Factuality of the Bible - Dick Harfield

Factuality of the Bible: answering Earnest Farr · Guestpost · answering Dick Harfield · Answer on Acts (to Dick Harfield)

Q

On what grounds have secularist historians concluded Pentateuch, Ruth, Daniel, Esther, and Acts are not factual?
https://www.quora.com/On-what-grounds-have-secularist-historians-concluded-Pentateuch-Ruth-Daniel-Esther-and-Acts-are-not-factual/answer/Dick-Harfield

Answer requested by

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Dick Harfield

Lives in Sydney, Australia

Updated Fri 25.XI.2022

St. Catherine of Alexandria

This is a wide-ranging question that could justify a whole book to answer fully, so I can only summarise—with the risk that some may say that I have not provided enough detail to make my case.

Pentateuch

Presumed authorship by Moses is key to a claim to authenticity, as this would make much of the Pentateuch an eyewitness account written by its principal participant, who was in regular communication with God. That was challenged already the twelfth century by Abraham lbn Ezra, who considered it strange that Moses would have said: "At that time the Canaanites were in the land" (Genesis 12:6), when he should have said, "The Canaanites are now in the land," because they were still there when he travelled from Egypt with the people of Israel. This was not just the view of a “secularist historian” but of one of the great rabbis of medieval times. Modern scholars have established from a study of linguistics that the books of the Pentateuch actually had multiple authors.

Science tells us that life on earth is far older than suggested in Genesis and that there was never a time in human history when there were only two people on earth. Likewise, science tells us that there was never a time in human history when the whole world was covered in water.

Elliott Rabin says, in Understanding the Hebrew Bible: A Reader's Guide:

There is considerable uncertainty whether the patriarchs in the Bible actually lived or are instead legends of ancestral founders…Genesis tells us both too little and too much about the patriarchs: too little in that no recognizable figures are explicitly mentioned; too much because details mentioned often cannot be made to fit into the historical timeline given in the Bible.

The Book of Genesis contains many anachronistic details that are hallmarks of fiction. One is its reference to “Ur of the Chaldees”, although the Chaldeans did not arrive in Ur until a thousand years after Abraham would have lived. It also refers to the Philistines, who did not arrive in the Levant until about 1180 BCE.

Nearly all historians now regard the biblical Exodus as an Israelite national foundation myth. There is good evidence that the Israelites were never in Egypt and never invaded the land of the Canaanites. The renowned archaeologist William G. Dever investigated every site that could be identified from the Exodus itinerary and came up with a blank every time. Various archaeologists have established that the Israelites were actually rural Canaanites who never left their ancient homeland, but were a splinter group who left the region of the Mediterranean coast and fertile valleys, to settle peacefully in the hitherto sparsely populated hinterland,

Ruth

Ruth 1:1 places its authorship long after the story is set, simply because it informs the reader that the events occurred in the days when judges ruled. In their own time, Naomi and Ruth would have been women of no particular interest to others, so there would be very little chance of anyone recording and passing down any of their life story, let alone the rich detail that is actually in the book. It is either pure legend or a literary creation. Evidence of its fictionality is in the names of the two husbands who died so young: Mahlon means ‘Sickly’ and Chilion means ‘Wasting away’ – hardly names a parent would give a child, but helpful to the story.

Christopher Gilbert says, in A Complete Introduction to the Bible:

Although the Book of Ruth is set in the period of the Judges (1:1), and may be based on a story that dates to that period, scholars believe that it was written in the post-exilic period (around 400 BCE), for a number of reasons. First, the Hebrew in which the Book of Ruth is written was heavily influenced by the Aramaic language. As we have already noted, Aramaic influences on the Hebrew language were uncommon until the Persian period, when Aramaic was the official administrative language of the Persian Empire. Second, the author explains the custom of attestation – an ancient Israetite means of confirming a transaction by the exchange of a sandal – as though it is an obsolete practice with which the author does not expect the audience to be familiar (4:7). Third, and most important, the story recounts a marriage between a Jewish man and a Moabite woman. As we have already seen, intermarriage was a hot-button issue of the postexilic period; Ezra and Nehemiah both campaigned against it. The fact that the Book of Ruth presents a Moabite woman as a virtuous daughter-in-law, a faithful wife, and the great-grandmother of King David strongly suggests that this book was intended as an attack on postexilic efforts to prohibit intermarriage.

