The Greatest Story is History
Posted on: December 7, 2008 - 5:56am
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The Greatest Story is History
For the believers among us here is a blast from the past. It was only 18 years ago that I was mired in the 'retreatist" view that there was some semblance of fact in the OT stories. As you can see here I had not realized the magnitude of the fraud of the OT books. Here I was still at the level of Finkelstein and Silverman some six years after I wrote this.
http://www.giwersworld.org/mgiwer/hebrews.html
The Greatest Story in History
by
Matt Giwer (c) 1995 <10/29>
When I was a lad (I have waited decades to say that) the press would always say the Second Coming would be the greatest story in history. Today we cynically joke about the headline, "World ends tomorrow, women and blacks to suffer most." Perhaps that cynicism is deserved as there is such a story and it has only been covered in one documentary series.
That series is "Archaeology" hosted by John Rhyse-Davies and has only been shown in the US on The Learning Channel on cable TV. In some six episodes it covered the discoveries of archaeologists in Israel in recent years. In two of them it objectively and in a very understated manner, removed the foundations of Judaism, Christianity, and the Muslim religion.
None of this is a secret. It is in the technical literature and if you visit Israel you can visit the sites. And yet that is the extent of the coverage of the story.
In one episode the evidence of the origin of the Israelites is quite carefully laid out. They always lived in the land of Israel as herdsmen and came to power when people who lived in the cities for some unknown reason lost power, possibly a war, most likely insurrection by the herdsmen. To put it more bluntly, as they always lived where they are there was no Promised Land. Lacking a Promised Land, there was no Egypt, no Moses, no Ten Commandments. The entire foundation for three religions has vanished.
Lacking an Egypt and a Moses we are also lacking a Joseph and an Abraham and a covenant with a god. Circumcision, the sign of the covenant, becomes no different from any other ritual sexual mutilation performed by primitives around the world. In this everything in the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, the foundation of three religions vanishes.
In the other episode the Israelite pantheon is discussed. The idols of Yahweh, Astarte (his consort, which is also in inscriptions so there is no mistake), Baal and several other gods are shown. And a common representation of all of them in one idol is also shown. Again more bluntly, Yahweh God, God the Father of Jesus who was the prophet before Mohammed was no more than an Israelite version of Zeus, Jupiter or Odin.
All of this has been implied in the Bible itself and has been known for centuries. In the last hundred years it has rapidly become clear from other sources that there was no basis whatsoever for the Egypt/Moses story: it being only slightly less fanciful than the magic fruit, the talking snake and miraculous flood of Genesis.
But now, in addition to negative evidence, the lack of evidence for the truth of the Egypt/Moses story, we have positive evidence of its falsity. Without first person interaction with a god the Ten Commandments are barely more a footnote in the history of human moral ideas. Without a Moses it is difficult to give credence Mosaic Law as being much of anything other than a curiosity.
When we learn for certain this Yahweh was just the first of a pantheon of gods (thou shalt have no "other" gods before me, as it always read and always meant) there is no credible basis to argue, "This one is real, the rest were not." Since this same god that is God the Father of the Christian trinity it becomes laughable to argue for its having either a son or a spirit as other parts of the same idol. If there ever was a Jesus certainly he was no more than a man as there is nothing more for him to have a relation than a stone idol.
And while Christians focus on their Jesus, Muslims need to consider that their Allah is the same stone idol. Their prophet is a prophet of a stone and when they "akbar" their "Allah" it is this primitive idol they are praising.
That is the story that is not being reported and it is more profound than I have portrayed. It is easy to think about people recognizing there is no god but it is another to examine that in practice.
Next time you are driving through town pay attention to all the churches and religious references you see. That is how deeply we are enmired in the worship of one of the gods of the Israelite pantheon. Listen to the political speeches and delete the foundation in a god from everything said. Review every law that exists to prevent an offense against god, remove the god and try to fill in the blank.
The UFO conspiracy types hold the government suppresses what it knows about UFOs because of the effect upon the people that "we are not alone." Yet right here for all to see and read about is the removal of the entire foundation for the religious beliefs of over half of the world's population. It is the biggest news story of all time. It appears the cynicism about what is news these days is clearly warranted.
Perhaps no one wants to be the one to break the story? Perhaps it is just a matter of not wanting to put it bluntly? But this is like leaving the coverage of a UFO landing on the White House lawn to a "maybe, someday" article by the paper's science writer.
And if one wanted to continue to take religion seriously you would think a picture of Yahweh (a photo of his idol) would be front page news. It is like discovering a bust of Jesus or proof positive the Shroud of Turin is authentic. A painting of Mohammet would pale in comparison but these discoveries are not news.
So while you have not read it in the papers or seen it on the evening news, the greatest news story of all time (at least of the last two millennia) is not being told. Now you know it. The foundation of three major religions is now gone and it was beneath the notice of the press. It makes you wonder what else the media is not covering.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
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Not looking to argue, because I have always asserted that the Hebrew were a splinter group of the Canaanites. Their religion, language, and architecture confirm this.
What I contest is the ' no Egypt ' part. Not that the Exodus as depicted in the Bible was an actual event, mind you. The archaeological evidence and logistics of the migration discount it. If the number of people and herd animals involved were real, the chain of migration would have stretched from Israel into Egypt even if they were walking 4 abreast and as tightly packed as a regiment. The people in front would have been in Egypt before the people taking up the rear had left Israel's borders.
But to say that there was no Egypt is still incorrect. Semitic herders would often venture into Egypt in times of drought. They would sometimes willingly sign slave contracts with the Egyptians in order to obtain food and shelter during those lean years. As Egypt was their neighbor, they also traded with them often. These exchanges lead to an exchange of culture. We know that large chunks of the Bible was borrowed from Egyptian mythology. The Song of Solomon for instance is derived from the Egyptian love poetry tradition. 5 of the so called 10 commandments are found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Many of the Biblical proverbs are taken from The Instruction of Amen-em-Opet. Behemoth is taken from the Egyptian word Pehemu, meaning hippopotamus. Even Hebrew monotheism seems to date no earlier than Ankhenaton's short lived experiment with monotheistic sun worship. The Hebrew were well enough acquainted with Egypt to plagarize large chunks of their mythology and wisdom literature. They just weren't a captive labor force that was liberated by Moses.
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
Very minor nit Des but that is backwards. According to the official story, it was Jacob and his twelve kids that made the trip into Egypt. But yah, in general we know that the Exodus simply did not happen. Logistics aside, if a significant percentage of the population of Egypt got up and went walkies, someone would have thought to mention it. Not just one person but many people.
