Here’s notes AND counter arguments:

THESIS:

• What if Judaism is a “constructed” religion?

• There was a Jewish community in Elephantine, Egypt in 400BC that was practicing a “pagan” version of Judaism

• At this stage they should have been following “Mose’s Torah” and Jerusalem should have been enforcing standard Judaism - but they don’t mention the Torah and Jerusalem was supportive of this group?

• “They were likely a result of Judean refugees fleeing into Egypt during the Babylonian invasions. They seem to have had no knowledge of a written Torah or the narratives described therein”

• Quite a big thing to forget! The Torah is the foundation of the religion?

• It seems a lot of the Torah was only written AFTER this? This is bizzare… was it “constructed”?

• Platonism was hugely popular at the time in Egypt, as Plato was only brand new and had spread through Alexander the Great as the “great philosopher of the World”

• The thesis is that as the Hellenic Empire founded by Alexander the Great was collapsing - Judas Maccabee led a revolt to seize the old territory of Judea

• This Judea was only ever a pagan nation, like any other, that had been consumed by great Babylon

• Judas and his lineage wanted to create a “National myth” to unite this people - so he employed the best thinkers of the time to build a religion - like a propaganda team

• These thinkers took the old pagan customs of Judea and used Plato’s ideas in the Republic to reformulate them into “Judaism” - so not “fake” but much more “constructed” than we may think

• The problem here is how much this undermines the validity of the Torah and as a consequence all three major Abrahamic religions

• Moses, the Torah, and the mighty history of the one true God might be a Platonic “noble lie” put together out of Jewish paganism in 170 BC

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COUNTER ARGUMENTS:

• There’s very old Egyptian Steele’s etc. apparently mentioning “Israel” granting validity to an ancient past

• The Hyksos masters of Egypt look an awful lot like “the Israelites” granting validity to the Torah

• The Dead Sea scrolls found in the 20th century revealed works like Isaiah were indeed very old!