Made in Alexandria: The Origin of the Yahweh Cult

[A_Nony_Mouse]

If you are expecting to find a single document/artifact which is going to answer all your questions you are in for great disappointment. This is what the theists have tried (and failed) to do with their bible.

Now, I'm getting curious. What evidence do you claim to have....or is all of this little more than an argument from silence....( a silence which exists only if you dismiss everything located thusfar in the ancient world which you find inconvenient?)

I claim to have no new physical evidence. I claim to have only what everyone else has. I simply refuse to go beyond the physical evidence.

The very premise in the subject line is when the OT stories first appeared. That time is about the mid 2nd c. BC. Therefore I say the evidence is the stories were created at that time and no physical evidence they were created any earlier or are any older. If there is no evidence of anything older then any assumption that it is older is pure speculation. (You can read book one of Against Apion to show Jews at that time were desperate to be considered an ancient people. That gave them all the reason in the world to insist the stories themselves are of real history instead of historical fiction.

If someone wants to claim the stories are older than the 2nd c. BC then I expect to to see physical evidence such as a new archaeological find that passes the giggle test for non-believers. I have all the literature. I have copies of it all on my website for anyone interested.

While Davies makes a pretty fair shot at it he proceeds with NO physical evidence whatsoever to assign creation to after the return from Babylon. He does this without evidence of any captivity in the first place. He does this with no evidence of a literate culture in the hill country of Palestine until the 3rd c. BC -- he assumes something for which there is no evidence it could exist.

Then he talks about just stories evolving into dogmatic religious literature over time, which implies over centuries but was watching for an explicit statement and noticed none. All of that is fine except I know Josephus in late 1st c. AD did not consider these books and stories to be dogmatic religious literature. Davies does agree with that and explicitly says the same in the 2nd chapter. He shoots himself in the foot with what appears to be no more than an attempt to makes the stories as old as possible. If it did not happen by the 1st c. AD when did it happen?

Once mid 2nd c. BC appearance of these stories is recognized then we have the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucids and in favor of the Ptolemys -- it was definitely not against Greeks in general according to Josephus. The priest that started the revolt not only got refugee status in Egypt but a city was built for him to rule that was a copy of Jerusalem including the temple.

The Ptolemys had previously invented the god Serapis for their own use. That is not evidence they invented this Yahweh cult but it shows they would have no reluctance to do so -- i.e. it is not blasphemous to do so and nothing is too sacred.

Fact: we know the OT appears around the time of the Maccabean revolt. What I say beyond that is speculation and I admit to succumbing to the temptation to spin a good story. But essentially everything in the OT is either neutral or supports rule by priests. The Maccabes declared themselves the priest-king rulers. Is it just coincidence that the Maccabes and stories supporting them appear at the same time?

If this is the case then many other questions related to real history being incorporated into the stories are easy. If the Ptolemys commissioned the stories or high priest that started the revolt did then the very obvious place to have it done, to find the manpower who knew the history of the region, was Alexandria because of the library.