AW! Epistles
From Stephen
Abstract
Monday, 12 May 2003
I felt that I had to address the general tone of your argument about the unhistorical nature of pre-9th Century B.C. Israelite History, in spite of the fact that, as a writer, I should not expend so much effort in writing such a long e-mail as this is.
You wrote a long letter. Although I provide a mailto link that automatically gives details of the page clicked from, precisely because many people do not say what page they are commenting on or criticizing, you manage to avoid saying. You mention Billngton which allows me to track it down, but I wonder why I should have bothered. Reading on for a few more lines you talk about being a graduate and thinking about reading cuneiform, but I suggest you read a bit more English on my pages before you start spouting about them. Spouting from ignorance is the preferred Christian way, I know from experience, but I am not a Christian. Incidently simply asserting that things are absurd is not an argument.
I suggest you read and inwardly digest the pages you purport to have read. You will find complete pages om Moses, David, Solomon, and all the other mythical figures that are as real as Hercules but that you think are as real as George W Bush. Read them, then make your points. They are in the ‘judaism’ directory below.
Anyway, I’ll consider what you say but you should have the courtesy to read what I say befor you criticize. Where something is covered, I have no intention of repeating it here.
In fact, I will only address certain points that you have made on your website.
Is this meant to imply that you have read the relevant articles on the site? if so, your memory is remarkably selective.
Your hypocrisy absolutely astounds me!
It is hard to see why hypocrisy should astound a Christian. It is the central element of your faith. As I write, I have just read the headlines about the deal in Iraq done by the leading secular leaders of the world—all Christians, strange to say. It is shows that everything they said only a few weeks ago were lies. They trowel lies upon lies and we are expected to believe them. It is Christian truth.
Although I am a believing Christian, I will not deny (for who possibly could) that atrocities (the Inquisition, for example) have been committed in the name of Jesus Christ. But YOU have an obvious agenda yourself, every bit as slanted and prejudicial as Billington’s. Just as he adopts a positively Mediaeval attitude toward the Bible, so do you go out of your way to make sweeping statements to demolish everything that is of historical value in it—in an obvious attempt to vilify the bases of the Jewish and Christian religions.
You Christians always find it confusing that someone should call your bluff. Most people admittedly do not, even if they had the knowledge, because they cannot be bothered arguing with fantasists and liars. Why am I not allowed to make up my own mind, in your view of things, and tell others that you are liars and confidence tricksters. That is what I have concluded, and that is what I explain in great detail. Taking any view other than the Christian one is to you people being ‘slanted and prejudiced’, but you are not, of course.
For all the blindly hate-mongering Christians who uphold the principles of Paul (who, I think, was single-handedly responsible for the cruelties perpetrated by Christians throughout the almost 2000 years since his death), there are Christians (laymen and scholars) who subscribe to the original message of Jesus of Nazareth, who declared that one should love one’s neighbour as oneself. His message was perverted by Paul.
If this is what you think, and I agree with you, tell me why you are not evangelizing all the Christians who are living with a false and therefore damning belief instead of wasting your time and mine, attacking someone who is saying the same thing about this, if nothing else. It is another example of your hypocrisy.
Many Christians (and I among them) do not believe that Buddhists and Hindus will burn for eternity in the fires of hell.
Well it would be difficult to justify from the New Testament, which says quite the opposite.
Now, for my background. I am a thirty-five year old graduate of McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. I have a Master’s degree in Classics (Greek and Latin Language and Literature), but also studied Biblical Hebrew for 2 years, and Sanskrit for one. Ironically, my knowledge of Ancient Near Eastern History is far greater than my knowledge of Greco-Roman history. My Master’s thesis was entitled Greek Perspectives on Cyrus the Great and His Conquests. It included a chapter describing the historical basis of Bel-shar-usur (Belshazzar’s) Feast.
I will address your various statements in roughly the order in which they appeared on your web-page…
I pointed out above that you haven’t the brain despite your credentials to cite the page you refer to, despite the help I gave you on it.
…and systematically undermine some of them (I could argue about more fallacious points that you make, but this e-mail will be long enough as is). I do hope, however, that you will take the time to read it.
