AW! Epistles
From Lyvi: Belief, The Old Testament, Archaeology and the Modern World
Abstract
Abstract
I have spent many hours reading much of this stuff. I have a BA in History, with emphasis on Near East and myths. And I am in the process of getting my master’s in ancient Near East Archaeology. This is the good and the bad I have found here. Number 1 bad—the way and style in which these papaers are written are no different then what I found with reading papers of religious history fundamentalists—sorry just my opinion. The need to prove one way or another speaks volumes of another need of fulfillment. Now the good—you have done plenty of research and have touched on many facts of the area but your research does not prove otherwise then what we know through archaeology.
From Lyvi
I have spent many hours reading much of this stuff. I have a BA in History, with emphasis on Near East and myths. And I am in the process of getting my master’s in ancient Near East Archaeology. This is the good and the bad I have found here. Number 1 bad—the way and style in which these papaers are written are no different then what I found with reading papers of religious history fundamentalists—sorry just my opinion. The need to prove one way or another speaks volumes of another need of fulfillment. Now the good—you have done plenty of research and have touched on many facts of the area but your research does not prove otherwise then what we know through archaeology.
You have not proved that the story of Abraham comes from the Persian Empire, neither have you proved which UR he/they came from. So I guess you can say I am unconvinced by the research you propose to prove your point. There are many true things you touch on in terms of myth and stories in Genesis but once again it does nothing to prove of the time of when these myths became myths to the people who settled in Israel.
I do Agree with you that the people of Israel were never monotheists and the whole Idea of this one God is a very modern one—and the bible is full of places where scribes/spiritual and political who reworked the stories tried to make sense of them. But we also must remember that Just like most cultures that date back to Uruk every area seem to adopt their own God from a pantheon of regional Gods and even those change in terms of power and chracter. And people borrow from one another all the time—that is why it is a human civilization/ not an Island.
I believe that most of the old testament was originally told as stories around campfires and stuff and as we all know these would change with the times. I think that it makes perfect sense that a lot of written work was done because of the Persian Diaspora—when a people feel that they are losing their identity they want to capture it and to preserve what they know.
Is there Persian influence in the later writings? Yes these were Persian/Judeans now and as we agreed before things change with the times. Was the idea of monotheism from Persia? no because they too had different characters in their myths. I often wondered if true monotheisim developed as a way to try to untie people together under one god —for power? or maybe so wars over whose god is better would stop? who knows?
Now As I have studied the trade material as it travelled from Ur Westward I can say that with these objects so came the myths. Was Abraham real or not who knows, but could there have been a person from ancient UR that traveled to the West and brought their own myths with them—heck yes! could this person/family evolved to a tribe—then clan—then—to a people—absolutley.
But even with everything that I know with regards to myth and written religion—you know what’s funny? I still beleive in an all powerful energy that created all of us. I’m sure you will find that I don’t fit well with the Atheists or the religious/with the maximalists or the minimalists. I form my own opinions.
From Mike
I wish more people were as keen to read these pages as you are, I note your admirable qualifications, and that you think I have covered many of the relevant facts. Even so some of your remarks puzzle me. What is a religious history fundamentalist? What am I meant to prove other than what we know from history and archaeology? You complain that I have not proved anything, but do not say what you understand by such proof. Can we prove who murdered Kennedy, something that happened only 50 years ago? Can we prove that David Kelly committed suicide less than ten years ago? When we are looking at the period we are studying, 2,500 years ago, almost nothing can be proved.
Among the pages you have read, you will have come across some little essays on precisely such points in history. What we then have to do is evaluate the balance of evidence, and that is what I am doing, and I imagine you are too. The balance of evidence criterion is less objective than proof, so leaves room for disagreement. I have given a lot of evidence to show that the Persians founded Judaism, and that Abraham appears to have been a man from around Urfa or Harran, not Ur. You are welcome to disagree, but you must say more than just, “You are wrong”!
Regarding biblical myths, many of them are from Babylonia, for, as you know, Persia and Babylonia became synonymous once the later Persian shahs made Babylon one of their capital cities, and married Babylonian women, and the colonists settled were from the places where such myths were believed. The bible is confusing about this, probably deliberately, from the time when it was rewritten by the Greeks to expunge as much of Persia as they could. The very beginning of the bible cries out to me that it is a daily record of a celebration, a festival of the creation, not the creation itself, which we cannot accept anyway as historians. The Babylonians and Persians had such a festival, and via Babylonian cultural imperialism it had already spread around the middle east. It seems there was such a festival associated with the Jewish temple, in which case the Persian colonists instituted it.
The gods of different places and times certainly changed their character, and the one imposed by the Persians in Jerusalem did. It changed from a universal imperial god to a narrow nationalistic one under the Maccabees. That change, and the rewriting in the third century BC by the Greeks, accounts for the changes in characters you mention. New conquerors typically change myths.
When were the people of Palestine last living around campfires and telling stories? Probably in the neolithic! And, if you mean the supposed wanderings of Moses, where is the evidence for that? All of that stuff in the Pentateuch implied settlement, and was obviously written from a settled state. You do not need any archaeology for this. It is in the bible itself.
Then you seem to begin to agree with me when you speak of monotheism being to unite people. That was the Persian aim. They were trying to unite people under a single universal God, albeit with local names matching familiar gods to make it easier to get local acceptance—Yehouah in Palestine. That is indeed the purpose of monotheism, and imperial religions.
Have you studied the god of Harran, Sin? You will know how important Harran was, and the bible suggests that the Persian settlers in Palestine were from around that ancient great trading city. That is why the Abrahamic myths entered the Jewish scriptures. You ask, Was Abraham real? And seem to think it enough to reply, “He could have been”. Well, there could have been a lot of things that never were. “Could have been” is not history, it is religion. There could have been a king Arthur. There could have been a Robin Hood, and a William Tell, or even some slaves escaping from Egypt. You can build all sorts of plausible myths, but they have to be distinguished from history.
In the end, you admit to a religious motive for believing these ancient myths. It is not ideal, but all right as long as you are meticulous as a historian not to let it influence your historical judgement. I suspect that explains what you said at the beginning about fundamentalism. I rail against historians and archaeologists, so-called, who are not at all objective, but twist their findings to suit the bible. They are not historians but vicars.
But in reading your letter I think that our disagreement in opinions comes down to one sentence where we differ completely. You wrote and I am quoting, “‘Could have been’ is not history it is religion”.
I 100 % disagree with that notion because I have been to religious services and have talked to many religious people. It never mattered what religion they practiced but “could have been” is not in their repertoire. For them it’s always “it is and it was” “no doubt”, no room for questioning or even dialect.
My belief is that Judaism is a combination of religious philosophies, histories, and political social rules. I believe that the idea of a one God notion was already developing from Egypt and Akenaten who as I’m sure you know worshiped an all powerful god that was represented by the sun light and in art as the sun disk and sun rays. To me this represents a closer resemblance to the Jewish God. I think that it was intermingled later on with Persian beliefs too. Purim is by all extent a Persian festival.
Not to mention that history does prove that Egypt was in control of that tiny strip of land for many years. Why did Akenaten change? Power? Faith? Who knows unless we had physical evidence of his writing behind his faith. I think that you and I could have many long conversations, and yes I do know about Harran.
Again I do not take the bible in literary terms but a combination of histories, philosophies, social lessons—and I believe that many of the stories are combined and filled with date issues, etc.
And lastly I do not believe in the myths in terms of facts or from my religious faith—because mine is not associated with these stories at all. I just think that there is a grain of truth to many myths. So I think either I miss wrote or you miss understood.
I agree with you about what religious people believe. They are dogmatic about it, but when their “historians” and theologians attempt to justify these beliefs, something that most ordinary believes do not or cannot do, they end up with phrases like “could have”, “probably”, “may be”, and “so and so is quite plausible”, and it is these religious apologists that I mean. Just read some of the essays in Peake’s Commentary. Plausibility is a large element of religious justification, yet in the period we are considering little changed in common life for centuries, so what is plausible in the second millennium is also plausible in the first. Needless to say that thousand years makes all the difference! For me, a big danger of religious history is to have different, looser criteria for it than for profane history. When it happens, it shows you are religious, perhaps not openly but subliminally.
You are right in your broad description of Judaism, but where can these elements come from? People who had been enslaved as brickmakers for hundreds of years? Even imagining these slaves had settled down to become Israelites, where did they get their remarkable literary skills. The evidence is that they were illiterate, became a little more literate when they were subject to the Assyrians and finally became literate when the Persians moved in a colony of skilled and literate people around 400 BC. What could Akhenaten have had to do with that from a thousand years earlier? I have a review on one of my pages of Act of God by Graham Phillips. He has written a lot of pseudo historical books on the theme you like, the Israelites coming from Egypt. Like many such books it depends on flimsy evidence combined with plausibility and a good tale. It is entertaining but hardly serious. And all it does really is take the bible as gospel :-D .
If there is a misunderstanding at the end it is from this passage you wrote:
I still beleive in an all powerful energy that created all of us. I’m sure you will find that I don’t fit well with the Atheists or the religious/with the maximalists or the minimalists. I form my own opinions.
I am not quibbling about your last sentence. That is what you must do (though you will be ingenious to find something original, so will end up deciding that one of the positions already extant is essentially correct, and the others wrong for this or that reason). An all powerful creative energy sounds like God, and that is what I took to be an intrinsic religiosity, but perhaps it is Nature and I am wrong in my assumption. That is why we discuss things—to correct falsehoods and wrong impressions.
I am reading your last email and realizing that you take a balance of evaluation as a fact? Am I correct? So you and I on a logical analytical argument will never see eye to eye and that is fine—hence freedom of thought and opinion. I as an Archaeologist do not pass judgment until I reach ground zero—as in I love the beginning of things—a little obsession of mine.
“When it happens, it shows you are religious, perhaps not openly but subliminally.” I am definitely religious without shame so no subliminalism (I know it’s not a word) needed J Not ashamed—I just don’t belong to any religion because as a historian/archaeologist/ and a fairly analytical person I can deduct much of the myth, symbolism, B.S. power grab, etc. out of most of what I have studied and I have studied many religions and continue to do so—as I said an obsession. A little background.
I was raised atheist Darwinism to the max with parents that were almost communistic in philosophy. My mom RIP one of the most intelligent people I know used to laugh when talking about my childhood and who I was—I tried to beat God out of her, it never worked, she was born with it different then her brother, she’ll probably die with it.
People not understanding that my faith is not tied to any religion warned me that once I go into archaeology that I was lose my faith. I think just like you were mistaken; for me studying this was never about religion. I also studied medicine they warned me of the same thing—if anything it strengthened my faith.
From all the many years I have spent studying the evidence and I don’t mean biblical when it comes to Judaism I have come down to this line of thinking. Judeans are an offshoot of the remnants of the Israelites. Israelites were no different then Phoenicians they had the same pantheon with a few linguistic changes. I just spent a summer at Dor, which is known to be a Phoenician/Israelite port. Scholars who mistake Israelites to be of the newer Jewish faith always ask where are the “Jewish” evidence and I just want to scream—you wont find it if you are looking for Deuteronomy like belief system because it didn’t exist yet! You will not be able to tell the difference between names and diet etc. so stop looking for it!
You mentioned illiterate slaves in Egypt? Phoenicians as you know were not illiterate, and even before them there was proto Canaanite. I believe that the Israelites were a mix of ancient migrants from Ur not unlike the myth of Abraham—(we have archaeological evidence for these migrations spanning thousands of years) who mixed in with the local Canaanite population bringing Sumerian creation myths and other with them. Cross cultural pollination. Then who knows how many famines people have had, again the myth in the bible could have happened as two separate stories put together—perhaps we will never know, I am not here to prove one way or another. It seems that people in upper Israel/Canaan were very much into the worship of a moon God Jerich. Jericho the most amazing place I have ever been to. The people in the South Arabian brought their own moon god sin up north, combined him with Nanna and as we all know that all ancient people were pagan and worshiped nature, the three obviously became one not to mention all the other names.
I see Jehovah/Adoni as a sun God almost identical to that of the Aten. In Egyptian hieroglyphs (I studied some) the T = D in Phoenician/ancient Hebrew and the vowel of E is interchangeable with that of O in pheon. /Hebrew. Aten Is the Adon of the Israelites a sun God. Adoni makes it my Adon. I am sure that you are aware that many Hebraic words and Egyptian words are almost identical—they were neighbors and Egypt was in control of most of the land.
Now to Judaism as we know it—it is remnants of the sun God mixed in with ancient Canaanite and ancient Sumerian myths and here is where the Babylonian/Persian influence come with Zoroastrianism. The Jews were influenced by them greatly and as All people do when they are threatened with extinction; under the Greeks and Romans, they become more controlling—hence the strict no image style monotheism that a backlash called Christianity evolved from.
May I suggest that you research some of the archaic pre-Canaanite writings found in the Sinai—fascinating! Also two years ago an early Hebrew/Phoenician writing system was found in Israel dating back to about 900 or 800 BC = I was supposed to be there that year for the dig and got sick—but I am heading there this summer to uncover more of these fascinating mysteries of the Western Civ. Ancestors.
