JR: The narrative of Adam is from 600 BCE when Genesis was written and used Mesopoptamian and Egyptian myths as a source to write stories for themselves.
BJ: The time of composition of a text can be much after the event. A history of WW2 written in 2022 does not mean the WW2 took place in 2022. The Biblical oral tradition is much longer.
Again, the archaeological evidence is they are Canaanites who moved out around 1200 BCE. Mesopotamian myth are 1 thousand years older. It's syncretic myth.
JR: Adam is from a mythology that is ALSO found throughout many ancient cultures. The Israelites were not Jewish people thousands of years prior. They were not Israelites. They were Canaanites. Around 1200 BCE they moved away from Canaan. Early Israelite settlements show that Yahweh had a consort, a mother Goddess Ashera. She was also a Canaanite deity.
BJ: New point. Please do provide me with reference to Goddess Ashera both in Bible and Canaanite texts.
37:04 By the time we get to the Hebrew Bible Yahweh has taken the name (of the head Canaanite God, El,) the wife of the head God - Ashera
-Dr. Stavrakopoulou, professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at Exeter University,
William Dever, Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona, has investigated the archeology of the ancient Near East for more than 30 years
One of the astonishing things is your discovery of Yahweh's connection to Asherah. Tell us about that.
In 1968, I discovered an inscription in a cemetery west of Hebron, in the hill country, at the site of Khirbet el-Qôm, a Hebrew inscription of the 8th century B.C.E. It gives the name of the deceased, and it says "blessed may he be by Yahweh"—that's good biblical Hebrew—but it says "by Yahweh and his Asherah."
Asherah is the name of the old Canaanite Mother Goddess, the consort of El, the principal deity of the Canaanite pantheon. So why is a Hebrew inscription mentioning Yahweh in connection with the Canaanite Mother Goddess? Well, in popular religion they were a pair.
The Israelite prophets and reformers denounce the Mother Goddess and all the other gods and goddesses of Canaan. But I think Asherah was widely venerated in ancient Israel. If you look at Second Kings 23, which describes the reforms of King Josiah in the late 7th century, he talks about purging the Temple of all the cult paraphernalia of Asherah. So the so-called folk religion even penetrated the Temple in Jerusalem.
Is there other evidence linking Asherah to Yahweh?
In the 1970s, Israeli archeologists digging in Kuntillet Ajrud in the Sinai found a little desert fort of the same period, and lo and behold, we have "Yahweh and Asherah" all over the place in the Hebrew inscriptions.
Are there any images of Asherah?
For a hundred years now we have known of little terracotta female figurines. They show a nude female; the sexual organs are not represented but the breasts are. They are found in tombs, they are found in households, they are found everywhere. There are thousands of them. They date all the way from the 10th century to the early 6th century.
They have long been connected with one goddess or another, but many scholars are still hesitant to come to a conclusion. I think they are representations of Asherah, so I call them Asherah figurines.
JR: These people were Canaanites and then formed a new nation around 1200 BCE. In 600 BCE they began writing a mythology by copying Mesopotamian creation stories and flood narratives.
BJ: The Mesopotamian legends say that creation took place in the east. So there must be earlier creation stories of the east that the Mesopotamians followed.
All religion is highly syncretic. "Nothing in the Hebrew Bible is original."
9:32
Francesca Stavrakopoulou PhD. Yahweh is not original at all.
BJ: Recurrence of themes (of basket and 10 commandments) do not make them fiction. Regarding the serpent, I have a long explanation from psychology that I am still working on. Give me a few months on that.
JR: No it's evidence that the stories were borrowed (they were) from older stories. Noah used the Epic of Gilamesh verbatim at times.
BJ: The legend of Gilgamesh actually says that creation and the Flood did NOT take place in Mesopotamia. Gilgamesh travelled across the sea to Dilmun which has been identified as the Indus Valley by Kramer. Here he met Utnapishtim who told him about the creation and the Flood. So no Sumer here, please.
Right, they make changes? It's fiction, you can re-write according to your tastes. The basic story is the same. All of the stories are basically the same. Also modern flood geology has ruled out a world flood on several lines of evidence.
Noah - Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned
Gilamesh - When the seventh day dawned I loosed a dove and let her go. She flew away, but finding no resting- place she returned.
Noah - And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.
