Question For Volgadon And Maklelan

[Damien the Leper]

This video is presented by a youtube user by the name of Evid3nc3. It concerns the History of God and its relationship to the Jewish tradition.

I wanted to know if this video is accurately portraying the origin of Jewish polytheism turned rigid monotheism.

Thanks.

[volgadon]

I'll take a look and post tommorow if I get my art history homework done.

[Damien the Leper]

I'll take a look and post tommorow if I get my art history homework done.

That would be greatly appreciated.

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

The ominous music and voiceover is pretty goofy, but most of the data seems fairly okay to me, even if it's spun a bit to sound like a "gotcha" moment for atheists (and I might quibble with the dating of Exodus). Nibley's been writing about this stuff for decades - The Circle and the Square, What is a Temple, the Expanding Gospel, the Babylonian Creation Myth, the Epic literature, etc., especially his utterly brilliant Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri, which shows the connections between Israelite religion and that of the Egyptians (and which should be required reading for every Latter-Day Saint, darnit). It's all completely fascinating - I've never understood the peeps who say that it somehow weakens faith just because it's "primitive myth" - if anything, it helps to confirm that the "primitive myths" have some historical value!

Latter-Day Saints are in a particularly good spot, in my opinion, since we've long believed that humans (male and female!) are Gods (plural!), that they can all take part in the Divine Council and "have seed" in the world to come (oh noez, polytheistic "fertility" Gods and Goddesses!), that the Bible is only correct insofar as it is translated correctly, that many plain and precious things have been lost from it, that scripture is not inerrant and can be edited (witness the Book of Mormon's compilers, and Joseph Smith with the D&C), that the testimony of different nations can run together, and that God remembers those pagan "heathens" just as much as Jew and Gentile.

Of course there is a ton of cross-over between ancient societies - Genesis itself tells us that the Canaanites are just another branch of the family, so naturally they (and many, many others) have similar "myths." It wasn't until everyone started jumping on the fashionable bandwagon of "philosophical monotheism" to impress their philosopher friends that the oldest "myths" were seen as "primitive" anyway. But Eliade and Frazer and Campbell and Nibley and Patai and Graves and Raglan and Santillana and Armstrong and ... well, a lot of people ... have been showing for over a century now that the idea that we can study a culture in isolation from the rest of the world is simply nonsense. Cross-cultural studies and diffusionism FTW!

(I'd also recommend Harriet Lutzky's work on 'Shadday' as a Goddess Epithet for Asherah, which would make the early patriarchs even more blasphemous. *grin* Also see Daniel Peterson's brilliant Nephi and his Asherah, Ye Are Gods, and Allison Von Feldt's Does God Have a Wife?, and all of Kevin Christensen's work on the Deuteronomic Reforms and Margaret Barker's work, such as What Did King Josiah Reform?.)

[maklelan]

This video is presented by a youtube user by the name of Evid3nc3. It concerns the History of God and its relationship to the Jewish tradition.

I wanted to know if this video is accurately portraying the origin of Jewish polytheism turned rigid monotheism.

Thanks.

I can give a brief point by point analysis:

The description of Enuma Elish is a little manipulative. It's being massaged into a shape more closely related to the Bible in order to make it sound like it is responsible for the salient aspects of the biblical account of creation. Those details are not quite as convenient for the narrator as he would like, although Genesis is definitely interacting with Enuma Elish in parts (tehom, the Hebrew word for "depths," for instance, is cognate with Tiamat). A good translation can be found here, and here are the portions relevant to the creation of the heavens and the earth:

1 When the heavens above did not exist,

2 And earth beneath had not come into being—

3 There was Apsû, the first in order, their begetter,

4 And demiurge Tia-mat, who gave birth to them all;

5 They had mingled their waters together

6 Before meadow-land had coalesced and reed-bed was to he found —

7 When not one of the gods had been formed

8 Or had come into being, when no destinies had been decreed,

9 The gods were created within them:

10 Lah(mu and Lah(amu were formed and came into being. . .

93 Tia-mat and Marduk, the sage of the gods, came together,

94 Joining in strife, drawing near to battle.

95 Be-l spread out his net and enmeshed her;

96 He let loose the Evil Wind, the rear guard, in her face.

97 Tia-mat opened her mouth to swallow it,

98 She let the Evil Wind in so that she could not close her lips.

99 The fierce winds weighed down her belly,

100 Her inwards were distended and she opened her mouth wide.

101 He let fly an arrow and pierced her belly,

102 He tore open her entrails and slit her inwards,

103 He bound her and extinguished her life,

104 He threw down her corpse and stood on it.

105 After he had killed Tia-mat, the leader,

106 Her assembly dispersed, her host scattered.

107 Her divine aides, who went beside her,

108 In trembling and fear beat a retreat.

109 . . . . to save their lives,

110 But they were completely surrounded, unable to escape. . .

135 Be-l rested, surveying the corpse,

136 In order to divide the lump by a clever scheme.

137 He split her into two like a dried fish:

138 One half of her he set up and stretched out as the heavens.

139 He stretched the skin and appointed a watch

140 With the instruction not to let her waters escape.

141 He crossed over the heavens, surveyed the celestial parts,

142 And adjusted them to match the Apsû, Nudimmud's abode.

143 Be-l measured the shape of the Apsû

144 And set up Ešarra, a replica of Ešgalla.

145 In Ešgalla, Ešarra which he had built, and the heavens,

146 He settled in their shrines Anu, Enlil, and Ea. . .

Tablet V

1 He fashioned heavenly stations for the great gods,

2 And set up constellations, the patterns of the stars.

3 He appointed the year, marked off divisions,

4 And set up three stars each for the twelve months.

5 After he had organized the year,

6 He established the heavenly station of Ne-beru to fix the stars' intervals.

7 That none should transgress or be slothful

8 He fixed the heavenly stations of Enlil and Ea with it.

9 Gates he opened on both sides,

10 And put strong bolts at the left and the right.

11 He placed the heights (of heaven) in her (Tia-mat's) belly,

12 He created Nannar, entrusting to him the night.

13 He appointed him as the jewel of the night to fix the days . . .

Tablet VI

25 Let him who instigated warfare be given up

26 That I may lay his punishment on him; but you sit and rest.

27 The Igigi, the great gods, answered him,

28 That is, Lugaldimmerankia, the counsellor of the gods, the lord,

29 "Qingu is the one who instigated warfare,

30 Who made Tia-mat rebel and set battle in motion."

31 They bound him, holding him before Ea,

32 They inflicted the penalty on him and severed his blood-vessels.

33 From his blood he (Ea) created mankind,

34 On whom he imposed the service of the gods, and set the gods free.

35 After the wise Ea had created mankind

36 And had imposed the service of the gods upon them—

37 That task is beyond comprehension

38 For Nudimmud performed the creation with the skill of Marduk—

39 King Marduk divided the gods,

40 All the Anunnaki into upper and lower groups.

41 He assigned 300 in the heavens to guard the decrees of Anu

42 And appointed them as a guard.

43 Next he arranged the organization of the netherworld.

44 In heaven and netherworld he stationed 600 gods. . .

Next, on Ugarit, the narration is simply wrong. There was no deity named "El Elyon" at Ugarit. That combined name exists nowhere outside the Hebrew Bible. El and Elyon are attested as separate deities in some inscriptions, but at Ugarit it was Baal, not El, who was called Ilyan, or "Most High." Later the narrator calls El Shaddai one of the names of the Canaanite El Elyon, which is also mistaken. There is no "El Shaddai" outside of the Bible. Scholars aren't even sure what Shaddai means, but the strongest theories, in my opinion, hold that it is related to the words "fields" or "mountains."

It is also incorrect in saying that the culture of Israel shows no sign of existence at 1200 BCE. The Merneptah Stele, which dates to around 1209 BCE, explicitly mentions Israel as a people of Canaan that was putatively destroyed by the Egyptian king. Another fragmentary text from Egypt from two centuries earlier has just recently (as in, last week) been suggested to also carry the name "Israel" (see here).

The discussion of J and E and so on comes from a specific version of a theory of Pentateuchal composition called the Documentary Hypothesis. While I am convinced there is quite a bit of truth to the idea that there are literary seams that evince stages of composition and compilation, the rather zealous positivism of the earlier iterations of JEDP (from which this video draws) are relics of the past. The theories with the most traction these days are less cavalier with the identification of sources, and prefer to separate the sources into priestly strands and non-priestly strands.

