Ebionite
Well-Known Member
Evaluation of proof is typically associated with the role of judge. In a forum like this readers who are not participants in the argument are the best judges, not the participants themselves.^ speaks volumes
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What Was Israel's Ancient Belief?
- Thread starter Rival
- Start date
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
Ebionite
Well-Known Member
There is a maxim of law that nobody can be the judge in their own case. A judge should be impartial, and you can't be impartial if you have an interest in the outcome of the dispute.
Bharat Jhunjhunwala
TruthPrevails
It depends upon what we mean by ancient at the time of the prophet Abraham the main belief was there is one God, as far as I understand there was no exclusivity or division with other people. At the time of the prophet, Moses’ situation changed, and the whole idea that the Jews were chosen people was created mainly because during the Exodus the Hebrews had to confront a lot of opposition from lands that they had gone into and in response to this it was necessary to keep the Hebrew people together. Then later after the time of Joshua, there was a further change in the ancient beliefs. Therefore, it depends upon what we mean by ancient.
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
"Hebrew"
I googled and got the following from my search/research:
- "-Moses---------in the mid-late 13th century B.C."
- What time Tanakh was written and in what language
- Biblical, or Classical, Hebrew, until about the 3rd century BCE, in which most of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is written.
- In the Middle Ages, Jewish scribes produced the Masoretic Text, which became the authoritative version of the Tanakh. Ancient Hebrew was written without vowels ...
- What times the vowels put on the TanakhVowel and cantillation marks were added to the older consonantal layer of the Bible between 600 CE and the beginning of the 10th century. The scholars who preserved the pronunciation of the Bibles were known as the Masoretes.
Moses - Wikipedia
Hebrew Bible - Wikipedia
Could Moses Write Hebrew & What Language Could Moses Speak | The Bart Ehrman Blog
So, who wrote the Tanakh, please, right; and who wrote the Masoretic Bible, right, please?
Right?
Regards
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
Ebionite
Well-Known Member
As much as anyone, I guess. The common law draws from the judeo-christian tradition, which connects the role of the judge with the role of the prophet.
Ehav4Ever
Well-Known Member
Just a bit of clarification, even Modern Hebrew, like all phases of Hebrew throughout history, is written w/o vowels most of the time. The vast majority of Hebrew speakers learn how to read Hebrew w/o vowels. The vast majority of books, newspapers, etc. in modern Hebrew is written w/o vowels. See below examples.
Ehav4Ever
Well-Known Member
Also, be aware that there is no "the Masoretic text" i.e. there is no one text when talking about what was produced due to the Masorites. It is correct to state "Masoretic texts" in the plural. Also, there is no one Masoretic Text that is the "authorative version" of the Tanakh. Literially, any copy of the Tanakh is authorative if it is proven to come from a valid Jewish source. A Tanakh w/o vowels is just as authorative as one with vowels if it is derived/copied from a valid source text from an ancient Jewish community.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
Why would you say that, please right?
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
paarsurrey said:
And Moses did not know the Hebrew language, I understand, please, right?
Could Moses Write Hebrew & What Language Could Moses Speak | The Bart Ehrman Blog
Regards
_______________________
"Moses probably lived in the palace with his mother (Pharaoh's daughter), Pharaoh, and the rest of his family, for about 35 years. We can understand from this conjecture, that Moses had access to the cream of everything in Egypt. Being part of the Royal Family, if he rode out on a chariot, the people on the street bowed. He would have had the best. If Moses traveled down the Nile by barge, it was among the finest in Egypt."
And Moses did not know the Hebrew language, I understand, please, right?
Moses lived in the palace with wife of Pharaoh , so where he could learn the Hebrew, please, right?
Could Moses Write Hebrew & What Language Could Moses Speak | The Bart Ehrman Blog
Regards
_______________________
"Moses probably lived in the palace with his mother (Pharaoh's daughter), Pharaoh, and the rest of his family, for about 35 years. We can understand from this conjecture, that Moses had access to the cream of everything in Egypt. Being part of the Royal Family, if he rode out on a chariot, the people on the street bowed. He would have had the best. If Moses traveled down the Nile by barge, it was among the finest in Egypt."
