'13-10-16, 09:07 MrFungus420	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Hey Folks! I think that I can make a good case for the Exodus to have begun in 1312 BCE, No, you can't. It never happened. There was no Exodus, the Israelites were never slaves of Egypt.
'13-10-16, 09:09 MrFungus420	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: If the "evidence" is the effects of somebody willing to trek through the desert with a bunch of exiles, working out the details of Mosaic Law, then somebody existed. There was no trekking through the desert, and there were no exiles.
'13-10-16, 09:10 MrFungus420	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Onyx8 wrote: What we haven't found since 1939 in the entirety of human history is any shred of physical evidence that this exodus (trek through the desert) actually happened. Sorry, had to fix it.
'13-10-16, 09:25 MrFungus420	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Wheelspawn wrote: Did Moses leave behind a visible legacy, write letters and public addresses and get acknowledged by external sources including those left by his enemies? Do you consider Mosaic Law to be a visible legacy? Do you have any valid reason for saying that Moses had anything to do with them except for the Bible? CharlesChandler wrote: Do you consider Manetho and Tacitus to be external sources? For Moses? Who supposedly lived and died centuries before either Manetho or Tacitus was born? No. Not even close. CharlesChandler wrote: For that matter, do you believe that Jesus existed, or was he just a myth? I don't know whether or not someone named "Jesus" was alive about 2000 years ago. I believe that everything supernatural or magical in the Bible is myth. And that includes the stories of Jesus. Jesus may have been a real person that the myths were built around. CharlesChandler wrote: The first written account was by Tacitus, who wasn't even born until several years after Jesus' (supposed) death. And, except for mentions of Christians and their stories, nothing about Jesus. CharlesChandler wrote: How about Socrates, who never wrote anything down either, and is only known through Plato and Aristophanes, who could have just made him up? (I'm just trying to figure out what you consider to be proof.) The difference is that Socrates is important for the ideas that he supposedly had. It is the IDEAS that are important. Whether or not Socrates himself existed doesn't matter. Everything about Jesus hinges on his actual existence and actual divinity. CharlesChandler wrote: But Ramose certainly left behind a decent paper trail, right up to the time when Akhenaten made it illegal to write the names of any of the lesser gods, including Ra. (This included defacing his own father's cartouches, since Amenhotep meant "Amun is satisfied".) We don't have any Egyptian records of Ramose's new name, since Horemheb obliterated as much evidence of the Amarna heresy as possible. The most conservative change would have been to simply drop the "Ra", leaving Mose (or Moshe in Hebrew, or Moses in Greek). But we don't have any legal documents certifying that this is what he did. That's nice. You can make shit up... That doesn't change the fact that there is no reason to believe that Moses ever existed.
'13-10-16, 09:36 MrFungus420	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: One more thing: no, there wouldn't be any Bez figurines dropped on the road from Egypt to Canaan, nor would they have appeared in Canaan after the Exodus. Only the Atenists would have left Egypt, and Atenism forbade idolatry. The specific example is irrelevant. Supposedly, the Exodus was around 600,000 men, (plus women, children, livestock and all belongings) wandering the desert for 40 years without leaving a single trace. Not one relic, not one pile of dung, not one campsite, not one corpse...nothing. Nothing except a story in a book that treats magic as real. Not that it matters, the Israelites were not enslaved by the Egyptians, there was no Exodus, it's a made-up story.
