Mainstream scholarship: Abraham and Moses mythicism is respectable
Note how this Wiki article reports that modern scholars question the historicity of the biblical story of the Israelite patriarch Joseph, using comparative religion/mythology:
“Modern day scholars believe the historicity of the events in the Joseph narrative cannot be demonstrated. Hermann Gunkel, Hugo Gressmann and Gerhard von Rad identified the story of Joseph as a literary composition, in the genre of romance, or the novella. As a novella, it is read as reworking legends and myths, in particular the motifs of his reburial in Canaan, associated with the Egyptian god Osiris. Others compare the burial of his bones at Shechem, with the disposal of Dionysus’s bones at Delphi.”
In the Wiki article on Abraham, we discover that the great founder of the Abrahamic cultus of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, also is questionable as a historical figure:
“According to archeologist William Dever, by the last quarter of the 20th century, ‘respectable archaeologists [had] given up hope of recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac or Jacob credible “historical figures”‘.”
The Israelite lawgiver, Moses, too is given up to myth:
“The existence of Moses as well as the veracity of the Exodus story are disputed amongst archaeologists and Egyptologists, with experts in the field of biblical criticism citing logical inconsistencies, new archaeological evidence, historical evidence, and related origin myths in Canaanite culture.”
Wiki thus relates the modern scholarly debate about whether or not Moses was a historical figure, also providing comparisons from other cultures. But to do so with the most supernatural personage in the Bible, Jesus Christ, why that’s just keeeerazy, and all of those who do so must be shouted down and driven from the public square! 🙁 Indeed, questioning these patriarchs’ historicity is “respectable scholarship,” but, we are constantly told, “no serious scholar questions Jesus’s existence.”
Abraham/Isaac/Jacob mythicism = respectable! Moses mythicism = good! Jesus mythicism = very, very baaaad!!!
What happened to fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me?
No evidence for Abraham, Moses or Jesus
As concerns the purported extrabiblical evidence for Jesus, this contention has been addressed and refuted many times over the centuries. Please read these articles for starters:
http://truthbeknown.com/pliny.htm
http://truthbeknown.com/josephus.htm
http://www.freethoughtnation.com/contributing-writers/63-acharya-s/672-does-josephus-prove-a-historical-jesus.html
http://www.truthbeknown.com/suetoniuschresto.html
There is more, and I have written about this subject extensively over the decades, including in my books, especially my new book Did Moses Exist?
Further Reading
What is a Mythicist?
Historicity and composition of the Abraham narrative
Joseph’s historicity
Moses on Wiki
Did Moses Exist?
Christ myth articles
6 thoughts on “Mainstream scholarship: Abraham and Moses mythicism is respectable”
Comments are closed.
Abraham and Moses
Great of course! 🙂
Bravo!
plagiarise, pressurise, popularise, papalise!
Dear Acharya,
The terms Abraham, Sarah are certainly lifted from the words Brahma, Saraswati, which are the names of the god of creation and goddess of learning( the couple who are the head of the pantheon of devas or gods) in the millenia old hoary ‘Sanatan Dharm’ also wrongly labelled as ‘Hinduism’ of Bharat also called India in modern times.
How the pirates of the worlds ancient religions became the dominant force today can be summed up as follows: History is written by the conquerors, of the conquerors, for the conquerors.
The papacy has plagiarised, pressurised and populaised lies about the whole jesus myth, and yes it has been very violent and continues to be very violent yet in Bharat where even today the violent maoist insurgency and the various christian seccessionist movements inspired by the papal ‘revolutionary theology’ and ‘dominion theology’ are underground and active.
The whole world can do without the Abraham/Moses/Jesus myths which have led to such violence and wars against innocent and naive non-believers. Also do not forget that this is the basis for the whole violent bloodthirsty islamic theology. Peaceful BRAHMA became violent ABRAHAM then was renamed terror founder IBRAHIM.
9/11 and other terror crimes are just the symptoms. The Abraham/Moses plagiarism and myth is the root disease.
Thank you. I have written about the Abraham-Brahma connection many times. As Josephus said, the Syrian Jews were “descendants of Indian philosophers.” It appears that a group of Brahma followers, possibly from Mojendaro via Ur, ended up in the Levant, where they were subordinated under El Shaddai and then Yahweh.
I talk to a young lady from my school who happen’s to believe in the historicity of the exodus myth, it’s not hard to conclude she is a devout Christian. Upon discussion I had mentioned to her that outside of the bible there is little historic evidence that Moses and the exodus story are in fact historical, I even went as far as emailing her the PDF file I had purchased from you called the exodus case By Lennart Moller. And she followed up by sending me a link to this Christian website called Creation-Ed Ministry, the article was posted on November 16, 2010 and its called The Bible: Accurate in Archaeology. This article attempts to prove the Biblical story’s to be historically and archaeologically accurate, as opposed to being fictitious myths recycled from more ancient cultures. Every time I send her evidence pertaining to the Biblical story’s being recycled pagan myths from older cultures she comes back at me with her Christianized evidence she gets from biblical websites. I’m interested in knowing if you are aware of this information & if you are how would you respond to it?
I don’t know the specific websites you are referring to, of course, because you didn’t post any URLs. There are thousands of Christian apologist websites, many of which repeat the same falsehoods.
The facts are as you’ve stated, so these sites are simply wrong. As you’ve stated, no matter what you send her, she’s just ignoring it and then sending you fallacious and erroneous apologies. Such is the nature of blind faith, and you will talk until you are blue in the face.
You might want to move onto more fertile intellectual fields.