The Mythic Past Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel Review
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What seems interesting to me is that he in no way talks of god'southward nonexistence. He sees the Bible as mainly theological. The Bible is a set of stori
It seems that Thompson presents very adept evidence for the nonexistence of Israel earlier belatedly eighth century BCE based on archaeologoical studies and some textual besides. That ways no historical patriarchs, Moses, David and Solomon, plus the united kingdom. So according to him the use of the Bible for historical research is wrong or misleading at best.What seems interesting to me is that he in no way talks of god's nonexistence. He sees the Bible as mainly theological. The Bible is a prepare of stories post-obit various motifs speaking to the reality of god in their (the writers) traditions.
I establish that the volume was well put together, only dry out in places. I would have given information technology iv stars based on his arguments, which for the virtually office I found audio. The thing was information technology was not a gripping piece of writing.
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How silly tin it go? Well, consider the Tel Dan stele. In 1993 an archeologist discovered a fragment of what appeared to be an ancient stele nearly Tel Dan in northern State of israel. The next year, another fragment (presumed to be from the
The past really is a foreign country. And the past had its ain by to puzzle over. And then approaching history is a multi-layered claiming (specially when dealing with a place every bit freighted with significance equally ancient Palestine). Information technology can also lead to a lot of silliness.How silly can information technology get? Well, consider the Tel Dan stele. In 1993 an archaeologist discovered a fragment of what appeared to be an ancient stele near Tel Dan in northern Israel. The next year, some other fragment (presumed to be from the same stele) turned up. The stele may originally have been put in place sometime betwixt 850 and 750 BCE by a king of Damascus, and it contained an inscription written in Aramaic. The stele was damaged, so much of the writing was missing. Merely attending before long centered on a few letters that could be transliterated every bit bytdwd. The byt role could be translated as "house." And dwd could be translated every bit David. News articles soon poured out, proclaiming that archaeologists had confirmed the historicity of the biblical Business firm of David. Christian apologists piled on.
Despite the breathless coverage, many scholars were skeptical. Byt could mean house, simply it could also connote temple. The "dwd" part of the inscription may actually take been dod. And dwd could hateful several things in Aramaic, including "beloved" and "uncle." Some thought bytdwd didn't look like a dynastic name at all, but more like a place name (perchance a place closer to Tel Dan rather than Judah to the southward, where David supposedly made his majuscule). Some even noted suspicious chisel marks on the fragment and wondered if the stele was a forgery.
In response to the circus surrounding artifacts similar the Tel Dan stele, some scholars (including the author of this book) proposed a more measured approach: Why not tell the public how niggling researchers really know for sure about the earth in which the Bible was written -- and distinguish that knowledge from speculation? Nearly Bible stories do not match up with the archaeological tape, later all (there'southward no evidence of an exodus from Egypt or a conquest of Canaan, for case). Even names and events that have some basis in known fact don't necessarily line upwardly with the scriptural telling.
So maybe Bible stories are what they wait like: Mythology about a fabulous past. It has been clear for a long fourth dimension that the authors of the biblical books borrowed from earlier works in circulation throughout the ancient About Eastward, such as the Babylonian Enuma Elish. The infancy story of Moses looks like a rewrite of claims about Sargon of Akkad being set adrift in a handbasket of rushes. Some of the stories clearly have been influenced by ancient Greek writings as well.
Speaking of which, it's interesting to compare how people react to archaeological finds related to the Bible as compared to other ancient texts, such equally _The Iliad._ Archaeologists accept discovered that at that place actually was an ancient metropolis of Troy -- and information technology did experience numerous wars (not surprising, given its strategic location on the declension of Anatolia). Simply no one seems gear up to conclude that _The Iliad_ is therefore historically accurate. Hellenic apologists don't fence that the presence of Bronze Age artifacts ways that Athena really did swoop down from Mt Olympus to restrain Achilles when he was brawling with Agamemnon.
