Larsguy47

Lack of Evidence, not evidence

Lack of evidence is not evidence, especially if people were nomadic, living in tents. As they traveled, if they were commanded not to leave anything behind and to maintain neatness and cleanliness, perhaps with a clean-up crew to inspect and make sure everything was pristine since this group was carrying the reputation of Yahweh, then what was left would seem minimal to nonexistent compared to what is found from others, which I believe is primarily broken pottery. Camp sites would have been dismantled and cleaned up as well. If that were the case, that might explain why there is so little evidence.

I would like to know, scientifically, if you buried a body just wrapped in cloth in a shallow grave, what would happen to it over time? Would worms eat the bones too?




LG47

-Jay-

Let's think about the process here. You've got a dead guy. You need to bury him. What do you do? Well, you start by preparing the body, somehow. The details of that aren't terribly important unless part of the process is cannibalizing him. For sake of argument let's assume you don't, but rather you annoint him with some oils and spices in accordance with your religious convictions, wrap him in some linen cloth, and prepare to bury him. You've stipulated no jewelry, but that's probably not realistic. I suspect you're more concerned with the condition of the body itself, though. (Feel free to respecify this sequence of events if you want.) Then you dig a hole (maybe shallow, maybe not), and after some ceremony, the decedant is placed into the hole and covered up with the displaced soil.

Now, let's consider what we've accomplished in that sequence of events. In blunt terms, we've seriously screwed up the order of the soil and dropped in a mixed bag of chemicals of very different composition than the surrounding soil. Keep those things in mind for later.

Next, let's consider the very important fact that we're in a desert, and not in, say, the Florida Everglades. Deserts are defined in part by what they don't have: moisture. At 4 inches of rainfall or less per year, deserts were dehydrating things hundreds of millions, if not billions, of years before Ron Popeil ever hawked a food dehydrator on a late night infomercial, and before anyone ever saw the term "silica gel - do not eat". The term we commonly use for a dehydrated, dessicated corpse is "mummy". So, the first thing we'd expect to find would be mummified bodies. Not two and a half million of them, obviously, but some. Information gleaned from mummies can include clues to the dietary habits of the population, the general health, the cause of death of the individual, and lots of other data if you know what to look for.

Now, what about the bodies that decompose? Well, if you recall, those are just bags of chemicals. As the bodies break down, chemicals leach into the surrounding soil, changing the chemical makeup. Also, as the bodies break down, you're left with areas of different density and organization than the surrounding soil. You've got at least two potential tell-tale signs now - chemically different soil compositions and differing densities that are detectable with ground penetrating radar. (And GPR is designed to do precisely this sort of thing - look for differences in density and orientation of the ground. So, just because you no longer have the body per se, you can still tease out indications that a body was there.)

As for items that may have been buried with the dead, anything metallic would stay around pretty much indefinitely, but you excluded these from the discussion.

However, a bigger issue than what remnants of burials would be expected is the vast amount of evidence that two and a half million people in one area for 38 years would leave. Two and a half million people in the same region for 38 years isn't a large encampment - it's a small nation. Five times the population of metropolitan Seattle. Five times. Think about that for a minute. You've asserted that the Hebrews in the desert would be meticulously clean - consider how much infrastructure it takes for a city the size of Seattle just to deal with its waste. The logistics are just mind boggling. The landfill area for such a population would be enormous, and would stand out archaeologically like a beacon on a dark night.

What about supplying water to 2.5 million thirsty people? What about the agriculture needed to sustain the livestock? These things leave evidence, too. How about chipped metal from the edges of digging implements? How about forges and foundries to work metal? Even if they repaired their metal tools, they'd need furnaces to heat the metal and work it. Likewise for any fired pottery they may have used. How about tooling marks in rock? Are we to assume that they didn't work stone for livestock enclosures or anything else? What about all that swag they pinched from the Egyptians on the way out?

