'13-10-19, 23:41 Oldskeptic	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus The_Metatron wrote: Good call, old man. I, too, wasn't buying this whole "Did I say exodus? I didn't mean to say exodus." There was no straw man. Well at one point I actually that Charles might be somewhat serious as something of a scholar, but this http://qdl.scs-inc.us/2ndParty/Pages/6883.html convinces me that besides being a bit of a looney he just makes shit up as he goes along. Ramose was a wise man, so the pharaoh made him vizier, and tutor of his son Akhenaten. Though the god of Thebes was Amun, Ramose favored the Sun god for whom he was named, while conceiving a faith that was more than just a religious preference among many gods. Rather, he believed that there is but one god, and all of the various cults were simply worshiping different forms of the same being. Thus the spiritual and regional conflicts could be eliminated if all of the cults could be fused into one national religion, with the pharaoh as its leader. Ramose instilled this vision in Akhenadten, who ruled 1351~1334 BCE, and who turned it into a reality. Aten was designated the only true god, and worship of any other god was made illegal. Here he has Ramose AKA Moses inventing monotheism and selling it to the boy Akhenaten who would be king. Culturally and economically, Egypt flourished under Akhenaten's humanistic rule. The elimination of cult conflicts, and the emergence of a clear and accessible spirituality, should have been the beginning of an enduring enlightenment that would have steadily increased the benefits to everyone. There is no evidence that Egypt flourished under Akhenaten any more than any other pharaoh. Yet the new-found prosperity led to "advances" in horticulture, in which more people had more animals, and different types of animals, and this created a problem that they could not have anticipated. Keeping pigs and ducks together breeds the bacteria that cause bubonic plague. Thus a pandemic began. Pigs and ducks together cause the bacteria yersinia pestis. The Amun priests blamed it on the Atenists. As god of the wind, the angry Amun was now decimating the population by spreading a contagious disease through the air. We now know that it was actually the fleas in the wind that carried the disease. Fleas in the wind? What about the rats? The less superstitious Atenists rather contended that it was just a disease that wasn't Akhenaten's fault, and that the problem could be solved without relinquishing the faith. They developed strict rules for the preparation and storage of food, now known as kashrut (i.e., Jewish dietary law), which precluded using anything that came from a pig. Making shit up does not count as explanation. When Akhenaten died and Smenkhare took over, the Amun priests took advantage of the transition to challenge the persistence of Atenism. To demonstrate their numbers and solidarity, the Amun worshipers conspired to make the Nile run red with blood, suggestive of the scale of the carnage that might ensue if the pharaoh did not yield to their demands. This was recorded as the 1st Plague. But this too had effects that could not be foreseen. The frogs died, and the land was overrun by gnats, lice, and fleas. The fleas then helped spread the bubonic plague. Not understanding the biological mechanisms at work, the priests simply concluded that Amun was punishing the Atenist pharaoh with more vengeance than ever. So, the fleas weren't spreading the disease until after the frogs died? We are told that the Christians superstitiously blamed the Jews for the disease, because the Jews were immune to it, and so the Christians attacked the Jews. But that's ridiculous. If all of the people in the world today were given a 50/50 chance of surviving some sort of catastrophe, except Mongolian sheep-herders, nobody would kill the sheep-herders. Rather, everybody would be studying up on sheep, and learning to speak Mongolian. Likewise in Europe, the Jews would not have been seen as the villains, but rather, as the heroes, and everybody would have been acquiring a taste for gefilte fish, and learning to speak Yiddish. The actual source of the anti-Semitism was the Pope, who didn't want to see everybody convert to Judaism (or Islam for that matter) just in the interest of self-preservation. The Inquisition continued the persecution of the Jews (as well as Protestants, and any other type of heretic it could find). But it had nothing to do with superstitions of the common people. It was just the Catholics trying to hold onto their power. So the Pope naturally didn't recommend mitzvot-like practices, but he did order attacks on the Jews, and by the time it was over, 40~60% of the population was dead. Never mind that Pope Clement VI issued two papal bulls against persecution of Jews for the plague. There's more but I don't feel like taking the time to expose every silly thing on this website. It would take too long.
