Jabu Khan

What about Ptolemy?

spin

I'm impressed how lightly Vorkosigan responded to this bombastic harangue.

What is so easy about analysing biblical texts in the historical contexts in which they were written? It takes a lot of effort. History requires evidence, lots of it, and reasoning to put the evidence together. The trivialization of such a process suggests that the poster, Psalm 13:5, doesn't appreciate what is involved. This lack is reflected in such rhetoric as "dismiss it all in a wave of the hand".

Well, Psalm 13:5, what do you know about the historical background of the material discussed here that allows to make such apparently unjustifiedly flippant remarks? Could you criticise some of the argumentation that you are now dismissing out of hand? What do you know about history and how the bible reflects or doesn't reflect it?

Why are you wasting your and our time here at a site which is attempting to take a coherent, no-tricks approach to the bible?


spin

Vorkosigan

I was terribly condescending to her before, and that was my way of apologizing. I admit, though, it is both hard to imagine and totally terrifying to think, how anyone could call J.J Collins a "liberal atheist scholar."

Vorkosigan

Psalm 13:5

Re-read what I said. I said he dismisses the whole thing with a wave of the hand, not that I am. And I only posted a small number of prophecies, there are a lot more, but as you said, I think it's pointless with the mindset of the people here.

Psalm 13:5

Careful, you're putting words in my mouth again. I didn't say he was, re-read my post. Would you happen to be a lawyer by trade?

I'm kidding.

rostau

HEY, Psalm! I took your first 5 'fulfilled prophecis' and carefully dismantled each one. The least you could do is respond with counter-arguments or be gracious enough to concede that none of these 'prophecies' have been fulfilled. Come on. Get with the program.

spin

I said you were dismissive.

And Psalm 13:5, I think, if you won't analyse an argument on its own merits, it certainly is pointless for you to be here. If you don't like what a person says on logical grounds, then point out the logical problems. Don't just launch into an apparent tirade.


spin

Vorkosigan

I most certainly did not "dismiss it with a wave of the hand." Here is what I wrote on Micah:
__________
Psalm:
Micah 3:11-12
Jerusalem would be destroyed and "plowed like a field"
Bible passage: Micah 3:11-12
Prophet: Micah
Written: sometime between 750-686 BC
Fulfilled: 135 AD

Vork:
The Book of Micah dates from after this period, some parts apparently date from after the return from Exile. End of that discussion. The very passage in question is most probably a later addition. As a citation on Kirby's excellent website notes:

"In 3.9-12 the priests and prophets are the object of Micah's invective, and for the first time the threat of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple is made. As we have seen, this last passage is doubtful: Jer. 26.18 dates it in the time of Hezekiah. Anyone who accepts its authenticity will note that the passage must have made a great impression if it could be quoted a century later in a court as a reason for acquittal in such an important case." (Introduction to the Old Testament, p. 271)."

And again:

"Jay G. Williams writes: "There has been considerable debate among scholars about how much of the book is actually attributable to Micah himself. As usual, the more radical scholars perform amputative surgery and remove most of the passages of hope (that is, most of 4-7) as later additions. A few conservatives attirbute every word to the original Micah. The truth, however, seems to lie somewhere between the two extremes. Certainly there are several passages (for instance, 4:10 which speaks of exile in Babylon) which were probably added later. On the other hand, it hardly seems necessary to deny to Micah most of what is found in the latter half of the book. One can only do so by asssuming before hand that an eighth century prophet must have said this and not that. The truth is that we know so little about the prophetic movement as a whole that no such hypotheses can be very fully substantiated." (Understanding the Old Testament, p. 248)."

It would be difficult to show that this prophecy dates from before the destruction you speak of.

Note that in all of the examples you have given so far, there is no specific prophecy, just a vague sense of the future. For example, just today I yelled at some kids at my son's school to stop standing on the teeter-totter because someone would get hurt. Sure enough, as soon as I turned my back, someone fell off and scraped his knee. Do you consider that I have magical prophetic powers? Or rather, is it that any intelligent person can foresee that if the political class is corrupt and society unbalanced, eventually the nation will be ravaged?
_______

You will note that I raised several points. First, Micah is a book with a mixed authorship that was redacted in the post-exilic period. This is not my conclusion but that of OT scholars.

