AW! Epistles
Proof by Example is Not a Reputable Argument. From A Montgomery
Abstract
Thursday, 27 October 2005
Mike, I have the following comments on: Biblical Archaeology—God’s Truth or Pious Lies? Science or Religion? AskWhy! Publications. You write: “And equally, if archaeology reveals facts that refute or even cast doubt on the biblical stories then they should be admitted, and not ignored or swamped in a load of non-factual biblical counter speculation. Biblicists cannot be archaeologists because they will not be subject to the scientific method. Wood and Petrovich prove it.” My comment: This appears to be a conclusion based on “Proof by example”. This is not a very reputable form of argument. At least a few blacks are lazy but we don’t generalize that to the population. This comment is inflammatory.
You are talking nonsense. You might have been right if I had made the assertion based only on the example of these two, but I do not. They are examples of the general rule which I cite, and then offer those two as examples which confirm the rule.
Even if you don’t like Wood, there are reputable and class act archaeologists in the bible believing community. Although I disagree with Wood on many of his conclusions I have never found that he was dishonest.
Are you defending biblical archaeologigists or Wood? The article you are quoting from gives examples of why Wood is disreputable. Did you read it?
Secondly, there is a great deal of disagreement not just on archaeology but even basic biblical chronology.
Quite so, and I have several pages on it. Did you read them?
Biblical thinking in recent years has returned to more traditional dates for the Exodus see mine www.ldolphin.org/icc-am.html
I shall comment on this when I see it.
I do see magazine articles that are always claiming the latest archaeological evidence as interpreted by some expert disproves the bible—e.g. Maclean’s Dec 9, 2002 has it blazened on the cover. It is awfully polite to say that this ought not to be done; it is not science to do these things. But people don’t read Archaeological Journals they read the short version in the magazines and newspapers and television. Some of these journalists are very shallow in their investigations.
Not as shallow or as dishonest as biblicists. Read the pages.
Having done some research on Jericho, it is my conclusion that Stratum IV (Middle Bronze) is the stratum of Joshua Conquest, that it ought to be dated circa 1550 BC. 1st by biblical chronology, 2nd by Assyrian Ultra Low chronology (Gasche et al) 3rd by corrected Egyptian chronology 4th by carbon-14. This interpretation may not be standard but it fits the known facts very well.
And what in this stratum tells you that it was the stratum of the Joshua Conquest? Were there bricks inscribed with Joshua on them? It is easy to see why you support Wood. Did you learn your archaeology on one of his tours?
We exchanged letters and I said I would read the page you cited at L Dolphin’s website. I am sorry for not replying sooner. My partner, Shirlie, was afflicted with a severe spinal infection requiring two major operations, so for months I have been pre-occupied with other things. I have now come across a page of yours that I downloaded from the L Dolphin site which I think is most interesting. In it you defend Velikowsky’s redating of the 19th Dynasty of Egypt, with synchronisms from Anatolia.
I agree with you that the dating of the Egyptian dynasties is wrong, and James has good points in his book for a downdating of Egyptian chronology by hundreds of years. What bothers me is that you approach it from a non-scientific religiously biased standpoint. You are trying to show biblical inerrancy, instead of simply letting the archaeology speak for itself, which is a much securer base for redating arguments.
Rohl seems to be doing something similar to you, from a supposedly secular view, but one which nevertheless gets its publicity by trying to uphold the truth of the Jewish scriptures. And James calls the biblical minimalists names, even though their stance is precisely that the archaeology should be allowed to tell its own story without having to force it into the biblical pot.
No one, so far as I am aware, holds that the bible was written by angels. Neither the bible nor Manetho’s chronologies were actually written supernaturally, so why do both sides not accept that neither is infallible. The Jewish scripture might be holy but it was written by fallible human beings, and long after the events it purports to describe in most instances, so that the errors in it are quite understandable. The fault of your approach is that the bible has to be upheld or otherwise by the archaeology, not the other way round.