'13-10-20, 01:51 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Thomas Eshuis wrote: 1. Semites =/= Isrealites/Jews That isn't correct, at least if the topic is ancient history. The Akkadian Empire (2334~2193 BCE) in Mesopotamia is considered to have been "Semitic" (at least by the Wikipedia article), and which everybody agrees to have come well before the birth of Israel, and of Judaism. Furthermore, modern DNA studies have shown that many Middle Eastern people have the same DNA as the modern Jews. Historically, some of them descend from people who converted to Christianity after Jesus of Nazareth came along, and some of those converted to Islam following Muhammad. And then some of them are descended from people who were never Abrahamic. So equating Semites with Israelites and/or Hebrews and/or Jews isn't accurate, nor is it useful just as a gross over-simplification. Thomas Eshuis wrote: 2. Can you please formulate in one or two sentences, what the point of your thesis is? Please state clearly what claim you are seeking to defend? I'm saying that some Hebrew customs and theological premises stem from the Amarna heresy in Egypt, and from a pandemic (perhaps influenza and/or bubonic plague) that started during or just after the Amarna heresy (for an unrelated set of reasons), and then spread throughout the Middle East. Agrippina wrote: The discussion became a little heated until he actually looked at some of the current archeological evidence that refutes the claim, albeit the video and not the actual book, but thankfully, he's not blindly denying the evidence, he's going to research it. I'm quite pleased to have come across someone who is prepared to admit that they might be mistaken. Here's a quote from posts #20, #30, #67, and #74: CharlesChandler wrote: I'm contending that the "Exodus" might have been just Ramose and a few courtesans who were forced into exile when Horemheb reinstated the Amun cult. There is no archaeological evidence of this "Exodus", in the Sinai or in Canaan, because it might have been a relatively small number of people involved, and the trail would be indistinguishable from a migrating Bedouin tribe. Now I've said it 5 times. Is that enough? I'll grant you that by the time I get done totally redefining the Exodus, just as a few courtesans in exile taking customs and ideas to a new land, it really isn't an "Exodus" anymore, and I'm accepting partial blame for the confusion here. So I have changed the title of my webpage to "The Origins of Judaism", and I'm in the process of re-aligning the remainder of the text around the simple thesis that Mosaic Law came from the court of Akhenaten, not from a bunch of isolated sheep-herders, nor from an epiphany of Josiah's. Oldskeptic wrote: There is a lot of back peddling going on here. Now we're going to find out whether you're interested in having a productive discussion, wherein sometimes positions change due to the introduction of new information and/or for the clarification and refinement of what's being said, or are you going to dwell on the points where you think you won. For my part, I didn't start this thread to maintain my existing position, and prove that I'm right. Rather, I'm looking for new information and new insights. I am, indeed, explicitly stating that I'm backing off of my original position, that what left Egypt was what somebody would call an "Exodus". The exile of a few courtesans doesn't constitute an Exodus. So that was a misrepresentation. If I had to guess, you'd prefer that I maintain that position, because you know you can win that one. I'd just as soon move on, but you can dwell on it for a while if you like. Oldskeptic wrote: There was no ideological clash, you were wrong and rather than admit it you now say, "That's not what I said," when you clearly did. No, we weren't clashing. You were right, and I was wrong. That isn't clashing. It was just me being an asshole. One would have to try much harder than that to actually clash with an old skeptic. My bad (again). Oldskeptic wrote: CharlesChandler wrote: For me to remove my straw hat, so that I am not mistaken for the straw man that you're attacking, I have to reformulate my thesis, to say that some of the ideas in the OT trace straight back to Ramose and Akhenaten, and can only be fully understood in the Egyptian context. Or you could just drop it. There are better explanations for the Israelite development of monotheism in the seventh to second century BCE than a twenty year run of a monotheistic sun god worship 600 years earlier. I disagree. That would have the whole thing springing into existence in the time of Josiah, and all of the people going along with it. If any of the rest of history is a guide (and if this thread is a microcosm of the same principle), ideas change slowly (and sometimes not at all). One individual can have a radically new epiphany, but getting the rest of society to go along with it is the hard part. So no, I don't think that the whole thing sprang out of the circumstances of the Babylonian captivity. I think that the "Book of the Law" that (supposedly) helped inspire Josiah's canonization of Judaism in the 7th Century BCE is a reference to pre-existing literature and/or oral traditions, and such needs to be taken into account. The Hebrews were rapidly building settlements, and were already culturally distinct, in the 13th Century BCE. So no, Judaism didn't just spring into existence in the 7th Century BCE. Oldskeptic wrote: CharlesChandler wrote: But through no fault of their own, a pandemic occurred, with two enduring effects. First, they learned to live a healthier life, eating right, bathing regularly, not partaking in promiscuity, etc. Where is there any evidence that a plague taught them any of these things? Hand washing and and bathing were religious rituals to be preformed so not to offend their god. And no one really knows when it started in the middle east or who out of all the people of the middle east followed it. Right — no one really knows when hygiene became a point of faith. It is now, at least for Jews and Muslims. But when did this get started? I'm not saying that I can prove that Hebrew customs involving diet and hygiene were responses to a pandemic, and it's certainly possible that the Hebrews just happened to adopt such customs, at a time when a pandemic was going