'13-10-16, 10:19 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus MrFungus420 wrote: The difference is that Socrates is important for the ideas that he supposedly had. It is the IDEAS that are important. Whether or not Socrates himself existed doesn't matter. [...] That doesn't change the fact that there is no reason to believe that Moses ever existed. I wholeheartedly agree with the first statement, that the important thing about Socrates, whether he was actually a real guy or not, was the impact that he had on society. Furthermore, I feel the same way about Moses. No, I don't know whether or not there was actually a real guy 3500 years ago (or whenever) who would respond to "hey Moses", nor do I actually care. The important thing is the ideas. But just as we would better understand Socrates in terms of Greek culture, in order to understand Moses, we need to understand his culture, whatever that might be. In that interest, it's legitimate to wonder where the ideas actually came from. And I'm saying that they came from Egypt. I'm also saying (on my site) that specific circumstances at a specific time in Egyptian history had curious consequences. BTW, I've been reading Moses de la Montagne's earlier thread on Akhenaten, and I have to say that it's one of the highest-quality discussions I think I've ever seen on the Internet. My most sincere compliments to those who participated, and to the moderators who have created the environment for such productive discussions. I'll try to raise my standards to get up to that level. Also BTW, on that thread, there were comments on how the monotheism of the Jews was influenced by the Babylonian exile, where they were exposed to Zoroastrianism (i.e., posts #5~#9). I guess the idea there was that Zoroastrianism had far fewer gods than perhaps the Israelites had. But there's another angle that should be considered, wherein it wouldn't have mattered what the religion was — exposure to any other religion would lead to a more monotheistic belief system. Offline somebody suggested to me that the nomadic Habiru tribes were likely candidates for monotheism, because they were nomads. The reasoning is as follows. In the relevant period of history, towns each had their own pet deities, which varied from one town to the next. If you stayed put, you'd keep worshiping the same god. If you moved to another town, you'd have to convert to their cult, or you wouldn't have any friends in that town. But what if you were a nomad, moving around all of the time, and coming into contact with all different kinds of cults? How are you going to keep it all sorted out? The natural response will be to perform the induction, and to start seeing the commonality among all deities — thus arriving at a more singular conception of gods (i.e., monotheism). So the idea is that yes, a bunch of illiterate Bedouins, uninspired by great theological treatises from the court of Egypt, or anywhere else, could have spontaneously arrived at this generalization. The same idea applies, in a different way, even to the Canaanites who might have remained in one place, because Canaan was a border state, and any time the balance of power in the Levant shifted, they were being ruled by somebody else, and they were being forced to worship a different god. Eventually, to keep their sanity through all of that, they developed a more generalized, more abstract theology. I still think that the specifics of Judaism came from Egypt. I just thought I'd mention that, because it sounds like a legitimate point, even if it contradicts my thesis.
'13-10-16, 11:09 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Hey Folks! I think that I can make a good case for the Exodus to have begun in 1312 BCE, during the reign of Horemheb (1319~1292 BCE). If you're interested, the full version is on my website. The following is the summary of the evidence in support. The full version explores the political, social, and spiritual implications of the Amarna heresy, its continuation through the Exodus and into the Promised Land, and its lasting impact on the Jewish community. I'm interested in getting a critical review of this material, by people who know more about ancient history and archaeology than myself. Regards to all, Charles Welcome Charles. ================================= First, we have to get an idea of when the Exodus occurred. No we don't. Seeing that there is absolutely no historical or archeological evidence for such an event, "we" don't have to get an idea of anything. Many ancient authors associated the Hebrews with the Hyksos, and the Exodus with their expulsion in 1560 BCE. But DNA studies now show that the Hebrews who settled the Levant were a thorough mix of Egyptians, and became racially distinct after the Exodus, due to their enduring unwillingness to intermarry with other ethnic groups. So the Hyksos expulsion was earlier, and unrelated. They were a thorough mix of all the Semitic people who lived in the Near East, and I don't know anyone who still believes that when the Hyksos were expelled from Egypt, they became the Hebrews. Manetho (according to Eusebius) wrote in the 3rd century BCE that the Exodus occurred in the reign of Rathotis, who most historians believe to have been Tutankhamun. After Tut's 10 years as pharaoh, Ay ruled for 4 years, and then came Horemheb. Yet if the Exodus occurred during Tut's reign, Moses didn't negotiate with the boy-king, but rather, with Horemheb, who