Turning Point UK Displays Poor Judgement

Look how they entitled the video:

British leftist student tells Charlie Kirk facts are unfair
Turning Point UK | 12 Dec. 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4QikQuwN6c

After watching the video, no, he didn't. He told Charlie Kirk he was cherry-picking some facts, neglecting to tell others.

Before 10:41 Charlie is not going to debate himself.
I don't under(stand), this is very confusing (to) me to(o).
- Because it's not a game, Candace, is it?
- No but you just said when he goes on campuses and he debates
with people, that he's not presenting facts
that would destroy the fact he just gave.

oops, if there are facts that would destroy it, perhaps it isn't a fact and he shouldn't give it as one?

Charlie Kirk gave a fairly good point against abortion. He probably has others. He should not be destroying them, or have Candace destroy them, by telling people* "we just look at our side of the facts, up to you to find the other side" - as she effectively did./HGL

* In essence. Not an actual quote, but close enough to what I did quote.

Douglas Macgregor's analysis and mine

I will not dispute this general's capacity for military analysis (though I am asking for a second opinion). On some other matters, I think he's wrong.

Ukraine is about to be annihilated
Douglas Macgregor | 22 Nov. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfgF4x7TCmM

5:34 This is in fact a case of amnesia.

One of the first pictures we saw was Russians bombarding infrastructure and making civilians homeless and frozen in the area of Kyiv - in case you didn't notice, that's not eastern Ukraine.

6:40 Azov "Nazis" may certainly have some issues, one of which being to idealise, in some cases, not just Ukrainean allies of Nazis (that's comprehensible), but actually NS Germany too.

But that's no reason to annihilate people who are mostly defending their country in mostly licit ways.

6:46 "not just murdering Russians, they are murdering their own people"

Oh, is that so?

According to what sources of information? Russian ones?

7:52 Novorossiya certainly had some Russian and German settlers in industrialised cities.

Doesn't make the countryside Russian.

What you said about Kharkiv can be contradicted fairly easily with a brief look at wikipedia.

"The earliest historical references to the region are to Scythian and Sarmatian settlement in the 2nd century BCE. Between the 2nd to the 6th centuries CE there is evidence of Chernyakhov culture, a multiethnic mix of the Geto-Dacian, Sarmatian, and Gothic populations.[8] In the 8th to 10th centuries the Khazar fortress of Verkhneye Saltovo stood about 25 miles (40 km) east of the modern city, near Staryi Saltiv.[9] During the 12th century, the area was part of the territory of the Cumans, and then from the mid 13th century of the Mongol/Tartar Golden Horde.

"By the early 17th century, the area was a contested frontier region with renegade populations that had begun to organise in Cossack formations and communities defined by a common determination to resist both Tatar slavery, and Polish-Lithuanian and Russian serfdom. Mid-century, the Khmelnytsky Uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth saw the brief establishment of an independent Cossack Hetmanate."

Only after that, this Cossack population got a Russian governor.

Putin may have some good information sources about foreign affairs, as they are moving.

He's already lousy on US internal affairs ("white Christian Churches are a minority in the US," he claimed) or internal affairs of Indonesia (he laughed at exporting pork to that country because Muslims don't eat pork, but forgot Christians in the capital, including guest workers, and tourists at least to Bali). And when it comes to history, if you throw a coin on whether to believe him after every statement, you are at least better off than by thinking of him as well informed.

And if there is one topic where Russian Orthodox don't even like to be well informed, it's about Ukraineans and about Catholics, specifically Ukrainean Uniate Catholics.

10:31 Previously, they thought EVERY Ukrainean except a few jerks would welcome a Russian invasion.

When they saw this wasn't so, they got mad about Ukraineans.

It's a bit like how Muslims first pretended a certain Perfectus (a Catholic priest in Cordoba, X or IX C) was going to be happy they had arranged for him to be a Muslim, and when he insisted on NO, they insisted on KILL. For the first time, as soon as they actually understood him, they went in to kill.

10:40 The gross miscalculation on Putin's part in February would be like if Charles III felt like the Irish would welcome the British Army to Dublin and to Cork.

15:14 Whatever right one had to ask this question back then, at the NATO expansion, exactly the same right one has to ask Putin this a few months ago.

What hallucinogenics was he taking? Oh, wait, he's a Russian, that explains a lot.

A US Citizen may not be ultra clear about all that's going on in Canada or Mexico, but that's genius compared to a Russian speaking up on Ukraine matters.

21:10 It so happens, what you say about ammo makes some sense.

What you say about France reminds me so much of the situation in late 1939, when the French military didn't want to go into Germany to stop the invasion of Poland.

A few months later, the very little they actually had been into Germany in token obedience to the orders and perhaps not even that, even less than that, just government saying "Poland is right" was enough for Germany to invade France. Not AS bad for Paris as when Russia invaded Paris in 1814, but still.

That the French military is right wing leaning doesn't bother me.

What bothers me is that the French right wing is heavily Putinised.

2014, Sixtus Henry of Bourbon Parma (a major supporter of Mgr Lefebvre, first to congratulate him in 1988) was on a conference with Aleksandr Dugin and a few more.

The French right wing, unfortunately, have decided, the Russians are best fitted to tell us what to do.

22:55 - 24:58 IF you should get into a war, how about this?
A) a few of the generals lead US troops, in or outside US
B) some others (probably most) start organising troops that work with little fuel.
C) some yet others (again a minority) start working on plans to neutralise Russian missile firing contraptions.

30:06 The main (top ten) priorities, "not sure Ukraineans make the list"

Like Poles in France, 1939. That's why the French army told their government, "we can't invade Germany" ...

32:16 The global caliphate is largely driven underground.

Doesn't mean it's non existant, but it's not occupying territories. Perhaps certain streets or neighbourhoods, the poorest in some cities, but not square miles of open countryside.

Putin's Russia could become a kind of Ersatz to its fans.

And to me, I'm more wary of KGB / FSB, than of Muslim jihadis, even if I support neither in their maximal claims.

32:51 "Find out who the donors are"

How long have FSB been donors to the Right Wing in Western Europe?

37:32 Have you heard of BRICS?

"BRICS is an acronym for five leading emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The first four were initially grouped as "BRIC" (or "the BRICs") in 2001 by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill, who coined the term to describe fast-growing economies that would collectively dominate the global economy by 2050;[1] South Africa was added in 2010.[2]"

That could be the new East Bloc.

Factuality of the Bible - Dick Harfield

Factuality of the Bible: answering Earnest Farr · Guestpost · answering Dick Harfield · Answer on Acts (to Dick Harfield)

Q

On what grounds have secularist historians concluded Pentateuch, Ruth, Daniel, Esther, and Acts are not factual?
https://www.quora.com/On-what-grounds-have-secularist-historians-concluded-Pentateuch-Ruth-Daniel-Esther-and-Acts-are-not-factual/answer/Dick-Harfield

Answer requested by

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Dick Harfield

Lives in Sydney, Australia

Updated Fri 25.XI.2022

St. Catherine of Alexandria

This is a wide-ranging question that could justify a whole book to answer fully, so I can only summarise—with the risk that some may say that I have not provided enough detail to make my case.

Pentateuch

Presumed authorship by Moses is key to a claim to authenticity, as this would make much of the Pentateuch an eyewitness account written by its principal participant, who was in regular communication with God. That was challenged already the twelfth century by Abraham lbn Ezra, who considered it strange that Moses would have said: "At that time the Canaanites were in the land" (Genesis 12:6), when he should have said, "The Canaanites are now in the land," because they were still there when he travelled from Egypt with the people of Israel. This was not just the view of a “secularist historian” but of one of the great rabbis of medieval times. Modern scholars have established from a study of linguistics that the books of the Pentateuch actually had multiple authors.

Science tells us that life on earth is far older than suggested in Genesis and that there was never a time in human history when there were only two people on earth. Likewise, science tells us that there was never a time in human history when the whole world was covered in water.

Elliott Rabin says, in Understanding the Hebrew Bible: A Reader's Guide:

There is considerable uncertainty whether the patriarchs in the Bible actually lived or are instead legends of ancestral founders…Genesis tells us both too little and too much about the patriarchs: too little in that no recognizable figures are explicitly mentioned; too much because details mentioned often cannot be made to fit into the historical timeline given in the Bible.

The Book of Genesis contains many anachronistic details that are hallmarks of fiction. One is its reference to “Ur of the Chaldees”, although the Chaldeans did not arrive in Ur until a thousand years after Abraham would have lived. It also refers to the Philistines, who did not arrive in the Levant until about 1180 BCE.

Nearly all historians now regard the biblical Exodus as an Israelite national foundation myth. There is good evidence that the Israelites were never in Egypt and never invaded the land of the Canaanites. The renowned archaeologist William G. Dever investigated every site that could be identified from the Exodus itinerary and came up with a blank every time. Various archaeologists have established that the Israelites were actually rural Canaanites who never left their ancient homeland, but were a splinter group who left the region of the Mediterranean coast and fertile valleys, to settle peacefully in the hitherto sparsely populated hinterland,

Ruth

Ruth 1:1 places its authorship long after the story is set, simply because it informs the reader that the events occurred in the days when judges ruled. In their own time, Naomi and Ruth would have been women of no particular interest to others, so there would be very little chance of anyone recording and passing down any of their life story, let alone the rich detail that is actually in the book. It is either pure legend or a literary creation. Evidence of its fictionality is in the names of the two husbands who died so young: Mahlon means ‘Sickly’ and Chilion means ‘Wasting away’ – hardly names a parent would give a child, but helpful to the story.

