Occam's Aftershave

AFDave, are you ever going to come back to the E/C forum and address the data on Brown's Hydroplate steam-launched asteroids claims?

Lots of people did the detailed calculations you always demand. It would be pretty damn rude for you to just bail out again and not acknowledge the work.

-Jay-

That could also explain the reliance on largely forgotten 70 year old apologetics, and why often when they do cite mainstream publications, they're mainstream publications from the 19th century...

regards,

NinJay

VoxRat

This was a really great post - beautiful in its thoroughness and clarity. The perfect antidote to Dave's characteristic tactic, the argumentum ad nebulam - a mixture of multiple fallacies, primarily involving equivocation and strawman and distraction - designed to fog up the issue to the point of unrecognizability, throw a lot of words at it, then claim victory. By any sensible analysis, the discussion should be finished at this point, and Dave's contentions recognized as thoroughly refuted.

Somehow, though - and I sincerely hope I'm wrong - I have a feeling Dave is going to come back and simply restate his thoroughly refuted thesis, ignoring Dean's careful analysis. It's my observation that a "victory" in dealing with Dave's arguments means that a relatively long period of time (weeks or months!) will elapse before he recycles the exact same defeated argument - rather than just seconds or minutes.

-Jay-

:notworthy: Excellent characterization!

regards,

NinJay

spin

As most of the scholarly work rests in books though and much of the material on internet highly suspect, isn't googling a formula for remaining stupid?

It was the internet that got him into this trouble, for where else did he find this outdated colophon crap. He didn't suddenly get an illumination from god to say that he had to read Air Commodore P.J. Wiseman's work -- which hasn't been in scholarly literature in the past 50 years.

I'd much prefer it if afdave started out with a few recognized university archaeology 101 bibliographies as a guide for what he should read, though these books would probably not assuage his modern logical problems with his own theological condition.


spin

Dave Hawkins

CHAMPOLLION'S BIG MISTAKE PROVIDES KEY TO 'MISSING' ISRAELITE ACTIVITIES
Dean made a post recently providing supposed evidence against the Mosaic authorship of the Penateuch. http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...05#post4823205 His most important point was I will deal with Dean's other points later, but I want to address his most important point first. The reason Dean thinks than Moses did not exist is because of a key assumption which has never been questioned by Egyptologists until David Rohl. Let's investigate ... (See also my new blog post ... http://afdave.wordpress.com/2007/10/...s-big-mistake/)

Jean Francois Champollion has been called 'the Father of Egyptology.' David Rohl, in his book Pharoahs and Kings: A Biblical Quest, relates that the Conventional Chronology of Egypt, such as that presented by Professor Kenneth Kitchen is based upon certain key assumptions received from Champollion, one of which, Rohl says, has never been questioned before his time. This key assumption is that the Egyptian Pharoah, Shoshenk I whose name is found on the Egyptian monuments is one and the same as 'Shishak,' the Pharoah who plundered Solomon's temple according to the Bible (II Chron. 12). (Rohl, p. 10) But where did this assumption come from? It came from Champollion when he made his first (and only) visit to Egypt. Rohl writes (p. 122) ...
Below is a map of Shoshenk's campaign with Rehoboam's fortified cities shown with letters. As you can see, name-ring 29 would most logically fall somewhere close to name-rings 30 & 31 and 27 & 28 on the map ... that is, nowhere close to Rehoboam's kingdom at all.



Finally, I Kings 11:40 tells us that Jeroboam, the king of Israel (Northern kingdom) took refuge with Shishak to escape the wrath of Solomon. If Shishak = Shoshenk (Champollion's view), then why would Shishak invade his ally's (Jeroboam's) kingdom in the northern part of Israel and leave the southern kingdom untouched? This is not logical.

SUMMING IT UP
Rohl goes on to explain how this fundamental error of Champollion has caused the Third Intermediate Period (TIP) Chronology to be out by several centuries, thus causing archaeologists to look in the wrong Egyptian dynasty for evidence of Israel's activities. Again, the points Rohl makes are ...

