Prehistory of the Bible
This is a series of 7 short videos about the origins of the Bible in the second millennium BCE.
In the first video we begin with the observation that everything has a history. It all has to come from somewhere. The machine I am working on in this series has its history, and so does the Bible.
The second video is about the history of the patriarch Abraham, the main character in the middle and the later parts of the Book of Genesis. Abraham was a powerful and successful nomadic herdsman, living sometime around 1700 BCE. He and his herds traveled from what is now Turkey, down through Syria, Lebanon, Sinai, Egypt, and Arabia.
The third video is about what little we know regarding the history of Moses and the escape of a small band of Hebrew slaves under his leadership from the land of Egypt.
The fourth video is about the way later generations would reflect on the ideal leadership of Israel during the period of the United Kingdom, from about 1020 to 922 BCE. This is the ideal kingdom of David, and Solomon.
The fifth video deals with the way later people would view the great kings of the 2nd millennium. These kings were able to command large groups of slaves and skilled craftsmen. They built huge, monumental structures out of stone. Later generations would remember them as giants. (See Genesis 6:4)
The sixth video is about the Book of Enoch, a book that has been used in many wild and crazy ways to describe the giants, and even ancient aliens . The real book of Enoch is about an ancient teacher of righteousness and indigenous purity coming into conflict with the powerful and wealthy rulers of the second millennium BC. It speaks of a hunger for the purity of the ancient nomad/herdsman prior to the advent of fortified city states. It’s about the struggle of purity against complexity.
The last video summarizes the whole series by pointing out how easy it is for us to take a very small dataset and then fill in the blanks with fantasy and imagination. We have very little reliable information about the prehistory of the Bible, and we need to avoid the temptation to fill in the blanks using our imagination.
For those of you who are curious, the machine I am working on in all seven videos is a vintage Sears Craftsman Continuous Blade Power Hacksaw. It now runs perfectly and was manufactured in 1960. It’s an amazing tool and it does have a history like everything else!
Watch Pastor Steve’s videos on YouTube:
1.) https://youtu.be/OEIi5zDJE50 [Learn the History of the Bible ]
2.) https://youtu.be/6gvSGvDc4pA [The History of Abraham]
3.) https://youtu.be/9Xh90gqoTmM [The History of the Exodus]
4.) https://youtu.be/2M1XiZcx3e0 [The History of the United Kingdom of Israel]
5.) https://youtu.be/u-gdZBA2qiE [Remembering the Age of Giants]
6.) https://youtu.be/Gqt8OCzZeNY [Enoch and the Memory of an Age of Purity]
7.) https://youtu.be/bxx_ZVCXpc8 [Agnotology and Our Habit of Pretending to Know What We Do Not Know]
