'13-10-20, 11:45 Thomas Eshuis	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Thomas Eshuis wrote: 1. Semites =/= Isrealites/Jews That isn't correct, Except that it is. CharlesChandler wrote: at least if the topic is ancient history. The Akkadian Empire (2334~2193 BCE) in Mesopotamia is considered to have been "Semitic" (at least by the Wikipedia article), and which everybody agrees to have come well before the birth of Israel, and of Judaism. Exactly, proving that Semites and Jews/Israelites are not interchangeable terms. Jews are a Semitic people, but not all Semites are Jews/Israelites. You keep conflating the two. CharlesChandler wrote: Furthermore, modern DNA studies have shown that many Middle Eastern people have the same DNA as the modern Jews. Historically, some of them descend from people who converted to Christianity after Jesus of Nazareth came along, and some of those converted to Islam following Muhammad. And then some of them are descended from people who were never Abrahamic. So equating Semites with Israelites and/or Hebrews and/or Jews isn't accurate, nor is it useful just as a gross over-simplification. But that's exactly what you've been doing. CharlesChandler wrote: Thomas Eshuis wrote: 2. Can you please formulate in one or two sentences, what the point of your thesis is? Please state clearly what claim you are seeking to defend? I'm saying that some Hebrew customs and theological premises stem from the Amarna heresy in Egypt, and from a pandemic (perhaps influenza and/or bubonic plague) that started during or just after the Amarna heresy (for an unrelated set of reasons), and then spread throughout the Middle East. This is a completely different thesis than you prented in the OP. You're shifting goalposts.
'13-10-20, 21:14 Oldskeptic	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Agrippina wrote: If you read the Old Testament, there is evidence for this with all the talk about child sacrifice and the worship of the god Baal. This is an undistributed middle. "Some Hebrews engaged in pagan rituals. Pagans engaged in pagan rituals. All Hebrews were pagans (until the time of Josiah)." That doesn't follow. You can't prove that Atenist ideas never made it to Canaan, and then germinated for 600 years until re-emerging in Josiah's canonization of the faith. Of course, you can't prove the negative, nor can I prove the positive. I can say that I wouldn't really expect to be able to prove the presence of Atenism in Canaan between the 13th and 7th Centuries BCE, since one of the 10 Commandments forbids idolatry, so there aren't going to be any little trinkets laying around to prove that they were worshiping Yahweh and not Ba'al. But that doesn't constitute proof. Except that there are lots of trinkets found in Israelite settlements that are symbols of other gods such as Ba'al and Asherah. What's missing are any symbols of Aten. Regardless, I find it implausible that the whole thing was invented by Josiah. We know that the Canaanites in the 13th Century BCE had writing, since they were the ones who adopted the Proto-Sinaic script that was passed on to the Phoenicians, who then spread it around the Mediterranean. We should suspect that they were recording their own history, but if there were any Atenists among them, they wouldn't have been manufacturing stelae to put in the town center, since Egypt had banned Atenism. Any documents would have been kept secret. Then, when Josiah reformed the faith in the 7th Century BCE, would he have stipulated that all extant literature be preserved? Or would he have ordered it to be destroyed? I'm betting that he would have torched all of the competing versions. Still, that doesn't prove that there was a literary thread, all of the way from the court of Akhenaten, through Moses, into Canaan, and down through the centuries until Josiah's time. But under the circumstances, I don't see how you can come to hard and fast conclusions that there couldn't have been such a thread. So now we are onto conspiracy theories. Agrippina wrote: Study the laws of Hammurabi in some detail. You found the mitzvot in the Code of Hammurabi? Do you even know what the mitzvot is? It is 613 rules that Jews must follow, and only one pertains to eating pigs. And it says nothing ducks though swans are included. I find it interesting that over a thousand years ago Saadia Gaon said pretty much what Steven Pinker and others studying food taboos have recently said; We consider them unclean because others do not. We don't eat them because others do. It is common and perhaps natural for people to label other peoples derogatorily by the foods they eat: Pizza benders - Italians Taco benders - Mexicans Potato eaters - Irish Bug eaters - Asians, Native Americans, and French It doesn't matter if we now also eat some of these same foods, the denigrating terms are what separates us from them. With regards to food taboos written into law or religious stricture or social guide lines it creates social barriers that insulate the family/clan/tribe/nation from outsiders. It is self isolation, and in the Israelite time period of when these food taboos arose a taboo concerning shellfish would have isolated them from the people living near the sea. And a taboo of pork would have isolated them from the agricultural Canaanites who raised and ate a lot of pork. A taboo against camel meat would have isolated them from bedouins that raised and ate camels. It is also highly likely that the sea of Galilee and its contributing rivers only held scaly fish with fins and that the people living by the Mediterranean Sea had a much larger diet that included eels and even rays and catfish. They eat them so we don't, and because we don't like them we don't like what they eat. Your mitzvot is nothing more than a collecting of ancient religious and moral instructions into a list of do's and don'ts mostly concerning what to sacrifice, how to sacrifice it, and what not to sacrifice, and who gets to eat it afterwards.
