Dean Anderson

Since you are asking what historians and archaeologists think, rather than what the Bible says - I'll try to summarise the position held by Professor Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University - and explained in his excellent book "The Bible Unearthed" (I can heartily recommend this book by the way. It is written for laypeople, and from your questions it would seem that you would find it fascinating).

Firstly, we can forget anything pre-Davidic. There is quite simply no evidence that anything the Bible says from Genesis through to the end of Judges is based on any actual history. It is a mix of etiological "Just So" stories and propaganda.

Modern archaeology shows, for example, that the Kingdoms and tribes (the Edomites etc.) that the Hebrews allegedly interacted with during the Exodus did not yet exist. They existed in the 7th Century BCE when the Torah was mainly written, but they did not exist during the earlier times at which the stories were set.

A similar thing can be said for the Conquest of Canaan led by Joshua. The cities that were supposedly "conquered" had been in ruins for centuries, and there were mere villages at the time that the conquest was supposed to happen. As an example, Jericho - site of the famous story about the walls tumbling down - was a small town without walls.

Another point that makes the whole Exodus and Conquest obviously false is the fact that Egypt ruled the whole of Canaan with an iron fist during the Late Bronze Age. The places that the Hebrews supposedly conquered after having fled Egypt were themselves controlled by a series of Egyptian garrisons and forts.

So, when it comes down to it, there was no violent influx of people who slaughtered the inhabitants of Canaan and replaced them with the Hebrew tribes.

It appears that the people who would later become the Hebrews started as part-time pastoralists and part-time farmers (in a similar style to modern Bedouin tribes) in the forested hills of what later became Judah. For all the talk in the Bible about the Hebrews invading and slaying the Canaanites - the Hebrews were the Canaanites, or at least a subset of them.

There is little hard evidence for the existence of King David - there are a couple of references that may or may not be related to him - and the archaeological record indicates that Jerusalem was certainly not the thriving Metropolis that the Bible makes it out to be. It is debatable whether the "unified monarchy" of Israel was ever ruled from Jerusalem, or whether Jerusalem only ever ruled the southern kingdom of Israel. The two kingdoms certainly shared mythical folk-heroes though, many of whom seem to have been written into the Biblical stories of the Patriarchs.

Once we get to the "Divided Monarchy" of Israel and Judah, the archaeological evidence starts getting closer to what the Bible says. Israel and Judah did squabble. Israel was conquered by the Assyrians. And so on.

The majority of the Deuteronomic History (Joshua - 2 Kings) and much of the Torah seem to have been written in the time of King Josiah of Judah. He ruled at a time when Judah had expansionist aims towards taking control of Israel - and much of the Bible reflects this.

For example, the embellished stories about King David portray him as very similar to King Josiah - showing Josiah's desire to rule Israel as a "return" to a possibly mythical "united monarchy" under a similar king. Similarly, the stories of the Conquest list places that are strategically useful for Josiah's expansionist plan, giving a huge propaganda boost to his armies who will feel that they are retracing the glorious victories of their anscestors.

Of course, this expansionism came to an abrupt end when Pharaoh Necho killed King Josiah at the Battle of Megiddo (in 597 BCE) and in the turmoil that followed, King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon conquered Judah.

robto

See this recent thread.
They mostly date to the second and third centuries AD. The Gospel of Thomas may be first century, or at least based on some document from the first century.

In GThom there are many sayings that are similar to the sayings in the canonical gospels, but which are given a different interpretation (or where the interpretation is simply missing.) IMO, this adds weight to the possibility that some of these sayings really originated with Jesus. That is, it seems more likely that some originally ambiguous/cryptic sayings got interepreted one way by the proto-orthodox Christians and another way by the proto-gnostic Christians than that some originally orthodox sayings got stripped of their context and got re-interpreted in a proto-gnostic way.

But mostly they tell us about 2nd-3rd century Christianity. For instance, the Trinity is described in one document as (Father, Mother, Son), and in another document as (Father, Son, Church).

TomboyMom

So the Torah is thought to have been written 7th centure BCE. That's interesting.

btw, derail, just had this thought. Noah is supposed to have been righteous and talked to God. But Abraham doesn't figure out about God until a couple hundred years later. How does that work? Or were the people supposed to have forgotten, and then Abraham figured it out again, or what?

