Weird Bible stories

Factual Questions
41

Spiritus Mundi:

First, he invited them in (hospitality). Then the people of Sodom came to the door, demanded to rape them, and Lot offered his daughters (bad idea). The redeeming quality is expressed in the first part, not the second.

There may well have been attempts at guidance; we don’t know about them because the Scripture’s main focus is on the Israelite people, not on the other nations. As a group, the cities were so corrupt, that their societies didn’t produce 10 righteous people between them. Any stranger who entered the city got the same treatment as Lot’s guests (the angels). This behavior made those cities worthy of serious punishment.

Only in your myopic view of Biblical narratives. I have no desire to turn this into a bout of theological flaming. However, I’d advise keeping this honest discussion of Biblical details free of insults to other people’s religions.

AWB:

Adam was the first man. Let me focus your attention to the text you quoted (emphasis mine):

The phrase I’ve bolded here clearly states that the narrative to follow refers back to the time of creation, i.e., during Genesis 1, not following it.

Chaim Mattis Keller

42

AHunter3’s post above is the first mention of the linguistic analysis of Genesis that seems to indicate a melding of two tales. Just a cursory glance hints at “P” being perhaps a Indo-European influenced version and “J” being an Egyptian influenced version (Ptah creation myth) - this is 100% pure speculation here - okay… points to the idea that Hebrew culture was not cooked up in a vacuum, but was part of a relatively fluid ancient world where cross cultural contact took place ALOT.

I have noticed the two different “voices” in Genesis. It is not considered radical that even if it is the “Word of God” it may have been transcribed through two separate people.

I am always trying to get to the bottom of the original words used in Genesis. I understand there is “Adonai Elohim” which means “chief (or lord) of the Gods”. Interesting. “-im” as an ending is usually plural in Hebrew. “Adonai” may be a cognate to “Adonis” a Syrian male deity. Elsewhere I understand the Hebrew is “Jahweh” = “I am that I am”. Any Hebrew scholars out there to attest this?

In the Genesis quote above - “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which [is] upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which [is] the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for MEAT.” (My emphasis). I see this English wording in vegetarian literature all the time. I also see “meat” translated as “FOOD” in other Bibles. Again, any clarification from the Hebrew?

In reference to Lot. The NIV verion I have says - “…so we may sex with them”. Nowhere else in my Bible is the word “sex” used this way. It is usually “lay with” in English. I understand the “lay with” phrase is from a Hebrew verb that means “to lay (or dig) a furrow” (is this poetic or just demeaning to women? probably a little of both :))

Lot did seem to be a little goofed up…the three “visitors” were the ones who pulled Lot, and his daughters back in the house - they were against the whole proposition.

And to introduce another Bible story to this string - the Flood. I read recently about a geologic event that occurred possibly about 50,000 BC. The flooding of the Black Sea. The Mediterranean basin was formed over millions of years by rift spreading and was for the most part dry, even though it was below sea level. At one point, the Pillars of Hercules were breached. Massive channels were carved in the bedrock there that exist today from the incredible force of the inflowing water and debris pushed along the sea floor. Sometime later this same scenario repeated for the Black Sea, although it seems it occured not over the course of a hundred years or more, but over only a few. Voila - the Flood. Could an oral tradition be carried over that great a time to be eventually written down - hard to say. The location is right tho - most Deluge stories center around the Black Sea. We see them in Persia, Mesopotamia, amoung the Hebrews, and the Greeks, who were probably making their way down out of the Steppes (North of the Black Sea) at that time. I have not encountered Deluge stories from the Egyptian…

Food for thought.

43

RobRoy:

It is to Orthodox Jews. Moses as the sole transcriber of the five books from Genesis to Deuteronomy is considered by Maimonides to be one of the fundamental beliefs of Judaism.

This is explained by the Rabbis as referring to the multiple levels on which G-d can be understood. Certainly the word, when referring to G-d (the word is sometimes used in the profane sense, to mean Earthly lords), the Scripture uses only the singular tense for the predicate of the sentence in which “Elo-him” is the subject.

