Hebrew script?

[Grumpage]

A few days ago we had the suggestion that Edomite culture was more advanced than previously thought. Now, this:

An Israeli archaeologist has discovered what he believes is the oldest known Hebrew inscription on a 3,000-year-old pottery shard — a find that suggests Biblical accounts of the ancient Israelite kingdom of David could have been based on written texts.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081030/ap_ ... cription_2

I wonder if Finkelstein et al are starting to feel a bit beseiged?

I'm reading Finkelstein and Silberman's David and Solomon and I get a touch uncomfortable when they say things like "The cycle of David...stories...were probably orally transmitted for some two centuries, until the eighth century BCE, when the first signs of widespread literacy appear in Judah."

It was their insertion of the word widespread which caught my attention. It's a clever verbal get-out.

[Minimalist]

From the same article:

Hebrew University archaeologist Amihai Mazar said the inscription is "very important," but suggested that calling the text Hebrew might be going too far.

"The differentiation between the scripts, and between the languages themselves in that period, remains unclear," he said.

Ami Mazar still holds a weak hope out for a United Monarchy as he wrote in "The Quest For the Historical Israel" a series of essays but he is obviously not convinced.

[Grumpage]

If the text is not Hebrew does it matter much? If the date is right then isn't it evidence for the probability of Hebrew writing existing at the same time?

[Grumpage]

I'm trying to get my head around this. If the script is proto-Hebrew then does the issue devolve to whether it is capable of supporting OT tales?

What are the implications of the script not being Hebrew?

[Minimalist]

To people who desperately want archaeology to provide some basis for the OT I suspect it is the only point.

Scholars are not so easily convinced. No one really knows the relationship between Phoenician, proto-Canaanite, Aramaic and Hebrew. The Phoenicians apparently developed the alphabet because as an advanced trading state they had more need for record keeping at an earlier time. This whole debate apparently comes down to a single word and in that is somewhat reminiscent of the Merneptah stele which uses the word "Ysrir" for the only time in all of Egyptian literature. 19th century scholars promptly decided that it meant "Israel." But we have no basis for that from the rest of Egyptian writing.

On a related note, and I know this is a cynical way to look at things, I sometimes wonder if these overblown press releases are not done as a means of attracting continued funding. Excavation is an expensive undertaking and as someone once noted, "there is no such thing as bad publicity." Would anyone in the media have paid much attention to a press release which said "we found a few lines of proto-Canaanite script?"

[Grumpage]

Would anyone in the media have paid much attention to a press release which said "we found a few lines of proto-Canaanite script?"

They are all at it. You will have noted the recent news item about a Trojan War type weapon found in Bulgaria.
Where is Perperikon anyway? I've never heard of it. I assumed it was Bulgaria.

[Minimalist]

A perfect example, Grump.

Bronze weapons were used EVERYWHERE throughout the Bronze AGe ... (hence the name!). It's just an attention getter.

[Grumpage]

I got to thinking about writing and scripts and what not. It occurred to me that there were no Old Testament papyri or other papyri from that time or place. Am I right?

[Minimalist]

I'm guessing that you mean the 10th-9th century? If so, you are correct.

However, that in and of itself is not surprising. Papyrus grew in Egypt and even there, given the amazingly dry climate, preservation of papyrus is a rarity. Canaan had a rainy season and the survival of papyrus, unless sealed in jars in caves (like the Dead Sea cache) would be an anomaly.

Parchment is far more common but even this is organic and deteriorates under normal circumstances. Most of the Dead Sea scrolls were in miserable condition in spite of the near perfect conditions for preservation.

What we lack from the 9th-10th century is any evidence of inscriptions on public buildings (what Finkelstein calls "monumental architecture). We do get some ostraka like the one in question but actual evidence of literacy is quite rare.

As far as OT scripts....we have none. The Septuagint written in Greek and dating from the 3d century BC is the earliest. The tradition is that the Septuagint was "translated" from Hebrew to Greek but we have not a shred of evidence for a written OT. It could just as easily have been written from oral tales. It is a major question in scholarship.

I could recommend Philip R. Davies "In Search of Ancient Israel" if you are interested.

[Ishtar]

As far as OT scripts....we have none. The Septuagint written in Greek and dating from the 3d century BC is the earliest. The tradition is that the Septuagint was "translated" from Hebrew to Greek but we have not a shred of evidence for a written OT. It could just as easily have been written from oral tales. It is a major question in scholarship.

