Wouldn't it be amusing if the Israelites were genetically Canaanites --- just with religious differences?
Someone would have a lot of explaining to do. Or maybe a lot of denying and covering up to do.
This would flip the scripture so to speak.
Someone would have a lot of explaining to do. Or maybe a lot of denying and covering up to do.
This would flip the scripture so to speak.
Between that, the sojourn to Egypt, and the constant complaints about intermarriage in the OT, you’d already expect these to be roughly the same gene pool.
More interesting may be the connection (or lack thereof) between OT-era Jews to modern Jews, which plays into political and racial arguments.
You're presuming some historicity there that I don't think is warranted. A lot of the stories in Genesis had their origin in stories from Mesopotamia, and I wouldn't read much more into that than you'd read into the Aenead claiming that the Romans originated in Troy. They're just borrowing legitimacy from an older historical tradition.
The early Israelites were polytheists but had some affinity for Yahweh which was one Canaanite god among many. Why, how and when the Israelites became monotheists and why Yahweh became their only god is unknown. My guess (speculation follows) is that the Israelites were influenced by the Babylonians and Zoroastriansim. Zoroastrians worshipped fire and Yahweh was the god of fire (and smoke). Perhaps the many conflicts with other Canaanites caused them to adopt foreign practices to distinguish themselves from their enemies. Ritual circumcision perhaps was borrowed from Egypt.
There is not a shred of evidence of an emigration from Egypt and archaeologists have been searching for it for over 200 years. So why the Exodus is in the Bible is unknown. At the time these stories were written down Egypt was a regional super power, so perhaps whoever wrote it felt that "having been to Egypt" was something to brag about? Perhaps the story is allegorical?
Establishing a pious fraud ex nihilo as late as the Babylonian Exile is also a little too pat. You really think that a) the Babylonian Exiles convinced themselves of this with no surviving refutation or debate and b) they managed to impress it on the entire non-Exile population when they returned?
This Smithsonian article on the discovery of mining operations by a semi-nomadic people is a great read and ends on this note, with which I wholeheartedly agree:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/archaeological-dig-re...
> What Ben-Yosef has produced isn’t an argument for or against the historical accuracy of the Bible but a critique of his own profession. Archaeology, he argues, has overstated its authority. Entire kingdoms could exist under our noses, and archaeologists would never find a trace. Timna is an anomaly that throws into relief the limits of what we can know. The treasure of the ancient mines, it turns out, is humility.
Stories of Arthur uncontroversially predate the 12th century, and it is an open debate as to whether Arthur was based on a historical figure or not. (I vote yes.) Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
> he Swedish 16th century king Erik XIV proclaimed himself the 14:th (hence the suffix XIV) king of Sweden
Some kings assuming a different regnal number on the basis of a semimythical history is not the same as convincing an entire population to change their origin myths.
The bible states they were from the island of Crete (Caphtor) and my understanding is there is also archaeological evidence (pottery etc) that suggests they were a Minoan (Indo/European) people in origin.
I believe they were part of the sea people migration during the bronze age collapse referenced by the Egyptians.
There were probably dozens of different West Semitic speaking cultures/groupings, with plenty of cultural mixing. Hebrew (and Aramaic) speakers were only one of many in the region, all with competing claims over grazing and growing lands, etc. The Bible basically alludes to this all over.
What you have there is the stories of various fragments of it that distilled into more or less powerful tribal federations and, eventually, kingdoms. Told from their vantage, because the others did not commit theirs to writing.
And by the 3rd or 4th century AD, all West Semitic languages had basically gone functionally (but not liturgically) extinct, but the cultural and religious traditions of one of them tenaciously held on through the diaspora.
Genetic evidence could eliminate this.
Aramaic lived for a longer period, but then slowly died out. As a liturgical language western Aramaic / Syriac lived on, and eastern variants for longer but as a widespread, spoken lived language in the Levant I believe Greek replaced it, and then Arabic. I understand that "Jewish Palestinian Aramaic" lingered on for some time in some smaller communities.
I think that was only the case in urban areas and/or amongst the more educated upper and middle classes. Syriac and other Aramaic languages were still widespread amongst local Christian population well into the Islamic perod.
As I understand it, that is the expectation: The consensus among archeologists seems to be that ancient Israelites were simply another group of Canaanites who came to dominate the region. The Exodus is not a historical event.
Nothing I said suggests otherwise. I was simply looking at potential aftereffects of the unveiling --- and why any such unveiling might be vehemently opposed by entrenched non-scientific interests.
I think the world is less run by logic than people generally think. I don't think there will be an aftereffect. There is an Status quo and that's it. This observation is general and in anyway targeted in the context of the article. The Status quo involves any of us.
Yes.
> The Exodus is not a historical event.
This does not follow from your premise at all. (Nowhere does it say that people of the Exodus weren't Canaanites genetically.)
Rather, the statement about the Exodus was meant to expand on the "who came to dominate the region": It was meant to convey that they did not come to dominate through systematic genocide of the other Canaanites as depicted in the bible. It is my understand that there is little to no evidence of this event (or the preceding events) having occurred.
The overall understanding that I was trying to communicate was simply that the ancient Isrealites were Canaanites who stayed in Canaan.
That does not follow either. Civil wars happen all the time, and are usually accompanied by large-scale ethnic cleansing.
It is my understanding that there is little to no evidence of such an event having occurred.
The Bible's testimony itself, along with conclusion that people believed in this historical event at some point in time, is at least a some evidence towards it.
Like, you shouldn't take the events of the bible literally, but you could probably reasonably infer that the nations demonized in it probably were historical enemies of the people who wrote it, etc
Just like yours is trying to, but with competing information
The simple, adult, quantifiable reality is that there is always cross drift between populations by mere nature of humans being compatible species to produce viable offspring with one another
> just with religious differences
I think that was before Judaism/Christianity. Islam is much more recent though. The region did not have that until hundreds of years later.
You mean modern Hebrew speakers?