mata leao

But we "Have" the ten commandments, we trace their lineage way back!, and the judeo-christian west has (at least aspirationally) tried to live by them. Atheists complain loud and long about them on a dialy basis! possession is nine tenths! Atheists claim humans evolved, where is the original source? Atheists claim that matter, being ,imdless, still somehow decided to create more matter, where was the original source? A bit of hypocricy here?

mata leao

my apologies..."mindless"..matter that is!

spin

Dear mata leao,

Please try to cut out the useless posturing when dealing with a thread. Your comments on atheists above add nothing to the discussion stemming from the original post (OP) of this thread. If you want to talk about atheists, find a suitable forum and post there. Our general topic on this forum is Biblical Criticism and History (BC&H). If that's not your interest, then you don't post here.

If I understand Malachi151's statement, the reference to the "Ten Commandments" is dealing with the tablets. The claim is that these tablets never existed. Your comment "But we "Have" the ten commandments, we trace their lineage way back!" doesn't seem to deal with the problem outlined by Malachi151. You may believe that the pentateuch stems from Moses, but how do you get past simple belief and enter into a world where only what can be demonstrated can be appreciated by your interlocutors? If you have ideas that you want to communicate, you have to explain them using means that will communicate them. That is what is fundamentally required of you here. You have to use logic and evidence. Without both, you can't hope to say anything to another person who doesn't see things the way you do.


spin

mata leao

Dear Spin, first you are not a moderator and you aint my mamma so dont tell me how or what to post. second, I was in fact responding directly and on point to Malachi151 who indicated Christians had to have an original source (physically extant) to authenticate the Ten Commandments. I pointed out the rank hypocricy in such a burden being placed on Christians and cited the "opposition's use of circumstantial evidence to support their position. The longstanding and well documented accuracy and fidelity of the hebraic oral tradition certainly provides a basis to argue that the copies trace back to an original source. The ark of the covenant, the plethora of substantiating anecdotal material concerning the levitical and Mosaic law and the traditions of the Israelites, at the very least, is consistent with the prevailing majority view of peer reviewed middle eastern scholars that the ten commandmants trace back to an original source , at least generally speaking, within the time period in question.

spin

I did not claim to be.

Of that I am thankful.

When you make off-topic comments, I am not obliged not to indicate the fact.

I think you haven't shown a cabbage.

You are making generalisations, apparently drawn from your imagination.

Outside the biblical (literary) text, what do you know about the ark? Not a sausage.

One piece of a literary source substantiating another??

Have you tried to look for evidence for either the exodus or the conquest? That should be easier to do than levitical or mosaic laws from their reputed times. As I have stated the major problem you face is not having a jot of evidence for your adopted views.

This is usually known as the fallacy of argument from authority. When you have evidence for your views, you might then get a listening to.


spin

Toto

mata leao: This forum is not for witnessing. It is for a serious discussion of issues relating to the literary text of the Bible and/or related history. There is a separate forum for discussing the evolution of the human species, and also one for church state separation issues.

Toto
BCH moderator

mata leao

Is there a separate forum where one might kindly be allowed to use analogical argumentation to point out hypocricy? (this is a rhetorical question). Tu qou que seems to be disallowed here I suppose....I think I did in fact make a serious and intellligent counter argument to the "opinion" of one poster who said they believed the Ten Commandments had to have an original extant source in order to be authenticated. That is an absurd proposition. The summary dismissal of the hebraic oral tradition counter argument and the labelling of same as some sort of "digression" is troubling as well but I suppose I shouldnt say anything. One wonders exactly what tenor of discussion one might have on this topic at all, if the reliability of a writing from antiquity is fait accompli deemed impossible to even debate, unless the original is produced.

Toto

I disagree. You referred to the mythical "judeo-christian" religion, you stated falsely that atheists complain about the ten commandments all the time as if this had some relevance, you brought evolution into the question, although evolution has no textual basis. There was nothing serious there.

You are not required to produce an original document, but you are required to produce a coherent argument if you want to post here. I saw no argument based on the "hebraic oral tradition counter argument.

May I ask if English is your first language?

judge

But even here we have more than one version of the ten commandments, don't we?

Diogenes the Cynic

Why should Hebrew oral tradition be given any more historical credence than Aboriginal or Lakota Sioux oral traditions? And strictly speaking, there actually is no evidence that an oral tradition of Moses and the tablets existed prior to its literary invention. What we do know is that the archaeological evidence refutes the Exodus story on virtually every point. The Jews were never enslaved in Egypt, there was no Exodus from Egypt, no Moses, no wandering in the Sinai, no mass immigration into Palestine and no conquest of Canaan. None of it ever happened. The cultural group which came to be known as the Israelites was indigenous to the Judea, never left it and never conquered much of anything (there was never a unified kingdom of David and Solomon either. Judea never controlled the northern kingdom). Since there was no Exodus and no Moses, it follows necessarily that there never was an Ark and there never were any tablets.

As for pre-scriptural Hebrew oral tradition, we don't really know what it was. There seem to be some local variations on some of the older Mesopotamian myths embedded in the text of Genesis (the creation myth, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the flood are all derived from earlier Sumerian myths) but we don't really know what other parts of the historical books of the Tanakh had precedent as tribal oral tradition (some of it probably did but that still doesn't make it historically accurate) and what did not.

The Hebrew Bible is mostly a collection of post-exilic writings and much of it was intended to create a mythic history for the Jewish people as well as to center religious and political authority in Jerusalem. There is no reason to believe that Mosaic law existed in any form, either oral or literary, before it was written down in the 7th or 8th century BCE.

Your shots about evolution in this thread (besides being in the wrong forum) are a complete non-sequitur. Evolutionary theory does not depend on a written text to authenticate it. What kind of worthless appeal to authority would that be? Do you need a written text to prove that the earth revolves around the sun? And this may come as a shock to you but evolution is NOT an "atheist" theory. Evolutionary theory does not contradict or even address the existence of God. Lots of people who believe in God (including the last Pope) have no problem at all accepting evolution.