Finally, we should note that the Book of Ruth seems to have been regarded as a fictional short story rather than an historical narrative even by its ancient Jewish audience.

Esther

Esther’s uncle Mordecai was supposedly sent into exile by Nebuchadnezzar, but this would have taken place over a century before Xerxes became king, so this part of the story must be fictional at least. Christopher Gilbert says (ibid):

Like Ruth, the Book of Esther is thought to be a fictional short story rather than an historical account. Again, a number of considerations support this assessment. First, there is no extrabiblical record of Xerxes I or any other Persian king having a Jewish wife; indeed, extrabiblical sources agree that the wife of Xerxes I was a Persian woman named Amestris. Second, the book seems to contain the sort of exaggeration that is characteristic of imaginative fiction, suggesting that both the author of Esther and her readers approached the book as literature rather than as a factual record. For instance, the king holds a banquet that lasts six months (1:4); the candidates for the position of queen receive a yearlong beauty treatment (2:12); the bribe that Haman offers the king is roughly $18 million (3:9); and Haman's gallows are eighty-three feet high (5:14). Most staggering, however, is the claim that 75,510 Gentiles were slain by the Jews in a single day (9:6-9, 16), a massacre that could hardly have escaped the notice of extrabiblical writers.

Moreover, many scholars suspect that the Jewish holiday of Purim was initially a Babylonian holiday that the Jews adopted during the Babylonian Exile. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the names of the main characters in the story are of Mesopotamian origin: Esther's name derives from Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love; Mordecai's name derives from Marduk, the chief deity of the Babylonian pantheon. If the Jews of the Exile did celebrate a Gentile holiday, the religious reforms of the postexilic period certainly could have motivated an effort to explain and justify that holiday as having a uniquely Jewish origin.

The New American Bible says, in its Introduction to the Book of Esther:

The book is a free composition - not a historical document, despite the Achaemenian coloring of the narrative. Its time of composition may well have been at the end of the Persian Empire, toward the close of the fourth century B.C.

Daniel

One very good reason to regard the Book of Daniel as fiction is that it contains historical errors that a person, alive at the time of the supposed events, would never have made. Moreover, the prophecies in the story do become more accurate as the approach 167 BCE, consistent with the author being more likely to have accurate information about more recent events. Nothing further is prophesied after 167 BCE, suggesting this must have been the time of writing. There is evidence of at least two authors of the Book of Daniel, with the second author adding to an earlier, more primitive book. Leonard J Greenspoon says in ‘Between Alexandria and Antioch: Jews and Judaism in the Hellenistic Period’, published in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, that, “at least in its finished form”, the Book of Daniel was a Jewish novel, and that “all but the most conservative interpreters agree that the final chapters date from the time of the Maccabean revolt”. He says:

The Hebrew form of Daniel neatly divides into two parts: chapters 1 to 6 consist of a collection of tales, in which Daniel and his companions demonstrate the superiority of their God and those who obediently follow him over the worshippers of false, empty and powerless deities.

The sudden changes of heart, through which foreign rulers acknowledged the sovereignty of God, did not really happen, but exemplify what should be the reaction of all people when confronted by the monotheistic faith of Israel.

Acts

Acts of the Apostles used to be regarded as an accurate and reliable history of the early church, At the beginning of the twentieth century, Sir William Ramsay stated:

Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy...this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.

New Testament scholars have reviewed the evidence and no longer hold that to be the case, generally regarding the book as propaganda rather than actual history. Acts contains some errors that can be demonstrated to be inaccurate. A well known historical error has Gamaliel speak of the rebel Theudas, whom the first-century Jewish historian Josephus assigns to the time of the procurator Cuspius Fadus (44-46 CE) several years after the death of Gamaliel. Acts of the Apostles also places Theudas before Judas the Galilean, who “arose in the days of the census” which had occurred decades earlier. Internal evidence demonstrates that the author of Acts relied on Josephus’ account in Antiquities of the Jews, but misreported the chronology because of the roundabout prose in Antiquities.

