If you are going to insist on a standard of historicity on a par with today you are bound to be eternally disappointed, Mouse.

We have independent attestation of Hezekiah's existence from Assyrian records. We also have evidence of rapid population growth at Jerusalem in the later 8th century and fortifications as well as increased urbanization.
The inscription itself:

Quote:Translation

Unreadable at first due to the deposits, Professor Archibald Sayce was the first to make a tentative reading, and later the text was cleaned with an acid solution making the reading more authoritative. The inscription contains 6 lines, of which the first is damaged. The words are separated by dots. Only the word zada on the third line is of doubtful translation - perhaps a crack or a weak part.

The passage reads:

... the tunnel ... and this is the story of the tunnel while ...
the axes were against each other and while three cubits were left to cut? ... the voice of a man ... called to his counterpart, (for) there was ZADA in the rock, on the right ... and on the day of the tunnel (being finished) the stonecutters struck each man towards his counterpart, ax against ax and flowed water from the source to the pool for 1200 cubits. and 100? cubits was the height over the head of the stonecutters ...

and while it does not name Hezekiah it is rather pointless to think that such works would have been undertaken earlier when the site was little more than a miserable little shithole. There are some things which archaeology can show and some things which it cannot. But the artifacts are what they are and they are not as easily manipulated as human writings which can be made to say whatever an author ( or more importantly, the author's patron) wants them to say.

Such is the problem with the bible. It reflects a much later reality but the only place where I find fault with Davies, Thompson and the rest is in the insistence that these writings were created in the Persian period in toto. I think that if someone sat down to write a bullshit story it would have been better done than it is. What has come down to us suggests a compilation of various oral tales ( much to the chagrin of fundie lunatics you are quite right when you say there is no extant body of literature from the period in question) that was cobbled together - most likely by the Greeks and later re-copied into something called Hebrew.

BTW, in the citation from Wiki above I find it curious that the inscription uses dots as word separators. That is an Aramaic usage most notable on the Tel Dan stele. Hebrew did not use word separators, nor capitals, nor punctuation...in that it was much like the Greek of the same time. Curious.

Quote:Was not the Galilee quite lightly populated from time of the Assyrian conquest to the Hellenistic people.

Probably not. Compared to Judah and other regions to the south it was quite decent agricultural land capable of supporting a much larger population. As Finkelstein and others note the idea that the southern kingdom could have ever dominated the more populous and wealthy north is simply a later fiction created by the Judahite court which thought about expansion to the north and sought to establish a reason for making the claim.

Min, he's an obvious troll. Here I present him certified proof that Judaism wasn't invented in the 2nd century BC.



Let me guess, the First Jewish Temple had nothing to do with Judaism??

Let me tell you something. Eilat Mazar has been dismissed by her own fellow archaeologists for being a sellout and a crackpot. She works for a nationalist outfit called Elad which is bound and determined to classify every rock found as something that fucking moses pissed on so they can dismantle Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem and evict them from what they think is biblical "Israel."

There has never been a single artifact found which can be attributed to Solomon's "temple." In fact, there is no historical attestation at all for any fucking "Solomon." In fact, the site of Jerusalem in the 10th century BC seems, at best to have been a miserable little village and more likely a fortified manor house with a couple of huts built around it. Archaeologist David Ussishkin of Tel Aviv University has indicated that the site was totally abandoned in the 10th century.

What is true is that the Assyrian King, Shalmeneser V, who ruled in the 8th century BC was a great king with a major trading empire. In Akkadian his name was Šulmanu-ašarid. Sulmanu. Solomon. Not too hard to figure out where later writers borrowed the name from, is it?

Now I expect you to go hide your head in the sand because the mean old atheist told you your fairy tales are a pile of shit. Deal with it, son.

Aw can't take a bit of simple irony.



There are other examples too.

(January 10, 2013 at 7:51 pm)Minimalist Wrote: If you are going to insist on a standard of historicity on a par with today you are bound to be eternally disappointed, Mouse.

I agree completely. When things are up to more recent standards I give them equivalent credit. And they are not so modern as Thucydides did try to meet self-imposed standards we can describe as modern. He consulted all the written records he could find. He interviewed the important participants. It was not that hard for him to see writing about fact required a best effort to ascertain the facts.

What I do not accept is taking anything available if nothing to reasonable standards is available. The obvious one to this thread is the age and origin of the OT. Specifically I object to any contending origin that has no physical evidence supporting it given any weight whatsoever.

