This could mean one of four things:
1. pure chance.
2. Popper's idea of error due to selective research.
3. our ability (my) to project our models onto reality.
4. some threads of the real story were passed on and survive in the Torah.
Remember I am not talking about a "memory" of what happened at the origin of the species in Africa, BUT when we left Africa we encountered at least one more human like species. We were also small in numbers and left a fertile place of origin to move to one more difficult.
There is also a peculiar similarity of the Abraham story, the orig8ins of the Hyksos, and accounts of the habiru in both Mesopotamian and Egyptian accounts.
So, my thesis is this:
Some point of origin, when humans were very few, perhaps a band that passed into Arabia rather than following the coastal plain to become the Chinese and Australians, seems to have existed about 20k years ago. If we imagine a similar group of say 20 or 30 folks, it is not hard at all to imagine a legend that gets passed on, esp. in wandering people like the habiru.
About 10,000 years ago, the other races no longer existed. Did the existence of a second sort of people not give rise to legends. perhaps int he form of stories or songs? At that time too, we had become not only numerous but divided into hunter gatherers, the habiru?, and the first urbans. What would have happened to the old legends as farming and towns changed reality?
The other issue that I find intriguing is the identification of Abraham with Ur. I realize there are tow ideas about Ur .. one that it is Ur of the Chaldees, a contemporary palce about 3K years ago, the other that legend of that first city .. then dead for 6k years or so, lived on ... in the habiru???
One tiny piece of evidence comes from Campbell and from Spencer. These folks, a religious theorist and a Chines historian, speculate that the first dynasties of China, supposedly simultaneous with the origins of the Torah about 5k years ago, are a dim memory implanted by wanderers (habiru?) from Mesopotamia. If they are correct, the idea of historic transmission, as a cultural trait of semites, could be quite old and common. This wold also explain the oddity of the Jews as the first people to write a history rather than a mythology of origins.
So, the story is plausible, the question is how much of it can be tested? Habiru leave little traces behind, other than their descriptions by the city folk. Most "Jewish" customs .. are pretty generally semitic .. except for the pork issue. Dever writes that the hill dwellers of Canaani times, the putative Hebrews, did no leave pork bones in their kitchen middens. So that makes something plausible as far back as 3-5k years.
Anyhow, as a scientist, the best thing is discovery and wonder .. in both of that words meanings. It is fun to think about the sorts of evidence that would fit into my Popperian construct!
BTW, I have posted some of this dialogue to my Blog, SeattleJew. I hope that is OK.
On Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 7:05 PM, Paul Tobin
Stephen,
That the Torah may contain very old elements of history is certainly intriguing, I doubt it though. I do not think oral tradition is as veracious as to be able to keep a memory intact for 20,000 years. But still, who would have guess without the breakthrough in regulatory genes that humans and flies use the same type of genes to built their segments (i.e. the segments of flies and backbones of humans) until recently?!
Good luck in your quest.
Cheers
Paul Tobin
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2008 07:55:48 -0800
From: steves@u.washington.edu
To: tobinator99@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Comments on Pascals' Wager
BTW, if I may suggest ...
One reason that this intrigues me is that there is parallelism between genesis and the emerging confluence of genetics and linguistics. We are to pretty sure that non-African humans left "Eden" at about 40-50Kyears ago and Semitic origin is around 19k years. Since the early tigris/euphrates cultures were of the Semitic root, this makes me wonder whether the Torah may have VERY old elements of truth that may actually be testable as genetics progresses. If so, Eden could reflect some lost oral history of the original migration from Africa or, more likely, the origin of the Semites and genetic markers might still be able to identify the Hyksos amongst modern Jews.
The political problem here is that the Arabs have constructed a political fantasy of their own origins that can be explosive. Many, perhaps most, believe that the stories of Joshua are real and that the modern Arabs of the area are the lineal or at least cultural descendants of the Canaani. This is obviously wrong, but it is heavily intertwined with the politics of the Palestinians.
While I am on that subject, there is an equal challenge in these ideas to the orthodox Jews. Since these people claim that maternal descent is all that is required to be a Jew, I suspect that one day the Palestinians will discover mitochondrial DNA and make the argument that THEIR ancestors were Jews so ....On Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 7:41 AM, Stephen Schwartz <steves@u.washington.edu> wrote:I will take a look but frankly wonder if this is not too sensitive an issue for public discussion. I am "talking" with some experts here on early Islam and arabic culture.--On Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 1:03 AM, Paul Tobin <tobinator99@hotmail.com> wrote:Steve,
This is an interesting field, I agree. Unfortunately I am not able to help you here.
You might try to post your question on this site:
http://sites.google.com/site/biblicalstudiesresources/
I am a member of the discussion group and such issues are discussed in depth with participants from various fields.
Cheers
Paul Tobin
Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2008 20:00:17 -0800Subject: Re: Comments on Pascals' Wager
Hi Paul,
The second story is the issue. I am skeptical that this was a widely accepted idea in earlier times though it may well have been after the spread of Christianity.
For one thing, it seems to me that a story held in common by all semites would have appeared in some literature other than the Torah before the spread of Christianity by the Romans. It is hard to understand why Josephus would not have noted that the Bedouins were also descended from Abraham.
Nothing I have read about Babylon, the Hittites, or the Accadians suggests that these folks claimed an Abrahamic origin. The closest I can think of are references to Abraham/Isaac names amongst the Hyksos and in Semitic digs in Syria and northern Arabia. Those folks, however, seem to be more Jewish than "Ishmaelite" since they identify with Jacov.
This raises a lot of intriguing issues. Did M graft the Arab people into the Jewish root or did he adopt a widely held idea? Where did the Hyksos go?.. I rather like the idea that they are the source of the J voice and given their high level of civilization it is hard to imagine that they simply dispersed across Arabia. This is related to the argument Bloom makes for the Moses story in his introduction to the Book of J, accept that I wonder if the J people were not actually Hyksos, the Joseph/Moses story a revamped version of their history in Memphis, and the Abraham story also part of that heritage.
Do you know of any references to this story in Arabic poetry? Given their proclivity, I would imagine that something this important would feature prominently in the pre-literal oral tradition.
The politics are, of course daunting too.
On Thu, Dec 25, 2008 at 5:17 PM, Paul Tobin <tobinator99@hotmail.com> wrote:Stephen,
Hi. By "the story of Ishmael", I presume you mean either (1) the Muslim version of Abraham's (or Ibrahim in Arabic) sacrifice of his son who instead of Isaac (as in the Bible) was Ishmael or (2) the belief that Arab's were descendents of Abraham via Ishmael.
On (1), the Quran mentioned that Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son but no mention is made of the name of the son. So the identification of this unnamed son with Ishmael instead of Isaac must have happened at a later date.
On (2) Ibn Al-Rawandi in his book "Islamic Mysticism" (Prometheus 2000) p. 97 mentioned a work dated to 5th century CE called "The Ecclesiastical History" by Sozomen who was an Arab. Here the belief that Arabs were descendents of Ishmael was already mentioned.
Hope this helps.
Cheers
Paul Tobin
Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2008 08:12:12 -0800
From: steves@u.washington.edu
To: tobinator99@hotmail.com
Subject: Comments on Pascals' Wager
I ran across your website while trying to find out more aboutt he origins of the story of Ishmael.
I have been unable to find any evidence that the Arabs took this on as a story prior to M. Do you lknow anything of this?
--
Stephen M. Schwartz
Pathology
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