Acts can also be checked for accuracy by comparing its account with Paul’s epistles. Bart D. Ehrman writes, in The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings:

In virtually every instance in which the book of Acts can be compared with Paul's letters in terms of biographical detail, differences emerge.

Richard Carrier says, in On the Historicity of Jesus, that the author of Acts

rewrites Homer several other times.

• Paul's resurrection of the fallen Eutychus is based on the fallen Elpenor.5
• The visions of Cornelius and Peter are constructed frorn a similar narrative about Agamemnon.6
• Paul's farewell at Miletus is constructed from Hector's farewell to Andromache.7
• The lottery of Matthias is constructed from the lottery of Ajax.8
• Peter's escape from prison is constructed from Priam's escape from Achilles. 9 And so on.

Uta Ranke-Heinemann, in Putting Away Childish Things, also finds parallels to Greek mythology:

In the third of the legendary accounts in Acts, Jesus is supposed to have remarked to Paul as he lay on the ground, “It hurts you to kick against the goad” (25:14).

This is a quotation from the Bacchae by Euripides (d. 406 BCE). The only peculiar thing is that Jesus should quote a Greek proverb to Paul while speaking Aramaic ("in the Hebrew language").

The really strange thing is that with both Jesus and Euripides we have the same “familiar quotation” and the same situation. In both cases we have a conversation between a persecuted god and his persecutor. In The Bacchae the persecuted god is Dionysus and his persecutor is Pentheus, king of Thebes. Just like Jesus, Dionysus calls his persecutor to account, “You disregard my words of warning . . . and kick against necessity [literally 'against the goads'] a man defying god.” Jesus even uses the same plural form of the noun (kentra) that Euripides needs for the metre of his line.

Thomas Kazen says, in ‘The Christology of Early Christian Practice’, originally published in Journal of Biblical Literature, 2008:

When dealing with Luke’s descriptions of practice in the early Jesus movement in the first chapters of Acts, we find ourselves both earlier and later in time than with Paul. Earlier, because the narrative concerns the earliest post-Easter followers of Jesus in Jerusalem; later, because the narrative is shaped [written] toward the end of the first century. While it would be naïve to take Acts as a historical report of early Christ-believers in Jerusalem, it would be equally simplistic to read Luke’s narratives as representing general Christian practice and belief in his own time and environment. Rather, we should regard these descriptions as revealing what some late-first-century Christians, such as the author of Acts, thought about practice and belief in the earliest Jerusalem community of Christ-believers during the thirties.

Answered

ideally five times, Pentateuch, Ruth, Daniel, Esther, and Acts. When redacting this, I am on the first two answers.

Pentateuch

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Sat, 26.XI.2022

I’ll respond one by one. First this one:

Pentateuch

"Presumed authorship by Moses is key to a claim to authenticity, as this would make much of the Pentateuch an eyewitness account written by its principal participant, who was in regular communication with God."

Indeed, and what's more, who could prove it to his surroundings by his miracles.

Suppose no one had seen any miracle except his talking to a God invisible to everyone else, why would they have bought his claims to have brought them out of Egypt through the Red Sea, since in that case this would have jarred with their actual memories? Why would they have trusted his claims to be in communication with God, if that God told him things they knew were nonsense?

"That was challenged already the twelfth century by Abraham lbn Ezra, who considered it strange that Moses would have said: "At that time the Canaanites were in the land" (Genesis 12:6), when he should have said, "The Canaanites are now in the land," because they were still there when he travelled from Egypt with the people of Israel."

1) That Canaanites "are now in the land" is irrelevant to Abrahams situation back "then".
2) Moses can have taken over a resumé by Joseph.
3) Moses can have written down the overall narrative before checking Canaanites were still in the land.
4) There can be a redactor who changed "are" to "were then" in an update that remained licit for Cohanim while the tabernacle and temple stood.
5) Canaanites can here mean - se below - actual patrilinear descendants of Canaan, son of Ham.

"This was not just the view of a “secularist historian” but of one of the great rabbis of medieval times. Modern scholars have established from a study of linguistics that the books of the Pentateuch actually had multiple authors."

