hinduwoman

How old are the oldest stories of the Bible do you think?
I hear that Jehovah is a Bronze age god but do the Jewish traditions go beyond it?

Huon

A partial (I don't mean biased ...) answer is in this recent thread :
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=178123

lpetrich

One clue may lie in when the Bible's history becomes "real" history. A nice recent discussion of this question is The Bible Unearthed (or via: amazon.co.uk).

The Bible's history in the Dual Monarchy period is well-supported by outside sources, but before that it becomes questionable. Although there could well have been historical Kings David and Solomon, it is now considered unlikely that they ruled over the great empire the Bible describes them as having done.

And the history before that is nowadays considered purely legendary. The Conquest, the Exodus, the Patriarchs, the Flood, and the Creation are pure mythology.

David's reign was approx. 1011 to 971 BCE and Solomon's approx. 970 to 928 BCE. By comparison, the first king to get outside mention, King Omri, ruled 876-869 BCE (William F. Albright) or 885-874 BCE (E. R. Thiele) (source: Wikipedia).

Earlier parts of the Bible have various anachronisms, like the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc.) using camels, animals that had not been domesticated around 2000 BCE or so, when the patriarchs are calculated to have lived.


Some of the earlier parts of the Bible can be traced back to earlier mythologies, like Noah's Flood and the long lives of people before that flood, but other parts are more difficult to trace.

And I don't know of any reference to YHWH (Yahweh) before the Bible.

Clivedurdle

Is it possible the vast majority of it was written post exile in Babylon? Might even the concept of one god be an import from zarathustrianism?

robto

Persian religion wasn't especially monotheistic during the post-exilic times. Inscriptions from the time of Xerxes and Artaxerxes call on several gods: Ahura Mazda, Anaitis, Mithras, Arta.

Newton's Cat

This is rather surprising - well worth reading:

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive...0and%20Reality

Imagine something like this on an Iranian or Saudi Goverment site about early Islam!

Loomis

What about AFTER the Bible?

What I mean is - have you ever considered the possibility that some of the stories in the OT about Yahweh may have originally been about other gods? And that the name “Yahweh” was just tacked on?

It looks to me like some stories were originally about the god named Baal.

Isaiah 27:1
In that day Yahweh will punish
with his destructive, great, and powerful sword
Leviathan the fleeing serpent,
Leviathan the twisting serpent;
he will slay the dragon Yam.

KTU 1.5 i 1-4
When you smite Lotan the fleeing serpent, finish off the twisting serpent, the close-coiling one with seven heads, the heavens will wither and go slack like the folds of your tunic.

Loomis

I bet this is old …

Isaiah 14:12-13
Look how you have fallen from the sky,
O Helel, son of Shachar!
You have been cut down to the ground,
O conqueror of the nations!
You said to yourself,
“I will climb up to the sky.
Above the stars of El
I will set up my throne.
I will rule on the mountain of assembly
on the remote slopes of Zaphon.
I will climb up to the tops of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High!”

But I bet this is even older …

Deuteronomy 32:7-9
Remember the ancient days;
bear in mind the years of past generations.
Ask your father and he will inform you,
your elders, and they will tell you.
When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,
when he divided up humankind,
he set the boundaries of the peoples,
according to the number of the sons of El;
Yahweh's allotment is his people
Jacob is the portion of his inheritance.

In Isaiah 14:12-13 the distinction between El and Baal is confused and blurred. For example - the "stars of El" and the "mountain of assembly" are both linked to El, but the divine council is placed at Zaphon, which was Baal's mountain. Also Helel is presented as climbing on the thunderclouds (that’s a Baal thing), but he is making himself like Elyon (an El thing). This is assimilation in action. El and Baal are melting into the same god before our eyes.

In Deuteronomy 32:7-9 Yahweh and El are clearly identified as two distinct gods. They haven't "melted together" yet.

My point is this: Even if we don’t know the exact dates when these stories were written, we can still make some pretty good guesses about their chronology. (What was written before what.)

All the best,

Loomis

yalla

Actually I found the article to be cleverly written propaganda.
It started out well, noting the lack of definite archaeological evidence for Jerusalem as the capital city for a Davidic monarchy.
It mentioned the minimal evidence for that, but gave it a slight positive spin [in that it did not mention the debate over Tell Dan]. Fair enough.
But by the end of the article, despite the earlier doubts, we have David, a United Monarchy, Jerusalem as a capital [probably], Saul and Solomon all prsented matter-of-factly as if fact.
In addition a few stories from the Bible are also presented as probably factual.
So it ends up as it would have at the beginning if it had taken a maximalist approach at the start.
The line of evidence does not support the conclusions.
cheers
yalla

hinduwoman

Then the answer is no one really knows when jews became Jews. I guess that is true of all ancient cultures.