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Sunday, 29 September 2024

ABRAHAM

 

Sarah, Abraham’s wife, had produced no children. But she had an Egyptian slave child named Hagar; so she said to Abraham, "Go, sleep with my slave."

Why do so many Moslems appear backward; and why is the Moslem world falling apart?

Why are so many 'Jews' apparently successful in life?

Too many Moslems still believe in the old myths.

Most Jews have given up believing in the old myths.

The fundamentalists are all wrong.

'God' is not a fundamentalist. 

'God' does not belong to any one religion.


Abraham - the inspiration for ISIS.

The only source that records Abraham's existence is Genesis.

There is no archaeological evidence that Abraham existed.

Even Jewish rabbis admit that Abraham probably never existed.

"Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, probably never existed. Nor did Moses...

"And David, far from being the fearless king who built Jerusalem into a mighty capital, was more likely a provincial leader whose reputation was later magnified to provide a rallying point for a fledgling nation.

"Such startling propositions - the product of findings by archaeologists digging in Israel and its environs over the last 25 years - have gained wide acceptance among non-Orthodox rabbis..." 

Archaeologists have figured out that Abraham never existed and neither did Moses. Probably still won't dissuade my Baptist parents.... (nytimes.com)

No country is perfect. Some Jews and Moslems get sexual pleasure from killing people?

The Jews stoned people to death and the 'mad Moslems' copied them.

Numbers 15:32-36:

While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day...

The LORD said to Moses, "The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp."

So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses.

(The UnHoly Bible)

"In much of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, there are laws that command that people be killed for absurd reasons such as working on the Sabbath, being gay, cursing your parents, or not being a virgin on your wedding night." 

Abraham was going to murder his son Isaac.

Some mad people get sexual pleasure from killing.

"Italian and Russian police, working together, broke up a ring of Jewish gangsters who had been involved in the manufacture of child rape and snuff pornography.

"Three Russian Jews and eight Italian Jews were arrested after police discovered they had been kidnapping non-Jewish children between the ages of two and five years from Russian orphanages, raping the children, and then murdering them on film.

"Mostly non-Jewish customers, including 1,700 nationwide, 600 in Italy, and an unknown number in the United States, paid as much as $20,000 per film to watch little children being raped and murdered."

(Italian, Russian Police Break Up Child Snuff Porn Ring - Italian - Whale)


Palestinian kids, murdered by Israel.

The countries that carry out the most executions include China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the USA.


Americans executed this innocent youth. Clinton destroyed Libya and Trump wants to torture people.

Lynching occurred in the United States chiefly from the late 1700s through the 1960s.



Afghanistan and Iran were relatively civilised until the USA began its interference.

The Dalai Lama may be correct when he says that most people are gentle in nature

He says he does not believe people are naturally violent.

He says the basic human nature is to be a social animal and the basis of a social animal is some kind of cooperation, “So therefore I describes human nature as more gentleness.”

He says that the people who are violent are in the minority in our society.

He says we take for granted that the violence by others becomes very striking in our minds, so it becomes significant, but he says the majority of people still remain gentle by human nature.

He says that human beings by nature want happiness and do not want suffering.

(Teachings: Dalai Lama Quotes)



Chimpanzees will help humans without any reward in return.[8]

The peaceful sociable Bonobos, who are our nearest relatives, have been observed aiding injured or handicapped bonobos.[9]

Animals that cooperate are more likely to survive.

Cooperation is a very successful survival strategy.

It has been the basis of all the most dramatic steps in the history of life.

(Evolution myths: 'Survival of the fittest' justifies 'everyone for ...)

In the 1940s, Brigadier Gen. S.L.A. Marshall claimed that only 15-20% of America's World War II soldiers would use their weapons in battle.

(On Killing, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, p. 4 - The Canadian National Newspaper: Twilight of the Psychopaths )



"We in the West have received a huge wake-up call that our politicians are all completely beneath contempt, bribed and blackmailed by World Jewry to the point of incomprehensible corruption."


The Kosher Nostra is essentially a criminal organisation run by the elite.

The Kosher Nostra and its friends planned World War I, in part to get Palestine removed from the Turkish Ottoman Empire.

The Kosher Nostra needed World War II, in part to get their state of Israel, and, to get Jews to move to that state of Israel.

Himmler - partly Jewish. The Zionists are in bed with the Nazis

Hitler and his friends were part Jewish. 