Christopher Gilbert says, in A Complete Introduction to the Bible:

Although the Book of Ruth is set in the period of the Judges (1:1), and may be based on a story that dates to that period, scholars believe that it was written in the post-exilic period (around 400 BCE), for a number of reasons. First, the Hebrew in which the Book of Ruth is written was heavily influenced by the Aramaic language. As we have already noted, Aramaic influences on the Hebrew language were uncommon until the Persian period, when Aramaic was the official administrative language of the Persian Empire. Second, the author explains the custom of attestation – an ancient Israetite means of confirming a transaction by the exchange of a sandal – as though it is an obsolete practice with which the author does not expect the audience to be familiar (4:7). Third, and most important, the story recounts a marriage between a Jewish man and a Moabite woman. As we have already seen, intermarriage was a hot-button issue of the postexilic period; Ezra and Nehemiah both campaigned against it. The fact that the Book of Ruth presents a Moabite woman as a virtuous daughter-in-law, a faithful wife, and the great-grandmother of King David strongly suggests that this book was intended as an attack on postexilic efforts to prohibit intermarriage.

Finally, we should note that the Book of Ruth seems to have been regarded as a fictional short story rather than an historical narrative even by its ancient Jewish audience.

Esther

Esther’s uncle Mordecai was supposedly sent into exile by Nebuchadnezzar, but this would have taken place over a century before Xerxes became king, so this part of the story must be fictional at least. Christopher Gilbert says (ibid):

Like Ruth, the Book of Esther is thought to be a fictional short story rather than an historical account. Again, a number of considerations support this assessment. First, there is no extrabiblical record of Xerxes I or any other Persian king having a Jewish wife; indeed, extrabiblical sources agree that the wife of Xerxes I was a Persian woman named Amestris. Second, the book seems to contain the sort of exaggeration that is characteristic of imaginative fiction, suggesting that both the author of Esther and her readers approached the book as literature rather than as a factual record. For instance, the king holds a banquet that lasts six months (1:4); the candidates for the position of queen receive a yearlong beauty treatment (2:12); the bribe that Haman offers the king is roughly $18 million (3:9); and Haman's gallows are eighty-three feet high (5:14). Most staggering, however, is the claim that 75,510 Gentiles were slain by the Jews in a single day (9:6-9, 16), a massacre that could hardly have escaped the notice of extrabiblical writers.

Moreover, many scholars suspect that the Jewish holiday of Purim was initially a Babylonian holiday that the Jews adopted during the Babylonian Exile. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the names of the main characters in the story are of Mesopotamian origin: Esther's name derives from Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love; Mordecai's name derives from Marduk, the chief deity of the Babylonian pantheon. If the Jews of the Exile did celebrate a Gentile holiday, the religious reforms of the postexilic period certainly could have motivated an effort to explain and justify that holiday as having a uniquely Jewish origin.

The New American Bible says, in its Introduction to the Book of Esther:

The book is a free composition - not a historical document, despite the Achaemenian coloring of the narrative. Its time of composition may well have been at the end of the Persian Empire, toward the close of the fourth century B.C.

Daniel

One very good reason to regard the Book of Daniel as fiction is that it contains historical errors that a person, alive at the time of the supposed events, would never have made. Moreover, the prophecies in the story do become more accurate as the approach 167 BCE, consistent with the author being more likely to have accurate information about more recent events. Nothing further is prophesied after 167 BCE, suggesting this must have been the time of writing. There is evidence of at least two authors of the Book of Daniel, with the second author adding to an earlier, more primitive book. Leonard J Greenspoon says in ‘Between Alexandria and Antioch: Jews and Judaism in the Hellenistic Period’, published in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, that, “at least in its finished form”, the Book of Daniel was a Jewish novel, and that “all but the most conservative interpreters agree that the final chapters date from the time of the Maccabean revolt”. He says:

The Hebrew form of Daniel neatly divides into two parts: chapters 1 to 6 consist of a collection of tales, in which Daniel and his companions demonstrate the superiority of their God and those who obediently follow him over the worshippers of false, empty and powerless deities.

The sudden changes of heart, through which foreign rulers acknowledged the sovereignty of God, did not really happen, but exemplify what should be the reaction of all people when confronted by the monotheistic faith of Israel.

Acts

Acts of the Apostles used to be regarded as an accurate and reliable history of the early church, At the beginning of the twentieth century, Sir William Ramsay stated:

Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy...this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.

New Testament scholars have reviewed the evidence and no longer hold that to be the case, generally regarding the book as propaganda rather than actual history. Acts contains some errors that can be demonstrated to be inaccurate. A well known historical error has Gamaliel speak of the rebel Theudas, whom the first-century Jewish historian Josephus assigns to the time of the procurator Cuspius Fadus (44-46 CE) several years after the death of Gamaliel. Acts of the Apostles also places Theudas before Judas the Galilean, who “arose in the days of the census” which had occurred decades earlier. Internal evidence demonstrates that the author of Acts relied on Josephus’ account in Antiquities of the Jews, but misreported the chronology because of the roundabout prose in Antiquities.

Acts can also be checked for accuracy by comparing its account with Paul’s epistles. Bart D. Ehrman writes, in The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings:

In virtually every instance in which the book of Acts can be compared with Paul's letters in terms of biographical detail, differences emerge.

Richard Carrier says, in On the Historicity of Jesus, that the author of Acts

rewrites Homer several other times.

• Paul's resurrection of the fallen Eutychus is based on the fallen Elpenor.5
• The visions of Cornelius and Peter are constructed frorn a similar narrative about Agamemnon.6
• Paul's farewell at Miletus is constructed from Hector's farewell to Andromache.7
• The lottery of Matthias is constructed from the lottery of Ajax.8
• Peter's escape from prison is constructed from Priam's escape from Achilles. 9 And so on.

Uta Ranke-Heinemann, in Putting Away Childish Things, also finds parallels to Greek mythology:

In the third of the legendary accounts in Acts, Jesus is supposed to have remarked to Paul as he lay on the ground, “It hurts you to kick against the goad” (25:14).

This is a quotation from the Bacchae by Euripides (d. 406 BCE). The only peculiar thing is that Jesus should quote a Greek proverb to Paul while speaking Aramaic ("in the Hebrew language").

The really strange thing is that with both Jesus and Euripides we have the same “familiar quotation” and the same situation. In both cases we have a conversation between a persecuted god and his persecutor. In The Bacchae the persecuted god is Dionysus and his persecutor is Pentheus, king of Thebes. Just like Jesus, Dionysus calls his persecutor to account, “You disregard my words of warning . . . and kick against necessity [literally 'against the goads'] a man defying god.” Jesus even uses the same plural form of the noun (kentra) that Euripides needs for the metre of his line.

Thomas Kazen says, in ‘The Christology of Early Christian Practice’, originally published in Journal of Biblical Literature, 2008:

When dealing with Luke’s descriptions of practice in the early Jesus movement in the first chapters of Acts, we find ourselves both earlier and later in time than with Paul. Earlier, because the narrative concerns the earliest post-Easter followers of Jesus in Jerusalem; later, because the narrative is shaped [written] toward the end of the first century. While it would be naïve to take Acts as a historical report of early Christ-believers in Jerusalem, it would be equally simplistic to read Luke’s narratives as representing general Christian practice and belief in his own time and environment. Rather, we should regard these descriptions as revealing what some late-first-century Christians, such as the author of Acts, thought about practice and belief in the earliest Jerusalem community of Christ-believers during the thirties.

Answered

ideally five times, Pentateuch, Ruth, Daniel, Esther, and Acts. When redacting this, I am on the first two answers.

Pentateuch

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Sat, 26.XI.2022

I’ll respond one by one. First this one:

Pentateuch

"Presumed authorship by Moses is key to a claim to authenticity, as this would make much of the Pentateuch an eyewitness account written by its principal participant, who was in regular communication with God."

Indeed, and what's more, who could prove it to his surroundings by his miracles.

Suppose no one had seen any miracle except his talking to a God invisible to everyone else, why would they have bought his claims to have brought them out of Egypt through the Red Sea, since in that case this would have jarred with their actual memories? Why would they have trusted his claims to be in communication with God, if that God told him things they knew were nonsense?

"That was challenged already the twelfth century by Abraham lbn Ezra, who considered it strange that Moses would have said: "At that time the Canaanites were in the land" (Genesis 12:6), when he should have said, "The Canaanites are now in the land," because they were still there when he travelled from Egypt with the people of Israel."

1) That Canaanites "are now in the land" is irrelevant to Abrahams situation back "then".
2) Moses can have taken over a resumé by Joseph.
3) Moses can have written down the overall narrative before checking Canaanites were still in the land.
4) There can be a redactor who changed "are" to "were then" in an update that remained licit for Cohanim while the tabernacle and temple stood.
5) Canaanites can here mean - se below - actual patrilinear descendants of Canaan, son of Ham.

"This was not just the view of a “secularist historian” but of one of the great rabbis of medieval times. Modern scholars have established from a study of linguistics that the books of the Pentateuch actually had multiple authors."

