Does the Bible Contain Valid History?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                         

Israel's Likud party, the party of Prime Minister Netanyahu,  has a young woman who has stated the validity of following history from the Torah. She's the government's new Deputy Foreign Minister.   She's causing a stir among the Conservative and Reform Jews in the USA and elsewhere, for not all believe it to be the word of G-d, or many even question the existence of a G-d, period!   Being Israel was created as a Jewish state, this is causing quite a stir.  Was there even a Moses (1391 BCE-1271 BCE)?  Will Jews believe in the rights of Israel's existence now?  After a speech, Hotovely told journalists that despite her personal political views, she was committed to pursuing a two-state solution in keeping with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declared policy.
                                                                             

Tzipi Hotovely is not the only person in Israel who believes that Israel's right to exist comes from G-d's leading the Jews there by Moses on the Exodus with the command that this was their land.  There are many others.  Otherwise, they would not have the strength to fight off so many attacks from the Arabs.

1. The Jewish population in Israel is divided into two subcultures: an Orthodox minority, known in colloquial Hebrew simply as “religious” (dati), which includes about 15 percent of the population, and the secular (hiloni) majority -- some 85 percent of Jewish Israelis."
2. The leadership of the state has been totally secular. Orthodox parties participate in governing coalitions, but have always been excluded from discussions about peace, war or the economy. Nor do they aspire to be part of those fateful deliberations. Israel’s intellectual, literary, scientific, military and artistic elite is 99 percent secular.
3. Orthodox Zionists are a different matter. They are less marginal because they share the Zionist discourse and do not limit their existence to a cultural and social ghetto. Since 1967, they have been raising the banner of militant Zionism, and this role has pushed them closer to center stage. Still, their religious rhetoric only reinforces their marginality.

                                                                     

 The induction into the IDF, the army, is done at the Masada, the place high up where a thousand Jews died rather than be taken alive by the Romans in 73 and 74 CE who were were not known for their kindness;  more for their bestiality in taking lives. The 970 Jewish men  had women and children with them.  They could not allow that to happen.  "Because Judaism prohibits suicide, Josephus, the author of the information,  reported that the defenders had drawn lots and killed each other in turn, down to the last man, who would be the only one to actually take his own life."  The Romans also recorded what they found.  A woman and 5 children were left alive as they had hid.  
                                                                           

Tzipi's audacious fearlessness of stating her views and in what she will fight for reminds me of our ancient Judge, Deborah who lived c 1150 BCE.  Before we had King Saul, we had judges who decided things for the people.  Deborah, wife of Lapidoth,  roused the Israelite tribes to revolt under Barak, son of Abinoam, against the Canaanite king Jabin of Hazor and Sisera, his ally and commander.  She sings a song of victory in Judges 4 which is attributed to her as written in Judges 5 is regarded as one of the oldest compositions preserved in Hebrew.  Tzippi is stirring up the tribes for sure.
                                                                             

IS-Islamic State turning Syria and Iraq into their own Caliphate, something Osama Bin Laden was not ready to do.  According to " Michael Scheuer, 63 year old former CIA  intelligence officer, American blogger, author, historian, foreign policy critic, and political analyst. He is currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies.  Osama  wanted to get all Jews out of Israel first."  Osama was not following the precepts set by Mohammad.  Scheuer criticized the USA for their closeness to Israel and was fired for that from the Jamestown Foundation.  He resigned from the CIA.  He wrote "Imperial Hubris."   I suppose he would have thrown us to the wolves. 

 Is this why Obama is distancing himself from Israel?  He's following Scheuer's advice.  He just spoke Friday night to  Adas Israel congregation, Washington’s prime Conservative synagogue.  Barack Obama Says Israel Criticism Is Tough Love.  Nate Guttman, writer from the Forward, thought the congregation approved and Obama passed with flying colors.  

From the opposite quarter in the Middle East is Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, who believe that the land of "Palestine"  is an Islamic Waqf ( a religious endowment (a trust) and refers to preserving of certain land and buildings.  