The Kosher Nostra and its friends planned 9 11, in part, to get Americans to hate the Moslems.

The Kosher Nostra and its friends planned the Arab Spring to weaken Egypt and other Arab countries.




During the 1980s there were new discoveries in archaeology.

The story of the 13th century BC exodus from Egypt into the PROMISED LAND was shown to be a myth.

Moses could not have led the Hebrews out of Egypt into the Promised Land, because the Promised land was Egyptian territory at the time.

The archaeologists say there is no trace of either a slave revolt against the Egyptian empire or of a sudden conquest of Canaan by outsiders.

Nor is there any trace or memory of the Biblical kingdom of David and Solomon.

Just a parable.

According to a Report by The Church of Scotland:

The inheritance of Abraham - A report .

"Biblical promises about the land of Israel were never intended to be taken literally, or as applying to a defined geographical territory, the report argued...

"Biblical promises about the land of Israel are a way of speaking about how to live under God so that justice and peace reign, the weak and poor are protected, the stranger is included, and all have a share in the community and a contribution to make to it. 

"The 'promised land' in the Bible is not a place, so much as a metaphor of how things ought to be among the people of God.

"This 'promised land' can be found - or built - anywhere."


The Israeli Ambassador commented negatively on the report.

Representatives of the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Movement for Reform Judaism, and Rabbis for Human Rights held a meeting with the Church of Scotland.

At this meeting, it was agreed that the report would be withdrawn and revised 

(Church statement is available here. The revised report)



General assembly

The revised version was debated at the Church of Scotland's annual General Assembly in Edinburgh.

Rev Sally Foster-Fulton said: "This is primarily a report highlighting the continued occupation by the state of Israel and the injustices faced by the Palestinian people as a consequence.

"It is not a report criticising the Jewish people. Opposing the unjust policies of the state of Israel cannot be equated to anti-Semitism. "

The revised report was overwhelmingly accepted by the Assembly.

Kirk backs controversial Israel report | Herald Scotland



In 2010, there was debate in the Church of Scotland about the possibility of boycotting Israeli goods.

The Rev Ian Galloway withdrew the proposed boycott call as a result of the threat to the Church’s work in the region from Israeli laws designed to make boycott calls illegal.

"The General Assembly 'may take this legislation to be intimidatory', said Mr Galloway, adding sorrowfully: 'We are intimidated.'"

Assessing the Kirk's report on theologies of land in the ... - Ekklesia

There were only about 50,000 Jews in Palestine in 1918. (Cached)

On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, "To your descendants I give this land, from Seattle to Orlando and from Boston to Los Angeles - the land of the Apache, the Huron, the Blackfeet...."

Genesis 15:18-21

The Palestinians are most likely the original Jews.



'Most of the Jews in Israel are not the original Jews of the Bible, but people who converted to the Jewish religion.

'Most of the Jews in Israel are descended from people in countries such as Germany, Georgia, Ukraine, Yemen, and Morocco who were not originally Jewish.'

The Palestinians are most likely the original Jews.

Schlomo Sand, professor of history at Tel Aviv

 university, 

wrote about the Zionist myth at Le Monde Diplomatique, in September 2008.



Palestinians - who probably converted from the Jewish religion to Islam.
Among the points made by Professor Sand:

1. In 70 AD, the Jews were allegedly exiled and went to live in countries such as Yemen, Morocco, Spain, Germany, Poland and Russia.

2. At the end of the 19th century, people claiming to be Jews began to talk about setting up a Jewish state.


The 'Jews' who invaded Palestine were terrorist gangsters from places such as New York, Warsaw and Belarus.

3. Is the Bible historically accurate?

The first modern Jewish historians, such as Isaak Markus Jost (1793-1860) and Leopold Zunz (1794-1886), did not think so.

They saw the stories of the Old Testament as being useful parables.


Victim of an Israeli rocket.

4. During the 1980s there were new discoveries in archaeology.

It is worth repeating this.
The story of the 13th century BC exodus was shown to be a myth.

Moses could not have led the Hebrews out of Egypt into the Promised Land, because the Promised land was Egyptian territory at the time.

The archaeologists say there is no trace of either a slave revolt against the Egyptian empire or of a sudden conquest of Canaan by outsiders.

Nor is there any trace or memory of the Biblical kingdom of David and Solomon.

Many of the Nazi leaders were part Jewish.

