evolution of judaism

One key thing is that Genesis was not written by one person whether it was Moses or anyone else. Instead, it is an anthology of many independent and sometimes mutually exclusive stories. For example, Genesis 1 & 2 tell two completely different stories. These stories show two very different voices, two very differnt eras, two very different concepts of GOD and of creation.Moses may have written down part of it, but it's pretty certain that he did not write the whole thing.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

You do realize that a common tactic until just recently was to write a treatise and attribute it to one of the earlier authors, such as Plato, Aristotle or other ancient sages?>>That's not entirely accurate........because, while this is true, there was no pretense that the aforementioned ancient sages actually wrote them.........it was just named after them in tribute.

read shakespeare's "taming of the shrew" and watch "10 things i hate about you." they're the same story. which one did shakespeare write?>>We both know this is a gross exaggeration of any of the stylistic differences found in the Bible.i'm not talking about genre differences here, i'm talking about actual wording, names, and ideas.>>I need better specifics than that, or I'm not buying it.i could have done better. there's alot of verse in deutoronomy that seems to indicate that moses wrote it. however, since it ends in his death, it must have had at least a second author.>>Mozart's "Requiem" was finished by an editor........is it any less a work of Mozart's?no, not specifics if i recall.>>All three are about a man told by God or the gods that a great flood was coming to destroy the Earth. All three were told to build boats and take with plant and/or animal life to repopulate the Earth. All three survived and repopulated the Earth.That's pretty specific.if moses wrote the book of genesis, he wrote during or just after the reign of ramses ii. that was about 1200 bc, give or take. the oldest written date for gilgamesh is 2500 bc, and the last version was about 1600 bc. so, which came first?>>Once again, we're back to oral tradition.tell me though, does the tower of babel story pre- or post-date the great ziggurat at babylon? the story is play on babylonian legend.>>Or Babylonian legend is a play on semitic legend.......you can't prove it wasn't.but i have to go to work. maybe i'll reply more indepth later with better figures.>>I look forward to it.

One key thing is that Genesis was not written by one person whether it was Moses or anyone else. Instead, it is an anthology of many independent and sometimes mutually exclusive stories. For example, Genesis 1 & 2 tell two completely different stories.>>That's not true. At first glance, in can appear to be so..........but, when read carefully and repeatedly, you see that Genisis 1 is a broad account of creation. Genisis 2 is the specific account of the creation of man. No contradiction is present.

I've read it carefully and repeatedly, and they both have the same level of detail. Neither is more broad or more specific than the other. They also have two different chronologies.They're contradictory. That is the literal interpretation, and the only reasonable one. They're as contradictory as if I told you "I went shopping and then good a haircut" and then turned around and said "I got a haircut and then went shopping."To try to deny this is to deny the meaning and existence of the words laid before you. I guess that's the sort of mental gymnastics you wind up with if you're determined to substantiate Biblical inerrancy at all costs.

They also have two different chronologies.>>Example please.They're contradictory. That is the literal interpretation, and the only reasonable one. They're as contradictory as if I told you "I went shopping and then good a haircut" and then turned around and said "I got a haircut and then went shopping.">>In the context of casual conversation, we've probably all done that.This message has been edited by JasonChin, 10-10-2004 02:43 AM

What, contradicted ourselves in the space of two sentences?Who are you, Dick Cheney? Read your Bible.Here's the relevant chronology from Gen 1:1) God makes plants.
2) God makes birds and sea creatures.
3) God makes land animals.
4) God makes Adam and Eve at the same time.And here's the relevant chronology from Gen 2:1) God makes Adam.
2) God makes plants directly in the garden, and indirectly in the rest of the world by supplying water.
3) God makes all animals at once in an attempt to create a helpmeet for Adam.
4) God makes Eve from Adam's rib.They're two different stories. Hell, if you'd bothered to read it, you'd see the part where the first story ends and the second rewinds and starts again:

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1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation. 4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens...