Or redactors. Tegnér who died in 1846 and published Frithiofs Saga in 1825 would not have written "Där växte uti Hildings gård" or "Frithiof tager arv efter sin fader" but, writing before 1870's he wrote "Der vexte uti Hildings gård" and writing before 1906 he wrote "Frithiof tager arf efter sin fader." The Cohanim were free to change the linguistic shape at copying.

"Science tells us that life on earth is far older than suggested in Genesis and that there was never a time in human history when there were only two people on earth. Likewise, science tells us that there was never a time in human history when the whole world was covered in water."

This is definitely not an argument that Genesis wasn't taken as history, just that it was wrong history, if what you say is true. However, not having Science as my religion, and being read up on Creation Science, I feel no special urge to believe you on that one.

"Elliott Rabin says, in Understanding the Hebrew Bible: A Reader's Guide:

'There is considerable uncertainty whether the patriarchs in the Bible actually lived or are instead legends of ancestral founders…Genesis tells us both too little and too much about the patriarchs: too little in that no recognizable figures are explicitly mentioned; too much because details mentioned often cannot be made to fit into the historical timeline given in the Bible.' "

I disagree with his distinction between "actually lived" and "legends" - I consider most legends are about poeople who actually lived, and in the few cases where this is not the case, non-actuals are composites of several people who actually lived. If Japanese believe that Bodda had been incarnated as Krishna before being incarnated as Siddharta, their Bodda is a very superficially stitched together composite of the actual Krishna, the actual Siddharta and some wrong claims about them in theology and philosophy, one of them being reincarnation.

"The Book of Genesis contains many anachronistic details that are hallmarks of fiction."

I don't think this is the case.

"One is its reference to “Ur of the Chaldees”, although the Chaldeans did not arrive in Ur until a thousand years after Abraham would have lived. It also refers to the Philistines, who did not arrive in the Levant until about 1180 BCE."

Before which they were where?

Perhaps in NorthWest Mesopotamia, if Urfa (Edessa) is the correct identification and Woolley's Ur is outside Genesis.

"Nearly all historians now regard the biblical Exodus as an Israelite national foundation myth."

Do you regard the story of George Washington as a United States foundation myth? I do. But I don't believe that equates to non-factual. Just that, to Americans, he looms somewhat larger than life, together with Paul Revere and Lafayette.

"There is good evidence that the Israelites were never in Egypt and never invaded the land of the Canaanites."

Or lack of specifically archaeological evidence that they were and did, identified as such.

"The renowned archaeologist William G. Dever investigated every site that could be identified from the Exodus itinerary and came up with a blank every time."

• 1) some places should leave a blank if the Bible was true - none of their tools or clothing wore out and they didn't build houses
• 2) some places would not leave a blank if you took the right time - right Biblical chronology along with right calibration of C14.

The latter meaning - not the uniformitarian one, and the former meaning not the Masoretic one.

"Various archaeologists have established that the Israelites were actually rural Canaanites who never left their ancient homeland, but were a splinter group who left the region of the Mediterranean coast and fertile valleys, to settle peacefully in the hitherto sparsely populated hinterland,"

The oldest DNA carbon dated in the land is dated to 3500 BC - meaning 1935 BC, when Abraham was there - and is close to the Israelite one - perhaps because Abraham's men took over the nations in Canaan with their descendants, while Israelites were in Egypt. If so, the men whom Joshua was beating didn't mainly descend from Canaan, on the patrilinear side, but from renegade Hebrews whose ancestors had been 318 men of Abraham.

Dick Harfield

Sat, 26.XI.2022

Hi Hans-Georg

One take-away from this is that you believe the Book of Genesis may have been altered by Cohanim or redactors, so that the Book we now have does not reflect what was first written. I suppose that from now on, I should assume that whenever there are problems with Genesis, you believe these result from ancient changes to the original text.

Another take-away is that we should ignore the analyses of people like Abraham lbn Ezra and Dever, because they are not as intellectually rigorous as you are. I wish you well at the next Nobel awards.

Yet another is that you regard science as a religion, which explains why you see “creation science” as the ultimate form of science.