5. The Kingdom of Israel was a tiny little place.

6. Were the Jews exiled in 70 AD?

The Romans never exiled any nation from anywhere on the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean.

The Jewish population of Judea continued to live on their lands after 70AD.

Some converted to Christianity in the 4th century, while the majority became Moslems during the 7th century.

Most Zionist thinkers were aware of this.

Yitzhak Ben Zvi, later president of Israel, and David Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, accepted it.

Both stated on several occasions that the Palestinians were the descendants of the Jewish inhabitants of ancient Judea.

So, the Palestinians are the real Jews.

Begin and his Betar members wore brown shirts and used the fascist salute. (Cached )

7. So, what about the people in Europe and elsewhere who claimed to be Jews?

From the 2nd century BC onwards, many people were forcibly converted to the Jewish religion.

Many Europeans, Africans and Asians were converted to Judaism.

For example, in the 1st century AD, in Kurdistan, there was the Jewish kingdom of Adiabene.

In the 5th century, in Yemen, a Jewish kingdom emerged.

Arab chronicles tell of North African berber tribes becoming Jewish, during the 7th century.

Israel tries to control the politicians.

8. In the 8th century, the most important mass conversion took place.

This was in the huge Khazar kingdom between the Black and Caspian seas.

Judaism spread from the Caucasus into the Ukraine, then into Eastern Europe, and on to Germany.

The Yiddish culture of Europe involved people who had converted to the Jewish religion.

However, some people dispute the Khazar Theory -

Twelve DNA Studies are said to disprove the Khazar Theory.

"The Talmud, the books of Jewish law promoting Jewish extremist supremacism and hatred against all non-Jews, was written hundreds of years before any alleged Khazar conversion."

Israelis.

9. The Israeli forces who seized Jerusalem in 1967 may have been descendents of Germans, Yemenis, Berbers and Khazars.

Victims of Israel

At Haaretz, on 21 March 2008, Ofri Ilani wote about shattering a 'national mythology'.


Ilani refers to Dahia al-Kahina, a leader of the Berbers in the Aures Mountains.

Al-Kahina was the daughter of a Berber tribe that had converted to Judaism.

According to the Tel Aviv University historian, Prof. Shlomo Sand, author of "Matai ve'ech humtza ha'am hayehudi?" ("When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?"), the queen's tribe and other local tribes are the main sources from which Spanish Jewry sprang.

Professor Alon Tal, of Ben-Gurion University, says of Israel: "As the population density rises it becomes more violent, congested and unpleasant to live in..." 

Israel's population has doubled in the last 25 years and it needs lebensraum (additional territory).

Israel has a high birthrate and high Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union.

Tiny Israel's current population of 8.4 million could reach 20.6 million by 2059.



Expect Israel to speed up the disruption of its neighbours:

Turkey, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Expect Israel to hasten its plans for the takeover of the land of its neighbours.

Expect Israel to force European governments to accept more Moslem refugees.


The Palestinians outnumber the Jews.

So the Jews have a policy of driving the Palestinians out of their homeland.

The Jews already have their illegal settlements in the 'occupied territories'.

Reportedly, the founder of the Saudi Wahhabi sect of Islam, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, was a crypto-Jew. Jewish origin of Saudis and Wahabis.

Israel and its friends are highly skilled at manipulating Moslems.

Israel secretly promotes Hamas and all the fundamentalist Islamist groups.



It is possible that Muhammad lived from c. 570 - 632 AD, and that his religion was one of peace and tolerance.

It is possible that Islam was relatively obscure until it was hijacked by Abd al Malik ibn Marwan, the Arab Emperor from 685 - 705AD.

Abd al Malik ibn Marwan may have turned Islam into the official religion of his warlike empire.

The official story is that Muhammad died in 632 AD.

In 661 AD, Muawiyah I became the leader of the Arab Empire.

No mention of Muhammad or Islam can be found in any of Muawiyah's inscriptions, coins, or documents.

Islam: The Untold Story.

"There is no mention of Muhammad anywhere in stones, script, monuments, or other sources from the Middle East during his actual lifetime."


Apart from 'a single ambiguous reference in the Koran', there is no mention of Mecca in any datable text for a century after 'Muhammed's death'.


It is thought that the prophet who attacked Palestine was not actually Muhammad. Sira - biographies of Muhammad..

In the Koran, 'Muhammad' addresses farmers and agriculturalists while his opponents are described as keeping cattle and growing olives and vines.

