Is the Jesus story an astrological allegory?

[Ishtar]

Yes, that's a brilliant quote and one well worth using in a reply to a fundie, I would have thought.

OK, so as we can't bridge the E gap in Finkelstein et al's case at the moment, I think I should proceed with this discussion about whether or not Exodus is an allegory and if so, what sort of allegory.

So sorry Min - there's more hocus pocus on the way!

[Ishtar]

Looking for a mythological basis for the Exodus story, we have already discussed the Dionysian trick of Moses of getting water in the desert by striking a rock with a rod. And that the hiding of Moses in the bulrushes was similar to the story of Sargon of Akkad.

But I’ve now had a chance to look at the link that Min provided, and Egyptologist Donald Redford adds:

http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/arch ... bible.html

The birth of Moses and his being secreted in the rushes has been likened to the fate of Horus in late mythology; but in fact the motif of the "Birth of the Hero" has much wider currency in antiquity and is not Egyptian in origin. The rod that turns into a serpent (Exod. 4:2-4, 7:10-12) recalls the wax model that turns into a live crocodile when grasped; and the "magicians" who can emulate this trick derive their designation from an Egyptian loanword....[on the plagues] The motif of turning the river into blood (7:20-24) is known from Mesopotamia.

However, the following two quotes of Redford’s tell me that he is not aware of the several writers to contribute to the Old Testament, which, in my view, means that all his proposed dating of Biblical stories has to be questioned.

my bolding:

The Biblical writer certainly thinks he is writing datable history, and provides genealogical material by means of which the date may be computed. He also thinks it is possible to locate this event on the ground, and packs his narrative with topographical detail.

There were, in fact, two lists of genealogy from two different sources: J and the Book of Records of the Human. They have some names that are the same and some that are different. So this paragraph of Redford’s is misleading to say the least.

And he goes even more wrong on his assessment of who wrote the story of Joseph:

my bolding:

No piece of prose elsewhere in the Bible can equal the literary standard attained by the Joseph story of Genesis 37-50; and few extra-Biblical works in the ancient Near East can rival it for excellence of style and composition. The story is constructed around a beautifully turned and symmetrical plot that displays a unity and integrity that bespeak single authorship.

Well, no actually. The story of Joseph told in Genesis has three authors – J, E and P – and there’s also the Redactor putting in his four cents too.

This may seem like nit picking but who wrote what and when in the Bible, imho, is as key to dating to it as any geographical or archaeological factors. And Finkelstein's and Redford's theory that the story was told for political and expansionist reasons hinges on the dating.

[Minimalist]

Part of the problem with the "who wrote the bible" question is that we have to admit that it was re-written and edited extensively. Philip R. Davies makes a very sound case for the final revision having been made during the Maccabaean period and for the very compelling reason of giving Judaea a history of its own with which to withstand the Hellenization of the East which was taking place.

The Maccabees can be construed as conservative religious freaks who were trying to turn the clock back from the more enlightened and moderate Greeks. As Redford suggests.....Yahweh was a mean-spirited god.

[Ishtar]

Min, that makes perfect sense to me. That they would take existing stories and use them to political advantage would be an obvious course of action. And just looking at Friedman's Pentateuch, which is all I have here, these first five books alone display no less than 10 writers, redactors, revisionists and interpolators. And so later on, there may be even more.

But with this thread, my aim has been find out why these stories (which seem to mirror many others across the region) were told in the very first place, which in my view, was probably long before J and E were writing (900 - 722 BC).

There's a further point of interest:

J and E would probably have never met, being from different kingdoms and holding different political views. And if they had met, they probably wouldn't have agreed even to most simplest story element like 'when did God reveal himself as Yahweh.'

Yet, although they were writing in different kingdoms, and there were differences between them, there were also a striking number of commonalities in the stories at the archetype level.

This is why there are so many double ups - two versions of stories that are similar but different.

This would indicate that J and E were independently mining the same seam of ancient 'folk tales', for want of a better term, that go back to the 'days of yore' and which have a Sumerian/Akkad and Canaanite flavour.

I believe that Exodus was one of those ancient stories, which makes it a prime candidate for an allegorical teaching story similar to those told in the Mystery schools in Greece, Egypt and beyond - and especially when viewed in the context of the Jesus story, which I will come on to later.

Btw, I'm reading Finkelstein now (in the same link) and I think he's really stretching a point with his 6th century dating. It seems a bit wobbly to me, but he's 7th century date seems firmer.

However, E is pretty firmly dated to before the Assyrian invasion (722 BC), and I don't think, if what is said about him is correct, that he would ever write to support the campaign of a Judean king (Josiah).

[kbs2244]

Careful, there Ishtar:
You are getting close to the “Many writers, one author” argument for the Bible.

[Ishtar]

Careful, there Ishtar:
You are getting close to the “Many writers, one author” argument for the Bible.

Don't see how, KB!

I'm saying "many writers, one freaking migraine!".

Btw, I'm reading Crichton Miller. He's got some good stuff to say, but I was right. He badly needed an editor, if only to keep his ego in check!

[Minimalist]

Yet, although they were writing in different kingdoms, and there were differences between them, there were also a striking number of commonalities in the stories at the archetype level.

That idea just seems to support the notion of William Dever that they were all Canaanites to begin with. But, Finkelstein is fine with that. The only dispute they have is that Finkelstein thinks they were originally nomads who settled down and Dever thinks they were farmers fleeing the (probably) Sea People driven collapse of the Canaanite urban centers. It is a minor dispute. For that matter, the Aramaeans, Moabites, Edomites, etc also seem to have arisen around the same time...as did the Phoenecians.

I tried to make sense of this one time with an analogy...it's around here somewhere but I'll try and re-create the situation facing Judah as the Assyrian empire overran Israel in 722.

Let's suppose that the US and USSR did not avoid a nuclear exchange in the Cold War. Let's say that, at the time there were 250 million Americans.
1/2 of them are wiped out by the bombs and the remaining 125 million find themselves living in a desolated and poisoned land. For reasons of language and culture 75 million decide to flee to Canada.

Put yourself in the position of Canadian leaders. On the one hand, a chronically underpopulated country has solved that problem overnight. It is no longer underpopulated. However, those 75 million US refugees now outnumber native Canadians by a ratio of 2 to 1. One of the problems of the Canadian elite is how to maintain their position of power when they are now grossly outnumbered. So why not put forward a version of history which says that America brought destruction upon itself because in 1776 they split from Canada and went it alone. Canada continued fat and happy and the US had all sorts of problems culminating in the H-bomb exchange which destroyed them. Now, with the US having collapsed, the remaining people have "come home" to be where they were supposed to be all along if they hadn't followed the bad advice of their leaders in 1776.

Put that concept into the ears of an ignorant Iron Age culture...add in an angry god and voila. You end up with the "Judah is the center of the universe" crap that permeates the deuteronomistic history. They did have a reason for writing the stuff they wrote. And it has little to do with astrology. It has to do with power and politics.

<sigh> As always.

[Ishtar]

Put that concept into the ears of an ignorant Iron Age culture...add in an angry god and voila. You end up with the "Judah is the center of the universe" crap that permeates the deuteronomistic history.

But that's my whole point, Min. The Deuteronomy writers (Dtr) were the latest - and the only bits of the Moses story that appear in Deuteronomy are:

• an introductory text casting the book as a farewell message from Moses before his death (chs 1 - 11)
  
  two old poems that are included as a parting message from Moses for the future (32 and 33)
  
  reports of the last acts of Moses, (bringing together portions from J, E, P and D).

From Friedman:

D is part of a larger work called the Deuteronomist History (Dtr1), which contains the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. Dtr1 contains sources that are as old as J and E ... but the formation of the work took place in the reign of King Josiah of Judah, circa 622 BCE. It was later extended into a slightly longer second edition, Dtr 2; this took place during the exile that followed the destruction of the southern kingdom of Judah by Babylon in 587 BCE.....

So that still brings us back to the fact that the original J and E story of Moses is much older than when Deuteronomy was beig written and put together.

They did have a reason for writing the stuff they wrote. And it has little to do with astrology. It has to do with power and politics.

