Johnny Skeptic

Do you attribute the Jews' achievements to God's help? If so, please start a new thread at the General Religious Discussions Forum and provide whatever evidence you have that the Jews' achievments are due to God's help. If what the Jews have accomplished was not due to God's help, then obviously we can attribute their achievements to lucky genetics and other lucky factors.

If you are right that no other group has done more amazing things per capita than Jews have, then you should become a Jew since Jews have done more amazing things than Christians have.

semiopen

I get the impression that Peter has a remarkable knowledge of Phoenician culture.

The original 1799 source cited of course is pretty close to the 19th century, but he has produced another from 1732.

My impression is that Peter has no hidden agenda other than pointing out the issue with the Wikipedia date. That being said, it is not clear to me that the 18th century writings cited seriously compromise the Wikipedia article.

Having only begun looking at Phoenicia within the last few weeks, my opinions of course are close to worthless.

Toto

I PM'd IamJoseph and he offered this link, which he said he had posted before so he didn't have to post it again:

Ancient Hebrew inscription from period of Kings of Judah found in Jerusalem dig

which has nothing to do with a coin.

Clivedurdle

Except maybe the world's best story tellers!

(They also do have a statistically significant number of Nobel Prizes for their population.)

I see a pre existing canaanite people who had a group of Persians claiming to be Jews from Babylon settle where they were living and introduce Persian and Aramaic ways leading to the invention of Hebrew.

premjan

A lot of outstanding academics and researchers. That counts as amazing or remarkable at least.

bacht

off-topic, but I'd like to see a thread with people's ideas about pre-exilic Palestine during the monarchies. For instance, was there a "renaissance" of religion and/or literature in Judah after the fall of Samaria? Did the Jews a century later feel inspired by the impending conquest of the Babylonians, and create the Deuteronomistic history on the eve of destruction?

semiopen

Finkelstein and Silverman in David and Solomon note a surge in Judean population after the fall of Israel. There was also an increase in commercial activity; as Assyrian vassals they had access to new markets. The centralization and standardization of religion at this point is reasonable.

My guess with the Babylonians is that the political environment got too tricky and the Judeans wound up backing the Assyrians. I'd like to think that when my ancestors wrote about the punishments for evil, they at least thought they had a shot at avoiding them.

Petergdi

I'm a monotheist. Everything that exists and everything that happens is caused by God. I don't have any specific hypothesis for Jewish achievement, but I think there are a variety of factors at work.

Such arguments are pointless. The atheist invariably thinks that the theist should mean the same thing by "God" as the atheist does. This is never the case - so all argument that follows misses the point.

You are excluding a whole bunch of reasonable possibilities.

This is magical thinking on your part. While Jews win Nobel prizes about 80 times more often than their share of the world's population would suggest, becoming a Jew does not necessarily increase one's chances at a Nobel prize!

Peter.

Petergdi

I don't. I only know a little. I do have a bit of an interest in the history of the alphabet.

On the whole, the article seems to be pretty good. There is a lot of stuff in that article which seems to be right on.

Peter.

semiopen

Apparently the cool new theory about the alphabet is that it may have originated near the Qena bend of the Nile near Luxor...

Middle_Bronze_Age_alphabets

The Wadi el-Hol script, possibly from 2000 BCE. I wasn't aware of this until yesterday but apparently it's been known since 1999.