I’m reminded of a conversation between Adler and Popper, who had presented the case of a child who did not seem to fit Adler’s theories. But from the scant information Popper gave him, Adler launched a tour-de-force analysis of the boy, explaining why the boy did indeed fit his theories.
“But you haven’t even met the boy,” Popper said. “How can you know so much about him?”
“Because of my thousand-fold experience in these matters,” Adler replied.
“And I suppose this,” Popper said, “makes your experience a thousand-and-one fold.”
Lots of archeologists are religious people, especially archaeologists in that region of the world. And as you say, their religion does not qualify them as experts, but as you don’t say, their degrees and expertise in archaeology do. But for expertise on the alledged time-frame of the alleged Exodus, it is not the alleged archaeologist whose alleged expertise is helpful. It is the alleged Biblical scholar.
In every instance that you have made these sweeping declarations, when I have brought to your attention an opposing view, you have never — not once — responded to it in any way other than to dismiss it summarily, claim no other view exists, and reference whatever source you find amenable to your own view.
You cannot know anything about what other people think, people who are at least as expert as yourself — I’m assuming you’re an archaeologist — without actually, you know, reading them. Even if your experience has found points to support your own view a thousand times.
I’m not even really sure what you’re objecting to. I’m not dismissing any other archaeologists or archaeological evidence or archaeological arguments for the Exodus. I’m saying they don’t exist at all. There AREN’T any archeologists who argue for the Exodus just like there aren’t any geologists who argue for a global flood. There is no other side. There isn’t ant dissent. There isn’t any controversy. It is a settled conclusion of ME archaeology that the Biblical Exodus is an ahistorical event. There are archaeologists and historians who argue about whether the Exodus has its roots in meories of the Hyksos expulsion, their own flight to Canaan and their subsequent pursuit and routing by the Pharaoh Ahmose I. The Hyksos were not Israelites but they were Canaanites and their story bears some superficial similarities with elements of the Joseph story.
It is now believed that the Sinai story was originally a separate tradition from the Exodus story and represents the origin of a tribal Yahweh cult (a God associated with a mountain, perhaps a volcano) from the Transjordan (which was eventually syncretized with the proto-Israelite worship of the Canaanite god named El).
Arguments for a Biblica Exodus of formerly enslaved Israelies from Egypt do not come from archaeologists but from non-credentialed evangelicals (or flat out con-artists like like Ron Wyatt) who publish nothing in peer-reviewed journals and mostly seek to sell popular books to the converted.
The time frame for the Exodus is not an issue. There is no time frame that works. It’s not a question of being narrow about when we look. There is no support at any time for the Exodus.
Like I said, the strongest (but far from the only) evidence against the Exodus is the fact that the Israelites were never enslaved in Egypt to begin with (not at any time in history) , They couldn’t have escaped from place they never went to.
It is now believed? Well, clearly nothing is ever going to get you to back down from these sweeping pronouncements that you make from time to time, and so as I said with the last one, I’ll just keep providing the counter-viewpoint materials when I see this happen, and people can just read them and decide for themselves. That okay by you?
I see this thread has changed quite a bit since I left. Mines Mystique, if you are still around, I was wondering if you’d allow me to pursue this a little more.
Do you view marriage, as defined in your religion, to be potentially different than marriages performed by governments? And maybe even different from other religions as to what is required and what is acceptable? I imagine it is quite possible for there to be some marriages that are perfectly valid in these other contexts but not in yours and perhaps vice versa. If so, then aren’t these otherwise married people committing sins every time they unrepentantly have sexual relations? Of course there are some jurisdictions that do not prohibit same sex marriage but for the sake of simplicity, let’s start with heterosexual couples. If this is your view, I assume you would not go about uninvitedly expressing it to such couples. But what is your view on marriage when it comes to washing the sin out of sexual activity?
Joey Jo Jo, I agree with you on adultery. We’d probably agree on promiscuity too. It’s easy to make the rational argument against such things. I also think increasing the number of stable relationships is a benefit to everyone. So where’s the corresponding argument against homosexuality? As an experiment, try to imagine a world that is exactly like this one in every way except that there is no god or religion. Things that aid loving relationships are still good and things that destroy them are still bad. What would be the rationale for not supporting the loving relationship of two men or two women who are attracted to each other in every way, including sexually? What would be “unloving” about a homosexual couple that truly love, support, honor, cherish, etc. each other? Wouldn’t barring such relationships be “destructive”? If you’re still with me at this point, add god and religion back into the world and tell me why things need to change.