Well, that's your opinion. It's not mine, for the reasons given above. I don't know about the astrology thing, but I'm pretty sure that it's an allegory of some kind.

I have a further point. I work in PR, and I have to say that if this book (the OT) was put together for the sake of PR, they did a pretty piss-poor job of it. They didn't even streamline and consolidate the stories, which would surely be a basic requirement if you're going to be pulling the wool over people's eyes? It's almost as if they want you, the reader, to know that there are two, sometimes conflicting, versions of the same story. Surely you agree with that?

[Minimalist]

They didn't even streamline and consolidate the stories, which would surely be a basic requirement if you're going to be pulling the wool over people's eyes?

Is it? When you have the power to stone someone who disputes your interpretation do you really have to be that careful? I've joked before that if you give me the right to torture and kill people within 20 years I could have millions of them worshipping a toaster.

[Ishtar]

I've finally figured out what's going on, Min. The only reason you're in here arguing with me about the Bible is because you're missing Arch! So go on - be my guest. Knock yourself out! Anytime you want to talk to about the Bible that's fine by me. Never let it be said that I won't help a friend out in a crisis! I may not quite match up to the great Arch - let's face it, who can? - but at least I can give you better grammar and spelling!

Anyway, I think you'll find this Youtube clip really interesting. It's Richard Friedman talking about how the Biblical scholars work with linguists, archaeologists and anthropologists to work out who wrote what and when. He also agrees with me (or should I say, I agree with him) on how the Bible Minimalists' (aka Finkelstein's, Redford's) case cannot stand up given the early age of the original Moses story, as told by J and E. He's also quite interesting on the Tel Dan stele. In fact, he's quite an entertaining speaker in a kind of modest, self-deprecatory way:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYt3oom0pJg

[Minimalist]

I don't have time to watch it this morning...have to to spring the wife from the hospital. I'll get to it later.

You're right about Arch! But I've lived without him for a while now. Oddly, the one thing that Arch and I always agreed upon was the regrettable tendency of archaeology to ascribe everything it does not instantly understand to "ritual."

As for Friedman, I'll watch his video as soon as I have time but as with all people who study old writings he is at the mercy of whoever last edited the book. I usually go nuts with people who say "Paul said this" or "Paul said that." We don't know what Paul said because we have no manuscript that he actually wrote. We have copies of copies of copies and as Bart Ehrman has shown, many errors creep into the copying process. Some minor....some major....some intentional!

[Ishtar]

but as with all people who study old writings he is at the mercy of whoever last edited the book. I usually go nuts with people who say "Paul said this" or "Paul said that." We don't know what Paul said because we have no manuscript that he actually wrote. We have copies of copies of copies and as Bart Ehrman has shown, many errors creep into the copying process. Some minor....some major....some intentional!

Yes, agreed. But this is not that. Here we are not having a theological discussion such as you would have with Arch where you're trying to convince him that there is no Sky Daddy. This is about who wrote what and when, and it's really obvious to the linguists because the early writing is in a different vernacular.

For instance, if we were chatting away normally like this about one of my ex-husbands, and I then suddenly said of him:

Unnethe myghte they the statut holde
In which that they were bounden unto me.
Ye woot wel what I meene of this, pardee!
As help me God, I laughe whan I thynke
How pitously a-nyght I made hem swynke!

...you'd notice that something was up, wouldn't you?

That's because I'd suddenly broken into Chaucerian English. That quote is from the Wife of Bath in the Canterbury Tales.

But that's how obvious it is and easy to spot, and there are whole swathes of an equally different vernacular from those used in Deuteronomic times running right through the Pentateuch from J and E (dated c900 - 722 BCE).

And that's what we're discussing - not the true meaning of this or that, but who originally wrote the Moses story. Once you realise that it was written by J and E, it takes it out of the Josiah political arena, and so therefore cannot have been written for political reasons - or if it was, not those political reasons!

[Minimalist]

The reference to Chaucer is actually appropriate. We are about 8+centuries separated from him and the "Israelites" of 722 BC are about equally distant from the expulsion of the Hyksos c 1550 BC. History tells us that the pharaoh who drove out the Hyksos was Ahmose I. Legend tells us that the "Israelite" who escaped from Egypt was named Moses. Coincidence? Or perhaps just a garbled memory.