Of course I would not expect modern standards to be applied to its origin but at the same time I object to giving tradition any weight at all as it means no standard whatsoever. But what we see in bible talk is an idea being given merit simply because it has been around for a long time but worse. They are often taken as true and better than new ideas based upon fact simply because they are old.

It is legitimate to ask why I have a problem with tradition. I do not have an objection to tradition in general. Usually they are reasonable, appear to be close enough and nothing else in contingent upon them being true. Here we have something different.

The tradition up until about 150 years ago was that Moses wrote wrote the Torah/Tanak/the first five books of the OT. Even among fervent believers today very few of them think Moses wrote them. This is separate from Moses existing and the events actually occurring. At first the retreat was to them having been written in the time of Solomon. I am sure there were other "retreats" but the most commonly accepted one today is after the return from Babylon.

So if tradition is to be given any weight, which tradition? Moses or Solomon or after Babylon? If there were only one tradition, it was reasonable (verses from Exodus found in Jerusalem in hieroglyphs dated to 1000BC or some such) and contingent things were also confirmed the idea of modern standards would not come up. They would not come up because there would be no obvious need to introduce standards.

On this subject the facts of the retreating tradition among believers themselves makes it imperative to address the subject. And given the retreat from 15th to 5th c. and that it is in fact as old as they can claim with a straight face NOT an evidenced opinion means believers to no rule this part of the discussion.

Quote:We have independent attestation of Hezekiah's existence from Assyrian records. We also have evidence of rapid population growth at Jerusalem in the later 8th century and fortifications as well as increased urbanization.
The inscription itself:

Quote:Translation

Unreadable at first due to the deposits, Professor Archibald Sayce was the first to make a tentative reading, and later the text was cleaned with an acid solution making the reading more authoritative. The inscription contains 6 lines, of which the first is damaged. The words are separated by dots. Only the word zada on the third line is of doubtful translation - perhaps a crack or a weak part.

The passage reads:

... the tunnel ... and this is the story of the tunnel while ...
the axes were against each other and while three cubits were left to cut? ... the voice of a man ... called to his counterpart, (for) there was ZADA in the rock, on the right ... and on the day of the tunnel (being finished) the stonecutters struck each man towards his counterpart, ax against ax and flowed water from the source to the pool for 1200 cubits. and 100? cubits was the height over the head of the stonecutters ...

and while it does not name Hezekiah it is rather pointless to think that such works would have been undertaken earlier when the site was little more than a miserable little shithole. There are some things which archaeology can show and some things which it cannot. But the artifacts are what they are and they are not as easily manipulated as human writings which can be made to say whatever an author ( or more importantly, the author's patron) wants them to say.

In addition to not mentioning Hezekiah it mentions nothing else in the bible story like the name of the city or the cause for digging it nor when it was dug or who paid for it.

I have to point out things like this "while it does not name Hezekiah it is rather pointless to think that such works would have been undertaken earlier when the site was little more than a miserable little shithole" are argumentation and contain unfounded assumptions of their own. For example around 1000-800 BC it was an outpost of the New Kingdom. How extensive has not been established. There are "cities" that barely qualified as large towns which had similar tunnels. I forget the name but I saw it and the dig on an arkie series episode.

Because such things are left out it is not just argumentation but argumentation to a preconceived conclusion. Simply calling it Hezekiah's tunnel means "Hezekiah lived in the Xth c. therefore the tunnel is from the Xth century and because it is from the Xth century it must be the one the bible says Hezekiah built." It does not sound circular because giving it that name avoids explaining why.

Quote:Such is the problem with the bible. It reflects a much later reality but the only place where I find fault with Davies, Thompson and the rest is in the insistence that these writings were created in the Persian period in toto. I think that if someone sat down to write a bullshit story it would have been better done than it is. What has come down to us suggests a compilation of various oral tales ( much to the chagrin of fundie lunatics you are quite right when you say there is no extant body of literature from the period in question) that was cobbled together - most likely by the Greeks and later re-copied into something called Hebrew.

I want to make sure another point got through. There is no such thing as oral history.

Quote:BTW, in the citation from Wiki above I find it curious that the inscription uses dots as word separators. That is an Aramaic usage most notable on the Tel Dan stele. Hebrew did not use word separators, nor capitals, nor punctuation...in that it was much like the Greek of the same time. Curious.

The dots are almost always used in a nonsense way. Generally the mark unintelligible letters in the original text. But then believers will carry it through to a translation but with translations that are impossible given the missing letters. That is, the mix actual missing letters with "best believer guess" translation of the readable letters. I say it is dishonest. I know I have come across examples of that but don't have one at the moment. I'll try to keep it in mind.

