It does not proof anything. Lots of people and tribes did sacrifices and might have some sort of writing on stones or whatever they had.
Yes, but only a limited number of peoples lived within a reasonable reach of Mt. Karkom; the Israelites are as good a candidate as any other, if you're prepared to overlook the date discrepancy.
(A lot of what we see there—particularly the anthropomorphic imagery—are counter to later Judaism, but who's to say what the ancestors of the Israelites considered religiously acceptable four thousand years ago?)
I always had my doubts about the truth of any of the Biblical stories. You once said yourself it is pharisean propaganda.
No, I talked about how a lot of aggada is pharisaic propaganda, for example the Patriarchs instituting the three daily services. What's written in the Bible itself is a different matter altogether. Those stories didn't come from nowhere; when you have myths, there will often be a factual basis for them, even if rather different to the form portrayed in the myth. (Compare the legend of the Minotaur with the discovery of the bull-dancing in the palace at Knossos.)
You also have to consider that what the Bible portrays, it both exaggerates, and twists according to the author's theological perspective. Finally, whilst the events at the end of the Biblical period are unquestionably historical, those towards the start have to be taken with a pinch of salt—but seasoned like this, rather than thrown away altogether.
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Date: 2009-02-09 07:41 pm (UTC)Yes, but only a limited number of peoples lived within a reasonable reach of Mt. Karkom; the Israelites are as good a candidate as any other, if you're prepared to overlook the date discrepancy.
(A lot of what we see there—particularly the anthropomorphic imagery—are counter to later Judaism, but who's to say what the ancestors of the Israelites considered religiously acceptable four thousand years ago?)
I always had my doubts about the truth of any of the Biblical stories. You once said yourself it is pharisean propaganda.
No, I talked about how a lot of aggada is pharisaic propaganda, for example the Patriarchs instituting the three daily services. What's written in the Bible itself is a different matter altogether. Those stories didn't come from nowhere; when you have myths, there will often be a factual basis for them, even if rather different to the form portrayed in the myth. (Compare the legend of the Minotaur with the discovery of the bull-dancing in the palace at Knossos.)
You also have to consider that what the Bible portrays, it both exaggerates, and twists according to the author's theological perspective. Finally, whilst the events at the end of the Biblical period are unquestionably historical, those towards the start have to be taken with a pinch of salt—but seasoned like this, rather than thrown away altogether.