WE absolutely know that the Canaanites of the post-Hyksos era were literate. The Amarna tablets found in Egypt bear correspondence from Canaanite vassals of the Egyptians to their overlords, Amenophis III and Akhenaten c 1350. They are written in Akkadian or a Canaanite/Akkadian dialect. Hebrew, in any form, did not exist and would not for centuries.

Egyptian hegemony over Canaan ended with the reign of Ramesses IV c 1150. Which means that it was another 250 years before the formation of the kingdom in the north. The Assyrians refer to it as bit Omri in much the same way as the Tel Dan stele refers to bit David (House of David). The term "Israel" as A. Mazar points out, does not seem to show up until the Mesha stele of c 850 BC. By this time, Finkelstein is fully willing to grant the establishment of "full statehood" to the Kingdom which is now known as "Israel." However, while we have some minimal written records such as tax lists and inventories we have no 'literature' from the period nor do we have any monumental inscriptions by the "Israelites" themselves. It is possible that any which did exist were destroyed by waves of conquerors who were, for whatever reason, more thorough than they were elsewhere. It is also possible that the literature was destroyed in the repeated attacks of Sheshonq I of Egypt, Hazael, king of Aram-Damascus, and finally the Assyrians. Or, perhaps, they were never written down but were maintained as oral traditions in that society. We simply do not know.

What is absolutely true, however, is that while Friedman can make his case about the E source using "Elohim" which was Canaanite in origen and is thus a completely compelling case for distinguishing it from the Yahwist (J) source in the south, what we lack is any other "Israelite" writing to serve as a basis for comparison. The Chaucer analogy breaks down at this point because we have other sources of literature both from Chaucer's time and before.

WE do not know what the original version of these stories may have been. There is no other source for them in the Egyptian, Hittite, or Assyrian archives. We have only the final form of the tale to go by. There is a pretty fair suspicion that the Judahites 'borrowed' and re-wrote many tales of the far richer and more powerful Omride kingdom and later substituted in their 'heroic' kings, "David" and "Solomon." The Romans did pretty much the same thing with the Etruscans who dominated the city of Rome until 509 when the Republic started.

What we know from archaeology is that the geopolitical situation in the region as it is reflected in the story is far closer to 7th century realities than the 13th century.

[Barracuda]

You know, this discussion reminds me of Hollywood screen writers.

When was the last time you saw a movie with a truly original plot?

Writing is a fairly common skill. The creativity to be original is not.

And probably most of the "original" stories weren't even creative writing, but based somehow on actual events at some time

[Ishtar]

Sorry Min, I’m not clear what you main point is here. Are you saying that the original story could be that of the Hyksos – with magical bits added, like the parting of the Red Sea, the manna, the pillar of cloud and pillar of fire, the plagues, the rod striking the rock and water gushing forth, and so on and so on?

Just to pick up on couple of your other points – the spreading of folklore does not depend on literacy. The oral tradition was alive and well for millennia before the Moses story was written.

Secondly, on your point about having another Israelite writer to compare E with. If you watch the Youtube clip you’ll hear Friedman say that they consolidate the linguists’ dating with writing on archaeological artefacts dated in the usual way – say a stele – before accepting it. So their research is a multi-disciplined approach with linguists, archaeologists and anthropologists, which is why I tend to have some faith in it.

You refer to ‘Friedman’s dating’. But this is not Friedman’s dating, as such. He is just building on the existing dating of the 19th century Julius Wellhausen, famous for the Documentary Hypothesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis

Also I have now read Finkelstein’s article on the link you provided, and even he doesn’t disagree with when E and J are thought to have written (c. 900 – 700BC).

Finally, go back to your previous text on the difficulties of dating “copies of copies of copies,”: This as you know, is a very real and massive problem with the NT, but not so much of one with the OT. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered at Qumran (thought to be written between 2nd century BC and 1st century AD), great surprise was expressed at the similarity to the existing OT texts.

So that’s addressing your two last posts.

