God Yahweh Allah was a volcano.

[Minimalist]

And they're dangerous!

[Judas BentHer]

Yes, and that's what makes them magnificent.
Volcano's are creators.
Volcano's are destroyers of humans pride, arrogance, greed, and imagined dominion over nature. And all the while, something new is born from the path of it's lava flow. New life begins, new landmass spreads into the oceans and sea's and expands the borders of territories occupied by flag's of many nations, while that quiet or fire breathing power is a reminder that mortals don't actually own a thing.

I respect Volcano's, because their eminence is that of a Volcano. They don't pretend to be hills.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

My take.........the Hebrews left Egypt during the aftermath of the Santorini volcanic explosion

(1) Umm,actually, modern archaeology argues the Hebrews were never slaves in Egypt, that Egypt did not have a slave based society and available evidence shows the pyramids were built by free labour

(2) The Torah is not a credible prime source of evidence.

(3)The most common view of the origin of YHWH was he began as "El (he) a minor Sumerian dessert god. It was not until the book of Exodus and the introduction of Mosaic law that Judaism became monotheistic.

I think your thesis needs some work,and support from credible evidence.

[popeyespappy]

It was not until the book of Exodus and the introduction of Mosaic law that Judaism became monotheistic.

It’s my impression that based on language and writing style Exodus is considered to be one of the oldest books of the Bible, possibly dating to as early as 900 BC. If that’s true then it probably predates the adoption of monotheism by at least some Israelites by several hundred years.

[Minimalist]

based on language and writing style

Pap. Our oldest fragments of the Torah - which includes the exodus bullshit story - are from the Greek Septuagint and date from the 3d century BC. The earliest Hebrew texts are the Dead Sea Scrolls which date from the mid 2d century BC at the earliest and a significant portion of those are in Greek and Aramaic anyway.

Frankly, that sounds like a "Hail Mary" to use a particularly unsuitable analogy for an atheist board! Translating stuff into Hebrew from Greek and then claiming that it is "early" seems like a real stretch.

Some of the anachronisms in the Exodus story are:

Anachronisms

The late origins of the Exodus story are evident also in a number of anachronisms which characterise it. For example, Pharaoh's fear that the Israelites might ally themselves with foreign invaders makes little sense in the context of the New Kingdom, when Canaan was part of an Egyptian empire and Egypt faced no enemies in that direction, but does make sense in a 1st millennium context, when Egypt was considerably weaker and faced invasion first from the Persians and later from Seleucid Syria.[26] Other anachronisms point to a period in the mid-1st millennium: Ezion-Geber, (one of the Stations of the Exodus), for example, dates to a period between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE with possible further occupation into the 4th century BCE,[27] while the place-names on the Exodus route which can be identified - Goshen, Pithom, Succoth, Ramesses and Kadesh Barnea - point to the geography of the 1st millennium rather than the 2nd.[28]

The quote above is from Wiki but it cites John Van Seters "Geography of the Exodus."

[fr0d0]

Personally I'm shocked that the Xtain Bible isn't an authoritative history book and not a religious text.


...


wait....

[BloodyHeretic]

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11 The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.

1 Kings 19

See, you can make it say whatever you like.

Not sure what your point is. This verse is complete poetic licence. It doesn't reveal anything.

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My point is the bible is all poetic liscence, and doesn't reveal anything. Or rather, you can make it reveal whatever you like. Christians do it all the time.

[Justtristo]

Add the fact that Moses wrote not only Exodus, Genesis, Leviticus, Numbers and Dueteronomy at the same time, it all seems to have mushroomed from this one act of paranoid superstition. He was obviously a psychopathic type and wrote the first books reterospectively to fit in with his grandiose scheme. It would be worth looking into the reason for the banning of the use of Yahwey's proper name because I smell a rat. All of a sudden they say writing or saying the name of their god is a crime punishable by death?? That might have been because the proper name meant 'explosion' or 'eruption', which was a bit of a give-away. Maybe long after the Hebrews left the mountain of god they worked out to their horror that it had been just a naturally occuring volcano and decided to ban the name to ensure no-one worked it out in the long run. Tracks covered.

Hannah Moses (if he existed, which is doubtful) did not write the Torah, the vast majority of serious scholars conclude that there were five different authors of the Torah whose writings were complied together into the Torah.

[The Grand Nudger]

The Ahmose/Mermose narratives and the Canaanite familiarity with Egyptian culture give us some perspective on exodus that may be based in fact. The earliest accounts of exodus do mention some sorts of plagues, but the stylized version we have now has more to do with dueteronomy than history. As a text that was compiled long after these events occurred, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that there is a fair bit of historical fiction going on. The fact remains that whatever history they may have tried to impart with the exodus narrative, it diverges wildly from actuality. The reasons for this could be political, or spiritual, they may simply be errors in chronology. It could also be that exodus was a purely fictional work. Fiction is not something new, and the inhabitants of the Middle East were fully modern human beings, capable of any leap of creativity and imagination that you or I might take today. There were bronze age Stephen Kings. Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter contains elements of history in both setting and character, but it is not a history. The same could be said of exodus.

