More of a convenient shortcut to fill in a hole, I think.
Yes, quite.
Not in the actual textual context. 3 separate gifts aren’t called out, just “Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh” Anything else is just dogma.
The scenario of Hebrews vs. Canaanites is inane. Hebrews were Canaanites. They spoke the same language, shared the same culture. The only way archaeologists can identify a specifically Hebrew site is the absence of pig bones. Archaeologically, Hebrews were Canaanites who didn’t eat pork.
Hundreds of years is not a short period for this kind of thing, at all. Especially for what are essentially internal changes within Canaanite culture, during a period of great cultural flux in the whole region overall.
Nor did they take over the whole “Holy land”[sic], the way the maps in your Sunday School books may have showed. There were plenty of other polities in the bounds of Canaan throughout the pre-exilic period.
Though I’d argue if there is a difference that lets archeologists tell your cultures apart just by looking at the fragmentary remaIns thousands of years later that actually represents quite a big difference between cultures.
I’d argue back that one factor being different out of many represents quite a small difference.
After thousands of years, when most of what defines a culture has rotted away to nothing, that you can still say with confidence “this is culture A not culture B” just by looking at the few surviving fragments of the food they threw away? Thats quite a big difference IMO
A professional archaeologist could settle this matter for us, and I’d sooner trust their judgment. Shake on that?
I believe archeologists also looked for evidence of stars on their bellies, or the absence of said marks.
It’s a matter of opinion. I’m sure you can find a professional archeologists who calls it an insignificant difference. Just as I’m sure you can find one who says it’s a huge difference. And probably every subtle shade of opinion in the middle. Hell you can probably find one who says the lack of pig remains doesn’t actually mean they didn’t eat pork.
I have a friend who’s an amateur archeologist. Maybe I’ll ask him next time we talk. (That probably won’t be for a few weeks, though.)
Not eating pork isn’t that big a deal in modern culture, but my inclination is to think that not keeping pigs would be a significant difference in lifestyle. The other meat animals in the region were easier to herd and migrate with, and don’t need shade as much as pigs. I don’t think the others need as much water as pigs, either.
If one group ate both sheep and goats, and the other only ate goats i wouldn’t think they were as different.
… in addition to the dozens of other things that have narrowed down the possibilities from A-Z to A & B alone.
If they use the same tools, the same clothes, the same houses, same farming techniques, same cooking methods… and only differ in their use of some food products, they’re not widely divergent cultures.
I don’t think you use the farm farming techniques if you keep hogs than if you don’t keep hogs.
But no, not “widely divergent”. For instance, it appears from the Bible that they understood each other’s speech.
Nope - not when other clear cultural markers - pottery, architecture, religious iconography - are unchanged. Pottery, especially, is a big one, way more of an indicator than laymen may be aware of.
If future archaeologists could identify a little connected cluster of people in your neighbourhood because they were all Apple users rather than Android users, but otherwise you all had the same stuff in your houses, would you (seriously) call the iOs people a separate culture? No, you would not. A subculture or a cult, sure.
Also, the pig thing is a bit overstated - there’s a statistically significant reduction in pig remains as the highland settlements increase, but never no pig remains in the area.
Also, pigs make less sense efficiency-wise in highland areas anyway as :
- they need water,
- cannot graze like sheep/goats,
- require settled feeding systems.
Also , some northern Israelite kingdom sites in the later Iron Age show increased pig consumption. It was always more of a Judah thing.
Also also, several clearly non-Israelite populations also had very few pigs - Moabites, trans-Jordanian Canaanite-associated settlements etc.
My sense was that that was one of the differences between Israel and Judah, and some of the chiding in the Bible is Judaeans trying to get the Israelites in line.
Ha! Excellent reference. 
Heck, most of the arc of the Northern Kingdom in the Bible is harping on how they’re allowing heathen ways and not rightly following YHWH.
Have a look at the work of anthropologist Marvin Harris, especially the books The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig or Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches. He wrote extensively on the practical aspects of pig-raising and how it related to the taboo status of the pig. It’s worth noting that Jews are/were not the only group to taboo pigs. So did the Egyptians and Sumerians, not to mention Muslims.
And an interesting point he raises is that you only need to declare something as “forbidden” if there is a real possibility that people might do the forbidden thing. There would have been no point in forbidding, say, the eating of penguin – penguins don’t historically feature in middle eastern diets. But eating pigs can be a temptation because your neighbors might be raising and eating them. As, in fact, they were – have a look at the story of the Gadarene Swine in the synoptic gospels. The demons tormenting the demoniac are sent into the bodies of a herd of pigs – which is only possible if someone in the neighborhood is actually raising pigs.
I’ve always assumed that this pig herd belonged to the Romans and not the native people.
It isn’t stated who owned the pigs - Roman’s or another sect like Samsritans or backsliding Hebrews – but clearly someone there was raising swine, despite biblical and cultural disapproval.