What the Bible says about Moses as Part of Royal Family
Forty years had passed since Exodus 1, and Moses is now 40 years old. We do not know a great many specifics about his life, but there are a few …
www.bibletools.org
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IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
I clicked on your link, and it was an extremely long Blog. First, blogs are not adequate websites to use as evidence. Second, contrary to rumor, I cannot read your mind -- there is literally no way I can read this entire long writing and figure out what part you want me to see. What you need to do is two things.
1. Find a quality historical source, not a a blog.
2. QUOTE the part you want me to see.
Here are some of the complicating factors in trying to answer your question.
1. Languages don't magically appear one day. They evolve. The modern Hebrew that is spoken today is different from the Hebrew 2000 years ago, which is different from Paleo-Hebrew. The truth is, Hebrew grew out of an earlier language, which scholars call Proto-Semitic, the original language from which all the Semitic languages evolved. Proto-Semitic was spoken about 4500 BCE. From there it evolved to what linguists call Proto-Canaanite, and from there to Early Northwest Semitic, which then became Hebrew sometime in the second millennium BCE.
2. The other difficulty is the lack of manuscripts. Probably the oldest manuscript we have from that area is the Proto-Sinaitic script, a hieroglyphic sort of text that evolved from Egyptian, and is thought to have been used by Canaanite workers in Egyptian mines. This basically evolved into The Proto-Canaanite alphabet, which then became the Phoenician alphabet, which was adopted by the Israelites . We DO have a few fragments of manuscripts in Paleo-Hebrew, but not many, and certainly not whole books. Sadly, when you go this far back into history, the picking just get very slim. It doesn't mean books were not written, it just means they didn't survive.
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A couple of extra credit questions might be:
- When can we begin to speak of "Hebrew people"?
- What can we infer from the Elephantine papyri and ostraca?
Bharat Jhunjhunwala
TruthPrevails
With due regards you are not answered my question. The op was, what was the Israel’s ancient believes? How these have been carried to the present day, you have very correctly pointed out but that does not answer what was their believes. My basic point is that we have to re-understand the ancient believe at the time of Abraham and distinguish them from the ancient believes at the time of Moses. Abraham was the prophet who gave the message of one God and he was open to every human being whereas Moses was restricted to the Israelis. So, that is the question we need to addressed."Hebrew"
I googled and got the following from my search/research:
- "-Moses---------in the mid-late 13th century B.C."
- What time Tanakh was written and in what language
- Biblical, or Classical, Hebrew, until about the 3rd century BCE, in which most of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is written.
- In the Middle Ages, Jewish scribes produced the Masoretic Text, which became the authoritative version of the Tanakh. Ancient Hebrew was written without vowels ...
- What times the vowels put on the TanakhVowel and cantillation marks were added to the older consonantal layer of the Bible between 600 CE and the beginning of the 10th century. The scholars who preserved the pronunciation of the Bibles were known as the Masoretes.
Moses - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
And Moses did not know the Hebrew language, I understand, please, right?Hebrew Bible - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Could Moses Write Hebrew & What Language Could Moses Speak | The Bart Ehrman Blog
So, who wrote the Tanakh, please, right; and who wrote the Masoretic Bible, right, please?
Right?
Regards
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
This is why I so appreciate your posts.
Thanks.
The Elephantine community is an instructive conundrum.
Quoting Wright:
The habits, laws, and religious behaviors of the Elephantine community differ starkly from biblical teachings. In fact, some of their most common practices are precisely those that many biblical books proscribe most fervently: they work on the Sabbath; the priests are engaged in intermarriage with outsiders; there is a temple to Yhwh (or "Yahu"); the community makes regular contributions to this deity in addition to a number of other deities (Anat-Bethel and Ashim-Bethel); and Yhwh/Yahu appears to have a wife (her name is Anat-Yahu).
