Freethought & Rationalism Archive

spin · 05-07-2009, 02:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by judge

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

I get the idea, judge, that you aren't going to consider the fact that the name Goshen is applied outside an Egyptian context and so there is no reason to believe that it has an Egyptian source. It is irrelevant then that a writer might reuse the name Goshen for an Egyptian place with nominal similarities. If that still doesn't make sense to you, then that's too bad.

spin

It is not that the fact can't be considered. Sure, one can consider it. But why would one follow your convoluted alternative explanation, where you are second guessing what the translators of the LXX might have thought when,

1) Genesis itself, within one chapter, indicates that Goshen was near to Joseph and thus in Egypt not Arabia.

2) An area in Egypt was called the Arabian Nome when the LXX was being written.

Compare this simple explanation (above) to your convoluted alternative (below).

Gen 45:10 LXX says clearly Gesem Arabias, ie the Greek translator understood an Arabian location rather than some place in Egypt. Joshua (Josh 11:16) took the land of Goshen -- obviously not Egyptian, but south of Judah, in what could be considered Arabia. Goshen, turns up in Gen 46:34, in the power of the pharaoh, so looking for something in Egypt proper the closest thing one finds is Qos near the delta. What we see is confusion in the minds of the Hebrew writers as to this Goshen and modern scholars attempting to make sense of the confusion by fixing the data. One could of course try to separate this Goshen into two separate locations in the same general area, but one can understand that this would merely appear expedient.

As you cannot contemplate the issue, let's cut the repetitive stress and do this one yes/no question at a time: is Joshua's Goshen in Egypt?

spin

David Rohl · 05-07-2009, 03:25 AM

Judge responded to spin on Arabian Goshen thus:

Quote:

Originally Posted by judge

It is not that the fact can't be considered. Sure, one can consider it. But why would one follow your convoluted alternative explanation, where you are second guessing what the translators of the LXX might have thought when,

1) Genesis itself, within one chapter, indicates that Goshen was near to Joseph and thus in Egypt not Arabia.

2) An area in Egypt was called the Arabian Nome when the LXX was being written.

Compare this simple explanation (above) to your convoluted alternative.

DR: Thank you Judge for exposing one of spin's convolutions. He really didn't like it very much, did he? You seem to have rattled him quite a bit if his shrill response is anything to go by.

On the Egyptian S to Hebrew Sh discussion, he has moved the goal-posts once again. First he demanded that I produce a sample text in the lingua franca of the region. I did so (several in fact). That was not good enough for him, so he demanded an example specifically from the region where the biblical story was set. I provided the Ashkelon letter. That was not good enough either. He now demands I produce an example from Jerusalem. Next he will be wanting an example from the royal palace archive (not yet discovered). Then, no doubt, he will require me to produce an example signed by King Solomon himself. Pathetic.

The lingua franca for diplomatic correspondence in the entire region, which included Jerusalem, was Akkadian. The royal scribes of Jerusalem in the Late Bronze Age would have used this language and the cuneiform script to correspond with other city-states and the rulers of major civilisations (attested in the Amarna Letters from Jerusalem). Why then shouldn't these same scribes have spelled the names of royalty in an identical fashion as in the correspondence? And you can't argue that they would not have used the hypocoristic form of Ramesses nomen as the Egyptian scribes themselves (especially those who had worked in Syro-Palestine) used Sysw in the naming of locations (Symyra of Sysw, Uto of Sysw, etc). Besides wasn't it the Hebrew scribes who wrote the name of the Assyrian King Tiglath-puleser as 'Pul'? In fact the Bible does not produce a pharaoh's name in close proximity to his formal and full Egyptian nomen until the reign of Taharka in the 7th century BC.

It seems that spin has many of you bamboozled by his slights of hand. He is fooling you. And when he is found out, he then redirects the discussion to some other obscure position.

He is claiming that a word in the Egyptian language (which was certainly partly Semitic) with the same meaning as the Hebrew equivalent, but which differs in the use of S rather that Sh, is irrelevant. Just because a word looks identical and has the same meaning, it does not mean it is common to both languages. That is like saying German 'Brot' does not have a relationship to English 'bread', or German 'Mann' is not the same word as English 'man'. He thinks I am joking to compare Egyptian ss (six) with Hebrew shsh (six). That's like dismissing the equivalence of Spanish seis and English six, or French un with English one, or tres with three and so on.

