Current Biblical Archaeology

[Guest]

continued...
pg. 90 re: kenyon----

"One scholar who has re-examinedkenyon's evidence now argues that the famous british arch. may have misread some of her own data. Bryant Woods, ...believes that some of Kenyon's own findings suggest that jericho fell much later--and much closer to the biblical chronology-- than kenyon reported.

Writingin Biblical Archaeology Review, Woods noted that Kenyon unearthed a type of pottery in the city ruins that appeared for only a limited time in the late 15th b.c.-- some 150 years after her 1550 destruction date. She apparantly overlooked this evidence, Wood says, and based her conclusions instead on the absence of evidence at Jericho of another type of pottery that is commonly found at imortant trade cities of the late bronze age.

Kenyon also apparantly was unimpressed with Gartang's earlier discovery of a series of tiny egyptian amulets, called scarabs, in a cemetery northwest of the city. The scarabs, notes Woods, were inscribed with the names of the Pharaohs begining with Hatshepsut...and ending with Amenhotep III... 'The continuous nature of the scarab series, he says, suggests that the cemetery was in active use up to the end of the late bronze age 1 period. An active cemetery would indicate an active population at Jericho precisely at the time when the Bible says the israelites were arriving in Canaan.

Kenyon's own carbom-14 analysis (a fact that minimalist left out, i wonder why) of a piece of charcoal found in the debris dated the residue to about 1410 b.c., says Wood, providing further evidence-- apparantly overlooked by kenyon-- that the conflagration occurred in the late bronze age. All of this suggests to Wood thatJericho 'was destroyed inabout 1400 b.c. not 1550 b.c. as kenyon maintained. Garstang, he says, was right."

it goes n to talk about the problems of the evidence and that Wood is in the minority on this view but then it says on pg. 91:

"For now, (1989) however, the evidence remains far to ambiguous. Barring some startling new archaeological discoveries, the case for the fall of Jericho and for a military conquest of Canaan cannot be sustained with material evidence. Yet there is plenty about the larger biblical story of the Israelite possession of the promised Land that is consistent with the archaeological record."

so we have good proof here that kenyon was wrong and i doubt if we will know if she purposefully overlooked the evidence or if it was just an oversite by accident.

[Minimalist]

So you are equating "god" with the inscription carvers of Egypt who makes stuff up?

Listen, I've told you a zillion times that the bible is nothing but a load of shit.

If you want to suddenly start agreeing with me, who am I to argue?

[Guest]

i am not agreeing with you just being honest as to what is said and found at jericho. since walls have been found to have crumbled, and they found burn marks, it stands to reason that kenyon was wrong and the Bible is right.

same for hazor and soon to be Ai.

you may be saying it but you haven't corroborated it yet and i think i have solidified my position quite well.

[marduk]

Repeated excavations by various expeditions at Jericho and Ai, the two cities whose conquest is described in the greatest detail in the Book of Joshua, have proved very disappointing. Despite the excavators' efforts, it emerged that in the late part of the 13th century BCE, at the end of the Late Bronze Age, which is the agreed period for the conquest, there were no cities in either tell, and of course no walls that could have been toppled. Naturally, explanations were offered for these anomalies. Some claimed that the walls around Jericho were washed away by rain, while others suggested that earlier walls had been used; and, as for Ai, it was claimed that the original story actually referred to the conquest of nearby Beit El and was transferred to Ai by later redactors.

http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/ ... erques.htm
solid position eh
about as solid as the non existent walls are

[Minimalist]

i am not agreeing with you just being honest as to what is said and found at jericho. since walls have been found to have crumbled, and they found burn marks, it stands to reason that kenyon was wrong and the Bible is right.

same for hazor and soon to be Ai.

you may be saying it but you haven't corroborated it yet and i think i have solidified my position quite well.

You have no position, you have wishful thinking in a book which has been discredited by real science. Ai was unoccupied for 1,000 years and Hazor went down at the same time as many of the other Late Bronze Age cities of Canaan. The reason that no one (outside of the Hallelujah crowd) even considers the conquest model is the general consensus among real archaeologists ( i.e. non bible-thumping assholes) that Finkelstein and his associates have demonstrated when and where Israel arose. In the hill country, to the east, in the century following the collapse of the LBA civilization of Canaan.

You can repeat what these bible-thumping jackasses say over and over and it does not change the fact that archaeology has moved past you. Find some evidence ( that's "Evidence" not pious blathering) that Finkelstein is wrong or give it up.

All you ever do is go around in circles.

[Minimalist]

A solid recap, marduk.

Of course, you don't understand that those lousy commies at Cornell just hate the bible and can't be trusted.

I wish I had read what you posted first. I could have saved myself some typing!

[Guest]

Find some evidence ( that's "Evidence" not pious blathering) that Finkelstein is wrong or give it up.

you haven't even proven him right yet.

You have no position, you have wishful thinking in a book which has been discredited by real science. Ai was unoccupied for 1,000 years

so you are accepting kenyon without questioning her? amazing and she is wrong too. all you have shown me is that 'real science' goes by faulty interpretation and conjecture. you have yet to lay down a decent argument and sustain it with good clear facts. all you do is declare something then move on.

yuo use finkelstein and friends as your Bible and take it because it tells you what you want to hear because you are running from what the Bible says.

A solid recap, marduk.

haven't got to that link yet, still recovering from the fact he actually posted one.

[Minimalist]

Find some evidence ( that's "Evidence" not pious blathering) that Finkelstein is wrong or give it up.

you haven't even proven him right yet.

