I'll Have To Wait For The Paperback

[Minimalist]

but this will annoy the living shit out of all the Angry Desert God buffoons.

http://www.equinoxpub.com/equinox/books/...p?bkid=466

Argonauts of the Desert explains through a comparative analysis based on the structural method of anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, how most of the stories and many laws of the Bible were inspired by Greek literature. The books from Genesis to Kings may have been written by a single author, a Hellenized Judean scholar, who used Plato’s ideal State in the Laws as a primary source of inspiration. As such, biblical Israel is a recreation of that twelve tribes State, governed solely by divine law. Most stories surrounding the birth, life and death of that State were inspired by Greek epics, such as the Argonauts, Thebes, Heracles and Troy, as well as by Herodotus’ Histories. Previous paradigms dealing with the origins of the Old Testament, such as the documentary hypothesis, are rejected in this demonstration. The main chapters are set in the order of the books from Genesis to Kings, each of which presents biblical stories or laws and compares them with their Greek or Roman equivalents. For each story, there is a discussion of similarities and differences. Through this demonstration, the reader comes to understand how the Bible was written and influenced by Greek literature. The book can be read as a commentary on the Bible in light of its Greek sources, to an extent that has not been attempted before.

[Justtristo]

Given that the writing of the Old Testament is pretty late (at the earliest 450 BCE) that would allow for a significant influence from Greek literature into the Old Testament. Also not to mention the Philistines were likely in part descended from Mycenaean Greek colonists.

[Minimalist]

Yeah, Just. The Philistines were Hellenic members of the Sea People confederation which landed in Canaan c 1155 BC. While this certainly precedes the age of Greek literature I scanned this chart out of a book called "Ancient Israel" edited by Israeli archaeologist Amnon Ben Tor. Its from a section written by Amihai Mazar and compares Myceneaen and Philistine pottery motifs.




The first column is Myceneaen and the second is Philistine and it is pretty apparent how similar they are. As the Mycenaeans went out about the time the Philistines showed up the continuity is fairly obvious.

We can quibble about the 450 date. The Greeks came rolling through in 332. Prior to that they were loyal to Persia.

[Rev. Rye]

Wow. I had long noticed a big similarity between Christianity and Platonism, but I had no idea that it was in any way deliberate (at least before the days of St. Augustine, anyway.)

[Justtristo]

We can quibble about the 450 date. The Greeks came rolling through in 332. Prior to that they were loyal to Persia.

I should correct that 450 BCE would be the earliest I think the Pentateuch was written, it could have been written later. The other books of the Old Testament apart from Daniel (which would around 150 BCE), I cannot say when they could be dated to.

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Wow. I had long noticed a big similarity between Christianity and Platonism, but I had no idea that it was in any way deliberate (at least before the days of St. Augustine, anyway.)

Earl Doherty's book The Jesus Puzzle argues that Christianity in it's formative stages was influenced by Middle Platonism. In that according to Doherty Jesus originally came "down" the "sub-lunar" sphere rather than the Earth. Where he was killed by the demonic forces and was resurrected from the dead. Doherty described also Platonists believed in the sub-lunar spheres being inhabited by demons (both good and malevolent in nature).

[Minimalist]

There is also no reason for it all to have been written at once.

The Septuagint is only the Torah - the first five "books." The rest of the bullshit could have been written later.

Dismissing the Davidic Empire for the fairy tale that it is, we need to start looking for periods in the first millenium when there was an independent Judean kingdom. Hezekiah c 715- c 686 BC seems to have been the man who built the city of Jerusalem up in the aftermath of the Assyrian attack on the northern kingdom. But Hezekiah was a vassal of the Assyrians until he got too big for his britches and tried to rebel. Bible horseshit aside, he failed and Judah was crushed. His son, Manesseh remained a loyal vassal and gradually restored the finances of the kingdom within the Assyrian economic sphere. There is no independent attestation for Amon or Josiah and Josiah in particular seems like a Solomonic figure or perfection...IOW, a mythological creation.

Clearly though when the Assyrians began to withdraw Judah became a vassal state of Egypt's 26th dynasty. When the Egyptians and Assyrians were crushed by Babylon, the Babylonians shortly after crushed Jerusalem. From 686 until the Maccabaean revolt petered out around 158 BC Judah was a subject land of one power or another. Certainly it would not be in the interest of the Persian, Ptolemaic or Seleucid rulers to allow a mythology of Judahite imperial power to be put forward. So, we are down to the later 2d century BC before it really makes sense for Jews to start writing a national history based on some great Davidic Empire. For that matter, c 100 BC John Hyrcanus managed to finally conquer the area which had, more or less, been claimed as the Davidic Empire. It seems that THIS is the period of time when a lot of this bullshit was written. It was the time when they had a need for it.

[Justtristo]

There is also no reason for it all to have been written at once.

The Septuagint is only the Torah - the first five "books." The rest of the bullshit could have been written later.

May I ask if you are confusing the Septuagint with the Pentateuch which is the Greek name for the Torah?

[Minimalist]

You lost me.

It's all the same thing.

http://www.chabad.org/search/keyword_cdo...-Torah.htm

Septuagint, The (Greek Translation of Torah)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torah

Torah
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The book of the Jewish faith , written predominantly in Biblical Hebrew with a few instances of Biblical Aramaic, is the entirety of Judaism's founding legal and ethical religious texts.[1][2] It is also the first five books of the Jewish biblical canon. The common names of the books in English, derived from the ancient Septuagint translation, are: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11646c.htm

Pentateuch

Pentateuch, in Greek pentateuchos, is the name of the first five books of the Old Testament.

[Cinjin]

Good stuff Min.

I'm such a history dork.

[Minimalist]

The failings of ancient literature became apparent to me when I was reading Livy's History of Rome. After a while you begin to recognize the pattern.

Successful commanders are steady and conservative and keep their troops in tight order until an opportunity presents itself. Shitty commanders are always reckless and allow their men to become disordered or undisciplined. After a while you start to get the hint that what Livy values are the Imperial values of his day rather than the reality of the time he was allegedly writing about.

With the bible, the nutjobs try to portray it as something more than literature by claiming their 'god' wrote it or inspired it. It's just a book and it served the interests of whoever was behind writing it.