by ICBehindtheCurtain 12 Replies latest jw experiences
Im going to watch it and research their claims. Hopefully its more honest than Zeitgiest. There are plenty of problems and questions about the Bible, there is no need to be dishonest about it.
Agreed. Zeitgeist is a total piece of trash that does much more harm then good for the cause of biblical criticism.
I had a conversation with another JWD member about this topic 7 months ago. I am going to cut and paste my portion of the conversation here as it went into some depth about my findings on the subject.
This is from the book History of the World - Earliest Times to the Present Day (2002). The section on The Ancient Near East was written by W. Hallo and W. Laffan, Professors of Assyrian and Babylonian Literature at Yale University.
I will paraphrase some and quote some directly. There was no mention of any enslavement of the Hebrews by the Egyptians or any mass Exodus of the Hebrews through the Red Sea to cross the Jordan.
The book says the emergence of the Amorites in history was in 2000-1800 BC. They were basically nomadic tribes of Semitic speech who were from the deserts bordering the right bank of the Euphrates and stretched into the Syrian and Arabian Deserts. The Hebrew, Aramaic and Phoenician languages were all derived from this Semitic language of the Amorites. They would sometimes farm, sometimes wander, sometimes invade other areas. The migrations moved in the direction of Syria and Palestine. The Hebrews were Amorites themselves who were rebels against the Amorite rulers and later rebelled against the Egyptians who conquered the Amorites.
Later, the Egyptians began to expand into the areas of the Amorites and made them vassal states who had to pay tribute to Egypt. During this time of the Egyptian expansion into the area of the Amorites, the Pharoahs of that time period were named Tuthmosis. Here is direct quote from the book.
"Queen Hatshepsut, who, as widow of Tuthmosis II, ruled Egypt for two years, first as regent and then in her own right (1490-1469 BC), even sent a commercial expedition down the Red Sea as far as Punt (the Somali Coast) to bring back its exotic products. The record of this celebrated voyage decorated the magnificient mortuary temple that she erected for herself at Deri-el Bahri, opposite Thebes, in the Valley of the Kings.
But it was left for her successor to forge a real Egyptian empire in Asia. Tuthmosis III (1490-1426 BC) had been pharoah in name only during Hatshepsut's lifetime, but immediately after her death, he launched a succession of campagins into Retenu, as the Egyptians called Palestine and southern Syria. Seventeen campaigns in 20 years carried Egyptian arms as far as the Euphrates and reduced all the intervening city states to vassalage. His greatest victory was won on the very first campaign, when he defeated the armies that had been combined, if not exactly united under the prince of Kadesh at the great battle of Megiddo. Megiddo itself fell after a seige of seven months.
His successors Amon-hotep II and Tuthmosis IV continued to maintain the Asiatic empire by repeated incursions into Palestine and Syria to receive the submission of loyal vassal-rinces and compel that of the recalcitrant ones.
Thus the subjection of the indigenous Amorites was completed before the end of the fifteenth century throughout the Near East. There was, however, one exception to this rule. Since the emergence of the Amorites, cuneiform texts from very diverse regions had begun to make mention of a group of people called Habiru with ever increasing frequency until by the fifteeenth century, they appear in texts from all over the Near East. On philological grounds, these Habiru can be conclusively equated with the Apiru of Egyptian texts and with the Hebrews of the Bible. The word originally seems to have been used in a slightly derogatory sense having such connotations as 'robbers' , 'dusty ones' or 'migrants'. These Habiru were not an ethnic, but a social entity. Though largely of Amorite stock, they constituted that portion of the population unwilling to submit to Amorite rule or, subsequently and more particularly, to that of their non-Semitic conquerors. Instead they chose to serve as roving mercenaries under successive masters or, alternatively, to band together in order to impose their own rule in areas beyond the reach of the various imperial armies. The latter was particularly true of the wooded hill country of Syria and Palestine. There they maintained a tenacious and much maligned independence while the great powers were dividing up the cleared lowlands."
So, it appears Moses really was a prince of Egypt. My son says he watched a Discovery Civilization show that also said the Moses of the Bible was probably this Tuthmosis III or IV (he couldn't remember which) and that he had been exposed to a monotheistic cult (can't remember name) that existed in Egypt and that he was instrumental in spreading this new religion. There was no mention of him being other than a natural Egyptian though. Whether he aligned himself with the Hebrews and they followed him willingly is debatable. He was a prince with power and army and was in the region to enforce submission of the people. It is not too far-fetched that he forced them also to submit to his favorite religion. The Hebrew accounts admits that Moses put all dissenters to his new religion to the sword, murdering thousands of rebels. Obviously he was successful in subjugating them to his will and to his new religion. Of course, the whole red sea parting, miracles, and him really being a Hebrew are not part of official historical documents. Still, if he wrote his own history or it was passed down orally and written later, he wouldn't be the first ruler to embellish his own story and make himself a God or God's spokesman. They were all doing it at the time! Who's going to argue when you have an army to back you up and you are not afraid to put dissenters to death by the thousands?
What if the first five books of the Bible are only allegory?
