Archaeologica.org

Hi, just wondering if any of you have ever read Graham Phillips' the Moses Legacy? If so, what did you think? The Bible makes a lot more sense now (The Old Testament being seriously slanted towards Judah's favor), and the mountain in Edom being the original "Mountain of God" and all the jazz.

Anyways, this guy wrote a REALLY convincing book, but I have done no research whatsoever online. Wikipedia had very little about the author.

He ends up explaining the origins of Western monotheistic thought... Mose's psychedelic trip on Datura Stratonium.... lol.

Anyways it was an amazing book, and it really opened my mind toward the Bible (Minimalist, I am leaning more toward your side now).....

Thoughts? Comments? Wisdom? You guys ever heard of or read this book? I have never read an archaeological book this gripping - couldnt put it down. But then I have my own biases...

-popelane24

There is no actual evidence that there ever were any Hebrew slaves in Egypt.

Any (every) time people try to be too rational, too consistently, their irrationality becomes evident to everyone but themselves. As here.

To imagine that great religions (as opposed to cults) have their origins in trivial accidents that have somehow or other taken on a life of their own is an attempted denial of entropy (one of those thermodynamical law principle thingies).

As can be easily observed, conceptions that start out intact don't tend to remain that way very long. Making the supposition that the great religions that have shaped and nourished human culture came about through accretion and borrowing a conceptual absurdity. The entropic constant pulls things in the opposite direction. As is only too apparent in "Christianity."

The allegation that the lesser can (somehow or other) produce the greater is a disguised insistence that there is nothing more to things than what meets the eye of the one doing the insisting. Who, if his vision were more nearly adequate to the task, would not be talking such tripe. He knows, on one hand, that it is a difficult enterprise for a accomplished parent to raise a child to an equally accomplished adulthood. Thus far, he is rational. But then he rubbishes his own understanding of causality to allege that not only does the opposite happen in the greater realm, but that it happens spontaneously and inevitably -- demonstrating the very "magical thinking" and "blind belief" he descries in those he disagrees with.

uniface wrote:...great religions (as opposed to cults)...

Same difference.

Could Uni or someone else explain in plain English what he said please?

Roy.

I doubt it.

Yeah that guy left me clueless. What I wanted was someone who actually READ THE BOOK. Did you actually read it, uniface?

Notice the lol after I "explained the origins of monotheistic thought".... Moses' Datura trip was just a TINY BIT of what the whole book said, it really was an amazing read.... I just wanted to be funny, being an ex drug addict is all

Now, has anyone actually READ THE BOOK ? If you have not, this guy's reasoning, based on archaeological/historical evidence that IS empirical, is REALLY REALLY solid. I am convinced he is on to something, and I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone interested in the origins of Judaism/Islam/Christianity. It was AWESOME, I was very interested to begin with, and by halfway though I was obsessed and couldnt put it down.

AMAZING theories, guys, really worth it......

-L.

I have not read the book but I would be curious as to what "archaeological" evidence he claims to have found?



If I am not mistaken this is the same fellow who claims that the Holy Grail is buried beneath a storm drain in the English countryside.


Oh...and the Ark of the Covenant, too.

Could be the same guy, as this guy speculates that Moses' staff is in a museum in London.... Archaeological evidence in cludes the staff, the snake mounument near Petra (Near the "Spring of Moses", still referred to as such by local people, the altars and platforms atop what he believes is THE Holy Mountain (Seeing as there are so many names and places for it in the Bible, apparently a deliberate attempt by Judean sribes to further confuse history).... I cant describe it all in detail. Its a relatively short read man... this guy is not a scientist, but a reporter-cum-"detective"... But...

OK, I will give you a short list.... it gets more and more convincing the further you read.

