'11-11-28, 17:36 Destroyer	Re: Akhenaten spin wrote: Destroyer wrote: spin wrote: There's fuck all chance that Akhenaten's solar monotheism got carried out of the court of an ephemeral king and transported to Palestine where the notion lingered for several centuries to be picked up by the Jews when their traditions started taking form, though not picked up by anyone else. No-one but Akhenaten was interested in Aten. His court was obsequious, but Aten died immediately after the demise of Akhenaten and no-one was interested in preserving the tradition in Egypt. As far as I am concerned, Akhenaten's solar monotheism is not what got transported to Palestine: But the idea of monotheism, which he introduced, could very well have become familiar to at least One Hebrew. How could the idea of monotheism have been transported to Palestine circa 1335 BCE and lain dormant for half a millennium or more before the Jews even took henotheism on board? The short answer seems to be, "it couldn't". There is not a shred of evidence to allow one to contemplate the issue. It's just butterfly logic. "Oooo, look, Akhenaten introduced monotheism." "Hey, but the Jews were montheists. I bet they're related!" "Yeah, but the Jews copied it from Akhenaten. Moses probably brought it with him to Palestine." "You're on to something there, I think." "Umm, sorry, but there doesn't seem to have been an exodus." "Don't be a wet blanket. Ya don't need an exodus. Some disgruntled prince or priest probably brought it with him to the promised land." "And the Jews weren't monotheistic at the time." "Haven't you heard of osmosis? Monotheism eventually filtered through, so of course it goes back to Akhenaten who had the idea first." All that is required is for One Hebrew to have sojourned in Egypt, at a later date, and become familiar with the idea. Then upon his own individual experience to have lent to that idea. ETA: forget about exodus and the Biblical account of events. What I am talking about here, is where the first Hebrew possibly got the idea. We cannot know this for sure. But since we have a record of Akhenaten, and his practice of monotheism, then at least we have one possible candidate.
'11-11-28, 18:21 Moses de la Montagne	Re: Akhenaten smudge wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: I can definitely appreciate your logic here, smudge, but doesn't the story of Josiah's priests finding the Book of the Law predate the exile? That, for me, evinces a pretty strong monotheistic tendency already in existence before the sojourn in Babylon. Josiah, if the text tells us anything, went on a wicked bender to eradicate as much of the Jews' extra-Yahwhicular worship as he could manage—and that he did it because he sincerely believed the original Law of Moses proscribed it. If we all accepted the veracity of the Bible you'd have a point. But that is not the case! The tale may be about priests concerned with control or may have been added/tampered with during/post exile (or any combination!). It is unclear. Either way, there is no evidence of an Akhenaten connection. Ah; I do not appeal for an acceptance of the Bible's absolute veracity. We can take the tale of Josiah or leave it. But unless his historical personage is disputed (and I don't think that it is), his story in the bible says something about his reign. Could the exilic writers really have invented a wholesale re-imagining of his policies only a generation or two after it happened? It's possible, but the exilic writers were not the first Jews to have had written and oral accounts of things. It would be believable if they had been in a position of centralized political power—in that case, they may've had the wherewithal to cover everything up with misinformation. As it was, however, they were a diaspora in Babylon. True, there is no evidence of an Akhenaten connection in Josiah. All I'm trying to do at this point is argue for monotheistic tendencies before the exile. Only so much of the Hebrew bible can be reasonably said to be interpolated and retrojected during the exile. If it's plausible that the Hebrews had monotheistic notions pretty well prior to the exile, then I think Akhenaten (via Moses) becomes a reasonable speculation of where they came from. smudge wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: smudge wrote: But my understanding was that hebrew religious leaders would have argued that they had deserved to be punished, deserved to be exiled in Babylon, precisely for 'whoring with false Gods'. If they'd done as they were told the exile would not have happened. Okay, but doesn't the very fact that they thought a punishment was deserved for whoring with false gods make them different from their neighbors? I can accept that the various Semitic nations had their favored and preferred gods, but whence the Hebrew notion that theirs must be worshiped as the one & only? We don't know if they thought it at the time or just decided that was a possible explanation for bad fortune at a later date and edited texts to suit. I suspect the later. Hmm. Your suspicion seems a stretch to me, though. What about early, pre-exilic prophets like Amos and Hosea? We would have to assume that practically their entire writings were composed later, and I don't know that even mainstream biblical scholars are willing to go that far. I think they're both well-accepted as 8th century writers and that their overarching theology was "Yahweh only." Amos even has Yahweh as the creator of heaven and earth. smudge wrote: For 'whoring with false gods' read 'not doing as priests would like'. I'm not sure that this resolves our problem, though. It only removes it by a step. It still leaves unanswered why the priests didn't like the whoring around with false gods if they didn't already have monotheistic predilections. smudge wrote: I think you are hung up on the 'why' move towards monotheism. Perhaps it is just logical if you accept one god as more powerful than another to end up with one 'above' all others....and then 'one' only. True, there is a certain logic to that. As someone earlier in the thread said, there was a kind of competition going on between the Middle Eastern gods of the day, wherein one nation conquering another would be considered a conquest for the victor's god. All well and good, but it points to the problem: from somewhere, the Hebrews had gotten the notion of predicating more than just macho might to their national god. They ascribed omnipotence and singular importance to him. If there was a theological pissing contest going on, why didn't anyone else respond in kind? Some other tribe could simply have said "fuck your Yahweh! It was Ba'al-Peor who made the heavens and the earth! He also made the ultra-heavens, so there!" Military prowess, at least, is something that can be demonstrated; getting fanciful about your god's lordliness is just empty talk. The Semitic nations seem to have preferred fighting it out. So why did the Hebrews develop this queer logic independently of their neighbors, who were allegedly just as henotheistic?
'11-11-28, 18:37 Moses de la Montagne	Re: Akhenaten spin wrote: How could the idea of monotheism have been transported to Palestine circa 1335 BCE and lain dormant for half a millennium or more before the Jews even took henotheism on board? The short answer seems to be, "it couldn't". There is not a shred of evidence to allow one to contemplate the issue. It's just butterfly logic. Nope; the proposition is that the introduction of monotheism (by a Moses character, who was like the Mighty Quinn to these people) influenced the Hebrews' religion. No one is suggesting they became perfect monotheists overnight. But it seems their so-called "henotheism" was of a peculiar flavor (different from their neighbors) from even before the exile. All I'm arguing for is the assimilation of it circa 1335 BCE: that they took the idea on board and that it was wrestled with in their theology for half a millenium. Because somehow Amos and Hosea already had the idea that Yahweh alone should be worshiped, and the J account in Genesis posited him as the Creator. All of this before the exile. You, on the other hand, seem to be saying they just took it up because their feelings were hurt after a stinging Assyrian defeat?