As for A-don-ai, this means “my master.” It is used as a substitute for the actual pronunciation of the name that is written as JHVH, because that name is too holy to ever be said by human beings, except in ritualistic purity in the Holy Temple (when it stood). The JHVH indeed has the root in (or is the root of, considering who we’re talking about here) the Hebrew word “to be”.

Definitely “food.” The hebrew word here is “L-Achlah”. The L is a prefix meaning “for”; the verb root “A-CH-L” means eating.

The hebrew word for meat (or flesh), specifically, is “Bassar”.

Re: Lot - There is no word specifically meaning “to have sex” in Hebrew. There are several euphemisms used, the most common of which actually means “to lay with.” One of the other euphemisms used is a word which means “to know,” first used in reference to Adam and Eve. It is that euphemism that is used with Lot.

Chaim Mattis Keller

44

We’re on a roll here - might I ask a few more questions…?

Do you think “Jerusalem” is from “Jerusha-” or is from Jeru-(new) Salem??

Does Asher mean “lion”?

also, was Hiram of Tyre Jewish? I know he wasn’t a Hebrew and Jewish probably isn’t the right word, but was he a believer in Jehovah?

Thanks.

45

The Egyptians tried to erase anything they didn’t like, but they weren’t necessarily successful. They tried to erase Hatshepsut, the first woman to sit on the throne as Pharaoh, but archaeologists were still able to dig up evidence of her. They tried to erase Akhenaten, the Pharoah who attempted to toss out the old pantheon of gods in favor of a single sun god, but archaeologists were still able to dig up evidence of him, too. So do you think it would really possible for the Egyptians to completely bury evidence of over 600,000 Israelites (Exodus 12:37) who had lived there 2 or more generations?

I read somewhere that Jewish archaeologists have stated that there is no evidence anywhere for Hebrew slaves in Egypt or the plagues or the Exodus. I thought I’d read that this was published or was going to be published in the Biblical Archaeology Review, but I can’t remember where I read it or what to cite. In trying to find it again, though, I did uncover this: New Biblical Archaeology

It cites several quotes from BAR that seem to basically uphold what I’d read.

On the subject of the flood, BAR’s website features a review of a book called Noah’s Flood which puts forth the theory RobRoy mentioned, only it puts the flooding of the Black Sea at about 5600 BC, not 50,000 BC. BAR’s Review of “Noah’s Flood”

“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy

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46

Boy, oh boy, this is exactly what I wanted to see! DEX, ahunter3, Kid_Gilligan are all talking about a way of studying the Bible that I first read about in Driver, S. R. and have been trying to update and refresh for a long time.

Palestine - Isreal - Judah - That area was literally a cross roads and paid the consequences of the location (Please CM Keller tell me why this was or could ever be considered a land of milk and honey?) in wars, battle, captures, paid tribute and whaever else I can’t remember. Of all the places to chose for a homeland, this one may well have been the worst.

But RobRoy, religious or symbolic concepts and ideas didn’t have to come from Egypt, couldn’t have really, because the concepts and symbols and language all reflect back to Mesopotamia - Ur - Babylonia.

Because this area (and Isreal and surrounds including Egypt) is still considered the cradle of civilization it is the area that has gotten the most/best of the scholarly work - languages, archealogy, & whatever.

Books I’m reading indicate that the early Hebrews continued to have contact with the “old folks” back in Mesopotamia.

But could we try to work on one area and not spread across all of the OT or Torah at once?
Too broad and there really is too much to it - how about just OT beginnings to the end of Noah? Or Abraham and his family? Era of Judges? Era of the kings? Exile? Exodus? Just Moses? Just covenants?

Or another approach is OT & the Just God?
OT brutality in God’s Name?