You state that “since they [the Biblical books] were originally written by the Persians who had access to the royal and diplomatic archives of Assyria and Babylon… ”
Why on earth would the Persians write in detail about a subjugated people like the Israelites??? Or, if they did, do you presume to think that they wrote them in Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Near East for centuries, and then translated them into Hebrew? It is absurd to think that they would have undertaken so monumental a task as to write a complete account of the Jewish creation and deluge stories, the Patriarchal narratives, the story of Moses and the Exodus, the Conquest, and so on—in short, an account of the entire panorama of Jewish history. The task would have been astronomical, to say the least!
You typically betray your arrogance compounded with your utter ignorance. I have a mass of pages that explain this in exhaustive detail, but you are too smug and idle to read them before you set your pen to paper. It is the reason why the world has suffered so badly for two millennia under Christianity. Christians are told to be infants and fools and they are.
And the figure of Moses was invented by the Maccabees??!! I am laughing as I type this. To suppose that in the mid-2nd cent. B.C. the Jews would have invented the figure of a prophet and legislator, whose laws governed their every movement is absurd.
You are typically determined to prove your complete stupidity and dishonesty with every word that you write. I did not say that the Maccabees invented Moses. My sentence was a conditional, but no doubt that is too hard for you to understand. Moses does not get mentioned anywhere before the third century BC, when the Ptolemies ‘translated’ the Hebrew Bible into Greek. The original Moses was Persian, but the tale was elaborated first by the Ptolemies and then by the Maccabees. He was not invented by the Maccabees in my view, but was elaborated by them. Again, I have a lot of pages about Moses and the exodus, that you wiould do well to read before you start talking tripe.
More ridiculous is the notion (which necessarily follows upon this first supposition) that they would have invented the Exodus and a period of degredation in Egypt, the conclusion of which would be commemorated in the Passover ritual, which they considered so vital that it was their duty to enjoin their children to observe it in perpetuity. Can you honestly believe that something which they considered so vital to remember was founded upon a lately invented lie??!! Such a supposition flies in the face of logic—regardless of how you feel about the part God played in the salvation of the Israelites.
Your logic, not all logic. Read the pages, Christian dunce.
I do not (as yet) read cuneiform Akkadian…
Or English, it seems.
…and can therefore not comment upon the supposed fact that the “Sidamu” mentioned in the Ebla tablets was located in Northern Syria, but have read that it is followed by a list of the other Cities of the Plain in the order in which they occur in Genesis (including Emara = Gomorrah… the “g” is from the Greek; the initial consonant in Hebrew is `ayin, a pharyngeal consonant which did not exist in Akkadian and therefore could not have been transcribed). Since you are so anxious to undermine the historicity of the Bible, I would not rule out the fact that the successor of Giovanni Pettinato could well have suppressed evidence of Sidamu’s southern location for HIS agenda, which may be the same as yours.
It is Christians that have the agenda. People like me are trying to use established principles of science and justice to establish truth from falsehood. Christians already know it, and so are just trying to get additional confirmation. But since they know it, it does not matter much, and they are easily satisfied.
In any case, there are the remains of cities in the Dead Sea region (Bab-edh-dra`, Numeira, and Feifeh) which appear to have been destroyed by fire. The Dead Sea region contains vast petroleum reserves and is seismically unstable. It is believed by archaeologists that cities in this region did indeed meet a cataclysmic end c. 2300 B.C. (a fact about which Persians could HARDLY have known in the 5th century B.C.!).
The plains of Mesopotamia have even more petroleum reserves—as Mr Bush has recently discovered—and many ancient cites were destroyed by fire—by war, by accident and deliberately for hygienic reasons. Christians are satisfied with plausibility, but the truth has to be more than plausible. Plenty of plausible things are not true. It is something that Christians cannot understand.
I will concede, however, that Abraham is generally believed (by impartial archaeologists who are not zealously eager to deny his existence as a person, NOT a god) to have lived c. 2000-1900 B.C. However, I will concede that the tradition which closely links him to the destruction of Sodom (his nephew, Lot, lived there) could have been a later invention. HOWEVER, the dates of the Exodus and thus those of the Patriarchs are by no means definitely known, and therefore an earlier date for Abraham is not outlandish.
All of this is more of the same. It could be this and it might be that, but it certainly is not anything that is more likely than your childish myths.
Your dismissal of the archaeological find mentioning bt dwd = “House of David” is not valid. “Beth” was generally used to refer to a dynasty of kings, and I feel that it is unlikely that a possibly illiterate Israelite peasant would have recorded his possession of a house!
This is infantile. Read the pages.
You state: “Others are less convinced and think that Shishak might have referred to Rameses II, whose popular name was Shisha. The “k” [actually qoph, not kaph, in Hebrew] was a diliberate [sic… ”dEliberate”] addition by the biblical authors to make the name sound like ‘hooligan’ in Hebrew.”
Dear me! Do you ACTUALLY know that here you are using a statement made by David M. Rohl, a HIGHLY controversial Egyptologist, whose book, A TEST OF TIME: PHARAOHS AND KINGS, defends not only the David/Solomon era, but the entire Exodus narrative (including the Plagues and the destruction of the pharaoh’s army in the sea) AND the Patriarchal narratives? You are using a source written by a man whose views are the the polar opposite of EVERYTHING you believe! I should add that mainstream scholars do not subscribe to his theory that some three hundred years were mistakenly added to Egyptian chronology and that Rameses reigned in the 10th cent. B.C., rather than from 1279-1213 B.C.
I knew it. Why should I have to disagree with all of Rohl if I disagree with some of it, or vice versa? Read the pages, dunce. I cover it all in detail.
So you have a spell checker. Clever boy. I must get one, but must admit to relying on my own brain, something Christians reject.
You state that secular history is in agreement with the Old Testament with respect to the fact that Hezekiah paid tribute to Sennacherib. Heavens! By the 9th to 6th centuries you actually deign to admit that the Bible got some facts straight! Do you HONESTLY think that Sennacherib would mention in his annals that his army was destroyed by a plague while it was besieging Jerusalem? Ancient Near Eastern monarchs NEVER recorded defeats, only victories.
Omri, mate! Read the pages. What defeat? Hezekiah submitted, so he was defeated. The falsehood is plainly biblical.
Rameses II transformed the fiasco at Kadesh into a glorious victory. Besides, Herodotus corroborates the destruction of Sennacherib’s army by mentioning that an innumerable amount of rats gnawed the weapons of the Assyrians, forcing them to abandon a siege—perhaps a reflection of some plague transmitted to the soldiers by the rats. You can obviously choose not to believe that God was behind this event.
How are rats gnawing weapons the same as a virulent plague that killed 185,000 men? Even biblical scholars consider the destruction of the Assyrian army to be a Judahite invention. Read the pages.
I would definitely defend the statement which you disparage: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” This is a perfectly valid statement. As mentioned above (i.e., that kings did not record defeats), do you think it reasonable to suppose that Rameses II (or whoever was the Pharaoh of the Exodus) would have recorded the destruction of his chariot force in the Sea of Reeds, “a miracle” which can easily be rationalized by those who are so inclined, due to the fact that there are wildly fluctuating tides in the northern tip of the Gulf of Suez (Napoleon’s army was almost swamped, which is an undeniable fact). As for the plagues, they follow a natural order. Such an unimpeachable source as Encyclopaedia Britannica defends not only the historicity of Moses and the Exodus, but even the plagues, mentioning that unusually heavy rains in the highlands of Ethiopia can wash carmine-red soil downstream, where flagellates are picked up, resulting in what would have appeared as a crimson tide of gore. The emergence of the frogs in the river, the insects feeding on their dead bodies and transmitting sickness to both animals and humans are all perfectly conceivable and can or cannot be viewed (depending on your religious viewpoint) as the manipulation of nature by God for a specific purpose. I am arguing on the basis of logic, science, and history in this e-mail, however.
It is all speculation and plausibility from beginning to end. What is fact is that the books themselves are not consistent in the treatment of the plagues or the crossing of the reed sea. They are from multiple sources and do not tell a consistent story. Christians love the statement about absence of evidence, and what I disparage is their dishonest use of it, not the statement itself. But it is massive absence of evidence that really counts. When there is no evidence at all when lots would be expected like the exodus, then its absence is meaningful. All of this is on the pages, but you have obviously not read a word of it. You are a phony like all Christians. Read the pages. The Encyclopedia Britannica is scarcely unimpeachable since it got taken over for commercial exploitation and by biased Christian editors. The older editions are more honest.
