Atheist Bible Study 1: Genesis

[Bucky Ball]

One finds, when one actually studies the Bible in the recognized main-line (non-Fundamentalist) centers of academic Biblical Studies, that scholars do not take the combined mythic traditions which ended up in the Bible, literally, (any longer)  The (ignorant) meme "so they are not *real*" if not literally true, is a common Fundamentalist view of ancient Near Eastern literature, not shared by actual scholars. The *in order for them to be "real" that have to be "literally" true* thing, actually went out at least 75 years ago, if not longer, as textual criticism, and form criticism, and archaeology revealed what it did.

In his well know seminal work, "Jesus Christ and Mythology", the well-known Christian scholar Rudolph Bultmann writes about the power of mythology in ancient cultures. .... not with the ("presentist") common misunderstanding of "oh that's just a myth", but how for ancient writers, mythology was an authentic and powerful method the ancients tried to transmit what they thought was "truth".
In ancient Near Eastern literature, many literary forms were used: poetry, allegory, symbolic writing, and various forms of narrative writing. The ignorant presentist idea that the truth of a text rests in its literal truth long ago (actually was never totally) went out as accepted by academics, and the liberal traditions of Biblical Scholarship.

In 1952, a team was set in place by the world-famous, preeminent scholar, archaeologist and pioneer discoverer of Holy Land historical sites and documents, Dr. William Foxwell Albright, the professor of Semitic languages at the Johns Hopkins University. Their job was to write criticisms and scholarly work concerning all biblical texts. The team was composed of the most respected biblical scholars in the US and Europe, including Dr. John W. Bailey, Professor Emeritus, New Testament, Berkley Baptist Divinity School, Dr Albert E. Barnett, Professor Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Dr. Walter Russell Bowel, Professor, The Protestant Episcopal Seminary, Virginia, Dr. John Bright, Professor, Union Seminary and many others.

The team of 124 clergymen and scholars came mostly from conservative, mainline universities and churches for the most part, the likes of whom will never be seen again in one place, whose names evoke the utmost and deepest respect, even if one completely disagrees with their religious views. They wrote the huge 13 volume set, now considered a valuable rare book, called "The Interpreters Bible". Today it is usually kept under lock and key in seminaries and libraries. This set includes an introduction to scholarship and looks at every single verse and word in the Bible, discusses their origins and possible meanings from various points of view. It has been updated in the 1990's, but the original scholarship is still the central fundamental summary of knowledge, which summarized scholarship from the Medieval period (1850's -1950's) and is therefore considered to be an interesting historical snapshot. It is also an assurance that these absolutely respected leading intellectuals from the 20th Century scholarship, of whom most were religious, have agreed to have each other's names associated with their own and that they felt comfortable with what each other were saying in an academic setting and commanded world-wide respect as conservative, careful, and sincere, life-long teachers, academics and scholars.

On page 15 of "The Interpreters Bible", Dr. Herbert F. Farmer, Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University wrote about the indispensability of the texts, their importance and how the "truth" of them should be approached, after an exposition of the traditional conservative Christian view of person-hood, sin and the salvific actions of Jesus (aka Yeshua ben Josef), known as "the Christ" in human history.

"The reason has to do with the evidence afforded by the texts themselves, and calls for fuller treatment. Scholarly research into the texts themselves, has convincingly shown that they cannot be accepted in detail as they stand."

The Biblical texts contain (which can be seen as changing even from verse to verse) a number of sources. For example the Documentary Hypothesis (https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jtigay/JapanVol.pdf )
has worked out line by line, which source was drawn upon, by editors/compilers of the texts. Also in work cited above, every verse is examined by multiple scholars as to their origins and meaning. One of the huge contributions to scholarship in the past 150 years, was the advances in understanding of origins as archaeological excavations in the Near East found so many important sources, (for example when the Royal Library at Ashurbanipal was excavated (at Nineveh) in the late 1800's), the source material was compared to what was in the Bible. Even the god "Yahweh Sabaoth", came to be understood as one of the sons of El Elyon, (his father-god) from the Babylonian pantheon, and brother of the god "Sin" who was the antecedent-precursor of the Arabian god "Allah". Yahweh had a consort/wife, whose name was "Ashera" .. who is briefly mentioned in the Bible. 

The Babylonian mythic origins (a paper on which I will post at some point) include :
poisonous plants, life-giving ribs, Eve, death by eating plants, "bread of heaven", water of life, plants which offer immortality, and snakes which bring about death, and most important, Chaos and Order. As was pointed out above, Martin Buber, well-known Hebrew scholar, in "Good and Evil" Part2, masterfully demonstrates how the Babylonian concept of chaos and order forms the foundation of the "Garden myth" (Adam and Eve). 

So with that little aside on the utter ignorance of the Fundy/uneducated/childish position which says "your stated stance is the Bible, Torah, tanakh, zophar, Septuagint are not real" we can resume discussing Genesis. 

There is no "pre-law" period (vs "post-law")in the history of Israel. Archaeology has demonstrated there is a continuum (in all Semitic settlements) and knows what the customs and civil life, religion and laws looked like. The idea that there was a radical change at some point is not supported by history. Israel was a monolateralist polytheism ... they accepted there were many gods, but agreed to worship only the War God, Yahweh Sabaoth, so he would help them in their battles. (The "Lord of Hosts" ... a host is an army in battle formation). It remained this way until after the Exile, when Isaiah began to insist on monotheism.
http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10...chapter-11

The "pre-law" assumption would rest on the idea that the Exodus actually happened, and that at a point in history, something changed, over-night. It did not. Egypt controlled the entire Near East, including Canaan. It would make no sense to go from one place Egypt controlled to another they controlled. The Egyptian officials WROTE to their superiors at home, and they have those documents, and know what they talked about. They never once mention a large group moving out of Egypt up to Canaan.

For most of its history Israel was 1st a Confederation of Tribes, then briefly a kingdom, then two kingdoms. When the Northern Kingdom seceded and needed symbols to set up in place of the symbols in the temple, the symbols (which were in place of the two sphinxes (supposedly) on the cover of the ark in Jesrusalem), the North chose two Golden Bulls. (!!) ... which is a hint of things to come.