Freethought & Rationalism Archive

spin · 05-26-2006, 08:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bfniii

rewrite? you mean try to understand what they could have meant several thousand years ago based on all available ancient documents?

I mean when the content of the text is too hard for you to deal with you start fudging the meaning. Before then you do handstands to make it fit in the face of overwhelming evidence.

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Originally Posted by bfniii

not at all. i addressed that point specifically

Rubbish. You changed the topic. Traces of long term temporary dwellings last thousands of years. Go read some standard archaeology.

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Originally Posted by bfniii

again, we should compare apples to apples. the analogy you gave has several pertinent incongruencies with the exodus narrative. we know much, much more about the romans than we do about the exodus.

This in no way deals with the remains of a few million people living in and around Kadesh Barnea for 38 years.

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Originally Posted by bfniii

which logistics would you be referring to?

The logistics of coping with such an enormous population.

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Originally Posted by bfniii

what about it?

You have an awful long sojourn in one place with lots and lots of human refuse. All stuff that leaves signs.

Here's what Amnon Ben-Tor says about concerted archaeological research on the exodus:

Quote:

Systematic surveys and excavations at Kadesh Barnea and in the Beersheba and Arad valleys have not produced any archaeological evidence of the Late Bronze Age, the period to which the exodus is assigned. At Kadesh Barnea, a third millennium settlement was followed by a long gap in occupation lasting until the tenth century, when an oval fortress was erected as part of a network of such fortresses throughout the Negev. Not one Late Bronze Age or Iron Age I sherd was found in the surveys, which combed the oasis of Kadesh Barnea and its vicinity, or in the systematic excavations of the mound.

(from The Archaeology of Ancient Israel, Ben-Tor, 282.)

Note that, "not one Late Bronze Age or Iron Age I sherd".

Quote:

Originally Posted by bfniii

it has to do with how they used the word. we say "a million" frequently when we don't mean it at all. but what if someone recorded a quote for posterity that contained that colloquialism? would people thousands of years in the future know to not interpret it literally?

Oh please, don't be silly. Read the first chapter of the aptly named book of Numbers. It lists the men of twenty or over from each tribe, not including Levi, each representing his family to a total of over 600,000 men. Add to this women and all those under 20 and those not fit to fight through old age.

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Originally Posted by bfniii

and there is no need for you to assume how many people were side by side which drastically affects the length of the train.

It was an image so that you could get over this Negeb's a big place thing.

You're still not imagining the ecological impact of a few million people with their goods and chattel in circulation in the area around Kadesh Barnea for so long.

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Originally Posted by bfniii

i have addressed your response to it so your accusation of it lacking substance is in doubt.

Sad fact: it had no useful content. It didn't deal with the issues. You can't simply point back to a post that didn't succeed as though it did. Well, you can, I guess, but don't expect to be taken seriously.

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Originally Posted by bfniii

i addressed this in post #204.

No, you didn't. You only referred to a general analysis of the water potential for the area. It doesn't deal with the fact that there was a drought for several hundred years down to about 1000 BCE in the fertile crescent, which I referred you to. You'll need to find something more useful. (And now read in context the statement I cited from Ben-Tor again: the drought at the end on the Bronze Age. Not one sherd.)

spin

spin · 05-26-2006, 09:15 PM

Regarding walls:

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Originally Posted by bfniii

key word: enough

Contextually wrong. Key word: none.

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Originally Posted by bfniii

i'm not making the situation out to be something it's not, like you are. i have not ignored what they found at all, contrary to the way you are portraying me. why do you feel the need to shift the discussion to a personal level whenever someone isn't intimidated by you?

It's hard to get through here. When you understand the notion of stratigraphy, when something isn't there, it isn't there. You can't shimmy around that fact. You are misrepresenting the results of the digs. They are not equivocal.

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Originally Posted by bfniii

you seem to be assuming that there were absolutely no habiru who stayed in permanent employment, that any who came in to work for a season necessarily left.

The notion is on the margins of society. You're hedging.

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Originally Posted by bfniii

i'm not avoiding anything. my brittanica is 2002 and you have done nothing to prove it wrong.

I'm horrified. Fry your disk. It's rubbish. There is a very long scholarly bibliography on the Habiru. (No, don't fry it. Some knowledge base is better than none at all. Just get over citing it as a reference for scholarly material, as it is not.)

