... on Historicity of Exodus

Video commented on:

Baryshx6 : The Hittites (Narration by Jeremy Irons)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq9FyI6D-xo

Hans-Georg Lundahl

1:39:00

Ramses II was into his twelfth year ... and Moses was supposedly ...

Ramses II may not have been Moses' Pharao at all:

CMI, David Down : Searching for Moses
http://creation.com/searching-for-moses

Bohewulf

Doesnt matter anyway. The bible is no history book and creationists are no historians.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

And you are neither prejudiced nor bad at spelling Old Germanic names, I suppose?

feeling very ironic in a British way as I say this ...

Bohewulf

+Hans-Georg Lundahl
You suppose correctly. Dismissing invalid sources as information is no prejudicing and using non-common names is no misspelling.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Beowulf and Bohemund are not same name for one, and Genesis is true history for another (and so is Exodus).

Bohewulf

Are you really that ignorant? Of course these names are different, that's why they are spelled differently. Now guess what, there are more names with -wulf, -wolf, -mond, -mund than just those two.

But you seem to not care for what is true anyway if you consider "genesis" and "exodus" as "true history".

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I certainly do care what is real history and what is not.

That is why I discount as unreal what is in conflict with the true history of the Bible.

For instance Ramses II (who has a burial in Egypt) being the Pharao of Moses (who was dronwed and buried in the Red Sea), or Proto-Indo-European being spoken before Adam was created going by the genealogies.

Bohemond is Norman French and Beowulf is English.

[Of course, he could have made that combination precisely because he is English, thus hailing from both, which I did not think of until it was too late.]

Blah b

Uhm, why look for answers when there are none? Moses is a made up figure, his history almost completely plagiarised from the story Sargon of Akkad had written down as being his background.

Pretty much that entire part of the bible is just Babylonian mythology, copied, and with some of the names changed. Noah's story for example is completely plagiarised from the story of Ut Napistim, with the only difference being a raven brought Ut Napistim the first branch after the global flooding the Babylonian gods caused to wipe out humanity.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

An early part of Moses' story and an early part of Sargon's story coincide, the stories are not the same, and neither is made up

Noah was a real name, Utnapishtim a post-Babel name for the basically same person, but though the tablets are older than the Genesis by some, it is the Hebrew tradition which gets the story correct and not the Babylonian one.

Since you are into Acharya Sanning, I have answered some of her on this blog:

somewhere else [preaching to Atheists]
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/

Blah b

+Hans-Georg Lundahl Lol, should I even be so naive as to ask for sources? (vague blogs aren't sources)

For one thing, the 'hebrew story' of Noah can't 'get it correct' since it is a myth to start with, and it was copied entirely from Ut Napistim's story.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

My blog is not vague, I sign the articles with my name, and the immediate source for any fact neither derived from my experience nor from common knowledge is usually noted.

In the Moses case I link to an Egyptologist who found a subset of the Pharaonic lists very well fitting with the Biblicalk account. As said, it was not Ramses II.

The Pharao he identified as having ordered the slaughter of Hebrew children was Amenemhet III, and Amenemhet IV was thus Moses followed by his "sister" or stepmother, the daughter of Amenemhet III. I do not recall her name or that of the other Pharao (next dynasty, tomb missing!) who the Christian Egyptologist identifed as Pharao of the Exodus.

Blah b

+Hans-Georg Lundahl
With source, I mean something which can be trusted to be true, something scientific.

You quoting the bible, and cherrypicking some vague stories which happen to suit your story, does not qualify.

For one thing, you'd first have to refute facts about the bible being copied, and then prove it's credibility, before you can stake any sort of claim on it.

And you're not going to manage to refute that the bible is copied and made up, the evidence is simply too strong for that.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

There is evidence for one of three possibilities: Biblical story of Moses' childhood copied from Sargon story, Sargon story of his childhood copied from Biblical story of Moses, or both stories copied from something else, for instance fact (same about other earlier person or coinciding in details about each of these persons).

I can only exclude Sargon copying Moses' story on chronological grounds, and chronology is moot. No other possibility is excluded on a purely sceptic and agnostic inquiry. Therefore the Biblical story is not excluded either.

The stories of Charles XII, Napoleon and Hitler marching on Moscow (but Hitler not in person) are very similar. Which ones are mere copies?

