The Ethno-Zionist-Revisionism-Old Testament-Bashing Megathread

[crazy canuck]

As to what made Christianity "the largest religious movement in history", that has a lot more to do with becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire and then by default the religion of the West after the Roman Empire failed.   At the start Christianity was just another mystery sect which was particularly attractive to slaves.

Slaves and women.

There were some notable few rich patrons that figure rather signficantly in the development of Christianity.

[crazy canuck]

But that doesn't strike me as the most likely explanation for the historical fact of the existence of the bible around the time it was written, and the rise of the largest religious movement in human history.

The Bible wasnt aorund at the time "it was written".  The Bible as we now know it was put together from selected pieces written over a long period of time and which were selected even later to be included in the book we now call the Bible.  Also, even amongst the books that were selected it is difficult for us to know with any certainty whether the version and translations we now have are accurate although scholars like Erhman have done their best to try to piece together what may be the most accurate versions by trying to filture out all the forgeries and poor translations which occurred over time.

What is more interesting imo are the pieces that didnt make the cut and were either discarded and lost to time or destroyed.  We probably will never fully know what was written at the time.  Only what made it through the political and religious battles that separate us from the time of the original writings.

As to what made Christianity "the largest religious movement in history", that has a lot more to do with becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire and then by default the religion of the West after the Roman Empire failed.   At the start Christianity was just another mystery sect which was particularly attractive to slaves.

Uhh, ok. You just said a bunch of stuff that is obvious to everyone, doesn't contradict anything I said really, but stated it in a manner like you were making some amazing point refuting me.

Congratulations?

I see, you were just using sloppy language that led to inaccurate conclusions but you did so because you understood everyone would know that.  Got it.

[The Minsky Moment]

It is interesting what you say about King David. As you know, I got back recently from Israel. While there, I visited the archeological site near Silwan from the first temple period that is billed as "the city of David". The tour started with a movie that credited the Bible stories being the guide for the excavations and the tour was very heavy on pointing out how the excavations matched up with Bible passages.

My impression has been that the Bible starts out as pure myth (the Garden of Eden, Tower of Babel, etc) but as it goes along gains historical accuracy to the point it is probably as accurate as any other source from the time period (ie, not very, but somewhat grounded in reality). From what you write, and I think you would know, I suspect that the tour guide was reaching a bit to please the typical audience that I suspect are Jews or Christian pilgrims. I had the impression the David stuff was fairly well substantiated.

It's very much debated.  It depends on interpretation of archaeological evidence which is ambiguous.  One big problem is the lack of chronological anchors because the relevant period of the earlier monarchy - roughly sometime in the 11th century BCE to the 8th century is a bit of a "dark age" generally in the region.    The first "Israelite" kings that emerge from the fog are northern kings that the Bible condemns (Ahab and Omri), everything before that has to be inferred and guessed at from fragmentary evidence like the Tel Dan Stela, and stratigraphic guesswork from various sites, including the Stepped Stone Structure in Jerusalem. 

My own view tends to those who contend that David was a real figure, but probably no more than a glorified chieftain of a small and relatively unorganized polity.  But there is the interesting episode of the invasion of the Canaanite hill country the Egyptian Sheshonq (the "Shishak" of the OT).  One could infer that invasion implied some significant state in that area; otherwise why would Sheshonq bother?  Of course that again raises the question of chronology which itself is problematic, and it requires various assumptions that can't be confirmed.  Interesting problem.

The Biblical text is very problematic as a historical source for the obvious reasons; although at times the text seems to carry kernels of historical information (usually place names) in their proper time, there are tons of anachronisms in the "historical" books - namely places and situations that existed in the 8th-6th centuries but not in the times in which the OT text tries to put them.  The scare quotes on historical are especially appropriate in this context, since whoever wrote these books did not remotely conceive of them as histories as we would understand the term.

[The Minsky Moment]

From what I've read the general scholarly consensus is that there was a figure who was baptised by John the Baptist (there's more other sources on him than Christ), who did preach and possibly had issues with the Temple and was crucified. The rest of the Biblical account is rather questionable but those bare facts are broadly agreed on by all modern Ancient Historians I've read.

...

Edit: And of course it's worth going back to Mark which is the oldest Gospel. The version that scholars now believe is the oldest starts with Jesus as a man getting baptised by John. Then there's preaching and calling disciples and the odd miracle - feeding the five thousand. It ends with crucifixion and an empty tomb, but not resurrection.

The hermeneutics of suspicion can do a good amount of lifting.  The fact of the baptism of John is theologically problematic and the Gospel authors seem to have some spin about it, that suggests the tradition is authentic.  Crucifixion is such an unusual fate for a messiah so that is usually accepted as accurate.  The "King of the Jews" writing is not a Christian moniker and appears in no other context and thus may be authentic (and would explain Roman involvement).  Markian priority seems pretty well accepted and the Jesus that is depicted therein - an exorcist and miracle worker - was as Malthus said a not uncommon type in the region in that era so is likely close to truth. 

[The Minsky Moment]

Semitic people lived in Egypt in this period.  It could have started as "hey remember how our great-great-great grandfather was a Hyksos?  Well he wasn't a brutal conqueror-the Egyptians were mean to him."  This is also a period when the Egyptians are starting to expand their control in to Canaan, so it might have started as a story of Semitic peoples fleeing Egyptian expansion in to the eastern wilderness and was then reinterpreted as foreshadowing the Babylonian exile.

Well . . . people have argued that the Joseph story incorporates some vague folk memory of the Hyskos period.  I suppose it is possible but the time scale here is much bigger than you are acknowledging - 350 years form the fall of Hyskos to Ramses II/Mereptah, 600+ years to the supposed Davidite monarchy, close to a millennium to the reduction of the story to writing.  People also have argued that Semitic peoples retained a presence in New Kingdom Egypt and were dragooned into the NK building projects, and have pointed to Egyptian accounts of small groups of workers escaping and sneaking past the Sinaic fortress line.  So this experience is speculated to give rise to a later folk legend of mass exodus.

Eh - maybe.  My response is if so, so what?  Does linking all this speculation together somehow bring any greater understanding of history than before?  I think not.