the flat earth a la Moses

[martini7B7]

in some cross-talk from a thread i participated in at the IIDB. forgive my references to wikipedia, but they were the quickest i found.

our oldest historical people from Mesopotamia believed in a flat earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamia

one of the ancient cities in Mesopotamia is Ur.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur

Ur is where Abram/Abraham came from before getting the divine message to go to Egypt.

in Egypt, the Hebrews are supposedly eventually enslaved and one of them is Moses.

Moses supposedly wrote the Pentateuch.

now, if the flat earth concept was a socio-religious legend passed down from Mesopotamia, why is it so unreasonable to think that Moses wrote them into the Genesis account. he obviously was not there, so his information is second-hand at best, correct?

[zarathustra]

The Pentateuch wasn't written until about the 7th century BCE during the reign of Josiah. Josiah desparately wanted to unite Judah and Israel, a feat which had never been done, so he had his priests gather the various Hebrew myths and codify them into the pentateuch. That is why you see the intertwining of Egyptian and Babylonian myths into the Hebrew mythos.

The Hebrews have never been a very original people at all. From their earliest emergence from the Canaanite tribes until their great influx into Europe they borrowed many things from their host cultures. From the Canaanites they took Yhwh, David, Saul, Abraham, Moses and many other mythical heroes, gods and customs. They even embraced Yhwh's goddess Asherah for a time until the Hebrews became a male-dominant culture. Other examples of their borrowing include the mixing of Koine Greek into their own Hebrew tongue to create Aramaic and the mingling of German into their Hebrew to create Yiddish. Their religion was radically changed when Saul incorporated the concept of the savior god-man into the mix.

I recommend Israel Finklestein's The Bible Unearthed : Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts . It is an exciting read. Dr. Finklestein is head of the archaeology department for the University of Tel Aviv. He's been digging up Israel for over 30 years. He gives a brilliant overview of what unbiased archaeology has discovered about the origins of the Hebrew culture.

[martini7B7]

i was going to get to that after i had some responses. we have to build the case slowly, Zara. one cannot come to these kinds of conclusions without some background, now can one?

[zarathustra]

I did not intend to spoil the fun of the chase...blooding a fox is a far greater reward than hobbling a horse, mon ami.

Finklestein has susinctly settled the matter for me, so to the point that I am soundly rebuked for averting the chase.

I do apologize for my abrupt conclusion and remain,

Sincerely yours &c

[Stevie K]

I read somewhere the idea of substitution myths. Something that like, the Jews did have a king during the time of the supposed biblical David, but he wasn't so great, so in their history that they wrote down later, they substituted the story of another culture to make themselves look better. Similar to Romans copying Greek culture.

[Kim]

Excellent thread !

Zara are you talking Joshia who took over from Moses or one later, just for clarification for those that do not know biblical history.

being love

Kim xx