Israel as "occupiers" and other bull poop

[tooblue]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

The professor quoted by Sooner is not doubting there was "an Exodus." It's more likely than not that a leader who came to be called Moses if he was not then so called led a branch of Hebrews formerly under Egyptian control into the Sinai where they wandered for some years, finally winding up in Canaan. And that this event turned out to be momentous in terms of establishng ancient Israel. But what was probably more much momentous is the generation of the mythical interpretation of that event.

The analogy to the Iliad is quite precise and is actually an acknowledgement of the Pentateuch's limited historicity. There's no reason to not believe there was not a "Trojan war" (maybe not called that then) or several similar wars between Greeks and more sophisticated and culterally advanced inhabitants of Asia Minor, probably bronze age proto Hellenistic peoples like the barbaric long haired "Greeks" or Achaeans themselves who laid siege to Troy in the Iliad. There is even substantial archeological and geographic evidence to corrorate the Iliad (compare the Book of Mormon, for a contrast).

But Achilles and his personality and interactions with the Greek gods are not historical, nor is even his character as we know it, and the same is true for Agamemnon, Odysseus, Helen, Paris, and the others. They are demonstraby mythical, just as are the specifics of Moses' and Aaron's and Joshua's characters and personalities, parting of the Red Sea, the burning bush, etc. are mythical by any empirical standard available.

The Iliad and The Old Testament have very similar claims to historicity. Some three-thousand years later, the comparison seems quite exact. Moreover, at this snapshot in history they are neck and neck as to which is the most important book ever written in terms of its influence and as a result the cultures that it begat.

I trust and Oxford educated young man is not a Biblical literalist. That would be really freakish.

SU -the 'purest' orientalist of CougarGuard.