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Originally Posted by bfniii

i am on the subject and i'm referring to the palestinian authority that controls the site

So? The Italians did their archaeology. What is wrong with it. You heavily imputed lack of quality. You didn't like the results. You disparage the workers. Old ploy.

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Originally Posted by bfniii

you imply that i "dislike" the evidence. i don't dislike it at all. i just don't think it is as final as you think it is.

If there are no walls in the stratum, then that's pretty final. That's not going to change. Even Kenyon who wrote the book on stratigraphy had to fudge over the lack of walls. It's dead. I know you don't understand, but then you would benefit from a little generic reading on archaeological methodology.

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Originally Posted by bfniii

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Originally Posted by spin

Your approach has been to refuse to accept the evidence whenever it doesn't suit your religious tendencies.

that hasn't been my approach at all.

Well, why are you interested in whackos who are trying very hard to revise the archaeology by relocating sites? -- not just Ai, because that's not sufficient, it's got to be Bethel as well against the evidence on both accounts. Why don't you get the idea that when a stratum doesn't have something as tangible as walls, it didn't exist?

You give the impression of having the approach I described. If it is not so, I would appreciate that you displayed an approach different from the one you currently display which apparently gives a false impression.

spin

Doug Shaver · 05-27-2006, 07:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bfniii

rewrite? you mean try to understand what they could have meant

No. We mean suggest that they meant something besides what they wrote.

Gullwind · 05-27-2006, 08:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bfniii

not exactly. i would say my main point in this thread is that people are making unwarranted presumptions. the issues of jericho's walls or the exodus or the plagues are far from decided, despite what spin thinks. you, however, seem to have taken a reasonable approach. you state that there isn't sufficient evidence to you. to that i would reply why do you need more and what kind would you accept?

What do you mean "more?" I'm not aware of any hard evidence that supports the Exodus.

In all of the study I have done on this subject, I have yet to see an apologetic defense of the plagues or the exodus that does not rely precisely what you have been doing this whole thread, i.e. raising possible explanations for why the historical record does not match the biblical one. Sure, they're possibilities, and I admitted that some time back. But regardless of whether you acknowledge it or not, many of the events described in the biblical account would have left some evidence, and the likelyhood of ALL of it disappearing is pretty remote. Not impossible, but why is it not justified to doubt something happened when there is no evidence that it did?

Here's an example. Let's say a guy claims that he walked into his bank and deposited $1000 in his account. However, none of the tellers remember seeing him, he does not appear on the security video, there is no record of the transaction, and he does not have an account at that bank.

By your "argument from silence" reasoning, one would be justified in believing that the guy did deposit the money because a lack of evidence that he did what he said he did is not justification for doubt.

I do not agree with your reasoning in this matter.

hinduwoman · 05-28-2006, 08:35 AM

Anyway if the Biblical accounts are just exaggerations of what actually happened, then what else in the book are exaggerations as well? Like someone rising from the dead?

bfniii · 06-01-2006, 05:54 AM

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Originally Posted by xaxxat

Farrell Till beats the Exodus claims to death:

respectfully, i disagree

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

Logistical Improbabilities in the Wilderness-Wandering Tales (1)

The Population Claims

Hence, the population for these two groups alone would have totaled 2,414,200.

there are various interpretations of the words that delineate the numbers of the people.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

The Sinai peninsula is about 150 miles long from north to south and about 120 miles across at its widest point. Since it is shaped like an arrowhead, it is much narrower in other places.

what other places? the three corners are where any narrowing occurs.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

The exodus stories ask us to believe that about 3 million people wandered in this wilderness for a period of 40 years, but how likely is it that 3 million people could do that in a relatively confined area without finding their way out of the wilderness?

they did find their way out.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

Let's suppose that these 3 million traveled, say, 200 abreast, taking with them their tents, herds, and other possessions as they marched along. How long would this line of humanity have been? If they traveled this way, there would have been 15,000 rows, and if they had only 3 feet between the rows, they would have been strung out over a distance of almost 9 miles.

there's no reason to doubt that at some points they could have been well over 200 abreast, like 500.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

So they sometimes backtracked or traveled in circles, some inerrantist will say.

they were being led by the smoke and the fire. who knows where they went. what difference does it make?