'11-11-28, 19:04 spin	Re: Akhenaten Destroyer wrote: All that is required is for One Hebrew to have sojourned in Egypt, at a later date, and become familiar with the idea. Then upon his own individual experience to have lent to that idea. Akhenaten's personal religion never got out of Akhetaten. It wasn't available to anyone outside his court. The religion was totally suppressed by Horemheb, who totally dismantled every trace of his temples and used them for filler in his constructions. The common people never experienced whatever it was that the pharaoh crapped on about in private. One Hebrew sojourning in Egypt would never have heard of the quaint private religion of a ruler whose memory was totally suppressed. We only learnt about Akhenaten because of archaeological finds in places that ordinary people were never permitted entrance. Then fast forward over 500 years to Judah, centuries of polytheism. We know that the Jews came into contact with the monotheistic Persians in Babylon. This is a situation that allows simple transference of the idea of monotheism without any problems whatsoever. Destroyer wrote: ETA: forget about exodus and the Biblical account of events. What I am talking about here, is where the first Hebrew possibly got the idea. We cannot know this for sure. But since we have a record of Akhenaten, and his practice of monotheism, then at least we have one possible candidate. Naaa, as I said, it's just butterfly logic. It's a bit like the story of the universal flood. Most cultures have a flood story so they must all be related, but we know that's bullshit. Lots of religions deal with death so they must be related!?
'11-11-28, 19:23 spin	Re: Akhenaten Moses de la Montagne wrote: spin wrote: How could the idea of monotheism have been transported to Palestine circa 1335 BCE and lain dormant for half a millennium or more before the Jews even took henotheism on board? The short answer seems to be, "it couldn't". There is not a shred of evidence to allow one to contemplate the issue. It's just butterfly logic. Nope; This confident "nope" has no support. Moses de la Montagne wrote: the proposition is that the introduction of monotheism (by a Moses character, who was like the Mighty Quinn to these people) influenced the Hebrews' religion. No one is suggesting they became perfect monotheists overnight. Didn't happen overnight and there is no evidence whatsoever to connect this private Egyptian monotheism to any other religion. And we know why. It wasn't allowed to get out of Akhenaten's court. Moses de la Montagne wrote: But it seems their so-called "henotheism" was of a peculiar flavor (different from their neighbors) from even before the exile. And you're basing this peculiarity on someone's analysis that wants Hebrew henotheism to be different. Moses de la Montagne wrote: All I'm arguing for is the assimilation of it circa 1335 BCE: Assimilation by whom? There was no separate Jewish entity at the time. Moses de la Montagne wrote: that they took the idea on board and that it was wrestled with in their theology for half a millenium. This is the same old same old romantic idea and baseless conjecture that has nothing to support it. Moses de la Montagne wrote: Because somehow Amos and Hosea already had the idea that Yahweh alone should be worshiped, Umm, that's, well, you know, kind of ordinary henotheism. Moses de la Montagne wrote: and the J account in Genesis posited him as the Creator. And the Babylonians' preferred deity was not the creator? Marduk, of course, was who the creator in Gen 1 was modeled after. The enemy Marduk fought before creation was the watery chaos Tiamat, who appears in Gen 1:2 as tehom ("the deep"). The wind Marduk used to defeat Tiamat is in Gen 1:2. The slaying is left out in Gen 1, but after Tiamat's death, Marduk slit her in two and lifted half the waters up and put half the waters under. And Marduk proceeded to create the world. Moses de la Montagne wrote: All of this before the exile. Naaaa. That's just trusting to the enemy. Moses de la Montagne wrote: You, on the other hand, seem to be saying they just took it up because their feelings were hurt after a stinging Assyrian defeat? How the fuck did you get that idea? The notion of principal deities was happening throughout the fertile crescent and was brought home with force with the succession of Assyrians with their one god worthy of worship, Asshur, and Babylonians with theirs, Marduk. And the little realms had to do obeisance to their overlords' gods. In such a set-up there was a slot in the structure for one god from each statelet. So the representative of the local deity paid homage to the god of gods.
'11-11-28, 19:37 smudge	Re: Akhenaten Moses de la Montagne wrote: Ah; I do not appeal for an acceptance of the Bible's absolute veracity. We can take the tale of Josiah or leave it. But unless his historical personage is disputed (and I don't think that it is), his story in the bible says something about his reign. Could the exilic writers really have invented a wholesale re-imagining of his policies only a generation or two after it happened? What we cant be sure of is how much of what is recorded regarding Josiah is accurate, how much is complete bollox, how much truth or spin, what the exact motives of any spin might be, and at which point any spin was applied. Same for most (if not all!) of the Bible. Moses de la Montagne wrote: True, there is no evidence of an Akhenaten connection in Josiah. All I'm trying to do at this point is argue for monotheistic tendencies before the exile. Only so much of the Hebrew bible can be reasonably said to be interpolated and retrojected during the exile. If it's plausible that the Hebrews had monotheistic notions pretty well prior to the exile, then I think Akhenaten (via Moses) becomes a reasonable speculation of where they came from. Monotheistic tendencies pre exile are 'plausible'. But it is unclear to what extent the tendencies were more accurately henotheism/monolatry and to what extent they were about control/politics. Influence during/post exile seems clear, the extent of which is hard to pin down. Speculation about Akhenaten is fine. But thats all it is.
'11-11-28, 19:48 Destroyer	Re: Akhenaten spin wrote: Destroyer wrote: All that is required is for One Hebrew to have sojourned in Egypt, at a later date, and become familiar with the idea. Then upon his own individual experience to have lent to that idea. Akhenaten's personal religion never got out of Akhetaten. It wasn't available to anyone outside his court. The religion was totally suppressed by Horemheb, who totally dismantled every trace of his temples and used them for filler in his constructions. The common people never experienced whatever it was that the pharaoh crapped on about in private. One Hebrew sojourning in Egypt would never have heard of the quaint private religion of a ruler whose memory was totally suppressed. We only learnt about Akhenaten because of archaeological finds in places that ordinary people were never permitted entrance. Then fast forward over 500 years to Judah, centuries of polytheism. We know that the Jews came into contact with the monotheistic Persians in Babylon. This is a situation that allows simple transference of the idea of monotheism without any problems whatsoever. Destroyer wrote: ETA: forget about exodus and the Biblical account of events. What I am talking about here, is where the first Hebrew possibly got the idea. We cannot know this for sure. But since we have a record of Akhenaten, and his practice of monotheism, then at least we have one possible candidate. Naaa, as I said, it's just butterfly logic. It's a bit like the story of the universal flood. Most cultures have a flood story so they must all be related, but we know that's bullshit. Lots of religions deal with death so they must be related!? Even if the original concept of monotheism as practiced by the Hebrews was not derived from Akhenaten, it was derived from somewhere. It matters not where the original concept came from; just that the Hebrews eventually practiced a religion based upon this concept. So, the fact that this concept eventually replaced the concept of other gods existing - amongst the Hebrews/Jews - is the only significant point. Monotheism became the dominant belief amongst the Jews (totally contrary to the practices and beliefs of the day).
