Current Biblical Archaeology

[Minimalist]

He's in office because people like you thought God wanted him to be president.

[Guest]

in the bookof genesis there is a verse that makes a passing remark and no where else is this topic repeated except when talking about goliath years later. the verse is Genesis 6:4 and it states : " ...there were giants in the land..'

well i was reading Charles Hapgood's book, 'Path of the Pole' and i came across this little tidbit on page 287:

"Historicallythe bones of Pleistocene mammals, especially those of the larger genrea, were noticed in south america soon after the spanish conquest. Curious theories were advanced by the early discoverers to explain the presence of these bones, usually by reference to a race of giants who were supposed to have anciently inhabit parts of the new world. Among the earliest reports is that of Pedro Ceiza de Leon, who wrote, "...when the most illustriousDon Antoniode Mendoza was viceroy and govenor of new spain,, he found certain bones of men who must have been even larger than those giants."

it goes on to talk about other such discoveries

his book is full of neat little discoveries that give credence to the Bible and maybe if minamilist is a good boy i will post more. he can't argue that hapgood is a Bible thumper.

[Beagle]

Arch - go back to your Websters Dictionary and look up the word masochist.

[Minimalist]

No, no...he's right about Hapgood except there was also a special on National Geographic in which someone explained that many of the mythological creatures of European/Levantine history were also the result of finding ancient fossils (gryffins, dragons, etc). The phenomenon was not limited to South America. I'm not too sure what that has to do with the bible as most of these concepts are far earlier but lots of people get in trouble by trying to take every offhand comment in the bible literally.

As for Goliath, I think Finkelstein demolished him far more effectively than "David" ever did!

[Guest]

as most of these concepts are far earlier but lots of people get in trouble by trying to take every offhand comment in the bible literally.

depends on what yu consider much earlier. remember the dating process is easily corrupted sohow can you trust it impicitly?

which someone explained that many of the mythological creatures of European/Levantine history were also the result of finding ancient fossils

do you have any links? it would be an interesting read.

according to one creationists, whom i normally disagree with, the concept of dragons comes from the presence of dinosaurs well into the middle ages.

[Minimalist]

It was a TV special, either on National Geographic or History International.

I wonder if a google search might turn up a reference.

I'll look.


There were no dinosaurs during the Middle Ages, arch.

[Guest]

There were no dinosaurs during the Middle Ages, arch

justgiving you one man's opinion, not mine.

[Minimalist]

Start with this, arch.

http://members.aol.com/afmayor/myhomepage/index.html


There's also an article in Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffin

[Guest]

Start with this, arch

thanks for the link. that fossil hunter book didn't get great reviews but the topic interests me. i will have to search for similar but more thorough works.

There's also an article in Wikipedia

wikipedia has certainly wornout its welcome with me. seems every poster needs to use it.

[Minimalist]

If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen

it is not that i can't stand the heat, it just gets tiring to read flimsy excuses for not acknowledging alternative opinions or accepting other people who were endowed with the same brain capacity of those on the 'accepted' list

While arch is debating whether or not to expose his bible experts to criticism or not, I guess it is time to get this thread back on topic with the latest installment of Crash Goes The Bible.

Finkelstein, drawing from the work of numerous archaeological surveys, deals with the collapse of Late Bronze Age Culture in the region. He notes the cities of Ashdod and Ekron, which were Canaanite cities on the Southern coast until the time of Ramesses III. Both were then destroyed for although Ramesses III defended Egypt from the Sea People he could not save Canaan which until that time had been a tightly controlled vassal of Egypt. Philistine cities arose in place of the Canaanites and Finkelstein notes that the previous mix of Egyptian/Canaanite pottery and architecture was replaced by Aegean-style pottery and architecture...meaning that the Philistines were Greek or, at least, Greekish. He then goes on to say:

In other parts of the country the Late Bronze Age order was disrupted by spreading violence whose source is not entirely clear. Because of the long period of time-nearly a century-during which the Canaanite city-state system collapsed, it is possible that the intensifying crisis led to conflicts between neighboring Canaanite cities over control of vital agricultural land and peasant villages

{Personal note: Finkelstein fails to mention the other obvious factor: Egypt which had dominated Canaan for centuries had barely been able to save themselves from the Sea People and were in no condition to intervene on behalf of their former vassals. Consider the ethnic strife and guerilla warfare which broke out in the former Soviet Republics when the USSR broke up for a corollary on what happens when the controlling power is suddenly removed.} Finkelstein continues;

One by one, the old Canaanite centers fell in sudden, dramatic conflagrations or went into gradual decline. In the north, Hazor was set on fire with the statues of gods in its royal palace decapitated and smashed. On the coatal plain, Aphek was destroyed in a terrible fire. Farther south the imposing city of Lachish was torched and abandoned. And in the rich Jezreel valley, Megiddo was set aflame and its palace was buried under six feet of burnt brick debris.

