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Posted on 07/22/2008 2:37:05 AM PDT by Man50D
Abraham didn't exist? The Exodus didn't happen?
The Bible's Buried Secrets, a new PBS documentary, is likely to cause a furor.
"It challenges the Bible's stories if you want to read them literally, and that will disturb many people," says archaeologist William Dever, who specializes in Israel's history. "But it explains how and why these stories ever came to be told in the first place, and how and why they were written down."
The Nova program will premiere Nov. 18. PBS presented a clip and a panel discussion at the summer tour of the Television Critics Association.
The program says the Bible was written in the sixth century BC and that hundreds of authors contributed.
"At least the first five books of the Bible come together during the Babylonian exile," says producer Gary Glassman.
The program challenges long-held beliefs. Abraham, Sarah and their offspring probably didn't exist, says Carol Meyers, a religion professor at Duke University.
"These stories are unlikely to represent real historical events, but rather there's some kernel of ancient experience in there which has survived and which helps give identity to the people at the time the Bible finally took shape centuries and centuries later," Meyers says.
(Excerpt) Read more at orlandosentinel.com ...
The Bible is what gives Jews the birthright to claim the land of Israel as their own. Hardly a surprise that PBS would throw down the gauntlet.
Let’s see...who funds PBS? Annenberg, Ford, etc. Social experimenters one and all. I have missed a few names, but I do know that these two foundations preferentially fund atheist, leftist projects.
The leg-warmer wearing, left-wing panty-waists over at PBS had better read up on repelling caravan attacks.
It also focuses quite heavily on Judeo-Christianity and it's origins which are nowadays under attack which was my point.
Some think there could be a connection between the Hyksos and the Israelites. The Hyksos are definately documented in Egyptian records.
They were probably Semitic invaders who conquered lower Egypt (forming the 15th dynasty) and were overthrown by the native Egyptian Theban kings. Of course, Biblical literalists would have a problem with that.
How do you, with pick and shovel - digging through the layers of history - tell the difference among these tribes of people?
There is no difference between the artificats of the Canaanites before the coming of the Israelites and Israelite artificats.
That is what makes many scholars think the Israelites may have been a group or sect of Canaanites who split off from the dominant society and developed the legend of the exodus hundreds of years later to explain what happened.
News flash: Captain Kangaroo not real captain, Film at 11
I think most believe the Hyksos were semitic, but it is not absolutely established. The Egyptians already had bronze tools, but you are correct that the Hyksos introduced the chariot to Egypt.
That the 15th dynasty is earlier than the usual date given for the Exodus is correct. Some think that after their rule was overthrown by the Theban dynasty, many Hyksos may have stayed in Egypt as servants, mercenaries, settlers, etc., with some of them later moving out of Egypt giving birth to the Exodus legend.
Many scholars think the Exodus may have been during the 19th dynasty, which was native to the eastern Nile delta. There is reason to believe that dynasty may have been part Asian. Ramesses II had red hair and they seemed to favor Asian gods. Many scholars think the pharaoh of the Exodus was Ramesses II. In the de Mille film, Ramesses II was played by Yul Brynner.
So, my point was that many think there may have been a connection between the Hyksos and the Exodus, but later than the 15th dynasty. I should have made that clearer.
Hope you haven’t drunk the kool-aid.
Here is a short article from the opposite point of view
http://www.aish.com/societyWork/sciencenature/Archaeology_and_the_Exodus.asp
Also, have you ever read David Rohl’s Pharaohs and Kings? Good read that essentially dispels all that conventional wisdom states concerning Egyptian Chronology.
Rohl’s chronology is very controversial and not accepted by most scholars. Kenneth Kitchen, perhaps the leading scholar on Ramesses II and the New Kingdom, does not accept Rohl’s chronology.
Reconstructing the past from very fragmentary evidence is no easy thing, as I'm sure we all know (I can barely remember what happened two hours ago). So any piece of new evidence can lead to enormous changes in our understanding.
The earliest (possible) reference to the Jews in Egyptian records (that I'm aware of) is to the Habiru(?) sometime in the 13th(?) century B.C. Palestine is mentioned 3 centuries earlier, when it was an Egyptian colony, but it was not then inhabited by Jews.
I'm not surprised that there are dissenting views on such a controversial subject. I'll read it if I have the time...but I can never have anything but a well-educated amateur's opinion on the disputes of experts.
Kitchen has a lot at stake - a lifelong pursuit of Egyptology. Perhaps his eyes are being a little clouded by convention.
Rohl’s chronology is worth looking at. There are big issues in the Chronology and his view seems to answer many of them.
Rohl isn’t an amateur. He is a credentialled Egyptologist and has spent a lot of time studying the field.
You can read a little of what he has to say here:
http://www.newchronology.org/cgi-bin/somsid.cgi?session=1216788116&page=html/authors/auth-r
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Thanks Convert from ECUSA....in this interview on UCTV's Dig This, February 2008. Dever gives an overview of Palestinian/Israeli archaeology: ... "What kind of scholarship is it that discredits the inconvenient evidence? This is the extent to which extremists will go to argue that there was no ancient Israel. And if you think perhaps there is an ideological agenda there, you're quite right ... There are some people who - let's put it gently - are not friends of Israel, ancient or modern, some people who believe that archaeology can be used to settle competing clams between Israelis and Palestinians today ... And there are always people who don't like the Bible, and enjoy Bible-bashing. I don't think that's honest scholarship." -- William Dever: 'The Bad Boy of Archaeology', May 14, 2008, The N. T. Wrong BlogDever is actually a minimalist himself, but likes the world to think he's a reasonable, MOR kind of guy. |
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Kitchen has a lot at stake - a lifelong pursuit of Egyptology. Perhaps his eyes are being a little clouded by convention.
People, scholars and others, can have honest disagreements over the evidence and what it implies.
To attribute improper motives for Kitchen’s lack of agreement with Rohl’s chronology is ungracious, to say the least. One could just as easily explain Rohl’s motive as an attempt by a newcomer to make a name for himself by advancing a dubious theory. But I won’t do that.
However, I’ll look again at Rohl’s work. You know, Kitchen is hardly a minimalist and is very accepting of the veracity of the Torah.
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