spin

Funny, the reaction is about a word and not the substance. I guess we can assume the substance is something the Duke doesn't want talk about.

The word, maybe inapt, can be understood as the second definition given by the Random House dictionary here: "an informal letter, account, or other piece of writing." It was not length that interested me.

Does the Duke still really want to recycle David Rohl's theories? We tend to look hard on tenuous logic here.


spin

Ted Hoffman

So have you changed your position in any way? Does this in any way impinge on the Sysw was written in a manner identical to Shyshak argument?

PS: Its interesting learning about abcedary, boustrphedon, hypocosristicons etc

Casper

I don't see why the argument is artificially limited to

SYSW and SHYSHK

when the evidence provided does not rule out

SHYSHW or SYSK or SYSR or SHYSHR.

And furthermore the implication has more to do with the sin-shin issue than waw-qof-resh debate we inserted earlier.

I'm sure there is more buried in the responses but I did not follow this as well as the "alefbet" itself.

Ted Hoffman

So that's it? No clarifications, no concessions? Just stony silence?

spin

Gone after his May 9 post. :wave:

"Time to give this up as a complete waste of time." (Note, not "test of time".)


spin

Duke Leto

To be fair, I've been looking after some personal affairs, and the server has been going down more often then Paris Hilton at Chippendales.

JoeWallack

JW:
The relevant issue here is which is a more objective procedure compared to the other regarding ancient Egyptian dating:

1) Carbon dating relics

2) Evaluating extant writings

For the related experts, what would be the theoretical standard deviation? Specifically here, there is no carbon dating expert that has calculated a date which supports your chronology, is there? So you don't have to be a math or statistics major to figure out which is more objective. Your criticisms of the carbon dating process here are interesting but you are not a carbon dating expert. You have pointed out issues with the carbon dating here but that does not remove the carbon dating as evidence. Requiring a higher degree of confidence than the evidence can give and when it disappoints, dismissing it as any evidence is Apologetics.

Specifically for The Shroud, no one here is disputing the actual carbon dating. The dispute is over what was carbon dated. There is no such dispute over your chronology so not such a good example is it?

As I already pointed out, an uncontrolled sample from a controlled sample does not invalidate the results of the controlled sample anyway. Ray Rogers had long been making the same claim, that the carbon dating was of a patch, and Steven D. Schafersman deals with that claim here:

A Skeptical Response to Studies on the Radiocarbon Sample from the Shroud of Turin by Raymond N. Rogers Thermochimica Acta 425:189-194, 2005

Rogers work on the Shroud had already been impeached by Walter McCrone as documented in Judgment Day for the Shroud of Turin
. McCrone proved that The Shroud contained no blood but did contain pigment both of which Rogers denied.

The supposed sample from the carbon dating cut, given by Rogers to Villareal, was uncontrolled for the following reasons:

1) There is no official record of any part of the original cut being retained.

2) There is no official record of Gonella giving any part of the original cut to Rogers.

3) Gonella never publicly commented on 1) and 2).

4) Rogers had samples of patched areas of the Shroud.

5) Rogers was proven to be biased in claiming that The Shroud was first century.

6) The original cut was in 1988. Villareal says that Rogers gave him a thread from the cut in 2005, 18 years later.

The only thing proven above is that Villareal has now taken his rightful place alongside Roger's impeached credibility. You can see Villareal's related talk on Youtube where he hints at what an honor it was to work on The Shroud. Note that there is no related comment from any of the actual carbon dating laboratories.

There is the wonderful irony above that in Roger's determination to prove The Shroud 1st century, because he was instrumental in convincing the Vatican that it was authentic, the Vatican agreed to carbon dating, which proved that it was not authentic (which the Vatican accepted at the time). Even as a Skeptic I have to confess that this is pretty good evidence for a higher sense of justice.

I have Faith though that all is not lost here for the Shroudies and that Rogers has sacrificed his credibility to offer hope of proving The Shroud authentic and show Christianity how to do it. Just as the classic Fight Club stated that "In the longest possible timeline, the survival rate goes to -0-." So too, in a wonderful illustration of how evidence is manufactured, Christianity, with an infinite amount of time to prove The Shroud authentic, could be able to provide evidence which would be acceptable to objective scientists as Rogers has shown The Way:

Take authentic samples of 1st century linen in order to compare them to The Shroud. Than put these samples in the inventory of someone biased but otherwise competent who also has samples of The Shroud. Let this person make the cut and than give the samples to the Carbon Daters. Given enough time you will have a cutter who sincerely believes that they gave a Shroud sample to the Daters and Daters who sincerely believe they received a Shroud sample from the cutter. The key here of course is who exactly is in charge of the sample which has been the related problem of The Shroud all along. The Church has always selected those sympathetic to Shroud authenticity to do the testing.



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Duke Leto

I've come to the decision that I really no longer have the inclination to pursue this thread any further. I simply want to get on with my life at this point.

My position is still that the balace of evidence suggests chonological inflation and that the evidence spin has put forward is, to use his term, tenuous in favor of the Generally Accepted Dates because the amount of evidence is so piddling.