Well, I’ll go along with this spaghetti approach if you insist…

47

Dave:
I really make almost no assumptions about God or the Bible. I simply ask others to stand behind the consequences of their position.

cmkeller:
Your point is taken, a fact I thought was evident in the post immediately following the one you chose to quote. My arguments relate only to those who take the position that the Bible is a literally accurate document that portrays an unchanging being of perfect morality. If that does not describe your position, then please accept my apology for the inflamatory language.

I disagree with your characterization of myopic, obviously. I prefer “unclouded by presupposition or ulterior motives”. I readily admit that there are many passages of beauty and moral guidance to be found in both the Old and New Testaments. The story of Lot is not one of them.

The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*

48

BTW: You’re right no one has ever found or encountered Deluge stories from the Egyptian…

Most of the early history you heard/read in the Bible came from Mesopotamia which has a whale of a deluge story. It infact agrees so much with the one handed down in the Bible it can be marked out chunk for chunk.

The seven day creation comes from Mesopotamia as well - the reference is easier than the one for the duluge (i.e., I have it available right now). The Enuma elish goes back to a Babylonian source that antidates the biblical account but here aare some of the common phrases:

Divine spirit and comsic matter are coexistent and co eternal
Primal chaos; Ti’amat enveloped in darkness
Light eminating from the gods
The creation of the firmament
The creation of dry land
The creation of man
The gods rest and celebrate

Here’s Genesis:
Divine spirit creates comsic matter and exists independently of it
The earth a desolate waste, with darkness covering the deep (tehom)
Light created
The creatin of the firmament
The creation of dry land
The creation of luminaries
The cratin of man
God rests and santifies the seventh day

Speiser, E. A. Genesis A New translation with Introduction and Commentary; The Anchor Bible
C 1964. See p.10.

Not a bibliography but enought to get you the library’s copy is you wish.

The Anchor Bible was/is being published book by book, was edited by William Foxwell Albright, David Noel Freedman and had /had
Frank M Cross, Raymond E Brown and Joans C Greenfield on the Editorial Board.

49

“Land of milk and honey” is a bit misleading as a translation. Basically milk means goats’ milk, not cows’ milk… and “honey” doesn’t mean the stuff from bees (which were not domesticated until the Roman era), but a paste or jam made from dates.

But “Land of goats-milk and date-jam” doesn’t have the poetic ring to it.

50

RobRoy:

According to the traditional Jewish sources, it’s a combination of two names: “Salem”, which was the name given the area by Malki-Zedek (mentioned after Abraham was victorious in the battle of the four vs. five kings), and “Jeru”, the name given to the area by Abraham following the binding of Isaac.

I assume you’re referring here to the name of the Israelite tribe (or its patriarch, the son of Jacob) Asher. It means “rich” or “happy”. There are several Hebrew words for lions (Ari or Aryeh is the most common, but there’s also Kefir and Lavi, and maybe some others that haven’t come to my mind), but as far as I know, Asher isn’t one of them.

He was a believer at the time that he did his righteous acts, such as donating stuff for the construction of the Holy Temple. According to Jewish Tradition, he was blessed with long life for this act and due to that he became arrogant and began to consider himself a god; I don’t know what his belief vis-a-vis the Jewish G-d was at that time of his life.

Jois:

As CKDextHavn said, it refers to goat milk and date honey. However, it should also be pointed out that the fertility of the Middle East was a lot different from what it was back in days of antiquity. Agriculturally, modern Iraq and Iran are nothing like the wonders that ancient Babylon and Persia were. Israel suffered quite a bit, agriculturally, at the hands of many invaders and occupiers who didn’t care for it. But modern Israelis, who have dedicated themselves to making the land bloom again, have managed to do quite a job…a land of milk and honey indeed.

Spiritus Mundi:

Quite frankly, that is my position. However, my point is that those who look at what they see as acts of cruelty by G-d seldom consider what the recipients of that cruelty might have done to make G-d react in such a manner. Is this view clouded by presupposition? In a way, I suppose. These acts of G-d are described in the same book from which those presuppositions come. If I believe the book is true, then my understanding of those acts are in the context of those presuppositions. And if I don’t believe the book is true, and therefore don’t believe the suppositions, then why believe the acts?

Chaim Mattis Keller

51

[self-serving statement] I want to be clear that when I post on Biblical topics, I try to (and almost always do) reflect the two main interpretations:

  • the “scholarly” belief in multiple authors of the Bible text
  • the “traditional” belief in a single author

Thus, my comments try to represent both points of view. I try to leave out of my posts the question of whether the author(s) were human or divinely inspired.

CMkeller and I would disagree on the inerrancy of the text. I do accept rabbinic tradition as binding, but not for the same reasons that cmk would (since he is orthodox and I am conservative.) [/statement]

52

Goat Milk and Date Honey! Yikes! Well, they could easily have been staples that would survive storage (cheese for milk) for leaner times. Thank you, CM Keller and DEX. That phrase always made me feel they were shortchanged. Still, I don’t think the life there was evey easy. And yet, we got kicked out of the garden to work anyway.

53

BTW: This “Actually there is a lot of speculation about who and where “Sheba” was,
Arabia, Ethiopia, etc. While Sheba per se may not be mentioned in the Egyptian texts, Solomon and many other Kings of Israel are.”

The above implies too much information not to have gleaned hints about your original questions. Are you just funning here?

“There are extensive references to the “habiru” in Egyptian texts. The question now is WHICH influx of Semites can be tied to Exodus, not whether there was one at all.”

There are a couple of places where it seemed people could just “Go down to Egypt” in times of famine or near-famine. And those poor Habiru (there are about 3 maybe 4 different spellings) probably just drifted in and out of Egypt since they were nomadic wanderers anyway.

I thought the timing of Exodus was pretty much tied down but I’d have to look it up.

Someone (on this board someplace) said that Egyptians and Semites were of the same stock and I don’t think they were, can’t find that either. However I’m positive I saw Egyptian and Assyrian victory stone carvings what showed the Semites as looking different from the Egyptians and Assryians. Ring a bell?

“This emphasizes the importance of the Bible as a historical document.” Yup.

I still like to think that history began with Abraham and the earlier parts correspond to what the Scots here in the USA do when they try to make up a family tree… It is easy to trace back a few generations - shipping documents, land grants, grave stones, census taking, Civil War and Revolutionary War documents…but when you get back to the “old country” you might be stuck with very little real information. My Scotch-Irish folk try to use the tartans and clan information as part of “our” history, but that’s not how the tree branched. They take a leap here that they shouldn’t.

The OT does a similar thing trying to go back from Abraham to the beginning of the earth and leap back to oral history, to Mesopotamia to Hurran (I forget) where Abraham had his beginnings. It’s just that they don’t have the sources to get the whole story, but at least they are going back to the right place.

Albright’s “Stone Age to Christianity” ties up travel, names, Mesopotamia, Abraham, camels, donkeys, flood cycles, and Exodus - and ties it with a bow. Probably only be able to buy it used from Powells.com, paperback - but if you can deal with the Egyptian names you’ll love this.

54

Well, Egyptology was never my specialty, but here;s what I recall from some research int the Amarna letters, et al.

The habiru/hapiru are mentioned several times in Egyptian records, however the association of this tribe with the Hebrews is by no means certain. It is dangerous to attach too much reliance upon teh similarity of the names.

The exodus has generally been placeed during the reign of Rameses II (Ozymandias, to the Greeks), but the evidence comes from “back dating” from points at which the Biblical narrative more clearly intersects the histoical record.

Egyptian stock was not originally semitic, but there has been quite a bit of mixing of populations – nd not just with Semitic tribes. I think the reference you remember may have stated that Arabs and Hebrews are both Semitic peoples, which is true. There were Semitic peoples in Mesopotamia from very early times, though n original Sumerian population seems to have been neither Semitic nor Indo-European. The dominant culture group of Assyria was Indo-European, but it was not a homogenous population.