Now as it happens, quite the major part of Egyptian writing that we still have concerns basic administrative information. Census data, allocation of resources and the like. Given that, we can come to some conclusions on the matter.
Just for shits and giggles, let's say that there actually was an exodus. OK, but the evidence shows no sign of half or even a tenth of the population going walkabout and not coming back. So given the grand assumption that something happened, it could not have involved very many people. Certainly not enough to send an army after.
Also, about the army, why is there no record of the destruction of the entire army? If that happened, I am sure that there would be records of that part of the event. On that note, why would any nation have an army unless they had neighboring nations that they needed to keep out? Didn't those nations also have their own armies?
On that note, what happens to any nation that has it's army wiped out? In order to accept the story of the exodus, we also have to accept that the neighboring nations has armies and absolutely no opportunistic tendencies. Yah, right.
On the other end, if tens of thousands of people moved into ancient Israel, why is there no evidence of that? Come on, from what we “know” about them, the Israelites were a really bloodthirsty people who came to dominate a whole region. So that happened and nobody noticed? Again, I say: Yah, right.
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There are a couple of poorly advertised facts which more than explain what you mention. The New Kingdom of Egypt ruled the east coast of the Med, i.e. all of bibleland, up to the Euphrates from about 1700 to 1000 BC. The influence was so long lasting that prior to the Roman urban renewal project the most common motifs in Jerusalem were pyramids and sphinxes.
Those dates are the real problem with Genesis and Exodus. From before Abraham to after Moses Egypt ruled all of the east coast of the Med up to beyond where Abraham was born to the Euphrates. After Exodus through Joshua and Judges and more bibleland was under Egyptian rule. That fact excaped the fiction writers of the OT books. But then Abraham was promised all the land from the river in Egypt to the Euphrates he was in fact being promised the kingdom of Egypt.
In addition bibleland was on the trade route to Egypt from the start of Egyptian trade with the outside world in the 4th millenium BC.
The bible recounts the Shofar horn being a ram's horn and sins were put onto a ram that was driven into the desert. The Egyptian god that came before all the other gods was Amun depicted in upper Egypt with the head of a ram. The first commandment prohibits believing any other god came before it. And then the strange habit of ending prayers with his name, Amun aka Amen, is explained.
Thy rod and thy staff do comfort me == Thy flail and thy staff do comfort me. Note the common depictions of egyptian kings with crossed arms holding a flail and a staff. And don't forget "spare the flail and spoil the child."
Once we see Amun as Yahweh Job is understandable from the period where Amun and Ra were melded into one god, Amun-Ra aka Yahweh-Lucifer.
It is instructive to read of Egypt in Genesis and Exodus. That is what adventurers expected to find when they started digging in Egypt. They found nothing like the bible descriptions. While I did not literally mean no Egypt I did mean no Egyptian connection anything like in the OT and no Egypt as described in the OT.
Talking about "semitic" herders in this context makes no sense at all. Semitic is a language group which includes ancient Egyptian. The first empire of Egypt ruled both sides of the Red Sea down to Yemen where its wealth in spices created a great demand for them. That was also the last time Yemen was under foreign rule. However this connection lasted for millennia. The Koran mentions the followers of Mohamed from the east coast finding safety in Egypt on the west coast of the Red Sea.
Knowing the extensive connections of bibleland with Egypt for thousands of years it is very difficult to explain the totally wrong description of Egypt as given in Exodus and Genesis. Believers will try any contorted explanation they think they can get away with. Rational people simply say the books were written so many centuries later that they made it all up.
But if you want to look into herders migrating to Egypt in times of drought one would also expect them to bring their herds to Egypt for trade every year. Egypt was a big customer and rich. Where else would they go to sell?
The problem with monotheism is we know there was a temple to Astarte in Jerusalem into the 2nd c. AD before the urban renewal project ended it. If you look into Ankhenaton you do not find monotheism despite what believers want to find. At most you find a king who deliberately neglected his worship duties to the other gods.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
You seem to be mistaking modern Egyptian for ancient Egyptian here. The Semitic languages are Akkadian, Aramaic, South Arabic, Arabic, Hebrew, Eblaite, Amorite, Maltese, Ugaritic, Amharic, Canaanite, and Phoenician.
The current Egyptian dialect is South Western Semitic. Ancient Egyptian was in a class of it's own, though all were from an Afro-Asiatic root. But it would be as wrong to call ancient Egyptian, Omotic, or Bedawiye Semitic as it would to call English a Balto-Slavic language since they are both of the Indo-European language family.
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
I doubt I am mistaken when I observe the Amorites and Canaanites are found only in the OT and not in archaeology and as such cannot have had a language. The only known ancient name for bibleland is Palestine as is used by Herodotus.
Modern Egyptian is a local dialect of Arabic.
What is right and wrong in this appears to be a matter of how fine one wishes to make divisions. I guess we could go around on this forever. However defining people by native their language has to be considered nonsense even though it is popular nonsense.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
I guess the statue of Pa-di-eset son of Apy, the envoy to Canaan (that seems to be in the Baltimore Art Gallery) deals with some other place. Same goes for the deposed king of Alalakh, Idrimi, who spent time in Canaan, though obviously must have been mistaken, because A_Nony_Mouse doesn't think anyone outside the bible talks of Canaan. And obviously the ancient state of Amurru which swapped sides during the Amarna period wasn't Amorite because A_Nony_Mouse doesn't think it existed.
That's basically what Desdenova said here:
(Italics added.)
If anyone can understand this, please let me know.
For those interested, the nearest language related to ancient Egyptian is Coptic, a modern form of which is still spoken in parts of Egypt. Theirs is a christian community. (In fact the name "Egypt" comes from "Copt".) Champollion used his knowledge of Coptic to decypher hieroglyphics.
spin
Trust the evidence, Luke
What world are you from? The Amorites were the inhabitants of Mari, the Sumerians called them Martu. The lands north of Palestine were known as Amurru by the Babylonians and Assyrians. These people that you in your delusional fantasy world seem to think are fictional weakened Ur so badly that the Elamites were able to overthrow Akkadian control during the reign of Ibbi-Sin, a rather impressive feat for an imaginary people. They are mentioned in the Treaty of Suppiluliumes and Aziras of Amurru and Akkadian prophecy ( ANET 607 ) among other places.