Assuming that the photograph of the goddess attached to your last mailing is Lyvi, I have no doubts that you are female :-) . Is the balance of evidence a fact? I take a fact to be something that is known to be true, so a conclusion from a balance of evidence might not be a fact because new evidence can change the balance, sometimes to the opposite. However, I think we take the balance of evidence to be a provisional fact. Otherwise the scientific approach is to be skeptical of anything that is not supported by any evidence, or by dubious evidence. If we can never see eye to eye, does that mean you will accept something without evidence, unlike me, or are you even more skeptical than I am, and, as you seemed to imply in your original comment, you will not accept anything as a provisional fact because you only accept facts? You are right to be cagey about making hypotheses on only partial evidence from archaeology or anything else, because it is all too easy to get emotionally attached to your theories, and then it is hard to see anything straight. Often, though, you need an outline of a hypothesis or a tentative one, at least, to guide your work, where you will dig, for example. Sometimes The Time Team on TV, especially some of the additional “experts” they bring in, seem all too ready to make complicated hypotheses on pretty flimsy evidence.
On your religious inclinations. Have you looked at the work of the moral psychologists over the last 20 years or so? They are finding evidence that the basis of morality is actually instinctual in us because we are a social animal, society is necessary to us and therefore we have evolved to be caring and sharing. The reason is that without getting something from others by living with them, society has nothing to offer us and so we would have remained solitary hunters or scavangers. Recently I’ve put online some summaries and occasionally criticisms of some of the work, but I accept the core of it. The criticisms mainly are about what besides caring (empathy, present in animals) and sharing (security of mutual protection and food distribution, also present in social animals), which seem solidly established, might be inherited as moral emotions. Inasmuch as communism exhibits a determination to share and care with others, it is a moral outlook. Your mother was intelligent to be a communist when it was unfashionable, because the instinctive basis of it is being upheld. Where it has failed so far is perhaps in the Leninist idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It seems a contradiction, and has led to simple dictatorship. Anyway, communism in the cold war period was called a secular religion, and even a Christian heresy in accepting Christ’s practical morality and ditching his supernaturalism. If authoritarianism and social purity are also inbred into us, then religions might have an evolutionary basis. I incline to the view that religion, and these aspects of it, are cultural rather than inbred, and so are recent, but it remains to be decided.
On the origins of the Jews, we seem to be close in our views. Israelites were Canaanites, and Canaanites was what Phoenicians called themselves, and Canaanite was their language. Phoenicians is the Greek name for the Canaanites they met in various colonies around the Mediterranean, and on the coast of Syria, and Hebrew is the name for settlers in the Palestinian Hills originally migrants from across the Euphrates, then applied in Assyrian and especially Persian times to the people of what became the Persian satrapy of Abarnahara. So we agree Israelites were not Jews, and they did not have the Mosaic religion, but a religion typical of the region before the so called Return. We begin to differ at this point, for the Persian colonists called the Returners from Exile were from around Harran, and, as you say, brought many of their own ideas with them to Yehud, but they were obliged to set up a temple to a local god, Yehouah (Yah, Iao) and to write, presumably with assistance from the Persian chancellery to be able to know the names and dates of ancient kings, the Deuteronomic History to give a mythical history as a foundation for Deuteronomy. On this view, the myth of Abraham was the original foundation myth of the Jews, because Abraham and his kin stood for the typical colonist from around Harran.
I do not know of a god called Jerich. Do you have evidence for such a god?
I see the similarity between Aten and Adon, but did the Jews call their god Adon? Hebrew has many Greek words, as well as Egyptian ones, and the habit of calling Yehouah Adoni so as to avoid using the forbidden tetragram was late, in the Hellenistic period, so is more likely to have come from Greek. The Greeks might have had it originally from Egypt. And the Greek Adonis was a name of the dying and rising gods like Attis. I would be very interested in any evidence that Yehouah was a dying and rising God. It would explain Christianity. You are right, though, that Yehouah was a sun god, as the dying and rising gods were. You finally mention the findings in Sinai. Do you mean the image of Yehouah and his wife Asherah? I have it on my pages somewhere, but the website is getting too big for me to remember where, so I would have to do a search. Pitiful, eh? Tell me more about the early Hebrew writing you mention.
I suspect we have got most of our difficulties settled, and basically we differ simply over the colonization of Yehud by the Persians. You consider the Persians to have been an influence, while I think they actually founded Judaism.
Goddess? I thought they did not exist in your world, ha! but thanks anyway-that was me three years ago when I lived in Hawaii. I am back in Cali and unfortunately lost most of that tan. waiting for summer that’s for sure.although I will not be wishing it so much as I am heading to a couple of digs—110 degrees—one is that one I mentioned where a seventeen year old kid found this clay shard and was washing it when he noticed some black lines on it. I was in touch with the professor at that time too, but was not there :( . link. Anyway the most exciting part is that if this kid didn’t see it when he did we would have lost it. Basically the archaeologists never thought that at that time people wrote with paint on clay and, guess what? they did. Can you imagine now all the lost information. All that there is left are the carvings. I even wonder at the many times I washed stuff, did I erase things because I wasn’t looking for them?
In terms of moralist psychology I read some, some education came from my mother and as I wrote before I started doing medical classes. I understand physiology, chemistry and neurotransmitters.
After all these years of books upon books I have not found it to be the answer to what or where my faith lies in because I don’t think that there are words that describe the feeling that I have. As I said before written religion tries many times but for me has never come close. Here and there I will read a sentence that echos my thoughts and I realize that I am not all alone and that somewhere at one time there was someone who felt like me and wrote it down. I have never found any of the sciences satisfactory in terms of fulfillment, fascinating yes, but for me it is all the building blocks of this builder/s that created us and the world. Communism eventually led my mother to nothing but disappointments as it had most thinking, believing people. I think that part of the problem was the fact that there was a belief that morality comes as an instinct and we have been proven wrong again and again. Oh if we only educate the people they claimed—the Nazis were educated, that didn’t seem to stop them—history has way too many sad stories to prove otherwise.
In her last hours of life in this world she sought me out to ask me how is it that I find so much meaning in life and so much peace. She too misunderstood that it’s not a meaning or peace per say but a place where one has no more questions— A sad day I will never forget. It is very hard to teach someone on their death bed how to believe in a bigger picture, I hope I got close.
As your site is so big I have not read everything but I understand your research. I am in the midst of writing a novel and preparing/studying for the master’s program at UC Berkeley. And no not everyone is crazy there—just the loud mouthed ones. I too used to read everything and reached out in many direction, but it always pointed me back to what I believed in since I was a little girl.I hope you found a satisfactory way to live where each day is meaningful more then just the basic necessities of our human bodies.
My favorite quote says something like this:
In the end, for the believers there are no questions and for the non-believers there are no answers.
