rob117

The Hittites and Mitanni, yeah. But the Hyksos were not Indo-European; they were primarily Semitic. And the Kassites spoke a linguistic isolate.

spin

I thought I said the Hyksos were a mixed group..., though not predominantly Semitic, despite the names. The connection with horses strongly links them with Indo-Europeans who were the ones who taught the area about horses. One thought is that they had a strong Hurrian component and a Semitic component.

On the Kassites I'll defer, as it's been too long since I looked at the evidence. My Amarna letters has them from the Zagros, by I don't have things like Brinkman to give any better indication.


spin

jonesg

Yeh, you would be a MUCH better God.
But you aren't,
I wonder why this travesty of justice prevails.?

Ojuice5001

I think the reason is that Yahweh actually is the same kind of god as a god like Jupiter, Saturn, or the native gods of North America. He was trying to convince the Jews that he is the omnipotent, omniscient creator of the cosmos. Obviously he has succeeded in making the Jews, and later the Christians, think this. But he wasn't actually a different kind of god than Jupiter, he just wanted humans to think that.

But some parts of the Bible that are more representative of what Yahweh is really like. These are the ones that do portray him as more of an imperfect king than an absolute principle. So if a Bible story is about Yahweh's doings in heaven, or anything else that is just as hard for the Jews to check, he got to, or had to, simply make it up. And as you say, these Jews were not logical enough to object to stories that we see as inconsistent with divine omnipotence.

Jagella

Or at the very least, Yahweh is trying to convince the Jews that he is a very powerful god of war. Consider the following passage from Exodus 12:42.

If God sets up a holiday commemorating his deed of bringing the children of Israel out of Egypt and demanding that the Jews observe it, then he’s obviously determined to get credit for what he did. Yahweh apparently has a need for recognition. Such a need exposes this alleged God as less than perfect. A perfect being would have no needs.

I’ve often wondered if any of the Greeks were aware of the beliefs that the Jews had regarding their God. Did any of the Greeks examine those beliefs to see if they were logically sound? I’m not aware of any Greeks that may have done so, but I do know that Paul of Tarsus experienced objections from the Greeks. In 1 Corinthians 1:23 Paul stated that the Greeks referred to the Christian belief in Jesus’ crucifixion as “foolishness.� One must wonder what they might have called the story of the Exodus!

Jagella

rob117

Just out of curiosity, when was your edition of the Amarna letters published? The Kassites being Indo-European was the view for a long time, because of their geographic origin. There were no cuneiform documents to contradict this then, but now we do have some examples of Kassite vocabulary from cuneiform documents, and they are definitely non-IE. See here.

The Hyksos are no longer regarded as having been ethnically mixed, apart from perhaps being partly Canaanite and partly Amorite. Their material culture is pretty much identical to the Canaanite material culture of the same period. Horses were beginning to be adopted throughout the Middle East in this period; they were probably introduced by the Indo-European Mitannians, and the Hyksos adopted them from there. See Hyksos.

spin

It's relatively recent, 1999. It doesn't connect them to anyone.

Yes, I see.

I've consulted trusty Redford, who says that they came from a Canaanite area which could be anywhere from Jerusalem north to southern Syria, so that pretty much agrees with the geography you cite. He also discounts the data relating to horses totally "Others displayed a fixation with the alleged use of the horse", he writes. He pushes for a date for the arrival of the Hurrians in the Khabur region which was later than that of the arrival of the Hyksos in Egypt. (All in Egypt, Can. & Isr.). So I'm convinced at the moment.


spin

Ojuice5001

The Greeks also had arguments against creation ex nihilo. Their philosophies, and their common sense, said that things don't come from nothing. They disbelieved in creation ex nihilo for that reason. And the early Christians and their Jewish contemporaries had both settled on saying that creation ex nihilo was true.

Chris Weimer

But who actually argues creatio ex nihilo anyway?

NewtonPooton

jagella, in response to my earlier post, you didn't pick up on any of the sarcasm. At least that's what it appears to be. I didn't really mean any of that about god vs. satan and the bet. I don't believe in either of them and I think somebody made up that story about Job. They wanted to make a point or tell a story. Example: The Tower of Babel story, a story to explain why there are so many different languages in the world. The god Thor and his lightning rod explains lightning, thunder, and big storms... etc etc... get it?

Anywho... just a lot of sarcasm earlier...