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Old 05-03-2007, 11:35 AM   #61
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Originally Posted by Larsguy47 View Post
MY QUESTION is, however, generic and not related to any "conspiracy" theory regarding this.

If you want to pass on this, that's fine. But it's part of the issue with correction of the references in the VAT4956, because of line 8 and also the renaming of beta-Virginis as the Rear Foot of the Lion, which Sachs/Hunger inapparopriate applied for this particular text, though not for many others. I think they were kind of hard pressed to expose the change and decided it better to distract from the problem by inserting "the moon" in that position rather than Venus. Inserting Venus there would expose the problem, of course, but leaving it blank would be the same as inserting Venus there because everybody noticing the description of a planet on the 15th of the Sivan immediately below the "bright star behind the Lion's Foot" would see that Venus was below beta-Virginis on this date. So leaving it blank would be the same as putting Venus there, since it would invite an empiric fill-in. By putting the "moon" in that blank and not noting "error for the 5th" or something as they did in Line 3, it's less noticeable. If there is no problem noted here, as they had before, you presume all is well. And who would notice this unless they were recharting the entire text or checking behind Sachs/Hunger on this?
Okay.....maybe it's just me.....but that sounds like you're describing a conspiracy.


Peace
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Old 05-03-2007, 12:57 PM   #62
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Larsguy47: I would like to comment mostly on stuff I understand, and practical astronomy is not one of those. But I can tell you that there is no known way for Earth's rotation to be speeding up in historical times, no known reason for assuming it and no known mechanism to cause it. The slowdown of the rotation of Earth (converging towards tidal locking with the Moon) and the related increase of Moon's orbital velocity are too small to have even been observed before modern times, so they could not actually have contributed to whatever anomalies appear to be documented by ancient civilizations. Twenty-six or twenty-seven centuries are nothing compared to the scale at which these forces work. E.g. IIRC the rotational speed of the Earth decays at a rate of one second per century per century (duplication intentional), i.e. it falls at such a rate that in a century it will accumulate a speed loss/difference which will cause a difference of one second during a subsequent century (defined in terms of number of days, not number of round-trips around the Sun).
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Old 05-03-2007, 06:40 PM   #63
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Larsguy47: I would like to comment mostly on stuff I understand, and practical astronomy is not one of those. But I can tell you that there is no known way for Earth's rotation to be speeding up in historical times, no known reason for assuming it and no known mechanism to cause it. The slowdown of the rotation of Earth (converging towards tidal locking with the Moon) and the related increase of Moon's orbital velocity are too small to have even been observed before modern times, so they could not actually have contributed to whatever anomalies appear to be documented by ancient civilizations. Twenty-six or twenty-seven centuries are nothing compared to the scale at which these forces work. E.g. IIRC the rotational speed of the Earth decays at a rate of one second per century per century (duplication intentional), i.e. it falls at such a rate that in a century it will accumulate a speed loss/difference which will cause a difference of one second during a subsequent century (defined in terms of number of days, not number of round-trips around the Sun).
This is very interesting. Right now the delta-T applied universally in astronomy programs decrease about 3 MINUTES every five years!

For instance, in a chart documenting the delta-T called "Reduction of Time Scales" from Bao Lin and Alan Fiala's excellent Canon of Lunar Eclipses, 1500 B.C.- AD 3000, the delta-T for 540 BC is 4:42 (4 hours 42 minutes). For 30 AD it is 2:28. So just for the period of 570 years between those two dates, the Earth's rotational speed has reduced 2 hours and 14 minutes. That's compared to the reality you supposed of "1 second per century per century."

For around the time of Ramses II where a pyramid was built with such precision that even now a light reaches a certain place in the pyramid on the birthdate of Rameses has a delta-T offset of 8:23 in c. 1221 BC. That is, if I'm understanding this correctly, the length of the year was 8:23 longer during the time of Rameses than it is now. So instead of the year being 365 and 6 hours (0.25 days), it is closer to 365-1/2 days. That means that every two years the length of the year would be 366 days, instead of now where every 4 years we have a year with 366 days. But that is not generally considered the case. The Sothic dating calendar is based on that standard 365-1/4 day. So something is up, right? But that totally becomes a subjective because the calculations for the lunar times and eclipses is based upon ancient records, not presumptions of calculation based upon the current Earth's rotational speed.

