NOVA Origins Of The Bible

[steve_bank]

Caught part of NOVA today.

Jews are said to be Babylonians captives, but that is misleading. They assimilated into the culture and economically did well. Jewish scribes had time to write.

One thing that came up was that the Sargon myth has him being cast into river in a basket of rushes. Turns out the Moses story of being cast into river was common in different myths.

The Jewish scribes would have spoken and read Babylonians. They were immersed in the stories of the culture.

What I got was a picture of Jewish people without a homeland fabricated a mythology that includes an origins or creation myth as all cultures had.

It was also proposed that the ziggerat in Babylon was the basis of the Babel story. It would be interesting to trace the origin of the word Babel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargon_of_Akkad#Origin_legends

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat

It looks like the entire Christian mythology clearly traces back as a derivative of several colures adapted by the Jews.

 

[braces_for_impact]

At least it sounds better than the various versions from The History Channel, which have very suspect exegesis, to be generous.

 

[steve_bank]

At least it sounds better than the various versions from The History Channel, which have very suspect exegesis, to be generous.

Both Nat Geo And history have a mixture of substance and fluff. History more than Nat Geo. They have to fill air time and Ancient Aliens on History probably has a following. It is entertaining to watch.

NOVA is usually taken to be good science.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Babel involved Babylon. They marveled at the construction relative to what used to be done. When you read Genesis, you pick up on how the Hebrews came from different groups of people.

At least it sounds better than the various versions from The History Channel, which have very suspect exegesis, to be generous.

Both Nat Geo And history have a mixture of substance and fluff.

It is so bad, I don't even bother to watch any of it as I don't have time to waste on BS.

 

[Politesse]

The "consensus" in these questions drifts a lot from decade to decade; science is helpful but its results are still subject to interpretation.

Certainly though, we should see the Hebrew Scriptures as documents with a social and historical context, whose literary antecedents were all textual traditions from other places. I don't think anyone denies that writing systems developed in Egypt and Mesopotamia long before they reached the Levant, and indeed it is not necessarily the case that all of the Bible's writers were Jewish. Their traditions and practices, at least, must have come from elsewhere, and we should expect genres, tropes, and archetypes in the HS that strongly reflect the existing templates in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Which we do. One of my favorite books on this subject is "Old Testament Parallels: Law and Stories from the Ancient Near East" (Matthews & Benjamin 2007) which uses a number of different categories to compare and contrast the writings of Judeans to those of their neighbors, often verse for verse.

 

[steve_bank]

The "consensus" in these questions drifts a lot from decade to decade; science is helpful but its results are still subject to interpretation.

Certainly though, we should see the Hebrew Scriptures as documents with a social and historical context, whose literary antecedents were all textual traditions from other places. I don't think anyone denies that writing systems developed in Egypt and Mesopotamia long before they reached the Levant, and indeed it is not necessarily the case that all of the Bible's writers were Jewish. Their traditions and practices, at least, must have come from elsewhere, and we should expect genres, tropes, and archetypes in the HS that strongly reflect the existing templates in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Which we do. One of my favorite books on this subject is "Old Testament Parallels: Law and Stories from the Ancient Near East" (Matthews & Benjamin 2007) which uses a number of different categories to compare and contrast the writings of Judeans to those of their neighbors, often verse for verse.

In many Christian circles that we be considered heresey and you would be vilified.

- - - Updated - - -

Babel involved Babylon. They marveled at the construction relative to what used to be done. When you read Genesis, you pick up on how the Hebrews came from different groups of people.

At least it sounds better than the various versions from The History Channel, which have very suspect exegesis, to be generous.

Both Nat Geo And history have a mixture of substance and fluff.

It is so bad, I don't even bother to watch any of it as I don't have time to waste on BS.

I love the Monster Fish show.

 

[Politesse]

In many Christian circles that we be considered heresey and you would be vilified.

Oh nooooooooo! Not that! Anything but that!