was the commander-in-chief of the army and minister of foreign affairs under Tut. And you know this because he left behind a written record? Oh yes, it's called the Book of Exodus and appears in a collection called "The Bible." I especially love the part where Moses wrote about his own death. We can draw a loose inference that Moses negotiated with Horemheb from the following passage. Exodus 3:1-3 wrote: Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up." Midian was east of the Sinai Peninsula, while Mt. Horeb is thought by many to be at the southern tip of the Sinai, and by some to be in Sudan near the Red Sea coast. Either way, if the shepherd had ventured that far from Midian, the sheep probably would have complained (especially about having to do all of that swimming, which they don't enjoy). The mismatched geography might be the author's hint that we are to interpret the passage loosely. One possible reading is that Horeb is short for Horemheb, and that the "mountain of God" was the pharaoh, who the Egyptians considered to be a living god. Nope, we don't draw inferences from stories written by people who manufactured a history in order to make themselves appear great. The Seder Olam Rabbah (a chronology of the Hebrews written in the 2nd century CE) states that the Exodus began in 1312 BCE, or 7 years into the reign of Horemheb. That's nice. So because some rabbi in the second century made up a story, it's supposed to be true. Hmmm. I think we already know about a collection of books containing fictional history. Tacitus wrote early in the 2nd century CE (based on Lysimachus) that the Exodus occurred in the reign of Bakenranef, who all authorities agree came much later. But the story mentions Moses, who led people out of Egypt and into a new country, where they expelled all of the inhabitants, and built a temple. So it's the right story. Interestingly, Tacitus also mentions the outbreak of a contagious disease. We now know from archaeology that there was a pandemic during or just after the reign of Akhenaten, father of Tutankhamun. And of course the Bible describes plagues just before the Exodus. Did Tacitus have access to a historical account? Isn't it odd that Herodotus who wrote extensively about Egypt in the middle of the lst century BCE didn't say anything about the Exodus story. You'd think he'd have known about it, wouldn't you, seeing he lived in Egypt, and travelled throughout the area at around the time that the Hebrews were concocting their history. We can establish the range of years in which the Exodus occurred by looking at the latest and earliest possible dates. So the Exodus began no earlier than... 1405 BCE Late in the reign of Amenhotep III (1415~1352 BCE), Egyptian records mention an incursion into Canaan by "Yashuya the Habiru", which we would recognize as "Joshua the Hebrew". The Bible tells us that Joshua sacked Jericho after the walls fell down. This is archaeological evidence of an earthquake in 1365 BCE that leveled both Ugarit and Jericho, leaving them vulnerable to attack. With three independent lines of evidence in support, it's reasonable to conclude that Joshua sacked Jericho in 1365 BCE, after the earthquake knocked the walls down. If this occurred at the end of the Exodus, and if the Exodus lasted 40 years, the earliest date for the beginning is 1405 BCE. 1359 BCE The Hebrews took over the state of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham. Jacob found Egypt to be the land of Ramesses (II). The Bible doesn't tell us exactly when he was there, but to figure conservatively, let's say that Jacob was 60 years old in 1279 BCE, which was the very beginning of the pharaoh's 66 year reign. And also to go back as far as possible, let's say that Jacob was 20 years old when the Exodus was completed. That puts the end of the Exodus 40 years earlier than 1279, which would be 1319, and the beginning of the Exodus would be as far back as 1359 BCE. Isaac contacted Philistines, who didn't arrive in Asia until 1350 BCE. If Jacob was born c. 1340 (to be 60 years old when he went to Egypt c. 1280), and if Isaac was 30 years old when he had Jacob, then Isaac was born in 1370, and was 20 years old in 1350 BCE. This doesn't alter the range, but it does confirm that this is the right era for these people. ...and ended no later than... 1241 BCE The Hittite King Khattushil III in his treaty with Egypt mentioned "the land of the Habiru of the Sun" lying between his country and Egypt. 1208 BCE Merneptah boasted that he had crushed the nation of Israel. Nope lists of dates don't establish anything except a list of dates. Then the only question is: was there any sort of cultural upheaval involving monotheistic beliefs in Egypt between 1400 and 1250 BCE? And of course the answer is that the biggest monotheistic upheaval in Egyptian history, known as the Amarna heresy, occurred during the reigns of Akhenaten, Smenkhare, and Tutankhamun, or 1352~1323 BCE (start-to-finish). And were there any plagues in that period? Yes, and they were the only Egyptian plagues big enough to show up in the literary records of other countries, and in the archaeological records. We know what happened to the guy who tried to create a monotheistic religion in Egypt. That's right, his name was Akenaten, and his history was expunged and his temples destroyed. The Egyptians worshipped dozens of gods right up until JW-type Christ-sellers came to their doors. So the present