yaakov wrote:
So in that sense, Judaism being a recognisable Faith then compared to what it is now, it IS the oldest religion.Edwin Johnson (
http://www.egodeath.com/edwinjohnsonpaulineepistles.htm#_Toc54460029 ):
But what is not yet understood is the true epoch of the beginning of Hebrew literature -- in other words, the rise of a class of literary men among the Jewish people. It has now been long a growing opinion that the Biblical books are much later than the "tradition" from the "Revival of Letters" has alleged them to be. Some critics, like Ernest Havet and Maurice Vernes, have lowered some of the books many centuries on the chronological scale. In this way the public mind has to some extent been prepared for the conclusion which I venture to announce, that the Hebrew literature is distinctly a modern literature.
In the first place, it is utterly impossible to trace the existence of Hebrew books among the Jewish people themselves beyond the epoch which I roughly date as "about 400 years ago," or the beginning of the Age of Publication. It is, indeed, alleged that the first Hebrew book was printed at a place called Soncino, near Cremona, a little earlier; but the student will discover, as before, that the fifteenth century dates are not to be trusted, and that sixteenth-century dates are very dubious.
But in general terms let me say that all our information about the Hebrew books from Hebrews themselves is sixteenth-century information. Only from the Age of Publication is any light cast upon the preceding darkness, and it is a light which convinces us that the Hebrew Letters were then a novel invention in the world. In Christian circles it is difficult to trace even the faint beginnings of Hebrew study in the earlier half of our sixteenth century. If the date of the Alcala Polyglott be true, Hebrew was of course known at that time to a limited number of monastic scholars, and was treated by them with no reverence, but merely as an instrument of ecclesiastical dominion. Their Latin version, so-called, is not a version or translation, but a sort of travesty of the Hebrew meaning. And I, at least, cannot conceive that such a thing could have been done had the Hebrew Scriptures been long in existence, and their meaning generally understood.
I have already pointed out what I hold to be the keybook to the system of Latin or Christian literature, the "List of Illustrious Men." Is there any corresponding keybook to the system of Hebrew literature? Undoubtedly there is; but that book is not the Hebrew Bible, which does not contain from end to end a solitary date, in the ordinary sense of the word, that can be used for purposes of science. Books alleged to be of Divine authority, and to contain a tradition from the creation itself, necessarily do not admit of being dated as matter-of-fact compositions are.
But now close the Bible, and open the other traditional books of the Hebrews, for which no Divine authority is claimed, and all becomes clear. The Cabbala, or Tradition, proves to be no tradition at all, but an invention of the Revival of Letters. The key-book is the "Sepher Juchasin" or "Book of Families," written in unpointed Hebrew, and attributed to the pen of one of the Sephardim or Spanish and Portuguese Jews, the Rabbi Abraham Zacuth or Zacuto. Though this little book has, never been translated, its contents have passed into various compilations, and may be conveniently consulted -- for example, in the Latin works of Wolf or of Bartolocci. The book is said to have been written about the year 1502 of our chronology.
Now, what is the programme of this work? It professes to contain a history of the events of the world from the Creation down to the time of the author. In particular, it contains the list of the alleged illustrious Hebrew scholars, and so corresponds to the Latin list to which I have so often referred. If you wish for particulars about Moses Maimonides, or any other famed writer, this list must be consulted, or one of the later lists based upon it. There is no dispensing with it. If it be a genuine record of ancient and mediaeval times, Hebrew antiquity is proved. If, on the other hand, it be, like the Latin list, a mere invention designed to produce the illusion of antiquity, the whole system is discovered to be a modern invention.