The narrator is incorrect about Jacob climbing to the top of a ladder that reaches to heaven. The text states that he saw a ladder that reached to heaven and had angels going up and down. The narrator keeps referring to the deity of Jacob's pericope as "El Elyon," but that's not the name for God used in that story. In fact, the name "El Elyon" appears only five times in the entire Hebrew Bible (Gen 14:18, 19, 20, 22; Ps 78:35). The narrator is discussing Israelites conflating and confusing deities, but the narrator himself is doing it too. His comment that the worship of El Elyon fades once we enter Exodus is manipulative, since the name actually only appears in chapter 14 of Genesis and once in the Psalms. At the same time, the names El and Elyon appear numerous times on their own elsewhere in the text (El appears 236 times in the Hebrew Bible, and Elyon appears 53 times).

Elohim is not a Canaanite word, and it does not at all indicate anything like "primary god." It is a generic word for "deity" (see my most recent blog post!). It is a somewhat unique plural form of the word El, which is found in Canaanite texts. There is an occurrence or two of that plural form in the Ugaritic texts, but they are insignificant. The notion that this term only makes sense if Jacob believed El was just one god of many, and was committing to him, is nonsensical, although I think it's obvious Jacob did believe that many gods existed.

The narrator goes on to say that the workers who built the pyramids were well paid Egyptian citizens who were taken care of and given honorable burials, but this is a rather confident and idealized description of what is actually a quite fuzzy picture. They were probably not expendable slaves, but they were also not exactly middle-class citizens. I do agree that there is no evidence of Israelite slavery there or the unilateral enslavement of an entire race.

The idea that the Israelites no longer had to worry about fighting wars after settling in Syria-Palestine is ludicrous. They were continually fighting their neighbors, both local and more distant. It is at this point, though, that we get an idea of where this author is getting his information. It's coming from Karen Armstrong's A History of God, a New York Times bestseller originally published in 1993 that is a popularly-angled survey based on rather superficial forays into biblical scholarship. Most of the scholarship it cites dates from the 40s to the 70s.

Yahweh did not start off as the equivalent of the Greek god Ares. He started off as a storm deity. He later subsumed the roles of the sun god and the high god. The storm god was just conceptualized as a warrior, given the violent nature of the phenomena associated with inclement weather. His discussion of the Ta'anach cult stand is ridiculous. It does not represent four deities, it represents two deities: Yhwh and Asherah. The bottom and third registers show different conceptualizations of Ahserah, and the second and top registers show different conceptualizations of Yhwh.

His discussion of the eighth century prophets s also kinda goofy. Hosea was suffering through marriage problems? He wasn't just using an extended metaphor?

His broad points about Deuteronomy being a late addition to the Pentateuch are accurate, although the details are not all precise in the narration. The map that shows Marduk and Asherah surrounding the tiny land of Israel is pure fabrication.

I agree with the scholarship regarding Deutero-Isaiah, but the narration is off by quite a bit (it was not 600 BCE, but closer to 530 BCE), and I disagree that monotheism begins with Deutero-Isaiah. I place it in the Greco-Roman period, with the demotion of the sons of God to angelic status.

Edited January 26, 2012 by maklelan

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

Or that. Maklelan wins the thread.

[Damien the Leper]

I can give a brief point by point analysis:

The description of Enuma Elish is a little manipulative. It's being massaged into a shape more closely related to the Bible in order to make it sound like it is responsible for the salient aspects of the biblical account of creation. Those details are not quite as convenient for the narrator as he would like, although Genesis is definitely interacting with Enuma Elish in parts (tehom, the Hebrew word for "depths," for instance, is cognate with Tiamat). A good translation can be found here, and here are the portions relevant to the creation of the heavens and the earth:

[font=verdana,

Next, on Ugarit, the narration is simply wrong. There was no deity named "El Elyon" at Ugarit. That combined name exists nowhere outside the Hebrew Bible. El and Elyon are attested as separate deities in some inscriptions, but at Ugarit it was Baal, not El, who was called Ilyan, or "Most High." Later the narrator calls El Shaddai one of the names of the Canaanite El Elyon, which is also mistaken. There is no "El Shaddai" outside of the Bible. Scholars aren't even sure what Shaddai means, but the strongest theories, in my opinion, hold that it is related to the words "fields" or "mountains."

It is also incorrect in saying that the culture of Israel shows no sign of existence at 1200 BCE. The Merneptah Stele, which dates to around 1209 BCE, explicitly mentions Israel as a people of Canaan that was putatively destroyed by the Egyptian king. Another fragmentary text from Egypt from two centuries earlier has just recently (as in, last week) been suggested to also carry the name "Israel" (see here).

