Mark Twain once observed that most human tragedies don't come from basic ignorance, but from a profound belief in lies: "It's not from things we don't know, but things we know that aren't so" that will harm us, he warned. How true! There is nothing more deadly than people dedicated to the preservation of lies which they regard as truth—and most especially if those lies carry the stamp of "divine revelation."
From the dawn of time to the present, looming over mankind's historical horror-drama existence is the hoary image of an approving god and his army of sanctimonious ministers with their "divine revelations."
"Divine revelation" tossed new-born babies into the sacrificial fires of Molech. "Divine revelation" offered virgins on the altars of the Aztecs. "Divine revelation" sent hoards of Israelites into Canaanite villages to rape, hack, slice and pillage. "Divine revelation" shredded and burned bodies during the Holy Inquisition. "Divine revelation" bayoneted, shot and exploded countless millions in countless Christian wars. It is "divine revelation" that inspires a man to strap dynamite around his body, walk into a crowded Jerusalem street and blow himself and a hundred people into oblivion. And, just as bad, it was "divine revelation" that inspired George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003 and kill hundreds of thousands of people.
If men want to butcher one another, then it is time for them to drop the excuse of "divine revelation," boot out ministers, priests and rabbis, and kill for the real reason behind all religions: hatred, bloodlust and greed. That was the impetus that created Baal, Molech, Zeus, Woden, Allah, Yahweh and Jesus of old; and it is why organized religion remains the most successful business enterprise known in human history—and the most dangerous.
The eminent danger posed by organized religion is the reason for this study, for if life on this planet is to survive, we humans must first awaken to the truth of religious madmen, their gods and their "divine revelations"—truth that you assuredly will never hear in church!
How It All Began
Most Christians are familiar with the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They know that Jacob fathered twelve sons by four women, and from these sons came the twelve tribes of Israel. They may remember how the whole family eventually migrated to Egypt, where they languished in slavery for the next four hundred-plus years. Thanks to films like The Ten Commandments, most people know that the Israelites were liberated by Moses performing godly miracles. As children, many learned how the Israelites were promised Canaan, wherein they dutifully slaughtered the indigenous population down to the last suckling babe and established their homeland. All this was recorded by the hand of Moses, given to Joshua, and then passed on to succeeding generations of Jewish scribes who have painstakingly preserved the word of God over the millennia. This, in brief, is the tradition, and, to be blunt, there's no evidence that it ever happened!
Indeed, the evidence of history and archeology completely disproves the biblical legends of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Aaron. Even worse, it is even doubtful that any of these men ever lived, which means that they and their legends belong beside the likes of Zeus, Apollo, Baal, Dagon, Romulus and Remus and the hundreds of other gods and heros of mythology.
In a process that mirrors virtually all ancient nation-states, Israelite unification necessitated the creation of national propaganda centered on fabulous heros, gods and miracles. It is a time-proven method of stirring the masses to do the will of their leaders, which is why it has never ceased to be employed by nation builders—our own American Republic being a prime example.
In the Prologue to their controversial book, The Bible Unearthed, Archaelogy's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, Professor Israel Finkelstein (director of the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaelogy at Tel Aviv University) and Neil Asher Silberman (director of historical interpretation for the Ename Center for Public Archaelogy and Heritage Presentation in Belgium and contributing editor to Archaelogy magazine) write:
The world in which the Bible was created was not a mythic realm of great cities and saintly heroes, but a tiny, down-to-earth kingdom where people struggled for their future against the all-too-human fears of war, poverty, injustice, disease, famine and drought. The historical saga contained in the Bible—from Abraham's encounter with God and his journey to Canaan, to Moses' deliverance of the children of Israel from bondage, to the rise and fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah—was not a miraculous revelation, but a brilliant product of the human imagination. It was first conceived—as recent archaeological evidence suggest—during the span of two or three generations, about twenty-six hundred years ago [i.e. about 600 years before Jesus]. Its birthplace was the kingdom of Judah, a sparsely settled region of shepherds and farmers, ruled from an out-of-the way royal city precariously perched in the heart of the hill country on a narrow ridge between steep, rocky ravines.
