Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Amaleq13 · 01-06-2007, 09:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mdd344

One set of souces says 'x' and the other says 'y.' You disagree with 'x' and so you take 'y.'

This is either entirely disingenuous or you have not actually been reading the posts. Your sources have been rejected because the evidence they offer has been shown to be false or flawed.

Quote:

Debate here will always be frustrating, because of the bias that exists toward any 'dumb' and 'uneducated' person, defined as one who believes in God, by the majority.

Wrong again. They are defined by their arguments and the evidence they produce to support them.

Quote:

The Aramaic argument alone demonstrates Daniel had to have been written in the 500's. But that is flatly rejected isn't it? The linguistic arguments are extremely good.

Frankly, that is the only argument that seems to have any potential. I wish you had simply focused on that instead of including it with all the other tired, apologetic nonsense.

I encourage you to start a fresh thread that deals solely with that particular line of argument.

diana · 01-06-2007, 09:32 AM

That's it. I can't take any more of this sanctimonious BS.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mdd344

The sources I posted I believe were right on target. You disagree. Fine. But it isn't the result of 'strawman, assertion, special pleading, or the like.' It was because you disagree to begin with.

To be fair, no one can disagree with your actual sources because you have not given them.

If I take Smith's claim that Jones said XYZ and instead of citing Smith as citing Jones, I choose to say "XYZ" (Jones), then I have not been honest about my source. Neither have you. The proper citation would be "Jones said 'XYZ'" (qtd. in Smith).

Many of your "citations" here are a lie, as they are designed to deliberately deceive or mislead us into believing you have done your research and are being forthright in your disclosures concerning where you got that information. Many apologists do the same.

Besides the fact that you, a preacher, are attempting to deceive us (I call an effort to deceive a "lie," even if it is not successful; the Church of Christ may have a less inclusive definition), you will routinely run into another problem with such dishonest techniques. That problem is demonstrated by Toto's mod note here. To wit: generally speaking, apologists tend to believe others who produce arguments/evidence of what the apologists believe. They accept any proffered "proof" uncritically. Then, instead of qualifying their unverified information with "So-and-so said X is true," they simply say "X is true." (I suspect this is because they believe a claim that X is true is verification that X is true. They have been conditioned to accept claims that X is true as proof that X is true, their simple acceptance of the Bible as true because it says it is as a case in point.) Thus, because they're so gullible in their willingness to accept any information that supports their belief as "true," they take the rap for the lies and twisted reasoning of others.

I encourage you to right your wrong, mdd, and provide the links whence you got your information.

d

diana · 01-06-2007, 09:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mdd344

I am not even a protestant. So whatever name you gave me doesn't fit.

Of course you are. You're a member of an offshoot of an offshoot of the Presbyterian denomination that resulted from the disillusionment of Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell in the early 1800s. There was no distinct "Church of Christ" as you know it until ~1910. While you may insist that it doesn't matter what the modern founders of the COC believed before they "went back to the Bible" and established/restored "First Century Christianity"--I'm not sure which you claim, but both of them sound silly--you cannot claim to be part of an unbroken chain of "1st C Christians" without the obviously-jumping-through-hoops appeal to a "Church in the Wilderness."

In short, the COC is a subdenomination of Presbyterianism.

d

PS: Interestingly, having been raised in the COC myself and sheltered as you have from all opposing viewpoints and fed exactly what they wanted me to believe, etc, no one ever mentioned the Barton-Stone movement. Ever. Some CsOC admit to the movement, at least, but still tout the party line of "1st C. Christianity." Most CsOC, though, don't even admit to their own history. I think many don't even know it. If they're really who they say they are and have the evidence and God on their side, why O why would they try to shield their people from the facts?