thesis is that Moses' monotheism was the continuation of the Amarna heresy, forced into exile by Horemheb in 1312 BCE. (Note that this means that the fall of Jericho in ~1360 BCE came before the Exodus. This anachronism is addressed in the section on Joshua.) Maybe your thesis, it's not mine. So who was Moses? Exodus 2:12 tells us that he was a poor shepherd who fled Egypt to escape prosecution for killing an Egyptian. Then Exodus 5 tells us that the poor shepherd just back from the Sinai got an audience with the pharaoh to argue the case of the Hebrews. There had to be more to the story than just that. Aside from divine intervention, only an important Egyptian could have stood toe-to-toe with the pharaoh. He might have been exiled, perhaps for killing someone, but he was still influential enough to re-enter Egypt and meet directly with the pharaoh. Yeah, yeah. An Egyptian princess adopts a baby floating in a basket and brings him up to be a prince. Wait, haven't we heard this story before, except I think the prince's name was Sargon, and he was a real person. See how the Bible writers refurbished history to make it their own? Sigmund Freud was the first to point out the striking parallels between Moses and a very important Egyptian at the time, namely Ramose, vizier to Amenhotep III and tutor of Akhenaten, later to be his vizier as well. Hence it's possible that the person who talked with God at Horeb (or rather, met with Horemheb) was Ramose, second in charge under Akhenaten. Sigmund Freud also said that all teenage boys want to sleep with their mothers. This doesn't make it so. It's interesting to note that Manetho's list of Egyptian kings (according to Africanus) includes Rathose, who ruled for 9 years, and who most historians consider to have been Tutankhamun, based on the length of the reign, and position in the sequence. "Th" is not interchangeable with "m", and thus "Rathose" cannot easily be equated with "Ramose". Nevertheless, Rathose appears in no other literature, and it's possible that this was actually a deliberate obfuscation, accomplished by earlier priests, to mask the fact that Ramose ruled, or at least was co-regent, after Akhenaten, at least until the end of the Amarna period. Perhaps when the capital was moved back to Thebes, and the boy-king changed his name to Tutankhamun, Rathose/Ramose/Moses was displaced, and Horemheb was promoted, who as a later pharaoh completed the eradication of the Amarna heresy, including the expulsion of all those refusing to go back to the old ways, thereby causing the Exodus. Horemheb actually removed the Amarna pharaohs from the record, so in his version, he succeeded Tutankhamun, who succeeded Amenhotep III. The only way Manetho could have known of other pharaohs would have been through scribes, who preserved the names, but perhaps cared not to explicitly say that the architect of the Amarna heresy, and leader of the Exodus, had actually been a pharaoh. The Egyptians knew their history, because they wrote it down. Regardless, the idea that will be explored in this paper is simply that Horemheb was the pharaoh of the Exodus, and that Ramose was its leader. Good, I thought we were going to have to live with another thread that won't die based on the the idea that Moses was a real person and the Exodus, for which there is absolutely no archeological evidence whatsoever, was real.
'13-10-16, 11:14 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus MrFungus420 wrote: CharlesChandler wrote: One more thing: no, there wouldn't be any Bez figurines dropped on the road from Egypt to Canaan, nor would they have appeared in Canaan after the Exodus. Only the Atenists would have left Egypt, and Atenism forbade idolatry. The specific example is irrelevant. Supposedly, the Exodus was around 600,000 men, (plus women, children, livestock and all belongings) wandering the desert for 40 years without leaving a single trace. Not one relic, not one pile of dung, not one campsite, not one corpse...nothing. Nothing except a story in a book that treats magic as real. Not that it matters, the Israelites were not enslaved by the Egyptians, there was no Exodus, it's a made-up story. Not only that. There is absolutely no evidence of the fires they made to sacrifice the sheep they'd been schlepping around the desert for 40 years. There is no evidence that they actually did make clothes for their priests using the jewellery they "borrowed" from the people of Egypt. There is no evidence that the Ark of the Covenant actually existed. They supposedly made dyes using animals from the sea, miles and miles away from where they were wandering around in ever-decreasing circles, and which animals were forbidden for them to touch, let alone extract the purple dye from them. There is no evidence of births, and deaths and no evidence for all the ritual bathing of women (bearing in mind that there must've been another 600,000 of them) bathing once a month after their menstruation. There is no evidence of the cloths their used to stem the flow of their menstruation. There is no evidence of anything that would normally be found if a group of over a million people and their livestock walked from Cairo to Jerusalem in a straight line taking at the most ten days to do it, let alone the same group ever-growing in numbers, over a period of 40 years. Sigh! I wish people would stop trying to sell the BS in the Bible as "real." What a waste of intellectual talent.
'13-10-16, 11:19 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus MrFungus420 wrote: CharlesChandler wrote: Hey Folks! I think that I can make a good case for the Exodus to have begun in 1312 BCE, No, you can't. It never happened. There was no Exodus, the Israelites were never slaves of Egypt. Exactly. There is ample evidence of workers' villages in Egypt and recorded history of the people who worked on the construction sites in Egypt having been paid employees. There is no evidence whatsoever of a group who worshipped "I am" ever having been employed as slaves by the Egyptians.
'13-10-16, 12:27 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus MrFungus420 wrote: There was no Exodus, the Israelites were never slaves of Egypt. Agrippina wrote: Exactly. There is ample evidence of workers' villages in Egypt and recorded history of the people who worked on the construction sites in Egypt having been paid employees. There is no evidence whatsoever of a group who worshipped "I am" ever having been employed as slaves by the Egyptians. I agree. Here's what I said in post #20: CharlesChandler wrote: I explore this in more detail on my site, but to briefly summarize, I'm contending that the "Exodus" might have been just Ramose and a few courtesans who were forced into exile when Horemheb reinstated the Amun cult. There is no archaeological evidence of this "Exodus", in the Sinai or in Canaan, because it might have been a relatively small number of people involved, and the trail would be indistinguishable from a migrating Bedouin tribe. The thesis in question is rather just that the ideas that popped up in Canaan in a mature form, and that, over a period of hundreds of years, came to dominate, trace straight back to what was going on in Egypt at the time, and can only be fully understood in the Egyptian context.
'13-10-16, 12:40 DarthHelmet86	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler can I just ask you something, are you a Christian trying to prove that the Bible is true and inerrant? Or are you, as I seem to have gotten from your posts, merely posting about how there is a potential grain of truth hidden in the Exodus account from the Bible?
'13-10-16, 13:34 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: MrFungus420 wrote: There was no Exodus, the Israelites were never slaves of Egypt. Agrippina wrote: Exactly. There is ample evidence of workers' villages in Egypt and recorded history of the people who worked on the construction sites in Egypt having been paid employees. There is no evidence whatsoever of a group who worshipped "I am" ever having been employed as slaves by the Egyptians. I agree. Here's what I said in post #20: CharlesChandler wrote: I explore this in more detail on my site, but to briefly summarize, I'm contending that the "Exodus" might have been just Ramose and a few courtesans who were forced into exile when Horemheb reinstated the Amun cult. There is no archaeological evidence of this "Exodus", in the Sinai or in Canaan, because it might have been a relatively small number of people involved, and the trail would be indistinguishable from a migrating Bedouin tribe. The thesis in question is rather just that the ideas that popped up in Canaan in a mature form, and that, over a period of hundreds of years, came to dominate, trace straight back to what was going on in Egypt at the time, and can only be fully understood in the Egyptian context. There would still be records and archeological evidence. Which there isn't. It was merely the Hebrews in exile in Babylon making up stories so that their history would be greater than that of the people who took them into exile. Just look at every story in the OT, there's a parallel story in Babylonian and pre-Babylonian history. They were merely changing place names and characters, probably just writing down the legends of their culture and changing the names to fit their language, in much the same way that if we are telling a story from mythology to our children, in our language, we give the characters the English version and spelling of their names. In other words, it's a little like telling the stories of Hans Christian Anderson fit into say an American setting and changing the names into American names, then collecting them in an anthology and two and half thousand years later, people claiming that they are real history. In other words, just mythology and none of it that isn't recorded outside of the Bible is true.
