pharoah

I'll start this thread off by listing some of the major bible characters, indicating whether I think they are mythical or historical beings. In some cases I'll elaborate on my reasoning. I'm no scholar, most of this is strictly my educated opinion so feel free to challenge or correct me!

Adam - mythical

Noah - mythical

Abraham - quasi-historical

It's possible that there may have been someone on whom these tales are loosely based, but it's probably impossible to be sure.

Isaac - mythical

Based upon the fact that the legends surrounding Issac are sparse, and that the legends that exist in the bible are mostly doublets from the Abraham and Jacob cycles, I think that Isaac was a later contrivance invented to bond Abraham and Jacob as kinsmen.

Jacob - mythical
He seems to me be a literary invention created to explain the origin of the Israelites and to poke fun at rivals such as the Edomites.

Joseph - mythical
After you extrapolate all of the myth and nonsense there's just nothing there.

Moses - quasi-historical
He is the Jesus of the OT. There is so much mythology surrounding him that it's almost impossible to determine his historicity.

Joshua - quasi-historical
It's quite possible that some military warlord akin to Joshua existed that conquered, or at least attempted to connquer, much of Canaan. This is plausible even after you strip away all of the nonsense.

Samson - mythical

Ruth - mythical

Samuel - mythical

Saul - historical
There's no evidence that he ever existed, but his story as told in the bible is not wildly implausible, so I tentatively lean toward historicity.

David - historical

Solomon - historical

Elijah/Elisha - mythical
They were characters probably created to represent the "school of prophets" that strongly opposed Baal worship.

Job - mythical

Daniel - mythical

John the Baptist - historical

Jesus - historical

Paul - historical

The Twelve - quasi-historical
Given the fact that GJohn only names 7 disciples, the other evengelists are in conflict about names and details, and Paul simply seems to be reciting a legend in I Cor 15 which conflicts with the Judas tales, there is good reason to doubt that 12 people were handpicked by Jesus as his disciples.

The Pillars: Cephas, James, Peter and John - historical
Paul's testimony confirms their existence. Note that I believe that Cephas and Peter are two different people conflated into one character by later traditions.

Chris Weimer

I seriously doubt this. Abraham appears to be total myth, with him being some sort of "Father Figure" to the Jews. (Ab means father; raham means many.) If there is any history at all, it is entirely lost.

There was no Exodus. Totally mythical.

There was no conquest. Totally mythical.

Reasons?

These two could have been based on real characters. It's plausible.

Actually, I would pin Judas as the myth, and the Twelve as historical.

Doug Shaver

From the Old Testament, I would put David and Solomon down as maybes, all others as fictional.

From the New Testament, I'd say yes to John the Baptist because of Josephus, yes to Paul because of his letters, and yes to the pillars because of Paul. I think all the others are fictional.

pharoah

That's an interesting tidbit about his name; I didn't know that. That certainly helps to push him closer to the realm of legend.

I agree with you here, but that in itself doesn't disprove the existence of Moses. If he existed at all, he may have conceived the ethics code that was later expanded into the Law by later priests.

I'm not arguing that the stories in Joshua are historical. I'm simply pointing out that it's not inconceivable that they are legends built around an existing military hero. Surely you agree that they engaged in some wars with their neighbors.

He seems to be too convenient a character for my taste. He happens to be the last judge, he happens to ordain the first king, and he happens to establish the Davidic dynasty. Throw in the miraculous birth and his "resurrection" and the smell of pure myth reeks around him.

There's nothing there to base them on. The entire cycle of tales is completely implausible.

That's possible, but then how do you differentiate between the 12 and the 70 that Jesus sent out as missionaries? Are the 70 historical?

Ruhan

In both these cases you are making the fundamental mistake of presuming Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. It was obviously written around the 8th-7th century BC by priests/scribes from the Northern and Southern kingdoms.

Moses was a myth which was most probably adopted from Ahmosis the Egyptian leader. There is no evidence that Moses or Joshua had any historical reference outside of the Pentateuch which was written 600 years after they were supposed to have lived.

We have to dismiss Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as pure myths.

David and Solomon were semi historical as folklore embellished their records.

I agree with Chris Weimer that Elisha/Elijah could be historical characters.

pharoah

Huh????? How do you infer from anything that I've written that I believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch? That's laughably absurd - I'm a strong proponent of the Documentary Hypothesis. Note that the DH doesn't claim that the entire story was concocted out of thin air by the Hezekiah / Josiah crowd. That's a very extreme view. Clearly much of the story, although compiled during those periods, was based on much older documents. Conceding that the story is largely based on older documents doesn't mean that the documents themselves are true - clearly most of it is legendary.

Diogenes the Cynic

I think Adam through Moses can all be safely categorized as pure myth. I think that Joshua is probably mythical but I don't think its impossible that the myth is based on some legendary military leader of yore. The conquest of Canaan never happened, of course, but a general named Joshua may have won some battle somewhere.

Sampson and Ruth are fictions. Samuel might not be -- at least not entirely.

I think that Finkelstein and Silberman have made a compelling case in their newest book for the historicity of Saul and David -- well not Saul and David, exactly, but for polities which would resemble both the historical and geographical parameters of the alleged kingdom of Saul as well as for a possible outlaw confederation (ostensibly led by a bandit chieftain named David) which became the major political power after the destruction of "Saul's" kingdom. Again, F and S speak mostly in terms of polities rather than historical personalities but I think they made a case that there could have been a historical kernel to the David and Saul legends.

Solomon, I think is myth.

Elijah/Elisha, I have no idea. I don't think it's impossible for them to have been based on real people.

Job and daniel are myths.

John the Baptist was historical.

Jesus- I have no idea. I've changed my mind on this a million times but generally. I think I still lean towards some kind of HJ.

Paul was historical.

The 12 were probably historical even if there wasn't an HJ. Christ only knows who they were or what they thought, though.

Ruhan

Great so we agree on this. My point is that you referred to some Mosaic influence in regards to the levitical laws. When we have no evidence for a historical character or even an exodus outside of the latter Pentateuch, then why would you suggest that such a character could have had any input into the levitical process, let alone existed?

There is an equal amount of evidence for the existence of Abraham than there is for Moses. Both are purely mythical.

Chris Weimer

The Laws are largely Semitic borrowings, probably adopted by priests at a later time. I see no reason for any historic possibility of Moses, especially since all of his activities takes place in a setting that didn't exist.

It's possible, I admit. I think he was more likely created as a military hero, though, or perhaps modelled after a current one, which would still make him mythical.

The theophoric element in his name - El - tells us of an earlier cycle of myths, though. If we grant Saul and David some historical possibility, then surely it is not far-fetched to think that there was some priestly mediator between the two? It's a tough call, and we'll never know for sure.

The Seventy?

mountainman

I have been perusing some of the IIDB resources, and recently the recommended reading that incorporates "The Whig Interpretation of History" in which, at section 2, entitled "The Underlying Assumption" the following is written: .

The listing of a dichotomy of myth and history is patently incomplete.
The new testament characters are separated from the old, with respect to history, and so should be entirely separately questioned from the old. And with respect to the new testament characters, a fictitious being is clearly separate and distinct from either an historical being and/or a mythical being.

You might like to think they are either historical or mythical, but do not rule out the possibility that they were fictional, that they were an invention of men.


Pete Brown
www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_029.htm