The home environment described by 'Muhammad' as having farmers and agriculturalists could be in the Negev desert in Southern Israel.

There was no agriculture in Mecca.

Islam: The Untold Story.

Under the reign of the Arab Emperor Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, Mecca may have been erroneously portrayed as Muhammad's home, in order to provide Islam with Arabian origins.

Abd al Malik ibn Marwan, the Arab Emperor from 685 - 705AD, may have been the inventor of the warlike form of Islam.

Was Caliph Abd Al-Malik the real creator and the prophet?



In 2012, the historian Tom Holland produced a TV documentary for the UK's Channel 4 which said:

1. There is little evidence to support the 'official' story of Muhammad.

2. There are questions about when the Koran was written.

3. Mecca may not have been the birthplace of Muhammad.

Holland asked why it took several decades after the death of Muhammad for his name to appear on surviving documents or artifacts.

Holland claimed that much of the story of Muhammad was developed some time after the death of Muhammad.



According to the official story, the prophet Muhammad's mother was Aminah, who claimed to be descended from Abraham, and who was reportedly Jewish.


The original Kaaba was at some point dedicated to Hubal, a Nabatean deity, and contained 360 idols. 

Reportedly, Muhammad decided to reject idol-worship and adopt the Jewish religion.

Safiyah, one of Muhammad's Jewish wives.

Two of Prophet Muhammad's wives were Jewish.

"Muhammad clearly saw himself as part of the Jewish tradition. …

"Islam was a radical call back to the basic values of the Torah and even talmudic stories."


The Dome of the Rock marks the spot from which Muhammad is believed to have ascended to heaven.[92]

Muhammad regarded himself as the last prophet of the Jewish-Christian tradition.

The Koran is based mainly on the Old Testament.

Muhammad required that his followers were kosher.

Muhammad required that his followers keep the fast of Yom Kippur.

Muhammad required that his followers be circumcised.

Muhammad required that his followers pray facing Jerusalem.


Muhammad only fell out with the Jews when they refused to accept him as their prophet.

...

Jesus, Muhammad and Buddha - what were they really like?

There is always a suspicion that the 'official story' is not entirely true.

There is a suspicion that the 'biography' has had untrue bits added, and that there is a lot of 'spin'.

"Late in the third century B.C. Cleomenes, king of Sparta, embarked on a revolutionary policy of cancellation of debts, redistribution of land and emancipation of the helots (slaves). 

"He was driven out of Sparta... 

"In the story preserved by Plutarch, Cleomenes and twelve friends have a last supper together on the night before his death. 

"He is betrayed to his enemies... 

"His dead body is crucified. 

"A prodigy occurs after the crucifixion; and the people of Alexandria call him a 'hero and son of the gods'." 


So, the 'real Jesus', who taught that one should tune in to the Holy Spirit, may not have been crucified?

...

Professor Robert M. Price has investigated Jesus, Muhammad and Buddha and gives his thoughts in Of Myth and Men.

The following is a brief summary.

Jesus

Price asks: was Jesus a holy man especially close to God, or a wise man filled with divine wisdom, or a mythic hero? 

With the typical mythic hero from ancient times:

1. The hero's mother is a virgin

2. He is reputed to be a son of a god

3. Evil forces attempt to kill the infant or boy hero

4. He is spirited away to safety. 

David Friedrich Strauss in The Life of Jesus Critically Examined suggests that Luke invented his story of the nativity.

Herod the Great died in 4 B.C.

Luke wrote that Joseph and Mary had to go to Bethlehem for a census in 6 A.D.

New Testament accounts of the death of Jesus appear to be rewrites of various earlier stories.

The anointing of Jesus at Bethany is similar to Isis anointing the corpse of her husband Osiris to resurrect him, part of the mummy-resurrection mythos of Egypt. 

Luke has one of Jesus' crucified colleagues bid him, "Remember me when you come into your kingdom," a phrase borrowed directly from Diodorus Siculus.

The divine portents attending Jesus' death on the cross reflect those at the crucifixion of rebel king Cleomenes of Sparta at Alexandria according to Plutarch. 

These omens cause visitors to the cross in each case to declare the crucified one to be son of god. 

As the Gospels have Mary Magdalene and her companions seek the body of Jesus only to find it gone, so do Isis, her sister Nephthys, and their maidens seek the slain Osiris.

