Marduk

"I read in a separate article that had nothing to do with Finkelstein that even orthodox Rabbis in Jerusalem now are starting to form the opinion that their history as recorded in the bible is mostly legends and myths."

I believe it was Conservative Rabbis, the ones who published "The Tree of Life"
I doubt orthodox Rabbis will ever change their story.

Iasion

Greetings all,

KA said:
As PTET pointed out - Dever was apparently a protestant who converted to Judaism.

Either KA is poorly informed about his own hero, or he deliberately mis-informed us.

i.e. KA insists Dever is an objective atheist but fails to inform us that his much touted Biblical maximalist is actually Jewish - which confirms just how unreliable KA's comments are.

QuentinJ

Preacher's Son

TBU was given to me as a xmas gift last year by my wife. I found the book hard to put down. The historical data they included really opened my eyes to how misinformed I had been in Sunday School. It is well worth reading for this reason alone. I can't really speak for the Archaeology. They did present it in an easy to read way and it did make an awful lot of sense. I can't imagine anyone reading through the Bible and coming to the tale of the priest finding the law and presenting it to King Josiah and not being somewhat skeptical.

RogerLeeCooke

Hey, ya wanna get really up-to-date on this? Read the screeds of the Russian mathematician Fomenko. He's a very good geometer, who has gone completely nuts, claiming that the whole chronology of the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles is merely a disguised version of the late-medieval history of the Holy Roman Empire. He even published a chart of successive regnal years to show how the succession of Holy Roman Emperors and their years on the throne matches almost perfectly the successive kings of Israel. (Of course, he's got a lot of fudge factors, including two Holy Roman Emperors reigning at the same time. With such flexible principles, you can get almost any two lists to match up.) In another of his writings he claims there was no Mongol conquest of Russia, that the whole thing was invented by the Romanov dynasty to justify its autocracy.

But it sounds like Finkelstein is on the sane side of all this, and I'm looking forward to reading what he has to say.

King Arthur

Shows what you know about religion...

A person can be both Jewish and Atheist. I believe that in the book I presented, Dever describes himself as both. If not atheist, then agnostic with atheistic leanings.

Dever became a Jew because he felt comfortable with the traditions, lifestyle, and philosophy. Not because he believes in God. Duh...

My information is reliable and reputable as usual. Note the review of Dever's book that was presented.

Radcliffe Emerson

Finkelstein expresses the same opinion in his book about the stories.

Radcliffe Emerson

You are correct, my mistake. It is indeed the conservative Rabbis who have made the statements.

Amen-Moses

I found the following online:

"I try hard to keep any latent theological concerns out of my work. I started in a fundamentalist home. I went to a very conservative church school. But I went to a liberal theological school, at Harvard. And then I converted to Judaism. I'm not a theist. I don't have any faith issues at stake.

Archaeologist William G. Dever, in an interview published in the New York Times, August 4, 2001"

If anyone wants to pay the $2-95 needed to view the original interview they can check the accuracy of the quote but to my mind it can be read (if indeed it is accurate) as either Fundy-Jewish-Atheist conversions or that he is damn confused. Either way it looks like he has a pretty theological background to try and overcome if he really is "not a theist".

Amen-Moses

godfry n. glad

Radcliffe did state:

Yeah? Can you provide a page cite on that? My memory has him supporting the contention that the Israelites were the descendants of the indigenous population. My memory is not the best these days, though....

godfry n. glad

CX

I just checked and in Chapter 4 "Who Were The Israelites?" (pp. 93-122) Finkelstein puts forth the proposition that the ancient israelites were indigenous pastoral nomads living in the Canaanite highlands as early as 3500 B.C.E. who settled the highlands in waves through a process of slow transformation from a semi-nomadic to a sedentary lifestyle and who gradually took over the material urban culture in the Canaanite cities.