Archeologly proves the Bible?

[boloboffin]

I know of one firstborn son in the Pharaonic line dying, but in the 18th dynasty. Akenaton's older brother Thutmose was the heir and he died. Among the artifacts we have of him are his cat's coffin (one of the most famous examples of cat funerals in ancient Egypt) and a ceremonial whip inscribed with his name in Tutankhamen's tomb.

 

[Maia]

And again, just because the city of Jerusalem is a fact, does not mean that Jesus's life and death (and non death) are a fact.
[/quote]

Well,I'm with John Shelby Spong on this one: I don't see any particular problem with saying that Jesus of Nazareth probably existed as a historical person. But this isn't a theological argument, so why exactly is it supposed to provide some kind of proof of religious assertions?

 

[eccles]

Ron Wyatt

Here is a classical example of a "quack archaeologist". I had a heated discussion about him on another Forum:

"I am Atheist, a former Roman Catholic and as such I was discouraged by my Catholic School from reading the Old Testament except Genesis and Exodus. I just read from Genesis to !I Kings.

As far as the Exodus of the Hebrews is concerned. I do not believe a word of it. It is worth noting that there is no official record of such an event by ancient Egyptians and archaeologists have been digging in the Sinai since 1920 and found nothing. Bibical scholars get the Hebrews mixed up with the Hyksos who invaded Egypt and ruled the country for about 100 years in the third Intermediate Period.

I know that the late Ron Wayett was not a trained professional archaeologist and his searches for Noah's Ark, evidence for the Exodus and the Ark of the Covenant were funded by the members of his fundamentaist church.

I have never accepted anything on his Web Site as any more that trying to prove a myth. He has been discredited by all responsible people interested in Biblical History."

That was one of my posts on that Forum. I shall leave it nameless for now. I am in dispute with the Admin and i want to leave that Forum.

I just got D.M. Murdock's book: "Christ in Egypt" in it she points out that NO evidence has been found anywhere to prove the Bible. I know for a fact that in spite of Archaeologists digging in the Sinai Desert since 1920 there is no evidence of 2 million people (Hebrews) wandering there for 40 years. There is no evidence from Ancient Egypt of such an occurence, No 10 Plagues, No "drowning" of the Pharoah and his army. No evidence showing which Pharoah it was (if any). No one can agree of a date for the "Exodus". It certainly was not Ramses II. His mummy is now in the Cairo Museum.

Of course "our friend" the late Ron Wyatt claimed he 'found" chariot wheels in the Red Sea!!!

As James Randi pointed out on YouTube, no sign has been found of Nazareth. Like the "virgin" birth of Jesus, Nazareth is a myth.

As for Jesus, There is no contemporary independent reliable evidence he ever existed. Forget Josephus. Those few lines in Book XVIII of the "Antiquities of the Jews" were later forgeries by Christians.

One should study the First Council of Nicea 325CE to find out how Roman Catholicism was really founded. It is too long a subject for this post.

"em hotep"

 

[Marduk]

The bible has been constantly edited since the beginning to make it more accurate
an example

Q. why was the claim that the Israelites built Heliopolis during their tenure as slaves removed from Exodus 1:11
A. because Heliopolis was predynastic and predated the time of the exodus by 1500 years

apart from that, many books of the old testament were written in Mesopotamia and originally featured different characters, substitute Enlil for Yhwh during the great flood, or Enki for Yhwh during babel, same stories, just written thousands of years before anything Hebrew existed

e.g.
Gilgamesh: -
When a seventh day arrived
I sent forth a dove and released it.
The dove went off, but came back to me;
no perch was visible so it circled back to me.
Genesis 7
8 And he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground. 9 But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him to the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth
Gilgamesh
I sent forth a raven and released it.
The raven went off, and saw the waters slither back.
It eats, it scratches, it bobs, but does not circle back to me.
Genesis 7
7 And he sent forth a raven, and it went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth

I would question as well the archaeology of a man who can exceed 30 mph for a 24 hr period (Jonah) or anyone who is supposed to have lived for hundreds of years. Why bother archaeology with details when common sense isn't even satisfied


didn't Ron Wyatt claim to have found Noahs Ark twice, in two seperate locations ?

