The Vedas were Oral history originally too though.
Which is where we get the Indians-come-from-Canada problem.
if you go back far enough, it's all oral. (as the prelate said to the actress)
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The Vedas were Oral history originally too though.
Which is where we get the Indians-come-from-Canada problem.
if you go back far enough, it's all oral. (as the prelate said to the actress)
The Vedas are versified history, which makes it easier to memorize and recite (same with the Gathas, the Mahabharata, the Illiad, etc.). And to transmit the Vedas until our times, an ininterrupted chain of brahmans especially devoted to memorizing it literally (and sustained by the community) has been needed. Nothing similar existed in the ancient Near East in any of its cultures (except for Iranians, who shared a common ancestry and cultural traits with Indo-Aryans).
And if we go back, of course everything is oral. And how many reliable accounts do we have from those times?
Before the Brahmans existed though, it was no different. It's only uninterrupted since it was codified, just the same as the bible, once it was set down it's went interrupted.
There are alot of iffy things about the Vedas which are blamed on the centuries of it just being oral history in the centuries before it was versified.
Yes, I agree with you in there. The Vedas are only reliable from the time they were versified and thus became "fixed" in the memories of the first generation of Brahman transmitters.
Exactly the same happens with the Bilblical accounts, only that in this case they were written down in prose, not memorized as mythological poems. They reflect the realities of VII century Judah (for the Deuteronomical History) and the Babylonian Exile and the first century after the Exile, for the rest of the OT (except for the Maccabees).
Agreed, the Bible is an immensely useful historical source once you stop taking it literally. It's absolutely crucial to understand which bits were written at which time; which go back to older, lost sources; which are fabrications to suit the political agenda of the writers; which are metaphor and which can be considered reliable. The bit we are considering in this thread is most likely a fifth century BC composition which reworks older material, much of which was already reworked during the seventh century BC. Two religious-political agendas are involved, one the reforms of Josiah which connect to his ambition to expand into northern Israel and the other the imposition of rule by returned exiles from Babylonia over a population which had mostly remained in Israel. The Exodus story fits rather neatly with the latter and is composed in language that fits the fifth century. This doesn't mean that Moses was invented at that time, it could be that the Exodus writers attached a new story to a well-known figure. Some parts of Deuteronomy have older language so they may go back to the seventh century (though parts of that book were also edited in the fifth) and Moses appears in that book as well, but as lawgiver rather than as a leader of exiles.
The archeological record (as we discussed earlier in this thread) doesn't show an invasion but instead a gradual development from general Canaanite patterns to something that is distinctively Jewish. There is room in that for a lawgiver, provided the new law isn't - or rather, the practices it stimulates aren't - too different from what had already been developing. The Kenite hypothesis, which proposes that a group from the land just south of Judah (Biblical Midian) achieved some kind of special status (possibly as smiths) which allowed them to spread their YHW-worship among the locals, is also within the bounds. The material culture of Midian is so much alike that the archeological record wouldn't show it if such a group moved in; however, the evidence still rules out an invasion, so this would have been cultural diffusion instead. Egyptian culture is sufficiently distinct that is recognizable if exiles from there become the ruling class. There are places in the lowlands along the coast where that may have been the case (and which we know from Egyptian records to have accepted its overlordship from time to time) but nothing in the highlands of Judah or further north in Israel.
No. This is bad history. Just because it's the only source we have doesen't mean it gets away from being treated critically. The Bible is a decent source... For what a particular group of 5th century jews thought about stuff. It's not a contemporary source to most of the stuff it describes.
WHO SAID IT DOESN'T GET TREATED CRITICALLY?
It's not bad history, because the people using it as a historical source, are treating it critically
Might as well say, No. this is bad history, just because it's the only source doesn't mean you have to print it out of massive sheets of paper and build your tent out of it. Why the hell would anyone using anything as a historical source, not treat it critically?
