Is the Jesus story an astrological allegory?

[Minimalist]

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.

That is exactly the argument of Davies, Thompson, Whitelam, and Lemche.
The entire thing was made up after the Exile.

Finkelstein (and DEver and Redford and A. Mazar) are moderates in this clash. They totally reject the positions of both Kenneth Kitchen and James Hoffmeier (leading "Maximalists") as well as the Copenhagen school cited above.

Again, I'm a little pressed for time today but I'll get back to you later.

[Ishtar]

Great, thanks Min!

Look forward to hearing more later...and hope your wife's arm is well on the mend.

Oh, and I musn't forget my duties here, otherwise you'll start to get withdrawal symptoms.

YOU'RE ALL GOING TO HELL!

Signed Arch

[Minimalist]

OK, I had a chance to listen to Friedman and one thing he said confused the hell out of me so I went back in the book I'm reading to where Amihai Mazar discusses the possible sources of information used by biblical authors.

At one point Friedman referred to "inscriptions."

Mazar notes that such sources might include:

1- The archives of the Jerusalem Temple Library.
2- Palace archives. (Mazar adds a note that the existence of such archives remains disputed. He could also have said that the temple library is disputed as well!)
3- Public commemorative inscriptions, perhaps centuries old, ...then he goes on to say "no Israelite ones have been preserved, but potential analogues include those Mesha of Moab and Hazael of Damascus, two of Israel's major opponents." Therefore, I ask again...."what inscriptions?"
4- The oral transmission of ancient poetry.
5- Folk stories and aetiological stories rooted in a remote historical past.
6- Earlier historiographic writings.

Mazar concludes "It is generally accepted that many of the stories incorporated in the Deutermonomistic History, though based on folk stories and traditions, were reworked under the influence of late-Judaean (that is southern) theology, ideology and editorial processes."

Friedman also glossed over the condition of the Tel Dan Stele. It was found, broken up, having been reused in a building project by a later ruler than Hazael.....sic transit gloria mundi!

It was pieced together from fragments and there has been some speculation that the "Bit Dwd" comment may have been mis-translated, or, mis-restored, to get that translation but it does not seem likely. The context of the text indicates that it is a genuine description of Hazael's defeat of the combined armies of Israel and Judah.

BTW, Arch is touchy about Tel Dan. True, it provides the only non-biblical evidence for the existence of the Davidic Dynasty, but, it also contradicts the biblical story of the event in question. The deaths of the two kings are laid at the feet of one Jehu...who also goes and kills Jezebel. Being a literalist he cannot be too comfy with the support for David while at the same time it kills his "inalterable word-of-god" routine. Poor Arch. Life sucks.

[Ishtar]

Jezebel! Sounds like a good idea for a sock!

I'm still trying to work out where you're going with this, so let me try it this way. Can you just answer the following with yes or no if possible, although obviously more fulsomely if you need to:

• As you and Finkelstein both agree that E and J were writing between 900 and 700 BC, can we assume that you no longer think that the Moses story was originally composed in order to further the political aims of Josiah?
  
  As Mazar also concludes that "many of the stories incorporated into the Deutrononomist History are based on folk tales", then same question as above.
  
  Is it possible that what you and Finkelstein mean is that these existing folk stories, originally written down by E and J between 900 and 700 BC, were re-presented and added to in the Deutrononomist History as part of a PR exercise on behalf of Josiah?

Thanks!

[Minimalist]

You're right....it isn't a 'yes' or 'no' question.

We have no way to know what the original stories may have been. That they were Canaanite seems beyond doubt because of the time frame between the Hyksos Expulsion and the rise of the Israelite Monarchy. Perhaps some day someone will find a bunch of clay tablets which record the Canaanite stories of their expulsion from Egypt but right now the record is silent.

So....when you say the stories were "originally composed" the answer is "does that matter?" What matters is the final version.

Let me give an analogy. Wild Bill Hickock and Davey Crockett were real people. Both had a number of actual exploits however that did not stop authors of what were called Dime Store Novels from writing fiction about them and passing it off as "the continuing adventures" of the name characters.

Thus, if you take a story and re-write it is that an "original composition"? If you take characters from history and put them into different settings for your own purposes, is that an "original composition?"

We know enough about the Hyksos expulsion from Egyptian history to know that it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the bible tale. Ahmose I was fighting to get the Hyksos out of Egypt. If someone had said to him "Let My People Go" he would have said "Get the Fuck OUT!!!" The Hyksos were not slaves....they were the ruling dynasty.