The Canaanites inhabited parts of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordon. They were never a single political unit, but rather semi cooperative city states. The Egyptian's were especially prone to distinguish them from the Hebrew Semites in the Victory Stela of Merneptah. Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore features a basalt statuette with the inscription " Envoy of the Canaan and of Palestine, Pa-di-Eset, the son of Apy ". They are also mentioned in the Story of Idrimi, king of Alalakh. The differences in the Canaanite and Hebrew cultures are sufficient to allow archaeologists to distinguish between the two.
That you could think that the only mention of these peoples is Biblical tells me that you have either lived in a cave all of your life, or else you have never bothered to actually study the subject.
You can go around in circles forever if you wish. I will continue to acknowledge that these people considered themselves to be separate cultures, that their languages were more diversified than that of American and British English, that their neighbors saw them as separate entities, and that our historians and archaeologists continue to see different styles of pottery, architecture, dwellings, and temples to cause them to differentiate between the cultures. The Anasazi and Seminole of the America's share the same genetic heritage, but nobody in their right minds call the two cultures identical.
Perhaps you might consider attending a couple of freshman history classes at a local college before trying to debate this issue further? It might spare you a little embarrasment.
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
I find it modestly amusing when believers use names found by archaeologists and aportion them out to bible names without the least physical evidence of any connection between them. Now if you can be the first to produce any physical evidence connecting these people, such as local inscriptions mentioning Amoria (or whatever) or any physical evidence of any people calling themselves Canaanites or something other than a fanciful book of magic tales calling some people Canaanites please do so. In fact publish professionally and make a name for yourself.
In the mean time we have only one known name from ancient sources for the inhabitants of this region. That comes from Herodotus and the name is Palestinian. We are reasonably certain where Herodotus was coming from and he mentions the Palestinians in seven different contexts. One of them with Syria, Palestine and Cyprus as a tributory region to Persia which warrants a separate designation for Palestine even though they formally called themselves Syrians of Palestine. That was in the 5th c. BC and centuries before the OT appeared in history.
As above, parcelling them out to fictional groups invented in a collection of books of magic does not mean the fiction is other than fiction. If one wants to make a case for a group defined by archaeology and one mentioned in the bible one has to in fact establish unique identifiers else might as well say the Book of Mormon talks about the Incas with the same level of confidence.
The problem with freshman courses it they tend to teach the bible. Even when totallyl unrelated to bibleland one finds date references such as "when Solomon ruled in Israel" which is moronic to say the least.
Myself I presume people here are largely college graduates and have a decade or so beyond college to have added to the meager learning a bachelor's provides. If that is not the case with you then we can continue this discussion a decade or so from now.
In college we were told many things. After college we have the time to compare what we were told with the available physical evidence. Take the time to do so. You will find most of the "thought to be"s were omitted from the lectures and in this area it is only believers who think it was.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
This one deserves special consideration. http://www.giwersworld.org/ancient-history/Merenpta-stele.gif is a drawing of that inscription. Would you care to be the first to tell me which of these glyphs means Israel and how anyone knows? Where is the second mention of Israel in an inscription which confirms the desired translation? You are free to quote any source which in fact explains the identification rather than merely asserting it.
If I may point out the entire stela refers to a war to the west of Egypt. If anyone wants to find the places that match those names, look for them in modern Libya where they were fighting. Facetiously of course, this could have been the first two front war in history with the king flying back and forth to lead the armies on both fronts.
Believers want to believe so greatly they will bend anything into a bible confirmation.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
Good grief man! If you are as retarded as you seem, your drool must fry your keyboard daily!
Language changes, and sub-regions develop their own variants. You would learn about linguistic variation were you to bother furthering your education past high school. The point is, different groups had different names for the area. The Akkadians called it Amurru from which we get the word Amorites. The Egyptians called it Canaan, Kharu, or Retennu. THe Hurrians called it Arrapha. We are dealing with what the lands lf Canaan are currently called, which is derived from the Egyptian term, a term which I seem to recall you erroneously insisting did not exist outside of the Bible before shifting gears in this approach to cover uo your laughable ignorance on the subject. You insisted there was no extrabiblical examples of the Amorites. We provided extrabiblical examples. Now you shamelessly switch horses. Reminds me of the fundies I know.
Next you loop around to Herodotus, ignoring the fact that he came around 2,000 years later than most of the people we are discussing. You wish to rely on the word Palestine, but seem unaware of the origin of the term. Palestine is derived from Philistine, the root of which is palash. These were part of the Sea People invasion of Egypt who were driven off and wound up settling in Canaan. They were not Semites, but more akin to Greeks. Centuries after the events we are discussing, they became one of the dominant groups, the Phoenicians. The Greeks gave the area the name Palestine. Palestine was not the indigenous name for the area. Again, had you fumbled past high school history, you would know this.
Fictional groups that the other fictional groups such as the Egyptians and Akkadians recorded combat with? Are you neglecting to take your medications? You need to explain why Egypt described the conquest of people that never existed. You need to explain why Aggade had so much trouble with the fictonal Amorites. The best way to do this is to sit in your parents basement and smoke weed instead of going to college. It seems this is the route you chose. Good job!
I suppose that if you go to a Bible college you get taught the Bible. I suppose that if you correspond with Assyriologists you learn a different picture. Spin and myself both quoted extrabiblical sources from antiquity to back our position. You respond with childish accusations.
I have studied this particular subject for a couple of decades. My suggestion of freshman college was to get you started on the subject, as you obviously lack even that much information.
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
Absolute change of subject, as we were discussing Canaan and Amurru, not Israel. I am well aware that the determinative before the glyph for Israel does not mean city-state. I have never claimed that it did. Neither have I ever claimed that Israel stretched into antiquity. In fact, I have argued often that Israel arose from the existing Canaanite culture rather late, probably no later than the 800 BCE.
But again, we were not discussing Israel. used the stele as an extra biblical example of Canaan. Your inability to admit your lack of education on the subject forces you to switch horses.
Might I suggest Chicago's Department of Oriental Studies to further your education past its 12th year? They do some exceptional research, and you would surely learn the history of people you seem quite interested in and ignorant of.
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
____________________________________________________________
"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
I wish that I had had the time to address this before leaving for work. As it stands, it reads like an afterrthought. Oh well!
What-in-the-hell-are-you-talking-about? First, nobody that has seriously studied this takes the stele as a historical representation. Merneptah was chest pounding, not recounting the details of a military campaign. That you think Merneptah was recording history shows us how little you know of the matter.
Secondly, what two fronted war? All of the areas mentioned were either along the levant or north of it. Turn left at Sinai, continue up the Mediterranian coast, and you encounter all of the areas mentioned just by hugging the shore. You don't even know the geography of the Near East or the locations of the events. How in the hell do you expect to debate anything about it? I recant my position that you studied this in high school. You obviously skipped those classes.
