Don’t Crucify Me, Bro! part 4

Part Four, The Mythology of Sacrifice

The Christian Passion is not the first sacrifice to have been portrayed as the means to salvation. Many cultures since before history have used sacrifice, human, animal, and agricultural, as offerings to the powers that be. These, less theological, but just as mystical acts of devotion are often seen as representative of hubris, an anthropomorphism of societies ills.

The sacrificial death of Jesus is important because Christ is a guiltless figure, without sin. How is this conceptually different than, say, sacrificing a virgin to a hungry volcano? Human sacrifices in ancient cultures were often done to promote the growth of crops, the body of the victim being strewn out upon the fields. In Christian ceremonies it’s for the nourishment of the soul instead of the nourishment of the soil. It is the body of the savior that is consumed as food.

“but with precious blood, as of a lamb without spot, even the blood of Christ: who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was manifested at the end of times for your sake” (I Peter 1:19-20)

This motif of the sacrifice of a life without flaw, a perfect specimen, can be seen in religious movements around the world, from the small sacrifice of a carefully selected animal without any blemish or flaw right on up to the ultimate sacrifice of a human being. A child would be a large sacrifice, but not as large as a grown human that had managed to mature without sinning. (The actual age of “person hood”, in which an individual is no longer viewed as property but is rather seen as a mature human being differs from culture to culture, but there is usually an initiation rite of some sort: a bar mitzvah, sweet sixteen party, etc).

“And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying,

And I, behold, I have taken the Levites from among the children of Israel instead of all the first-born that openeth the womb among the children of Israel; and the Levites shall be mine:

for all the first-born are mine; on the day that I smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt I hallowed unto me all the first-born in Israel, both man and beast; mine they shall be: I am Jehovah.

-Numbers 3:11-13”

Sacrifice, the taking of an innocent life for the benefit of a society as a whole, was/is believed to transfer certain properties from the guiltless sacrificed party to the people, either the performers of the sacrifice, or the community at large. In the Book of Judges, Jephthah sacrifices his daughter after making a promise to Yahweh that he would sacrifice the first thing that walked through the door if he defeated the Ammonites. In the Iliad, Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia to win the favor of the goddess Artemis. In Genesis, the sacrifice of Isaac may have been thought of as an atoning act, though there is little indication that Isaac was a willing participant in the act. In the Jesus Passion, there is question as to Jesus’ ultimate knowledge of his own death; Mark’s version shows Jesus to be silent, and perhaps unwilling, Luke’s version portrays a much more involved martyr.

Substitution

In the all too familiar Isaac story, Abraham, who is not shown putting up much of a fuss when asked to slit his son’s throat, a practical joker of a God magically conjures up a sheep as a substitute for the boy in the nick of time (Just kidding there, big boy. You were going to do it, too!). The Greeks too had a variant of the myth in which it is Hercules that puts a stop to a human sacrifice, substituting a sheep instead. In a variant of Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter, it was a deer that was substituted by the goddess at the last moment.

“On the Day of Atonement, which was the tenth day of the seventh month, the Jewish high-priest laid both his hands on the head of a live goat, confessed over it all the iniquities of the Children of Israel, and, having thereby transferred the sins of the people to the beast, sent it away into the wilderness.”

(Frazer, chapter 57, section 3)

In the ancient Greek culture, a human scapegoat, known as a pharmako, was chosen, usually a criminal. Records of the event differ, some claiming that the pharmako was sacrificed, with others taking it to be a mock ritual. Either way, the spirit of the event focused on a death that, through an unknown method, made up for the sins of the people.

And this sacrificial death motif seemed to have taken the world of the 1^st century by storm. Not only did Christianity arise at this time and place, but a slew of Mystery Religions worshiping the divine deaths of Mithras, Dionysus, Isis, Osiris, etc, swept across The Mediterranean region. This mystical replacement of the once all too common real world sacrifice could have been seen as a step in the right direction. Played out with responsibility it could have told the world that the slaughter of people or animals was no longer needed; that the ritual itself could unite the community. In all too many sects of Christianity, though, the death is fixated upon, made into a gruesome fetish that frees the believers from personal responsibility.

“Among the Semites of Western Asia the king, in a time of national danger, sometimes gave his own son to die as a sacrifice for the people. Thus Philo of Byblus, in his work on the Jews, says: “It was an ancient custom in a crisis of great danger that the ruler of a city or nation should give his beloved son to die for the whole people, as a ransom offered to the avenging demons; and the children thus offered were slain with mystic rites.” (Frazer, chapter 26, Sacrifice of the King’s Son)

The death of Jesus is compared to the death of the passover lamb in the gospel narrative, the lamb that was killed and who’s blood was painted on the doors of the Hebrews so that the angel of Death would pass over those houses, sparing the lives of their children inside (God, apparently, did not know your heart in those days, and needed a visual indicator on who to kill on who not to kill). In the Jesus variation of this Jewish myth, accepting the blood of Jesus protects us from divine judgment after death. This is why it is a matter of necessity to place the crucifixion during the passover festival. The Christian movement had split off from the Jews, no longer wanting to be slaves to Temple sacrifice of the priests, they accepted one of their own; a sacrifice that no longer needed to be tied to a physical location.

When theology becomes nothing more than rationalization of mythology, it provides a disservice to both the philosophy that leads to it, for any philosophy no matter how sound is worthless when based upon a false premise, as well as the mythology, which, when crammed into a pseudo-historical setting, loses whatever edifying nature it may have once had. Crucifixion saves no one. There is no single saving event, only the struggles we face each day.

Don’t Crucify Me, Bro! part 3

Part 3, The Evolution of the Crucifixion

The earliest Christian documents that we have portray the death of Jesus as a mystical experience, not tying it to any historical place or time. It was only once someone made the effort to turn the belief into a narrative with the Gospel According to Mark, 50 years to 100 years after the supposed event, that the death trial of Jesus was extrapolated into the passion play that we know today. And it was then portrayed differently in each of the following attempts to re-tell the tale to different audiences. In the earliest gospel, Mark, Jesus is lead silently to his death. He is mocked along the way and, as he dies, he cries out “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” At the turn of the first century, this portrayal of a truly gruesome death would have been the story converts of Christianity would have had preached to them. Evidently, a kindler gentler death was soon needed, for the popular re-write by Luke has Jesus going to his death practically cheerful, preaching to the women along the route and picking up a new Christian convert on the cross next to him before he cries Mission Accomplished.

The earliest copies of Mark that we have end when the women go to the tomb and find it empty. The women flee in terror and tell no one. Mathew added an earthly re-appearance by Jesus (the re-animation of the saints in Mathew 27: 51-53 shows us that an earthy re-birth from the tomb was an important element to his movement).

Luke adds an ascension to heaven, mostly like intended to be a reference to the ascension of Ilijah, an earlier savior figure in the Old Testament.

And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I am taken from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.

And he said, Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so.

And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, which parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.

And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof! And he saw him no more: and he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces.

-2 Kings 2: 9-12

The story of the crucifixion began simply, plain, and deeply mythological by a charismatic offshoot of Judaism in the first century CE.. The story grew over that years, and that is what we continue to see today. Theologians look for a spiritual message of divine acceptance and love in what began as little more an idea. Modern Christians, only familiar with fleshed out movie dramatizations of the narrative cannot imagine how the story could have been “invented” or “made up” so they demand evidence that it didn’t happen. Well, the evidence is usually sitting on a book shelf, gathering dust; it’s all in a book they love so much they dare not read it critically.

Don’t Crucify Me, Bro! part 2

Part Two, How Does Crucifixion Save Anyone?

How, exactly does the death of Christ “pay for our sins”? The answer is not quite as easy as midi-chlorians in the blood, but it may be just as disappointing. Theologians hungry to defend their beliefs have come up with a few mechanisms to attempt explain exactly how the crucifixion of Jesus works as a vehicle for redemption. Problematically, many of them are no more theologically advanced than the means of death itself:

1. Blood atonement – The idea that “spilled blood” can wipe away sins. This concept is not new to Christianity, the sacrifice of animals and humans was common place in ancient Mediterranean religions. To hold this belief, one would have to accept that blood itself either holds “sin” or some kind of cleansing agent. In the religion of Mithras, a faith that ran concurrent with early Christianity, a convert would receive a literal baptism of blood by having a bull’s throat cut above them, allowing the blood to pour over their body.
2. Penal substitution – Christ has paid for your sins so you don’t have to. If this were true, God would be nothing more than a debt collector, with no care as to who paid the bill. This view is not reconcilable with justice simply because the guilty party does not pay the price for their own crimes; nor does it show forgiveness, since an innocent man does. In variations of this belief, this price is paid to Satan rather than to God. But, a universe in which God must pay Satan to get all of humanity out of hock is definitely not Christianity as any modern church sees it.
3. Satisfaction – When asking for “satisfaction” we are more inclined to think of pistols at twenty paces than we are an almighty being. In feudal societies, though, the practice of hanging exaggerated penalties onto the smallest of crimes was common to keep the rest of the peasants in line. Once the hoi polloi see their buddy hung by the thumbs for stealing scraps of bread from the royal kitchen’s dust bin, all thoughts of infringing on the king’s belonging’s is off the table. This view would, of course, turn God into a stone cold tyrant with no more appeal than Joseph Stalin.
4. Trans-formative experience – This concept is new in the world of theology. Paul Tillich favored it, and it certainly seems less barbaric, though it certainly does strain vague explanations. Christ’s death is a demonstration of God’s love for us, though I have always felt that a hug, rather than a whipping, is a much better act of love.

Keep in mind, that all of these explanation require an archaic belief that “sin” is an actual state of being that can be acquired and, in some instances, passed down through family lines.

“I Jehovah thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me” (Exodus 20:5)

Sin is a word we have all had so severely beaten into us that, even if we choose to abandon it, we find ourselves looking for a secular substitution, and there simply is not one. Every act harmful to other human beings is not a sin, and every sin is not a harmful act. What did the ancients believe sin to be? Well, the treatment of the handicapped in the Bible certainly shows that an uninformed pre-scientific view of the world led to many misunderstandings about the nature of physical differences.

“Whosoever … hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach” (Leviticus 21:17-18)

Are we to adopt such discriminatory practices simply because they are mentioned in ancient Hebrew literature? No.

Don’t Crucify Me, Bro! part 1

Part One, Forget the Liberty, Give Us Death

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” -John 3:16

Atheists are often criticized for focusing on trivial aspects of religion and not tackling the deeper, more advanced modern theology of Christianity. Christianity does have some deep thinkers in their numbers. But, as in any branch of philosophy, no matter how intricate any argument may be, it is philosophically unsound if it is based upon a false premise. And no matter how glorious or beautiful the concept of an “atoning death” of Jesus is made out to be, it is still nothing more than the glorification of a bloody human sacrifice. It is a relic of primitive pagan idolatry, and no amount of apologetics can change that.

The core tenet of Christianity is, of course, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Liberal theologians and modern historical scholars may attempt to paint the newly discovered “historical Jesus” as a wise wandering sage, a stoic philosopher, or an apocalyptic prophet. But, there have been thousands of such figures throughout the last two thousand years and none of them are worthy of building up a world religion around.

It is, after all, not the Stoic philosophy that Jesus is shown rattling off during the sermon on the mount that saves anyone; accepting that the meek will get the lion’s share of the world is not the ticket to heaven. Most Christians don’t even seem to be concerned with studying the sayings of Jesus; I have found Buddhists and secular humanists to be much more familiar with any of these sayings than the average Christian. No, the saving grace of Christianity is the death of Jesus. It is this death that the early apostles seemed so attracted to. In fact, there is no trace of any of the teachings of Jesus in the early Pauline Epistles. This has lead some historians to wonder if Paul was even aware of any of these teachings. No, it is the worship of a death, a crude metaphor, perhaps, that has survived into the 21^st century simply because, at some point in Roman Empire, the emperor of the most powerful nation on earth adopted the religion. His successor made all other faiths illegal, and a purging of non-Christian temples soon wiped out all competitors.

Complex philosophies and theoretical puzzles can be based around any premise. Just ask any serious Star Trek fan. They can analyze the deeper symbolism of any plot line and describe the physics of non-existent star ships to no end. However, this ability to extrapolate on possible scenarios, does not make any belief system true. Christianity has used any number of theological beliefs based events that are unlikely to have even happened. This is why Christianity survives. Its has the ability to dazzle the listener with fancy rhetoric that often heads off in circles, but never answers any questions. Just ask any preacher to describe the doctrine of the Trinity and they will most likely head of into “modalism” (the ice, water, steam comparison that was declared a heresy as soon as the concept of the trinity was established) or escape by the back door by calling it a “mystery”.