'13-10-21, 22:32 amok	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus ! GENERAL MODNOTE CharlesChandler: Your posts here and here contained the phases "What kind of twisted mind..." and "...because you're a coward," which have been deemed to be personal attacks against other members, in violation of Section 1.2.c of the Forum Users' Agreement. To avoid possible sanctions please refrain from this kind of posting in future. Please do not discuss moderation in this thread. Amok
'13-10-25, 04:59 amok	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus ! GENERAL MODNOTE Some off-topic posts have been removed. Please do not discuss moderation in the thread - members can PM any moderator with concerns and, of course, report perceived infractions of the FUA by the normal channel. Amok
'13-10-25, 05:11 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Good analysis of the reasons why they made taboos about food Old Skeptic. It really could be as simple as "to belong to our group, you're not allowed to eat the food that the outgroup do!" It's interesting from the point of view that when Europeans first came across the Zulus, they didn't eat fish or pork, and some of them still don't, while other African peoples do eat both fish and pork and always have. The reason for it could be as simple as you've explained.
'13-10-29, 22:47 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus I'm thinking of starting a new thread, named something like "The Origins of Judaism", to discuss the actual nature of my thesis. When I titled this thread, I didn't realize what a powerful knee-jerk reflex I'd get out of this gang. For me, the "Exodus" was a relatively small number of people, who would not have left an archeological trail, and where the important thing that left Egypt and settled in Canaan was the ideas. So I believe that there was an historical context for the "Exodus" story, which is important to understand if we are to understand the ideas, and the culture that emerged. But that really isn't the "Exodus" anymore. As someone stated earlier, the general idea on this board is that Exodus = 600,000 male slaves getting freed after God punished the pharaoh, and if any part of that story cannot be supported scientifically, then every part of the story is false. OK, if you have to have an all-or-nothing definition, then by that definition, I'm definitely not talking about the "Exodus". But I still think that the ideas came from Egypt, and this would have happened in a specific period. Consider, for example, the similarity between Psalm 104 and a poem by Akhenaten. (See this for a side-by-side listing.) James Breasted considered the similarity to be beyond chance, and I agree. Now, there are a couple of ways of interpreting this. One is to say that both Akhenaten and the Hebrews borrowed from the same oral tradition, while Akhenaten's version just happens to be the oldest surviving copy. But for that to be true, the sheep-herders in Canaan before Akhenaten's time had a rich oral and/or literary tradition that was distinctly different from their otherwise unremarkable pagan customs. How did such a mix of pantheism and polytheism evolve, and get preserved through another 700+ years, ultimately to get written into Josiah's canonization of the faith? That sounds odd to me. A more likely scenario is that Akhenaten formulated the pantheism in Atenism, and the Hebrews picked up on the ideas, and preserved them, despite being red herrings in the context of Canaanite polytheism. The significance is that for the Hebrews to have picked up on such ideas, they had to have gotten them from Akhenaten or one of his contemporaries, since the Amarna heresy was subsequently suppressed, and Akhenaten's poetry was not discovered until modern times. Hence the cultural cross-fertilization could have only occurred during a very specific period in history, and we can more thoroughly understand the ideas by seeing the Egyptian context in which they were formulated. Would anybody be willing to debate those issues, assuming of course that we're no longer talking about an Exodus in any way, shape, or form? If so, should I start another thread?
