Kosh

In addition to Doctor X's wonderfull dismantion of this....

The items I quoted above are not what would be considered archeological in nature. They are writings, made long after the fact.

So even though they are off topic....

- Josephus wrote a good sixy years after the supposed incidents. The references to Jesus are considered alter Xian interpolations, and the others are simply historical information. If I mention a "smallville", does that make the Superman story true?

- Tacitus - Was he contemporary of Christ? Since he was not (56 - 117 ad), he's simply repeating mythology.

- Talmud, once again late, and therefore nothing but heresay.

NEXT?

Mageth

Already sufficiently deconstructed, but I'll add a tidbit:

Falvius Josephus writes about the existence of Jesus, John the Baptist, James (the brother of Jesus), and Ananias the high priest.

Josephus also wrote of the miraculous parting of the Pamphylian Sea for Alexander and his army.

Asha'man

Welcome to II, Sposam.

It was a nice try, but I’m afraid you have been deceived by your fellow Christians. The real story is somewhat different, and a bit dissapointing:

It seems that a professional archeologist disagrees with you.

In fact, it seems the entire conquest of Canaan is a fiction. Every piece of archeological evidence points to the fact that the Israelites are actually Canaanite natives, not foreign invaders. The conquest was probably fabricated in the 7th century BCE to provide political and religious justification for ownership of the land, since ownership by conquest was the only respected form back in those days.

The Tel Dan inscription merely mentions the “House of David”, but is not a reference to a King or a Kingdom. (It was probably written when Hazael, the king of Damascus, attacked the kingdom of Israel around 835BC. This is almost 300 years after the supposed dates for the rule of a King David.) From the inscription, all we really know is that someone named David existed, which is hardly a surprise.

Current archeological surveys of the historical Kingdoms of Israel and Judah indicate that they were never unified during the time that David and Solomon were supposed to have ruled (1005 – 931 BCE). Each kingdom grew at a separate rate, had separate wealth levels, and separate levels of government control. This is clearly indicated by the presence (or absence) of government buildings, commercial warehouses, and overall population surveys. Whoever David may have been, he was not a King of a unified Israel and Judah.

There is no way that a local river flood in Iraq in any way confirms the myth of Noah, especially since there is no such thing as “the time of Noah” in archeology. Archeology clearly confirms the continuous existence of multiple civilizations right through the time when the Bible claims that the flood wiped out all of mankind.

The Talmud clearly confirms that one or more men named Jesus were killed by stoning followed by hanging according to Jewish Law, not crucifixion according to Roman Law. If this reading of the Talmud is to be taken as accurate, then the Gospels are a total fiction. However, as the Doctor has pointed out, this is not archeology, but writings, and belongs in another thread.

Mathetes

I don't know about the rest, but I find it difficult to believe that any archeologist ever doubted about the existence of Ephesus or Jericho.

By the way, the first Neolithic layers in the city of Jericho predate the biblical date of Creation by more than 2000 years.

Kosh

That's gonna leave a mark....

Angrillori

I love the arguments of:

Place X exists.
Document Y mentions place X.
Therefore document Y must be true.

Leaving Las Vegas? TRUE!
Buffy the Vampire Slayer? TRUE!
2001? TRUE!
Bram Stoker's Dracula? TRUE!
Nightmare Before Christmas? TRUE! (Christmas and Halloween exist...)
Odyssey? Iliad? TRUE! (They found Troy right?)
Judges? Joshua? Chronicles? Kings? TRUE! TRUE! TRUE! TRUE!

Sposam

I appreciate the dialogue. I'm not sure I was trying to say that because certain cities have been found that this assumes the Bible to be true. Rather they serve as more smaller pieces of evidence to the larger case.

I want to respond to some of the "inaccuracies" assumed to be in the Bible, but this probably isn't the thread. Even Christians do a good job of pulling verses out of context.

I am short on time tonight, but I want to be one of the theists who stays around and continues to dialogue.

I do not mean this to cause trouble - seriuosly. It seems like any Christian sources have been dismissed as biased. Are there neutral sources available - not theist and not atheist? I'm not sure what that leaves.

Anyway, good discussions.

Sarpedon

My friend, you are not being troublesome, and we are always happy to see christians who stick around, and debate intelligently and politely. We will try to respond in kind. As for your claim that christian sources are discounted out of hand, this is not so...We are merely skeptical of christian sources as they are notorious for misrepresenting the facts. The example that Asha' man gives above from the bible unearthed is the usual; some archaeologist publishes a paper, media latches on to whatever part of it would sell the most, which happens to be anything that supports religion. The rest is ignored, or quoted out of context. This is the modus operandi for christian apologists for many years. Another good example is the recent "james ossuary" discovery, where the media trumpeted the discovery of a piece of physical evidence that supported the existence of jesus, long before it was studied by any credible archaeologist. As a result, this embarrassing hoax was taken as genuine by many, and the subsequent rebuttals of the above claim were not as widely published as the original announcement, so many STILL claim that it was genuine. We reject christian claims because they are often specious. Show us one that is not, and we will consider it.

Secondly, I object to your characterizing anyone who doesn't promote christian beliefs as being an "atheist source." Scientists are trained to be impartial. If the evidence is pro-christian, they say so, if it is not, then they say it is not. I assume you were objecting to Finklestein and Silberman? They were merely pointing out that what the media was reporting was at variance with the facts uncovered by the archaeological dig. There is no hidden anti-christian agenda here. They merely dig stuff up, study it, draw conclusions, and report it.