You have no position, you have wishful thinking in a book which has been discredited by real science. Ai was unoccupied for 1,000 years

so you are accepting kenyon without questioning her? amazing and she is wrong too. all you have shown me is that 'real science' goes by faulty interpretation and conjecture. you have yet to lay down a decent argument and sustain it with good clear facts. all you do is declare something then move on.

yuo use finkelstein and friends as your Bible and take it because it tells you what you want to hear because you are running from what the Bible says.

A solid recap, marduk.

haven't got to that link yet, still recovering from the fact he actually posted one.

You'll have to read his book. Oops. You don't want to do that because he is just attacking your bible....well...the facts are there and you can either read them or not.

As has been posted at least 3 times....Kenyon was right, Garstang was wrong (for reasons he didn't even know about) and Bryant Wood is just trying to sell books to bible thumpers but he has been totally discredited.

[Guest]

marduk's link basically relies on the absenceof evidence thinking and offered not one shredof proof for its position. lots of statements declaring the Bible is wrong but not one quote, reference, footnote or pieceof archaeological evidence that proves the Bible wrong.

researchers can not produce the documents J, E, P & D to back up their theory, nor can they prove that the Patriarchs did not live. all they can say is, they haven't found any evidence which does not prove much.

plus the fact that this article was written from a total biased position and not an scientific objectivity that is required of those who believe the Biblical accounts. that article is a blatant attempt to muddy the waters and paint a picture that is not true nor accurate.

when the opponents of the biblical record actually provide proof that what they say is true beyond interpretationa dn conjecture then they may have something but so far all it is is just talk.

Kenyon was right, Garstang was wrong (for reasons he didn't even know about) and Bryant Wood is just trying to sell books to bible thumpers but he has been totally discredited.

prove it and no Wood has not been discredited, just more fanciful footwork by minimalist who thinks no one is qualified unless he approves of them.

[marduk]

researchers can not produce the documents J, E, P & D to back up their theory,

I know a guy who's writing a book that does exactly that
should be out within a year. the documents are already in existence in the bible
it just needs a good biblical scholar to put them back into their ingredients instead of the pigshit pie that theyre now stuck in

[Frank Harrist]

Pigshit pie! I love it!

[Essan]

I know the book Marduk is referring to, and it's going to be good

As for evidence for the Bible: can anyone prove that Moby Dick wasn't a true story?

In actual fact, the Bible itself is proof for it not being entirely true, containing as it does many historical errors and logical inconsistencies

http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/bible/bible- ... encies.pdf

In reality the historucal books of the Old Testament are little better than Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britains. They both provide origin myths and popular tales which merge fact and fiction. You cannot discount it all as being fiction. But you most certainly can;t accept it all as fact.

[Minimalist]

Wood has not been discredited

Only in the minds of befuddled bible-thumpers.

He's as big as shithead as anyone else you love.

[Minimalist]

researchers can not produce the documents J, E, P & D to back up their theory,

I know a guy who's writing a book that does exactly that
should be out within a year. the documents are already in existence in the bible
it just needs a good biblical scholar to put them back into their ingredients instead of the pigshit pie that theyre now stuck in

He's a little late.

"J," "P," "E," and "D" are the names scholars have given to some authors of the Bible, and, as such, they are very important letters to a lot of people. Churches have died and been born, and millions of people have lost faith or found it, because of the last two centuries of debate about who, exactly, wrote the canonical texts of Christianity and Judaism. Richard Elliott Friedman's survey of this debate, in Who Wrote the Bible?, may be the best written popular book about this question. Without condescension or high-flown academic language, Friedman carefully describes the history of textual criticism of the Bible--a subject on which his authority is unparalleled (Friedman has contributed voluminously to the authoritative Anchor Bible Dictionary). But this book is not just smart. Perhaps even more impressive than Friedman's erudition is his sensitivity to the power of textual criticism to influence faith. --Michael Joseph Gross

[Guest]

very interesting points but again you fall short. i doubt that if believers produced the ark of the covenant any of yu or mainline archaeologists, scientists and so on, would believe anyways or say that the Bible is true.
On pg. 327 of Humphreys book 'The Miracles of Exodus' it says:

"Surely the well-educated Musil must have realized the striking similarity between Mount Bedr and the biblical Mount Sinai, yet he never once mentions this in 'The Northern Hagez'. Why not? This really puzzled me, so i looked into it, and what I discovered is fascinating. When Musil returned from his perilous journey to Midian in 1910 he was in fact convinced that the volcanic Mount Bedr was Mount Sinai, andhe stated this in a preliminary report onhis visit, published in 1911. However, he rapidly discovered that the location of Mount Sinai was an extremely controversial topic.

For example, a distinguishedBritish scholar, Dr. Charles Beke, had previously claimed that Mount Sinai was an unnamed volcano in Arabia and for this 'heresy' his opponents had forced him to return a gold medal awarded to him by the Royal Geographical Society. Beke later retracted his theory that Mount Sinai was a volcano because he couldn't justify it and he located Sinai instead at the nonvolcanic Mount ithm, close to the head of the Gulf of Aqaba.

Musil, very reasonably , was asked to justify his belief that Mount Sinai was Mount Bedr by constructing a plausible route of the Exodus from Egypt to Bedr. He spent the next 15 years of his life trying to do this and failed."

so if i say i tend to agree with Humphreys, Musil, and Beke and declare Mt. Sinai has been found would you believe it? i doubt it because you really don't want the Bible to be proven true at all.