Quora Prevents Questions About the Mother of Preston Davey

New blog on the kid: Preston's Death · Should Amy Shepherdson Stand Trial? · Preston Davey Case · Thanks to Nordfront, I Hear Preston's "adoptive dads" will do gaol · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Quora Prevents Questions About the Mother of Preston Davey

I tried to add this question:

Who Knows Who the Mother of Preston Davey Is, and Why She Was Set Aside?

I do not get it published, but when I push the button, I get:

This question should be more general. Try starting your question with 'What is...', 'How do I...' or 'Why does..

Where is Jeremy Sherman from?

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Jeremy Sherman Rambles Without a Due Look on Ultimates · Where is Jeremy Sherman from? · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl: With Jeremy Sherman PhD

Q, A I

What is the PhD of Jeremy Sherman, and from what university?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-PhD-of-Jeremy-Sherman-and-from-what-university/answer/James-Leland-Harp

Answer requested by

Hans-Georg Lundahl

James Leland Harp

UC Berkeley grad, Stanford alum, Harvard fellow, former professor and director

Thu 25.IV.2024

St. Mark

A2A. What is the PhD of Jeremy Sherman, and from what university

According to Jeremy Sherman LinkedIn account, he got his PhD in Decision Science from Union Institute and University in 2021. See

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyshermanphd/details/education/

For more information about Union Institute and University, see

Discover the Union Difference
https://myunion.edu

St. Mark

Thu 25.IV.2024

Hans-Georg Lundahl

1. What is “Decision Science”?
2. Is not Union Institute heavily focussed on teaching “modern” subjects like “leadership” or “social justice” or teaching in California (while the campus is in Ohio)?

Fri 26.IV.2024

James Leland Harp

Why don’t create a LinkedIn account and message Jeremy for details about “decision science”? He would be the right person to explain his dissertation.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I actually have one, and I accessed his profile.

• Union Institute & University Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Decision Science janv. 1998 - 2021
  https://www.linkedin.com/school/myunionedu/
  
  
• University of California, Berkeley Masters, Public Policy Analysis sept. 1993 - juin 1995
  https://www.linkedin.com/school/uc-berkeley/
  
  
• U.C. BerkeleyBachelor's degree, Social Sciences 1981 - 1984
  https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?keywords=U.C.%20Berkeley&sid=Cgp
  
  Niveau : 3.9 I went general, with classes in political science, economics, journalism, history, psychology, sociology, biology and the hard sciences.

Thank you. I think this was helpful, I tried to see his linkedin yesterday, and the extention was stopping his page from showing, I thought he had deleted it. Well, technically, probably not “the extension” as such, but a few characters after the last slash

Q, A II

What is the PhD of Jeremy Sherman, and from what university? https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-PhD-of-Jeremy-Sherman-and-from-what-university/answer/Joshua-Gross-8

Answer requested by

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Joshua Gross

Associate Professor of Computer Science at CSUMB

26.IV.2024

Our Lady of Good Counsel

I assume you’re speaking of this guy:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyshermanphd/

His PhD is from the soon-to-be-defunct online institution Union Institute and University.[1] They stopped offering coursework in Fall of 2023 and seem to have no plans or resources necessary to open. They have been evicted from their headquarters and cannot receive federal financial aid. They have apparently put teach-out programs in place. That’s the last step.

This is not to say that he’s some sort of fraud or didn’t receive a solid education. He does not have any formal qualification in psychology, although that’s a bit confusing:

But…

I don’t say this to disparage him. I find myself in a similar situation, since none of my degrees is in computer science. He may be a fantastic life coach. A formal credential in psychology is not necessary to be a life coach, and it’s not the only way to learn the relevant literature/information.

Footnotes

[1] Union Institute & University - Wikipedia

Sat. 27.IV.2024

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Thank you very much.

In other words, he’s basically trying to be a life coach, rather than for instance do metaphysics or theory of knowledge or theory of science?

I mean overall, as opposed to individual items on his internet output.