'13-10-30, 04:35 Oldskeptic	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: I'm thinking of starting a new thread, named something like "The Origins of Judaism", to discuss the actual nature of my thesis. When I titled this thread, I didn't realize what a powerful knee-jerk reflex I'd get out of this gang. For me, the "Exodus" was a relatively small number of people, who would not have left an archeological trail, and where the important thing that left Egypt and settled in Canaan was the ideas. So I believe that there was an historical context for the "Exodus" story, which is important to understand if we are to understand the ideas, and the culture that emerged. But that really isn't the "Exodus" anymore. As someone stated earlier, the general idea on this board is that Exodus = 600,000 male slaves getting freed after God punished the pharaoh, and if any part of that story cannot be supported scientifically, then every part of the story is false. OK, if you have to have an all-or-nothing definition, then by that definition, I'm definitely not talking about the "Exodus". But I still think that the ideas came from Egypt, and this would have happened in a specific period. Consider, for example, the similarity between Psalm 104 and a poem by Akhenaten. (See this for a side-by-side listing.) James Breasted considered the similarity to be beyond chance, and I agree. What is meant by "beyond chance"? That a few lines in one long psalm almost matches a few lines in Akenaten's long poem doesn't seem to me to be the evidence that you think it is. Now, there are a couple of ways of interpreting this. One is to say that both Akhenaten and the Hebrews borrowed from the same oral tradition, while Akhenaten's version just happens to be the oldest surviving copy. But for that to be true, the sheep-herders in Canaan before Akhenaten's time had a rich oral and/or literary tradition that was distinctly different from their otherwise unremarkable pagan customs. How did such a mix of pantheism and polytheism evolve, and get preserved through another 700+ years, ultimately to get written into Josiah's canonization of the faith? That sounds odd to me. A more likely scenario is that Akhenaten formulated the pantheism in Atenism, and the Hebrews picked up on the ideas, and preserved them, despite being red herrings in the context of Canaanite polytheism. The significance is that for the Hebrews to have picked up on such ideas, they had to have gotten them from Akhenaten or one of his contemporaries, since the Amarna heresy was subsequently suppressed, and Akhenaten's poetry was not discovered until modern times. Hence the cultural cross-fertilization could have only occurred during a very specific period in history, and we can more thoroughly understand the ideas by seeing the Egyptian context in which they were formulated. Or people praying to their god/s happen to say some of the same sort of things. Let's just ignore that Akenaten was praying to the sun itself and that Psalms 104 is a prayer to a god that created the sun. Would anybody be willing to debate those issues, assuming of course that we're no longer talking about an Exodus in any way, shape, or form? If so, should I start another thread? I don't think that you need a new thread. Just provide better evidence for your main premises than you have already.
'13-10-30, 07:05 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Oldskeptic wrote: That a few lines in one long psalm almost matches a few lines in Akhenaten's long poem doesn't seem to me to be the evidence that you think it is. In Psalm 104, verses 13~29 (i.e., 16 verses in total), the only verses not in common with Akhenaten's poem are #'s 15 and 19. So that's 14 out of 16 verses in common. I guess that "beyond chance" is subjective, but I found 14 out of 16 to be compelling. I actually consider this to be suggestive of a written Hebrew tradition, because I don't see any way that there could be 14 out of 16 verses in common after 700 years of oral story-telling. To me, that suggests faithful scribes, not ~23 generations of story-tellers with really good memories.