Blah b

+Hans-Georg Lundahl
You've clearly not been paying attention: The Babylonian mythology is much older than the bible. It's impossible that they copied from the bible.

Also the wars with Russia are fact. The bible is myth. You can't compare the two.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I am perhaps a bit nonchalant towards you, but first off Sargon is not what you usually call "mythological" and second even if he was older than Moses (which as I said would preclude one of the possibilities to explain the similarities of childhood stories) that does not preclude the childhood story of Moses being fact. So, I already noted the chronological argument you were giving. Perhaps you are a bit nonchalant?

And yes, you agree all three wars with Russia are fact. DESPITE SIMILARITIES. Therefore you CANNOT USE SIMILARITIES to prove Moses was what you mean by myth. That was the argument I was making.

Clearly Homer and Hesiod had another take on Zeus being son of Chronos and grandson of Sky and Earth than on Trojan War taking place.

And clearly King David's attitude to Exodus was closer to Homer's to the Trojan War, EXCEPT THAT Homer was telescoping old traditions into his account of a portion of it, while King David attributed the Exodus account to one of those there when events took place, i e to Moses.

IF he was wrong, when and how could his predecessors have started the mistake?

If you cannot pin that down, perhaps you can give a plausible scenario? If you cannot, your theory is down.

Blah b

+Hans-Georg Lundahl
You're several steps too far in already: I don't need to prove Moses is a myth. The story of Moses is a myth, since it's from a book of mythology with no evidence to it at all. That I can show much of it was plagiarised from the background story of Sargon of Akkad is just more nails in the coffin of the credibility of the bible.

For the same reason I don't get your empty claim based on Exodus. Why would I need to respond to another myth that never occured in reality?

You can't pile one myth on top of another myth and call it fact you know, that's not how it works.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"The story of Moses is a myth, since it's from a book of mythology with no evidence to it at all."

That is not how the earlier receivers of Exodus took it.

Blah b

+Hans-Georg Lundahl
Yes, it makes sense that a bunch of superstitious desert barbarians take the mythology of their war god Yahweh rather seriously.

But I don't see the point behind saying that? Weren't you trying to argue the credibility of the bible before?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

It makes sense that anyone takes seriously as history what has previously been regarded as history. Superstitious or desert barbarian are not really relevant factors.

It can be compared to Homer's account of Trojan War, but not to Hesiod's Theogony.

And lumping two very different categories together under the label "Mythology" shows your case depends on equivocation.

odean14

+Bohewulf evolutionists are?

[... historians, remember]

+Blah b listen how is it that you know that? were you there, so what if the story from one culture in the part had the same elements? for all we know it was the other way around. and im shore if you looked hard enough you'll find proof or to dis prove it comes back down to what you want to believe.

Bohewulf

+Hans-Georg Lundahl
"I certainly do care what is eral history and what is not. That is why I discount as unreal what is in conflict with the true history of the Bible." - that's the problem. You accept the bible as true and build your argumentation around that premiss without even taking into account that the bible could be wrong in some or all historical relevant parts.

Scientific research works differently.

+odean14
yes, obviously.

Blah b

+odean14
If you'd actually read the debate rather than fly into a spasm, you'd have seen that the Babylonian mythology is much older.

The bible writers only learned of these myths when the Babylonian empire overcame them and dominated the region.

Not just that, but the bible's plagiarised stories come from many aspects of Babylonian mythology, as well as others later on.

odean14

+Bohewulf lmao!!! dude really? evolution theory was crushed years ago lol where have you been? lol

if you believe in Darwinism and evolution then your no different that radical religious groups. lol

Blah b

+odean14
There is nothing to believe. Believe implies you're taking something false as being true.

There's so much evolution all around us that only the most foolish would deny it and back creationism. Ever seen a horse? Evolution. Ever seen a cow? Evolution. Ever seen a pig? Evolution.

Heck, there's several fossils from the Cretacious period sitting on a a board above my desk. To claim creationism is right, is to claim those objects don't exist.

odean14

okay go read up on the Cambrian period for example it was that discovery that disprove evolution.

Bohewulf

+odean14
You are funny. I nearly took you seriously. Yes, you are right. Creationism was crushed years ago. Too sad that many deluded weirdos still believe in it despite the evidence.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"You accept the bible as true and build your argumentation around that premiss without even taking into account that the bible could be wrong in some or all historical relevant parts."

