Do you think most provincials and Hellenized citizens of the East would have made that distinction clearly?
The distinction between a function and someone occupying it is not one hard to make.
How can it be asserted to not be a particular location if there are several possible locations that fit?
Because when authors wanted to be precise, they can. If they don’t, it’s a choice. Millenia after, religious archeologists who read this text literally looked for the place, and the fact that they did not found one and disagree is more telling than anything else.
near-unthinkable for Judaism
The fact that they did not keep tracks of their discussions doesn’t mean they did not occur. And the extent of the biblical rewriting, with discernable schools like the deuteronomist one, is the proof that this rewriting was conscious, organized and debated. We also have signs of this kind of work in Qumran. You seem to see Judaism as an ahistorical reality; the truth is that it evolved a lot; rewriting propositions were common until at least the fall of Jerusalem in 71. And after that, this work continued differently in the Midrashim, without changing the text but changing its interpretation extensively, with comparable results as the rewriting of the text.
The distinction between a function and someone occupying it is not one hard to make.
That’s a very fucking modernist point of view.
Because when authors wanted to be precise, they can. If they don’t, it’s a choice.
what.
Do you… do you think they were going to give a coordinate grid reference if they wanted to be precise?
Do you have any idea how many place names are incredibly generic, and only have any manner of uniqueness because of the adoption of the practice of not translating foreign toponyms? Itself a very recent development in most languages?
They gave the name of what they called the place. How much more precision are you looking for?
Millenia after, religious archeologists who read this text literally looked for the place, and the fact that they did not found one and disagree is more telling than anything else.
… you literally already conceded that there are several places that fit the description by archeologists’ estimates.
The fact that they did not keep tracks of their discussions doesn’t mean they did not occur.
“You can’t prove that they didn’t” isn’t very fucking compelling from an academic standpoint, especially when the argument presupposes the existence of the discussions to begin with.
And the extent of the biblical rewriting, with discernable schools like the deuteronomist one, is the proof that this rewriting was conscious, organized and debated.
How does that follow at all?
You seem to see Judaism as an ahistorical reality;
… what is that even supposed to mean?
the truth is that it evolved a lot; rewriting propositions were common until at least the fall of Jerusalem in 71.
…
And after that, this work continued differently in the Midrashim, without changing the text but changing its interpretation extensively, with comparable results as the rewriting of the text.
Changing interpretations and changing the text are so fucking distant from each other in an Abrahamic religious context that it’s bizarre that you even bring it up.
13 Then they sent to him some Pharisees and some Herodians to trap him in what he said. 14 And they came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? 15 Should we pay them, or should we not?” But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me see it.” 16 And they brought one. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this and whose title?” They answered, “Caesar’s.” 17 Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were utterly amazed at him. [Mark 12:13/17]
Jesus is speaking about the function of Emperor, representing the Empire, not an Emperor in particular.
Do you have any idea how many place names are incredibly generic
What I try to say is that this name is not generic.
… you literally already conceded that there are several places that fit the description by archeologists’ estimates.
Only because there’s no clear description, just as the forest in Little Red Riding Hood can be any temperate forest.
“You can’t prove that they didn’t” isn’t very fucking compelling from an academic standpoint, especially when the argument presupposes the existence of the discussions to begin with.
Absence of proof is never in history the proof of absence. It’s a quite common assertion in academia as we rarely have proofs… But you clearly here truncate my reasoning. It’s not compelling from an academic standpoint either.
How does that follow at all?
If someone is found dead with a knife in their heart, it’s probably because they died from being stabbed in the heart. The current state of the biblical text is best explained by the fact that successive schools of thought have rewritten their myths generation after generation, which presupposes a detached relationship to the historicity of the narratives. There is no proof, but no explanation that passes Occam’s razor any better either.
… what is that even supposed to mean?
There’s not much common between Judaism today, in which indeed any rewriting of the texts would be impossible, and a loose continuum of apparented traditions 3000 years ago. It’s an anachronism.