'13-10-30, 07:37 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus BTW, I'm about halfway through reading Moses de la Montagne's earlier thread on Akhenaten. Perhaps I'll supply more comments when I'm done, but for now, I'd like to say that the all-or-nothing mentality isn't terribly useful. Somebody says that the Hebrews got their monotheism from the Egyptians, and the rebuttal is that the Hebrews were not completely monotheistic. Well, ummm, neither are modern-day Christians, if you consider praying to Mother Mary and to Jesus (not to mention the Holy Trinity thing) to be polytheistic (which some people do). So what — that doesn't speak to whether or not the Hebrews got some of their ideas from the Egyptians. Personally, I don't find the theological points, or even the literary references, to be wholly convincing, and I wouldn't be intrigued by the whole topic if that's all there was. Rather, I find Hebrew culture to be anomalous in the ancient world, and in general, I consider anomalies to be evidence of forces. In the case of a social force that endured and remained distinct, right in the middle of the cross-roads of the ancient world, I consider this to be evidence of a powerful force. I'm not saying that Josiah (and others later) didn't cherry-pick from all available sources. People on this thread appear to be hardened against literalists — I can understand that, but that isn't me. I'm just saying that something distinguished the Hebrews from their neighbors in a way that is uncommon. That, of course, is a subjective assessment, so you can shoot that one full of holes. But I still think that social trends are rooted in practical responses to conditions at the time, and I don't see Hebrew culture springing up out of nothing in the 7th Century BCE (or later). But I do see the Amarna heresy, and the plague(s), to be unusual, and that these influences taken together provide the reasons for the distinctive characteristics of Hebrew culture.
'13-10-30, 08:43 Thomas Eshuis	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: BTW, I'm about halfway through reading Moses de la Montagne's earlier thread on Akhenaten. Perhaps I'll supply more comments when I'm done, but for now, I'd like to say that the all-or-nothing mentality isn't terribly useful. Somebody says that the Hebrews got their monotheism from the Egyptians, and the rebuttal is that the Hebrews were not completely monotheistic. Well, ummm, neither are modern-day Christians, if you consider praying to Mother Mary and to Jesus (not to mention the Holy Trinity thing) to be polytheistic (which some people do). So what — that doesn't speak to whether or not the Hebrews got some of their ideas from the Egyptians. Personally, I don't find the theological points, or even the literary references, to be wholly convincing, and I wouldn't be intrigued by the whole topic if that's all there was. Rather, I find Hebrew culture to be anomalous in the ancient world, and in general, I consider anomalies to be evidence of forces. In the case of a social force that endured and remained distinct, right in the middle of the cross-roads of the ancient world, I consider this to be evidence of a powerful force. I'm not saying that Josiah (and others later) didn't cherry-pick from all available sources. People on this thread appear to be hardened against literalists — I can understand that, but that isn't me. I'm just saying that something distinguished the Hebrews from their neighbors in a way that is uncommon. That, of course, is a subjective assessment, so you can shoot that one full of holes. But I still think that social trends are rooted in practical responses to conditions at the time, and I don't see Hebrew culture springing up out of nothing in the 7th Century BCE (or later). But I do see the Amarna heresy, and the plague(s), to be unusual, and that these influences taken together provide the reasons for the distinctive characteristics of Hebrew culture. This all reeks terribly of special pleading and circular reasoning.
'13-10-30, 22:41 Oldskeptic	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Oldskeptic wrote: That a few lines in one long psalm almost matches a few lines in Akhenaten's long poem doesn't seem to me to be the evidence that you think it is. In Psalm 104, verses 13~29 (i.e., 16 verses in total), the only verses not in common with Akhenaten's poem are #'s 15 and 19. So that's 14 out of 16 verses in common. I guess that "beyond chance" is subjective, but I found 14 out of 16 to be compelling. I actually consider this to be suggestive of a written Hebrew tradition, because I don't see any way that there could be 14 out of 16 verses in common after 700 years of oral story-telling. To me, that suggests faithful scribes, not ~23 generations of story-tellers with really good memories. I'm going to have to go with conformation bias, as in you see what you want to see. I'm also going to have to go with Miriam Lichtheim who translated much of the poem and wrote "The resemblances are, however, more likely to be the result of the generic similarity between Egyptian hymns and biblical psalms. A specific literary interdependence is not probable."