I swear, man! Your enormous gaps of knowledge give me headaches. I feel as though I am talking to a person that skimmed through a book on Mesopotamia 5 years ago, forgot nine tenths of what he skimmed, and then made shit up to fill in the gaps. Please, please, study the subject matter if you want to have intelligent conversations on it. I can't educate you fully on the subject while debating you.
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
Sure is!
Happy to!
Line 27. Start with the fourth palm frond, or the second set of palm fronds. This is the letter ' I '. The door bolt glyph is the letter ' S '. The open mouth glyph is ' R '. The single frond glyph is another ' I ' . The standing bird glyph is ' A '. The second, higher, smaller mouth is also ' R ', but was used to mean ' L ' as they had no letter for it. This can be seen from their spelling of foreign names such as Kleopatra where they substitute the open mouth glyph for the ' L '. As a foreign word, they would have given it a phonetic spelling, Isrial. We've been over linguistic variance with you repeatedly. Not sure why you have such a hard time with it. Dull witted, I suppose. Were you home schooled by any chance?
Now we go to the determinative. We have a man and woman sitting above three lines. This means people as the lines add plurality. The crooked stick is a throwing stick, making this mean hostile people. The lack of a hill glyph tells us that the Egyptians don't consider them to be a civilized nation like their other enemies. It indicates that they were a less settled, un-united group, fully in accordance with a splinter group of the Canaanites.
How we know this is because some people can read hieroglyphics. They would have taught you this fact if you had bothered going to school.
There isn't one, duh! That is what makes it such a big deal. The fact that the Egyptians mention Israel only once, and even then as a non threatening entitiy marks them as an unsettled collection of rabble. But even if we had a second mention, you would ignore it and demand a third. You claimed that there were no non Biblical mentions of Canaanites or Amorites. We provided you with several of each. Rather than admitting you were wrong, you ignored it and mounted an unrelated attack. Why would I assume you to be any less consistant in the future?
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
Ahh, must be the old A_Nony_Mouse bait and switch.
spin
Trust the evidence, Luke
If the purpose is insult I am modestly good it at after nearly 15 years on usenet. Some are asking to reduce this BBS to alt.flame which is completely counterproductive.
In this case the designation of Palestinian not only re-establishes what all educated people knew a century ago but counteracts a century of zionist lies about the recent invention of Palestinians. Given the seven mentions of them by Herodotus and his listing of peoples who practiced circumcision it also highlights the absence of any mention of any "jews" or anyone who could have been them. This is additional "absence" evidence to the absence of mention of any such people in the two inventories of Alexander's conquests and the failure of Alexander to "conquer" Jerusalem.
So in addition to NO EVIDENCE of any jews until after Alexander we have several distinct places where they should be mentioned if they existed but are not.
I am not certain what you are talking about but it sounds like the Menerpta Stele and I gave a link to a drawing of it and asked which glyphs meant Israel and how do you know and got no answer. I suggested the creator of the OT fiction merely used the inscription as a source of old names for their stories. Look if you can find the glylphs for Ashkelon and such please feel free to so so but also show me how you know but a second use of the same glyph which confirms its location.
If you can show me something evidentiary beyond reading glyphs as names I am interested.
He was 5th c. BC. The earliest date for the above stela is 1260 BC. In 1260 BC up to about 950BC the New Kingdom of Egypt RULED the eastern coast of the Med up to the Euphrates River. One finds it difficult to read a stela claiming conquest of cities it has ruled since about 1700BC if they existed that long before.
Excuse but would you care to present your physical evidence of your mere assertion of the derivation of Palestinian?
This is fish in a barrel. Please present your physical evidence of that assertion.
I have been there and found there is nothing but pious speculation. But if you have physical evidence please present it. You will find rational people say no one knows who the "sea people" were nor what happened to them after being defeated. You will find others who connect them with Thera, Canaan and Atlantis. Needless to say they have no physical evidence.
Hate to break this to you but you are saying they became "phoenicians" after Tyre had existed for some five centuries. If that does not ring a bell get your nose out of christian versions of ancient history.
Herodotus is the single source of that name and he says he learned it from the local people. It is also its first appearance in history. The Greeks used the name Herodotus was told was the name of the people, the Palestinian Syrians, which does not quite directly translate to English. Alternatively the Syrians of Palestine would have a different nuance in English. Suffice to say as recently as 1948 the Palestinians claimed to be Syrians and to this day that is the basis of Syria's claim on Palestine. Based upon Herodotus it predates any other claim.
Should some day on a shroom trip you meet the shade of Herodotus you may take it up with him. In the mean time I use the name he says he learned while visiting the region.
However if you have physical evidence to show he lied and made up the name please post it. Do not forget mentions of Herodotus can be traced to the 5th c. BC and his writings have survived by some miracle. The first mention of the bible stories is in the Septuagint centuries later. BTW: I have only found two of the volumes in English so if you know where I can find the rest in English please let me know.
I am still awaiting a correct identification of the Egyptian glyphs and coroboration of the identification. As to others, it would be a great help to names which can be construed to be similar, IF there were geographic references to show the name is being construed to the correct geographic area. Alternatively IF there were some description of these people that is unique it would corraborate a similar name. You would think all those old folk including Herodotus and down to the Romans would have mentioned the one unique thing about these people that made them different from everyone else in the world. But the did not.
Can you suggest why no one mentioned they had only one god?
In fact other than a name similarity believers don't have squat.
And to make that worse there is nothing precluding people in the 2nd c. BC from reading these same inscriptions and creating stories set centuries earlier. If you cannot show that is impossible then you don't have squat.
Do you not also have to explain why they described the conquest of a people they had ruled for half a millennium? (You still have to show the glyphs that you want to mean Israel.)
Been to college and have had 42 years to consider how elementary and "just so" were what was taught there. It appears you are still enamored with the idea college teaches facts rather than the foundation for departure from learning afterward.
But 40+ years ago is instructive. A proper college education would have layed out the basics such as ancient Egypt, Greece, Persia and the rest and in the intervening decades our knowledge would have built upon the college material. And it has.
But when it comes to bibleland college material it has been different. As I went to a non-religious university most of Genesis was ignored but there was Abraham. Contrary to all other ancient histories in the intervening years, bibleland history has disappeared. Abraham went away. Hebrews in Egypt vanished in the 1970s. Joshua and an invasion disappeared in the 1980s. David and Solomon and the united kingdom disappeared in the 1990s as did a Babylon captivity.