It appears that I am not allowed to argue that Egyptian 'sbt' (to judge) is the same word as Hebrew 'shpt' (to judge) or Egyptian 'shs' (linen) is Hebrew 'shsh' (linen). Why?

Incidentally the nomen Ramesses is spelt two ways - with the the last element written with two door-bolt glyphs = S or two bolts of linen = S (we have no idea what the difference in vocalisation was). This latter glyph is the symbol of the word that is written 'shs' (linen) in Egyptian, with the equivalent of a shin and sin - not two sameks. Who is to say that the nomen of Ramesses II ends in two sameks? That is pure conjecture, because nobody knows how the Egyptian letters were pronounced when it comes to the subtleties between a 'sharp S' and normal S. The only guide is the Coptic of a much later time. That's like saying modern English is a useful and accurate guide to the pronunciation of Chaucer's English. Or even that a local English dialect is a guide to 'the Queen's English'. Or colloquial Arabic is the same as Classical Arabic. Indeed, there were at least four dialects of Coptic, one of which pronounced words with Sh whilst the others used S.

Spin says Akkadian possesses the same generic words (cognates) as Hebrew, thus the latter is more akin to it's sister Semitic languages than Egyptian. [At another time he was arguing that you can't use East Semitic to make a linguistic point with regard to the relationship between Egyptian and Hebrew.] All that implies is that the Semitic languages as a whole - given their close relationships - were capable of represnting Sh where the Egyptians used S. I have produced sufficient evidence in the form of examples of this phenomenon to cast doubt on Kitchen's assertion that this never happened with Hebrew. And there is nothing wrong with the methodology of doubt - that is the basis of criticism.

For years linguists have argued that many Egyptian words are cognates of the Semitic language family anyway. Science is often observational. So if A looks like B, tastes like B, and acts like B, then it is most likely the same as B. If a word in the Egyptian language, looks like a word in Hebrew, acts like that word (i.e. has the same meaning) and is used in the same way, then it is most likely the same word in both languages. So if one uses S and the other Sh, this shows a transfer of S to Sh or Sh to S. The direction is irrelevant. Spin really does like to make the task of producing the requested evidence impossible to fulfill. Evidence is rarely conclusive and usually open to interpretation in one form or another. All evidence is open to doubt and it is the weight of evidence that persuades.

And I really don't understand how someone can profess a belief that the Exodus and Conquest never happened, yet can bang on about a passage in Joshua regarding an Arabian Goshen as if his life depended on it. Is he really a closet fundamentalist who has been hiding his secret all along? Or is he simply schizophrenic when it comes to the Bible, believing one minute that it is all tosh and the next that every passage is the inerrant word of God?

Am I alone on the discussion board in seeing through spin's convolutions? I realise that asking this question is to invite a whole raft of criticism, but I am quite interested to find out if there are any lurkers here who do not support the spin methodology of aggression and rhetorical dismissal. If not, then fair enough. I shall pick up my bed and move elsewhere. It is no fun beating your head against a brick wall and I do have other things I need to do (like the odd bit of grubbing for money and fundie baiting).

David Rohl · 05-07-2009, 03:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roland

This whole conversation is pretty much beyond my comprehension, but I do have one question. In most of what I've read on the subject of ancient Israel from authors like Finklestein and the like, there is no time prior to the 7th Century BC when ALL the cities that Joshua and his Israelite army supposedly conquered were occupied simultaneously.

If Rohl's revised chronology were shown to be plausible, would that still be the case or would it somehow solve that "problem," thereby lending credence to the conquest story?

Thanks

DR: They are all occupied and destroyed towards the end of the Middle Bronze Age (given the caveat that we cannot identify all of them and some identifications - like et-Tell = Ay - are very much in dispute). Finkelstein simply does not consider this archaeological period because it is off his radar.