It is perfectly reasonable to suppose that a later redactor would have added “Kasdim” to “Ur,” making the full name of the city where Abraham was born “Ur of the Chaldeans,” to clarify which Ur was meant to later readers. It is not unreasonable to suppose that traditions about the Patriarchs as the early ancestors of Israel could have been transmitted over a period of some 800 years (give or take a century). Why could Moses (who was educated in the court of Egypt and could therefore write) not have composed a skeletal, pre-monarchal version of the Pentateuch, which could then have been committed to writing—perhaps on non-perishable parchment—until the time of Ezra when the Canonical Hebrew Scriptures assumed their final form?
More and more of what if and why not. I am dealing with evidence not wishes and hopes, like you. If the original Ur was not Ur of the Chaldees then the redacter was introducing an error. The rest of the tradition is all centred on Harran, so the original Ur is more likely to have been Urfa.
The eminent and universally respected Egyptologist, Kenneth Kitchen, in his book, THE BIBLE IN ITS WORLD: THE BIBLE AND ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY, points out that the accurate oral transmission of traditions is attested by numerous sources in the Ancient Near East. He also points out that, unlike other Akkadian/Babylonian stories about known historical individuals such as Naram-Sin, grandson of Sargon of Akkad and conqueror of Ebla (in one of which we read that Naram-Sin’s progress was at one point impeded by a forest of lapis lazuli!), the Patriarchal stories are notably devoid of miraculous elements (they are concerned with the mundane worries of a nomadic tribe: the quarrelling of siblings, disputes about water rights, the use of a concubine to produce a legitimate male heir, the last of which is a historical reality attested by tablets at Mari, which could not possibly have been known by authors in the last centuries of the pre-Christian era). These factors offer strong evidence that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, et alii were historical individuals, NOT deities, an idea which is patently absurd.
God, you are boring! Read the pages where most of this is dealt with, and I have no intention of repeating to anyone as bone idle and intellectually crooked as you. As for Kitchen, it is clear why you cite him. He is one of you. A Christian cracked pot.
It is possible, by the way, that Belshazzar was the maternal grandson of Nebuchadrezzar, whose daughter Nabonidus may have married. Grandsons and even great-grandsons were often loosely called sons of the remoter ancestor. This is an admittedly minor point, but I thought I would mention it in passing. Also, your derivation of Solomon’s name (Heb. Shelomoh) from Shalim, “the sun,” shows a woefully faulty knowledge of Semitic languages. The root s-l-m means “peace” in both Hebrew and Arabic, while the word “sun” is “shemesh.”
It all goes to show that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. When you have done another two years of Hebrew you might know more. You could always read the pages, idle one.
As a final note with respect to the very early chapters of Genesis, I will concede that in the light of Paleontology and the extreme antiquity of civilisation in the Near East, the Adam and Eve story sounds absurd, although it is obviously more edifying than the model proposed by Evolutionists—that we share a common ancestor with the apes and, in fact, go back to some primitive reptile that crawled out of the primordial ocean.
Ha! Ha! Creationist nitwit. Try learning something instead of praying for revelation. Too difficult, eh?
But the story of Noah and the Ark cannot be so easily dismissed. Secular historians mentioned by Josephus in his ANTIQUITIES OF THE JEWS affirm that in their day (1st cent. B.C. and later) people were still breaking off pieces of the bituminous wood and wearing them as amulets.
You are as dishonest as it is possible to be. Josephus cites Borosus, the Greek Babylonia historian who did not live as a contemporary of Josephus or even 100 years before, but getting on for 400 years before. You lot will lie yourselves blue, expecting the sheep to believe you, and they do, of course, because Christians pretend they are preternaturally honest to cover their utter dishonesty. In any case Bitumen was not unusual even then in that part of the world, and this story is about as convincing as the many foreskins of baby Jesus that exist in the world. The trade in relics was as strong then as it is now.