Or redactors. Tegnér who died in 1846 and published Frithiofs Saga in 1825 would not have written "Där växte uti Hildings gård" or "Frithiof tager arv efter sin fader" but, writing before 1870's he wrote "Der vexte uti Hildings gård" and writing before 1906 he wrote "Frithiof tager arf efter sin fader." The Cohanim were free to change the linguistic shape at copying.

"Science tells us that life on earth is far older than suggested in Genesis and that there was never a time in human history when there were only two people on earth. Likewise, science tells us that there was never a time in human history when the whole world was covered in water."

This is definitely not an argument that Genesis wasn't taken as history, just that it was wrong history, if what you say is true. However, not having Science as my religion, and being read up on Creation Science, I feel no special urge to believe you on that one.

"Elliott Rabin says, in Understanding the Hebrew Bible: A Reader's Guide:

'There is considerable uncertainty whether the patriarchs in the Bible actually lived or are instead legends of ancestral founders…Genesis tells us both too little and too much about the patriarchs: too little in that no recognizable figures are explicitly mentioned; too much because details mentioned often cannot be made to fit into the historical timeline given in the Bible.' "

I disagree with his distinction between "actually lived" and "legends" - I consider most legends are about poeople who actually lived, and in the few cases where this is not the case, non-actuals are composites of several people who actually lived. If Japanese believe that Bodda had been incarnated as Krishna before being incarnated as Siddharta, their Bodda is a very superficially stitched together composite of the actual Krishna, the actual Siddharta and some wrong claims about them in theology and philosophy, one of them being reincarnation.

"The Book of Genesis contains many anachronistic details that are hallmarks of fiction."

I don't think this is the case.

"One is its reference to “Ur of the Chaldees”, although the Chaldeans did not arrive in Ur until a thousand years after Abraham would have lived. It also refers to the Philistines, who did not arrive in the Levant until about 1180 BCE."

Before which they were where?

Perhaps in NorthWest Mesopotamia, if Urfa (Edessa) is the correct identification and Woolley's Ur is outside Genesis.

"Nearly all historians now regard the biblical Exodus as an Israelite national foundation myth."

Do you regard the story of George Washington as a United States foundation myth? I do. But I don't believe that equates to non-factual. Just that, to Americans, he looms somewhat larger than life, together with Paul Revere and Lafayette.

"There is good evidence that the Israelites were never in Egypt and never invaded the land of the Canaanites."

Or lack of specifically archaeological evidence that they were and did, identified as such.

"The renowned archaeologist William G. Dever investigated every site that could be identified from the Exodus itinerary and came up with a blank every time."

• 1) some places should leave a blank if the Bible was true - none of their tools or clothing wore out and they didn't build houses
• 2) some places would not leave a blank if you took the right time - right Biblical chronology along with right calibration of C14.

The latter meaning - not the uniformitarian one, and the former meaning not the Masoretic one.

"Various archaeologists have established that the Israelites were actually rural Canaanites who never left their ancient homeland, but were a splinter group who left the region of the Mediterranean coast and fertile valleys, to settle peacefully in the hitherto sparsely populated hinterland,"

The oldest DNA carbon dated in the land is dated to 3500 BC - meaning 1935 BC, when Abraham was there - and is close to the Israelite one - perhaps because Abraham's men took over the nations in Canaan with their descendants, while Israelites were in Egypt. If so, the men whom Joshua was beating didn't mainly descend from Canaan, on the patrilinear side, but from renegade Hebrews whose ancestors had been 318 men of Abraham.

Dick Harfield

Sat, 26.XI.2022

Hi Hans-Georg

One take-away from this is that you believe the Book of Genesis may have been altered by Cohanim or redactors, so that the Book we now have does not reflect what was first written. I suppose that from now on, I should assume that whenever there are problems with Genesis, you believe these result from ancient changes to the original text.

Another take-away is that we should ignore the analyses of people like Abraham lbn Ezra and Dever, because they are not as intellectually rigorous as you are. I wish you well at the next Nobel awards.

Yet another is that you regard science as a religion, which explains why you see “creation science” as the ultimate form of science.

It seems you do not understand the meanings of words in common use, so let me help you. I regard the story of George Washington as chopping down the tree and unable to tell a lie to be a legend, but George himself otherwise to be part of history—not of legend. A myth is a legend with supernatural elements, and I do not believe any common legends about George Washington incorporate supernatural elements. Now, when scholars say the biblical Exodus story is a national foundation myth, you do not have to be clever about it: we both know what they mean, no matter how ambiguous the words may be. Their view is that the story we see in the Bible did not happen, even if there might be some legendary aspects behind it.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Lord's Day 27.XI.2022

First of Advent

“so that the Book we now have does not reflect what was first written.”

More like it was changed to reflect it more clearly to more recent audiences.

“I suppose that from now on, I should assume that whenever there are problems with Genesis, you believe these result from ancient changes to the original text.”

Linguistic and terminological updates are not problems.

“we should ignore the analyses of people like Abraham lbn Ezra”

Because his conclusion was hasty …

“and Dever,”

Because he looked for wrong things at wrong times.

“I wish you well at the next Nobel awards.”

I am a Swede. I know the Swedish establishment. Believe me, it is very improbable that the Nobel committee would be so marginalised people in Sweden, that they could be outstanding by some balance and sanity on the matter.

“you regard science as a religion,”

I see an actual difference between sciences - often enough legitimate intellectual endavours - and Science with a capital S, where these are lumped together with things like Evolution (also capital letter E, way beyond finches or pepper moths). The latter, which some think we “should believe” is in fact the positive religion of Atheism, and one of the two positive religions of a certain type of Syncretists called Modernist Christians.

“It seems you do not understand the meanings of words in common use, so let me help you.”

It’s more like I refuse to accept the misuse of the term legend now prevailing. I’m trying to help you or at least our readers.

“I regard the story of George Washington as chopping down the tree and unable to tell a lie to be a legend, but George himself otherwise to be part of history—not of legend.”

Nice. I think all the hype on him can be classified as legend - and most positively mentioned things (including the cherry tree) as probably factual. I do not make a counterdistinction between legend and factual, since legends are usually based on fact, and facts that become legends are often but not necessarily somewhat but not all that much distorted. Where does this US origin myth come short of factuality? In people not Southron and Jefferson Davies of their loyalties, it comes short of factuality in neglecting that GW was a slave owner and part of his taunt against George III was that the latter was listening to Wilberforce, preparing to free slaves, which happened in 1830. That, back in England, Tories were the early abolitionists, like Dr. Johnson, Whigs sympathising with GW were pro-slavery, like Boswell.

Hope this makes clear to you, or at least someone who reads us, why your usage was faulty. Common as it is.

“A myth is a legend with supernatural elements, and I do not believe any common legends about George Washington incorporate supernatural elements.”

To imagine that supernatural elements have any bearing on the factuality of a legend in one specific direction of falsehood only is begging the question how YOU pretend to know the supernatural doesn’t exist.

But the presence or absence of the supernatural is not all the triggers the word choice “myth” there are also phrases - as highly relevant to Exodus as to George Washington - like “foundation myth” or “myth of origins” where the whole phrase (including the word myth) is used because of such and such a story being the popular narrative behind a change leading up to the present state of affairs on some level.

“Now, when scholars say the biblical Exodus story is a national foundation myth, you do not have to be clever about it:”

The only thing that is clear about what they can legitimately mean, and say without rational hesitation is, the Exodus is to an Israelite in such and such a time the popular narrative behind a change leading up to the present state of affairs on some level.

“we both know what they mean, no matter how ambiguous the words may be.”

I don’t pretend to know what a writer means unless I actually read him.

“Their view is that the story we see in the Bible did not happen,”

If they base this on the obvious role that Genesis and Exodus have as “origin myths” and “foundation myth” that is very clearly in and of itself falling victim to reasoning from popular associations of a label.

If you intend “origin myth” and “foundation myth” to exlude factual accounts or such as you consider factual, which would be necessary for their case, if you wish it to exclude George Washington whom we both agree existed or Abiogenesis which you believe happened, well, the role these narratives have as “origin myth” and “foundation myth” are simply not enough.

Ruth

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Lord's Day 27.XI.2022

First of Advent

Second part of answers - and I intend to answer all before the debate on the Pentateuch is finished and have debates in parallel.

Ruth.

As I recall, I actually already posted an answer on this one yesterday, where did it go?

The FIRST thing to note is this one, from your quote by CG:

"Finally, we should note that the Book of Ruth seems to have been regarded as a fictional short story rather than an historical narrative even by its ancient Jewish audience."

It would be interesting to find out whether CG concluded this from a Talmudic or even post-Talmudic source LATER than St. Matthew, or whether his view on how it was regarded is more based on some subjective impressionistic takeout on it.

Because, you see, the reason I don't take Silmarillion or Beren and Luthien as history is, I live in a society known to be the FIRST audience of Tolkien, preceding for instance a hypothetic future audience which 200 or 500 years from now could have a view on the matter, and this FIRST audience takes Beren and Luthien as fiction.

Meanwhile, the reason I take The Assisi Underground as historic is, it was to its first audience (to which roughly speaking we still belong) presented by the journalist Alexander Ramati as a documentary.

I believe the process by which history gets relegated to "fiction" category is just a question of a fashion of scepticism. But the process by which fiction is elevated to history is, as far as I am concerned, unknown. This makes "earliest KNOWN audience" a standin for FIRST audience" in assessing a text as historic.