'11-11-28, 20:33 spin	Re: Akhenaten Destroyer wrote: Even if the original concept of monotheism as practiced by the Hebrews was not derived from Akhenaten, it was derived from somewhere. (As an aside, there are two independent developments of monotheism that I know about, so it should be reasonable that others could develop the idea without external stimulus, though in the case of the Jews, the evidence seems strong for it being derived.) Destroyer wrote: It matters not where the original concept came from; just that the Hebrews eventually practiced a religion based upon this concept. So, the fact that this concept eventually replaced the concept of other gods existing - amongst the Hebrews/Jews - is the only significant point. Monotheism became the dominant belief amongst the Jews (totally contrary to the practices and beliefs of the day). Makes sense.
'11-11-28, 20:43 Moses de la Montagne	Re: Akhenaten spin wrote: Didn't happen overnight and there is no evidence whatsoever to connect this private Egyptian monotheism to any other religion. And we know why. It wasn't allowed to get out of Akhenaten's court. And yet, somehow, we still know of the existence of Akhenaten's monotheism. How come? spin wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: Because somehow Amos and Hosea already had the idea that Yahweh alone should be worshiped, Umm, that's, well, you know, kind of ordinary henotheism. Not as I've been made to understand it. The character of Jewish worship was that their god was singularly superior to all others, and the Hebrew prophets burn with a white-hot passion for how sick & revolted they are by pagan worship; Jeremiah calls other gods "false wooden idols"—hardly a designation that comes close to acknowledging their actual existence! Perhaps "monolatry" is a better term. Henotheism, I take it, is much less perturbed about the existence of other gods: such as with Hindu worship of a preferred god within a broad pantheon consisting of others, or in the Middle Eastern gods who simply usurped the throne of other gods by subduing their nations. Neither of those ways is the Hebrew style. spin wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: and the J account in Genesis posited him as the Creator. And the Babylonians' preferred deity was not the creator? Marduk, of course, was who the creator in Gen 1 was modeled after. The enemy Marduk fought before creation was the watery chaos Tiamat, who appears in Gen 1:2 as tehom ("the deep"). The wind Marduk used to defeat Tiamat is in Gen 1:2. The slaying is left out in Gen 1, but after Tiamat's death, Marduk slit her in two and lifted half the waters up and put half the waters under. And Marduk proceeded to create the world. Good point, but consider how much more finessed the Hebrew version is. Marduk is a creator through toil & struggle (and other gods seem to pre-exist him), while old Yahweh sits back in the dark like Peter Fonda puffing on a spliff and just speaks the world into existence. I don't deny that the Hebrews based their creation myth on the Babylonian genesis stories. Clearly they did, but they came to it with some rather more refined concepts of their creator. spin wrote: The notion of principal deities was happening throughout the fertile crescent and was brought home with force with the succession of Assyrians with their one god worthy of worship, Asshur, and Babylonians with theirs, Marduk. And the little realms had to do obeisance to their overlords' gods. In such a set-up there was a slot in the structure for one god from each statelet. So the representative of the local deity paid homage to the god of gods. Then that system displays a much more unflappable acceptance of the multiplicity of gods than is reflected in the Hebrew scheme. It assumes that the various gods can be promoted and demoted within a hierarchy, whereas the Jewish prophets would not brook any such ladder of ranks for Yahweh, who was above such competition. Why the proliferation of graven images in all the neighboring cults, whilst the Jews formulated a ban on such representations? I'm sorry, but the Hebrews seem much more given over to monotheistic tendencies than the other nations.
'11-11-28, 22:15 spin	Re: Akhenaten Moses de la Montagne wrote: spin wrote: Didn't happen overnight and there is no evidence whatsoever to connect this private Egyptian monotheism to any other religion. And we know why. It wasn't allowed to get out of Akhenaten's court. And yet, somehow, we still know of the existence of Akhenaten's monotheism. How come? Modern archaeology. Moses de la Montagne wrote: spin wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: Because somehow Amos and Hosea already had the idea that Yahweh alone should be worshiped, Umm, that's, well, you know, kind of ordinary henotheism. Not as I've been made to understand it. The character of Jewish worship was that their god was singularly superior to all others, Just like Asshur and Marduk. Moses de la Montagne wrote: and the Hebrew prophets burn with a white-hot passion for how sick & revolted they are by pagan worship; Too bad you've got texts that have been preserved by Jewish scribes who believed the in vogue religion. You understand the motto from 1984, "who controls the present controls the past"? The past can become as the present wants to fashion it. Moses de la Montagne wrote: Jeremiah calls other gods "false wooden idols"—hardly a designation that comes close to acknowledging their actual existence! And Jeremiah is ostensibly of the early exilic period. Moses de la Montagne wrote: Perhaps "monolatry" is a better term. Henotheism, I take it, is much less perturbed about the existence of other gods: Josiah according to the bible still had to deal with the high places of other deities. Many Jews were being criticized by the big mouthed prophets for their beliefs in other gods. What you have is a conflict within the Jewish society over worship. Moses de la Montagne wrote: such as with Hindu worship of a preferred god within a broad pantheon consisting of others, or in the Middle Eastern gods who simply usurped the throne of other gods by subduing their nations. Neither of those ways is the Hebrew style. Hebrew style is the Persian style. Moses de la Montagne wrote: spin wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: and the J account in Genesis posited him as the Creator. And the Babylonians' preferred deity was not the creator? Marduk, of course, was who the creator in Gen 1 was modeled after. The enemy Marduk fought before creation was the watery chaos Tiamat, who appears in Gen 1:2 as tehom ("the deep"). The wind Marduk used to defeat Tiamat is in Gen 1:2. The slaying is left out in Gen 1, but after Tiamat's death, Marduk slit her in two and lifted half the waters up and put half the waters under. And Marduk proceeded to create the world. Good point, but consider how much more finessed the Hebrew version is. What is this? Jewish religious appreciation week? The Marduk creation had been around for a millenium when the Jews wrote Gen 1. Moses de la Montagne wrote: Marduk is a creator through toil & struggle (and other gods seem to pre-exist him), The only struggle is with watery chaos, a battle that has been sublimated, but traces of which are still to be found in the Hebrew bible. Just look at Isa 27:1 though in the future tense, is extremely similar to a passage from Ugarit which described the struggle with the watery dragon, called Lotan in Ugarit and Leviathan in Hebrew. Moses de la Montagne wrote: while old Yahweh sits back in the dark like Peter Fonda puffing on a spliff and just speaks the world into existence. I don't deny that the Hebrews based their creation myth on the Babylonian genesis stories. Clearly they did, but they came to it with some rather more refined concepts of their creator. You can see the different stages of development of the Jewish creator. Gen 1 is the latest stage and the most sophisticated. Gen 2:4ff is a much earlier hands on creator. Moses de la Montagne wrote: spin wrote: The notion of principal deities was happening throughout the fertile crescent and was brought home with force with the succession of Assyrians with their one god worthy of worship, Asshur, and Babylonians with theirs, Marduk. And the little realms had to do obeisance to their overlords' gods. In such a set-up there was a slot in the structure for one god from each statelet. So the representative of the local deity paid homage to the god of gods. Then that system displays a much more unflappable acceptance of the multiplicity of gods than is reflected in the Hebrew scheme. It assumes that the various gods can be promoted and demoted within a hierarchy, whereas the Jewish prophets would not brook any such ladder of ranks for Yahweh, who was above such competition. Why the proliferation of graven images in all the neighboring cults, whilst the Jews formulated a ban on such representations? I'm sorry, but the Hebrews seem much more given over to monotheistic tendencies than the other nations. Fuck, when you've settled on a conclusion you certainly don't consider anything else. You seem to continuously treat the HB as literally correct when you're not trying to be critical. You have no idea when theological changes took place, yet you are making definitive statements regardless of temporal concerns. How many of the theological ideas being kicked around are actually the result of a long evolution ending with the Hasmonean kings? The oldest Hebrew religions texts of any significance are the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest of which has been dated to the 3rd c. BCE. Your Hebrews who were much more given over to monotheistic tendencies seem to date between the early exilic period (Jeremiah) and goes through to the Hasmoneans. Ezra was sent to Jerusalem according to the bible under the stimulus of the monotheistic Persians, who had taken control of Babylon while the Jews were there. That was the first contact the Jews had that we know about with monotheism. How much of your picture of the Jews came prior to the Persians??
