5000 years long before bible salvaging invented nomads appeared.

One is not permitted to invent "pastoral nomads" solely to reconcile bible stories after one admits everything before this period is myth. That is assuming facts not in evidence. It serves only to support the preconceived conclusion of an ancient OT.

As to it being ancient that was not accepted in the 1st c. AD as Josephus declared anyone who refused to believe Judeans were ancient simply hated Jews. When the idea it was ancient became the common belief is between then and maybe the 6th c. AD. Of course there was no new evidence introduced between those times -- not that people in those days were capable of producing any.

My point being you are assuming the stories are in some manner ancient. You are arguing to that conclusion. That conclusion appeared some time between the 1st and 6th c. AD. Why would you consider arguing to an invention by unknown people in that time frame?

The population increase around "Jerusalem" (or whatever) begins after the Assyrians overrun "Israel." Even then, the population never grows much beyond 10,000 because that seems to be the practical limit of the water supply. It wasn't until Herod the Great imported some Roman engineers to build an aqueduct that the city began to grow and eventually attained a population of perhaps 30,000.

That is fascinating about Assyria and the population at that time. Fascinating in that I have never found any archaeological papers which supports it. Where did you find the archaeological evidence which supports that? I do not mean what people say about archaeological finds but the finds themselves. The best I would expect would be the volume flow of the springs and believers deciding how many that could support and then declaring that was the population. That would be circular reasoning and clearly disqualifies it as the city of the prism therefore the prism is out. But I will await your presentation of the archaeological evidence.

Consider the Moabite inscription which believers claim confirms the bible. Never do they tell you the inscription is dated using the bible and is therefore a circular confirmation. (There are greater problems with the inscription but that is good enough to start.)

Sidebar: The aqueduct is also of interest in that there is a surviving description that a sluicegate in it was opened to clean out the sacrifice room. However it was not high enough to reach the top of the "temple mount" where the mosques are. It could only reach the level of the plaza in front of the Wailing Wall. Not that important as on the same level as the mosques was invented in the mid-late 19th c. and does not appear in history before then.

But you don't have to dismiss 200 years of archaeological research in order to deduce that the bible is bullshit, Mouse.

Dismiss? I insist upon and only it with no assumptions or "interpretations" beyond the physical evidence. BTW: Archaeology was invented in the 1890s when it was clear the bible was worthless with regard to the reality of ancient Egypt and Palestine. It is amazing how far behind the times believers are -- and proudly so best I can tell.

I have no doubt that when these goat-fucking tribesmen went to Nineveh to pay their annual tribute they brought back stories of the opulence of the place.

They took a plane? Grabbed a bus? or spent a month getting there and back only to discover tribute was a government to government matter. But then the prism does not describe the same Jerusalem or Samaria as archaeologists have found so we only know the prism refers to other cities and places and the old names were adopted for verisimilitude only.

It isn't too hard to see where they got their inspiration for these later tales of "Solomon." ( Shalmeneser the name of several Assyrian kings is a Greek rendition of the Akkadian Shulmanu-Asaredu. Shulmanu? Solomon? Is it really that hard to see the connection?)

Tell me which of those things that are not too hard to see could not have been written in Alexandria in the 2nd. c. BC. Look at the title of the topic I started.

We seem to agree they are all fiction. I add there is no kernel of truth. If there is any kind of basis for the stories it does not go beyond names and places. A prism mentions Jerusalem. It is not the Jerusalem of either the bible or of archaeology. The prism one has no connection to anything we are talking about beyond the name.

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The prism tells of its surrender. The Greek story says it was miraculously saved. The prism refers to 46 fortified cities as part of Judah. Archaeology have found nothing of the kind.

I don't know where you are getting this stuff. Archaeology has most assuredly located destruction layers consistent with Sennacherib's invasion. The most notable site is Lachish but there are others.

You have stated Jerusalem was barely a city in your estimation. What problem do you have when I point out there is no evidence of 46 fortified cities under the rule of a Jerusalem which is barely a city? According to your bible story there was NO destruction of Jerusalem therefore you are talking about something you hold did not occur. What has been found near Jerusalem is an ash layer of burned grain which does not rise above a local 2 alarm fire. As with anything in bibleland IF the method of dating is not given the date is meaningless. If the method is the bible it is meaningless.

http://books.google.com/books?id=ln5NwF8...ah&f=false

When was the bible story written? by whom? and why is the 2nd c. BC an impossible creation date? There has to be a legitimate, sound, evidence based reason to assume the stories are older than the 2nd c. BC. No one has produced a reason to assume that. You are not doing that here even if the rest were not questionable.

I have not read that particular text nor am I likely to do so because it invokes the prism telling a different story to relate it to an imaginative bible story. One might as well say the prism is the fiction but if one does there is nothing to confirm. Connecting anything to Sennacherib has to first reconcile both stories and give priority to the prism. But if one does that the prism is talking about another Jerusalem not the present day one.