The English word love is certainly used to describe a wide range of situations. Do you think that there is a definition of love that cannot possibly be used to describe a relationship between two people of the same gender? I trust you understand that homosexuality isn’t about sex any more or less than is heterosexuality.
You have asserted that everything about the Exodus has to be literary invention because none of it happened.
The linked article points out that there are events in Egypt that parallel some of the biblical stories, except that they occurred 1,000 years earlier–a time when there is archeological evidence for some habitation in the Sinai. That article toys with the idea that the Exodus story is a recounting of ancient tales in a way that could be used by the authors of the biblical books.
To simply declare that “it cannot have happened” is to ignore the evidence presented. Neither Liberal nor the linked article makea claim that “this is what really happened,” but your declarations are based on the assumption that the Exodus story is bound to both the events and the time period found in the bible.
If, as people speculate, Plato’s Atlantis might be based on a memory of tales told about the destruction of Thera/Santorini, why do you insist that there can be no possible event, tales of which might have been collated into a story of the Exodus?
This is not a claim that Exodus “happened.” It is an exploration of various events that might have provided the framework on which to hang a new tale giving mythical status to the origin of a people. When you declare
you are arguing a strawman position (since no one has claimed that the events “are” Exodus) as well as imposing your belief on other information.
The Genesis chapter I read said that now that Adam and Eve had sinned they would die because they knew evil from good; there was no mention of loss of soul or eternal Damnation. God was supposed to have stopped them from getting back into paradise. The idea that one had a soul and suffered eternal damnation or earned paradise came much later.
True, an examination of the development of Christian doctrine on this issue does require an historical study of the Bible, and the interaction of the various beliefs and philosophies over the millennia between Moses and Luther. The concept of “soul” as distinct from “life” is basically a Greek concept, which, as you say, is not to be found in the earlier books of the Old Testament - one of the many problems in attempting to read the entire Bible uncritically and coming up with a coherent and non-contradictory set of beliefs from the text on its own. That being said, Jesus regularly speaks about the subject (Matthew 7:21-23, for starters), and we’re discussing Christian, rather than Jewish, doctrine here.
Genesis 3:22 has God preventing Adam and Eve from becoming immortal by eating of “the tree of life” after the Fall, implying that they were mortal in their unfallen states. I’m not sure how this is relevant to the issue at hand, though.
I believe that idea came later, as I read it it was said, now you know good from evil you must die. The idea that a person was just a soul in a body came later, and the word soul came from the word anima meaning life.
Note that this is a warning, a threat, from God, about what will happen if Adam eats the forbidden fruit.
Genesis 3:4-5
The serpent tells Eve the truth.
Genesis 3:22-23, emphasis mine
This is God’s actual punishment. Adam and Eve are prevented from becoming immortal, not made mortal from a previously immortal state. And not killed on the spot, as Genesis 2:17 would imply.
To me this means death of the body that would have lived forever not loss of soul.If man was made in God’s image he would be invisible, except for the fact that the Psalmist says: Don’t you know you are Gods, sons of the most high. Jesus used this Psalm to prove his divinity when accused of Blasphmey.
I did not read Genesis to mean killed on the spot, but now their life would end.
For that matter, who is God talking to? It’s very difficult to extract a consistent, absolute monotheism from much of the Old Testament.
Yes, I agree. I’m not trying to argue that the (universal) penalty for sin is the same as Adam and Eve’s penalty for the Fall. We can bring out analogies and similarities between them, of course, but I don’t think that anyone claims that the two are identical.
“In the day that thou eatest thereof” - which is a literal translation of the Hebrew, the NIV’s “when” is a paraphrase. I suppose that if we give “day” an allegorical interpretation in Genesis 1, we can do the same in Genesis 2. However, the standard YEC objection to this is that the “days” of Genesis 1 are delimited by morning and evening, and are therefore 24-hour days. If one is committed to a literal interpretation, then one has to accept that God told Adam he would die on the same day that he ate the fruit; which didn’t happen. So, either God lied, or we have to abandon a literal interpretation of either “day” or “die” or both. And if we have to abandon a literal interpretation here, right at the beginning of the text, why bother hanging on to it elsewhere?
Mines Mystique, Here is an example of why I think the discussion here is important. After reading today’s Ask Amy column…
…I was wondering how you, as a future pastor, would have counseled such a parishioner. You will be in a position to influence your congregation’s behavior as well as how your church is viewed by others. How important are the outsider’s view to you? Do you have any trepidation of accepting this responsibility?
But, yeah, what Tomndebb said.