• @prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 months ago

    The interesting context, I appreciate. The subtle condescension, not so much… I’m well aware that Christianity was cobbled together like Frankenstein’s Monster using various parts of existing religions and pagan traditions. I assure you that these stories have not gone over my head.

    You seem to think that the main issues I have with these stories are: the questions of historical veracity; or whether they were original stories. It’s really not. Sure, for stories like Noah’s Ark, where we know for certain it didn’t happen.

    Or how we can say with near-certainty that Moses never parted the Red Sea, and crushed “Pharaoh’s’” army (side note: it’s funny to me how they always just call them that in the Bible. Just, “Pharaoh”. And I guess we’re supposed to pretend that we don’t know they had names and histories known to us?).

    How do we know? Because their remains would be all over the bottom of the sea. Also, I’m pretty sure that Egypt, during the times when Pharaohs ruled, was known for keeping pretty good records. No historical record that the Exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt even exists. In fact, there’s no record of these Hebrew slaves, period.

    Anyway, I digress…

    And Noah’s ark was likely originally a famine story before being turned into an adaptation of the Babylonian flood mythos.

    Throwing these claims out with zero sources or backup? Like c’mon guy (or gal, etc.) that’s quite the stretch. Let’s see the the sources.

    I guess all of this was to say that I find the meanings and lessons of these stories to be downright appalling. Whether or not Job was a real bloke isn’t really the point.

    • @kromem@lemmy.world
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      15 months ago

      No historical record that the Exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt even exists. In fact, there’s no record of these Hebrew slaves, period.

      As I said in my earlier comment, this narrative was probably appropriated from the forced relocation of the sea peoples into the southern Levant. The Egyptians do have extensive records of conflict with them, who they note in that conflict were without foreskins (as opposed to the partial circumcision more common at the time), and there’s an emerging picture of Aegean cohabitation with the Israelites in the early Iron Age along with Anatolian trade with an area where the Denyen were talking about their founding leader Mopsus.

      Here’s the source for the Noah’s Ark as originally a famine narrative: https://scholar.harvard.edu/dershowitz/publications/man-land-unearthing-original-noah

      You’re welcome to find the material as you like, but I’m telling you that there’s a lot more value to careful analysis of it within it’s broader context than you (and many others) seem to think. Whether you find that stance condescending or not.

      • @prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        15 months ago

        Why did you just focus in on that one part when I literally say that I don’t really care about that? My issue isn’t that the stories are borrowed or stolen. Read the rest of my comment maybe.