How's about some more virtual travel? Believe me, I was there! I've got this here record. But I forget where it was. LOL Oh, yeah, that's the Pacific. And that's an agave. Those are rocks. Can you see the birds? And a sloop. (We'll call it a sloop cause that sounds better than a boat; no need to get technical.) We can listen along as we go. I used to sail a Lark... a dinghy, on Long Island Sound. Prepare to come about.
Got somewhat flummoxed writing up the post about the Hyskos. Looking to see how the timeline of the Egyptian dynasties jibed with that of Exodus. So I went to Wikipedia, to Moses, to huh? You know how Wiki works. Contributors. Like in an academic environment, they're challenged in peer review (anyone else registered) and I suppose there's a process to select out misinformation. Never participated in it however much I refer to the thing.
Well, this presented under the heading of Historicity: "The scholarly consensus is that the figure of Moses is legendary, and not historical..." Oh, really? What 'consensus' is that? The entry cites one source, the comment repeated verbatim. Throwed me for a loop. Who's got the time to clear this one up? I always thought (belief not even entering the process) that Moses was a real person. Is this also the product of virtuality after the fact (again, if actual indeed) of The People being 'let go' and the whole nine yards? Isn't that the whole enchilada... bondage and redemption?
The entry goes on to say that it's (he's) a memorialized construct crafted by the compilers of Torah, which, generally speaking, was done during the Babylonian Captivity. I don't recall where I read that this had an existential, political motive, namely to validate the Jews' claim to 'the Land of Israel', making a case, as it were, to the Persian overlords. (Where have we heard that before? Harry Truman, a Baptist, may have seen the Palestinians as Canaanites in 1947. Good question. Met an older literalist fellow who thought the Jews had all these problems vis-a-vis Zionism v. Islam because they didn't exterminate the 'natives' as they were commanded. Sheesh. Don't want to make too much of this here but think 'Manifest Destiny' and destroying Native American culture. This literalism was sort of an apologetic argument in that regard.) throwing the U.S. under a tribalist bus. But I never heard they made the person of Moses up in a similar manner to the Greeks, gods being actual legendary persons who acquired supernatural qualities in the hyperbole of multi-generational transmission.
Got somewhat flummoxed writing up the post about the Hyskos. Looking to see how the timeline of the Egyptian dynasties jibed with that of Exodus. So I went to Wikipedia, to Moses, to huh? You know how Wiki works. Contributors. Like in an academic environment, they're challenged in peer review (anyone else registered) and I suppose there's a process to select out misinformation. Never participated in it however much I refer to the thing.
Well, this presented under the heading of Historicity: "The scholarly consensus is that the figure of Moses is legendary, and not historical..." Oh, really? What 'consensus' is that? The entry cites one source, the comment repeated verbatim. Throwed me for a loop. Who's got the time to clear this one up? I always thought (belief not even entering the process) that Moses was a real person. Is this also the product of virtuality after the fact (again, if actual indeed) of The People being 'let go' and the whole nine yards? Isn't that the whole enchilada... bondage and redemption?
The entry goes on to say that it's (he's) a memorialized construct crafted by the compilers of Torah, which, generally speaking, was done during the Babylonian Captivity. I don't recall where I read that this had an existential, political motive, namely to validate the Jews' claim to 'the Land of Israel', making a case, as it were, to the Persian overlords. (Where have we heard that before? Harry Truman, a Baptist, may have seen the Palestinians as Canaanites in 1947. Good question. Met an older literalist fellow who thought the Jews had all these problems vis-a-vis Zionism v. Islam because they didn't exterminate the 'natives' as they were commanded. Sheesh. Don't want to make too much of this here but think 'Manifest Destiny' and destroying Native American culture. This literalism was sort of an apologetic argument in that regard.) throwing the U.S. under a tribalist bus. But I never heard they made the person of Moses up in a similar manner to the Greeks, gods being actual legendary persons who acquired supernatural qualities in the hyperbole of multi-generational transmission.
Having already made the quantum leap through the Genesis creation account as literally presented to a literary understanding of the capabilities of those compilers' information about cosmology, i.e., explaining existence and origin (Essentially prehistoric oral camp fire tales told by the elders - once saw an anthropological video about the Inuit; after a seal dinner, one of the youngsters exclaims, "Grandfather, tell us again how we got here." Different cultures have assorted origination tales.) for reasons pertinent to the time, subject to what we'd call 'processing' the information. What could be understood? Not this, clearly.
Adam and Eve? Literally, man and woman in archaic Hebrew. Their personas reflect that which is driven home in Proverbs - women are wily and strange women are devastating, by the self-same scribes who reflected the male supremacist values which, it's got to be said, were experiential. Where the stability of a people, a tribe, a family (kinship taboos) are concerned, sexuality is, to be kind, distracting from the business at hand... survival. Gestation cannot keep pace when famine's in the land. What did the 'patriarchial' society do? It organized toward creating, storing and distributing surplus crops which need to be produced in hard labor and guarded by men at arms. And that goes to the metaphor of the notorious apple. Food is property upon which the whole of the society depends. You just can't go and take it.
What I'm saying is there are varying degrees of reading between the lines. One needn't 'believe' the Genesis creation account to believe in Grace. To believe and be grateful for Jesus Christ. (Another story there.) That's how I settled it. Picking up from Abraham who believed God... Isaac and Jacob real people too. Moses, so I believed but I guess I'd better check that consensus out. LOL I do recall real old school Biblical exegesis had Moses writing Torah in his tent during the Wilderness years, but that's moved to said compilation by scribes in Solomon's Temple, in Babylon and finally in the restored Temple. Ezra was one of them. The moral of ye story: disobedience to The Lord spells catastrophe.
Jesus preached that the scribes and Pharisees bound The People up in man-made interpretation of The Law; all 633 commandments which made it a tyranny by which they held power.
What gave impetus to collating the scrolls of declarations, narratives and just plain geneologic or demographic information, was the (Legendary?) discovery of Deuteronomy in the last days of Judah. Of course the idea of the Genesis story being literally a layering of several previous accounts ( E, J, P, D sourcing) is old hat, but there are many literalists who won't even accept this. Long story short, Moses didn't exist?!! Going to look further into this. Er, when I get the time.
Leave us sojourn to Daisy Mountain. Springtime. Believe me. Not far. Lovely.
So, if one were to found the Institute for Advanced Credulity, which view is preferred?
So, if one were to found the Institute for Advanced Credulity, which view is preferred?
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