David Rohl · 05-07-2009, 03:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

There is a real problem with the Iceman but it is not about him being pre-Chalcolithic. We have quite widespread European radiocarbon evidence (quite apart from the Iceman) for the smelting of copper before 3500 BCE (older than the Iceman).

The problem is that on stylistic grounds the Iceman's axe appears to be a product of the Remedello culture which seems clearly to be later than 3000 BCE (maybe 2700 BCE). This is a real problem but it is not that the Iceman had a copper axe; it is the type of copper axe.

DR: Thank you Andrew for the clarification - very useful.

David Rohl · 05-07-2009, 04:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

Hi David

I think this is a misunderstanding of what Manning is argiung. Manning does suggest that the (current) conventional dates for the early 18th dynasty may be up to 25 years too low, and has been attacked by Egyptologists over this. However his dating of the Thera event to shortly before 1600 BCE does not involve dating the beginning of the 18th dynasty that early. Manning is arguing (rightly or wrongly) that the appearance of Theran pumice in Egypt first occurs decades after the Thera event.

DR: Andrew, that's not really the point I am trying to make. The point is that the vast majority of Egyptologists put the Theran eruption within the first part of the 18th Dynasty - based on pottery synchronisms between Akrotiri (on Thera), Cyprus and Egypt. Those synchronisms place the end of LM IA well into the 18th Dynasty whilst the eruption took place towards the end of LM IA according to the Cretan evidence. Manning is out on a limb with both the Egyptologists and the Aegeanists in insisting that the eruption took place in the Hyksos period as would be implied by the early C14 date for the event. So, if according to C14, the eruption occurred more than a century before the OC date for the start of the 18th Dynasty, yet the archaeology indicates it took place within the 18th Dynasty, we have a dichotomy. The solution is not to stretch the 18th Dynasty backwards by 100 years because there are simply no kings in this well attested era to fill the gap. And one can't shift the whole dynasty backwards because it is anchored to the C14 dates for the Amarna period at the other end on the dynasty. Hence the impasse.

judge · 05-07-2009, 04:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

As you cannot contemplate the issue, let's cut the repetitive stress and do this one yes/no question at a time: is Joshua's Goshen in Egypt?

spin

Is Paris in Texas or France?
Is Athens in Georgia or Greece?

What about Springfield? :devil1:

David Rohl · 05-07-2009, 04:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Rohl

DR: Andrew, could you explain this to me? How do you know that there was more C14 in 3000 BC than now?

Hi David

I was explaining to Ben the current consensus (I noted that you do not share it.) As you are aware the most unambiguous evidence comes from measuring the C14 in treerings from trees (primarily North American) whose absolute ages are known by tree ring matching. There are problems (not generally regarded as major) in applying these results to the Eastern Mediterranean where the tree ring calendar is less solidly rooted in absolute chronology.

(If one accepts the conventional Egyptian chronology then one has no real option but to believe there was more C14 in ancient times but you would correctly regard this as a circular argument.)

DR: I was expecting you to say that. In other words, there is no evidence that C14 levels were higher in 3000 BC other than C14 dating itself. You are using the deviation of the dendro calibration curve as your evidence for this, which assumes that the calibration curve is correct. And so you are right, this is a prime example of circular reasoning!

Ted Hoffman · 05-07-2009, 06:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duke Leto

I think I can cast some doubts over the efficacy of Radiocarbon, since I've done a lot of thinking on the subject.

First an explanation of the science underlying radiocarbon dating. Our atmosphere is under constat barrage of intense radiation from our friendly neighborhood Fusion Power source, to wit, the sun. A statistically predictable number of cosmic rays interacting with the upper atmosphere dislodge neutrons from atomic nuclei, which subsequently hit other nuclei and produce radioactive isotopes. The most common of these isotopes is when a neutron hits a Nitrogen 14 nucleus, by far the most common isotope in the most common element in the atmosphere, and transmutes it to a heavy isotope of Carbon, Carbon-14, with a hydrogen atom sloghed off into the bargain.

Since Carbon-14 has a fairly short half-life, just under 6000 years, there's a natural equilibrium point between the constant creation of Carbon-14 and its constant decay back to Nitrogen-14 by Beta radiation. This equilibrium point is presently at ~ 1 C-14 atom for every trillion standard issue C-12 atoms in the atmosphere. Since living things are constantly exchanging carbon with the atmosphere by means of photosynthesis and respiration, the proportion of C-12 versus C-14 in living things is always the same as that of the local atmosphere. Once something is dead, however, that exchange of carbon comes to an end and the C-14 gradually decays away. So, by measuring the proportion of C-14 to C-12 against the fixed rate of decay, one can state with confidence when the the organism died.

The problem is it isn't that simple. The theory rests on three major assumptions that are simply not true.

1.) The amount of solar radiation causing N-14 transmutation in the upper atmosphere is constant. This is not the case owing to fluctuations in solar output with the sunspot cycles and variations in the strength of Earth's magnetic field.

2) The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is constant. As we all know this is emphatically not the case and CO2 has content has gone up dramatically within historial times thanks to human intervention. The more CO2 there is in the atmosphere as a whole, the larger the pool the constant trickle of transmuted C-14 is absorbed into, and the lower its equilibrium proportion.

3) It is assumed no sources of inorganic carbon are escaping into the system to drive down the overall proportion. We know that no systemic human activity capable of releasing considerable amounts of fossilized Carbon has existed until the industrial era, but that leaves volcanic activity as a wrench in the works. (The input of radioactive carbon into the atmosphere stemming from a certain gang of idiots getting access to very powerful "neutron emitting devices" circa 1945.)

Thus carbon dating must be calibrated.

This is generally done via dendrochronology, the study of tree ring widths to determine the age of trees. Since the age of a tree can be known by counting its seasonal rings, and the pattern of thin rings to fat rings within a given environment will be unique over a period years, if you can match the pattern of ring growth in a tree or piece of timber with an unknown date of death to another pattern in a tree or piece of timber with a known date of death, you can fix when the unknown tree died and thus what the proportion of C-14 to C-12 was at that time. In theory.

There are two problems with dendrochronology prior to roughly the start of the common era as I see it.

First is the increasing paucity of source logs. Second is the inherent subjectivity of pattern matching on tree rings, even if done by computer, since climate is still cyclical, and trees will have a tendency to auto-correlate, yielding false positives.

What would be best is if Thera could be pinned down by non-radiocarbon methods. We know a major catastrophic eruption took place that is placed at circa 1640 BCE via radiocarbon and dendrochronological methods, but the sulphur peak captured in the glacial corings of the polar ice caps finger Mt. Aniakchak in Alaska.

Duke, a response has been made to your claims below:
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....79#post5924779

Let me know what you think.

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....79#post5924779

spin · 05-07-2009, 01:01 PM

David Rohl will not deal with the evidence that $w$q is the most likely original form in Hebrew, a form eminently suited for the current understanding of the name as Shoshenq. This is why he is grasping at straws to make his version seem reasonable. He has to grub any slight hope for getting some linguistic support for how Sesw could end up $w$q, ie not one phoneme the same. It's a bit like how "fish" could just as easily be spelled "ghoti" in the eyes of some pundits (ie "gh" as in "rough", "o" as in "women" and "ti" as in "ignition").

Here are the first seven numbers:

-	Egyptian	Hebrew	Akkadian
one	wi'yaw	)axad	edu, axadu
two	sinway	$nay	$ina
three	hamtaw	$elo$	$ala$tu
four	yafdaw	arb'a	arba'u
five	diyaw	xamo$	xamsu
six	yassaw sisw, isw	$e$	sudu$u [sixth: se$$u]
seven	safxaw	$eba(	sibi, sibittu

[")" = alef; "(" = ayin; "$" = shin; "x" = chet]

This should be indicative of the closer relationship between Hebrew and Akkadian. It also shows that all the Hebrew numbers are related to the Akkadian with a strong indication that Hebrew and Akkadian versions of each number come from the same shared ancestor. Hebrew didn't need to borrow a number for six when it already had one, inherited it.

