Clivedurdle

Has anyone given a percentage probability of mythological or actual person to all the characters in the Hebrew Bible?

What does it look like?

The discussion about Mark and the Hebrew Bible got me thinking tangentially.

What if Mark is an attempt to update all the favourite golden oldies, like an ancient Disney?

Clivedurdle

Have I asked a question that no one has done any work on?

Is there a list somewhere of all the main Hebrew Bible characters and a percentage probably mythological, to actual person?

Who is there argument about?

Are there any patterns? Is there a historical period when more heroes were made up?

How would such a list compare with a list of Greek characters?

Anat

What is your definition of historical? Someone by that name that lived in the approximate time? Someone who did some of the acts ascribed to a certain character? Take for example David - most archaeologists reject the united kingdom and its conquests, but obviously someone had to be the first king of the kingdom that we know as Judah. Was his name David? Solomon? Rehoboam? Something else? Who knows.

I'm pretty sure we have the right names for many of the latter kings of Judah and some idea of how long they ruled, but obviously any details about their deeds and the nature of their policies is colored by the agenda of the composer(s) of Kings. Of course the kings did not rule in a vacuum. Do the names of members of the royal court correspond to those of real people? BTW despite Finkelstein's saying that he accepts the full list of kings of the divided monarchy because nobody had a motive to fabricate it, I suspect that for the earlier kings there was an attempt to present pious kings as ruling longer than 'evil' ones.

What about the prophets? Somebody obviously composed the prophecies, but it is accepted that several of the prophetic books had multiple authors. It is also accepted that some of the authors did not live during the times mentioned in their books. Even the words of those who did might have been edited at a later time to reflect later events.

Regarding the kingdom of Israel - we have external evidence for the existence of the Omrides and for Jehu - but AFAIK we do not have verification that Jehu rebelled against the Omrides and started a new dynasty. Most of the actions of Elijah and Elisha are obviously legendery, and they also show several stages of composition, but were there any prophets that criticised the worship of Baal and injustice by the Omrides?

Are you asking about times of composition or times in which the stories are set? For example Ruth is likely to have been composed in the times of Ezra/Nehemiah, but is set in the times of the Judges.

Dharma

I would say Abraham and Moses were both mythological as they are both referred to as Elohim. The word Elohim is also used for divine judges and "angels", it's probably a generic term for "divine".

Sensei Meela

I was under the impression that Moses, David, Solomon and perhaps even Job are sometimes looked at as such mythical characters and not as historical persons. I, too, was curious to see how well supported the arguments are for their, uh, 'mythical status' (for want of a better term); what evidence do we have that such figures never existed, for intance?

Surely they are, at best, legendary figures but I am aware of no consensus opinion or even critical works addressing the issue. Enlightenment, please?

Clivedurdle

I would like to achieve something like - David - local war lord, most of stuff in Bible fiction - and do this for all the main characters.

Apologists assert we are dealing with a true record.

Are we really looking at a Hebrew version of greek myths and legends?

What actual evidence do we have that these characters existed?

Julian

You could not have evidence for something that never existed. The only type of evidence would be the Argument from Silence which can be dangerous. It is strange that they are never mentioned outside the bible considering how much importance is placed upon them there. We seem to have no evidence of their existence which seems awfully strange if they really did some of the things attested to by the OT.

Julian

Amedeo

Speaking of Judeo-Christian scriptures, there are two persons that I am certain of. The O.T. deity is entirely mythical; the N.T. Jesus is half myhical.
As I have written many pages on these two characters, I will make here only a few remarks as to why I made those two judgments.

I said O.T. deity to point to whatever is declared to be divine therein. It has been shown over and over, and in different ways, that the Bible contains two distinct and quite different accounts of the genesis of the world, each with its own distinct deity. So, Genesis-1 reveals the Elohim, the supreme gods of the Arabo-Canaanite pantheon in whose image man was emanated: on male and another female. However, only EL (or The-EL, al-Elah, Allah) was recognized in the rest of the Bible. Genesis-2 reveals only the male Yah or Yahveh who constructed or organized the world, constructed and breathed into a man (Adam), and so forth.

El and Yah have a common nature: they are anthropomorphic in nature, and so are all the gods of prophetic religions, namely the religions whose gods are not apprehended by the minds of the common humans; they are reveled to the common humans by special speakers (prophets). So, the religion itself is ecclesistical, mediated by a priest or prophet, as the common humans have no direct line with the gods.

So, we are speaking the gods according to their nature, as revealed by some prophet or other: the nature of such gods is exactly as it is revealed, not as it might be imagined or surmised by us. (So, we admit of no rabbinical or theological wise-guy coming up with, "What God is really like,...." A god is really like the way in which he is spoken by a prophet.) The prophetic gods, then, are anthropomorphic. Like men (albeit in superlative ways), they are persons; they are either male or female [though, unlike the Greeks, the Hebrew prophets did not admit of their gods having sexual organs or families... for their very religion is founded on the sexual sinfulness of man; the gods are beyond the possibility of sinning, whereas the gods of the Gentiles are typically family-founding gods]; they interact with physical reality [humans and the world];they can hear humans, either actually voicing (producing sounds) or thinking linguistically [with sound images]; etc. So, for all intents and purposes, they are man-like, bodily, physical. However, they are said to be divine in nature, not only in the sense that their powers exceed human powers beyond measure, but also because they are bodiless, non-physical and, hence, unperceptible to others, incorrupitle (or immortal), not undergoing any changes. Consider them emanating [creating] or constructing: Such operations are superlatively human and -- here is the point -- by doing one thing after another, they exist as temporally as man and the world do. By their successive actions they are changing and they have a history. So, there are two sets of attributes about they gods. The attributes contradict one another. What is self-contracdictory does not and cannot exist.

