ARCHEOLOGY and THE BIBLE

tosca1 said:

Surely, anyone who dug up
Spiderman comics would eventually realize what Spiderman was to us! Lol.

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The Egyptians had a story (book) a romantic tale about Sinuhe an Egyptian physician.

Story of Sinuhe - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Sinuhe

Overview

The Story of Sinuhe (also known as Sanehat) is considered one of the finest works of ancient Egyptian literature. It is a narrative set in the aftermath of the death of Pharaoh Amenemhat I, founder of the 12th dynasty of Egypt, in the early 20th century BC. It was composed around 1875 BC, although the earliest extant manuscript is from the reign of Amenemhat III, c. 1800 BC. There is an ongoing debate among Egyptologistsas to whether or not the tale is based on actual events involving an individual named Sinuhe (Egyptian: z3-nht "son of the sycamore"), with the consensus being that it is most likely a work of fiction…

Read more

blü 2 said:

Your point being?

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You don't know????? You didn't see it?

tosca1 said:

You don't know????? You didn't see it?

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The Cinderella story dates back to ancient Egypt.


The Original Cinderella Story - Per Ankh
www.perankhgroup.com/cinderella.htm
The Egyptian Cinderella . This Ancient Egyptian version of Cinderella is considered the oldest version of the story, recorded by the Roman historian Strabo in the first century BC. Long ago in the Ancient land of Egypt were the green water of the Nile River flows into the blue water of the Mediterranean Sea lived a young maiden named Rhodopis.

tosca1 said:

Interesting finds that relate to things written in the Bible have been discovered by archeology. And, they're still digging....and still discovering....

Here are some of the discoveries:





https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org...-bible-royal-seal-of-hezekiah-comes-to-light/

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There are thousands of such discoveries, and since archaeology is a modern science, when the Bible writers match archaeology, we re-confirm their veracity.

sooda said:

The Cinderella story dates back to ancient Egypt.


The Original Cinderella Story - Per Ankh
www.perankhgroup.com/cinderella.htm
The Egyptian Cinderella . This Ancient Egyptian version of Cinderella is considered the oldest version of the story, recorded by the Roman historian Strabo in the first century BC. Long ago in the Ancient land of Egypt were the green water of the Nile River flows into the blue water of the Mediterranean Sea lived a young maiden named Rhodopis.

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You're giving irrelevant materials, Sooda.

This is about archeology and the BIBLE - archeological findings reaffirming what's written in the Bible.

tosca1 said:

That's the thing with the Bible. Crumbs here and there - but, they are cumulative!

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I believe that the crumbs largely focus on the period of King Hezekiah and later. Anything earlier diminishes the Bibles historicity dramatically.

tosca1 said:

You don't know????? You didn't see it?

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You can't put it into words?

tosca1 said:

You're giving irrelevant materials, Sooda.

This is about archeology and the BIBLE - archeological findings reaffirming what's written in the Bible.

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You mean places? Egypt is also a place.

tosca1 said:

Interesting finds that relate to things written in the Bible have been discovered by archeology. And, they're still digging....and still discovering....

Here are some of the discoveries:





https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org...-bible-royal-seal-of-hezekiah-comes-to-light/

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While analyzing the reports contained in the novels of Sherlock Holmes, they found that a town called London, looking exactly like the one in the novel, exist.

That was amazing, and a real blow to all people who believed that Sherlock Holmes was fiction.


Ciao

- viole

tosca1 said:

Nope. That's a poor comparison.

Of course it will be foolish of them - after all, Spiderman is admittedly a work of fiction. Comics fiction.

The Bible isn't under the category of fiction.
Go ahead - check it out in the library and see where it's located. Not in "fiction."

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ROFL... So ALL it would take to convince you that Spiderman was REAL is if one of the comics CLAIMED that it was real. That's both funny and sad.

And the ONLY reason that the bible isn't listed under fiction is because theists like you would have a conniption fit if we did... even though you can't provide any more evidence that the fantastical claims made in the bible are any more real than the fantastical claims made Spiderman.

Of course nothing you've written changes the reality that just because something real is referenced in a book doesn't make everything in the book real.

QuestioningMind said:

ROFL... So ALL it would take to convince you that Spiderman was REAL is if one of the comics CLAIMED that it was real. That's both funny and sad.

And the ONLY reason that the bible isn't listed under fiction is because theists like you would have a conniption fit if we did... even though you can't provide any more evidence that the fantastical claims made in the bible are any more real than the fantastical claims made Spiderman.

Of course nothing you've written changes the reality that just because something real is referenced in a book doesn't make everything in the book real.

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Well, no. I didn't say that all it hgave to do is to claim it is non-fiction.
I'm saying...... you picked a poor comparison for your analogy.