Mon. 29.IV.2024

Joshua Gross

From what I can tell, he has a number of sources of income and has held a lot of different careers. If his general content is geared toward big-picture stuff, that makes sense; his writing and YouTube are likely to just be a hobby, and we all want to think big thoughts when we can. He’s probably not making any money from it.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

OK.

The problem is, I interacted with that, on basically big picture debate conditions, and he switched to life coach mode, when I complained of being censored.

Ages or Names Symbolic?

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Ussher III · Φιλολoγικά / Philologica: Numeric Symbolism in Genesis 5 Patriarchs? · HGL'S F.B. WRITINGS: Number Symbolism in Genesis 5? · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Ages or Names Symbolic?

My Question

Are Orthodox Jews saying Patriarcal Ages in Genesis 5 and 11 have number symbolism?
https://www.quora.com/Are-Orthodox-Jews-saying-Patriarcal-Ages-in-Genesis-5-and-11-have-number-symbolism

Answer I

Al Berko

Completely Jewish

Aug 27

Technically, they have to. For many different reasons:

1. Truthfulness: Today’s criteria for the truthfulness of claims are very different from the ancient world - we know sciences and we don’t like to be BS-ed. While the Rabbinic tradition is pretty much literalistic, once they confront reasoning and common sense they resort to Biblical metaphorism.
2. Gnostic tradition: If you read the Torah back to back unbiasedly, you will very quickly realize how dull, primitive, philosophically and theologically shallow it is, especially after the Exodus story. Rabbis already realized that in the 2nd century BCE, so they adopted the Gnostic approach of presenting the Torah as codes and metaphors of “deep divine secrets”. Philo was probably the first written source of such an approach to the scripture.
3. Greek numerology: Rabbis loved cracking numbers and numerology (aka Heb. Gematria=”Gamma means three”) and applied it extensively for interpreting the text. Unfortunately, Rabbinic mathematics didn’t develop beyond basic arithmetic.

Practically, most Orthodox skip this part altogether as meaningless. Pre-Abrahamic stories have no Halachic (law-pertaining) value, so they don’t bother the followers of Rabbinic Judaism too much.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Aug 28 2023

Oh, thank you.

That was very enlightening.

“Pre-Abrahamic stories have no Halachic (law-pertaining) value, so they don’t bother the followers of Rabbinic Judaism too much.”

A solution which is not open to Catholics, obviously (II Tim 3:16 and Trent Session IV).

I take it you don’t know of any specific number symbolisms commonly or even less commonly used?

One more … Genesis 14, being Abrahamic, and having Halachic value is strictly taken as historical, right?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Aug 28 2023

“Philo was probably the first written source of such an approach to the scripture.”

Does he give any specific symbolism for the patriarcal ages in Genesis 5 or 11?

Answer II

Yehoshua Feigon

Translator and Language Coach; Kosher Food Manager

Wed 30.VIII.2023

The ages may or may not, but some of the names do. Isaac in Hebrew (יצחק) has an exact numerical value of 208, 8 times the value of the Divine name (26). His son Jacob’s name (יעקב) has a numerical value of precisely 182, 7 times the value of the Divine name. His son Joseph’s name (יוסף) has a numerical value of 156, exactly 6 times the value of the Divine name.

With regard to the ages themselves: we are told that Abraham passed away early, to spare him seeing the apostasy of his grandson Esau, and we are told that Jacob’s lifespan was reduced by one year for every word of complaint that he made to Pharaoh. I don’t know if this is helpful.

While he didn't allow me to comment, it was in fact very helpful. No, there is no Jewish tradition that we Christian Fundamentalists miss out on, about patriarcal ages having a purely symbolic value.

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]

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.

Quora Consulted on Matthew 6:7 Early Translations of βαττο-λογέω

Own Q

In Matthew 6:7, the Greek word is battologein, a hapax, and the Latin word is "multum loqui". What is the Syriac translation, and what does it mean in English?
https://www.quora.com/In-Matthew-6-7-the-Greek-word-is-battologein-a-hapax-and-the-Latin-word-is-multum-loqui-What-is-the-Syriac-translation-and-what-does-it-mean-in-English

Answer 1

the one answer now directly shown, since "answer 2" had already been collapsed ...

