However, I was thinking neo-Babylon, not Hammurabi's. Hammurabi is younger than Abraham but older than Moses, so his law would have predated the Commandments by nearly 500 years. I suspect however, the code against killing is much older than that.Hammurabi does have the advantage of having existed, which grants him seniority.
Wow, there's proof he didn't exist? You're just so full of facts.
Wow, there's proof he didn't exist? You're just so full of facts.
However, I was thinking neo-Babylon, not Hammurabi's. Hammurabi is younger than Abraham but older than Moses, so his law would have predated the Commandments by nearly 500 years. I suspect however, the code against killing is much older than that.Hammurabi does have the advantage of having existed, which grants him seniority.
It's nice when people make basic errors of reasoning so clearly.
Hammurabi does have the advantage of having existed, which grants him seniority.
However, I was thinking neo-Babylon, not Hammurabi's. Hammurabi is younger than Abraham but older than Moses, so his law would have predated the Commandments by nearly 500 years. I suspect however, the code against killing is much older than that.
Oh look, a snippy comment degrading my religion in an otherwise civil discussion. I'm sure this will provide an accurate color with which to view your future comments with.
Samnell, you are grasping at straws with which to build a man if you think that 'Honor your mother and father' would be applied to rapist molester parents.If I'd written them, the commandments would have suggested honoring only things that deserve honoring, not every person who ever managed to procreate. But I didn't, and what's in them is what's in them.
To insist they apply only to parents worthy of respect is to inject into the words a sentiment clearly alien to them. Just as the first commandment doesn't have any exceptions for other gods than Yahweh who are harmless sorts, or even really cool, the one in question doesn't exclude rapists, child abusers, or the like.
Sure, that's a fairly pedantic and tiresome reading of it, but it's yours and I'm sure it has value to you. Of course, the rest of Jewish law is fairly clear on what to do with rapists, child abusers and the like, so if you bother to follow the entirety of it, those victims will not have parents to honor, making it a fairly moot point. But by all means, twist something noble like honoring your parents into a mockery of its intent and purpose. And go ahead and don't honor yours if they are so lacking the worth. That's your prerogative.
Sure, that's a fairly pedantic and tiresome reading of it, but it's yours and I'm sure it has value to you.
None of the Commandments is capable of possessing value from where I sit, even the ones I think are good ideas.
Of course, the rest of Jewish law is fairly clear on what to do with rapists, child abusers and the like, so if you bother to follow the entirety of it, those victims will not have parents to honor, making it a fairly moot point. But by all means, twist something noble like honoring your parents into a mockery of its intent and purpose. And go ahead and don't honor yours if they are so lacking the worth. That's your prerogative.
There is nothing about honoring parents simply for being parents. The very suggestion is an absurdity. Some parents deserve respect, others incarceration. It's a bad rule that only serves to distract us from meaningful, worthwhile morals. You know it. I know it. What's the problem with admitting the commandment is faulty and tossing it with the rest of history's bad ideas?
Back to the original point...
[sarcasm]It's been a few decades since we had a good Poll Tax, we need a new one. This'll work.[/sarcasm]
I am disappoint, Texas. I am disappoint.
It's nice when people make basic errors of reasoning so clearly.Wow, there's proof he didn't exist? You're just so full of facts.
However, I was thinking neo-Babylon, not Hammurabi's. Hammurabi is younger than Abraham but older than Moses, so his law would have predated the Commandments by nearly 500 years. I suspect however, the code against killing is much older than that.Hammurabi does have the advantage of having existed, which grants him seniority.
I almost think the two of you planned that, it's so perfect. Samnell, check out my other thread, please.
It's nice when people make basic errors of reasoning so clearly.
QFT.
I'm conflicted. Any law that says, "Show me your papers.", makes me uncomfortable, but it seems odd to me that the standard for voting should be lower than the standard for getting a beer. I have had to produce ID for voting for decades; it seems like there should be some minimum standard to discourage fraud.