-The Hebrew Bible as it exists today... BUT he goes back to 2nd century copies
-the Book of Jasher, omitted by the Hebrew scribes, rediscovered and translated in 1993. This I found fascinating. Should it have been in the Bible, Jasher would have been an Edomite hero for the people of Israel... apparently he was the real "King", NOT Joshua, of Joshua's army, and Moses appointed HIM.
-Egyptian records
-The Thera eruption
-The scientific theories of the plagues caused by it
-Mistranslations of the Bible, he cities many, many examples
-Using anachronisms in the Bible to make some AMAZING theories... (seriously its incredible, this guy, after I studied the Bible intensely, believing it to be the Almighty Truth of God, basically debunked it for me)
-The Moabite Stone
-In Manetho's Aegyptica, there IS documentation of a large slave revolt in Egypt
-Apparently many Hyksos were enslaved - documented in tomb inscriptions of the period (of Ramsses II I believe)
-Apparently in Ramses II's reign, inscriptions were made stating a vast labour force was used to rebuild Avaris
-Prince Tuthmose has MUCH in common with the OT Moses, ESPECIALLY the name but much more (He goes on to theorize there were actually two Moses's)
-Similarities between Atenism and the early Israelite religion, the second Moses was a disgruntled Atenist priest, the two Moses' legacies combined into one over time.
-Baal worship just meant they (Israel as opposed to Judah after the division) were worshipping the Lord... just in another way, because all the word means is Lord.
-Animosity between Judah and the Edomites... both descended from Hebrews
-the Atuff Ridge Israelite high places on Mount Madhbah near Petra... in Edmonite terriotry
-The strong wind blown through the Siq (entrance to the Petra Treasury etc) creates a stropng, loud, trumpet like noise sometimes in big winds and storms, like would have happened in the unstable weather following the Thera eruption
-The gorge he talks about is known by the local Bedouin as "The Valley of Moses" and it contains the "Spring of Moses"...
-The Snake Monument near Petra, called Peor "serpent" in Akkadian, ref. to in Deuteronomy
-An altar over a tomb where Moses supposedly laid once (in Bible), they found an Egyptian Princely staff
-The staff, bearing the name of man (he) identifies with Moses, , found in what he reasoned may have been Moses' own tomb (A simple but Princely cedar staff inscribed with hieroglyphs with a snake on top), on what he identified as-
-..."The Mountain of God, or Beth-El in the Bible..
-A connection between the Essenes and the Edomites recorded by Strabo, the two sound very similar. (Essers vs Essenes, and common practices... saying that this was a place where Judaism was practiced in some form even in Nabatean times
-The Sabean Stone, commemorating the death of a Priest, with a depiction of a very menorah-like tree with a serpent around it (Sound like the story of the original sin", anyone?)
-Datura Stratonium is of of the only bushes that grows up there. Known for its effects of burning the mouth, burning sensations throughout the body, this "Thorn apples", may have been the original "forbidden fruit" that gave this Moses the "knowledge" of the one God... BECAUSE the famous passage stating the bush was buring can actually be translated as "The Bush burned Moses".

Theres a whole pile of it, Minimalist... it was an amazing read.

-L.

popelane24 wrote:...this guy, after I studied the Bible intensely, believing it to be the Almighty Truth of God, basically debunked it for me...

Then all those 'threads' ('stories' seems too denigrating, 'hypotheses' too grand) must either have been revelations of some sort, which I don't pretend to understand, or you are relatively easily influenced.

If so, you can probably also relatively easily be hypnotized. I'm serious. Have you ever tried that? Gotta try it! It's fun! No, I'm serious! It is fun!
It also teaches you some valuable insights into yourself.

All right, let's see. One at a time.


http://www.answers.org/bible/jasher-book-of.html

Goodspeed cites several reviews from the late 18th and early 19th century that declared this book to be "a shameless literary forgery".

The book is described as "a condensation of portions of the first seven books of the Old Testament". One glaring omission is that nothing is said about David's dirge over Saul, which should be there according to II Samuel 1:18.

The title page of the book says. "translated into English by Flaccus Albinus Alcuinus, of Britain, Abbot of Canterbury, who went on a pilgrimage into the Holy Land and Persia, where he discovered this volume in the city of Gazna."

Alcuinus did live in Britain around 650. One problem with this manuscript is that it is written in an Elizabethan style English unknown to Alcuinus. The first edition of this book claimed that Alcuinus had "learned in the University of Oxford all those languages which the people of the East speak." The problem with that is that Oxford wasn't founded until 886, more than 80 years after Alcuin's death. Subsequent editions omitted this remark.

Goodspeed gives a number of other reasons based on internal evidences in the book why it is clearly an 18th century forgery and not genuine.

-The Hebrew Bible as it exists today... BUT he goes back to 2nd century copies


Folklore, at best. And probably not written until after the so-called Return from Exile. The question is, how much after the "return."

Egyptian records

There seems to be a difference of opinion on this.

Archaeology

While some archaeologists leave open the possibility of a Semitic tribe coming from Egyptian servitude among the early hilltop settlers and that Moses or a Moses-like figure may have existed in Transjordan ca 1250-1200, they dismiss the possibility that the Exodus could have happened as described in the bible.[19] A century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has found no evidence which can be directly related to the Exodus narrative of an Egyptian captivity and the escape and travels through the wilderness,[8] and it has become increasingly clear that Iron Age Israel - the kingdoms of Judah and Israel - has its origins in Canaan, not Egypt:[20] the culture of the earliest Israelite settlements is Canaanite, their cult-objects are those of the Canaanite god El, the pottery remains in the local Canaanite tradition, and the alphabet used is early Canaanite. Almost the sole marker distinguishing the "Israelite" villages from Canaanite sites is an absence of pig bones, although whether this can be taken as an ethnic marker or is due to other factors remains a matter of dispute.[21]

The Thera eruption

1628 BC. Triangulated by C14, dendrochronology and ice core testing. Well over 1,000 years before the OT was written.


-Mistranslations of the Bible, he cities many, many examples
-Using anachronisms in the Bible to make some AMAZING theories... (seriously its incredible, this guy, after I studied the Bible intensely, believing it to be the Almighty Truth of God, basically debunked it for me)

Too vague to be of much help.


-The Moabite Stone

A mid-ninth century BC ( c 850 ) carving.


-In Manetho's Aegyptica, there IS documentation of a large slave revolt in Egypt

Manetho lived in the 3'd century BC...under the Ptolemies. Over 1,500 years after the events discussed vis-a-vis the Hyksos.
Roughly akin to someone trying to research political events in Western Europe in 550 AD from our own time.

-Apparently many Hyksos were enslaved - documented in tomb inscriptions of the period (of Ramsses II I believe)

Many? Ramesses ( c 1250 BC) was 3 centuries after the Hyksos were booted out. I know of a handful of tomb reference from Ahmose I about a couple of slaves taken from the Hyksos, but so what? The Hyksos were rulers, not slaves.

-Apparently in Ramses II's reign, inscriptions were made stating a vast labour force was used to rebuild Avaris

Again, we now have dates being thrown around from 1628 BC to sometime after 530 BC. There is not a single mention of Israelites, Hebrews, Jews, in the extensive literature of Ramesses I or II or Seti I.

-Prince Tuthmose has MUCH in common with the OT Moses, ESPECIALLY the name but much more (He goes on to theorize there were actually two Moses's)

There were four pharaohs named Thutmoses beginning around 1506 BC and ending c 1390 BC. Thutmoses III was a great military leader conquering Syria and Nubia. Canaan was already under Egyptian control.

-Similarities between Atenism and the early Israelite religion, the second Moses was a disgruntled Atenist priest, the two Moses' legacies combined into one over time.

Akhenaten ruled around 1350 BC. His religion lasted 20 years and was vigorously stamped out upon his death. People who are dying to find some historical justification for their belief system go out on a limb to make a connection but it seems that Judaism resulted from contact with Zoroastrian Persia.....many centuries later.


I'm guessing by now that you get the idea?

Ive got a lot to learn apparently. BUT I am going to keep researching this book. Maybe it is too good to be true.

"it seems that Judaism resulted from contact with Zoroastrian Persia.....many centuries later."

Could you give me an explanation, Minimalist?