around. That such customs gave them some protection from contagious diseases was proved by later history, when in the late Middle Ages, the Black Death struck Christians harder than Jews in Europe. The difference was so noticeable at the time that the Jews were actually blamed for the Black Death. We can then infer that the efficacy of such customs in affording protection from contagious diseases would have been just as noticeable in ancient times. And I'm saying that this is when diet and hygiene became points of faith — when Yahweh clearly favored those who engaged in such practices. Oldskeptic wrote: Or others had similar codes, and the Israelites were a network of interrelated tribes/families with a mistrust of outsiders. Evidence? Oldskeptic wrote: How can you say/know that within the time frame you're talking about that Israelites were more practical or less superstitious than the other Canaanites? I'll let Sir Flinders Petrie say it for me, in his comments on Atenism: If this were a new religion, invented to satisfy our modern scientific conceptions, we could not find a flaw in the correctness of this view of the energy of the solar system. How much Akhenaten understood, we cannot say, but he certainly bounded forward in his views and symbolism to a position which we cannot logically improve upon at the present day. Not a rag of superstition or of falsity can be found clinging to this new worship evolved out of the old Aton of Heliopolis, the sole Lord of the universe. Now, you can certainly argue that the Hebrews during the relevant period certainly didn't immediately destroy all of their little pagan idols of Canaanite gods, thus calling into question how non-superstitious they actually were, and indeed, calling into question whether or not they were even influenced by Atenism. My point here is purely conjectural, but my contention is that the Hebrews figured out that the plagues were contagious diseases to be handled with diet and hygiene, while other people thought that plagues were the work of angry gods, hence the (purely conjectural) contention that the Hebrews were less superstitious. That Atenism is less superstitious has been attested by many modern scholars. And I'm just connecting all of the dots. Oldskeptic wrote: I fail to see how monotheism would be needed to promote a practical, healthy lifestyle. It isn't necessary — you can live a healthy lifestyle without any theism at all. But if people are running around attributing everything to the action of one god or another, they'll never realize that people are getting sick and dying because of a contagious disease. The point that I'm trying to make regarding the role of monotheism is subtle, but essentially, I'm saying that Atenism wasn't just the promotion of one god above all others — it was the advent of pantheism, in which God and nature become one and the same. Akhenaten forbade idolatry, and even insisted that Aten be spelled out phonetically, instead of using a pictograph, to frustrate people's attempts to conceive God in a physical form. This abstraction then removed the attribution of all events to divine intervention, thereby leaving such events to be attributed to natural causes. In other words, monotheism doesn't have to be non-superstitious, but Atenism was, and I'm contending that the Hebrews were, and that there was a connection. There's no way to prove it, because we don't have archeological evidence of the worship of Aten, precisely because there isn't going to be any archeological evidence of a religion that forbids idolatry. The evidence that is there clearly shows that the Hebrews continued to worship Canaanite gods. But I'm saying that there were more practical ideas going around, stemming from Atenism. Oldskeptic wrote: [re: the Bronze Age Collapse] Well, considering that cities weren't abandoned and left standing, that they actually were destroyed. I'd go for war between the nations and city states. Nations and city states going after one another continuously until hardly any are left standing from Egypt to Greece. Indeed, the "collapse" is known by the destruction layers in the cities throughout the Mediterranean, so no, it wasn't just a disease that decimated the population. But I'm considering the possibility that the disease weakened the population, to the point that they were less able to defend themselves, inviting the looting parties, which wouldn't have been possible had they been strong. It's even possible that the cities were burned by the inhabitants, because they couldn't figure out any other way of isolating the contagion, and saw no other choice but to simply burn everything and go back to being pastoral nomads. Like I said, I doubt that I'll find a smoking gun here, but it's still interesting to consider the idea.
'13-10-20, 02:09 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Oldskeptic wrote: Well at one point I actually that Charles might be somewhat serious as something of a scholar, but this http://qdl.scs-inc.us/2ndParty/Pages/6883.html convinces me that besides being a bit of a looney he just makes shit up as he goes along. Umm, you missed the first sentence on that page... We can now rebuild the entire story, to judge its plausibility, and to see what new meaning it lends to the Biblical and historical accounts. I'm explicitly stating that it's a reconstruction, for the purpose of judging the plausibility. In other words, connect the dots, and then color in the picture, to see if it actually looks real, or if something about it just doesn't make sense. I can try to relay that point more emphatically, and there are a lot of things that I'm going to change, in reformulating my thesis as the exile of a few courtesans, instead of an "Exodus". But you should go ahead and save a copy, so that you can continue to flame it even after I've fixed the errors. Oldskeptic wrote: Never mind that Pope Clement VI issued two papal bulls against persecution of Jews for the plague. Good point. So is this one, from Wikipedia: Clement's efforts were in part undone by the newly elected Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor making property of Jews killed in riots forfeit, giving local authorities a financial incentive to turn a blind eye. So I think I'll blame Charles IV, instead of the Pope. But I still blame the Pope for the Inquisition. Sorry.