If you believe in God, then why do you not trust in Him. It seems you would sooner make God a liar than let the facts speak for themselves. For all you know, God might have been trying for centuries to say all you religionists have it wrong. In my view that is what the evidence shows, so you are denying God by upholding falsehood. Such disagreements can be seen from ancient times in the bible itself, though you would obviously not see it. Why is it that most Christians would rather be Pharisees than Prophets?
I would like to see more stuff like yours here and that in James’s book in which chronologies are actually re-written without the dark ages to show the hidden synchronisms. Is anyone doing it?
I use the Bible because it is a reliable source of information. I started my investigation with a biblical chronology you can find at
www.ldolphin.org/icc-am.html
I needed this to find the Exodus in secular Egyptian chronology. Assyrian chronology confirms this and sometimes carbon 14, sometimes not. I am still working on understanding the dendrochronology methodology and results. The explosion at Thera is dated to 1630 or so in the Middle Bronze/Late Bronze transition but data from Jericho is dated to 1550 BC in the Hyksos era. The pottery at Thera is definitely later according to specialists I have written to.
We have some things in common and some things diametrically opposed in our different views. I read James with interest and thought his presentation was convincing in the face of unconvincing evidence from the Egyptologists. But I am what is called a minimalist when it comes to the bible. I think it has some history in it, but we need to get the objective evidence from elsewhere such as properly conducted archaeology, and from that check which bits of the bible seem reliable and which are not.
Regarding Thera, I am also left wondering, and wondering about the scientists themselves. I read that there are other candidates for the date of Thera, right down to about 1200, and the footprint left in the ice cores is not good enough to say whether one of these others might be the right one, even though some scientists have gone overboard on 1628. The trouble is, as I see it, that biblical believers want high dates, and because most people interested in the ANE are believers, we get high dates. It seems to be to let the mythical history of Israel before Omri time to exist.
I do not understand why you say that I approach this from a non-scientific point of view. Do you mean that I disagree with maiinstream scientists? Even mainstream scientists disagree with other mainstream scientists. Do you mean that I regard the texts written by ancient Jewish scribes are reliable history? Why not? Do the Jews lie? Or is it that I take that info to be more reliable than secular texts. In the long run all the main theories critical of the Bible have flared out. It may take 50 or 100 years for the scholars to let go of their favourite theological theories but in the end the critics are no match for the Bible.
I do not mean to impugn your diligence or care. What I mean is that by putting your faith in the bible at the outset, you cannot be objective. Science works by skepticism, not by gullibility. Better to doubt what might be true, than to accept as true what is false. That is why, I think minimalism is the proper way to approach history that impinges on the sacred history (or mythology) of the bible. So, I agree with you that we and others might all disagree on evidence, but whatever we do, we must eschew belief in any evidence that is not secure. The bible is not.
It is not a question of whether Jews lie or not, though I have no reason for thinking that Jews are any more or less prone to lying than anyone else. The point is that it is too old a text to be assumed to be reliable, for several reasons which you will be aware of. It is enough to give a basis for doubt, and no document that can be doubted ought to be assumed as being true. You say all the theories critical of the bible have flared out. What do you mean? Do you mean they have been shown to be wrong? I would like to know what you mean, but the real point is not that some hypothesis is shown to be wrong, but has the bible been shown to be right?
I wrote this text to Believers so that they might understand.
- how simple it is to find the Exodus when you know what you are looking for.
- how difficult it is to find academic believers who can break out of their box long enough to get it.
- how difficult it is in a Manetho/Egyptological dominated academic world to undo all the damage.
- how the magazines crow at every scientifically dysfunctional theory that disproves the Bible and forget to report the demise of these theories.
On these points:
- a shows just what I mean. You convince yourself you have found the Exodus even though there is no evidence on the ground that there was such a thing, certainly like the one described.
- b and c I put it the other way round, while agreeing with you in fair measure, namely that I am with you that the conventional Egyptologists are up the creek, and it is causing endless trouble, but that much of it has been caused by biblicists who liked unproven synchronisms they thought they saw in the bible.
