RE: lying for Jesus
March 14, 2014 at 2:20 am
(This post was last modified: March 14, 2014 at 2:44 am by Minimalist.)
Took a while but I did find the report of Ahmose I's campaign against the Hyksos.
http://ib205.tripod.com/ahmose_1_1.html
60 years is more than 5 minutes but the issue of what time-frame constitutes the Old Testament is certainly one which could bear a little examination. As far as the Seleucid's "thumbs" go, they were a spent force. If part of the peace treaty was that the Hasmoneans would acknowledge their king as some kind of feudal overlord it hardly matters. The Seleucids could not defend themselves much less attack anyone else. When Pompey gave them the coup de grace it was a gesture of kindness. They were the living dead.
But let's be clear here...especially about the purposes of writing in antiquity. It served the powerful. They commissioned the scribes who did the writing and the scribes told the stories that their masters wanted told. So, we have Judah becoming an actual state in the late 8th century but as a vassal of the Assyrian Empire. They stayed that way except for Hezekiah's brief rebellion until Assyria was defeated by Babylon. They were quickly destroyed by Babylon who burned Jerusalem ( or whatever it was really called ) to the ground and moved their administrative center to Mizpah. This remained until Babylon was overrun by the Persians and the Persians suddenly found themselves with a Western Empire. Persia retained control until Alexander came rolling through and when he died first the region was under his general Ptolemy and later under Sleuchos. This situation brings us down c 160 BC or, in other words, a fairly unbroken run of some 650 years in which Judah - later Yehud - was under someone's control.
I submit that no Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian or any of the various Greek overlords would have tolerated a story in which their captives were encouraged to think of themselves as anything other than conquered peoples. Again, there was no underground book-sellers club. Books served a purpose and they were expensive to produce and only the elites could afford them or read them.
So the question of "Old Testament Times" comes down to that same period, right around the end of the 2d century BC when there was an independent, Judaean-based state which might have benefited from tales of a great empire that had god on its side. Go back and study those two maps, above.
Are you following me so far?
http://ib205.tripod.com/ahmose_1_1.html
Quote:Ahmose I slowly drove the Hyksos back to their capital Avaris (location on one of the eastern branches of the Nile in Lower Egypt), once here Ahmose laid siege to the city. Ahmose had troubles of his own with his kingdom, he left the siege of Avaris in the control of his military commanders so that he was free to placate a rebellion in the Theban region. When Ahmose returned to Avaris he found that negotiations had been taking place between the Hyksos and his military commanders the Hyksos were allowed to leave Egypt gracefully in return for surrendering the city (1532 BC).
...However, Ahmose was not going to let his enemy escape so easily the Egyptian army pursued the Hyksos people into southern Palestine to Sharuhen. The city was put under siege by the Egyptians, after three years the Hyksos once more fled this time into Syria. Again the Egyptians followed, but Ahmose finally returned home to Egypt.
Quote:Well it was only for 5 minutes and well outside of the time frame for both the Old & New Testament events. And as you pointed out, they were still under the Seleucids' thumbs for some of that time. So it's safe to conclude that their independent history as depicted in the Bible is 100% BS.
60 years is more than 5 minutes but the issue of what time-frame constitutes the Old Testament is certainly one which could bear a little examination. As far as the Seleucid's "thumbs" go, they were a spent force. If part of the peace treaty was that the Hasmoneans would acknowledge their king as some kind of feudal overlord it hardly matters. The Seleucids could not defend themselves much less attack anyone else. When Pompey gave them the coup de grace it was a gesture of kindness. They were the living dead.
But let's be clear here...especially about the purposes of writing in antiquity. It served the powerful. They commissioned the scribes who did the writing and the scribes told the stories that their masters wanted told. So, we have Judah becoming an actual state in the late 8th century but as a vassal of the Assyrian Empire. They stayed that way except for Hezekiah's brief rebellion until Assyria was defeated by Babylon. They were quickly destroyed by Babylon who burned Jerusalem ( or whatever it was really called ) to the ground and moved their administrative center to Mizpah. This remained until Babylon was overrun by the Persians and the Persians suddenly found themselves with a Western Empire. Persia retained control until Alexander came rolling through and when he died first the region was under his general Ptolemy and later under Sleuchos. This situation brings us down c 160 BC or, in other words, a fairly unbroken run of some 650 years in which Judah - later Yehud - was under someone's control.
I submit that no Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian or any of the various Greek overlords would have tolerated a story in which their captives were encouraged to think of themselves as anything other than conquered peoples. Again, there was no underground book-sellers club. Books served a purpose and they were expensive to produce and only the elites could afford them or read them.
So the question of "Old Testament Times" comes down to that same period, right around the end of the 2d century BC when there was an independent, Judaean-based state which might have benefited from tales of a great empire that had god on its side. Go back and study those two maps, above.
Are you following me so far?
