Current Biblical Archaeology

[Guest]

Kind of off topic so I apologize, but is anyone else thinking that there is no vacation that Arch is taking?

actually i just have some time topost a few remarks but thatis all.

The Hittites were found in 1906....that is hardly 'news.' They were confirmed in Egyptian records....unlike your precious Israelites who do not show up until the end of the 13th century.

even when the bible has been proven right, you try to find ways to discredit it.

because the West could not read cuneiform you assume that he had to be 'discovered.

typical. when the bible was the only ancient source to mention sargon, the Bible had to be wrong but when it was proven that the Bible was correct it is brushed aside as a fottnote. time for you to deal with what the Bible is saying.

[Guest]

here is a question? whatis so important about a date in the past? for the religious (christians) the dates are not so important because the focus is on God and what He did and not when he did it.

for the non-religious, it is a matter of proof and if they can prove the Bible untrue then they feel they have won a victory, but in reality all they have done is sealed their fate.

as i have previously shown, non-religious archaeologists cannopt be looked upon as being accurate for too many of thier 'dates', and conclusions depend so much upon theory and inference that what they say cannot be trusted as to what actually happened. especially when their stories contradict the Biblical account.


so the only importance dates have, is to try and undermine the Biblical account, which it can't do because those placing the dates are usually not motivated in helping the Bible but subverting it.
seeing that the ancient world dated their years differently than the modern one, i theorize that it is highly unlikely that an accurate time frame can be found.

even the pottery dating system is subject to opinion and cannot be relied upon as conclusive so again we are left we a subjective conclusion which is highly manipulatable, subject again to the belief structure of the person wielding it.

knowing that man believes in himself and his own inventions, it is no surprise that they rely heavyily upon c-14 anbd other dating methods but for what purpose? what do they gain by saying something happened in such and such a year? if they undermine the Bible then what do they have left?

[ReneDescartes]

Hey Arch ,all thissounds like paranoia fromp a cornered biblethumper .As if research from archaeologists or any other scientific discipline asintentionaly trying to disprove the bible .Science has no consideration for superstition as such.Nobody will deny that some events described in the bible have actually happened .The Hittites existed indeed .Is that a proof of something,perhaps that your God exists ?I think not ,wielding this kind of arguments,as you did ,will also undoubtfully prove that Zeus exists as Troy has been found .Or Thor and Odin ,as the vikings exist .Is this the best you can come up with ?Get some help from a better evangelist ,you lack brains to debate here .Untill now you failed to convince anybody ,quite on the contrary you made a mockery of religion with your poor understanding of it .Even religion has evolved Arch .

[tj]

Rene, Arch's version of logic doesn't include all of that silly if p then q, p, therefore q business. If it did, he would believe in every religion that promises unbelievers a sour end given the way he always ends up intoning Pascal's Wager.

[Minimalist]

The bible should be undermined because it is virtually complete fiction.

Stolen or invented stories to con goatherders. Well, I don't have any goats and I don't need the alleged morality (alleged because of the bodies strewn liberally throughout its bloody pages at the order of your so-called 'god') of that silly book.

[Guest]

rene, when you stop p[ostiong like a pschtic and turning to insult then maybe i will answer you as it stands you have no credibility nor does your opinion mean anything.

Stolen or invented stories to con goatherders

how do you know they were stolen? do you have proof of it? no i do not think so. again, just because an artifact turns up that is possibly older than the earliest Biblical mss. does it mean that it was first or that the Biblical writers stole from them.

again, we have to look at 'faith' and what would happen to it if we were given the original writings of the Biblical authors. without faith you can't please God.

[Minimalist]

Because the earlier version are extant among far more ancient cultures than your precious Hebrews.

Sumeria far pre-dates the Early Iron Age.

[Frank Harrist]

rene, when you stop p[ostiong like a pschtic and turning to insult then maybe i will answer you as it stands you have no credibility nor does your opinion mean anything.

Because you don't have an answer. That's the easiest cop-out in the book. You use iut all the time. You have no answers so you just ignore the questions you can't answer. Talk about lack of credibility.

[Guest]

ecause you don't have an answer. That's the easiest cop-out in the book

i have an answer but i get tired of wading through the crap and the insults to find something concrete to reply to.

You have no answers so you just ignore the questions you can't answer.

i certainly don't ignore the questions given the fact that i amstill waiting months later for many of the questions i asked when these topics were in their infancy. when you can remove the gutter from your posts then maybe you will see a diffrerence in mine.