- d The world is still overwhelmingly pro-Christian, and does the opposite of what you say. I watch with disbelief the so called documentaries on the bible on the TV, and they almost unanimously ignore all modern scholarship, simply continuing to paraphrase the bible with little science or archaeology mentioned, and that carefully picked out to give spurious confirmation of the biblical myth.
I can write with a view not to offend unbelievers, but I find that when the secular evidence makes the Bible look good they just accuse me of being a closet Biblicist. This makes me look like I’m hiding something. So I just let my prejudices and my evidence hang together. The real scientists look at the evidence and judge for themselves. The others can stumble at times at what has been written because of the reason it was written. I will send a further update in a few days. Many typos and an added section refuting much of Rohl’s anti-Velikovskian stuff.
Fair enough so long as the secular evidence is fairly presented. I just fear—maybe I am neurotic about it—that biblicists have a terrible reputation for selecting what they like and ignoring, or even destroying the rest. I wish I could do it, but I feel, that someone has to get a grip on all the evidence and completely reassess it, and that is better done with no preconceptions. It will be a big job, that will necessitate abandoning Manetho and the bible until either is upheld by the science.
Nice to talk to you. I hope your son is now fully recovered. I shall go and read the rest of wour work. So far, I have only read your short piece on the nineteenth dynasty. It is interesting talking to you, but almost your every word betrays a sad lack of objectivity through your utter commitment to the authenticity of the bible without needing to verify what it says, and that is not scientific.
“But I am what is called a minimalist when it comes to the bible. I think it has some history in it, but we need to get the objective evidence from elsewhere such as properly conducted archaeology, and from that check which bits of the bible seem reliable and which are not.”
Well, I do not know of any other national history where historians look at its history from a “minimalist” and “maximalist” presuppositions. It seems to me that the repercussions into peoples lives if the Bible is true are such that they fight them fiercely. This can lead to putting the Biblical statements of history under more suspicion and skepticism than it is proper to apply to historical documents. To me minimalism is not objective because it starts from a position of suspicion. If you examine something from that point of view one can only find fault. It is the same sort of self-fulfulling thing as finding what you are looking for in the last place you look.
Do you know of any national history that relies upon a single book never revised for over 2000 years? The national histories of modern states differ from the mythical histories of ancient states like Israel in that they are based on a stream of evidence from different sources that can be cross checked to confirm or refute claims any historian wishes to make. Ancient states had a foundation myth from which all their subsequent history sprang. One of the functions of historians of ancient times is to distinguish myth from reality. That is precisely what biblicists will not do, because they are convinced for non-scientific and non-historical reasons that their preferred book is infallible. All that the scientifically minded person tries to do in approaching the bible is to treat it like any historical document with no known provenance—skeptically. Indeed, to be scientific about anything demands skepticism. It merely means not believing without adequate proof.
The “repercussions on people’s lives” you mention is another assumption of yours. If there are any such repercussions, they will come when the book is shown to be true history, and not so long as it remains a book of Jewish myths. As I have said, objectivity necessitates suspicion, as you call it. No consistent progress was ever made with people just working on this belief or that belief, all of them unfounded. Only when people chose not to believe until there was sufficient evidence to compel belief did we make progress. I cannot understand how honest and intelligent men can gainsay this, but there are men like you who cheerfully do! For me, it shows how Satanic Christian beliefs are. They lead you to the opposite of the truth while blatantly claiming it is The Truth. Madness.
In regard to the historical records post-Omride there is total compatibility with cultural and historical knowledge. Josephus wrote a book of Jewish history in Roman times that was as good or better than any Roman or Greek historian and took his own national history seriously. There is no suggestion in his writings that I can find that suggests that anything in the Bible was regarded as Mythology in the modern use of the term. The few people who opposed the Jews are full of unsupported and unsupportable claims—such as Apion. Josephus easily took him to task although I think he overreacted. The phenomena of minimalism is a modernist concept with little objectivity in it. At least that’s my view.