'13-10-20, 04:47 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler said: I'll grant you that by the time I get done totally redefining the Exodus, just as a few courtesans in exile taking customs and ideas to a new land, it really isn't an "Exodus" anymore, and I'm accepting partial blame for the confusion here. So I have changed the title of my webpage to "The Origins of Judaism", Please present your evidence for a "few courtesans" i.e. harlots/whores/ladies of ill-repute, being the origin of the customs invented by the Jewish people. I'm sure the Jewish people would be really impressed to learn that they are the children of whores. and I'm in the process of re-aligning the remainder of the text around the simple thesis that Mosaic Law came from the court of Akhenaten, not from a bunch of isolated sheep-herders, nor from an epiphany of Josiah's. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support the idea that Akenaten's sun-disc worship resulted in the adoption of monotheism by the people of Canaan. I have to confess that I also thought this might be the case but then further research revealed that, well into the first millennium, the Canaanites were still polytheists, and that the change to monotheism was not completely established even after the exile in Babylon. If you read the Old Testament, there is evidence for this with all the talk about child sacrifice and the worship of the god Baal. The exile of a few courtesans doesn't constitute an Exodus. The continued use of this word makes me think that you mean "courtiers" and not whores. I certainly hope so. Otherwise my ancestors were dodgy people. ...canonization of Judaism in the 7th Century BCE is a reference to pre-existing literature and/or oral traditions, and such needs to be taken into account. The Hebrews were rapidly building settlements, and were already culturally distinct, in the 13th Century BCE. So no, Judaism didn't just spring into existence in the 7th Century BCE. Study the laws of Hammurabi in some detail. The similarity between those and the laws of Moses (not Josiah) but continued by his successor Joshua, indicate that the laws were fairly common throughout the region, and part of the legal system of all the semitic people, And yes, Jews are Semitic, hence the term "anti-Semitism" for the behaviour of discrimination against Jews. Yes, the laws didn't "spring into existence" they'd been in existence in the region for centuries. My point here is purely conjectural, but my contention is that the Hebrews figured out that the plagues were contagious diseases to be handled with diet and hygiene, while other people thought that plagues were the work of angry gods, hence the (purely conjectural) contention that the Hebrews were less superstitious. That Atenism is less superstitious has been attested by many modern scholars. And I'm just connecting all of the dots. If you're going to write scholarly blog posts and present ideas as properly researched, then don't offer "pure conjecture" without backing up your conjecture with evidence. You're allowed to say that it is just your opinion, but then you have to accept that if you can't support your conjecture with evidence, people are going to criticise them, especially if they are able to produce conflicting evidence. I'm saying that Atenism wasn't just the promotion of one god above all others — it was the advent of pantheism, in which God and nature become one and the same. Akhenaten forbade idolatry, and even insisted that Aten be spelled out phonetically, instead of using a pictograph, to frustrate people's attempts to conceive God in a physical form. No, his religion was the worship of the sun disc, not the worship of an invisible god. It was still a form of idolatry. If you look at pictures of the gods worshipped by the Egyptians, you'll see that several of them have the sun disk as a headdress. He simply removed the disk and built a religion around sun-bathing (joke) rather than the various gods who wore it on their heads. ndeed, the "collapse" is known by the destruction layers in the cities throughout the Mediterranean, so no, it wasn't just a disease that decimated the population. But I'm considering the possibility that the disease weakened the population, to the point that they were less able to defend themselves, inviting the looting parties, which wouldn't have been possible had they been strong. It's even possible that the cities were burned by the inhabitants, because they couldn't figure out any other way of isolating the contagion, and saw no other choice but to simply burn everything and go back to being pastoral nomads. Like I said, I doubt that I'll find a smoking gun here, but it's still interesting to consider the idea. Again, if you bothered to do proper research, you'd find that the Bronze Age collapse did not happen as a result of disease but as a result of climate change which brought northerners south to the warmer regions of the Near East, ending the "dark age" of European history. From Wikipedia: Between 1206 and 1150 BCE, the cultural collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms, the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and Syria,[1] and the New Kingdom of Egypt in Syria and Canaan[2] interrupted trade routes and severely reduced literacy. In the first phase of this period, almost every city between Pylos and Gaza was violently destroyed, and often left unoccupied thereafter: examples include Hattusa, Mycenae, and Ugarit.