Yes, it’s true that many, many people believe very strongly in the fictions that arose around the realities that the academic cuts closer to.
But reality matters.
I’m sure we might agree that it would be absurd to say that the stories of Homer, because of how they are treasured by audiences in their own right, should invalidate the importance of better learning the historical realities on which they drew.
There was a history. That history is not what was canonized in the Torah. It was not what was canonized in the New Testament.
And at least to me, that history is much, much more interesting than the fantasies and propaganda which eroded it.
It will not change anyone’s beliefs. Faith is belief in the face of evidence, not because of it. Telling believers that “actually, in Genesis, God is referred to as both male and female” will not matter one bit to them because that’s not the god they believe in and it will never be the god they believe in.
It’s not necessarily for them. They aren’t the center of the universe, even if they believe it to be so.
Other people who care about evidence and history and reality might be interested in the fact that originally there was a claimed prophet and leader of the Israelites who was a woman named ‘bee’ around the time there was an apiary in Tel Rehov importing queen bees from Anatolia as the only honey production in “the land of milk and honey” where inside the apiary was one of the earliest four horned altars (later appearing as an Israelite altar feature) dedicated to a goddess for example.
I could care less if an Orthodox conservative religious person believes that’s true or not. Archeology tells us unequivocally that the apiary and altar were true, and that’s valuable context for untangling the folk history that was being reshaped by later hands.
That simply isn’t true. If a group of people make claims about history that are provably false, not just about supernatural stuff but about actual events which feed into their attitudes towards modernity, then the availability of accurate information about what really did or didn’t happen is quite relevant to people that deconvert, or oppose that group and their positions, etc.
The idea that there’s a dichotomy of either “believe in BS” or “don’t care” cedes the claims over history to the fanatical.
Personally, I care about knowing my real ancestral history. I care about knowing my real cultural history. To me, the historical reality of the book of Joshua being anachronistic BS that flies in the face of the archeological reality of the Israelites cohabitating peacefully with Philistines and Canaanites has quite profound implications for a major modern world news topic, and recontextualizes phrases like Leviticus’s “love thy neighbor as yourself” and “love the alien residing among you as yourself.”
A historical reality of an early history of cohabitation with ethnically different neighbors as opposed to the claimed history of conquering those neighbors is relevant in opposing the dogmatic claims of justified oppression of others and in interpreting the tradition that history left behind. Even if it gets ignored by the ‘faithful’ it’s a useful context for those standing in opposition to their claims and dogma.
You’re asking how discoveries in the past few decades have impacted millennia old traditions? Your evaluation may be a bit premature.
But as one example we’ve seen more progressive religious groups who learned ‘Lucifer’ was a mistranslation of Isaiah turn away from the Enochian interpretations of those passages and a distancing from the Milton-esque portrayal of sinister forces still present in things like American evangelical circles.
Analyses like Idan Dershowitz’s of Leviticus’s homosexuality bans that reveal it as a later addition to earlier laws have been a source of solace to many religious folk who felt at odds with a presumed Mosaic law.
Also – a rigorous understanding of the underlying history of the text and its circumstances relies on far more than just ‘translations.’
And there too, the work is still ongoing.
There’s going to be serious upsets in what people think they know about the Old Testament period and history in the next few decades given emerging research trends - but just like how in medicine it takes 17 years from research to broad awareness in practice, it’s going to take some time for discoveries in the past few years to snowball to broader awareness and perspective shifts.
The academic matters.
Arguably more than the fiction.
Yes, it’s true that many, many people believe very strongly in the fictions that arose around the realities that the academic cuts closer to.
But reality matters.
I’m sure we might agree that it would be absurd to say that the stories of Homer, because of how they are treasured by audiences in their own right, should invalidate the importance of better learning the historical realities on which they drew.
There was a history. That history is not what was canonized in the Torah. It was not what was canonized in the New Testament.
And at least to me, that history is much, much more interesting than the fantasies and propaganda which eroded it.
It will not change anyone’s beliefs. Faith is belief in the face of evidence, not because of it. Telling believers that “actually, in Genesis, God is referred to as both male and female” will not matter one bit to them because that’s not the god they believe in and it will never be the god they believe in.
It’s not necessarily for them. They aren’t the center of the universe, even if they believe it to be so.
Other people who care about evidence and history and reality might be interested in the fact that originally there was a claimed prophet and leader of the Israelites who was a woman named ‘bee’ around the time there was an apiary in Tel Rehov importing queen bees from Anatolia as the only honey production in “the land of milk and honey” where inside the apiary was one of the earliest four horned altars (later appearing as an Israelite altar feature) dedicated to a goddess for example.
I could care less if an Orthodox conservative religious person believes that’s true or not. Archeology tells us unequivocally that the apiary and altar were true, and that’s valuable context for untangling the folk history that was being reshaped by later hands.
Yes, that’s what I was saying, it’s academic.
And as I said, the academic matters.
It matters to other people interested in the academics. It has no significant impact on the world.
That simply isn’t true. If a group of people make claims about history that are provably false, not just about supernatural stuff but about actual events which feed into their attitudes towards modernity, then the availability of accurate information about what really did or didn’t happen is quite relevant to people that deconvert, or oppose that group and their positions, etc.
The idea that there’s a dichotomy of either “believe in BS” or “don’t care” cedes the claims over history to the fanatical.
Personally, I care about knowing my real ancestral history. I care about knowing my real cultural history. To me, the historical reality of the book of Joshua being anachronistic BS that flies in the face of the archeological reality of the Israelites cohabitating peacefully with Philistines and Canaanites has quite profound implications for a major modern world news topic, and recontextualizes phrases like Leviticus’s “love thy neighbor as yourself” and “love the alien residing among you as yourself.”
A historical reality of an early history of cohabitation with ethnically different neighbors as opposed to the claimed history of conquering those neighbors is relevant in opposing the dogmatic claims of justified oppression of others and in interpreting the tradition that history left behind. Even if it gets ignored by the ‘faithful’ it’s a useful context for those standing in opposition to their claims and dogma.
What measurable effect has learning about the original translations of Biblical texts had on the world?
You’re asking how discoveries in the past few decades have impacted millennia old traditions? Your evaluation may be a bit premature.
But as one example we’ve seen more progressive religious groups who learned ‘Lucifer’ was a mistranslation of Isaiah turn away from the Enochian interpretations of those passages and a distancing from the Milton-esque portrayal of sinister forces still present in things like American evangelical circles.
Analyses like Idan Dershowitz’s of Leviticus’s homosexuality bans that reveal it as a later addition to earlier laws have been a source of solace to many religious folk who felt at odds with a presumed Mosaic law.
Also – a rigorous understanding of the underlying history of the text and its circumstances relies on far more than just ‘translations.’
And there too, the work is still ongoing.
There’s going to be serious upsets in what people think they know about the Old Testament period and history in the next few decades given emerging research trends - but just like how in medicine it takes 17 years from research to broad awareness in practice, it’s going to take some time for discoveries in the past few years to snowball to broader awareness and perspective shifts.