He details the evidence used to establish the relative dates of destruction at least to the extent that a cuneiform tablet at Aphek dates from about 1230 BC and other artifacts/inscriptions showing that Egypt still maintained some presence in Megiddo until the late 12th century, lest why would a statue of Ramesses IV have been erected there?

Finkelstein concludes the passage with:

The kings of these four cities-Hazor,Aphek, Lachish and Megiddo- are reported to have been defeated by the Israelites under Joshua. But the archaeological evidence shows that the destruction of those cities took place over a span of more than a century. The possible causes include invasion, social breakdown, and civil strife. No single military force did it and certainly not in one military campaign.

[Guest]

i wasn't planning on using any Bible thumpers just more of Hapgood. as i said i read more non-religious works than religious as that i wherei find the information.

from hapgood's 'path of the pole' pg. 275-76 he quotes Prof. Frank C. Hibben:

"In many places the alaskan muck is packed with animal bones and debris in trainload lots. Bones of mammoth, mastodon, several kinds ofbison,horses, wolves, bears and lions tella story of a faunal population..."

"It looks as though in the midst of some cataclysmic catastrophe of ten thousand years ago the whole alaskan worldof living animals and plants were suddenly frozen in midmotion in a grim charade..."

"This is no ordinary extinction of a vague geological period which fizzled to an uncertain end. This death was catastrophic and all-inclusive."

"The corpus delecti of the deceased in this mystery may be found almost anywhere...we find literally thousands of these remians together. The young lie with the old, foal with dam and calf with cow. whole herds of animals were apparantly killed together, overcome by some common power."

pg. 277 same person quoted:
"One of the most interesting of the theories of the Pleistocene end is that which explains this ancient tragedy by world wide, earthshaing volcanic eruptions of catastrophic violence. This bizarre idea, queerly enough, has considerable support, especially in the alaskan and siberian regins."

pg. 278 hapgood himself says:

"The evidence from south america will be found as strong or even stronger...They include evidence of a geological revolution having to do not so much with ice caps and ice ages as with the upheaval of half a continent in which the deathsof millions of animals resulted frm extensive volcanic eruptions and vast floods."

pg. 285
""On the basis of paleiontological andhydrological evidence, Bellamy (Hans S. Bellamy) believed that in geologically recent time the whole Cordillera was violently upheaved..."

pg. 289

"The block contained a human skull, teeth and other bones, together with fragments of shells, some of which still retained traces of their original colors. Remains of several hundred other human skeletons were dug out of similar calareous tufa at the same place, where the presence of serpulae in the rock sugested that the remains were depositied through marine action, fos as lyell (prof. charles lyell) observed...the shell would not have been brought so far inland by natives for food..."

pg.290 Hapgood quotes Marquis de Nadaillac:
"..Doubtless these men and animals lived together and perished together, common victims of catastrophes, the time and cause of which are alike unknown."

on pg.293 Hapgood quotes Alcide d'Orbigny:
"It would seem that one cause destroyed the terrestial animals of south america, and that this cause is to be found in great dislocations of the ground by the upheaval of the Cordilleras. If not, it is difficult to conceive on theone hand the sudden and fortuitous destruction of the great animals which inhabitedte american continents, and on the other the vast depsoit of pampan mud. I argue that this destruction was caused by an invasion of the continent by water, a view whichis completely en rapport with the facts presented by the pampn deposit, which was clearly laid down by water."
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knowing that this talks about the flood more than israel, i wanted to illustrate that finkelstein is operating under a realm of unbelief and limited information to make his points.

it is easy to refute something when one does not allow for the mearest of evidence to influence one's philosophical thinking and open one's eyes to the broader scope of what is out there that supports the Biblical account.

so again i refute finkelstein based upon his corrupted and limited information and that his unbelief dictates his conclusions not his objectivity or open-mindedness. many times one cannot see the the truth because one refuses to see it.[/b]

[Minimalist]

I was wondering how you were going to tie Hapgood's Earth Crust Displacement theory into biblical archaeology. I'll give you a D+ for doing it weakly.

For those who may not know what you are talking about:

It has been suggested that approximately 12,000 years ago there was a displacement of the Earth's crust. The entire outer shell of the earth moved approximately 2,000 miles. When the Earth's crust shifted all of Antarctica was encapsulated by the polar zone. At the same time North American was released from the Arctic Circle and became temperate.