Changing interpretations and changing the text are so fucking distant from each other in an Abrahamic religious context that it’s bizarre that you even bring it up.
That’s why I said differently. There’s no need of Midrashim before 71 because they rewrote the texts. When they couldn’t anymore, they did something different.
/
But listen, you’re clearly becoming angry, and I don’t understand why. I’ll stop here, it’s not worth it. Thanks for the beginning of this exchange, and the other one about Paul Veyne and bestiaries.
It really fucking is. Even outside of the context of divine rulership or even elite status, it is incredibly common for people in pre-modern societies to be identified overwhelmingly by their position or profession rather than their name even in daily interactions. Individualism is an extremely recent development in human culture.
Jesus is speaking about the function of Emperor, representing the Empire, not an Emperor in particular.
“Whose head is this and whose title?” They answered, “Caesar’s.”
“Whose head”
I can launch into a lecture about the importance of individual Imperial portraiture and the departure from the norms of coinage of the near-east of the period if you like.
What I try to say is that this name is not generic.
… do you not know what “Yam Suph” means?
“Reed Sea.”
Only because there’s no clear description, just as the forest in Little Red Riding Hood can be any temperate forest.
The Rubicon lacks a clear description as well. Is the Rubicon also a fictional place in the context of Caesar’s Civil War?
Absence of proof is never in history the proof of absence. It’s a quite common assertion in academia as we rarely have proofs…
It is incredibly unusual in historical academia for positions to be advanced without evidence, and even over-reading into solid, extant evidence is often viciously ripped apart.
If someone is found dead with a knife in their heart, it’s probably because they died from being stabbed in the heart. The current state of the biblical text is best explained by the fact that successive schools of thought have rewritten their myths generation after generation, which presupposes a detached relationship to the historicity of the narratives. There is no proof, but no explanation that passes Occam’s razor any better either.
So the best explanation of games of religious telephone in a religious tradition that posits the defiance of the objective truth of YHWH to be a cause for society-wide destruction and divine wrath, between numerous warring tribes who went through extensive societal trauma, including the exile and then return of their elites to a distant land, is that the oral tradition was… consciously and in an organized fashion rewritten by dedicated Bronze Age cynics without any notable pushback from the common believers.
… one might suggest the difficulties of unwritten oral transmission even within one language, in one generation, much less a nonstandardized language family over the course of hundreds of years, given the vagaries of human memory and prejudice, might suggest a different, much less convoluted route that doesn’t contradict what we know about the society of the ancient Israelites.
There’s not much common between Judaism today, in which indeed any rewriting of the texts would be impossible, and a loose continuum of apparented traditions 3000 years ago. It’s an anachronism.
I suppose there’s not much in common between Judaism in the 1st century AD and Judaism in the 10th century BCE either? Or much in common between Judaism in the 2nd century BCE and the 10 century BCE? Or Judaism in any period wherein the facts and reflections of the ethnoreligion can be studied, and your convenient tabula rasa view of Judaism unburdened by evidence?
That’s why I said differently. There’s no need of Midrashim before 71 because they rewrote the texts. When they couldn’t anymore, they did something different.
It’s funny that they should be so secretive as to obliterate all whisper of rewriting their own holy texts, even from hostile, non-Hebrew sources, but be so open about re-interpreting it, despite both of those supposedly serving the same purpose and the re-interpretation tradition only arising because they, in some vague sense, ‘could not’ rewrite the texts any longer, despite the fact that the widespread Jewish diaspora which long-predated the destruction of the Second Temple would have had to coordinate and agree upon such rewrites over the entire Mediterranean and part of Central Asia.
But listen, you’re clearly becoming angry, and I don’t understand why. I’ll stop here, it’s not worth it.
