'13-10-16, 15:58 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus 'fraid he did. Yes.
'13-10-16, 16:17 Moses de la Montagne	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Agrippina wrote: 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. If that was their intention, then why did they waste so much more ink trying to prove Yahweh's superiority to non-Babylonian Canaanite and Ugaritic gods? Many stories in the OT are older than the sixth century BC. 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. If they were fabricating the whole thing up on the spot while they wept bitterly by the rivers of Babylon, then why didn't they just have Joshua's armies take a detour into Babylon to wipe out their forces, rape their girls, and leave their homes ablaze before heading west and reaching the Promised Land? That would've been a better, more triumphant story—and a lot more obvious than easing bits of Babylonian mythology into their creation stories. The Jews didn't need to be forced into exile in order to borrow from Babylonian myths. They'd been aware of them long before that. Polytheism has porous borders, and the OT has indications of a variety of cross-pollination. Those stories were cobbled together from multiple sources, edited and re-edited over time. It looks a lot more like the gradual refinement of polytheism into monolatry and monotheism than it does the deliberate wholesale work of sixth-century scribes.
'13-10-16, 16:20 Moses de la Montagne	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Agrippina wrote: 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. I think you can rest easy, Agrippina. No one on this thread is trying to argue for that.
'13-10-16, 16:48 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Moses de la Montagne wrote: Agrippina wrote: 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. If that was their intention, then why did they waste so much more ink trying to prove Yahweh's superiority to non-Babylonian Canaanite and Ugaritic gods? Many stories in the OT are older than the sixth century BC. They already had that idea, they just wrote it down in the 6th century. 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. If they were fabricating the whole thing up on the spot while they wept bitterly by the rivers of Babylon, then why didn't they just have Joshua's armies take a detour into Babylon to wipe out their forces, rape their girls, and leave their homes ablaze before heading west and reaching the Promised Land? That would've been a better, more triumphant story—and a lot more obvious than easing bits of Babylonian mythology into their creation stories. They didn't have to have fabricated them then, they just adapted them. I'm not denying that the stories had been previously written down. I can't do that because I don't know. There is the evidence from different writers having written the stories supposedly penned by Moses. I think (my own personal opinion) that the redactor who assembled the stories did the collations and that bits and pieces were added around this time. The Jews didn't need to be forced into exile in order to borrow from Babylonian myths. They'd been aware of them long before that. Polytheism has porous borders, and the OT has indications of a variety of cross-pollination. Those stories were cobbled together from multiple sources, edited and re-edited over time. It looks a lot more like the gradual refinement of polytheism into monolatry and monotheism than it does the deliberate wholesale work of sixth-century scribes. Yes, that's what I'm trying to say.
'13-10-16, 19:37 Moses de la Montagne	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Agrippina wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: The Jews didn't need to be forced into exile in order to borrow from Babylonian myths. They'd been aware of them long before that. Polytheism has porous borders, and the OT has indications of a variety of cross-pollination. Those stories were cobbled together from multiple sources, edited and re-edited over time. It looks a lot more like the gradual refinement of polytheism into monolatry and monotheism than it does the deliberate wholesale work of sixth-century scribes. Yes, that's what I'm trying to say. As long as we agree, then, that the 6th-century editors were working from stories that had long preceded them. Presumably they didn't invent the character of Moses wholesale; the "Moses legend" had already been around. Deuteronomy, which is pre-exilic, makes its appeal to authority by having Moses make its proclamations; Moses seems to have had an authoritative reputation among the tribes of Israel. So the shift to monolatry had already begun before the exile, with the Moses character as the driving force behind it. The question is: when did the Hebrew shift to monolatry and monotheism begin? Was it a late development (circa Josiah), or was it earlier? I think it was early. Just my personal opinion. It's speculation, I concede, but it's not baseless. Moses is constantly trying to merge the Yahweh god with the Semitic ur-god El-Shaddai ("the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob"), assuring his audience that the two titles refer to the same singular deity. This seems like it would've been an early concern, not a late one. And there is a tedious thread running throughout the OT where the Jews keep drifting back and forth between worshiping Yahweh and sacrificing to pagan idols, which seems to indicate a longer history of tension between poly- and mono-theism than there would've been if they made a more or less clean transition within the span of the hundred years before the exile. And early prophets like Hosea (8th c.) are already contending with the problem. The fact that so many of the diverse OT books share this constant theme suggests a long and awkward history with the concept.
