Abraham and Jewish History?!?

[solja247]

In other words you caved into the pressure of the instituations around you.

Not at all. . I wanted to keep my objectivity.
A brillant quote from Betrand Russel, 'No one can believe in God if they have seen a child die.' See a child die, would be very sad, however this doesnt prove there is no God, just our understand and perception of God is, perhaps wrong...

Thats utterly bizzare and proves my point about christians being bound by a doctrine teaching them to blindly follow their rulers as passive slaves.

No. If you want to talk about the Bible, understand how theology works.

Eternal hell is not a pagan belief, find me a couple of pagan religions around the levant who thought that, because I can tell you with absolute sincerity that the egyptians didn't think that, and no other religion had more influence on the damn hebrews than theirs.

In Greek mythology etenal hell was called Kronos, the worst of the worst places. Hades was the afterlife in greek mythology, a place where one lived forever. So yes there was such a thing as eternal hell...

[Minimalist]

Not at all. Wink. I wanted to keep my objectivity.

You have no objectivity. What you have is a deep-seated desire to believe in horseshit to make yourself feel important.

[solja247]

You have no objectivity. What you have is a deep-seated desire to believe in horseshit to make yourself feel important.

When people approach stories like Jonah they either try to attack it or defend it, my response, I have no bloody idea if it happened, who really cares?

That a bigstatement saying I have a 'deep-seated desire to believe in horseshit' care to back that up?
I doubt you can...

[Loki_999]

Maybe Abraham did exist. Maybe the guy did have to leave his city after disputes over his belief that El(?) was greater than the other gods (El at that time being a minor deity, one of the 50(?) children of Ugarit(?))... so he left, founded a new tribe with El (later Yahweh) as the top dog, and his tribe went on to dominate the local religions and cultures through a nice application of Microsoft's favourite practice, EEE, Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (see, Microsoft didn't invent it!). When that failed they simply resorted to Genocide (a la David and Saul).

PS: Sorry for the question marks, its half remembered and can't be arsed at this point to check the references.

[fr0d0]

Dreamtime rocks! The Aborigines really nailed it there. I wish I knew more about it/ where to look.

[Cerrone]

See a child die, would be very sad, however this doesnt prove there is no God, just our understand and perception of God is, perhaps wrong...

... because yours certianly is.

No. If you want to talk about the Bible, understand how theology works.

If you want to understand the bible, understand mythology, if you want to understand mythology, understand the evolution trends of theology.

In Greek mythology etenal hell was called Kronos, the worst of the worst places. Hades was the afterlife in greek mythology, a place where one lived forever. So yes there was such a thing as eternal hell...

Kronos was the the god of time.. the brother or the father in some versions of Zeus and Poseidon. Perhaps you're thinking of Tartarus, where the Titans (mythology within a mythology) were imprisoned by Zeus. Hades on the other hand was an afterlife, but not one of eternal torment and damnation as we would be told it was by christians... even the worst levels of Hades were just places of solitude and reflection.

Note the crucial differance even there with the Greek pagans (i'm not even going to bring up the fact that they had little to no cultural influence on the hebrews and were not based in the levant), pagan "hell" was one of reflection and contemplation where you would go to consider the merits of your actions, whereas christian hell involved being skewered by a saytr (the image as we would recognise as a devil, but originated as the pagan image for fun and orgies) and molested by walking skeletons for all eternity.

One encouraged responsibility for ones actions, the other waved a big stick and demanded obidience or else.

[Justtristo]

A good book on the historicity of the Old Testament is The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. It has been like three years since I have read it, however it is a fantastic book which argues through interpreting the archeological evidence that in all likely hood, characters such as Abraham and Moses were fictional. Hell, they are even doubting if David and Solomon were ruling over a united Israel as opposed to tribal chieftains.

My reading of that book helped to inform me greatly of my reading of the Old Testament. For example; I noticed a section in 2 Kings 22 where King Josiah's high priest Hilkiah "found" a scroll of the law of Moses in the temple. Reading The Bible Unearthed with the archeological and historical evidence presented of the Israelites practicing polytheism to a much latter date than the bible asserts, makes me suspect that the Torah was first written or complied around the reign of Josiah.

I agree with Finkelstein and Silberman that the whole field of biblical archeology has been greatly damaged in the past by archeologists using the bible to inform archeological evidence.

I have spent a bit of time looking at the historicity of the Bible, mostly Moses, Abraham and other patriachs. I was reading a lot of skeptic 'mainstream' archaeology and history, saying that Abraham did not exist and was a fabrication, I went to a friend of mine, a biblical scholar, and he asked me a powerful question; Why should we not believe Abraham existed? People want evidence for Abraham's existence, but isnt that absurd? Should we expect evidence? My skeptic mind had no answer, after all, there are large gaps in history, massive gaps, perhaps we should be a little more careful when dismiss historical characters, such as Abraham?
Another thing to take into consideration, is the fact that the Jews had a very very very strong oral tradition. We should NOT dismiss oral, espicially if there is no reason too. Oral tradition is what people used, a fine example of this is the rainbow serpent, in Aboriginal's mythology they believe a rainbow serpent created Australia (or the world?) we know they believe this through oral tradition, they didnt write, they drew and had symbols. Never the less, relied HEAVILY on oral tradition and we take their oral traiditions as being credible, being passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years. However, for some reason, people dismiss the Bible as quick as they can, and largely have no reason why, they dismiss Jewish history (Although they dont dismiss other culture's history) as being 'made up' by the Religous leaders, being copied from the Epic of Gilgamesh and other sacred mythological texts. Is this a reasonable conclusion to come too? Why should we believe that Abraham did not exist?

[Dotard]

I think I have my next book on the "to read" list

Cheers Min.

Me too. Thank you Min for the turn on.