I'm finding Gerald Massey's Ancient Egypt the Light of the World extremely enlightening on this score. He's worked from translations of Egyptian myths from the Papyrus of Ani, the Book of the Dead, the Destruction of Mankind etc. And the more I read, the more it looks to me as if the Hebrew stories are a straight lift from these for the major milestones at least - i.e. The Creation, The Ark and the Deluge, the Exodus (the whole story of Moses, in fact, from the bulrushes on), the story of Jesus and Revelations.

These Egyptians myths are both eschatalogical and astronomical in nature - the journey in the 'arka', the sun boat, that the dead person takes follows the Milky Way (the White Nile) and seven ancient pole stars as each one is, in turn, 'drowned in the primordial waters' and replaced by another (under the precession of the equinoxes process). So this Flood is not, and was never meant to be, an earthly Flood - because none of the action happens on Earth.

What's also interesting is how place names are arrived at, according to Massey - and this might be a source of confusion for us. They name their places after their mythical locations whereas we do it the other way round for our entertainment stories (which are not myths, anyway). For instance, LA Story (one of my Steve Martin favourites) is set in an existing place, LA. But the Egyptians invented stories in imaginery locations they called, say, Memphis and Thebes before, much later, naming new earthly cities Memphis and Thebes after their mythical locations. So when we hear their stories, we can be confused into thinking the action took place in the earthly Thebes.

Thus if the Jews really did lift these stories, they may have done the some thing. Jerusalem would have been a mythical location for their mythical god king (Deva king or David) and Sun king (Sol-om-on) and only later did they found a city which they named Jerusalem after their mythical Jerusalem. This would explain why historians can find no literal evidence for these stories. They were never meant to be taken literally and the audiences of that time would have understood this, because it was how things were done. We only find it difficult to understand now because, since the Christians - from Constantine onwards - stamped out the Gnostics and the Mysteries, we've lost the appreciation of the value of myths. We don't understand what they're for.

Within the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are plans for a temple that was never built - probably one intended to represent Solomon's in the myth.
'
Even the battles the Hebrews fought against the 'Canaanites' can be compared to the mythical battles fought on the Egyptians' mythical journeys, such as Jericho with its 'seven' symbolism and its rams horns.

I thoroughly recommend this book - but it is very dense reading.

[Minimalist]

I haven't read the book so I can't comment on it. There does seem to be a similarity in all these stories....be it Sumerian or Egyptian. Sargon I was cast into a river long before anyone dreamed up the Moses tale. Was it also dreamed up long before the Isis-Osiris tale? Harder to say. Much harder in fact.

What we cannot forget is that, in comparison to the Judahites the Egyptians and Sumerians were far more ancient cultures and what do we really know about cross-pollination between them back in the early Bronze Age? We know there was trade but ideas are harder to track down than artifacts. I'd still have to be persuaded against the notion that Judaism was not a creation of the Persians seeking to set up a loyal province of their empire while they dealt with more pressing matters to the East. That does not invalidate your argument, though, since it merely puts them in the position of being the heirs to a much longer development period to these stories. As you also know, I don't quite buy the argument that all of the OT was concocted as an original composition after the Exile but rather they scraped up familiar legends and threw them together with a little editing to give them a reason for suddenly showing up in Judah (renamed Yehud by the Persians) and shouting "Hi, we're back...and ready to lead again."

Of course, none of this could be held against Massey. He was writing in the early 1900's and simply did not have the benefit of modern science and archaeology. In fact, he was quite the pioneer at times.

http://www.africawithin.com/massey/gml1_jesuschrist.htm

Do you have any specific examples that you'd like to talk over?

[Ishtar]

I haven't read the book so I can't comment on it. There does seem to be a similarity in all these stories....be it Sumerian or Egyptian. Sargon I was cast into a river long before anyone dreamed up the Moses tale. Was it also dreamed up long before the Isis-Osiris tale? Harder to say. Much harder in fact.

An was the main Sumerian god and the god Annu figures largely in the Egyptian mythology. Isis is a straight copy of Ishtar, or rather Hathor who is the Proto-Isis. Heliopolis (named by the Greeks) was originally called Anu. I could go on ....