 

[Akhenaten]

I just got D.M. Murdock's book: "Christ in Egypt" in it she points out that NO evidence has been found anywhere to prove the Bible. I know for a fact that in spite of Archaeologists digging in the Sinai Desert since 1920 there is no evidence of 2 million people (Hebrews) wandering there for 40 years. There is no evidence from Ancient Egypt of such an occurence, No 10 Plagues, No "drowning" of the Pharoah and his army. No evidence showing which Pharoah it was (if any). No one can agree of a date for the "Exodus". It certainly was not Ramses II. His mummy is now in the Cairo Museum.


"em hotep"

So's his daddy.


menmaataten


ETA: G'day Eccles. Owyergoinmate?

 

[Dr Adequate]

I agree with your point, but on the specific claim of 6,000 years, MG is right. That's not in the Bible or even really implied by it.

But it is --- it's trivial to add up the periods of time given and set an age on the Earth.

 

[brodski]

On the other hand that doesn't mean that everything in the Iliad is true. I even started a parody thread to make this point a while back: What do you do when the Iliad is proven right on something?

The original thread is here: What do you do when the Bible is proven right on something?

Have you been to Kings cross station? (it exists) Have you seen platform 9 3/4 (it exists) Have you seen Downing Street? (it exists).

All these places are mentioned in the Harry Potter books, therefore if we keep looking we'll eventually find Hogwarts!

 

[Akhenaten]

Didn't Ron Wyatt claim to have found Noah's Ark twice, in two seperate locations?

One of them was used by Noah to transport Richard Paley's pterosaurs and their relatives.

The goal of Project Pterosaur is to mount an expedition to locate and bring back to the United States living specimens of pterosaurs or their fertile eggs, which will be displayed in a Pterosaur Rookery that will be the center piece of the planned Fellowship Creation Science Museum and Research Institute

Good luck with that, Doctor Paley, ya dingbat. Give Ron Wyatt a call.


Cheers, Great God, and my best to Thor if you see him,

Dave

 

[shadron]

But it is --- it's trivial to add up the periods of time given and set an age on the Earth.

And that makes at least as much sense as banning women as priests because Christ didn't name a woman as one of the twelve.

 

[HENTAI DOUKYUSEI JP]

and this is at the heart of claiming any historical significance in the bible. If we allow even simple things like the creation story to be "mythical allegory", then why should I take any other part of it as reality?

Because x-tians wouldn't have it any other way!
FELÍZ CUMPLEÁÑOS!

 

[skullerello]

Once again, very little of the "history" of The Old Testament is verifiable in light of archeological evidence. In this thread alone there is enough information which can be substantiated to disprove the collection of those B.C.E tall tales. Why would X-tians dare to assume that some further rambelings predicated on such nonsense hold any sway in this modern era?!
If you couldn't even document the past correctly, what hope is there that you could fore-see the future?!
Your bearded sky-daddy is trying to pull the wool over your eyes.
Snap out of it!
Pat Robertson, I'm talkin' to you.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Of course "our friend" the late Ron Wyatt claimed he 'found" chariot wheels in the Red Sea!!!

That would be a trick, since the "Red Sea" referred to in the Bible probably wasn't the same body of water we call the Red Sea today, unless the Hebrews were seriously disoriented.

 

[Lothian]

You need evidence. Solid evidence. Not just evidence that such and such a city actually existed. This is no evidence for the Bible but just evidence that such a place existed and was widely know in the Roman/Biblical world. If you are trying to provide evidence that the Bible was true, you need strong evidence that the things that occurred in the Bible actually happened.

I would be happy to believe the whole bible if a single location can be found.

4:8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;

Find this earthly mountain and I am converted.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I just got D.M. Murdock's book: "Christ in Egypt" in it she points out that NO evidence has been found anywhere to prove the Bible. I know for a fact that in spite of Archaeologists digging in the Sinai Desert since 1920 there is no evidence of 2 million people (Hebrews) wandering there for 40 years. There is no evidence from Ancient Egypt of such an occurence, No 10 Plagues, No "drowning" of the Pharoah and his army. No evidence showing which Pharoah it was (if any). No one can agree of a date for the "Exodus". It certainly was not Ramses II. His mummy is now in the Cairo Museum.

Also the population of egypt was only about 1.5 million in total.

 

[ponderingturtle]

What is the oldest thing in the bible that we has at least some confirmation that something vaguely like it happened?