In the 1970s believers fought a rearguard action for Hebrews in Egypt. in the 1980s they fought a rearguard action for Joshua. In the 1990s they fought oa rearguard action for David and Solomon and the United Kingdom. And today the same believers are fighting a rearguard action for "Judah" and a mess of minor kings.
I can go through those same 40+ years and show a retreat from Moses wrote the Torah to "some undefined people at an undefined time after the return from the mythical time in Babylon" wrote it all.
At every step along the way there has been a rearguard action citing material that was old before I was born.
It has all failed every step along the way.
But now you believe you are at the end of all the retreating and have drawn the final line in the sand.
I have been in this discussion for decades. Your line in the sand is no different from the line for Abraham, Egypt, David, or Solomon.
For the record, in my decades the nature of you folks' arguments have not changed. At one time I was given the argument there had to have been a Moses because the name was similar to king names like Thutmoses and a dozen others. It is difficult to remember how many times I have been given a name similarity argument by you folks, particularly spin, to claim the stories are true.
I know, we were wrong then but we are right now! I have heard that one too.
You folks should know I would be interested in a new line of argumentation just to break the monotony.
If in fact you have studied the subject since 1988 then you remember the retreats I have recited above. If you do not remember them then you have not.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
If you insist we are discussing Canaan then I revise my question to show the glyphs which mean Canaan and how you know by a second example which narrows down the geographic location of this place.
Go back to the stele and the "almost as an afterthought" mentioning his conquests in lands Egypt had ruled for 500 years. If it had been "putting down a rebellion" it would lessen the skepticism. But how can he conquer what Egypt has ruled for so long? There is no suggested context of rebellion or anything like it. The entire stela is about a war in the west which is modern Libya. Why do not people look for those names in Libya instead of Palestine?
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
If it is not a matter of history then there is no reason to invoke it for bibleland.
The body of the stela is about war with what is modern Libya. That is to the west of Egypt and lower Egypt fully included the delta region. However the Sinai and Egyptian ruled lands were to the east running up the coast of the Med to the Euphrates river at the time of the stela circa 1250BC.
You are unaware of this?
Are you claiming the stela only discusses putting down a revolt in the lands it had ruled for 500 years?
I am not so much interested in education but in noting anyone who does not know of the duration and extent of the New Kingdom has been educated in a religious context.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
Actually the fact that there is no second usage means there is no corraboration of this interpretation. That means it is no great deal until there is corraboration.
As to the unrelated attack accusation I have seen decades of similar arguments but you are too young to remember them. Or perhaps you have the "they were wrong then but we are right now" attitude everyone has had of the previous decade.
As to the identification you are the first to even try of all of those who KNEW FOR A FACT but could not identify them. You are also correct. You are also the FIRST person I have met here who any idea what they are talking about. I am not surprised at the number of people ready to ride your coattails.
However there is a problem. There is always a problem. ALL the letters is the problem. No one knows how the language was pronounced at that time or at any time for that matter. I need only point out US mite and Australian mate are pronounced the same to show the vowel identification is meaningless.
I then point out this "translation" requires double vowels I and A and the desired spelling is ISRIAL if I have it correctly. But I have it on the best authority that the name is Yisrael. I won't argue the IA/AE but it is missing a Y. Now it has been fun to deal with BT and BYT in BYT STRT. Ah! there we are! YSRL. Can I juggle letters forever? YES!
How long will it take to resemble modern English spelling? I have quick on my believer feet. I can make Babil (modern name) look like Babylon (bible name) and find there are believers. Of course that is a joke. After all who could claim the name Bible comes from Babil? Perhaps if they used the German Bibel instead it would be more confusing.
Now we can digress into the extra marks for determinative and the like but we do first have to go back to the Egyptian rule of this entire land up to the Euphrates for the previous 500 years.
I have seen it tried to claim these SRLs were frontier but we also find the mention of a conquest of Ashkelon which, as a port city, cannot possibly be considered frontier but are also not mentioned as rebellion but conquest.
OTOH we can look at this stela as a refutation of the existence of the New Kingdom. It stands as that if I am wrong in saying these names were inspiration for the bible writers. But there are many problems with this. Back in the 19th c. when people wer looking to find pronunciations for the heiroglyphs one of the peoples they used were near the Euphrates. Someone else will have to research why.
Another thing is that before the Roman urban renewal project in Jerusalem two of the most common motifs were pyramids and sphinxes/seraphim.
Another thing is Amun/Yahweh made the first people from clay and was the father of all the gods. They both had the head of a ram and the Shofar horn and putting sins on a ram are expressions of this god as well as ending prayers with his name, Amen/Amun.
So do we have coincidental name similarities? Borrowed names for historical religious fiction? You tell me.
But please explain all the claims about the stela in terms of the fact Egypt had ruled every bibleland mention for 500 years and at the time ruled the land to north of the name places while these victories were occurring. And why are these victories not described as putting down rebellions as they had to be? \
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
Yeah, I know where to find Israel on the stele. I also know that if you look one line up, far to the right, you find the word Canaan. Now you want to argue that the spelling isn't exact and so the meaning is unclear. But the reason we assume it is Israel is because of the context in which it refers to them. It is placing them in precisely the same location that we expect to find Israel. It also places them in the disorganized context that archaeology shows to be the case. The question should not be why assume they are Israelites, but rather since they fit the geography and organization we now associate with the Israelites, why do you not assume them to be Israelites.
When we go back to Egyptian rule of the area and check the letters of those times, we see how weak their grip of the area was. They were conquers, much like the Babylonians, Assyrians, and Akkadians, that would roll through, dispose of the current leader, install someone willing to pay them tribute, then pull out. Their reign could be seen more by its neglect than by its military rule. Only during the height of the New Kingdom did they even try to exert more control, and even then only because they needed the area as a buffer against the Hittites of the north. Ugarit, Tyre, and Sidon show little to no Egyptian influence and the Armana letters give us a picture as to how rocky Egyptian control was in the supposedly conquered areas.
The Egyptians had no Iron grip on the Levant even during the New Kingdom. Ramesses II fought viciously to regain control of the Levant, and Ankhenaton promptly lost it again. Ramesses III later takes credit for relocating the invading Sea People into Canaan, giving rise to the name Philistia, but the archaeological clues give a different story. It looks as though the Sea People, having failed to invade Egypt, turned then on the lands of Canaan, burning cities and settling. Over 3,000 years later, Biblical archaeologists incorrectly interpreted the carnage from this period as evidence of the Hebrew conquest of Palestine. And all this was at the height of the Egyptian Kingdom. Egypt never successfully ruled the region.