As a rule, I do not trust anyone who tries to hide the evidence and very real arguments against his position, as this is evidence only that he does not want me to make a fully-informed, mature decision. The COC thrives on carefully withheld information and ingrained wilful ignorance. You yourself have provided copious evidence not only of your certain--predictable--areas of personal ignorance and insistence upon maintaining them, but also of your reticence to address weak arguments in your own position.

In response to your oft-repeated assertion that the Bible is divine/true/inerrant and admission that you begin with this assumption, you have not, to my knowledge, yet addressed the very relevant question of whether you read the Koran the same way. The first time or two someone made this point, I could believe you simply overlooked it. However, the question keeps popping up. Now, I've come to assume that you are pointedly avoiding it. The only reason I can imagine that you would avoid this question is because you know deep down that we have you and you've too much pride and investment in your belief to honestly answer it. In other words, you do not address it out of sheer intellectual dishonesty.

Please prove me wrong.

partial plate · 01-06-2007, 10:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by diana

In short, the COC is a subdenomination of Presbyterianism.
d

The Cladist has spoken.

WRT to Conklin's article at Turkel's site... I agree with the poster who recommends a detailed deconstruction of some of the Tektonics stuff to which people can be referred.

Honestly, having skimmed that article, and being blissfully ignorant of the relevant scholarship, I am inclined to accept an early date for Daniel from the arguments made there (assuming that the information cited in support is accurately conveyed -- and I know that's a stretch where tektonics is concerned). It would be nice to see the counterarguments and citations to reliable sources of information so that one could independently draw decent conclusions. My guess is that, upon further study, I will remain agnostic on the dating of Daniel. But the matter is so dense with scholarship that I'm not sure a layman can make a responsible further study. Which is a shame - because it is toward the layman that the apologists' efforts are directed.

diana · 01-06-2007, 10:47 AM

For those who are curious:

Wiki's write-up on "nondenominationalism"

Executive summary of Barton-Stone Movement

For those arguing with mdd, this may be the most useful tool: COC Rules of Biblical Interpretation

And for those who'd just like an amusing (but factual) lineup of some of the things this self-proclaimed "non-Protestant" group believe and fight about, look here. (I wish I knew who wrote this; the person is most certainly ex-COC.)

d

diana · 01-06-2007, 11:05 AM

There seems to be a bit of a conundrum regarding some of the Rules for Interpreting Scripture, a la COC:

Quote:

14. Always interpret a psassage in its literal and apparent meaning, using words in their primary and normal sense. If the plain sense makes sense, seek no other sense.

15. Always interpret a passage as any unbiased person would if he just picked up a Bible and read it. The Bible was written for the common man (at a 4th or 5th grade level in general).

...

20. Never place a "figurative" meaning on a passage unless the text or context demand it without presuppositions or bias.
Some kinds of literature are figurative.
poetic - e.g., Job, Psalms, Song of Solomon
proverbial - e.g., Proverbs
apocalyptic - e.g., Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah, Revelation
parables - e.g., Matthew chapter 13

If a literal application violates plain, scriptural teaching, the passage is figurative. - e.g., Psalm 44:23; 121:4
If a literal application is impossible, the passage is figurative. - e.g., Revelation 12:3-4,9
If the passage is identified as figurative, it is figurative. - e.g., Matthew 13.3
If the passage possesses the characteristics of figurative language, it is figurative. - Matthew 26:27-29

Otherwise the passage is literal. - 2 Corinthians 3:12

So when you're greeted with two "literal" clear, unequivocal interpretations, "using words in their primary and normal sense" and "as any unbiased person would if he just picked up a Bible and read it" where "cultural context" gives no clues and there is no indication of either passage being meant "figuratively." one of them must (by these rules) be "figurative."

How do you know which one?

d

Sauron · 01-06-2007, 11:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by partial plate

The Cladist has spoken.

WRT to Conklin's article at Turkel's site... I agree with the poster who recommends a detailed deconstruction of some of the Tektonics stuff to which people can be referred.

I suggest you make a copy of Turkel's original article, then. He is well-known for changing his published positions to invalidate the criticisms of them. I'm all for people updating their positions when they are discovered to be wrong; however, Turkel fails to admit the update and tries to pretend that the new position was his *original* position. Therefore, the only way to defeat him at his game (and catch him red-handed) is to copy the original article that you are trying to refute.

Quote:

Honestly, having skimmed that article, and being blissfully ignorant of the relevant scholarship, I am inclined to accept an early date for Daniel from the arguments made there (assuming that the information cited in support is accurately conveyed -- and I know that's a stretch where tektonics is concerned).

Too much of a stretch. Turkel is not an apologist, so much as he is a a seamstress: he gathers arguments he has heard elsewhere, and tries to weave them into single location. But he doesn't actually bother to check the validity of the arguments. For example, tries to use Aramaic as a point of proof:

24) In terms of the Aramaic of the text it has been concluded that the book could _*NOT*_ have been written *later than* 300 B.C.. [See the book review of Klaus Koch's Das Buch Daniel by Arthur Ferch in the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 23 (July 1982): 119-123] Stefanovic studied Old Aramaic inscriptions from the ninth to the seventh centuries B.C. and found significant similarity to the Aramaic used in Daniel. [Zdravko Stefanovic, Correlations between Old Aramaic Inscriptions and the Aramaic Section of Daniel. Ph.D. dissertation, Andrews University, 1987]

25) Koch also points out that the vocalization of the Aramaic of Daniel appears to be of Eastern type and the general context and royal figures point to the east. [See Koch's book, page 47] Also the famous Aramaic scholar E. Y. Kutscher has shown that the Aramaic of Daniel points to an Eastern origin. [Kutscher, 400; cited by Hasel, (1981): 219 and (1986): 132] A Western origin would be required if the Maccabean thesis were correct. This factor alone strongly suggests that a Maccabean source for the book is in error. On this basis Kitchen notes that a number of scholars "would consider an Eastern (Mesopotamian) origin for the Aramaic part of Daniel (and Ezra) as probable." [Kitchen (1965): 76-7; Baldwin (1996): 256; Boutflower, 246, note 1]

So a claim that the Aramaic of Daniel must be of the "eastern context", and not from the Maccabee period - a claim that rests upon Kutscher's work. However, what did Kutscher himself actually say? We don't know; because Turkel doesn't cite Kutscher directly. He cites other apologists who cite Kutscher.

However, here is an educator and scholar citing Kutscher. Notice the difference in the outcome for Turkel's argument:

Quote:

Middle Aramaic (fourth century BCE - the early centuries CE) consists of the Onqelos translation of the Bible and the scrolls of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Most of the versions of Middle Aramaic, according to the late Dr E Y Kutscher, were not spoken forms of the language and were modeled to imitate Official (Biblical) Aramaic.

Oops. Kutscher says that the DSS copies of Daniel - the ones that Turkel are referring to - were deliberately formulated to imitate a certain "sound". If someone deliberately wrote a document to sound like it came from the time period of the American Revolution, do you think that might cause amateurs to assume it *was* from that period?

And what about this "eastern (Mesopotamian) origin"?

Quote:

Aramaic was the official language of the Assyrian Empire. Early epigraphical material of this dialect include the findings in Southern Egypt (Elephantine) and Eastern Persia (Driver documents). Although the Aramaic portions of Ezra and Daniel, in comparison to the discoveries, seem to have undergone a modernization, their free word order is specifically common to Eastern dialects.

But the historical usage of Aramaic is more complicated than Turkel makes it out to be. The fact that something sounds "eastern" doesn't mean it actually came from the east:

Quote:

Imperial Aramaic

Around 500 BC, Darius I made Aramaic the official language of the western half of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. The bureaucrats in Babylon were already using the local dialect of Eastern Aramaic for most of their work, but Darius's edict put Aramaic on firm, united foundations. The new, Imperial Aramaic was highly standardised; its orthography was based more on historical roots than any spoken dialect, and the inevitable influence of Persian gave the language a new clarity and robust flexibility. Imperial Aramaic is sometimes called Official Aramaic or Biblical Aramaic. For centuries after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire (in 331 BC), Imperial Aramaic as prescribed by Darius, or near enough to it to be recognisable, remained the dominant language of the region.