It seems you do not understand the meanings of words in common use, so let me help you. I regard the story of George Washington as chopping down the tree and unable to tell a lie to be a legend, but George himself otherwise to be part of history—not of legend. A myth is a legend with supernatural elements, and I do not believe any common legends about George Washington incorporate supernatural elements. Now, when scholars say the biblical Exodus story is a national foundation myth, you do not have to be clever about it: we both know what they mean, no matter how ambiguous the words may be. Their view is that the story we see in the Bible did not happen, even if there might be some legendary aspects behind it.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Lord's Day 27.XI.2022

First of Advent

“so that the Book we now have does not reflect what was first written.”

More like it was changed to reflect it more clearly to more recent audiences.

“I suppose that from now on, I should assume that whenever there are problems with Genesis, you believe these result from ancient changes to the original text.”

Linguistic and terminological updates are not problems.

“we should ignore the analyses of people like Abraham lbn Ezra”

Because his conclusion was hasty …

“and Dever,”

Because he looked for wrong things at wrong times.

“I wish you well at the next Nobel awards.”

I am a Swede. I know the Swedish establishment. Believe me, it is very improbable that the Nobel committee would be so marginalised people in Sweden, that they could be outstanding by some balance and sanity on the matter.

“you regard science as a religion,”

I see an actual difference between sciences - often enough legitimate intellectual endavours - and Science with a capital S, where these are lumped together with things like Evolution (also capital letter E, way beyond finches or pepper moths). The latter, which some think we “should believe” is in fact the positive religion of Atheism, and one of the two positive religions of a certain type of Syncretists called Modernist Christians.

“It seems you do not understand the meanings of words in common use, so let me help you.”

It’s more like I refuse to accept the misuse of the term legend now prevailing. I’m trying to help you or at least our readers.

“I regard the story of George Washington as chopping down the tree and unable to tell a lie to be a legend, but George himself otherwise to be part of history—not of legend.”

Nice. I think all the hype on him can be classified as legend - and most positively mentioned things (including the cherry tree) as probably factual. I do not make a counterdistinction between legend and factual, since legends are usually based on fact, and facts that become legends are often but not necessarily somewhat but not all that much distorted. Where does this US origin myth come short of factuality? In people not Southron and Jefferson Davies of their loyalties, it comes short of factuality in neglecting that GW was a slave owner and part of his taunt against George III was that the latter was listening to Wilberforce, preparing to free slaves, which happened in 1830. That, back in England, Tories were the early abolitionists, like Dr. Johnson, Whigs sympathising with GW were pro-slavery, like Boswell.

Hope this makes clear to you, or at least someone who reads us, why your usage was faulty. Common as it is.

“A myth is a legend with supernatural elements, and I do not believe any common legends about George Washington incorporate supernatural elements.”

To imagine that supernatural elements have any bearing on the factuality of a legend in one specific direction of falsehood only is begging the question how YOU pretend to know the supernatural doesn’t exist.

But the presence or absence of the supernatural is not all the triggers the word choice “myth” there are also phrases - as highly relevant to Exodus as to George Washington - like “foundation myth” or “myth of origins” where the whole phrase (including the word myth) is used because of such and such a story being the popular narrative behind a change leading up to the present state of affairs on some level.

“Now, when scholars say the biblical Exodus story is a national foundation myth, you do not have to be clever about it:”

The only thing that is clear about what they can legitimately mean, and say without rational hesitation is, the Exodus is to an Israelite in such and such a time the popular narrative behind a change leading up to the present state of affairs on some level.

“we both know what they mean, no matter how ambiguous the words may be.”

I don’t pretend to know what a writer means unless I actually read him.

“Their view is that the story we see in the Bible did not happen,”

If they base this on the obvious role that Genesis and Exodus have as “origin myths” and “foundation myth” that is very clearly in and of itself falling victim to reasoning from popular associations of a label.

If you intend “origin myth” and “foundation myth” to exlude factual accounts or such as you consider factual, which would be necessary for their case, if you wish it to exclude George Washington whom we both agree existed or Abiogenesis which you believe happened, well, the role these narratives have as “origin myth” and “foundation myth” are simply not enough.