So whatever the folklore may have been...and the stories could have been preserved from northern sources just as easily, if not more so, than southern sources...someone sat down and cobbled together a grand national epic. Both Finkelstein and Redford use archaeology and geography to show that this story benefits the needs of Judah at the time of Josiah. I find that a compelling argument and even Mazar, who is supposed to be an opponent, does not dispute the position.

[Ishtar]

You're right....it isn't a 'yes' or 'no' question.

So....when you say the stories were "originally composed" the answer is "does that matter?" What matters is the final version.

So by final version - sorry, but I'm still confused - do you mean that the story of Moses as told in Exodus (not Deuteronomy, which as I mentioned before, just rounds off the end of Moses's life) is the final version and thus dated to c650? Exodus not Deuteronomy, just to be clear. What is your date for the story of Moses as told by E and J in Exodus?

Also when you say it doesn't matter - I disagree. It doesn't matter to you because you are more interested in trunk of the elephant whereas in this thread we're examining the tail (or tale!) So for the purposes of this thread, it matters very much. We're examining whether and how the story of Moses was derived from a more ancient mythology. As Mazar says, it was probably derived from a folk tale, which is another name for mythology.

We are here examining the roots of a myth. So whether or not it was later changed or revised to suit a political agenda is not relevant to this thread. Where it came from originally is.

[Ishtar]

Min - btw, when you reply, can you leave the Hyksos out of it. I wasn't intending to go there because no way in hell, as far I'm concerned, is this story anything to do with the Hyksos.

The story of the Hyksos is that some Canaanite people were in Egypt and then they came out again.

That's it...that all there is to it. It doesn't even begin to approach the complexity of the Moses myth.
'

[Minimalist]

More like c 630 BC, when the Judahites began to get delusions of grandeur as the Assyrians and Babylonians kept slaughtering each other in the East.

I can see that I am not making myself clear.

Unlike the Noah myth, where we have several older versions of the story and can track it through history, we have no older version of this story. Friedman asserts that it had to be written prior to the fall of Israel and while logical, it is not exactly true.

We know that after the fall of "Israel" the population of Judah jumped dramtically. You cannot simply look upon this in terms of real numbers. These people had their own history to bring with them and, in material terms vis-a-vis Judah, it was a far richer history. On a basis of the number of built up acres, Finkelstein estimates the population of Judah in the early 8th century at 20,000. By the end of the 8th century it's nearly 100,000. Immigrants do not just absorb the culture of their new country. They bring change. Quite frankly, in this case they probably brought far higher literacy rates, building techniques, farming techniques (Judah was a mainly pastoral region) etc., etc. Judah was a backwater. It's people were primarily shepherds. We do not know for certain that Judah was monotheistic anymore than we know that Israel was monotheistic. Most likely, as other Canaanite groups at the time, they were henotheistic with various local gods being the boss in various places. Dever has devoted an entire book to the discussion of Canaanite cult objects in Judah (Did God Have A Wife?). The only thing that tells us they were monotheistic is the bible itself...which in 630 is still about 4 centuries away from its final form.

We have little in the way of written records from Israel by which Friedman or anyone else can state categorically that we KNOW what they believed in the middle of the 9th century BC. We have even LESS from Judah because if the Israelites wrote little the Judahites wrote next to nothing which has come down to us. For all we know they fully subscribed to the Canaanite pantheon and Yahweh was an insignificant volcano god until later on.

You know, if I sat down today and wrote a story about how Davey Crockett was leading a tank regiment in Iraq I have no doubt that a trained linguist could look at the modern usage of my langauge and calculate when I wrote the story. But if nothing else survived 2,000 years later, would he be able to determine that the original Davey Crockett used to ride a horse and fire a muzzleloader? There has to be some basis for comparison and I don't know where Friedman is getting that. He is comparing the bible text to other parts of the bible text and saying this was written by these guys and this was written by others....but it would all be more convincing if he had actual documents for comparison. Thirty years ago historians considered the bible to be reliable history. That idea has gone out the window. I'm not sure where that leaves Friedman.


I'm probably still not making myself clear but I have to go get a haircut.

[Ishtar]

I'm probably still not making myself clear but I have to go get a haircut.

Perhaps the haircut will help!

Look, purely by using supposition - of what seems likely - you're going way out on a limb here. You're disagreeing with not only Friedman but also Finkelstein, and where does that leave you - in that radical Copenhagen School you were talking about? And how does that make you a moderate? Those guys are to Bible history what the Sex Pistols were to music. You're way out there, Min.

As you know, I'm not a great one for having to attest everything. But on this, I can't just agree with you. The weight of the evidence, while it may not be 100 per cent conclusive, is against you. I don't believe that Friedman would out and out lie - and he says that the linguists work is attested with other writing at the time.

By the way, I pointed this out before, but you're making the mistake of thinking this is all Friedman's idea - the dating. The dating already existed before he came along. He just has a minor disagreement with it over whether P came before D, or vice versa.

But in any case, for the purposes of this discussion, it's obvious that the story of Moses does derive from an ancient myth, because it has so many archetypal threads in common with other myths current in the region. Even Redford and Mazar managed to notice that.

So I have to proceed on that basis. So I'm sorry. This has been an entertaining diversion into politics, but I think it's time to get back to hocus pocus!

[Minimalist]

but I think it's time to get back to hocus pocus!

IF you prefer hocus pocus then mythology is definitely the place to go.

I don't know where you got that I disagree with Finkelstein. I don't. His ideas make perfect sense. Someone or some group sat down in the late 7th century and wrote this tale out. If they borrowed names from earlier folklore or not is almost irrelevant. They created the story at that time to suit the purposes of their own power structure.

And if Friedman has written sources for comparison then I think he should tell Professor Mazar what they are.

[Ishtar]

I don't know where you got that I disagree with Finkelstein. I don't. His ideas make perfect sense. Someone or some group sat down in the late 7th century and wrote this tale out.

Min, I got the idea from Finkelstein's article that you sent me in which he never uses the words 'wrote this tale out' as you do, but rather 'compiled', where he is talking about whole texts being compiled together to make the Bible as we know it today.

His opinion is that E was writing circa 900 - 700 BCE and that the stories were then re-presented and compiled together with other stories to form the Bible around c650 for, as you say, political reasons.

Here are his quotes:

In this one, note the word 'compilation':

But when did that compilation take place? .... The biblical text reveals an obvious familiarity with the main products of the lucrative Arabian trade that flourished under the supervision of the Assyrian empire in the eighth-seventh centuries BCE.

Note here the words: compiled in the northern kingdom of Israel before its destruction in 720 BCE:

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.

and I replied, if you remember:

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.

And if Friedman has written sources for comparison then I think he should tell Professor Mazar what they are.

Mazar doesn't doubt that the Moses story is a folk tale - from your own post earlier.

What I don't think Finkelstein understands - and Donald Redford certainly doesn't as shown before - is how easy it is to spot the older writing, and that it occurs in swathes in the Pentateuch. It's not just the ideas that are older (which they are, and almost certainly mythological). As I said before, it was if I was speaking just like this, and then suddenly switched into Chaucerian English. So what we have in Penateuch is swathes and sometimes whole chapters of completely differerent vernaculars to the later 650 BC writers, and it is as different as Chaucer's language is from ours today.

But in any case, as I've shown above, Finkelstein and Mazar are not saying that the story of Moses was made up from start to finish in 650 BC. They are saying that an older - and according to Mazar - folktale was included in a new compilation of texts that were being put together to impress the hell out of anyone who had any doubt at all about how great the Jews were.

So I think I've done enough here. I've come round to your side of the elephant, I've examined this trunk that you have such great interest in and I've explained to you why, from my point of view, the evidence in the trunk supports what we're finding in the tail, and doesn't contradict it.

Now I want to get back to the tail, or the 'hocus pocus', as you call it. I prefer to call it the study of mythology, which shows us why people thought as they did. It's not to say that I agree with why people thought as they did. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't. But it is just to look at it and try to see the world at that time through their eyes. This can only inform archaeology and anthropology, and help us to understand what some of the stuff we dig out of the ground is all about.

The study of mythology also makes a very good case for religion, as we know it today, being a crock of you know what. But it is a bit complicated at times, and perhaps some people just find it easier to toss it into the box of 'hocus pocus' rather than to try to get their heads around the complexity of what's actually being said. Not naming any names or anything.......!

[Ishtar]

In recent posts, I’ve been making the case that the Moses story must be derived from ancient mythology because it contains so many mythical archetypes.

But you might be wondering - what is a mythical archetype?

A mythical archetype refers to the common themes that run through all myths and which are particularly found in myths of that time and in that region of the world, as discussed earlier.

The Joseph and Jesus stories for instance, written at least 700 years apart, display classic archetypal themes including:

• Joseph was born of a miracle birth. Jesus was born of a miracle birth.
  
  Joseph was of 12 brothers, Jesus had 12 disciples.
  