I’m frustrated because your arguments are not simply disagreeable, but outright incoherent (as with the assertion about precision and the location of the Yam Suph), contradictory (as with your agreement that archeologists have several places that the Yam Suph could be, and then arguing that the fact that archeologists did not have any such locations was proof that it was fake), and borderline axiomatic (as with your arguments regarding how little worth actual evidence and proof are in comparison to an assertion based on what my rural relatives would unintuitively call “common sense”).
Okay, I may have understood why we can’t understand each other (beside my poor English, which is I presume a big part of the problem). The idea that these texts come from oral traditions from the bronze age was abandoned decades ago… they are far more recent than that. The book of Exodus, for example, was written in its first form in the 7th century BCE (exactly when Egypt regains power in the Middle East, and it’s not a coincidence), and rewritten again and again; we still find (small) variations on the text in the 10th century CE! But it’s more or less finished by the period of Alexander the Great. It may contain traces of oral tradition, but nothing very older; it was a written document Does it make more sense to you in this timeframe?
If not, I’ll just say thank you for your memes that Iove and stop bothering you.
Okay, I may have understood why we can’t understand each other (beside my poor English, which is I presume a big part of the problem). The idea that these texts come from oral traditions from the bronze age was abandoned decades ago… they are far more recent than that. The book of Exodus, for example, was written in its first form in the 7th century BCE (exactly when Egypt regains power in the Middle East, and it’s not a coincidence), and rewritten again and again; we still find (small) variations on the text in the 10th century CE! But it’s more or less finished by the period of Alexander the Great. It may contain traces of oral tradition, but nothing very older; it was a written document Does it make more sense to you in this timeframe?
That probably is a major issue here. Your argument regarding Exodus, however, only applies to Exodus - you explicitly noted Leviticus as part of your argument for rewriting scriptures, but the laws in Leviticus are pretty generally accepted to long-predate its 6th century BCE written composition. Not only that, but the idea that Exodus is itself made from ‘whole-cloth’ a la Esther is not a popular position to my knowledge, with the older position being that the oral tradition was a singular cultural memory closer to the text as-is; and the newer, more mainstream position being that Exodus was a compilation of oral folklore, which would have, again, been regarded as fundamentally true by those collating it.
My point is not that Exodus is reliable or true or ancient, but that it was believed to be such by the vast majority of Jewish scholars in the Second Temple Period, and was unlikely to have been consciously or significantly altered precisely because of Jewish cultural norms regarding religious truth.
I don’t remember citing Leviticus, but it was written after Exodus, probably in the 5th Century BCE. Some rules are older, but not a lot, even if some may come from the Iron Age (but remember that David and Salomon, if they existed, didn’t have a big central temple; the “first temple” if it existed, was something far more modest who wouldn’t need all these rules). Second Temple period is when these texts were redacted from the first time, using small oral tradition from before, but with a lot of original composition. They chose the texts, they put them in order, they created a narrative around the small traditions they collated. They knew it was not historical, at least the parts they wrote themselves, it’s not possible otherwise. They probably thought that Moses existed, that he liberated the Hebrews; but they wanted to be true to what they believed was Moses’s legacy, not Moses’s life. And after that, other schools rewrote some parts, which were added, explaining why there are so much contradictions. These texts were living for centuries before being stopped; moreover, we now know thanks to Qumran that there never was one tradition, but different and opposing ones, probably until the late antiquity. If people thought that Exodus was written by Moses, they wouldn’t dare change it. The fact that they did proves that they didn’t think so.
It’s the same thing for the New Testament: the people writing the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians for example knew that they were not Paul (obviously), but they thought they were true to Paul’s legacy. And it was more important to say a true thing than a real thing.
The distinction between a function and someone occupying it is not one hard to make.
Because when authors wanted to be precise, they can. If they don’t, it’s a choice. Millenia after, religious archeologists who read this text literally looked for the place, and the fact that they did not found one and disagree is more telling than anything else.