While the discussion spin and David had was largely over my head, I do know enough about the stste of the discipline to know that they brought in ALL of the contemporary primary source inscriptions from Palestine. That is scarcely half a dozen inscriptions. That strikes me as far less than is necessary to make slam dunk philological generalizations about how the languages in question were spoken and how names would be transferred between them.

I'm asked to accept the universal authority of Kitchen despite the evidence I've presented that he is an evangelical with his own axe to grind and not an intellectually honest scholar.

I've been asked, again and again and AGAIN, to accept as given the plst = biblical Philistine identification at face value when alternative possibilities exist. I have had a chance to reread David's 2007 book in full and I can now say that his solution is basically the Norman/Norsemen solution. The peleset of Ramesses III were a new wave of Pelasgic Achaen invaders centuries after the first wave came into Palestine. Whether or not they became the new masters of Philistia is irrelevant. I do not see the preponderance of evidence proving that the Biblical Philistines MUST be equated with the Peleset.

spin has conceded that the epigraphic evidence from Assyria and the Neo-Hittite states is thin on the ground. As far as I'm concerned, that is itself conceding the possibility of inflation since a similar scarcity of archaeological sites pervades the entire Mediterranean area during the alleged Dark Ages.

The physical archaeological evidence from the Royal Cache and the San tombs has been ignored by spin, who refers me to Kitchen. To me the logical impossibility of the conventional Third Intermediate Period reconstruction explaining the anomalies of these sites has always been the strongest indication that David was on to something.

If I can explain some of things I should have done from the beginning, I'd like to lay out why I think the Rohlian reconstruction and identifications are better for an atheist worldview than the current model.

First and foremost, if we can show that the Solomon and David belonged to the Late Bronze Age period whose sites are presently listed as "Canaanite", we have compelling evidence that the earliest kings and citizens of Israel worshipped a pantheon and that Monotheism was an evolutionary development dating to Hezekiah if not all the way down to the Josiahan reforms.

Second, many of the most horrific examples of OT barbarism by the Israelites came from the periods of biblical history currently regarded as mythical. If these periods are restored to a small degree of historicity than the genocides of Joshua, of Numbers and of Judges, the parts of the bible that most appalled free thinkers like Twain and Ingersoll, are restored to the historical record and the origination of mootheistic faith can be more firmly condemned as inhumanity.

Now spin is doubtless going to interpret the fact that I'm sick of arguing with him as a victory, but I hope at least some of the horde of watchers out there will be favorably impressed with the material I've laid out. It'll take decades of work by committed full time scholars to prove or disprove David's work, we here are just a couple of know-it-all amatuers shooting the shit.

I would at least submit that I myself have tried to take the moral high ground of not arguing from ad hominems throughout this affair.

spin

You are not asked to accept anything of the sort. You are asked to look at the best statement of the status quo position, which you have not done and are therefore ignorant of the materials and evidence available. Jesus, what a misrepresentation!

If you want to believe this without evidence, then you know what I think.

If you cannot read what is said, do not try to construct such lunatic misrepresentations. You haven't looked at the data. You do not know anything about the continuous king lists from the middle Assyrian period down to the neo-Assyrian. I said that a particular period was thin on the ground and I gave a specific reason for it: there was an area-wide drought, that was reflected in the drying up of many canals in Mesopotamia and the loss of a great deal of land productivity and consequent reduction in living standards. The kinglists tell us who the Assyrian kings were during the period and we have epigraphy to support most of it.

Ignorance will allow you to coveive all sorts of errors. It is better to reserve judgment until you have a few facts.

Actually you ignored what I said about them, pointing you to Kitchen's response. I can point you to other responses if you like. I've never been too interested in Egyptology. I have tended to argue along different lines, lines which Rohl is totally deficient with. He cannot deal meaningfully with the Assyrian data. His use of the bible is extremely poor and the link between the Davidic era and the Amarna letters deserves ridicule for its lack of schholarly seriousness.

You are simply in no position to judge, lacking most of the data and willing to listen to the musing of an outsider while never once opening a book to see the status quo.

You might start out by wondering why you are wasting your time with David and Solomon of Jewish legend when you should be doing history.

You can shift stuff around to suit yourself, but if you don't have any evidence for your actions it's a waste of time.

No. You disqualified yourself before you started, but taking a position without showing any knowledge of it.

You like authority don't you? Evidence is not necessary.

The simple problem is that you look at the wrong things. Why look at your considered slights when you overlook all the evidence??


spin

Duke Leto

spin, you've been consistently appealing to authority since we've started. You've appealed to Kitchen and the archaeological communities as authority.

Let's just try and break this up amicably since I've not demonstrated my position to your satisfaction and vice versa.

At some point in the future, I'll make the effort to go through Kitchen, but I have severe doubts that I'll find adequate evidence in his presentation to discount the TIP problems that Rohl has raised.

I encourage you to read through Rohl's 2007 book when you get the chance. If nothing else, you might find the notion that the grander Mycenae burials are the Greater Hyksos dynasty interesting, and that at least requires no chronological revisionism whatsoever. Alternately of course, you can find more evidence of the loose linguistic skills you accuse him of having.

I have at least learned in this process that there is a lot I don't know and that I am not qualified to act as an internet ambassador on Rohl's behalf owing to the gaps in my knowledge. He also apparently does not need one.