Shepherds part 8

In paragraph 9 of Mr. Alcorn's article Shepherd's Status, we read "In the course of 400 years, the Egyptians prejudiced the  Israelite's attitude toward shepherding." Again, there are no sources to back this up and no reasons to believe it is true.

In paragraph 10, we see a statement that shepherding in Palestine decreased after the Israelites occupied the land and settled down. Again, no sources to back this up. Not surprisingly, Mr. Alcorn seems unaware of the current scholarship, supported by archaeology, that shows the Israelites probably originated and developed  from within the Canaanite people. They were Canaanites to begin with.

Mr. Alcorn continues to make statement after statement of dubious historicity, with no sources given. In paragraph 12, this claim is made: "In the days of the prophets, sheep herders symbolized judgement and social isolation. (Zephaniah 2:6)."   I don't think Mr. Alcorn read the context of that passage in Zephaniah very well. The shepherds represented Yahweh's people, the remnant of the house of Judah. They were supposed to show god's loving care for his chosen ones.

We are given Dr. Joachim Jeremias as a source for the statement that shepherds were "despised in everyday life." We are not told in which of Dr. Jeremias's writings we would find this, or where he got his information.

Paragraph 13 says, "Shepherding had not just lost its widespread appeal; it eventually forfeited its social acceptability. Some shepherds earned their poor reputations, but others became victims of a cruel sterotype. (Sources ??) The religious leaders maligned the shepherd's good name; rabbis banned the pasturing of goats and sheep in Israel, except on desert plains." We will see there is a small kernel of truth in the last statement when we examine the Mishnah's statements about shepherds. But it is not the whole truth.

The article goes on to say, "The Mishnah, Judaism's written record of the oral laws, also reflects this prejudice, referring to shepherds in belittling terms. One passage describes them as 'incompetent'; another says no one should ever feel obligated to rescue a shepherd who has fallen into a pit. Mr Alcorn does not tell us where in the mishnah we can find these statements. My guess is he didn't actually check to see if they are there.

If you read the Wikipedia article on the Mishnah you will see that it is a collection of documents about oral traditions and laws, supposedly passed down from through the ages. They were written and edited by rabbis, combined with other documents written and edited by rabbis. Some of the documents are comentaries on the Mishnah. All together, the collection is called the Talmud, and there are two versions of that. Think of the whole thing as a kind of law library reference encyclopedia.

In the next post I will attempt to uncover just what we can find about shepherds in these documents.

Judges chapter 1

After reading chapter 1:

*After the death of Joshua, the Israelites asked Yahweh which tribe should continue the fighting. Yahweh chose the tribe of Judah. Who was Yahweh speaking through now? We are not told, but presumably it was the current high priest, Phineas. The men of Judah invited the Simeonites to accompany them.  Together they killed ten thousand men. They captured the king of Bezek and cut off his thumbs and big toes. The king viewed this as a kind of divine Karma, because he had done the same thing to 70 other kings.

*Next, they attacked Jerusalem, slaughtered its inhabitants, and burned the city to the ground. Then we are told they attacked Canaanites living in Hebron and Debir, which had already been totally conquered in Joshua chapter 10! We are also retold the story of Caleb's daughter marrying Othniel, the conqueror of Debir. We are also retold the story of her asking for land with springs of water from Joshua chapter 15. Only this time it all happens after the death of Joshua, not before!

*The Judahites and Simeonites, with the help of Yahweh, went on conquering Canaanites and took Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ekron. (History says these Canaanite cities were actually conquered by the Philistines or the sea people.) They also took possession of the hill country, which appears redundant because Joshua is said to have done the same thing in Joshua chapter 11. Again, we are told they could not conquer the people of the plains because they had iron chariots. Foiled again, Yahweh!

*Caleb was given Hebron and drove three sons of Anak from it.The sons of Anak, or Anakim, are interesting fellows. They are considered to be Giants. Also, Numbers 13 says they are descendants of the Nephilim, introduced in Genesis 6. The big question is how did they survive the flood?

