My own scepticism about taking the O.T. narratives at face value came from Jesus comdemnation of the Book keepers of his time. My reasoning was simple, if they weren't afraid to kill God's son so they could inherit God's property, why would they have kept God's revealed words in it's integrity? Why not distort a phrase here so the meaning would be that "the high priest is always infaillible" and replace a couple of words there so the meaning would be that "the gold of the temple is more valuable then the temple".

Geek, funny you should say this....

But Christ told them: "It is given unto you (His disciples) to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given ... therefore I speak unto them in parables (puzzles): because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.

"And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive:

"For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them! " (Matthew 3:10-16).

Christ was telling them He was making a conscious decision to speak in puzzling terms, lest those people should understand, and become converted! Jesus Christ was referring to the O.T. many times....to me this indicates that it must be a valid.source of information....

 

15:8 �?B>This people honors me with their lips, but their heart13 is far from me,

15:9 and they worship me in vain, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.�?14

If this was so with their teachings, what about the Book that was the basis of their doctrines?

He said: "Think NOT that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets:

I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill" (Matt. 5:17). Christ lifted the law to a spiritual plateau, applied God's Ten Commandments in a spiritual sense, showing that the law was broken even by "thoughts of the human heart", and not by the breaking of the letter of the law only.

The basis of their doctrines were their own teachings, their own interests.

This polarisation is rapidly becoming an issue of 'blind faith' versus 'scientific scepticism' with little room for compromise. How can an academic then reconcile the two opposing sides?

Well, you are right Geek...

Evolution directly contradicts the Bible, which says "In the beginning God created..." Evolution says, instead, "In the beginning was the hydrogen atom."

Hmm, whichever way you look at it, it takes faith, except in the latter case, also a miracle.

So which came first...?

cath,

 

The commandment of God is Love. It is somewhere inside us all, we are build with it. We Love God, therefore we Love God's creation, therefore we Love God's creature, therefore we Love Humanity, therefore we Love our self.

 

 

The commandments of men are in books. Like anything men do, they should pass. When Jesus talks in parables he does not talk for our mind to understand, he talks for our hearts to understand. When our hearts are too harden by the laws of men, we don't understand.

 

When a tribe wanted to justify their temporal superiority over another one, they invented an origin myth or transform another creation myth to put themselves on top of the god(s) favored children so to pretend that it was so from the begining and would stay so to the end of time. But this is from what is called anthropomorphic deism. We put our will and vision of the world as the will and vision of god. There is were I trace the line between mythology and true faith. When I read that god was angry at this person, it's mythology. When I read that God is "like" a father or the kingdom of God is "like" a wineyard, this sounds to me the true way to talk about it. Jesus parables speak more truth to me than any story about God writing magically his 10 commandments on a stone with an hebraic alphabet that wasn't invented yet.

Just a little bit more on the flood...

 

In the 1920s, Sir Charles Woolley, a British archaeologist, while working at Tell al-Muqayyar, of Ur in Mesopotamia, made a startling discovery. He had been digging vertical shafts deep into the soil in the ancient city. As expected, he found layer after layer of evidence of human life - the remnants of graves, pottery, and rubble. But suddenly, it all stopped at a layer of pure clay that was approximately 10 feet thick. Such an abrupt and deep layer of clay, far above the ancient level of the nearby Euphrates river, was very unusual. It indicated a massive flood.

Woolley's workmen kept digging through the layer of sedimentary (i.e. water borne) clay, that had no evidence of human habitation, until it ended as abruptly as it started and they again found deposits of graves, pottery, rubble - but which were nothing at all like that found above the layer of water-deposited clay. The clay layer marked the boundary between two very different worlds, two very different civilizations, that Woolley declared were the before and after worlds of the flood. Woolley's findings made headline news in Britain and the United States at the time.

Jesus parables speak more truth to me than any story about God writing magically his 10 commandments on a stone with an hebraic alphabet that wasn't invented yet.

Geek, maybe I give you the wrong impression, i quite agree that the 10 commandments had not been put in force as to be in judgment of others, i don't think God meant it to be that way...but only as a help for people to live in peace with each other and have a happy life in general. Jesus Christ kept the 10 Commandments and taught men so, they can't be that bad hence forth...

but later.

