Stephen T-B

Just to add my two-pennyworth:
of all the numerous problems with which inerrantists must deal, one that isn't often raised (as far as I know) is the Genesis account of Adam being a gardener and his sons farmers, thus pointing to our very first ancestors being agriculturalists rather than hunter gatherers.
This, I believe, is in unequivocal contradictiion to what is known about early Homo Sapiens.

Since the first book in the Bible is so wrong about this (as in so much else) then the question has to be asked: how can it be determined what is and what is not historically factual in its accounts?
The answer, I suggest, is corroborating evidence. Where there is none, then anything stated as a fact must be subject to the commonsense test of: "would it be plausible if it were not in the Bible?"
If the answer be "no", then it is reasonablr to assume that we are dealing with myth and legend.

semiopen

From IAMJoseph
I think you're referring to Joseph/Imhotep. Why not say that, are you trying to be brief? Regarding the likelihood of that being true, to paraphrase Fat Bastard in the divinely inspired movie Goldmember, "Even dubious would call that dubious."

There is some possibility that Imhotep was the model for the construction of the Joseph character.

Your friends at Chabad have bet the farm that the big bang was creation ex nihilo (of course it was only 6000 years ago). The theory of relativity is described in the second verse of Genesis. These are words of wisdom compared to your Chromosones comment. You are right that the fruit was not an apple.

Jewish sources say the stay in Egypt was 210 years, are you converting to Christianity? The Talmud says Jewish women had 5 five babies at a time, which causes the arithmetic to sort of work out. It can also be calculated that a line of people that long walking 10 abreast would stretch over 100 miles. It's hard to imagine the weaklings falling behind to be attacked by Amalek.

Taking a dump inside the camp wasn't allowed, this could be a considerable walk for someone in the center.

It is absurd to imagine that even say 20,000 people living in the Sinai for 40 years would leave no traces for archaeologists.

I sense you are doing a song and dance with this one. Numbers 31 has been discussed here many times. This involves God telling the Hebrews to kill the children of the Midianites.

After this, it continues with what seems like human sacrifices.

Personally, this kind of stuff doesn't bother me as much as it seems to bother some people on here, but I think that at some point you have to call a spade a spade.

BTW, very bold statement about Balaams Ass being possibly metaphorical, hope you don't get excommunicated. The metaphor here is not clear to me however; expect your transportation methods to act oddly if you are not a Hebrew and have conversed with God in a dream the night before?

bacht

apologies, offline for a couple of days

Just to clarify: I'm a materialist, I have no interest in spirits or ghosts

This discussion is way off topic, so I don't want to take up a lot of space in this thread. My basic point is that yes we are animals, but there is no parallel in the rest of the animal kingdom to the phenomenal rise and success of homo sapiens: not only have we filled every ecological niche, but through our tools and teamwork we can emulate any other animal behaviour and often exceed their abilities. Also we have self-awareness, imagination, and abstract reasoning. We are non-specialized physically and highly specialized mentally.

Dinosaurs dominated the earth for hundreds of millions of years, and what artifacts did they leave behind? In the last million years of human evolution what were the apes doing? Did any monkey ever invent a tool like a bow and arrow, or draw a cave painting, or use fire as a tool? No, it seems they lived their lives largely unchanged from millenium to millenium.

You say that humans murder for no good reason, and this is true. But humans also write poetry, build cities, cure diseases etc.

Not only are we capable of negative behaviour, but we are aware of what we do and how it affects those around us. I would suggest that one reason humans invented gods is because we are gods in the eyes of our non-human cousins. And with power comes responsibility. Denying that we are at the top of the animal hierarchy is an example of how good we are at lying.

semiopen

I've raised the point about agriculture and animal domestication a few times, not to mention the use of fire.

IAMJoseph's opinion is that all animals were domesticated before the flood. There are two lines in Genesis which "prove" this. Animals (or man) did not eat meat until after the flood. This is a rare example of his interpreting the Bible properly, although the literal truth of this can hardly be taken seriously.

Your test for plausibility is reasonable. Another key issue is when the texts were written or redacted. The texts should have meaning (if not literal truth) for the time in which they are written. Obviously if material is much older than the time when it was written it will become less reliable.

spamandham

Are you actually claiming that it's impossible for mathematics to exist without monotheism?

How do you explain the existence of mathematics among non-monotheists?

show_no_mercy

I wonder if IamJoseph realizes that most modern Jews don't take Genesis literally. It's supposed to be a lesson, not history.

bacht

Joseph have you ever actually studied any real science like physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy...?

The Bible is not a science book, and no such thing really existed in ancient times, though the Greeks and Arabs made a start before modern times. If anything the Jews were anti-scientific compared to the progress of math and medicine in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

One of the reasons the Catholic church resisted people like Galileo is because they knew the ancient mythological model of the universe was facing a fatal challenge. You can pretend it's still 1611, but the rest of us have moved on.

Stephen T-B

"IAMJoseph's opinion is that all animals were domesticated before the flood." (semiopen)

But this doesn't answer the question, does it, of agriculture pre-dating hunter-gathering?
If mankind didn't eat meat prior to the Flood, what did Abel do with his sheep? Wear their wool, or eat 'em? He certainly killed them because he offered "the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof" as an offering to his god.
Cain, the story says, was a "tiller of the ground". No mention of anyone going around gathering berries and roots.

semiopen

My opinion is that this is an error in the bible because the writers didn't understand that human's have to domesticate animals, etc. They are pretty clearly saying that agriculture was before hunting. I hate to bring up language with my friend Joseph around, but God would have had to teach them to talk also.