Abraham was said to have come from Ur of teh Chaldees, a city in southern Mesopotamia (Sumeria).

All of this is “off the cuff” and based upon memories of books read years ago, so please apply salt/research as necessary, but I think it is acurate.

The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*

55

cmkeller:
I do not believe the stories of the Bible represent a litereally true account of history. I do believe that they are a valuable historical resource, though, since they represent the preserved oral traditions of a people over a period of centuries.

I also believe that the stories of the Bible present a God which is not perfectly good, perfectly moral or perfectly just. However, it is not my general approach to attack another’s religion, and I have already stated that I regret the confrontational tone of my earlier post. I was reacting to provocations which did not take place on this thread but which I allowed to color my attitude.

The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*

56

So who was NIMROD?

57

egkelly:

I don’t mean to sound snippy, but unless there’s more to your question than meets the eye, this is something you can easily look up.

According to Genesis, Nimrod is a son of Kush, who is the son of Ham, who is a son of Noah. He was the first person to establish himself as a mighty conqueror/warrior, and ruled over Babylon and much of the surrounding area, including Assyria.

Any more detailed questions about him?

Chaim Mattis Keller

58

It is amazing to me the amount of travel that took place in the age of Abraham and before.
I know that the pottery and use of gems and even copper/copper tin shows that travel and trade were constants. And I can imagine that taking place. However a whole nation of people surplanted the original population of many ancient people.

Sharp left or right turn:

Hum, maybe that is what’s happening in southwestern US. A relatively small change in one life time but over several generations (which is what could have happened in Sumer, for example) the whole population could easily change over time and we wouldn’t notice it in archealogical digs until very late.)

Oh, I’m gonna keep using these #%@&* codes 'til I get 'em right.

59

Re: Who was Nimrod.

In the Bible, as CMK cited, in Genesis 10:8-10, Nimrod was the “first man of might” and a “mighty hunter by the grace of the Lord”; this is echoed in Micah 5:5.

Nahum Sarna in JPS TORAH COMMENTARY: GENESIS says that Nimrod was an outstanding personity, whose exploits left their mark on the historic memory of Israel, but who has not been positively identified by scholars with any known individual in the ancient world. In the keeping with other comments I have made in this thread, at one time the name Nimrod was presumably so well-known to Israelite oral tradition that there was no need to describe him further.

Attempts have been made to identify Nimrod with Naram-Sin, grandson of Sargon I of Akkad, who dominated a great portion of the Near East for about 50 years towards the end of the third millenium BC; one of his titles was “Strong Male” which recalls “man of might” of Genesis 10:8.

Another suggestion is Tukulti-Ninurta (about 1234 - 1197 BC), the famed Assyrian monarch who first conquered Babylon and whose enthusiasm for big-game hunting is well documented. His exploits, too, were the subject of epic poems.

Is that what you wanted?

60

Try:I also believe that the stories of the Bible present a God which is not perfectly understood.

To me, that’s much better.

I’ve been looking at the covenant/confession series in the OT and they all start with Abraham or later - that I’ve found anyway.

I still like the info before Abraham as back-fill.

It also looks like the idea of keeping history could have begun with the confessions
feeling the need to collect extra information and preserve it.

DEX - I have been reading both of the books by Friedman that were readily available - “Who Wrote the OT” and “The Hidden Book in the Bible” or “The Hidden Book in the OT”
and while they follow most of my old readings the take is new because it treats the OT, especially the JEPD threads as literature and applies literary devices.

The “Hidden Book” is the J strand alone which was well done. I was told/had read that it couldn’t be done so that was a surprise, too.

Nor have I ever seen the division of North vs South: King, Priest, Prophet vs King, Priest, Prophet laid out like that. I never imagined the hostility to be so great (Why not since we have had a civil war here which still occasions argument?)or the line so finely drawn.

Friedman uses Freedman as a reference along with Albright, Speiser, Wright and all the other I’m used to seeing.

Oh, I’m gonna keep using these #%@&* codes 'til I get 'em right.