The book was also written by Christians, and mostly read in "Christian circles". Life is complicated.

 

[Tharmas]

Caught part of NOVA today.

Jews are said to be Babylonians captives, but that is misleading. They assimilated into the culture and economically did well. Jewish scribes had time to write.

One thing that came up was that the Sargon myth has him being cast into river in a basket of rushes. Turns out the Moses story of being cast into river was common in different myths.

The Jewish scribes would have spoken and read Babylonians. They were immersed in the stories of the culture.

What I got was a picture of Jewish people without a homeland fabricated a mythology that includes an origins or creation myth as all cultures had.

It was also proposed that the ziggerat in Babylon was the basis of the Babel story. It would be interesting to trace the origin of the word Babel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargon_of_Akkad#Origin_legends

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat

It looks like the entire Christian mythology clearly traces back as a derivative of several colures adapted by the Jews.

Is it possible you could give more information about the program? I am looking through NOVA and PBS materials online and all I can find is "The Bible Unearthed", which is more of an archeological survey. Could it be "Secrets of Noah's Ark" which aired last week?

 

[steve_bank]

Caught part of NOVA today.

Jews are said to be Babylonians captives, but that is misleading. They assimilated into the culture and economically did well. Jewish scribes had time to write.

One thing that came up was that the Sargon myth has him being cast into river in a basket of rushes. Turns out the Moses story of being cast into river was common in different myths.

The Jewish scribes would have spoken and read Babylonians. They were immersed in the stories of the culture.

What I got was a picture of Jewish people without a homeland fabricated a mythology that includes an origins or creation myth as all cultures had.

It was also proposed that the ziggerat in Babylon was the basis of the Babel story. It would be interesting to trace the origin of the word Babel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargon_of_Akkad#Origin_legends

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat

It looks like the entire Christian mythology clearly traces back as a derivative of several colures adapted by the Jews.

Is it possible you could give more information about the program? I am looking through NOVA and PBS materials online and all I can find is "The Bible Unearthed", which is more of an archeological survey. Could it be "Secrets of Noah's Ark" which aired last week?

I caught the last part on PBS Saturday, probably part of Easter weekend. I wrote down Sargon to look him up. I'll check the station site.

 

[Tharmas]

Thanks. I appreciate your looking it up, because it sounds fascinating.

 

[Tharmas]

I think it was the “Secrets of Noah’s Ark” which you caught. I watched it this morning.

The program contains several different narratives. One is deciphering different versions of the flood myth going back four thousand years in the "fertile crescent," the area now associated with Iraq. A second narrative is the realization that in the earliest telling, the boat is described as a giant coracle, or round boat made with reeds. Gradually in many retellings it evolved into being an oblong shape of the kind of boat we’re more familiar with.

A third narrative involves some individuals deciding to build a giant coracle, using ancient techniques (reeds and bitumen), and see if it could be made structurally sound and actually float.

A fourth narrative involves the origins of the flood. Ancient cities in the region relied on bi-annual flooding of rivers to retain fertility and prosperity, but the occasional flood could be damaging, and a 100 year flood could be catastrophic. Archeological evidence from ancient cities such as Ur and others show evidence of catastrophic floods at different times.

A fifth narrative involves establishing that the Genesis story of Noah is indeed copied from these Sumerian/Babylonian stories, and answering the question of how did the Jews get ahold of it. The answer to this last question involves the “Babylonian captivity” that the Jews underwent.

This last narrative concludes that the Jews wrote the Torah after the return from Babylon and used various myths they had learned in Babylon as the basis for some of their own creation myths, such as the story of the flood but also the story of baby Moses, etc. In the process, they turned their Flood story into a moral narrative involving punishment and forgiveness.

After the return from Babylon and the creation of the Torah the “people living in what is now Israel” became the Jewish people as we know them from history.

 

[steve_bank]

I think most of us nonnbeliers intuitively understood it. Recent shows have but it on at least a partial evidence basis.