Judah and Samaria in Persian Times — the Evidence (and a way out of a quandary)
Having surveyed what the archaeological evidence tells us about religious practices of the Judeans in Elephantine (see the previous post) let’s now compare the evidence for Judah and Samaria in the...
View ArticleQuestioning the Hellenistic Date for the Hebrew Bible — continuing
I am continuing here with my responses to criticisms raised on the earlywritings forum. The next objection raised was: I can’t help feeling that proponents of a Hellenistic origin of the Old Testament...
View ArticleNo Evidence Jerusalem/Judea had a “Writing Culture” in Persian times — Israel...
I have transcribed the last ten minutes of the archaeologist Israel Finkelstein’s December 2022 Conference presentation because it dovetails with my recent posts and discussion points about the...
View ArticleSamaria in the Persian Period
Our quest is to test the thesis that the earliest books of the Bible were written or at least heavily redacted and supplemented in the Persian period. To that end we have trying to understand what...
View ArticleComparing Samaria and Judah/Yehud – and their religion – in Persian Times
Recent posts have focussed on the case for the earliest books of the Bible being composed as late as the Hellenistic era, that is less than 300 years before Christ. The longstanding conventional wisdom...
View ArticleNo Evidence Cyrus allowed the Jews to Return
In my book collection I have a massive (both in size and weight) Reader’s Digest 1971 version of the King James 1611 translation of the Bible. On page 377, the second page into the Book of Ezra, is...
View ArticleOrigin of the Cyrus-Messiah Myth
The Cyrus Cylinder is not evidence that the Persian king Cyrus commissioned a return of Judeans to restore their temple (as explained in the previous post) but it does show us why the biblical authors...
View ArticleQuestioning the Hellenistic Date for the Hebrew Bible: Circular Argument
So let’s resume my specific responses to criticisms raised on the earlywritings forum over the question of the Hellenistic era being the earliest setting for the Pentateuch and other books of the...
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