Just So This Extraordinary Claim Has A Non-Admin Topic...

Started by Sleeper, February 17, 2013, 06:07:41 PM

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Davka

Quote from: "Dena"
Quote from: "aitm"
Quote from: "Rasputin"The first commandment alone is proof enough that the Jews were originally polytheists.

that is true, but so very often ignored when I mention it to the believers.

Christians seem to largely be unaware of the fact or want to pretend it's not known. I'm not sure why it's so bothersome.
The Christian myth sez that people always knew there was only one god, cuz he done created adam and watsis in that there garden thingie, and they tolded their kids about it and people always talked to god for ever and ever and he talked back and everyone who was anyone knew there was only one god, except the pagans who were just trying to piss off yahweh.

If the early Hebrews were polytheistic, then the entire story breaks down.

Colanth

Quote from: "Davka"The Christian myth sez that people always knew there was only one god, cuz he done created adam and watsis in that there garden thingie, and they tolded their kids about it and people always talked to god for ever and ever and he talked back and everyone who was anyone knew there was only one god, except the pagans who were just trying to piss off yahweh.

If the early Hebrews were polytheistic, then the entire story breaks down.
It breaks down even further if they accept that Yahweh was just El's war chief.  Yahweh didn't become the only god until almost Christian times.
Afflicting the comfortable for 70 years.
Science builds skyscrapers, faith flies planes into them.

FrankDK

> BUT the writer of Alice and Wonderland was not selling a truth, but a story.

I suspect the people who made up the stories later documented in the Bible didn't intend for them to be taken as anything but stories.  They were allegories, intended to give people power over events by naming them, and to provide entertainment and cultural cement.  The idea of taking them literally probably came much later.

Frank

Sleeper

Quote from: "FrankDK"> BUT the writer of Alice and Wonderland was not selling a truth, but a story.

I suspect the people who made up the stories later documented in the Bible didn't intend for them to be taken as anything but stories.  They were allegories, intended to give people power over events by naming them, and to provide entertainment and cultural cement.  The idea of taking them literally probably came much later.

Frank
The law seems pretty drawn out and tedious for it all to have been allegorical. And the divine right to give the law was based on what Yahweh did for (to?) the Israelites.
Because LaPlace still holds sway.

FrankDK

> The law seems pretty drawn out and tedious for it all to have been allegorical. And the divine right to give the law was based on what Yahweh did for (to?) the Israelites.

I could be wrong, but I think the stories long predate the law.  The stories go way back to the period of oral tradition.  The law developed after that, and was incorporated into Jewish tradition and religion.  They used the stories, which were by then well-accepted, as justification for enforcement of the laws.  You notice there is no direct or logical link between most of the laws and the stories.  Other than the First Commandment, you can't get there from here.

Of course, some of the parts of the stories were probably added later, "merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative."

Frank

Davka

One thing that helps shed light on the Torah, or 5 "books of moses," is the fact that it was common practice for thousands of years to attribute your writing to an earlier, famous writer, as a way of "honoring" that writer (and stealing some glory while you were at it). The first 12 chapters of Genesis is clearly a hodgepodge of oral stories passed down for generations. The comes the whole thing with Abraham, Isaac, and Isaac's 12 sons - the fictional years of slavery in Egypt which made those sons' descendants into different tribes - and finally the whole Moses-in-the-desert story. It seems pretty clear that the entire Torah was assembled piecemeal over time, and as new stories entered the scene, they were always attributed to "moses."

So the garden story, tower of babel, the flood and all the rest probably pre-dates all the law stuff by many generations.

Another interesting factoid: Although the Torah is supposedly the earliest written part of the Bible, the language in Job is far more archaic than anything else in the OT. Job was the first book of the Bible to be written down. The rest came hundreds of years later.

FrankDK

> One thing that helps shed light on the Torah, or 5 "books of moses," is the fact that it was common practice for thousands of years to attribute your writing to an earlier, famous writer, as a way of "honoring" that writer (and stealing some glory while you were at it).

In 2 Kings 22:8, the claim is made that they "found" the books of Moses lying around in the temple.  Makes one suspicious.

Frank