'11-11-29, 00:40 sennekuyl	Re: Akhenaten :bookmarking:
'11-11-29, 05:25 Moses de la Montagne	Re: Akhenaten spin wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: spin wrote: Didn't happen overnight and there is no evidence whatsoever to connect this private Egyptian monotheism to any other religion. And we know why. It wasn't allowed to get out of Akhenaten's court. And yet, somehow, we still know of the existence of Akhenaten's monotheism. How come? Modern archaeology. Well then okay. If modern archaeology can reveal it to us, why couldn't an expatriate member of the pharaonic court reveal it to the Hebrews? Is there irrefutable evidence that the entire inner circle of Atenists all just sunk into the sand after the death of Akhenaten? If archaeologists can find it after the fact, then I don't see why someone contemporaneous to it couldn't simply dispense it after the fact. spin wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: spin wrote: Umm, that's, well, you know, kind of ordinary henotheism. Not as I've been made to understand it. The character of Jewish worship was that their god was singularly superior to all others, Just like Asshur and Marduk. Did Asshur- and Marduk-worshipers use wanton harlotry as a metaphor for acknowledging other gods? Did they believe that Asshur and Marduk had a sacred eternal covenant with them that couldn't be transgressed under penalty of their god's violent wrath? I'm sure the disciples of Asshur and Marduk were pretty loyal and all, but did their priests and prophets really howl with the same kind of intensity as the Jews did? spin wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: Jeremiah calls other gods "false wooden idols"—hardly a designation that comes close to acknowledging their actual existence! And Jeremiah is ostensibly of the early exilic period. I understood Jeremiah to be banging on about false idols before the exilic period. No? spin wrote: Josiah according to the bible still had to deal with the high places of other deities. Many Jews were being criticized by the big mouthed prophets for their beliefs in other gods. What you have is a conflict within the Jewish society over worship. What you also have is that the big-mouthed prophets must've gotten their notions from somewhere before they started their criticizing. We could probably go back and forth on this for a while, so I'll rest my argument on Amos, Hosea, and Jeremiah. If the Assyrian "henotheism" of the 8th century can be satisfactorily shown to rival the ravings of those three writers in its understanding of strict fidelity to god, then I'll concede that Hebrew theology probably borrowed most of its monolatry from the north. If not, I'll continue to suppose that the wails of the prophets were taking up the vestiges of the Hebrew's Atenist loan from a Moses of old. spin wrote: Hebrew style is the Persian style. That's an awfully late style to have been acquired if it didn't happen until the exile. The Hebrews were geographically closer to Egypt than Persia in their infancy. And doesn't Amos predate Zoroaster? spin wrote: What is this? Jewish religious appreciation week? The Marduk creation had been around for a millenium when the Jews wrote Gen 1. It may be Jewish appreciation week for you, who credit a cadre of Jewish priests with nearly the wholesale reinvention of their religion in less than a century, and in a foreign land, no less. Apparently they had plenty of spare time after they sat down by the rivers of Babylon and finished crying for Zion. Mazel tov, exilic Hebrews! Personally, I wasn't aware that a composition date of Genesis 1 had been definitively established, but I'm willing to take correction on this. I consider it to have been an oral tradition for long before it was written down, and I don't think that's a left-field position. I can't help it if it's more serene than the Akkadian version. That's your problem, not mine. spin wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: Marduk is a creator through toil & struggle (and other gods seem to pre-exist him), The only struggle is with watery chaos, a battle that has been sublimated, but traces of which are still to be found in the Hebrew bible. Marduk undertakes creation after a bout of mortal combat with Tiamat, does he not? If the Jews suppressed this aspect and saw fit to just commence things with their Yahweh, then I think it suggests something about their existing theology. Doubtless you'll say they just edited the whole thing much later. spin wrote: You can see the different stages of development of the Jewish creator. Gen 1 is the latest stage and the most sophisticated. Gen 2:4ff is a much earlier hands on creator. I'm sorry, I thought this stuff was supposed to have all been cleverly revised & polished much later, during the exile—at least according to your version. So why are the roots showing? spin wrote: Fuck, when you've settled on a conclusion you certainly don't consider anything else. You seem to continuously treat the HB as literally correct when you're not trying to be critical. You have no idea when theological changes took place, yet you are making definitive statements regardless of temporal concerns. How many of the theological ideas being kicked around are actually the result of a long evolution ending with the Hasmonean kings? The oldest Hebrew religions texts of any significance are the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest of which has been dated to the 3rd c. BCE. Your Hebrews who were much more given over to monotheistic tendencies seem to date between the early exilic period (Jeremiah) and goes through to the Hasmoneans. Ezra was sent to Jerusalem according to the bible under the stimulus of the monotheistic Persians, who had taken control of Babylon while the Jews were there. That was the first contact the Jews had that we know about with monotheism. How much of your picture of the Jews came prior to the Persians?? I accept a (later) Persian influence, but I have been making an effort to reference pre-exilic texts to argue for an (earlier) Egyptian one. Is it seriously contended that four-fifths of the goddamned Torah are originally exilic or post-exilic? No doubt those tales were formally compiled and set down in the latter days, but it stretches my credibility to believe that Genesis and Exodus were composed in Babylon in toto. They were, surely, already in the Jews' folklore. Anyway, why would Moses be from Egypt if they were taking their cues in the 6th century from the Persians? Just have him be a Persian. The Egyptian focus suggests that the myth originated much earlier. Hosea wrote in the 8th century, and his writing carries the "out of Egypt" motif. It was likely long pre-exilic. From where did the Hebrews get their idea for the ban on graven images? Or the unutterable name of God? I don't care if these are late developments, but are they unique? Were images of Ahura Mazda discouraged, and was Marduk's holy name unspeakable? I still want to know why, if the Jews were so reputedly just like everyone else in the Levant, their religion wound up such an anomaly. It seems there could've been an early influence (from Egypt) as easily as a late one from Persia.