[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age_collapse Here's more: Anatolia[edit] Prior to the Bronze Age collapse, Anatolia (Asia Minor) was dominated by a number of Indo-European peoples: Luwians, Hittites, Mitanni, and Mycenaean Greeks, together with the Semitic Assyrians. From the 17th Century BCE, the Mitanni formed a ruling class over the Hurrians, an ancient indigenous Caucasian people who spoke a Hurro-Urartian language isolate. Similarly, the Hittites absorbed the Hattians, a people speaking a language which may have been of the North Caucasian group. Every Anatolian site that was important during the preceding Late Bronze Age shows a destruction layer, and it appears that here civilization did not recover to the level of the Indo-European Hittites for another thousand years. Hattusas, the Hittite capital, was burned - probably by Kaskians, possibly aided by the Phrygians - abandoned, and never reoccupied. Karaoğlan was burned and the corpses left unburied. The Hittite Empire was destroyed by the Indo-European speaking Phrygians and by the Semitic speaking Assyrians. The Trojan city of Troy was destroyed at least twice, before being abandoned until Roman times. And... Egyptian evidence shows that, from the reign of Horemheb (ruled either 1319 or 1306 to 1292 BCE), wandering Shasu were more problematic than the earlier Apiru. Ramesses II (ruled 1279-1213 BCE) campaigned against them, pursuing them as far as Moab, where he established a fortress, after the near collapse at the Battle of Kadesh. During the reign of Merneptah, the Shasu threatened the "Way of Horus" north from Gaza. Evidence shows that Deir Alla (Succoth) was destroyed after the reign of Queen Twosret (ruled 1191-1189 BCE). The destroyed site of Lachish was briefly reoccupied by squatters and an Egyptian garrison, during the reign of Ramesses III (ruled 1186-1155 BCE). All centres along a coastal route from Gaza northward were destroyed, and evidence shows Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Akko, and Jaffa were burned and not reoccupied for up to thirty years. Inland Hazor, Bethel, Beit Shemesh, Eglon, Debir, and other sites were destroyed. Refugees escaping the collapse of coastal centres may have fused with incoming nomadic and Anatolian elements to begin the growth of terraced hillside hamlets in the highlands region that was associated with the later development of the Hebrews This last bit still needs a little research. However, from that you can see that far from the Jews being the conquerors of Palestine, it was the Egyptians who destroyed Ashkelon etc. Traditionally, students are taught that it was an invasion of iron-working warriors that invaded: The Ugarit correspondence at the time mentions invasions by tribes of the mysterious Sea Peoples, who appear to have been a disparate mix of Luwians, Greeks and Canaanites, among others. Equally, the last Greek Linear B documents in the Aegean (dating to just before the collapse) reported a large rise in piracy, slave raiding and other attacks, particularly around Anatolia. Later fortresses along the Libyan coast, constructed and maintained by the Egyptians after the reign of Ramesses II, were built to reduce raiding. This theory is strengthened by the fact that the collapse coincides with the appearance in the region of many new ethnic groups. These include Indo-European tribes, such as the Phrygians, Proto-Armenians, Medes, Persians, Cimmerians, Lydians and Scythians, as well as the Pontic speaking Colchians, Hurro-Urartuans and Iranian Sarmatians. These groups settled or emerged in the Caucasus, Iran and Anatolia. Thracians, Macedonians and Dorian Greeks seem to have arrived at this time – possibly from the north, usurping the earlier Greeks of Mycenae and Achaea. There also seems to have been widespread migration of Semitic peoples, such as Aramaeans, Chaldeans and Suteans – possibly from the South-East. The ultimate reasons for these migrations could include drought, developments in warfare/weaponry, earthquakes, or other natural disasters, meaning that the Migrations theory is not necessarily incompatible with the other theories mentioned here.
'13-10-20, 05:51 MrFungus420	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: MrFungus420 wrote: If there were no Jewish slaves in Egypt, then the story about the plagues is just that, a story. If they never happened, then any conjecture about how they might have happened is automatically WRONG. Slaves = Exodus = plagues = thesis. No slaves = no Exodus = no plagues = no thesis. Is that simple enough for you to understand or do you need it explained in one-syllable words? This... No. Fuck your quote-mine. Let's look at the CONTEXT of that post: MrFungus420 wrote: Alright, let's see how fucking simple we can make this because you need it. CharlesChandler wrote: [*]You were such a coward that you never considered the possibility that your thesis was correct (which remains to be demonstrated, but that's not the point). Then you sheepishly adopted your professor's view, not because of any truth value, but because he/she had the nerve to smack you down for reasons that had nothing to do with your central thesis, and because you're a coward. If there were no Jewish slaves in Egypt, then the story about the plagues is just that, a story. If they never happened, then any conjecture about how they might have happened is automatically WRONG. Slaves = Exodus = plagues = thesis. No slaves = no Exodus = no plagues = no thesis. Is that simple enough for you to understand or do you need it explained in one-syllable words? Now, whether or not there were slaves (and the Exodus) IS central to what his thesis was. He was trying to explain supposedly historical events. If those events never occurred, then there is nothing to explain. If there is nothing to explain, then there is no basis for a thesis explaining it. Sorry, I couldn't do it in one-syllable words.
'13-10-20, 05:52 MrFungus420	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus The_Metatron wrote: CharlesChandler wrote: Oldskeptic wrote: No smack down, Professor Campbell was a gentle giant, very interested in his students education. He has remained a hero of mine, and a role model. I didn't mention, because I didn't think it important, that I received a B+ for the paper even though there factual errors; more than the two that I mentioned. [...] Again there was no smack down, it was guidance and mentoring. In fact I became one of Professor Campbell's TAs after that. Sounds like you fell in love. This is how you support your argument? Well, it's no worse than anything else that he's posted...
'13-10-20, 05:55 MrFungus420	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Agrippina wrote: This is from extra-biblical evidence. I can cite extra-biblical literary "evidence" for the Exodus, I bet you can't.
'13-10-20, 05:59 MrFungus420	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: In order to float your Babylonian captivity "theory" in this critical environment, you have to provide archaeological evidence. Hmmm... "ar·chae·ol·o·gy or ar·che·ol·o·gy (ärk-l-j) n. The systematic study of past human life and culture by the recovery and examination of remaining material evidence, such as graves, buildings, tools, and pottery." Aggie DID provide archaeological evidence. It's not her fault that you don't know what "archaeological" means.
'13-10-20, 07:22 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Agrippina wrote: If you read the Old Testament, there is evidence for this with all the talk about child sacrifice and the worship of the god Baal. This is an undistributed middle. "Some Hebrews engaged in pagan rituals. Pagans engaged in pagan rituals. All Hebrews were pagans (until the time of Josiah)." That doesn't follow. You can't prove that Atenist ideas never made it to Canaan, and then germinated for 600 years until re-emerging in Josiah's canonization of the faith. Of course, you can't prove the negative, nor can I prove the positive. I can say that I wouldn't really expect to be able to prove the presence of Atenism in Canaan between the 13th and 7th Centuries BCE, since one of the 10 Commandments forbids idolatry, so there aren't going to be any little trinkets laying around to prove that they were worshiping Yahweh and not Ba'al. But that doesn't constitute proof. Regardless, I find it implausible that the whole thing was invented by Josiah. We know that the Canaanites in the 13th Century BCE had writing, since they were the ones who adopted the Proto-Sinaic script that was passed on to the Phoenicians, who then spread it around the Mediterranean. We should suspect that they were recording their own history, but if there were any Atenists among them, they wouldn't have been manufacturing stelae to put in the town center, since Egypt had banned Atenism. Any documents would have been kept secret. Then, when Josiah reformed the faith in the 7th Century BCE, would he have stipulated that all extant literature be preserved? Or would he have ordered it to be destroyed? I'm betting that he would have torched all of the competing versions. Still, that doesn't prove that there was a literary thread, all of the way from the court of Akhenaten, through Moses, into Canaan, and down through the centuries until Josiah's time. But under the circumstances, I don't see how you can come to hard and fast conclusions that there couldn't have been such a thread. Agrippina wrote: Study the laws of Hammurabi in some detail. You found the mitzvot in the Code of Hammurabi? Agrippina wrote: And yes, Jews are Semitic, hence the term "anti-Semitism" for the behaviour of discrimination against Jews. Another undistributed middle. All Jews are 'posed to be Semites, but not all Semites are Jewish. Were the Akkadians Jewish? Now, how did you get from... The ultimate reasons for these migrations could include drought, developments in warfare/weaponry, earthquakes, or other natural disasters, meaning that the Migrations theory is not necessarily incompatible with the other theories mentioned here. ...to... Agrippina wrote: Again, if you bothered to do proper research, you'd find that the Bronze Age collapse did not happen as a result of disease but as a result of climate change which brought northerners south to the warmer regions of the Near East, ending the "dark age" of European history. Climate change is merely one of the hypotheses — that doesn't make it fact, nor does it rule out my hypothesis. It doesn't even rule out any of the other hypotheses that they listed. MrFungus420 wrote: Now, whether or not there were slaves (and the Exodus) IS central to what his thesis was. In what sense is my hypothesis reliant on slaves? MrFungus420 wrote: CharlesChandler wrote: I can cite extra-biblical literary "evidence" for the Exodus, I bet you can't. Manetho and Tacitus. What did I just win?
'13-10-20, 08:02 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Historians from the Ptolemaic era, and the Roman Imperial era, are hardly first-hand eye-witnesses to a fictional event that was set in the second millennium BCE are they? Try learning a little about how the historical method works.