The discussion of J and E and so on comes from a specific version of a theory of Pentateuchal composition called the Documentary Hypothesis. While I am convinced there is quite a bit of truth to the idea that there are literary seams that evince stages of composition and compilation, the rather zealous positivism of the earlier iterations of JEDP (from which this video draws) are relics of the past. The theories with the most traction these days are less cavalier with the identification of sources, and prefer to separate the sources into priestly strands and non-priestly strands.

The narrator is incorrect about Jacob climbing to the top of a ladder that reaches to heaven. The text states that he saw a ladder that reached to heaven and had angels going up and down. The narrator keeps referring to the deity of Jacob's pericope as "El Elyon," but that's not the name for God used in that story. In fact, the name "El Elyon" appears only five times in the entire Hebrew Bible (Gen 14:18, 19, 20, 22; Ps 78:35). The narrator is discussing Israelites conflating and confusing deities, but the narrator himself is doing it too. His comment that the worship of El Elyon fades once we enter Exodus is manipulative, since the name actually only appears in chapter 14 of Genesis and once in the Psalms. At the same time, the names El and Elyon appear numerous times on their own elsewhere in the text (El appears 236 times in the Hebrew Bible, and Elyon appears 53 times).

Elohim is not a Canaanite word, and it does not at all indicate anything like "primary god." It is a generic word for "deity" (see my most recent blog post!). It is a somewhat unique plural form of the word El, which is found in Canaanite texts. There is an occurrence or two of that plural form in the Ugaritic texts, but they are insignificant. The notion that this term only makes sense if Jacob believed El was just one god of many, and was committing to him, is nonsensical, although I think it's obvious Jacob did believe that many gods existed.

The narrator goes on to say that the workers who built the pyramids were well paid Egyptian citizens who were taken care of and given honorable burials, but this is a rather confident and idealized description of what is actually a quite fuzzy picture. They were probably not expendable slaves, but they were also not exactly middle-class citizens. I do agree that there is no evidence of Israelite slavery there or the unilateral enslavement of an entire race.

The idea that the Israelites no longer had to worry about fighting wars after settling in Syria-Palestine is ludicrous. They were continually fighting their neighbors, both local and more distant. It is at this point, though, that we get an idea of where this author is getting his information. It's coming from Karen Armstrong's A History of God, a New York Times bestseller originally published in 1993 that is a popularly-angled survey based on rather superficial forays into biblical scholarship. Most of the scholarship it cites dates from the 40s to the 70s.

Yahweh did not start off as the equivalent of the Greek god Ares. He started off as a storm deity. He later subsumed the roles of the sun god and the high god. The storm god was just conceptualized as a warrior, given the violent nature of the phenomena associated with inclement weather. His discussion of the Ta'anach cult stand is ridiculous. It does not represent four deities, it represents two deities: Yhwh and Asherah. The bottom and third registers show different conceptualizations of Ahserah, and the second and top registers show different conceptualizations of Yhwh.

His discussion of the eighth century prophets s also kinda goofy. Hosea was suffering through marriage problems? He wasn't just using an extended metaphor?

His broad points about Deuteronomy being a late addition to the Pentateuch are accurate, although the details are not all precise in the narration. The map that shows Marduk and Asherah surrounding the tiny land of Israel is pure fabrication.

I agree with the scholarship regarding Deutero-Isaiah, but the narration is off by quite a bit (it was not 600 BCE, but closer to 530 BCE), and I disagree that monotheism begins with Deutero-Isaiah. I place it in the Greco-Roman period, with the demotion of the sons of God to angelic status.

Thanks for the information and your participation, Maklelan.

First, what good accessible resources would you recommend for for studying the origins of Judaism and its connections to polytheism?

Secondly, what consequences does the history of the Jewish formation of God render to the truth claims of the New Testament? I ask this because if the history of God is problematic in the OT then that must have some weight on the NT and those problems are carried over? Or would it be more appropriate to separate the Testaments?

I guess I'm just confused on how to approach the concept of God and whether to approach God with the OT and NT collectively or separately.

[maklelan]

Thanks for the information and your participation, Maklelan.

First, what good accessible resources would you recommend for for studying the origins of Judaism and its connections to polytheism?

The second edition of Mark Smith's book The Early History of God is good, as is The Origins of Biblical Monotheism. An edited volume called Religious Diversity in Early Israel and Judah has a lot of discussion of early Israelite religion. Mike Heiser's dissertation on the divine council is also informative, and it's available online (here). So is a pre-pub version of Larry Hurtado's monotheism article from the recent Oxford Handbook for the Dead Sea Scrolls (word doc), and Peter Hayman's 1991 article on monotheism (here). There are also some good blog discussions, such as here, here, here, and here.

