Originally posted by Crazy_Ivan80
Only if you go from the assumption that all israelites were in Egypt. ...
I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about periods of time after that, specifically during the early kingdom. When I say Egypt was in a much better position to influence Israelite religion and culture, I am refering to it geographical proximity, not the time spent there centuries before that.
Remember, you can't just take the Old Testament at face value for historic truths. Although it does contain reports of historical events that did happen (by account of finding archaeological evidence or independent sources), the people who wrote the OT did explain these things from a religious perspective.
And how does being written from a religious perspective entail that an ancient document is any more or less historically reliable?
Might I also point out that pretty much every surviving ancient historical document is written from a religious perspective, so if you are going to distrust anything with religious content, you have
nothing left from anyone.
Then there's also the fact that
in the Ancient Near East the migrations in the Ancient Near East are a near constant. There was so much migration (forced or voluntary) that by 1000BC the original people had vanished (they went up in the rest of the population). As such we can assume that the 'israelites' themselves were composed out of more than one people/tribe, each of which might have had a somewhat different history/myths/legends (this seems to be backed up by the israelites mentioning the 12 tribes). As a result I wouldn't be all that surprised that when the OT was written down that the authors drew upon the multiple mythologies available in their people (as well as from other peoples).
This sounds plausible, and it is certainly true that the area was a busy one for travel, but there are some serious flaws in your theory as well. First of all, it can only begin by throwing away a great amount of Israelite and non-Israelite evidence to the contrary, which does not do well for any historical theory. Secondly, it neglects to note that family, tribal, and ethnic grouping was extremely important in the ANE, and people did not forget or surrender their heritage easily. People did not just invent new social groupings out of the air. Have you ever read the huge geneologies and census data recorded in the OT? People in the ANE were very concerned with maintaining their identity, and were keenly aware that "We are us, and
not them!" Finally, the overwhelming theological unity in the OT disbars the idea that it is a hodgepodge of different mythologies. Thus, it appears from the evidence that while individuals were constantly being absorbed into different ANE cultures, including Israel, entire people groups were not so mixed, and tended to retain their identities.
Besides which, why are we bringing this up?
Then we also have to take into account that, iirc, a big part of the OT was written during the Babylonian Exile, which ended when Cyrus the Great gave the Jews the right to return home. From that time on we have about 200-300 years of Persian Dominion over the Near East.
Yes, significant amounts of it were written during and after, and significant amounts before. Job was written beforehand, like Proverbs and perhaps Ecclesiastes (it is hard to say with Eccl.). Your point is what exactly?