I am an Election Judge here in Texas, and there already *is* a standard for voter identification. Explicit instructions are given to all poll workers, and great care is taken. The new voter ID bill is based on the fraudulent premise that there is some massive level of fraud going on, when (literally) millions have been spent by the attorney general, uncovering (figuratively) nothing.
RPG Superstar 2013
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The Sabbath is Saturday but you can't expect a bunch of bible-belters, who only thump the bible not read it, to know that.
Edit: That was a jab at holier than God politicians, not Kirth.
Easy, buddy. Without defining holier than God politicians, you make me want to point out Christians already know what the Sabbath is.
If there's a bill to allow the Ten Commandments to be placed in a government building, it is almost certainly to counter a series of law suits attempting to have the same removed from the face of government buildings.
Curiously, I've never heard of a suit to remove other religious displays from public visibility. I think maybe the Star of David a few times.
The FOunders who wrote the establishment clause attended church in government buildings. They paid chaplains as majors in the Revoutionary war. They begans every session of the COnstitutional convention with prayer. Thay wrote a Bill of Rights to protect us from a state-imposed religion, not to allow busy-body elitists to waste time and money by making a big deal out of a crucifix in a Senator's office or a nativity scene in town square. It's completely ridiculous this effort to bleach our nation of authentic history, which includes not a little bit of Judeo-Christian and deistic heritage.
Moreover, it wastes tax payer money. How many of you know that the ACLU is a profit center that gets paid by the government to bring suits against the government? One of my top ten budget fixes. Small in the scheme of things, but money that the government ought never to have paid out and shouldn't in the future.
And right after that, the Ad Council and nonsense like the Child Death Review Board. Gonesville.
I am an Election Judge here in Texas, and there already *is* a standard for voter identification. Explicit instructions are given to all poll workers, and great care is taken. The new voter ID bill is based on the fraudulent premise that there is some massive level of fraud going on, when (literally) millions have been spent by the attorney general, uncovering (figuratively) nothing.
I don't know about Texas, but here's how it went in Michigan before you had to present your papers:
1) You registered to vote, filling out the usual form and presenting ID then. I was especially keen to get this right because my birthday is in October but the registration cutoff date is before that. I filled out the card at age 17.9 or so.
2) The card goes into the state database and they confirm with all their records, then adding you to the rolls.
3) You get a card in the mail with all your voting information issued explicitly in your name and which you have to sign.
4) Then on election day you go into your assigned polling place. If it's your first time, you have to present the card that the state sent to you. You also have to fill out a short application slip there with your current address and name, then sign it.
5) You walk down the line and all three officials confirm that your data matches what's on their printouts of the voter rolls for the precinct. They each sign off and cross your name off the list.
6) You get your ballot and go vote.
This is pretty damned airtight. We know it too because it's been studied and we've yet to find any significant cases of voter fraud at all.
If somebody is committed enough to repeat that process for hundreds, maybe thousands of people (and we're still talking about a small local election here, not something important), they've got the commitment and resources to get fake photo IDs for their fake voters too. And if a conspiracy is really that good, it would be a lot easier to just buy the politicians like everybody else does.
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RPG Superstar 2013
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There is nothing about honoring parents simply for being parents. The very suggestion is an absurdity. Some parents deserve respect, others incarceration. It's a bad rule that only serves to distract us from meaningful, worthwhile morals. You know it. I know it. What's the problem with admitting the commandment is faulty and tossing it with the rest of history's bad ideas?
Because, as with all other interpretations of single scriptures I have seen from you, you don't understand the commandment at all.
Of course honoring your father and mother has value. Having your father lead the family spiritually and willing to sacrifice himself as Christ sacrificed himself for the church also has value. Having a monther that cares for the family and supports her husband has value.
No part of the Bible is intended to stick you with a few bad seeds and then laugh at you cause your Dad's an alcolohilc. It's incredibly prejudicial, short-sited and eisogetic to believe such a thing. Obeying your parents and respecting thei experience has intrinsic value. But also, fathers not isolating their kids or failing to treat their family with love and respect is also valuable. God's design for the family in no way forces a wife to continue to get abused or children to suck up to a jacktard of a drunken father. You show the love you have and you pray for said jacktard.
