Johnny Skeptic

Are you referring to possibilities regarding the existence of the Hebrew God, or the Christian God? Are you a Christian?

Jews winning Nobel prizes can adequately be explained by secular factors, as can the disproportionate achievements of the amazing ancient Greeks, who not only excelled in science, but also in art and philosophy, thereby far surpassing the achievements of ancient Hebrews. If any case can be made that a certain God(s) exists because of the achievements of his followers, I will vote for the existence of the Greek gods. The success of the Roman Empire and the Italian Renaissance was largely due to contributions from the Greeks.

If we are talking about moral contributions as opposed to contributions that deal with intelligence, what amazing moral contributions have Hebrews given to the world?

Regarding "no other group has done more amazing things per capita than Jews have," what things before Christ are you referring to. What things after Christ are you referring to?

Of course, if a God exists, and wanted as many people as possible to believe that he exists as a specific God, he could easily have convinced more people to believe that he exists than the number of people who are Christians. If a God inspired the Bible, he obviously withholds evidence that would convince more people to believe that he exists. That is quite odd. Morally, no man can be sent to hell for refusing to accept evidence that he would accept if he was aware of it.

Clivedurdle

As the majority of Jews have always lived outside Canaan in for example major Greek cities like Alexandria, arguably the high success rates of Nobel prizes for example may be due to cultural traditions of learning and debate with Greek origins!

More and more I see Judaism as a Greek Persian religion, with xianity as a sub cult that was more into mumbo jumbo.

The Carthage lot who were defeated by the Romans - anybody remember Hannibal? - maybe had far more influence than recognised.

The stories of Solomon are actually ridiculous - why is there no evidence - compared with the huge empires over centuries in the ANE?

Toto

Please stick to the topic here - Solomon's navy and/or the Hebrew alphabet and its development.

semiopen

This is reasonable.

The other side of the debate seems to be an Egyptian origin of great antiquity, as suggested by the Qena bend alphabet. This may be linked to rather far fetched theories that Joseph was Imhotep of the third dynasty, and Moses and Aaron, pharohs during the 12th.

In any case, I don't see Greece inventing the alphabet, but have become more convinced it passed from Phoenicia to Greece rather than Hebrew.

The Persian influence on Purim is very interesting. Esther = Ishtar and Mordecai = Marduk. Another possibility is:

http://academic.reed.edu/humanities/.../Hdt/Hdt3.html

This is so not Hebrew...

Clivedurdle

If that is about my comments they were directly to the subject - Phoenicia - Carthage - Hannibal are the same thing!

A people invent an emperor figure in Solomon when there were for example huge Greek, Persian and Phoenician navies that were deployed at Salamis.

Methinks someone invented all this to make them appear more important than they were. If Solomon's navy existed there would definitely be something somewhere!

Which relates to the intelligence of the people and their ability to tell stories and argue and debate.

"It ain't necessarily so"

Clivedurdle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salamis

The article doesn't say this explicitly but the Persian navy was primarily the Phoenician navy - so the Phoenicians were heavily involved in the greatest sea battle of the time, started by the successor to Darius.

Which makes me wonder if Carthage and the Phoenicians and Persians have been written out of history by both the Greeks and the Romans and the whole replaced by a new religion and history of Judaism.

The important names are Darius, Alexander, Hannibal, Zarathustra not Solomon.

East is East and West is West or is it?

semiopen

There is also speculation that Jezebel, who was the Phoenician princess responsible for the Golden Calves of Jeroboam, may have been modelled on one of Solomon's wives. It is noted in the bible that the temple was built with Phoenician help and indeed Aslar blocks which are a distinctive Israelite architectural feature are Phoenician in origin.

It might be gueesed that Solomon's navy was actually Phoenician, which is reasonable based on the apparent level of cooperation between the cultures. Wouldn't take the world's wisest man to want access to the Mediteranean.

Anat

Or the other way around - after all the Omride kings are better evidenced than Solomon - the story of Solomon and Hiram was based on the ties between the Omrides and their contemporary Phoenicians?

show_no_mercy

Another oddity of syncreticism is that the Hebrew word for lord (adoni), which they modify to say The Name (Adonai) comes from the same root that the Greek god Adonis gets his name.

Clivedurdle

If Solomon actually existed he was only a minor war lord up some hills miles from the sea - bit like the Swiss Navy.