Sheshbazzar

I didn't say that what the earlier Hebrews believed is not to be found within the text of the Bible. Their basic beliefs are concealed within, but must be sifted out.
My position is that their basic beliefs were distorted and overshadowed by the much latter elaborate 'Jewish' religious/nationalistic political propaganda writings.
That these early Hebrews trusted and believed in the name 'YHWH' is the only significant claim, what they as individuals, or collectively may have believed or taught -about- YHWH is only of secondary consideration.
It is no requirement that men of today, to 'believe' in The Name YHWH, need hold to exactly the same beliefs as men of old.
'Abram' believed YHWH....' That, by Scripture, was sufficient for both parties.
And still is.
I know what The Name signifies to me, I do not presume to speak for any other man. If to you The Name means something, or means nothing, then that is up to you.
My own son, is now a man of beyond forty years. I have never dictated or passed any religious beliefs to him, other than a knowledge of this, that I, his father, believed in YHWH. He, in his life is free to either admit or to deny any such knowledge, to so say of himself or no.

spin

As I said, rubbish. The Mitanni were not Semitic. They were Indo-European.

You developed the rubbish all by yourself??

You aren't exactly agreeing with me. Pithom might have been built around 600 BCE, but that is only a terminus a quo (earliest possible date). One at least needs time for the Jews in Egypt to ruffle the feathers of the locals.

Actually the Hyksos, ie the rulers of the foreigners were not Semitic. It was the Hyksos who introduced the military use of horses into Egypt, certainly not a feature of any Semitic culture at the time.

Stop making things up. We had a crash course of destroy the Aten religion. It didn't need much time at all. It had no roots. It wasn't spread by Akhnaten. There was no time to get to know it. It meant nothing to the ordinary Egyptian. They were too busy wondering what was going on to their own cultic interests. Once Tutankhamun returned to Karnak, Aten was dead. Horemheb merely gained brownie points destroying weird things.

Sorry, what use do you imagine the Merneptah stele is to whatever it is you are trying to assert?

I doubt that the notion of monotheism had anything to do with the antagonism. The Jews at Elephantine clashed with Khnum worshippers, because the Jews were sacrificing goats, an animal sacred to the Khnum worshippers. They also did the bidding of the Persian overlords, so generally the Jews were probably rather unpopular in various circles for nothing to do with monotheism.

Start with the notion that the story is basically accepted by the Jews who heard it, but then fashioned it in their own image, just as the little black child does in a poem by William Blake, "I am black but O! my soul is white." This isn't the child's rhetoric: he has taken it over and transformed it. Taking over the imposed rhetoric and transforming it is not strange or difficult to understand.

Have you got shares in some rancid book that presents this crap? You are imagining the survival of Atenism for 800 years when there was no-one to transmit it. Christ, why are you having difficulty with this? The chief priest of Aten was Akhnaten. Who else do you have evidence for that was a priest of Aten? This was a very limited worship. Just the royal family and those retainers who followed them. Ejection of Atenists requires Atenists for being ejected. Who exactly? Yup, nobody. You can't seem to put together a meaningful trajectory for this pipe dream.

Umm, there relationship between the Aten Hymn and Ps.104 is not particularly close. There are a number of phrases that are vaguely similar, but what can one say about the good qualities of the sun that hasn't been said before? Both talk about the sun rising and setting. Then there is mention of lions though nothing of those references is similar... birds... boats... other vague similarities. This is rather uninspiring. There is no turn of phrase that makes you say, "gosh, they are similar." Why not present one or two of your greatest similarities and try to make a case that they are really, directly related? As is the relationship is uninspiring. But wait, beside that? Nothing. You are making a case simply on vague similarities. You would probably not be impressed either.


spin

Anat

The Bible Unearthed by Finkelstein and Silberman was already recommended in this thread. It is very approachable to the non-specialist and gives much archaeological evidence.

The evidence is that the people that show up in the hill country are connected culturally and technologically to the other people in ancient Palestine and not to other places. Compare to the Philistines who have Aegean roots and it shows.

jgreen44

Your paragraph also applies to Christianity....

It is anachronistic to retroject those blatant literary fabrications and falsehoods contained within the much latter composed 'Christian' 'Bible' unto the beliefs held by the earliest of Christians.

jgreen44

IOW, gnosis.

Sheshbazzar

Obviously. but men do it every day, even most scholars who should know better.
Relevent to this thread, are similar empty arguments that try to fabricate imaginary sceanarios that would support the Bible, and the existence of a real 'histrical' Moses and 'nation' of Israel at such an early period, contrary to all of the archaeological evidence. May as well use the same type of arguments to 'prove' that the garden of Eden guarded by Angels with flaming swords still exists bounded by the Tigres and Euphrates Rivers.

No. I don't believe in the Bibles stories as being records of any actual events.
No Garden of Eden,
No talking serpent,
No first man,
No 'Noah's' Flood,
No 'Moses',
No 'Exodus' from Egypt,
No 'conquest' of the Promised Land,
ect.
No flesh and blood 'Jesus', and No religion recognized by the name 'Christianity' before the second century.