'13-10-31, 01:59 Oldskeptic	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: BTW, I'm about halfway through reading Moses de la Montagne's earlier thread on Akhenaten. Perhaps I'll supply more comments when I'm done, but for now, I'd like to say that the all-or-nothing mentality isn't terribly useful. Somebody says that the Hebrews got their monotheism from the Egyptians, and the rebuttal is that the Hebrews were not completely monotheistic. It's not that the Hebrews weren't completely monotheistic, it's that they weren't monotheistic at all until somewhere between the 7th and 3rd centuries BCE. Well, ummm, neither are modern-day Christians, if you consider praying to Mother Mary and to Jesus (not to mention the Holy Trinity thing) to be polytheistic (which some people do). So what — that doesn't speak to whether or not the Hebrews got some of their ideas from the Egyptians. What does Christianity have to do with any of this? Personally, I don't find the theological points, or even the literary references, to be wholly convincing, and I wouldn't be intrigued by the whole topic if that's all there was. Rather, I find Hebrew culture to be anomalous in the ancient world, and in general, I consider anomalies to be evidence of forces. In the case of a social force that endured and remained distinct, right in the middle of the cross-roads of the ancient world, I consider this to be evidence of a powerful force. I'm not saying that Josiah (and others later) didn't cherry-pick from all available sources. People on this thread appear to be hardened against literalists — I can understand that, but that isn't me. I'm just saying that something distinguished the Hebrews from their neighbors in a way that is uncommon. Finding ancient Hebrew culture uncommon in the near east is not the same as it being influenced by outside forces. In fact I think that it argues against outside forces acting on it much at all. That, of course, is a subjective assessment, so you can shoot that one full of holes. But I still think that social trends are rooted in practical responses to conditions at the time, and I don't see Hebrew culture springing up out of nothing in the 7th Century BCE (or later). No one has said that Hebrew culture sprang up out of nothing in the 7th Century BCE. Only that their worship exclusive of Yahweh began around that time. But I do see the Amarna heresy, and the plague(s), to be unusual, and that these influences taken together provide the reasons for the distinctive characteristics of Hebrew culture. You have yet to provide any substantial evidence for this amazing conclusion.
'13-11-01, 15:15 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Thomas Eshuis wrote: This all reeks terribly of special pleading and circular reasoning. For that comment to be worth something, you'd have to explain. Otherwise it's just unattributed name-calling. Oldskeptic wrote: I'm going to have to go with conformation bias, as in you see what you want to see. I'm also going to have to go with Miriam Lichtheim who translated much of the poem and wrote "The resemblances are, however, more likely to be the result of the generic similarity between Egyptian hymns and biblical psalms. A specific literary interdependence is not probable." For that comment to be worth something, you'd have to provide examples of non-Amarna poetry that are as similar to Psalm 104 as Akhenaten's.
'13-11-01, 16:14 stijndeloose	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Thomas Eshuis wrote: This all reeks terribly of special pleading and circular reasoning. For that comment to be worth something, you'd have to explain. Otherwise it's just unattributed name-calling. Name-calling? Who's he calling names??
'13-11-01, 18:23 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus stijndeloose wrote: Name-calling? Who's he calling names? My bad. I should have said, "Unsupported accusations."
'13-11-01, 19:51 iamthereforeithink	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus <Don't mind me. I'm just bookmarking with a pig, a duck and some popcorn>
'13-11-01, 21:00 Thomas Eshuis	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Thomas Eshuis wrote: This all reeks terribly of special pleading and circular reasoning. For that comment to be worth something, you'd have to explain. Otherwise it's just unattributed name-calling. You're trying to claim that Judaism/Jewish culture was special because it was monotheistic and it was monotheistic because it was special. On top of that you're special pleading or arguing from ignorance seeing that Jewish culture wasn't always monotheistic, nor was it the only monotheistic culture at the time.
