Human rights: Food for thought, this time not directly for HR
HRR 759
[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader deals with the thorny issue of how the Bible misleads us: There are several characters in the Old Testament of the Bible that never existed . For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
[Although this Reader does not touch upon human rights directly, I am transcribing a piece here by three scientists as an example of how dogma also distorts history].
There are several characters in the Old Testament of the Bible that never existed
1. Archaeologists Israel Finkelstein (from Tel Aviv University, a professor of Jewish origin, Zawi Awas from Egypt and historian Neil Asher claim that there are several characters in the Old Testament of the Bible that never existed. As examples they give: Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah and the rest of the ancient patriarchs.
2. “Science had to unveil the truth and complete the history of the Jewish people”. “There is not a single historical reference, beyond the Old Testament and other religious books that mention the existence of a Moses”.
3. It is now known that real historical characters appeared only up to the time of King David, in 1000 B.C. And the earlier characters that emerged in 2100 B.C. were, for the most part, false national heroes created in order to give cohesion to a people totally divided, both geographically and in customs –as was the case with Israel and Judeah.
Not only that, but there is no evidence of the existence of ancient Israelites in Egypt
4. The situation of Canaan at the supposed date of the conquest, between 1230 and 1220 B.C. is totally different from what the Bible alludes to, since the city of Jericho did not even exist in the 13th century B.C. There are thus at least four strictly archaeological arguments that dismantle the fantasy about Moses, the Tablet of Commandments and the Jewish Exodus:
- After 200 years of research in the field of egyptology, no written reference was found in Egypt referring to the Jews as a slave people who later became free.
- False chronologies: The stele of Merneptah, the only mention of an ancient Israel, refers to the year 1210 and not to 1430-1420 which is the date attributed by the Old Testament for the great epic of the Jews. There are 200 years of difference between one date and the other.
- Archaeology did not find any vestige of Jews been in the Sinai Peninsula and much less on Mount Sinai which means that no God gave any person a tablet of commandments written in stone.
- The political motivations of Judeah in the 7th century BC explain the need to create the lie of the Exodus of Moses. This was to reunite the north (Israel) with the southern kingdom (Judeah), as King Josephas needed help against the invader.
5. Taking these four items into account, we have that the only reference to Israel as a human group already residing in Canaan is the stele (stone inscription) of Pharaoh Merneptah. This pharaoh completely destroyed the people of Canaan in the 1210 war campaign against the Canaanites for not paying their taxes. There is also no evidence of Israelites in Egypt. There are no funerary or papyrus inscriptions. There are no monumental inscriptions on temple walls indicating that there were ancient Israelites there. The city of Jericho as indicated in the Bible (13th century B.C.) did not exist at that time; it was 200 years later when it began to grow very slowly and only 700 years later did it become a great city.
Who built the pyramids in Egypt?
6. The illustrations of certain Passover prayer books (hagadot) seem to clearly express that they were the work of Jewish slaves. In opposition to this, the Egyptians maintain that the Jews were not involved. Of course, this discussion did not remain in the realm of history, but moved into politics to further straiten relations between Egypt and Israel.
7. The director of the Egyptian Dept. of Archaeology and Antiquities, Zawi Hawas, is emphatic that the pyramids were built by the Egyptians and not by the ancient Jews. “The ancient Egyptians made them, because for them it was the national project of Ancient Egypt.”
8. The truth is that the controversy could have been settled much earlier if they had only read the opening chapters of the book Exodus of the Old Testament. There it is clear that the Jews were obliged to build only the cities of Pitom and Ramses, and there is no indication of any pyramid construction. Therefore, the Egyptians are not wrong.
9. Now, 200 years before the 13th century B.C. and 200 years after the 13th century B.C. there was no construction at all. Another evidence of the manipulation of the Old Testament is that it is full of stories that speak of camels that were used as a means of transportation, from the time of Abraham onwards. The truth is that in the 13th century BC camels had not even been domesticated.
There are other problems of common sense
10. Such is the impossibility of crossing the Red Sea and then the desert for between 2.5 and 3 million people in one day. Moreover, the Ten Commandments have no validity, nor are they universal, or are they applicable to any time in history, since they were written in the 7th century B.C. by the scribe of the day in Judeah –at the time of King Josephias– for exclusively political and not religious reasons.
11. Moses is mentioned as a character also throughout the New Testament, from the Gospels to Revelation. The New Testament scriptures were riddled with deceptive historical inaccuracies, even about Jesus.
Bottom line
12. Modern archaeological techniques are capable of finding traces of even the very scanty remains left by hunters, gatherers and nomadic shepherds anywhere in the world.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com