The commandment of God is Love. It is somewhere inside us all, we are build with it. We Love God, therefore we Love God's creation, therefore we Love God's creature, therefore we Love Humanity, therefore we Love our self.

Geek, is this why we see wars and people hating each other ? I know there are many good people in the world and love does grow....but look around you and see already how hatred is being encouraged in some of the E.P threads, never mind in other places... love can grow cold very quickly too...is that the kind of love Jesus spoke of ? Think of the Jews how quickly they were hated by so many in Germany during WW2... or other minority groups...What about Zaire and Rwanda, how can such behaviour be possible with all that love in the human heart ?

Why does love grow cold so quickly ?

When I read that God is "like" a father or the kingdom of God is "like" a wineyard, this sounds to me the true way to talk about it. Jesus parables speak more truth to me than any story about God writing magically his 10 commandments on a stone with an hebraic alphabet that wasn't invented yet.

Yes Geek, very good comparison...but which of the ten commandments is so bad, that God had to send His Son to this earth to erase His mistake?

Christ said: "And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath:

"Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27, 28). The Sabbath was MADE!

When was it made ? And Who made it ?

John wrote, "In the beginning was the Word (Greek: Logos), and the Word was with God (Greek: Theos, meaning more than one), and the Word was God (TWO members or Theos). "The same was in the beginning with God. "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made" (John 1:1-3)

Did Jesus Christ keep the Sabbath ? The answer is yes. The question is, Do we pick and choose which words of Jesus to believe and which one's to reject ?

Naturally we can, but should we ?

 

Geek, I agree with some of what you are saying... but for me the Old Covenant God made with Israel, tells a story.

Israel was not chosen because they were better then any other nation, but because of Abraham being faithful to God and trusting in God. Abraham lived in the land of Ur. God called "Abram" out of that land...which he didn’t argue about, but went.

As people created more and more idols/gods for themselves and got further and further away from the one God (God is Spirit and not made out of clay) God chose Abraham to reconcile mankind.

The bible starts with telling the story of Adam and Eve (mankind) who had rejected God ect...now you can say this is all made up for the reason of some nation to have power over another nation and you have got a good point, for religion certainly seems to be used that way, but was it that way with Abraham....? Did "Abraham" have an agenda ? (You could ask...Is Abraham real...?)

People certainly departed quickly from worshipping the one God, for the history of Israel is full of it.

For example....

"And The Lord said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live." So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live." (Numbers 21:4-9 RSV)

Centuries Later, The Bronze Serpent Was Destroyed Because The Israelites Had Turned It Into An Idol

"In the third year of Hoshea son of Elah, king of Israel, Hezekiah the son of Ahaz, king of Judah , began to reign. He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Abi the daughter of Zechariah."

"And he did what was right in the eyes of The Lord, according to all that David his father had done. He removed the high places, and broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had burned incense to it; it was called Nehushtan."

"He trusted in The Lord the God of Israel; so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him. For he held fast to The Lord; he did not depart from following Him, but kept the Commandments which The Lord commanded Moses." (2 Kings 18:1-6 RSV)

 

BTW I got the flood article from that site...looks like a good one.

http://www.keyway.ca/htm2003/20030818.htm

 

Geek,

There is much proof that the history of Israel has not been a fiction of imagination and that their story had been recorded correctly.

A full copy of the Book of Isaiah was found at Qumran. The Dead Sea scrolls prove that the copyists of biblical manuscripts took great care in making sure that they translated them correctly.

A tunnel was constructed from the spring at Gihon, under the city walls and through the rock to the southern end of the city of Jerusalem, to the pool of Siloam. It is the Aqueduct of Hezekiah (2 Chronicles 32:2-4; 2 Kings 20:20)

Three accounts have been left by the Assyrian monarch-Sennacherib-about his campaign against Israel and Judah. The tell of how he came against the cities of Israel and then Judah, and how he "shut up" Hezekiah in his capital city Jerusalem. But, Sennacherib failed in his campaign (2 Kings 19:35-36). In 1938 archaelogists found a mass grave outside the city of Lachish, which Sennacherib had conquered and which was the base for the Assyrian move to Jerusalem. There found was 2000 skeleton's. There are stone panels on display today in the Lachish Gallery in the British Museum-- depicting the seige of Lachish. Sennacherib was assasinated (2 Kings 19:36-37) and also on display are tablets of this event.

Babylon was prophesied by Jeremiah and Isaiah and Daniel that it would "disappear" (Jeremiah 51:58; Isaiah 45:1-2; Daniel 4:30) It disappeared completely for over 2000 years. The palace ruins were discovered by archaelogists in the 19th century--proving that the Word of God stands!

http://www.angelfire.com/ut/warriorforchrist/page4.html

Only the Creator has the power to be God...anything else that humans have made into "gods" are in fact merely objects created by the Creator.....

The presence of a creation demands the existence of a Creator, and the existence of natural laws require the existence of a Natural Law Maker.

Geek, you might find the following of interest....

 

Yes, quite a number of Biblical structures have been excavated. Some of the most interesting are the following:

The base of the Tower of Babel in Babylon where language was confused (Genesis 11:1-9).

The theater at Ephesus, Turkey.

Old Testament
New Testament

The palace at Jericho where Eglon, king of Moab, was assassinated by Ehud (Judges 3:15-30).

The east gate of Shechem where Gaal and Zebul watched the forces of Abimelech approach the city (Judges 9:34-38).

The Temple of Baal/El-Berith in Shechem, where funds were obtained to finance Abimelech's kingship and where the citizens of Shechem took refuge when Abimelech attacked the city (Judges 9:4, 46-49).

The pool of Gibeon where the forces of David and Ishbosheth fought during the struggle for the kingship of Israel (2 Samuel 2:12-32).

The Pool of Heshbon, likened to the eyes of the Shulammite woman (Song of Songs 7:4).

The royal palace at Samaria where the kings of Israel lived (1 Kings 20:43; 21:1, 2; 22:39; 2 Kings 1:2; 15:25).

The Pool of Samaria where King Ahab's chariot was washed after his death (1 Kings 22:29-38).

The water tunnel beneath Jerusalem dug by King Hezekiah to provide water during the Assyrian siege (2 Kings 20:20; 2 Chronicles 32:30).

The royal palace in Babylon where King Belshazzar held the feast and Daniel interpreted the handwriting on the wall (Daniel 5).

The royal palace in Susa where Esther was queen of the Persian king Xerxes (Esther 1:2; 2:3, 5, 9, 16).

The royal gate at Susa where Mordecai, Esther's cousin, sat (Esther 2:19, 21; 3:2, 3; 4:2; 5:9, 13; 6:10, 12).

The Square in front of the royal gate at Susa where Mordecai met with Halthach, Xerxes' eunuch (Esther 4:6).

The foundation of the synagogue at Capernaum where Jesus cured a man with an unclean spirit (Mark 1:21-28) and delivered the sermon on the bread of life (John 6:25-59).

The house of Peter at Capernaum where Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law and others (Matthew 8:14-16).

Jacob's well where Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman (John 4).

The Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, where Jesus healed a crippled man (John 5:1-14).

The Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, where Jesus healed a blind man (John 9:1-4).

The tribunal at Corinth where Paul was tried (Acts 18:12-17).

The theater at Ephesus where the riot of silversmiths occurred (Acts 19:29). - See picture at top

Herod's palace at Caesarea where Paul was kept under guard (Acts 23:33-35).

[ If this information has been helpful, please prayerfully consider a donation to help pay the expenses for making this faith-building service available to you and your family! Donations are tax-deductible. ]

Author: Bryant Wood of Associates for Biblical Research

There is much proof that the history of Israel has not been a fiction of imagination and that their story had been recorded correctly.

A full copy of the Book of Isaiah was found at Qumran. The Dead Sea scrolls prove that the copyists of biblical manuscripts took great care in making sure that they translated them correctly.

cath,

there is also much proofs that history has been slightly distorted in the writtings as to make ways for changes in religious/political situation at precise time in israelite history.

One such religious rewriting of history is the idea that the israelites had a covenant with a monotheist god from Noah to Abraham to Moses to Solomon. In fact many archeological findings do point in the direction that monotheism in judaism was a fact long after Solomon.

As a result of comparing biblical and inThe Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic
scriptional evidence with the Ugaritic texts, we can see how the worship of other deities lasted for quite a long time in Israel's pantheon.

By Mark S. Smith
Skirball Professor of Bible and Near Eastern Studies
New York University

For decades, scholars have tried to penetrate the Bible's story about Israelite monotheism. According to traditional interpretations of the Bible, monotheism was part of Israel's original covenant with Yahweh on Mount Sinai, and the idolatry subsequently criticized by the prophets was due to Israel's backsliding from its own heritage and history with Yahweh. However, scholars have long noted that beneath this presentation lies a number of questions. Why do the Ten Commandments command that there should be no other gods "before Me" (the Lord), if there are no other gods as claimed by other biblical texts? Why should the Israelites sing at the crossing of the Red Sea that "there is no god like You, O Lord?" (Exodus 15:11). Such passages suggest that Israelites knew about other gods and did not simply reject them. It seems that Israelites may have known of other deities and perhaps various passages suggest that behind the Bible's broader picture of monotheism was a spectrum of polytheisms that centered on the worship of Yahweh as the pantheon's greatest figure.

In the past, the question of Israelite polytheism has been approached by looking for evidence of specific deities worshipped by Israelites in addition to Yahweh. These would include biblical criticisms of the worship of other deities, such as the goddess Asherah in 2 Kings 21 and 23, as well as apparent references to this goddess or at least her symbol in the inscriptions from Kuntillet 'Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom in the eighth century. In the Kuntillet 'Ajrud inscriptions, the symbol is treated respectfully as part of the worship of Yahweh. The gods Resheph and Deber appear in Habakkuk 3:5 as part of the military retinue of Yahweh. Other deities who gain some mention in the Bible include the "hosts of heaven" criticized in 2 Kings 21:5, but mentioned without such criticism in 1 Kings 22:19 and Zephaniah 1:5. Scholars have also noted that the god El is identified with Yahweh in the Bible, again with no criticism. The criticisms of Yahweh's archenemy, the storm god, Baal, also seem to reflect Israelite worship of this god. While many of these deities are not well known from the Bible, they are described sometimes at considerable length in the Ugaritic texts, discovered first in 1928 at the site of Ras Shamra (located on the coast of Syria about 100 miles north of Beirut). As a result of comparing biblical and inscriptional evidence with the Ugaritic texts, we can see how the worship of other deities lasted for quite a long time in Israel down to the Exile in ca. 586.

More

What I'm doubtfull about the movement to find historic proofs of facts in the bible is that the positive findings are put on the mediatized/touristic highlights while the rest are trown back to the dark of specialist's knowledge.

 

After Reich and others quelled national concerns, insisting that the discovery in no way contradicts the Biblical narrative, the hullabaloo quickly subsided. I visited Reich later that week at the Gihon spring, where the expansion of a settler home along with a new tourist center parking lot has prompted continual archaeological investigation. When asked about the impact of settlers on archaeology in the village, Reich lamented their destructive presence while recognizing that his own reputation will be built on these recent discoveries. Anyway, the days of nationalist Israeli archaeology are over, he informed me, concluding that scientific method has all but subsumed earlier biases.

Many in the discipline have noted a new breed of Israeli archaeologists distancing themselves from Biblical and Zionist historical narrative, echoing the reversals of the New Historians in their asking of new questions to fill out the gaps in the patchy Israeli historiography. Nadia Abu al-Haj has suggested that this new pluralism might be read for its "otherizing" effect, as the artifacts of "foreign" cultures are more prominently displayed, although often as outside influences enriching the Israeli national fabric.^[6]

Many Israeli archaeologists I spoke with who have worked in the village openly express their dislike of the settlers, taking care to note their warm relations with local Arabs. One senior digger did admit that he would like nothing more than to bulldoze the whole hill, thus preserving Jerusalem's archaeological tel for scientific study. As many local Palestinian residents will tell you, the bulldozers do come, but usually to demolish unlicensed homes. Archaeologists like Ronny Reich would prefer to steer clear of demolitions, settlers, and Tourist Ministry officials alike, proclaiming an objective distance from such ideological conflicts. This professed neutrality, however, ignores the role of archaeology in the service of tourist development, which in the case of Silwan is transforming a living village into a place called "The City of David." The antiquities produced through archaeological research in Silwan are being arranged to narrate the much contested Biblical story of David conquering the Jebusite City. Beyond re-inscribing the village with this new symbolic meaning as "Jewish space," the practice of archaeology is physically reshaping the village, having in several cases paved the legal path for Jewish settlement expansion.

Far across town in his Talbiye home, the architect contracted to design the park revealed to me that the City of David is but a piece of a much larger plan. He unrolled a map of the Old City and its environs, and my eyes tried to take in the hundreds of dots plotted across nine or so neighborhoods. Each dot represents a historic site, he explained, to be incorporated into a large open-air museum stretching south from the citadel, around Mt. Zion and Silwan, north through the Kidron Valley, and up to the Rockefeller Museum. Each area will be designed to represent different historical periods, and I was not surprised to hear that Silwan will serve as the First Temple Period.

I hope that these few angles on Silwan suggest the intricate spectrum of historical narratives projected onto this village. I argue that despite this multifarious legacy, it is the Biblical story of the City of David which Silwan is being shaped to represent. This historical landscaping takes place through the excavation and selective display of archaeological remains. We must pay particular attention to places like Silwan where historical narrative and archaeological practice operate on the front lines of an ongoing struggle. Given the austere political landscape in which Israeli land confiscations and house demolitions consume Palestinian space on a daily basis, it is important for us to be sensitive to other ways in which these erasures occur. The use of archaeological sites to reshape the land into historical landscapes assists Israel in its co-optation of places like Silwan in ways that bulldozers never could.

More

Geek, this might proof to be good reading material, I only read a bit myself, so i can't give you my conclusion on it yet.....

 

LEGENDS OF BABYLON AND EGYPT IN RELATION TO HEBREW TRADITION BY LEONARD W. KING, M.A., LITT.D., F.S.A. Assistant Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum Professor in the University of London King's College THE SCHWEICH LECTURES 1916

In these lectures an attempt is made, not so much to restate familiar facts, as to accommodate them to new and supplementary evidence which has been published in America since the outbreak of the war. But even without the excuse of recent discovery, no apology would be needed for any comparison or contrast of Hebrew tradition with the mythological and legendary beliefs of Babylon and Egypt. Hebrew achievements in the sphere of religion and ethics are only thrown into stronger relief when studied against their contemporary background.

But the people with whose traditions we are ultimately concerned are the Hebrews. In the first series of Schweich Lectures, delivered in the year 1908, the late Canon Driver showed how the literature of Assyria and Babylon had thrown light upon Hebrew traditions concerning the origin and early history of the world. The majority of the cuneiform documents, on which he based his comparison, date from a period no earlier than the seventh century B.C., and yet it was clear that the texts themselves, in some form or other, must have descended from a remote antiquity. He concluded his brief reference to the Creation and Deluge Tablets with these words: "The Babylonian narratives are both polytheistic, while the corresponding biblical narratives (Gen. i and vi-xi) are made the vehicle of a pure and exalted monotheism; but in spite of this fundamental difference, and also variations in detail, the resemblances are such as to leave no doubt that the Hebrew cosmogony and the Hebrew story of the Deluge are both derived ultimately from the same original as the Babylonian narratives, only transformed by the magic touch of Israel's religion, and infused by it with a new spirit."[1] Among the recently published documents from Nippur we have at last recovered one at least of those primitive originals from which the Babylonian accounts were derived, while others prove the existence of variant stories of the world's origin and early history which have not survived in the later cuneiform texts. In some of these early Sumerian records we may trace a faint but remarkable parallel with the Hebrew traditions of man's history between his Creation and the Flood. It will be our task, then, to examine the relations which the Hebrew narratives bear both to the early Sumerian and to the later Babylonian Versions, and to ascertain how far the new discoveries support or modify current views with regard to the contents of those early chapters of Genesis. ..........

Four centuries of complete silence lie between its close and the
beginning of Exodus, where we enter on the history of a nation as
contrasted with that of a family.[1] While Exodus and the succeeding
books contain national traditions, Genesis is largely made up of
individual biography. Chapters xii-l are concerned with the immediate
ancestors of the Hebrew race, beginning with Abram's migration into
Canaan and closing with Joseph's death in Egypt. But the aim of the
book is not confined to recounting the ancestry of Israel. It seeks
also to show her relation to other peoples in the world, and probing
still deeper into the past it describes how the earth itself was
prepared for man's habitation. Thus the patriarchal biographies are
preceded, in chapters i-xi, by an account of the original of the
world, the beginnings of civilization, and the distribution of the
various races of mankind. It is, of course, with certain parts of this
first group of chapters that such striking parallels have long been
recognized in the cuneiform texts........

It must be admitted that both Egypt and Babylon bear a bad name in
Hebrew tradition. Both are synonymous with captivity, the symbols of
suffering endured at the beginning and at the close of the national
life. And during the struggle against Assyrian aggression, the
disappointment at the failure of expected help is reflected in
prophecies of the period. These great crises in Hebrew history have
tended to obscure in the national memory the part which both Babylon
and Egypt may have played in moulding the civilization of the smaller
nations with whom they came in contact. To such influence the races of
Syria were, by geographical position, peculiarly subject. The country
has often been compared to a bridge between the two great continents
of Asia and Africa, flanked by the sea on one side and the desert on
the other, a narrow causeway of highland and coastal plain connecting
the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates.[1] .........

<!--StartFragment-->The great trunk-roads of through communication run north and south,
across the eastern plateaus of the Haurân and Moab, and along the
coastal plains. The old highway from Egypt, which left the Delta at
Pelusium, at first follows the coast, then trends eastward across the
plain of Esdraelon, which breaks the coastal range, and passing under
Hermon runs northward through Damascus and reaches the Euphrates at
its most westerly point. Other through tracks in Palestine ran then as
they do to-day, by Beesheba and Hebron, or along the `Arabah and west
of the Dead Sea, or through Edom and east of Jordan by the present
Hajj route to Damascus. But the great highway from Egypt, the most
westerly of the trunk-roads through Palestine, was that mainly
followed, with some variant sections, by both caravans and armies, and
was known by the Hebrews in its southern course as the "Way of the
Philistines" and farther north as the "Way of the East"...........

During the second period, that of the settlement in Canaan, the
Hebrews came into contact with a people who had used the Babylonian
language as the common medium of communication throughout the Near
East. It is an interesting fact that among the numerous letters found
at Tell el-Amarna were two texts of quite a different character. These
were legends, both in the form of school exercises, which had been
written out for practice in the Babylonian tongue. One of them was the
legend of Adapa, in which we noted just now a distant resemblance to
the Hebrew story of Paradise. It seems to me we are here standing on
rather firmer ground; and provisionally we might place the beginning
of our process after the time of Hebrew contact with the Canaanites.

Under the earlier Hebrew monarchy there was no fresh influx of
Babylonian culture into Palestine. That does not occur till our last
main period, the later Judaean monarchy, when, in consequence of the
westward advance of Assyria, the civilization of Babylon was once more
carried among the petty Syrian states. Israel was first drawn into the
circle of Assyrian influence, when Arab fought as the ally of Benhadad
of Damascus at the battle of Karkar in 854 B.C.; and from that date
onward the nation was menaced by the invading power. In 734 B.C., at
the invitation of Ahaz of Judah, Tiglath-Pileser IV definitely
intervened in the affairs of Israel. For Ahaz purchased his help
against the allied armies of Israel and Syria in the Syro-Ephraimitish
war. Tiglath-pileser threw his forces against Damascus and Israel, and
Ahaz became his vassal.[1] To this period, when Ahaz, like Panammu II,
"ran at the wheel of his lord, the king of Assyria", we may ascribe
the first marked invasion of Assyrian influence over Judah. Traces of
it may be seen in the altar which Ahaz caused to be erected in
Jerusalem after the pattern of the Assyrian altar at Damascus.[2] We
saw in the first lecture, in the monuments we have recovered of
Panammu I and of Bar-rekub, how the life of another small Syrian state
was inevitably changed and thrown into new channels by the presence of
Tiglath-pileser and his armies in the West.

http://www.gutenberg.net/etext00/beheb10.txt

 

 

it is lenghty. will try to rad it all. plutocracy is in unexpalined. moved it all tonite.