'13-11-02, 03:35 Oldskeptic	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Thomas Eshuis wrote: This all reeks terribly of special pleading and circular reasoning. For that comment to be worth something, you'd have to explain. Otherwise it's just unattributed name-calling. Oldskeptic wrote: I'm going to have to go with conformation bias, as in you see what you want to see. I'm also going to have to go with Miriam Lichtheim who translated much of the poem and wrote "The resemblances are, however, more likely to be the result of the generic similarity between Egyptian hymns and biblical psalms. A specific literary interdependence is not probable." For that comment to be worth something, you'd have to provide examples of non-Amarna poetry that are as similar to Psalm 104 as Akhenaten's. No, because that would entail me thinking that Akenenaten's hymn to the sun god was similar to Psalm 104. I don't think that at all. Particularly after reading both in their entirety a few times. So rather than look at supposed similarities let's look at differences: Akenaten's hymn is a prayer to a sun god. Psalm 104 is a prayer to a god that created the sun. Akenaten's hymn is a prayer that only he can recite because his sun god listens only to him. And only Akenenaten can know his god. Psalm 104 is a prayer for anyone. In Akenaten's hymn the world and all men were created for Akenenaten by his father the sun god. There is no mention of anything like this in Psalm 104. In Akenaten's hymn the people rise with the sun god to worship it. In Psalm 104 they rise and go about their work. There's nothing very similar about the two works other than they are both prayers to a god and have a few words in common.
'13-11-02, 13:00 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Oldskeptic wrote: CharlesChandler wrote: For that comment to be worth something, you'd have to provide examples of non-Amarna poetry that are as similar to Psalm 104 as Akhenaten's. No, because that would entail me thinking that Akhenaten's hymn to the sun god was similar to Psalm 104. You accepted Miriam Lichtheim's point about the similarity being "generic", because her position is contrary to mine, and you deny that there is any similarity at all, insinuating the fallacy of too many questions (i.e., that supporting your point would certify the premise of mine, which you don't want to do). Thus you contradicted yourself. But never mind that. Providing a better example of similarity between Psalm 104 and Egyptian poetry in general would not certify the connection between Akhenaten and Psalm 104. Rather, it would reduce the supposed similarity to chance, thereby eliminating my point. And it should be easy to do — if Lichtheim supported her contention, she provided the example, and all you have to do is quote it. Don't pass up the opportunity to properly discredit the strongest supposed link between Akhenaten and the OT.
'13-11-02, 18:00 Oldskeptic	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Oldskeptic wrote: CharlesChandler wrote: For that comment to be worth something, you'd have to provide examples of non-Amarna poetry that are as similar to Psalm 104 as Akhenaten's. No, because that would entail me thinking that Akhenaten's hymn to the sun god was similar to Psalm 104. You accepted Miriam Lichtheim's point about the similarity being "generic", because her position is contrary to mine, It is a bit arrogant to think that I would accept any point just because it goes against you. and you deny that there is any similarity at all, insinuating the fallacy of too many questions (i.e., that supporting your point would certify the premise of mine, which you don't want to do). Thus you contradicted yourself. But never mind that. There is no contradiction. Superficially the two works can resemble each other in style (especially after translation of the Akenaten hymn into a verse like structure used in the bible), and they can resemble each other by the use of some similar images. But that doesn't mean that they that they are similar in a way that would make them the same, or even from the same source. Providing a better example of similarity between Psalm 104 and Egyptian poetry in general would not certify the connection between Akhenaten and Psalm 104. Rather, it would reduce the supposed similarity to chance, thereby eliminating my point. And it should be easy to do — if Lichtheim supported her contention, she provided the example, and all you have to do is quote it. Similar in style and using some of the same images. Page 87 should be of some interest. http://books.google.com/books?id=Cf8Ye9 ... ti&f=false Don't pass up the opportunity to properly discredit the strongest supposed link between Akhenaten and the OT. If this is the strongest link you have then you have little or nothing.