Archeologly proves the Bible?

[Cleon]

The famous archaeologist Sir William Ramsay would have disagreed:

Then he would have been wrong. However, much of what scientists thought they knew in his day turned out to be wrong.

 

[Lothian]

Ramsey again eh?

Shall we look at his words again, Doc.

You may press the words of Luke in a degree beyond any other historian’s, and they stand the keenest scrutiny and the hardest treatment, provided always that the critic knows the subject and does not go beyond the limits of science and of justice.

Ramsey simply took the same line as many here. The stage is real but the play fiction.

 

[pakeha]

Hi, eccles.
Is this the site you mentioned:
http://www.exminister.org/

To be honest I found the blog on the subject of creationalism vs evolution in the classroom interesting.
As you can see, I'm new to the JREF and probably everyone here else has read similar or better blogs years back, but it was quite refreshing to this newbie.
Thanks for posting it up.

 

[Akhenaten]

I would like to make this observation. It is my opinion only. I seem to have a feeling that Israeli Archaeologists have a biased approach to their work. They want to find evidence for the factual nature of their Torah. It is amazing how many artifacts dug up or appearing in private collections have been proved to be forgeries. The Ossurary of James is the best example. I am not saying that Solomon did not exist and that there was not a Temple, but until irrefutable evidence is found by unbiased Archeologists the Temple has to be regarded as only possible

The winners always write the history books and fabricate discover the best evidence. Hasta la vista, baby. It'll all come out in the wash.

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

Of course it's there. I should know; I fly in and out of the airstrip on the property in my DH Twin Otter many times ---- On my Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. There is an addon for Hogsmere, near Loch Ness. The graphic detail is excellent. One can drive a car around all the roads, past the quiddich ground, up to the castle. I have landed a float plane on the lake as well.

You have simply got to get FS-X. Landing a 747 at Puckapunyal is a hoot.

Nothing personal here. How many of you bible-believers are locked into blind faith and no reason and logic?


em hotep

"em hotep" doesn't fit with your rhetorical question, does it mate?

Ok, Guys, I might have gone too far with the 'blind faith" comment. I don't want to be "Scourged" yet. I shall stick only to the topic from now on.

Way to go cobber.


Cheers,

Dave

 

[Akhenaten]

Possibly the Hittite Empire

Damned Hittites! I've been warning you people about the Hittites, but will anyone listen?

heard the Jesus-Horus claims before, bit narrow minded imho to claim that the antics of Jesus are based on just one pagan God and on the whole most of the similarities only work if you twist them a little and ignore a lot of evidence

The Moses-Akhenaten fairytale is my pet peeve. Wanna help me with some smiting?

Jesus - Horus nonsense is discussed here:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=132483

Those Horusists are another bunch I can't stand. I'm sure their priesthood has been infiltrated by Hittite spies.


Nepherkheperure

 

[eccles]

Yes Pakeha

Hi, eccles.
Is this the site you mentioned:
http://www.exminister.org/

To be honest I found the blog on the subject of creationalism vs evolution in the classroom interesting.
As you can see, I'm new to the JREF and probably everyone here else has read similar or better blogs years back, but it was quite refreshing to this newbie.
Thanks for posting it up.

You Kiwi?
That is the web site for sure. As I said earlier, as a bedraggled refugee from the "Holy" Roman Catholic Church I can attest to its accuracy. I can be sure that the Church knows the truth but has been lying for so long it can't stop now. That would be the end of Roman Catholicism if not the whole of Christianity. Oh, Great Horus, let it be done. Oh --- Horus does not exis, nor do any other "gods".

I hope Pakeha you have read Richard Dawkins. He should be a Saint, even before he dies.

 

[eccles]

FS-X

Akenaten:
Broadford eh? I know it well. I was in Hawthorn, then Bayswater, Now the Gold Coast.

About MS FS. I belong to some simmer's forums and have been advised to stick to FS-9. There can be problems unless you have a super fast computer and loads of disc space and memory. Anyhow Microsoft are ceasing production of their Flight Simulators.

I have a fullset of controls: Saitek Stick, Yoke, Pedals, 2 banks of Throttle Quadrants, about 300 airplanes and hundreds of scenery addons. Best plane I have? Spitfire Mk 1a with working Brownings. It is a joy to fly.

I did not know Pukapunyal has an airstrip capable of taking a 747. That is an Army Barracks unless it has been greatly changed recently.

Trickest airstrip? Lukla Nepal, near the foot of Mt. Everest. 9,200 ft altitude. Runway 1,700 ft; 2000 ft. drop at the end of the runway. I can just get the twin otter down with full reverse thrust to stop it. That's flying.