Achaemenid Aramaic

'Achaemenid Aramaic' is used to describe the Imperial Aramaic of the Achaemenid Empire. This period of Aramaic is usually dated from the proclamation of Darius (c. 500 BC) to about a century after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire in 331 BC. Many of the extant documents witnessing to this form of Aramaic come from Egypt, and Elephantine in particular. Of them, the most well known is the 'Wisdom of Ahiqar', a book of instructive aphorisms quite similar in style to the biblical book of Proverbs. Achaemenid Aramaic is sufficiently uniform that it is often difficult to know where they were written. Only careful examination reveals the occasional loan word from a local language.

Post-Achaemenid Aramaic

The conquest by Alexander the Great did not destroy the unity of Aramaic language and literature immediately. Aramaic that bears a relatively close resemblance to that of the fifth century BC can be found right up to the early second century. The Seleucids imposed Greek in the administration of Syria and Mesopotamia from the start of their rule. In the third century, Greek overtook Aramaic as the common language in Egypt and northern Palestine. However, a post-Achaemenid Aramaic continued to flourish from Judaea, through the Syrian Desert, and into Arabia and Parthia. This continuation of Imperial Aramaic was a subversive, anti-Hellenistic statement of independence.

Biblical Aramaic is the Aramaic found in four discrete sections of the Hebrew Bible:

* Ezra 4:8–6:18 and 7:12–26 — documents from the Achaemenid period (fourth century BC) concerning the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem.

* Daniel 2:4b–7:28 — five subversive tales and an apocalyptic vision.

* Jeremiah 10:11 — a single sentence in the middle of a Hebrew text denouncing idolatry.

* Genesis 31:47 — translation of a Hebrew place-name.

Biblical Aramaic was originally written in Achaemenid Aramaic, but heavily influenced by later forms of Aramaic and Hebrew due to the work of the Masoretes in the first century AD. Thus, Biblical Aramaic is a hybrid dialect.

Why does Turkel fail to quote Kutscher directly? It might have to do with the fact that Kutscher's relevant work on this topic in Current Trends in Linguistics 6, is from 1970, and all the electronic copies are behind JSTOR firewalls. Or it may be due to the fact that Kutscher didn't support Turkel's position as well as Turkel is intimating. In short, we don't know.

Going further on this topic:

Quote:

“Contemporary texts paint a bracingly cosmopolitan linguistic picture of first-century C.E. Jerusalem: Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, with two of the three sometimes together, are inscribed all over the city. Latin was a foreign language, found in names and official terms but alien to speech. Jonas Greenfield, the great Aramaist from whom Fulco and I learned,..Greenfield… compared the synagogues of Jerusalem to those of the old Lower East Side: ” For this view, typically combining massive first-hand knowledge with concrete and poetic analogies, see “The Languages of Palestine, 200 B.C.E.-200 C.E.” in Shalom M. Paul, Michael E. Stone, and Avital Pinnick, eds. Al Kanfei Yonah: Collected Studies of Jonas C. Greenfield on Semitic Philology. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001.

This raises a deep and interesting question: What languages did the area’s Jews think they were speaking? By the second century B.C.E. Palestinian Jews were writing major religious texts in all three languages, and translating the Hebrew scriptures into both Aramaic and Greek. Strikingly, they did not always even see Hebrew and Aramaic as two different “languages” That is, although they formed at least two distinct linguistic systems, Hebrew and Aramaic were not always differentiated, in theory or practice—the New Testament mentions of “Hebrew” usually refer to what we would call Aramaic, but sometimes Hebrew (as hosanna, which would have appeared as hothanna were it a native Aramaic root, or rabbouni, a form found in both Palestinian Aramaic and good manuscripts of Mishnaic Hebrew), and should perhaps be understood as an ethnic term. The most salient opposition for them may have been between cultures and ethnicities: not Hebrew vs. Aramaic but Jewish vs. Greek, and the opposition may have dominated understanding of language in the region as well.

Recent decades have seen an explosion in contemporary sources for Aramaic, which strengthens and nuances this picture. The longest contemporary Aramaic texts, from Qumran, are written in a standard literary dialect that has more to do with the book of Daniel than it does with anything spoken at the time. But in the past few decades, excavations and further study of medieval manuscript discoveries from the Cairo Geniza have unearthed inscriptions and text fragments which expand our knowledge of the period’s living Aramaic: we can now read mortuary and synagogue inscriptions, as well as good manuscripts of the Palestinian Targums and Talmud, poetry and early Midrash such as Genesis and Exodus Rabbah.

But here is the chief scholarly irony. From the purist’s point of view, this corpus, which is as close as we are going to come to the Aramaic of Jesus, ought to be as odd as the film. The main problem is that much of it is not exactly Aramaic. The inscriptions and Midrash offer Aramaic phrases, sentences, and extended passages—but freely mixed with, or embedded in, Hebrew. One would not know this from consulting Michael Sokoloff’s groundbreaking Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (1990, rev. ed. 2002) but that is precisely because he has done his job—expertly extracting the evidence from its messy contexts. One has only to check a reference in E. Y. Kutscher’s magisterial Studies in Galilean Aramaic (published in 1952, English tr. 1976) to find that the context—even the word—he is citing for a “Galilean” phenomenon is often Hebrew (a complexity Kutscher understood well). That such mixture may have been closer to the rule than the exception in religious contexts is suggested by the literary standard itself: to this day, no one has explained why the book of Daniel switches the way it does between Hebrew and Aramaic.

Even apparently monolingual Hebrew or Aramaic texts edited by Palestinian Jews revert to their linguistic other at key points. The best manuscripts of Palestinian Targum sometimes use the old Hebrew circumlocution for the name of God, adonay, (--though we also find the Greek loanword QYRYS! and as a Hebrew word adonay is justifiably absent from Sokoloff’s dictionary). And many readers of the Hebrew Bible would be surprised to know that the Tetragrammaton, which they are taught to read adonay in Biblical Hebrew class, is often actually vocalized as Aramaic shma ‘the name’ in the very text they have in front of them. Their eyes pass over the disruptive evidence of another language standing between the reader and text.

Turkel knows his audience - which is why he treates a source like Archer or Wiseman as the equal to a source like Finkelstein or Dever. Turkel counts on his audience being like mdd344: impressed by a reference, and not too concerned about the expertise behind the reference. World Net Daily is the same quality as The New York Times.

Sauron · 01-06-2007, 12:14 PM

More on the alleged "eastern" character of the Aramaic, and what Kutscher actually said about it (red, below):

Quote:

The relative prominence of Akkadian and Persian vocabulary in the Aramaic of Daniel has raised the question whether this material is likely to come from the eastern diaspora.184 When S. R. Driver pronounced that Daniel exemplified Western Aramaic, he was assuming the Palestinian origin of the book.185 It is now recognized that the classic distinction between Eastern and Western Aramaic only holds in the Christian era. The principal indicator of that distinction was the use of the prefix or in the third-person imperfect. In Daniel, the prefix is found only in the verb and this is a survival of a widespread jussive form in Old Aramaic.

