Originally Posted by notta_skeptic

It was when I discovered this vast body of research on the writing of the Bible that I started questioning the whole foundation of my belief structure. Having been told my entire life that it was written by god himself, using men as intermediaries, was inerrant, and was as good as a history book, I was astounded beyond measure that there were thousands or more scholars who had undeniable evidence that Moses had not written the first five books of the Bible. It started me on the path that led to unbelief.

Originally Posted by Gullwind

Me too. I was never an inerrantist, but I didn't know the full scale of the situation. I was quite surprised, too.

Maybe this is an extreme view of it, but the DH seems to pretty much show that Judaism is based on mythology. And if Judaism has no foundation, how can Christianity (or Islam, for that matter) have any support?

Originally Posted by Bigmo

The Torah and Gospel are revelations.

Originally Posted by Bigmo

The problem is that men do not know how to shut up. There is a lot of information there in some of these scriptures. But they are all emphasizing a common theme. Its not only in Judaism, Christianity or Islam, but all religions have similar sources but people after their founders talk too much. God is silent.

Originally Posted by Gullwind

Me too. I was never an inerrantist, but I didn't know the full scale of the situation. I was quite surprised, too.

Originally Posted by notta_skeptic

What does that say about our religion that children and adults are not exposed to alternative ideas when it comes to our most holy religious writing? Heck, I didn't even know there was a Catholic version of the bible until I was in my early 40s. And, to my church, anything other than the KJV was heresy - or as good as.

Originally Posted by Bigmo

The problem is that men do not know how to shut up.

Originally Posted by Dean Anderson

How does your theory of Biblical authorship explain the consilience between the different ways in which there are textual differences? How do you explain the fact that when split using the DH, the text sources are consistent when each of these criteria is applied - yet when split using your criteria, the sources are inconsistent when each of the criteria is applied?

Originally Posted by Wolfhound

Yeah, and the Tarnhelm, and Excalibur, and the Golden Fleece, and the Winnowing Oar, and the Aegis, and the Book of Thoth, and Gleipnir, and Palladium, and on and on and on. I'm sure of them existed, too.

You're as credulous as a three year old child whose been read bedtime stories and expects to find a fairy ring in the morning when he wakes up. What's so pathetic is that you are, presumably, an educated adult and should no longer believe in such nonsense.

Originally Posted by spin

Can anyone cite a single cuneiform tablet written in Hebrew?

Thank you.
No? I thought not. NEXT!
spin

Originally Posted by Chris Weimer

I'm pretty sure the Palladium existed.

Originally Posted by wikipedia

The Trojan Palladium was said to be the image of Pallas, whom the Greeks identified with Athena and the Romans with Minerva, and to have fallen from heaven in answer to the prayer of Ilus, the founder of Troy. Since Troy could not be captured while it contained this image, the Greeks Diomedes and Odysseus carried it off during the Trojan War. According to various versions of this legend it found its way to Athens, or Argos, or Sparta (all in Greece), or Rome in Italy. To this last city it was either brought by Aeneas the exiled Trojan (Diomedes having only succeeded in stealing an imitation of the statue) or surrendered by Diomedes himself. It was kept there in the temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum.

According to myth, the importance of the Palladium to Troy was revealed to the Greeks by Helenus, the prophetic son of Priam, and Diomedes and Odysseus made their way to the citadel in Troy by a secret passage and took the image. In this way the Greeks were then able to enter Troy and lay it waste using the deceit of the Trojan Horse.

"The most ancient talismanic effigies of Athena," Ruck and Staples report, "...were magical found objects, faceless pillars of Earth in the old manner, before the Goddess was anthropomorphized and given form through the intervention of human intellectual meddling."[1]

In Late Antiquity, it was rumored that the Palladium was transferred from Rome to Constantinople by Constantine and buried under the Column of Constantine in his forum. Such a move would have undermined the primacy of Rome, and was naturally seen as a move by Constantine to legitimize his reign.