Chad Turner

PhD in Latin and Greek

Answered 18h ago

According to this

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon : βαττο-λογέω
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dbattologe%2Fw

it means to stammer or say the same thing over and over again. I’m not sure how one goes from that to multum loqui (“speak a lot” vel sim.) in Latin.

I

Hans-Georg Lundahl

10m ago

It is a hapax, or a duax.

I’d love to check the context in the one other ancient context // Simp. in Epict.p.91D. // - do you know what work it is?

Someone “in Epictetum”?

Battein, we know from many places it means simply stammer. And someone who stammers does not say the same thing over and over again, but pronounce the same syllable or specifically consonant over and over again. Which has more to do with nervousness than with repetitive insistance.

The translation offered by Liddell / Scott alternative to stammer is perhaps conditioned by their view of Matthew 6:7 which did not take other ancient translations but more like King James into account.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

4m ago

Trying to check, I find Salmasius in Epictetum et Simplicium … but I do not find the actual word “battologein” (given as reference by Liddell / Scott) on page 91.

Cl. Salmasii Notae et animadversiones in Epictetum et simplicium
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1518954s/f197.image

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

Ah, it would be page 91 of an edition of Simplicius: On Epictetus by

Simplicius of Cilicia - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplicius_of_Cilicia

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

This makes Vulgate and Syriac translations older and better references to the Greek usage in Matthew 6:7 than Simplicius is, c. 490 – c. 560.

II

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

I would like to add sth which clinches the correctness of “speak a lot”

And when you are praying, speak not much, as the heathens. For they think that in their much speaking they may be heard.

Douay Rheims, from Vulgate. The point is, “as the heathens”.

We know from St. Luke that Christ started preaching in the 16th year of Tiberius and we do have a heathen prayer at the very end of Velleius Paterculus, which Roman History earlier on mentions Tiberius as having ruled for 16 years.

The Greek would mean sth like “speak as nervously as someone stammering” and one way of doing that is speaking a lot - trying to express the exact same sentiment in different words, hoping one of the gods at least shall be able to relate to one of the wordings at least. That’s the hope of a nervous person who in a comic book might be lampooned as stammering.

Answer 2

hidden, while it is in fact a more informative one:

Michael Abernathy

former Minister (1974-2005)

Answered 20h ago

The word in Syriac is mppqyn. It means stammer.

I

Hans-Georg Lundahl

19h ago

Thank you - like Greek battein, then?

II

Hans-Georg Lundahl

19h ago

Just a curiosity - your answer seems to have been collapsed as “needing improvement” while to me it seems perfectly adequate.

Do you think there is an autmatic thing because it was short, or do you think some Protestant of a certain type would have wanted it to mean “repeat”?

Michael Abernathy

Original Author

16h ago

I have no clue.

[1 upvote from Hans-Georg Lundahl/from me]

Hans-Georg Lundahl

52m ago

That said, I forgot to ask Coptic, do you know that one too?

Updated:

Michael Abernathy

Original Author

20h ago

Sorry, I never got around to learning Coptic.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

OK, thank you anyway!

Quora : "Not Posted Public."

Q

What does "not posted publicly" mean?
https://www.quora.com/What-does-not-posted-publicly-mean/answer/Milena-Rakic

My Question!

Therefore, someone else's answer.

Context

What was hygiene like in the Middle Ages?
https://www.quora.com/What-was-hygiene-like-in-the-Middle-Ages/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Milena Rakic

Ec.S. Bookkeeping & English as a Foreign Language (2014)

Answered 2h ago

It means that what ever you have shared on any social media is not shared for everyone to see, but it’s meant for the people you chose to see.

For example: FB have those kind of restrictions, they are set by you, and if you chose for some people to see something you posted, at the same time, others can not see the same thing. But, if you chose ‘post publicly’ that’s for everyone to see, not just your friends, but everyone that is not even your friend, can and will see it if it’s publicly shared.

Answered twice

On I and II

I

Hans-Georg Lundahl

2h ago

This is certainly so on FB, and I regularly get offers on updating the default position of sharing everything publically which I share on the wall.

But I got “not posted publically” under my answer without having been given such a choice.