I am very sceptical of CG getting hold of some writer in an even earlier audience than that to which St. Matthew belonged and in which he used the genealogy of the book of Ruth as providing historic genealogy of Christ Jesus.

"Ruth 1:1 places its authorship long after the story is set, simply because it informs the reader that the events occurred in the days when judges ruled."

Not necessarily authorship, perhaps a redactor's touch. But possibly also a collecting of the family history of King David into an actual book.

"In their own time, Naomi and Ruth would have been women of no particular interest to others, so there would be very little chance of anyone recording and passing down any of their life story, let alone the rich detail that is actually in the book."

Except obviously they were of very great interest to Obed. He was resourceful enough for his family to keep the record the few generations remaining up to King David. And King David had resources to get it written down into a book and the book put into the temple.

"It is either pure legend or a literary creation."

Pure legend in my book means things usually historical. Like King Arthur (though the exact title might not have been rex).

"Evidence of its fictionality is in the names of the two husbands who died so young: Mahlon means ‘Sickly’ and Chilion means ‘Wasting away’ – hardly names a parent would give a child, but helpful to the story."

• 1) Ben-Oni is hardly a name a parent would give a child for life, but this was the name Rachel spontaneously gave her second son. The father changed this to Ban-Yamin. It is clearly possible that Naomi's first reaction on seeing either was "Mahlon" or "Chilion" that the father Elimelech then changed the names and that Naomi's and Ruth's memory changed it back when the first given names turned out to be prophetic.
• 2) It is also possible that the actual names were forgotten, perhaps deliberately, and replaced by Mahalon and Chelion. As aliasses. Code-names. If you had had the youtube account with the moniker "Bimbelibimm" - would you consider our debates were a fiction because such is not a real name?

"Christopher Gilbert says, in A Complete Introduction to the Bible:"

Here I'll return to GC.

"Although the Book of Ruth is set in the period of the Judges (1:1), and may be based on a story that dates to that period, scholars believe that it was written in the post-exilic period (around 400 BCE), for a number of reasons."

We'll take them one by one.

"First, the Hebrew in which the Book of Ruth is written was heavily influenced by the Aramaic language. As we have already noted, Aramaic influences on the Hebrew language were uncommon until the Persian period, when Aramaic was the official administrative language of the Persian Empire."

A Cohen made a linguistic update later on.

"Second, the author explains the custom of attestation – an ancient Israetite means of confirming a transaction by the exchange of a sandal – as though it is an obsolete practice with which the author does not expect the audience to be familiar (4:7)."

A Cohen inserted what amounts to a footnote.

"Third, and most important, the story recounts a marriage between a Jewish man and a Moabite woman. As we have already seen, intermarriage was a hot-button issue of the postexilic period; Ezra and Nehemiah both campaigned against it."

Here is good old wiki, with a Swede correcting the spelling of a Swedish name:

"Gösta W. Ahlström argues the inconsistencies of the biblical tradition are insufficient to say that Ezra, with his central position as the 'father of Judaism' in the Jewish tradition, has been a later literary invention."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra#Historicity

I obviously disagree, but why don't you? You are so heavily into believing "legends actually didn't happen" and things like that.

Perhaps because you find historicity of Ezra as a useful copout to argue non-historicity of other things - one here will claim Ezra wrote the Pentateuch and attributed it to Moses and now you will cite another guy pretending Ezra was being argued against by the author of Ruth.

In Ezra 10, I can find no precision that the "foreign" women are singled out in any single case as Moabites.

I do find the word Moab - as the name of a Jew.

"The fact that the Book of Ruth presents a Moabite woman as a virtuous daughter-in-law, a faithful wife, and the great-grandmother of King David strongly suggests that this book was intended as an attack on postexilic efforts to prohibit intermarriage."

Because obviously, real older events never become topical later on ...

Seriously, believing both Ruth and Ezra to be inspired, I will definitely consider both as inerrant, and God as seeing no problem if a single Moabite woman wants to follow the law of Moses, but a very big problem if lots of women were together exercising a kind of infiltration pressure against lots of husbands against the law of Moses.

Esther

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Lord's Day 27.XI.2022

First of Advent

Answer part III

Esther

"Esther’s uncle Mordecai was supposedly sent into exile by Nebuchadnezzar, but this would have taken place over a century before Xerxes became king, so this part of the story must be fictional at least."

Let's see the relevant verse:

Esther, chapter 2:

[5]There was a man in the city of Susan, a Jew, named Mardochai, the son of Jair, the son of Semei, the son of Cis, of the race of Jemini, [6] Who had been carried away from Jerusalem at the time that Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon carried away Jechonias king of Juda,

What if the meaning is, Cis (or Jemini) had been carried away, rather than Mardochai himself?

Blows that argument out of the water.

"Christopher Gilbert says (ibid):

'Like Ruth, the Book of Esther is thought to be a fictional short story rather than an historical account.' "

Yeah, I was aware of his bias.

"Again, a number of considerations support this assessment. First, there is no extrabiblical record of Xerxes I or any other Persian king having a Jewish wife; indeed, extrabiblical sources agree that the wife of Xerxes I was a Persian woman named Amestris."

1) Is Xerxes I the real match for Assuerus?
2) If yes, was Amestris Vashthi?
3) How complete are "extra-Biblical sources"?

"Second, the book seems to contain the sort of exaggeration that is characteristic of imaginative fiction, suggesting that both the author of Esther and her readers approached the book as literature rather than as a factual record."

Tell that to the guys who support the idea that Auschwitz killed 2 million Jews.

But suppose this could be laid down to the style of narration? However, I will try to give actual answers for the honour of inerrancy.

"For instance, the king holds a banquet that lasts six months (1:4);"

It actually says a feast for boasting that many days. However, this would not necessarily be one banquet. It could involve voyaging around through the realm.

"the candidates for the position of queen receive a yearlong beauty treatment (2:12);"

Could be a kind of project of impregnating the skin, every pore. Plus a kind of education project for the role going on alongside this.

"the bribe that Haman offers the king is roughly $18 million (3:9);"

That's perfectly realistic. If you want to bribe the "king of kings" you had better make a real juicy offer.

"and Haman's gallows are eighty-three feet high (5:14)."

I recalled it as fifteen cubits, seems LXX has fifty as well.

"Most staggering, however, is the claim that 75,510 Gentiles were slain by the Jews in a single day (9:6-9, 16),"

6 And in the city Susa the Jews slew five hundred men:
15 And the Jews assembled in Susa on the fourteenth [day] of Adar, and slew three hundred men, but plundered no property.
16 And the rest of the Jews who were in the kingdom assembled, and helped one another, and obtained rest from their enemies: for they destroyed fifteen thousand of them on the thirteenth [day] of Adar, but took no spoil.

500 + 300 + 15 000 = 15 800

"a massacre that could hardly have escaped the notice of extrabiblical writers."

Supposing we had any left and they were free to express such losses. Did you know the Babylonian cuneiform accounts of Alexander certainly paint him as victorious, but do not tell he's a foreigner, and he's simply "the king of Babylon" ...

"Moreover, many scholars suspect that the Jewish holiday of Purim was initially a Babylonian holiday that the Jews adopted during the Babylonian Exile."

Purim was in March this year ... a month before Pesakh, in fact. 14 Adar is a month before 14 Nisan. I have for the moment no source saying that Babylonians celebrated anything in Adarru.

"This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the names of the main characters in the story are of Mesopotamian origin: Esther's name derives from Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love; Mordecai's name derives from Marduk, the chief deity of the Babylonian pantheon."

In France a very famous Jew is called Eric Zemmour. In case you didn't know, Eric is a Pagan and Catholic Norse name - not a Jewish one. He's Eric to outsiders and Moyshe to his family.

If this custom of external adaptation was already there, and if Mordecai and Esther were common names among Babylonians, this could explain why Jews were in fact called Mordecai and Esther.

"If the Jews of the Exile did celebrate a Gentile holiday, the religious reforms of the postexilic period certainly could have motivated an effort to explain and justify that holiday as having a uniquely Jewish origin."

Or suppress it.

"The New American Bible says, in its Introduction to the Book of Esther:

'The book is a free composition - not a historical document, despite the Achaemenian coloring of the narrative. Its time of composition may well have been at the end of the Persian Empire, toward the close of the fourth century B.C.' "

Nice to have their point of view, it's presented without argument, and so I dismiss it without argument.

Daniel

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Lord's Day 27.XI.2022

First of Advent

Part IV here:

Daniel

"One very good reason to regard the Book of Daniel as fiction is that it contains historical errors that a person, alive at the time of the supposed events, would never have made."

Would, if true, be the case with lots of actual histories as well.

However, considering the errors to be on Daniel's side rather than that of the other sources to me seems to be an overrating of the other sources.

"Moreover, the prophecies in the story do become more accurate as the approach 167 BCE, consistent with the author being more likely to have accurate information about more recent events."

If I were to disbelieve the prophecies, this is where I would put the prophecies down to "vaticinium post eventum" - but as I don't, I would rather say that the completion of the four beasts (with Antiochus Epiphanes representing Rome) in the OT context was what was needed to make Daniel useful for the endtimes.

"There is evidence of at least two authors of the Book of Daniel, with the second author adding to an earlier, more primitive book."

Not any precision on what this evidence is. Apart from the "two parts" argument, see below.

