Would you believe Abraham and Sarah existed before the Bible and King David etc.

mP

Believers, take a guess which and explain how this is possible.

Abraham, Sarah, Jacob and likely some other patriarchs are actually clever humanisations of local dieties. Cults of El-Jacob are well attested and Abraham as "Father" had cult centers well outside the textual tradition. When inventing a ancestral origin legend it likely seemed quite natuaral to recruit from the local minor dieties as the national acestors and progenitors. Some, a hundred years ago or so, had supposed a link between Abraham and Bramah but the connection is very remote at best.

ÁrbolesdeArabia

Mp Who do you believe existed before 1700 A.D. and what proof do you offer to substantiate your claims?

mP

Brahma and his wife Saraswati in the Hindu traditions. There are similarities in the story not the least being the phreaky coincidence that both characters share names with Abraham and Sarah. What are the odds on that ? Jewish religion and tradiition is not unique far from it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saraswati

She is the companion of Brahma

peacefulpete

mP, when I found Higgins' book 'Anacalypsis' I thought I had found gold. Sadly the man was one of those odd geniuses that mistake their own ingenuity for revelation or good research. We have had few posters here that fit that definition. Higgins writing back in the early 1800's had a very specific agenda of proving that there was a secret religious order that was directing the world's evolution. Simply said the huge book is a treasure trove of imagination mixed with incomplete research, facinating and delightful for those of us who enjoy the unusual, but not a credible source for researching religious history. There have been a number of authors since his time that naively drew from the book which keeps some of his ideas floating in the ether. More sober minded folks like Leolaia and others have commented on many of these "links" in the past. The spirit of your last comment is absolutely true that the Jewish religion, like all religions bear resemblances to other ancient faiths and that the exchange of ideas has been critical to the formulation of all religions. But sometimes the resemblances are just coincidences and sometimes they are the product of a fertile imagination.

mP

peacefulpete

Ive never read that book. I dont know enuff about hinduism and the countless mythological stories that they have. India is a large place and each region has variations and different gods. My point was its amazing that the names Abraham and Sarah can found there, with some similarities. I can only imagine that way way back some inspiration of common theme inspired the writers of the Jewish bible. We can see they copied other stories from Metsopotamia in the Noah story and so on. They even admit it and we can see this in the geography mention in these storise.

peacefulpete

Linguistics are hairy stuff for layfolks like us. All too often what seems a remarkable similarity in English has no relationship in the native tougues. Of course the opposite is also true. Many authors including the WT and even NT writers have been guilty of confusing similar sounding words when it made for a convenient argument. Bottom line is refer to credible and well documented sources and we are chasing rabbits down dark holes a lot less often.

Leolaia

My point was its amazing that the names Abraham and Sarah can found there, with some similarities.

They aren't. Sanskrit names with phonetic resemblance to the two Hebrew names are found there. Whether there is an actual connection between the names or not depends on how philological and comparative evidence is assessed.

Linguistics are hairy stuff for layfolks like us. All too often what seems a remarkable similarity in English has no relationship in the native tougues.

Well I had a long discussion with mP last year on how the English word "elder" has nothing to do with the Canaanite deity "El", but the phonetic similarity alone is enough to convince him that the words are historically connected.

Lore

I'm not sure I understand the question

Do you mean it as it is written? That Abraham and Sarah existed prior to King David and the writing of the Bible?

That's exactly what the Bible claims happened: That Abraham was an ancestor of Moses who was the first bible writer. So Abraham would have to have existed before the Bible and King David who was also one of his decendants.

Most people live before their children.

mP

Leo:

Well I had a long discussion with mP last year on how the English word "elder" has nothing to do with the Canaanite deity "El", but the phonetic similarity alone is enough to convince him that the words are historically connected.

mP

Your not telling the full picture. You only showed from some scholar that the word "elder" came from a Germanic word which i cant recall. El is a 4000 year old word, while im sure you will agree your Germanic source is at best 1000 years. Even if we add an error of 500 years that still leaves quite a considerable gap of 2500 years. Im sure you will agree that the Germanic word itself is based on another word from another language and culture. Until we follow that back further and see that it does not converge with the middle east its not appropriate or honest to make the claims you are stating. The question now becomes where did that German tribe get the word from ? What is its origin etc ?

All languages ultimately are based on earlier languages and evolve, sometimes they substitute certain hard/soft forms of consonents when adopting the word. Eg PTR and MTR as the core consonants of mother and father in latin. Many romantic languages swapped a F for P and we see the same pattern in english. The TH sound has replaced T as well. All i was trying to show in the EL case is that the use of L or R is a common form for god or godly things. L and R are related and often exchanged. We can this pattern in many words where these sorts of consonant swaps happen as if a formula is present in migrating the word.

Back to EL, until you show me where that German tribe got their elder origin word from, well ally9ou have proven is where it was 1000 years ago.

Would you believe Abraham and Sarah existed before the Bible and King David etc.

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