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It's like a DVD on autorepeat, ending and starting up again. "And they lived happily ever after. Beep! Once upon a time..."

the two i mentioned were written about 400 years apart. assuming moses wrote deuteronomy, and someone after the babylonian exile wrote kings, those two books are at least 600 years apart.now, how is it a gross exageration? stylistically? compare song of songs (or solomon) to leviticus. i GAVE you one earlier. the names of god. some parts refer to god as eloyhim, some yhvh, some yhvh eloyhim, and some el. genesis 1 and 2 contradict each other. parts of chronicles and kings are identical, yet chronicles is only concerned with judah and not israel. no one person could have possibly written the bible. it spans more than a thousand years. slightly, yes. and beethoven's 5th symphony certainly is not a work of mozart. and rachmaninoff's piano concerto no. 3 isn't either. you can't look at all of the bible, or even all of the torah and assume that moses or some other figure wrote it all, just as mozart was not the only classical musician. in fact, just demonstrate how bad the average perception of history is, rachmaninoff wasn't even a classical musician.looking at the bible and saying it's by one author is like looking at rachmaninoff's music as being written by mozart. even ignoring blatant stylistic differences and structure, and periods of music, mozart was long dead by the time rach lived.similarly, genesis shows evidence of being at the very least tampered with at least 600 years after moses should have lived. this is PROBABLY the date the text was compiled from the various sources, to protect the tradition during the hebrews' stay in babylon. actually, it's not. almost EVERY flood myth goes that way.in gilgamesh, utanapishtim is warned by the gods of the flood, builds and ark acording to one of their specifications. after the flood, the boat gets stuck on a mountain, for a few days, and he releases a bird to see if the land is dry. when he finally gets out of the boat, the god atrahasis makes a covenant with him to never destroy all of the earth again by a flood, and places the milky way galaxy in the sky as a reminder of this agreement.most of those elements are clearly borrowed in noah's story. that's nice, but the written date for gilgamesh still precedes most of the ORAL dates for hebraic traditions. and you misunderstand oral traditions. ever played telephone? oral traditions are recorded in genesis, but they come from at least two distinct sources, on top of obvious babylonian influence. if moses was the redactor of genesis, he lived in babylon at the time. yes. i can. the tower is babylonian. who cares what their legend about it was, it was a ruined ziggurat that the hebrews were making fun of in their text. the tower is in babylonian. it's name was bab-el, or gate [ladder?] of the gods in english. i think the name babylon is derived from this name.and the hebrews made a JOKE about it. they pointed out that bab-el sounds like balal, the hebrew word for confound. so their story went that god confounded the people in babylonian, so that they failed in building their giant temple. it's a pun, it's supposed to funny.but i can gaurantee you that the babylonians didn't go half-build a ziggurat in their city to validate a random hebrew insult directed at them. think about it for a second. which came first? the story or the actual tower?This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 10-10-2004 03:15 AM

well, this thread is going nowhere fast.i'd love to analyze the evolution of hebrew tradition and their views of god, even in the space of just genesis. but we seem to have to get people to accept that the bible wasn't written all at once by one person before we can look at the differences over time.

pretty much.

And here's the relevant chronology from Gen 2:1) God makes Adam.
2) God makes plants directly in the garden, and indirectly in the rest of the world by supplying water.
3) God makes all animals at once in an attempt to create a helpmeet for Adam.
4) God makes Eve from Adam's rib.>>You're twisting things. The creation of Eden is never suggested as the creation of first plants.........the assembling of animals for Adam is never suggested as the creation of said animals........Hell, if you'd bothered to read it, you'd see the part where the first story ends and the second rewinds and starts again:>>Nope, if you read it carefully, you'll see that it simply details the creation of man in Genisis 2 after treating it more broadly in Genisis 1.

the two i mentioned were written about 400 years apart. assuming moses wrote deuteronomy, and someone after the babylonian exile wrote kings, those two books are at least 600 years apart.now, how is it a gross exageration? stylistically? compare song of songs (or solomon) to leviticus.>>GROSS exaggeration, because, for starters, one's a MOVIE (and I'm pretty sure they didn't have those back in the day).......and, really, that pretty much shows the validity of the comparison.If Genisis 1 were scripture, and Genisis 2 a hologram, you'd have a point.........no one person could have possibly written the bible.>>No one claims such.i GAVE you one earlier. the names of god. some parts refer to god as eloyhim, some yhvh, some yhvh eloyhim>>I hear these names used for God TODAY......you've proven nothing.actually, it's not. almost EVERY flood myth goes that way.>>Which would seem to suggest that it has its origins in a true story.most of those elements are clearly borrowed in noah's story.>>Or vice versa.that's nice, but the written date for gilgamesh still precedes most of the ORAL dates for hebraic traditions.>>There's no way to date oral tradition, you know this.As for the tower of Babel, the story being TRUE would account for everything........wouldn't it?