Again you make hugely excessive claims. The correct thing to say is that the record of the bible begins to tally with non-biblical records only after Omri. It is not true that there is total compatibility, if only because much of the historical books of the bible tell of things that simply cannot be checked in external records, such as the Assyrian and Babylonian annals. A few of the kings mentioned in the bible seem to be mentioned in the Assyrian records, and some of the events too. Most are not, and some that are, are not corroborated by the non-biblical finds. Biblicists are fond of saying that the external records are propaganda, without considering, because they cannot, that the bible might be the propaganda. From my skeptical viewpoint, a religious work has more reason to be propaganda than a collection of state archives that no one would see other than officials. As for the agreements there are, they could quite easily be simply because Assyrian archives were used as a source to write the historical parts of the bible. The religious lessons of the bible were set in a broadly historical milieu culled from these old tablets. People like Josephus, two or three hundred years later had no reason to doubt what came down to them as the history of the Jews, so naturally he would use it as his own source. Josephus plainly used the Jewish scriptures as a main source, but also had other sources too that obviously did not agree with the Jewish scriptures.
Moreover, why should Josephus think of mythology in the modern use of the term? Religion and culture in Hellenistic times were inseparable. Religion was a nation’s culture, and mythology was the cult basis of its religion, so there is no reason at all why Josephus should have doubted the Jewish scriptures as history, though he might have looked upon it no differently from a Roman contemplating a statue of Aeneas. A mythic truth is still true but comes from a magical and golden past time when truth was not quite what it is to us. Minimalism is no more than any scientific skeptic would demand—“prove it!”.
“It seems to be to let the mythical history before Omri in Israel time to exist.”
There is nothing in the Deutero-historical books of the Bible prior to Omri that sets them aside as mythological as opposed to historical. This is a modernist judgement with no objective evidence to support it.
Modern yes! No evidence? Until not so long ago everyone believed everything in the bible because no one was allowed to question it. Once it began to be questioned, a mass of severe doubts arose, so many that reasonable people are compelled to re-examine it all as the valid history it has been considered to be. What sets it aside is that there is nothing that corroborates it outside the bible, and even within the bible, it is bedecked with a load of mythological ornamentations that no one could just accept without question as true history. These decorations are the stuff of fairy tale, and have only been accepted by rational people because they have been indoctrinated by parsons, parents and teachers that God wandered around in those days, whereas today, he is shy of the news media. It is much more parsimonious to believe that the events supposed to have happened before Omri are a composed foundation myth.
“The point is that it is too old a text to be assumed to be reliable, for several reasons which you will be aware of. It is enough to give a basis for doubt, and no document that can be doubted ought to be assumed as being true.”
The oldness or newness of the text is not a valid criterion for its accuracy. New documents are not generally more accurate that is an occidental bias. In the Orient the oldest documents are regarded as the most reliable.
I am not an oriental, and I fancied you were not either. We in the west have come to a conclusion about how to treat sources, and one of the conclusions is the simple one that the older a copied text is the more likely it is to have been altered, deliberately and by copying errors. I agree that the criteria we use for original sources are different, but we have no originals of the Jewish scriptures.
Even more important though is the import of what is written and the accuracy and honesty of the historical witness. The Bible was used more or less like a modern constitution. Its doubtability in Jewish society was like doubting the American Declaration of Independence. It controlled all the formal ceremonies of the culture. It was frequently written by people who were intimately involved in the events they describe and who were honoured for centuries as noble and honorable heroes. These are quality reasons for assuming their veracity.
I fear you are indulging in special pleading. Do you suppose the Declaration of Independence would survive the USA being conquered by a foreign power—it does not matter who—say Korea? OK, let us be more realistic and topical. Has the constitution of Iraq survived the invasion by the USA and Britain? When countries are conquered, or, if you like, liberated from conquest, then they are very unlikely to retain the constitution they had, at least in any unaltered way. Your analogy of a constitution rather supports what I am arguing than what you are. If the constitution, you suppose, was that of Moses, even long before 1200 BC you would persuade me, then is it likely that the self-same constitution could survive until today, through the many changes of rule the Jews had in between? The structure of the book as it is shows it to be a layer cake, and that is considered to show its genuineness, but at the same time it has been supernaturally preserved. It might be good fun trying to have your cake and eat it, but the more serious approach is to note the reasons for doubt, and therefore to seriously doubt it! That is what minimalism is.