What makes these facts even more shocking is that the Jews of Elephantine maintained close relations with the homeland. When their leaders had questions about cultic practices, or when the needed support for their communal affairs, they wrote to the priestly and lay authorities in both Jerusalem and Samaria. From what we can piece together, the responses from these authorities surprisingly never condemned the community's worship of Anat-Yahu or their labors on the Sabbath. This is therefore not a case of a diasporic community backsliding from "orthodoxy" and embracing a syncretistic form of "paganism," as some scholars claim.
Literacy is also not the issue. Many at Elephantine could read and write, reflecting a wider trend throughout the Persian Empire. The cosmopolitan literature they read included the widely transmitted Proverbs of Ahiqar and the famous Behistun Inscription io King Darius. However, all their texts are in Aramaic, not Hebrew. And closely connected to this fact is a more obvious, yet all the more astounding, one: the biblical writings were not available on this island in the Nile. In fact, no one there seems even to know of their existence, nor do the leaders in Israel ever refer to them!
Interesting, yes?
paarsurrey
Veteran Member
Our @RabbiO with love.
Excerpt from one's link:
“scribes who composed the Bible”
So, Moses (knew little of Hebrews , the scholars say) did not and could not compose/author, it were the Scribes who have been doing it, right, please?!
Regards
___________________________
"If Moses was primarily brought up in the ways of the Egyptians, how did he know Hebrew to speak to the children of Israel and how did he know how to write Hebrew in reference to the law of Moses?
Source: “At this time Moses was born, and was well pleasing to God; and he was brought up in his father’s house for three months.But when he was set out, Pharaoh’s daughter took him away and brought him up as her own son. And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds."
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My reasonably informed opinion is that the Tanakh is the result of scribal activity mostly during the Persian period.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
Your original question was:
"And Moses did not know the Hebrew language, I understand, please, right?"
I addressed two issues that complicate this question: the fact that languages evolves over time, and the fact that the written language evolves over time.
A third complicating factor is the unanswerable question of whether Moses was a historical person, a legend based on a real guy but embellished, or a completely fictitious person who is simply part of an Origin Story on par with Romulus and Remus of Rome. Logically, I would think that the beginnings of Jewish law had to be written down by SOMEONE, and I think of that someone as Moses. However, it needs to be said there simply is no archeological remains or texts dating to that time that affirm that Moses is historical.
The Quran of course was written over a thousand years later, and so has absolutely no reliability as a historical source regarding Moses..
The texts of the Torah, which have at least four authors if not more, were redacted and edited over time, and did not reach their final form until the post-exile period, around the 5th century BCE. It was only at that time that their importance to the Jewish people became clear to us, and from that time forward, the utmost caution was taken to accurately copy that version. This is why the Torah we have today is almost exactly the same as at that time.
In general, the Tanakh can divided into those books which depict the Bronze Age, and those which depict the Iron age. Since the texts were written in the Iron Age, it is not surprising that many of the people and events depicted can be verified by sources outside the Bible. The problem arises with the Bronze Age stories -- there simply is not corroborating evidence. This is a very strong argument that these Bronze Age stories, including the one about Moses, were based entirely on stories orally passed on, and are simply not a source for actual history.
Do you see how it is kind of impossible to answer the question of whether Moses knew Hebrew, when we don't even know whether he existed or not?
Bharat Jhunjhunwala
TruthPrevails
I agree with you that the Torah was written around 700-500 BCE. However, I believe that the Torah is an inspired text and one can looked into the past through inspiration. Off course this is not absolute proof and the inspiration can be wrong but unless proven otherwise we should take it as a face value and look at it. Now the fact that there was four author and that it was written 1000 year after Moses, does not reduced the correctness of the Torah unless it is proven otherwise. My own study is that fundamentally what Moses said is correct including the narrative of Genesis and the Exodus. The problem is that the scholars have been looking for evidence for these events in West Asia whereas the origin lies in Indus Valley. Once we start looking for the Indus Valley many of such doubts and questions evaporates into thin air.
Whether Moses knew Hebrew or not off course cannot be answered but there is evidence that the script of the North-West Semitic and old Hebrew has about 17 out of 22 signs exactly parallel with the Indus Valley. Therefore, we should in the first instance assume that the Moses knew the language which was simultaneously of the Indus Valley as well as the old Hebrew.