Spyke

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US Army attack helicopters crashing at historically high rate amid mechanical issues

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I appreciate that Torah was written during 2nd temple. But the relatively recent 1st temple history and prophets cursing their kings, and declaring God himself will destroy the temple, and contradicting Moses law, seems to chronicle a fall that seems too intricate. But, there is archeological evidence that Jerusalem and Judah (David and Solomon) (surround it) had small 10000 population. That Israel was a more powerful friendly kingdom to the north, and Judahan history got rewritten after Syrians invaded and displaced Israel's citizens to Judah. Very hard to judge if its too crazy, when religion continuously proves very crazy.

I think I broadly agree with all of this.

Well, 'Syrians' is a somewhat problematic term, but basically yes.

The more likely history of Judah is that the Philistines forced Egypt to reduce its empire, and Saul, just before David, consolidated the few poor tribes of Judah in defense to Philistines, with David paying tribute to Philistines to survive. Yahweh war god's chosen people never fought or vanquished anyone anywhere near Judah/Israel. It is also Israel side that laid claim to a Moses heritage instead of the Judah/David side. It would all get merged later after Israel was invaded.

Ah thats an interesting further uh, wrinkle in the story, I'd guess you could say.

Plausible, certainly, I think.

But yes it gets... very complicated, very fast, the more detail one tries to cover, but again, broadly that all seems plausible to likely, to me.

Sorry didn't mean to be purely critiqueing, I thought you had a pretty good take on all the... gnostic complexities running parellel to developments in Judaism itself, post 2nd temple destruction and such.

I just had to quibble with a flat out assertion of David as historical, hahaha, maybe I was too zealous =P

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Scientists from John Hopkins University decided to study how conservative americans in Wyoming, Michigan and South Carolina experience and evaluate democracy

I mean I have been saying for 25 years that most US conservatives fundamentally do not believe in democracy. I know because I was raised as one.

So have others said this, such as arch neocon David Frum:

Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.

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Counting out the Count

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Yeah, i think more specifically theyre going by people paying income taxes... it may include other categories, i think they have a giant companion methodology explainer somewhere.

I only clipped like 10% of the whole page, basically roughly what it initially was when this page was started... 20+ years ago, I don't know exactly.

Its since gotten ... a lot more stats added on to it.

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There is 0 conclusive contemporaneous historical evidence that King David actually existed.

The Torah itself... was likely written and compiled during roughly 500 BC to 300 BC. David is traditionally supposed to have existed in approximately 1100 BC to 1000 BC. The oldest supposed reference to David is from 925 BC, and this interpretation of a highly damaged relief is contested, theres again 0 contemporaneous evidence, and just a scant bit of contentious/dubiously providenced evidence later than that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David#Historicity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davidic_line#Historicity

Given that much of the Torah more or less seems to be a fantastical rewriting of the history of the people exiled from Judea/Canaan/Israel, largely put together when/after they were allowed to return to their homeland by Cyrus, after Persia conquered the Neo Babylonians, so that they could strengthen their group identity with a collective mythic origin...

In all likelihood, if David was real, he would have been more like a chieftain of basically a large village, who was then tall-taled into a much exaggerated ruler of a much exaggerated 'Kingdom', in furtherance of creating that collective unifying myth.

Hopefully I do not need to tell you Moses and Joshua are entirely mythical figures, the Exodus did not actually happen, nor did the Israelite conquest of Canaan.

The reason why God is a jealous God and you shall have no other representations of any other Gods and he smites all other Gods and such is because Yahweh more or less is El + Ba'al, renamed, and amalgamated with the attributes and titles and escapades of other Canaanite deities. The Yahwist cult was an offshoot of the general Canaanite religion, that started roughly somewhere bewteen the 13th and 9th centuries BC, that decided their amalgamation God was superior to the original pantheon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahwism

The tale of the conquest of Canaan by Joshua is basically a dramatized allegory of the Yahwists gaining traction and popularity in Judah/Israel.

After that group returned from Babylon to their original homeland, influenced by the two-god paradigm of Zoroastrianism... their original homeland was at that time populated by people whom some of which were Yahwists, but many of whom more or less still held to the polytheist version of Canaanite religion.