Second, I noted that the prophecy is non-specific. It does not say when or who would destroy Jerusalem. Micah's prophecy is a vague statement about the future, written after the city had already been destroyed and plowed like a field once before.

These are two very specific points. Further, I backed these points with references to places where you could look up the scholarly consensus, for example, Kirby's website, which contains further links to Encyclopedias and other reference works, as well as recognized books by scholars such as Friedman's introductory work, Sachar's History of Israel, or Collins' commentary on Daniel. None of these men are "anti-Christian."

It is actually you who are "dismissing" here, Psalm, for you have not grappled with even single point I have made.

Vorkosigan

Peter Kirby

Psalm, so far you've:

(1) Plagiarized a web site, verbatim, without a scintilla of attribution.
(2) Refused to engage Vork in a meaningful dialogue on the particular biblical books and their dating by the ad hominem (a false one) that the centrist scholarly opinions (e.g., Moses didn't pen the Torah) are the province of "liberal anti-Christian" folk.

No good evidence for the authorship of the Torah by Moses has ever been put forward; the main thing it has going for it is the claim by Ben Sira (c. 200 BCE) and later writers that Moses wrote it.

Evidence against authorship of these five books by Moses has been known for a long time. For example, Ibn Ezra (who died in 1167) realized that Genesis 36 couldn't have been written any earlier than the rule of Jehoshaphat because it mentions Hadad (cf. Gn 36:35; 1 Ki 11:14). The Reformation writer A. B. Carlstadt (1480–1541) said that the Torah wasn't written by Moses on the basis that the part after his death is written in the same style as what comes before. Spinoza (1670) saw several doublets and contradictions in the Torah, and he concluded that Ezra pieced together several sources, along with writing Deuteronomy, to produce it. The Roman Catholic author Richard Simon (1685) also developed a view that the Torah consisted of multiple sources, and Jean LeClerc (an Armenian) drew the conclusion that they were put together between 722 BCE and the time of Ezra by a Jew residing in Babylon. J. G. Eichhorn (1780–83), K. D. Ilgen (1798), and Alexander Geddes (1800) further developed the idea of Yahwistic and Elohistic sources. De Wette (1807) made the important observation that Deuteronomy is the best candidate for the law book "found" in the time of Josiah (whose reforms line up with the content of Deuteronomy). Many scholars followed until the "documentary hypothesis" received its classic form in the work of Wellhausen. (This information can be found in New Bible Dictionary, a publication of InterVarsity Press, described as evangelical, in the section on "Pentateuch," p. 894.) This of course is far from the end of the story (Wellhaussen's JEDP has been modified at the least), but the point should be clear: what Vorkosigan is talking about is nothing new, and it only reflects poorly on you that you didn't mention it before and do not give it serious consideration now.

best,
Peter Kirby

Asha'man

Going beyond analyzing the text itself, there is good archeological evidence that Moses was not recording his own history in his own time, simply because that history never happened.

Archeologists have been unable to locate any hint of the Hebrews living within Egypt, nor any trace of hundreds of thousands of individuals crossing the Sinai desert. (Though traces of smaller groups in the desert, both before and after, have been found.) On the contrary, archeology has found evidence that points strongly to the conclusion that the Hebrews were simply natives to Canaan, not conquers.

Given that no exodus and conquest ever happened, Moses himself is most likely a fictional character, not an author.

Analysis of the story of Moses contains strong hints that it was written long after it supposedly happened. For example, it references neighboring nations that were firmly established in the 7th century BCE, but didn’t exist in the 13th. Most likely, the whole story is a fairy tale, invented to provide justification for owning the land that the Hebrews lived on.

This is not simply hand waving, or even textual analysis. This is solid physical evidence that can be examined by any archeological expert who cares to look. The conclusion is pretty clear: most of the texts that appear to contain older history are simply wrong, and written much later than they are claimed.