History and the Bible

[Travis Clementsmith]

Interesting show coming up on PBS:

Holy Moses! PBS documentary suggests Exodus not real

Hal Boedeker | Sentinel Television Critic
July 21, 2008

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Abraham didn't exist? The Exodus didn't happen?

The Bible's Buried Secrets, a new PBS documentary, is likely to cause a furor.

"It challenges the Bible's stories if you want to read them literally, and that will disturb many people," says archaeologist William Dever, who specializes in Israel's history. "But it explains how and why these stories ever came to be told in the first place, and how and why they were written down."

The Nova program will premiere Nov. 18. PBS presented a clip and a panel discussion at the summer tour of the Television Critics Association.

The program says the Bible was written in the sixth century BC and that hundreds of authors contributed.

"At least the first five books of the Bible come together during the Babylonian exile," says producer Gary Glassman.

The program challenges long-held beliefs. Abraham, Sarah and their offspring probably didn't exist, says Carol Meyers, a religion professor at Duke University.

"These stories are unlikely to represent real historical events, but rather there's some kernel of ancient experience in there which has survived and which helps give identity to the people at the time the Bible finally took shape centuries and centuries later," Meyers says.

There's no archaeological evidence of the Exodus, either, she says, but "it doesn't mean that there's no kernel of truth to it."

Nova series producer Paula Apsell says she found it "extremely shocking" to learn that monotheism was a process that took hundreds of years.

"I was always brought up to believe that the minute Abraham and the patriarchs came on the scene, the Israelites accepted one God and there was just always one God and that was it," Apsell says. "I think people are going to really be stunned by that."

Another shocker: The program contradicts the biblical view that the Israelites came from somewhere else into the land of Canaan. "The film shows that they were Canaanites," Apsell says.

Also, here's an interesting review from a genuine Biblical scholar on the book, Who Was Jesus, Fingerprints of the Christ, written by fellow conspiracist thinker, D.M. Murdock, aka "Acharya S":

D.M. Murdock, aka "Acharya S," has written a really fine introduction to the problem of the Historical Jesus. She couches everything in the most basic terms, comprehensible to the layman, and lays out the problem and all the issues in a both really readable and digestible form.

Her charts are insightful and extremely useful and presented in such a way as to make things immediately plausible to the general reader.

I can recommend her work whole-heartedly for anyone on a world-wide basis who really wants to know what is at stake in approaching and coming to terms with the real person behind the literary image provided by those who created the story of 'Jesus.'"

Dr. Robert H. Eisenman
Author of James the Brother of Jesus and The New Testament Code
RobertEisenman.com

[Lightkeeper]

I will be looking forward to this program. A few years ago I talked to Acharya S about doing an interview here. She almost did, but became too busy.

If this is true about Abraham this effects several religions if anyone wants to take the Bible literally. It also effects the lineage of Jesus. I would assume it would also effect the Bahai's since they work with several religions. I wonder how the Muslims will react to this.

It looks as though the "Promised Land" will have to be considered a place within ourselves.

[Travis Clementsmith]

Many of those items such as...

Most of the books are written during or after the Babylonian period

Abraham and Sarah are not "historical" and represent other deities (most notably Brahma and Sari)

Lack of archeological evidence of Egyptian sojourn

The Hebrews always being monotheistic

...were brought up in her first book The Christ Conspiracy. Needless to say, it has been a lightning rod for those you busy themselves with the debate over historicity.

-TC

[arthra]

The question of historicity is a good one...

You could ask what is the historicity of say Nebuchadnessar, Cyrus the Great or Pharoah Necho or Alexander..? all of whom appear in the Bible (at least Alexander was probably mentioned as well as his Selucid successors in the Deuterocanonical .. Well no one will probably contest them because they were also archeological and other historical material about them...

That Abraham may not be mentioned outside the Bible and the Qur'an may pose a problem for some... but recall that most people are also unmentioned in history except perhaps some trade people who left their transactions in cuneiform but the average sheep hearder and hunter gatherer will not be mentioned.

Would we say though that a figure or personage that is acknowledged by say ancient people is significant because they traced their ancestry to Him and acknowledge a Covenant that God was supposed to have been made Him.

For someone who acknowledges that the Bible is inspired and that the Qur'an was revealed it would seem that the need for historicial validity is not very great.

The Bible has a historical perspective you could say more than maybe some religions that may view time as cyclical... Read some of the Jataka tales about the previous incarnations of Guatama Buddha and you will see society is basically static and the same.. references to kingdoms and so on are mostly not historical or relate to any meaningful historical context... Not so the Bible, the Qur'an and the Baha'i Writings...

Where there's been a long and continuous pattern of acknowledged succession over a millenia is it significant or should some view prevail that since a personage lacks what they consider to be some credentials they are not to be considered?

-Art

[Travis Clementsmith]

I think there's a difference between having a religious past and claiming authority through historicity. Abraham wasn't "a nobody", he petitioned Babylon to lead the Israelites out supposedly. Whether some event like this should survive in an archeological record is one question, but it really strikes me as odd when people try to play these figures off dually, "they weren't that famous, but they were famous enough to be remembered for centuries." Nobody tries to do this with Romulus and Remus, few try and make a case for the Gilgamesh era, or the "First Time" of the Egyptians. We feel fairly comfortable in calling those "people" myths, yet raise our hackles over Abraham, Samson, David and Solomon.

Isn't it interesting that in the Buddhist tradition you mentioned, the lack of serious historicity led to a culture whose spiritual leaders pushed the envelope of mystical practice and insight that they come down to us in full traditions in how to attain such, but where historicity is at least expected, if not demanded, we're still more interested in the stories than in what spiritual truth they might try to teach?

Listing famous people in a work of fiction does not make the work non-fiction. People make up stories to explain their situation and give a sense of identity, actual history can often get in the way of that. I think we would be better off if we could come to a point in our lives where we regard these fantastic figures more like King Arthur than like King Tut.

-TC

[arthra]

Of course the stories can contain spiritual truths.... if we look into them I think ... but truly remarkable and if you will miraculous is the fact that the Bible as an influence has survived down through the ages through a relative minority and is still a living "Book" while the Book of the Dead of the ancient Egyptians has not.

-Art

[Travis Clementsmith]

Originally Posted by arthra

Of course the stories can contain spiritual truths.... if we look into them I think ... but truly remarkable and if you will miraculous is the fact that the Bible as an influence has survived down through the ages through a relative minority and is still a living "Book" while the Book of the Dead of the ancient Egyptians has not.

-Art

I think we can attribute other things to its survival, namely that the religion of the soon to be Holy Roman Empire needed it to link to Christianity to establish some sort of ancient-ness. Without that, and the belief that the Jews had to be preserved to witness their "failing", the OT may have faded out of relevance after the Roman conquest and diaspora of the Jews. The Egyptian religion may go back four or five thousand years, and its overall run is longer than the good book. Aspects of it may have still been strong if not for the Christian conquest. If it were not for the importance the Christians placed on the Scriptures, its quite likely Judaism would have gone the way of Zoroastrianism.

-TC