Digging up the Old Testament - Russian Orthodox Autonomous ...

Excerpts from Bible as History
Digging up the Old Testament. Werner Keller. (Please get the full version of this book at your bookstore)
Content:
I. The Coming of the Patriarchs from Abraham to Jacob.
1. In the "fertile crescent." 2. Ur of the Chaldees. 3. Digging up the
flood. 4. A flood-story from old Babylonia. 5. Abraham lived in the
kingdom of Mari. 6. The long journey to Canaan. 7. Abraham and Lot in
the land of purple. II. In the Realm of the Pharaohs from Joseph to Moses.
8. Joseph in Egypt. 9. Four hundred year's silence. 10. Forced labour in
Pithom and Raamses. III. Forty Years in the Wilderness from the Nile to the Jordan.
11. On the road to Sinai. 12. At the mountain of Moses. 13. Under desert
skies. 14. On the threshold of the promised land. IV. The Battle for the Promised Land from Joshua to Saul.
15. Israel invades. 16. Under Deborah and Gideon. 17. The warriors from
Caphtor. 18. Under the yoke of the Philistines. V. When Israel Was an Empire from David to Solomon.
19. David, a great king. 20. Was Solomon a "copper king"? 21. The queen
of Sheba as a business partner. 22. Israel's colourful daily life. VI. Two Kings - Two Kingdoms from Rehoboam to Jehoiachin.
23. The shadow of a new world power. 24. The end of the northern
kingdom. 25. Judah under the yoke of Assyria. 26. The seductive
religions of Canaan. 27. The end of Nineveh as a world power. 28. The
last days of Judah. VII. From the Exile to the Maccabean Kingdom from Ezekiel to John
Hyrcanus.
29. Education through exile. 30. Sunset in the ancient orient. 31.
Cyrus, king of Persia. 32. Return to Jerusalem. 33. Under Greek
influence. 34. The battle for religious liberty. Digging Up the New Testament. I. Jesus of Nazareth.
35. Palestine on Mare Nostrum. 36. The star of Bethlehem.
I. The Coming of the Patriarchs from Abraham to Jacob. 1. In the "fertile crescent." Four thousand years ago - continents asleep - the great cradle of our
civilization - culture in the Ancient East - staged towers and pyramids had
been built long before - giant plantations on the banks of canals - Arab
tribes attack from the desert.
If we draw a line from Egypt through the Mediterranean lands of
Palestine and Syria, then following the Tigris and Euphrates, through
Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf, the result is an unmistakable crescent.
Four thousand years ago this mighty semi-circle around the Arabian
Desert, which is called the "Fertile Crescent," embraced a multiplicity of
civilizations lying side by side like a lustrous string of pearls. Rays of
light streamed out from them into the surrounding darkness of mankind. Here
lay the center of civilization from the Stone Age right up to the Golden
Age of Graeco-Roman culture.
About 2000 B.C., the further we look beyond the "Fertile Crescent,"
the deeper grows the darkness and signs of civilization and culture
decrease. It is as if the people of the other continents were like children
awaiting their awakening. Over the Eastern Mediterranean already a light is
shining - it is the heyday of the Minoan kings of Crete, founders of the
first sea-power known to history. For 1,000 years the fortress of Mycenae
had protected its citizens, and a second Troy had long been standing upon
the ruins of the first. In the nearby Balkans, however, the Early Bronze
Age had just begun. In Sardinia and Western France the dead were being
buried in vast stone tombs. These megalithic graves are the last great
manifestation of the Stone Age.
In Britain they were building the most famous sanctuary of the
Megalithic Age - the Temple of the Sun at Stonehenge - that giant circle of
stones near Salisbury which is still one of the sights of England about
which many tales are told. In Germany they were tilling the soil with
wooden ploughs.
At the foot of the Himalayas the flickering lamp of an isolated
outpost of civilization in the Indus valley was fast going out. Over China,
over the vast steppes of Russia, over Africa, darkness reigned supreme. And
beyond the waters of the Atlantic lay the Americas in twilight gloom.
But in the "Fertile Crescent" and in Egypt, on the other hand,
cultured and highly developed civilizations jostled each other in colorful
and bewildering array. For 1,000 years the Pharaohs had sat upon the
throne. About 2000 B.C. it was occupied by the founder of the XII Dynasty,
Amenemhet I. His sphere of influence ranged from Nubia, south of the second
cataract of the Nile, beyond the Sinai peninsula to Canaan and Syria, a
stretch of territory as big as Norway. Along the Mediterranean coast lay
the wealthy seaports of the Phoenicians. In Asia Minor, in the heart of
present day Turkey, the powerful kingdom of the ancient Hittites stood on
the threshold of its history. In Mesopotamia, between Tigris and Euphrates,
reigned the kings of Sumer and Akkad, who held in tribute all the smaller
kingdoms from the Persian Gulf to the sources of the Euphrates.
Egypt's mighty pyramids and Mesopotamia's massive temples had for
centuries watched the busy life around them. For 2,000 years farms and
plantations, as big as any large modern concern, had been exporting corn,
vegetables and choice fruits from the artificially irrigated valleys of the
Nile, the Euphrates and the Tigris. Everywhere throughout the "Fertile
Crescent" and in the empire of the Pharaohs the art of cuneiform and
hieroglyphic writing was commonly known. Poets, court officials and civil
servants practiced it. For commerce it had long been a necessity.
The endless traffic in commodities of all sorts which the great
import and export firms of Mesopotamia and Egypt despatched by caravan
routes or by sea from the Persian Gulf to Syria and Asia Minor, from the
Nile to Cyprus and Crete and as far as the Black Sea, is reflected in their
business correspondence, which they conducted on clay tablets or papyrus.
Out of all the rich variety of costly wares the most keenly sought after
were copper from the Egyptian mines in the mountains of Sinai, silver from
the Taurus mines in Asia Minor, gold and ivory from Somaliland in East
Africa and from Nubia on the Nile, purple dyes from the Phoenician cities
on the coast of Canaan, incense and rare spices from South Arabia, the
magnificent linens which came from the Egyptian looms and the wonderful
vases from the island of Crete.
Literature and learning were flourishing. In Egypt the first novels
and secular poetry were making their appearance. Mesopotamia was
experiencing a Renaissance. Philologists in Akkad, the great kingdom on the
lower Euphrates, were compiling the first grammar and the first bilingual
dictionary. The story of Gilgamesh, and the old Sumerian legends of
Creation and Flood, were being woven into epics of dramatic power in the
Akkadian tongue which was the language of the world. Egyptian doctors were
producing their medicines in accordance with text-book methods from herbal
compounds which had proved their worth. Their surgeons were no strangers to
anatomical science. The mathematicians of the Nile by empirical means
reached the conclusion about the sides of a triangle which 1,500 years
later Pythagoras in Greece embodied in the theorem which bears his name.
Mesopotamian engineers were solving the problem of square measurement by
trial and error. Astronomers, admittedly with an eye solely on astrological
prediction, were making their calculations based on accurate observations
of the course of the planets.
Peace and prosperity must have reigned in this world of Nile,
Euphrates and Tigris, for we have never yet discovered an inscription
dating from this period which records any large-scale warlike activities.
Then suddenly from the heart of this great "Fertile Crescent," from
the sandy sterile wastes of the Arabian desert whose shores are lashed by
the waters of the Indian Ocean, there burst in violent assaults on the
north, on the north-west, on Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine a horde of
nomadic tribes of Semitic stock. In endless waves these Amorites,
"Westerners" as their name implies, surged against the kingdoms of the
"Fertile Crescent."
The empire of the kings of Sumer and Akkad collapsed in 1960 B.C.
under their irresistible attack. The Amorites founded a number of states
and dynasties. One of them was eventually to become supreme: the first
dynasty of Babylon, which was the great center of power from 1830 to 1530
B.C. Its sixth king was the famous Hammurabi.
Meantime one of these tribes of Semitic nomads was destined to be of
fateful significance for millions upon millions throughout the world up to
the present day. It was a little group, perhaps only a family, as unknown
and unimportant as a tiny grain of sand in a desert storm: the family of
Abraham, forefather of the patriarchs. 2. Ur of the Chaldees. Station on the Bagdad railway - a staged tower of bricks - ruins with
biblical names - archaeologists in search of scriptural sites - a consul
with a pick - the archaeologist on the throne of Babylon - expedition to
Tell al-Muqayyar - history books from rubble - tax receipts on clay - was
Abraham a city dweller? "And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's
son, and Sarai, his daughter in law, his