Hex

Okay, Nuwanda, if your hypothesis is correct, where are the relics? And, can you conclusively prove that they came from not only the right time but the right place?

How would Jews and Christians for, as you propose, thousands of years, know where to find the items?

It is not logical that we have no evidence. It is unreasonable to think that 'pilgrims' to the 'Exodus desert' would have plucked everything clean enough that archaeologists could find no trace if 'pilgrims' had no issue in finding the artifacts without the training and tenacity of professionals. (Look here to how 'looters' treat archaeological sites versus how archaeologists do.)

Likely we would also see reminants of 'Salim's Relic Shack' as a pilgrimage point, right?

RED DAVE

From Larsguy47:
Just so we can keep things straight, what is your basis for claiming to be Jewish? The recognized criteria are either:

(a) being born of a Jewish mother; or

(b) conversion.

Which?

Since you also claim to be the Messiah, I would like to hear your basis for this much more modest claim.

RED DAVE

Hex

Actually Lars, they do.

Maybe not whole houses, but stone rings to hold the tent materials down. Spin did a very nice job of pounding at you on this, but here, to be nice, is an example of two of ten tent remains from the Negrev that date 2nd Century AD:



From The Edge of the Empire: The Archaeology of Pastoral Nomads in the Southern Negev Highlands in Late Antiquity, Steven A. Rosen; Gideon Avni, The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 56, No. 4, Nomadic Pastoralism: Past and Present. (Dec., 1993), pp. 189-199.

Now, I wonder Lars, if you only do your research on the interweb. You don't seem to have done much checking up on the citations I've been giving you ...

Sauron

Well, since the Exodus never happened, what you're describing here is an argument between groups of people pushing for two different versions of the same fairy tale.

Sauron

Fixed for you.

Hex

If you are referring to Lennart Moller and the "coral-covered chariot wheels" theory, then, I suggest you take a step back. Moller isn't an archaeologist, he's a DNA specialist. And, for those falling prey to The Exodus Case, check out the review by Martin Rundkvist: Biblical pseudoarchaeology by a Swedish professor of medicine Skeptical Inquirer, Nov-Dec, 2004.

Sorry, praxeus, I couldn't find a single thing in scholarly journals about the 'Aquaba Crossing' stuff. Might be that that's really not a focus for "Many folks looking at the Exodus today", huh?

RED DAVE

From RED DAVE:
From Sauron:
Sigh. Some people just never get things right.

RED DAVE

Hex

Lars, I already told you, archaeology is not your friend in this, and when you start to deal with archaeologists, I have to step up ...

Your problem with archaeologists is that they have a strong grasp on precise chronology. For archaeologists, the archaeological record -is- the fact, and all the documents are ancillary.

Take, for example, the Titanic. Exploreres and marine archaeologists have found and explored the sunken wreck. We have pictures. Items retreived that are -proof- that we have the right ship. Should we then beleive:

N/A

People do write things that are not true. For many different reasons. Yet, the sunken ship doesn't lie (other than on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean ). We can examine the wreck and recreate from the remains just how it went down and why.

And the same cane be done for the Bible. But from an archaeologist's view, the Bible must be warped or changed to fit the facts, not the other way around.



Okay, your turn. Provide me with some -proof- that archaeologists believe this.



And archaeologists -look- especially for all of these. They are usually a wealth of information. And, contrary to what you propose, they -do- leave a residue in the archaeological record. Biodegradeable stuff leads to phosphates. Check out Paleotopography and Phosphate Analysis of a Buried Jungle Site in Ecuador, by Ronald D. Lippi, Journal of Field Archaeology © 1988

And take the fires for another example. Not only would your rather tidy Hebrews have to clean up all the ash, but any sands or rocks that were 'heat-treated'. Some fires can fuse sands into glass nodules. Most of the time rocks, snads and clays just change color with the heat.



Now, in the area we're looking at it's not all beach sand. The compacting of sands and other soils has been known for a long time as showing up in aerial photography (Note: Air Photography and Archaeology, by J. K. St. Joseph, The Geographical Journal © 1945). Such studies have yeilded not only information on structures and the paths between them (Air Photographic Mapping of San Marcos Pueblo, by Frank W. Eddy; Dale R. Lightfoot; Eden A. Welker; Layne L. Wright; Dolores C. Torres, Journal of Field Archaeology © 1996), but also travel routes (The Archaeological Identification of an Ancient Peruvian Pilgrimage Center, by Helaine Silverman, World Archaeology © 1994).