'13-10-16, 22:12 Oldskeptic	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? Yeah I can, first of all there weren't any Hebrew settlements in Canaan before the 1200s. Secondly they didn't raise pigs. 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. Actually in an arid environment herders would find it more expensive to raise pigs than goats or sheep, or even cattle. And there isn't any religious significance to it either. The religious significance comes from entrenching eating habits with custom. Studies have shown that people simply won't eat and or are disgusted by foods that they are not fed in early development. This avoidance and or disgust can be reinforced when an enemy or people hated regularly eat the "disgusting" food. The avoidance can become a sort of cultural patriotism, which is easy to turn into a religious taboo. 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? Jews thought that pork was unhealthy because their god supposedly said it was unclean. But the question why would their god do that? Because they couldn't figure out how to eat pork safely? I don't think so, many other cultures had and have figured out how to cure and prepare pork safely. It is entirely possible and I and Steven Pinker think probable that the some of the foods proscribed by their god is because they didn't eat them and people they didn't like did. Borrowing from Steven Pinker: Food taboos also provide something like a cultural corral that keeps people especially younger people from straying. Why the restrictions on shellfish and camels? They are no more dangerous than goat, lamb, or chicken. Could it be that rival Bedouins ate camels and the rival Sea People ate shellfish? It sounds more logical to me than a health code. I remember when the French government refused to join in the war against Iraq that many government cafeterias and other patriot food establishments refused to serve French Toast (Never mind that only in the US is it called French Toast). What would have happened if the US had gone to war with France? All things French would have become culturally taboo for no other reason than that they were associated with the enemy. 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. That's a lot of "ifs" for a sensible conclusion. As I have written above there are other ways to make sense of the Jewish taboo against pork, and your hypothesis does not explain shellfish or camels. Where does this information come from that bubonic plague "germinates" where ducks and pigs are kept together? I'd like a citation. Also an explanation of why Egyptians kept on eating pork if it was so obvious that pigs were associated with the plague. 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. Well lets never mind that Jewish households were generally cleaner than the rest of the population and that they lived in isolated communities. Let's just say that it was that they didn't eat pork that they suffered less from the plague and be done with it, and also never mind that neither did many of the general populace. In fact the general populace didn't eat much meat at all because it was too expensive.
'13-10-16, 22:22 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Agrippina wrote: Mere coincidence. Right. So here's how this goes: One of the central figures in the Amarna heresy is Ramose, who had to change his name when Akhenaten made it illegal to write the names of the lesser gods, including Ra. The most conservative change would have been to simply drop the "Ra", leaving "Mose". With a Greek ending added later, this becomes "Moses". And the central figure in the foundation of Judaism is "Moses". Mere coincidence. There are so many parallels between Atenism and Judaism (e.g., the thinly-veiled Sun-worship in the Bible — especially in the earliest passages, the ban on idolatry, Akhenaten's version of Psalm 104, the fact that both of them had an "Ark of the Covenant" of similar design, etc.) that clearly the architects of the one religion were familiar with the other. Mere coincidence. Deuteronomy 4:41-43 tells us that Moses founded the town of Ramoth and named it after himself. But wait... why did he name a town "Ramoth" after himself, when the name made it sound like Akhenaten's vizier Ramose had founded the town? Mere coincidence. There was an outbreak of a pandemic near the end or just after Akhenaten's reign, which could have been bubonic plague, and which could have been caused by the practice of keeping pigs and ducks together, which began during Akhenaten's reign. Then the Hebrews develop extremely strict customs concerned diet and hygiene, including a deference for pork, and we know that these same customs greatly reduced their suffering in a much later outbreak of bubonic plague in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. Mere coincidence. Leviticus 13 contains no less than 59 verses on how to diagnose and treat skin diseases. Now, the unusual thing about this is not that [pseudo]medical practices appear in a religious text, since ancient priests doubled as village [pseudo]doctors. The unusual thing is that it goes into monotonous detail on skin diseases, and nowhere else in the OT is any other malady discussed in such detail. And of course bubonic plague is a skin disease. Mere coincidence. Numbers 31:7-24 tells us that after the battle with the Midianites, who were infected with the plague, Moses insisted that all of the spoils of the battle be either burned or boiled, to "purify" them. This makes sense if there was the possibility of picking up a contagious disease from such articles. Moses also stipulated that the soldiers stay outside of the camp for 7 days before re-entering. This makes sense in that bubonic plague kills 2/3 of all infected humans within 4 days. So if, after 7 days, somebody still isn't showing any symptoms, then he's probably OK. Since other skin diseases don't have the same germination period, this is circumstantial evidence that it was bubonic plague. Mere coincidence. Sure, all of these could be mere coincidences, and you can easily dismiss each one in turn. But that's a lot of coincidences.