Are you aware your own answer is marked “not posted publically”? I discovered this “not posted publically” first time today and under the post of a friend who arguably had wanted to post publically and when asked did not know what it meant.

Claire-Edith de la Croix

21m ago

Where do you see this?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

4m ago

I saw it under the own answer previously, and still do.

Here near top of this post is a screen shot where it is under another answer of mine:

Phil Stilwell Gets Remedial Philosophy (quora)
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.fr/2017/09/phil-stilwell-gets-remedial-philosophy.html

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

If you mean under her answer, it is gone, she was able to edit settings.

No, it is there.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

It actually went away as soon as I had voted “helpful”.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

I actually could post my own publically too, by voting “helpful” - check link.

II

Hans-Georg Lundahl

31m ago

I found a similar tag from a few days ago, and I found I could not edit it when trying.

I had posted it as public, it remained, incorrectly, tagged as “Not posted publicly.”

How about you? Can you change setting of your answer to posted publically?

How should it look when the decision is working? When you decide whether it is public, for friends onl or completely private for your eyes only:

... on Identity of Hagiographers, Other answers and my replies to them (quora)

... on Identity of Authors of the Bible, the Hagiographers (quora, own answer to own q) · ... on Identity of Hagiographers, Debate under my Answer · ... on Identity of Hagiographers, Other answers and my replies to them (quora)

Q

once again:

Who are the authors of the Bible?
https://www.quora.com/Who-are-the-authors-of-the-Bible

I

Roy McLean Jr

studied Bible Truths at Theocratic Ministry School

Answered 5h ago

2 Timothy 3:16,17

Can Anyone Know Who Really Wrote the Bible? | Bible Questions
https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/who-wrote-the-bible/

Hans-Georg Lundahl

4h ago

The problem is this is not a detailed going through of the 40 human authors, but thank you anyway!

II

Jane Upping

Full time everything. (1970-present)

Answered 5h ago

There were about 40 human writers of the books that make up the bible canon … but only ONE author.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

4h ago

I was asking about the human writers.

They were more or less also authors, St Luke for instance more than Isaias, and Moses more in Genesis than in the Exodus chapters beginning “and God spoke to Moses and said”.

My question was a copy of a similar question on French quora, where a Muslim had pretended there were two authors, Moses and Jesus, both of whom had had the texts distorted.

So, I wanted my own reply on this question, but since the Haydock online commentary is in English, I needed the answer in English.

Aside that, you are right, of course.

III

David Osofsky

works at IBM

Answered 5h ago

Since before the internet, one of the best sources for information has been The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams. Some questions can be quite trivial, such as “What university did Bullwinkle go to?”, while others are quite informative. In 2002, he assigned his elves a deeper question to research and that was “Who wrote the Bible?”.

They gave an excellent 5-part answer that you can find here:

Who wrote the Bible? (Part 1) This in turn links to parts 2–5.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1985/who-wrote-the-bible-part-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

[commenting on the link given]

4h ago

I am taking the traditional view.*

Here is a little mistake in it:

“Mosaic authorship would mean the five books were written around 1280 to 1250 BC, the most commonly accepted range of dates for the exodus from Egypt, give or take 30 years.”

Er, no. Exodus was in 1510 BC.

But I like the reading anyway, so thanks!

Hans-Georg Lundahl

4h ago

“ Religious tradition holds that this book was written mostly by Samuel, the last Judge, around 1000 BC. The scholarly view is that many of the stories are older”

I take it Samuel had to Judges a similar relation as Moses to Genesis : final redactor of a long collaborative and cumulative work, not unlike Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

4h ago

Here he is skipping the previous equilibrium between “traditionalist” and “scholarly”* view:

“The first generation of Christians didn't see any need for a permanent written record of the sayings and stories of Jesus. Jesus' return and the restoration of the Kingdom of God on earth were imminent — why bother preserving stories if the world was about to end?”