The bottom line is that the only way for 2.5 million people to not leave a trace of their occupation of a patch of desert for 38 years is for them not to have ever been there in the first place.

regards,

NinJay

Larsguy47

Thanks for these references. Appreciated.

With respect to the scarabs, though, they date down to 1550 BCE per the article which would have been long before the Israelites entered Palestine. Per Kenyon the Israelites conquered Jericho between 1350-1325BCE.

Many grave findings are found in settled areas, or customs established long after the time of the wilderness trek.

Further, what exactly is the soil condition of the area? Was it extremely sandy? Would the usual decay have occurred or would we expect some preservation?

LG47

RED DAVE

Usual meandering bullshit.

Let's get this straight. You have made an extraordinary claim: that 2 1/2 million people could exist in a small area for 40 years, without leaving a trace.

The burden of proof is up to you.

But that shouldn't be hard for you, claiming as you do to be the Messiah.

RED DAVE

Larsguy47

[QUOTE]I'm not suspecting the men had jewelry, but it's reasonable the women might have, though some customs would hand the jewelry down, especially if not cheap, as an heirloom to grandchildren. You know, like if everybody had plenty of gold, rather than cheap stone jewelery, they'd hardly bury it. So if the Jews were more gold-wearing than chep bead-wearing, it would make a difference. But point well taken.


I would think so too. Where are all those graves? Although, it seems theJews preferred cave burials, either natural or dug out, as well as burial in the ground.


Thanks. This makes sense.


I suppose. But an incentive against anything valuable being buried would be because robbers might disturb the bodies and defile them. Certainly not gold either, which probably would have been kept as an heirloom. That leaves cheap beads which I'm not sure the Jews would have prized, but I guess that can be checked out as well.

Yes it is, but they were in TENTS.

Waste is biodegradable and it would have only been organic waste. There were no discarded old clothing or shoes, so not the usual things one would find in a trash pit. Furthermore there were "ash heaps" so they would have burned a lot of things as well. Further, they were adequately spread out. The Bible says when the quails would be blown into the camp you couldn't see the end of them in either direction. So they were camped over a very large area.

Yes, that's logical. Is there some scientific reason we're not finding anything now?

Good question. But I'd suspect there was grazing available.

Perhaps, but not sure exactly what. Aren't there some natural springs in the area?

They may have, but that might have been dismantled totally when they left.


I agree, they should have left something. But I heard some earlier people had been discovered and left evidence. I'm going to research that further and see what types of things THEY left and compare that to what the Jews didn't leave.

Thanks, NJ!

LG47

Larsguy47

This is a topic brought up before and so is discussed in detail here. I'm still researching, but it is quite fascinating. Apparently there is "debris" from earlier times and later times but no Late Bronze debris. I'm curious what type of "debris" was found, likely pottery. If that's all that is expected, i.e. graves, etc. then I'm wondering why we're looking for anything beyond that if nobody else left anything more than that?

http://www.bibleorigins.net/ExodusRouteMapsVarious.html

LG47

3DJay

ROFL! Thanks for that Lars. Great link!


Peace

Sauron

Stop guessing and look it up.

Who says that is all that was expected?

Bad conclusion since your initial presumption is flawed.

Hex

Okay, a weekend away and there's so much to comment on.

Lars, please forgive me for not addressing -all- of the things I took issue with. Some of them I've taken issue with on other threads (or even in this one, for a metter of fact), and it seems to have no imact on you, so there's no use, right? :banghead:

Lars, Katrina occured in a lowlands swamp area of a major river delta. There's no comparison with that and the Sinai Penninsula. And, were you to even get to that point, the only places that would really be affected would be the wadis which serve as drainage ditches that peroidically flash-flood when the area -does- get rain, thus preserving the sands that are there. The fact that there's still sand there should show you the silly-ness of that.

Now, the question you -want- to ask deals with 'natural disasters' and the 'archaeological record', right? Don't worry. These things leave remainders, even in places like the Sinai. You noted all those rocky uplands areas (especially to the south, near Mt. Sinai, right?), well, these were very likely all exposed to begin with. Unless you're proposing a second world-wide flood, you're not going to have the desctruction you want there.