'11-11-29, 08:36 Agrippina	Re: Akhenaten My two cents: I think that the standard creation myths existed throughout the region where the original "Jewish" people were living. I also think that there were migrations of people who came and went and brought new ideas with them. There is certainly ample evidence of the migration of people who the Egyptians called "Sea People" and that Egypt went through a Intermediate period at around the time that the exodus was supposed to have happened. My opinion is that it was a time of political upheaval, and Finkelstein and Silberman say that as well. They say that some political, or society upheaval caused the settlements I mentioned earlier and I think that at the same time, some people arrived from around the Red Sea area bringing with them tales of the revival of the Egyptian kings. The inspiration for the creation myths definitely came from the stories of creation that abounded around them, probably told and retold so many times that they became accepted folklore and then because some of the population were descended from the people who joined their citizenry from the Red Sea area, and who brought their myths of conquest and escape etc with them, those were added to the mythology of the Israelites. Remember that Israel was overrun by the Assyrians two hundred years before Judah was, which is ample time for people to turn myth into "history" and then when Judah was exiled, they turned their actual exile into one of great conquer of the land promised to them by their mythological forefathers. The actual assembly of the text was most definitely redacted and constructed during and immediately after the exile. Think about a bunch of priests sitting around observing the hedonism and sophistication that was Babylon and, in the way of priests, using their criticism of novelty to make up curses and punishments to explain why they were living as exiles. What is very interesting about the Bible is the non-inclusion of the Books of the Maccabees in the standard Bible. It's part of the Jewish tradition, but not the Christian one. My opinion for this is that it didn't fit the prophecy of the Messiah, and the idea that the worship of Yahweh was what caused them to live as "his people" for 500 years before the Romans sent them into exile again. There was the Greek occupation that doesn't feature at all in the Bible (as we know it). Most Christians aren't aware that the Greek occupation and influence caused rifts in the religion of the Jews and even influenced the religion which caused the Pharisee/Sadducee split.
'11-11-29, 18:16 Moses de la Montagne	Re: Akhenaten Agrippina wrote: My two cents: I think that the standard creation myths existed throughout the region where the original "Jewish" people were living. I also think that there were migrations of people who came and went and brought new ideas with them. There is certainly ample evidence of the migration of people who the Egyptians called "Sea People" and that Egypt went through a Intermediate period at around the time that the exodus was supposed to have happened. My opinion is that it was a time of political upheaval, and Finkelstein and Silberman say that as well. They say that some political, or society upheaval caused the settlements I mentioned earlier and I think that at the same time, some people arrived from around the Red Sea area bringing with them tales of the revival of the Egyptian kings. The inspiration for the creation myths definitely came from the stories of creation that abounded around them, probably told and retold so many times that they became accepted folklore and then because some of the population were descended from the people who joined their citizenry from the Red Sea area, and who brought their myths of conquest and escape etc with them, those were added to the mythology of the Israelites. Remember that Israel was overrun by the Assyrians two hundred years before Judah was, which is ample time for people to turn myth into "history" and then when Judah was exiled, they turned their actual exile into one of great conquer of the land promised to them by their mythological forefathers. The actual assembly of the text was most definitely redacted and constructed during and immediately after the exile. Think about a bunch of priests sitting around observing the hedonism and sophistication that was Babylon and, in the way of priests, using their criticism of novelty to make up curses and punishments to explain why they were living as exiles. My two cents are this, Agrippina. I don't deny all kinds of cross-pollination going on between the ancient Middle Eastern religions, and obviously the Jews borrowed heavily from their peers and edited things to suit their fancy. I'm not, however, convinced by the idea that every last monotheistic notion in the Hebrew bible was just dropped in there by some cabal of sneaky hook-nosed priests burning the midnight oil during the Babylonian captivity. I believe that the J compositions reflect the mythology and oral folklore of the Jews from before the exile. I believe they had a story of a Moses character who gave them a law and a covenant regarding strict fidelity to Yahweh. And I think the pre-exilic prophets reflect this. That is all, really (with the caveat that the Moses story is about an Atenist, of course). Agrippina wrote: What is very interesting about the Bible is the non-inclusion of the Books of the Maccabees in the standard Bible. It's part of the Jewish tradition, but not the Christian one. My opinion for this is that it didn't fit the prophecy of the Messiah, and the idea that the worship of Yahweh was what caused them to live as "his people" for 500 years before the Romans sent them into exile again. I think the omission in "standard bibles" is a Protestant innovation. Catholic and Orthodox bibles contain 1 & 2 Maccabees as canonical Old Testament books—some Protestant bibles will even print them in an appendix of apocrypha. Maccabees hints in places, if I rightly recall, at both creation ex nihilo and praying for the souls of the dead (the latter notion, of course, being anathema to Protestants).
'11-11-30, 00:30 spin	Re: Akhenaten Moses de la Montagne wrote: spin wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: And yet, somehow, we still know of the existence of Akhenaten's monotheism. How come? Modern archaeology. Well then okay. If modern archaeology can reveal it to us, why couldn't an expatriate member of the pharaonic court reveal it to the Hebrews? Is there irrefutable evidence that the entire inner circle of Atenists all just sunk into the sand after the death of Akhenaten? If archaeologists can find it after the fact, then I don't see why someone contemporaneous to it couldn't simply dispense it after the fact. I don't really understand why you gotta string this out with this sort of stuff. Atenists were Atenists because Akhenaten was Atenist. When Tutankhaten closed the chapter he changed his name to Tutankhamen. His wife changed her theophoric. Aten died with Akhenaten. It died at Akhetaten which was raise to the ground and rubble used as fill. Tombs that had been sealed before Horemheb went untouched if they remained hidden. The rest were completely vandalized. We learn about both Akhenaten and the Aten from within those tombs and from the recovered fill. This is a dead issue. Moses de la Montagne wrote: spin wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: Not as I've been made to understand it. The character of Jewish worship was that their god was singularly superior to all others, Just like Asshur and Marduk. Did Asshur- and Marduk-worshipers use wanton harlotry as a metaphor for acknowledging other gods? Did they believe that Asshur and Marduk had a sacred eternal covenant with them that couldn't be transgressed under penalty of their god's violent wrath? I'm sure the disciples of Asshur and Marduk were pretty loyal and all, but did their priests and prophets really howl with the same kind of intensity as the Jews did? Religionists tended to use whatever awful rhetoric they could against those outside the belief. Moses de la Montagne wrote: spin wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: Jeremiah calls other gods "false wooden idols"—hardly a designation that comes close to acknowledging their actual existence! And Jeremiah is ostensibly of the early exilic period. I understood Jeremiah to be banging on about false idols before the exilic period. No? That's the claim, but the text "bangs on" against Israel, though Israel had been non-existent for a century, its elite replaced with deportees from elsewhere. Incidentally, Jeremiah is a little deceptive as to the exact form of its religion, having no denial of Baal's existence, when Baal's name is mentioned. Consider for example 7:9 which talks of making "offerings to Baal, and" going "after other gods that you have not known," while 11:13 says, "For your gods have become as many as your towns, O Judah; and as many as the streets of Jerusalem are the altars you have set up to shame, altars to make offerings to Baal." I don't really think there is a coherent picture to be gained out of Jeremiah. Moses de la Montagne wrote: spin wrote: Josiah according to the bible still had to deal with the high places of other deities. Many Jews were being criticized by the big mouthed prophets for their beliefs in other gods. What you have is a conflict within the Jewish society over worship. What you also have is that the big-mouthed prophets must've gotten their notions from somewhere before they started their criticizing. We could probably go back and forth on this for a while, so I'll rest my argument on Amos, Hosea, and Jeremiah. We've scratched Jeremiah. Hosea, who mentions Baal, is certainly no help to you and Amos doesn't give any indication of being anything other than henotheist. Moses de la Montagne wrote: If the Assyrian "henotheism" of the 8th century can be satisfactorily shown to rival the ravings of those three writers in its understanding of strict fidelity to god, then I'll concede that Hebrew theology probably borrowed most of its monolatry from the north. If not, I'll continue to suppose that the wails of the prophets were taking up the vestiges of the Hebrew's Atenist loan from a Moses of old. You want the Assyrians to have left behind a bible. Didn't happen. We have nothing that is comparable. You're just trying to rig the gain so you don't have to consider the silliness of proposing that Akhenaten just had to be the source of Jewish monotheism, despite the fact that Atenism died out with the death of its one king and the country got back to business as usual. There just had to be one who kept the light burning in order to pass it down through the generations, waiting for an opportunity to push the religious elite in Judah towards henotheism and eventually to monotheism. You may as well keep the light on for Santa. Moses de la Montagne wrote: spin wrote: Hebrew style is the Persian style. That's an awfully late style to have been acquired if it didn't happen until the exile. The Hebrews were geographically closer to Egypt than Persia in their infancy. And doesn't Amos predate Zoroaster? (Wiki) You use Amos as though the work is some kind of indicator. It isn't. It fits easily within Henotheism. And once again that forlorn hope that somehow the Aten was able to pass on its monotheism out of the rubble of Akhetaten and into Judah. Moses de la Montagne wrote: spin wrote: What is this? Jewish religious appreciation week? The Marduk creation had been around for a millenium when the Jews wrote Gen 1. It may be Jewish appreciation week for you, who credit a cadre of Jewish priests with nearly the wholesale reinvention of their religion in less than a century, and in a foreign land, no less. Ezekiel was post-exilic and he was still raving against Asherah. The process took much longer forward than you would like to consider because you are being too literal with the religious texts. There were high places around Jerusalem. During Persian times there was certainly worship of a female deity in the area because of the find of a favissa (trench ) containing vast numbers of female cultic statuettes. Moses de la Montagne wrote: Apparently they had plenty of spare time after they sat down by the rivers of Babylon and finished crying for Zion. Mazel tov, exilic Hebrews! When you read the verse it says, "by the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept..." The psalm wasn't written in Babylon, but recalls being there. Do we have any tangible evidence that any Jewish text was written before then? We continue to use a somewhat slavish acceptance of literal content of these scriptures. Moses de la Montagne wrote: Personally, I wasn't aware that a composition date of Genesis 1 had been definitively established, but I'm willing to take correction on this. I consider it to have been an oral tradition for long before it was written down, and I don't think that's a left-field position. I can't help it if it's more serene than the Akkadian version. That's your problem, not mine. More idyllic modernization. Moses de la Montagne wrote: spin wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: Marduk is a creator through toil & struggle (and other gods seem to pre-exist him), The only struggle is with watery chaos, a battle that has been sublimated, but traces of which are still to be found in the Hebrew bible. Marduk undertakes creation after a bout of mortal combat with Tiamat, does he not? If the Jews suppressed this aspect and saw fit to just commence things with their Yahweh, then I think it suggests something about their existing theology. Doubtless you'll say they just edited the whole thing much later. I don't need to talk about editing. The earliest text we have is from Qumran. You have no way of knowing how much earlier any of the texts were constructed. You just use a modicum of naive literalism to make assumptions about dating. The combat is implied in other places in the bible, which should at least tell you that Gen 1 is later than the other indicators. (See for example Isa 51:9, Ps 89:9-10, Ps 74:13-14, Isa 27:1, etc. Rahab/Leviathan/dragon/serpent has multiple heads as did Tiamat.) Moses de la Montagne wrote: spin wrote: You can see the different stages of development of the Jewish creator. Gen 1 is the latest stage and the most sophisticated. Gen 2:4ff is a much earlier hands on creator. I'm sorry, I thought this stuff was supposed to have all been cleverly revised & polished much later, during the exile—at least according to your version. So why are the roots showing? Editing is quite often not what you'd expect. Consider repeated stories such as Abraham & Sarah in Egypt or Gerar and Isaac & Rebekah in Gerar. Not very smooth. Two flood accounts interleaved. Some editing is more to your taste than in other places. So two creation accounts one after the other, was apparently not a problem to the editors. Moses de la Montagne wrote: spin wrote: Fuck, when you've settled on a conclusion you certainly don't consider anything else. You seem to continuously treat the HB as literally correct when you're not trying to be critical. You have no idea when theological changes took place, yet you are making definitive statements regardless of temporal concerns. How many of the theological ideas being kicked around are actually the result of a long evolution ending with the Hasmonean kings? The oldest Hebrew religions texts of any significance are the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest of which has been dated to the 3rd c. BCE. Your Hebrews who were much more given over to monotheistic tendencies seem to date between the early exilic period (Jeremiah) and goes through to the Hasmoneans. Ezra was sent to Jerusalem according to the bible under the stimulus of the monotheistic Persians, who had taken control of Babylon while the Jews were there. That was the first contact the Jews had that we know about with monotheism. How much of your picture of the Jews came prior to the Persians?? I accept a (later) Persian influence, but I have been making an effort to reference pre-exilic texts to argue for an (earlier) Egyptian one. Is it seriously contended that four-fifths of the goddamned Torah are originally exilic or post-exilic? No doubt those tales were formally compiled and set down in the latter days, but it stretches my credibility to believe that Genesis and Exodus were composed in Babylon in toto. I doubt much if anything was written in Babylon. It was post-exilic. Ancient oral traditions, sometimes competing versions, were molded into later contexts to make new written traditions filtered through the return from exile, an exile tarted up as the exodus. Moses de la Montagne wrote: They were, surely, already in the Jews' folklore. Anyway, why would Moses be from Egypt if they were taking their cues in the 6th century from the Persians? Just have him be a Persian. The Egyptian focus suggests that the myth originated much earlier. Hosea wrote in the 8th century, As you get it from the horse's mouth. One should not be literal with Hosea and it warns the reader against doing so, for Hosea is a tool of the writer to deliver his message. The marriage between Hosea and the prostitute is a dramatic presentation of god's relationship with unfaithful Israel. You're unlikely to believe that a Hosea actually sought out a prostitute to marry. Did a Hosea really have kids with such ludicrous names? Then we come to chapter 3, which tells us that the Israelites shall remain many days without king or prince... Afterwards the Israelites shall return.... Hey, but Israel's gone. Its elite carted off and replaced by other exiles. Are we really reading a serious prophecy that the old kingdom of Samaria is going to recreate itself?? In the book "In Search of Ancient Israel", Philip R. Davies argued that the term Israel was used in three different ways in ancient history. First and most marginally, it was a people known to Merneptah circa 1210 BCE. Then it was a sometime name for a kingdom centered on Samaria. Finally it became an idealized past realm (from which Judah stems) in post-exilic times. Hosea uses a post-exilic rhetoric, which features Israel, the kingdom that once was and could be again, the kingdom of the past into whose nest Judah has put itself as a cuckoo, the kingdom that the descendants of the returnees yearn for, with its idealized David as king. Later in Hosea, 9:13, there is a "prophecy" foretelling that Israel or Ephraim will return to Egypt. But look at a similar passage in Deut 28:28, "the lord will bring you back in ships to Egypt, by a route that I promised you would never see again." According to Genesis Israel entered Egypt by land. This is not the exodus or a reflection on it. This was when Israelites entered Egypt by ship as slaves. Judah's biggest export was people. This slave trade which shipped people by sea was still going on in the 3rd