Another trial explanation
Offline A long time ago in soc.history.ancient far, far away
Inabón Yunes wrote:
> Answering to a post I wrote something as a joke but now it makes sense...
> What if the Greeks wrote the OT as a piece of art, meant to be played
> in theaters like the Iliad or the Odisea?
> What if it didn't find audience as an epic but somebody found it and that "somebody" believed it to be a true history.
> What if the name of that person, 300 years BCE, was Adam? or Moses?
> and he thought it was talking about him?
> Who knows?
Again I do not see how to make this case. I see nothing which supports it. It does appear to have been written by people whose native language was Aramaic while writing in Greek. This is reasonable.
One of Alexander's intentions was to export Greek culture to the world. (Perhaps he was an ancestor of Bush.) After Greek rule was established they did not just rule the natives. They did in fact bring their culture to the lands they ruled. On the other hand the native people were certainly motivated to at least say they appreciated the culture even if pissed off by it.
Part of Greek culture was explicitly their language. Natives would learn it out of mere survival like Iraqis learning English. Gaining respect in the eyes of the Greek rulers meant learning Greek culture. The Greeks encouraged it. So there was going to be a natural pool of Greek educated people in the local ruling and upper classes.
This is the way it goes with empires. The people in Hindustan/India have English as the only language in common because of British rule. The Americas south of the US learned Spanish and Portuguese because of those empires. The difference is the Greeks did make efforts to bring their culture to the people they ruled. With other empires it happened in the natural course of events. The Europeans empires did impose customs and religion but did not try to export their culture. If a young Hindu wanted to British education he had to travel to England to get it. The Greeks brought Lyceums to the natives.
If some contenders for local rule were going to try to establish their claim to the right to rule the land they would do it in a manner that appeals to the Greek rulers. First it would be in writing. Second it would be written in Greek.
It is difficult to see if under age 50 and in my 60s hard to remember that the rights of indigenous peoples is a very new idea. It is a post WWII idea that took effect slowly. From the 50s I remember no one taking seriously the idea that Africans should rule themselves. Rather they were conquered fair and square.
So anyone who was going to claim a local right to rule a territory was not going to get any place claiming to be the people who always lived there. They had to claim they should rule by right of conquest.
So lets look at the essence of the story they created, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Kings. Abraham with ties to the most ancient of times in the land which was then part of the Greek Empire. Moses who defeat the Egyptians just as the Greeks had. Joshua who led the conquest of the land. The kings who ruled it.
The first thing any Greek hearing this story is going to ask is where did it go? These claimants from from a small region around Jerusalem. So there Kingdom was divided, the northern one, Israel, suffered all kinds of misfortunes which was Judeans were able to resist of course. So let us rule the land.
It didn't get any place. One of the first things Pompey takes gold to deal with is to settle a feud on who should rule what, the Hasmodeans and the priests. What is to be made of this? The first and second books of Maccabe tell the same story from a civil, Hasmodean, point of view and a religious, priestly, point of view. Whatever really happened these support both sides. Of course this is speculation. But unlike the other speculation that it is a collection of stories relating the real history of real events this one explains the stories and the total absence of archaeological evidence for any substantive aspect of the stories.
That the divergence was between the Hasmodeans and those who called themselves priests explains another part of the story. It is unclear what they meant by priests in their stories. Priests were apparently also common laborers from their employment in the temple building stories. This was not priests in our sense but the people who claimed to be Levites priests by birth. In other words they were just a clan claiming to have a right to the throne.
--
The gentle sauce doth drop equally upon both the goose and gander.
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http://www.giwersworld.org/palestine/answers.phtml a9
Tue Jun 9 02:36:57 EDT 2009
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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The Old Testament is the word of god. One way or another to some degree of absolutism or other that is what we have heard from our earliest memories.
Whatever the form it is nothing more than a traditional belief. It is also a traditional belief whose creators we do not know and who origin we cannot date and we have no idea why that explanation was created.
I have found this a difficult idea to get across to people. They have "known" it for so long it is very difficult to realize what it is and deal with it for what it is, a traditional belief of unknown origin.
Perhaps as difficult is to see how it was viewed two thousand years ago in the context of the times. Perhaps most importantly, whatever any individual thought of it whether as a Yahwist or as an observer it would not have been considered unique. Nor would the idea of divine inspiration have appeared to any greater extent than a Greek would credit the Muses.
This is likely where the idea of divine inspiration got started. Note there is a difference. Inspired by a Muse indicates a creative effort not taking dictation. It would hardly be the first time words have changed meanings in service to religion. The orginal true god was as in true love without connotation of only god.
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
There is another defense of the Old Testament which is purely political. It is the one used by the animal zionists to claim a "3000 year connection" of the Jewish "people" to Israel.
The idea of a Jewish "people" has been more than adequately exposed as a creation of the zionists. Before those animals appeared it was always as it is in the OT, those who keep my commandments, a religion only.
This 3000 year connection is of course a zionist fable. Those who left bibleland did so voluntarily. There was no expulsion by the Romans. The Ashkenazi are religious converts from about 1000 years ago and have no ancentral connection to bibleland at all.
The political leadership of Israel intending to preserve their big frog in a little pond fiefdom always fall back to this ancestral claim and for that they need the Old Testament. Without the support of the OT mythology they have a documented history in the land of about two centuries. After the political rule ended it was no more than a religion.
The political supporters are always willing to strip away all of the god and magic from the stories while still insisting what is left is a record of a "people" living in "their" land.
When it is seen there is no evidence the OT is any different from the Book of Mormon or the Koran and Dianetics their 3000 year claim evaporates. So they fight for it being an undefined something which at the bottom line supports zionists claims to the private property they have stolen and have no intention of returning.
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