The fact that they did not keep tracks of their discussions doesn’t mean they did not occur. And the extent of the biblical rewriting, with discernable schools like the deuteronomist one, is the proof that this rewriting was conscious, organized and debated. We also have signs of this kind of work in Qumran. You seem to see Judaism as an ahistorical reality; the truth is that it evolved a lot; rewriting propositions were common until at least the fall of Jerusalem in 71. And after that, this work continued differently in the Midrashim, without changing the text but changing its interpretation extensively, with comparable results as the rewriting of the text.
That’s a very fucking modernist point of view.
what.
Do you… do you think they were going to give a coordinate grid reference if they wanted to be precise?
Do you have any idea how many place names are incredibly generic, and only have any manner of uniqueness because of the adoption of the practice of not translating foreign toponyms? Itself a very recent development in most languages?
They gave the name of what they called the place. How much more precision are you looking for?
… you literally already conceded that there are several places that fit the description by archeologists’ estimates.
“You can’t prove that they didn’t” isn’t very fucking compelling from an academic standpoint, especially when the argument presupposes the existence of the discussions to begin with.
How does that follow at all?
… what is that even supposed to mean?
…
Changing interpretations and changing the text are so fucking distant from each other in an Abrahamic religious context that it’s bizarre that you even bring it up.
No it’s not. Let’s take an example:
Jesus is speaking about the function of Emperor, representing the Empire, not an Emperor in particular.
What I try to say is that this name is not generic.
Only because there’s no clear description, just as the forest in Little Red Riding Hood can be any temperate forest.
Absence of proof is never in history the proof of absence. It’s a quite common assertion in academia as we rarely have proofs… But you clearly here truncate my reasoning. It’s not compelling from an academic standpoint either.
If someone is found dead with a knife in their heart, it’s probably because they died from being stabbed in the heart. The current state of the biblical text is best explained by the fact that successive schools of thought have rewritten their myths generation after generation, which presupposes a detached relationship to the historicity of the narratives. There is no proof, but no explanation that passes Occam’s razor any better either.
There’s not much common between Judaism today, in which indeed any rewriting of the texts would be impossible, and a loose continuum of apparented traditions 3000 years ago. It’s an anachronism.
That’s why I said differently. There’s no need of Midrashim before 71 because they rewrote the texts. When they couldn’t anymore, they did something different.
/
But listen, you’re clearly becoming angry, and I don’t understand why. I’ll stop here, it’s not worth it. Thanks for the beginning of this exchange, and the other one about Paul Veyne and bestiaries.
It really fucking is. Even outside of the context of divine rulership or even elite status, it is incredibly common for people in pre-modern societies to be identified overwhelmingly by their position or profession rather than their name even in daily interactions. Individualism is an extremely recent development in human culture.
I can launch into a lecture about the importance of individual Imperial portraiture and the departure from the norms of coinage of the near-east of the period if you like.
… do you not know what “Yam Suph” means?
“Reed Sea.”
The Rubicon lacks a clear description as well. Is the Rubicon also a fictional place in the context of Caesar’s Civil War?
It is incredibly unusual in historical academia for positions to be advanced without evidence, and even over-reading into solid, extant evidence is often viciously ripped apart.
So the best explanation of games of religious telephone in a religious tradition that posits the defiance of the objective truth of YHWH to be a cause for society-wide destruction and divine wrath, between numerous warring tribes who went through extensive societal trauma, including the exile and then return of their elites to a distant land, is that the oral tradition was… consciously and in an organized fashion rewritten by dedicated Bronze Age cynics without any notable pushback from the common believers.
… one might suggest the difficulties of unwritten oral transmission even within one language, in one generation, much less a nonstandardized language family over the course of hundreds of years, given the vagaries of human memory and prejudice, might suggest a different, much less convoluted route that doesn’t contradict what we know about the society of the ancient Israelites.
