Just how stupid were the ancient Israelites?

[Mystic]

You present it as you believe.

I know there is something more sinister going on with history, just as Abu Baker burned hadith books people wrote to leave people confused and Uthman collected Qurans just do away with commentary in them but people are too stupid to reflect.

I will trust limited evidence we have as the limited evidence we have once all the vaults in the world, underground or otherwise, are made accessible to public and not just few humans.

[Minimalist]

From Haaretz, last year.

Eighteen years ago, on October 29, 1999, Haaretz published an article by Tel Aviv University's Ze’ev Herzog, whose message was spelled out in the very headline: “The Bible: No evidence on the ground.”

Of what? No evidence that the children of Israel sojourned in Egypt, passed through a miraculously parted Red Sea, wandered the Sinai Desert for 40 years or indeed any years, and no evidence that they conquered the land of Israel and divided it up among 12 tribes of Israel. The renowned archaeologist also shared his suspicion that David and Solomon’s "United Kingdom," described in the Bible as a regional power, was at most a minor tribal domain.

"Jehovah, the God of Israel, had a wife and the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only towards the end of the period of the kingdom, not at Mount Sinai,” Herzog also wrote.

The unbridgeable gap Herzog described between the Biblical tales and the archaeological findings was nothing new, to researchers. Israeli archaeologists have long thought as much, based on biblical criticism theories originating in Germany during the early 19th century. The general public, however, was shocked.

You know what that means, MK?  It means jesusism and allahism are built on foundations of sand.

[Mystic]

Gate keepers of history - nothing new, when Moses' came about, one of the first thing Pharaoh wanted to argue about is what is the story of previous generations, where all the Prophets and talk of Abraham there as Pharaoh and his gang controlled history in the minds of their people.

Don't worry, truth is coming, and God willing, evidence real evidence is coming fast.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

The Hittites were the ones with the iron chariots that Yahweh couldn't defeat.  In the story the Yahweh god character is actualy the Egyptian Pharaoh.

You know what that "iron chariots" shit tells me?  It tells me that the moron who wrote that nonsense would not have known a chariot if it hit him in the ass.

Chariots were designed for speed.  They were not tanks.

IOW -

This:



Not this:

The Hittites had a monoply on iron production so they were able to build better weapon systems, like the three man chariot.  That gave them superior firepower against the two man Egyptian chariots.  They also had a professional army.  https://www.realmofhistory.com/2017/06/2...ronze-age/

[Minimalist]

They still did not build chariots out of iron.  What the Hittites did was add a third soldier to the chariot but even that would have added weight and thus made them slower.

From an Egyptian relief on Kadesh:



The Egyptians had a two man chariot with an archer shooting a composite bow.  I recall a Nova special where the technique was demonstrated.  Impressive.  Like a fighter strafing ground troops.

In any event, the two fought each other to a draw at Kadesh.  One also had to pick ones ground carefully to employ chariots.

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Gate keepers of history - nothing new, when Moses' came about, one of the first thing Pharaoh wanted to argue about is what is the story of previous generations, where all the Prophets and talk of Abraham there as Pharaoh and his gang controlled history in the minds of their people.

Don't worry, truth is coming, and God willing, evidence real evidence is coming fast.

You do understand I won't be holding my breath waiting for you.  "Moses" is bullshit, too.

[The Grand Nudger]

@Wyrd
"In the story"..the people who came up against an iron axle were the hilljack rabble of judah....rightly terrified of fighting on the open plains..particularly on something as flimsy as a promise from "god". It wouldn;t have just been iron axles, though. They;d have employed iron points and tips as well (and..honestly, not that many iron axled chariots). Meanwhile, they were packing fire hardened wooden spears, slings, and a few bronze pieces here and there. In short, they were facing absolute technological superiority.