Don't archeologists do farther analysis/research with what they find?

Anyway....that's your personal opinion. Excuse me if I ignore them.

Here is a coup among Biblical archeologists!

It's one of the most exciting narratives in the Old Testament for me.
It's a thriller!


JERICHO


Joshua 6


Note; it's a very, very long detailed article. You should go to the site.....the following is just an excerpt.

When we compare the archaeological evidence at Jericho with the Biblical narrative describing the Israelite destruction of Jericho, we find a quite remarkable agreement.

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First, a few words about the Israelite crossing of the Jordan River. The Bible describes the crossing of the Jordan River in vivid and very explicit language:


The waters coming down from above stood and rose up in a heap far off, at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan, and those flowing down toward the sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, were wholly cut off; and the people passed over opposite Jericho" (Joshua 3:16).

The Jordan was apparently blocked at Adam, modern Damiya, some 18 miles upstream from the fords opposite Jericho. How could this happen? Historians and Bible scholars have focused on the "miraculous" nature of the event, with little regard for the seismology of the southern Jordan Valley. In fact, the blocking of the Jordan has happened a number of times in recent recorded history. Jericho is located in the Rift Valley, an unstable region where earthquakes are frequent. Geophysicist Amos Nur of Stanford University has studied the well-documented earthquakes of this area in an effort to find ways to predict them. He has noted several earthquakes that caused phenomena quite similar to what is described in the Book of Joshua:

Today Adam is Damiya, the site of the 1927 mud slides that cut off the flow of the Jordan. Such cutoffs, typically lasting one to two days, have also been recorded in A.D. 1906, 1834, 1546, 1267, and 1160.40

The 1267 C.E. mudslide was recorded by the Arab historian Nowairi. He writes that a large mound on the west side of the Jordan at Damiya fell into the river damming it up. No water flowed south from Damiya for 16 hours. In the 1927 quake, a section of a cliff 150 feet high collapsed into the Jordan near the ford at Damiya, blocking the river for some 21 hours.




Now let us turn to the remains of the city itself. One of the most intriguing questions about the story in Joshua concerns the location of Rahab’s house. We know her house had a roof exposed to the elements because she hid the spies under some flax that was drying there (Joshua 2:6). It was also built against the city wall, thus facilitating the escape of the spies: "Then she let them down by a rope through an opening, for her house was at the surface of the wall, since she lived within the wall" (Joshua 2:15).


Remnants of the final phase of City IV were also found on the southeast slope, just above the spring, by both Garstang and Kenyon. What Garstang and Kenyon found here is most revealing. Garstang dug a large area, about 115 feet by 165 feet, which he called the "palace storeroom area"; Kenyon found remains from the final phase of City IV only in two excavation squares (H II and H III). The results reveal that City IV was massively destroyed in a violent conflagration51 that left a layer of destruction debris a yard or more thick across the entire excavation area.52 Again, we will let Kenyon describe the calamity:

The destruction was complete. Walls and floors were blackened or reddened by fire, and every room was filled with fallen bricks, timbers, and household utensils; in most rooms the fallen debris was heavily burnt, but the collapse of the walls of the eastern rooms seems to have taken place before they were affected by the fire."53

The last observation in this quotation suggests that an earthquake preceded the conflagration. This description may be compared with the Biblical account. According to the Bible, after the Israelites gained access to the city, they "burned the city with fire and all that was therein" (Joshua 6:24). In short, after the collapse of the walls – perhaps by earthquake – the city was put to the torch.



The most abundant item found in the destruction, apart from pottery, was grain.
As noted above, both Garstang and Kenyon found large quantities of grain stored in the ground-floor rooms of the houses.
54 In her limited excavation area, Kenyon recovered six bushels of grain in one season!55 This is unique in the annals of Palestinian archaeology.

But in the case of Jericho the Israelites were told that "the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction," and they were commanded, "Keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction" (Joshua 6:17-18).

So the Israelites were forbidden to take any plunder from Jericho.
56 This could explain why so much grain was left to burn when City IV met its end.

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Associates for Biblical Research - Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the Archaeological Evidence

tosca1 said:

Well, no. I didn't say that all it hgave to do is to claim it is non-fiction.
I'm saying...... you picked a poor comparison for your analogy.


Don't archeologists do farther analysis/research with what they find?

Anyway....that's your personal opinion. Excuse me if I ignore them.

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Actually it's a FINE analogy, because you STILL haven't addressed the fact that a book that references real things DOES NOT in any way shape or form give credence to the fantastical claims made in the book. Until you can address THAT aspect of my argument the fact that the bible references real things gives absolutely ZERO credence to the fantastical claims that it makes.

Which is why you choose to 'ignore' the entire point of my argument.