NO work ever traditionally accepted by any people was wrong in ALL historical parts.

If the Bible were not recording real miracles, it would not just be plain wrong, but as historical books go MIRACULOUSLY WRONG. I refuse to buy that. I can believe in Miraculously Always Right, but not in Miraculously Always Wrong.

And the miracles recorded in the Bible are such that God must be there, meaning Miraculously Always Right is clearly possible.

Blah b

+Hans-Georg Lundahl
So basically what you just said is "I don't have any arguments, I'm too weak to accept the religion I've been indoctrinated with is wrong".

Obviously that's not a very good argument.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

No. You are basically saying you have no arguments against mine, you are too weak to deal with real arguments and have to resume them as strawmen.

And you do not even know basic definitions of English words:

"Believe implies you're taking something false as being true."

No, that is what it implies to "be mistaken" or "believe the wrong thing", not what it means simply to "believe".

"Heck, there's several fossils from the Cretacious period sitting on a a board above my desk. To claim creationism is right, is to claim those objects don't exist."

Not at all, it means assuming they came from a Cretaceous type biotope at the Flood (dissimilar from contemporaneous Permian type biotopes) rather than from diverse epochs just happening to be divided conventiently into eras also, supposed to be thousand times earlier than the flood and more than that.

Blah b

+Hans-Georg Lundahl
An assumption? You don't even know where I dug them up, so you can't possibly know what research has been done on the ground there.

Conclusively proof you're just making stuff up and parroting things priests have told you.

[If I had been wrong here is where he would have said where he dug them up and I could have checked that Cretaceous ex-living fossils were found on top of Permian ones.]

Hans-Georg Lundahl

No, neither parroting, nor making up.

I have a sample of fossil sites and each is from either one time label or two - three neighbouring ones with no really drastic change in fauna.

If the place where you dug it up has Permian fossils on a lower level, do tell me, I would be surprised!

Creation vs. Evolution : How do Fossils Superpose?
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2013/11/how-do-fossils-superpose.html

Bohewulf (modified comment)

"NO work ever traditionally accepted by any people was wrong in ALL historical parts."

- That's irrelevant. Relevant is evidence and plausability in each specific case.

[problem is that it is totally implausible that any work traditionally accepted by any people as historic was wrong in all historical parts]

"And the miracles recorded in the Bible are such that God must be there"

- Again, you set a premiss and only accepts what fits into it. A scientific approach looks different, it needs to be open minded.

[problem is that he is doing so, by accepting as plausible a historical account wrong on every detail and he is not being it, since close minded to miracles]

Blah b

+Hans-Georg Lundahl
If you claim older fossils being deeper in the ground, underneath a younger layer, disproves evolution, than you've seriously not learned the very first thing.

Suppose we're in a sedimentation area on the lowering side of a geosyncinale (you need to google the meaning of these terms first), then we first get a Perm time period. Whatever is sedimented then is then covered by younger layers, such as those from the Cretacious period. So you obviously end up with several layers on top of eachother.

Limestone, from the Cretacious period, is nearly entirely made up of skeletons of fossil beings that have been compresed.

Find a layer a few metres thick, and you know you're dealing with a period of at the very least tens of thousands of years in that layer alone, conclusively destroying any chance of creationism being true. And there's limestone rocks that tower above you.

Also, stop spamming your blog. You just parrot a bullshit creationist site there. Not just that, but nobody who's not already a creationist is going to read it. Creationists are known to be liars who never say a sensible word. People ignore whatever they puke out as a result.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"If you claim older fossils being deeper in the ground, underneath a younger layer, disproves evolution, than you've seriously not learned the very first thing."

You have not learned how to read.

I claimed that LACK OF older fossils being deeper down in the ground where the fossils are actually found refutes YOUR ARGUMENT for EVOLUTION.

Also, I am not echoing a Creationist site on my creationist blog. I sometimes link to them because they have studied a matter beyond my capacity, but sometimes to refute them and often I do not link to them at all.

The argument I am making here is for instance new to THEM.

Confer this article by Thomas Ross which presupposes you are half right and then my arguments below it:

CMI by Marcus R. Ross : Evaluating potential post-Flood boundaries with biostratigraphy—the Pliocene/Pleistocene boundary
http://creation.com/biostratigraphy-post-flood-boundary

[They have now taken away my second comment along with the one by Tasman W I was answering - possibly because it was saying same things as my first one, possibly because Tasman W showed non-attention to that first one and I showed him an approach although he is Geologist and I am Amateur.]

