Sunday, June 2, 2019

Editing of Scriptures


 Image result for egypt and the bible



 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

 

Occasionally one encounters someone who will insist that

Moses wrote every single word of the entire Pentateuch.

 

 

 

 

 

A self-confessed “amateur” writes:

 

Mr Mackey,

I’ve been studying egyptology for many years now and also the theories of dr. Velikovsky.

Without a doubt he was on the right track but as you probably have discovered very difficult to convince the hardcore believers of the conventional chronology.



Mackey’s comment: Along these lines, see my three-part series regarding entrenched academia:

 

Robert K. G. Temple's Trenchant Criticisms of "the Academic World"


commencing with Part One:

 


 

Now, according to Part Two:


there has been a “failure of nerve”. Truth demands sacrifice:

 

A Kingdom of Truth not Power

 


 

It is so much easier to fall in with the received scholarly opinion.

 

One of the errors both sides make is in the use of the title “pharao”. Forgive me my impudence but you yourself make this error too.
For some reason or other we seem to assume that the Scriptures have not been edited in any form whatsoever.

 

Mackey’s comment: The term “Pharaoh” actually comes from the Greeks.

Regarding scriptural editing, I, in my series:

 

Tracing the Hand of Moses in Genesis

 

commencing with Part One:

 


 

have argued for significant editorial activity of the Pentateuch, commencing with Moses’ work on the original Genesis documents, or sources. I commenced that article by writing: “Three lines of evidence will be presented here in support of the traditional view that Moses was substantially the editor, or compiler (though not actual author), of the Book of Genesis”.

I would allow for further editorial intervention by the likes of Samuel, Solomon, and Ezra.

You are not being ‘impudent’, just honestly stating your opinion. I appreciate that.

Editing can cause confusion, as in the famous case of the appearance of “Ramses” in Exodus 1:11. That has led many to presume - quite wrongly, I believe - that Ramses II was contemporaneous with the Oppression of Israel – a huge anachronism!

 

However, most of the books of the Old Testament have only been assembled during the babylonean exile and the Septuagint was translated from Hebrew to Greek during the Ptolemaic period.

 

Mackey’s comment: I do not accept the conventional late dating of either the Old, or New, Testaments. Regarding Genesis, see e.g. my article:

 

If Genesis Borrowed from Babylonian Epic, why an Egyptian ‘loan word’ for Noah’s Ark?

 


 

Scholars tend to overlook completely the pervasive Egyptian element.

As professor A. S. Yahuda, expert in both Hebrew and Egyptian (not to mention Akkadian), wrote:

 

Whereas those books of Sacred Scripture which were admittedly written during and after the Babylonian Exile reveal in language and style such an unmistakable Babylonian influence that these newly-entered foreign elements leap to the eye, by contrast in the first  part of the Book of Genesis, which describes the earlier Babylonian [sic] period, the Babylonian influence in the language is so minute as to be almost non-existent.

 

Similarly, regarding the New Testament Gospels, and other texts, Dead Sea Scrolls expert, Fr. Jean Carmignac (Birth of the Synoptic Gospels), had been able to apply the same sort of bilingual expertise - in his case, Greek and Hebrew - to gainsay the received scholarly opinion and show that the New Testament writings in Greek had Hebrew originals: his argument for a much earlier dating than is usual for the New Testament books.

 

Fr Jean Carmignac dates Gospels early

 


 

So if we assume Solomon to have lived in 900BC, the first editing would occur in 500BC, the babylonean episode and the Septuagint around 300BC or so. This means a period of about 600 years in which is ‘assumed’ that no editing or change from the original text occured.
To be honest, that’s preposterous and contrary to any human behaviour however rigid their belief is.

 

Mackey’s comment: Occasionally one encounters someone who will insist that Moses wrote every single word of the entire Pentateuch. Now that is “rigid … belief”.

 

Language is a fluid human endeavour and changes from generation to generation. Old words become archaic and new ones in vogue.
A beautiful example is the word ‘sharpshooter’. The correct term would be ‘sniper’. During the american civil war a union regiment of snipers used a breech loading and very accurate rifle made by Christian Sharps.

They were known as Sharps shooters. Very few today know this and assume it has to do something with a sharp eye.

There’s not such thing as a ‘sharp’ eye.
And that’s only after a century and a half...

 

Mackey’s comment: I love reading about the American Civil War, the names and the characters – but not the blood and the guts. I do know something about “Sharps” – namely, that (the Battle of) Antietam (1862) was also called Sharpsburg.


So what’s my point:

 

Mackey’s comment: I thought that you had already made it.


The title “pharao” in any of the books of Kings or Exodus is anachronistic. In hieroglyps, it only appears in the late 18th dynasty and never as a stand alone title. We have to wait until the 21st dynasty for it to appear as a title in itself. This means that Hatshepsut never was called Pharao! Nor Shishak, Zera or So for that matter. They were “Nesu Bity” and Lord of the 2 lands. Simply translated they were kings.
The first ‘Pharao’ is Siamun of the 21st dynasty who came after Ramses III. In Velikovsky’s chronology that’s fairly late.

 

This alone proofs the anachronistic and late editing of the Scriptures. Since the time of the Ptolemaic era, King of Egypt and Pharao are synonyms, and the latter simply unknown in the days of Solomon!

In another example a scolar tries to refute Velikovsky by analysing Hebrew so to make a difference between king x and king of x. His analysis of the Hebrew title is probably correct but he does not take the late Hebrew date of editing in account.
Written in the same timeframe (500 to 300 bc) and Hatshepsut/Sheba a contemporary of Solomon (900bc), nobody knew who Hatshepsut/Sheba was anymore. The Egyptians themselves made sure we would forget. Tuthmose III had everything destroyed or covered that mentioned Hatshepsut. He even had her temple completely covered with rubble. So 4 to 6 centuries later when Jewish scolars were assembling their books nobody knew who or what they were writing about. So a change from king x to king of x was easily made.

In any case, just an opinion from an amateur so don’t mind me.
Thank you for your work.

….

 

 

No comments: