“Every religion is true...when understood metaphorically.” - Joseph Campbell

According to the novel, “The Da Vinci Code,” Mary Magdalene wasn’t just a devout follower of Jesus. She was also his wife! They even had a child together and their bloodline extends down to present day France. The Vatican, through Opus Dei, portrayed as a pseudo-fascist organization, is killing people off left and right. They are doing this to suppress that story line, which is seen as a threat to the Church’s hegemony. The book, authored by Dan Brown has, in turn, become a very popular movie. The screenplay was done by Akiva Goldsman. The flick was directed by Ron Howard, who cut his teeth on Tinsel Town’s silly sitcom, “Happy Days.” The All-American icon himself, Tom Hanks, plays the lead in this film which many practicing Christians consider a sacrilege and a gross insult to their faith. The “Da Vinci Code” is mostly fiction, but with kernels of truth found here and there, especially regarding the male-dominated Roman Catholic Church’s irrational hatred of women and sex.

The success of “The Da Vinci Code, is history repeating itself. In 1957, Cecil B. DeMille, directed a movie with a biblical theme, called the “Ten Commandments.” It, too, was a box office hit. It showed the enslaved Jews being led out of captivity in Egypt by Moses, a sort of Theodor Herzl of his time. Playing the Jewish saint was the Tom Hanks of his era - Charleston Heston. In the film, Moses/Heston opened up the turbulent Red Sea by waving his staff at it, which then permitted his desperate refugee people to cross over and return to Palestine. When the pursuing Egyptian Army tried to follow, the sea closed up on them and many of them drowned. The only thing missing from this high drama was having Barbara Walters narrate it. There is, however, one big, serious problem with the “Exodus” story, which is sourced by the Old Testament. There isn’t any historical evidence to support it at all. None! According to the book, “The Laughing Jesus,” it’s a Jewish fable - a fantasy. Period! The Jewish scribes made it all up! (1)

The Ancient Egyptians were fantastic record keepers. “Texts, sculpture and artifacts testify to a sophisticated culture that really did endure for millennia,” say the British authors, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. They go on to write: “There is no evidence for the existence of Moses. Although he is portrayed as an influential member of the Egyptian royal household, he is not mentioned in any Egyptian record. Nor is there any evidence to support the idea that the Jews were ever held captive in Egypt or that they made any exodus from the country under Moses’ command. The Egyptians chronicled their history in great detail but make no mention of any captive Jews. Amongst the hundreds of thousands of Egyptian monumental inscriptions, tomb inscriptions and papyri, there is complete silence about the ‘600,000 men on foot, besides women and children,’ who ‘The Book of Exodus’ tells us escaped from Pharaohs’ armies. The story of Moses, with its many miracles, has all the hallmarks of a myth.” (1)

With respect to the Bible as genuine history, Israel Finklestein, director of archaeology at Tel Aviv U., and his co-writer, Neil Silberman, describe it as “no more historical [than] the Homeric saga of Odysseus or Aeneas’s founding of Rome. The birth of biblical narrative is too thoroughly filled with inconsistencies and anachronisms...that it must be considered more of an historical novel than an accurate historical chronicle.” (2)

Another noted scholar, Thomas Thompson, Professor of the Old Testament at the U. of Copenhagen, goes even further. He challenged the supposed history of the ancient Israelites. He stated: “There is no evidence of a ‘United Monarchy,’ no evidence of a capital in Jerusalem or of any coherent, unified political force that dominated western Palestine, let alone an empire of the size the legends describe. We do not have evidence for the existence of kings named Saul, David or Solomon; nor do we have evidence for any temple at Jerusalem in this early period.” (3) Piling on, Freke and Gandy underscored how, “In truth, the Ark of the Covenant... was never lost, just deleted from the record by an editorial hand when it became a liability.” (1)

Authors Freke and Gandy also said, “The account of Moses’ birth is a retelling of the myth of the birth of Sargon the Great, the king of Akkad, which is known in a number of variations from the early sixth century BCE. Like Moses, the child Sargon is ‘set in a basket of rushes’ and ‘cast into the river,’ from which he is later rescued by an influential woman. Similar Greek stories tell of the child Dionysus confined in a chest and thrown into the river Nile. These probably all go back to Egyptian stories which tell of Osiris confined in a chest and thrown into the Nile.” (1) Somehow Freke and Gandy’s book slipped by the Zionist censors. The ADL’s Abe Foxman must have been sleeping at the switch on this one.

It actually gets worse! A fearless military type, named Joshua, supposedly led the Jews escaping the Egyptians into the so-called “Promised Land.” Freke and Gandy said that kind of feat was “an historical impossibility.” They wrote: “From the fourteenth to the twelfth centuries BCE, when the exodus is supposed to have occurred, Canaan was a province of Egypt, so the Jews would not have escaped from Egyptian rule at all, but merely passed from one Egyptian territory to another. The ‘Book of Joshua,’ which relates the Jews supposed invasion of the Promised Land, makes no mention of Egyptians in Canaan, when the area should have been crawling with them.” (1)

The authors Freke and Gandy emphasized: “The Tanakh (or the Old Testament) is a collection of myths and legends. And to be fair to the Tanakh, it actually never claims to be history. In fact, you won’t find the word ‘history’ anywhere in its pages, because the word did not even exist in Hebrew.” The Brit duo believe the message of the original Christians of “awakening” to oneness and to love was transformed over the centuries by a literalist loving, power hungry elite into the authoritarian Roman Catholic Church. Many of these early Christians, the authors insist, saw Jesus as a “mythical hero of a symbolic teaching story,” which represented a “spiritual journey,” that eventually led the individual to the “experience of awakening, they called gnosis or knowing... They imagined a new world that would no longer be divided...”

Hold on! There is more. Professor Ze’ev Herzog of the U. of Tel Aviv’s Institute of Archaeology, published, in 1999, an article in the Israeli newspaper, “Ha’aretz. In his controversial commentary, entitled, “Deconstructing the Walls of Jericho,” he declared the “exodus from Egypt, the invasion by Joshua and the famous walls of Jericho are all without historical foundation.” (1) Herzog lamented: “These facts have been known for years, but Israel is a stubborn people and nobody wants to hear about it.” (4)

Finally, Freke and Gandy, said, “Although [Herzog’s] views are widely shared in the academic community, [his] article caused a furor, with secular Israelis responding the most violently. The reason is simple. They immediately recognized that the modern state of Israel would be seriously compromised if its claim to the land turned out to be based on a myth.” Considering all of the above, do you think Ron Howard will ever direct a movie, with a screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, with the theme, “Debunking the Exodus Myth?” If you do, I know a guy, who has a ton of stocks in Ken Lay’s Enron that he’s looking to unload!

Notes:

1. “The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom.”

2. “The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts.”

3. “The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past.”

4. “It Ain’t Necessarily So: Investigating the Truth of the Biblical Past,” by M. Sturgis.

© William Hughes 2006.

William Hughes is the author of “Saying ‘’No’ to the War Party” (IUniverse, Inc.). He can be reached at liamhughes@comcast.net.

I hope those academic wiseguys don't start punching holes in stories like Noah's Ark, Jonah and the Whale, Adam and Eve, or the walls of Jerico tumbling down after Joshua blows on a horn. It will be the end of civilization if people stop believing that stuff. Besides, they might start opposing billions of dollars of military equipment being sent to Israel.

For one thing, The author held up the ADL and its chairman against the Zionists, thus his "non-racist" figleaf slipped.

Secondly, even if the Exodus narrative completely lacks even one kernel of truth (I'm not convinced of that), that doesn't invalidate Israelite authenticity. Archaeology alone has proven Israelite presence in the land of Israel since the late 13th century BC and the Jewish presence of some of their progeny since the 5th.

Curious that this author utilizes the term "Jews" to describe the Hebrews that sojourned in Egypt. That shows he has little command of modern biblical scholarship. He's got other facts wrong -- stuff that already had been pointed out by biblical scholars and archaeologists. No wonder he had to rely on bigger names than himself to avoid coming across like a total clown.