But to go on, as I said, I have now read Finkelstein to see where he’s getting his dating from, upon which he’s basing his assumption that the Moses story was created solely for political and expansionist reasons. And from my point of view, it seems that his case has some holes in it that he doesn’t address or else tries to sidestep.

Here’s what I mean. This is Finkelstein’s starting point:

The critical textual scholars who had identified distinct sources underlying the text of Genesis insisted that the patriarchal narratives were put into writing at a relatively late date, at the time of the monarchy (tenth-eighth centuries BCE) or even later, in exilic and post-exilic days (sixth-fifth centuries BCE). ...

Absolutely no-one is postulating, not even Finkelstein, that the J and E stories were written “even later, in exilic and post exilic days (sixth to fifth BCE)”, and so the first sentence reads like a fudge of two different ideas posing as one. At the very kindest, it’ s unclear and misleading.

But imho whether or not these stories reflected and thus happened to serve the concerns of the later Israelite monarch is not the point. The point is that J and E stories were writing the Moses story hundreds of years before this monarchy and, no-one, not even Finkelstein, disputes that. A bit further on, he says....:

In the admittedly fragmentary evidence of the E version of the patriarchal stories, presumably compiled in the northern kingdom of Israel before its destruction in 720 BCE, the tribe of Judah plays almost no role.

It’s actually not that fragmentary - whole chapters have been written by E.

But anyway, Finkelstein’s point here does make it clear that E could not have been writing the Moses story to support the reign of Josiah which occurred around a hundred years after they both wrote, at the least. Neither could J have been, as his writing is dated to the same time as E - and some (Wellhausen) put J even earlier than E.

Though the Genesis stories revolve around Judah - and if they were written in the seventh century BCE, close to the time of the compilation of the Deuteronomistic History - how is it that they are so far from Deuteronomistic ideas, such as the centralization of cult and the centrality of Jerusalem?

I think this is a straw man argument.

First of all, the Genesis stories don’t solely revolve around Judah. As Finkelstein himself points out in the second quote (above) the tribe of Judah plays almost no role in E’s writing, yet he is a major contributor to Genesis, writing virtually the whole of chapters 20, 21 and 22 (on Abraham and Sarah), and huge swathes from chapter 30 onwards, from Jacob and Esau right up the story of Joseph. He then is the main setter of the scene of the tale of Moses in Exodus 1.

Secondly, the reason that the stories don’t comply with the centralisation ideas of Jerusalem is because they were written at least a hundred - and possibly hundreds - of years earlier. The general consensus for the writing of Deuteronomy (Dtr1) is c 650 BC, and thus within the context of a completely different political situation (i.e. post Assyrian invasion of northern kingdom of Israel). There is also thought to be a later redaction (Dtr2) in post-exilic times around the time of Ezra.

Finkelstein goes on (from the previous quote):

Perhaps we should see here an attempt to present the patriarchal traditions as a sort of a pious prehistory, before Jerusalem, before the monarchy, before the Temple, when the fathers of the nations were monotheists but were still allowed to sacrifice in other places.

But he has already admitted that E (and thus presumably J) were writing between c 900 and 700 BC.

So Finkelstein’s case works well for why the stories were allowed to be included in later redacted versions - and perhaps that motivation was political. But it doesn’t in any way address the point that these were original myths that were not created in the first place for political reasons – or if they were, we have yet to find the political reason for their creation.

I think the mistake he may be making is that he’s assuming that the J and E stories have been rewritten by the later redactors into a more contemporary style and vernacular and thus adding in their own political agenda to the mix. But we know that this is not the case because it’s also why the linguists were able to date J and E’s stories so easily.

The redactors, it seems to me, just slapped the J and E stories into their compilations of texts that made up the Bible without so much as dotting an i or crossing a T. Various revisionists and redactors do then come along later and add in bits. But they’re added either side of J and E’s stories. They are not added into them, except on a few occasions where they’ve slipped in the odd sentence, but the linguists have been able to clearly spot them because the language is so different.

So when reading, say chapters 20 – 22 of Genesis, we are reading what E actually wrote between c900 and 722 BC. In other words, we are reading stories that were written well before Josiah and Deuteronomy and the centralisation of the Judaic religion.