Of course, these myths are spread across Mesopotamia and also India. But Egypt is right next door to Israel. On top of that, the Hebrews seem to be obsessed with Egypt in their mythological plotlines.

What we cannot forget is that, in comparison to the Judahites the Egyptians and Sumerians were far more ancient cultures and what do we really know about cross-pollination between them back in the early Bronze Age? We know there was trade but ideas are harder to track down than artifacts.

Sure. As you know, we've discussed this at length in many threads. But in reading these Egyptian myths, for the first time I'm seeing a much more direct linkage than I've seen before.

I'd still have to be persuaded against the notion that Judaism was not a creation of the Persians seeking to set up a loyal province of their empire while they dealt with more pressing matters to the East. That does not invalidate your argument, though, since it merely puts them in the position of being the heirs to a much longer development period to these stories.

As you also know, I don't quite buy the argument that all of the OT was concocted as an original composition after the Exile but rather they scraped up familiar legends and threw them together with a little editing to give them a reason for suddenly showing up in Judah (renamed Yehud by the Persians) and shouting "Hi, we're back...and ready to lead again."

Of course, none of this could be held against Massey. He was writing in the early 1900's and simply did not have the benefit of modern science and archaeology. In fact, he was quite the pioneer at times.

http://www.africawithin.com/massey/gml1_jesuschrist.htm

Do you have any specific examples that you'd like to talk over?

Well, it's my bedtime here....

But I think Massey's work is in no way diminished by modern archaeology. In fact, I think it confirms it - that these stories are myths and there is no historical evidence for them ever taking place on Earth.

I've heard you and Seeker and others say that you believe the Persians were instrumental here. But I've never actually heard hard evidence for that being so. These stories were not original to the Persians - so they wouldn't have been bringing in anything new. As we say over here, it would have been like taking coals to Newcastle, and it wasn't even as if these stories were dead and needed revamping, although there are examples where they put their own gloss on them - Bel and the Dragon, for instance. But if they wanted to use these stories to convince people that they were literally true, no-one would have believed them.

My view is this - you don't need big cities, powerful kings and glittering temples to practice paganism. Hunter gatherers and pastoralists could perform their rituals as well as any agriculturalist or city dweller, as we've discovered from the likes of Gobekli Tepe and Catal Hoyuk. So the fact that Jerusalem wasn't much more than a village of huts at that time does not mean that the people were not the custodians of a rich oral mythology that underpinned their spiritual practices in their 'high places' and Asherah groves, under the very stars that they told their stories about.

I'm flagging fast, here!

Let's carry this on tomorrow, if you like.

Good night!

[Minimalist]

I'm all for religious syncretism, Ish. I guess the question is did the Egyptians influence Sumer or did the Sumerians influence Egypt OR, were they both influenced by what Hancock called "the remote common ancestor."

Part of the point is that Egypt-Canaan-the Hittite Empire-Mesopotamia were in contact, violently or commercially and were not dependent on "Israel" for such contact.

We know that Persia worshipped the single god Ahura Mazda. We also know that Persia conquered Babylon by coup de main capturing the city intact. We next have the Persians sending the "Jews" back from Exile but, as has been previously discussed, the people who were sent back were basically Babylonians. Prof. Davies' point is that the returnees would have been strangers in the land and they were handed this story to legitimize their rule over those who were not shipped out by the Babylonians.

I don't have a problem with Massey's work. I think he would feel vindicated if he knew what archaeology has discovered since his death. It's a bit like the discussion of whether the Deist, Thomas Jefferson, would have been an atheist if he had known 230 years ago what science knows now.

Anyway, I'll be around manana if you'd like to review some of this.

[Ishtar]

Hi Min

I won't be around much today. My mother has just had a hip operation, so I'll be at the hospital for most of the day. But I may be able to pick up on this later.

I'm all for religious syncretism, Ish. I guess the question is did the Egyptians influence Sumer or did the Sumerians influence Egypt OR, were they both influenced by what Hancock called "the remote common ancestor."

Part of the point is that Egypt-Canaan-the Hittite Empire-Mesopotamia were in contact, violently or commercially and were not dependent on "Israel" for such contact.

I'm not at this point trying to identify the common ancestor of the myths, especially as there are so many holes in our knowledge. It's probably a toss up between the Sumerian and the Vedics age-wise - but who knows what was before that.