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

Well, if so, why didn't they stay in the same encampments on their second or third trips through?

how do we know they even came close to any previous encampments? we don't.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

The Size of the Hebrew Camps

the size of the encampments would have been over 4 square miles.

is this impossible, or just difficult to believe?

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

Sacrifices and the Size of the Hebrew Camps

Now if we imagine that about half of the three million Israelites at this time were adults, then since census figures at the end of the 40 years of wandering (Numbers 26) indicated that approximately the same number (3 million) went into Canaan, that would have required at least 1.5 million births during those years, not even allowing for infant mortality rates or for deaths of those who were children at the time of the adult rebellion at the report of the spies. Since we could expect a high mortality rate under the conditions the Israelites lived in, it would not be at all unreasonable to assume that at least 2 million births occurred during the wilderness wanderings.

why should such an assumption be made?

the article also fails to consider how many people died during the exodus.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

As we noted above, 137 births per day would be just a conservative estimate for a horde of 3 million people, so this would have required 137 purification sacrifices per day.

that is not a conservative estimate for people living under harsh, desert conditions.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

Inerrantists, of course, will think that this isn't any problem at all. That is probably because they have never taken the time to analyze biblical scenarios and try to visualize what would have been involved if they had actually happened. They just assume that if the Bible says it, then it had to have happened.

no, there is a difference between impossible and difficult. some people have never taken the time to analyze the scenario and try to visualize that their misconceptions stem from unwarranted assumptions and personal conjecture based on an opposing worldview. they just assume that if the bible says it, then it couldn't have happened.

some christians don't "just assume that if the bible says it, then it had to have happened". some christians have actually analyzed the the issues and aren't convinced by articles like this one.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

Yahweh's Quails

There are no discrepancies in the Bible? Well, if obvious exaggeration is not a discrepancy, what is it?

a miracle performed by an omnipotent deity?

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

So one passage from Yahweh's inspired, inerrant word says that he told the people they would eat so much meat (for at least a month) that it would become loathsome to them, but another passage (just a few verses further along) says that the people never even had the opportunity to eat the quails, because Yahweh struck the people with a "very great plague" while the meat was still between their teeth, before it was consumed, and killed those who had had "the craving."

"the anger of Yahweh was kindled against the people" is the key phrase. what we don't know is why He was angered. it's safe to assume given their behavior all along, they did something else that was impudent. the real question is why you feel that God is not allowed to change His mind when people are ungrateful.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

Besides the sheer logistics that would have been involved in the gathering of these quails as claimed in the biblical text, this fanciful little tale presents another problem for biblical inerrantists.

no, it doesn't

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

But there are no discrepancies in the Bible, are there?

not so far

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

At Least the Priests Had Meat

We have to wonder why the inscrutable Yahweh selected such an ungrateful lot to be his chosen people above all nations on the face of the earth (Deut. 7:6-7).

the hidden assumption in this statement is that there are people who are different than the hebrews.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

Only a very gullible person could believe that this book accurately portrayed how sacrifices were offered by 3 million people in a desert wilderness and officiated over by just three or four priests.

the NIV study bible says they were "assisted by many from the tribe of levi" (emphasis mine)

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

Getting the Whole Congregation Together

Inerrantists will argue that "all of the congregation" didn't mean all of the Israelites in the exodus but only the adults. That hardly solves the problem, because if we cut the population figures in half to accommodate this quibble,

quibble? if christians responding to a misconception is a quibble, then what are these articles? garbage?

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

that would simply halve the scenarios presented above, and no reasonable person can think that 1.5 million adults assembled on 137.5 acres of land or in a column 4.2 miles long could hear a speech that Moses was delivering without a public address system. Obviously, all of Moses speeches to "all Israel" or the "whole congregation" are simply more exaggerations in the fanciful tale of Israel's trek from Egypt to the promised land.

getting the congregation together to deliver a message does not mean every single person has to hear the message simultaneously.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

When Nature Called

In Yahweh's inscrutable wisdom that led him to choose this method of waste disposal rather than ordering the construction of pit latrines, special problems would have necessarily ensued. In a time, for example, when there was no Imodium A-D, diarrhea would have seriously complicated the problems.

how so?