1. They believe it is consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day.  These Arabs, who follow Mohammad (570 CE-632 CE), also feel, like everyone else of their religion viewed as Orthodoxy or extremism, that Judgement Day  is at hand right now.  They are not willing to give up any part of the land. to Jews. Obama could not change them, even if he tried.
2. I find that so many things Jews do are copied by the Muslims.  Now  the land is their religious land given to them, but by who?  At least we can say G-d gave it to us and have the book to prove it.  They don't.  Jews not only have G-d's word, but the UN's okay.  They also bought the land legally from the Arabs who did have ownership on parcels.  As a people of the book with 613 laws from Moses, we people are a people of law.  That's our thing.  Our ancestors saw to it that after waiting for this important date for 2,000 years, they were going to make sure it was all legal.  No one in their right minds could argue with our rights.  They didn't know today's world.  
3.                                                                        

Israelites entering the land of Egypt. 

Whereas Moses was the Prince of Egypt, son of the daughter of the Pharaoh, he was well educated.  He could read and write.  History had been going on for centuries in a written form and writing was an important skill.                                                                      

They wrote in heiroglyphics and used pictures to depict their life along with their writing.
                                                                             

Circumcision, an operation started in Egypt. 

Their artists were very skillful.  The walls of their tombs can be viewed today, about 4,000  years later.   Their historical practice was to always show the righteousness of the Egyptian.  They never showed their errors or losses.  If something was out of favor, they covered up that chapter with more cement and just painted over it with the new prevailing history.

Not so with Moses.  When he started writing, he wrote the good and the bad about the Israelites. Look how King David's history was told.   This is one reason it is so believable.

 He heard G-d speak to him and he wrote it all down.  Some psychologists have said he may have had some condition-some psychosis, but when you read what it was that was said, most of us just cry out, "Brilliant!"  Our greatest minds have been studying the 5 Books of Moses since then to this very day and still are in awe at the genius of it all.

Mohammad was aroused by the Jewish storytellers in Medina, also.  A man who could neither read nor write, he was awestruck with the story from the Torah he heard read in the streets by these different people, the Jews.  He hadn't heard any such thoughts before, and so he felt he must take this to his people.  He was a general that was unappreciated in his home town of Mecca.  This should also dazzle them, too, and he would have a book written and would place his own thoughts in it besides these Jewish ones he would use.
                                                                           

When the time came that Mohammad had become a leader and was out converting Arabs to his belief, he allowed the Jews to live among them without being converted as they were now the respected "People of the Book."  Christians were included in that too, but they both had to pay a Poll Tax for the honor.  They were held down and many rights the Arabs had were not theirs, but they were able to exist among them.. That was more than Hitler would allow in the future, or Haman would have allowed in the past in Persia.
                                     
What would he think of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) or IS who are pledged to drive out the Jews and take over their land?  Iran wants to do the same thing.  This was not Mohammad's view at first, even though he had been angry with Jews who were no good as co-fighters against other Arabs.

The facts are that Mohammad became angry with the Jews who he felt went against him in a battle.  Mohammad, in his zeal to convert people, had gone on a binge and forced most Jewish tribes in and around Medina  to convert with the threat of death, so a few cow-towed and converted quickly, actually not understanding the danger of it.  They saw that Arabs were mono-theistic like they were, so they gave in, at least outwardly.   Some must have realized that Mohammad had learned from them.   These people had been stranded from the main hub of Judaism since Jerusalem had fallen to the Romans in 70 CE and they had been away from stimulating intellectual thought for a good 500 years.  They were being good to hold on to their Jewish beliefs this long, having it transferred from generation to generation.  Almost 500 years later after 70 CE they allowed the Jews to live in their land after paying their Poll tax.  Then the Jews were 2nd class citizens or Dhimmis.
                                                                         

Esau and Jacob, twins of Isaac and Rebecca,  with Esau becoming an Arab with his Uncle Ishmael and Jacob being father of the Jews.

There are Arabs, being from Ishmael, Isaac's half brother, who are carrying the J1c3d gene, or Cohen gene.  How else can you explain that Jews from Europe and Arabs from the Middle East carry a gene so similar that one carries a little tag showing the split between them and the split can be traced to the actual time period?   The story found in the Torah is being proved to be right by science!
                                                                             

IDF in Six Day War of 1967 standing at the wall in Jerusalem for the first time since 1947.  

