(September 1, 2010 at 9:50 am)Entropist Wrote:(September 1, 2010 at 9:31 am)Quest of knowledge Wrote: That said, the date of the alleged birth of the fictional Jesus must be wrong because Herod died in the year 2 B.C. He could not logically have ordered the Jewish babies killed when he was dead. There is another detail. The Hebrew scholars forgot to mention anywhere that their children were ordered dead by the Romans in year 1. Maybe they didn’t mind?
This is one thing that has really puzzled me about the NT. Even if Herod could have given the order, it doesn't make a lot of sense since Herod was merely a figurehead propped up by the Roman government. He didn't have the authority to order Roman soldiers to do something like this, on this scale-- and based on a silly prophecy? Te Roman government would have laughed at him. It also would've created a hell of a lot of civil unrest, something not exactly in the Roman's interest (the Jews were a pain in ass enough as it was for the Romans). And yet no mention off it outside of the gospel accounts. (I find the same thing puzzling about the OT with the ten plagues, and the Israelite exodus. There is no mention of this in Egyptian history that I am aware of).
You are correct. There is no mention of the Jews being in Egypt as a group that migrated from Ur, in present day Iraq, from where Abraham was supposed to have migrated with his nephew Lot. There is also no historical mention of absolutely anything that the Bible says happened because the whole thing is an inconsistent collection of silly unsophisticated tales for naïve people. Most intelligent religious people were raised in the religion and either never bothered to challenge their beliefs, or they are psychologically unable to do so.
Judaism itself was invented by the Babylonians. The Babylonians invaded what was known as Philistine and spread the myth that those who believed in the religion they invented were related to them. Ur is located in what was the kingdom of Babylon, so if the Jews were descendents of Abraham who was Babylonian by birth, then that made the Jews Babylonian descent. The silly Philistines who swallowed the story then started to war against their own people. In other words, the Babylonians created a civil war between Philistines (the Greeks spelled the name of the place as Phalestina, and the Romans dropped the “h” and made it Palestina, which is Palestine in English) and “Jews” that continues today.
Ezra, who was the Babylonian governor of Israel during the second Babylonian invasion of Philistine, wrote the book of Ezra and the Book of Daniel. What business does have a Babylonian invader writing the Jewish “holy” book? The book of Daniel tells the story of a prominent Jew in Babylon during the second Babylonian invasion of Philistine. It tells the Jews that the Jews are respected by the Babylonians and that the Jews have influence over Babylonian affairs. That way the poor confused Philistines that converted to Judaism fought against their own non converted Philistines rather than fight against the Babylonian invaders.
The Babylonians did not invent the whole thing from nothing. The parts of Genesis relating to creation and Satan were written in Babylon by the ancestors of the Kurds. The Babylonians added the stories of Abraham onwards. The Babylonians and the Assyrians were essentially the same people, just two different names for the two different empires they created at different times with different rulers. At any rate, their language was and is Aramaic (the Assyrians of today call it Arami). The Torah and most of the Old Testament was written in Aramaic. What a coincidence!
The Babylonians also invented Moses and the whole story of the Jews in Egypt and the Jews invading Philistine. They did this to prevent an alliance between Philistines (Palestinians) and Egyptians.
I find the reality of the development of Judaism, Christianity, and other religions so much more interesting than the simplistic tales it packages for the needy believers.


