JehovahsWitness wrote: ↑Sun Jul 24, 2022 2:36 amThere is absolutely nothing problematic in the proposal that the tribes of Israel were decendents of 12 patriarchal brothers.
Absolutely nothing problematic? From any point of view, that is such an outrageous statement that if written in any spirit of honesty can only be of the grossest hyperbole. Even if we understand your statement to be that the proposal is
somewhat plausible, I think you'll find it difficult to marshal any sort of supporting data for your claim. You might just as well claim that there are
Nazis living in the hollow Earth.
JehovahsWitness wrote: ↑Sun Jul 24, 2022 2:36 amI defy anyone, including the poster, to present a logical argument why this would require "wishful thinking" given that com mon ancestry is one of the basic factors that define ethnic groups (tribes).
Of course you do. With no other coherent historical argument based in archaeology, anthropology, or the text itself, what else can one do, right?
Everything about the early history of Israel as portrayed in Genesis and Exodus is problematical. The most obvious problem is simply the assertion that a dozen displaced families sharing a single ancestor only a generation ago, somehow maintained both a cohesion of national identity and distinction of twelve familial, then lineal, then clan, then tribal identities along precisely the same lines across more than four-hundred years. These tribal identities then maintained their cohesive distinction through a forty-year period of unified nomadic travel that was followed by a unified war of conquest, but after which each of these distinct identities traveled up to hundreds of miles to establish its own bordered territory. This beggars anthropological belief.
Archaeologically, the evidence is that Israelite culture rose from the ashes of the often literally burning Canaanite civilization that preceded it. There was no central origin that could have corresponded to a single family and no precise time that could have corresponded to a single generation. Israel Finkelstein puts it this way in
The Bible Unearthed:
The landscape of the patriarchal stories is a dreamlike romantic vision of the pastoral past, especially appropriate to the pastoral background of a large proportion of the Judahite population. It was stitched together from memory, snatches of ancient customs, legends of the birth of peoples, and the concerns aroused by contemporary conflicts. The many sources and episodes that were combined are a testimony to the richness of the traditions from which the biblical narrative was drawn—and the diverse audience of Judahites and Israelites to whom it was aimed.
Finally, even without the disciplined scientific data of anthropology and archaeology, the text itself shows its seams. There are multiple definitions of which tribes compose the "Twelve Tribes." Genesis 49, for example lists Levi as its own tribe, but Numbers 1 omits Levi and turns Joseph into two. It seems that the idea of having twelve tribes is somewhat independent of which tribes they actually were. If the narratives in the Bible don't agree on even the broadest details, why should we accept them as accurate despite all evidence to the contrary?
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