Christ Conspiracy_ The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Acharya S [54]
The Bible as History?
Furthermore, if we look to the archaeological evidence to support the Old Testament, we will find much less than expected. Although the texts make the Jewish people appear to have been a force to be reckoned with in the region, there is no evidence of grand buildings, navies or militaries of the Jews. In fact, during the centuries prior to the Christian era, the Greeks barely noticed the Jews, and the famous historian Herodotus could not find the "great" kingdom of Judah: ". . . Solomon, whose magnificent empire was invisible to Herodotus, when searching for kingdoms in Judea ..."22 As Hazelrigg relates:
"Where is the empire of Solomon the Magnificent? It is not noticed by Herodotus, Plato, or Diodorus Siculus. It is a most extraordinary fact that the Jewish nation, over whom . . . the mighty Solomon had reigned in all his glory and magnificence scarcely equaled by the greatest monarchs, spending nearly eight thousand millions of gold on a temple, was overlooked by the historian Herodotus writing of Egypt on one side and of Babylon on the other-visiting both places, and of course almost necessarily passing within a few miles of the splendid capital of the national Jerusalem. How can this be accounted for? Suleyman was a Persian title equivalent to the Greek Aiolos, and meant universal emperor. Like Pharaoh, it was not a name, but a designation of rank. The Jews, aiming at universal empire, feigned that one of their kings bare this name; and it is with this petty pilfered thane (for in a little place like Judea he could be no other), that the mighty Suleymans of the Orient are confounded alike by the civilized European and the ignorant Bedoween."- Kenealy, The Book of God. One need not search very diligently in order to find similar disparities between biblical statement and the inferences of historical evidence.23
This dearth of evidence for such an empire was noticed at least 2,000 years ago, and eventually provoked the Jewish historian Josephus to write his Antiquities of the Jetvs to demonstrate that the Hebrew culture was very old. While the Hebrew culture may have been old, the "nation of Israel" in fact was not a "great empire" but a group of warring desert tribes with grandiose stories "borrowed" from other cultures. Out of this fertile imagination and opportunism came an even more grandiose tale to end all tales: the Christian myth.
1. Wheless, FC, 112.
2. Fox, 392.
3. Carpenter, 180-1.
4. Doane, 502.
5. Dujardin, 2.
6. Doane, 203.
7. Levi, 4.
8. Higgins, 11, 154.
9. Doane, 501.
10. P. J. Casey, Understanding Ancient Coins An Introduction for Archaeologists and Historians, Batsford, 1986, 43. (www.christianism.com)
11. Wells, HEJ, 194.
12. Fox, 69.
13. Walker, WDSSO, 309.
14. Freethought Datasheet #5, Atheists United.
15. Leedom, 164.
16. Walker, WEMS, 880-1.
17. Wells, HEJ, 184.
18. Walker, WEMS.
19. Fiislop, 179.
20. Wheless, FC, 11-12.
21. Doane, 511.
22. Higgins, 1, 668.
23. Hazelrigg, 178.
The Myth of Hebrew Monotheism
As demonstrated, the historical and archaeological record fails to provide any evidence whatsoever that the New Testament story is true. Nor does it bear out important Old Testament tales, such that the religion Christianity is purportedly based on is unsubstantiated as well. In fact, the very notion of the monotheistic Hebrew God, as allegedly depicted in the Old Testament, who could produce a son, is baseless.
It is a common belief that the Hebrew people, beginning with Moses, were monotheists whose one god, Yahweh, was the only true god, as revealed exclusively to Hebrew prophets. These original monotheists, it is believed, were superior to and had the right to destroy the polytheistic cultures around them by killing their people and stealing their towns, booty and virgin girls, which is what "God's chosen" are recorded as doing throughout the Old Testament. This monotheist versus polytheist scenario is the common perception, but it is incorrect, as the Hebrews were latecomers to the idea of monotheism and were originally themselves