'13-10-16, 23:27 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Moses de la Montagne wrote: Moses is constantly trying to merge the Yahweh god with the Semitic ur-god El-Shaddai ("the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob"), assuring his audience that the two titles refer to the same singular deity. This seems like it would've been an early concern, not a late one. I agree. And "Yahweh" seems to have originated with the Shasu tribes, who were described as "those who move on foot" (i.e., nomads). The hieroglyphics for this transliterates into Hebrew as YHWH. So this was all just religious consensus-building, and yes, these were all very old deities by any reckoning. It's possible that the Babylonian captivity motivated a move to a more monotheistic faith, and this prompted some house-cleaning concerning the long-standing duplicity between Yahweh and Elohim. But the root issue was certainly ancient, and the consensus-building would have begun in the formation of the first nation of Israel, before Merneptah destroyed it in 1208 BCE. Oldskeptic wrote: Actually in an arid environment herders would find it more expensive to raise pigs than goats or sheep, or even cattle. Yes, but it wasn't arid just for the Hebrews. Oldskeptic wrote: Why the restrictions on shellfish and camels? They are no more dangerous than goat, lamb, or chicken. Could it be that rival Bedouins ate camels and the rival Sea People ate shellfish? It sounds more logical to me than a health code. And who were the rivals who ate pigs? They couldn't just hate everybody, and refuse to eat whatever anybody else ate, and expect to survive. Regardless, I don't have an explanation for the restrictions on shellfish and camels. Oldskeptic wrote: Where does this information come from that bubonic plague "germinates" where ducks and pigs are kept together? I'd like a citation. Bubonic Plague Traced to Ancient Egypt Oldskeptic wrote: Also an explanation of why Egyptians kept on eating pork if it was so obvious that pigs were associated with the plague. Horemheb outlawed Atenism, and reinstated the Amun cult. If the Atenists had already made a pork-free diet a point of faith, it's possible that people who didn't eat pork were targeted as suspected Atenists. This sounds outlandish, but 2600 years later (when the Black Death was ravaging Christians more than Jews), the Inquisition fought the spread of Judaism in Europe, and they targeted people who didn't eat pork as suspected Jews in disguise. Oldskeptic wrote: Well let's never mind that Jewish households were generally cleaner than the rest of the population and that they lived in isolated communities. Let's just say that it was that they didn't eat pork that they suffered less from the plague and be done with it, and also never mind that neither did many of the general populace. In fact the general populace didn't eat much meat at all because it was too expensive. You contradicted yourself there — please clarify.
'13-10-17, 00:06 JVRaines	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Oldskeptic wrote: Where does this information come from that bubonic plague "germinates" where ducks and pigs are kept together? I'd like a citation. Bubonic Plague Traced to Ancient Egypt No mention of the pig-duck connection in that article. It does mention pigs in passing but dwells on black rats as carriers. Are you thinking of influenza, which is known to undergo genetic reassortment when reservoir animals (pigs, ducks and chickens) are brought together?