False.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

4h ago

Here we get to choice of books, to canon:

“Today, there is considerable disagreement about the importance of the rabbinic school at Jamnia in the canonization of the Hebrew Bible. The process certainly began long before, and there is no doubt that some sections (like most of Prophets) were closed and accepted as canonical by the second century BC — the writings of the grandson of Ben Sirah, around 130 BC, clearly mention the Law, Prophets, and other writings as the divisions of sacred text. The school at Jamnia may have done little more than formalize decisions made long before, rejecting "newer" books such as the Book of Maccabees, despite the popularity of the holiday of Hanukkah that it commemorated.

“Jamnia didn't settle matters once and for all. It's known that texts with slight variations persisted until the second century AD, such as the Septuagint and the Samaritan versions.”

I would say, first of all, Jamnia was not concerned with either Samaritan version, since it belonged to the Samaritan sect which rejected books after Torah, Joshua and Judges, nor with Septuagint which was accepted by Christians and rejected by those at Jamnia.

In other words, while Jamnia is decisive for Rabbinic Judaism, it is not so for Catholic Christianity. Protestantism is a mishmash between the two.

IV

Daz Lovegrove

Used to be a sunday school teacher now i have seen through monothiesm

Answered 6h ago

the Bible has multiple authors and has stolen from at least a dozen different civilizations. We all know however who edited it, and that was the Vatican via the Council of Nicea

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

You got exactly one thing right : humanly speaking, it has multiple authors.

The council of Nicea did not edit the Bible.

The Bible is not fiction under copyright from other civilisations.

The Vatican was not alone in deciding canon, but several local councils interacted.

The decision of canon was nothing like an editing of internal content of any one book.

Saverio Sciacca

5h ago

Greetings Daz,

Keeping it light:

Monotheism was achieved by the Canaanite Clergy, who became the Judaic Clergy, by dropping Canaanite Father EL, as in IsraEL & 69 of the Elohim Siblings anointing & giving Elohe YHWH; Yahweh the apotheosis after 456BC in Jerusalem, by non other than red hot zealot Ezra 480/440BC sequestering his few souls into their 1st Ghetto to rekindle Shem tribalism, with Semites only speaking only Hebrew worshiping only YHWH, he succeeded!

The 1st two books of Mose:

Genesis is thievery in its entirety from the Sumerian Eridu (Genesis) written c. 3350BC.

Exodus is taken from the exodus of Babylonian freedom in 536BC for those, who wanted to travel to Canaanite Shalim; not knowing it had been renamed by the Arameans in 550BC to Jerusalem; He casts Peace. It ain’t called Jerushalom, now is it? The Clergy set retroactively to 1250BC with Pharaoh Ramses II, solely for the drama & lime light of sharing space & carbon with the greatest of all Pharaohs!

The other 3 books of Mose? Who cares, with the 1st two as Chutzpah!

Nothing of whatever was written about was of a Judaic experience, all taken from the Sumerian, Akkad, Canaanite & Egyptian culture, religion & history!

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

How about Primeval Human experience, better preserved among Hebrews than among e g Sumerians?**

V

Emile De Favas

Answered 4h ago

Some palestinian shepherds, who collected the knowledge of their time. It then has been added with writing from many sources, and translated many times.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

Collected the knowledge of their time?

Where in the Bible do you find descriptions of how to forge a sword or to build a house or to even graze your flocks? Presumably that too was knowledge of their times.

Apart from that, your answer is fairly bland, except what can be guessed about what you really mean by certain phrases. (Like, “their knowledge” = perhaps = “not accurate” etc).

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

A bonus point for Palestinian, anyway!

Notes:

* Quoting Straight dope on part one, for "traditional" and "scholarly" views:

How did these books come to be written? There's a wide range of opinion. We'll only present the two most commonly held views — what we'll call the "traditional view" and the "scholarly view." This is perhaps misleading terminology, since there are many profound scholars on both sides. We use the term "scholarly" in the sense of "academic" or "scientific", although neither of those terms are right, either. Perhaps the best term is "documentarist", but that's cumbersome. So we shall stick to "traditional" and "scholarly", without implying lack of scholarship on the other side.

Thank you! Without implying lack of scholarship on the other side!

One could also have called the scholarly the "antitraditional". Since that is where that kind of scholarship goes to.

** Really, for today, I am tired and Saverio did more mistakes, but comments on these can be added tomorrow!