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Basically, yes. That's what the scholarly expert that was in the video said. And I agree. Judaism has always been a minority position. Not only that, but if there wasn't a distinction between canaanites and israelites at that time, then, applying any label to the religious practices of these people is erroneous. The best description of what was happening is a folk religion. It doesn't describe Judaism.
Nope. It's completely true.
No, it's because everything you posted from Nick Grier is false.
And you don't know enough to even discuss those faults. All you can do is say "they're right because they say so". Yes, your credibility is a disaster. You simply don't have knowledge on the details. But ou know how to copy paste a conclusion. Good for you. Oh yeah, and you have a youtuber on speed-dial.Claim. No real evidence provided other than, "They said so, so it must be true"
Not without making assumptions about the language and the canaanite connection. And you don't understand the language nor the papers that discuss this isssues.
Well. Of course I challenged it. But, there's no such to challenge here, there's no shame in not remembering. Your posts from Mary Boyce focused on a cosmic saviour, which isn't in the Hebrew bible, thats in later commentary. You tied to bring one verse, Isaiah 53:5, and that's a fail if you read the actual story, the Israel is bearing the sins of the other nations who persecuted them. Suffering in silence, they're the righteous remanant. And if you actually read Isaiah, you'll see Israel is the servant, multiple times. The other thing Boyce focused on was God as the supreme god being added late in Isaiah, but that concepts exists in Genesis, Psalms, and the story fo the Exodus. So it's a fail all around.
Yes, following the herd seems to be your standard operating procedure.
That comment, you replied to is:
I'm not the one who repeatedly misquotes the sources. That's all you.
Yes, please stop trying to prove something that isn't in dispute. It makes you look like a preacher on a pulpit who just wants to speak his "truth" at people regardless of the actual topic.
Great, you know the popular opinion. But you don't seem to understand what goes into making those opinions.
A 30 minute video, and you quoted the first 6 minutes. Wow! That proves nothing but, sure demonstrates an idea. You really didn't watch the last Dr. Baden video did you? He says:
Could have come from the people who immigrated to the area. Yes, even a small group of egyptian slaves.
Well, good thing I didn't do that then, did I? Your accusations against me are false. I'm not dishonest. I'm just the only person with the patience and motivation to go through this stuff with you.
As Dr. Baden says, people immigrated to the settlements that became the Israelite nation from many places during the iron age collapse. And there's evidence of a small group of semetic slaves leaving egpyt for canaan. So no, not all were canaanites.
Judaism has always been a minority position. What the majority did is irrelevant.
No, not really. The only evidence actually brought on polytheism in scripture is Psalms 82, which if translated polytheistically makes no sense when one gets to the last verse. At the beginning the gods are being condemned, and at the end the gods are told to rise? Of course you need to know Hebrew to understand that. And Deuteronomy 32 doesn't really actually point back to some canaanite myth. When it comes to the prohibition of "other gods", that's a practical matter. If the prohibtion were against idols, then a person could simply believe in other false gods without breaking the rules. So, the concept of "other gods" was outlawed which includes outlawing idols. They're still false gods. Calling them "other gods" doesn't encourage or acknowledge a belief in them by the author.
Im having trouble parsing this. regardless of what Francesca says, Dr. Baden says otherwise. Montheistic worship of Yahweh was the practice of the elites, and probably some said "yeah, Yahweh, just him".
Nope, common misconception. If the target audience is polytheistic, then it might use some polytheistic imagery at times. But, the actual text, if analysed in the original language, isn't henotheistic.
It's not a non-secuitur. You've been accusing me of imagining things, and making things up. And here it is, your own source agreeing with me.
Ummm, YOU said you were putting this to bed. And then your own source proves me right again and again. So, the point is, I'm not imagining, nor making things up.
No, that was when it was compiled. It was compiled over time, and 600 seems to be when that process concluded.
No, they weren't all canaanites. That's what Dr. Baden said. A lot of them were, but, some immigrated from elsewhere, and perhaps a small group of slaves from Egypt.
The Temple at Arad. Looks to be pre 1000BCE. The House of Yahweh. There's an inscription found there. No polytheistic anything has been found there. Dever ignores it when claiming the ancient Israelites were all polythiestic. Remember? I mentioned it before.
First of all, he made a joke about taking the bible literally when making the comment about the storm god. 2nd, thank you for considering granting that some people were monotheistic. That's the sort of flexibility and moderation that I'm asking for. 3rd, sorry, but you're the argument against God speaking to people is a STRAWMAN. I have not claimed any of that. I have not brought my personal beliefs into this debate. Not once. I'm just looking at the evidence to see if it makes sense.
Again, Temple at Arad shows a monotheistic belief. And, I doubt very highly that you have early text showing that. You might have a text about ?L? and ?Y?W?. But I doubt you'll be able to bring the actual text, just someone's attempt at reconstructing it and assuming the vowels. I ask again, is your name Julie? If not then the vowels matter. And BTW, there is no Asherah in those texts either.
Yup. You brought this video to "put this to bed" relating to "his Asherah", and guess what your own source says? The MIGHT be evidence of it. MIGHT. So, it's not a concensus among all experts, is it? Nope. You didn't watch this whole video before posting it, did you? You didn't expect me to actually listen and take notes, right? You really don't know me very well do you?
Dr. Baden says, the israelites were mixed to the point that you couldn't distinguish one from the other. So now you're making a claim which contradicts "your favorite" source.
Dever makes conclusions about Asherah based on hairstyle, and ignores evidence that doesn't match his conclusions.
Strawman, again, I have not disputed that it's myth. I have not disputed that polytheism existed. I know that true mission is to preach anti-god. But that's not this debate. Start your own thread about proving anti-god.
And if it's not.
If you go and look at the actual texts, their god was "?Y?W?" And whether or not it's a myth is not under dispute.
Says the person who skipped 90% of the interview.
Uh-huh. A folk religion. Not Judaism. It doesn't matter what was popular.
The point is, Dr. Baden is saying that the best we can say is probably, but we don't have records for a lot of the conclusion made about ancient religious practices.
Your point about no-God is a strawman. You're response doesn't address the issue.
So now we're supposed to take the bible literally.
Anyways, bring the verse(s) so we can discuss it.Um, nice vacuous claim. "all this stuff borrowed". But you don't actually know? And Asherah, have you even looked it up? Nope. cause if you did you'd see their god is "?T?R?T?", most people write it out "atrt", but none of the vowels are known. Even if we *assume* that it is "atrt", that's not Asherah. It's just a female fertility goddess.
Yes, you beleive the popular opinion. We've got that. No you haven't shown stuff is borrowed. You tired and failed with the intertexuality. "One word is the similar, and all the differences prove it" was a delusional argument by Dr. Bowen. And Megan Lewis said there the stories are similar but diffrerent and there was no plagiarizing, not by the ancient Jews.
Im pretty much done watching your videos. If they're short, I might watch them. But this one is too long. You need to be able to bring the evidence of borrowing. And you've failed to so to this point.
"Predates the book..." Who wrote it first is irrelevant. This doesn't address the issue.
Who wrote it first is irrelevant.
Well, I already showed you they don't match. But here you are parroting someone else's idea. And it looks like you went through the whole video but there's nothing here that shows borrowing, just that one was written first.
I'm not watching any more videos. You'll need to find the evidence of borrowing, and point them out with a time stamp. I've spent plenty of time watching your videos. I agree the stories are similar, I'm not wasting my time, relearing about the similarities when it's likely that the differences are ignored.
When the nation of israel is formed is irrelevant. Both the Jewish story and the Epic of Gilgamesh could have come from an older tradition. Which means no copying, just similar stories.
That's a weak argument. Have you read the prophets? They don't do history. They do rebuke. This is like reading the book Dune, and saying that the beginning was conceived much later than the rest because Paul's life on Caladan isn't mentioned at the end of the book. This is the sort of silliness you'll see in the documentary hypothesis if you actually examine the reasons behind the conclusions.
Nope. Not really. Just another claim, and you don't know enough to tell if it's true or false. But you believe it anyway. "It's true because they say it's true" - the weakest of the weak arguments.
Let's see if you can come up with any actual evidence of borrowing...
Nice claim, I wonder if you'll bring the reasons for that claim?
Well, we already showed that it isn't almost exact. It's amost exact, if one ignores all the differences. And if one mistranslates, of course. See, what I think a normal person would do, is once something has been disproven, any source that repeats the same false claim should be discarded. We know that the stories aren't almost exact. But you keep trusting sources that say the opposite. That's called garbage in >>> garbage out.
Probaby? why probably? Influenced? What's the reasons to claim the direction of influence? Because the nation is new, so what, that doesn't mean their stories were new. Because the Bible is newer? So what, that doesn't mean the stories are newer.
Or possibly not. So how that works. And why are we taking the bible literally? That's just plain silly. If it was a myth, then selectively choosing to accept a verse is faulty logic.
Hee. This is adorable. What "original text". Where does this text exist? And you've been proclaiming how new the bible is. And now here you are flip-flopping saying it's older.
Nope. If you go and look at the text ?Y?W? is a son of ?LT?. I posted this early on, you ignored it.