Doubt is a two-edged sword. If one doubts what is true one could lose the truth. Many a criminal has been found “not guilty” on the basis of reasonable doubt. Perhaps you mean that much overused word scepticism.
How do you know it is true until you have doubted it and subjected it to the approriate tests to remove the doubt? That is the point of the law. No man should be sentenced while there is doubt, but we begin by doubting the accusation, by making the man innocent until proven guilty. You illustrate the absurdness of the Christian position. You do the opposite. You have no doubt, and so evidence is irrelevant. You know you are right and so resist all urging to test claims made about the “sacred history”. My recollection is that even Jesus accepted the doubts of his own twin, and allowed him to check them out physically. Needless to say Christians made it a model of what no Christian should do! No later Christian would have let Thomas do it. Skepticism is not doubting despite the evidence, but doubting until the evidence is adequate for belief.
“You say all the theories critical of the bible have flared out. What do you mean? Do you mean they have been shown to be wrong?”
We could start with ideas like there never was an Assyrian king named Sargon. Since the Bible was the only ancient document that named this king it was doubted. But then they found Khorsabad.
I never heard of this before, but it is would be an excellent example of minimalism, and shows how you benefit from it too, as a believer. The reason is that what is true in the bible is doubted until confirmed by external evidence. If I had been one of the doubters about the historicity of the mention of Sargon in the bible, then I should have been forced to accept that the bible was historically sound when it did mention him. I have to say, though, that Sargon is never actually mentioned by name in the bible, though his name might have been expected, so it is a reason to doubt at least the historical care of the writer, if not the contemporaneity of the account.
It was thought at one time that the Exodus account was a fraud because they did had no writing in Moses day. Ooops.
Again, I have never heard of this one, and since historians of the ANE have known about hieroglyphic writing since at least the time of Napoleon, it must have been a very old fashioned idea indeed. What is more true is that Moses could hardly have been keeping a diary, and his supposed recollections of a very long life must be considered as subject to human frailties. Of course, if Moses actually wrote the Pentateuch as long ago in the past as modern Christians think, around 1200 BC, and you seem to agree, albeit with the chronology of the Pharaohs altered, then it seems curious that he was not served with the accolade of Herodotus, as the father of history. No one seems to have heard of Moses until the third century BC, so there is a 900 year dark age preceding his emergence into the world. If Nectanebo was Rameses II, then maybe Moses only happened about 350 BC. That would be a hypothesis that would shock Rohl, but would meet with the historical fact. As I have said, I agree with the need to question Egyptian dating, but not to try to fit the bible into what emerges, but because it needs resolving.
Graf-Wellhausen theory said that there was annuals or state archiving in Moses day. Then they discovered the El Amarna correspondence. They also carved Genesis into JEDP. The discovery of colophons showed that Genesis was indeed a Mesopotamian document and would not have been constructed that way after the days of Moses. The Iliad was analyzed by the same G-W techniques only to yield ridiculous results. The latest literary analysis reveals structures in most biblical texts which were common among ancient texts. These techniques have undermined support for G-W except for stalwart diehards.
Discovery is a process not a revelation, and Wellhausen’s was an important step in it. He showed that the bible is no different from any other book, and can be analysed by the same methods. Early methods are inevitably shown to be inadequate, but the principle of analysis is not wrong. We have moved on, but the JEDP divisions of Wellhausen have been useful, and they indeed do show distinct differences in style of composition and purpose. So far as I am aware, and I am happy to be corrected, there is no corresponding basis for analysing the Iliad into different strands, and so it would hardly be surprising if any such analysis came up with silly results. It is a curious thing that progress is normally celebrated except when it is progress in biblical analysis.