'13-10-16, 14:09 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus DarthHelmet86 wrote: CharlesChandler can I just ask you something, are you a Christian trying to prove that the Bible is true and inerrant? Or are you, as I seem to have gotten from your posts, merely posting about how there is a potential grain of truth hidden in the Exodus account from the Bible? You are correct in the latter statement. I believe that Mother Nature is God, while most people's conceptions of God are attempts to compress natural law into personifications. Unlike some people who believe that (including Akhenaten, Ramose, & the Hebrews), I believe that such personifications are useful, though I agree that it's very easy to make logical errors when you start creating beings within your own mind. So I understand pantheists who are atheists, and I understand the Atenist ban on idolatry , though I am a pantheist and a theist (so long as I get to believe that God is a useful construct, not a physical entity). My interest isn't in the Bible per se, but rather, in the evolution of ideas. IMO, monotheism isn't just a simplification of polytheism — there is a difference of kind. The pagan gods were like people, complete with all kinds of character flaws. But in monotheism, we see the emergence of the concepts of right and wrong, and the abstraction of principles for living. And it marks the transition from superstition to science. So it's no longer whichever local lord is the most powerful, or which god is angry at which other god today. Rather, it's a sense of absolute and universal principles. This is an extremely important step in history, and I'm of the opinion that the nature-loving, non-superstitious ideas of the Atenists led directly to the Greek awakening in the 9th century BCE (thanks to the Hebrews and the Phoenicians). But neither the Biblical nor the historical accounts of how these ideas germinated made any sense to me. Then I wrote a paper on the Exodus, mainly just to preserve some work that my uncle had done on it. The more work I did on it, the more sense it made. I'm now convinced that putting the Exodus in its proper context is the key to the whole thing, including Judaism, and Jewish culture, and even the totally bogus motives behind modern anti-Semitism. But you'd have to read the whole paper to get all of that.
'13-10-16, 14:13 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Can you entertain the idea that the Exodus was just a figment of someone's over-active imagination. Or are you convinced, despite the complete absence of evidence, that there is some truth in it.
'13-10-16, 14:16 DarthHelmet86	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus I don't think monotheism is the emergence of the concepts of right and wrong and the god of the Bible to me comes of as exactly the same as the pagan gods with emotions and actions that I would expect from people. But that might be for another thread. I was merely trying to help clear up your intention in this thread with that post, I get the feeling that other posters here might think you are a typical Christian trying twist reality to fit their favourite book. Perhaps with your intention more clearly laid out you will get a different response I look forward to the thread progressing and ideas being tested by both sides. Or in an image
'13-10-16, 14:32 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Agrippina wrote: In other words, just mythology and none of it that isn't recorded outside of the Bible is true. Is there any value to "just mythology", aside from passing the time with story-telling? Or are there essential concepts and object lessons embodied in the stories, and are those, in fact, the whole reason for the stories? I agree that there's a lot of BS in Bible studies. But there's more to it than that. Was Shakespeare just good at fabricating stories about people he didn't even know, some of which might not have actually existed, or did he give us insight into the human condition?
'13-10-16, 14:38 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Agrippina wrote: In other words, just mythology and none of it that isn't recorded outside of the Bible is true. Is there any value to "just mythology", aside from passing the time with story-telling? Or are there essential concepts and object lessons embodied in the stories, and are those, in fact, the whole reason for the stories? I agree that there's a lot of BS in Bible studies. But there's more to it than that. Was Shakespeare just good at fabricating stories about people he didn't even know, some of which might not have actually existed, or did he give us insight into the human condition? We're not talking about Shakespeare who never pretended, and has never been purported to be writing history. He was writing fiction, even though there were some historical events in some of his stories, no one has ever tried to make me use them as a source for history. The Bible on the other hand is given out as a true account of the history of the Jewish people. I'm not denying and never have denied that it is incredible writing, considering the time in which it was written. If it were given out as a book of stories, in the same way that Herodotus is, we would treat it with the same respect that we do Herodotus's stories. In studying Herodotus, one of the first things we were told was that it isn't to be taken as infallible history, but rather as an indication of how stories about the peoples he met in his travels lived, and what stories they told about their culture. That is all that the Bible is too: a collection of stories of the people of the first century BCE, and what stories they told about their culture. From that point of view, I don't have a problem with it. It's when I'm expected to accept it as "truth" and as the path to eternal life, that I'm bothered by it. Firstly because it's not truth, and there is no eternal life.