Hockeycowboy said:

On the contrary, they prove a lot: that the Scriptures we have today, though copies and copies have been made of unknown numbers of copies....the context is almost unchanged from the Qumran manuscripts!

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Actually there is a lot of language drift that has occurred with each subsequent translation and redaction .

LANGUAGE DRIFT AND THE DATING OF BIBLICAL PASSAGES on JSTOR

I've asked people what did they have as a Bible before Qumran was discovered?

The answers I've gotten so far were quite interesting and revealing to say the least and quite varied.

tosca1 said:

Separately, no....not revealing.

But cumulatively? As they pile up? Then, they are.

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They aren't.

Why wouldn't these stories mention or reference cities, places, people, events,... that actually occured?

If 2000 years of now you would investigate a film like Oceans 11, it wouldn't be any different.
It mentions real places, casino's, mob bosses, politicians, hospitals, events,....

One thing no archeological dig supports though: supernatural claims.

So a better analogy might be a Marvel super hero movie.
It takes place in New York and mentions / visits plenty of other very real places, references tech companies, us presidents, events, etc etc etc.

But that doesn't mean that Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Hulk are real................
Nore does it make it any more probable that these characters are real. Not even by a long shot.

Why would then finding out that Pontius Pilates was an actual government representative in Judea at the right time make it any more likely that Jesus is a god that resurected the dead and what not?

Circumstantial evidences become more powerful and can be conclusive, when there's many of them to reinforce each other!

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No amount of this type of "circumstantial evidence", is ever enough to make such outlandish claims more credible.

Finding out 2000 years from now that Manhatten was a real place AND finding actual records of a Peter Parker living there, doesn't mean that this dude actually WAS Spiderman.

In the same way, such "evidence" doesn't lend any creedence at all to super-Jesus claims.
You must also understand that all these things, while in the same story, are seperate distinct claims.

It's not that they are linked!
Let's go back to Spiderman.

There's no connection here that ties Spiderman to New York in the sense that "IF New york exists THEN spiderman must exist". The existance of New York doesn't in any way shape or form make it more likely that a human gained spider-like powers after being bitten by some exotic spider.

They become CORROBORATIVE evidences!

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That's where you are wrong. It would be corroborative, if there was an actual causal link between these things, but there isn't.

tosca1 said:

Here is a coup among Biblical archeologists!

It's one of the most exciting narratives in the Old Testament for me.
It's a thriller!


JERICHO


Joshua 6


Note; it's a very, very long detailed article. You should go to the site.....the following is just an excerpt.


Associates for Biblical Research - Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the Archaeological Evidence

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The walls were "knocked down" on many occasions, plus the archaeological evidence actually suggests that the "Israelites" actually were "fighting" (probably not physically although some conflict may have occurred) amongst themselves and not the "Canaanites".

tosca1 said:

Here is a coup among Biblical archeologists!

It's one of the most exciting narratives in the Old Testament for me.
It's a thriller!


JERICHO


Joshua 6


Note; it's a very, very long detailed article. You should go to the site.....the following is just an excerpt.


Associates for Biblical Research - Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the Archaeological Evidence

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So you have been to Jericho? The first time I was there was about a year after Kenyon completed her work. 1958-59 I think.. Jericho has many, many layers as far back as the Natufians in 11,000 BC...

It was abandoned for a time .. several hundred years as I recall because the spring dried up.. Joshua is fiction.. Israel had no massive armies and didn't destroy any Canaanite cities.

sooda said:

So you have been to Jericho? The first time I was there was about a year after Kenyon completed her work. 1958-59 I think.. Jericho has many, many layers as far back as the Natufians in 11,000 BC...

It was abandoned for a time .. several hundred years as I recall because the spring dried up.. Joshua is fiction.. Israel had no massive armies and didn't destroy any Canaanite cities.

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Source?

KenS said:

Source?

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30 years of study....

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/jerusalem/ancient-jerusalem/

sooda said:

30 years of study....

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/jerusalem/ancient-jerusalem/

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Yes... that is ONE viewpoint. I find logic, as well as historical documents, to be a better fit:

"From the Biblical Archaeology Review: 80,000 “Estimating the Population of Ancient Jerusalem”, Magen Broshi, BAR 4:02, Jun 1978

Roman historian Tacitus estimated the population of Jerusalem at the time of the Jewish wars to be 600,000 .

Jewish historian Josephus, who would know because he had lived there during the 60s AD, estimated the number of Pharisees alone to be 6,000 (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 17.42)

Josephus estimated that 1.1 million were killed in the Jewish War, that 115,880 dead were carried out one of the gates during the month of Nisan in AD 70, and that 97,000 were taken as slaves. Josephus (The Wars Of The Jews Book VI Ch 9 Sec 3)"

https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-population-of-Jerusalem-during-Jesus-time

Joshua was real.