1) Champollion mistranslated name-ring 29 on Shoshenk I's campaign list, causing him to equate Shoshenk I with the Biblical Shishak.
2) Champollion failed to notice that the location represented by name-ring 29 could not possibly have been 'Judah the Kingdom' because of the positively identified locations of the name-rings surrounding name-ring 29
3) No Egyptologists since Champollion (except Rohl) -- including the great Kenneth Kitchen -- have questioned Champollion's assertion that Shoshenk = Shishak, thus perpetuating a several century error in Egyptological studies
4) Once we correct this error, we find all kinds of evidence for Israel's activities as Rohl shows in this book. (See below)

Why does this matter? It matters because now, with Rohl's New Chronology, the Biblical accounts of the Israelites are confirmed as historical by the findings of archaeology. The Bible is a real history book which relates real activities of real people. It is not a "Bronze Age myth" as skeptics like to say. In fact, it is the most accurate history book in the world ... which makes sense that it would be if it truly is the Message of the Creator to Mankind.


MY CONTINUOUSLY GROWING BOOK REVIEWS OF DAVID ROHL'S BOOKS
See ... http://afdave.wordpress.com/2007/06/...an-chronology/
From the back cover of his first book ... "In Pharoahs and Kings, Egyptologist and ancient historian David Rohl presents a revolutionary theory that challenges the modern skeptical view of Old Testament history. Rohl demonstrates that archaeologists have been looking in the right places for evidence of the Israelites--but in completely the wrong time. Pharoahs and Kings reveals the true historical setting of the biblical epics, providing astonishing archaeological evidence for the existence of the Old Testament's most charismatic personalities.

'Missing' Evidence of Israel's Activities (Rohl's page numbers in parentheses) ...
* A Papyrus dated to the generation just prior to the birth of Moses listing slaves with Hebrew names--Menahem, Issachar, Asher, and Shiprah (one of the names of a Hebrew midwife listed in Exodus 1:15-21) (p. 276)
* Manetho wrote that that in the reign of Dudimose (the Pharoah of the Exodus under the New Chronology), 'a blast of God smote us' (i.e. the Egyptians) (p. 283)
* The 13th Dynasty of Egypt ended abruptly with the reign of Dudimose and we are told by Manetho that a foreign power took over the rule of Egypt. This would make sense if Dudimose's army had just been destroyed as related in the Book of Exodus.
* The archaeology of Avaris (northern city in the land of Goshen) shows that, at approximately at this time, there was a terrible catastrophe--shallow burial pits all over Avaris into which victims had been hurriedly cast. (p. 279)
* The palace and cult statue of Joseph the Vizier of Egypt appears to have been found (p. 327)
* Evidence for the fallen walls and burned city of Jericho in the correct time period thus vindicating Garstang and refuting Kenyon (p. 299)

************************************************** **

ANSWERING SOME OBJECTIONS FROM DEAN
From the balance of Dean's "Against Mosaic Authorship" post ... http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...05#post4823205

EVIDENCE OF MULTIPLE AUTHORS
Dean says that "the Torah is written in a variety of styles and in language of a variety of ages." He goes on to say that "the remaining 80% was written by Moses. This 80%, naturally, contains all the differences in textual style and age that indicate multiple authorship." I have already agreed with the first part of this. The general premise of the Tablet Theory states that Moses was the compiler of Genesis and that he added his own material -- probably the account of Joseph near the end of the book. So of course we would expect to find a variety of styles in Genesis. Also, it is not unreasonable to suppose that Joshua added the information about the death of Moses to the record of Deuteronomy. The Tablet Theory explains the varying styles in Genesis quite coherently. As for the various styles supposedly contained in the "remaining 80%" ... you have not given me any examples of this. Could you please supply some examples?

LACK OF ANY AUTHORIAL CLAIM
Dean writes ... Colophons are known to be used on tablet sources. Tablets were used in Mesopotamia, but not in Egypt or later, in Israel. Egyptians used papyrus and the Israelites used vellum. While we DO know of colophons being used on tablets, we (or at least I) do not know of them being used on papyrus or vellum.

ANACHRONISMS
Please give an example of this. I don't think you are correct. I have dealt with supposed anachronisms in past debates.

MOSES' DEATH
Why? Please elaborate. Can you show that the Account of Moses' Death is very dissimilar in style compared to the style of the Book of Joshua? This might help your case.

COLOPHONS NOT SIMILAR
This is a mystery to me. How is this ... (thank you Cege) ... not similar to this ... ??I didn't say they were identical. I said they were similar. And they are. Both contain the name of the author, even mentioning who the author was the son of.

