Kosh

If I'm not mistaken, you qualify more as a
Budhist than a Christian....

spin

ReasonableDoubt asks:
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But what should be viewed as history:

Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden?
Jonah and the whale?
Noah and the Flood?
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?
the Patriarchs?
Moses and the Exodus?
the Promised Land?
the United Monarchy?
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None of the above.

The last which is most likely, is still doubtful. Jerusalem in the 9th century was a tiny place, a village, not the city of some centuries later. And there is some doubt about the Judean side of the divided monarchy -- did Judah exist long before Hezekiah's time? There was, however, a relatively powerful kingdom in the area we call Samaria and some of the kings from the state are known from external accounts, but Judah only comes into history with Hezekiah, though an artefact with the name of Hezekiah's father has been found.

When Sheshonq waded through Palestine he went from Arad in the south through the area of Jerusalem (without mentioning it) onto places further north. Arad was a kingdom in the south of what we call Judah which existed independently, but in territory we usually ascribe to Judah. So, was there a Judah long before the time of Hezekiah? I think it's too difficult to say, so even the divided kingdom is also doubtful.

Jayhawker Soule

It was presented with a good deal of integrity and made a great deal of sense -- thanks.

Given the question: "Is Christianity viable without the Torah as history?", you seem to suggest that Christianity can be broadly enough defined such that it has meaning without much of anything as foundation. It seems to have a Christianity-of-the-gaps quality.

Is it not possible that this is no more than placebo effect in search of theistic justification?

Haran

Just to add my 2 cents as a Christian, I do not believe that the New Testament can stand without the Old. Marcion was branded a heretic for attempting to do away with the OT.

IMO, they are too intertwined. The God of the OT is the God of the NT. You simply can't have one without the other. Jesus' messiahship (if that's a word) and ministry was intimately connected with the OT.

I am not threatened by the current trend in some of modern OT scholarship which speaks mostly using arguments from silence. Who's to say that they evidence of the Jews' existence didn't "weather away" over the thousands of years? Who's to say that we simply have not found evidence that exists? I know atheists don't like the word much, but I have faith that the OT is true and will eventually be vindicated.

Thanks,
Haran

Jayhawker Soule

And who's to say that we simply have not yet found evidence for the ubiquitous UFO?

The problem goes beyond "arguments from silence". A conspiracy of silence is required to explain so selective a weathering away.

At the same time, it takes little imagination and even less faith to see the Torah as far more syncretic than historic ...

spin

Haran:
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I am not threatened by the current trend in some of modern OT scholarship which speaks mostly using arguments from silence. Who's to say that they evidence of the Jews' existence didn't "weather away" over the thousands of years? Who's to say that we simply have not found evidence that exists? I know atheists don't like the word much, but I have faith that the OT is true and will eventually be vindicated.
---------------

Haran,

I think this is a somewhat hopeful defence which appeals just as much to silence as what you are attempting to criticise. For someone to assert a position one puts forward evidence, whether that position is currently accepted or not. If a position, be it popular or long-standing or not, cannot be queried and found solid, it has no reason to be accepted.

Israeli archaeologists have done a lot of analysis of extremely many Late Bronze/Early Iron Age sites and come to conclusions that there was no mass entrance of a population into the area, but a slow urbanization of the local areas. (See L.E.Stager and I.Finkelstein)

That literature was not kept early can be demonstrated by the fact that Jewish literature knows nothing about the arrival of the Philistines (and other related populations including the Tjekker who settled around Dor: see the Egyptian "Journey of Wen-Amon") whose arrival made a big splash all down the Levantine coast from about 1200 to about 1160 BCE. The Philistines are just there in the biblical account, no trace of their arrival at all. They are simply another indigenous population. There is even a good chance that the "tribe" of Dan were really one of the populations which came down with the Philistines, the Denyen of Egyptian accounts and the Amarna Letters; just note the strange statement in Jdg 5:17 about Dan remaining in ships, exceptionally strange for a land-bound wandering group of sheep-herders.

Abraham connected with Philistines is clearly anachronistic. We know when the Philistines arrived and that was centuries after the reputed time of Abraham. The connection was a later (post 1160 BCE) development.

There are many substantive issues to be dealt with. It is not simply a matter of lack of information.

spin

ReasonableDoubt:
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At the same time, it takes little imagination and even less faith to see the Torah as far more syncretic than historic ...

Citing inscriptions from Kuntillat Ajrud:
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May you be blessed by YHVH of Samaria (or Teman) and his Ashera ...
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I don't think this shows synchretism, but polytheism. From another inscription (Khirbet el-Qom) one finds a similar inscription which talks of Ashera in the position of a consort. Ashera is well-known in Semitic speaking cultures. We have nothing to suggest that in the 9th/8th centuries the religion of the area was monotheistic. There is a polemic against Ashera (and the asheras) in biblical literature. The problem is to date this polemic. The first datable, lasting montheism I know of is from the Persian culture, a culture which had a big impact on Judea before the time of Alexander the Great. Was there a monotheism or a synchretism before in Judea then?

[ March 19, 2002: Message edited by: spin ]</p>

Jayhawker Soule

Thanks. You might find <a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~zimriel/Baal/baal1.html" target="_blank">THE BAAL (AND THE ASHERAH?) IN SEVENTH-CENTURY JUDAH</a> interesting, e.g.:

spin

Posted by ReasonableDoubt:
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The Israelite elite, represented at the end of the Iron Age by Josiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, P and H(Dtr), did not arrive at a doctrine of monotheism by rejecting the gods of other peoples. Rather, it arrived at this pass by rejecting the gods that traditional culture, and earlier elite culture, had inherited from the fathers from the remotest bounds of the collective memory. The Deuteronomistic History as much as admits that such gods, and the cultic appurtenances characteristic of their cults, stemmed from the earliest moments of Israel's life in Canaan. And the attribution of Deuteronomy to Moses represents an attempt to manufacture a tradition, of alienation from all gods other than Yhwh, that is older than memory itself -- older than the memories of "other gods" who were Israelite gods, who were, in the traditional understanding, a part of Yhwh's heavenly court.
-- Baruch Halpern; York University, Toronto
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I know Halpern is trying to come to grips with the evidence, but he has far too much baggage for me. I don't accept his datings of texts. I don't think he is correct in using the term "Israelite" in the context above, especially with Josiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, who were all Judahite. He accepts the alphabet soup of source criticism, of which I'm not a big fan. (There is some evidence of different written sources being used, when two different accounts get sewn together, as in the Noah account, but I tend to see less of that and more an continuum of work on the texts, though from when I tend to see from the exile and not before.)

This does not mean that I disagree with his idea about other "Israelite" gods. We have direct evidence of Asherah outside and inside the literature.

However, you should be aware of his tenets. Were there not still asherim in the post-exilic period?

Deuteronomy is held by some (including me) as the oldest of the "Mosaic" tradition. It claims to be the words of Moses and is certainly the book (singular) of the law referred to in the Dead Sea Scrolls (and it is clear that the "Mosaic" books circulated separately at the time), so Halpern is sidelining it favour of probably later works.

Is there any reason not to believe that the Jewish religion up until the Persian period was anything but polytheistic (or at best henotheistic)? Halpern doesn't want to contemplate this and attempts to push the possibility back into the distant past.

Jayhawker Soule

BTW - I failed to note that Dr. Halpern wrote the article referenced above back in 1992, i.e., a decade ago. I do not know when he would now date the advent of monotheism.