None of which any man needs for belief in The Name YHWH, and what expression of The Name implies about existence,
and the existence of all existing things.

In addition to being a 'NAME', this 'Name' signifies (to me) an inviolable and uchangable geometrical/mathematical expression of time and space. Or in other words that 'Reality' in which we all of us, man and beast alike....."live, and move, and have our being."

One 'Name' that I trust to remain valid and existent more than any material thing.

Though the universe, the earth and all living were destroyed and cease to exist, yet would YHWH remain, unchanged and eternal, able to bring forth and create again.
When everything else at last fails....when The Holy Books, and the men who wrote them, and their man-made institutions have been discredited and have all lost their allure,
.....Then, at the long last,....they shall (finally, really) trust in The Name YHWH.
But first they must learn.


Sheshbazzar the Hebrew

DNAReplicator

Yup. On reading the Josephus passage for the first time a few days ago.

Thanks - that is interesting.

Of course not. This self flagellation is purely recreational.

No I'm not - that would be nuts. I'm suggesting something originating within Atenism and its aftermath got transmitted though oral traditions.

If it happened, then the answer would probably be your first sentence above.

That the Lord can be compared to the sun. Where else does this happen in the bible?

There are eight passages within Psalm 104 that are often compared to Hymn to the Aten. I have not seen or read any non-apologetic debunking of these similarities (although would be interested to do so). I think it is more of a puzzle than you give it credit for.

jgreen44

I'm guessing you are referring to this sort of thing?

Y (Fire)
H (Air)
W (Water)
H (Earth)

spin

Then you'd need to suggest how it got into an oral tradition, given that it was a private royal religion, and from there how that tradition migrated to Canaan.

Which is so improbable we can discount it totally, given that there was such a dearth of royalty available that they had to bring in a general after old Ay died.

The retainers followed the pharaoh into Atenism and out again. And one wonders just how much of that was toadying.

The solar aspects of Yahweh will have been subliminated, though some signs remain. When the king of Babylon is compared to the morning star (lucifer) in Isa 14:12f, the sun is obviously god, whose throne is in heaven. Elsewhere of course the throne is burning. Ezek 8:16 has Yahwists prostrating themselves to the sun in the temple of the lord. When the heavens are telling the glory of god (Ps.19:1) the obvious image for this glory is the sun.

You might be interested in the Sheffield book, "Yahweh and the sun: biblical and archaeological evidence for sun worship in Ancient Israel (or via: amazon.co.uk)", by J. Glen Taylor.

It's called stretch-fitting, usually what happens when an XXXS man tries to put on a medium T-shirt.

But here's a challenge, try presenting here in this thread those parallels that you find convincing, ie ones that wouldn't just be generated by someone musing long and imaginatively on aspects of the divine sun.

Just to start you off, what is the substantive reason for comparing the following material?

[T2="b=1;s=0;bc=yes;p=5;bdr=1,solid,#000000;bg=#FFF FFF"]Hymn to the Aten|Psalm 104
||
Your dawning is beautiful in the horizon of the sky,
O living Aten, Beginning of life!
When You rise in the Eastern horizon,
You fill every land with Your beauty.
You are beautiful, great, glittering, high above every land,
Your rays, they encompass the lands, even all that You have made.
You are Re, and You carry them all away captive;
You bind them by Your love.
Though You are far away, Your rays are upon the earth;
Though You are on high, Your footprints are the day.
When You set in the western horizon of the sky,
The earth is in darkness like the dead;|1 Bless Yahweh, my soul,
Yahweh, my God, how great you are!
Clothed in majesty and splendour,
2 wearing the light as a robe!
You stretch out the heavens like a tent,
3 build your palace on the waters above,
making the clouds your chariot,
gliding on the wings of the wind,
4 appointing the winds your messengers,
flames of fire your servants.
20 You bring on darkness, and night falls,
when all the forest beasts roam around;[/T2]
Extremely unconvincing as parallels. I can only see the most overworked possibilities for meaningful similarities. In fact, nothing in the biblical material seems like it comes from anywhere other than the biblical tradition.

(Copy the table I've started. Use "|" to separate columns and "||" to separate rows. Use a single color for each similarity.)


spin

stephan huller

As something a little different from the usual head bumping that goes on here - has anyone else noticed how little speculation there is in rabbinic literature about the person of Moses? It is very suspicious or at least very curious. Moses - 'the man of God' - is supposed to be the focus of the religion and yet the Jewish tradition has very little to say about Moses, or at least a lot less than you'd expect especially if you compare the rabbinic literature to let's say the Samaritan tradition, the Qumran documents or Philo.

One guess might be that it has something to do with the Talmud, as gemara ultimately trumps the Torah when the two disagree. Another explanation might be that any discussion about Moses led to all kinds of 'exaggerations' (like the ghulat in early Islam). To this end, the rise of early Christianity might have had something do with curbing this speculation as it opens up all kinds of dangerous questions about the messiah.

In any event it is curious how little the rabbinic tradition has to say about the person of Moses.