Individual footprints might not leave much of a mark, but in large numbers or over time, they can add up in the archaeological record.



Lars, I give you lots of citations to back up my assertions. Have you looked at any? I mean, they're in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and not on the interweb, so I'm not sure if you count them as 'research'. But they -do- answer a -lot- of the questions/issues you seem to be continually raising.

And they're why, overall, I'm perhaps a bit smug that no matter how you try to dish out what you want to spoon-feed us, I'll be able to spit it right back in your face and tell you why it doesn't taste good. I have facts and analysis of not just one person, but a whole field or two to back me and my position up.

You've got a couple of quotes of questionable veracity (not that I don't beleive Kenyon, but I think you put too much weight on an opinion), a chart you misuse, a reconstructed timeline and a pretty story.

If I -were- a betting man and were faced with the two sides, I wouldn't be putting my money on your side right now ... :huh:

Sauron

More bullshit from the Bullshit Messiah.

No one assumes that any hypothetical exodus hebrews are building stone houses. The assumption all along was that if this story had even a shred of fact to it, that these hebrews would have been living in tents.

In spite of that, zero evidence has been found for 2.5 million people living in tents.

Larsguy47

Actually the archaeology side of it is my friend, perhaps not archaeologists trying to add their own interpretation of chronology. So I'm separating archaeology and chronology at this point. For instance, archaeological evidence shows say the Philistine pottery period extending "well into the 10th century BC" per Finkelstein. That's an archaeological assessment. That's fine. But then Finkelstein will note that this conflicts with the popular dating of David from 1010-970BCE, a rule which is more appropriate toward the end of the Philistine pottery period. However, who asked Finkelstein to only apply that particular timeline? If you use the Kenyon-based timeline for the fall of Jericho, for instance, during the time immediately after Amenhotep III as she does, then the projected dating for Solomon's rule beginning no earlier than 914 and thus David's rule no earlier than 954BCE, then there's no conflict with the archaeological findings and the historical application. That's what I meant when they don't have a good "grasp" of the chronology and particularly Biblical chronology, which dates the Exodus at the beginning of the reign of Akhenaten and specifically to 1386 BCE. So some Biblical chronology scenarios also don't date Solomon and David as early as some of the standard dating from archaeologists do.

So archaeology is my friend, but not necessary archaeologists who pick and choose various timelines in line with their own agendas that serve their Bible-bashing.

Again, note ARCHAEOLOGY is my friend. Kenyon an archaeologist dates the fall of Jericho between 1350-1325BCE. GREAT. She's my friend, since my dating is 1346BCE. Finkelstein says the Philistine pottery period extends well into the 10th century BCE, that's fine with me since David's rule doesn't start until 950BCE anyway. So that dovetails with the archaeology.

Yes, this is a stipulated clarification. We have to separate archaeologically dated things from the popular chronology some archaeologists use to draw their conclusions. The pure archaeology, however, usually agrees quite well with the Biblical timeline.

No. That's a "warped" view of archaeologists becuase they are not Biblical experts and get lots of stuff wrong. The difference between harmonizing between the Bible and archaeology, therefore, often is an amateur or one-sided or biased application of a Biblical interpretation to the archaeological findings. That is, at the very least, when more than one apparent Biblical timeline can be used, archaeologists should make comparisons of what they find with those timelines. Some of them do. For instance, Kenyon came up with the dating for the fall of Jericho between 1350-1325BCE, and noted in passing that that didn't fit two of the more popular dates in place connected with this. That's what she should have done. Finkelstein and others, on the other hand basically only use one timeline they prefer and make comparisons to that specific one, ignoring all others and use that personal preference to draw all kinds of other conclusions.

Thanks for the added info on what is looked for by modern archaeology.


Yes, I have been reading some of the references, which are quite interesting.