I mentioned this in the last thread we had occasion..but, the whole bit in magic book about beating swords into ploughshares was legit..but in the reverse. The hillbillies were not allowed to possess the tools or infrastructure to work iron. They had to get their shit (and get it repaired) from the local lowland overlords..precisely so that they couldn;t mount a credible threat. The author of the fairy tales mentions these iron chariots offhand, with no elaboration..because it would have seemed entirely obvious to the audience of the time. As obvious as me telling you not to bring a knife to a gunfight..even though that idiom may confuse someone not in the know.

[Minimalist]

The Hittite empire was either done in by the Sea Peoples, or the Kassites or a one-two punch of both c 1180 BC.  Modern archaeology has determined that the primitive beginnings of what were proto-Israelites date to roughly the same time although separated by quite a distance as these things go.  It is unlikely that they ever faced each other on any battlefield.

Just more made up shit in the bible.

[The Grand Nudger]

Wasn;t the hittites - canaanites. I'll try to find the thread again. I;m pretty sure you were in it as well..when I was discussing the phillistine ox goad.

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Found it, em 

Heres one

https://atheistforums.org/thread-53557-p...pid1717331

-and the other.


https://atheistforums.org/thread-54600.h...ght=exilic

The long and short of both of those boringly long posts is that magic book mangles the events of the period between 1.3k ish and exile as some ancient mythologized past.  There is history in there, just not a history of the timeframes purported or in the order presented.  Its gets significant details wrong, like the actors in question..but those details it gets right (or rightish) can place the narratives authors in time.

If magic book wants to talk about canaanites with iron, for example..there are only a couple of groups that they could be referring to....one of which being themselves reimagined -as- "canaanites".

[Minimalist]

The Philistines were part of the Sea People confederation and were called the Peleset by the Egyptians.  The Egyptians claim that Ramesses III defeated them in battle at the mouth of the Nile c 1175 BC.  This would be one of the stranger "victories" in military history.  While true that the Sea People did not penetrate the Nile it does seem as if they moved off to the east and landed in Canaan and overran the coast south of Lebanon.  There is a sudden changeover from Canaanite pottery to more Hellenics style ( the Peleset were believed to be from the Greek Islands) and there are destruction layers at Gaza, Ashkalon and so on where the style shifts abruptly from one to the other.  More importantly, within 20 years the Egyptians were either evicted or voluntarily abandoned their principal base in Canaan at Beit Shean in the north.  It does not sound as if it was as one-sided a victory as the Egyptians pretended.

History and archaeology shows us that from the middle of the 12th century BC the fate of Egypt was to be overrun by one conqueror after another.  In many cases she managed to absorb the invaders into her culture until Actium in 31 BC when Octavian said "enough of this shit."

The Hittites were on the Anatolian Plain in Turkey.  They were destroyed in the early 12th century BC probably by a combination of forces including earthquakes, disease, and finally war from both the Sea Peoples and the Kassites, probably on different fronts.  It is true that a Neo-Hittite culture arose later in Syria and this may have been the result of survivors of the previous disasters relocating to new urban centers.  In spite of bible bullshit the prevailing theory, based on the evidence and settlement patterns on the ground is that the so-called "Israelites" arose from similar detritus of humanity being pushed inland from the hostile coastal regions and being forced to mix with nomadic tribes who had lost their trading partners when the various Canaanite coastal towns were overrun.

Something else about that period I always found fascinating.  There is a long catalogue of Sea People conquests along both the northern and southern coasts of the Mediterranean and also on Levantine coast, except for the Phoenician cities of Sidon, Byblos and Tyre.  Somehow, they managed to avoid being attacked and emerged as an intact power on the coast for a while.  I wonder, did they bribe the Sea Peoples..... or hire them as mercenaries to attack their enemies?

[Whitewolf]

Jews are still a huge problem today. Seems like everywhere they go they're conniving people and subverting nations.

What does it say in Thessalonians 2:14-16?

What about it? Relevance to the harm Jews are doing today?