OK. Did you actually listen to this? Do you know what it means, and how it shows a pantheon? Essentially, now there's 2 words in Deuteronomy 32 which matches a canaanite myth if they are tranlsated in a specific way. Just 2, and that's only if you go back to the dead sea scrolls. Two words matching is not strong evidence of anything.
But your post wasnt about syncretism, it was about it being a myth.
No, you're having trouble keeping up with the pace of the conversation. Maybe slow down and try to prove one thing at a time.
You brought up the documentary hypothesis.
No, he's a sensible moderate, for the most part. The connection to canaanite religion is far-fetched. The claim of knowing any of this with absolute certainty is far fetched. Ignoring that oral story telling the source of these myths is also far fetched.
Strawman. I'm talking about Judaism which could easily predate the Israelites.
Hee-hee. I knew you couldn't do it. You said that "contradictions and doublets" were evidence of borrowing. You just copied that write out of one of the videos. But You don't even know what that means, and you can't explain why it's evidence of borrowing. Just more copy-paste without any real brain power put behind it.
I would argue that they definitely believed that these stories would keep them elites.
You've proven you can knock down a strawman.
Nope, anytime we examine the evidence, it's weak. No evidence of persian influence what so ever. Boyce was wrong, Grier was wrong. "Everything" points to it if you ignore everything that doesn't.
You didn't read nor understand the paper. How can you conclude it's probable?
You did say it. You said it was a line of evidence. Then you directed me to arrowheads which supposedly have Asherah on them... but they don't. You were lied to. I'm sorry. I thought it was true too. Francesca let us both down.
See? You are bringing the documentary hypothesis. They aren't two stories without it. How much do you actually know about the documentary hypothesis?
Nope, thats not wht you said. You said they were the same because the flood ended after 7 days in both. And you left out the forty-days forty nights part.
Me thinks you didn't read this... it has zero evidence of your claim, and actually proves my point, God is the savior. It's only three pages, and that's at the top of page three. You're just throwing spaghetti at the wall. No analysis what so ever.
Umm, did you read this? Do you understand what it's saying? I already refuted this. You're repeating the same failed arguments.
You didn't read any of these did you?
You probably didn't read this nor understand it either. Here's a little test. The author says:
God vs. Devil does not exist in the Hebrew bible. You made the claim, you have to bring evidence for it. If you think it's in there, you have to find it. I can't bring evidence for something that doesn't exist.
The author is an amatuer researcher with zero credentials, not even a bachelors degree. You wouldn't know if this is true or not. You don't know enough to read and understand what's being said.
Uh-huh...
Whats the "lexical-syntactic" evidence he's talking about?Nope. It's not a lie that you can't comprehend what this paper is saying. It absolutely is based on assumptions. At least two. And that's the simplest way to get to "his". The others require much much more than that.
Translation: "I follow the herd, but can't defend the position myself."
Maybe, maybe not. It's more of a 50/50 toss-up. But you don't have the knowledge to understand that. So, yeah, just keep on mooooooooooven with the herd.
Your blind faith is noted.
Your position is regurgitation.
Nope. I've demonstrated pretty clearly you don't have the knowledge to identify the weak points in your sources claims. There has been no evidence of anything you've claimed about syncretism, borrowing, original sources for the mythology, a canaanite connection. None of it. It's all just copy-paste. Look at those last three links you brought from Isaiah. It's pretty obvious you didn't even read them.
No, they weren't true. You haven't been able to refute my objections. Just copying more people to show a popular opinion. But you can't seem to bring any evidence that makes any sense.
Who wrote it first is irrelevant. Ancient myths begin as oral story telling.
Nope, I didn't say that. I said it was based on assumptions from the very beginning. I said, "How can they say that without vowels?" You said, "You're making that up". But I'm right. All the papers you've brought confirm it. But you don't understand the topic.
Bingo. You don't know if the exiles were influenced by this festival or not. "re-working" is false. It could be verbatim of an older myth. Without that original myth, "reworking" is a guess. Genesis has similarities, but showing it was influenced hasn't been shown. No evidence, just a claim. "It's true because they say it's true". But when we examine the reasons, they're all weak.
Nope, I looked at the examples he brought, and they don't make sense. Have you looked at them?
Garbage in >>> garbage out
Temple Tel Arad: Tel Arad Temple - Madain Project (en)
Look at that, monotheists!
Well, first of all, she exaggerated the evidence of Asherah on those arrowheads. So, it's not like she can be trusted to be extremely accurate. But what she actually said in the video you posted was that the bible was compiled and put onto scrolls during the persian period. She sais perhaps they were reworked at that time. Understand. Reworked means that there was a Torah before. It can't be reworked if it was "written" at that time.