That the Hebrew and Arabic word Amen translates roughly to ' truthfully ' or more literally as ' let it be so ' and the Egyptian Amun translates to ' Hidden One ', it seems highly unlikely that the two words are linked in any way. To claim that Yahweh = Amun takes a gigantic leap, leagues further than a simple explanation of linguistic variance.
You wish to argue spelling, but must take in mind that nobody then had formal grammar training that would even remotely resemble what we have today. And considering how atrocious some peoples grammar is today, this is really saying something. Phonetic spellings were the standard, and even then different nations did not have the same enunciations, so spellings would differ. To use an example, you seem fond of Herodotus. But by using your own methods, I can demonstrate that Greece never existed. Herodotus himself never used the word ' Greece '. Instead, he used the word ' Graecia '. You don't know how he pronounced it, and it isn't spelled exactly like we spell Greece. Furthermore, you can present no foreign writers from or before the time of Herodotus that referred to it as Greece. You can find others that referred to the exact geographic location of Greece with names that contained phonetic similarity, but as none of them spelled it the way we do, you cannot prove that they were writing about Greece. Therefore, Greece was a fictitious country that never existed. The point is, even though people spelled it slightly different, both Israel and Greece are designated by their geographical relations, and therefore despite those different spellings, we can infer who the authors are talking of. The Egyptians point to one area and call it Kanana and place it in the region we call Canaan. They point to another area and call it Isrial ( or Ysrial, as the double frond sometimes represented a soft Y such as the one in ready ) then place it in the region we call Israel. We look at the region, look at the name given for the region or its inhabitants, and make the inference that Graecia means Greece, that Kanana means Canaan, and that Isrial means Israel. If you wish to abandon this inference, you must abandon it at all times, not just when it is convenient to support your claims.
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
This is where I came in. The context of the stele is a war to the west of Egypt is what is presumed to be modern day Libya. From the Romans in their wars with Carthage in the same location we know the people outside of Carthage, the peasants or locals, were called the Kanana if you are Protestant and Canana if you are Catholic. So as one would read it without the OT those passages go on to mention conquests to the west of Egypt.
As I suggest the creators of the OT used the names. As the Phoenicians ruled both Tyre and Carthage and the OT was written much more recently the term Canana can simply be a term meaning peasant or farmer in both cases.
This whole "expect to find" thing means you believe in the OT in the first place. Without it there is no reason to expect to find it any place any more than we expect to find Oz a tornado's travel from Kansas.
But lets not leave it there. Believers claim to find both the city of Ashkelon and the city of Israel and the city of Canaan in the same inscription. But they do not. They claim to apportion the meaning of the names based upon the OT not from anything in the inscription itself. So the desired translation of the believers is clearly dependent upon the OT which is circular reasoning.
Any rational description of the translation of the stele would qualify the translation with "If we give the OT credance ..." but that never happens. The translation is considered determinative because of the OT even though the translation contradicts, refutes and renders the OT as bullshit from the gitgo.
I do find it difficult to comprehend reliance upon the OT as a guide to a translation when the "guided" translation itself discredits the OT as a credible source. Believers are very strange people.
Excuse me but archaeology shows absolutely nothing about any "israel" in bibleland at any time outside of bible guided translations like this. This is the one and only word which is tortured until it confesses to mean Israel. There is nothing but OT guided translation to say it means a clan or tribe rather than a city or a name of a territory.
I realize you are trying to salvage the modern of the Jews as an ancient people who have a right to Palestine over those who converted to Islam from Judaism but it doesn't play in Peoria.
Check the letters from those times you say? Pardon but not a single diplomatic letter from all of Egypt or Mesopotamia mentions either Israel or Judea or anything which could be them. You mean I should look at letters which indicate nothing about the OT and infer they support the OT? Sorry. I have rejected the OT completely as does any rational person. Books of magic are obvious fantasy creations.
I think we are all aware of the new idea of Alexander to export Greek culture to the world. And thus we are also aware that the Egyptians did not export their culture. Thus claiming not to find the influence is hardly of interest. We do not find Babylonian or Persian influence in the places you mentioned either yet Persia did rule Egypt itself.
Thus we see a selective interest in what is and is not found among the believers and those who would have the "jews" an ancient people with a biblical claim upon Palestine. A lack of cultural export by Egypt even though expecting it is anachronistic is considered evidence of no serious rule. But that test is not applied to Babylonian or Perian rule as those are intrinsic to the rear guard retreat action to salvage some OT mythology from the books of magic.
An amazing desire to believe. No one knows who these "sea people" were nor what happened to them. There is nothing in all archaeology to identify them. I have not found a credible source for the invention of "Philistia" but I do have Herodotus in the 5th c. BC naming it Palestine.
The idea of an unknown people actually invading "from the sea" sort of redefines our idea of ancient civilization if a sea invasion were possible. In fact, beyond that one mention they vanish never to be heard of again. There is ZERO archaeological evidence of them as the cause but you are invited to present what evidence you think exists.
You never will.
As it depends solely upon spelling it is closer than your imagining of finding the word "israel" and Ashkelon and Canaan on the stele.
However here I have another problem. I would like to get you and Spin into the same thread so I can insist you two agree to a single explanation before I have to respond to either of you. One of the least amusing things about believers is that they all disagree with me but contradict each other. If people who disagree with me all told the same story I would certainly rethink my position. But what I get is mutually exclusive disagreeing positions.
If I had faith I might say I was blessed.
Which leads to an explanation of the mutually contradictory replies I receive. I keep pointing out there was no such thing a proper spelling or grammar for written material until a few centuries ago. And here I find believers trying to make points in favor of the OT based upon the assumption that at any time in the history of Palestine the grammar and spelling were uniform and thus grammar and spelling can be used for dating. I find these people very silly.
Here Spin would insist different spelling were not represented in vowels as there were no vowels. What are you saying about vowels?
Never let me say believers are not stupid people. Without vowels GRC is GRC. Is there a problem with this?
At least there is a GRC.
And at one point the Romans place the Canana/Kanana around Carthage. So?
As you said, context. We therefore place the city of Ysial to the west of Egypt.