So, according to history/archeology (not the bible), at what point would we say there was such a thing as the Jewish people?

Codec

Well if you go along with the documentary theory - and most serious scholars do, the Torah as we know it was finalised during the time of the Exile by the redactor. So around +/-537BCE. One of the candidates for redactorship was Ezra.

The redactor was an editor who edited together various existing texts into one single account, and added some bits of his own to make it read through smoothly. He took works from earlier, from the time the North was still in existance (E), the time of Judah (J), the priestly era (P) - probably around the time of Hezekiah, and the Deteronomist (D). Also a smattering of other bits and pieces.

He took two creation stories, and decided to keep them both (Gen 1 & 2).
For Noah he decided to interweave the stories - hence its rather confusing text. (2's or 7's, 40 days or a year?)
Other places there are jumps in the text which also seem to point to this.
Theres a lot more evidence that goes into it separating the parts though.

Dean Anderson

Most of it. Some bits are older, and some of the stories are most certainly based on older myths, but that is when it was put together into a single unified work of literature.

This question is more complicated than it first sounds.

In the oldest of the texts that forms part of the Torah (the 'J' text), people have know the name "Yahweh" (or "Jehovah" to use the English spelling) since the time of Eve and Seth - her and Adam's son. In the version of the Noah story in this text, Noah does indeed call on Yahweh, but this name is not forgotten. It is known until and beyond Abraham.

In the second oldest of the texts (the 'E' text), Abraham is the first person to discover God's name. Before him, people didn't know his name. This text does not mention Noah (or at least, if it did mention him, we no longer have that part of it).

In the third, more recent of the texts (the 'P' text), Noah refers to God as simply 'God' without knowing his name, and although the exact incident is not mentioned, the implication is that Abraham is again the first to discover God's name.

Each of these texts is internally consistent. It is only when they are compiled together that it appears that Noah knows God's name but then it is somehow forgotten until Abraham re-discovers it.

Of course, a more interesting "contradiction" is that Noah takes 2 of each unclean animal and 14 of each clean animal onto the ark with him - but the whole concept of clean vs unclean animals is not invented until the God explains it to Moses, who lived over a thousand years after Noah if the Bible is to be believed...

This is because those parts of the Noah story were from the 'P' text - where the clean vs unclean distinction is taken as a given. The older ('J') parts only mention two of each animal - which fits with the older 'J' text being unconcerned with the clean vs unclean status of animals.

That's hard to say. Even by the 7th century BCE when the Torah is being put together, we have people who are clearly Israelites and clearly Hebrews - but who's beliefs and social structure don't necessarily bear much resemblence to classical Judaism. That developed slowly, after the Exile - between the 5th and 2nd centuries BCE. It is hard to pin it down to a fixed date, since it seems to have been a gradual development rather than a sudden 'founding' of a religion.

Chunk

Ok, thanks again everyone.

As far as Q goes, why has nobody made the case that it contains a biography of Jesus' life, as well as sayings? Isnt this completely possible?

If there are events in Luke and Matthew that arent in Mark, would this show that Q possibly had some biography as well as sayings. Couldnt it be that Mark put his version together and so did Luke and Matthew, expect Luke and Matthew had the benefit of Mark and Q, whereas Mark didnt?

Tao of Pooh

I've not read every post in here yet so...ooops if this has been brought up before. I'll read the other posts after I write this. ok...


Is it true that Esther is the only book in the bible that makes no mention of deity?



The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

Chunk

yes, I believe so.

Julian

The problem is that Luke and Matthew mostly disagree where Mark doesn't supply the details. This is one of the reasons why Q is only sayings, the main point of overlap where Mark is silent. The fact that Luke and Matthew differ where Mark is silent is one of the major arguments for Q, i.e. although they agree on the sayings, more or less, they disagree with the non-saying details. Conclusion: They must have known the sayings but not the context, hence the existence of Q and no biographical details beyond the sayings can be supproted by the Q theory.

Supporters of other solutions to the synoptic problem will somewhat disagree that the differences are meaningful.

Julian

TomboyMom

The Torah was written in the 6th or 7th century B.C.E., but we don't really get what you would really call the Jewish people until 5th to 2d century? Wow, that really surprises me in terms of the order of things; I thought it would be reversed. So the Torah could be a kind of proselytizing, recruiting or uniting book?