"Live Long & Prosper"

 

[amb]

Coming in late to this thread and not having time to read from the beggining I may have missed a similar post.
Archeology proves beyond reasonable doubt that the babble is a fabrication of primitive sheep and goat herders imaginations and story telling.
Practically every square inch of the Middle East has been dug up at one time or another, yet not one scrap of evidence has been found to confirm any of the stories in the babble. Even the story of King David is in doubt, as is Moses and the Exodus. Surely the number of people as described in the Exodus story wandering around the desert for 40 years would have left some evidence. Nothing exists. No pottery, food utensils, nothing.
Yep, archeology proves the bible is nothing more than a collection of poetry and perhaps a history of a small tribe of desert wanderers.

 

[eccles]

Coming in late to this thread and not having time to read from the beggining I may have missed a similar post.
Archeology proves beyond reasonable doubt that the babble is a fabrication of primitive sheep and goat herders imaginations and story telling.
Practically every square inch of the Middle East has been dug up at one time or another, yet not one scrap of evidence has been found to confirm any of the stories in the babble. Even the story of King David is in doubt, as is Moses and the Exodus. Surely the number of people as described in the Exodus story wandering around the desert for 40 years would have left some evidence. Nothing exists. No pottery, food utensils, nothing.
Yep, archeology proves the bible is nothing more than a collection of poetry and perhaps a history of a small tribe of desert wanderers.

Exactly AMB. I have been making that point for a while now and I get scourged for it. Glad you have the same opinion. We Australians have brains eh?

Exodus: 602,000 adult males plus women and kids = 2 million, a figure confirmed in the footnotes of the New International Version of the Bible. How did they feed and water themselves and their live stock? Oh- YHWH done it. What YHWH? fiction.

Population of Egypt at the time, somewhere about 1.5 - 3 million. Egypt would have been drained of people.

em hotep

 

[amb]

Did I mention that nowhere in Egyptian history are hebrews mentioned? Not in the numbers described anyway. Imagine the departure of millions from a population of between 1.5 million and up to 3 million, imagine the consequences of such a disaster. Egypt would have perished just as the Chaldeans did.

 

[Akhenaten]

Did I mention that nowhere in Egyptian history are hebrews mentioned? Not in the numbers described anyway. Imagine the departure of millions from a population of between 1.5 million and up to 3 million, imagine the consequences of such a disaster. Egypt would have perished just as the Chaldeans did.

I occasionally mention the "Hebrews up in the Delta" when I'm playing Pharaoh, but IRL I only believe that some precursor to the Hebrews existed up there, among any number of other cults that seemed to thrive in the Lower Land.

Whatever they chose to call themselves, it would have been, as you say, a disaster if 2 million of them had wandered off into the Eastern Desert or Sinai. I don't know if all Egypt would have been lost, but the Lower Land would probably have fallen to the Hyksos or others, while the Upper Land, much weakened, may have held out.

In any case there's no chance that it wouldn't have been recorded, had it happened. Just like that silly flood they prattle on about.

Dave

 

[Simon39759]

Ramsey again eh?
Shall we look at his words again, Doc.
Ramsey simply took the same line as many here. The stage is real but the play fiction.

More quote mining then.

 

[GreNME]

Did I mention that nowhere in Egyptian history are hebrews mentioned? Not in the numbers described anyway. Imagine the departure of millions from a population of between 1.5 million and up to 3 million, imagine the consequences of such a disaster. Egypt would have perished just as the Chaldeans did.

Except the Chaldeans didn't perish, they assimilated (much like the Hebrews of antiquity and pretty much any other Mid-Eastern group of that period did). The closest approximation to the Chaldean people (as opposed to the empire, which got divided and taken) are the Suraye people, mostly found in Iraq, Syria, and parts of Iran (and in Detroit ).

I'm not picking at nits... at least not without a very good reason. That reason is to basically point out that history and archaeology isn't simply some black-or-white system of "is" or "is not" in terms of judging accuracy of ancient or claimed ancient sources. Archaeology isn't going to prove or disprove the Christian Bible. What archaeology can do, however, is use the bible as a guide for what and how the people who recorded it felt with regard to their times and neighbors, and compare those records with the records that can be found of their neighbors. From that, a reasonable approximation can be had of the general overview of a given kingdom or culture based on what they thought of themselves, what others thought of them, and how many artifacts can be found and studied/examined.

For example, we know that for most of its existence Egypt had trading relationships with Mid-Eastern kingdoms, though after the Hyksos were driven out of Lower Egypt (they didn't control much of Upper Egypt) there was quite a bit of adversarial relations between Egypt and the rest of the Mid-East-- this would have been about the time of the Hebrew kingdom and they're rarely (if ever) mentioned. We know the Assyrian and Babylonian accounts of Israel regarded it as very small, and the archaeological record confirms that the kingdom that likely existed was not only much smaller than the current nation-state of Israel, but it was also divided for much of its existence (between a northern-eastern bloc and a southern-western bloc), which means the accounts of a unified kingdom or empire are mostly exaggerated. We also know that the Hebrews and the Canaanites were pretty much the same ethnic people, divided (only slightly) by culture and where they lived in the land-- the Hebrews seem to have been the herding people of the mountains and hills, the Canaanites living mostly in the lower lands and cities (though there was plenty of overlap).

What this boils down to with respect to the original post is that there are no clear lines of delineation to "prove" much of the bible, and instead biblical accounts are useful in determining the tenor and views of the Hebrew culture at the time and little else. It's a religious and cultural document, not a historical one.

 

[I Ratant]

Damned Hittites! I've been warning you people about the Hittites, but will anyone listen?
The Moses-Akhenaten fairytale is my pet peeve. Wanna help me with some smiting?
Those Horusists are another bunch I can't stand. I'm sure their priesthood has been infiltrated by Hittite spies.
Nepherkheperure

.
Prolly 55 years ago I read "The Egyptian" and encountered you and Horus.
And Nefer-nefer and the odd Hittite or three.

 

[I Ratant]

Did I mention that nowhere in Egyptian history are hebrews mentioned? Not in the numbers described anyway. Imagine the departure of millions from a population of between 1.5 million and up to 3 million, imagine the consequences of such a disaster. Egypt would have perished just as the Chaldeans did.

.
That number of people living in one spot for 38 years in the Sinai would have left at the very least a large rubbish heap, and an extensive cemetery, as, due to the life expectancy of the time, most of the adults leaving Egypt would have died and been buried .
Ain't none of that in the Sinai.

 

[ponderingturtle]

.
I believe it's Solomon. Anything earlier is anecdotal, as there was no OT prior to that time, until he organized the first compilation.
And, his situation is over-glamorized, according to some current investigations, which have him controlling little more than the hill he lived on.
http://www.archaeology.org/0601/reviews/kings.html

Do we have any acheological evidence of this though.

 

[ponderingturtle]

If there was no temple, where did the wailing wall come from?

You know that it is not even claimed to be from the first temple but the second?

 

[Akhenaten]

Do we have any acheological evidence of this though.

Possibly. Here's a National Geographic article from 2007.

The artifacts, which date to the First Jewish Temple period—the eighth to sixth centuries B.C.- were found by employees of the Waqf Muslim religious trust doing maintenance work, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) reported.

The artifacts may be the first physical evidence of human activity at the Temple Mount - also known as Solomon's Temple - in that time.

 

[Maia]

I'm a bible-believer who is locked into blind faith and no reason and logic!!

Did I win anything?

A NEW CAR!!!
(yay!!)

(everyone runs around the set of The Price Is Right, throwing confetti)

I just couldn't resist. I don't know if they do that now, but remember when Bob Barker was still the host? It was the big highlight of every show, and I just loved it when I was in sixth grade and home sick from school. Anyway, everyone on this board is such a rigorous skeptic that it's a delight to see (sits back with popcorn).

 

[TimCallahan]

Did I mention that nowhere in Egyptian history are hebrews mentioned? Not in the numbers described anyway. Imagine the departure of millions from a population of between 1.5 million and up to 3 million, imagine the consequences of such a disaster. Egypt would have perished just as the Chaldeans did.

In the Amarna Letters, the kings of various Canaanite city states complain of various bandits, called "Hapiru," roughly meaning "outlaws," who may be the source of the "Hebrews." Of course these weren't in Egypt.

A tribal group called Israel is mentoned the Merneptah Victory Stela, erected by Pharaoh Merneptah (reigned 1212 -1202 BCE) to commemorate a Palestinian campaign undertaken reassert Egyptian control of the Levant.

Of course, neither of these have any bearing on the Exodus. It would seem to be based, to the degree it was based on anything, on various small scale escapes of bands of slaves at different times. It may also have been conflated early on - as it was by Josephus in the first century CE - with the expusion of the Hyksos.

The actual history of Israel, corroborated by non-biblical records, effectively begins with King Omri (ca. 875 - 870 BCE) and his famous son Ahab (ca. 870 - 850 BCE). The Assyrian king Tiglath-Peliser III (745 - 727 BCE) mentions King Ahaz of Judah paying him tribute.

The Tel Dan inscription, probably made by Hazael, prince of Damacus, ca. 845 BCE, commemorates his victory over the king of Israel and the "king of the House of David." This indicates that the kings of Judah did claim descent from David and that he was probably a real person. However, there is nothing in archaeology (so far) to support the claim by the House of David to having ruled a united kingdom of Israel and Judah. A brief united monarchy, only held together by considerable diplomatic skill and soon breaking apart due to natural centrifugal tendencies is, however, not all that implausible.