Wouldn't hurt you to get up to speed on modern biblical scholarship if you aren't feigning ignorancve, that is. In the same vein you could edify yourself about the total spuriousness of the Muslim claim to the Temple Mount in relation to the Quran ("al-Aqsa", = "The Furthest Place"). If all Westerners became privy to this Muslim lie and its underlying greed, maybe they would rail against all the assistance provided by Foggy Bottom to the Palestinians.

While you're at it, why don't you run by us once more that "white European" riff about the early Zionist immigrants. Not that I'm in any danger of forgetting that you bared your hand displaying such racism when you really got emotional since your genetic misconceptions aabout European Jews were refuted.

Hebrew Bible

The only two choices for any sane person are whether all those Bible stories I mentioned are true or whether Muhummad ascended to Heaven from the Temple Mount. By the way, Mr. Scapegoated, do you believe that Aaron's rod was turned into a serpant, and ate the rods of the Pharaoh's magicians, which had also turned into serpants? I guess you must, because anyone who would cast doubt on that story is surely an anti-semite, out to scuttle US military aid to Israel, which is needed to defend freedom against the fanatical Arab hordes trying to keep their land.

Is this the correct understanding? Are you that resolute to cling to a racist and mendacious label?

BTW,

"US military aid to Israel, which is needed to defend freedom against the fanatical Arab hordes trying to keep their land."

The opposite is true in virtually all instances.

BECKY: How historically accurate is the Jewish Bible? What archeological evidence exists to support it? A cruise of the internet shows opinions on all sides. Consider this:



"Archaeologist Joseph Free has said that "Archaeology has confirmed countless passages which had been rejected by critics as unhistorical or contrary to known facts." [1] Renowned Jewish archaeologist Nelson Gluek confidently said that "It...may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference. Scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible." [2] Christian apologist Josh McDowell tells us that "After personally trying to shatter the historicity and validity of the Scriptures, I have come to the conclusion that they are historically trustworthy." [3]

Some scholars once said that Moses couldn't have written the first five books of the Bible (as the Bible says) because writing was largely unknown in his day. Then, archaeology proved otherwise by the discovery of many other written codes of the period: the code of Hammurabi (ca. 1700 B.C.), the Lipit-Ishtar code (ca. 1860), and the Laws of Eshnunna (ca. 1950 B.C.).

Critics used to say that the biblical description of the Hittite Empire was wrong because the Hittite Empire (they though) didn't even exist! Then archaeologists discovered the Hittite capital in 1906 and discovered that the Hittite's were actually a very vast and prominent civilization. Archaeological and linguistic evidence is increasingly pointing to a sixth-century B.C. date for the book of Daniel, in spite of the many critics who attempt to late-date Daniel and make it a prophecy after the detailed events it predicts.

see entire article at: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/8449/two.html

BECKY: One difference between Christianity and Judaism is the former demands blind faith and the latter demands independent investigation of the truth.

BECKY: More from the same source as above:

JOSHUA AND THE CONQUEST OF THE PROMISED LAND

Liberal scholars of the twentieth century have denied the reliability of the biblical account of the conquest of the promised land found in the Book of Joshua. However, in 1887AD the Tell el-Amarna tablets were found. They consisted of ancient writings on clay tablets.78 These tablets contain correspondence between Canaanite kings and the Egyptian Pharoah during a troublesome time. The Canaanite kings were requesting assistance from the Pharoah due to constant invasions by nomadic peoples called the "Habiru." Many scholars believe that the Habiru invaders, or at least many of them, were in fact the Hebrews of Joshua's army.79 Many of the reports in the Tell el-Amarna tablets confirm specific details as related in Joshua's account of the conquest.80

Any descrepencies between the tablets and Joshua's account can be explained by the fact that though all Jews were Hebrews (referred to as Habiru in the tablets), not all Hebrews were Jews. For Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, was himself a Hebrew (Genesis 14:13). Therefore, the Jews were probably not the only Hebrews invading the land of Canaan during the life of Joshua.81

In short, the evidence seems to indicate that there is enough agreement between the Tell el-Amarna tablets and the Book of Joshua to conclude that these tablets provide ancient secular confirmation for the Israelite conquest of the promised land (Canaan).82 The strength of this conclusion is in no way lessened by the fact that the Habiru invaders of the tablets cannot in every case be equated with Joshua's army.

