The following is a response to the question: If an idea like Walsh's "Peasant Revolt" Theory is true, is the narrative in the Hebrew Bible “false”? Why? In what sense?
From a certain point of view all abstractions are inherently false. For example, if I were to show you a communications model like this...
...you might be able to gather some insight into how human communication works. However, this isn't literally how communication works and there are processes occurring which are far too complicated for us to grasp. We, then, judge a model not by it being 100% accurate, but instead by how insightful it is or isn't. Does it offer insight into the subject matter at handle, to the process of model making itself, or into the human condition? Models are a form of abstraction, and the same questions apply. Abstractions which hold many insights are the ones which are valuable to engage with, as long as they are engaged with responsibly.
Both Walsh's Peasant Revolt Theory and the Hebrew Bible are abstractions of history. They don't fully capture all of history, but are instead zoomed out pictures. The question becomes, which holds insight?
PRT Insight into Abstraction-Making: I love historical information that asks us to rethink how we conceptualize the past. Any abstraction (as long as it get used responsibly, as I'll get to in a moment) which shifts our perspective can provide value.
PRT Insight into Human Condition: There's something beautiful about disparate groups of marginalized people overthrowing an oppressive power structure and uniting into a group which would go on to change the course of history in so many ways.
PRT Insight into Subject Matter: It seems that the PRT gives us some potential literal insight into what happened, physically, in a way that HB does not. Assuming the PRT was formed intelligently, revealing the origins of an important religious and ethnic group is pretty insightful.
HB Insight into Abstraction-Making: Myth-as-abstraction is an incredibly useful tool. It makes the abstraction more engaging and potentially speaks to us on a deep psychological level that a chart simply cannot.
HB Insight into Human Condition: The Hebrew Bible is a toolset in learning to trust God in the face of despair and pain. It's so powerful in that regard, and I reckon that the contents of the Bible were instrumental for many in the face of the trauma of the Shoah.
HB Insight into Subject Matter: The Bible offers us a ton of insight into how many Jewish people see themselves, both historically and psychologically. I don't think one could understand Jewish culture without engaging with the Bible.
So it turns out that both abstractions hold insights. That's cool. The only important thing is that we engage with both of them responsibly.
For the PRT I think the key in engaging responsibly is to not shove it in people's faces as a way to "prove" their religion to be false. Because, as I've pointed out, all abstractions are false and at least under the umbrella I'm working from we're only concerned about the value they offer.
For the HB things are a little more complicated and it's such a thorny issue that I'm going to take a step back and talk about two other topics, real quick I promise.
1) Qanon and the modern conspiracy theorists.
Do these conspiracy theories, these abstractions, hold any insight? Of course they do! Let's look at a simple one: "Hillary Clinton is a lizard person."
Be real, she's kinda a lizard person. I find Clinton to be one of the most interesting people in the modern political sphere, and I do have love and empathy for her because I'm a spiritually minded person. I wish she had won over Donald Trump and despite my dissatisfaction for her policies, I would have been happy to elect the first woman president. However, the idea of calling her a "lizard person" is funny because she is a bit cold, a bit distant, and she's got that scale-like armor. It's an abstraction, and it's false, but it does hold insight.
However, this conspiracy theory and others like it do not get used responsibly. Because adherents believe that she is a lizard person literally and because she's drinking the blood of children literally they vote against her for a person who wasn't qualified to hold stewardship over the country. Also note the parallels between the blood drinking beliefs of Qanon believers to anti-Semitic beliefs, as we discussed in the lecture.
2) The Christian crusades, killing people to take the "Holy Land" and all murders in the name of scriptural abstractions all read like irresponsible use of them.
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I avoid using the Hebrew Bible as an example because I'm not equipped for it and because those not equipped for it often stray into anti-Semitism (either on accident or because they are dog whistling). I will note that using the HB abstraction as a justification for oppressing Palestinians seems irresponsible to me, but I would rather point towards Jewish writers tackling the subject rather than me being a bull in a religious studies china shop.
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All of this is to say that I don't believe the question of "false" to be particularly useful as a black/white label as all abstractions hold falsities. Instead, we should focus on what insights an abstraction gives us, where those insights are valuable or not and in what fields they are valuable in, and how to use them responsibly. There have been innumerous Jewish people who have read the Hebrew Bible and have extracted immense insight from it and used those insights in wonderful ways. In this way, the abstraction of true/false doesn't hold much insight.
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