  Joseph was sold for 20 pieces of silver. Jesus was sold for 30 pieces of silver.
  
  Brother "Judah" suggests the sale of Joseph. Disciple "Judas" suggests the sale of Jesus.
  
  Joseph began his work at the age of 30. Jesus began his work at the age of 30.

With the Moses story, the archetypal themes are not so obvious. But that’s because they need to be compared to Christian Gnostic archetypes.

The Christian Gnostics were the earliest (and some, say original) Christians who understood that Jesus was a mythical character. However, most of the Gnostic teachings of the time have been lost because they were destroyed by the later ‘Literalist Christians’, who believed that Jesus existed as a historical person and all “that Gnostic stuff is just so much hocus pocus” - sorry Min! It is that same Literalist Christianity that’s running the Christian religion today:

As Jung wrote after the Nazi excesses of World War II:

Christian civilisation proved hollow to a terrifying degree: it is all veneer, but the inner man has remained untouched and therefore unchanged. Yes everything is to be found outside – in image and in word, in Church and Bible – but never inside.

In other words, when Literalist Christianity exiled the Gnostic Inner Mysteries, Christianity lost its soul. As Freke and Gandy say:

It became a bastion of the hypocrites which the Gnostics portrayed Jesus as mocking in their gospel story – ecclesiastical autocrats who imposed their dogmas with threats and maintained their power through violence, politicians dressed up as priests who justified the laying waste of whole continents and the enslaving of millions.

So Freke and Gandy are saying that the story or myth of Jesus was created by Gnostics an an allegory to help them in their inner, spiritual progress. But they never had any intention that anyone should ever think that Jesus was real historical person.

So what are the teachings of the Christian Gnostics?

Unfortunately, most of the Christian Gnostics' literature has been destroyed by the Christian Literalists (or was until the discovery in the last century of the Nag Hammadi gospels) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library

So we have none of the Gnostics teachings to go on - the NH Gospels being as metaphorical and thus as mystifying as the stories in the Bible.

Therefore, we have to rely on the texts of these Literalists - the likes of like Origen, Justin the Martyr and Hippolytus - when they are attacking the Gnostics, to find out what the Christians Gnostics believed.

But there is also another great clue which the Literalists missed. The Literalist Christians could not destroy the writings of the Greek Gnostics (who they called the Pagan Gnostics) and so in the teachings of the Greek Gnostics we can find many clues to the underlying meaning of the Jesus allegory.

One of the great Greek Gnostic teachers at that time was Philo of Alexandria (c 200 BC to 100 CE). So in further posts. I'd like to explore his ideas and how they relate to those of the Christian Gnostics and thus the story of Jesus. Once we understand that ‘blueprint’ if you like, we can then see how the Moses story fits into it, and thus discover the mythical archetypes of the Moses story as told in Exodus.

[Minimalist]

Min, I got the idea from Finkelstein's article that you sent me in which he never uses the words 'wrote this tale out' as you do, but rather 'compiled', where he is talking about whole texts being compiled together to make the Bible as we know it today.

You're going to make me dig through The Bible Unearthed to get you a quote, aren't you?

Allright. No hockey games today. The wife isn't bitching (much). I'll dig it out later.

[Ishtar]

Min that's kind of you, but please don't cancel any hockey games on my account. Also hope your wife's arm is healing up fine!

But look, I think others reading this thread must be bored to death with us trading Finkelsteins and Friedkmans and Js and Es and Ps and Ds, and probably want to get on with the mythology as much as I do, as that's what this thread is supposed to be about.

In addition, neither of us are in any doubt that Moses and the story of the escape of the Children of Israel from Egypt is pure fiction - which, for the purposes of this thread is all we need to know.

So how about you and I take this discussion about dating somewhere else, either into a new thread, or talk about it in the Syrian Palestinian thread?

I need to describe some facets of Gnostic Christianity so that we can start to see the archetypal underlying structure of the Moses story. At the moment, the Literal Christians, aka fundies, have buried it under their sh**.

[Minimalist]

Minimalist wrote:

And if Friedman has written sources for comparison then I think he should tell Professor Mazar what they are.


Mazar doesn't doubt that the Moses story is a folk tale - from your own post earlier.

In the video, Friedman referred to "inscriptions." Mazar does not seem to know of any "Israelite" inscriptions. Hypothesizing about earlier, existing folk lore is fine (although NT scholars hypothesize about the "Q" gospel, too, though none can seem to find it!). We have no hard evidence for those folk tales...just inference and supposition.