It is not quite a "rewriting", but a cut-and-paste job. At least the phrasing indicates that it was compiled and amalgamated from multiple sources - some Judaen, others Israelite, with different national narratives and different agendas. At least that's what the philologists have suggested.
Genesis and Exodus in particular are the worst edited parts, with interpolating paragraphs from different sources, that shows up in phraseology and terms and often yields up multiple narratives of the same events and puzzling inconsistencies. This is much more jarring in those two books than the others (which seem more whole). While some take this to be later rewrites of an original narrative, the philological tell-tale signs suggest it is more probable they were just poorly merged documents, some editor trying combine different narratives of the same thing.
In other words, the Bible probably wasn't written in the 6th-5th. Its narrative is too fragmented for that. The sources - the words - were probably written quite earlier - maybe 9th/8th C., and preserved in fragmentary bits, in different chronicles, some from Israel, others from Judea. It was simply pasted and edited together as a single collection during the Babylonian captivity.
So while the 6th-5th C. editing job may have had an "agenda", the content itself does not. Or rather, each original source had its own agenda, back when it was originally written, and thus the resulting Bible is a hodge-podge of forgotten agendas.
The "complexity" of the Bible is not subtle meaning. It is just poor editing.
There's one bit in Kings where it was straight up re-written, we even have a fairly firm idea of who by and why. But a couple generations you get a cut-and-paste job of people trying to undo it.
And there are acouple well-written parts from a single source, Job is a good one, as it's wholly a story/myth, it gets to just be written by one person with the aim of telling the story in the best way instead of worrying about getting it right. Sometimes Jonah gets named for that too, but Job is the usual example.
But otherwise I'll 100% support the poor editing as the answer to well, everything.
Atleast the OT only gets bad editing, the NT has malicious editing.
And there are acouple well-written parts from a single source, Job is a good one, as it's wholly a story/myth, it gets to just be written by one person with the aim of telling the story in the best way instead of worrying about getting it right. Sometimes Jonah gets named for that too, but Job is the usual example.
But otherwise I'll 100% support the poor editing as the answer to well, everything.
Atleast the OT only gets bad editing, the NT has malicious editing.
Yep, we agree about that.
Again, I agree with you. But the final product, the OT, is the edited work put together, and the agenda of the final compilators is an integral part of it, even if analyzed separately there are older, different agendas subsumed within the final result. The OT is the final result, just like a house is an integral whole in itself, even if it's built using recycled materials from older buildings.
Yep, that's right. I did not hint otherwise. Complexity is complexity, regardless of its origin (intentional subtlety or poor editing job)
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Not quite the right analogy, as a heap of recycled materials are not houses in themselves. Whereas these sources were. It is more like combining a few adjoining houses, knocking down a few walls, and making it appear as a whole mansion.
There is less architectural genius in the editor than there is in the original houses. The original agendas matter more.
Moreover, the apparent multiplicity of sources lends weight to historical veracity. Not in every detail, of course, but it is not merely a feel-good Babylonian-era myth. If the story of Moses and the Exodus was contained in multiple prior sources - both Judaean and Israelite - that lends credence to it being or alluding to a real historical event.
Moreover, if you weigh it against other religious writings, the mythical elements in the Bible are comparatively few and far between. These are not tales of gods a la Ovid, but the history of a people, in which a god intervenes only intermittently as a motivator and source of bad luck. Genesis may be outright mythical balderdash, with only a touch of historicity (e.g. migration from Ur to Canaan), but the proportions are reversed in the remainder. Judges and Kings are outright chronicles that would meet the standard of pre-modern historical sources. Exodus, Numbers and Joshua are a little tougher to swallow whole, but are also overtly historical - not much more outrageous than, say, the Roman histories of Livy.
The Bible is less myth parading as history, and more history parading as myth.