Gilamesh - When the seventh day dawned the storm from the south subsided, the sea grew calm, the flood was stilled;
Noah - And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake;
Gimamesh - , I made a sacrifice and poured out a libation on the mountain top. Seven and again seven cauldrons I set up on their stands, I heaped up wood and cane and cedar and myrtle. When the gods smelled the sweet savour, they gathered like flies over the sacrifice.
Noah - The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
Gimamesh - “Wisest of gods, hero Enlil, how could you so senselessly bring down the flood? Lay upon the sinner his sin, Lay upon the transgressor his transgression, Punish him a little when he breaks loose, Do not drive him too hard or he perishes; Would that a lion had ravaged mankind Rather than the flood, Would that a wolf had ravaged mankind Rather than the flood, Would that famine had wasted the world Rather than the flood, Would that pestilence had wasted mankind Rather than the flood
Gilamesh - ‘For six days and six nights the winds blew, torrent and tempest and flood overwhelmed the world, tempest and flood raged together like warring hosts. When the seventh day dawned the storm from the south subsided, the sea grew calm, the flood was stilled;
Noah - And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.
Noah - And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.
Gilamesh - Gilgamesh, the son of Ninsun, lies in the tomb.
JR: Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou… “Scholars agree much of Genesis is riffing off much older Mesopotamian stories.”
BJ: I doubt if the Prof takes note of the point above regarding Gilgamesh; or Sumerians saying creation took place in the east. Then, scholars disagree. Let us apply our minds please. Now regarding the pointers to the Indus Valley.
Why you can't imagine the author was using several different sources and simply changes some aspects is beyond me. This is pure mythology?
Religion, Identity and the Origins of Ancient Israel
K.L. Sparks, Baptist Pastor, Professor Eastern U.
As a rule, modern scholars do not believe that the Bible's account of early Israel's history provides a wholly accurate portrait of Israel's origins. One reason for this is that the earliest part of Israel's history in Genesis is now regarded as something other than a work of modern history. Its primary author was at best an ancient historian (if a historian at all), who lived long after the events he narrated, and who drew freely from sources that were not historical (legends and theological stories); he was more concerned with theology than with the modern quest to learn 'what actually happened' (Van Seters 1992; Sparks 2002, pp. 37-71; Maidman 2003). As a result, the stories about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph are
JR: Early proto-Israelite villages are built on Canaan soil with no evidence of armed conflict.
BJ: Regarding Dever on no conflict in Canaan. That is post-Exodus period. I have nothing to add.
It means the conquest stories are more myth.
Archeologists also have discovered that most of the large Canaanite towns that were supposedly destroyed by invading Israelites were either not destroyed at all or destroyed by "Sea People"—Philistines, or others.
So gradually the old conquest model [based on the accounts of Joshua's conquests in the Bible] began to lose favor amongst scholars. Many scholars now think that most of the early Israelites were originally Canaanites, displaced Canaanites, displaced from the lowlands, from the river valleys, displaced geographically and then displaced ideologically.
So what we are dealing with is a movement of peoples but not an invasion of an armed corps from the outside.
JR: Dever: Some liberation theologians and some archeologists have argued that early Israel was a kind of revolutionary social movement.
BJ: The question is of time. >12c BCE would be post Exodus. My theory is only pre-Exodus, please. This is not relevant unless it is first shown that Exodus took place from Canaan to Canaan or something like that.
Write a paper, pass peer-review then great, you have a theory. Submit to the Journal for Biblical Archaeology.
Dever: Abraham and the Patriarchs have no evidence. However Thomas Thompsons work demonstrated they were literary creations. Dever: One of the first efforts of biblical archeology in the last century was to prove the historicity of the patriarchs, to locate them in a particular period in the archeological history. Today I think most archeologists would argue that there is no direct archeological proof that Abraham, for instance, ever lived.
BJ: I agree with Thompsons. But that is in Canaan. Perhaps he would find evidence in the Indus Valley.
JR: Dever: For the earlier periods, we don't have any texts. The Hindu narrative of Rama runs exactly parallel to Abraham. I will send you some matter on that if you are interested. I agree, no evidence for Abraham in W Asia. So 2 ways forward. 1. Make Abraham a fiction. 2. Look elsewhere. I support the latter.
Point to a peer-reviewed work. This is complete mythology, needing Abraham to be real doesn't sound like a belief rooted in evidence, facts or knowledge. It sounds like you are attempting to support a belief system you already have.