But the Passion story, the drawn out depiction of the savage beating and gruesome death of Jesus of Nazareth, has a power no theological meandering has: it has emotional appeal. And, as anyone that’s seen The Passion of the Christ can attest to, the pain of the narrative is often played for all the tears it can muster in an attempt to win converts.

In the world of myth, the passion story may make sense. Myth can make emotional appeals to the senses without having to worry about any being literal. In any literal sense, the crucifixion death of an immortal god is beyond preposterous. Or are we to believe that the killing of Christ was all pomp and circumstance? A pageant play for our amusement in which the creator of the universe masqueraded as a man, and went through the motions of getting killed? It is not theology, it is mythology.

Crazy Creationist Capitalization

Anyone that’s received even a singe e-mail from a Creationist has surely noticed their bizarre habit of putting random words into all capitalization (when they are, apparently, meant to be shouted with great enthusiasm).

Where in the world do they acquire this habit? I know what you’re thinking; they get it from bat-shit crazy land, right? Well, while it is true that most Creationists are illiterate idiots, this custom is far too homogeneous to be purely the result of sleeping in grade school.

So, where do I think they get it? Well, let’s look to the Bible for the answer:

And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food;

-Genesis 2:9

So, do Creationists believe that the word “Lord” in this sentence in supposed to be stressed? Or yelled? I think they do. And, after seeing this seemingly meaningless capitalization all their lives, they simply assumed it was kosher to capitalize words that make them feel funny.

Well, the capitalization of LORD in the Bible isn’t random. It is a scheme developed to substitute different, more familiar, words for the various words and names originally used to refer to the principle deity of the Hebrew people.

Examples:

Lord = Adoni. Adoni a general term. A proper name version of the word, Adonis, was used to refer to the Semitic god Tammuz.

LORD = Yahweh. Yahweh, or more properly YHWH, is the proper name for the Hebrew god.

God = El or Elohim. The term “El” can be used for any god. The Canaanites, as well as the Ugarits used it to refer to the chief god in their pantheons. It was probably adopted by the Hebrews to refer to their god. Elohim is technically plural, but may be used to refer to god as an abstract entity rather than an anthropomorphic, “on the stage”, character.

Lord God = Yahweh Elohim (Yahweh, the god)

God Most High = El Elyon (the high god)

God All Mighty = El Shaddai. It may translate as “god of the fields” or “god of the mountain”. But, since Shaddai was a city and El simply means god, it is quite possible that it may just refer to the god of the city of Shaddai.

Here is an example of how these traditional substitutions can make the Bible look like a mess of odd caps and italics.

And God spoke to Moses and said to him: “I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name LORD I was not known to them.

-Exodus 6:2-3

When this would be a more proper translation.

And Elohim spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am Yahweh: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as El Shaddai; but by my name Yahweh I was not known to them.

Of course, I could be wrong. With all the shouting that has been done in town hall meetings in the last year, perhaps Creationists really do intend certain words to be yelled. They are an odd bunch.

Pre-10 Commandments Law Codes

The 10 Commandments, of C.B. DeMille fame, are often given credit by Christians as the only possible way to know what’s right and wrong (that’s why you always see then counting before they make any decisions).

Even though Biblical literalists attempt to place the Exodus at the middle of the 14th century BCE, there is a large discrepancy in proposed dates. And, with the absence of any corroborating archeological or historical data from Egypt, Canaan, or anywhere in between, as well as all the logical difficulties with any sort of a literal reading of the Biblical narrative, the chances of the Exodus being an historical event are pretty much nonexistent. The Torah is theoretically dated to the 6th century BCE, probably based on 8th or 9th century BCE sources. And it is difficult to imagine the text being any older at all since a recent discovery of 10th century BCE writing on a pottery sherd was so foreign the language was dubbed “proto-Canaanite” and took scholars some time to translate.

All that aside, several law codes pre-date even the early mythical date for the 10 Commandments. This leaves Yahweh’s chosen people not only incapable of making a decent set of laws themselves, but paints them as late comers in the law and order department:

Code of Urukagina, Lagash, 2300 ca BCE

• Among reforms for the poor, this law code imits powers of the priesthood, giving us a pretty good precedent for the Separation of Church and state

Code of Ur-Nammu, Sumer, 2100-2050 BCE

• Mentions the gods An and Enlil in the prologue. Superstitions cultures often attribute laws to gods.

Laws of Eshnunna, Baghdad, ca. 1930 BC

• Most offenses were penalized with monetary payment.

Codex of Lipit-Ishtar, Isin, ca. 1870 BC

• If a man rented an ox and injured the flesh at the nose ring, he shall pay one-third of its price. Sounds odd, sure. But there’s rules about cattle in the Bible, too.

Code of Hammurabi, Babylon, 1790 BCE

• Like the 10 Commandments, it attributes the laws to god. Only in this case, the god is Dagon.

Hittite laws, 1650 BCE

Assyrian law, ca. 1110 BCE

Mosiac Law, Judah, 900-800 BCE

• Listed in the Hebrew Bible (aka, the Old Testament) as the 10 Commandments as well as the 613 laws listed in the Pentateuch

The Evolution of God

Destruction of Leviathan

Everything has a beginning, including God, whether the faithful would like to think so or not. But, when was it?

The oldest parts of the Bible as we know it is (theoretically) the J an E sources, dated back to the 8th or 9th century BCE. Even a cursory glance at those parts of the Bible, though, gives us a pretty clear indication that Yahweh was viewed in a very different light than he is today. There are references to Yahweh walking though the Garden of Eden “in the cool of the day” (that’s hot, even god waited until it started to cool down)(Genesis 3:8); standing around with Abraham debating on what it would take for him to not kill the Sodomites (Genesis 18:22-33); and coming down on a cloud to stand at the door of the Tent of Meeting (Numbers 12: 4-6).

The more abstract god that we think of today would not be depicted until the later writings of the Bible.

We don’t have any original copies of any of the Old Testament writings. Up until 1948, the oldest copies of the Old Testament we had were from the middle ages. In 1948, though, a discovery in the Jordon dessert turned that around. The Dead Sea Scrolls contained multiple copies of most of the Old Testament books, and they have been dated to 200BCE to 100CE; not as old as we would have liked, but better than what we had. Though the texts do show a very careful copying of manuscripts by the scribes, there are some interesting differences between them and the Masoretic texts. Like this passage in Deuteronomy:

“When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
When he separated the children of men,
He set the bounds of the peoples
According to the number of the children of Israel.
For Jehovah’s portion is his people;
Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.”
– Deuteronomy 32:8-9 (Masoretic text)

became this

“When `Elyon (the Most High) allotted peoples for inheritance,
When He divided up the sons of man,
He fixed the boundaries for peoples,
According to the number of the sons of El
But Yahweh’s portion is his people,
Jacob His own inheritance.”
– Deuteronomy 32:8-9 (Dead Sea Scrolls version)

This puzzling piece of data can be explained with another recent archaeological discovery: The Ugaritic texts. In 1929, an site in Syria uncovered religious texts far older than the Old Testament.

The Documentary Hypothesis of the Old Testament had long theorized that the passages in the Bible that refer to god as “El” had originated from the northern Kingdom of Israel and that the part that refer to god with the personal name Yahweh (or more properly, YHWH) were from the southern land of Judah.

The Ugaritic texts originate from the northwest of Israel, and also use El to refer to god (or variations – Elyon meaning “god most high”; El Shaddai meaning “god almighty”; or, Elohim, which is the plural). There are some differences to how he’s depicted, though. He is the head of a pantheon, with 70 sons. 70, the number of nations the Hebrews believed to have existed (“He fixed the boundaries for peoples,According to the number of the sons of El”).

The Ugaritic texts, which have been dated from the 13th to 15th centuries BCE, depict El as a father of all mankind; a dessert dwelling .. El’s son, Yam (or Yaw), is believed to be the name sake of Yahweh. Once the Hebrews adopted mono-theism these two gods seem to have been combined, as mentioned in Exodus:

“I revealed myself to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as Ēl Shaddāi, but was not known to them by my name Yahweh.” Exodus 6; 2-3

Oddly enough, the Christian derivation of Judaism adopted a sort of pantheism again once Jesus, the anointed son of Yahweh, was given equal status with him inside the concept of the trinity. (“We affirm, too, a crowd of angels and ministers ”-Athenagoras of Athens).

Yaw, himself, seems to have originated as a sea deity, similar to Poseidon. This does fit elements of Yahweh’s mythos, most notably his infamous battle with the sea dragon, Leviathan.

God’s Top Ten Hissy Fits

Let’s face it, God occasionally acts a bit childish.

God’s Top Ten Hissy Fits

1. Kicks Adam and Eve of the house
2. The Flood: Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. So he killed them (Genesis 6:5 to 9:29). Not everyone, though. He let a drunk and his kids live. Afterward, they all split ups “after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations”. But , half a chapter later they are of one language again. I guess nothing lasts. Noah was billed as the “first tiller of the soil (Genesis 9:20a RSV)”, leading Cain to say “hey, what about me?”
3. Tower of Babel: In those days, the whole earth had one language … again. But, then some guys decided to build a tower, so he (it actually says they) “came down” and “confounded” their language. That’ll show ’em. Apparently none of the skyscrapers today bother him so much. (Genesis 11).
4. Destroying Sodom: The men of Sodom were wicked, wicked I tell you! The women, on the other hand, were quite mild. So mild, in fact, that they had no problem being thrown to a mob to be raped in place of two strangers (their father generously telling the crowd, “you may do to them as you wish”-Genesis 19:8). As generous as the offer was, it just wasn’t enough: Kaboom! Dead, Baby! Yahweh rained brimstone down on Sodom … and Gomorrah, which wasn’t visited in the story but is, apparently, a suburb of some kind – Genesis 19.
5. Moses is forever banned from the Holy Land for not following directions (Numbers 20:1-13)
6. Snakes: While in the dessert, the Israelites complained. Boom! Venomous snakes, bitches! Numbers 21:4-9
7. Kills the sons of Aaron, for mixing their incense wrong. Bam! Dead! Leviticus 10:1-2
8. Smotes Uzza for touching the ark of the covenant, Kaboom, dead baby! 2 Samuel 6:3-7
9. Gives hemorrhoids to Ashdod and the Philistines, 1 Samuel 5:5-7
10. Kills his kid to prove a point (New Testament). He’s God, he can do anything he wants, I guess. But,  in no way was this necessary. An educational film about how bad we are would have worked.

Eddie Izzard on Religion

Decoding the Early Hebrew Sherd

The translation of five lines of writing found on a pottery sherd last year has finally been released. The sherd was found at Khirbet Qeiyafa, southwest of Jerusalem, and is will hereby be known as the The Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon!

Using broken bits of pottery as notebook paper was common in the ancient world. What is interesting about this piece is that it was dated to the 10th century BCE. Though not the oldest writing found in that area, it is the oldest writing in Hebrew. Or, rather, “proto-Canaanite”, since it does resemble the Hebrew language, however a much more primitive version of it. Press Release | A More Sober Assessment

News stories like this are always blown out of proportion by religious reporters, who tend to jump to the conclusion that any bit of writing, pottery, or discarded toiletry found in the Levant somehow verifies the historicity of the Torah, no matter what it says.

Though this piece does have some language on it that may seem to echo the sentiment expressed in the Covenant Code (Exodus 21-23), it most certainly does not echo any of the language of Exodus. Firstly, it’s not Hebrew, it’s “Proto-Canaanite”, meaning the culture was still evolving and changing. Secondly, the code in Exodus, is made up of commands given from YHWH himself, so merely paraphrasing the rules would not be on the up and up. What the existence of this sherd does do is point to an early stage of the evolution of Hebrew culture which is, oddly enough, exactly what critical scholars have been pointing to all along.

The most interesting knowledge nugget that this left over piece of clay brings us is evidence that literacy may have taken hold in the area a bit earlier than previously thought, though I would say that a single sherd does not a library make. It certainly shows that their culture was not static; that there was at least a considerable change in the language between the 10th and 8th century BCE, the time period many scholars believe the earliest of the Torah writings to be from.

Inscription (English approximation):

Do not do [ ] and servant a[…]
Judge ….. [ ] El(?)…
El(?) and Ba’all
Pe[rso]n will revenge, YSD king (of) G[ath(?)]
Seren(?) a[…] from Gederot (?)

The Proposed translation (by Gershon Galil):

1′ you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord].
2′ Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow] / Judge the orph[an]
3′ [and] the stranger. [Pl]ead for the infant / plead for the po[or and]
4′ the widow. Rehabilitate [the poor] at the hands of the king.
5′ Protect the po[or and] the slave / [supp]ort the stranger.