How can you explain today's Israeli soldiers who have lost their way in Israel somehow being able to pick up the Bible they carry and thumb through, finding the description of the land and how his ancestor managed to find his way.  Using that page, the soldier can get back to base.
                                                                           

Mt. Hermon in the Galilee

 I've heard this story.  It's a fact.  Archaeology is opening the doors to show that the bible is not a lot of hooey.   The fact that it is as old as it is, is not in any way  full of incorrect information.  It's up to us to understand that the years that have gone by have changed some of the landscape but not that much.  It's all there.   Here are some Egyptian Pharoahs and their dates.

 The Date of the Exodus: 1446 BC
Pharaoh who killed Hebrew children: Amuntotep I: 1532-1511 BC
Pharaoh's Daughter who adopted Moses: Hatshepsut: 1526 BC
Pharaoh of Moses' flight to Midian: Thutmoses II/Hatshepsut: 1498-1485 BC
Pharaoh of the Exodus: Thutmoses III: 1485/1464 - 1431 BC

My Jewish Encyclopedia has Moses living from 1391 to 1271 BCE.  He was 80 years old when he went back to Egypt to talk to the Pharoah, his adopted relative, so that would have been in 1311 BCE,   and after walking on the Exodus for 40 years, he died outside of Canaan at age 120.  There are people today who have lived to 120, so it's not a wild idea, rare but possible.  The Torah doesn't tell us the name of the Pharoah, so we're still examining Egyptian history.  

Bob O'Dell gives us the new date for the Exodus to have started as 1579-1578 BCE.  He uses the science of astronomy to figure it out, zeroing in on the phases of the moon.    So we all may have come up with dates a little off from each other, but the history has not changed since it was written down.  The writing in the Torah is sacrosanct.  Not one iota, not one letter has been altered.  

One of the many archaological finds in Israel that proves the Bible to be correct is 

 Tel Dan (“David”) Stela

Few Biblical archaeology discoveries have attracted as much attention as the Tel Dan Stela—the ninth-century B.C.E. inscription that furnished the first historical evidence of King David outside the Bible.  An excavation assistant stumbled upon the stela bearing the inscription in a newly excavated wall.

                                                                                                                                                 

The Arab, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was the first who fought against the Jews' return to their land.  He had been appointed by a British Jew, no less, to be the master over Jerusalem while the Brits held the mandate after WWI.
He was so against their coming and usurping his own position that he went to Germany to speak with Hitler. Hitler had his own reasons to want to kill off all the about 14 million Jews in the world.  He dared to verbalize it as justification for his plan for genocide of the Jewish people:
"Conscience is a Jewish invention like circumcision.  My task is to free men from the dirty and degrading ideas of conscience and morality."  Adolf Hitler 
                                                                                                    

Our Torah and other books from the Prophets are an amalgamated group of history, geography, genealogy and laws of conscience and morality.  Jews read the whole Bible,  which Christians call the Old Testament, every year.  They read from the Torah and then from the other correlating parts.  
                                                                           

Mt. Sinai where Moses received the 10 Commandments

For instance,  on (Sivan 6-7) May 23rd is the holiday of Shavuot, celebrating Moses giving us the 10 Commandments.  We will read Genesis  and then get into the Haftorah and read Isaiah XLII, 5-XLIII,10  which correlates with Genesis.  On Shavuot we will also read The Book of Ruth as it mentions the barley and wheat harvests.  That's how we cover both parts.  

Are people a thousand years from now going to look at our history books and say it's just science fiction?  Will we even exist a thousand years from now or is this the end or about to be the end?  

Resource: http://www.merip.org/mer/mer179/israels-ultra-orthodox
 http://www.bible.ca/archeology/bible-archeology-exodus-date-1440bc.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Masada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Scheuer
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2015/04/date-of-exodus-discovered.html
http://www.bible.ca/archeology/bible-archeology-exodus-date-1440bc.htm
http://forward.com/news/308765/barack-obama-frames-israel-criticism-as-tough-love-in-washington-synagogue/?utm_content=daily_Newsletter_TopSpot_Title_Position-1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=The%20Forward%20Today%20%28Monday-Friday%29&utm_campaign=New%20Daily%202015-05-23
http://www.timesofisrael.com/deputy-fm-tells-diplomats-the-whole-land-is-ours/
Politicide, Volume 3 by Victor Sharpe p. 1-13.
CNN news about Michael Scheuer
http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/free-ebooks/ten-top-biblical-archaeology-discoveries/
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2013/06/archaeology-proves-israels-past-history.html