My theory, of course, based upon the VAT4956 and other anomalies, is that the Seleucid Period astronomers in order to make some revisions compatible with the new chronology work, sought to revise not just the dating but also the lunar times, adding 12-16 hours to the times, or actuall removing 8-12 hours of lunar time, and one way to compensate for this in the ancient texts, is by renaming beta-Virginis as the "Rear Foot of the Lion", the original name for the actual rear foot of Leo, sigma-Leonis.

The "conspiracy theory" comes in when we find Sachs/Hunger apparently intentionally distracting from this issue and the fact that if it were established the astronomical texts from the later times were fradulent, then the substantiation of the revisions would fall and texts like the VAT4956 and others would force the redating back to the original timeline.

But I'm suspecting, therefore, that what we can determine to have been the ORIGINAL TIMES would better agree with the scientific understanding that the Earth's rotational speed if it is actually decreasing, would not decrease more than "1 second per century per century."

As I noted, even in the VAT4956 where you have an IDEAL chance to align earth and moon in line 8 where the lunar position and Earth position (sunset) are aligned, there's a 10-13 error in the lunar position. However, the SK400, is more in line with the Seleucid Period dating, even though the critical eclipse as noted confirmed for year 7 of Cambyses in 523BCE is still off by 57 minutes!

Thus per FR Stephenson, he notes that one single eclipse event late in the Seleucid Period is considered reliable enough to establish the Earth's position for a certain date and thus the Earth's rotational speed back then, which is just then reduced year by year over 2300 years until we arrive at the present Earth's rotational speed, but rarely do any other lunar eclipse times when specifically stated ever work if they are earlier than the Seleucid Period.

Now people don't like modern "conspiracy" theories, but as I noted, after reporting the misrepresentation in this critical text for line 18 to the British Museum, I just got the brush up though they acknowledge it was an obvious mistake. But to my knowledge there has been no formal correction. But of course, it's apparent that at some point some review board would consider Sachs/Hunger to have made this "error" fradulently, even if they had "good intention" at the time. So then acaemic review politics come into play to correct this. Are we going to call Hunger on the carpet and ask why he lied in the text? or is it better to just allow him to maintain his unblemished reputation and sweep this under the carpet?

It's the ultimate catch-22. We all claim we want TRUTH, but at what cost? If it hurts too many people, if there is too much "collateral damage", then the "trade off" is always going to win.

You can imagine how big this is. Once you redate the Neo-Babylonian Period by 57 years, there is no problem reducing the dating back to the Exodus. Many other things suggest this dating is too early anyway. But it's the Greek Period revisions that become the issue, because that requires correction to, the removal of 56 years of fake Greek history. So the Classic Gree History industry and Departments in these universities will pay a higher price. Suddenly their icons of Plato, Aristotle and Xenophon are key players in the biggest ancient conspiracy of all time, they becoming icons of that era by default, since they participated in destroying all other records from the time. Why cause all those problems just so a few Christians can have their messianic prophecies work out a little better? The trade off is a foregone conclusion.

My position is that if the academic world is not willing to come clean on the problems with these key astronomical texts that they want to use to establish the anti-Biblical and false timeline, then they need to stop using the texts, at which point there is little to truly contradict the Judeo-Biblical timeline, which has good "absolute chronology" compatibility (i.e. Rehov's Shishak invasion dated to 871BCE).


Thanks for your comments! Appreciated.

LG47
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Old 05-03-2007, 07:08 PM   #64
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Okay.....maybe it's just me.....but that sounds like you're describing a conspiracy.

Peace
No. You know actually, when you find someone lying about what's in a key document, and you just ignore it, you can't claim "conspiracy theorist!", holding it up like a cross to try and stop a vamprie in its tracks.