I have no hesitation in saying that, tried by any possible test, the "Book of Families" is an invention of the Revival of Letters. Not only have no early records been discovered on which it is based, but the later Hebrew writers of the Age of Publication entirely confirm the opinion of the recency of the system.I say that the admissions of the solitary Rabbi, Elias Levita, of whom a story is told that he gave lessons to Luther in Rome, are sufficient of themselves to establish the truth. What is the meaning of the admission that the vowel points are recent, but that the written language is still in a crude and imperfect state? What is the meaning of the admission that the Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken tongue in the mouth of the people, and that it had become the mere possession of literary men? It means that the Hebrew was the recent work of art of literary men. The Rabbis were in the same inconsistent position with all priestly scholars: they had to maintain the antiquity and sacredness of books which they knew to be fresh and of human origin. The truth, as usual, escapes for the initiated eye, and, possibly, was intended to escape by some of the more enlightened and truth-loving of these scholars.
The tales of "Palestinian" and "Babylonian" schools are but tales. I once thought that there were Spanish schools of Hebrew learning in the eleventh or twelfth century of our chronology; but, on detecting the fable of Zacuto's work, I found that notion must also be abandoned. Nor can I so much as make out anything definite about Jewish culture so late as 1492, when the great exodus from Spain is said to have taken place. The Hebrew accounts of that event are very slight, and appear to have been written down near the middle of the sixteenth century.
Another very important book for the understanding of the rise of Hebrew literature is the chronicle ascribed to the R. Joseph, another of the Sephardim, who is said to have lived in exile at Avignon and at Genoa. Here is a man who may be said to "write Bible," so thoroughly is he steeped in Hebrew poetical imagery. He is one of the best guides to the Bible extant; and, as his work has been done into English, it should be studied by all who wish to arrive at the truth. He is another powerful indirect witness against the antiquity of Hebrew letters.
Another fact that should be added to the sum of evidence is the bad state of the text of the early-printed Hebrew Bibles. Can you conceive it possible that a text which had been long in use, and had been jealously guarded by the pastors and rulers of the people, should come from the Press teeming with errors, and bearing all the marks of rush and haste? To me this is not conceivable. In short, it would be weakness to labour the argument, once clearly stated. It is this: The phenomena of Hebrew letters during the Age of Publication (or sixteenth century) forbid us to suppose that they are an invention of much earlier date.Again: According to the Christian tradition, which my readers will find in the handbooks, the first Christian scholar who learned Hebrew from Jewish teachers was none other than our notorious Hieronymus, or imaginary Jerome, the mouthpiece of the monks of the Age of Publication.
Once more: When you understand the "Jerome" works to be of that time, many a cloud rolls away, many an enigma is solved. Through this imaginary scholar we learn that the monks had unpointed Hebrew before them; that, consequently, the same word might be read Roim, shepherds, or Reim, lovers; that another word might be read either as Salem or Salim, because "very rarely do the Hebrews use vowels, and the words may be pronounced differently, according to the caprice of the readers and the variety of regions;" that the Hebrew word DBR, without vowels, may be understood as dabar, word, or as daber, pest; that SM may either be understood as placed (sam), or as there (sham); and so on ("Hieron. Ep. ad Damasum," 125; "Ad Evag." 126; "Comm. ad Heb. 111., 5," and so on).
Further: It is through the Talmud alone that we can know what the Jewish scholars wished their people to believe about the Bible; and, certainly, the collection of Jewish lore called by that name was not heard of until the early Age of Publication, when it was denounced by Christian scholars as entirely inconsistent with Christianity. The Talmudic tracts give evidence that mere Hebrew caligraphy is still imperfect, and that correct readings have not been fixed, in many a passage. The good Rabbis veil their critical observations, such as they are, under the figure of the "Tradition of Moses from Mount Sinai."
Israel Finkelstein (University of Tel-Aviv), Bible Unearthed
http://books.google.ro/books?id=lu6ywyJr0CMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=israel+finkelstein+bible+unearthed&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4DgYVNPGD6viywOQ94HACA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=israel%20finkelstein%20bible%20unearthed&f=falseThe Bible Unearthed begins by considering what it terms the 'preamble' of the bible "the Book of Genesis" and its relationship to archaeological evidence for the context in which its narratives are set. Archaeological discoveries about society and culture in the ancient near east lead the authors to point out a number of anachronisms,
suggestive that the narratives were actually set down in the 9th-7th centuries: * Aramaeans are frequently mentioned, but no ancient text mentions them until around 1100BCE, and they only begin to dominate Israel's northern borders after the 9th century BCE.