If they were just moving from place to place and Yahweh was supplying a-plenty, -why- would they clean up? They don't get the santiation and dietary law until they've already been a-wandering for a while right? What about remains from -before- (and after, for that matter) those laws?

And, are you proposing an ancient Roto-Rooter coming to pump the septic systems of the buried feces piles?

And, that archaeological data is -still- more firm than what you're postulating. The thing is that there has been lots of information left behind by cultures around the world. The probability that out of millions of people over a 40 year period in a small area like the Sinai -some- archaeological trace would be left is -so high- that the -lack- of evidence is telling.

And because the cities haven't been found yet doesn't mean they don't exist, Lars. It just means that there's no -proof- that they are there. Archaeology is all about finding the unknown in the soil and documenting it so that it can be put into the bigger picture.

And don't worry, you don't have to 'buy it'. Your tax dollars that go to scientific research are already paying for it ...

Yep. Compacting soil (done by standing/walking on it) shows on IR photography, which can even be done from a plane rather than a satellite. Mineral analysis can be done by a number of different spectra (We'll get to phosphates in a moment - I got ahead of myself). And, simple travel routes and ancient lakes, ponds, and riverine valleys can be seen in the big picture in visible spectra or even shown in radar scans that show bedrock returns.

Just as -one- example, look at Report on the Human Remains Found at Kish., by L. H. Dudley Buxton; D. Talbot Rice, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland © 1931, where Early Sumerian and Neo-Babylonian ossuaries at Kish were examined. There were at least 146 individuals exhumed whose skeletons were in good enough shape to be mophologically studied. The bones do exist when simply 'buried in the ground'.

Where are your wandering Hebrew's bodies then, Lars?

Here. Even without 'modern' archaeology's detail, we know the 'common people' of Egypt's bodies exist in the archaeological record:
You can doubt all you want. But you've no 'proof' of your story, so the 'great nation suddenly appearing out of nowhere at the time of Shishak, with a made up history' seems just as logical, doesn't it? Occum's Razor, my friend.

And hey! Weren't these guys the ones building pyramids, houses, irrigation ditches and the like out of stone? Can't have it both ways ...

Not thousands, perhaps, but they exist (see my link far above from Angela E. Close's 1995 field survey). And, for them we're looking at a group of people of -maybe- 200. A group of a million or more just ups the odds of even a -single- body surviving to prove your point.

Actually, what's at issue here (as noted many times on different threads) is that you're taking a few scraps of information and building a wonderful house of cards out of them to fit with the story you want. That's bad science and I hate bad science. Build up a body oif evidence for -each- of your aspects here, not just a fragment and a re-interpretation or leap of faith. If you can actually -support- these individual facets with a bunch of information, then we can deal with taking you seriously.

Who commanded? If I recall correctly, Yahweh gives Moses the 600+ commandments (read 'rules of conduct') -during- the Exodus, no? So how would the hebrews have known to bury their excretement so as not to offend Yahweh? And, if they -did- follow the commandment, where are the huge stashes of buried $hit? And what tribe of Hebrews was the one in charge of cleaning up, and where is it stated?

Also note - Human activities such as burying $hit or disposing of debris by reducing it to ash by fire -does- leave a trace. Phosphates can be traced. Build-ups in the soil are used to find mideval towns in Denmark and Aleutian camp sites in Alaska.



I think that catches me up. Other folks have posted on some of the other topics/issues brought up, so I won't worry on the other stuff. Except maybe to say that overall, grave goods represent the -best- one has to bury with the body. If gold's the best, well then, look to that.

And why wouldn't men have gold jewelry?

Larsguy47

Actually, I think they did. I tend to think they wouldn't bury gold, though. That would just invite grave robbery. And there is also the heirloom value of having the jewelry passed down.

LG47