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

It's hard to imagine how 2.5 million people trekking throughout the day to this "designated area" could have attended to their needs without at times uncovering the holes that others had used. This must have caused many unpleasant moments.

just because God commanded it, that doesn't mean they did it that way. they were disobedient as you have so often noted.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

The Water Problem

If the Israelites journeyed three days and found no water until they came to Marah, they must have either traveled three days in a desert region without water or else they carried with them the water they needed. Studies that have been done in desert suvival show that it would have been unlikely that they could have traveled for three days in a desert region without water.

the hidden assumption here is that they didn't have water with them. that is not what the passage says. the passage says they were unable to find water which doesn't preclude any that they already had.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

Hence, inerrantists, who claim that the wilderness wandering tales are historically accurate, cannot escape the need to explain how the Israelites could have transported with them enough water to provide them and their livestock with their daily requirements.

they carried it? also, God apparently provided some as till himself has noted.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

If water is scarce, do not eat. Food requires water for digestion; therefore, eating food will use water that you need for cooling.

that undercuts till's previous arguments regarding food requirements. guess he didn't catch that or else he would have excluded one of them.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

A gallon of water weighs eight pounds, so if each person carried his minimum daily requirement, he/she would have begun the journey burdened with 24 pounds of water in addition to what else may have been necessary to carry.

To argue that each person carried his own water would be to ignore other factors involved in the wilderness-wandering tales. If, for example, each adult started out carrying three gallons of water, how did they transport other items that they would have needed to carry with them? An informed inerrantist should know that, as these tales were spun in the Bible, the Israelites had taken with them more than just the clothes on their backs. Who carried these metals?

Let's look at this problem in another way. To travel three days over desert terrain, three million people would have needed a minimum of nine million gallons of water just for themselves without any consideration of what their livestock would have needed. Nine million gallons of water would weight 72 million pounds. That would have been 36,000 tons of water. To transport this much water, without burdening themselves and increasing their daily water requirements, these Israelites would have had to have had with them a fleet of tanker wagons (which their hasty exodus from Egypt would not have allowed them time to build).

they could have been bulding them all along. there is no indication how long they knew that they were going to leave, but they knew moses was working on it.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

If we imagined that a tanker wagon could have carried 2,000 gallons of water and that horses or some other beasts of burden could have pulled a wagon weighing 16,000 pounds through a sandy desert terrain, the Israelites would have needed 4,500 such tanker wagons to transport just the water that the people would have needed. Only a hopelessly naive inerrantist would argue that this was how the Israelites supplied their daily water requirements.

maybe not totally, but the israelites did build some impressive structures in egypt so it's not out of the question.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

Some inerrantists have tried to solve this problem by postulating that the Israelites had used pack animals--horses or some such--to transport their water

it's probably some combination of people, carts and livestock all carrying items. keep in mind that it's possible many people and animals did not survive. the article is almost implying conditions necessary for a perfect sojourn.

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

My point is that an enormous amount of water would have been required each day to maintain the three million Hebrews and their flocks and herds. Inerrantists who think that this is just a minor problem that can be brushed aside as of no consequence haven't taken the time to think the problem through.

1. till himself noted an occasion where God/moses turned bitter liquid into drinking water. who's to say that didn't happen everyday?
2. i have already noted that there are known wells all within a days journey in certain areas of the sinai region

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Originally Posted by Farrell Till

I am reminded of what a man said to me after I had completed my oral debate in Pekin, Illinois, with Kent Hovind, who had tried to explain how Noah could have taken specimens of all animals in the world aboard the ark and attended to their needs for a year with only seven other people to help him. This man approached me while I was talking to others in the audience and told me that he believed in God but did not believe that the story of the ark could have happened. He explained that he owned a livestock farm and was therefore familiar with the many problems involved in animal management. He told me that anyone who believes the ark story is someone who has not had any experience in tending animals. The subject of water access during the wilderness wanderings didn't come up in that debate, but I am sure that this man would also know that access to water in the wilderness would have posed an insurmountable problem to the survival of the Israelites and their large herds of livestock.

not to God. "animal management" is probably not as big of a problem for Him as it is for us.

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Originally Posted by xaxxat

Lots of interesting articles on that sight...

interesting is a good choice of words

Anat · 06-01-2006, 07:36 AM

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Originally Posted by bfniii

there are various interpretations of the words that delineate the numbers of the people.