Secondly, what consequences does the history of the Jewish formation of God render to the truth claims of the New Testament? I ask this because if the history of God is problematic in the OT then that must have some weight on the NT and those problems are carried over? Or would it be more appropriate to separate the Testaments?

The two testaments are products of different cultures and different religious outlooks. I believe they both clearly show the influence of contemporary culture and ideologies, just as I believe the Book of Mormon does, but the relevance for a believer is really going to come down to their own experience with, and beliefs about, what religion and beliefs and God should be.

I guess I'm just confused on how to approach the concept of God and whether to approach God with the OT and NT collectively or separately.

I personally approach them quite separately. The NT has the OT in its background, and it clearly appeals to that textual heritage throughout, but I think it's also a product of its own socio-religious worldviews, and it reinterprets much of the OT for its own purposes (although those purposes are derivative of the ideologies of the Judaism of the time period).

[LeSellers]

I personally approach them quite separately. The NT has the OT in its background, and it clearly appeals to that textual heritage throughout, but I think it's also a product of its own socio-religious worldviews, and it reinterprets much of the OT for its own purposes (although those purposes are derivative of the ideologies of the Judaism of the time period).

It's for the very reasons you outline that I cannot treat them separately.

All I Christians, Paul and Peter, Aquila and Timothy, saw what we call the New Testament as nothing more than an extension of the scriptures they already had: what we call the Old Testament. At least that's what John Miller says in How the Bible Came to Be. His argument makes a lot of sense.

One reason we moderns tend to separate them (apart from the artificial designations added to the Bible as we have it) is that the books in the Old Testament were re-arranged by non-Jewish theologians. The original, Hebrew order would have made the "transition" to the New Testament far less abrupt than it stands now.

Lehi

Edited January 26, 2012 by LeSellers

[Damien the Leper]

Would you recommend maintaining an understanding of the NT from a Greco-Roman context and not so much as a revolutionizing of an older faith heritage and paradigm?

[maklelan]

Would you recommend maintaining an understanding of the NT from a Greco-Roman context and not so much as a revolutionizing of an older faith heritage and paradigm?

I think it has to be viewed as both. All religions that have histories have to negotiate between their sacred past and the realities of their present. Usually what happens is the community finds ways to identify with whatever aspects of that sacred past it can. Those events or ideologies that have the most utility for contemporary expediencies become more salient for that community. Those that do not, or that problematize the contemporary positions, will be marginalized or excised. The identification of the sons of God with angels in the Greco-Roman period is an example of having to acknowledge the ideologies of the past, but making them fit the needs of the present. In Mormonism, an example of the submission of the past to the expediencies of the present is the marginalization and rejection of Adam-God.

[maklelan]

It's for the very reasons you outline that I cannot treat them separately.

All I Christians, Paul and Peter, Aquila and Timothy, saw what we call the New Testament as nothing more than an extension of the scriptures they already had: what we call the Old Testament. At least that's what John Miller says in How the Bible Came to Be. His argument makes a lot of sense.

One reason we moderns tend to separate them (apart from the artificial designations added to the Bible as we have it) is that the books in the Old Testament were re-arranged by non-Jewish theologians. The original, Hebrew order would have made the "transition" to the New Testament far less abrupt than it stands now.

Lehi

I disagree that the Hebrew order lends itself to continuity with the New Testament. The Christian arrangement of the Old Testament is designed specifically to end the Old Testament with the Jewish vision of the return of Elijah, a messianic prophecy. This is an intentional segue into the New Testament, which begins with the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David. The Hebrew order ends with the description of the fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy regarding Israel's exile and subsequent return to Jerusalem. It thus ends with an appeal to Jewish nationalism.

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

I disagree that the Hebrew order lends itself to continuity with the New Testament. The Christian arrangement of the Old Testament is designed specifically to end the Old Testament with the Jewish vision of the return of Elijah, a messianic prophecy. This is an intentional segue into the New Testament, which begins with the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David. The Hebrew order ends with the description of the fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy regarding Israel's exile and subsequent return to Jerusalem. It thus ends with an appeal to Jewish nationalism.

You know, I never really thought of this that much, but I think your analysis is spot on.

[volgadon]

I really don't have much to say that Maklelan didn't cover.

[Damien the Leper]

Volgadon and Maklelan:

You make me rethink specializing in NT studies. I am more and more fascinated by the Hebrew Bible and Jewish studies the more I read posts by you both. Thank you for insightful inspiration.