I could say I am speechless at the leaps but that would mean nothing as I do not subvocalize what I type. Everything that questions the OT is proven by reference to the OT. One has to wonder why believers are not dizzy from the gyrations of this circular reasoning.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
The stele recounts the desolation for Tehenu ( Libya ) before turning attention to the Levant. It is almost a dismissal, as there was so little of Libya to be a threat. The scribe distinguishes Tehenu from the other countries grammatically, but the translator removes an N from the translation ( which originally reads hf' n thnw ) to give the reading a poetic unity. The original context implies desolation for Tehenu as an earlier summary of Merneptah's victories, a prior medal on his chest, so to speak. This is evident because the body of the engraving is recounting victories in a very limited geographical area that includes, whether you like it or not, Giza, Ashkelon, and Gaza. It is because of this context that we infer that Kanana is in this area.
You are faced with a difficult obstacle by trying to translate Canaan as peasants. First you have to explain why the Eblaite inscriptions at Tell Mardikh dated to 2350 BCE mentions them. Once done you get to explain why the Sumerians mention them in a text from Mari dating back to the 18TH century BCE. And while you are at it, please explain why they are found written of in the Hurrian held city of Nuzi around 2,000 BCE, in the city of Ugarit from 1,400 BCE, and the Armana letters dating to 1,350 BCE. Each and every one of these places Canaan in the region we accept it to be in, and each and every one of them predate the usage of the term Philistia. You also need to explain why the Merneptah stele designates Kanana with the hill sign meaning nation. As Carthage was only founded around 814 BCE, you are going to have a damned hard time showing that the term Philistia predates the use of the name Canaan.
I don't ' believe ' in the OT. I haven't even used it as a reference. You seem to be the only person bringing it up. I am using archaeological data to demonstrate that you don't have a clue as to what you are talking about. The stele makes it clear that the Levant is the focal point, with Libya being prior chest thumping. You are the one trying to move the Levant, not me.
Again, I am not relying on the OT. Please show me a single citation to the OT that I have used. The OT is your obsession, not mine.
Your anti-Semitism is starting to shine through. Never, nowhere, at any point have I defended the Jews. What I have argued is your erroneous claim, at this point an outright lie, that the Canaanites did not exist. That the Hebrew are a splinter from the Canaanites is why you have a problem with the existence of the Canaanites. That the Canaanites inhabited the area for over a thousand years before the coming of the Philistia is what you have a problem with. You wish to deny that there was an indigenous people in the area that hold claim to the region, and are willing to throw out all archaeological data that counters your racially motivated belief. I have tortured nothing out of the Merneptah stele, I have simply provided you a translation that you claimed did not exist. Now that I have exposed that lie, you wish to shift subjects again.
There you go again, bringing up Israel and Judea. I was pointing out the errors of your pseudo-history regarding Canaan, remember? For the third time, I am confronting your LIE regarding Canaan, not Israel. I consider the OT a fairy tale as well, much like your fairy tale that Near East history begins with Herodotus.
If the Hebrew are related to the Canaanites, and linguistics, archaeology, mythology, and architecture tells us that they are, then they actually do have a claim to the area. This is not my belief in the OT talking, but my grasp of archaeology and history of the area.
Your ignorance of geography and archaeology is pouring forth again. Letters from Ugarit also mention the Sea People, just proir to the destruction of the city, and in context of being attacked by them. Your geographic ignorance stems from your failing to even know how short of a distance the invasion came from. The excavations from the 12TH century in areas of the Levant that show signs of invasion contain Mycenaean Late Helladic IIIC pottery above the destruction strata. The rebuilding of Ekron is typical Mycenean megaron. The 8 spoked wheels found at the same site are characteristic of Mycenean cultic stands. The rare inscriptions left by the sea people at this time contain words with no Semitic roots and trace to an Aegean origin. There is little doubt that the sea people that attacked and settled in the Levant were Mycenean. What was that I'll never do?
I am not sure what disagreement you are seeing, and I suspect that it is trivial and based on small translation differences in vowels. This does nothing to discredit the validity of the mention of Canaan in the stele. You're grasping at straws.
If you were even remotely educated in this subject I would consider it a blessing.
My gawd, but you are hung up on vowels! Try not being so anal about it. The word is vowel, not bowel.
But seriously now, try an experiment. Add different vowels to the writings. Here, I'll do it for you. KENION, KONON, KONYN, ESREUL,ASRAAL,YSRYL,... They ALL can be enunciated as Canaan and Israel, just as a phonetic renditon of Greece can be made from GRAECE, GRYSEA, GRAYSI and the like. Not sure where your delusion is leading you to any contradiction here.
I absolutely agree that there was no uniformity of spelling. This lack of a unified school of grammar does nothing to counter the phonetic renditions though. For the fourth time, I am not using the OT as a source of reference. Sorry, I know that it is essential to your anti-Semitism to try and insist that I am, but the facts speak for themselves. I am using non Biblical sources to expose your Anti-Semetic lies.
And without vowels CNN and SRL are CNN and SRL. And with phonetics we know roughly how to pronounce them. The problem with Greece though is that the Greeks DID have vowels, and they did NOT use the vowels to spell Greece. You must rely on phonetics to wring the word Greece from their spelling. It is more linguistically consistant to derive Canaan from CNN than it is to derive Greece from Graecia. Hopefully you aren't too stupid to see this, despite your anti-Semitic fantasy world.
Which you can't pronounce without resorting to the same phonetics that real researchers use to pronounce other ancient words.
The Romans? The Romans? I thought that we were talking ancient history here!
Only if your are completely ignorant of linguistics, ignore actual scholarly research, distort geography to place the Levant in the west, and generally are so anxious to deny reality that you will close your eyes and plug your ears to the mountains of archaeological and historical evidence that screams reality to you.
I suspect that you are nauseus from your convoluted leaps, spins, jerks, and tumbles of illogic. For the fifth and final time, I have not once used the OT as a reference! I have disproven your racist lies using Egyptian, Sumerian, Hurrian, and Ugaritic sources. If you wish to continue rejecting reality in favor of ethnic cleansing, I will be no part of it. You are obviously unwilling to accept any evidence that shatters your opaque delusion, and can only counter four thousand year old references by ignoring an invasion and invoking a late reference to the much, much newer name for the area. Your level of scholarship is unrelentingly juvenile, your agenda is laughably transparent, and your ability to reject reality is as mind numbingly impenetrable as that of the most zealous of fundamentalists. I do hope that you one day can afford to educate yourself on this subject. You seem to have a genuine, if racist, interest in it. I make no apology for the Hebrew, but rather allow actual historical and archaeology to speak for itself on the subject. As long as you remain willingly ignorant of the subject, there is nothing I can do to help educate you, and there is nothing to be gained by continuing to try to rationalize with a delusional zealot that makes his enormous ignorance of the subject excruciatingly evident. I have seen better research from first year history majors than you have displayed. Your have exibited deplorable ignorance of geography, near east relations, archaeology, linguistics, and supporting textual findings that demonstrates a one sided, myopic, racist bias to the pursuit of truth. Repetition of error does not make the errors factual, and repetition of error is your primary argument. Until you bridge the gulf of education to the point that you can discuss the subject as a peer rather than a bumbling novice, I fear that I have nothing more to say to you on the matter.