The appearance of the risen Jesus to two disciples on the road to Emmaus is similar to the story of  Asclepius appearing unrecognized to a woman.

...

Buddha

Buddha taught that by not grasping for things, life goes better.

He did not see himself as being any kind of God.

However, bits seem to have been added to the story:

Some Buddhists are taught that:

Young Buddha was miraculously conceived and announced before birth as the saviour of the world. 

One by one four deities appeared to him in human disguises...

The story of Buddha abandoning affluence is similar to that of the Jaina saint Vardhamana (usually called Mahavira), who supposedly lived a single generation earlier than Buddha. 

When Buddha sits beneath the Bodhi Tree, he is protected from the demon's assaults by the hood canopy of the mythical Naga King, a hydralike cobra deity. 

And so was the Jain hero Parsva, the predecessor of Mahavira. 

Some Western scholars of Buddhism, including R. Otto Franke, think that Buddha is simply a collective name for earlier generations of unnamed Buddhist teachers.

Buddhist texts appear to disagree about whether or not there is an individual soul.

....

Muhammad

According to a reconstruction of Islamic origins entitled Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World by Patricia Crone and Michael Cook (1977):

Some Jews saw Umar, the second caliph of the Arab Empire, as the messiah.

These Jews saw Muhammad as the prophetic herald of 'Umar'.  

The term "Muslim" appears first on the Dome of the Rock in 691 AD and nowhere else till the late eighth century. 

The early Muslims were known as Hagarenes because they were engaged in a Hegira/Hijra, an Exodus from Arabia to Palestine, the Promised Land where the messiah must manifest himself. 

The Hagarenes built the Dome of the Rock.

The Hagarenes then broke with Judaism and turned to Christianity. 

'Umar's messianic status was forgotten.

Jesus was accepted as messiah.

The first Arabic "king" of Jerusalem made a show of praying at Christian sites.

The Hagarenes come to adopt the name "Islam" seeing Muhammad as the person who has revived the Abrahamic faith.

The scholar Günter Lüling reckons that as much as a third of the text of the Koran derives from pre-Islamic Christian texts.

The direction of prayer was switched from Jerusalem to Mecca.

The caliphs and imams were originally a priesthood and were called kahins (originally Cohens).

The rabbinical character of Sunni Islam came from the influence of Babylonian Judaism. 

Robert M. Price is Professor of Biblical Criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute and a member of the Free Inquiry Editorial Board. He is a member of the Jesus Seminar and is Regional Director of New York and North New Jersey for the Council for Secular Humanism. His book,Deconstructing Jesus is from Prometheus Books.



The Old Testament was not written by 'God'.

King David was reportedly described by God as "a man after my own heart."

King David is important to Moslems, who call him Daoud.

King David reportedly fought Goliath, wrote the Psalms, loved Jonathan the son of King Saul, had an affair with Bathsheba and was the ancestor of Jesus.
The truth about the Bible's King David.
The Bible contradicts itself because, according to the Bible, Goliath was killed by a warrior named Elhanan.

The Bible never actually says that David wrote the Psalms.

David became King as the result of the killing of a lot of the members of King Saul's family, including Jonathan.

The Bible admits that David was working for Saul's enemies, the Philistines.


Archaeologists have unearthed 'a palace' in what MAY be the fortified Judean city of Shaarayim, where David is said to have fought Goliath. dailymail. "Not all agree that the ruins found in Khirbet Qeiyafa are of the biblical town Shaarayim, let alone the palace of ancient Israel's most famous king." Are the ruins found in Israel really his palace

David took over Jerusalem, "displacing its ancient native inhabitants."

"The people didn't love David - they couldn't wait to get rid of him."

The truth about the Bible's King David

There was a people's revolt against David, led by David's own son Absalom.

King David was a gangster from a little cow town?


Yossi Garfinkel

In July 2013, Professor Yossi Garfinkel spoke of unearthing ruins that he thinks are related to King David.

The archaeologists have unearthed 'a palace' in what they think is the fortified Judean city of Shaarayim, where David is said to have fought Goliath. 

dailymail.

'The ruins are the best example to date of the uncovered fortress city of King David,' professors Yossi Garfinkel and Saar Ganor of Hebrew University said.

www.dailymail.


Khirbet Qeiyafa - Canaanite or Judean?