During a few extraordinary decades of spiritual ferment and political agitation toward the end of the seventh century bce, an unlikely coalition of Judahite court officials, scribes, priests, peasants, and prophets came together to create a new movement. At its core was a sacred scripture of unparalleled literary and spiritual genius. It was an epic saga woven together from an astonishingly rich collection of historical writings, memories, legends, folk tales, anecdotes, royal propaganda, prophecy, and ancient poetry. Partly an original composition, partly adapted from earlier versions and sources, that literary masterpiece would undergo further edition and elaboration to become a spiritual anchor not only for the descendants of the people of Judah but for communities all over the world.1
These are extraordinary statements and to the average Christian or Jewish mind goes beyond controversial; they are in fact explosive—all the more so because Finkelstein and Silberman offer the archeological evidence to back up their words!
The record shows that at the time Israel was supposedly conquering Canaan under Joshua's leadership, the land was under rigid Egyptian military control, which would have rendered such an invasion impossible—especially considering that the scattered, disorganized Israelites were then vastly inferior both numerically and militarily. Moreover archeological excavations have shown that the formidable cities mentioned in the bible, against which the invading Israelite armies supposedly fought, were nothing more than administrative strongholds to house a regional ruler and his bureaucrats. This point is driven home by a request at the time from the king of Jerusalem to the Egyptian pharaoh that he supply fifty men to guard the land—a request that clearly shows the minuscule scale of the "kingdoms" allegedly conquered by Joshua. Even worse, many of the cities mentioned in the Old Testament (ot) as being conquered by the Israelites, did not exist at the time of the alleged Israelite invasion of Canaan, which includes Jericho and its famous tumbling walls, a tale to which we shall return later.
The first authentic historical record of Israel is an Egyptian record that dates to the end of the thirteenth century bce in which Pharaoh Merneptah, the son of Ramessess II, who is believed to be the pharaoh of the biblical Exodus story, boasts that his campaign in Canaan decimated a people called Israel. Prior to that brief mention the only evidence of Israel comes from archeology.
What archeology proves is that Israelites first appear in Canaan (around 1200 bce), that they were shepherds and farmers, and (most importantly) that their presence was not the result of violent invasion, but by peaceful settlement. It also shows that ancient "Israel" was comprised of some 250 hilltop villages. When compared to the fabulous bible stories, the real surprise for historians was the small scale of Israelite settlements—most being no larger than a single acre in size, containing around 100 men, women and children. The largest of those settlements were no more than three or four acres and held no more than a few hundred people. Most revealing is that none of the "villages" were fortified, which contradicts the biblical account of Israel being in a state of constant warfare with their Philistine neighbors. Another tell-tale fact is that there are virtually no signs of advanced civilization in those first settlements. There was no record keeping, nor luxury items, such as jewelry or imported pottery. A massive conflict with the biblical record is the overall numbers of Israelites in Canaan—about 45,000 instead of the millions boasted of in Exodus. All of this has serious implications for the origins of a biblical narrative. On page 118 of their book, Finkelstein and Silberman write:
The process that we describe here is, in fact, the opposite of what we have in the Bible: the emergence of early Israel was an outcome of the collapse of the Canaanite culture, not its cause. And most of the Israelites did not come from outside Canaan—they emerged from within it. There was no mass Exodus from Egypt. There was no violent conquest of Canaan. Most of the people who formed early Israel were local people—the same people whom we see in the highlands throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. The early Israelites were—irony of ironies—themselves originally Canaanites!
The early Israelites were indigenous Canaanites who merely found greener pastures in which to establish new settlements. Although this is information kept from most Christians and Jews, Finkelstein and Silberman's revelations are hardly news to biblical academia. In 1941, based on the evidence of the time, in the article "Exodus" the editors of The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia were candid enough to admit the mythical proportions of the book of Exodus:
The chief difficulty in accepting the story in Exodus is the large numbers involved in the emigration of the Israelites, as well as the miracles of the ten plagues. These are explained by assuming that the present narrative in Egypt represents an idealization of the past and a fusing of the history of the various tribes. Probably only one or two of the tribes (especially those derived from Joseph) actually settled in Egypt, were enslaved and managed to regain their freedom; some of the others, however, may have had a tradition of Egyptian domination from the time when they settled in Palestine, as it is known that they exercised control over Palestine during the 13th cent.2
An Israelite presence in Egypt does have some historical support, although it bears little resemblance to the biblical narrative.
