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Don't look to Bible for history

by Richard M. Berthold

Daily Lobo columnist

I have remained out of the ongoing debate on evolution versus intelligent design, because it is simply silly. As Thomas Aquinas discovered, reason and faith are separate orders of truth, and ultimately, neither can budge the other. Faith-based knowledge, whether it is true, cannot be employed in reasoned debate, because it has absolutely nothing to do with reason. Tenets of faith are based on authority and are certain. Tenets of science are based on evidence and involve probabilities. Like Darwinian evolution, the idea that the Earth circles the sun is just a theory. But like evolution, it is a theory with an incredibly high probability of being correct. Some of the statements made recently, however, require a response from an ancient historian, specifically those regarding ancient Egypt and the Bible.

For the about 1,500 years of the Old and Middle Kingdoms (3100 B.C. to 1550 B.C.), Egypt was turned in on itself, doing everything - including ultimately building a line of border forts - to keep out the west Semitic peoples who constantly drifted south toward the Nile Delta and food. The Great Pyramids were constructed early in this period long before any Hebrews existed, and they were built not by slaves but labor drafts from the agricultural population, which was mostly idle during the summer flood of the Nile. Only in the New Kingdom (1550 B.C. to 1100 B.C.) did the Egyptians discover chattel slavery on any large scale, but draft or forced labor was still the norm for the temples and granaries that the Hebrews were compelled to build, according to

the Bible.

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Much more important than this, however, is the nature of the Bible, of which many defenders of intelligent design appear to be ignorant. Whether or not it is the word of God, the Bible is certainly not history, despite the late-19th century archaeological discoveries that began to convince believers of this. It is rather wisdom literature and mythic history reflecting the differing societies that created it. Even the more corroborated history in the late books of the Old Testament is corrupted by the Bible's didactic nature. All sacred literature has an agenda and a bill of goods to sell, and though it presumes to wrap itself in history, the Bible is certainly no exception.

It is accepted fact that the final version of the Pentateuch - the Books of Moses - is a patchwork over a period of centuries of five strands representing different authors or editors each with different interests and agendas. It is agreed, for example, that Aaron, the brother of Moses and first priest, was added later by the priestly source in order to pump up the status of the priesthood vis-Ö-vis the prophets. And, of course, even a casual reading of the Old Testament will reveal constant contradictions, especially in the early books, where Yahweh is sometimes a primitive henotheistic desert god demanding blood and, sometimes, the mature universal deity of the later Jews.

Further, the source of the Bible before the establishment of Israel - and, to an extent, after that - is oral tradition, which is notoriously inaccurate and becomes more so as the stories are handed down and unconsciously distorted by the current storyteller. Old material is forgotten, and new material, especially new perspectives and attitudes from the bard's environment, is added. In this regard, the Pentateuch is no different from Homer, and in oral tradition, the fish will inevitably get bigger with each telling.

Archaeology is now, in fact, confirming the distortions and tendentiousness of the Old Testament. The sole good thing to come out of the 40-year Israeli occupation of the West Bank is a wealth of new archaeological evidence about ancient Judea and Israel, and these excavations confirm what one might have expected - that the Biblical histories of these states, especially Israel, reflect the biases of the composers and do not match the evidence. In general, everything is exaggerated, and the grand empire of David and Solomon was, in reality, a miserable collection of hill forts in central Palestine. In fact, some Israeli archaeologists and historians are beginning to doubt the historicity of the Exodus itself, which has absolutely no support from Egypt, a serious record-keeping society. It is suggested that much of this is devised for political purposes during the reign of King Josiah in the late eighth century, a period that much better fits the Egypt described in the Pentateuch.

Knowing how the Bible was composed should suggest that as historical a source, it is indeed a very weak reed upon which to lean. The creation stories in Genesis, for example, come straight out of the Sumero-Babylonian mythic tradition and are valueless in understanding the early history of the planet unless you believe Sumerian priests knew something we do not. Because of your faith, you may well accept all that the Bible relates, but this has nothing to do with reason, science or with the imperial claims of ultra-Zionists in modern Israel.

Richard M. Berthold is a retired professor of classical history at UNM. He is the author of "Rhodes in the Hellenistic Age."

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