Actually, I'm not entirely in disagreement with you and some of what I assert is academic so can not be refuted. For instance, that Manetho or Syncellus dates Joseph's appointment as vizier to year 17 of Apophis. That's a reference that's there. Connected with that is the implication of who was ruling when the Exodus occurred. Now you can dismiss that that reference is not accurate, debate whether or not it agrees entirely with the Biblical record, perhaps, but you can't say that reference is just a figment of my imagination and doesn't exist. So what can you spit back at me in that case? I'm just siting one of many references connected with the Exodus issue.

Sorry, that's not a dismissal. And I can use any supporting evidence I wish to support my position. That's what I'm SUPPOSED to do. If you don't agree with Kenyon's dating for the fall of Jericho, fine. But she agrees with me so I use her. The difference is, that otherwise you'd be saying something like: "NOT A SINGLE ARCHAEOLOGIST AGREES WITH YOU! All the archaeologist and their scholarly peers completely contradict you." You can't say that now. Further, not a single person has contradicted that there was an LBIIA occupation of Jericho. So Kenyon hasn't been contradicted. Part of that dating was in line with cartouches found of Amenhotep III, so she has no choice but to date the Jericho period sometime during or slightly after the rule of that king, which she does. So until the dating for Amenhotep III changes (though Rohl tries at it), Kenyon's dating is still a foregone conclusion. If you are suggesting someone has effectively redated the LBIIA Jericho fall or "abandonment" grossly outside the 1350-1325BCE dating, then I haven't seen that reference.

As far as the chart I "misuse", that's a joke. I went back to the source and that has been completely resolved in my favor.

Here is the comple dismissal of your claim of my MISUSE of the chart:

"There is another basic aspect that should be mentioned here briefly in relation to the Groningen 14C dates of Tel Rehov: ‘The statistical (random) nature of radioactive decay causes the results of repeated measurements to spread around a “true” value. The possible discrepancy between a measured value and the “true” value is indicated by the standard deviation (sigmas )’ (Mook and Waterbolk 1985: 10). Therefore, the midpoint value of a single date may be 1-sigma (68.2%) or 2-sigma (95.4%) away from the ‘true’ value. Making two or three measured values of the same sample (sub-samples), each with its own pre-treatment, results in a much firmer dating basis, which we consider important in Near Eastern archaeology, as the 14C dating method is pushed to its very limit of resolution (van der Plicht and Bruins 2001). Though two midpoint dates on both ends of a mutual 2-sigma range are considered the same in physical–mathematical terms, the calibrated age of each of them may be substantially different from an archaeological–historical perspective. It is imperative in our methodology of duplicate or triplicate measurements of single samples, employed for many of the Tel Rehov Loci, to calculate the weighted average of the separate dating measurements. Thus, the outcome will be more precise and possibly also more accurate, closer to the ‘true’ value, if the radiocarbon laboratory involved does not have any systematic measurement bias (van der Plicht and Bruins [Chapter 14, this volume]). Hence the ‘R_Combine’ command is often used in the developed Bayesian model, so that the weighted average results of multiple measurements of one sample of a certain Locus are calculated by the model prior to the Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling process (Bronk Ramsey 2003; Gilks, Richardson and Speigelhalter 1996). The underlying assumption for calculation of the weighted average is that the organic materials from the Locus are truly contemporary.

FROM: "The Bible and Radiocarbon Dating - Archaeology, Text and Science" Edited by Thomas E. Levy and Thomas Higham, PAGE 273

Did you get that? More is in the chart than just 2-sigma and 1-sigma values which have those wide ranges. Something new is going on called the "weighted avarage" which is considered more accurate toward the "true date." The "weighted average" reference in the chart is expressed by the graph height, weighed against what they labeled as "relative probability." As you can see in the case of Level IV Rehov, the highest relative probability found there for values say 98% or higher are only for a short range of years from about 874-867 BCE. These are considered just as noted, as the the relatively most probable "true date" for this event, that is the destruction of the city since the short-lived same of seeds is considered rather contemporary with that event, that is, within a year or so in age relative to this event.

So I am not misuing the chart. The chart represents just what it says, which dates are of the highest "relative probability" with reference to the results of multiple testing of sub samples and the weighted average based on those multiple testings, the highest averages believed to be closer to the true date. Thus 874-867BCE are considered to be closest to the "true date" for when this city was destroyed presuming the grains tested were harvested no more than a year before the city fell.

So, sorry, the chart actually does tell us exactly what it appears to.


LG47