I think a large part of your very bitter criticism of Christian morality is that you utterly refuse to give it the time of day. You look for whatever small, out of context verse you can find (a great example is your obstinate refusal to read the whole chapter in Exodus rearding slavery, focusing instead on the mutable single use of the word slave in one verse).
A guy as smart as you ought to be wary of eisogesis. That you aren't suggests you aren't interested in honestly studying the scriptures for their merit, morally or spiritually. You choose to believe the Bible is full of vulgar barbarism and therefore you see it in everything. You even once listed Jesus' cleansing the temple of money changers as proof the NT advocates violence. Really?
I respect your breadth of information, but you look at everything biblical through a pre-determined filter, and I would think you don't want to be that guy.
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RPG Superstar 2013
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It's nice when people make basic errors of reasoning so clearly.Wow, there's proof he didn't exist? You're just so full of facts.
However, I was thinking neo-Babylon, not Hammurabi's. Hammurabi is younger than Abraham but older than Moses, so his law would have predated the Commandments by nearly 500 years. I suspect however, the code against killing is much older than that.Hammurabi does have the advantage of having existed, which grants him seniority.
Dude has a point. You choose to beieve he didn't exist, so to you he doesn't It's that siple for you. And yet, the Bible accurately records historic events better than any document its age. So the ONE source you'd have to go on is more accurate than any others. Again, you've no proof Plato existed, that isn't satisfied many many more times as regards Abraham.
You say the same thing for Noah. Isn't it weird how so many ancient cultures records a massive flood, some of them NOWHERE near Mesopotamia? Sure, you can argue a big flood happened and every culture recorded it their own way. But then again, that tells you that cultures recorded the events, and in the Hebrew culture, there was a Noah. And a Mt. Ararat. Not a tree that the Incan guy climbed so he could drop acorns i the water. A specific guy, with a specific family line, and a specific mountain. More historical than other accounts. Ergo, while you can conclude that maybe Noah and Abraham didn't exist, the Biblical account of ancient events is MORE RELIABLE than other similar events. And discoveries of extant Biblical texts locked away for centuries tell us that as far as we can possibly know, they are transcribed and transliterated largley correctly - with only small transmission errors showing up as we study the texts we have and the commentaries on the texts we don't.
It's more evidence than we have from anywhere else.
Now, I am still planning to take some time to look into your claim that the Exodus could not possibly have occurred when the Bible says it did. I still think that was interesting reading. You won't be surprised that several sources so far don't agree with the conclusions. And certainly treatment of Hebrew numbers means a difference of a century or so is not really significant. But I still plan to look at it thoroughly.
Kain's statememt is snarky, but there's not an error of reasoning in it. You say that there's not sufficient evidence to prove the existence of Abraham other than the historical texts you refuse to give credibility. So if the claims is x is not true because I don't buy the evidence that x is true, even though there's no evidence that x is false, it's perfectly reasonable to reject that argument.
Abraham existed because a reliable historical text mentiosn him, and also mentions specific places. The poeple who made that record are among the most meticulous record keepers in ancient history. That all goes into the plus column. There's nothing in the minus column. So it's more believable than not believable.
Because, as with all other interpretations of single scriptures I have seen from you, you don't understand the commandment at all.
And your feet smell.
Of course honoring your father and mother has value. Having your father lead the family spiritually and willing to sacrifice himself as Christ sacrificed himself for the church also has value. Having a monther that cares for the family and supports her husband has value.
And having those who don't do those things does not. The commandment does not say, does not even suggest, that parents need to be worthy of being honored. It just says to honor them as a matter of dogma.
No part of the Bible is intended to stick you with a few bad seeds and then laugh at you cause your Dad's an alcolohilc. It's incredibly prejudicial, short-sited and eisogetic to believe such a thing. Obeying your parents and respecting thei experience has intrinsic value.