c. BCE, the time of the Zenon Arc hive. Moses de la Montagne wrote: and his writing carries the "out of Egypt" motif. That should warn you that Hosea is not pre-exilic. The "out of Egypt stuff" is a means of foreshadowing aspects of the return from exile. Moses de la Montagne wrote: From where did the Hebrews get their idea for the ban on graven images? Or the unutterable name of God? I don't care if these are late developments, but are they unique? Do you know? Does it matter? Moses de la Montagne wrote: Were images of Ahura Mazda discouraged, and was Marduk's holy name unspeakable? You seem to somehow be trying to sell what you consider to be unique about the Jewish religion as significant here, yet at the same time trying to sell that Jewish monotheism came from the monolatry practised privately by the Egyptian court, that stopped being practised at the death of its king, whose name and faith received damnatio memoriae 500 odd years prior to the manifestation of Jewish henotheism, the knowledge of which king only filtered down to us through the discovery of certain tombs in the valley of the kings and a few other locations in the 19th century. Moses de la Montagne wrote: I still want to know why, if the Jews were so reputedly just like everyone else in the Levant, their religion wound up such an anomaly. It seems there could've been an early influence (from Egypt) as easily as a late one from Persia. When you have the knowledge of any of the other faiths in the era, you might be able to answer your own queries. The Egyptian belief you keep coming back to was a closed affair that lasted a very short time and was not understood by anyone outside the royal household. The Persian belief was relatively public, definitely in operation at a time when the Jews had the opportunity to learn all about it. Things have impact through exposure and there was no Jewish exposure to the Aten, nor would one expect anyone to extract the concept of monotheism without anything else from the religion for it to float around for over half a millennium in vacuo for the Jewish priests to hit upon.
'11-11-30, 11:39 Agrippina	Re: Akhenaten I'm without electricity at the moment so I can't participate right now. I'll be back when we get the lights back.
'11-11-30, 20:35 Moses de la Montagne	Re: Akhenaten spin wrote: I don't really understand why you gotta string this out with this sort of stuff. Atenists were Atenists because Akhenaten was Atenist. When Tutankhaten closed the chapter he changed his name to Tutankhamen. His wife changed her theophoric. Aten died with Akhenaten. It died at Akhetaten which was raise to the ground and rubble used as fill. Tombs that had been sealed before Horemheb went untouched if they remained hidden. The rest were completely vandalized. We learn about both Akhenaten and the Aten from within those tombs and from the recovered fill. spin wrote: The Egyptian belief you keep coming back to was a closed affair that lasted a very short time and was not understood by anyone outside the royal household. The Persian belief was relatively public, definitely in operation at a time when the Jews had the opportunity to learn all about it. Things have impact through exposure and there was no Jewish exposure to the Aten, nor would one expect anyone to extract the concept of monotheism without anything else from the religion for it to float around for over half a millennium in vacuo for the Jewish priests to hit upon. spin wrote: This is a dead issue. "String it out" for as long as you like. It's not a dead issue, but you're beating a dead horse, because I don't deny that the cult of Aten was destroyed after Akhenaten's death. What hasn't been established, though, is that everyone in the Atenist religion enthusiastically apostatized from it. This may the third time I say it or so, but I'm not positing the survival of Atenism in Egypt; all I'm arguing for is the transference of its monotheism to the Jews via an Atenist Moses who left the scene during Tutankhamen's restoration. Not an impossibility. spin wrote: Incidentally, Jeremiah is a little deceptive as to the exact form of its religion, having no denial of Baal's existence, when Baal's name is mentioned. Consider for example 7:9 which talks of making "offerings to Baal, and" going "after other gods that you have not known," while 11:13 says, "For your gods have become as many as your towns, O Judah; and as many as the streets of Jerusalem are the altars you have set up to shame, altars to make offerings to Baal." I don't really think there is a coherent picture to be gained out of Jeremiah. spin wrote: We've scratched Jeremiah. We haven't scratched Jeremiah. Regardless of his mentions of Ba'als and other gods, he is quite clear that he does not recognize them as such. The other gods are false gods to Jeremiah: "frauds," "worthless idols," nothing but "wood and stone." He's obligated to bring them up, though, since his whole point is to disabuse the people of their futile worship: "the customs of the people are false." spin wrote: You want the Assyrians to have left behind a bible. Didn't happen. We have nothing that is comparable. Then on what basis do you propose Assyrian henotheism was equivalent to the fanatical monolatry of Amos, Hosea, and Jeremiah? This is the crux. If, between the 8th and 6th centuries, the Hebrew prophets were writing shit-hot shrieking screeds insisting on Yahweh only, and meanwhile their pagan neighbors were blithely tolerant of a scenario where one nation has its preferred deity and other nations have theirs, then there's something peculiar in the Hebrew scheme. I don't want the Assyrians to have written a bible; I just want them to have been as zealous of Asshur only or Marduk only as the Hebrews were of Yahweh. Is there evidence of that or no? spin wrote: The earliest text we have is from Qumran. You have no way of knowing how much earlier any of the texts were constructed. You just use a modicum of naive literalism to make assumptions about dating. Is it "naïve literalism" to date Exodus before 150 BC, or even before the exile? I'm laboring under the assumption (which I think has some consensus) that the Moses story was pre-exilic folklore, and was formally compiled and set down later. Hosea suggests this much, but then of course you'll argue against the standard dating & reading of Hosea: spin wrote: One should not be literal with Hosea and it warns the reader against doing so, for Hosea is a tool of the writer to deliver his message. The marriage between Hosea and the prostitute is a dramatic presentation of god's relationship with unfaithful Israel. You're unlikely to believe that a Hosea actually sought out a prostitute to marry. Did a Hosea really have kids with such ludicrous names? Then we come to chapter 3, which tells us that the Israelites shall remain many days without king or prince... Afterwards the Israelites shall return.... Hey, but Israel's gone. Its elite carted off and replaced by other exiles. Are we really reading a serious prophecy that the old kingdom of Samaria is going to recreate itself?? In the book "In Search of Ancient Israel", Philip R. Davies argued that the term Israel was used in three different ways in ancient history. First and most marginally, it was a people known to Merneptah circa 1210 BCE. Then it was a sometime name for a kingdom centered on Samaria. Finally it became an idealized past realm (from which Judah stems) in post-exilic times. Hosea uses a post-exilic rhetoric, which features Israel, the kingdom that once was and could be again, the kingdom of the past into whose nest Judah has put itself as a cuckoo, the kingdom that the descendants of the returnees yearn for, with its idealized David as king. Later in Hosea, 9:13, there is a "prophecy" foretelling that Israel or Ephraim will return to Egypt. But look at a similar passage in Deut 28:28, "the lord will bring you back in ships to Egypt, by a route that I promised you would never see again." According to Genesis Israel entered Egypt by land. This is not the exodus or a reflection on it. This was when Israelites entered Egypt by ship as slaves. Judah's biggest export was people. This slave trade which shipped people by sea was still going on in the 3rd c. BCE, the time of the Zenon Arc hive. That's one theory, but readings (and datings) of Hosea vary, as you doubtless know. You may not like that, but there it is. The Wikipedia entry (which perhaps you'll want to edit) places Hosea in the 8th century. There are also some fun quotes from "feminists" and "scholars" about covenantal theology. Personally, I'm content to never mind that business: the important thing is that an arguably pre-exilic Hosea uses "out of Egypt" as a reference to the Hebrew's past, and I see no reason why I have to take this usage, at your insistence, as figuratively as I do his more patently metaphorical marriage to Gomer. It's most likely a reference to Exodus. spin wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: From where did the Hebrews get their idea for the ban on graven images? Or the unutterable name of God? I don't care if these are late developments, but are they unique? Do you know? Does it matter? It matters if it's a unique characteristic of Hebrew religion. If they developed these things where their henotheistic neighbors or their Persian mentors did not, then it suggests the Hebrews had monotheistic tendencies from beforehand. Akhenaten himself tolerated no images of Aten save for the solar disc.