'13-10-17, 00:43 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus JVRaines wrote: CharlesChandler wrote: Oldskeptic wrote: Where does this information come from that bubonic plague "germinates" where ducks and pigs are kept together? I'd like a citation. Bubonic Plague Traced to Ancient Egypt No mention of the pig-duck connection in that article. It does mention pigs in passing but dwells on black rats as carriers. Are you thinking of influenza, which is known to undergo genetic reassortment when reservoir animals (pigs, ducks and chickens) are brought together? Perhaps — I saw it on a TV show and jotted it down, but now I'm looking for the literary sources, and it isn't jumping out at me. It's possible that I (or the TV show) merged statements about different diseases. So I'll research it, and post back what I find. (Do you have a handy link for the influenza info? Otherwise I'll study up on it on my own.) BTW, as concerns the earlier question of why the Egyptians continued to eat pork, if pigs were a source of the bubonic plague (or whatever the disease was), I found this quote which is interesting (from http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exfildip.html): Joyce Filer wrote: Herodotus (Book II, 45) relates that pigs were considered unclean and that its flesh was only eaten on the day a pig was sacrificed to two deities. We must remember that Herodotus was writing during the fifth century BC and so was recording events at the end of the pharaonic period.
'13-10-17, 01:39 Oldskeptic	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Agrippina wrote: 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. Sorry Aggie but I have to disagree with you on this. In warm/hot climates without refrigeration all meat is risky if not consumed almost immediately. The risk with pork isn't how much sooner bacteria grows in it as apposed to other meats, it is how well it is cooked or cured because pork can carry trichinosis as do many wild game animals. And as I mentioned in a previous post many cultures had and have figured out how to deal with this. Also trichinosis is not life threatening. It just makes a person ill for a while. The danger from all meat is from bacteria that begin to grow and that produce toxins that have the purpose of keeping other scavengers away. These toxins cannot be cooked away, hence an almost universal taboo against eating carrion. And a taboo against eating animals that have evolved/adapted to be able to eat spoiled carrion and survive, because they retain the bacteria and or toxins with their systems without harm to the scavenger. So, parts of the Judaic code concerning food taboos can be attributed to health concerns, but the concerns with any validation are world wide, not specific to Jewish law or custom. Many cultures around the world and in the near vicinity of the Jews thrived on shellfish of all kinds, and whatever fish they could catch, regardless of whether they had scales or not. It was not a health code stricture not to eat certain seafood. It was custom and culture that made these rules. The way to stop people doing something is to tell them "god said not to do it." I agree whole hearted with this.
'13-10-17, 04:52 Oldskeptic	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Agrippina wrote: Mere coincidence. Right. So here's how this goes: One of the central figures in the Amarna heresy is Ramose, who had to change his name when Akhenaten made it illegal to write the names of the lesser gods, including Ra. The most conservative change would have been to simply drop the "Ra", leaving "Mose". With a Greek ending added later, this becomes "Moses". And the central figure in the foundation of Judaism is "Moses". Mere coincidence. It's starting to sound like numerology to me. Yes coincidence. There are so many parallels between Atenism and Judaism (e.g., the thinly-veiled Sun-worship in the Bible — especially in the earliest passages, the ban on idolatry, Akhenaten's version of Psalm 104, the fact that both of them had an "Ark of the Covenant" of similar design, etc.) that clearly the architects of the one religion were familiar with the other. Mere coincidence. Yes. But that is only if you see similarities. I fail to see any in Psalm 104 and The Great Hymn to Aten. Nor do I find thinly veiled sun worship in the Bible. And both did not have an Ark of the Covenant. Deuteronomy 4:41-43 tells us that Moses founded the town of Ramoth and named it after himself. But wait... why did he name a town "Ramoth" after himself, when the name made it sound like Akhenaten's vizier Ramose had founded the town? Mere coincidence. Where does it say that Moses named the town after himself? 41 Then Moses severed three cities on this side Jordan toward the sunrising; 42 That the slayer might flee thither, which should kill his neighbour unawares, and hated him not in times past; and that fleeing unto one of these cities he might live: 43 Namely, Bezer in the wilderness, in the plain country, of the Reubenites; and Ramoth in Gilead, of the Gadites; and Golan in Bashan, of the Manassites. There was an outbreak of a pandemic near the end or just after Akhenaten's reign, which could have been bubonic plague, and which could have been caused by the practice of keeping pigs and ducks together, which began during Akhenaten's reign. Then the Hebrews develop extremely strict customs concerned diet and hygiene, including a deference for pork, and we know that these same customs greatly reduced their suffering in a much later outbreak of bubonic plague in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. Mere coincidence. How does keeping pigs and ducks together cause bubonic plague? Where did you get this information? And how would you know that keeping pigs and ducks together began in Akhenaten's reign? And what does this have to do with Hebrews that were never in Egypt? Leviticus 13 contains no less than 59 verses on how to diagnose and treat skin diseases. Now, the unusual thing about this is not that [pseudo]medical practices appear in a religious text, since ancient priests doubled as village [pseudo]doctors. The unusual thing is that it goes into monotonous detail on skin diseases, and nowhere else in the OT is any other malady discussed in such detail. And of course bubonic plague is a skin disease. Mere coincidence. But unfortunately for your hypothesis all of Leviticus 13 deals with leprosy not bubonic plague. Numbers 31:7-24 tells us that after the battle with the Midianites, who were infected with the plague, Moses insisted that all of the spoils of the battle be either burned or boiled, to "purify" them. This makes sense if there was the possibility of picking up a contagious disease from such articles. Moses also stipulated that the soldiers stay outside of the camp for 7 days before re-entering. This makes sense in that bubonic plague kills 2/3 of all infected humans within 4 days. So if, after 7 days, somebody still isn't showing any symptoms, then he's probably OK. Since other skin diseases don't have the same germination period, this is circumstantial evidence that it was bubonic plague. You need to read Numbers again, if you have ever read it. It wasn't the Midianites that were afflicted with plague it was the Israelites because their god got pissed off that an Israelite brought a Midianite women before the altar of the priests. Their god managed to kill 24,000 Israelites before some pluckish fellow put a spear through the man and his woman. After which their god apologized and took away the plague. Sure, all of these could be mere coincidences, and you can easily dismiss each one in turn. But that's a lot of coincidences. That's how numerology works.
'13-10-17, 05:05 Oldskeptic	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: JVRaines wrote: CharlesChandler wrote: Oldskeptic wrote: Where does this information come from that bubonic plague "germinates" where ducks and pigs are kept together? I'd like a citation. Bubonic Plague Traced to Ancient Egypt No mention of the pig-duck connection in that article. It does mention pigs in passing but dwells on black rats as carriers. Are you thinking of influenza, which is known to undergo genetic reassortment when reservoir animals (pigs, ducks and chickens) are brought together? Perhaps — I saw it on a TV show and jotted it down, but now I'm looking for the literary sources, and it isn't jumping out at me. It's possible that I (or the TV show) merged statements about different diseases. So I'll research it, and post back what I find. (Do you have a handy link for the influenza info? Otherwise I'll study up on it on my own.) BTW, as concerns the earlier question of why the Egyptians continued to eat pork, if pigs were a source of the bubonic plague (or whatever the disease was), I found this quote which is interesting (from http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exfildip.html): Joyce Filer wrote: Herodotus (Book II, 45) relates that pigs were considered unclean and that its flesh was only eaten on the day a pig was sacrificed to two deities. We must remember that Herodotus was writing during the fifth century BC and so was recording events at the end of the pharaonic period. Yeah well here's the whole quote, not cherry picked. In addition to the vitamins contained in the staple foods and meats mentioned above, protein was provided by poultry and eggs. Geese and ducks are economical to rear and may have been bred by ordinary families. Except on special festival occasions it is unlikely that the poorer families ate meat from the larger animals enjoyed by the wealthier sections of society, but they were at least spared the consequences of eating rich and fatty foods. We have already seen that beef, mutton, goat flesh and poultry were eaten, but the extent to which pork was eaten remains undecided. Herodotus (Book II, 45) relates that pigs were considered unclean and that its flesh was only eaten on the day a pig was sacrificed to two deities. We must remember that Herodotus was writing during the fifth century BC and so was recording events at the end of the pharaonic period.Also we cannot be sure that he observed details correctly or that he was given complete information by the native Egyptians he spoke to. It is even possible that Herodotus may not have actually been to Egypt. From his evidence, it has been thought by some researchers that pork was not eaten in ancient Egypt but the growing archaeological evidence suggests otherwise. Notice the bold part?
