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Read the first seven books and prove to yourself they are not folklore.
RESPONSE:
I already have. They are folklore. The proof is that they contain doublets and even a triplet, different versions of the same story. And unless it can be established that the 2,300, 000 Hebrews were in Egypt, spent 40 years in the desert, and then conquered the cities claimed, all the time failing to leave any archaelogical evidence at all, they're not history.
Like I said, I'm no Archaeologist. Are you? I'm just saying there are other possibilities other than "ITS ALL A LIE. HEBREWS MADE IT ALL UP!!" And btw, if I were Pharaoh, I wouldn't want a trace of the Exodus in the History books either.
Btw, just out of curiousity, do you believe that the Epic of Gilgamesh is as historically credible as the Torah?
RESPONSE:
If you were Pharaoh, you wouldn't have been the only one writing!
>>...do you believe that the Epic of Gilgamesh is as historically credible as the Torah?<<<
I believe that the Epic of Gilgamesh is exactly as credible as the Torah. In short, neither are. They are both folklore of the people who created them
Does this story sound familiar?
"Cuneiform texts have this to say of King Sargon, the founder of Semitic dynasty of Akkad. In 2360 B.C.: I am Sargon, the powerful king, the king of Akkad. My mother was an Enitu priestees, I did not know any father . . . . My mother conceived me and bore me in secret. She put me in a little box made of reeds, sealing its lid with pitch. She put me in the river. . . . The river carried me away and brought me to Akki the drawer of water. Akki the drawer of water adopted me and brought me up as his son. . ".
Werner Keller, The Bible as History, 2nd revised Ed. Morrow & Co, NY, page 123.
Later there is this story:
Exodus 2:1-3
Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.
Does this sound familiar?
Last edited by ancient warrior; 09-06-2012 at 05:55 PM..
Reason: addition
If you were Pharaoh, you wouldn't have been the only one writing!
>>...do you believe that the Epic of Gilgamesh is as historically credible as the Torah?<<<
I believe that the Epic of Gilgamesh is exactly as credible as the Torah. In short, neither are. They are both folklore of the people who created them
Does this story sound familiar?
"Cuneiform texts have this to say of King Sargon, the founder of Semitic dynasty of Akkad. In 2360 B.C.: I am Sargon, the powerful king, the king of Akkad. My mother was an Enitu priestees, I did not know any father . . . . My mother conceived me and bore me in secret. She put me in a little box made of reeds, sealing its lid with pitch. She put me in the river. . . . The river carried me away and brought me to Akki the drawer of water. Akki the drawer of water adopted me and brought me up as his son. . ".
Werner Keller, The Bible as History, 2nd revised Ed. Morrow & Co, NY, page 123.
Later there is this story:
Exodus 2:1-3
Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.
Does this sound familiar?
If I were as ruthless as Pharaoh supposedly was, I'd make sure every writing was destroyed and kill anyone who tried.
Regarding the similarities, so what? It's radically different in terms of theology and the idea that the Hebrew would copy something from the Sumerians is doutbtful considering their hatred of them. The writing styles are somewhat similar, but this is not surprising considering it is ancient Mesopotamia. For example, notice the similarities in the writing styles of the ridiculously repeatitive Abraham petitioning God not to Destroy Sodom and compare that to the ridiculously repeatitive Gilgamesh and Enkidu camping and dreaming (tablet 4). Most of the similarities are in the flood accounts and those similarities are mostly what you would expect to happen for any massive flood account in that period, and these are not the only cultures to talk about a giant flood of some kind.
Anyways, the point is that your a died in the wool evangelical atheist hellbent on proving us wrong and most of us are Christians trying to "save your soul." Considering the nature of the writings we are talking about being incredibly old stories about supernatural occurances where their is plenty speculate on why there is little archaeological evidence for them, it is nearly impossible to say that they did or did not happen. We Christians believe mostly by faith and for other reasons like most of the rest of the bible is fairly well proven historically and people who know something is a lie (such as the discples would have) are not stupid enough to tortured to death for it while being smart enough to bring about one of the largest religions in history.
Anyways, the point is that your a died in the wool evangelical atheist hellbent on proving us wrong and most of us are Christians trying to "save your soul." Considering the nature of the writings we are talking about being incredibly old stories about supernatural occurances where their is plenty speculate on why there is little archaeological evidence for them, it is nearly impossible to say that they did or did not happen. We Christians believe mostly by faith and for other reasons like most of the rest of the bible is fairly well proven historically and people who know something is a lie (such as the discples would have) are not stupid enough to tortured to death for it while being smart enough to bring about one of the largest religions in history.
RESPONSE:
Actually, I've been trained to research issues carefully.
However, when a "true believer" can't defeat the evidence, a common response is to attack the motives of the person presenting the evidence. It's called an ad hominem argument and is commonly attempted when someone really can't present any valid refutation of the evidence presented.
From Wikipedia: "Abusive ad hominem (also called personal abuse or personal attacks) usually involves insulting or belittling one's opponents in order to attack their claims or invalidate their arguments.... This is logically fallacious because it relates to the opponent's personal character, which has nothing to do with the logical merit of the opponent's argument"
But they can be recognized for what they are, can't they?
>>We Christians believe mostly by faith <<
Some of us prefer evidence. Do some Christians have a problem with that sort of approach?
"The Epic of Gilgamesh is, perhaps, the oldest written story on Earth. It comes to us from Ancient Sumeria, and was originally written on 12 clay tablets in cunieform script. It is about the adventures of the historical King of Uruk (somewhere between 2750 and 2500 BCE)."