well, with kings and genesis, one's a history (sort of). the other is mythological. how is this different than movies and plays? movies and plays are more or less the same thing, it's just one is recorded.remember, shakespeare is meant to be watched, not read. in fact, shakespeare himself never wrote his plays -- his actors did for posterity. one is an orderly priestly story, and one is a "way back when" story. seriously, read the bible -- they are VERY different styles. so your claim is just that only one person wrote each book? yes, because they're in the bible. you're getting the events in the wrong order. isn't suspicious that it'll refer to god one way and only way for a chapter or two, and then change and only refer to god that way for a chapter or two?if i wrote a book about you, and called you "jason" and nothing else for a chapter, but then the one chapter wrote about some guy named "bob" would you even assume that i'm still talking about you? every romantic comedy goes the same way: guy meets girl, guy and girl get together, something bad happens and they split up, and then they get back together for a cute happy ending. now, try as i might, i can't seem to get this to work out right in real life.the lesson of the story is that commonalities in stories do not neccessarily reflect and underlying truth. again, check the ages.i'm gonna stop playing with assumptions here. no more "if moses wrote genesis..." the earliest text we have for genesis is about 300 bc. the earliest text we have for gilgamesg is 2500 bc. that's twice as old. actually, there is. they can't predate the people that originated them. the story *IS* true, in some respect. there was indeed a tower called bab-el, whose construction had not been completed. i can't find a date for when it was first built, but a king of babylon that jews particularly despised rebuilt it around 600 bc: king nebuchadezzar.so the story might date from its first construction, but it was far more likely that story comes from 600 bc or so, when the jews were actually in babylon. the story was obviously written with intent to belittle and poke fun at the babylonians, and it makes too much sense for this to be done when they had a good reason to do it.there is no evidence for an earlier date. and assuming the story is just true is missing the joke.

this will be the theme for the post. your words, not mine.

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Hell, if you'd bothered to read it,

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When the LORD God made earth and heaven -- when no shrub of the field was yet on the earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted, because the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the soil, but a flow would well up from the ground and water the whole earth -- the LORD God made man from the dust of the earth

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are there plants when god makes man? yes or no?one verse later:

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The LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east...

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now are there plants?

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The LORD God said, "It is not good for man to be alone;"

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man is alone. are there animals? yes or no?

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"I will make a fitting helper for him." And the LORD God formed out of the earth all the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky...

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are there animals now?seriously, are we reading the same book?

well, with kings and genesis, one's a history (sort of). the other is mythological.>>And no one's claiming the same author for Kings and Genisis.<>

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Once again, the same author can't have different styles? I need MUCH more concrete proof than this before I can just ASSUME that the man who authorship has been accounted to for thousands of years didn't write it.

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so your claim is just that only one person wrote each book?>>

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No knowledgable religious person claims that the Bible was written by one individual. I have no idea where you got this idea from.

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Generally speaking, traditional attribution of authorship is taken to be true.........which is the same for ALL ancient literature. Only (and unfairly) is it questioned when it comes to the Bible.

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yes, because they're in the bible. you're getting the events in the wrong order. isn't suspicious that it'll refer to god one way and only way for a chapter or two, and then change and only refer to god that way for a chapter or two?>>

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I'll give you this..........IF you can give me examples........

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every romantic comedy goes the same way: guy meets girl, guy and girl get together, something bad happens and they split up>>

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But no one's claiming that all romantic comedies are based on the same story..........flood myths are clearly all based on the same story. Why would this story ring true to all cultures unless it WAS true?

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the earliest text we have for genesis is about 300 bc.>>

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The earliest text we have for Homer is what...........200 ad?

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Besides, try how you might, you can't discount the possibility that the oral tradition goes back thousands and thousands of years.

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actually, there is. they can't predate the people that originated them.>>

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Of course they can. They just have to originate from another people group and get passed on. For instance, some people think the Hindu Vedas go back to the ICE AGE........

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so the story might date from its first construction, but it was far more likely that story comes from 600 bc or so, when the jews were actually in babylon. the story was obviously written with intent to belittle and poke fun at the babylonians, and it makes too much sense for this to be done when they had a good reason to do it.

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there is no evidence for an earlier date. and assuming the story is just true is missing the joke.>>

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Ok, but if you assume the story is allegorical then that still doesn't diminish the inerrancy of the Bible.