News:

Welcome to our site!

Main Menu

Robert Price: The OT Is A Pile Of Shit

Started by Minimalist, December 30, 2018, 01:52:20 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Minimalist

Back to the point:

QuoteThe very existence of King David is fully as dubious as that of King Arthur. It’s not that such an epic hero couldn’t have existed in reality. After all, there’s Alexander the Great. The trouble is that no trace remains of David’s palace or even of Jerusalem as a royal city. 101 So what was the purpose or the motive for the creation of David’s epic? Here’s a speculation: I wonder if the whole business was a fiction designed to enhance the credentials of Zerubbabel, the Jewish governor under the Persian Empire, who prided himself on his belonging to the house of David (Ezra 5: 2; Hagg. 1: 1; 2: 21-23; 4: 6-10). 102 I’m suggesting that he (and possibly other descendants of some nondescript man named David) fabricated an epic starring not the “David of history” (whoever he might have been) but the “David of faith,” i.e., of propaganda, just as the Roman historian Livy made the mythic hero Aeneas, heroic refugee from Troy, the progenitor of the house of Iulus, from which Julius Caesar sprang. 103 But there is reason to think there had never been any historical David. The name means “Beloved,” a divine epithet. 104 It was applied to the David character as God’s favorite, as if he had been named (by the author, not by his parents) in view of his narrative role, which he probably was. 105 David would seem to be another case of an ancient deity being reduced to a legendary hero. 106 But couldn’t parents name their son “David” to mark their love for their infant? Sure. But there is no one else with the name David in the Bible, implying it was not considered an appropriate name for mortal man.

Price, Robert M.. Holy Fable: The Old Testament Undistorted by Faith (p. 118). Tellectual Press. Kindle Edition.
The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails.

-- H. L. Mencken

Baruch

Correct.  King David is legendary.  There is evidence of "house of David" .. but that isn't the only way it reads, if you read Hebrew.  David = Beloved.  So it could read "house of beloved" ... which might be a whore house, instead of a government office ;-)

Tear down every scripture?  Fine with me.  Burn all the books, like a good Nazi?
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Minimalist

Correct about the meaning of "David" or "DVD" in Hebrew.  Of course, the Tel Dan stele is written in Aramaic not Hebrew and as such had dots as word dividers.  There is no dot between Bet and DVD which according to scholar George Athas makes it a toponym or a place name.  We cannot be sure about the usage or even if it refers to some sort of god or legendary hero.  But Rome and Athens were both named after patron deities so there is precedent.
The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails.

-- H. L. Mencken

Baruch

#33
Ancient writing is always ambiguous ... until about 1000 years ago, there was almost no division into separate words or sentences.  Derrida took his philosophy from biblical hermeneutics by rabbis, that all text interpretation is a "reading in" of the ego of the reader into a performance (the combination of the text and reader).  This is essentially true.  Without a reader interpreting the text, the text is lifeless.  You have to add a reader (life) to bring it alive.  An essential underlying POV to Johannine Gospel (Jesus as Word/Reason).

Basically writing was "stream of letters from a stream of consciousness" ... a kind of phonetic tape recorder of a spoken utterance.  The Bible wasn't even divided into chapters and verses until then.  A Biblical book is simply the length of a physical scroll.  The codex (booklet) inspired the need for books (chapters).  Actual pauses during performance (spoken writing) are part of the poetics and rhetoric of it.  The Bible wasn't meant to be read, it was meant to be heard, and heard by someone whose primary language was Hebrew-Aramaic or Greek.

Scholars get this completely wrong.  Gnostic practice (which is where religion comes from) involves hearing over sight (aka Mantra Yoga) and emotions over thought (aka Bhakti Yoga).  If is essentially feminine, with the feminine male being "complete", just as the masculine female is "complete" (see final aphorisms in the Gospel of Thomas).  Neil Douglas-Klotz is the only author today who understands this ... he emphasizes he Aramaic tradition over the Hebrew/Greek, and Gnosis over dry scholarship.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Minimalist

Agree with one slight quibble.

Scholars fully understand the auditory nature.  Literacy in the ancient world was so low that writings literally had to be read aloud to the crowds by the handful of people who could actually read/write.  And one must always make allowances for the degree of literacy.  While perhaps 10% of the Athenian population could read Greek most would have been merchants and tradesmen keeping business records.  For the relative handful who could read sophisticated stuff like Plato or Aristotle the number would have been far lower.

Some degree of literacy in Latin in the West may have been higher because the Roman army taught basic literacy to the legionaries for military purposes.  But again the ability to read a duty roster to see who was supposed to clean the latrines is somewhat less than reading the Aeneid or Livy's History.  And anyway, the preferred language of the Roman elite was Greek presumably to set them apart from the Great Unwashed!

We see this phenomenon today.  There are people who are classified as functionally illiterate.  They can get a driver's license and read road signs but filling out a job application is beyond them.
The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails.

-- H. L. Mencken

Baruch

Quote from: Minimalist on January 04, 2019, 11:00:05 AM
Agree with one slight quibble.

Scholars fully understand the auditory nature.  Literacy in the ancient world was so low that writings literally had to be read aloud to the crowds by the handful of people who could actually read/write.  And one must always make allowances for the degree of literacy.  While perhaps 10% of the Athenian population could read Greek most would have been merchants and tradesmen keeping business records.  For the relative handful who could read sophisticated stuff like Plato or Aristotle the number would have been far lower.

Some degree of literacy in Latin in the West may have been higher because the Roman army taught basic literacy to the legionaries for military purposes.  But again the ability to read a duty roster to see who was supposed to clean the latrines is somewhat less than reading the Aeneid or Livy's History.  And anyway, the preferred language of the Roman elite was Greek presumably to set them apart from the Great Unwashed!

We see this phenomenon today.  There are people who are classified as functionally illiterate.  They can get a driver's license and read road signs but filling out a job application is beyond them.

All scholars ... are like a man who has never had sex with a woman, but can recite the Kinsey Report to you.

Gershon Scholem was the greatest scholar of Kabbalah in recent times.  But he was an atheist Jew, who didn't practice Kabbalah.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gershom_Scholem

Socrates was right, books are the death of true intelligence.  It is a lived experience.  Scholarship is just bureaucracy.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Minimalist

The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails.

-- H. L. Mencken

Baruch

Quote from: Minimalist on January 04, 2019, 02:33:27 PM
It beats ignorance.

Life beats death.  Why choose death?  Books don't make you smart.  Burn them all!

Socratic learning from another living person, that is education.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Minimalist

Depends heavily on who the other person is, wouldn't you say?
The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails.

-- H. L. Mencken

Baruch

Quote from: Minimalist on January 04, 2019, 09:20:49 PM
Depends heavily on who the other person is, wouldn't you say?

Of course.  Choose carefully.  They say .... when the student is ready, the teacher appears.  Mostly people aren't ready, except for bedtime.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Cavebear

Quote from: Minimalist on December 30, 2018, 01:52:20 PM
Okay, the actual title of his book is Holy Fable:Vol. One but I like to cut to the chase as the saying goes.  I'll be posting excerpts from the work.  The first deals with "David and Goliath."  A cute story and total bullshit.

Prof. Israel Finkelstein has a good take on this tale, too.  But I'll stick with Price for the moment.

But I suggest the christian text is even less factual that that, being almost wholly made up from bits and fragments of older religions stolen and incorporated shamelessly into a conflation of self-contradictory stories and concepts. 

I do actually appreciate how ancient people tried to comprehend their world partly from current experiences and struggles against invaders (or being invaders themselves).  I can accept that legends from previous ages (like the flooding of the Black Sea) gave rise to false stories of Noah's Flood.  And why NOTt imagine an origin myth like the garden of Eden (when you don't have any actual facts to go on).

What annoys the crap out of ME is that people still treat those ancient myths as REAL!  Come ON people. take a course in ancient anthropology...  Read some facts, study old fossils.  Stop being so damn gullible.
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Baruch

Correct.  Even the Bible says ... "nothing new under the Sun" ;-)

Plagiarism is a sign of good taste.  A truly innovative writing would by this time be just a random list of letters, even worse than that no-caps poet, e e cummings.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.