Blah b

+Hans-Georg Lundahl
Didn't I already tell you that creationists lie and say the stupidest things, always, at all times?

For example this guy assumes that biblical events actually took place, while they didn't. His story sinks before it even began.

I don't waste my time on that kind of trash. There's much better fiction out there to read.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Yes, you did "tell" me "that creationists lie and say the stupidest things, always, at all times?"

Does it occur to you that it is a stupid thing to say to a Creationist age 45 who has been so since age 12 and, as former evolutionist, is very interested in the technical stuff?

"For example this guy assumes that biblical events actually took place, while they didn't."

Like you were there and saw something else happen?

Or like it happens very often that people are totally mistaken about their recent history? I mean, there was a time when to Israelites the events of Exodus were as recent as Eisenhower to us (just after Joshua took the land) and there was a time when they were as recent as George Washington is to us (like a bit closer to King David's time, perhaps in it.

And same observation is relevant if you would like to pretend Joshua never conquered or David never was King.

"There's much better fiction out there to read."

If it is fiction you want, do not read either Bible or even Homer as long as the fit lasts.

If any suspicion it may have happened may spoil your fun, keep to Star Wars or to Agent Spatiotemporel Valérian, or for that matter Superman and Doctor Who.

Cubious Blockus

+Hans-Georg Lundahl London is in the harry potter books, does that mean hogwarts is real?

Just because the bible has REAL locations and some things may have happened, it doesn't mean your book god exists.

Just like harry potter, he does things in real locations, but has a fantasy side to it, just like the bible.

Your just a part of the jesus/yahweh book club, you're nerds in every aspect.

Blah b

+Hans-Georg Lundahl
You're reversing the burden of evidence. There's no reason to assume the bible is correct. Untill someone proves otherwise it stays that way.

And yes, it works that way. You yourself also apply that model to every situation except your god.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"You're reversing the burden of evidence. There's no reason to assume the bible is correct."

OK, let's play your game - according to the rules you really apply rather than those you think you apply. There is no reason to assume accounts about Napoleon are correct. THEN.

Cubious Blockus

There are more than 1 account for napolean.

The book god has 1, the bible.

Take that away, and your god never exists, no one would have ever heard of him.

The prussins knew of napolean, the brits, russians, mexicans, argentinians, blah blah blah.

There is PHYSICAL evidence for the existance and accounts of napolean.

NONE for the great flood, egypts plagues, pillars of salt......

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"Just like harry potter, he does things in real locations, but has a fantasy side to it, just like the bible."

Your mistake. The problem with that parallel is that we do not have a civilisation mistaking Harry Potter for real history, nor will we ever have so.

"There are more than 1 account for napolean.

The book god has 1, the bible."

Bad parallel too since 1 the Bible is not just one account and 2 there are accounts outside the Bible.

There are accounts of the flood in most cultures, and the only way they are all twisted the same way by Christian standards - the rival accounts to Genesis, that is - is in not having the right God and sometimes not even having the same deity decide the flood and save the survivor (Babylonians notoriously attribute the one to Enlil and the other to Enki).

I have suspicions about other accounts of Exodus too - but in the model given by the article I linked to, there is no need for an Egyptian one. After Pharao's army was dronwded in Red Sea, there was no army to oppose the Hyksos invaders, presumably Amalekites.

Besides, the account in the Bible is preserved as a short version of several oral or written accounts double checked against each other under - for Exodus we would have Moses - before it was handed on.

That is how the account was taken later, as history not as made up fables.

You have a burden of explanation here: how could an account initially meant as fantasy and initially accepted as such have become accpted as literal history by the people possessing it? Not just once, but over and over again (remember, each historic Bible book is both an account and including miracles which is why atheists would on principle stamp them as fantasy, the Bible is just a redaction of what books belong to the history that is also divine revelation).

"Take that away, and your god never exists, no one would have ever heard of him."

Not true. Catholicism is not the religion of a book only. It cannot exist as itself if Bible is taken away, but it includes thousands of extra-Biblical accounts of saints living and of God working - up to our own days. And by God working I mean miracles, I mean conversions, I mean coincidences that are miraculously good.