The Jewish scriptures are supposed to have been written over an immense timescale on purely internal evidence, not supported by any external inspection. The Hebrew of the bible written over almost a millenium shows little in the way of evolution expected of any language, and the differences that are found are quite easily explicable as regional variations rather than temporal ones. Yet biblicists are able to separate out regions and temporal variations on the basis of little evidence indeed. So far as anyone can judge, Hebrew is a petrified language, long forgotten, and then deliberately revived as a religiopus language, rather as modern Hebrew has been artificially revived. As a language it has no history, it just exists. Hebrew is Canaanite, that is Phœnician, since the Phœncians were properly called Canaanites, and Hebrew was revived for temple use when most people in the region were already speaking Aramaic.
TL Thompson has tried to promote the idea that the Davidic dynasty was pure fantasy. But the Tel dan stela as well as the Mesha stela and Shoshenq I wall in Karnak all contain “Beth David” a direct parallel to “Bit Humri” of the Assyrian texts.
You are regurgitating what the fundamentalists believe uncritically, and in so doing you again illustrate the whole point of skepticism. You believe these inscriptions to mean what you want them to mean, yet you are knowledgeable enough in this field to know they are not at all as unambiguous as you claim. Far from it, the Egyptian inscriptions is not even likely, Kenneth Kitchen being like yourself a keen biblical kite flier, but even he describes it as no more than a gullible “likely”, this translating into a skeptical “unlikely”. It also depends on Shoshenq being Shishak.
The supposed mention of David on the Mesha Stele is mainly imagination, and André Lemaire is not far off being a crook, being happy to come up with conclusions that suit Christian belief while playing havoc with the clear indications of the evidence. Neither the reading of “House” nor that of “David” is certain. The Tel Dan Stele could easily be a forgery, the State of Israel itself having uncovered a nest of forgers that have been at work for 30 years who have left every artifact found in that time and in most prestigious museums in the world in doubt! This is serious buisiness. Believers are notorious liars and forgers, and worse, are happy to believe anything however dubious so long as it confirms their prejudices. That is why I am urging you to do your useful dating work objectively and not to get tainted by this bad smell. The Tel Dan find, even if valid, only mentions “bytdwd”, and the interpretation of that is far from as obvious as believers want it to be. Further still, even if it means “house of David”, you are not justified in thinking that it means the same as House of Omri, namely a reference to a country or a dynasty. It can mean the palace of a prince called David, or a temple to a god called David. Kitchen sneers that there were no gods called David, utterly failing to notice, because of his bias, that the word David (Dwd) is philogically the same as Thoth! Kitchen is another bent witness. It is part of the Christian disease that witnesses must lie because it is far more important to them to uphold their beliefs than the truth. I hope you do not fall into the same category.
He has also tried to suggest that the Tabernacle of Moses was a retrofit from far the 1st millennum. But this ignores a host of tabernacles in ancient literature used for royal and cult purposes. It is well within egyptian technology of Moses day.
I have not read this idea you mention, but the key point about any legend of a tabernacle is that it implies a cult that was not centred in one temple, the tabernacle being a portable shrine that went the rounds of several equal shrines, probably on a seasonal basis, that being the origin of ANE mythologies. Since no archaeologist has yet found the least trace of the supposedly immensely grand temple of Solomon, it seems far more likely and better suits the known facts of ANE religion, and even some of the biblical facts, that the religion of the Israelites before the second temple was built was a multi-sited religion with sanctuaries at places, perhaps like Bethel and Shechem as well as Jerusalem, that the mobile tabernacle was carted between, doubtless in some ceremony.
Some anti-biblicists insist that the Merenptah stela has no relevance to the knowledge of the kingdom of Israel in the 19th Dynasty. Duhh!
Well, you are trying to change the chronology, and the importance of the Merneptah stele depends entirely on the chronology. It is one of the puzzles that suggest to me that Egyptian dates are wrong. Israel mentioned in the thirteenth century seems altogether less likely, indeed barely possible, though people are mentioned for the first time at some point in history, and this is obviously it, for the Israelites. When was it? That is the point. So far as I can see, Merneptah virtually pushed up against Omri in time, so his stele is perfectly understandable. Merneptah’s stele is about 900 BC not 1200 BC.
Lemche seems to think that he has established that the entire history of Israel is pure fiction. That all the biblical texts belong to the Perso-Hellenistic era. A set of Perso-Hellenistic documents would never contain the colophons of Genesis.