"Leonard J Greenspoon says in ‘Between Alexandria and Antioch: Jews and Judaism in the Hellenistic Period’, published in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, that, “at least in its finished form”, the Book of Daniel was a Jewish novel, and that “all but the most conservative interpreters agree that the final chapters date from the time of the Maccabean revolt”."

Count me as one of the most conservative ones, then.

"The Hebrew form of Daniel neatly divides into two parts: chapters 1 to 6 consist of a collection of tales, in which Daniel and his companions demonstrate the superiority of their God and those who obediently follow him over the worshippers of false, empty and powerless deities."

Does not the least imply these tales didn't happen.

"The sudden changes of heart, through which foreign rulers acknowledged the sovereignty of God, did not really happen, but exemplify what should be the reaction of all people when confronted by the monotheistic faith of Israel."

Or Nebo-Chadnezzar made some Monotheistic decrees about Nebo, which is what the author considered as equivalent to the summary in Daniel.

On this one, as well as for Esther, I refer to the works of Damien Mackey.

Acts

Note

I actually had planned to add the answer on Acts on Monday. When in the evening I went on to it, I saw this:

"Adding comments disabled" - saw it 22:36 on November 28th, 2022. This was to me, or perhaps to all, by the man who had answered a question I posed.

The point is, I had told him, instead of making one post with all the books he dealt with, I was answering one by one. He had enough with 4 comments answering, and couldn't take a fifth.

It looks like cancel culture to me. Feel free to ask him whether it was the fact I intended to answer in five comments or whether he was so dissatisfied with my first one.

Factuality of the Bible - Guestpost

Factuality of the Bible: answering Earnest Farr · Guestpost · answering Dick Harfield · Answer on Acts (to Dick Harfield)

On what grounds have secularist historians concluded Pentateuch, Ruth, Daniel, Esther, and Acts are not factual?
https://www.quora.com/On-what-grounds-have-secularist-historians-concluded-Pentateuch-Ruth-Daniel-Esther-and-Acts-are-not-factual

A

Henry Zecher

Former Retired Fed Gov and Published Author. at Federal Government of the United States (1976–2006)

Wed 23.XI.2022

It’s simply what they prefer to believe.

There is absolutely no historical, scientific, or factual reason to NOT believe in them.

Jesus Christ Himself said 2,000 years ago that unbelief would increase dramatically toward the end, and He was correct.

The validity of the Bible can be checked through archaeology and other ancient writings, although the most telling evidence is the Bible’s record for correct predictions of future events, a few of which were centuries away in being fulfilled, particularly the resurrection of the nation of Israel in 1948, which a few Old Testament prophets prophesied more than 2,000 years before it happened.

Here are five scholars, four of them definitely NOT believers of any kind, who actually took up the challenge of researching the historicity of the Bible.

In the early 19th century, Judge Simon Greenleaf, an expert on evidence, published his three-volume Rules of Evidence, and then used it to evaluate the Gospels. In The Testimony of the Evangelists, he demonstrated from the testimony of evidence that the Gospels are authentic history.

Not long after, a spiritually neutral Lew Wallace did seven years of hard historical research into the authenticity of the Gospel accounts before publishing Ben-Hur, A Tale of the Christ. Ben-Hur itself is not about proving the Bible true, but Wallace’s research material was, and he became a true Christian in the process.

More recently, cold case detective J. Warner Wallace – a rather scornful unbeliever – treated the crucifixion as a cold case, did a thorough examination of the biblical evidence, and came away declaring in Cold-Case Christianity that the Gospel is thoroughly true, and became a Christian in the process. He is now active in ministry.

By far the most hateful anti-religion blowhard of them all, Josh McDowell, was challenged to research the truth of Jesus Christ. He set out with gleeful scorn, determined to do just that, but found the evidence to be so overwhelming for the Gospel accounts that he became a believer and turned his anti-Christ research into the greatest collection of evidence ever known – his Evidence That Demands a Verdict series.

Finally Lee Strobel, an investigative journalist for the Chicago Tribune and an atheist, saw his wife become a Christian and began investigating the biblical claims for Christ. As with Lew Wallace, J. Warner Wallace and Josh McDowell, Stroble became a Christian, and published his The Case for... series in which, as a journalist, he investigated The Case for Christ (1998), The Case for Faith (2000), The Case for a Creator (2004), and then on to cases for Easter (2004), Christmas (2005), the Real Jesus (2007), Hope (2015), Grace (2015), Miracles (2018), and Heaven (2021), along with three books on Faith, Christ and a Creator for children.

Evidence is not the problem. The Bible itself is evidence, just as the writings of and by Julius Caesar are evidence of Caesar. And, as McDowell in particular demonstrated, there is more than abundant proof. The books that contain history ARE history, not made-up myths. We accept written evidence for Caesar, Cleopatra, and other ancient figures.

Why not Jesus Christ?

Mind you, there is a gap between the fullest evidence and the reality of God that can only be bridged by faith. Otherwise, if faith was as hard and true as the multiplication tables, it wouldn’t be faith. But, the true seeker of truth about God will find more than enough justification for faith in Greenleaf, Lew Wallace, J Warner Wallace, McDowell and Strobel, and inspiration in the story of Lew Wallace.

And, to claim it was all myth and that there is no evidence is, itself, the true myth.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Lord's Day 27.XI.2022

First of Advent

Apart from you using the modern misuse of the word “myth” - I would say you gave the right answer.

Would you mind me posting your answer as a guest post?

By the way, the guest post draft also includes RMG’s answer.

Henry Zecher

Lord's Day 27.XI.2022

First of Advent

I would be interested in how I misused the word “myth,” but by all means, share it.

I

Hans-Georg Lundahl

28.XI.2022

Myth is the Greek word for story. Aristotle and presumably people setting up dramas, use “myth” for synopsis. The drama “The Persians” has as “myth” the fact that a King (Xerxes?) is forced to hear about the defeat of his troops who were in fact defeated.

Greek myths fall into two categories. Some concern only gods and can obviously be written down as fables. Quite a few concern men, and in these cases, I think the human and observable part can often be historically correct. E. g. Iliad and Odyssey (with a reservation on whether Achilles-Hector conflict happened or was Homer’s trick to give unity to a panorama of scenes from that war, and another reservation on what Ulysses was alone speaking on to Nausicaa really happened or was his lies).

So, using “myth” in human affairs for “non-factual” is in my opinion wrong.

When St. Paul uses the word disparageingly, he is probably comparing to myths about gods.

Henry Zecher

28.XI.2022

Wow. Thank you. I never heard it explained that way.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

28.XI.2022

No problem.

I was in the teens a big myth buff, and I read Greek tragedy.

II

Hans-Georg Lundahl

28.XI.2022

Shared: [+ link to this post]

B

RMG

Retired. Veteran. (2013–present)

Wed 23.XI.2022

They’re secularists. It’s mandatory. You answered your own question.

On what grounds have secularist historians concluded Pentateuch, Ruth, Daniel, Esther, and Acts are not factual?

I

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Lord's Day 27.XI.2022

First of Advent

May I include this in a guestpost also featuring Henry Zecher on my blog?

RMG

28.XI.2022

If you’re talking to me, yes.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

28.XI.2022

Wonderful.

Yes. Done.

II

Hans-Georg Lundahl

28.XI.2022

Hope you don’t mind I shared directly after his yes?

[+ link to this post]

"the luck to trust the right people ... the tough luck to see the worst of the wrong people."

The Trick to Converting Conspiracy Theorists and Evangelization
Breaking In The Habit | 23 Nov. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOEtzwsSTF4

1:33 I actually did change my mind at least once in my life because I lost an argument.

One day in 1990, I was talking to a convert whom I had welcomed in, since he had converted that year.

I tried to defend Vatican II and the establishment resulting from it. And I couldn't.

Since then, I am a trad. Very largely described. By the way, the guy who had humiliated me had done so before this - namely two men. Two priests I had had as father confessor.

5:17 This is why I think my debates on the internet are at the heart of whatever mission there might be for my apologetics.

I give some people a chance to be a jerk against the creationist, and some fall for it.

I also give them equally and preferrably a chance to come with facts.

And to get a bit more silent when I have given my answers.

Sure, if I have a debate with Dick Harfield, as currently is the case, where he impugns the historical reliability of Pentateuch, Ruth, Daniel, Esther and Acts, republishing this debate in commercial format should in fairness of simple copyright issues depend in part on his admission for such reuse. Actually, I think it would be fair enough if he were offered a part of the proceedings, alternatively an equal right to publish it on his part with those doing so for me, but he might get lawyers on his side. So, my essays, where no one else's words are extensively involved in about equal proportions to mine actually are a big investment. Plus, I don't have a debate everyday.

BUT it will be a fairly edifying spectacle for our readers - his and mine - on the republication (for free) I do on my blog, to see him go from confidently factual to being snarky at my supposed impudence in not bowing down to experts ... you know Liberal to non-believing "Biblical scholars" plus those of natural sciences.

Trey Smith is not my greatest social asset, when he takes jabs at Darwin that are morally wrong as well as factually wrong (distrusting someone because he "doesn't have a real work" or "real degree" and this on top of it not being Darwin's case on the Beagle). But he certainly beats people who try to "educate" me on the "actual" meaning of the word "legend" and on trusting "appropriate" expertise (including Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier), as is the case with Dick Harfield.

