(November 7, 2011 at 12:19 pm)Minimalist Wrote:Quote:Bethelehem is mentioned (v.2) to stress the humble origin of both David and his future successor, who would be a true shepherd of the people (v.4). In its context the oracle prophesises not the birth of the coming king, but the continuity of the line of David. "
That of course is typical obfuscation. Since what it says is inconvenient we'll just pretend that it doesn't mean what it says and make up some other horseshit.
Interesting about that line of "reasoning" ( if you want to use the term incorrectly ) is that even centrist archaeologists like Finkelstein maintain that the whole "Davidic covenant" line of shit arose in the period after Hezekiah. The Kingdom of Israel serves as the bad example and it is Judah - under the probably fictitious "Josiah" - which is to take the lead of restoring the country to its former glory.
Of course, the problem with that is one cannot restore a country to former glory if such glory was an illusion. Archaeology shows that Judah in the 10th century was a rather pitiful collection of miserable villages and some wandering sheep and goat herders. No way in hell did it have any sort of "empire."
As I said to Justt the problem with dating any sort of literature like this is that we have no examples of it prior to the Greek septuagint in the 3d century BCE.
The closest we come is the Silver Scrolls an amulet found by Gabriel Barkay which contains two variants of the same generic prayer, an expanded version of which ended up in the Book of Numbers. God must be fairly shitty at dictation if no one can get it right.
I hope I didn't piss you off by posting the book's information. I was just providing another viewpoint. In my mind biblical archaeology is a jumbled mess. There are a lot of people saying a lot of things. The loudest of which are the fundies (and various flavors therein) who have for centuries explained away and turned a blind eye to the horrors of the OT. I have read and seen on tv some things about biblical archeology that differes from that of the fundies but the information is very disorganized and they rarely cite sources.
Do you know of any organized source for accurate information? Though I am reading about other things right now If you have a good book I could put it on my reading list. Oddly I have difficulty researching information on the OT because I am repulsed by the current political situation. I am also repulsed by the savage primitive behavior of our "holy fathers" and their contemporaries. It's disturbing, makes me want to vomit, it's hard to imagine that people can be so horrible to other people. I can only deal with it in small bites before I have to put it down for a while. It took me months just to read Diarmaid Maculloch's book "The Reformation". I suppose if I grew up playing violent video games (not available in my time) perhaps I could objectify things a bit better, I don't know. I digress
Next on my list is Stephen Pinker's book on improving morality "The Better Angels of Our Nature" http://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-...0670022950 . I hadn't planned on reading it but perhaps it might provide an alternate viewpoint to the millenalistic lens that fundamentalism (and oddly modern media) puts on history and current events. I digress again.
If anyone would find any value in it, I could post a passage in the OT book I had previously cited from. It mentions how when the Assyrians took over, OT chronology improved for a while (from 891-648). Aided by this was the recording of a solar eclipse that happened 15 June 763.
I have studied the Bible and the theology behind Christianity for many years. I have been to many churches. I have walked the depth and the breadth of the religion and, as a result of this, I have a lot of bullshit to scrape off the bottom of my shoes. ~Ziploc Surprise