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
You got the description correct when you gave the number of the line in which people want to find a mention of Israel. How could you miss the parts believers want to mean Israel and bibleland places is maybe 15% at most of the inscription?
Who is this we and why does we do that? Can you answer without reference to the OT which did not get one thing right about Egypt? Even this inscription fails to note that it if does in fact refer to bibleland it is putting down an insurrection against Egyptian rule.
The fact remains there is no "israel" to be found in archaeology. Believers have retreated to Israel being a bible myth while holding firm to Judah as a modest bastion in their retreat in the face of the science of archaeology.
Although I am easily amazed finding the name in non-phoenetic languages challenges me. As for the location, the location of what? As for nation it is difficult to find any consistent usage for that word. Are you going for political entity or as in Iriquois nation or as in kingdom? It should not be that hard. Simply look up the digs in the cities where the locals call themselves by that name.
Rather it is much better to rely upon century old, bible-dictated translations and ignore the absence of physical evidence. It was realizing the OT was all wrong about Egypt that lead to the founding of archaeology. So few realize the OT is all wrong about the Syrians of Palestine too.
If, as with Egypt, the entire, known, pre-Greek history were based upon archaeology without any consideration of a religion book it would be entirely different. You are using Israel in this context to mean the Israel described in the OT. Based solely upon the archaeological finds there is only a name which from context should be another city.
As the desired translation of this word negates any possible connection to the biblical Israel it should at least be given and different spelling and/or the comment that it cannot be what people commonly associate with Israel. A "close enough is good enough" attitude pervades believers.
You can review where I started this thread and find it is in fact on the subject which I have stayed on. I have stayed on the subject. You have claimed not to use anything related to the bible but you freely introduced the mythical Hebrews which are found no place else -- sort of like the Munchkins. As to my claim about the translation, you jumped in to answer the challenge of WHERE the claimed mention of Israel is to be found on the inscription. I also congratulated you on being the first to know out of the dozens who have claimed it was there.
How do you get to me changing subjects?
Actually the idea of history itself begins with Herodotus but that is another discussion. Herodotus is a data point for several issues. His seven mentions of Palestine are one. His failure to mention any Jews or people who could have been them is another. His listing of peoples who practiced circumcision without mention of any Jews is another. That circumcision was not unique is another.
You must have some secret sources of archaeology unknown to the rest of the world. Only the bible mentions "hebrews." They are not to be found any place else. Obviously you are talking the bible and not archaeology. When Judeans first appear in history in the time of Pompey they are speaking Aramaic.
Lets see. Mycenean culture ran from the Aegean across southern Asia Minor to the eastern side of the Dardenelles. And you want to make an issue of finding signs of that culture a few miles south of the Dardenelles. Not only that but you would declare them the sea people even though invasion by land was as likely. In fact given the proximity calling it an invasion rather than a border dispute is questionable.
How does this make them the "sea people?" How do you connect these people with the invasion of Egypt? Egypt was trading with Mycanea. Why would the Egyptian not use their name for their trading partners?
You are telling one of the many stories that are woven around what little is known. These stories are rarely more than that once one looks at exactly what backs them up and what is left out to make it a just so story.
At one time I did read the stories but then I looked for the evidence in support of the stories. It wasn't too long after finding so little evidence I found the real arkies decrying those who created and told the stories.
You failed to make substitutions for the consonants which is a point I also brought up to spin so it is not changing the subject. And the use of any phonetics to represent non-phonetic languages is at best an educated guess. Although slower than vowel drift consonant drift also occurs. And phonetic assignments are not transliterated from the language in which pronunciation was established to English so one is not pronouncing it correctly unless in the pronunciation of that language at the time the transliteration was established.
I do not have a link but there is a rather well known audio of the Our Father spoken in several period Englishes going back to Canterbury Tales times. The oldest is incomprehensible but then so are many modern English pronunciations such as from Wales.
Antireligion is by defintion the point of this website. If you are not claiming there was a "jewish people" independent of the religion then your politically correct accusation makes no sense. As such a "people" does not appear in history until after Pompey and their descendents today are the Palestinians you should give your accusation a sanity check.
To call me antisemitic buys into not only what little there is in the bible but also into zionist mythology which is barely a century old.
While you took pains to deny you were defending a zionist myth of a people separate from a religion you do keep coming back to it.
Nor do the Greeks pronounce it as Greece nor call themselves by a word all that close to Greeks. We can look at so many other examples where we should know better like calling Beograd Belgrade or Deutschland Germany. Yet, although you claim no bible interest you find terms only in the bible be default and even introduce the totally mythical Hebrews found only in the bible unless one is of the Hiparu persuasion. And if one is of that persuasion then you can't have Egypt dealing with both israel and hiparu.
Generally ancient history in the west is considered up to and including the fall of Rome. But as the identification comes from the time of the wars with Carthage, a Phoenician city like Tyre, I consider it unquestionably in the ancient history category.
It is the actual physical evidence and lack therefore from archaeology that is what requires believers to retreat to century old linquistics as determinative.
Historical evidence is by definition what was written. It would be considered profoundly strange to find the only mentions of Greece and events related to it outside of Greece. Equally strange if the only mentions of Rome and Egypt and Ur and Babylon were only found far from those cities.
It is not considered strange when the only mentions of the bible people and events are found far from bibleland. I have to ask why. If I eliminate believers I have no explanation at all. Without relying upon the bible that is the case.
And you did not mean to write Hebrew.
Jews are not a race. Jews are not an ethnic group. Where comes that nonsense?
Ethnic cleansing? The only known ethnic cleansing in Palestine in all history occurred in 1947 and 1948,
Yes, all of that but not a single bit of indigenous archaeological evidence of an Israel. Not a single bit of indigenous evidence which indicates the region was any more then goatherds and dirt farmers who would never get a mention hundreds of miles away.
But there is all the linguistic "evidence" which was created using the bible. That you use it means only that you indirectly use the bible. It is no different from the fools who quote Dever as independent when in fact Dever does his work with a trowel in one hand and the bible in the other.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml