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My point is that, they urged caution, pending further investigation and information. There has been none forthcoming in almost three years. The article in the Egyptian newspaper (not even a journal or conference proceeding) is literally the only thing you have to base any of this on.
You appear to want to turn archaeology on its head, becasue of an unverified report of a mysterious "researcher" who made vague and untestable claims, and has since vanished into thin air. This has all the hallmarks of a hoax: it traces back to a single unverifiable source, no attempt has been made by the purported author to introduce any of his scholarship to the rest of the worldwide academic community. Even other researches in Egypt were skeptical, and it appears the skepticism was warranted.
Even the methodology described in the newspaper article is pretty flakey. He didn't find anything, he decided that a bunch of already found and classified artifacts from a variety of time periods must have been curreny because they were small and round (except when they weren't, they were made of metal(except when they weren't ), they were double sided and had inscriptions (except, you guessed it). In short, from the original article it appears that someone very short on evidence tried to "reinterpret" what was already known ad understood, to avoid a conflict of the Koran with reality. A conflict, I might add, that the Bible does not share.
In short, this is as much evidence as the national Enquirer claiming that Michael Jackson and Elvis has a love child who roams northern Canada and is often mistaken for Bigfoot. It was at its core pure sensationalism with apparently little to no evidence. If this fellow could establish what he claims, he would have revolutionized archaeology. Instead he has disappeared.
BTW, have you checked into that second link you provided? To be honest their writing is pretty incomprehensible, but if they are claiming that the photo is of some funerary tablet, then they either did no fact checking or they are just lying.
Where are the pictures of these coins? why can't you poduce evidence that these coins exist? how can you expect anybody yo believe you of you failed to produce evidence of these coins?
I'll have to google a bit, but I did find some images on them. They are not coins at all. They are scarabs, essentially charms or medallions. many of them have holes to wear on a cord around the neck. They are mostly ivory or semiprecious stones, not metal. In short, some guy looked through a museum, and "reinterpreted" (made stuff up) the evidence for the express purpose of justifying the infallibility of the Koran.
I find it ironic that Christians want to appropriate it, since on the point of coin usage in Egypt before the 4th century, the Bible is consistent with current knowledge, unlike the Koran. This is a fine example for them to try to differentiate their ancient text from the Islamic ancient text, but some evidently don't want to do that.
Not to worry, as far as I could tell actual biblical scholars were not taken in and the foolishness is generally confined to the credulous on the internet
"Ur of the Chaldees is near modern day al-Basrah (Basra) on the edge of al-Hajar Desert in southern Iraq, not
far from where the Euphrates and Tigris rivers meet. If you look at a modern atlas, you will see that area is
still called Mesopotamia. There have been extensive excavations of Ur, which has shown us that there was a
high state of civilisation with a civic authority much like our civic councils. The houses were made of large
stones about ½ metre square and mud bricks. The average house was two storeys and had between ten
and twenty rooms. They had kitchens, bathrooms and toilets built in the houses, and each house had
running water drawn from the nearby river and fed by aqueducts. Children went to school; school students
studied reading, writing and arithmetic, mathematics, multiplication, division, learned square and cube root,
just as do students today. Ur had detailed commercial trading; even the name ‘Abram’ has been found
etched into clay tablets. These people were not primitive ‘cave men’ but were intelligent, family oriented,
hard working, well organised, civilised people who lived in a cohesive society. Abraham’s family moved away
from Ur to Haran. Imagine how hard it would have been for Abraham and Sarah to move from their well built,
weatherproof home and all this luxury, to living a nomadic life in a tent! http://www.bibleabookoftruth.com/abr...realpeople.pdf
I looked at the scarabs but could not find what the researchers said were images of Joseph etc.
Do you really not use a capo?
Most of the time, no. Occasionally I cheat, but I always felt like barre chords were more manly. Sometimes you just need one, though. Its a principle not a rule...
I also could not find the Joseph scarab. Unfortunately all we have is hearsay that it even exists, so finding it is likely to be difficult at best.
Several posters have already produced some very compelling reasons as to why these coin/scarabs are unreliable, as well as some general observations on the unhistorical nature of Joseph in general.
I'll add a few myself.
Common Near Eastern Themes in the "Story of Joseph"
1- Just becasue a scarab has 7 cows, is no proof that someone named Joseph existed, or even lived in Egypt. Even his dream concerning them is not extraordinary in the ancient Near Eastern mind, or limited to the Biblical Joseph. As Cyrus Gordon and Gary Rendsburg point out,
Although there is nothing mythological in the Joseph story, the motif of seven-year cycles both of plenty and of famine run through Near East mythology. As we have already observed, the Gilgamesh Epic even contains the element of laying up a seven-year supply in anticipation of the famine.
(The Bible and the Ancient Near East, p. 137, n. 9, 4th Ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 1997)
This theme, then, was quite common in the ancient Near East. It's existence in the Joseph account only shows the narrative's debt to it's surroundings and background. In the Ugaritic story of Aqhat, we find the following:
Now Daniel, man of Rapiu,
Adjures the clouds in the awful heat,
"Let the clouds make rain in the summer,
the dew lay dew on the grapes."
Seven years Baal is absent,
Eight, the Rider of the Clouds:
No dew, no downpour,
No swirling of the deeps,
No welcome voice of Baal.
(CAT 1.19, Column II, 38-46, Trans. Simon B. Parker)
The above is further elucidated in point 4 below, and also shows how a number can become intensified in poetic parallelism ("7 times I implored him, 8 times I beseeched him" etc..) Specific animal dream omens in Ugaritic can be found in RS 18.041, as well - where cattle play a prominent role.
2- The story of Joseph almost stands alone in Genesis, and is considered a "novella" because of it's length and stylistic features - it is not as composite as other Genesis texts in it's major content. As such, it make s a concerted effort to bring Egyptian themes into the story. A major theme is the above-mentioned interpretation of dreams - a common element in Egypt. Gordon and Rendsburg again:
The emphasis placed on dream interpretation in the Joseph story is another aspect of the Egyptian background of the account. Peoples in all societies dream; it is merely a question of how we deal with our dreams. In Egypt, as the story itself implies, there was a class of professional dream interpreters whose job it was to explain people's dreams. We even possess a lengthy dream interpretation text-book from ancient Egypt, listing various things dreamt and the appropriate meanings thereof. Accordingly, it is not surprising that the author of the Joseph story made a major motif out of dream interpretation.
(ibid, p. 136)
So, again, we have elements that are quite common, and the story is not especially exceptional in portraying Joseph as a successful interpreter of dreams.
3- The number 7 is a common element in the ancient Near East and was considered by many peoples to be an important, holy number. It's use here (besides being a common element in famine/plenty dreams) is not unusual - and neither is the Bible's usage of it.
4- The story in general owes much to a previous Egyptian story, one which may be familiar to some here (and might have been mentioned already, but I missed it): The Tale of Two Brothers.
In this story, a man is falsely accused of attempted rape by a spurned potentional adulteress, and the man must flee for his life. In fact, this theme is found in many ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean stories - with Joseph being yet another in a long line of them. Again, there is nothing exceptional in the account of Joseph's encounter with his masters' wife.
Summation
Finding some scarabs/coins with 7 cows (if true) would not be very shocking, and it does not prove a Biblical character existed - just that a certain imagery existed in the minds of the inhabitants of the ANE.
Dream interpretation as a motif, the innocent man accused of seduction as a motif, and the number seven are all common motifs and ideas from the ancient Near East.
It is my personal opinion that it is best to examine the text closely before even attempting to make vain efforts at proving it's veracity. A close examination will make such an attempt unnecessary and unfruitful. Even appealing to the Hyksos as a possibility is fraught with problems, as any historian will demonstrate. We have no records of a "Joseph" character (by his Hebrew or Egyptian name) who ruled, or held high rank, anywhere in Egypt. But it's not my intention to go into that - this post was to merely show how common certain suggested "proofs" actually were in the ANE.
Last edited by whoppers; 04-19-2012 at 03:03 PM..
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