I suppose there’s not much in common between Judaism in the 1st century AD and Judaism in the 10th century BCE either? Or much in common between Judaism in the 2nd century BCE and the 10 century BCE? Or Judaism in any period wherein the facts and reflections of the ethnoreligion can be studied, and your convenient tabula rasa view of Judaism unburdened by evidence?
It’s funny that they should be so secretive as to obliterate all whisper of rewriting their own holy texts, even from hostile, non-Hebrew sources, but be so open about re-interpreting it, despite both of those supposedly serving the same purpose and the re-interpretation tradition only arising because they, in some vague sense, ‘could not’ rewrite the texts any longer, despite the fact that the widespread Jewish diaspora which long-predated the destruction of the Second Temple would have had to coordinate and agree upon such rewrites over the entire Mediterranean and part of Central Asia.
I’m frustrated because your arguments are not simply disagreeable, but outright incoherent (as with the assertion about precision and the location of the Yam Suph), contradictory (as with your agreement that archeologists have several places that the Yam Suph could be, and then arguing that the fact that archeologists did not have any such locations was proof that it was fake), and borderline axiomatic (as with your arguments regarding how little worth actual evidence and proof are in comparison to an assertion based on what my rural relatives would unintuitively call “common sense”).
Okay, I may have understood why we can’t understand each other (beside my poor English, which is I presume a big part of the problem). The idea that these texts come from oral traditions from the bronze age was abandoned decades ago… they are far more recent than that. The book of Exodus, for example, was written in its first form in the 7th century BCE (exactly when Egypt regains power in the Middle East, and it’s not a coincidence), and rewritten again and again; we still find (small) variations on the text in the 10th century CE! But it’s more or less finished by the period of Alexander the Great. It may contain traces of oral tradition, but nothing very older; it was a written document Does it make more sense to you in this timeframe?
If not, I’ll just say thank you for your memes that Iove and stop bothering you.
That probably is a major issue here. Your argument regarding Exodus, however, only applies to Exodus - you explicitly noted Leviticus as part of your argument for rewriting scriptures, but the laws in Leviticus are pretty generally accepted to long-predate its 6th century BCE written composition. Not only that, but the idea that Exodus is itself made from ‘whole-cloth’ a la Esther is not a popular position to my knowledge, with the older position being that the oral tradition was a singular cultural memory closer to the text as-is; and the newer, more mainstream position being that Exodus was a compilation of oral folklore, which would have, again, been regarded as fundamentally true by those collating it.
My point is not that Exodus is reliable or true or ancient, but that it was believed to be such by the vast majority of Jewish scholars in the Second Temple Period, and was unlikely to have been consciously or significantly altered precisely because of Jewish cultural norms regarding religious truth.
I don’t remember citing Leviticus, but it was written after Exodus, probably in the 5th Century BCE. Some rules are older, but not a lot, even if some may come from the Iron Age (but remember that David and Salomon, if they existed, didn’t have a big central temple; the “first temple” if it existed, was something far more modest who wouldn’t need all these rules). Second Temple period is when these texts were redacted from the first time, using small oral tradition from before, but with a lot of original composition. They chose the texts, they put them in order, they created a narrative around the small traditions they collated. They knew it was not historical, at least the parts they wrote themselves, it’s not possible otherwise. They probably thought that Moses existed, that he liberated the Hebrews; but they wanted to be true to what they believed was Moses’s legacy, not Moses’s life. And after that, other schools rewrote some parts, which were added, explaining why there are so much contradictions. These texts were living for centuries before being stopped; moreover, we now know thanks to Qumran that there never was one tradition, but different and opposing ones, probably until the late antiquity. If people thought that Exodus was written by Moses, they wouldn’t dare change it. The fact that they did proves that they didn’t think so.
It’s the same thing for the New Testament: the people writing the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians for example knew that they were not Paul (obviously), but they thought they were true to Paul’s legacy. And it was more important to say a true thing than a real thing.