Egyptian record keeping and the Exodus (priest, ritual, moral, Moses)

[greatcalgarian]

Originally Posted by MdmSzdWhtGuy

My post above was in response to a previous poster who claimed, as evidence of Noah's Flood, that there were stories from multiple cultures of a great flood.

If there were a Biblical Flood, then all these other author's the previous poster was referring to, would have been drowned. I was not referring to, in any way, how Moses came up with the idea for the Flood.

B.

Frubals to you. On one hand, only Noah family was left, and on the other 'evidence' of global flood from multiple cultures. They want both end to themselves

I offer another explanation. All the other culture telling about the global flood are also inspired by God, same as Moses. But their story does not carry weight, as they are not God selected people

[greatcalgarian]

Originally Posted by Buttons*

how do you KNOW christ existed?

Try these:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html

And the great work of Albert Schweitzer:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/

Or the more recent work by Earl Doherty:
http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/home.htm

[dan]

Originally Posted by Jayhawker Soule

While it is an interesting question, it is also off topic. While there is little or no evidence for an historical Jesus, the arguments against such a character are arguments from absense. The Exodus is a far different matter, where there is an ever increasing amount of evidence against the Biblical narrative.

Mention is continually made of this "ever increasing amount of evidence," and occasionally a vague reference is actually made to some content, but none of this evidence is ever produced. Please provide this evidence.

[dan]

Originally Posted by MdmSzdWhtGuy

Ahh, where to start. . .

First with Christ. Frankly there is not much evidence for an historical Christ, tho, there is no real evidence against such a historical figure having lived either, so I will leave this one alone.

Second point. The flood. If the Biblical story of the flood is to be beleived then Noah and his family were the only humans left alive on Earth. So if Noah and his progeny are the only ones left who was writing all these stories of floods? Besides the MYRIAD of reasons why a global flood did not and could not have happened, how do you answer this very simple problem?

Third point - that society accepts the Bible without any evidence to support it, therefore we should accept it as well? Please google logical fallacies.

First point - There is much evidence that a man named Christ lived. I have some non-Christian texts that were contemporaries of Christ that make mention of a wise man named Jesus. There is a pot making mention of him and his brother (in Aramaic). There is plenty of evidence.

Second point - When the flood abated the people left and inhabited the world. Most did not stay true to God, and many different cultures, philosophies, languages and religions spring from this. These other stories are only perversions from the original. Many studies have been undertaken to explain why all languages seem to trace to identical roots from different isolated groups from different corners of the earth. Two explanations exist regarding how this is possible. One is that the same ideas on language simultaneously sponteneously were created. This is kinda dumb. The other is that they all came from the same language. The same is true of the flood story.

Third point - There is much evidence for the Bible. I can produce some if requested, but there's no time or room for me to start down that road right now. The things that lack evidence are the miracles found therein. I don't make the mistake that many people do in trying to explain how miracles happen, I only offer this point - to deny the actuality of miracles on the grounds that they cannot be explained is to arrogate omniscience to the human mind by saying, "What we cannot comprehend cannot be, ergo, we comprehend all." Don't be among the millions of pseudo-intellectuals that make this claim.

[MidnightBlue]

Originally Posted by dan

I invite the cynics to debate the evidence I will shortly provide. As a side note - I call you "skeptics" cynics because I don't believe you're skeptical of anything at all.

This is where I stopped reading the OP.

[MidnightBlue]

Originally Posted by dan

I didn't edit anything. I pasted that in one lump. I chose the four arguments he made against Dever and pasted them. I expected anyone interested to simply google a sentence from the quote to find the saource. I wasn't trying to pawn off anything as my own.

Not only that, but you missed the point of what you were copying.

[MidnightBlue]

Originally Posted by dan

Your strongest argument is ad hominem. You make fun of people rather than engage them in debate. The entire article would have been too lengthy to paste, so I chose from the beginning of the relevant argument to the end. You then accuse me of intentionally leaving out an entirely seperate argument, saying I edited it on purpose. I did no such thing, and now you try to make me look stupid so you can feel like you've won. This is high school behavior. Present your argument and stop there, unless this is more about breastfeeding your ego than intelligent debate.