Kutscher has attempted to distinguish between eastern and western dialects in the Achaemenid period on the basis of the Arsames correspondence, published by G. R. Driver.186 These documents “come from the eastern parts of the Persian Empire and exhibit some traits typical of Late Aramaic dialects which originated in the very same regions centuries later.”187 Such traits include free word order, many borrowings from Persian, and the use of passive construction to convey active meaning (e.g., “I have heard”). The first two of these are applicable to Daniel. The third is not typical of Biblical Aramaic, but we do find a passive construction in the direct speech of high-ranking persons, for example, “I have decreed.”188 An eastern character has also been ascribed to the use of rather than the construct to express the genitival 2:20).189 “Eastern Aramaic” according to this characterization is the official chancery style of the Persian administration, which shows Persian influence at some points. These stylistic features could also be picked up by people living in the west. So we are told that “the official letters of the Jews of Elephantine are also written in the Eastern dialect.”190 Kutscher acknowledges the presence of “eastern” features in works such as the Targum of Job from Qumran, which are presumed to have originated in Palestine (pending proof to the contrary). He concludes that eastern features in the dialect do not necessarily require eastern provenance, since the influence of the (eastern) chancery style was pervasive.191 He allows, however, that “the free word ordering possibly points to an Eastern origin.”192 In view of the pervasiveness of allegedly eastern features in Imperial Aramaic, linguistic observations can carry no weight in the discussion of the provenance of the stories in Daniel.

partial plate · 01-06-2007, 12:35 PM

Oh well. I guess like the poor, the apologists will always be with us. And their apologetics. Thanks for the rundown on Aramaic. Only 27 more points to go...

mdd344 · 01-06-2007, 12:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by diana

That's it. I can't take any more of this sanctimonious BS.

To be fair, no one can disagree with your actual sources because you have not given them.

If I take Smith's claim that Jones said XYZ and instead of citing Smith as citing Jones, I choose to say "XYZ" (Jones), then I have not been honest about my source. Neither have you. The proper citation would be "Jones said 'XYZ'" (qtd. in Smith).

Many of your "citations" here are a lie, as they are designed to deliberately deceive or mislead us into believing you have done your research and are being forthright in your disclosures concerning where you got that information. Many apologists do the same.

Besides the fact that you, a preacher, are attempting to deceive us (I call an effort to deceive a "lie," even if it is not successful; the Church of Christ may have a less inclusive definition), you will routinely run into another problem with such dishonest techniques. That problem is demonstrated by Toto's mod note here. To wit: generally speaking, apologists tend to believe others who produce arguments/evidence of what the apologists believe. They accept any proffered "proof" uncritically. Then, instead of qualifying their unverified information with "So-and-so said X is true," they simply say "X is true." (I suspect this is because they believe a claim that X is true is verification that X is true. They have been conditioned to accept claims that X is true as proof that X is true, their simple acceptance of the Bible as true because it says it is as a case in point.) Thus, because they're so gullible in their willingness to accept any information that supports their belief as "true," they take the rap for the lies and twisted reasoning of others.

I encourage you to right your wrong, mdd, and provide the links whence you got your information.

d

Well well. Sanctimonious. The definition of that is "hypocritically pious or devout." What a nice way to start. The fact is I did give my sources throughout what I wrote. I have a lot of books in print, and the rest I retrieved from the internet. I did not bother providing a list because I assumed people here would be familiar. It seems as if they are.

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01-06-2007, 10:47 AM	#205
diana Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Colorado Springs Posts: 6,471	For those who are curious: Wiki's write-up on "nondenominationalism" Executive summary of Barton-Stone Movement For those arguing with mdd, this may be the most useful tool: COC Rules of Biblical Interpretation And for those who'd just like an amusing (but factual) lineup of some of the things this self-proclaimed "non-Protestant" group believe and fight about, look here. (I wish I knew who wrote this; the person is most certainly ex-COC.) d

01-06-2007, 12:35 PM	#209
partial plate Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: southeast Posts: 85	Oh well. I guess like the poor, the apologists will always be with us. And their apologetics. Thanks for the rundown on Aramaic. Only 27 more points to go...

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