Admittedly, the mountain where the Ark still rested at that time cannot positively be identified (although it was probably Jabal Judi, not Mount Ararat). We know that historically there were severe floods in Mesopotamia and the plethora of Near Eastern narratives which describe a man building a vessel to save himself and his family suggests that there could be a historical basis to these myths. Why could Noah/Utna-pishtim not have built a wooden vessel caulked with pitch, in which he, his family, and his livestock were saved from an unusually severe flood which was enshrined in the memory of the inhabitants of the Near East?
The point is that very many people probably did it! That was the basis of the myth. People in Mesopotanmia were familar with the story, and wrote it large. This is what is remembered. You will note that the aforesaid Berosus puts the incident near Carrhae—Harran.
I will now bring this lengthy e-mail to a close, in the hope that I have given you food for thought and refuted many of your points.
You refute things in your head, but that is evidently easily done. Try reading instead of spouting, and you might actually learn something, although anyone who doubts that we are a type of ape can learn nothing.
I find it laughably incongruous that you should begin and end your email in the cordial manner customarily found in letters. “Dear Stephen” and “Best Wishes” seem out of place in an email filled with open insults (“;you haven’t the brain despite your credentials,” “too smug and idle,” that I am characterised by “complete stupidity and dishonesty,” “Christian dunce,” “Christian crackpot,” “infantile,” “dunce” again, “phony,” “boring,” “bone idle,” “intellectually crooked,” “Creationist nitwit”—I virtually conceded that the Adam and Eve story is a myth… and you claim that I did not pay attention to what you wrote!).
Such talk belongs in a playground, not in a serious debate. But, then again, since I assume you are English, it is only natural that you should have a groundlessly superior attitude, which has long characterised the English, who are one of the most culturally impoverished of European peoples.
I won’t descend to your level by mud-slinging (although I’m quite sure you can imagine what choice adjectives are circulating in my mind now). It is surprising that someone with your intelligence (if that is not an oxymoron, considering the half-baked and outlandish theories which you have come up with) would be so petty and openly hostile.
I don’t know why you think I did not read your specific pages on Moses, David, Solomon and other HISTORICAL figures. I perused the “Judaism” pages. I did not need to pore over each sentence to conclude that your arguments are flamboyantly ludicrous and devoid of any merit, except, perhaps, to show that you are anti-Semitic in an isidiously unobtrusive way. Your condemnation of Christianity and Christians in general shows you to be every bit as bigoted as those involved in the very Inquisition which I condemned. According to you, all Christians are “infants and fools.”
Addressing each of your protracted, insulting attacks on MY logic and my supposedly inflexible Christian viewpoint (which is anything but inflexible, which you would realize if YOU had read my statements carefully) would be a waste of my time.
So you enjoy being contemptuous yourself, but feel aggrieved that anyone should show contempt for you. It is typical of Christians who think they are above criticism. You began your unsolicited letter with languid disdain, as if you could barely bring yourself to write but felt it your Christian duty. Immediately you call me a hypocrite, then carry on with half-baked arguments that proved you had read nothing (something you now admit—you ‘perused’ the pages but are so superior you had no need to ‘pore over’ them), and childishly impugn my spelling ability. For my part, I do not think I used an insult that is not substantiated by your words. Having had a reply in kind, you disgrace yourself by turning to the anti-semitic accusation of scoundrels (even if it is ‘iNsidiously unobtrusive’), and blanket condemnations of the poor uncultured English.
In your reply, you say that the debate was ‘serious’. You should have therefore treated it seriously, read what I had said and answered the points specifically. Groundless superiority is something you should recognize. You insist that your heroes are historical but there is no historical evidence for them. Christians are urged to be infants and fools by your own holy book, whether you agree with Paul or not. The truth is that you have no arguments beyond the Sunday school level. As a Christian, how can you have? Your only argument is ‘I believe’. You believe the impossible but will not believe well founded science. It is a relief to me that you have thrown in the towel.
You might not want to accept my best wishes. That is up to you, but I do not wish you ill—something that Christians cannot claim historically of their opponents—and I do indeed wish that you will learn some sense. But you already think you have something better, and you prefer your delusions.