'13-10-17, 05:13 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Old Skeptic, I do think that among ordinary people, on the move, without time to spend curing meat, it is easier to eat meat that doesn't become inedible as quickly as pork does, and also possibly because raising pigs was simply too much work, and they didn't travel well, i.e. they don't follow their owners the way goats do. Goat meat doesn't need curing, they follow wherever their owners are going and when slaughtered (according to the people I know who actually do raise goats), the meat lasts a good few days before becoming edible. Pork on the other hand can become inedible after a car journey lasting a couple of hours, as my mother found out when she took some freshly slaughtered pork from my grandmother's house on a visit in the middle of summer, and by the time she'd placed it in our fridge at home, after a journey that took at the most 3 hours, it was smelling very unpleasant, so much so that my dad found it simply because of the smell. (He had a ban on pork, and she was trying to sneak it past him to enjoy when he wasn't home. ) I'm just saying from personal experience, which I know isn't a scientific study, unless you cure pork almost as soon as it's slaughtered, or at least refrigerate it immediately, you can become very ill from eating it, so it's better to just say "God said don't eat it."
'13-10-17, 05:16 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus From Old Skeptic's quote: Also we cannot be sure that he observed details correctly or that he was given complete information by the native Egyptians he spoke to. It is even possible that Herodotus may not have actually been to Egypt. From his evidence, it has been thought by some researchers that pork was not eaten in ancient Egypt but the growing archaeological evidence suggests otherwise. Indeed. Although Herodotus is offered as the first written history and he is called "the father of history" all ancient history students are made to study and write about why his history is disputed.
'13-10-17, 05:37 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Agrippina wrote: Mere coincidence. Right. So here's how this goes: One of the central figures in the Amarna heresy is Ramose, who had to change his name when Akhenaten made it illegal to write the names of the lesser gods, including Ra. The most conservative change would have been to simply drop the "Ra", leaving "Mose". With a Greek ending added later, this becomes "Moses". And the central figure in the foundation of Judaism is "Moses". Mere coincidence. The suffix "Mose" is found among several pharaohs, it was a common name, like the names Edward/George/Charles/William etc., are among the British Royals. The Hebrews could simply have used it because it "sounded Egyptian." There are so many parallels between Atenism and Judaism (e.g., the thinly-veiled Sun-worship in the Bible — especially in the earliest passages, the ban on idolatry, Akhenaten's version of Psalm 104, the fact that both of them had an "Ark of the Covenant" of similar design, etc.) that clearly the architects of the one religion were familiar with the other. Mere coincidence. There is no evidence that the worship of Yahweh was based on the Akenaten religion. You are on the right track by suggesting that the Shasu and other people from Arabia might have migrated to Canaan, and their gods incorporated into the construction of the god of the Hebrews. Read "The Bible Unearthed" if you are genuinely interested in researching the history. Deuteronomy 4:41-43 tells us that Moses founded the town of Ramoth and named it after himself. But wait... why did he name a town "Ramoth" after himself, when the name made it sound like Akhenaten's vizier Ramose had founded the town? Mere coincidence. Because the Egyptians ruled Canaan, of course there was a strong influence of Egyptian culture on the people of Palestine (in the 14th century) thus the legends could easily have developed from the stories of this period. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:14_century_BC_Eastern.png There was an outbreak of a pandemic near the end or just after Akhenaten's reign, which could have been bubonic plague, and which could have been caused by the practice of keeping pigs and ducks together, which began during Akhenaten's reign. Then the Hebrews develop extremely strict customs concerned diet and hygiene, including a deference for pork, and we know that these same customs greatly reduced their suffering in a much later outbreak of bubonic plague in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. Mere coincidence. "Could have" is not evidence. Provide evidence, show me something I can read about this. Leviticus 13 contains no less than 59 verses on how to diagnose and treat skin diseases. Now, the unusual thing about this is not that [pseudo]medical practices appear in a religious text, since ancient priests doubled as village [pseudo]doctors. The unusual thing is that it goes into monotonous detail on skin diseases, and nowhere else in the OT is any other malady discussed in such detail. And of course bubonic plague is a skin disease. Mere coincidence. They also called all skin lesions "leprosy" which is well-documented as a disease that takes years after infection to manifest but which the Bible miraculously claims was cured in Miriam in a week, see Numbers 12. Numbers 31:7-24 tells us that after the battle with the Midianites, who were infected with the plague, Moses insisted that all of the spoils of the battle be either burned or boiled, to "purify" them. This makes sense if there was the possibility of picking up a contagious disease from such articles. Moses also stipulated that the soldiers stay outside of the camp for 7 days before re-entering. This makes sense in that bubonic plague kills 2/3 of all infected humans within 4 days. So if, after 7 days, somebody still isn't showing any symptoms, then he's probably OK. Since other skin diseases don't have the same germination period, this is circumstantial evidence that it was bubonic plague. Mere coincidence. So what, they figured out how to observe proper hygiene, big deal. It doesn't prove that it was bubonic plague, and even if it was, so what? The presence of rats in the ancient world is well-documented, and we know that fleas on rats cause plague, so it was prevalent, that's nothing remarkable. Sure, all of these could be mere coincidences, and you can easily dismiss each one in turn. But that's a lot of coincidences. Of course, similar histories, illnesses, cures, eating habits etc., among people living in the same climatic conditions is coincidental. People in Europe all wore furs and killed animals for their furs to keep out the cold in winter. It's pure coincidence that they all figured that out, it doesn't demonstrate that they had a central fur-producing culture that we don't know about. In the absence of actual evidence that can be examined, it is mere coincidence.
'13-10-17, 05:46 Oldskeptic	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: Moses is constantly trying to merge the Yahweh god with the Semitic ur-god El-Shaddai ("the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob"), assuring his audience that the two titles refer to the same singular deity. This seems like it would've been an early concern, not a late one. I agree. And "Yahweh" seems to have originated with the Shasu tribes, who were described as "those who move on foot" (i.e., nomads). The hieroglyphics for this transliterates into Hebrew as YHWH. So this was all just religious consensus-building, and yes, these were all very old deities by any reckoning. It's possible that the Babylonian captivity motivated a move to a more monotheistic faith, and this prompted some house-cleaning concerning the long-standing duplicity between Yahweh and Elohim. But the root issue was certainly ancient, and the consensus-building would have begun in the formation of the first nation of Israel, before Merneptah destroyed it in 1208 BCE. Oldskeptic wrote: Actually in an arid environment herders would find it more expensive to raise pigs than goats or sheep, or even cattle. Yes, but it wasn't arid just for the Hebrews. Yeah but not everyone was a nomadic herder. That seems to be the Hebrew heritage and origin. The canaanites were farmers before Hebrews arrived on scene. Farmers raise pigs, herders don't. Oldskeptic wrote: Why the restrictions on shellfish and camels? They are no more dangerous than goat, lamb, or chicken. Could it be that rival Bedouins ate camels and the rival Sea People ate shellfish? It sounds more logical to me than a health code. And who were the rivals who ate pigs? They couldn't just hate everybody, and refuse to eat whatever anybody else ate, and expect to survive. Their rivals in Canaan where Canaanites who raised pigs. You yourself wrote that one of the easiest ways to tell a Hebrew site from others was lack of pig bones in refuse piles. Regardless, I don't have an explanation for the restrictions on shellfish and camels. But you came up with an explanation regarding pigs so easily. Maybe shellfish and camels don't fit so nicely into your hypothesis? Oldskeptic wrote: Where does this information come from that bubonic plague "germinates" where ducks and pigs are kept together? I'd like a citation. Bubonic Plague Traced to Ancient Egypt Nothing in your link mentions either pigs or ducks. Oldskeptic wrote: Also an explanation of why Egyptians kept on eating pork if it was so obvious that pigs were associated with the plague. Horemheb outlawed Atenism, and reinstated the Amun cult. If the Atenists had already made a pork-free diet a point of faith, it's possible that people who didn't eat pork were targeted as suspected Atenists. But there is no evidence that Atenists had made a pork free diet a point of faith. This sounds outlandish, but 2600 years later (when the Black Death was ravaging Christians more than Jews), the Inquisition fought the spread of Judaism in Europe, and they targeted people who didn't eat pork as suspected Jews in disguise. It not only sounds outlandish it sounds like rubbish. Oldskeptic wrote: Well let's never mind that Jewish households were generally cleaner than the rest of the population and that they lived in isolated communities. Let's just say that it was that they didn't eat pork that they suffered less from the plague and be done with it, and also never mind that neither did many of the general populace. In fact the general populace didn't eat much meat at all because it was too expensive. You contradicted yourself there — please clarify. Where do you imagine that I contradicted myself? Was it in pointing out that not only did Jews not eat pork but very few other common people did either? The bubonic plague in Europe was caused by rodent born fleas, unless it went pneumonic, something that happens and probably did happen. Then it can be contracted by breathing infected air. People in Europe were not contracting bubonic plague by eating pork, so whether or not Jews ate pork had nothing whatsoever to do with them having a lower rate of contraction.