The books of the Bible (both testaments) were literary works for a mostly illiterate age. Then who was the intended audience? Probably the authors' (relatively few) literate peers. Most ancient people would have been exposed to these writings (if at all) through passages read aloud. The authors (whoever they were) had a different view of the universe from ours, and probably a different concept of divinity (information technology seems to have included a large element of what we would call fate). Many biblical texts read like woo-inflected sociology. And the brutality of the stories can be numbing, as when Yahweh instructs Saul in i Samuel xv: "Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and exercise non spare them. Only impale both man and woman, babe and nursing kid, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." (Saul famously savage from grace considering he was not mindlessly subversive enough. Attempts to explain this abroad for modern readers mostly serve to make theologians sound like sociopaths.)
BTW, this book may exist hard to follow unless you've read the Bible all the manner through. I re-read chunks of it while reading Thompson's book, trying to see the authors as they most probable were -- educated people of their time who were striving to make sense of their globe. They lived in a relatively powerless land that depended on merchandise with richer neighbors. Their homeland existed in a constantly precarious state, indelible war and oppression at the hands of successive empires (Arab republic of egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Seleucids and Ptolemies, Romans), always surrounded (and frequently invaded) past competing cultures with competing gods. Their deity was ofttimes savage and capricious, just like their world.
It tin be hard to castor away centuries of biblical commentary and read the books of the Bible without filters. But before appropriating the authors' work for any modern theological or other purposes nosotros may have in mind, nosotros owe them that at least.
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The problem is Thompson's accented ignorance of annihilation that It is not that Thompson'due south primary thesis is wrong: far from that. Thompson represents what is for the almost function the mainstream consensus in the scholarly study of the Bible, the position that claims that Biblical texts are not historical but theological, that they should not be seen and read as historical evidence, and then on. Thompson's chronology might be more radical than the broader consensus, but this in itself would not be a problem.
The problem is Thompson's absolute ignorance of anything that is *not* the Bible in the sense of the text and just text. If I had taken a better wait at the tabular array of contents to start with, I would have noticed that Thompson offers no bibliography at all, which in itself is reason plenty no to even consider reading this book. He frequently misspells "Akkadian" as "Accadian", which is the orthograpy used perhaps during the 1890s - this is non a typo - and even then marginally. His interpretation of Assyrian displacement policy is so simplified as to be completely incorrect, when information technology is non completely wrong. His interpretation of aboriginal police collections, such every bit the Laws of Hammurabi, is extremely outdated and simply wrong. When at 45% I read:
"The Assyrian ideology of democratic equality inside the provinces was touted equally a do good of empire. This was not only propaganda simply also policy."
I could but laugh. The Assyrian Empire was not a republic. The equality existed only in the sense that the king had say-so over the life and death of all his subjects, equally. Such profound ignorance and anachronistic thinking seem nearly likewise absurd to be true.
Aramaic was most certainly NOT the official language of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires - it was explicitly the *un*official one. The official language was Akkadian - in that location is a majestic letter from the Neo-Assyrian menses in which the king explicitly forbids the leaseholder to ship his missives in Aramaic. To claim the opposite is the height of folly - and once again, how is it possible to take done whatsoever research at all and miss the nigh basic facts? It is about like maxim that the official linguistic communication of the Catholic Church during the Eye Ages was English, or similar rubbish.
I think there was also a passage somewhere claiming the Assyrians built schools in conquered territories: again, nothing could be further from the truth. Schooling in this period was carried out privately: school tablets are nigh invariably institute in the context of private housing, with the exception of occasional votive tablets in temples (these, however, are Babylonian and non Assyrian).
I could keep for pages, merely in any case, if then much about Assyrians and Babylonians is so horribly wrong, I shudder to remember what I take missed nigh topics that exercise non belong to my area of expertise. This book is simply a waste matter of fourth dimension and I stronly discourage anybody from reading it. ...more
The Author starts by giving a dour motion-picture show of the condition of the field of historical studies of the Bible for its lack of solid scientific methods. Theological prejudice that insists on adopting 'the Bible'due south view of the past' has hindered the progress in biblical scholarship. The dependence on the Bible itself every bit a source of history resulted in the failure of separating myth from history.