History confirms that Canaanites traditionally would migrate to Egypt in time of drought, famine and war. Egyptian historians record a people called the Hyksos who were Canaanite immigrants and who came to dominate a great delta city. Eventually the Hyksos were forcibly expelled by the Egyptians around 1570 bce. However, unlike the biblical narrative, the Hyksos did not leave Egypt as slaves, but as kings and nobles. Finkelstein and Silberman note that after the Hyksos expulsion, the Egyptian government controlled immigration from Canaan closely and built forts along the eastern delta and at one-day intervals along the Mediterreanean coast to Gaza. These forts kept extensive records, none of which mention the Israelites or any other foreign people entering, leaving, or living in the delta. In part, this is why Finkelstein and Silberman join other scholars and postulate that the legends of the Semitic Hyksos were eventually fused with the legends of ancient Israel.
(For more information about Finkelstein and Silberman's book, The Bible Unearthed, read this overview.
Although this is a brief overview of Israel's muddied and/or mythical history (later we shall delve more thoroughly into some details), it should lead any thinking person to at least ask pertinent questions. For instance, if Moses and the Exodus can be shown as fabulous tales, then who invented them, when, and for what reason—and for what reasons have ministers, priests and rabbis consistently kept the truth of the bible's origins from the billions of faithful sheep who have lived and, in countless pathetic cases, died fervently believing the tales?
The Priesthood
The historical record of Israel's priesthood doesn't begin with Aaron and his Levites, it begins with the reign of Judah's King Josiah. In their book, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman explain how the "pure" faith of Israel/Judah was essentially the same as their Canaanite neighbors, which they sum up in these words:
The existence of high places and other forms of ancestral and household god worship was not—as the books of Kings imply—apostasy from an earlier, purer faith. It was part of the timeless tradition of the hill country settlers of Judah, who worshiped YHWH along with a variety of gods and goddesses known or adapted from the cults of neighboring peoples. . . . the clearest archaeological evidence of the popularity of this type of worship throughout the kingdom is the discovery of hundreds of figurines of naked fertility goddesses at every late monarchic site in Judah. Moe suggestive are the inscriptions found in the early eighth century site of Kuntillet Ajrud in northeastern Sinai—a site that shows cultural links with the northern kingdom [of Israel]. They apparently refer to the goddess Asherah as being the consort of YHWH. And lest it be assumed that YHWH's married status was just a sinful northern hallucination, a somewhat similar formula, speaking of YHWH and his Asherah, appears in a late-monarchic inscription from the Shephelah of Judah." (pp. 241-242.)
Israel's primitive faith took a dramatic turn when, according to 2 Kings 23:2-3, the high priest found a copy of the "original" Jewish bible during temple restoration. This newly-discovered book pronounced horrible curses on anyone found practicing the "heathenish" faith of the phallic worshiping Canaanites. Forthwith King Josiah determined to clean up Israel's faith, although he stood by a phallic pillar in the "house of the Lord" while taking his oath! (See this author's study on steeples for more details of Israel's true primitive faith.) Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman write:
Josiah's messianic role arose from the theology of a new religious movement that dramatically changed what it meant to be an Israelite and laid the foundations for future Judaism and for Christianity. That movement ultimately produced the core documents of the Bible—chief among them, a book of the Law, discovered during renovations to the Jerusalem Temple in 622 BCE, the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign. That book, identified by most scholars as an original form of the book of Deuteronomy, sparked a revolution in ritual and a complete reformulation of Israelite identity. (p. 276)
Perhaps most telling of all, Finkelstein and Silberman also go out to demonstrate how the high priest's "discovery" of "an original form of the book of Deuteronomy" was actually produced during the seventh century. After reviewing the evidence for this ancient forgery, they write: "Rather than being an old book that was suddenly discovered, it seems safe to conclude that it was written in the seventh century BCE, just before or during Josiah's reign." (p. 281.)
This then was the true origins of Israel's "special relationship" with the only "true" god, Yahweh! It was the invention of a king who was looking to build an empire and who had obviously learned the same lesson as would the French philosopher, Voltaire, who wryly observed that "if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." In other words, to hold sway over a bunch of quarrelsome nincompoops, one needs to convince them that certain men act on the orders of a divine boogeyman who is ready and willing to smite all non-believers! (Again, readers are encouraged to read this author's study of steeps for a full accounting of ancient Israel's true primitive faith.)
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