'13-10-20, 08:04 The_Metatron	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Did he really try to cite authors from centuries after the event as evidence?
'13-10-20, 08:25 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: Agrippina wrote: If you read the Old Testament, there is evidence for this with all the talk about child sacrifice and the worship of the god Baal. This is an undistributed middle. "Some Hebrews engaged in pagan rituals. Pagans engaged in pagan rituals. All Hebrews were pagans (until the time of Josiah)." That doesn't follow. You can't prove that Atenist ideas never made it to Canaan, and then germinated for 600 years until re-emerging in Josiah's canonization of the faith. Of course, you can't prove the negative, nor can I prove the positive. I can say that I wouldn't really expect to be able to prove the presence of Atenism in Canaan between the 13th and 7th Centuries BCE, since one of the 10 Commandments forbids idolatry, so there aren't going to be any little trinkets laying around to prove that they were worshiping Yahweh and not Ba'al. But that doesn't constitute proof. Akenaten's ideas were eradicated from the culture of Egypt after his death, his name from erased from the hieroglyphs recording his ideas, and his temples destroyed. Regardless, I find it implausible that the whole thing was invented by Josiah. We know that the Canaanites in the 13th Century BCE had writing, since they were the ones who adopted the Proto-Sinaic script that was passed on to the Phoenicians, who then spread it around the Mediterranean. We should suspect that they were recording their own history, but if there were any Atenists among them, they wouldn't have been manufacturing stelae to put in the town center, since Egypt had banned Atenism. Any documents would have been kept secret. Then, when Josiah reformed the faith in the 7th Century BCE, would he have stipulated that all extant literature be preserved? Or would he have ordered it to be destroyed? I'm betting that he would have torched all of the competing versions. Still, that doesn't prove that there was a literary thread, all of the way from the court of Akhenaten, through Moses, into Canaan, and down through the centuries until Josiah's time. But under the circumstances, I don't see how you can come to hard and fast conclusions that there couldn't have been such a thread. Thumb-sucking and supposition. Please support assertions with evidence. Agrippina wrote: Study the laws of Hammurabi in some detail. You found the mitzvot in the Code of Hammurabi? A simple Google search reveals this: There are great similarities between God's Torah and Hammurabi's code. (The 10 commandments sum up all commands and are included in Torah) For example, Hammurabi said "If a man puts out the eye of an equal, his eye shall be put out." The Torah version is: Exo 21:24 Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Exo 21:25 Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. And The code of Hammurabi predates the giving of the 10 commandments by a few hundred years. However, what is often overlooked is that God's Torah was committed to writing a couple of hundred years after Hammurabi's code, but there is ample evidence that God's Torah (laws, instructions) were well known LONG before Sinai. For example: Gen 26:4 And I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven; I will give to your descendants all these lands; and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; Gen 26:5 because Abraham obeyed My voice and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws." (laws is torahs in the Hebrew manuscripts) And.... Exo 16:28 And the Lord said to Moses, "How long do you refuse to keep My commandments and My laws? In the Genesis reference, Abraham obviously kept God's commandments and laws a good 400 years before Sinai and more than 100 years before Hammurabi's code. In the Exd. passage above, God asking how long will they refuse to keep his commands happens a couple of years before Sinai. I share those two references to show that God's laws/commands were known before they were written on stone. Those quotes are the admission someone who, like you, doesn't agree that the biblical laws were based on already-existing laws in the region. He says: Some historians point to the Torah/Sinai being inspired by Hammurabi's code, and I accept that perspective as valid even if I personally do not agree with it. I personally see scripture revealing that Hammurabi might have been inspired by the laws/commands of the Hebrew God. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Compare_and_contrast_hammurabis_code_and_ten_commandments Agrippina wrote: And yes, Jews are Semitic, hence the term "anti-Semitism" for the behaviour of discrimination against Jews. Another undistributed middle. All Jews are 'posed to be Semites, but not all Semites are Jewish. Were the Akkadians Jewish? Now, how did you get from... The ultimate reasons for these migrations could include drought, developments in warfare/weaponry, earthquakes, or other natural disasters, meaning that the Migrations theory is not necessarily incompatible with the other theories mentioned here. Simply quoting from the text of the link I gave you, not my words. ...to... Agrippina wrote: Again, if you bothered to do proper research, you'd find that the Bronze Age collapse did not happen as a result of disease but as a result of climate change which brought northerners south to the warmer regions of the Near East, ending the "dark age" of European history. Climate change is merely one of the hypotheses — that doesn't make it fact, nor does it rule out my hypothesis. It doesn't even rule out any of the other hypotheses that they listed. Here's something for you to read. Three alluvial deposits near Gibala-tell Tweini provide a unique record of environmental history and food availability estimates covering the late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. The refined pollen-derived climatic proxy suggests that drier climatic conditions occurred in the Mediterranean belt of Syria from the late 11th/early 12th centuries BC to the 9th century NC. This period corresponds with the time from of the Late Bronze Age collapse and the subsequent Dark Age. The abrupt climate change at the end of the Late Bronze Age caused region-wide crop failures, leading towards socio-economic crises and unsustainability forcing regional habitat=tracking. Archeological data show that the first conflagration of Gibala occurred simultaneously with the destruction of the capital city Ugarit currently dated between 1194 and 1175 BC. Gibala redeveloped shortly after this destruction with large-scale urbanisation visible in tow main architectural phases during the early iron Age...
'13-10-20, 08:28 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus The_Metatron wrote: Did he really try to cite authors from centuries after the event as evidence? Yep. Obviously doesn't understand about first-hand evidence and eye-witness accounts and people writing from original sources. There's nothing wrong with citing Tacitus for information about Imperial Rome because he had access to original documents and was therefore qualified to report on them. However, when it comes to his citing Christian literature for evidence of events reported in their religious tradition, he is as valid as I am because I only have the Bible for evidence that the Bible was written. When I quote from the Bible, I'm not quoting from the original text, so my quotes are merely a repetition of what is said in the Bible, it's not what was actually written in the original language.
'13-10-20, 08:50 stijndeloose	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus Bit of special pleading going on here, no? Written texts don't count as evidence unless I use them as evidence?
'13-10-20, 09:08 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus stijndeloose wrote: Bit of special pleading going on here, no? Written texts don't count as evidence unless I use them as evidence? That's why I put "evidence" in scare quotes — I don't consider human reports to be in the same category as physical archeological artifacts. But it seems like they'll make an argument out of just about anything here. I have gotten a little bit of useful information out of this, aside from the lesson in how hateful people can be, but not much. Oh well.
'13-10-20, 09:10 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus stijndeloose wrote: Bit of special pleading going on here, no? Written texts don't count as evidence unless I use them as evidence? No, the Bible is the only text I have available for the Bible. I'm never going to have access to the original text, and I'm never going to learn the language to be able to read it myself anyway. So what the Bible says, in the language I am able to read, write and speak is all I have. Anyone who can refute what I quote from the KJV is welcome to do so, I won't argue with them. However, I'm not going to cite the Bible as valid evidence for any of the historical events alleged in the Bible.
'13-10-20, 09:12 Agrippina	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: stijndeloose wrote: Bit of special pleading going on here, no? Written texts don't count as evidence unless I use them as evidence? That's why I put "evidence" in scare quotes — I don't consider human reports to be in the same category as physical archeological artifacts. But it seems like they'll make an argument out of just about anything here. I have gotten a little bit of useful information out of this, aside from the lesson in how hateful people can be, but not much. Oh well. You're perfectly entitled to quote written text as evidence, as long as you can show where the evidence came from. So if you say that Tacitus wrote about the exodus, you have to show where Tacitus got that information, because his writing is not a first-hand account.
'13-10-20, 09:18 stijndeloose	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: stijndeloose wrote: Bit of special pleading going on here, no? Written texts don't count as evidence unless I use them as evidence? That's why I put "evidence" in scare quotes — I don't consider human reports to be in the same category as physical archeological artifacts. But it seems like they'll make an argument out of just about anything here. I have gotten a little bit of useful information out of this, aside from the lesson in how hateful people can be, but not much. Oh well. Didn't you also say that, if one cannot provide archaeological evidence for one's theory, then that theory is highly suspect? By your own measure, then, Sir, your theory is highly suspect. So there.
'13-10-20, 10:35 CharlesChandler	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus stijndeloose wrote: Didn't you also say that, if one cannot provide archaeological evidence for one's theory, then that theory is highly suspect? By your own measure, then, Sir, your theory is highly suspect. So there. I'll abide by that, assuming that it isn't a double standard. Their "evidence" that the OT was invented in the 7th Century BCE is some clay tablets that Nebuchadnezzar commissioned to brag about the destruction of Jerusalem, which strangely for being a much more recent event, cannot be supported by archeological evidence. That's why they won't consider other possibilities?
'13-10-20, 10:35 Scar	Re: The Pharaoh of the Exodus CharlesChandler wrote: stijndeloose wrote: Bit of special pleading going on here, no? Written texts don't count as evidence unless I use them as evidence? That's why I put "evidence" in scare quotes — I don't consider human reports to be in the same category as physical archeological artifacts. But it seems like they'll make an argument out of just about anything here. I have gotten a little bit of useful information out of this, aside from the lesson in how hateful people can be, but not much. Oh well. No one's been hateful. You're just butthurt over the fact that people won't uncritically swallow your bullshit. Poor you.