Because the earlier version are extant among far more ancient cultures than your precious Hebrews

butthat is the point, you don't know that for sure nor do youhave proof that it is so. just because the hebrews writings were preserved later does it mean thatthey did not have a record already written down prior to the sumerians and other civilizations.

obviously, someone fromthe disporia carried the true events of the pre-flood activities & the flood with them and preserved them for their descendents,long before the other civilizations started perverting the stories.

ever played that party game where everyone sits in a circle and a statement is made at onepoint and by the time it gets around to the origin, the statement has changed drastically?

well here you have a prime example of that game as the true flood account (the biblical version) is passed down from generation to generation and as they stray further from God, the stories change as the beliefs and influences change.

[Minimalist]

Mainstream archaeology rejects the notion that your Hebrews existed prior to the collapse of Canaanite civilization at the end of the Late Bronze Age. I know you don't like to hear that and you whine and whine about vicious little Izzy Finkelstein who is out to get you and your silly book but it is the truth.

Instead of whining about it, find some evidence to prove them wrong.

But it isn't there.

[Guest]

i post proof, you just don't accept it as you believe finkelstein and dever over anyone else. though finkelstein has been taken to the woodshed by his own professor, so relying on him is not intelligent.

"How is the presence of egyptian terms inthe narrative to be explained, especially if the motif was borrowed from mesopotamia?" pg. 140 Israel in Egypt

"Furthermore,it seems unlikely that a scribe during the late Judean monarchy or the exilic period (or later) would have been familiar withthese Egyptian terms." pg. 140 ibid.

"even if that possibility is allowed, in a period when assyria and babylon overshadowed hebrew thought, the inclusion of these egyptian features would serve no purpose." pg. 140 ibid.

"I concur withthose who reject associating the Horus myth with the Moses birth story,largely on the dissimilarity of detail and the fact that the surviving egyptian sources, as Redford noted, were of greco-roman date, too late to be seriously considered as influences on theHebrew author." pg. 138 ibid

"A further problem for those wishing to fnd a corelation between the Sargon legend and the Moses birth story is, as noted above, that the earliest surviving copies of the Sargon text date from neo-assyrian or later times." pg. 137 ibid.

"This possibility diminishes the case for the sargon legend influencing Exodus, because if we allow that J or E (usually dated to the 10th & 8th centuries respectively) is the source behind Exodus 2:1 through 10 and follow the traditional dating for these sources , both would predate the reign of Sargon II" pg. 137 ibid.

and now for the dismissal....

[Minimalist]

You post shit. You post the opinions of other bible thumpers but when the science of archaeology tells you that you have your head up your ass you whine that they are all out to destroy you.

By the way, if Finkelstein's version of bible construction is correct...and I think it is, even though the Davies' and Thompsons of the world think it was written much later.... then the whole point was that Egypt, recovering under the Pharoahs Psammetichus and Necho in the wake of the Assyrian collapse would have been the prime rival of the Judahite kingdom to resume overlordship of Canaan. As your bible admits....Egypt won. For a short while, until the Babylonians picked up the pieces of the Assyrian Empire and came storming back.

In any case, while Josiah's friendly priests and scribes would have been writing the fiction which you believe so desperately they surely would have known that Egypt was their nemesis and written accordingly.

THe answer to the bible mysteries can be found in the 7th century BC....not the 13th.

[Guest]

You post shit. You post the opinions of other bible thumpers but when the science of archaeology tells you that you have your head up your ass you whine that they are all out to destroy you.

they that cry the loudest... sorry but you post non-religious writers and i can post religious ones. just because they believe the bible it doesn't disqualify them from knowing the truth. you just want your blind uneven playing field---sorry but you can't have it. it is not a discussion when all the opinions come from the same side of the fence.

By the way, if Finkelstein's version of bible construction is correct

so now finkelstein is now God...and he gets to re-write the Bible as he sees fit...hahaha what a joke you are. especially since he has been embarrassed and put in his place by those who taught him. hahaha

[Guest]

case in point:

http://www.bib-arch.org/Retrospective/b ... ticleID=4&

but again i can expect another offhand dismissal and not a serious look at the evidence provided.

[Leona Conner]

[quote="archaeologist"]
but again i can expect another offhand dismissal and not a serious look at the evidence provided.[/quote]

Correct. As usual you post something that is out to prove its own agenda. As long as you use circular reasoning to try to prove your point, we will continue to call you on it.

In one of these threads someone called you a "presuppositionalist" and after reading the article. Fits you to a T. To quote, your argument rests on "a belief in the Bible as the source of truth because it is inspired by God, in whom we can believe because the Bible affirms it and the Bible is the source of truth." Makes it hard to counter, "since each premise is only acceptable if the other premise is also found acceptable." Therefore, in your eyes the only way we can prove the facts set forth in the Bible are false, is by using the Bible itself. You even use a circular reasoning to cover the contradictions the Bible contains by saying that they are NOT contradictions but just a different way to telling the same story. BUNK!!!!

You should be ashamed to call yourself an archaeologist since you have no idea of science or history.