Bpelta, I don’t think that you’re going to learn much by asking the question in the OP here. All you’re going to get are one-paragraph (at most) potshots that don’t give you any overall idea of current Biblical scholarship on such issues. I think a better thing for everyone here to do is to give us a list of books that would answer some of Bpelta’s questions. What are the main books that people would suggest for Bpelta to read, ones that have substantial, coherent amounts of knowledge on these issues but which aren’t hopelessly difficult for a non-scholar in the field to read?
Voyager:
How are you defining “Empire”? Is the area of the modern state of Israel considered an “Empire”? He was never said to rule over an area like Babylon or Egypt.
They were dated to a time later than secular historians think of as Solomon’s, but consistent with traditional Jewish chronology for Solomon. There is a discrepancy of about 160 years in the figuring of the destruction of the first Temple and construction of the second one.
Blake, those are good questions. But they’re not new. Rabbis have been answering them for thousands of years. Let’s take just one example:
Unfortunately, when one reads a work in translation, one misses much of the meaning. In the case, the word translated as “repented” actually (in my opinion) means “He was consoled”. I can see perhaps how someone might translate it as “He regretted”, but I have no idea how it got translated as “repented”; maybe the words have changed meaning over the centuries, I don’t know. Anyway, over 900 years ago, Rashi quoted an even older work as explaining this verse to mean that if man had been created in Heaven, things would have turned out even worse, and so He was consoled that He had made man on the earth.
Your other questions have other answers, but I have to go now. I’ll be back in the morning.
Direct evidence that things did not happen and could not have happened.
Nope. Never happened. The archaeolgical evdience disproves it dispositively. The Israelites were never even enslaved in Egypt. As a matter of fact, the Israelites didn’t even exist at the times theywere supposedly enslaved.
Asking for negative evidence is fatuous, by the way. Can you prove that Odysseus did not escape being cannibalized by a cyclops?
I don’t know, but I have no investment in believing that Ezra was a redactor. I think it’s also possible that the Samaritans are using a post-exilic Torah, despite their ancient claims. I don’t have the answer to this question. It’s not anything I’ve studied. My understanding was the differences in scripture were essentially the post-exilic, non-Torah material, but my knowldge is not deep on this. I should study more about the Samaritans. They’re interesting.
Also, physical impossibility is sufficient reason to assume something did not happen. If I tell you that I flew to work today by flapping my arms, you know that I’m full of shit. You don’t need to wait for extra evidence. Why people think impossible claims made by the Bible are subject to any kind of special presumption of truth is very strange to me. The proof that Jesus did not come back to life is that it’s impossible. Why is any other argument needed? Religion is weird. It never parsed for me, even when I was a small child.
To Omri, if I recall correctly.
This post is spectacularly wrong in several ways. First of all, the Documentary Hypothesis is largely the product of scholarship by believers. In fact the bulk of Biblical criticism has been done by believers. There isn’t any “no-God camp.” Doesn’t exist. There is good scholarship and bad scholarship. It either holds up to scientific method and peer review or it doesn’t.
Secondly, the existence of David is a question because we have never found any conclusive evidence of his existence despite the expectation that we should, given the claims made about his power and influence made in the Bible. “thousands of years of literature” is not evdience. There are thousands of years of literature about Krishna. Means nothing.
Moreover, while the existence of David is still an open question, it’s not regraded as implausible or farfetched. What can be discerned is that during the alleged time of David, there was no unified Kingdom of north and south, and that the southern region (the region of Jerusalem) did not control the north.
Thirdly, there is a ton of evidence supporting the Documentary Hypothesis. Lingusitic evidince - evdidence of strongly different writing styles and dialects - doublings of stories told first in one voice, then a completely different one, etc. Not to get too deep with this, but if you say there isn’t any evidence for it, then you haven’t studied much about it.
I’d suggest he start with The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman.
Agreed. More generally, plenty of Catholics and Jews are not literalists: among other things this divides mainline believers from fundamentalists.
My copy of the Schocken Bible gives this translation of Genesis 5:5-6. I’ll include Everett Fox’s footnote.
To summarize, Blake showed us a literary technique of the Bible: it’s only a contradiction if you insist on interpreting the Bible as cookbook, and there’s no evidence that it was written with such intent.
As a kid, I figured miracles were something that occurred long ago, but stopped after Jesus died. It’s sort of like I believed that woo might exist in certain cultural contexts, until Randi put that particular hypothesis to rest.
Not true. Indeed, Hebrew slaves were common in Egypt. Now, sure, before Moses and Joshua, it’s be hard to call them “Israelites”, but that’s picking nits. Egypt had ruled over that area, and battled with it’s peoples, and Egypt kept large numbers of foriegn slaves from that area- all documented, they even had a word for them “Hapiru”.
Now of course, the Exodus is legendary- now way did anything of that size happen. But that’s not to say a few thousand slaves from what is now Israel didn’t escape and then bring new leadership and technology to their backward rural cousins.
wiki
The name Israel first appears in the stele of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah c. 1209 BC, “Israel is laid waste and his seed is not.”[15] William Dever sees this “Israel” as a cultural and probably political entity of the central highlands, well enough established to be perceived by the Egyptians as a possible challenge to their hegemony, but an ethnic group rather than an organised state.[16] Archaeologist Paula McNutt says: “It is probably … during Iron Age I [that] a population began to identify itself as ‘Israelite’,” differentiating itself from its neighbours via prohibitions on intermarriage, an emphasis on family history and genealogy, and religion.[17]
The Exodus has traditionaly been dated to 1312BC, about 100 years before the stele. It’s doubtful that a whole people could have risen and “laid waste” in 100 years. Thus, there’s little doubt there were "Israelites’ about 1300 BC and likely earlier.
here’s a good site:
*This exit from Egypt by the Hyksos probably included the Israelites as well. The story of the Exodus is most likely bases on the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt, for there is no other record of any mass exit from Egypt (Robertson 1990, 36; Halpern 1994, 89-96; Redford 1897, 150). The evidence seems to fit well with Josephus’ account. Although the Egyptians saw the expulsion of the Hyksos as a great military victory, the Israelites viewed this as a great salvation victory for them. This seems similar to other events recorded in ancient history where both sides claim a great victory. Ramses II battled with the Hittites and almost lost his life, yet he calls this a great victory, but so do the Hittites. In reality it was a stalemate, so they both signed a treaty (ANET 1969, 201; Soggin 1993, 213) Ahab is seen as a powerful king (ANET 1969, 279). Sennacherib claims a great victory over the Jews by taking 46 cities and surrounding Jerusalem. Hezekiah is said to be “like a bird in a cage” (ANET 1969, 288), yet he claims a great victory because Jerusalem is not captured. In the Mesha or Moabite stone (ANET 1969, 320) the king of Moab, Mesha claims a great victory over Israel, yet Israel claims a great victory over Moab (II kings 3:4-27). So it seems that what the Egyptians saw as a great victory over the expulsion of the Hyksos, the Israelites saw as a great exodus victory of salvation.
*
Generally, people who are religious or believe that the Bible or some other holy book is true, believe in a supernatural being; a “god”, if you will, who is able to perform acts that seem impossible under the natural laws of the universe, like bring people back to life or create something out of nothing.
Cite?
You’re aware that the Hebrew language did not even emerge from Canaanite untill the 12th Century BCE? In waht sense were these slaves “Hebrew?” I can assure yiou, they were not Israelite.
This has been disproven. The word Hapiru did not refer to an ethnic orgroup and did not refer to slaves, but to a lifestyle - essentially to people who lived on the outskirts of civilization,a dn who were sometimes employe as mercenaries.
The Israelites themselves never went to Egypt, and there was never any kind of mass Exodus back to Canaan.
There isn’t the sligfhtest evidence for this, nor was there any influx of people, technology or leadership into Canaan.
This is all after the alleged time of the Exodus.
Dated by who? The tradtional dates of the Exodus are either during the reign of Ramesses II (13th century), or the 15th Century BCE.
There isn’t a shred of archaeological evidence for this.
This is flat out making things up. The Hyksos were not, and did not include Israelites. There were no Israelite in the 16th Century BCE. What is the evidence for your assertion that there were?
Correct, but they weren’t Israelites. It was an ancient story garbled, reimagined and revcast as an Israelite story.
The Hyksos were not slaves, though. They were occupiers.
Cite? Where do you find thhe Israelites saying anything about the Hyksos at all?
So it seems that what the Egyptians saw as a great victory over the expulsion of the Hyksos, the Israelites saw as a great exodus victory of salvation.
[/QUOTE]
That’s one way to look at it, I suppose. They used some elements to make up an origin story for themselves, but it wasn’t a question of different interpretations of history, but self serving mythology.
I have given you two cites. You have exactly zero.
You didn’t provide cites for the two things I asked for.
What would you like a cite for from me?
I don’t know the answers to OP’s questions, but am very skeptical of blanket negative claims.
Some “Aryan” people from Central Asia arrived in India (perhaps only 1 or 2 centuries before the alleged date of Exodus), established a new language, a new religion, and a new culture; but there isn’t a shred of archaeological evidence for this. Linguistic and genetic evidence, however, makes us certain it did happen. (A major difference is that the Aryans found it politic to suppress their Northern origin, while Hebrews celebrated their alleged Exodus.)
BTW, I don’t believe in miracles, yet find the question of the historicity of non-miraculous Biblical accounts interesting. Yet some in the thread deny an “excluded middle”, as though anyone who thinks Solomon existed, also thinks Eve fed the apple to Adam! 
There is no evidence of any kind of an influx of “Israelites” into Canaan. The israelites were Canaanites. This isn’t a negative claim but a positive one. The evidence is not just archaeological, but linguistic and religious as well. Hebrew is derived from Canaanite. The Hebrew gods are derived from the Canaanite pantheon.
Gid?
Bpelta, Diogenes the Cynic has suggested one book for you to read:
> I’d suggest he start with The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil
> Silberman.
I think that this is the only useful contribution for you in this thread. The rest of the thread, as is typical in these discussions, consists of nothing but endless sniping back and forth. Does anyone else have any books to suggest for Bpelta on this matter?