*The Benjaminites could not drive out the Jebusites. Manasseh could not drive out four tribes that were determined to live in that land. Ephraim could not completely drive out Canaanites living in Gezer. Zebulon could not drive out Canaanites living in Kitron nor Nahalol. Asher could not drive out 7 tribes of Canaanites living in "his" land, so he just had to live with them. Naphtali could not drive out two tribes. The Amorites  confined the tribe of Dan to the hill country and wouldn't let them come down into the plain. Sounds like Yahweh's powers either waned or experienced limitations. It is quite clear that the Israelites did not completely control the land of Cannan, no matter how you look at it. Nevertheless, this chapter insists that the Israelite tribes grew stronger and eventually subjected these pesky leftover Canaanites to forced labor. Yeah, right.

Joshua chapter 17

After reading chapter 17:

*Here we are told what part of the land was allotted to the rest of the tribe of Manasseh and the tribe of Ephraim, the descendents of Joseph. In the Wikipedia articles, you can see a map of the distribution of tribal territory. Remember, half of the Manassehites recieved land east of the Jordan. This was called the land of Gilead  What makes it a little confusing is that the land of Gilead is named after a descendant of Manasseh. We are also reminded of the story of the daughters who were promised an inheritance back in Numbers chapters 27 and 36. The land allotted to Ephraim lies partially within the boundaries of Manasseh.

*We are also told that the Manassehites were unable to drive all the Canaanites out of their allotted land, instead they subjected them to forced labor. This is becoming a familiar refrain. What happened to Yahweh's strength and might? What happened to the order to anihilate all the Cannanites? If you can enslave people, why can't you destroy them? Something fishy is going on here. Could it be that the authors of Joshua needed an explanation for why there were Canaanites living in the land when the book was written? Also, remember way back in Genesis chapter 9 when the descendents of Canaan were cursed and told they would become slaves of the descendents of Shem? Justification! All this happened because Ham saw his father Noah naked and drunk, imagine that.

*In the second half of the chapter, the Ephraimites and Manassehites complain that their share of land is too small because they are very numerous. Joshua allows them a bit more. Then they complain because the Canaanites in that land have iron chariots. Aha! Yahweh is no match for iron chariots. Joshua admits those Canaanites are strong, but says,"you can drive them out." Will the Canaanites with the iron chariots be driven out? Stay tuned for continuing episodes...

Exodus chapter 6 Part 1

After reading chapter 6:

*Yaweh says  now Moses will see what he will do to Pharoah to make him let the Israelites go. Oh, and by the way, he is the same God that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob worshipped. They just called him something else, "God almighty," not Yahweh.  He's the god that made the covenant to give them the land of Canaan. After hearing the trouble the Israelites were in, he remembered the covenant.

*The word God  in God almighty is another form of El, the Canaanite high God. Of course the God of the land of Canaan could decide who he wanted to live in that land, right? What the bible does not tell you is that many gods in ancient times were generally fixtures of geography. Egyptian gods would be worshipped in Egypt, Canaanite gods would be worshipped in Canaan. There were also times when one people group would say to another, hey this particular God of yours looks just like that particular God of mine, they must be the same God! This happened to the Greeks and Romans, because  the Romans happened to admire Greek culture.  Yahweh says he's the same God as El. We will see later that Israelites definitely do not admire Canaanite culture, but they claim the land as their own, and generally speaking, the land comes with its own God. What we see from a purely historical point of view is that gods evolve along with culture.

*Continuing on with the story, Yahweh tells Moses to tell the Israelites that he is going to be their God and will take them out of Egypt to the land he promised their forefathers. Moses told them, but they did not listen to him. Can you blame them? Then Yahweh tells Moses to go talk to Pharoah again. Moses does not want to go. Can you blame him? Why doesn't God talk directly to the Israelites or Pharoah? Why go through all this nonsense? Why can't they worship him in Egypt?   These questions are unanswerable, unless you make up your own answers. Faith supplies answers that don't exist.

Genesis chapter 17

After reading chapter 17:

*This chapter takes place 13 years after chapter 16, when Abram is 99 and Sarai is 90, or approximately 1953 B.C.E.

*Abram has another personal revelation from the lord (Yaweh) who says he is the almighty God (El ). God renews his covenant with Abram. He changes Abram's name to Abraham and Sarai's name to Sarah.

* The terms of the covenant:
~Abraham will be given the whole land of Canaan
~He will be the father of many nations
~Every male in his entourage, slave and free,  must be circumcised as an everlasting sign of the covenant, whether they wanted to be or not. That was at least a few hundreds of men( Gen. 14:14), not to mention the billions of descendants to follow. Any uncircumcised male will be cut off from the the rest of the family.
~Abraham and Sarah will have a son and will call him Isaac. He will be the heir of the covenant even though he is technically the Younger Brother.
~Ishmael will be blessed and will be the father of twelve rulers.

