I remember some book i read a while back made a few interesting statements that Saul and Samuel were originally one character. Saul is simply a contraction of Samuel and this separation accounts for the break and errors in years that are brought up throughout this thread. Apparently Samuel was a king but then somehow this got rewritten as Saul. Naturally what we have now in the bible has been edited many many times but he did make several cases wehre this does make sense. Then again there are other parts that fail this combined single person.
Bad chronology - Samuel, Saul and David
by Jeffro 35 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Jeffro
John Kesler:
From the day that the ark was lodged at Kiriath-jearim, a long time passed, some twenty years, and all the house of Israel lamented after Yahweh.
The problem is that the ark was taken to the "house of Abinadab on the hill" before Saul became king (1 Samuel 10:1), Saul reigned for forty years (Acts 13:21), and the ark wasn't retrieved from "the house of Abinadab on the hill" until Saul's successor David was king (2 Samuel 6:1-3).Indeed.
It's worth nothing though that the twenty years suggested in 1 Samuel is consistent with the twenty years assigned by Josephus for the length of Saul's reign (before being 'edited' by translators of Josephus' works who wanted to make it seem consistent with the faulty claim in Acts.
mP:
I remember some book i read a while back made a few interesting statements that Saul and Samuel were originally one character. Saul is simply a contraction of Samuel and this separation accounts for the break and errors in years that are brought up throughout this thread. Apparently Samuel was a king but then somehow this got rewritten as Saul. Naturally what we have now in the bible has been edited many many times but he did make several cases wehre this does make sense. Then again there are other parts that fail this combined single person.
It's possible that Saul never actually existed, and it's possible that 'Samuel'/'Saul' is a fictional archetype based on a self-appointed king of the early Jewish nation as an insignificant tribe in Canaan (who may or may not have been named a lingual variation of 'Saul' or 'Samuel'). The stories in the Bible attributed to 'Moses' are generally recognised as having been written much later (specifically, in the Neo-Babylonian period); in particular, Deuteronomy is broadly considered to have been part of the same work as Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings. The books of Judges (seriously, Judges is just plain ridiculous) and Samuel (also actually from the same Neo-Babylonian exilic period) contain stories that seek to fill the gap between 'the Moses stories' and the later verifiable Judean/Israelite [Book of] Kings. All those books are possibly by the same author (or a group of colluding authors), working from a mixture of oral tradition and records available at the time, and influenced heavily by theological and political motivations.
The story of the Jews leaving Egypt and the subsequent 'invasion' of 'the promised land' never actually happened. The early Jews were most likely just another Canaanite tribe. The stories of not only the 'release' from Egypt but also of the Jews 'conquering' the [other] Canaanite nations is therefore just a lot of 'chest thumping'.
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mP
Jeffro
The story of the Jews leaving Egypt and the subsequent 'invasion' of 'the promised land' never actually happened. The early Jews were most likely just another Canaanite tribe. The stories of not only the 'release' from Egypt but also of the Jews 'conquering' the [other] Canaanite nations is therefore just a lot of 'chest thumping'.
mP:
The story happened, its just the numbers and characters are made up. The Jews stole this story like many others from different peoples. Much if not all of the old history of the Bible is stolen and rewritten.
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Jeffro
mP:
The story happened, its just the numbers and characters are made up. The Jews stole this story like many others from different peoples.
As I said before, the story of the Jews leaving Egypt never actually happened. If I recall correctly, the story of the 'Exodus' is stolen from an earlier Ethiopic story. Whether something remotely similar ever happened to anyone (though this isn't necessarily the case) doesn't alter the fact that it never happened to the Jews.
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mP
@jeffro
Of course the story in its bible form never happened. Somebody back then heard a few "exodus type" stories and adopted them and made the travellers jews. I have never heard of the Ethiopic story you are referring too, but given the proximity of both home lands its of course quite a reasonable possibility.
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Jeffro
mP:
Of course the story in its bible form never happened. Somebody back then heard a few "exodus type" stories and adopted them and made the travellers jews. I have never heard of the Ethiopic story you are referring too, but given the proximity of both home lands its of course quite a reasonable possibility.
The 'Moses' character is basically ripped straight out of an earlier Exodus story. I can't recall the specifics about the Ethiopic origins of the Exodus story, because it's been a few years since I've looked at that in any depth.
But note this 'co-incidence' provided in Insight:
*** it-1 p. 560 Cush ***
Cush, or Ethiopia, had come under Egyptian domination by about the time of the Exodus of Israel from Egypt, and it continued thus for some 500 years. A viceroy administering this domain under the Egyptian Pharaoh was known by the title “King’s Son of Kush.” Evidently toward the close of the second millennium B.C.E., Ethiopia freed itself from Egypt’s control. The Ethiopian capital was thereafter located first at Napata, near the fourth cataract, and later at Meroë, about 210 km (130 mi) NNE of Khartoum.