Why should I have anything against goddesses? Well, human women who are metaphorically goddesses! I am happy also with Nature and the Earth as metaphorical goddesses, or rather the same one. I am not happy with belief in an invisible infinitely big and intelligent human being as a god, though my disdain is limited to regarding those who believe in Him as being infantile and primitive. It is those who believe in this figment who want to burn others on his behalf, not people like me, or, I imagine, your mom. Was she a mother goddess? :-) If there is a God, He is an atheist. Right?
Anyway, back to the business in hand. I thought washing sherds was not modern practice for the very reason that archaeologists had realised they were all too often washing away writing. The sherds might be ostracons. It is on my site:
Y Aharoni was responsible for realizing that a large amount of important data had been lost in past work through the practice of scrubbing potsherds to clean them so as to type them more easily. He realized that an unknown number of these sherds could have been ostraca, and the scrubbing had removed any writing they bore. He introduced a new precaution of dipping the sherds into water first, and then inspecting them closely for inscriptions before scrubbing them thoroughly when they had none.A Century of Bad Archaeology, judaism/0165Archaeology.php
The whole point about morality is that it is lodged in our emotions. The feeling you have seems likely to be a moral feeling, and the basis of religion is morality. Jonathan Haidt has written a slim popular volume (The Happiness Hypothesis) after the style of the self-help books that fill whole sections of modern bookshops, but Haidt is a serious empirical positive psychologist, so writes his advice from modern psychological findings. Haidt was brought up in a typical atheistic Jewish family, and had decided firmly on atheism by high school. He is still an atheist, he says, but from his studies of morality, he has much more sympathy for religion than he had. Mind you, he is financed by a Christian foundation, which I find suspicious, but then I am suspicious about many things. It is called skepticism. :-D
Maybe Haidt could persuade you that your feeling is what all normal, well adjusted humans feel—it just is not God, but your natural feeling of concern for others that is almost being supressed in modern “dog eat dog” society. We have evolved to be social, and we are unhappy that society often contradicts our strong instincts (stronger in some than others—there is a distribution of emotions and their intensity, as in other human attributes). So, you have been too eager to write off what is perhaps our most essential instinct, our instinct of empathy and concern for others. It is true of course that we have other emotions, and these can be stimulated by popular demagogues like Hitler and used to over ride our feelings for others. And remember, when you say Nazis were educated, that millions of people voted Nazi, from the best educated to the least, and most of them were religious—then the Germans were as religious as the Americans now are, and about in the same proportions, mainly Protestant and the rest Catholic. Hitler was a Catholic who never renounced his faith.
It must be pleasant indeed to be at total peace, but I cannot understand how life would be tolerable without questions. The whole idea of bliss in heaven sounds like an eternity of hell to me. It is the main reason why it is so unconvincing. But the purpose of life is to solve the questions involved in living. The questions give life meaning. The thing is not to get neurotic about them, and that is the peace I would guess you have. Too many people think they should be free of problems, yet, in the west, they are essentially free of them. How pleasant it is to have the problem of whether to buy a new dress or an i-pod, when plenty of people are living in utter misery. Haidt addresses things like this. He says we all have a natural inherited level of happiness, and we deviate little from it, assuming that our essential needs are satisfied. If you are at peace with yourself and the world, then I guess that is happiness.
Has UC Berkeley got a reputation for craziness? I thought it was a top university in the US. Maybe creativity requires craziness. Anyway, good luck with your masters and your novel. A novel is something I have never tried to do, though I thought about it on occasions when I was younger. But then I thought about doing law too—not for long, fortunately. Now, like you, I am pretty much at peace, though it has not always been so. Even then, I think the worst I have suffered is frustration really, and regrettably it emerges as anger. Or maybe it is not regrettable because without the anger, I might actually be neurotic! >:o
For me your life quotation or motto amounts to “believers have no life” They have an imaginary life, quite obviously for many in that they allegedly look forward to an imaginary after life when they die, but also that they have no questions in life, as you suggest, so must be blind, deaf and dumb—and bored and boring. Essentially they try to ignore reality in favour of something they imagine. You do not sound like that, so I wonder whether you are kidding yourself. It is simply that you have the will and confidence to face life as it is, and even enjoy it, whereas for conventional religions like Christianity it is a vale of tears. If it is, then it is largely because that is what we make it. Our duty is to help everyone to have a happy life. It is the principle of humanity. Or in Adelphiasophism, “Do not hurt the earth, directly or indirectly”.
God an atheist ? i don’t see him/her it as having a personality, more like an “I AM And You are Me” personality. If that makes sense. My human mother was a a faulty goddess as most human beings are, including myself. I also used to have disdain towards that type of god too but along the way I realized that this simplified version was perhaps necessary at certain times sometimes for positive and obviously we all know the negative of it. Unfortunately the dogmatic take things word per word and the uneducated do not realize what symbolism is. Very sad state of affairs indeed since religions can have much beauty in them.
In terms of sherds and ostraca (sorry for my past misspellin—I am using a voice recognition software do to carpal tunnel syndrome from so much writing, and sometimes he writes what he thinks I should say) yes we do put them in buckets and then later we wash them but with crusted dirt that has been there for thousands of years it can still just disappear in the water and sadly I have a feeling that many writings and clues to the the past disappeared along the way.
i have rad similar writings what you mentiond. I always found hat true reason for such deep and analytical research is because somewhere someone thinks that religion is the problem. on surface may seem like it—but there are plenty religious people who wouldn’t hurt fly llone go blow up people in the name of a god. I found that the problem is people Not a god figure. I similarly believe that a gun or a knife has no need, want to hurt anyone, it is a neutral object, objects can be used to do things. That is how I feel about religion.
The Nazi movement was far from religious, they hated religious people and killed millions of catholics on top of the Jewish genocide. It was a social political movement and it was evil.
For me your life quotation or motto amounts to “believers have no life”.
Well then how do you explain someone like me? I have a very complex, busy exciting and a full life and trust me I am a believer. The believer that the quote talks about is not the believer that is told to believe and does so.it is about a believer that went on a life long journey to answer many many questions. A believer that traveled, studied ancient writings, history, myths, archaeology, astronomy, arts, language, science, medicine. And at the end of that journey realized that the questions haun out-for me that is peace.
My mother unfortunately died in fear and with questions she told me she was afraid because although she believed that this reality is all there is this world and nothing else she still didn’t know—interesting?I think the quote I gave you meant what mom went through at her end. all questions and all fear. Again so very tragic and so so sad.
You obviously spent many many hours putting your web site together. Why not a novel? a story? don’t you have any good ones to tell? It’s never too late to do things like that—as long you are alive you can still give to the world. Isn’t that what humanism is about? and the essence of true religion? Many people will not read all have put in your site—unless they are highly educated and have a keen understanding of the subjects. Put in a novel, make it more accessible—that is what I am doing. If we differ on our outlook of life our beliefs may help someone else make better decision for themselves and their lives—you never know.