 

[eccles]

Red Sea - Sea of Reeds

Ok lets clear this up once and for all. I have known for a long time about the Sea of Reeds. What I like to do when answering a problem on the Internet is add cut & paste from reliable sources so that people can't say "Eccles" is shooting off his mouth" I Googled for the Sea of Reeds because although I have a rough idea where it was I can't give co-ordinates. However I found this from (believe it or not) Associates for Biblical Reseaech. I have not logged up 50 posts yet so I can't supply links. I will C & P Significant portions from the article:

It may come as a surprise to many students of the Bible that in the original Hebrew text the body of water the Israelites crossed when leaving Egypt is called yam suph, “Sea of Reeds,” not Red Sea (Ex 15:4, 22; Dt 11:4; Jos 2:10; 4:23; 24:6; Neh 9:9; Ps 106:7, 9, 33; 136:13, 15). Unfortunately, yam suph has been rendered “Red Sea” in nearly all of our translations, the Jerusalem Bible and the New Jewish Publication Society Hebrew Bible being notable exceptions.

The “Red Sea” phrase came into the account with the third century BC translation of the Old Testament into Greek. Called the Septuagint (abbreviated as LXX), its translators made yam suph (“Sea of Reeds”) into eruthrá thálassē (“Red Sea”). The Latin Vulgate followed their lead with mari Rubro (“Red Sea”) and most English versions continued that tradition.

(one proof of the many mis-translations that are in the bible)

Unfortunately, “Red Sea” was not a translation at all, and the LXX translators understood that. While we do not know their reasoning, they gave yam suph a historicized interpretation, based on their understanding of the region at the time (Kitchen 2003: 262; Hoffmeier 1996: 206; 2005: 81). When the Bible indicated the Israelites crossed a significant body of water on Egypt’s eastern border, the LXX translators connected it with the body of water they knew as the Red Sea. Instead of translating the Hebrew phrase literally, they offered this historical identification as their interpretation of the text.

I suggest this is an unfortunate translation that has confused the issue for centuries and has kept us from appreciating the real historical accuracy of the Exodus and sea crossing accounts. In the late 20th century, scholars began to reestablish the meaning of the Hebrew text to its Egyptian context in a fresh way and then connect it with recent archaeological evidence (see Hoffmeier 2005: 81–85).
(On this matter I do not believe the Exodus ever took place)

The Red Sea
But, you ask, what about the Red Sea? The Red Sea includes two fingers of Indian Ocean salt water that extend northward into the Biblical world and help separate the two continents of Africa and Asia. The Red Sea’s eastern branch is known as the Gulf of Aqaba (Arabic) or Gulf of Elat (Hebrew), and the western branch is known as the Gulf of Suez (Arabic, and the origin of the name of the Suez Canal which connects this western branch to the Mediterranean Sea).

In classical Greek, the name Red Sea was used for both gulfs as well as the main body of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean (Kitchen 2003: 262–63; Hoffmeier 1997: 200). Unfortunately, today we do not know why these bodies of water were originally called “Red Sea” (Hoffmeier 1997: 206).

One interesting suggestion has a Biblical basis. Maybe the Red Sea received its name from the Edomites, perennial Old Testament enemies of the Israelites. The Edomites, whose name means “red” in Hebrew, controlled the Gulf of Aqaba during much of the Old Testament period. It has been suggested that later Israelites had difficulty referring to this sea by the name of their enemy (that is, the Edomite Sea), so they used the meaning of Edom (“red,” Greek eruthrá) instead to identify it (Hoffmeier 1997: 206).

Another possibility is that the Gulf of Suez was already known as the Red Sea (for a presently unknown reason), and its application to the Gulf of Aqaba was a natural extension (Hoffmeier 1997: 206). Whatever the origin of the term, it was not the name of the body of water the Bible says the Israelites crossed in the Exodus.

To complicate matters more, the New Testament follows the LXX in referring to the location of the Exodus sea crossing as the “Red Sea.” While a full treatment of the New Testament references is beyond the scope of this article, I will suggest that our understanding of ancient Egypt’s eastern frontier and the terminologies describing it are still incomplete and that the present state of our research is like working a puzzle with a number of key pieces still missing.

Sea of Reeds
There is general agreement among scholars today, both liberal and conservative, that yam suph means “Reed Sea.” The Hebrew suph definitely referred to a water plant of some sort (Kitchen 2003: 262), as indicated in Exodus 2:3–5 and Isaiah 19:6–7, where reeds in the Nile River are mentioned (Hoffmeier 2005: 81). In fact, it is probable that the Hebrew suph (“reed”) is an Egyptian loan word—from the hieroglyph for water plants (twf) (Huddlestun 1992: 636; Hoffmeier 1997: 204; 2005: 81–83).