He is still plugging away trying to make the Goshen of Hebrew legend into a real place in Egypt, when there was a Goshen closer to home to be the source of the word. An analogy is the word "Africa", a word developed by the Romans to describe the land of the Afri (sing. Afer) which was located on the southern side of the Mediterranean; it's now used for the whole of the continent, but that use doesn't reflect the origin of the word, just as the use of Goshen to describe a legendary part of Egypt doesn't reflect its origin. But, hey, if he wants to believe the exodus story he can also believe that Goshen comes from Egypt. And so I guess he has two Goshens.

He claims I have "moved the goal-posts" regarding "Egyptian S to Hebrew Sh discussion" and you're darned tootin' I have. I've put them back on the field. His approach to linguistics is to forget anything that doesn't reflect his conclusions. He wants to forget that Akkadian in no way directly reflects the local language spoken around Jerusalem: because the Amarna letters feature Egyptian /s/ to Amarna Akkadian Sh, and Palestinian towns received some of these letters, then Hebrew must have been influenced by Amarna Akkadian. We have no letters from the culture which produced the biblical literature mong the Amarna letters and the ones to Canaanite Jerusalem don't feature examples of what he wants, and even if they did what influence would the one or two Akkadian speaking scribes have had on Hebrew literature when they translated the letters they read aloud into the local language? He is so far off the field with his thin chain of hopeful connections that he seems more interested in scoring any way possible than playing the game.

Further he says:

"He thinks I am joking to compare Egyptian ss (six) with Hebrew shsh (six). That's like dismissing the equivalence of Spanish seis and English six, or French un with English one, or tres with three and so on."

He actually doesn't understand his own argument here. He is ostensibly interested in how Egyptian words are transliterated into Hebrew (be they names or ordinary words) to explain how Ramses could become Shishak in Hebrew. Yet here he's not talking about movement into Hebrew at all but about cognate words, ie words that have always been in the language, coming from a common ancestor language, as Spanish seis, Italian sei, German sechs, and Russian shest are all from one and the same source though the word has always been in the language. This has nothing to do with what Rohl is interested in. So, alright, he's not joking. He's just terribly misguided about a simple language issue.

(Linguistically, Hebrew is closely related to Akkadian, as English is to Dutch, but we still need to have Dutch translated, notwithstanding the similarity. The relationship between Egyptian and Semitic languages (such as Akkadian and Hebrew) is certainly unclear. It is obviously not in the same sort of relationship with Hebrew as Akkadian has with Hebrew.)

In the same vein he asks:

"It appears that I am not allowed to argue that Egyptian 'sbt' (to judge) is the same word as Hebrew 'shpt' (to judge) or Egyptian 'shs' (linen) is Hebrew 'shsh' (linen). Why?"

The question indicates the continuing confusion between cognates and borrowing. In an earlier post I showed that as Akkadian has cognates for most of the words discussed (such as shapat), the words weren't borrowed from Egyptian. End of story. We are interested in how Ramses could have been brought into Hebrew. Hebrew didn't start with the name Ramses in its onomasticon (def.), as it started with vocabulary such as the words whose cognates Rohl has mentioned.

And while it is interesting that Ramses can be spelled two ways, it certainly doesn't help him get to Shishak. In fact it argues strongly against (Ram)ses becoming $w$q as Ramses can already be seen as r(mss as I've shown.

I doubt that there was a Joshua, though it is irrelevant for the location of the Goshen mentioned in the book of Joshua. We have a Goshen that is clearly not in Egypt, so Rohl's etymology cannot be taken at face value as it would be irrelevant for the Goshen of Joshua. I'm dealing with text; David Rohl seems to be fishing for biblical history without knowing the contents of the waterhole. (And "schizophrenic" is ok, I'm always in my right mind, well most of the time.)

spin

spin · 05-07-2009, 01:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by judge

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

As you cannot contemplate the issue, let's cut the repetitive stress and do this one yes/no question at a time: is Joshua's Goshen in Egypt?

Is Paris in Texas or France?
Is Athens in Georgia or Greece?

What about Springfield? :devil1:

Note "Joshua's". Let me ask you again, is Joshua's Goshen in Egypt? (Hint: the choice is yes or no.)

(Please don't make this into repetitive stress.)

spin

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