Freethought & Rationalism Archive

douglas · 05-27-2008, 12:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ernestombayo

Conclusion, does archeology disprove or prove the bible.and to what extent does it prove or disprove the bible?

While not "archeology" I've found the stuff in Luke regarding the Census of Quirinius to be a fairly glaring error. I've also seen the Star of Bethlehem crap easily disproven by a trained astronomer (Asimov perhaps?). This only proves the writers were human, and disproves that they were divinely guide by hand of God.

Jaecp · 05-28-2008, 01:42 AM

Yeah, I mean, how exactly does someone determine that a star was above someones house? We know that these things are a good bit away while the people of the time imagined them resting a couple of miles up.

Also, weren't those guys astronomers?

Minimalist · 05-28-2008, 08:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mythra

I'm not so sure that your info on Jericho is correct. Looks to be based on the (not unbiased) perceptions of William F. Albright around 1930.

From "The Bible Unearthed" by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, pg 81-82:

In the midst of the euphoria - almost at the very moment when it seemed that the battle of the conquest was won for Joshua - some troubling contradictions emerged. Even as the world press was reporting that Joshua's conquest had been confirmed, many of the most important pieces of the archaeological puzzle simply did not fit.

Jericho was among the most important. As we have noted, the cities of Canaan were unfortified and there were no walls that could have come tumbling down. In the case of Jericho, there was no trace of a settlement of any kind in the thirteenth century BCE, and the earlier Late Bronze settlement, dating to the fourteenth century BCE, was small and poor, almost insignificant, and unfortified. There was also no sign of a destruction. Thus the famous scene of the Israelite forces marching around the walled town with the Ark of the Covenanat, causing Jericho's mighty walls to collapse by the blowing of their war trumpets was, to put it simply, a romantic mirage.

A similar discrepancy between archaeology and the Bible was found at the site of ancient Ai, where, according to the Bible, Joshua carried out his clever ambush. Scholars identified the large mound of Khirbet et-Tell, located on the eastern flank of the hill country northeast of Jerulsalem, as the ancient site of Ai. Its geographical location, just to the east of Bethel, closely matched the biblical description. The site's modern Arabic name, et-Tell, means "the ruin," which is more or less equivalent to the meaning of the biblical Hebrew name Ai. And there was no alternative Late Bronze Age site anywhere in the vicinity. Between 1933 and 1935, the French-trained Jewish Palestinian archaeologist Judith Marquet-Krause carried out a large-scale excavation at et-Tell and found extensive remains of a huge Early Bronze Age city, dated over a millennium before the collapse of Late Bronze Cannaan. Not a single pottery sherd or any other indication of settlement there in the Late Bronze Age was recovered. Renewed excavations at the site in the 1960s produced the same picture. Like Jericho, there was no settlement at the time of its supposed conquest by the children of Israel.

And, just to help out, Mythra.

http://www.netours.com/jrs/2003/jericho-debate.htm

Quote:

3. Wood says: "One Carbon-14 sample was taken from a piece of charcoal found in the destruction debris of the final Bronze Age city. It was dated to 1410 B.C.E. plus or minus 40 years." (Wood, p. 53)

Problems: The British Museum later re-dated this sample to about 1550 BC. In 1995, when methods of radiocarbon dating had become more efficient, Hendrik J. Bruins and Johannes van der Plicht conducted C-14 tests on eighteen samples from this same destruction layer at Jericho. They did this not in order to refute Wood, but "as a contribution toward the establishment of an independent radiocarbon chronology of Near Eastern archaeology." (Radiocarbon Vol. 37, Number 2, 1995.) They included six samples consisting of charred cereal grains (more reliable for dating than wood, which might have been used over a long period). The samples, it turned out, had lived and died in the 16th century BC. This confirmed Kenyon's dating.

ElysianBliss48 · 05-28-2008, 04:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ernestombayo

I am looking for positive evidence against the bible,archaeologically.

Conclusion, does archeology disprove or prove the bible.and to what extent does it prove or disprove the bible?

How about a book? The Bible Unearthed.

Here is a wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_Unearthed

Minimalist · 05-28-2008, 09:31 PM

How about a good magazine article?

http://www.worldagesarchive.com/Refe..._(Harpers).htm

Quote:

Moreover, by the 1970s and 1980s a good deal of countervailing evidence--or, rather, lack of evidence--was beginning to accumulate. Supposedly, David had used his power base in Judah as a springboard from which to conquer the north. But archaeological surveys of the southern hill country show that Judah in the eleventh and tenth centuries B.C. was too poor and backward and sparsely populated to support such a military expedition. Moreover, there was no evidence of wealth or booty flowing back to the southern power base once the conquest of the north had taken place. Jerusalem seems to have been hardly more than a rural village when Solomon was reportedly transforming it into a glittering capital. And although archaeologists had long credited Solomon with the construction of major palaces in the northern cities of Gezer, Hazor, and Megiddo (better known as the site of Armageddon), recent analysis of pottery shards found on the sites, plus refined carbon-14 dating techniques, indicate that the palaces postdate Solomon's reign by a century or more.

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05-28-2008, 01:42 AM	#22
Jaecp Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Washington State Posts: 2,232	Yeah, I mean, how exactly does someone determine that a star was above someones house? We know that these things are a good bit away while the people of the time imagined them resting a couple of miles up. Also, weren't those guys astronomers?

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