is bible archeology real?

jimbob said:
Have you read bad fanfic?
Click to expand...
No, AFAIK I haven't read any fanfic at all. But as I understand the term, fanfic takes the characters from a certain canon - be it Star Trek, Harry Potter or what else - and invents new stories around those characters, preferably stories that are believable from the canon stories. And then you get endless flamewars and splits over questions whether Harry "does" Hermione or not - but I digress. So, fanfic has two characteristics: (1) the characters are pre-existing, but (2) the story line is original.

Noah's story in the Bible is no fanfic in this sense. The Bible writers took the story of Utanapishtim, changed his name to Noah, and the name of Enki to Yahweh, changed a few details, and passed it off as their own. So here we have (1) "new" characters, but (2) an existing story line. So, it's not fanfic. IMHO, it comes closer to plagiarism, which is wholesale copying of the text. And if I go out on a limb, just changing the characters' names to hide your copying wouldn't help you in a court of law today against a plagiarism charge.

And it's not only the flood story; the creation story, and the garden of Eden story in Genesis were likewise wholesale copied from Mesopotamian myths.

jimbob said:
But yes, your second point is also a good one. It's almost as if there were more sophisticated and powerful neighbouring civilisations that overawed the tellers of the bible stories and greatly influenced them.
Click to expand...
It's not just that they had more powerful neighbours, but that there is little to no evidence of Judaism's alleged very ancient roots. You'd think Herodotus would have mentioned this tribe with their quaint monotheistic religion; but no. And this is after Ezra would have built the Second Temple. Are there other extra-biblical references to Judaism, or to the Hebrew Bible, or at least the Torah? Not that I'm aware of. There is simply no tangible evidence they existed before the DSS. :rolleyes:

Lest someone object you could claim the same of our copies of Herodotus or Tacitus or any other ancient Greek or Roman author: that is no valid comparison. Greek and Roman authors often referenced each other, and explicitly quoted other authors. There's no way our dating is wrong unless it is wrong for the whole Graeco-Latin corpus as a whole.

But there is no outside reference point for any of the Hebrew Bible books. Their dating is purely done on textual and linguistic grounds, and the latter on basis of a very limited corpus of Ancient Hebrew texts, none of them biblical.

I realize this is a very minimalistic standpoint.
 
ddt said:
....as I understand the term, fanfic takes the characters from a certain canon - be it Star Trek, Harry Potter or what else - and invents new stories around those characters, preferably stories that are believable from the canon stories. And then you get endless flamewars and splits over questions whether Harry "does" Hermione or not - but I digress. So, fanfic has two characteristics: (1) the characters are pre-existing, but (2) the story line is original.
Click to expand...

And where do you draw the line between fanfic and genuine series authorship by established authors i.e. novels by James Blish, Vonda McIntyre, and Alan Dean Foster based on existing characters from Star Trek/Star Wars?

hardly fanfic IMO.
 
smartcooky said:
And where do you draw the line between fanfic and genuine series authorship by established authors i.e. novels by James Blish, Vonda McIntyre, and Alan Dean Foster based on existing characters from Star Trek/Star Wars?

hardly fanfic IMO.
Click to expand...
I know none of those authors. But I think the question what is fanfic and what is established canon - how interesting it may be in its own right - is hardly germane for the distinction I drew in that post.
 
jimbob said:
Have you read bad fanfic?

But yes, your second point is also a good one. It's almost as if there were more sophisticated and powerful neighbouring civilisations that overawed the tellers of the bible stories and greatly influenced them.
Click to expand...

To the best of my experience it is well nigh impossible to read fanfic in any moderate amount without reading bad fanfic. The Farce is high within them.
 
Way I understand it, to qualify as fanfic, it must more or less work within the existing canon of another franchise. If it just rewrites everything, then it's not really.

E.g.,

- if I were to write a amazing story of crew member Joe Christian of the NX-01 Enterprise, and his interactions with Captain Jonathan Archer, T'Pol and the gang, then that's fanfic.

- if I were to write something called Star Travel, where the United Planetary Confederation sends starship USS Undertaking to seek out new life forms and civilizations, that's at best a parody and at worst a rip-off, but most people wouldn't really consider it fanfic

In that vein, I'd say that the NT or the rabinical midrash is fanfic. The OT in relation to the Mesopotamian myths, meh, not so much fanfic as plagiarism.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom