Hebrew civilizaton may be older than thought – ancient writing found

semilargeintestine

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Scholars now say that the Torah was written 400 years earlier than they thought. Surprise surprise. None of their "theories" about the Torah being written in a different time or by different groups have any evidence supporting them. All the evidence they find destroys their theories and just lends more and more credence to the Torah being written when it says it was.

Notice that people conveniently ignore all the inscriptions found in the desert of Sinai that discuss the parting of the Sea of Reeds, the plague that killed those passively guilty of the sin of the golden calf, and alters with Jewish names and dates inscribed on them that were written with an alphabet that would place them around the time we say the Exodus occurred.
 

Mac H.

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In some ways the Old Testament does surprisingly well for accuracy - or at least gets backed up quite well with other records.

For example, II Kings has the Israeli version of the Assyrian invasion. It details how the Assyrians took gold from them , etc.

The Jews, however, stood strong and in the end a supernatural creature from another world came and fought on the Jews behalf until 'Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt a Nineveh'

If we compare that with the Assyrian records, we get an almost blow-for-blow agreement with the Assyrians taking the gold from the Jews, but the Jews standing strong.

In the end, according to the Assyrian inscriptions:

"As of Hezekiah, the Jew who had not yet submitted to my yoke, forty-six of his strong, walled cities and the cities of the environs, which were numberless, I besieged, I captured, as booty I counted them. ..

I imposed the payment of a yearly gifts by them, as tax, and laid it upon him ... With thirty talents of gold, eight hundred talents of silver, and all kinds of treasure from his palace, he sent his daughters, his palace women , his male and female singers, to Nineveh, and he dispatched his messengers to pay the tribute"

So the accounts, overall, are almost identical - they start and end the same way, with one version having a supernatural force fighting a battle to get the enemy to leave and the other version has a careful diplomatic solution involving payment.

The end results is the same - with the walled cities remaining intact. I wonder how often this pattern gets repeated across the historical records.

Interesting.

Mac
 

semilargeintestine

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In some ways the Old Testament does surprisingly well for accuracy - or at least gets backed up quite well with other records.

For example, II Kings has the Israeli version of the Assyrian invasion. It details how the Assyrians took gold from them , etc.

The Jews, however, stood strong and in the end a supernatural creature from another world came and fought on the Jews behalf until 'Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt a Nineveh'

If we compare that with the Assyrian records, we get an almost blow-for-blow agreement with the Assyrians taking the gold from the Jews, but the Jews standing strong.

In the end, according to the Assyrian inscriptions:



So the accounts, overall, are almost identical - they start and end the same way, with one version having a supernatural force fighting a battle to get the enemy to leave and the other version has a careful diplomatic solution involving payment.

The end results is the same - with the walled cities remaining intact. I wonder how often this pattern gets repeated across the historical records.

Interesting.

Mac

The "supernatural force fighting a battle" is an angel coming down during the evening and afflicting his army with a plague that killed 186,000 men. The Assyrian version differing in the end by not mentioning the tremendous loss of its military is not surprising. This happened a lot in those times. We have documents from both Egypt and the Hittites that describe a battle between the two where both sides proclaim themselves to be the winner leaving the other in completely annihilation. This is also why it is not hard to believe that there are Biblical and extra-Biblical accounts of the splitting of the Sea but no Egyptian account. They simply did not record their failures.

Interestingly, this is what makes the Torah unique. It is likely the only accurate representation of the history of an ancient people that was recorded as it was happening. If you read the Torah, every shortcoming and failure on the part of the Jews is recorded with embarrassing accuracy. We were constantly unable to remain on the high level God continuously raised us to, and thus were met with punishment after punishment and atonement after atonement.

As I've said in other threads, there are many extra-Biblical accounts that discuss Biblical events and confirm their accuracy, including several in Egypt that discuss the situation of the Jews (Hebrews as they were called then) in slavery and the events leading up to the Exodus. There are artistic renditions of Biblical events as well, such as the sculpture of the ram caught in the thicket dated to a little bit after the 20th century BCE which is not far off the time we give for the binding of Isaac occurred (and several centuries before the Torah was given):

Ram_in_the_Thicket.jpg
 

Mac H.

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This is also why it is not hard to believe that there are Biblical and extra-Biblical accounts of the splitting of the Sea but no Egyptian account
That's interesting.

What are the other accounts ?

Mac
 

Ralyks

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"Writing indicates Kingdom of Israel already existed in the 10th century.
Scientists have discovered the earliest known Hebrew writing — an inscription dating from the 10th century B.C., during the period of King David's reign."

Israel already existed during King David's reign? Who'd have thunk it. I would have thought Israel didn't exist until AFTER the reign of its most famous king. Did England exist during Alfred the Great's reign too???

Newspapers are so comical. Also comical is that this is "breaking news" in January of 2010 when it was excavated in 1994.
 

Rufus Coppertop

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Notice that people conveniently ignore all the inscriptions found in the desert of Sinai that discuss the parting of the Sea of Reeds, the plague that killed those passively guilty of the sin of the golden calf, and alters with Jewish names and dates inscribed on them that were written with an alphabet that would place them around the time we say the Exodus occurred.

Can you provide references to all of these inscriptions found?

To say that it sounds fascinating is a total understatement.