You just said that it didn't. Now you're saying it does. Which story do you want to go with? Either honoring your parents has intrinsic value in itself, just because they're your parents, or they have to be worthy of being honored.
You show the love you have and you pray for said jacktard.
But honor the jerk anyway, because he's your father and you're to honor your father.
I think a large part of your very bitter criticism of Christian morality is that you utterly refuse to give it the time of day. You look for whatever small, out of context verse you can find (a great example is your obstinate refusal to read the whole chapter in Exodus rearding slavery, focusing instead on the mutable single use of the word slave in one verse).A guy as smart as you ought to be wary of eisogesis. That you aren't suggests you aren't interested in honestly studying the scriptures for their merit, morally or spiritually. You choose to believe the Bible is full of vulgar barbarism and therefore you see it in everything. You even once listed Jesus' cleansing the temple of money changers as proof the NT advocates violence. Really?
Steven, it's reading the Bible without staring instead at theological filters that got me to the opinions I have about it and the characters it describes. You're the one being eisegetical here. You start with the position that the Bible ultimately means well, is good, perfect, etc, and thus you insert into the plain words the exact qualifiers they lack since even to you the idea that someone should honor an abusive, deadbeat parent is obscene. Then you complain about other people reading things that aren't there?
That's pretty rich, just like the time you pretended you were not advocating on slavery's behalf when you defended the Bible's endorsement of the practice.
As for Christian morality in general? I know moral and immoral Christians. They both selectively use the same book, with roughly the same degree of wild inconsistency. Both parties seem to subscribe to divine command theory, which would be absurd even if we had good reason to think the divine commander was real. The book itself occasional, by apparent accident, stumbles upon a good teaching but for the most part it's exactly what one would expect of a bunch of brutal bronze age people almost totally ignorant of anything to do with the universe: a mess of superstition, obsession with imagined ritual purity, wild misogyny, rampant homophobia, and genocidal intolerance.
I don't particularly hold it against the authors. They lived in an almost unimaginably horrific time and were almost unimaginably ignorant of everything. They knew less than most kids in elementary school. Of course they produced a work of wild superstition thick with bronze age prejudices. What else would they write, a text on calculus and how to optimize your Linux installation? (You know, the kind of stuff they might write if they had real foreknowledge of future events and wanted to record it.)
I would say I'm at a loss as to why anybody today bothers with it, since the thing is clearly so obsolete. I mean we don't go to the Odyssey or the Iliad and make excuses for the bad behavior of the Greek Gods, which is quite a bit more famous than their good behavior. Why would we? But there's no mystery, really. Adherents to the Greek gods are essentially extinct. Yahweh still has his partisans.
Now, I am still planning to take some time to look into your claim that the Exodus could not possibly have occurred when the Bible says it did. I still think that was interesting reading. You won't be surprised that several sources so far don't agree with the conclusions. And certainly treatment of Hebrew numbers means a difference of a century or so is not really significant. But I still plan to look at it thoroughly.
I have no doubt that there are endless liars for your god who will tell you it's all a horrible secular conspiracy. I mean, your entire branch of the religion decided to do that a century ago. How many of your sources are independent archaeologists working in the field presently and published in peer-reviewed literature? You can skip every one that isn't and save us both the effort. Apologists are as competent to do archaeology as they are brain surgery.
I am going to leave the rest for the other thread, but I'll say this as I'm sure you'll end up telling you it again and again until I tire of playing or you do:
Abraham existed because a reliable historical text mentiosn him, and also mentions specific places. The poeple who made that record are among the most meticulous record keepers in ancient history.
This is so pathetic that it's insulting you think anybody would take it seriously, and I really do mean that. Modern people are infinitely more meticulous record keepers than anybody in antiquity (widespread literacy helps). Harry Potter mentions specific places: London for one. Therefore Harry Potter is historical.
That's your argument, Steven. You declare the Bible without even an attempt at argument to be absolutely the most reliable set of documents we have from antiquity, then say because it's so accurate we can say it's accurate. It's totally arbitrary. We could assert the same about Harry Potter and any intelligent person would be right to rebuke us for wasting their time. That's not just the case because we know JK Rowling wrote it as an intentional fiction, but also because even if we did not know that the argument itself does not stand up. It's hopelessly circular and thus worthless to us.
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RPG Superstar 2013
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I think you intentionally misrepresent me. I do not flip my case. The commandments of God are intended to be taken together. They are rules for the individual and for the community. I am commanded to honor my parents. Not yes-man them like some sort of automoaton, but respect their lessons and obey them while I live in their house. They are also commanded to teach, care for, love and discipline me. Just as you can't look at one verse and jsuge all of scripture by its apparent immoraity, you cannot judge one commandment by the exceptions to it.
My parents weren't always right, ut I honored and respected them. When I was grounded unfairly, I obeyed my grounding becuase I want to show myself worthy of their trust. Except that one time. I did sneak out once. : } Point remains, they don't forfeit respoectability because they were wrong a few times. Not only did I remain a pretty good kid, I learned to be a better parent. Both are works in progress.
Just let go of the closeminded judgmentality for a few days and bother for a bit to understand what I am saying to you. There's intrinsic value in honoring your parents, and there's intrinsic obligation in parenting. A minority of examples where the whole structure breaks down because a parent beats their kids when they are drunk, while tragic, does not bring down the whole system. We have rules about drunk driving. Those rules aren't invalidated because people get away with it every day, or because there are tards out there that also can't drive sober. The rule carries value because when you practice it, you do your part in the family.
Extend that to the neighbors of the Israelites. It becomes an ordained contract: you obey and respect me like God commands, and I'll honor God's commandment not to eat you like the worshippers of Moloch. I'm being a little silly with my example, but you are capable of receiving my point if you choose to: there's value in the commandment.
Your comment about my endorsement of slavery is ridiculously unfair, becuase it tells other people not privy to that conversation I endorsed slavery, which is flatly a lie. I reminded you not to commit eisogesis in your understanding of Exodus. I pointed out that Hebrew slavery was a more indentured servitude - a way to handle debtors, criminals, the poor who needed a fresh start, war criminals, etc. I pointed you to a verse in the same chapter that says stealing and selling people is punishable by death. I reminded you of jubilee - that all hebrew slavery was either a sentence for crime or a voluntary condition that amounts to a job. Finally, we discussed the reality that 'salvery', a word with many meanings to the ancient Hebrew, was at its most humane in Israel compared to anywhere else in the world. Ergo, Jewish slavery is not what you continue to misunderstand it as, and Christians do not endorse slavery as people today understand it. I can only renounce the immoral practice so many times. You should choose to accept that instead of misrepresenting my beliefs to other people. It does serve as a great example of your unwillingness to apply context and language to the subject of our conversations. You essentially say the same things over and over, and ignore evidence that pretty clearly should force you to reconsider. Like a verse in the same chapter outlawing the practice of slavery as we recognize it.
The bronze age barbarism you continue to talk about has very weak legs. By all accounts, Hebrew society was less barbaric than its neighbors, ascribed by them and Christians as guidance by a living God who intervened in history to bring redemption to the whole world. To ascribe today's moral standards to the behaviors of ancient cultures causes a lot of errors. Forst, like slavery, you mistake one practice for an entriely different one, and refuse to budge from it. Second, once you conclude that these Hebrews followed a barbaric law, you look for pretty tame examples to extend that into the New Testament. Didn't I ask you for examples of New Testament advocation for violence? I think you did not provide any but the cleansing of the temple. What a massacre that was, resulting in the awful beating of....no one.
You inflate your disrespect for the Bible with misunderstandings of its content. You have no appreciattion for context or for the coparative cultures arounf Israel. You also don't bother with the expressed larger picture of the whole of Hebrew law: to demonstrate salvation can only be on od's terms, and that our ways are not His ways. God didn't want the Jews to have a mortal king, but they demanded it. Their way was less perfect than His. His morality and message never changed, and ours was inadequate.