8:06 Your list:

"Taylor Swift"

I think it is a good thing to avoid her songs, because of her endorsement of GLAAD. Credits to la Reezay for bringing this up.

Up to that, she had been pretty marginal after I tried to contact her for getting me artists to play my compositions, which she didn't do. I have no dislike of her style apart from message.

"Pumkin Spice"

Is that a Starbucks drink? Think I like it.

"the Latin Mass"

Was my first mass, when ma went from Vienna to Södertelge, she stopped in Munich and assisted a Mass in late 1968, perhaps around the 6th of October. Before the Liturgic Reform.

What I was convinced of, the day I lost an argument in 1990 was to avoid the New Mass.

"Boston sports teams"

I don't do sports.

"the Marvel Cinematic Universe"

I prefer the Marvel Comics universe as it was before X-Men came in ...

8:19 I can't answer, since none of these are things I really hate.

8:27 No amount of discomfort with people who go to St. Nicolas du Chardonnet and look down on me, it doesn't change the preference for the Mass of the Patristic, Scholastic and Second Scholastic times of the Latin Patriarchate.

By the way, since Pope Michael allowed it to be said in English (1958 books, presumably from the translations provided in "My Sunday Missal"), I prefer calling it Tridentine Mass.

It wasn't exclusively Latin before that either, the Glagolitic in Croatian, and an Huron version by Jesuit missionaries already existed. Who am I to disagree with St. Jean Bréboeuf?

8:38 I think you have just made the case Belloc made.

Impoverishing Catholics and Catholic clergy (insofar as it wasn't hanged, drawn and quartered) was a great way to make the English feel bad about Catholics and hence not listen to them.

I see some similarity to a tactic by some Catholics, who want this proponent of "Catholics should be Young Earth Creationist, and they would do very well to be Geocentric too" to look bad.

It is also a tactic by some Muslims who want this proponent of "Muhammed, Joseph Smith, Hesiod and Numa Pomilius had a thing in common" to look less than attractive.

And some Jews who don't like "Jesus is the true Messiah, Isaiah 11 already is fulfilled, Palestinians are Juda and Ephraim reunited" - and who would just love to reeducate me, and to make me "admit"' that all of this was a very absurd "conspiracy theory" ...

10:29 "is a huge social risk"

Which I took.

12:25 Distinguo.

If I were working primarily to influence Dick Harfield, it would not make sense to double down on facts or distinctions.

But if I hope a third party will be enlightened on what he and I say, and how each of us says it, perhaps it actually does make sense.

It's exactly one area, where I have hopes of still looking pretty good to people who in advance are as unbiassed as I was against any of your given list. Taylor Swift. Pumkin Spice. Marvel. Boston.

I'm obviously highly biassed for the Latin Mass or rather, as said, the Tridentine one.

13:23 Antipope "Paul VI' - Commies are right that Pentecostals are convincing and Scholastics aren't .... a résumé.

The fact of the matter is - "modern man" doesn't exist.

The "modern man" who dislikes Tridentine liturgy because it is impressive doesn't exist. Some may personally prefer it when it is less impressive. But to imagine either 1969 or 2022 this is the taste of all the masses - fiddlesticks (thanking CSL for providing a word that is less offensive than a certain US American one). It's like hanging around with lots of shrinks and then conclude "modern man believes in psychoanalysis" - when it's probable lots of young who are forced to it agree to it to avoid bad consequences, but don't really believe it.

13:50 "and care about the same things that they care about"

Even when they care about useless or hurtful things like "access to abortion" or "democracy" ...?

That's trying to be a convincing messanger, by forgetting the actual message.

What did a certain Bernadette Soubirous say?

"It's my task to transmit, not to convince"

Mutatis mutandis, I am not a prophet, it is my job to argue, whether I convince the other person or not.

14:22 "interested in nothing but money" (/fame)

Nice way to discredit an apologist who is poor and needs a publisher and some more viewers to start interesting one.

14:29 I am not the Church Universal.
It is not my duty to discard no one from listening to me. There are other ways into the Church than I am.

But, there is a certain type of intellectuals whom I could be really useful to - as CSL, even in his dryer moments, was to me.

If I believe I am right, it is not because I always have the facts on my side. About 10 years ago, I could make a blunder like attributing the 80 000 or 800 000 date of skeleta in Atapuerca to "carbon dating" which is not used for that far back. And argue on carbon buildup instead of the definitely other factors that fudge the probable Flood date for Atapuerca.

If I believe I am right, it is because I had the luck to trust the right people, starting with mother and grandpa, at first also grandma, and going on to Jesus and the Gospellers, to C. S. Lewis, to J. R. R. Tolkien, to G. K. Chesterton, to St. Thomas Aquinas and Cardinal Newman, and to Hilaire Belloc.

And the tough luck, but for my intellect still luck, to see the worst of the wrong people.

Anglo-Saxon Again

Old English - Spoken! · Anglo-Saxon Again

Can Germans understand Old English? | Language Challenge | Part 2 | Feat. @Simon Roper
Ecolinguist | 24 Nov. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve7JLIYnuD0

hwat doth we heo dæg - what do we do today?

I spelled it wrong, heodæg is one word (=heute)

sum mann wæs on hæfe (?)
some man was on the (?)

hæðe - I heard a v sound!

6:28 For Simon Roper - do you think "on" for "in" was a calque on the Latin usage where "in" means both, and also with accusative "into" and "onto"?

7:37 se heofon hæbt fremmedde bleow
Heaven has a strange wind(?)
There is a strange wind in the sky(?)

bleo = colour ! I had no idea of this word!

9:55 Is there a cognate for modern English "blow" that sounds similar?

11:58 The only thing I get is the not very topical "þu spriecst soðlice" = you speak truly

12:48 Who lives in that house?
Edward
The woodwork is rotted.
You speak truly, but he doesn't have enough ... wealth(?) .... woodland (?)
I can give part of my wood
You are very generous!

16:40 closest cognate for soþ is obviously "sooth."
Forsooth = truly.
Soothsayer = Wahrsager

16:54 I think I can detect a real cognate in German and Swedish.
"Gesund" in German, "sund" in Swedish - both mean sane or healthy.

And a "sane" word or a "healthy" word is one that serves the purpose of communicating truth.

17:39 No, it's not common to all West-Germanic, it is in fact Anglo-Frisian.

[Nasal + Fricative > Fricative with lengthening of previous vowel]

18:52 Count on a Swede to miss the even more obvious nd in "sand" - in Swedish it is spelled "sann!"

Reviewing Trey Smith - Genesis, Is it Real? First half of the video

Genesis: Is it Real?
Trey Smith, 25 Nov. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3CQtIWnx7c

12:21 I think your point about the atmosphere was, it had less Nitrogen comparative to Oxygen?

Nitrogen is what C14 is formed from.

That would be one thing that involved C14 adding up slower than today, especially if much of the carbon from then is also lost.

This is however not automatically the same thing as a lower initial proportion of C14 to C12 which is the actual reason why fossils from then date to 39000 years and older (except when contamination from Uranium make them look somewhat younger).

By contamination from Uranium I don't mean there are chunks or even atoms of Uranium in the bones, I mean that Uranium emitted neutrons that turned Carbon 12 into Carbon 14 (yes that is a process that exists too).

14:04 I think:

• elephants and mammoths are the same kind, so only one of the forms was on the ark
• the youngest mammoth bones are in fact way younger than this

However, for my theory to work, either no elephant bones would be dated prehistoric, or the ones that do would still be post-Flood, since developed from mammoths.

Unless, of course, Noah took one couple of each on the ark (or one of each in the couple).

22:36 "was a spoiled little rich kid and he was sent on the HMS Beagle" (omitting the obvious explanation)
"it was a little well to do rich kid with a degree in theology, he didn't have a degree in any science" (omitting the obvious forecast)
"he gets put on that ship by his family in other words, he was the only guy on the boat without a job and his family is trying to find something to do with him"

If having a "real job," and a "real relevant degree" matter so much to you, and if personal initiatives are "the family trying to find something to do with him" rather than himself finding something to do, are you a Christian?

I think the attitude as such is somewhat Nimrodian.

The Hebrews kept Hebrew, because they were the guys who didn't have a job on a certain Tower project.

The end days heros are the guys who, by not taking a mark, at least in one moment of the story, miss out on having - certainly an enterprise of their own, probably even a job, like some who refused a mask or a jab recently were likely to lose a job.

I think your attitude hails from some places in Brooklyn and when you trace it back a generation, from people who would not recognise Christ or His Blessed Mother as what they are, King and Queen of Heavenly Jerusalem.

There are lots of things one could say about Darwin, and just the other guy I said he was already a believer in Lyell who was already a Modernist Semi-Christian who was already combining Christianity of sorts with the ideology of a Deist at Siccar point. In other words, he was already anything but a Bible believer, he was already biassed against the Genesis account.

But stating he had no job is a lie. The expedition was a survey expedition, not a war one. Yes, exactly, Robert FitzRoy actually did want someone to do some kind of science - and back then that was as often amateurs as not. Probably wasn't even a university chair where he could have got a degree - much like the situation is for creationists in Europe, of which I am one.