You seem to be saying that because archaeology can't confirm the bible bullshit stories that archaeology can't be trusted either. That's silly. The question to ask is Cui Bono? Who benefits from the bible stories?
There are different answers at different times?

I have no idea how you could get that out of what I have written. I am saying the archaeology is the sine qua non of EVERYTHING related to the OT and ancient Palestine. What cannot be trusted is what believers say about archaeology. That is why I am only interested in what has been found not in what believers say about what has been found.

Pottery from the Xth c. BC is entirely different from saying pottery from the time of King Ahab has been found. But is really gets thick when they start running about about what the pottery shows about the reign of Ahab. The circles are often so tight one wonders why they do not spiral in to self-destruction.

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As far as "Hezekiah's" inscription goes....

The Siloam (Shiloach) inscription or Silwan inscription is a passage of inscribed text found in the Hezekiah tunnel which brings water from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam, located in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. The inscription records the construction of the tunnel in the 8th century BCE. It is among the oldest extant records of its kind written in Hebrew using the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.

Scholars say it is written in Hebrew using the Paleo-Hebrew script.

Called Hebrew based solely upon the bible which is the circular reasoning fallacy. Why are you going along with this? Did you not agree just a couple posts back the whole "hebrew" thing went out the window with Moses and Exodus? Why do you go along with believers with this name?

You can google images of the inscription and of the Phoenician alphabet and see they are the same. As I pointed out days ago the name given to the handful of inscriptions there are is based upon who the bible says ruled where it was found.

Ordinarily one would determine a language grouping by comparing the body of inscriptions. There are not enough words on those two index cards worth of words to establish it as a separate language from Phoenician. And again the people in the region were illiterate so declaring it was a local language in any sense is nonsense.

Assyrian records tell us that Hezekiah rebelled against them.

Clearly the Hezekiah the records are talking about is not the Hezekiah of the bible. Nor is the Jerusalem the one of the bible nor the one of archaeology. There is no Hezekiah of archaeology.

He fortified his city and took steps to ensure his water supply in case of a siege. These are logical steps for any ruler to take if you are going to do something as illogical as rebel against Assyria in the first place.

There is no way to know when the tunnel was dug much less who. And you are forgetting the 46 fortified cities of the Hezekiah of the prism. What did he do with them? Why if he fortified 46 cities did he put off fortifying Jerusalem? You are making up a narrative to salvage the bible but at the same time negating, even trashing, the prism. How can you explain this?

The OT claims that "god" smote 185,000 Assyrians...as if such a number could ever be amassed! The Assyrian records tell us that Hezekiah paid a tribute and submitted to Assyrian hegemony. The Assyrian account is more rational...I trust we agree on that. We can speculate on why the Assyrians showed such restraint in their dealings with Hezekiah but I imagine the reasons were tactical.

What I note is you are invoking the records in support of the bible story even though those records negate the possibility it was the Hezekiah of the bible.

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However here the Assyrians are being invoked and their empire and what they meant by a fortified city or just plain city is what is meant. You cannot back off from the words on the prism. If it says 46 fortified cities belonging to Jerusalem and there is nothing like that to be found then it is not talking about the bible's Jerusalem.

Julius Caesar reported that a quarter of a million Gauls came to relieve the siege of Alesia. Herodotus claimed that 2.1 million Persians invaded Greece.

They were both full of shit.

But you are holding there are no points of congruence between your de-exaggerated bible story and the inscription not just a single point or two of disagreement. In those days numbers were commonly used as adjectives however they were never used to replace zero. As in zero fortified cities or zero Gauls or zero Persians.

The fact that there are no points of congruence between the two stories suggests only the names were lifted from the prism and incorporated into stories. There is nothing to preclude those stories from having been written in the Greek period. The absence of literacy in the region precludes them from having been written prior to that.

When the Assyrians write that they took 46 "fortified cities" they are simply exaggerating their own accomplishments. It is a common failing of leaders.

Perhaps you know the syndrome?

While it is common to invent threats where none exist the issue remains no points in common between the prism and your invented version of the bible story. Now I could ask for your source of inspiration but as you are not describing the Jerusalem of the bible then the biblical Jerusalem did not exist.

The problem is believers have been making up all kinds of BS to make the OT as old as possible ever since they had to give up on Genesis and Exodus. With no evidence at all and only faith that the bible consists of old material they have been rationalizing and inventing ad hoc explanations why they are still old stories recounting real history at some level.

You are inventing your own Jerusalem contrary to both the inscription and the physical evidence of archaeology. This accomplishes nothing but fantasize a way in which there could be some "truth" to the OT completely independent of and without regard to (both arbitrary and capricious) the evidence which does exist.

The only reason to do that is to start with the conclusion and find a way to support the conclusion. That is arguing to a conclusion. It is not acceptable in rational discussion.