By the way, where in my statements have I made a derogatory statement about your character?

Official nominee for the 2006 Anna Anderson Memorial Award for Lack of Self-Awareness.

[Jayhawker Soule]

Originally Posted by dan

Mention is continually made of this "ever increasing amount of evidence," and occasionally a vague reference is actually made to some content, but none of this evidence is ever produced. Please provide this evidence.

For example ...

Early Bronze Jericho: High-Precision 14C Dates of Short-Lived Palaeobotanic Remains

Hendrik J. Bruins and Johannes van der Plicht

Reliable series of high-precision radiocarbon dates in a stratified archaeological context are of great importance for interdisciplinary chronological and historical studies. The Early Bronze Age in the Near East is characterized by the beginning of the great civilizations in Egypt and Mesopotamia, as well as by urbanization in the Levant. We present stratified high-precision dates of short-lived material of Tell es-Sultan (Jericho), covering Late Proto-Urban/EB I, EB II and EB III layers from Trench III. Our calibrated dates, refined by Bayesian sequence analysis involving Gibbs sampling, are ca. 150-300 yr older than conventional archaeological age assessments. The corpus of 14C dates measured in the first decades after the discovery of 14C dating should not be taken too seriously. The 14C dates of Jericho measured by the British Museum 14C laboratory in 1971 appear to be erroneous.

- [Radiocarbon Volume 40, Numbers 1-2, 1998]

Also ...

Migrations, Ethnogenesis, and Settlement Dynamics: Israelites in Iron Age
Canaan and Shuwa-Arabs in the Chad Basin

Thomas E. Levy
Department of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92039
and
Augustin F. C. Holl
Department/Museum of Anthropology and Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, The University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1079

Received May 29, 2001; revision received September 25, 2001; accepted October 14, 2001

This article discusses issues connected with the emergence and maintenance of cultural identities in multiethnic contexts. Migrations have been shunned during the past few decades as an explanatory tool in the emergence of new cultural entities. It is argued in this article that “migrations” are effective forces of cultural change but they have to be well documented and carefully investigated. The formation of ethnic identity is a complex but dynamic process that does not take place in a vacuum. It sometimes involves “foundational” events, such as key migration, encapsulated in the “social memory”: the trek across the Sinai desert for the Israelites or the move westward along the Wadi-el-Malik for the Shuwa-Arabs to the Lake Chad Basin in West Africa. However, it is more often structured according opposite cultural “archetypes.” The case studies marshaled in this discussion, one archaeological, from the Late Bronze–Iron Age I emergence of Isrealites in highland Canaan (ca. 1300–1100 B.C.), and the other ethnoarchaeological, concerning the Shuwa-Arab settlements of northern Cameroon, both offer distinct histories with striking parallelisms. © 2002 Elsevier Science (USA)

- see Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

Or subscribe to the The Bulletin of ASOR - which, of course, you won't.

[Jayhawker Soule]

Originally Posted by dan

First point - There is much evidence that a man named Christ lived. I have some non-Christian texts that were contemporaries of Christ that make mention of a wise man named Jesus. There is a pot making mention of him and his brother (in Aramaic). There is plenty of evidence.

Prove it.

[greatcalgarian]

Originally Posted by dan

Second point - When the flood abated the people left and inhabited the world. Most did not stay true to God, and many different cultures, philosophies, languages and religions spring from this. These other stories are only perversions from the original. Many studies have been undertaken to explain why all languages seem to trace to identical roots from different isolated groups from different corners of the earth. Two explanations exist regarding how this is possible. One is that the same ideas on language simultaneously sponteneously were created. This is kinda dumb. The other is that they all came from the same language. The same is true of the flood story.

So the flood did not wiped clean all living things? What is the point of Noah getting a pair each into the arc?

I thought different speaking tongue started from the Tower of Babel time?