"The second voyage of HMS Beagle, from 27 December 1831 to 2 October 1836, was the second survey expedition of HMS Beagle, under captain Robert FitzRoy who had taken over command of the ship on its first voyage after the previous captain, Pringle Stokes, committed suicide. FitzRoy had thought of the advantages of having someone onboard who could investigate geology, and sought a naturalist to accompany them as a supernumerary. At the age of 22, the graduate Charles Darwin hoped to see the tropics before becoming a parson and accepted the opportunity. He was greatly influenced by reading Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology during the voyage. By the end of the expedition, Darwin had made his name as a geologist and fossil collector and the publication of his journal (later known as The Voyage of the Beagle) gave him wide renown as a writer."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_voyage_of_HMS_Beagle

In the years preceding 1836, the article on Charles Darwin's education show no evidence of immediately preceding doldrums (there had been such back in his second year), and it's made clear he had mentors who were:

• Anglican clergymen (he was after all studying theology)
• and who were doing some geology and other stuff as a kind of sideline.

First John Stevens Henslow, then Adam Sedgwick.

In other words, his studies to become a CoE clergyman were running according to plan, and his scientific, if you will, training was part of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin's_education

It's an article that opens too gushy about how Biblical and Christian the background was, in fact it wasn't, but it gives a more accurate biography than yours.

Which seems to hail from money grabbers who resent people being born to a comfortable life. You know the kind who think "it's not good to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth" ...

29:36 Your claim sounded a bit nude. Not that I doubted it, but it has been said so often as a Creationist talking point, I am sure others would.

I actually calculated volume of earth, graphite of C14, so, volume of earth, times density of normal graphite (took the largest density), times a ratio of 7/6 because that's how much heavier C14 is than C12, then I played around with halflives and multiples of such.

In 595 920 years there is 0.852 598 784 g left, and that's rounding up from a bit more than 0.78 to 0.8 % left after 45 840 years, so, I rounded up this way 13 times to get that much.

And 0.85 g is 0.029 982 87 oz.

30:31 I wonder if this fact (if such) was presented to Yves Coppens was still alive. However, one of the team actually is still alive.

Have you tried contacting a 79 year old man called Donald Carl Johanson?

When I refuted Pascal Picq on language origin and partly Colin Renfrew on carbon dates, meaning he took them for granted, while I give a creationist calibration, I at least tried to contact them.

35:00 sth - spider goats can't raise their small ones on the milk, since the milk production produces spider silk instead ... somewhat gross if you think it through.

42:05 I know there are actual Enki worshippers in Paris.

Some suspect - I am among them - that the murder of Lola was a human sacrifice of Satanism (or if you prefer witchcraft).

After what I know about Babylonian mythology, Anu, Enlil and Enki are a horribily fake version of the Blessed Trinity.

Anu far off, retired.
Enlil angry, wanting - as you mentioned - less people.
Enki devious and wanting to save men from Enlil's wrath. But by means of deception.

I looked up "kingship descended from heaven" and couldn't find whether it was Enlil or Enki who was most connected or both equally.

But Enlil wanting less people and Enki being devious are not directly correct memories from before the Flood, they are in fact distorted theology about the Flood. Enlil sending the flood and Enki warning Utnapishtim. Instead of it being the same true God who both sent actual punishment and provided salvation for 8.

42:31 I think you are confusing Babylonian texts with Carthaginian and Chanaanean practises.

Child sacrifice of Chanaaneans seems to be getting admitted even by some archaeologists (people who when I studied tried to tell me both Bible texts and Livy's texts about Carthage were propaganda). But I don't think it was a Babylonian practise generally.

However, the pre-marital sacrifice of virginity was. While a Hebrew virgin was supposed to remain virgin to the marriage night, a Babylonian virgin seems to have been required by law to lose her virginity in an Ishtar temple before she was considered fit to marry.

0U8123MTA3

Interesting detail. Hebrew culture is a culture of honor. I have found no other culture that promotes honor like how it is written in biblical texts.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@0U8123MTA3 Well, Babylonian culture is also a culture of honour - it just has a very un-Christian sense of it.

44:40 Have you studied Greek tragedy?

I have, as a Classics student. Dito with the Aeneid.

If you look it up, you might find out, most of Greco-Roman myth happened, not before the Flood but (mostly just the centuries) before King David, and it contains no proof that Zeus or Poseidon was the real God, but plenty that whatever appearances they made were either human (Zeus was a Cretan king who banished his father to Italy) or demonic (Poseidon when he posed as father to Theseus - see Hippolytus).

And the scattered world of Greek sovereign city states just before Alexander wasn't the setting, but a more like heavily centralised Mycenaean Greece was.

45:11 Eridu is too late for Tower of Babel. Carbon dates 5000 BC and similar are just a generation or so before Abraham is born.

The real carbon date for Peleg's birth is 8600 BC, when a city in North West Mesopotamia, not far from a place in Turkey known as Çınar, in the province of Diyarbakır, which may have been conquered by Sargon, before he changed the name Akkad into Babilu, but even closer to a city known as Edessa, which has been cast as Ur Kasdim, was abandoned and deliberately covered with sand.

You know ... and they ceased to build the city. - Not exactly the fate of Eridu, but certainly that of Göbekli Tepe.

We can't study Nimrod's manners in writings from there, but other things give a clue. Heads cut off from bodies and stringed on ropes (after trepanation) seem to be a reminder that Nimrod was in fact cruel, and not just - in fact not - an esoteric.

Credits to Ken Griffith and Darrell K. White for Çınar, Diyarbakır. See "An Upper Mesopotamian location for Babel" in Journal of Creation 35(2):69–79, August 2021, and also on creation dot com.

Even if I think they were wrong to take it as the original Babel, rather than as an intermediate location between Nimrod's and Sargon's Babilus.

And even if they don't seem to want to credit me with the alternative theory of Göbekli Tepe.

Factuality of the Bible - answering Earnest Farr

Factuality of the Bible: answering Earnest Farr · Guestpost · answering Dick Harfield · Answer on Acts (to Dick Harfield)

Q

On what grounds have secularist historians concluded Pentateuch, Ruth, Daniel, Esther, and Acts are not factual?
https://www.quora.com/On-what-grounds-have-secularist-historians-concluded-Pentateuch-Ruth-Daniel-Esther-and-Acts-are-not-factual/answer/Earnest-Farr

Earnest Farr

Wed (23.XI.2022)

They are secular historians. There’s no such thing as a secularist.

The evidence you are asking for cannot be provided to you in a Quora post. Entire books are written about the evidence demonstrating that these books are not literal/historical.

That said, there are common types of evidence that historians take into account.

Conformity with known fact

We know certain things about the world. We know our planet is billions of years old. We know species evolved from a common ancestor. We know there was never a global flood. We know the Hebrew tribes did not develop into a settled, literate polity with a bureaucratic administration until after the 14th century BCE. We know there was no captivity and exodus from Egypt or conquest of Canaan.

This is the low-hanging fruit. If a text contradicts known fact, well, that’s that.

Conformity with parallel sources

In some cases, it’s possible to locate Biblical stories within a wider context of tales and legends. A few examples:

• The two creation stories in Genesis parallel Egyptian creation stories in which Egyptian gods create humans out of clay and speak the world into existence.
• There are other Ancient Near Eastern myths telling how a god created humans for labor (in one of the two Genesis accounts, humans are created to till the ground in the garden of the gods) but things go wrong and the humans turn out to be ungovernable.
• The epic of Gilgamesh also has a flood narrative with the character Utnapishtim in the role of Noah.
• The story of Moses in the basket retells the legend of Sargon of Akkad.
• Within the Hebrew texts, Israelite criticisms of Solomon rehash the story of Pharaoh and the Israelites from Exodus, and the account of the Benjaminite civil war rehashes the story of Sodom.
• Within the Christian texts, Acts often disagrees with Paul’s letters about what he did and said and believed and where he went and with whom.

Anachronisms

Many ancient texts purport to be much older than they are. But they never get the past quite right. They use placenames that did not exist in the claimed time of authorship, for example, or mention technology that didn’t exist or social groups, conventions, or customs that hadn’t yet developed.

Religious, political, and social issues

Suppose someone were to produce a text which they claimed was from the 1700s, let’s say a set of letters debating the adoption of the Second Amendment. Yet there’s no mention of the issues of the day, such as federalism and abuse of standing armies. Instead, all the issues are modern ones such as home defense and rights granted by the Fourteenth Amendment. We would know these could not be authentic.

The same is true of ancient texts. In the story of Noah, for example, we can tell that two different accounts have been merged together, because all the events happen twice. In one story, Noah takes 7 of all the clean animals so he can offer sacrifice after the flood. In the other, he takes two and offers no sacrifice. That latter version was a rewrite of the former, merged in a later time, because the Temple priesthood purged the scriptures of all mention of sacrifice to Yahweh prior to the building of the Temple.

This is why the Bible contains three different accounts of the rise of Saul and two irreconcilable accounts of how David joined Saul’s court. Most of the contradictions in the Bible can be traced to differences in theocratic politics among the priestly factions who wrote the varying accounts which were later merged into a single scroll, or which are preserved in separate scrolls.

Linguistics

Language and writing evolve over time. It’s easy to distinguish between, say, texts composed in the mid 1700s, mid 1800s, and mid 1900s without reference to content, just by vocabulary and syntax, and in the case of manuscripts, handwriting and fonts and ink and such. The same is true with Biblical texts. We now have extensive knowledge of the stages of Classic Biblical Hebrew, for example.

