Roger Pearse

I was wondering why this is a question directed at one person. Surely the same question might be directed in all directions, with or without animosity?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Looking at Google, there is a Wikipedia page and a professional translation of the text.

The Wikipedia page gives a very familiar-looking list of 10 ante-diluvian kings: the same list as that given by Berossus and preserved in Eusebius Chronicle, complete with reigns denominated in 'sars'. (Eusebius expresses his scepticism about whether a sar=3600 years, as I indicated in the post earlier).

So here we are right back to the issue which I raised earlier; are these very large numbers, as in Genesis, the result of rather later mistranslations or mistaken arithmetic?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

I do; this is the sar->3600 years conversion, and the source is Eusebius Chronicle book 1. The regnal lengths are quoted in sars, not years.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Sauron

Because that one person has been persistently evasive when confronted with pointed questions.

But alas - you already knew this, making it unlikely that you "wondered" about it. Your line of questioning is merely a springboard to try and re-focus the conversation.

An excellent idea. After we get afdave to answer the question, we can certainly broaden the scope. Doing so now, however, would only defocus the original poster's question to Davey Boy, allowing him to duck out on answering it.

Was that your intent?

Roger Pearse

Is there a reason why he should, and if so what is it? Come, this seems like jeering and nothing more -- it contains no content, at any rate. We can all go around making demands of others.

The disagreement is not between you and afDave, tho, but between you and every educated person in the world. Ask someone teaching ancient history in any university in the world.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

I have to say that I have never met anyone make this statement about something that they DO want to believe, or to go out and start producing any. Thus I infer that it's a set of words for prejudice. That seems to me to be a waste of valuable drinking time.

Hum. Well I don't claim to know.

But I find that most people who appeal to these sorts of issues have some kind of argument along these lines in mind: "modern society has many wonderful bits of science; unless you adopt the values and ideas that I talk about you are rejecting this." This, of course, is the fallacy of the omitted middle.

Few atheists are scientists, at any event. Attempts to bully people with 'science' are rather Victorian, you know, anyway. Outside the children of the current generation are sat in a circle worshipping rocks!

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Sauron

You already know the answer: Davey has presented no reason for accepting one myth and rejecting the other.

Yes, he's said that he accepts them both with the same level of critique; however, that was predicated on being able to use the base-60 argument to recalculate the 10,000 year lifespans of the Sumerian kings and bring them downwards. Presumably, to bring them in line with the patriarchal ages. That approach didn't work, though.

1. It's far from jeering - it is a request to explain a contradiction on behavior.

2. How silly; you have it backwards. Evil One isn't required to provide content - the claim isn't coming from Evil One. It's coming from afdave. Davey's the person that you should be appealing to for some content, Roger.

No demands here.

Sadly incorrect. There are dozens of educated people in this very forum who quickly put the lie to your desperate sweeping generalization. There are also experts who will clearly admit the decisive value of non-textual evidence in determining historical events (or non-events).

Instead of making demands of others , you'd do better to support you own claim. Do you have any sourced to support your view about the relative value of written sources? Experts working in the field who ALSO have experience in the other types of evidence?

Or is this just some of your content-free jeering?

Sauron

Hm. Well, I daresay that I probably know more scientists and have read more science than you have, especially since you admit to not knowing about these topics. I've never met anyone who tried to frame an argument the way you have caricatured it above.

Correction: since there's no evidence that anyone uses this argument in the first place, the fallacy is that of strawman.

Ah. Another sweeping pronouncement with absolutely zero evidence to support it. Unless you have some data you're hiding up your sleeve?

Faid

No animosity here. Anyone can answer this question (including you, if you like); I am particularly interested in dave's reply, though, because I strongly suspect that he doesn't use the same standards everyone else does- and that the only criteria he has to tell between myths and "historical records" is whether they confirm to his beliefs and to his religious doctrine of choice.

If dave trusts an objective method to distinguish between myths and actual "historical records", I'm sure he will be able to tell us which it is. And we can continue the debate from there, seeing if it has merit, and how it applies to his claims.

If not, then this is yet another pointless thread.

The Evil One

Thanks to The Buxter supplying a link to the Oxford electronic Sumerian corpus (which I should have thought of myself - d'oh!) I can now say with confidence that the full SKL is in the Sumerian language.

However, there are later parallel (but not identical) documents in Akkadian if I recall correctly. Obviously they are not to be found on the Sumerian website.


I already said I didn't, and indicated why it seems to be irrelevent to the debate we are actually having (which is about afdave's latest YEC claim of a literally historical Genesis) -- as opposed to the debate you apparently think we're having which is about text criticism of ancient king lists.



afdave is the one making the claim that one particular ancient source is an accurate historical record in every particular. It seems legitimate to query the steps of the thought process that have led him to this conclusion.


It doesn't matter for the present debate. For the present, afdave is arguing the accuracy of the genesis account. When we've got him past this misconception, we can start discussing with him which of the possibilities you raise is responsible for the presence of inaccurate large numbers in the texts.

That said, I don't see that either explanation is necessary. Supposing that there was a "mistranslation" or "mistaken arithmetic" presumes that there was some ur-document which listed real people with realistic lifespans, and that this document was later muddled up. However, given the likely mythological nature of the people in the early part of the lists, I don't see any reason to posit such an ur-document. We know that myths contain weird stuff; I see no reason that the extended life spans can't just be an example of this. Of course your explanations are possible. But my explanation is more parsimonious.

I'll have to take your word for it. However, you will please note that the later regnal lengths on the list are not given in sars.

A priori we should treat all sources equally critically. Of course one may have an a posteriori reason to treat one source less critically than another. I am asking afdave if he has any such reason in this case, because it seems to me that such a reason would be an important component of the overall case he attempts to make in the OP to this thread and elsewhere. I am sorry if you have a problem with this.

This is the second time you have accused me of making content-less posts. I am not sure that you are successfully distinguishing between no content and content you don't like. In any case, I cannot agree that this is just "jeering". It is the nature of debate that one asks questions about what seem to be weak points in arguments one disagrees with. I can't see that my question to afdave is any more of a jeer than your questions to me.

You are incorrect. Ancient written testimony is critically important evidence. It tells us a great deal. We should not ignore it. But it is not weighty in the sense that, when it comes into conflict with other types of evidence, it loses out.

I am fairly certain that if I ask "someone teaching ancient history in any university in the world", they will agree with me that it would be perverse to uphold the truth of an account in any given ancient source where that account comes into conflict with physical evidence.

That is the bottom line, and that is what I and others are arguing to afdave.

As for your latest comments about science, atheism, the excluded middle, and the "extraordinary evidence" issue, I have to say I find them incoherent. My apologies.