Okay, as JMPD1 requested, Beowulf is front and center:
Let’s see, are the stories of the bible true. Well, it depends on which stories you are referring to. As far as archaeological, geological and historical evidence, you can take the tales of Genesis and toss them out the window. What stories that aren’t directly stolen from older Semite religions are chock full of anachronisms (that means things out of temporal place), such as Ur of the Chaldees, the Chaldean people did not come into being for 2 millennia after Ur flourished (historians believe that the town of Urfa, located near the town of Haran with which many of the patriarchs were plainly associated in the bible is what was referred to).We can chuck Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy also, there is no evidence at all of a sizeable group of people crossing and wandering the Sinai for forty years. The Sinai is practically unchanging, we can identify the campsites of Egyptian miners enroute to one of the mines that Egypt maintained in northern Arabia and can see the unchanged tread marks of German recon cars from WWII and Israeli tanks from the 7 Day War. If there was no Exodus, it follows that there was no Moses, Aaron, tablets with the 10 commandments and all the other bric-a-brac of the four books mentioned. What most Christians (and Jews) fail to understand is that during the period of the supposed Exodus, the whole of Canaan was an Egyptian “protectorate”, with Egyptian forts and Egyptian troops spread from the home land across the Sinai peninsula and at or near all city states. Therefore Joshua can also be canned, those cities that he was supposed to have conquered either had lain in ruins for several centuries (Ai means “ruins” in Hebrew, that should show you what condition that city was in when Joshua was written) or had a resident Egyptian garrison. Somehow I doubt that a ragtag rabble would take on the imperial might of Egypt. Recent excavation has shown that the Hebrew were probably nothing more than the “fringe” element of Canaanite society that during the social upheaval caused by the “Great Mycenaean Drought” slowly migrated into the hill country of Palestine. Archaeologists would expect an abrupt change in building and pottery styles with the incursion of a new people into a land. In this case, the houses and pottery of the Proto-Israelites is identical to that of the mainstream Canaanites and remained so until the Assyrian conquest of Palestine. There is no evidence of David or Solomon, none! It would stand to reason that such a ”pocket Empire” as Israel would maintain diplomatic relations with the larger neighboring Empires of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and the Hittites, for no other reason than to ascertain their danger to Israel. Yet there are no diplomatic dispatches from Israel’s King David or to him found in the royal archives of these powers of the ancient world. We have correspondence between Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Hatti (the homeland of the Hittites), but there is none for David. If David existed, he was probably nothing more that a bandit chieftain ruling over a small duchy in the Palestinian hill country. Solomon is even more interesting, once again there is no diplomatic correspondence with Solomon of Israel from any of the powers of that period. There was a Solomon, he lived during the period of the Pharaoh Shishak reported in the bible in 1 Kings. However this Solomon (whose name was actually Shalmaneser IV) was a strong king of Assyria at that time. His name Salimanu-eser, means Solomon directs. So it would seem that when the post-exilic scribes codified the OT after 560 BCE, they borrowed more than creation myths from older Semitic cultures. We can safely toss out the books of Judges, Ruth (Jews don’t even recognize that book), 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles (with no conquest there would have been no Judges, with no David or Solomon, there would have been no true stories of them, hence 1 Samuel to 2 Chronicles would be naught but myth), the books of the minor prophets Ezra and Nehemiah’s books might hold some small grains of truth, but can’t really be backed by history. Esther can be tossed, this is one of two books in the OT that does not even mention God. There is no evidence of a Hebrew favorite wife of any of the Persian Kings. The story of Job isn’t a Hebrew story. Job was an inhabitant of Uz, location unknown but believed by most Biblicists to be in Arabia. This would make Job a story borrowed from another Semitic culture, reflecting no history and can be thrown out, Psalms and Proverbs are mainly “borrowed” from the sacred writings of the city of Urgarit. A city that was destroyed 100 years before the purported Conquest. These books contain no history (a lot of good poetry, but no history). Ecclesiastes is probably the best book in the bible, it contradicts everything else in the OT but contains no discernable history. Song of Solomon is the second book of the bible that makes no mention of God whatsoever and it too contains no history. Now we finally come to the portion of the bible that contain true stories. From Isaiah through Malachi (with the exception of Daniel) there are kernels of truth and history, you have to dig through the overlay of bias and religion to get at them. With these books, it seems that the scribes codifying the OT took the preserved histories of the short lived nations of Israel and Judea and added an overlay of religion to them. The books after the codification of the OT were added during the Maccabeean reconstitution of the scriptures (to replace those burned by the Greeks) between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE. It was at this time that the Book of Daniel, with it’s surprisingly accurate prophesies, was written. Daniel is an acknowledged pseudepigrapha, that is a work given the name of a famous man to give it authority. It is very easy to make accurate prophesies if you are doing them centuries after the actual happening. Daniel does contain history, once again heavily overlaid with superstition and religion. I hope this helps you understand about the truth and the myth of the Bible. – The Wolf
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Whoah. Too late in the night to reply the entire thing but lets get one thing straight... You claim there was NO evidence at all of King David. Well Scholars also discounted the existence of King David, arguing that he was a mythical creation of the Jews at a time when they desperately needed heroes. However, stone tablets were found approximately five years ago dated from David’s time and naming him (King)- specifically providing significant evidence that David did indeed exist.
