Yes there is a lot of mambo-jumbo and impossible assertions in this book or more correctly collection of books. But filter out the "god is great" stuff, prophesies and miracles. What is left is a chronicle of a people from hunter gatherer to nomadic then agricultural existence. Of course it is flawed but it remains as the only written record of those times. Would we be as dismissive of Aboriginal dream time stories or native American folklore? Are we guilty of Judo-Christian inverse snobbery?
As the mythological tales of the wanderings of twelve tribes, with pretty much no basis in history, the Pentateuch is right up there with all other folklore.If it were billed as such, then I would have no problem with it.
It's the fact that it's accepted as literal history, by otherwise-educated people who should know better, that makes me fed up with the whole thing. Thousands of dollars that should be better invested are wasted on yearly expeditions to find "the Real Noah's Ark", as if a few splinters of wood on a mountain will contradict geology and prove that there was a worldwide flood.
Not to mention the suffering and the lives lost over the "promises" of a mythological and non-existent God that his twelve tribes should have ownership of a few square miles of desert, the subsequent wars and migrations in the region and the religions of others who don't believe those promises notwithstanding.
you do have a good point if the old testament leads to further historical finds that is all fine and good.
I am not sure how much it can do that at this point however, given how much it has been studied and that region of the world has been studied. I saw documentary a little while back that they dug up in iraq a royal announcement to build a big tower and it is most likely the tower refereed to in the book. So, thats kinda cool.
I do not maintain it is accurate or rules to live by ffs would I be here if I was? What I am asking is it worth looking at for information of those times? I doubt if any historical records are particularly accurate or without bios even about more recent events such as the Alamo or Boston tea party. Imagine if the only record future historians had to go on was Fox news?
The news is at least a contemporary, documentary account. With the religious books of the Middle East (Old & New Testament and Q'uran alike) you are talking about "books" that began as word-of-mouth, handed down for many generations, before ever being reduced to writing. We have no clue how close even the first writings were to the original stories.
Imagine if the first records we had of the D-Day invasion began with "Saving Private Ryan". That's similar to the situation with the books of the Middle Eastern religions. They can't be looked at for documentary information because they're heroic fiction.
Abraham and Moses did not exist. The Hebrews didn't have an exile and return, because they never lived in Egypt in the first place. It's all pretty much BS.
As you say, it gives an inside view of some of the big changes. I'm no scholar at all, but it appears the religion started as a pagan one, an agricultural variety, with sacrifices and that was in conflict with the Temple based religion which was more suited to an animal raising agriculture.
The religion appears to change into a national identity, linking a fairly large population into a powerful army, and I guess it is still a cultural unity more than anything else.
It also appears they changed eras from worshipping the calf (Taurus) to the lamb and then a thousand or so years latter to two fishes.
But it's somewhat jumbled up, interspersed with stuff written to encourage someone to fight, and as I say this is nothing more than the impression I got from reading it.
The change from crops to animal raising may seem a retrograde step but the towns were crop growing and the population scattered around the rest of the territory was raising animals, mainly sheep it would appear. When the towns were destroyed and pillaged that left just the animal herders and they had a tabernacle out somewhere. Eventually towns recovered and the tabernacle was moved into one of those, possibly the most defensible, over and out.
There is no baby there. Of course there is value in reading the Bible as the anthropological document it is. But those other examples listed, folklore, etc., are taken as such; as metaphor and glimpse of perspective on a culture; not as divine rules to live by. The Bible is NOT the only written record of those times. There are other books that "didn't make the cut," or that were later excised from the church's cannon. There are Egyptian records. There are Greek writings. There are likely others as well.