Ruth

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Lord's Day 27.XI.2022

First of Advent

Second part of answers - and I intend to answer all before the debate on the Pentateuch is finished and have debates in parallel.

Ruth.

As I recall, I actually already posted an answer on this one yesterday, where did it go?

The FIRST thing to note is this one, from your quote by CG:

"Finally, we should note that the Book of Ruth seems to have been regarded as a fictional short story rather than an historical narrative even by its ancient Jewish audience."

It would be interesting to find out whether CG concluded this from a Talmudic or even post-Talmudic source LATER than St. Matthew, or whether his view on how it was regarded is more based on some subjective impressionistic takeout on it.

Because, you see, the reason I don't take Silmarillion or Beren and Luthien as history is, I live in a society known to be the FIRST audience of Tolkien, preceding for instance a hypothetic future audience which 200 or 500 years from now could have a view on the matter, and this FIRST audience takes Beren and Luthien as fiction.

Meanwhile, the reason I take The Assisi Underground as historic is, it was to its first audience (to which roughly speaking we still belong) presented by the journalist Alexander Ramati as a documentary.

I believe the process by which history gets relegated to "fiction" category is just a question of a fashion of scepticism. But the process by which fiction is elevated to history is, as far as I am concerned, unknown. This makes "earliest KNOWN audience" a standin for FIRST audience" in assessing a text as historic.

I am very sceptical of CG getting hold of some writer in an even earlier audience than that to which St. Matthew belonged and in which he used the genealogy of the book of Ruth as providing historic genealogy of Christ Jesus.

"Ruth 1:1 places its authorship long after the story is set, simply because it informs the reader that the events occurred in the days when judges ruled."

Not necessarily authorship, perhaps a redactor's touch. But possibly also a collecting of the family history of King David into an actual book.

"In their own time, Naomi and Ruth would have been women of no particular interest to others, so there would be very little chance of anyone recording and passing down any of their life story, let alone the rich detail that is actually in the book."

Except obviously they were of very great interest to Obed. He was resourceful enough for his family to keep the record the few generations remaining up to King David. And King David had resources to get it written down into a book and the book put into the temple.

"It is either pure legend or a literary creation."

Pure legend in my book means things usually historical. Like King Arthur (though the exact title might not have been rex).

"Evidence of its fictionality is in the names of the two husbands who died so young: Mahlon means ‘Sickly’ and Chilion means ‘Wasting away’ – hardly names a parent would give a child, but helpful to the story."

• 1) Ben-Oni is hardly a name a parent would give a child for life, but this was the name Rachel spontaneously gave her second son. The father changed this to Ban-Yamin. It is clearly possible that Naomi's first reaction on seeing either was "Mahlon" or "Chilion" that the father Elimelech then changed the names and that Naomi's and Ruth's memory changed it back when the first given names turned out to be prophetic.
• 2) It is also possible that the actual names were forgotten, perhaps deliberately, and replaced by Mahalon and Chelion. As aliasses. Code-names. If you had had the youtube account with the moniker "Bimbelibimm" - would you consider our debates were a fiction because such is not a real name?

"Christopher Gilbert says, in A Complete Introduction to the Bible:"

Here I'll return to GC.

"Although the Book of Ruth is set in the period of the Judges (1:1), and may be based on a story that dates to that period, scholars believe that it was written in the post-exilic period (around 400 BCE), for a number of reasons."

We'll take them one by one.

"First, the Hebrew in which the Book of Ruth is written was heavily influenced by the Aramaic language. As we have already noted, Aramaic influences on the Hebrew language were uncommon until the Persian period, when Aramaic was the official administrative language of the Persian Empire."

A Cohen made a linguistic update later on.

"Second, the author explains the custom of attestation – an ancient Israetite means of confirming a transaction by the exchange of a sandal – as though it is an obsolete practice with which the author does not expect the audience to be familiar (4:7)."

A Cohen inserted what amounts to a footnote.

"Third, and most important, the story recounts a marriage between a Jewish man and a Moabite woman. As we have already seen, intermarriage was a hot-button issue of the postexilic period; Ezra and Nehemiah both campaigned against it."

