Johnny Skeptic

Consider the following from the Evolution/Creation Forum?

In a thread at the General Religious Discussions Forum, Lugubert said:

bacht

I think this was already discussed. Joseph has some illusions about the origins of the Hebrew language.

Johnny Skeptic

Please elaborate, if you don't mind. Joseph is still over at the Evolution/Creation Forum touting the Hebrew language. I told him that I just started this thread.

steve_bnk

Th roots of mathentocs and language, and the evloution and spread through all the ancient cultures is well establihed. While the Jews were wandering refugees in the desert for 40 years, civilization elsewhere was in fill swing. The Egyptians had asronomy, written language, mathematics, building great cities, and supporting large populations.

The early Jews in the time of Abraham were interacting with well established cultures and civilizations.

Difficult to make a claim as t0 the Jews being fundamental ior the precursor of anything signifigant.

semiopen

The fundamentalist Jewish opinion is that God spoke Hebrew when he was creating the Universe, literally saying Vey'hi Ohr, let there be light, etc.

Before the tower of Babel, Hebrew was the only language.

My friend considers these things carefully and we are all familiar with the final result.

It is rather remarkable, that creation happens at a time when there is no written history (depending on how you look at it). I think in Joseph's mind this is incredibly, unbelievably remarkable.

premjan

Kind of sad that the collapse of Christianity has led to Christians turning into second-hand fundamentalists.

Toto

The final result seems to be that no one is convinced of IamJoseph's somewhat incoherent claims, and many have him on ignore.

Lugubert

Were there even Jews in Abraham's supposed times? And your argument doesn't lose anything in strenght from there being no proof of any group of people, as many as described in the Bible or even much fewer, in the desert for anything like that amount of time.

steve_bnk

A Jew on another forum posted that 40 meant a long time,. JC was in desert for 40 days, Jews in the desert for 40 years..

PapaverDeum

I was totally astonished by the strangeness and well, the outright fabrication of the poster named IamJoseph (He should call himself IamaConArtist).

Now, lets try to establish some truths here and see what we have. I want to start by some facts about the Hebrew alefbet and go from there. some of these are things that I've only read while other I know to be true.

Hebrew alefbet and Language.

- The oldest archeological sample of distinctly Hebrew writing is the Gezer Calendar from about the 9th or 10th BCE.(I understand that this is true). However, it is called "proto-Hebrew", meaning I assume, a very early form of it.

-The Hebrew alefbet originates from the Canaanite alefbet.(It was actually Canaanite alefbet that might have originated from Ugaritic cunieform, but this seems speculative to me).

- The oldest Hebrew alefbet represents only consonants. Vowel sunds are not expressed (later vowel points were added but this seems only well after Hebrew was no longer in use). This suggest their alefbet was primitive and of only limited usefulness.

- The early Hebrew language is very simplistic. It used only 2 verb tenses (a perfect and an imperfect). Words are derived from 3 consonant(?) root words.

- After the return from exile, the Hebrew language was used only for ceremony and was no longer in common use. A relared language, Aramaic, learned from the Babylonian exile, is similiar but is much more expressive. The Jewish people (in ancient times) never revived Hebrew as a common language.

The Torah.

Externally, there is not a single mention of the Torah or any of its stories or any of its heroes until just after the return from the Babylonian exile. According to history and tradition, it was at this time that Ezra read the Torah to those returning to Israel/Judea from the Babylonian exile. but prior to this time the Torah seems to have been unknown.

However, internally( in Kings or Chronicles) , there are some stories about a Yahweistic revival by King Josiah. According to the story, one of the priests "finds" the book of the seat of Moses in the temple.

Also, according to Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in "The Bible Unearthed", when they looked into the story of Joshua's conquest of Canaan, the cities mentioned did not all exist at the supposed time of Joshua. But they claim that there was a time when they did all co-exist and that this was about the time of Josiah.

Many of the stories we find in Genesis have similiarities and similiar elements to stories from Sumerian, Canaanite and Babylonian cultures.(Gilgamesh, Enuma Elish,...)

From this the most reasonable explanation seems to be that the Torah was written during the Babylonian exile and was designed to serve as law, traditions and as myths of origin for the jews returning from the Babylonian exile. Consider the Exodus story and its parallels for these people, themselves returning from a similiar situation in Babylonian.

This also seems to fit in well with the JEPD documentary source theories of the Torah. The Torah is a collection of stories that were put together during the exile. To anyone who can read Hebrew at even a a basic level, it is fairly clear that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are independent accounts from 2 different sources. What it does not look like is the work of a single author (why would a single author change the name of god mid-stream ?) or start using different words and phrases to refer to the same objects ? Yet very unified and consistent within their own sections. Actually, Documentary Hypothesis has several independent lines of reasoning that all converge.

These explanations and speculations, in light of the few known facts, seem to make sense.

One thing for certain is that they make much more sense than the traditional explanation. The one thing that always struck me,(and I do read some Hebrew) is that the Torah does not look like the work of any one author.


The other thing is that save for what has come to modern cultures through Christianity, Judaism seem to have contributed very little to the sciences, political thought, philosophy, law nor to engineering and building. (btw, I thought that just aobut everyone knew that Herod's temple complex was actually designed and rebuilt by Greek and Roman engineers).

Numismatic evidence.

I would also ask people like Joseph this question. Look at the numismatic evidence of those ancient Israeli or Judeans and what do we see ? Show me an example of an ancient Hebrew coin ? (that is, well before Herod or the Hasmoneans, that isn't Persian or Macedonian or Babylonian. That is, which is without foreign influence.