Now whether there is a "conspiracy" or not, is one thing. But it is clear, I believe, that since Sachs/Hunger was checking the lunar positions in the text against the actual astronomy, thus noting "an error for the 8th" for the position of the moon in Line 3, and being as expert as they were in translating the entire text, which included references to many other planets, that to get to line 18, the 15th of Sivan, when the Moon was clear in Capricorn some ten days away, and it was clear Venus was the only planet in Virgo on this date and it was so precisely in that exact position, to have "accidentally" missed this, inserted the moon presumptively, and then not bothering to check the lunar position against the astronomy, which would have meant they would have noted a "10-day error for the 5th" is not believable. Then when you realize that that one reference actually DEFINES what star is being called the "Bright Star Behind the Lion's Foot" (MUL KUR sa TIL GIR UR-A), and that affects the star assignments for Lines 3 and 14, where Line 3 refers to the "Rear Foot of the Lion" (GIR ar sa UR-A) and Line 14 refers to the BSBLF, which they are assigning to different stars, then it seems this was quite deliberate. So it's just not the presumption of an "inadvertent error" by inserting the moon for Line 18 that's involved. That would have been a simple case of simply correcting the Moon to Venus and all would be well. The correction involves the other misrepresentations and introduces the need to explain why beta-Virginis is being assigned incorrectly to the "Rear Foot of the Lion." But we know why, because that is the name given in later texts, but not in earlier texts, and not in the VAT4956. So the name of beta-Virginis was changed sometime after the VAT4956 was created. This also addresses that the lunar position in the VAT4956 is up to 10 hours different than the lunar position/timing in the SK400. A huge can of worms you can avoid if nobody notices you are applying the revised star names inappropriately to this text. Leaving that space blank would be the same as a red flag to look it up and insert Venus there. The least obvious is to insert something there and hope nobody notices, so they apparently placed "the moon" there and made no reference whatsoever about any "error" in that lunar position.

Now that becomes presumptively fraudulent since someone reading this without checking it, after noting an "error for the 8th" in Line 3, that this reference was astronomically checked and in the correct position. Which it isn't. Now I didn't suggest to the British Museum that they call Hunger on the carpet (Sachs is deceased) before an academic peer review board on ethics charges, but that should have been quite apparent. But the British Museum didn't seem to act on it. Or maybe they did review it, and even if they thought Hunger should be disciplined academically for the misrepresentation, the "collateral damage" to the field and credibility of the institution in general becomes an issue. No one likes a scandal and when all is said and done one wonders if it was all worth it. So if it's too BIG, then burying under the carpet is the way to go. That seems to be the decision since they haven't corrected it yet. Had they been truly honest and had any academic integrity, they would have at least corrected it immediately and made an apology, even if they didn't publicly assign any sanctions to Hunger for this.

So this addresses another ISSUE as far as getting to the truth of things. Sometimes the biases that are involved and the MONEY involved with interest groups affect the research. "Biblical archaeology" is a perfect example, where archaeologists who believe the Bible are accused of having "a shovel in one hand and the Bible in the other", ostensibly trying to find what fits the Bible record and ignoring other evidence. But that accusation works both ways, the anti-Biblicalists jump on every little thing of "missing evidence" they can find and claim this disproves the Bible.

So, yes, it's a big mess. But once you point out an error, a clear error that is admitted by an institution like the British Museum, and they drag their feet to correct it, then it indeed becomes the beginning of a "conspiracy" of fraud.

Obviously, one option would be to sue the British Museum legally for compliance in fraud and/or generate some press exposing the fraud to force the powers to be do deal with this and be more responsive to their reputation and responsibility. But who really has time for all that? Again, the idea is not to get money from the British Museum or to win the case but force them to correct the text, like they should have when this was brought to their attention.

It makes you wonder why the British Museum, besides being a museum, is so interested in acquiring all these ancient texts that they keep in their vaults that few people have access to.

LG47
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