When I read 'biblical Israel' or 'biblical Judah' I take it to mean as described in the bible and not some bait and switch con game.

>As I was using the term "exilic" as a standard date indicator, you are missing the point. Hebrew existed in the 9th c. BCE. The religion existed and seemed to be polytheistic in that there seemed to be two deities venerated.

As I have noted, it is typical of things found in bibleland to talk about them in biblical terms. The use of "exilic" is telling a bible story related to an imaginary exile. The use of "hebrew" when in fact there is no evidence of any hebrews ever existing is telling a bible story. It is not reasonable to do this. It is only customary.

However playing that same game, Herodotus visited "post exilic" bibleland and found no one who were called or who could have been the good guys of the bible. So on one hand we have a traveler who did collect strange tales to tell back home and found only Palestine Syrians. On the other hand we have books recounting magic and miracles which claim the good guys had returned and were there when he was there.

Then we jump ahead to modern times and find the archaeology supports Herodotus and not the bible. What conclusion are we to draw?

>When the Assyrian king says he trapped Hezekiah in Jerusalem, perhaps this Hezekiah wasn't Hebrew. The city obviously existed and a few Hebrew epigraphic fragments have been recovered, but I guess you want to redefine the data.

So what? The inscription does not say Jerusalem rather "his city" and you have to want to to find Hezekiah to find that name. But even if all true, there is nothing in the inscription identifying this person or people as those in the bible. Without an intrinsic mention anyone centuries later can incorporate the inscription into one of their fanciful tales of magic and miracles.

>You don't seem to understand the linguistic issues and you won't get informed. You have a belief untinged with fact that you hold firmly onto.

That may be true but the primary fact I have is that there was no culture in bibleland which could have produced and preserved the bible stories. I see no way to reconcile that fact with the existence of the bible stories from the 5th c. date.

Further I find no evidence that these bible kingdoms existed any more than Camelot or Atlantis existed. That also I cannot reconcile with the existence of the bible stories from the 5th c. date.

However I can reconcile these facts with a post-Greek creation of the stories. In which case our only disagreement is which language was used in the 2nd c. BC to create the pack of lies we call the OT.

>You are not reading closely. Egyptian has nothing to do with the linguistic issue of whether the tanakh was written in Greek or Hebrew. That is the issue. And post #11 of this thread gives you a lot more than one psalm.

Perhaps I missed something you posted. You appear to have gone from

>"Numerous psalms, a piece of Proverbs and most of Lamentations evince the Hebrew alphabetical acrostic structure. This acrostic structure is only one proof of a Hebrew source for the Hebrew bible."

to the Torah. As the idea of a canonical collection of books does not appear in history until about the 5th c. AD I frankly do not see why they are considered related to each other in the first place.

>Breeze through a copy of Ben-Tor, Aharoni, or Amihai Mazar for some archaeology. Put it in context of Davies' "In search of 'Ancient' Israel" as a fixing factor (or Finkelstein and Silberman, "The Bible Unearthed" Eye-wink and you'll have a fair idea of the evidence.

I am familiar with Finkelstein and Silberman, I presume Mazar is not the Elad shill, but having looked at what is called evidence I do not find it barely rises above evidence of human habitation. Perhaps I am being too pedantic but when I read 'biblical Israel' or 'biblical Judah' I take it to mean as described in the bible and not some bait and switch con game.

For example when there is a claim that some king provided hundreds of chariots I do not consider that confirmed until there is arkie evidence of all the infrastructure required to field hundreds of chariots. Clearly bibleland is not quite the place one expects to find such a military force. The Syrian (aka Golan) Heights could have done it but that was Syrian. At present Israel steals 1/3 of its water, enought for 2 million people, from the Heights. That is where to find fertile grassland.

>Did you notice that "Nym" is in the middle of "A_Nony_Mouse"? That's the level of the folly. The biblical Israel issue is irrelevant, as Giwer is only rehashing the bible as though it were of any value to use historically.

I agree the OT is of no value as history. I would not call it a pack of lies if it were of value.

