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Martin Edwards wrote:
Matt Giwer wrote:
Now that even the most ardent believers have agreed upon a 6th or
7th c. BC creation they still see things written in styles older than
that time where everything should be style of the time of creation. So
if the creation time known then the variations are based upon locale
not age. This same can be applied to any creation date.
Nope, on refelction I think you are wrong here, but
/it was worth bringing up/.
It is an attempt at creating the simplest explanation for the facts.
There are facts which must be accounted for in any explanation.
1 Herodotus traveled the area in the mid 5th c. BC. One of his purposes was the
identify the peoples in the new Persian empire. Thus we would expect a mention
of people who could be identified as the Judean people. He does not. In itself
this leads to no conclusion just a curiosity.
2 The first mention of these people, stories and events appears in the Greek
Septuagint. There is no mention of anything in it found in any other source
prior to it. No inscriptions any place offering direct support. There are a
half dozen or so which some try to forcefit into the OT but even if all are
taken as legitimate they do not support anything of interest in the OT and
generally flatly contradicts it. Which first it has to be argued that it
supports the OT and then the contradiction has to be explained away. That is not
rational. If it contradicts it is not support.
3 Today Israel is percentagewise the most dug country in the world. This
includes professional and amateur arkie digs going back more than a hundred
years. This is a country with artifacts laws that make it profitable for a
contractor to stop work and report anything found. So all the construction in
Israel in the last half century, from parking garages to housing to roadbeds, is
counted in the digging. NOT ONE THING supporting the existance of anything in
the Septuagint.
So we must account for the sudden appearance of these people AFTER the
Septuagint appears. How? Can anyone show the above things are not true? Merely
saying they are not true is not an honest reply.
Can anyone come up with a simpler explanation than it is an invented religion
drawing upon local stories and legends to create the Septuagint?
The book of Mormon was similarly created drawing upon the bible and ideas
floating around at the time such as the Indians being the lost tribes of Israel.
Smith did not invent that. You can rest assured some Mormon Indian in Latin
America has told his grandson that his grandfather told him it is all true, that
the Indians had known it all along. It becomes truth so easily.
Is it only a religion thing? Queen Victoria married a German who brought the
tradition of a Christmas tree to England where it had been known only as a
German custom similar to the English Yule log. Within twenty years there were
English writers telling of Christmas stories of having had Christmas trees at
home when they were children, writers who were adults at the time of the
marriage. Ahistoric "historical evidence" was created.
The most common objection is scholars seeing only things scholars can see. My
quick response is to substitute poor quality scribes for changes in time. Of
course that does not sound very reasonable as the region is so damned small. But
I have to ask how these scholars can see a progression of writing over centuries
by people who left no evidence of their existence?
It is supposed to be a connected set of stories over centuries. That means
there has to be a continuous history of these people over centuries, a
continuous culture. But there is no sign of it. This puts to rest the idea
salvage attempt which says the stories are completely fictious but the people
really existed. (I presume this is what PTD means when he calls me a literalist,
implying I expect to find evidence of the stories. NO! I mean there is no
evidence of the people who are supposed to have created the stories.)
One way or another the "scholars" have acknowledged every fact I use. When it
was clear they were looking like fools trying to salvage the chronology of
events in the OT they developed the idea that the single people slowly
infiltrated the region, rose up against the cities and took them over and later
creating a semi-mythical history. Sounds like a good salvage job until you find
there is no arkie evidence of such an event.
Why do they propose there was an infiltrating culture? The rude settlements and
farms had plain pottery while the cities had the expected stylistically
decorated pottery. They claim that is a sign of two different cultures because
of the pottery style differences.
First off that "difference" only applies between cities and only to decorated
pottery. But there is a much simpler explanation. Farmers and herdsman made
their own simple pottery. They could not afford the city made stuff. Farms
always did it that way. If one tries to defend the idea of two cultures they
have to explain "hebrews" living outside of every city in every country in the
world.
I have been developing, promoting and defending this idea on s.h.a for years.
The original insight goes to a man there who posts under a lot of names and I
have no idea of his real name. I have no problem if this is wrong but so far
there has been no credible contradiction. I do not dismiss contradictions
without simple and straightforward explanations. If you think you have something
new, please post it.
It has changed over the years. The good news is it has become simpler rather
than more complicated. That is a good trend in science.
This is NOT the Copenhagen school. They maintain a few complications which keep
their departments from being abolished and themselves unemployed. This makes
them take job in the food service industry. And seriously I had not heard of
them when I started.
--
The greatest protection of the people against government is a free press
save the greatest supporter of government is the free press.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3632
nizkor http://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml
Zionism http://www.giwersworld.org/disinfo/disinfo.phtml a4
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