And I have asked already: show me one that is consistent with *all* the numbers in the Bible and a reasonable scenario of desert survival (including things like access to water). Oh, but the numbers need to be big enough to necessitate a conquest, considering that the land was settled rather sparsely in the LB.

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they did find their way out.

It took Egyptian soldiers a few days to cross. Heck, their own ancestors crossed it fast enough to get grain in a time of famine. Consider that by what was supposed to be the second year of the famine they had been back and forth twice and returned with their families.

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is this impossible, or just difficult to believe?

If the camp site is 4 square miles it means anyone at the center would have a long trek each time s/he needed to defecate. Or gather firewood.

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why should such an assumption be made?

the article also fails to consider how many people died during the exodus.

Look, you have one generation leaving Egypt. By divine decree they all die in the desert, and the next generation enters Canaan, and their numbers are roughly the same. That means if X people left, ~X people had to die and ~X had to be born, within the specified time span. And all the required life cycle ceremonies were supposed to have been performed. (And since almost all the deaths would have occured in Kadesh Barnea we would expect to find their cemetary by now, in addition to the waste trenches and middens.)

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the NIV study bible says they were "assisted by many from the tribe of levi" (emphasis mine)

How many altars was Moses instructed to build? How many sacred tools?

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just because God commanded it, that doesn't mean they did it that way. they were disobedient as you have so often noted.

You mean they were so disobedient that they found a better and safer way than the one God commanded them, thus overcoming a problem that would have ensued had they followed God's commandment?

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they could have been bulding them all along. there is no indication how long they knew that they were going to leave, but they knew moses was working on it.

And where are the remains? How would such wagons have crossed desert terrain anyway? What did they do with them when they entered Canaan?

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it's probably some combination of people, carts and livestock all carrying items. keep in mind that it's possible many people and animals did not survive. the article is almost implying conditions necessary for a perfect sojourn.

The same number of people entered Canaan as had left Egypt. Yes, lots of people died, but they were supposedly replaced.

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1. till himself noted an occasion where God/moses turned bitter liquid into drinking water. who's to say that didn't happen everyday?
2. i have already noted that there are known wells all within a days journey in certain areas of the sinai region

How did they access the wells? How many at one time? How much water can be drawn in a day?

You don't even notice how ridiculous the scenarios you offer are.

darstec · 06-01-2006, 08:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anat

Has any of the thread participants observed a recitation of the plagues during a seder? Theoretically one is supposed to drip wine from one's glass for each plague in memory of the suffering of the Egyptians - thus the glass is less than full, because happiness that comes on the account of another's suffering cannot be complete. However, in all seders I had participated in, this recitation wasn't a solemn time but a time of hilarity, with everyone reciting in unison. I think the authors of Exodus just added whatever disasters they could come up with in increasing severity for literary and dramatic purposes. The Exodus cycle is exciting story-telling material.

At least Cecil B. DeMille thought so.

spin · 06-01-2006, 09:40 PM

In a post full of evasion our star evader bfniii writes:

Quote:

Originally Posted by bfniii

Quote:

Originally Posted by Farrell Till

Hence, the population for these two groups alone would have totaled 2,414,200.

there are various interpretations of the words that delineate the numbers of the people.

ok, bfniii, please explain exactly how you understand the figures in the pentateuch which add up the number of able-bodied men over 20 years of age from to various tribes to be over 600,000.

Are they wrong? (If so, why?)

Are they inaccurate? (If so, why?)

Are they misunderstood? (If so, how exactly should they be understood?)

Are we not to read the passages literally? (If not, how exactly should they be read?)

When the pentateuch tells us that there are over 600,000 able-bodied men over 20 years of age during the wandering in the desert, how many do you say there were? How many women do you think there were? How many children?

Why do you have problems with a literal reading of the bible?

Why can you never have the strength of character to give a clear precise response?

spin

Doug Shaver · 06-01-2006, 10:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bfniii

there are various interpretations of the words that delineate the numbers of the people.

I ask you in a previous post for some alternative interpretations of "six hundred thousand." Are you going to respond to that?

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05-28-2006, 08:35 AM	#215
hinduwoman Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: India Posts: 6,977	Anyway if the Biblical accounts are just exaggerations of what actually happened, then what else in the book are exaggerations as well? Like someone rising from the dead?

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