'11-11-30, 21:25 smudge	Re: Akhenaten Moses de la Montagne wrote: This may the third time I say it or so, but I'm not positing the survival of Atenism in Egypt; all I'm arguing for is the transference of its monotheism to the Jews via an Atenist Moses who left the scene during Tutankhamen's restoration. Not an impossibility. Not impossible. Just very unlikely and with no evidence at all to support it. Moses de la Montagne wrote: We haven't scratched Jeremiah. Regardless of his mentions of Ba'als and other gods, he is quite clear that he does not recognize them as such. The other gods are false gods to Jeremiah: "frauds," "worthless idols," nothing but "wood and stone." He's obligated to bring them up, though, since his whole point is to disabuse the people of their futile worship: "the customs of the people are false." We have to be cautious interpreting any text where we are unsure of the date, who wrote it, where, what their political motivations were, was it accurate, how many times it has been edited...etc. It may imply a pre exile shift towards monotheism as you suggest. But clear it is not and certain we cannot be. There are many reasons one might describe the gods of others in derogatory terms or criticise their worship. Doing so does not make you monotheist. Moses de la Montagne wrote: I'm laboring under the assumption (which I think has some consensus) that the Moses story was pre-exilic folklore, and was formally compiled and set down later. Folklore is folklore, who cares? Moses de la Montagne wrote: From where did the Hebrews get their idea for the ban on graven images? Or the unutterable name of God? I'd imagine that it was about control. Moses de la Montagne wrote: It matters if it's a unique characteristic of Hebrew religion. If they developed these things where their henotheistic neighbors or their Persian mentors did not, then it suggests the Hebrews had monotheistic tendencies from beforehand. It suggests that in given circumstances they were intolerant of certain others is all.
'11-12-01, 00:51 Moses de la Montagne	Re: Akhenaten smudge wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: This may the third time I say it or so, but I'm not positing the survival of Atenism in Egypt; all I'm arguing for is the transference of its monotheism to the Jews via an Atenist Moses who left the scene during Tutankhamen's restoration. Not an impossibility. Not impossible. Just very unlikely and with no evidence at all to support it. The evidence (such as it is) would be that the Jews, in their monolatry, outpaced and out-zealous'd their Semitic neighbors. They also had an important story about an Egyptian and an exodus out of Egypt—and not only a story, but a belief in a law and a covenant with the sole God that this Moses fellow had given them. The evidence (though it doesn't prove the theory, at least sustains it) is Exodus and the early prophets. smudge wrote: We have to be cautious interpreting any text where we are unsure of the date, who wrote it, where, what their political motivations were, was it accurate, how many times it has been edited...etc. It may imply a pre exile shift towards monotheism as you suggest. But clear it is not and certain we cannot be. There are many reasons one might describe the gods of others in derogatory terms or criticise their worship. Doing so does not make you monotheist. I can only point out that Jeremiah's terms are not just derogatory or critical. He is strident that the other gods are false gods: not gods at all. He likens them to the stone and wood they're carved from—he's not insulting them so much as he is denying them. They are but nothing: "they can do no harm and they can do no good." Jeremiah believing that other gods are not gods makes him a monotheist; Paul's rhetoric when touring Athens or writing the Corinthians is no different (in fact, it's a little less vehement in measure). And Paul was a monotheist. smudge wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: I'm laboring under the assumption (which I think has some consensus) that the Moses story was pre-exilic folklore, and was formally compiled and set down later. Folklore is folklore, who cares? No one need care, really, but folklore can have a basis in reality. Mythical legends can accrue around actual persons. King Arthur may or may not've been an actual British leader—similarly, Moses may or may not've been an actual Egypto-cum-Hebraic patriarch. I guess we can take our pick. But if it suffices for an explanation of Hebrew theology, the existence of a Moses becomes more likely. smudge wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: From where did the Hebrews get their idea for the ban on graven images? Or the unutterable name of God? I'd imagine that it was about control. Why so? We can observe that, later on, in Christianity, the debate over icons and representations was a theological issue—not a political one. People who believe in gods tend to take these things pretty seriously, whereas if we assume it's strictly about "control" we're probably ascribing to them a cynicism they may not've had. smudge wrote: Moses de la Montagne wrote: It matters if it's a unique characteristic of Hebrew religion. If they developed these things where their henotheistic neighbors or their Persian mentors did not, then it suggests the Hebrews had monotheistic tendencies from beforehand. It suggests that in given circumstances they were intolerant of certain others is all. But these "given circumstances" weren't unique to the Jews. The Jews were neither the first nor the only "henotheistic" nation to suffer defeat and exile. Other conquered tribes didn't turn their losses into prideful religious chauvinism, which suggests that the Hebrew style was different to begin with.
'11-12-01, 11:59 smudge	Re: Akhenaten [quote="Moses de la Montagne";p="1093629"][/quote] We are going round in circles here and I don't have the time to do so. I think you are taking Biblical texts too much at face value. I think you are picking out vaguely plausible (but unconvincing) points mixing it with what you want to believe and are saying 'here's an argument, this works, MUST be true'. That is not the case. You've decided where you want to get to and are joining dots to get there (I think Spin said something similar earlier in the thread).