I wouldn't compare the OT to a heap of bulding materials. In its final form, its editors gave it a unity of purpose and message, if their poor editing work undermines their efforts. I stick to my house analogy
. Plus it follows a more or less clear chronological order. For a truly haphazard assemblage of cuts and bits with little in the way of structure, the Quran or even the NT are better examples.As for it being mythology parading as history or vice versa, I wouldn't be as clear cut either. The archaeological record sticks close to the biblical narrative until a precise point in time, the start of the Omrid dinasty in the northern kingdom of Israel and the foundation of Samaria. From that point onwards, the biblical narrative is corroborated (in its general guidelines) both by the archaeological record and by historical records of non-Israelite peoples (the steles of Moab and Ben-Hadad of Damascus, or the Assyrian records). But from that point backwards, we have only the biblical narrative itself. All the events reported in the OT older than the middle of the VIII century BC can only be studied by analyzing the text of the Bible itself. I wouldn't call that history, but rather mythology. The closer in time the biblical narrative gets to the VIII-VII centuries BC, the more historical it becomes, with less mythical elements.
On a technical point, do you distinguish between myth and legend? And would you then rather that we refer to the Exodus as legend? I didn't make the distinction before (and to make it worse, I also used national myth for a complex of interwoven mythical, legendary and historical stories) but I agree there is a difference between Genesis, where YHW appears as an actor in the story, and Kings etc., which reads as a history book and in which He takes a back seat. However, there is a shades in between those poles. Joshua reads as history but is flatly contradicted by archeology. Exodus doesn't read as history, it's a miracle-filled story centered on a hero. For a Roman comparison, I'd go with Virgilius' Aeneas rather than Livy.
No, that just means these older sources shared an earlier myth. It says nothing about the historicity. (furthermore of course, we don't have access to these earlier sources)
Reliance on a single written source is not unusual. And for this time period, that is more than you can normally hope for. That doesn't make it automatically history, but that does not mean it should be discarded.
If not for the Bible's religious impact, this wouldn't even be a question. It would be definitely a source used by historians, as much as any other for the era. Indeed, a very productive source, so much more detailed than contemporary parallels.
They are not really comparable. Virgil's Aeneid is a coherent literary work by a poet. Exodus is a mess of clippings by a hurried editor.
The story of Aeneas is, of course, not due to Virgil. It is much older e.g. Livy sets it down "as certain fact", even while he acknowledges there are divergent narratives of the arrival of the Trojan emigrants.
The editor of Exodus is approaching it more like Livy than Virgil. He is not showing off literary skill or consciously fantasizing for heroic effect. He is trying to compile multiple divergent accounts of a historical event, maintained by legends, which he believes is a fact.
The editor of Exodus does a poorer job than Livy. Livy actually tries to be coherent, imposes his own narrative and acknowledges divergent sources when they arise. The Exodus editor just cuts and pastes without warning, which is why we end up with pointless repetitions and inconsistencies.
Admittedly, there is more myth and miracles in Exodus then there is in Livy. But that seems the fault of the original narratives, and how they were originally written, not something added by the editor of Exodus for a grand overarching Virgilesque goal.
It says more than that, particularly when we can detect the differences between accounts.
Suppose you knew nothing of, say, WWII, and read a single American book about it and no other. Its historicity would be dubious. But suppose instead your single book was an anthology, with various chapters, containing narratives from various sources, some American, some British, some Soviet. Would your confidence in the historicity of the event be higher or just the same as a single American book?
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That depends on all sorts of factors (how close are the various anthologies to the event in question? If they're all written a century or so later than the alleged event it gets tricky)
The classic scandinavian example is the various icelandic sagas, many of which share personages across various cycles. That does not neccesarily make them historical, and it's very difficult to assert they are with a time-gap of hundreds of years. (the icelandic sagas are of course very good sources for the times they were written)
Your example assumes a historical event but we have examples of multiple sources narrating the same myth or legend, with slight differences, which have been anthologized or even synthesized; the Edda is one. Multiple sources, including multiple sources reconstructed from a synthesized text, increase my confidence that the author didn't make it all up himself, but the story can still be fantastical.