"Archaeological and linguistic evidence is increasingly pointing to a sixth-century B.C. date for the book of Daniel,"

This may be true for small sections of this book concerning themselves with alleged events whose historical backdrop was the last days of the Babylonian empire and the early era of the Persian empire that routed the Babylonians.

But most of the book was written, much less edited, during the subsequent Hellenistic era.

My favorite little bit of archeoogy is the Moabite Stele. Its interesting at many levels. As an enemy of the Israelites, the Moabites still mention important Israelite figures. Also, it confirms that the Canaanites spoke and wrote a near Hebraic Western Semitic language not a Southern Semitic language like Arabic.

From Wikipedia;

The Mesha Stele (popularized in the 19th century as the "Moabite Stone") is a black basalt stone, bearing an inscription by the 9th century BC Moabite King Mesha, discovered in 1868. The inscription of 34 lines, the most extensive inscription ever recovered from ancient Palestine, was written in Hebrew-Phoenician characters. It was set up by Mesha, about 850 BC, as a record and memorial of his victories in his revolt against Israel, which he undertook after the death of his overlord, Ahab.

The stone is 124 cm high and 71 cm wide and deep, and rounded at the top. It was discovered at the ancient Dibon now Dhiban, Jordan, in August 1868, by Rev. F. A. Klein, a German missionary in Jerusalem. "The Arabs of the neighborhood, dreading the loss of such a talisman, broke the stone into pieces; but a squeeze had already been obtained by [Charles] Clermont-Ganneau, and most of the fragments were recovered and pieced together by him"[1]. A squeeze is a papier-mâché impression. The squeeze (which has never been published) and the reassembled stele (which has been published in many books and encyclopedias) are now in the Louvre Museum.

The stele describes:

1. How Moab was conquered by Omri, King of Israel, as the result of the anger of the god Chemosh. Mesha's victories over Omri's son (not mentioned by name), over the men of Gad at Ataroth, and at Nebo and Jehaz;

2. His public buildings, restoring the fortifications of his strong places and building a palace and reservoirs for water; and

3. His wars against the Horonaim.

This inscription can be interpreted as supplementing and corroborating the history of King Mesha recorded in 2 Kings 3:4-27, thereby earning it a prominent place in the corpus of Biblical archaeology. However there are significant differences. In the Bible it is Ahab, Omri's son, who conquers Moab, and the rebellion is against Ahab's son Jehoram. Further, in the Bible, it is not Chemosh who gives victory to Mesha but Jahweh who gives victory to Jehoram. Israel withdraws, according to the Book of Kings, only because they are disconcerted when they see Mesha sacrifice his son.

With the exception of a very few variations, such as -in for -im in plurals, the Moabite language of the inscription is identical with an early form of Hebrew. The Moabite alphabet is the oldest Phoenician type of the Semitic alphabet. The form of the letters here used supplies very important and interesting information regarding the history of the formation of the alphabet, as well as, incidentally, the arts of civilized life of those times in the land of Moab. This ancient monument, recording the heroic struggles of King Mesha with Omri and Ahab, was erected about 850 BC. Here "we have the identical slab on which the workmen of the old world carved the history of their own times, and from which the eye of their contemporaries read thousands of years ago the record of events of which they themselves had been the witnesses."

This phrase was deciphered several years ago on one of the stele's last lines. It confirms, much to the chagrin of extreme revisionist biblical scholars (more extreme than I. Finkelstein), the early existence of a Judahite royal dynasty founded by David, and by extension David's historicity. Two excuses have been employed to explain it away as non-corroberating: (1) the phrase doesn't actually read House of David, and (2) it was written in reference to a location. Both excuses have no valid leg to stand on.

http://www.bible-history.com/resource/ff_mesha.htm

http://www.jewishhistory.com/jh.php?id=Assyrian&content=content/house_of_david