Made in Alexandria: The Origin of the Yahweh Cult

[A_Nony_Mouse]

Some of this thread is the theory of the development of the Hebrew language, and like any theory, it provides a possible answer unless disproven of replaced by a better one. I have read several books over the years on how languages of any kind develop, and I am no closer to being an expert than when I started! Now given that, I thought I would throw a few more items into the mix, since I do speak the language and have studied the texts in question.

The issue is not so much as how languages develop but rather the impossibilities believers imagine to salvage their beliefs. You do not have to be much of an expert to know languages do not develop the way believers "wish" they did.

First of all, the source for the hebrewe language is most likely related to the development of the other semitic langues, given the similarities in style and syntax. Hebrew and Aramaic are not that different, and if you have mastered one, you can read the other. Arabic is a cousin, and the speaker of one can shift to the other with some moderate effort, but not much. Finally, there are a handful of words in the Torah that have always been problematic, since they are Aramaic ones, and not Hebrew, and commentators have come up with some interesting mental gymnastics to explain those.

As I have elsewhere noted before the discovery of the DSS it was widely assumed "hebrew" was an invented liturgical language for finding no examples of it outside (what I call) translations of the Septuagint books. And then among the DSS there were found two secular letters in "hebrew" and upon this the believers claim vindication that it was a real language. Awfully slim if you ask me. BUT I will give believers the use of "hebrew" at the time of the letters by other than priests IF AND ONLY IF they do not try to claim that proves Moses wrote in Hebrew. Two letters means two letters, nothing more than that. It does not give the language any kind of antiquity.

In this regard the script/font of all "hebrew" is Aramaic. Why should an "ancient" language be written using Aramaic letters? And why are there NO examples of a precursor script for "hebrew" that differs from Aramaic? Again, I observe only the absence of evidence, the kind of evidence we would expect to find and do find in all other ancient cultures.

As far as Moses being the author of the first book, that comes from the single statement that he wrote the sefer haBrit when he came down from the mountain, and many religious commentators make an assumption. But in truth, the story never says what that book was any more than what was in the "book of wars" and so forth.

If you are referring to he threw down the tablets and then recreated them that is a neat device to avoid inspecting the inscribed(?) word of Yahweh. But it refers only to the big ten.

However that is a fundamental assertion of Orthodox Judaism. Until a century and half ago or so there was only Orthodox Judaism and a few surviving Karaites and Kabbalists. So there is a demarcation caused by reality leading to Reform and then Conservative saying Reform went to far.

Note the time frame for the retreat from 1500 to 600 BC for creation date is in the time frame I have suggested.

I would disagree with what it takes to write a scroll. My son in law is a scribe, and while there are a few common elements (the ink is from a common material that needs to crumble with time) and is written on leather, which, while a bit laborous, there usually isn't a lack of cows, sheep, goats, or whatever to write upon their skin.

Your son comes from a literate culture. In ancient times it was different. In fact you can find texts on scribal cultures and what they were like in the ancient world. And we do NOT make special pleadings that it was different in bibleland from every other ancient civilization.

Scribes were a separate class with a family tradition. They were supported by the king. They apparently took in extra work writing, interpreting and arguing (lawyers) contracts. They mostly promulgated royal edicts and laws. The percentage of religious texts is so small one might suggest they were vanity productions.

Yet if we look at bibleland there are ONLY religious texts produced by scribes. Bibleland is different from all the rest? That is not a permissible assertion.

You can also go by analogy with the production of the bible before printing and its cost. The bible was chained to the pulpit not so the people could not read it but because of its value in terms of cost of replacement. It was no cheaper in bibleland.

On the other hand, historically, we know that during the time of Ezra, the Jews were mostly illiterate, and had no real connection with their belief system. According to the jewish writers, it was not the cream of the crop that left with Ezra, but the bottom of the bowl of society. And why call him a scribe? Perhaps he was the writer? It is one way of looking at it. And who were the men of the Great Assembly that put the book together? Nobody knows for sure. Were they great because of their size? Certainly they were not great because of their knowledge.

I can only call bullshit on this. You say, we KNOW. Upon what evidence do we know? No evidence the bullshit. We can gauge the literacy of Rome by the graffiti. There is no graffiti in bibleland.

Literate requires what it does today. Books to read and practice writing and look at all the material for six years of schooling to be considered literate today. And there is exactly one possible writing practice found in all of bibleland.

Sorry, there is no evidence of common literacy in bibleland until the 2nd c. BC but if you have any PLEASE post it. Evidence NOT argumentation.

Now to touch on the Septuigint.

Why is it called that at all? If you are referring to Jewish legend that 70 Rabbis wrote it in seperate jail cess and brought them to the greek King and a miracle happened that they were all the same - well, that is a legend. And if you accept that part of the legend, then why not the part where there is a description of certain passages that they changed because of an assortment of translation issues, problems that are not in the modern text called by the same name. But we really don't know why the Septuigint is called that for certain, but everyone has a theory - each one better or worse than the other.

It is called that for no known reason. The best guess if the FORGERY, the Letter of Aristeas, has 72 as the number and that it was abbreviated. The point it the ONLY basis for claiming the Septuagint is a translation is a forgery dating from the same time the Septuagint appears. It is a forgery therefore the Septuagint is the original because there is no evidence to the contrary. Forgeries are not evidence.

Finally, an interesting point on the DSS - apparently, there are 2 forms of ancient Hebrew writing, the priestly (modern) form, and the common (paleo-hebrew) form. In the Torah scrolls that were discarded, you find the tetragrammaton written in paleo-hebrew while the rest is in priestly hebrew. You can interpret this as the paleo-hebrew being more important, or less, depending on your bent on things.

All I can find on "paleo-hebrew" is that it was found in the region the Septuagint claims was ruled by the mythical Hebrews. That is what we call circular reasoning. If you have some specific examples in mind please post them.

There have been changes, edits, and the like. As to the origin of it all, and how it all started, and who wrote what, and how the language and religion developed, nobody really knows. All we really know is that it's literature, like the works of Homer. But unlike Homer, where people do not believe in giant cyclops or witches that turn men into pigs, people have devoted their lives and, tragically, have given up their lives for these writings, willing to be burnt alive as a kiddush HaShem, as an honor to a god who was never there.

Chaval!

If we are talking its literature then we have the Septuagint which appears along with Judah Maccabe which is a nom de guerre for his real Greek name. He was allied with Egypt after his group broke with the Seleucids. Read Josephus.

As to pulling the Homer trick, stick with the Iliad and not the claims to intervention of the gods hardly differs from GW Bush. But if you want to look at the Odyssey look to the Torah for opener, then go to Joshua and you can move on to the rest as you find time.

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Oh, one more thing about the Hebrew language...

The current language was recreated in the 19th century, after falling into disuse.

Relevant to the discussion it is better stated that the surviving words were only about 1/3 of a working language, meaning before words like electricity were invented. Iraqis with enough zeal could have reconstructed a complete working language of Babylonian because there was more than enough to have a working language, again before modern words were needed.

Claiming "falling into disuse" would apply to Babylonian. That is not an excuse for Hebrew. There is no evidence that Hebrew was ever in use outside of a very small group is near zero for the absence of non-liturgical sources.

And yes, the whole invention of "modern" hebrew is due mostly to the work of one zionist whose name escapes me at the moment.

And while it was used for reading the scriptural texts, the modern Hebrew changed much of the structure as well as the pronounciations. For example, there are two sounds for a dalet which sounds like a "D" and "something else". But nobody knows how to do that "something else", so we always pronounce it as a "D" sound. There are some, such the Yemenites, who make is a DshZ combination, of sorts, but that could be from the Arabic influence. Even the gutterals are different than in the good old days. We glean that from the Talmudic texts that belittle the pronounciation of that Gallileans, and give several examples of how they pronounced badly, from which we can infer how they might have sounded.

And that person drew upon the Palestinian dialect of Arabic for the other 2/3rds of the words needed for a working language as well as a local pronunciation rather than a polish or germanic or slavic pronunciation.

As for the Dalet thing best I have seen it is comes from the Masoretic which more or less comes out of no where but is an abbreviation of the DSS with fanciful vowel tics. It is an abbreviation. Without an audio recorder no one can pretend to know letter sounds, period. As one linguist noted, the most likely pronunciation of Shakespeare and all Elizabethan English is American Ozark hillbilly. The varieties of Arabic pronunciation today make it obvious no one knows how to pronounce any imagined Hebrew.

And should I be correct that it is pidgin of Greek and Aramaic clearly no one knows how either were pronounced back then much less the pidgin. Which is why I suggest the differences in the books of the Septuagint in Hebrew are due to the pidgin variations in the process of inventing "hebrew."

I bring this up because, had Hebrew been correctly passed from generation to generation, then these sounds would not have been lost. The "Shema", which a Jew says at least twice a day, which the first 6 words are taught to every Jewish child, ends with the "D" sound that should be "the other" sound. And with such an important sentence, that a Jew is commanded to pronounce it aloud, perfectly, and clearly, you would think that this would have been passed down correctly over the generations. The sages wrote that the last letter ("D") should be extended longer than the rest. You cannot do that with a "D" noise.

Now you are just being ridiculous. You can go to England and hear a dozen or more distinctly different pronunciations of "God save the king" without pretending it never changes.

And if a simple sound, which is critical in fulfilling that one mitzvah/commandment, that every Jewish child is taught, is in error, how many other things, from the period of Alexaner the Great and forward, had been mis-communicated. Not just something as simple as a sound, but the very words themselves. And if the words are suspect, then the stories that are made up of these words should also be suspect. The Jewish sages themselved admitted that the very people you might have thought wrote those texts, were primarily written by an anonymous group during the time of Ezra (most of Nach, inclding Isaiah).

In other words, ancient literature, not the word of god. And as fables, such as Snow Whilte changed over the years with each telling, can we say that the OT did not?

Of course it changed and there are enough variations such as Orthodox, Karaite, Kabbalist, Samaritan to show there was never a fixed form even without digging into the history and archaeology.

But if we dig into history and archaeology we find the Judeans/Jews also worshiped Ashara into at least the early 2nd c. AD and there was a temple to her in Jerusalem. That is what I mean by recognizable Judaism. It did not exist until after the 2nd c. AD at the earliest.

Nothing special here. The Christian church fathers were all heretics by 6th c. and later doctrine. Islam originally liberated women.

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You are sounding more and more and more like a troll.

The Great Isaiah Scroll has been carbon-14 dated at least 4 times. Two of the tests, provided in two separate labs, yielded nearly identical results. The calibrated data gives you the range of 335-324 BC and 202-107 BC.

Now think about that for a moment, why is there a gap from 323 BC to 203 BC? That's it keep thinking.

Did you work it out?
...

You are obviously totally and completely ignorant of radioactivity, how C14 dating is done, and how to present the results OR you are deliberately lying. Sorry. I have better things to do that attempt to either expose your lies or educate you.

Go away, dumb ass believer.