'13-10-17, 06:07 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus OK folks, I have presented the bulk of the "evidence" that I have, for whatever that's worth. But I learned a long time ago to not bother jumping through hoops for people who are taking an argumentative stance, because I have never witnessed any of them actually change their position. Either people are open minded, and are willing to exchange information and ideas, or they already have all of the opinions that they ever care to possess. Since people like that rarely offer useful information, and never in a useful way, I'm not going to spend any time in a back-n-forth like that. If anybody has any new information, please PM me. Otherwise, I'm moving on. Cheers!
'13-10-17, 06:13 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: OK folks, I have presented the bulk of the "evidence" that I have, for whatever that's worth. But I learned a long time ago to not bother jumping through hoops for people who are taking an argumentative stance, because I have never witnessed any of them actually change their position. Either people are open minded, and are willing to exchange information and ideas, or they already have all of the opinions that they ever care to possess. Since people like that rarely offer useful information, and never in a useful way, I'm not going to spend any time in a back-n-forth like that. If anybody has any new information, please PM me. Otherwise, I'm moving on. Cheers! If you are as "open-minded" as you claim, you would be prepared to concede that you may have missed something, and stay around to discuss the arguments people are giving you, instead of sticking your fingers into your ears metaphorically, singing lalalalalala, while you walk away slamming the door behind you. No rebuttal, or counter argument, just "I'm right, because the Bible says so." Or "I'm right because it's how I interpret what I read, mostly because it agrees with what the Bible says." I'm sorry you are leaving before you've actually learnt something new.
'13-10-17, 06:27 Oldskeptic	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Agrippina wrote: Old Skeptic, I do think that among ordinary people, on the move, without time to spend curing meat, it is easier to eat meat that doesn't become inedible as quickly as pork does, and also possibly because raising pigs was simply too much work, and they didn't travel well, i.e. they don't follow their owners the way goats do. Goat meat doesn't need curing, they follow wherever their owners are going and when slaughtered (according to the people I know who actually do raise goats), the meat lasts a good few days before becoming edible. Pork on the other hand can become inedible after a car journey lasting a couple of hours, as my mother found out when she took some freshly slaughtered pork from my grandmother's house on a visit in the middle of summer, and by the time she'd placed it in our fridge at home, after a journey that took at the most 3 hours, it was smelling very unpleasant, so much so that my dad found it simply because of the smell. (He had a ban on pork, and she was trying to sneak it past him to enjoy when he wasn't home. ) I'm just saying from personal experience, which I know isn't a scientific study, unless you cure pork almost as soon as it's slaughtered, or at least refrigerate it immediately, you can become very ill from eating it, so it's better to just say "God said don't eat it." I have spent a large part of my adult life living in small towns in Mexico, Mostly Mulegé http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muleg%C3%A9. Back before this town had any grocery store with refrigeration the butchers would bring their meat to the mercados early in the morning and people would line up to buy their cuts and immediately take them home and put them on ice or into the pot. They shopped daily for their meat and if without a way to keep it cool they cooked it immediately. In these mercados there was far more pork than beef and no one was dying from eating it, even without a way to preserve it. I'll admit that I would not what to eat a pork chop that had spent three hours in a hot car, but the same would go for a beef steak or a package of chicken breasts. Bacteria begins attacking dead flesh democratically, as in it doesn't matter what animal it is. I know you well enough, Aggie, to think that you would recognize that your story is anecdotal and not evidence for anything.