THE GREAT AGE OF GENESIS SOURCES
Jack the Bodiless wrote ... And Dean added ... Jack, I challenge you to present some evidence for your assertion about Genesis containing reworks of the Sumerian and Babylonian myths. Better yet, give your evidence to Dean and let him present it if he feels it's worthy. This has been an assumption of conventional scholarship just like the Champollion assumption mentioned earlier. Conventional scholarship is full of assumptions like this and people like you repeat them uncritically because you apparently don't want to believe that the Book of Genesis is reliable history. I'll give you just one reason why we know the source material for Genesis is older than these myths. Genesis 1:16 talks about the "greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night." Wiseman points out that men had given names to the sun and moon and worshipped them as deities long before the Flood (see Faber). Why would the writer not use names for the sun and moon? The most reasonable answer is because no one had given them names yet when this account was written. There are many other reasons to believe that this passage of Genesis comes from a source much older than the Sumerian and Bablylonian myths. I suggest you read Wiseman's book. I think you will find that the most reasonable hypothesis is that the Sumerian and Babylonian accounts are corrupted copies of these original sources and that Moses' account is the uncorrupted compilation of these accounts.

Secondly, Dean, if the Babylonian words entered the text during the captivity, why didn't Babylonian words enter the ENTIRE text? The Babylonian words only appear in the earlier parts of Genesis but not in later parts of the Torah, which supports the view that the parts with Babylonian words date back to the time of Abraham (remember Abraham came from Ur, fairly close to Babylon) and before.

Thirdly, there is no non-sequitur. I am not saying that the Babylonian words were in the Hebrew language. You misunderstand. I am saying that the Babylonian words were in common use by the original authors of the Genesis source material, not by the early Hebrews who Moses led out of Egypt. Now do you understand Wiseman's argument?

Cege

That is not Dean's claim. Dean clearly stated that the Tablet Theory makes that claim.

Constant Mews

I'm sorry Dave, but this is simply incoherent nonsense. And Rohl is quite simply wrong. He is arguing from his conclusion back into twisted logic. Had his case any merit, it would have been picked up by the many Christian and Jewish Biblical archaeologists who have no 'ideological bias'.

No, actually we don't. Rohl's claims merely move dates - they provide no more support that the Biblical stories are actual history.

I'm sorry, but this is, quite simply, insane. Whether or not Rohl can readjust the dates does nothing to show that the stories are any more or less historical; it merely removes one bar that prevents them from being historical. There is still no evidence that the Exodus actually happened. Empirical evidence. The kind that you are unable to present to support your case, such as evidence that 3+ million people spent 40 years in the Sinai and adjacent regions; that an entire Egyptian army was drowned; etc.

You have no empirical evidence whatsoever.

Absolutely false. This is a mistake on your part brought about by your inability to understand history, logic, empirical evidence. Unfortunately, you have no empirical evidence to support your case. Continuing to assert it over and over and over again gains you nothing but ridicule.

spin

Kenneth Kitchen, the most respected expert on Egypt's Third Intermediate Period -- TIP -- (and good evangelical christian, as you know), has torn David Rohl's chronological revisionism to pieces. Kitchen literally wrote the book on the TIP. See this (pdf) analysis of the chronology Rohl messes with and tell us how Kitchen is wrong.

At the same time Rohl, when he chops a chunk out of Egyptian history, puts it out of whack with Assyrian history and we have a nice set of continuous chronology from Assyria, which can be compared to Egyptian history because of the el-Amarna letters, the texts from Hattusis, the Ugarit texts and sundry Assyrian and Babylonian texts. The Amarna letters tie Egyptian history to all the major powers of the fertile crescent and Assyrian records (king lists and eponym lists) are continuous down to close to the fall of the empire. You simply can't have one country's history longer than another's for the same period. (If you need some solid information on this subject, just ask.)

Rohl will not save you. He cannot save himself. That's why he tends to work as a tour leader for Ancient World Tours these days, see for example here.


spin

Constant Mews

And with regard to colophons - the toldeth of the Bible are not in any way comparable to the various samples of colophons you have been presented with in this very thread.

Deal with those. Why are not the other components of an actual, archaeological colophon present in the Torah? Components such as You simply assert; you provide no evidence; you provide no argument.

How can we take anything you say seriously, Dave? Please do stop making Christians look like ignorant rubes. Thanks.