>We seem to be back with Frazer and the Golden Bough. Ishtar is Mesopotamian and is linguistically the same entity as Ashterat and Astarte (a Greek rendering of the name). It is all fundamentally ($TR with a feminine ending where the particular culture required it. Asherah is a different deity. Just look through the Ugaritic evidence and find that they existed at the same time. It is Asherah who is indicated int he 9th century inscriptions I've mentioned.

If it were only similar names I would have no interest in it. But with the similar names come local reimaginings of the same story. The names are much closer than Santa Claus, Father Christmas and Saint Nicolas. Yet reimaginings of the same story are associated with all three. We find the same set of stories reimagined from Rome to Persia to Egypt in the ancient world. And while you are at it, do not forget to include Aphrodite all the Astarte variants.

[Reimagining is a Hollywood term. The Wizard of Oz and the recent Tin Man are the same story. In fact the movie Wizard is a reimagining of the book. Hollywood is simply a venue of storytelling. In ancient times there was no dogma about gods. There were only good stories.]

>Is this your site or are you just running with it? It might be good if you were clear here. If I have to offend someone, I'd like to do it directly. I've referred you to the standard archaeological texts.

Eventually I will get the captioned and organized. The most indicative of the twin god and goddess are images provided by Dever who is slowly coming around to realizing the facts are not as he had written. Granted Dever is not a credible source but believers love him so as he "reimagines" arkie finds into a bible context.

And that presents a problem in exposition. There is real archaeology and biblical archaeology. There is real history and biblical history. In the latter case totally secular works on ancient history often use, as you do, fictional bible dates such as "post exilic" in reference to real historical events. It is as difficult as naming a language after non-existent hebrews. Western terminology is steeped in myth.

>Denial as to who lived in and around Jerusalem in 600 BCE is not a useful line of argument. The Assyrians seemed to think it was Judahites. Why don't you?

Sort of like saying the people who lived on Manhattan in 600 BC were New Yorkers. Of course the land was inhabited and has been since humans left Africa. Saying the people who lived in and around a city for which there is no evidence of existence in 600 BC were the people as described in the bible is a leap of religious faith unsupported by the evidence. If they are not as described in the bible then the bible people did not exist. No bait and switch is permitted.

>By people who spoke Hebrew in the land where the Jews lived. The names are clearly Hebrew in the bible. If you'd like to accept that Hebrew existed in the 9th c. BCE and was used by the writers of the letters of Lachish and Arad and that those people who spoke Hebrew were separate from those who spoke Phoenician and Moabite and who had Yahwistic names, let's call those people "Hebrew".

Excuse me but assuming you are of European origin you should be aware that a significant fraction of the personal names are also of "hebrew" origin. Are we to make a lineal connection between Abraham Lincoln and Abraham the con artist? Or are we to say that the similarity of names used by Leon Uris in Masada proves his book is ancient?

The fact that archaeology cannot confirm the OT in any material sense should be a good indication. Habitation is not sufficient. The archaeology has to be able to reconstruct the OT without any reference to the OT including calling the language hebrew or referring to an imaginary exile or anything else.

Myself, I look back on the debates I was having about the OT just twenty years ago. Back then I was not so bold. I was only saying there was no Abraham, Moses, David and Solomon were myths. Believers were responding just as you are with a grain of fact wrapped in a bible context. Today most people who have looked into it have arrived at the position I had twenty years ago.

Have patience with yourself and wait twenty more years.

>You obviously haven't read of the archive of Zenon, an agent for a high official under the Ptolemies who traveled through Judah.

I have not read it. But the Ptolemies are post Greek conquest. How could that impact what I said?

But since you have read it, please tell me what is described that conforms with the Old Testament about the people and culture. For example, does it talk about one god? Why would it not mention the strangest people in all the world at the time?

Please be specific in your response.

Another tangent. This subject is not difficult. Either the Hebrew bible was written in Greek or it wasn't. One sad attempt you make is to say that there were no Hebrews to write it. As Judah existed in 600BCE, you are simply wrong. End of that story.

And I am rather tired of your incessant flow of tangents. If you can't keep to the subject, please refrain from wasting your efforts.

spin

A_Nony_Mouse wrote:

All the substantive parts of the OT which deal with the religion are clearly a pack of lies.

This seems to be your catechism.<P>

I don't know about you but the magic and miracles were sufficient hints to convince me it is a pack of lies. Do you consider those to be evidence of fact?