Human reason [above the primitive mentality of the prophets, who reveal WHAT the gods are] has found them out. They are nothings. The gods are mentally constructed by the prophets. Such constructs [which are contradictory in nature] are otherwise called MYTHS. God [the Biblical deity] is the greatest myth of all.

Jesus of Nazareth was a man, a real man, neither a myth nor an imaginative entity (like the characters in works of fiction). At least I have reasons to believe that there was a real Jesus. In fact, the Gospels [aside from the theology John added in his own account] are biographies of Jesus, which appropriately quote various things he taught [sermons and parables] in addition to conversations with other humans.

Now, my analyses have revealed [to me] that the gospels are two interwoven biographies. To be brief, there is the biography of Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews, who was born as a king, was persecuted by the fearful king {Herod} sometimes around 4 or 5 B.C., has genealogies of his legitimacy as a descendant of King David, through his father, Joseph, and eventually was crucifies under the triple-language inscription, "Jesus Nazarene king of the Judaeans."

Indeed, there is also the biography which says that the Galilean Jesus (from Nazareth) was born in Judea, at Bethlehem, where the Messiah was supposed to be born. There is a whole biography of Immanuel [Jesus] the Messiah who, through circumstances [the census], he was delivered into the world at Bethehem, as the Scriptures required. And according to the census, it has been figured out that he was born in 5 or 6 A.D.

As the Gospels keep on saying, such-and-such took place IN ORDER THAT THE SCRIPTURES MIGHT BE FULFILLED. So, many episodes of his life belong to Jesus the messiah, according to all the expectations of the Bible. His messianic mission was to preach the kingdom of God and to save the Isrelites from the fires of the wicked on judgment day -- which was imminent. The kingdom of God is at hand. ONE GENERATION will not pass away when all of these things [the cataclysm] will come to pass. [Every thousand years, the Christian fools get ready for the end of the world! When it does not happen, the'll wait another one thousand years....]

As messiah, Jesus was the son of God, begoitten by a maiden... that's the virgin Miriam. So, his real father was not Joseph, the man though whom he inherited the royal blood of King David. Strange things are happening. As Messiah, he has divine powers, or God-granted powers: he raises the dead, multiplies bread and fish, cures the blind, casts devils out, and so forth.

The biographies of Jesus the King and Jesus the Messiah have radical discrepancies (contradictions). Which was the real Jesus?

Read the Gospels again. We would not know some episodes of his life, if Jesus himself had not told or taught them to his listeners! He had conversations with Satan, who took him to different sites -- while there was no one to see or hear. He suffered and spoke alone in the garden at Getsemani. Clearly Jesus TAUGHT some of his life: HE WAS AN AUTOBIOGRAPHER! He was an autobiographer in his life as a Messiah. [The Gospels report little about the royal Jesus, since the Gospels were written down long after Jesus had dies and his kingdom never materialized, After the destruction of the Temple, the KINGDOM of Judea ended, not just the Herod dynasty that he or his cousin John wanted to end!]

Most significantly, at one point Jesus complained to his brother that they did not believe him! You know, he always demanded FAITH IN HIM. Apparently, people did not believe in his autobiographical stories that he cured the sick, raised the dead, etc. etc., because his brother said to him: If you really do the things YOU SAY YOU DO, go to Jerusalem for the Passover, perform them in front of everybody,.... and they will believe you. Obviously his brother had NO KNOWLDGE that Jesus really performed miracle and put him to a test, but Jesus knew better and never took up the challenge.

Jesus the Messiah is a fake. He, who was learned in the Scriptures, created his Messiah-personality, a pure myth, and he taught himself unto others. The real or royal Jesus was a failure. He would have remained unknown in history, had not some Gentiles converted to Judaism through the Apostles of Jesus and created a church of their own. The Jesus of the Christians -- the son of God rather than Joseph, whom John raised to the level of his heavenly father [or deified] -- is a double myth, which cretins [pardon my French] still believe in.

Clivedurdle

Apart from the obvious like Cyrus, who do we have incontrovertible positive evidence that they firstly existed and secondly the Biblical stories match external sources reasonably well?

Can we create a table of columns

Existed - Bible agrees with external sources about their exploits
Existed - significant discrepancies with external sources
Feels mythological
Definitely mythological

For example did Joshua exist?

Samuel?

Ezekiel?

Asha'man

We have strong archeological evidence that Canaan was never conquered by an invading mass of ex-Egyptian slaves. Since Joshua was supposed to be the leader of this non-existent conquest, the most reasonable conclusion is that Joshua didn’t exist either.

However, it’s quite possible that Joshua existed but took none of the actions ascribed to him. But would that really mean Joshua existed, or just some other guy with the same name?