'13-10-16, 15:06 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Agrippina wrote: Can you entertain the idea that the Exodus was just a figment of someone's over-active imagination. Or are you convinced, despite the complete absence of evidence, that there is some truth in it. Can you explain to me why Hebrew settlements in Canaan in the 1200s BCE and onward are easily identified by the absence of pig bones in their trash heaps? That doesn't make much sense, if you think about it. It wasn't because they were so overwhelmingly wealthy that it was easy to be picky about what they ate. And there isn't any religious significance to it either. In other words, Jews don't spare pigs because they think they're holy, the way Hindus spare cows. Rather, the Jews just think that pork is unhealthy. Why is that? It's possible that the enduring Jewish deference for pork has to do with something that happened in Egypt toward the end of the 1300s BCE, namely, an outbreak of bubonic plague, for which there is archaeological evidence at Amarna, and which germinates wherever pigs and ducks are kept together, which is a practice that began in Akhenaten's time. If a plague preferentially attacked people who kept pigs in Egypt, and if some of the people left, partly to maintain their Atenist beliefs, but also to get away from the bubonic plague, and if these people developed extremely strict rules for the careful preparation of meat, which preclude anything that comes from a pig, the whole thing is cause and effect. Otherwise, none of it makes sense. Along those lines, it's interesting to note that during the Black Death in Europe (1348-1350 AD), Jewish customs concerning cleanliness and healthy eating afforded them some protection against the plague. This might be coincidence, but then again, it might be cause and effect, if such customs date back to a time when bubonic plague was going around. Otherwise they don't make sense.
'13-10-16, 15:14 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Agrippina wrote: Can you entertain the idea that the Exodus was just a figment of someone's over-active imagination. Or are you convinced, despite the complete absence of evidence, that there is some truth in it. Can you explain to me why Hebrew settlements in Canaan in the 1200s BCE and onward are easily identified by the absence of pig bones in their trash heaps? That doesn't make much sense, if you think about it. It wasn't because they were so overwhelmingly wealthy that it was easy to be picky about what they ate. And there isn't any religious significance to it either. In other words, Jews don't spare pigs because they think they're holy, the way Hindus spare cows. Rather, the Jews just think that pork is unhealthy. Why is that? Very simply because pork doesn't keep in the heat. You can take a chance with mutton, it does survive longer without refrigeration than pork does. Or possibly because they identified pigs with dirt because they wallow in mud to keep cool in the heat. There is no explanation for why the people living in the hot and dry climate of the Near East didn't eat pork, other than that it had to do with them identifying food poisoning and death with them. The way to stop people doing something is to tell them "god said not to do it." It's possible that the enduring Jewish deference for pork has to do with something that happened in Egypt toward the end of the 1300s BCE, namely, an outbreak of bubonic plague, for which there is archaeological evidence at Amarna, and which germinates wherever pigs and ducks are kept together, which is a practice that began in Akhenaten's time. If a plague preferentially attacked people who kept pigs in Egypt, and if some of the people left, partly to maintain their Atenist beliefs, but also to get away from the bubonic plague, and if these people developed extremely strict rules for the careful preparation of meat, which preclude anything that comes from a pig, the whole thing is cause and effect. Otherwise, none of it makes sense. Mere coincidence. Along those lines, it's interesting to note that during the Black Death in Europe (1348-1350 AD), Jewish customs concerning cleanliness and healthy eating afforded them some protection against the plague. This might be coincidence, but then again, it might be cause and effect, if such customs date back to a time when bubonic plague was going around. Otherwise they don't make sense. They do make sense. People notice something works and they then decide to use it. Semmelweiss found that washing his hands between deliveries stopped women contracting puerperal sepsis, he didn't know why, except that when he washed his hands, they didn't die. So he told his staff to wash their hands. Just adding two and two and making four, nothing magical.
'13-10-16, 15:46 The_Metatron	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Agrippina wrote: In other words, just mythology and none of it that isn't recorded outside of the Bible is true. Is there any value to "just mythology", aside from passing the time with story-telling? Or are there essential concepts and object lessons embodied in the stories, and are those, in fact, the whole reason for the stories? I agree that there's a lot of BS in Bible studies. But there's more to it than that. Was Shakespeare just good at fabricating stories about people he didn't even know, some of which might not have actually existed, or did he give us insight into the human condition? You did not just compare the bible scribblings with Shakespeare, did you?