Vridar

So let’s resume my specific responses to criticisms raised on the earlywritings forum over the question of the Hellenistic era being the earliest setting for the Pentateuch and other books of t...

https://vridar.org/2024/04/25/questioning-the-hellenistic-date-for-the-hebrew-bible-circular-argument/

The Cyrus Cylinder is not evidence that the Persian king Cyrus commissioned a return of Judeans to restore their temple (as explained in the previous post) but it does show us why the biblical au...

https://vridar.org/2024/04/24/origin-of-the-cyrus-messiah-myth/

In my book collection I have a massive (both in size and weight) Reader’s Digest 1971 version of the King James 1611 translation of the Bible. On page 377, the second page into the Book of Ezra...

https://vridar.org/2024/04/22/no-evidence-cyrus-allowed-the-jews-to-return/

Recent posts have focussed on the case for the earliest books of the Bible being composed as late as the Hellenistic era, that is less than 300 years before Christ. The longstanding conventional ...

https://vridar.org/2024/04/20/comparing-samaria-and-judah-yehud-and-their-religion-in-persian-times/

Our quest is to test the thesis that the earliest books of the Bible were written or at least heavily redacted and supplemented in the Persian period. To that end we have been trying to understan...

https://vridar.org/2024/04/15/samaria-in-the-persian-period/

I have transcribed the last ten minutes of the archaeologist Israel Finkelstein’s December 2022 Conference presentation because it dovetails with my recent posts and discussion points about the...

https://vridar.org/2024/04/12/no-evidence-jerusalem-judea-had-a-writing-culture-in-persian-times-israel-finkelstein/

I am continuing here with my responses to criticisms raised on the earlywritings forum. The next objection raised was: I can’t help feeling that proponents of a Hellenistic origin of the Old T...

https://vridar.org/2024/04/11/questioning-the-hellenistic-date-for-the-hebrew-bible-continuing/

Having surveyed what the archaeological evidence tells us about religious practices of the Judeans in Elephantine (see the previous post) let’s now compare the evidence for Judah and Samaria in...

https://vridar.org/2024/04/10/judah-and-samaria-in-persian-times-the-evidence-and-a-way-out-of-a-quandary/