To give an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh is a great example of fiction in the ancient world (epic fiction in fact). The most complete copy is dated to the 7th century BC, one of the oldest known works of literature. The earliest examples of this epic date to around 1700 b.c.e. The individual poems that the epic may have drawn against to form a complete narrative existed as early as 2150 b.c.e.(and this discounts the time spent as oral tradition, if there ever was such a time), Ancient peoples were very well versed in fiction and storytelling.
(I've always thought it was a little insulting to assume that our ancestors couldn't write a good book)

Problem with your scenario Hannah is that we have reason to believe that the Hebrews were not refugees, or nomads, but Canaanites. Moses did not write the Pent, in fact, Moses may be a literary device. An early dues ex machina. It's interesting that this comparison can be made, considering that the large majority of "biblical sources" are greek. The greeks were a people who leveraged this device so often that later roman critics such as Horace actually complained about it being unsatisfying and a poor show of the writers craft in his work Ars Peotica.

There is currently no reason to assume that the narratives of the bible are anything more than points in the timeline of the great collective work of literary achievement. This isn't a bad place to find ones self. I actually very much enjoy the narratives in the bible as an exercise in what was then a costly luxury (literature), and it's direct contribution to the literary tradition is not to be understated, it is a quirk of humanity that has survived in us up unto the present day.

[Hannah]

BH....references to yahweh being a volcano run all the way through the Bible. Once you have volcano in mind, verses describing yahweh make sense. For example, 'His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire.' Rev 1:14. When you have the idea he's a volcano in mind, that verse starts to paint a different picture. Even after the Hebrews left Mount Sinai, their ideas of things like hell were set in stone. That explains why Jesus uses the term 'lake of fire' despite never having seen the volcano.

The Minoans had advance notice of the Santorini expolsion. No bodies have been found by archeologists. It sounds as though there was an Exodus in Greece. Hundreds of thousands of people migrating to Turkey and Egypt to escape the forthcoming eruption. I read that the Sea Peoples (whose origins have never been established) imvaded Egypt during this time but were subordinated by the Egyptians. That certainly makes sense doesn't it? A trickle of boats arrive on the shores of Egypt and the Egyptians easily take control. One clan of Sea Peoples is the Habiru, which some experts say is the origin of the Hebrews. So it seems that there were civilisations that existed prior to Exodus but which left no evidence afterwards and one civilisation that existed afterwards but that left no prior evidence. For me, the dots point to a masse exodus of refugees leaving Greece and arriving partly in Egypt where they were at first subordinated (not necessarily enslaved but maybe not as free as they would have liked......refugee status). Maybe a month or two more passed before the volcano finalled blew and the ten plagues occured during the aftermath, making the Pharoah believe it was caused due to him mistreating his new 'captives' and setting them free. They, this collection of people from differing backgrounds, leave Egypt when they get their chance and, due to seismic events in the area, a tsunami (or alteration in plates causing sea levels to change) exposes a crossing over sea. Then, in the distance, a plume of smoke can be seen during the day and a plume of fire at night, leading the way. Light at the end of the tunnel! Moses, who escaped Egypt along with the refugees due to having commited murder and being on the run, decided to be the leader of the group. On seeing the refugees humbleness in the face of the volcano, he decided they should make the volcano their one and only god. He took it upon himself, wanting to come across as very brave and important, to ascend the mountain of god and pretend to communicate with the new deity. After a long time, as it was hard getting the rules right, he came back down to find the pagan refugees worshipping a golden calf they'd made. In a fit of rage he smashed the set of rules he spent ages coming up with and made lots of threats and killed off a load of dissenters. That made everyone stop and take notice so, feeling important again, he went back up and re-wrote the rules making sure one of them was 'You must not worship any other gods'. That way, he could be in control of the people. Having one god also worked well at creating harmony amongst the people, who all had different gods before. It was like a New World Order with a one world false religion. The volcano worked extremely well at insiring piety in the people due to fear and awe. Due to the lack of ancestry to mention, or maybe due to wanting to make the past sound more fitting to the present and future, a fake family background was invented. This made the people, in time, believe they were more special than they actually were. Not having their own land was also something that needed addressing. As there was no one piece of land they could ever go back to, a home for the future had to be organised. Despite this chosen land being occupied by several communities of people already, a story was written, supposedly by god, that would lay claim to said land. As they were not real nomads but refugees, having a land to call your own was very important. Moses writes the Pentateuch based around the events of the time of the Exodus and the mountain of god.

Exodus Decoded....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBBvvDl25F4

Thera.....the fact the Minoans left no evidence of their existence after the eruption does not mean they did not exist after it. That is of course the reverse scenario as for the Hebrews. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRBC-TFtxHw

p.s. would this explain why the Bible was written in Greek?