This is based on the theory of Continental Drift - the continents of the earth have been slowly drifting apart over millions of years. This is possible because the outer crust of the Earth floats upon a semi-liquid layer.

A pole shift theory is a hypothesis based on geologic evidence that the physical north and south poles of Earth have not always been at their present-day locations; in other words, the axis of rotation had shifted. Pole shift theory is almost always discussed in the context of Earth, but other solar system bodies may have experienced axial reorientation during their existences.

One early popular proponent of a pole shift theory was Charles Hapgood.

http://www.crystalinks.com/crustal.html

The problem with the theory is that Hapgood, who was not a geologist, is dependent on antarctica to have been ice free 12,000 years ago and he does not have such evidence.

In fact:

A review of the evidence relating to Antarctica leads to just as many problems. The first is the age of the Antarctic ice sheet. According to Hancock (1995), “researchers at the Carnegie Institute in Washington DC were able to establish beyond any reasonable doubt that great rivers carrying finegrained well-sorted sediments had indeed flowed in Antarctica until about 6000 years ago” (Hancock, 1995, p. 16). The bulk of core samples from Antarctica, however, show that there is “an abundance of evidence that demonstrates [...] that the Antarctica ice cap has been around for the last 2 million years or more [...] Ice core and other data from [sic] the Antarctica clearly show that it has been covered by an ice cap for the last 300,000 to 3 million or more years”

http://www.skrause.org/writing/papers/h ... _ecd.shtml

Moreover, there is a dispute about the claim of massive amounts of animals carcasses being found frozen in the north.

According to Heinrich, the claim that “huge numbers” of animals were frozen in permafrost is erroneous: “First, their claim that hundreds of thousands of frozen carcasses have been found is simply incorrect. At most, only a few tens of frozen carcasses have been documented in all of Siberia and Alaska.” (Heinrich, 1996, MOM and Atlantis...) Additionally, most of the carcasses appear to have gone through extensive decomposition, indicating not that they were suddenly trapped and frozen, but that the remains (mostly bones) were preserved sometime well after death.

{same url as above}

The idea that there was a catastrophic flood is borne out by the fact that there are over 600 versions of that flood from around the world. Hancock's placing the event at the end of the last ice age is not dependent on Hapgood's theory although certainly Hancock was intrigued by the idea. It does not require a pissed off psychopath of a god who wants to kill everyone except ONE GUY, though. Unfortunately for you the bible version is a rather late and lame addition to a story which was old by the time the Jews came along. That did not stop them from incorporating their own version into their own book....with added typical Jewish moralizing.

Thus, to get back to the point, it seems as if you are trying to prove Fingerprints of the Gods instead of the bible. Which might be a good tactic on your part since Fingerprints of the Gods makes a hell of a lot more sense.

[Guest]

is dependent on antarctica to have been ice free 12,000 years ago and he does not have such evidence.

not as far fetched as you would like. i have read elsewhere of the dfferent types of anoimals whose bones have been found on antartica, most of whom were warm weather dependent.

I was wondering how you were going to tie Hapgood's Earth Crust Displacement theory into biblical archaeology

considering what scriptures says when the waters came at the time of the flood, Hapgood has done a good job in documenting evidence that supports scriptre. (i am sure he is rolling over in his grave by my use of his work)

there is a dispute about the claim of massive amounts of animals carcasses being found frozen in the north.

i will concede that a dispute would arise. seems par for the course.

but hereis something you cannot ignore: Dr. Schoch on page 101 is quoting the Popol Vuh:

"According to the Popol Vuh, the Quiche were migrants from the east who lived there in darkness, came west in ships in search of the sun, disembarked on the shore, and made their way up to the their highland home. The text says that the ancestors came 'from theother side of the sea' where the sun rises. By their own testimony, the Maya were the descendants of a people from somewhere else."

Now again i know non-believers will disagree with me but this is sound evidence for the dispersal mentioned in the Bible at the time of the tower of Babel.

*though i am sure Dr. Schoch would not approveof my using his bookto prove the Bible.

[Minimalist]

There are older cultures than the Maya with similar beliefs. Hancock does a good job recounting the mythical basis of Central and South America.

The Olmec 'heads' are negroid. There is a stele which shows bearded white men in South America centuries (at least) before Columbus. The assumption would have to be that both would have had to arrive "from the East."

However, it is a stretch of the imagination to say that any of this stuff has anything to do with a book written in the 7th century BC by a people who only extracted themselves from the ruins of Canaan in the 13th century BC.

[Minimalist]

*though i am sure Dr. Schoch would not approveof my using his bookto prove the Bible.

Schoch has nothing to worry about on that score.