UC Berkeley is a great school and has amazing teachers etc. it is the city of Berkeley that crazy. Example: Oakland is the murder capital of the USA after Detroit. Oakland is a few ms away from Berkeley. The local gov. has torn down a block old buildings used money to build projects with “organic food” :-) and had many of the Oakland resident move in because they wanted to prove that they are “humane” and NOT RACIST. So a year later we have crime and murders in front of the university—drug dealings in every corner. most of the local gov. lives in Berkeley hills—$$$ beautiful Now they are complaining that they need more police patrol but forgot that they cut the police budget to divert money for the re-education and the buildings of these “progressive” projects. That is what Northern Californians mean crazy Berkeley—unfortunately this stuff is spilling into the school and many of the great professors are leaving—the gov is trying to dictate what is appropriate to teach etc.
ok I took a break, back to the novel. you are obviously well read and highly educated and this is why I found myself writing to you the first e-mail. These types of conversations can get pretty heated in real life seen it done so many times. I do not argue to try and prove something, a point, a message. Now I share with those who ask my opinion only—I am not here to change the world anymore ;)
Some people can see much beauty in B52 bombers and battleships. Religions have been responsible for beautiful art, but they have also led to uncountable degrees of human distress. If religions disappeared from the earth though, people will find other reasons for building beautiful buildings and decorating them with beautiful pictures. If we had all become Jews with Christ instead of labelling Jews as murderers of God, we would by now have had 2000 years of wonderful Jewish art at our disposal. The same goes for those who would not hurt a fly. Most people are intrinsically kind, at least once they have become socialized properly in a caring society, but the amazing thing about religion is that it makes kind people into monsters, who will tolerate nothing other than their own religious obsessions, and think it right to kill those who disagree. Once you are certain God is on your side, you go insane. People are the problem, that is true—an imaginary God cannot be—but they are a problem because they believe the creator of the universe wants them to kill His enemies.
The USA is a weird and uncivilized place in tolerating the millions of firearms it does, and in letting kids buy them with their pocket money. Guns have their place, but civilized society is not it. You need to read more about the Nazis. They were voted into power by ordinary Protestant and Catholic Christians and few of them ever protested against what Hitler was doing. Most of them as Christians agreed that Jews were evil. Why other did they murder Christ, and why did Paul blame them, starting off centuries of Christian antisemitism? Hitler made pacts with the Pope, especially on education, and while some Nazi opponents were Catholic and others Protestant, most of the people gassed, besides Jews, were Communists, Trades Unionists, Gypsies and Homosexuals. It was the Trades Unions and Communists who opposed Hitler most consistently, and that is why so many of them died. Of course, then, many of the Trades Unionists and Communists were Jews anyway, so the Nazis were killing two birds with one stone by getting rid of Jewish communists.
I think I agreed that you did not seem a typical believer, and that is why I suggested you might be kidding yourself. How would your personality change if you suddenly realized your belief was formed by an instinctive moral emotion? You would simply believe in the moral emotion as driving your sincerity rather than some imaginary energy.
Few people read more than one page of my website, if they even read that, but I realize I am not saying things most of them like to hear. If a few intelligent ones get something out of it, then I will be satisfied. I was a teacher for seven years but gave it up. I am no Mr Chips, but teaching in those days must have been more satisfying than it is now. I reckon more people have the chance to hear what you think on the web than in a classroom.
Drugs are a big problem in our societies. Here in the UK the police must be paid off by the drug barons because they flaunt themselves around poor districts in flash cars and living in fortified houses, but the police say they have no evidence against them. All you can say is, You’re not trying too hard, are you, chum? At one time, the police would arrest anyone they thought was living beyond his means, and he had to show how he got the money to live in the style he did. Not now, I fear. But society now is run by crooks, gangsters and worst of all banksters and their paid men in Washington, or London. We let them. We let them control us with their unbelievable propaganda, yet we believe it. Religion is part of it!
I do argue to make points. But most people just give me funny looks. :-)
Hi there Mike, been sick—actually still am—flu-fever, sneezing, sinus headache sore throat the whole works—lucky me!
“If religions disappeared from the earth though, people will find other reasons for building beautiful buildings and decorating them with beautiful pictures.” You are correct in this sentence but also forgot to mention the other side of the coin so I will. If religion disappeared from the earth though,people will find other reasons for wars and hate, continuing the cycle of what we see today ;)
I agree with you about Jewish art—it is very sad. I appreciate cultures who absorbed arts and culture of the people that they have taken over. It is sad to see what the Christians and Muslims have done to Jewish/Israelite history and that is why archaeology in Israel is so very important because in other places like Saudi Arabia that had a huge Jewish population, the historical evidence have been erased as part of a political agenda—what a loss. I will most likely be stopping in Italy (friends) before my digs this summer and I always do research on the towns I want to visit—one of them is Aquileia. I have included a link with an interesting and yet common type finds that go unnoticed.
Guns—I fear guns I don’t like them, but last year I was forced to deal with the reality that we no longer feel protected in our country—something that other people from abroad do not understand. The police here has been so emasculated by political correctness that they are scared to raise a weapon to deal with criminals. So what we have is criminals with illegal weapons and police with legal weapons who do not protect the law abiding citizens. I started target shooting—me! if you knew me you would understand the irony in that. I read a lot about England because I believe that in away it is a microcosom of what will happen here in the US. As an American and historian I completely understand the danger in forbidding law abiding citizens the means of getting weapons. You are right that I seem to be more skeptical than you are. I do not trust our government nor our law enforcements and this is coming from someone who’s father was a member of the police task force. So I am looking into purchasing a small weapon—sad but true. With the economy worse then you know—we are suffering armed burglaries left and right—so many that they have stopped reporting them. I happen to live in one of the most safest areas in terms of home values—but just as I predicted the cheap labor (mostly Mexican) that people here hired because they were cheap and greedy is turning on the people because do to economic strife everyone has been tightening the belt. and so luxuries like bi-weekly gardeners and maids etc. are being cut. These people are angry, poor and compared to their countries we are rich even if we are about to lose our homes. It’s getting out of control—but everybody loved the cheap labor—both demobrats and republifarts. Can you tell I am an independent politically speaking????
Hitler—religious? No. He states many times that he despised the church and wished Germany had a religion that was similar to that of the Japanese—which he regarded as nationalistic. It is obvious that he used the Christian doctrine as means of getting the peasantry behind him. He knew what he was doing—he used religion as a way of control—just like others. His statements on religion are not the same. He seemed to believe in a an Aryan god or something of the sort—after all Christianity IS a branch of Judaism. He remained catholic but did he practise—from my research he did not. There are many people who belong to a church based on their parents background. I agree that he made many deals with many Churches—however once again these religious leaders were as dirty as he was. Power hungry and greedy. Hitler stated many times that he also wanted to destroy the Slavs, blacks ,gays, and even catholics who did not agree to back him up+ who ever he deemed unworthy—not too Christian in my view.
I am a believer through and through—not fooling myself I just see and feel something that ties the entire world together. I can not describe it and I don’t think it has to do with my morality. It has to do with a certain thread that weaves all that exists together. I have read that you are a chemist? well then you should understand what I mean. For you it may be chance and nature for me it’s a story of it’s own. I don’t think that we as human can seat here and say that we know all that there is and needs to be known. That is a very foolish and egotistical view. I included some lyrics from a song I really like that helps describe what I feel.
Strip away the layers and reveal your soul
Got to give yourself up and then you become whole
You’re a slave to yourself and you don’t even know
You want God but you can’t deflate your ego
If you’re already there then there’s nowhere to go!
If you’re cup’s already full then its bound to overflow!
You’re looking for help from God ,you say he couldn’t be found
Looking up to the sky and searchin’ beneath the ground
Like a King without his Crown
Yes, you keep fallin’ down
You really want to live but can’t get rid of your frown
Tried to reach unto the heights and wound bound down on the ground
Given up your pride and the you heard a sound
Out of night comes day and out of day comes light
Nullified to the One like sunlight in a ray,
Makin’ room for his love and a fire gone blaze.
I guess here is where atheistic fundamentalism will call me deluded or insane ;) but of course for me that is equivalent to the religious calling atheist devil worshippers ;) While searching to see where I stand on the idea of a God figure/energy I used to read a lot of books about physics especially and other hard sciences again I found them very interesting but devoid of a conclusion about life and God. That is when I went back to my original faith in something that I feel but unseen—that something that my mother tried to “beat” out of me. I guess that is what “faith” means. the last book I read (other than fiction) was by Francis S Collins and I found it so mean and arciahc when his non-believing collegues thought that he might be experincing “mild demintia” because he is a beliver. That’s like calling someon a heretic—just stupid.
No one makes funny faces at me because I no longer discuss these ideas and thoughts with anyone. As I said I am fine with what I know and what I don’t know. And besides you can’t make a face at me through e-mail—not really. I also used to be a teacher (History and Social Science) but gave up on it because I hated the school system.
ok back to my book writing , must turn it in to publishers by the Ides of March—a challenge I put on myself.
*ps I just read an interesting article about the final DNA and scans of King Tut—I couldn’t help it but notice that they said that he had a cleft pallate— just like his father Akenaten— which would be a speech impedement—and think about how they said in the Hebrew bible that Moses was hard of speech and needed someone to speak for him to be understood. Hey ;) we don’t know the whole story—we may never know.
I’m sorry you have been ill, and hope you are picking up. Was it swine flu? Often swine flu is accompanied by an upset stomach. I reckon I had it last summer.
Of course, you are right about religions. Religions and religious sects are just modern day tribes, and the hatred between them is a type of xenophobia. We have evolved to love and trust others within the local tribe, and suspect and distrust people of other tribes, strangers. What is strange about the patriarchal religions, if no others, is that the Jewish scriptures emphasize our freedom of will, so we are not confined to obey our instincts, and should not when they are bad. I cannot see that anyone sane would doubt that loving others is an instinct and habit that should be good for us all, whereas hating anyone is bad, so hating a whole bunch of other people you do not even know is wicked. We have evolved to distrust and hate strangers, and the singular thing that Christ taught was that we should use our God given free will, ignore our instinct to hate, and instead love our enemies. Which of them does it? Certainly not the supposedly Christian leaders of the US, or the supposedly Jewish leaders of Israel.
The past is always erased for the political agendas of today. It was the reason the bible was written!
I am glad you pointed me to the paper about Aquilea. I have thought for a long time that the Roman references to Syrians actually meant Jews, and here I read this:
Italian scholars of the region refer to a large proportion of the Aquileian population as Orientali, or “Easterners” and in some cases to Siriani, or “Syrians”, blanket terms that include Jews. A few of these scholars did take cursory note of references to the Judaic presence in Aquileia and nearby towns in Christian literature, but none delved further into the subject. A considerable Judaic population is manifested by the iconographic appearance of numerous hellenized and latinized names of Levantine immigrants, but the Italian archaeologists termed the immigrants Syriani, that is from “Syro-Palestina”, as the former Israel and Judah had been renamed by the Romans.
The collapse of Persia to the Greeks left, without an imperial protector, vast numbers of non-Persian subjects of the Shah, whom had been provided with a central temple in Jerusalem. The Levant and Asia Minor were full of them, and they sought their fortunes in the west protected by Rome. They were Jews (Canaanites, Siriani) and Asians (Orientali). Many of the Orientali, I reckon, worshipped Mithras, but the rest were called Jews and worshipped Iao, and were called Syrians. Really the Syrians were mainly from Syria Levant but were Jews by religion, and the Orientali were mainly from Asia Minor, but were mainly worshippers of Mithras by religion, though many were Jews. One has to explain how there came to be a diaspora before the Romans dispersed them. The Jews, in short, were always a spread out people. Only the Cohens came from Yehud!
Americans seem to want to think they are still pioneers. They want to protect themselves with guns like Wild Bill Hickok. The ruling class is happy to feed this delusion, because a fearful people are more easily manipulated. From where I stand, the most powerful people there ever have been in history seem scared shitless (sorry for the vulgarity, but it seems appropriate because it is so absurd). In the UK we were bombed regularly in the 70s and 80s by the IRA, but nobody seemed in the least bit terrified by the terrorists. I heard the Hyde Park bomb (about 1985) go off myself, and later heard that a friend had been killed by it. She had been in the shop across the road when the bomb went off. The police and secret services were determined to get somebody, and several times groups of poor Irish laborers were locked up and the key thrown away, only years later to be proved innocent. The Brits were not scared, and trusted to the law and the police, though the law in the hands of bent politicians and coppers is unjust. You Americans are scared, and Bush has made you more scared, yet you would be better demanding the repeal of the Nazi Patriot Act, and the repeal of gun legislation, with severe penalties for anyone owning an illegal firearm. Get rid of guns and bad law, and maybe even the cops will not need to carry guns, then all those poor people who get “accidentally” shot will get their entitlement to life too. You will also get a lot more citizens willing to patrol the streets if they are sure they will not get gunned down. So burglary will be a lot harder.
Sadly our neoconservative government are taking us down the American road to disaster. Poor us. If you were attacked and you tried to pull a gun, don’t you think you have more chance of getting a bullet?
What Hitler could not bear was that Christ was a Jew. He thought the messiah ought to be an Aryan, but he was brought up as a Catholic by a devoutly Catholic mother, and ended up with his own messianic delusions. You say it makes him not religious, but I say it makes him a religious maniac. They always know what God thinks, and often believe that they have been sent themselves as the messiah. No one is more dangerous, and disaster always treads in their footsteps.
A pantheist like Einstein thinks in just the way you do, and the Hindu and Buddhist feeling is the same, and Hinduism has a multitude of gods and Buddhism has none. It is nothing to do with God. It is the feeling of oneness with the world, the dissolving of the veil between self and other. It is realizing we are a part of something much bigger than ourselves. We are polyps of life, but have evolved a feeling of self to help preserve us in the evolutionary struggle. It has served us well, but we are more than ourselves, and sometimes we sense it. It might be what we need to save us from self destruction. Dividing into little, and worse, big tribes, will not help us now. We all have to be inhabitants of the world, or we shall be blown into extinction or at least dissolve by armed bickering back into tribal society.
I found Francis Collins’s book to be pitiful. He must be an excellent scientist, but whimpers before his figmentary God like an infant. Moreover, he is either dishonest or deluded because he says he was brought up an atheist, then tells a story that proves he was deeply influenced by churchgoing, and was even singing for years in a choir. I have three long pages on the book onsite, so there is no need to go into it any more, but I am surprised if he impressed you.
OK! Back to your book. I hope you get published and have a bestseller. On your last point I just read that a Zionist historian of the mid last century S W Baron taught that the Jews in Egypt were extremely well read and cultured slaves with a long memory of their ancestor Abraham, and an appreciation of the monotheism that Akhenaten practiced, and which they took with them when Moses took them to Canaan (but could not enter it as a sinner), so Joshua did as a genocidal maniac, only obeying his God, of course. Lyvi, Lyvi! You don’t really believe it, do you? It was invented by the Greek kings and their Egyptian priests like Manetho who knew some of the ancient history of Egypt. In my mind, there is no doubt that the Exodus story is based on the escape of the Hyksos—based on it!—it is extremely romancified and changed from ex-rulers to escaping slaves. It is not the same thing, but suited the geopolitics of the time. Eh? :-)
Thanks for the well wishing, today I feel a bit better. I also caught the swine flu at the end of summer and it was a complete disaster. I had fever for 11 days—I lost so much weight that my friends were worried. I was still not a 100% to what I felt before that damn flu and now here I am . It’s different and everyone in my town has it—mostly very very stubborn sinus infection complete with lovely headaches.
Glad you liked the article—My book which is fiction has a person that follows glass making so hence I have done a lot of research and came upon Aquileia ans since I’m stopping in Italy before my digs I decided to see the mosaics. Governments I will never trust them—I know too much about History to see what they are capable of doing to their own people so my skepticism at trusting the government does not come from me living in the US, it’s much passed that.
Guns? we have an amazing amount of violence especially against women. We have them being kidnapped by psychotic pervs straight off the streets. Since this country is so big we don’t hear about all of them in the news but it happens almost daily in all the states. Will I get shot with my own gun? I might. But I would rather have a fighting chance. As I said since the economy tanked and our true unemployment rate is most likely close to 25% which does not count the illegal work force—things are bad and theft , home burglaries etc. are everywhere. They used to call the place I live at “the bubble” because it was completely different, happy (mostly because of rapid use of anti-depressants ;) , insular from the rest of the country. The bubble has burst so to say.
You wrote about some “Zionist” scholar? I’m not sure what that supposed to mean? many scholars around the world believe that the Exodus and Mosis story has to do with events that took place at the late 17th dyn—end 18th dynasty. I go back to 17th dynasty and bingo we seem to agree on something here :) I too believe that the Exodus story is based on the explosions of the Hyksos. but as we see by the names that appear in the 17th 18th Dyn. there were still Semitic Hebrew, Canaanite names in high ranking positions. May I point that you jump to conclusion that if I think that moses of the bible is based on a true person that I suddenly believe in Joshua’s story? As I said for me the bible gives shreds of a true untold story (minus the miracles) including Persian meddling and support.
Jericho’s destruction dates to about 1550 BC. give or take 50 years. which coincides with the years of Hyksos expulsions. did Joshua exist? did he walk around the walls and and blow a horn? I doubt that. But the story of Jericho is romanticized to read as a great hero destroys the bad guy. similar to the stellas of other kings boasting how they smote 60,000 people style. I am under no doubt that the Hyksos were Hebrews and so to our first point of dispute it is obvious to me that the theme of one God starts spreading from the South upwards. I still maintain that Aten=Adon (actually that is proven linguistically)=Yahu of the Hebrews who was a combo of the Aten and Yah—which is the name of a moon god in Egypt and with the spreading of Akhenaten’s teaching the Hebrews molded these deities into one—a sun God. As do many linguists, Historians, Archaeologist.
Another point to think about is that yahric is a Ugaritic moon god worshiped in Yericho—very similar to Yah of the Egyptians. in terms of the latest scans of king Tut and his kin— I just pointed out that the fact that both the mummies of King Tut and his father show that they had heredity cleft malformations coincides with a biblical notion about Moses being hard of Speech. For me it is another point that strengthens my theory. There is plenty of evidence in the language and names to show a distribution of Egypt themes entering Judea area and vice versa. In Fact there are some Egyptian hieroglyphs that no one could read until they found out that they weren’t in Egyptian at all, but they were Hebraic/Canaanite words. In my glass research I also found that glass making began in Egypt only after the Hyksos settled there. It has been proven that the most ancient glass comes from the Afghanistan mtns. area and moved westward not unlike the travellings of our dear Abraham whether he was an actual person or a symbol of a people travelling westward from the Iran/Iraq plateau’s.
In terms of slavery I think that it is not based on the Hyksos in Egypt but on their ancestries who returned to Israel and then were overtaken by the great Egyptian armies starting with Ahmose I. After that all of Israel and later Judea paid tribute to Egypt which is equal to working for free and can be seem as slavery. In the bible there are statements about Solomon sending one of his daughters to Egypt? or maybe it was him who married one of the Egyptians princesses—business as usual in terms of political alliances.
You are correct that the Hindus and the Buddhists have the same notion about the God I believe in. This energy or connections to everything around us for me has an awareness—an all knowing awareness. However as I studied many religions that theme runs in other religions including western ones, The mystical side of Islam as in Sufism, or Jewish mysticism all speak about the same God.
Collins inspires me in the fact that he is a scientific genius and refuses to let go of his faith. I don’t care about his background because of what he has studies, and you would think that would sway him otherwise. The fact is that Science HAS NOT IN ANY WAY DISPROVED THE EXISTENCE OF GOD and his supports of that statement is what is important to me. he is a top geneticsist and this support it is an absolute. For me science will never disprove God because it works within God’s realm. Delusional me? me and most of the world’s population at least I’m not completely alone :)
Stay warm over there, I hear the UK is like a refrigerator these days?
I do not think we realize over here how violent the Great Society actually is. But that is what I meant about Americans being scared. You have a reason to be scared with all those guns around a society where tens of millions are left neglected. The US also seems to be splitting into two, with the right wing authoritarians seemingly to be permanently on top. It seems curious that these same right wing authoritarians cannot understand why the rest of the world are scared more of the US than they are of Al Qaida.
The cause of the US going pear shaped is its acceptance of competition as the basic motivation of society. If that were the case, then society could never have evolved. Co-operation is what makes society, and that means we have to help each other, and not neglect whole swaths of society. We can only have agreed to gather together in social groups because we were better for it, and we were better for it because the group could help us when we were in a bad way, starving or threatened. Nowadays too many people are abandoned, and that is dangerous for any society. Since none of us can leave and go fend for ourselves, the only solution is to opt out, and when society gangs up against those who choose to opt out, there will be civil war or a revolution. The US seems to be held together only by propaganda. It cannot last that long. Having a fighting chance with you own gun will be by gunning down your enemies, as well as some dipstick mugger or rapist who probably thinks you are rich and therefore fair game.
Well, I do not think many scholars agree with you on Moses, unless they are Zionists, in which case they are not scholars but apologists for their preconceived beliefs. You cannot be a scholar and begin with an immovable belief. When there is no evidence for something, you do not believe it nevertheless, you disbelieve it. That is the basis of science and history, and any other faculty for establishing the truth. If you are already convinced before you try to establish some fact, all you will do is rake up anything that suits your belief, and you will ignore, or worse, destroy, contrary evidence. Christians have done it throughout the last 2000 years, and Jews have connived in it when it suited their own beliefs. The Zionists now do not seem to try to hide it. It is quite open as long as you can read Hebrew.
The expulsion of the Hyksos was not the voluntary escape of slaves. Moses is mythical, and the story of the Exodus was invented—from the idea of the expulsion of Asiatics—in the third century BC. Manetho knew about the Hyksos, and turned them into the escaping slaves so that the Jews would forever believe they came from Egypt. If it were not for the destruction of the Nehemiah Library in the time of the Hasmonean uprisings, Abraham would probably have been dropped from the bible, because Abraham was the myth associated with Babylonia and Persia, whence the Seleucids now operated and were oppressing the rebels. With the victory of the Hasmoneans, the scattered books of the library were gathered, and discarded bits were included, out of ignorance of the status quo ante, with accepted bits and newly written bits. Thus we have what we now read. A book started by the Persians, filled out by the Ptolemies, then put back together by the Maccabees.
If we were to accept that the word Hebrews stems from eber, then the Hebrews were so called because they came from some place across the river (Euphrates). In ancient times they were migrants or raiders from the east, but from the time of the Assyrians and Persians they were the inhabitants of the province called in the bible, Beyond the River (to the west of Assyria and Persia)—much of present day Syria, the Levant, and parts of northern Arabia. The Hyksos seem to have been or became Canaanites when they were expelled.
Moses being hard of speech is a rationalization of his always being associated with Aaron. Aaron was always with him for reason of his being Moses’s spokesman. Why would he need a spokesman?—because he had a speech defect. Originally Aaron and Moses were inseparable because they were the same being.
I think you have said yourself that Egypt had a strong influence on Palestine because it was for centuries an Egyptian colony. No additional mythology to explain it is necessary. Phoenicia was very much influenced by Egypt too, even though it was farther off, and was more cosmopolitan than the Hill Country in the south, and on Egypt’s doorstep. Palestine was always a buffer area between the Egyptian empire and the empires of Asia and Mesopotamia, and continued to be until the Roman period. In particular when the Jewish scriptures were written, the Ptolemies and Seleucids were the opposing empires, and each sought to influence the Jews.
Millions of traders passed east and west through Syria. In that sense there were millions of Abrahams, but the biblical Abraham was not trading, he was an emigrant. He stands for the colonists sent into Yehud by the Persian chancellery to set up a temple state. The colonists are effectively personified in a myth written to give the colonials an ancient history. That is what myths of origin are for. The Ptolemies tried to make a new myth of origin in Moses.
We do agree on the notion of slavery coming from the simple fact that the Canaanites of the Hill Country really were the colonial subjects of the Egyptians for centuries, so could properly be said to have been slaves in Egypt, an Egypt including Palestine. They were not slaves in the delta but slaves in their own land. There were no doubt slaves in the delta too, at various times in history, but they are not the ones described in the scriptures. Solomon is a myth, and not a jot of evidence exists for him and his empire. David is the same, all bar the mention of bitdwd on a recently found stone which no one is allowed to examine with proper forensics, but has already been denounced by several scholars who have had sight of it as a fake. No Egyptian records exist of an Egyptian princess marrying any Solomon, nor of a Solomonic princess marrying a pharaoh.
God began as the god of the heavens and now He is the God of empty space and emptier heads. Mystical experiences are psychological experiences, and yours probably are too. When you are insecure, as you show you are in a country full of random murders and rapes, and more guns than people, the idea of a supernatural father watching over you is a psychological comfort. There is nothing to be ashamed of in that, except when you start believing He will or can do anything for you. Recent research has shown that people have exactly the same ideas as the God they believe in, yet they believe in the same God, but do not agree with each other. The very process of thinking about what God wills is just the same one as thinking of anything, but thinking about what Obama thinks, or any external real person, uses different parts of the brain, the parts that pertain to relating and predicting what others will do. It confirms that God is not thought of as someone else, but has exactly the same views as oneself. One’s mental image of God is just a projection of yourself!
Lastly, I really cannot admire Collins in spite of his great scientific achievements, because he is a hypocrite. He ought to apply the same criteria of truth to his own thoughts about God, but cannot. He claims to have been an atheist but proves in his book that he was always in thrall to the Christian God. Either he is a liar or he is lacking objectivity and is hypocritical when he comes to defending his unsubstantiated beliefs. He sees a frozen waterfall and falls down on his knees before God! Its like those movies where the primitive natives fall down before the white man who flicks on his cigarette lighter. Except that Collins is a great scientist dealing with truly remarkable things like the Human Genome. Appointing anyone so childish as head of the NIH seems absurd, so let us hope he succeeds in keeping his personal delusions out of the job.
So, to the bit of phatic communion to end on a friendly note :-) . The weather in parts of the UK has been poor, but nothing like they have been having in the east of your own country. Perhaps Collins will get caught in a snowdrift and have an unconversion experience :-) . Doubt it, though. Here today, it has been wet but otherwise mild. I took the long journey into town by cab (about 5 minutes!) to get a new pair of specs, varifocals, which people tell me are hard to get used to, but I have 30 days to try. They’ll be ready in about a week or ten days. Then had a nice latte and read some newspapers. Wild!
