The History of Israel: Herodotus' Histories as the Blueprint for the Bible's First Books | Explore Ancient Biblical Origins & Historical Contexts

We already knew that Herodotus was unaware of Jewish culture. In his days it did not dominate the political Judean scene, and we have to admit that Judaism, although seeded before the Babylonian trauma, flourished much later than the religious texts proclaimed and that temple culture came later than Scripture declares.The great merit of this book is to attempt a comparaison between Persian history as Herodotus reported in his Inquieries and writing the Bible of which Herodotus showed no familiarity. Wesselius convincingly shows that Scripture borrows from the legendary biographies as credited to Cyrus and other significant leaders. The many parallels between the Joseph story and Cyrus, in details and generalities, is ground breaking.The first half of the book is therefore well worth the 'fine'.The second half of the book is less appealing.The author supports that Scripture was composed by a single author, with Herodotus' book on his table. The legendary biographies Herodotus reported were necessarily well known to the learned. The biblical writers did not need his book considering they could have relied on the same sources of information as Herodotus used.Furthermore, the composition is much more complex than Wesselius deduces. The post-exilic stories reflect challenging influences on the grounds of the reconstructed temple. The writers were exclusively dealing with religious party propaganda and competed to establish a sense of national identity centered on temple culture. Reviving temple culture within rivaling priesthoods created Scripture. He is also amazingly shy when it comes to acknowledge the signifiance of the Moses and Pharaoh episode. He missed,for instance, declaring that the Egyptian captivity, the providential deliverance and the journey to a promised land is a fiction based on the Babylonian events. Readers interested in further expanding the significant information Wesselius produced can consult 'Moses in Exodus: a fiction derived from the Babylonian exile.' (Academia.edu)Wesselius' book, even with my reserves, is nevertheless highly recommandable, if you hopefully can afford it.