If I understand you right, you compare Exodus to Livy because the text shows multiple sources. This is true but Livy puts them forward explicitly while philologists have had to pry them out of Exodus. We're getting onto the dangerous grounds of authorial intent so I want to be careful but IMO there is a difference between an author who shows his sources and one who does such a ramshackle job of editing that they show in spite of him. Perhaps we can compromise and say the Exodus author (or authors) was more like Virgil in intent but the resulting work is like Livy in the way that you say.
You seem to know more of this stuff than I do but it was my understanding (from a couple of books I've read) that the text of Exodus dates back mostly to the Babylonian exile and shortly after while other books that mention Moses contain parts that clearly date back a couple of centuries further. Exodus is also the book that most clearly fits the agenda of the ex-exiles, which makes me think that it might have been the most extensively rewritten. It is quite possible that the rewriting consisted of compiling the elements of earlier stories (possibly orally transmitted, that would fit with the magical fantasy elements in the story) that best fit the agenda, I wouldn't throw Exodus out entirely as a historical source - but I do think that other parts of the Torah may be more reliable.
My best guess (please correct me if I'm wrong) is that Moses has been a key religious figure from the beginning, that is, since Judaism began to distinguish itself from Canaanite religion. His "official" role is primarily as a lawgiver but in folk religion magical stories gradually became associated with him. As Isaiah doesn't mention the exodus but Hosea does, it seems likely that this element was added first in the northern kingdom; I don't think it was a part of the Moses story from the beginning. On the other hand, it does seem to predate the Babylonian exile. The ex-exiles on their return find themselves in a difficult political situation in which this particular aspect of the Moses legend both appeals to their experience and appears to be useful propaganda so they compile that story in the book we know as Exodus.
Edit: Emu'd on the first paragraph. Honestly, I thought of the Edda myself.
Livy gets to be coherent, Livy is probably one or atleast a handful of people, compiling it once.
While Exodus is hundreds of people, maybe even hundreds of committees, over hundreds of years.
While Exodus is hundreds of people, maybe even hundreds of committees, over hundreds of years.
It's not just a matter of being left in the dark before the VIII century BC, and having only the OT as a single source. If we leave aside all the supernatural elements and focus on the main story thread itself, the events recorded in the OT for that time period can be divided in two periods. Before the alleged stay in Egypt, it's totally impossible to ascertain anything, as the OT tells the story of a nomadic clan; in any case it'd have been impossible to find any kind of evidence for its historicity outside of the biblical tale itself. But from the stay in Egypt onwards, we could expect to find some evidence: massive plagues in Egypt, the death of a pharaoh with an entire army, the bloody invasion of Canaan and the "golden age" of David and Solomon. But there's absolutely nothing in the Egyptian records (perhaps the more exhaustive ones of the ancient Near East), and what's even worse, the archaeological record is in complete disagreement with the OT until the VIII century BC.
That means that the OT tale, before the start of the Omrid dinasty, is not a historical one, but that it includes and combines historical elements into a single storyline. An ideologically driven storyline that owes its existence and idiosyncracies to the social, political and religious events in Judah and Babylon between the VII and V centuries BC. That doesn't mean that we cannot analyze those parts of the OT for useful bits and snippets of real history within it, but we're dealing with a myth here, and a manufactured one. Perhaps a person called Moses did really exist at a given point in history, and perhaps he became some sort of lawgiver or religious figure. but we can be almost 99% sure that the Exodus story is not real in the way the Bible tells it. There's some similarities for example with the figure of Rustam in the Shahnameh, as some scholars have pretended to see in him a folk echo of the historical Surena of Carrhae, based on certain vague parallelisms between his life (at least the meager details that Graeco-Roman authors gave about him) and the one of the folk hero that Firdawsi borrowed for his epical poem. But it's all pure speculation, based on very flimsy evidence.
There's probably more historicity in the Illiad than in those parts of the OT, at least archaeology has been able to provide a credible setting for the Trojan war that accords more or less with Homer's tale.