* The text describes the early origin of the neighbouring kingdom of Edom, but Assyrian records show that Edom only came into existence after the conquest of the region by Assyria; before then it was without functioning kings, wasn't a distinct state, and archaeological evidence shows that the territory was only sparsely populated.
* The Joseph story refers to camel-based traders carrying gum, balm, and myrrh, an unlikely event for the first millennium, but quite common in the 8th-7th centuries BCE, when Assyrian hegemony enabled this Arabian trade to flourish into a major industry.
* The land of Goshen has a name that comes from an Arabic group who only dominated the Nile Delta in the 6th and 5th centuries.
* The Egyptian Pharaoh is portrayed as fearing invasion from the east, even though Egypt's territory stretched to the northern parts of Canaan, with its main threat consequently being from the north, until the 7th century
The book comments that this corresponds with the documentary hypothesis, in which textual scholarship argues for the majority of the first five biblical books being written between the 8th and 6th centuries.
Finkelstein and Silberman argue that instead of the Israelites conquering Canaan after the Exodus (as suggested by the book of Joshua), most of them had in fact always been there; the Israelites were simply Canaanites who developed into a distinct culture. Recent surveys of long-term settlement patterns in the Israelite heartlands show no sign of violent invasion or even peaceful infiltration, but rather a sudden demographic transformation about 1200 BCE in which villages appear in the previously unpopulated highlands;these settlements have a similar appearance to modern Bedouin camps, suggesting that the inhabitants were once pastoral nomads, driven to take up farming by the Late Bronze Age collapse of the Canaanite city-culture.
Dr. Gunnar Heinsohn has already demonstrated in his best known work (
http://www.specialtyinterests.net/heinsohn.html ) that the entire historical period of 2100 BC - 600 BC was invented:
"Heinsohn has made a very important contribution to the revisionist debate by focussing attention on the evidence of stratigraphy outside Egypt. Dayton had uncovered many examples in museums around the world where near identical ancient artefacts of very similar styles and manufacturing techniques were given dates which varied sometimes by as much as 1000-1500 years. Heinsohn, from an extensive study of archaeological reports from most of the better known sites across Asia Minor, showed how these anachronisms had arisen. At site after site, archaeologists had artificially increased the age of the lower strata by inserting, without supporting evidence, 'occupation gaps' of many centuries. They did this in order to meet the expectations of excessive antiquity among historians, who had used Biblically derived dates for Abraham (c. 2100), initially seen as broadly contemporary with the great Assyrian king Hammurabi. Using this elongated time frame, great empires of the past such as the Sumerians, Akkadians and Old Babylonians were invented by late 19th C and early 20th C scholars to fill the historical voids. The ancient Greek and Roman historians, not surprisingly, knew nothing of these ancient peoples. Sumerian, said Heinsohn, 'is the language of the well known Kassite/Chaldeans, whose literacy deserves its fame'.
He showed that the Bronze Age started in China and Mesoamerica some 1500 years later than in the Near East and proposed this gap be largely closed by lowering the ages of the Mediterranean civilisations. He cited the Indus Valley where the early period civilisations, dated from Mesopotamian seals to c. 2400BC, sit right underneath the Buddhist strata of 7-6C. Seals from Mesopotamia are found in the Indus valley and in Mesopotamia there are seals from the Indus Valley. So the excavators have to say they have an occupation gap of some 1700 years. Thus some sites only about 30km apart have chronologies some 1500 years apart. But in the same strata, supposedly 1500 years apart, they frequently find the same pottery.