I will only address this further in our other conversations. The germane topic is ID for voting, which I fully support. I don't know about Texas, but I know here voter fraud would be incredibly easy. And just because it isn't happening now, in an time when getting illegals to vote appeals to some, and making more money by committing registration fraud appeals to others, and instituting some measure of 'skin in the game' test for future voters appeals to still others, being proactive isn't a bad thing. I would like t see it in every state take a back seat to budget reform and job creation, but I still support the idea of voter IDs in general.
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I have no doubt that there are endless liars for your god who will tell you it's all a horrible secular conspiracy. I mean, your entire branch of the religion decided to do that a century ago. How many of your sources are independent archaeologists working in the field presently and published in peer-reviewed literature? You can skip every one that isn't and save us both the effort. Apologists are as competent to do archaeology as they are brain surgery.
I am going to leave the rest for the other thread, but I'll say this as I'm sure you'll end up telling you it again and again until I tire of playing or you do:
Abraham existed because a reliable historical text mentiosn him, and also mentions specific places. The poeple who made that record are among the most meticulous record keepers in ancient history.This is so pathetic that it's insulting you think anybody would take it seriously, and I really do mean that. Modern people are infinitely more meticulous record keepers than anybody in antiquity (widespread literacy helps). Harry Potter mentions specific places: London for one. Therefore Harry Potter is historical.
That's your argument, Steven. You declare the Bible without even an attempt at argument to be absolutely the most reliable set of documents we have from antiquity, then say because it's so accurate we can say it's accurate. It's totally arbitrary. We could assert the same about Harry Potter and any intelligent person would be right to rebuke us for wasting their time. That's not just the case because...
That is most certainly not my argument. Harry Potter is not historical because:
-It doesn't present itself as history
-It occurse as contemporary fiction
-It is authored by a nonhistorian with no credentials as a historian
It's sily to have to differentiate between the two for you. Again, you are smarter than that, but you choose to make it an issue. The Bible consistently records names, dates places, and other significant events. It represents itself as a historical document and was compiled by a culture known for attention to detail. Rather than being written in a few years' time for money, it was recorded over centuries for posterity. Having found documents isolated from other texts for centuries, the translation from one source to another is born out by later discoveries to have been remarkably accurate. So, it isn't quite the same as Harry Potter, is it?
As for the assertion that any who disagree with your conclusions are liars, that's flatly offensive. Apologists aren't spin doctors. They study the subject matter at hand. Some are anthropologists and archaeologists. You'll recall that once, secular anthropologists judged the Bible as inaccurate because Babylon was believed to have been a mythical city. Till we found it. Some claimed that Jesus would not possibly have been born during the range of years believed because Quirinius didn't call a census during his term as governnor. Until we verified that he was governor twice, unconcurrently. In both cases, the secularists had no trouble claiming they'd proven events in the Bible were jsut so much fiction. But they were wrong. I'll research as I have time for it, and I am telling you already I see issues with the claim the Exodus could not possibly have happened: first with the acknowedgement that the primary source in your post was very patriotic as an Egyptian, and second with the assumptions made that the dates involved have to be taken literally. But, you raised important questions and they deserve an honest look. Which I will give you. Your response is rather less objective, you will simply repeat the same argument about London and slavery over again.
And that saddens me.
Okay, i'll really let it go this time. I said I'd respond to the other thread, but then I saw you use the word liar and saw you freak out with the poor Harry Potter example. Whatever else you've said, I will say on a germane thread and conclude with this thought:
Go voter IDs and civics tests.
Isn't it weird how so many ancient cultures records a massive flood, some of them NOWHERE near Mesopotamia? Sure, you can argue a big flood happened and every culture recorded it their own way. Ergo, while you can conclude that maybe Noah and Abraham didn't exist, the Biblical account of ancient events is MORE RELIABLE than other similar events.
Well, except that while there's geological evidence of a large flood in the area at around the right time, there is no geological evidence of a worldwide flood (unless you blatantly misrepresent geology to the point of parody) -- not to mention that such a flood would defy the laws of physics (which of course doesn't count, I guess -- "it's a miracle!" is supposed to be proof against all counter-argument, I suppose). BTW, there have been times in the geologic past when the Earth was warm enough that there were no ice caps, and there was still plenty of land above water. Nor would Mt. Ararat BE the one place above water, even if you did import enough water from another planet or parallel universe to cover the earth.
Noah's Flood is a good story. It's got a useful moral. But it's not a true statement of history, and it's certainly not "reliable" in terms of literal fact.
I think you intentionally misrepresent me. I do not flip my case. The commandments of God are intended to be taken together. They are rules for the individual and for the community. I am commanded to honor my parents.
Yes, commanded regardless of whatever they do to you. If you want me to abandon that position you must present the qualifier from the text (which remember is the Ten Commandments) which you insist is present. I've read three lists of the ten in the past week and none of them included it. Where is the qualifier? Here is your chance to demonstrate to me and everybody else that you're not inserting your wishful thinking or your modern morals into the text.
There's intrinsic value in honoring your parents, and there's intrinsic obligation in parenting. A minority of examples where the whole structure breaks down because a parent beats their kids when they are drunk, while tragic, does not bring down the whole system. We have rules about drunk driving. Those rules aren't invalidated because people get away with it every day, or because there are tards out there that also can't drive sober. The rule carries value because when you practice it, you do your part in the family.
You say there's intrinsic value in a practice, then proceed to lay out how it lacks just that intrinsic value and instead requires a qualifier to gain it. That you have to add a qualifier is admitting my point. It is in fact not good to blindly honor whoever your parents are, whatever they do.
I'm sure you can appreciate the irony of hearing this from me, but here it is: You are a better human being on this front than you are giving yourself credit for, Steven.
As for the assertion that any who disagree with your conclusions are liars, that's flatly offensive. Apologists aren't spin doctors. They study the subject matter at hand. Some are anthropologists and archaeologists. You'll recall that once, secular anthropologists judged the Bible as inaccurate because Babylon was believed to have been a mythical city. Till we found it.
Apologists are, by definition, spin doctors. There's a reason nobody calls heliocentrists or geologists apologists for heliocentrism or geology.
But the conclusions are not mine, Steven. They're the conclusions of the trained experts who have studied the matter and investigated the facts in far more depth than you and I ever will. You have twice told me this story about people not believing Babylon was real, but have zero times provided any source for it. Even if true, it's irrelevant. People in the past believed all kinds of idiotic things, even things they had every reason to know were false. When they found the city, they changed their position. This is what serious, honest people do. If something in the current scholarly consensus is wrong, it will be discovered and the consensus will be modified or rejected in favor of a newer, more accurate model.
I'd like to call your attention to something you just admitted, though. You accepted that the Bible ought to be checked against reality and we ought to acceptreality, whatever our prior opinions or wishes might be. That's going to be a problem for you when you go looking for a site where six hundred thousand people lived for the better part of four decades. It's also a problem for you, as Kirth notes, when you try to claim that a global flood took place during the span of human history. You say these things happened. If so they would have left traces we can still find today, just as we found Babylon.
I pointed out that Hebrew slavery was a more indentured servitude - a way to handle debtors, criminals, the poor who needed a fresh start, war criminals, etc. I pointed you to a verse in the same chapter that says stealing and selling people is punishable by death. I reminded you of jubilee - that all hebrew slavery was either a sentence for crime or a voluntary condition that amounts to a job.
As was pointed out to you in the Civil Religious Discussion thread, the indentured servitude hobby horse you're riding applied only to Hebrews enslaved. Non-Hebrews could be enslaved for life per the Bible.