[maklelan]

Volgadon and Maklelan:

You make me rethink specializing in NT studies. I am more and more fascinated by the Hebrew Bible and Jewish studies the more I read posts by you both. Thank you for insightful inspiration.

I was moving toward early Christianity and patristics as an undergrad, but I luckily saw the light and am loving Hebrew Bible and early Judaism.

[Robert F. Smith]

It's for the very reasons you outline that I cannot treat them separately.

It is true, Lehi, that the early Christian Church eventually extended the Septuagint to include the NT canon, including the apocrypha, and they did see them as a continuum.

All I Christians, Paul and Peter, Aquila and Timothy, saw what we call the New Testament as nothing more than an extension of the scriptures they already had: what we call the Old Testament. At least that's what John Miller says in How the Bible Came to Be. His argument makes a lot of sense.

However, it is not true that these particular early Christians had any conception of a NT. Their Bible was the Septuagint (LXX), buttressed and supplemented with Aramaic targums, and including a variety of OT apocrypha and pseudepigrapha (the Book of Enoch, for example, has remained canonical for the Ethiopic Jews and Christians even into the present).

Centuries passed before the NT canon took authoritative form.

Experts such as Amy-Jill Levine have been saying for years that, in order to understand Jesus and early Christianity, one must have a sound understanding of the Judaism of late antiquity. It would also greatly aid in such understanding to include study of the Qumran scrolls, since they provide the closest parallels to early Christianity. In addition, it might help to know that Qaraism (the source of our Massoretic Hebrew Bible) is directly descended from the form of Judaism practiced at Qumran.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Robert F. Smith

[volgadon]

In addition, it might help to know that Qaraism (the source of our Massoretic Hebrew Bible) is directly descended from the form of Judaism practiced at Qumran.

Influenced by, but not directly descended from Qumran.

[Robert F. Smith]

Influenced by, but not directly descended from Qumran.

Beseder gamur.

[volgadon]

Beseder gamur.

The reason I say this is that Karaite evidence doesn't back this up. The Karaite al-Qirqisani gives a history of the Zadokites, showing them as forerunners to Anan b. David, but he never claims that they are one and the same. The Karaites also rejected many salient features of Qumran belief, such as their Enoch traditions. There are also other groups, such as the Mourners for ZIon, which are far more likely progenitors of Karaism.

Edited January 30, 2012 by volgadon

[inquiringmind]

It is also incorrect in saying that the culture of Israel shows no sign of existence at 1200 BCE. The Merneptah Stele, which dates to around 1209 BCE, explicitly mentions Israel as a people of Canaan that was putatively destroyed by the Egyptian king. Another fragmentary text from Egypt from two centuries earlier has just recently (as in, last week) been suggested to also carry the name "Israel" (see here).

That is VERY interesting.

If an Egyptian text dating from the 14th century B.C. mentions Israel as a nation, wouldn't the Exodus have had to have occurred even earlier?

And wouldn't that confirm the revised chronologies of David Rohl, Peter James, and others?

What do you think of this?

Edited January 31, 2012 by inquiringmind

[Robert F. Smith]

That is VERY interesting.

If an Egyptian text dating from the 14th century B.C. mentions Israel as a nation, wouldn't the Exodus have had to have occurred even earlier?

And wouldn't that confirm the revised chronologies of David Rohl, Peter James, and others?

What do you think of this?

Setterfield's chronology is very interesting, and he understands the differences among the various versions of the Bible. However, he does go to interpretive extremes in the ante-Diluvian era. But, since that is not our primary interest here, I will simply say that of course the Exodus must have occurred earlier -- not because of the new inscription, but for historical and archeological reasons which I detail in my 2010 paper on Moses here: http://www.scribd.com/lighthorseharry/d/51104640-Moses-Our-Teacher-Moshe-Rabbenu .

[Robert F. Smith]

The reason I say this is that Karaite evidence doesn't back this up. The Karaite al-Qirqisani gives a history of the Zadokites, showing them as forerunners to Anan b. David, but he never claims that they are one and the same. The Karaites also rejected many salient features of Qumran belief, such as their Enoch traditions. There are also other groups, such as the Mourners for ZIon, which are far more likely progenitors of Karaism.

I was thinking of the systematic arguments of Robert Eisenman (one of my teachers). However, since the scholarly community has marginalized him, I won't insist on that interpretation.