"The prussins knew of napolean, the brits, russians"

These claimed to have fought him down yes.

Mexicans and Argentinians maybe claimed to have had exchange on diplomatic level.

Swedes were divided between a King abhorring him and a freemasonry admiring him.

Now, the God of Israel is not mentioned by name by the enemies of Israel, but some of his miracles were known to them.

• Some of his miracles were known to them, like staying the sun so that Joshua could destroy his enemies, which was known to Egyptian astronomers stating the sun had behaved very curiously as to movements four times (the Bible mentions one other time and Egyptians may have doubled the amount so as to make their chronology appear longer), and which was known to Agamemnon, who prayed for a similar miracle and was not heard.
  
  
• Some of his miracles were known to them, like the death of all Assyrian soldiers when they were threatening Israel. As CSL notes, Herodotus confirms there was an occasion when Assyrians had to give up an attempt to conquer Israel, but attributes it to mice nibbling all the bowstrings of the soldiers.
  
  A nice excuse for not admitting God (or some deity) doomed their army to die without battle, all soldiers none excepted, and not very accurate zoology about mice.
  
  As CSL noted, unless we are atheists we can accept the miraculous explanation as possible. It is just the naturalistic one that is totally impossible: mice don't behave that way.

"There is PHYSICAL evidence for the existance and accounts of napolean."

There is physical evidence for a battle occurring at Waterloo. If historians were incompetent they might try and deny Napoleon lost it*, and the soldier graves would not be evidence enough ton contradict them totally.

There is similarily physical evidence all over the world for the flood. Incompetent historians call it evidence for eras of faunas of very dissimilar type, like Cretaceous or Permian. No piece of evidence precludes both Permian and Cretaceous fossils from being exactly just from the Flood.

And as for Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt, it has been pointed out to people in the area.

*[Either saying he did not exist, or was just a general under Bourbon Kings, or denying he lost rather than won, claiming there was no Restauration - neither of these pervesions of history could be checked by the merely physical evidence from Waterloo battle field.]

Cubious Blockus

+Hans-Georg Lundahl You mean a geological formation?

how long does a pillar of salt stay as a pillar in the open elements?

look at how well worn the pyrimids are after 4000 years. I doubt a puny human size pillar would last 50-100 years, yet alone how ever long ago that "story" would have happened.

Salt was a commodity back then, merchants got rich selling it aswell.

[Look how Lot's wife was the one he choose to answer on.]

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I recently learned something about transporting salt back then.

From Kent Hovind, I think. Salt and clay were mixed and baked into a small "pillar" (about a yard or less). Then it was transported. [And then sold, obviously] When one wanted to salt something, one put broken pieces from it into water to extract the salt. The clay does (so I heard) not affect the taste.

Hence "if the salt loses its savour" (NaCl itself will not be lossing it, it is the savour of the salt pile).

I see two scenarios about the pillar that had been Lot's wife:

• a) its salt has been washed away, but other parts remain
  
  
• b) its salt has miraculously been retained in it (a miracle that would be noted, since rains would fall from time to time and would after some time have washed away the salt from a normal pillar of it

Either way, if everyone knew someone's wife had been turned into a pillar of salt, one would probably try to identify it so as not to be graverobbers even in the search for salt.

Of course you could argue the pillar pointed out were an actual natural geological formation and was later used to prove an originally fictitious story. That is the trouble with a preference of physical evidence, since such can be interpreted differently, according to different informations or lack of them and different convictions about the informations.

Cubious Blockus

Hans, that was the most coherent nonsense i have ever heards from a bible believer.

It actually made sense, and was logical.

I have found one flaw, but may have been over loooked by you.

Wind has caused the damage to the Pyrimids, which is why the lower half is the most destoyed. the sand particles smashing against it didn't reach the peak as often as it did the bottom.

It has lost several tonnes and metres off its base.

The pyrimid is made of limestone, a harder rock than saltstone. if the pyrimid is harder and taken so much damage.

It would be safe to assume that a softer rock of salt that is 1:10000 the size of the pyrimid would have eroded to nothing by now. considering that story happened supposedly before the pyrimids.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Has it occurred to you that Sodom area is not in sandy deserts but in rocky deserts? Jordan is not Egypt!

Btw, did you notice I mentioned miraculous preservation as an option too?