The presence of evidence from extra-biblical
The volume proves that what is narrated in the Bible is only myth.The Author starts by giving a dour picture of the status of the field of historical studies of the Bible for its lack of solid scientific methods. Theological prejudice that insists on adopting 'the Bible'due south view of the past' has hindered the progress in biblical scholarship. The dependence on the Bible itself every bit a source of history resulted in the failure of separating myth from history.
The presence of evidence from extra-biblical texts does not necessarily ostend the historicity of the Bible'south stories. On the contrary, information technology confirms the Bible's own presentation of them as agile tales of the by.
Thompson is not impressed by authors of the biblical texts that describe the myths of origin. It wasn't the intention of authors of the Bible for it to be a volume of history. This means the collapse of the paradigm: "the Bible as history".
He believes that the Bible is a drove of stories, myths and traditions; it can't exist the source of serious theology. Even if the Bible contains some theology, this theology is obsolete; it is not suitable for modern times.
If the Bible is an obsolete document that can't be relied upon equally a source of history or theology, why there is still swell interest in information technology? The Writer believes the reason is because the Europeans place themselves with Christianity and with the Bible as the Scripture of Christianity.
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his thesis does not detract from the value of these stories but does place them in context and purpose.
Trudno mi książkę oceniać. Due west porównaniu z autorami mającymi bardziej historyczne cele, tu razi mnie nadmierne operowanie ogólnikami. Bo, że mamy due west Biblii powtórki? Że opowieści tłumaczą fenomeny naturalne i nazwy miejsco
Wczytując się west historię biblijną, czy raczej historię starożytnych Żydów (każde słowo to pułapka, więc świadomie upraszczam), postanowiłem też zapoznać się z przedstawicielem nurtu "minimalizmu biblijnego", czyli tezy, że to wszystko to późne, z czasów hellenistycznych, legendy.Trudno mi książkę oceniać. W porównaniu z autorami mającymi bardziej historyczne cele, tu razi mnie nadmierne operowanie ogólnikami. Bo, że mamy w Biblii powtórki? Że opowieści tłumaczą fenomeny naturalne i nazwy miejscowe? Że łączą wątki mityczne? Ależ z tym już nikt się nie sprzecza. Przynajmniej nikt z poważnych autorów, bo w końcu temat mocno ideologiczny i, niestety, obecność fundamentalistów źle wpływa na dyskusję. Ci "nie-minimaliści" Biblijni różnią się właściwie tym, że przesuwają powstanie ksiąg o kilkaset lat wstecz, łącząc je z wydarzeniami historycznymi, a niektórym nawet przydając znaczenie pewnego dokumentu historycznego. Niby dużo sprzeczać się, czy Biblię ukształtowała niewola babilońska i okres perski, czy powstania Machabeuszów, ale westward potocznym rozumieniu chodzi o historyczność Mojżesza, czy zdobycze Jozuego, a tu już obie strony w pełni się zgadzają. Spory dotyczą Salomona i Dawida, albo reform Jozjasza i dawności ksiąg prorockich.
Tak więc entuzjastą nie jestem, ale nie potrafiłbym ocenić, bo wszystko zależy od punktu odniesienia.
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Prepare to be claiming
Deep, dense, enervating, and difficult. The author has aught against religion, but he demolishes (quite successfully) a literal reading of the Bible AND the "history" of Israel; he also destroys a liberal interpretation. He is like Alan Watts or Bishop John Shelby Spong on bookish steroids. This book, along with Watts' Myth and Ritual in Christianity and Assmann'southward Egyptian Moses, reinforces the truth that God volition not be independent be the covers of whatever book written past us.Prepare to be challenged!
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