Unfortunately, a more precise identification to a specific water plant for suph is not presently possible. Still, the Bible is clear that the sea the Israelites crossed was the “Reed Sea.” This suggests a large body of water on Egypt’s eastern border that is identified with reeds. But where was it located? In the Bible, the name yam suph is used in reference to the Gulf of Aqaba (Ex 23:31; Nm 21:4; Dt 1:40, 2:1; 1 Kgs 9:26) and apparently the Gulf of Suez (Nm 33:10–11). That makes both legitimate candidates for the sea crossing location.

While few scholars have posited the Reed Sea crossing point to be on the eastern Gulf of Aqaba, Robert Cornuke and Larry Williams have recently popularized that idea (Blum 1998). However, that location appears to be too far east of Goshen to fit the literal understanding of the Exodus itinerary (Hoffmeier 2005: 130–40; Franz 2000; Wood 2000).

On the other hand, the popular view among conservative scholars has been to locate the Exodus crossing somewhere along the northern tip of the western Gulf of Suez. Unfortunately, the place names in the Exodus account do not fit that region very well. Neither has modern archaeological research added any support to this location for the Exodus sea crossing.

Whether one chooses either gulf, the important issue is that the location was the yam suph. If the Gulf of Suez is chosen as the Exodus crossing site, the location must be based on Biblical and extra-Biblical data. The Gulf of Suez must not be chosen because it is called the Red Sea today, or even in antiquity. I propose that a literal and careful understanding of the Biblical text, in conjunction with the most recent research from the eastern Nile delta, suggests a location other than the Gulf of Suez.
---------------------------------------------------
As I said, I don't believe the bible. It was not written before 700BCE and the authorship is unknown. There is nothing in Egyptian records that refers to such an "event".

em hotep

 

[Lothian]

What is the oldest thing in the bible that we has at least some confirmation that something vaguely like it happened?

Genisis 1.1 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
There was a certainly a beginning. From that good start it all goes rapidly downhill.

 

[eccles]

And that makes at least as much sense as banning women as priests because Christ didn't name a woman as one of the twelve.

Rememer that Jesus was married to Mary Madgelene and, if there is anything to believe in the Gospel of Thomas, the Apostles questioned Jesus love for Mary Madgalene and why they kissed. Of course the Church cooked up the lie about her being a hooker. Roman Catholic Church treats women as inferiors.

em hotep.

 

[eccles]

Genesis

Genisis 1.1 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
There was a certainly a beginning. From that good start it all goes rapidly downhill.

Who wrote that and when? Bible was not written before 700BCE. The "Creation Story" is a copy of the Egyptian Creation Myth.

Creation of light
In the beginning there was only water, a chaos of churning, bubbling water, this the Egyptians called Nu or Nun. It was out of Nu that everything began.
Then the sun god Ra emerged out of primeval chaos, he came out of a blue giant lotus flower that appeared on the surface of the water.
Ra gave light to the universe .

Creation of light (Genesis)
In the beginning the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep water, these waters were very similar to the primordial watery chaos Nun of the Egyptian creation myth
A wind from God swept over the face of the waters to give light (just the same as Ra )
Unlike the Egyptian mythology, God existed before the creation, he was not born out as Ra.

The basic concept in the creation myths for both the Egyptian mythology and the Hebrews seems very similar
Both creation myths concern themselves with nature; the earth, the sky, the sun, the moon and the stars
Since the Nile river, with its annual floods played a critical role in this cosmic order, water was the first element in the cosmos that existed before anything else, and this was passed to the Hebrews in a slightly different form
in fact we have to wonder how much the ancient Hebrews borrowed from Egyptian mythology to explain the creation of the universe
The most important difference between both mythologies is that Egyptians believed in polytheism, and every cosmic deity had an independent role in the creation of the world, while in Hebrew mythology God was the only creator, and the Creation was basically a "One Man Show"
(ref: Aldokkan, Ancient Egypt on a comparative method)




Of course ALL "Gods" were made in the mind of Man, even Jehovah. Oh dear, I'll be stoned to death as a Blasphemer ("Life of Brian")

em hotep

 

[joobz]

Because x-tians wouldn't have it any other way!
FELÍZ CUMPLEÁÑOS!http://www.geocities.com/hentairadio/cake.jpg

Thank you!