* What does Abraham have to do for all this? Just be God's man and blameless. One wonders what blameless means, since Abraham has lied, traded his wife for riches to save his own neck, treated a woman with contempt, and is the owner of many slaves.

*Abraham laughed at the thought if having a son at his age, but he went ahead and circumcised every male in his clan on that very day. Nobody would be doing any baby making quite yet.

*The earliest record of circumcision is from about 2,400 B.C.E. in Egypt. It had probably been practiced for hundreds of years before that. Ra the sun god was said to have circumcised himself. Check out he Wikipedia article on circumcision for more info.

Genesis chapter 13

After reading chapter 13:

So, Abram, who is now very wealthy, leaves Egypt. He and his entourage go back to the Bethel that isn't named Bethel til chapter 28. There Abram and Lot divvy up the land, because there aren't enough resources for all of them to stay in one place. Lot chose to go east to the well watered plain of the Jordan and Abram stayed in Canaan's hill country.

Again, God talks only to Abram and tells him all the land he sees, north, south, east and west, will be given to his descendants. Later, we will see that Abram's descendants make sure God keeps his promise.

So,Abram travels again, scoping out the land God will give him and ends up traveling south through the hills to Hebron where he builds a barbecue pit, um, altar to the Lord.

So far Abram has built three altars, one in Shechem, one in Bethel, and one in Hebron. Two of those places are said to have sites with "great" trees. There are a few other great trees mentioned in other books of the bible. These trees had special cultic significance. My study bible tells me Canaanites sought advice from thier gods by these trees, maybe Abram followed that practice. The chief Canaanite God was El, whose name appears as part of many place and people names we will encounter in later passages. A couple of examples are Beth-el and Isra-el.

*In many English versions of the Old Testament, when we see the words "the lord,"  the Hebrew is Yahweh. When we see the word God, it is almost always a version of El. Later, we will come upon scriptures that will explain why there are two versions of the supreme being.

Edited.

Genesis chapter 10

After reading chapter 10:

* It is physically impossible for all the people on earth today to have come from only 3 couples 4,000 years ago. Modern genetics tells us there has never been a population of less than 10,000 people on earth. It also tells us that humans probably originated in Africa, not the Middle East.

*Many of the civilizations listed in this chapter existed long before the flood date of 2,350 B.C.E. , according to Ussher's chronology. The area covered does not include civilizations in India and across the vast land mass of Asia.

*Apparently Ham had other sons besides Canaan, but Canaan bore the brunt of the curse of slavery. Why?

*In verse 21 we find out that Shem, the traditional ancestor of all Semites was the Younger Brother of Japheth.

*It is worth noting that there are animals all over the world that are peculiar to their own part of the earth with no trace of them ever having lived in, or migrated from, the Middle East. Kangaroos and koalas are a couple of the most well known ones.

Genesis chapter 9

After reading chapter 9:

*God tells the people and animals to go make babies and fill the earth back up, which they must have done with extraordinary enthusiasm.

*Now he sanctions the eating of flesh as as well as vegetation, and animals begin to fear for their lives. However, there will be no eating flesh with blood in it. No rare steaks from now on. 

*After we find out there is no penalty for killing animals, we see the introduction of the death penalty for killing a human. Man and beast will be executed for this crime, because people are like God. At least man is. 

*Now God promises never to destroy the whole earth again, with a flood. The prismatic effect of light through water droplets, will remind God of this promise. Otherwise, he would forget.

*Then Noah plants a vinyard with grape cuttings that he carried in the ark for a year. He tends the grape plants for the approximately 3 years it takes to get a good crop for wine making. Then he squeezes the juice from the grapes, stores it, and lets it ferment, so he can get drunk.

*While Noah is drunk, Ham sees his father naked so his son Cannan is cursed as a punishment, introducing the justification for slavery into the world. All the descendants of Shem and Japheth can just point to this verse and the descendants of Canaan will pay for Ham's indescretion. This will come in handy later when the Israelites want to take over the land of Canaan.

*Noah lives to the ripe old age of 950, which would be about 2,000  B.C.E. by Bishop Ussher's chronology. At that time the world was amazingly full of people,  even as far away as India and China. You would never have known there was a flood if the Bible didn't say so.