Here is good old wiki, with a Swede correcting the spelling of a Swedish name:

"Gösta W. Ahlström argues the inconsistencies of the biblical tradition are insufficient to say that Ezra, with his central position as the 'father of Judaism' in the Jewish tradition, has been a later literary invention."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra#Historicity

I obviously disagree, but why don't you? You are so heavily into believing "legends actually didn't happen" and things like that.

Perhaps because you find historicity of Ezra as a useful copout to argue non-historicity of other things - one here will claim Ezra wrote the Pentateuch and attributed it to Moses and now you will cite another guy pretending Ezra was being argued against by the author of Ruth.

In Ezra 10, I can find no precision that the "foreign" women are singled out in any single case as Moabites.

I do find the word Moab - as the name of a Jew.

"The fact that the Book of Ruth presents a Moabite woman as a virtuous daughter-in-law, a faithful wife, and the great-grandmother of King David strongly suggests that this book was intended as an attack on postexilic efforts to prohibit intermarriage."

Because obviously, real older events never become topical later on ...

Seriously, believing both Ruth and Ezra to be inspired, I will definitely consider both as inerrant, and God as seeing no problem if a single Moabite woman wants to follow the law of Moses, but a very big problem if lots of women were together exercising a kind of infiltration pressure against lots of husbands against the law of Moses.

Esther

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Lord's Day 27.XI.2022

First of Advent

Answer part III

Esther

"Esther’s uncle Mordecai was supposedly sent into exile by Nebuchadnezzar, but this would have taken place over a century before Xerxes became king, so this part of the story must be fictional at least."

Let's see the relevant verse:

Esther, chapter 2:

[5]There was a man in the city of Susan, a Jew, named Mardochai, the son of Jair, the son of Semei, the son of Cis, of the race of Jemini, [6] Who had been carried away from Jerusalem at the time that Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon carried away Jechonias king of Juda,

What if the meaning is, Cis (or Jemini) had been carried away, rather than Mardochai himself?

Blows that argument out of the water.

"Christopher Gilbert says (ibid):

'Like Ruth, the Book of Esther is thought to be a fictional short story rather than an historical account.' "

Yeah, I was aware of his bias.

"Again, a number of considerations support this assessment. First, there is no extrabiblical record of Xerxes I or any other Persian king having a Jewish wife; indeed, extrabiblical sources agree that the wife of Xerxes I was a Persian woman named Amestris."

1) Is Xerxes I the real match for Assuerus?
2) If yes, was Amestris Vashthi?
3) How complete are "extra-Biblical sources"?

"Second, the book seems to contain the sort of exaggeration that is characteristic of imaginative fiction, suggesting that both the author of Esther and her readers approached the book as literature rather than as a factual record."

Tell that to the guys who support the idea that Auschwitz killed 2 million Jews.

But suppose this could be laid down to the style of narration? However, I will try to give actual answers for the honour of inerrancy.

"For instance, the king holds a banquet that lasts six months (1:4);"

It actually says a feast for boasting that many days. However, this would not necessarily be one banquet. It could involve voyaging around through the realm.

"the candidates for the position of queen receive a yearlong beauty treatment (2:12);"

Could be a kind of project of impregnating the skin, every pore. Plus a kind of education project for the role going on alongside this.

"the bribe that Haman offers the king is roughly $18 million (3:9);"

That's perfectly realistic. If you want to bribe the "king of kings" you had better make a real juicy offer.

"and Haman's gallows are eighty-three feet high (5:14)."

I recalled it as fifteen cubits, seems LXX has fifty as well.

"Most staggering, however, is the claim that 75,510 Gentiles were slain by the Jews in a single day (9:6-9, 16),"

6 And in the city Susa the Jews slew five hundred men:
15 And the Jews assembled in Susa on the fourteenth [day] of Adar, and slew three hundred men, but plundered no property.
16 And the rest of the Jews who were in the kingdom assembled, and helped one another, and obtained rest from their enemies: for they destroyed fifteen thousand of them on the thirteenth [day] of Adar, but took no spoil.

500 + 300 + 15 000 = 15 800

"a massacre that could hardly have escaped the notice of extrabiblical writers."