Despite The Producers not yet being accepted into my canon... Was the language Hebrew? Is there any other?

These questions don't seem to bother people who believe Genesis literally. I asked a rabbi about the sheep and he said to use for wool... makes sense in a weird kind of way.

Despite my short attention span and other bad habits (or maybe because of them), this type of soft science (history, anthropology, archaelology) is more effective in understanding and discussing the bible than hard science like geology, physics and astronomy.

Killing the sheep is an excellent point BTW, didn't notice that before. That seems like a major flaw in the story.

Sheshbazzar

No, it certainly does NOT mean the world turns on the Hebrew laws.
Hundreds of millions of people live without having ever heard your fairy tale. They have their own cultures, and their own ancient traditions, and religious beliefs, and laws that are based upon their own beliefs.
They don't give a squat for your half-baked Jewish mythology.


Yes, it is only a mythical story. Joseph who cannot even read Hebrew, much less read or interpret any ancient Egyptian inscriptians.
Talking out of your ass once again.


In other words your "all knowing" Gawd has such poor communication skills that he "inspired" gibberish to be written, foreknowing that billions of people, even the believers, would not be able to properly understand, or to properly translate his mumbo-jumbo.
But ta-da! someday, in some magical improbable future, his mumbo-jumbo gibberish is going to transform into something different, then a man's "rib" will no longer be a rib, and and a "serpent" will no longer be a serpent, because Gawd didn't really mean those words that he had written, but something else, that no one yet knows
You realise, do you not, that if that is the fact, then the words of your bible cannot at all be trusted to mean what they say, and even his own servants cannot properly understand, or be trusted to correctly interpret them, the word of Gawd becomes slippery and wholly untrustworthy for human understanding or to establish anything?
You admit your "rib story" is flakey, or that it doesn't mean what it says, but now you want to use what you admit that you cannot even translate properly as being relevant to the discoveries of modern science?
How would you know, seeing as you admit that you cannot even properly translate or interpret that babble?

Perhaps, at least it cuts to the heart of the matter, without your sacred snake tale, the rest of the bibles fables, fabricated conversations, and fabricated history, would have no reason or justification at all for existing. Everything that you hold sacred is entangled in the coils of your sacred snake.
Doesn't have a damn thing to do with my statement, I really don't give a rats ass how you arrive at your imaginary population numbers, my statement is based upon the number of men of "twenty years and upwards" with their wives, children, and the "mixed multitude" that allegedly came out of Egypt.
Figures from various sources generally range from around 1.5 to 3 million. However, the undetectable impact that this alleged Exodus had upon Egypt, would indicate that if there was any real exodus at all, there must have been of far less people involved than what the bible claims.

You have your fairy-tale account, but I don't believe in your fairy tales.
There were a lot of great civilizations before the Hebrews ever came on the scene, I do not accept your claim that the Hebrews were the first to ever take a census.
No, Joseph, you DO NOT know this for a fact, you are only asserting.
The archaeological evidence indicates that the "Hebrews" did NOT land there from Egypt, but rather arose out of the indigenous Canaanite peoples.


First of all "Joseph" if you would actually read the bible you would know that the story of Balaam and his ass is NOT to be found in Genesis.

Yes, lets do discuss the "context" of the tale of Balaam, the story covers all of Numbers chapters 22, 23, 24, and he is mentioned again in Numbers 31:8, 31:16 Deut 23:4-5, Joshua 13:22, 24:9-10, Nehemiah 13:2 and Micah 6:5
Ummm, just how much out of all this is the miracle? and how much is only metaphor?
The story is presented as just as much of being an account of factual events, as all those the other stories that you claim are actual history.
So did Moab actually send messengers to Balaam the son of Beor? (Num 22:5)

or are you claiming the bible writer created an imaginary scenario? (a -fable-)

Did Balaam go with Balak? and -did they- or -did they not- come unto Kirjathhuzoth? (Num 22:39) It either happened or it didn't,
fact or fable, you say. You want to admit the story is a fabricated-fable-, fine with me.


So you claim, but thus far your claims have amounted to little more than the hot air of stinking flatulence.
Millions of provable stats Joseph? I seriously doubt that you can produce even a hundred "provable stats" out of your entire book.
Sure you can cite verses that have numbers in them, but you cannot prove that those numbers are correct, and not inflated.
This is only one thread and to keep it short of course I selected only a few items. Anyone who has followed this forum for long knows that I, (and others) have extensively discussed hundreds of other verses.

Your last line above is interesting, Where Joseph, does your text say the snake talked "- IN A REALM OUTSIDE OF THIS UNIVERSE! :wave" ?

My Bible says that this alleged conversation took place in that Garden planted -Eastward- in Eden, YOU KNOW- that one that was located on earth, and from which;

10.-A river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.

11. The name of the first [is] -Pison-: that [is] it which compasseth the whole -land of Havilah-, where [there is] gold;

12. And the gold of that land [is] good: there [is] bdellium and the onyx stone.

13. And the name of the second river [is] -Gihon-: the same [is] it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.

14. And the name of the third river [is] -Hiddekel-: [i]that [is] it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river [is] Euphrates.

Perhaps we have been mistaken in believing that "EAST and EASTWARD refer to directions on earth, and that the Euphrates river, Assyria, and Ethiopia are locations on earth?
Please explain Joseph, how it is that you are able place Assyria, Ethiopia, the Euphrates River, "EAST" and "EASTward" as being located somewhere "IN A REALM OUTSIDE OF THIS UNIVERSE!".