Sure, they either had their own stories, or the stories immigrated there during the irn age collapse. Or the small group of egyptian slaves brought them.
When people lie to us, Joel. Like saying that Asherah is inscribed somewhere and it isn't. That's a reason to mistrust. The only thing I'm discreditting is the reliance on a popular opinion without examining the underlying assumptions. And for you, I'm discreditting you from being able to tell anything about the demetic languages or the Hebrew bible, because evidentally you don't have the knowledge.
It's a strawman to prove you have a consensus. I'm not disputing that you have a popular strongly held belief. It's a strawman to argue that the bible isn't true. We're talking about myths. It's a strawman to argue that God isn't real. That isn't even remotely topical to this debate.
You first. Shallow is precisely your approach to all of this. You don't even read or understand the stuff you post as evidence.
Yes, it's very important to understand how and why these concensus opinions are made. You really don't understand scholarship do you? It's cumulative. It's perfectly normal for someone to take someone else's conslusions and build on them. Scholarship doesn't start over with each research project. The underlying conclusions get reused by many people, and then everyone has a common belief. It's not like this popularity ensures that the belief is true. It's just popular. The foundation could be weak. And thats what's happening with this canaanite connection. Assumptions compounded. And inorder to really see the picture accurately, one has to go way back and examine those underlying assumptions.
Well, it seems like you need the repetition because you keep bringing claims without evidence. I'm not losing this debate at all. The only thing you;re winning is the strawman contest.
You just can't stop misquoting. I said Jewish oral tradition, not Israelites.
You abuse scholarship.
Except when they're wrong. Outliers exist.
You're false suspicion is noted.
Bah-bye. I'll remember these arguments so I can refute them next time you decide to setup your virtual pulpit.
All you have to do, is post the evidence in your own words if you actually understand them.
I don't know. But nobody's rating your posts in this thread.
You're just ignoring it. Totally understandable.
You don't have the knowledge to make that assessment.
Do you know what this ^^ means? What does the l- attached mean? what does the w- attached mean? This has nothing to do with "his" Asherah.
A popular opinion, but there are those who both come from a common tradition.
but you haven't read the paper, nor understood it.
Uh-huh, How is "srth" functional in nature? What is he talking about here? How does it relate to "his Asherah" compared to just "Asherah"?
Well, for one, you keep misrepresenting my position[/quote]
Actually, there is some very weak evidence. You wouldn't know it existed, but, there is a lineage, an unbroken chain of tradition that is documented for Jewish oral tradition. Hear me. I acknowledge it's weak. But, it's a lot more than people give us credit for.
Israel's formation is irrelevant.
when it's written is irelevant.
And he also said that during the iron age collapse people immigrated to these settlements.
That's a theory. Remember, he's telling you a story. Those were his exact words. The settlements could have been family groups. Not exclusively but, there could have been tribes previously. Nothing is preventing it.
Wow, you've taken the copy paste to a whole new level. Why are you taking the bible story as literal? That's silly. Dr. Baden makes a joke about this.
OK, this is defintley a spam post. Yes, no one knows. Take note of what that means. Could be beforw persia.
So why, WHY, do you keep insisting that the israelites were all canaanites. Listen to yourself, Joel. Listen to your experts.
Strawman! It doesn't matter if the story is true.
No my goal is to learn all your arguments so I can refute them the next time.
almost exact, except when it's not.
Look at that, it's not copied from Epic of Gilgamesh. Could be that Jewish people were in mesopotamia. It's a region not a culture.
That's true possibly, maybe for the early books, right? But then the prophets rebuke everyone, including the elites. Examples Ezekiel 22:26-28, Isaiah 28.
Just seems like unnecessary gatekeeping. That’s like saying only Catholics are Christians. The problem is that Judaism wasn’t Judaism until late in their history. What you call folk religion was the standard for centuries.
Isn’t it because a variant of Her name is Astarte?
It's missing, the "s". But, I agree, that would be the closest match based on the name. But Astarte doesn't match Asherah in function. Astarte wasn't a fertility goddess. As far as I know she was a warrior. She wasn't the consort of the head canaanite god.
No, it's because everything you posted from Nick Grier is false.
First, like Meagan, you are not an expert, remember? I know, what works for me doesn't count for you, you don't apply to the standards you set yourself. This is how a dishonest debater acts.
Well, good thing I didn't do that then, did I? Your accusations against me are false.I'm not dishonest. I'm just the only person with the patience and motivation to go through this stuff with you.