"The findings at Khirbet Qeiyafa - a fortified hilltop city about 19 miles (30 kilometers) southwest of Jerusalem - indicate that David, who defeated Goliath in the Bible, ruled a kingdom with a great political organization, the excavators say."

King David-Era Palace Found in Israel, Archaeologists Say ...

Prof. Emeritus of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University, Nadav Na’aman and Ido Koch, a Ph.D. candidate in Archaeology and Biblical History at Tel Aviv University, believe that the Khirbet Qeiyafa ruins are Canaanite.

Professor Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University suggests that it is a strong possibility that 

the Khirbet Qeiyafa ruins are Canaanite. 
"A very similar layer, with almost exact pottery types and other finds hinting in this direction, was found in the nearby Canaanite dig in Bet Shemesh directed by Prof. Shlomo Bonimovitz and Zvi Lederman of Tel Aviv University."

Crying King David: Are the ruins found in Israel really his palace

David and Jonathan - just good friends.

The December 2010 edition of National Geographic magazine(David & Solomon Controversy - National Geographic Magazine) suggests that:

The Kingdom of David was quite possibly "just a little cow town."

But, it all "depends on which archaeologist you ask."

In National Geographic, Robert Draper writes:

"While the Bible says David and Solomon built the kingdom of Israel into a powerful and prestigious empire stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, from Damascus to the Negev, there's a slight problem - namely, that despite decades of searching, archaeologists had found no solid evidence that David or Solomon ever built anything."

King David and his shag.

Had found no solid evidence that David or Solomon ever built anything?

According to National geographic, Eilat Mazar works for two organizations "dedicated to the assertion of Israel's territorial rights."

In 2005, Eilat Mazar claimed she might have found the ruined remains of King David's palace.

According to National Geographic, Israeli archaeologist David Ilan of Hebrew Union College is among the many who doubt that Mazar has in fact found King David's palace.

"My gut tells me this is an eighth- or ninth-century building," he says, constructed a hundred years or more after Solomon died in 930 B.C.

National Geographic quotes Israel Finklestein.

Tel Aviv University's Israel Finkelstein is among those who point out that the so-called "Solomonic" buildings, excavated at Hazor, Gezer, and Megiddo, were constructed well after David and Solomon's time.

According to Finkelstein, King David's Jerusalem was little more than a "hill-country village."

David's kingdom would consist of "500 people with sticks in their hands shouting and cursing and spitting."


Most Israelis apparently were Khazars who converted to the Jewish religion. The Palestinians are the people most likely to have links to the Kingdom of David.

National Geographic has awarded grants to two archaeologists,Yosef Garfinkel and Thomas Levy.

National Geographic reports that, in the Elah Valley, where David allegedly slew Goliath, Hebrew University professor Yosef Garfinkel claims to have found the remains of a 'city' dating to the time that David reigned.

University of California, San Diego professor Thomas Levy has been excavating a 'copper-smelting operation', in an area linked to David's alleged enemies, the Edomites.

Levy dates one period of copper production to the tenth century B.C.

This was when, according to the Bible, the Edomites lived in the area.

But, scholars like Finkelstein state that Edom did not emerge until two centuries later.

Levy and Garfinkel support their claims with data including pottery remnants and radiocarbon dating of olive and date pits found at the sites.

David killed Goliath?

"Maybe Goliath never existed," Garfinkel tells National Geographic.

Garfinkel learnt about a nine foot high megalithic wall and began digging in 2008.

He found buildings which carbon-14 analysis dated to around 1000 B.C. He found bones from cattle, goats, sheep, and fish - but no pig bones.

This suggested Judaeans may have lived here.

A clay pottery object was found with writing that appears to be a proto-Canaanite script.

This suggested a tenth-century B.C. complex Judaean society of the sort which Finkelstein claimed did not exist.

If the Kingdom of David existed it was a very tiny place.

According to National Geographic, Yossi Garfinkel originally announced his conclusions "despite the fact that he had only four olive pits on which to base his dating, a single inscription of a highly ambiguous nature, and a mere 5 percent of his site excavated."

According to archaeologist David Ilan, "Yossi has an agenda - partly ideological, but also personal. He's a very smart and ambitious guy. Finkelstein's the big gorilla, and the young bucks think he's got a monopoly over biblical archaeology. So they want to dethrone him."

King David is important to Moslems, who call him Daoud, and to Jews and Christians.

Daniel Polisar is president of the Shalem Center, the Israeli research institute that helped fund Eilat Mazar's excavation work.

National Geographic quotes Polisar as saying: "You take David and his kingdom out of the book, and you have a different book.

"The narrative is no longer a historical work, but a work of fiction. And then the rest of the Bible is just a propagandistic effort to create something that never was. And if you can't find the evidence for it, then it probably didn't happen. That's why the stakes are so high."

According to national Geographic, the books of the Old Testament telling the story of David and Solomon were probably written at least 300 years after the event.

No other texts from that time exist to back up the story.

National Geographic points out that scholars have failed to provide proof that there really was an Abraham, a Moses, an Exodus or a conquest of Jericho.

Yigael Yadin, an Israeli, uncovered city gates at Hazor in the late 1950s.

He claimed the gates belonged to the tenth-century B.C. empire of Solomon.

Why? Because that was what it said in the First Book of Kings.

The First Book of Kings was added long after Solomon died in 930 B.C.

According to National geographic, unless new evidence emerges, we're left with tenth-century B.C. biblical world that Finkelstein first proposed in a 1996 paper.

That means no large Kingdom of David with fine buildings, but instead a collection of small kingdoms including Philistines, Moabites and Aramaeans.

What about the Palestinians?

East Jerusalem resident and archaeology professor Hani Nur el-Din is quoted by National Geographic as saying, "When I see Palestinian women making the traditional pottery from the early Bronze Age, when I smell the taboon bread baked in the same tradition as the fourth or fifth millennium B.C., this is the cultural DNA. In Palestine there's no written document, no historicity - but still, it's history."

Anyone seen the Kingdom of David?

There is a problem with carbon dating.

National Geographic quotes Eilat mazar as saying: "Carbon-14 doesn't help you solve all this controversy.

"You have the plus or minus" - a margin of error of about 40 years.

"You have different laboratories bringing different interpretations. You have debates about the whole C-14 issue."

Finkelstein says: "Think of the Bible the way you would a stratified archaeological site.

"Some of it was written in the eighth century B.C., some the seventh, and then going all the way to the second B.C. So 600 years of compilation. This doesn't mean that the story doesn't come from antiquity. But the reality presented in the story is a later reality. David, for example, is a historical figure. He did live in the tenth century B.C.

"I accept the descriptions of David as some sort of leader of an upheaval group, troublemakers who lived on the margins of society. But not the golden city of Jerusalem, not the description of a great empire in the time of Solomon. When the authors of the text describe that, they have in their eyes the reality of their own time, the Assyrian Empire.

"Now, Solomon. I think I destroyed Solomon, so to speak. Sorry for that! But take Solomon, dissect it. Take the great visit of the Queen of Sheba - an Arabian queen coming to visit, bringing all sorts of exotic commodities to Jerusalem.

"This is a story which is an impossibility to think about before 732 B.C., before the beginning of Arabian trade under Assyrian domination. Take the story of Solomon as the great, you know, trainer in horses and chariots and big armies and so on. The world behind Solomon is the world of the Assyrian century."

What about Tom Levy's copper mining?

Finkelstein says, "I don't buy that it's from the tenth century B.C. There's no way people lived on this site during production. The fire, the toxic fumes—forget it! Instead, look at the fortress of En Hazeva on our side of the Jordan River, built by the Assyrians on the main road to Edom.

"I see Tom's building as an eighth-century Assyrian fortress parallel to the other one. And look, at the end of the day, his is a marginal site. It's not a stratified city with many eras, like Megiddo and Tel Rehov. Taking a pile of slag and making it the center of the discussion of biblical history—forget it, no way, I reject this absolutely!"

What about Garfinkel's 'city'?

Finkelstein says: "Look, you'll never catch me saying, 'I've found one olive pit at a stratum in Megiddo, and this olive pit - which goes against hundreds of carbon-14 determinations - is going to decide the fate of Western civilization.' "

The writing found at the site? Probably Philistine.

According to National geographic, even if Mazar, Levy andGarfinkel can prove their findings, "this does not a glorious biblical dynasty make."

National geographic quotes Finkelstein as saying: "Look, when I'm doing research, I have to distinguish between the culture of David and the historical David.

"David is extremely important for my cultural identity.... I'm proud that this nobody from nowhere became the center of Western tradition."

The National Geographic does not seem particularly pro-Israel.

There is a belief that the original David was Egyptian.


posted by Anon @ 23:28   5 Comments