Mesopotamian Texts Archive:
EnumaElish
Adapa and the Food of Life
The Code of Hammurabi
The Descent of Ishtar Into the Lower World
The Seven Evils Epic of Gilgamesh
[Genesis dates from 900 to 750 BC.Which was written first? Is it possible to copy from a writing which won't be written for about another 2000 years?]
Actually, I've been trained to research issues carefully.
However, when a "true believer" can't defeat the evidence, a common response is to attack the motives of the person presenting the evidence. It's called an ad hominem argument and is commonly attempted when someone really can't present any valid refutation of the evidence presented.
From Wikipedia: "Abusive ad hominem (also called personal abuse or personal attacks) usually involves insulting or belittling one's opponents in order to attack their claims or invalidate their arguments.... This is logically fallacious because it relates to the opponent's personal character, which has nothing to do with the logical merit of the opponent's argument"
But they can be recognized for what they are, can't they?
>>We Christians believe mostly by faith <<
Some of us prefer evidence. Do some Christians have a problem with that sort of approach?
Trained by who? We are not professional debators or researchers or archaeologists here and most of us don't have time to constantly fact hunt deep into archaeology. If you are, then you sure are spending alot of time with people who are not your peers. There have been alot of claims and alot of stories about finding thing actual sites from the Torah and some with "conspiracy theories" to cover them up
I'm certainly not qualified to judge the credibility of these claims from an archaeological standpoint and there may be some that give reasons to debunk them. The same goes for being visited by aliens. Just because we don't have any "direct" proof doesn't mean it hasn't happened at some point and that its all "folklore." I don't spend hours on UFO forums trying to debunk believers in UFOs and I certainly think their beliefs are crazy completely without merit. Unlike people who have faith in the existence of UFOs, We as Christians do have the a Hebrew/Jewish race that exists and an oral traditional and fairly well preserved written documentation with surprising accurate history that bases itself on the unproven events of the Torah. It may not be much in your opinion, but its worth some faith for most of us Christians.
You can call it ad hominem if you like but I'm calling it as I see it and I believe your intentions are obvious and they have been for almost as long as you've posted here. Intentions do make a difference as far as what person is willing to admit is possible and that applies to this case as well. If one has a motive for interpreting evidence or lack of evidence a certain way, that is worth bringing into a courtroom. If you weren't "evangelical" or "died in the wool" in your atheism (or perhaps agnostic to be fair), you would have stopped a long time ago. I'm not complaining by any means, I think hard questions need to be asked and I welcome that, but you have your intentions and I have mine. Pretending you don't is I think unrealistic...for all I know, not being a real archaeologist, we may even have more indirect evidence at his forum of your intentions than we do that the Torah is 100% historical.
Anyways, being a Criminal Justice major, I will concede that having little "indirect" evidence is almost never enough for a conviction in a court of law and as such with the Torah, certainly not enough to prove it happened without a doubt. But then again, so times cases are reopened with evidence is discovered. However, are the weeping families of a murder victim stupid for having faith that one day the person who believe is the killer will come to justice just because there's not enough proof at the moment? To some degree, maybe us Christians are like disappointed District Attorneys for a case keeps getting appealed, but hasn't reached the Supreme Court yet and may never reach it without divine intervention.
There is a ancient stone of Egypt from the Ptolemaic period who inscription contains the story of the famine of seven years during the reign of Djoser... Where a leading man of Djoser`s reign called Imhotep had a dream that the Nile god promised to end the drought....which some scholars to consider this Imhotep to Joseph of Jacob in Egypt.... Where this Imhotep was a architect of the structure in this time ..Chancellor of the King Chief under the King , High Priest of Heliopolis , and maker of Stone Vases....See the Old Testament account of Joseph of Jacob in Egypt, and this Stone in Egypt with inscription had similar history stories of seven year famine which came from Archeology and Bible text History
Some historian noted this chronological impossibility in Exodus.
Traditionally, Moses was born about 1400 BCE, lived to be 120 years of age, and therefore died about 1280. Another dating of his death is 1316 BCE.
Israelite slaves were used to build the Egyptian cities of Pithom and Raamses (Exodus 1:11). The date of the Exodus is taken to be about 1436 BCE
However,
Ramses I, the first pharaoh of the 19th dynasty, reigned from 1292 to 1290 BCE.
Ramses II, or Ramses the Great, reigned 1279 BCE – 1213 BCE
Whichever dates we use, how could the Israelites be building a city of Raamses about 200 years before either of these two pharoahs reigned, and how could Moses have written of them in Exodus?
There is a ancient stone of Egypt from the Ptolemaic period who inscription contains the story of the famine of seven years during the reign of Djoser... Where a leading man of Djoser`s reign called Imhotep had a dream that the Nile god promised to end the drought....which some scholars to consider this Imhotep to Joseph of Jacob in Egypt.... Where this Imhotep was a architect of the structure in this time ..Chancellor of the King Chief under the King , High Priest of Heliopolis , and maker of Stone Vases....See the Old Testament account of Joseph of Jacob in Egypt, and this Stone in Egypt with inscription had similar history stories of seven year famine which came from Archeology and Bible text History
RESPONSE:
Egypt had lots of famines. The most famous was the seven year famine of 1064–1072 AD
Please give us the name or present location of this "ancient stone".
Please note that the Ptolemaic period lasted for 275 years, from 305 BC to 30 BC. It was the last dynasty. Thus if the Exodus account was written between 950 and 750 BC, this would have been at least 500 years earlier that the "ancient stone" was "discovered".
Last edited by ancient warrior; 09-08-2012 at 06:13 AM..
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And btw, if I were Pharaoh, I wouldn't want a trace of the Exodus in the History books either.