Supposing we had any left and they were free to express such losses. Did you know the Babylonian cuneiform accounts of Alexander certainly paint him as victorious, but do not tell he's a foreigner, and he's simply "the king of Babylon" ...

"Moreover, many scholars suspect that the Jewish holiday of Purim was initially a Babylonian holiday that the Jews adopted during the Babylonian Exile."

Purim was in March this year ... a month before Pesakh, in fact. 14 Adar is a month before 14 Nisan. I have for the moment no source saying that Babylonians celebrated anything in Adarru.

"This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the names of the main characters in the story are of Mesopotamian origin: Esther's name derives from Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love; Mordecai's name derives from Marduk, the chief deity of the Babylonian pantheon."

In France a very famous Jew is called Eric Zemmour. In case you didn't know, Eric is a Pagan and Catholic Norse name - not a Jewish one. He's Eric to outsiders and Moyshe to his family.

If this custom of external adaptation was already there, and if Mordecai and Esther were common names among Babylonians, this could explain why Jews were in fact called Mordecai and Esther.

"If the Jews of the Exile did celebrate a Gentile holiday, the religious reforms of the postexilic period certainly could have motivated an effort to explain and justify that holiday as having a uniquely Jewish origin."

Or suppress it.

"The New American Bible says, in its Introduction to the Book of Esther:

'The book is a free composition - not a historical document, despite the Achaemenian coloring of the narrative. Its time of composition may well have been at the end of the Persian Empire, toward the close of the fourth century B.C.' "

Nice to have their point of view, it's presented without argument, and so I dismiss it without argument.

Daniel

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Lord's Day 27.XI.2022

First of Advent

Part IV here:

Daniel

"One very good reason to regard the Book of Daniel as fiction is that it contains historical errors that a person, alive at the time of the supposed events, would never have made."

Would, if true, be the case with lots of actual histories as well.

However, considering the errors to be on Daniel's side rather than that of the other sources to me seems to be an overrating of the other sources.

"Moreover, the prophecies in the story do become more accurate as the approach 167 BCE, consistent with the author being more likely to have accurate information about more recent events."

If I were to disbelieve the prophecies, this is where I would put the prophecies down to "vaticinium post eventum" - but as I don't, I would rather say that the completion of the four beasts (with Antiochus Epiphanes representing Rome) in the OT context was what was needed to make Daniel useful for the endtimes.

"There is evidence of at least two authors of the Book of Daniel, with the second author adding to an earlier, more primitive book."

Not any precision on what this evidence is. Apart from the "two parts" argument, see below.

"Leonard J Greenspoon says in ‘Between Alexandria and Antioch: Jews and Judaism in the Hellenistic Period’, published in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, that, “at least in its finished form”, the Book of Daniel was a Jewish novel, and that “all but the most conservative interpreters agree that the final chapters date from the time of the Maccabean revolt”."

Count me as one of the most conservative ones, then.

"The Hebrew form of Daniel neatly divides into two parts: chapters 1 to 6 consist of a collection of tales, in which Daniel and his companions demonstrate the superiority of their God and those who obediently follow him over the worshippers of false, empty and powerless deities."

Does not the least imply these tales didn't happen.

"The sudden changes of heart, through which foreign rulers acknowledged the sovereignty of God, did not really happen, but exemplify what should be the reaction of all people when confronted by the monotheistic faith of Israel."

Or Nebo-Chadnezzar made some Monotheistic decrees about Nebo, which is what the author considered as equivalent to the summary in Daniel.

On this one, as well as for Esther, I refer to the works of Damien Mackey.

Acts

Note

I actually had planned to add the answer on Acts on Monday. When in the evening I went on to it, I saw this:

"Adding comments disabled" - saw it 22:36 on November 28th, 2022. This was to me, or perhaps to all, by the man who had answered a question I posed.

The point is, I had told him, instead of making one post with all the books he dealt with, I was answering one by one. He had enough with 4 comments answering, and couldn't take a fifth.

It looks like cancel culture to me. Feel free to ask him whether it was the fact I intended to answer in five comments or whether he was so dissatisfied with my first one.