Creationist Lies
Out of context: Reply #793
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"During these times, Baal and his consort Ashtoreth were worshiped by many Israelites both in Samaria (Israel) and Judah even after the captivity, mainly by those who remained in the conquered lands. Yahwists like Ezra finally purged the Israelites (by then known as Jews) of all Baal residuals and even forced them to give up their Baalish wives and families (see Ezra 9-10 ). Ezra's purging of Baal appeared to be complete. It was his wish to erase Baal completely from the Israelite past; however, the residuals in Genesis 1 and 3 continue to remind us not only of Israel's polytheistic past but of the Canaanite origins of Judaism.
Using archaeological evidence on one hand and biblical between-the-line implications on the other, the following conclusions support the premises stated above:
(1) Most of the Israelites at the time of the exodus (about 1250 B.C.) were already located in the Canaanite area, which, incidentally, was at that time a part of Greater Egypt. A relatively small number, probably only one tribe (Levi), were in Egypt. Exodus 1:15 , for example, says that only two midwives were needed to attend the births of Hebrew children. Furthermore, the Israelites needed divine help to defeat a small seminomadic tribe (Ex. 17:8-13 ) in contradiction to the later editor's estimate of an army of 600,000 men (12:37 ) besides children (and women?).
(2) This relatively small group of Israelites from the outside (Egypt proper) formed some type of symbiotic relationship with the much larger inside group (which consisted of Israelites and Canaanites, the so-called mixed multitude) to form the "12 tribes" (when they were not fighting each other).
(3) The outside group was the Yahwist cult, the inside group the Baal cult. The struggle between the two groups went on for well over 500 years.
(4) Apparently it was not until the reign of Josiah that the Yahwist group was able to achieve dominance. The "lost book" of Deuteronomy was discovered in the house of the LORD (2 Kings 22:8 ), and the Passover was reinstituted after a lapse of 500 years (if indeed it even existed before then). The golden calf (symbol of the Kings of Israel) from the reign of Jeroboam was suppressed (2 Kings 23:15 ).
(5) Biblical scholars agree on how the Pentateuch was put together. The sources were (E) Elohist, (J) Yahwist, (P) Priestly, (D) Deuteronomist, and (R) Redactor. The last two were written to dovetail with the first two, and the writers tried to do two things: (1) eliminate all contradictions, and (2) eliminate all vestiges of the Israelite primitive past of pagan polytheisism. "