I agree with Lemche, and base it on what we know, not on what we might hope we knew. I really do not get what you mean by your last sentence here. What stops Genesis being compiled in the Persian or Hellenistic periods?
According to Finkelstein, Deuteronomic history is entirely composed within the 7th century and beyond because none of the biblical places existed prior to the 7th century. This is all based on the assumption that the Exodus is Late Bronze. In the light that the Exodus is a Middle Bronze event most of his evidence evaporates. The remnant problems are not entirely solved by his hypothesis either.
Finkelstein is too timid, perhaps because he is a Jew. The books of the bible were written mainly after the fifth century, explaining why Herodotus had never heard of such astonishing histories when he was making his name for himself.
Then we have our sociologists who claim the Bible is wrong on the Sojourn. It somehow necessary to have the Israelites infiltrate Israel or emerge from subculture status into their own tribal nation. We can rewrite history from broken pottery and fallen buildings. This is more like crystal ball gazing than following any “objective” evidence. It is substituting archaeology for history.
There is no evidence for any such invasion or infiltration, but only for an expansion in population after a period of several centuries when the population had declined. Nothing suggests a new culture, except whatever the biblicists imagine they can see such as peculiar four roomed huts that turn out to be common almost everywhere else too. The Israelites were Canaanites until the Assyrians replaced many of them by Aramaean colonists from Syria. The bible records this, and it seems to be true history. Aramaeans from the Euphrates river around Harran brought in Mesopotamean myths that were later used in the Jewish scriptures.
None of these propositions really fly. The system of personal names in the Bible parallels closely with the changing names and naming systems used in ancient times from the 3rd millennium onward. Such a contrived list of names in the Bible that fits the known historical changes marks a genuine document beyond any reasonable doubt. Only a very knowledgable and careful forgery could have produced such a consistency. And just how in a highly literate, organized and cultured country like Israel or Judah could be fooled by a forger who produce 3000 years of history is never explained nor how it could avoid being challenged by the contemporary scholars?? And who would accept a fabricated history instead of their own?
You call it a forgery, and in some ways you are right. It was more of a forgery than an honest history, that is certain, provided that you look objectively at the facts. Consistency was not that difficult because the compilers deliberately took on board elements of mythology known to different elements that the compiled history was meant to appeal to! It was meant for all the people of Abarnahara, not just the priests of Jerusalem. Once the history got into the ninth century, the compilers had historical annals to work from. All of this suggests that the forgers were the Persians of the fifth century. The date of a story cannot be earlier than the final incidents of it—in Persian times. It is all written up and explained on my website, though no doubt you have no wish to read it.
Archaeology cannot of itself validate the history contained in biblical documents. Only those present could have done that and they are dead. Maybe they wrote some of the bible stuff on broken potsherds but I doubt that we will ever find such an evidence.
I agree, but mainly because it was never written on broken potsherds, because it was written by a world power of the time on parchment, not by the Clampetts, a hicky family of hillbillies. The conventional religious theory requires the bible to be written on potsherds just as soon as David and Solomon in particular disappear because that is all there was to write on, not that anyone could write anyway. Writing was a skill of empires in those days, not generally of petty princedoms. Princedoms, at the most, needed a few accountants, not armies of scribes.
But, quite honestly, I cannot understand why you all want to make God into a liar, and some ancient liar into God, when the evidence shows that the Persians, known to have had an ethical god, led the Jews into righteous ways from their fertility rituals. The fact that Greeks changed the story to suit themselves, and the Jewish nationalistic Maccabees changed it more to make a universal god into a national one, are reasons why Christians, if they were really interested in truth, would want to correct. Christians, in my opinion, have never been interested in truth because they believed exactly what the Ptolemaic and the Seleucidic and the Maccabeic editors of the Jewish scriptures wanted them to believe. Maybe that is why God has been annoyed for the last two thousand years.
I much appreciated your screed. It is full of useful facts showing that Egyptian dating is wrong, and shall be glad to use some of it on my pages. How should I refer to it? Has it been published, or shall I just link to the pages you have given me?