Also, there is the issue that christian sources have more to gain by promoting their ideas than do "atheist" sources. There is no atheist church, or atheist priests. If god is suddenly proven to exist, we all stop being atheists, but very few of us will have to find a new line of work. Now, if God were proven NOT to exist, just think of how many people would be out on the streets. Hundreds of Thousands, even Millions! These people have set their livelyhood on their religion. Therefore, they will do whatever they can to promote it, even lie, we've seen it before. Whenever someone tells you to believe something, ask yourself "what do they have to gain from my believing this?" Often, whoever has less to gain from you believing what they say is the one who is telling the truth.

As far as the bible goes, we remain skeptical until we see some things that are supported by evidence...There are some claims that are probably true, such as the story of the Babylonian captivity, is more or less consistent with other findings. It was a custom of certain ancient empires to displace conquered people from the fringes of their empire and resettle them in the middle, so as to more easily assimilate them. However, most biblical claims, that should have evidence to support them, simply dont. For example: The Plague on the Egyptians where all the firstborn died. There should be mass graves and heaps and heaps of mummies of all these boys and men, who all died on the same day! The egyptians were very fastidious with their funeral rites. Where are the tomb inscriptions? Where are tombs stuffed with mummies that had to be buried in a hurry? Where are the vast quantities of hastily mummified males? Literally Tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, would have died in that plague. We have been digging in Egypt for more than 100 years, and have not found a jot of evidence for that plague, or any of the others. We assume that anything that would logically leave evidence, but doesn't is just a tall tale. If you unearth evidence, we cheerfully will change our opinion. We are not the ones who claim infallibility. We find it peculiar that there are those who claim that the stories recorded by primitive people thousands of years ago, people who thought the world was flat and who were mostly illiterate, are infalliable.

People sometimes accuse me of believing nothing; on the contrary, I will believe ANYTHING, so long as there is evidence to support it.

(edited for spelling, and to add extra belaborment)

Sauron

And here we come to one of the favorite tactics of bible literalists: make the claim that scientists or historians doubted something, that was later proven to be true, thus validating the bible.

Here's the problem: thes bible literalists never demonstrate that scientists or historians doubted the "something", in the first place.

Josh McDowell in "Evidence that Demands a Verdict", claimed that historians doubted the existence of Edomites. Which is nonsense, since there are Roman records of Edomites (Idumea) that are separate and distinct from any biblical references.

In short: this is a strawman that bible literalists use: they set up a false position, attribute it to scientists or historians, and then claim that it has been proven true.

So: let's see your proof that science or history ever doubted the existence of any of these cities or places.

Koyaanisqatsi

Welcome to the arena . It can get rough (I know; I'm one of the rough ones).

I would argue that you are merely capitulating, based largely upon what you had initially posted ("All in all, I believe there is strong evidence to take the Bible at its word"). Don't worry. We see that a lot around here.

Usually it comes as a result of apologetic indoctrination; i.e., you're simply told various catch phrases (e.g., "Archeology proves the bible to be true" or the like) and then parot them back without much analysis.

When we provide the analysis others should have employed themselves upon first hearing the apologetic catch phrase, the capitulation occurs. We're used to it.

Case in point. As others have pointed out, archeological discoveries serve absolutely no evidentiary purpose in regard to claims of divinity, so, no, they are not "smaller pieces of evidence to the larger case" in the slightest. In fact, they are completely irrelevant to the "larger case," yet something tells me, you're not going to recognize this fact and discard this apologetic accordingly. I could be wrong, of course, and I sincerely hope that I am, but cult indoctrination is a bitch in heat and it has been my extensive experience on these boards that no matter how many times an argument has been demonstrated to be fallacious, theists continue to raise it as if the very existence of the argument somehow proves its veracity.

Hence the Sisyphian task we here at II face with just about every post.

We love trouble .

Not "dismissed as" but demonstrated to be. I'm sure you can appreciate the qualitative difference.

This (falsely) implies that atheist "sources" are not neutral, which in turn implies that there is some sort of atheist agenda and/or motivation to deliberately engage in either falsehoods or deceit. Atheism simply means the lack of belief in a god or gods and while there are certainly those among us intent on debunking various cult myths and dogma (i.e., Christian, Islamic, Judaic, etc.), there is no motive for any of us to engage in deceit.

I would ask you to consider which "side" is the one who invented such things as "false prophets" and "devils/demons" (how Paul goes to great lengths to pre-emptively declare that his god has made wisdom foolishness, etc), and how those literary devices are used to frighten/caution/confuse cult members against critical analysis from within the cults. That should give you a much better idea of where any bias comes into any of this.

Almost no one here is going to say, "You have to believe what we're telling you, or suffer the consequences," but a very good argument can be made for the detrimental consequences of believing in the various cult dogmas; the admonitions against applying critical analysis (whether implied or directly stated) number one on that list, IMO.

Granted, not all bias is based upon deceiving others, but there is one bias involved here that is almost exclusively based on deceiving one's self and it is to that concern that many of us respond and most of the detrimental consequences derive from. I'll leave it to you to guess which one that is .

If I were to say, for example, that I am a Kingist and then state, "Archeological discoveries prove that every character Stephen King ever wrote about actually exists," then the fact that I am a Kingist axiomatically biases me toward believing a priori everything that Stephen King writes. Qualifying or supporting this a priori assumption with archeological discoveries, is, therefore, unnecessary. I already believe it to be true prior to any evidence to support it, thus any evidence that may support it is entirely irrelevant to my beliefs, other than to personally confirm my self-deception.

If an Akingist came along and pointed out that these archeological discoveries do not in any way establish evidence for the factual existence of the characters (and their attributes) in any of King's novels, well, that wouldn't be an example of bias on the Akingist's behalf; it would simply be the truth.

In other words, it's not an attack on Theism so much as it is an assault on theistic mindsets and the reasoning (or lack thereof) employed accordingly.