44“However, you may purchase male and female slaves from among the nations around you. 45You may also purchase the children of temporary residents who live among you, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, 46passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat them as slaves, but you must never treat your fellow Israelites this way.
That you are simply pretending this was never done and, apparently, that the passages does not exist, is hardly honest behavior in either the personal or intellectual sense of the word.
Second, once you conclude that these Hebrews followed a barbaric law, you look for pretty tame examples to extend that into the New Testament. Didn't I ask you for examples of New Testament advocation for violence? I think you did not provide any but the cleansing of the temple. What a massacre that was, resulting in the awful beating of....no one.
You mean tossing around furniture (the Bible says he overturned tables) doesn't count as violence? I bet if someone was throwing around my tables and I called the cops, they wouldn't cuss me out over it but rather come directly. How about the phantasmagoric depictions of violence in Revelation?
And that's leaving aside all the barbarism that the lowest sort of modern day Christian will defend from the Hebrew Bible as still being binding on them today.
That is most certainly not my argument. Harry Potter is not historical because:-It doesn't present itself as history
-It occurse as contemporary fiction
-It is authored by a nonhistorian with no credentials as a historian
1) What a book presents itself as is irrelevant. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion presented themselves as a documentary style account, but they were not. Propaganda and myth, in all cultures and all times, present themselves as kinds of histories.
2) So what? We only sort it that way because we know from sources outside the book that it's fiction. Just like the origin stories in the Bible.
3) Nobody in the ancient world had any kind of professional historian credentials. We have that benefit in examining Harry Potter, but we lack it for examining both the Bible and the Iliad. Those who wrote what they considered history sometimes took pains to be as accurate as they could (Thucydides is one) and other times reported any story that they'd heard as fact (Herodotus).
It's sily to have to differentiate between the two for you. Again, you are smarter than that, but you choose to make it an issue. The Bible consistently records names, dates places, and other significant events. It represents itself as a historical document and was compiled by a culture known for attention to detail. Rather than being written in a few years' time for money, it was recorded over centuries for posterity. Having found documents isolated from other texts for centuries, the translation from one source to another is born out by later discoveries to have been remarkably accurate. So, it isn't quite the same as Harry Potter, is it?
The Iliad records dates in roughly the same way the Bible does (X years from Y, being the beginning of the war or from the Exodus, etc). Both name many people, places, and significant events. But for the distance in time, we could say exactly the same thing about Harry Potter.
As I have pointed out to you repeatedly, accuracy and proliferation of transmission is a function of the importance given to the text by those transmitting it. They tell us nothing about the accuracy of the text's claims. That you continue to cite these facts as if they do, again, does not reflect well upon you.
I'll research as I have time for it, and I am telling you already I see issues with the claim the Exodus could not possibly have happened: first with the acknowedgement that the primary source in your post was very patriotic as an Egyptian, and second with the assumptions made that the dates involved have to be taken literally.
When you read my post again, you'll find that the upper and lower dates the authors cite for the Exodus depend not so much on taking the Bible's account literally but rather quite sensibly arise from external dating. Israel can hardly have departed Egypt before the building of the cities the Bible claims the ancient Jews helped build in their captivity, for example. It names the cities. So either the Exodus happens after those cities referenced were founded, or the Bible isn't accurate about that either.
But your objection is bizarre in the extreme. If the Bible is reporting history in the story of the Exodus, then those passages must be taken literally. Forty days and forty nights might be a Hebrew idiom, but it beggars belief to suggest that the claim to build named cities is just a little turn of phrase. The Bible claims to be reporting events that happened, not waxing poetic spouting homilies. If you admit that it's wrong to take the Bible's chronology as it presents itself, as a chronology, then you are agreeing with me that it's not accurate in the whole but rather a mishmash of myth, legend, superstitions, and maybe some genuine history tossed in on the edges.
And that saddens me.
I shall bear your sadness with great fortitude.
Something about "literal fact."
You sure you're in the right thread?
I removed a post. Do not defame, abuse, stalk, harass, or threaten others.