Using tools such as these, combined with archaeology and other realms of historical inquiry, it’s possible to tease out a good deal of information about these ancient texts. There are still scads of questions. We aren’t always sure if a text or a section of a text is unitary or composite, for example, and possible dates of composition can span generations. We don’t always know what’s original and what’s been edited. But there’s a lot we do know.

And it’s not as simple as declaring a scroll or a book to be fact or fiction. The law codes in the Pentateuch, for instance, are actual law codes. There was probably a historical Moses and a historical Aaron, but they did almost nothing described in the Biblical texts. Esther and Ruth, and Daniel on the other hand, appear to be fictional heroes.

All this is very complex, and if you want to answer your own question you are free to actually read the secular scholarship. But you must read it with an open mind. If you have decided in advance that you don’t accept it and you’re only looking to argue with it, then you might as well save yourself the time.

I

Hans-Georg Lundahl

25.XI.2022

General

"They are secular historians. There’s no such thing as a secularist."

Already false. A devout Catholic like Don John of Austria was a secular lord, and a devout Catholic like Pope St. Pius V who prayed for him was a spiritual or clerical lord. Neither was a secularist.

Voltaire was a secularist and he wanted secular lordships to be separated from the Church as much as from Islam. And [the Church] in practise humiliated, in France.

The counterpart in sciences is one that wants the Catholic dogma (and other religious dogmas identified by him as such) left out of the equation, and in practise contradicted.

"The evidence you are asking for cannot be provided to you in a Quora post. Entire books are written about the evidence demonstrating that these books are not literal/historical."

There is actually no evidence demonstrating it was not literal, even on your view. You would be meaning, the evidence demonstrates it is literally false - but it is still clearly literally meant.

Conformity with known fact.

"We know our planet is billions of years old.
"We know species evolved from a common ancestor.
"We know there was never a global flood."

So far that would, if correct, rule out just first eleven chapters of Genesis.

"We know the Hebrew tribes did not develop into a settled, literate polity with a bureaucratic administration until after the 14th century BCE."

In and of itself irrelevant. This is common ground with what the Bible says.

"We know there was no captivity and exodus from Egypt or conquest of Canaan."

OK, that would by now (if true) make the Pentateuch not factual. So far nothing of Ruth, Daniel, Esther and Acts.

"If a text contradicts known fact, well, that’s that."

Well, the problem is, you are not specifying on what grounds the things you call "known fact" are supposed to be that.

Conformity with parallel sources.

"possible to locate Biblical stories within a wider context of tales and legends."

The heading you gave actually usually implies truth because more than one source claims so. Interesting that you pretend to use it as argument for falsehood.

According to the Bible, Egyptians and Babylonians also descend from Noah who descended from Adam, so it would make sense they had access to the information, and didn't ditch all of it when becoming idolaters / polytheists.

"parallel Egyptian creation stories in which Egyptian gods create humans out of clay and speak the world into existence."

What papyrus?

"in one of the two Genesis accounts, humans are created to till the ground in the garden of the gods"

No, the two accounts of creation involve NO tilling of the ground in Genesis. You confuse that with Babylonian myth, landing straight between both and the account of the fall.

"The epic of Gilgamesh also has a flood narrative with the character Utnapishtim in the role of Noah."

Indeed. That's one of the items we Creationists use as argument FOR the historicity of the Flood.

"The story of Moses in the basket retells the legend of Sargon of Akkad."

Or the reverse. Or - what I think more likely - first Satan saved Sargon in one basket and then God saved Moses in another one.

"Israelite criticisms of Solomon rehash the story of Pharaoh"
"Benjaminite civil war rehashes the story of Sodom."

Or similar evils happened more than once over time ...

"Acts often disagrees with Paul’s letters about what he did and said and believed and where he went and with whom."

I think all the pretended disagreements can be accounted for, and most already have been accounted for - feel free to give your favourite example of this.

Anachronisms

"They use placenames that did not exist in the claimed time of authorship"

I think Moses authoried the Cohanim to update the placenames.

"or mention technology that didn’t exist"

Like?

My favourite example would be riding horses for battle. Assyrians rode from 800 BC on. But how much earlier than that Persians and Israelites were riding horses is not clear. One could also think David’s horsemen were riding onagers to battle and dismounting just before the fight.

"or social groups, conventions, or customs that hadn’t yet developed."

Much harder than previous to make even a case for.

"we can tell that two different accounts have been merged together, because all the events happen twice. In one story, Noah takes 7 of all the clean animals so he can offer sacrifice after the flood. In the other, he takes two and offers no sacrifice."

The fact is, there are no two parallel accounts of coming out of the ark and sacrificing (or not).

The 7 or one pair can be explained like this:

God said "one pair" when explaining what dimensions Noah was going to build. The clean animals being a clear minority of landwalking or flying creatures, the seven of each clean would make no difference.

God said "one pair and seven of each clean" when explaining how Noah was to immediately prepare for going in.

In general for this type of argument:

"Yet there’s no mention of the issues of the day, such as federalism and abuse of standing armies. Instead, all the issues are modern ones such as home defense and rights granted by the Fourteenth Amendment."

This can be much more safely done with modern history, since we have good sources already for the times of second and fourteenth amendments.

When you apply this kind of method to very ancient history, you are guessing that clean animals (in the temple) were not yet an issue in Moses' time (or time of his purported existence) but became so only later.

Linguistics

"It’s easy to distinguish between, say, texts composed in the mid 1700s, mid 1800s, and mid 1900s without reference to content, just by vocabulary and syntax,"

Excepting the very obvious exception of deliberate old fashioned ones. Would you have placed Tolkien's prose in the mid 1900's without knowing the fact?

Again, a thing much safer to try (unlike phonology and morphology) for periods where you actually have some abundance of undisputed reference material of undisputed age. Not the case for the linguists playing this game with the Bible against its historicity.

"We don’t always know what’s original and what’s been edited."

A good reason not to take the linguistic shape of a book as evidence against the early redaction.

If I cite a Swedish poem in the spelling "Där växte uti Hildings gård" for first line (or halfline), this would put the redaction after 1870's. In fact the original spelling is "Der vexte uti Hildings gård" but the poem is popular and I read it first in updated spelling. Frithiofs saga was edited as one book with complete text in 1825 and first parts to appear in public started in 1820. Tegnér died 1846.

General again

"And it’s not as simple as declaring a scroll or a book to be fact or fiction. ... All this is very complex, and if you want to answer your own question you are free to actually read the secular scholarship."

Saying "it's not as simple" equates to pleading "please excuse the fudge factors!"

II

Hans-Georg Lundahl

29.XI.2022

St. Andrew's Vigil

I think I actually answered your answer to my question on November 25 … at least, when I copied your answer, I copied my comment under it too:

[+ link to this post]

Earnest Farr

29.XI.2022

Vigil of St. Andrew

You have plagiarized my post. Remove it immediately. If you do not, I will report you to your web host, which can result in your site being shut down. (And no, reposting my writing for the purpose of arguing with me is not fair use.) This is your official notice to remove my creative property from your site. You will not be notified again. If the content is still up tomorrow, I will report you.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

30.XI.2022

St. Andrew's Day

I think it is fair use.

It is also journalism - I am showing off how my intellectual opponents argue.

So did the Gospellers with the Pharisees, and Plato with the opponents of Socrates, including Gorgias.

While I am definitely not on the quora partners programme, you have already signed that anyone on that one can use your material freely. Shows you do not really value your creative property.

Earnest Farr

30.XI.2022

St. Andrew's Day

You are wrong. That is not the law. You are violating the law.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

30.XI.2022

St. Andrew's Day

Let’s take the quantity part of “fair use” first.

No more than ten % of your work quoted.
No more than ten % of my work being a quote.

Here are the word counts for your answer, and the word counts for my four-post-work, prior to these updates:

Eamonn Farr (initial) 905 words
All four posts 12 552 words

Here are the character counts:

Eamonn Farr (initial) 5373 characters
All four posts 73 799 characters

On both accounts, I fulfill the requirement of non more than ten % of my work being a quote from you.

Now what about the other ten % requirement?

First, it would be immoral to apply when it comes to refutation. If I can only quote ten % of sth I refute, I may have only refuted ten % of it.

Second, this is only so, if the thing I refute is an entire and separate work of yours. Is your answer to this question a separate work? If so, I have taken ten times more than I could legally do, but on the other hand, I had a moral right to it in the interest of refutation.

Or is this very small piece of text if you compare it to books and booklets more like a part of your work? For instance, what % is it of your 5.2 K answers on quora?

So much for the legal part. Unless you are doing sth illegal by impersonating someone else and making him or her look bad by arguing badly. I am not.

Now, a bit more on morals.

I posed the question you answered.
I posed it in the direct intention of debating and refuting .

I also did so on Friday, Day of St. Catherine, 25th of November. By posting a comment under your answer. Then I copied both your answer and my comment, my answer to your answer, to my blog.

It is not monetised. You cannot complain about me getting money for text that you have copyright to.

Hence, your only concern is, I am making your answer available on a platform where it is also given my refutation.

Both Quora and my blog are publically accessible. Even if the comments under your answer are only accessible after logging in, given the number of Quora users, that’s public.

So, you want to have your answer accessible without my refutation so badly you delete my comment.

And threaten to take legal action if I don’t delete both on my blog.

As far as good manners go, that pretty much sucks.