But around the first millennium BC, the priestcraft of every country was cosmopolitan and travelled widely, which is why the fabric of the mythology across Mesopotamia, Egypt and India weaves itself into such a syncretic pattern. Pythagorus, for example, studied first under the Hebrew Rabbis, then he went to Egypt where he was initiated into the Mysteries and then on to Ellora in India, where he studied with the Brahmins. Plato too was initiated into the Mysteries in Egypt, and the story told to him by Solon about Atlantis can actually be read in the original Egyptian Destruction of Mankind texts. It was an astronomical teaching story taught to initiates - and not a history lesson.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/leg/leg15.htm

Because we cannot prove whose stories came first, this information is useless to you as a stick to beat Arch with (which is why I'm happy to provide it! ) However, it’s unlikely that anyone would put a myth together based on something that actually happened. The whole point of them is that they are teaching stories, and each character, location, dialogue and plotline is there to serve the lesson being taught. It would be unlikely and one heck of a coincidence if a historical event would have all the components necessary to fulfil that function. Thus the fact that the Exodus exists as an Egyptian astronomical and eschatological myth would make it extremely unlikely that a real Jewish Exodus ever really happened, especially given all the other evidence (or rather, lack of it).

However, the Hebrews at that time most likely knew it was a myth, just like everyone else in the geographical area did. It was only later that it became literalised. Or, if you look at how the Australian Aborgines consider Dreamtime - they don't separate it from 'reality' - maybe the Hebrews never even asked the question 'did this really happen?', because it was irrelevant to its purpose to them.

We know that Persia worshipped the single god Ahura Mazda. We also know that Persia conquered Babylon by coup de main capturing the city intact. We next have the Persians sending the "Jews" back from Exile but, as has been previously discussed, the people who were sent back were basically Babylonians. Prof. Davies' point is that the returnees would have been strangers in the land and they were handed this story to legitimize their rule over those who were not shipped out by the Babylonians.

I know this is the theory. But I’ve not seen the evidence for it. I’m not saying that it doesn’t exist ... just that I haven’t seen it.

I also find it hard to imagine how the migrating Babylonians could be ‘handed a story’ that had been extant for thousands of years, and which was part of the ritual life of all these Meso peoples anyway. It’s a bit like, say if America was invaded by the Chinese and then the Chinese said:

“OK, Americans listen up. There’s this old man with a long white beard and red coat that lives at the North Pole and he distributes presents to those who are good. So if you do what we say, he will bring you presents when you die.”

You’d just laugh and say, “Sorry ... but that’s just a story we tell our children. Santa Claus doesn’t really exist. He’s a mythological character.”

I think the Hebrews would have found it equally risible if the Babylonians or Persians had tried to re-sell their own gods back to them, Yahwah being a Canaanite god. Secondly, the Egyptians had a flirtation with monotheism in Akhenaton’s Aten long before the Persians showed up. Thirdly, even in polytheism, there is/was always one chief god (or goddess) above all the others, thus making all polytheists actually henotheists. In fact, this is shown in the first line from the Destruction of Mankind text:

[Here is the story of Ra,] the god who was self-begotten and self-created, after he had assumed the sovereignty over men and women, and gods, and things, the ONE god.

Who does that remind you of?

I don't have a problem with Massey's work. I think he would feel vindicated if he knew what archaeology has discovered since his death. It's a bit like the discussion of whether the Deist, Thomas Jefferson, would have been an atheist if he had known 230 years ago what science knows now.

I don't quite see how Massey’s work relates to your Thomas Jefferson point. There is little that Massey would have to change about his thinking in the light of recent archaeological findings - as you say, he is vindicated - whereas your point here is that Jefferson would have to change his thinking.

However, I don’t even agree with that last point because, as we’ve discussed on many occasions, science has not disproved the existence of God. And if anything, the new sciences coming through now are producing theories about the universe that are not dissimilar to those of ancient man as recorded in his myths, and who definitely was not an atheist.

Massey's book is available online if you want to take a quick look at it. Sorry it's such a long url.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&i ... &ct=result

Talk to you later.....

[Grumpage]

I could recommend Philip R. Davies "In Search of Ancient Israel" if you are interested.

Thanks for the ref.
I've ordered his latest: Memories of Ancient Israel: An Introduction to Biblical History as it seems better suited to my level of ignorance and it's more up to date.
(I assume the publication date of 2008 means what it says and is not simply a reprint of a much earlier publication