And Tel Dan thing. The dots clearly indicate it is talking about Davidland or Davidtown and the idea of a dynasty called a house first appears in Renaissance Italy. All the bible examples fall from the English translation not from the original words else they would flood us with examples bytdwd from the "hebrew."

Quote:

Quote:Was not the Galilee quite lightly populated from time of the Assyrian conquest to the Hellenistic people.

Probably not. Compared to Judah and other regions to the south it was quite decent agricultural land capable of supporting a much larger population. As Finkelstein and others note the idea that the southern kingdom could have ever dominated the more populous and wealthy north is simply a later fiction created by the Judahite court which thought about expansion to the north and sought to establish a reason for making the claim.

And I am fairly certain the Phoenicians are Hellenes from the eastern extent in Asia Minor being the reason they appear so different from western peninsular Hellenes, the Greeks. The most obvious thing this explains is why the Phoenicians are not Hellenes when they are to the north, west and among them along the coast.

A little detective work is required to connect disparate pieces of evidence.
It can be a rewarding intellectual exercise BUT one must dismiss the bible bullshit stories at the outset. If you are going to insist on video evidence you are more or less stuck in the 20th century or later.

The Assyrians wrote about dealing with Hezekiah and Manesseh. We can date those Assyrian kings. It is not rocket science and it is not dependent on the bible at all. Archaeology has shown multiple destruction levels consistent with the Assyrian military campaign at the end of the 8th century which beat the shit out of Judah. One does not need the OT to tell us about Hezekiah. He would hardly have been the first ruler who tried a rebellion and got his head handed to him.

That archaeology dates the expansion of Jerusalem to the later 8th century and that Assyrian records place Hezekiah there are not dependent on the OT. However, all of the other pious bullshit about Hezekiah needs to be dismissed. For all we know he was just another Canaanite ruler, perhaps worshiping Yahweh along with Baal and El and all the rest. Only the OT claims he was a jew and without a single artifact to sustain that. (Xtians hate to hear that shit but...fuck 'em. I can't worry about them.)

I understand that some time this year Dever is coming out with a history of the region which is not based on the bible at all but strictly on archaeology. Dever is a bit pedantic but I'll read that one.

Have you read George Athas' The Tel Dan Inscription? Worth your time if you haven't although he is painstaking - to the point of PAIN - in his meticulous approach to the inscription itself.

(January 11, 2013 at 2:17 am)Aractus Wrote: Min, he's an obvious troll. Here I present him certified proof that Judaism wasn't invented in the 2nd century BC.



Let me guess, the First Jewish Temple had nothing to do with Judaism??

If there was any question you have removed all doubt citing a crackpot article on a neocon crackpot website run by a Lebonese Marionite who sold out his own country to Israel.

Mazar is working for a real estate scam calling itself Elad. For example it digs without a license. It has gotten a few acres declared an archaeological site and is working to remove the Palestinians from this "very important" ancient site. This site is in such desperate need of preservation that Elad plans to build a shopping center with underground parking and six luxury high rise apartment buildings on it.

Despite the stated credentials she has never published these claims in a professional archaeological journal. It is not clear whether she was rejected as an idiot or she knew better than to try. From memory I don't even the "Biblical Archaeological Review" will publish her crap.

To point out to the clearly illiterate the article makes no claim about finding the first temple.

To top this off

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, attended the inauguration and pronounced that every effort would be made to “expose every piece of Jewish history.”

“It shows that the Bible is real,” Barkat continued. “It shows that 2,000 and 3,000 years ago, Jerusalem was the center of the world. And we love to share that with the world.”

when the Romans called it the anus mundi.

Mazar's academic stature can be judged by her claimed to have discovered the seal of Jezebel. There were only two minor problems. Of the three letter name one of the letters was missing. And she was reading it backwards a mistake no arkie freshman would make more than once.

That Mazar is still employed by the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem strongly indicates no one should take seriously anything published by anyone associated with it.

---

(January 11, 2013 at 4:35 am)Aractus Wrote: Aw can't take a bit of simple irony.



There are other examples too.

Wikipedia is unsuitable as a reference for anything beyond the high school level. Just because your teachers accept it does not mean the rest of us will.

---

(January 12, 2013 at 12:37 am)Minimalist Wrote: A little detective work is required to connect disparate pieces of evidence.
It can be a rewarding intellectual exercise BUT one must dismiss the bible bullshit stories at the outset. If you are going to insist on video evidence you are more or less stuck in the 20th century or later.

Completely agree but different people have come across different facts and reached different conclusions. I am quite interested in how you got where you are. I am not per se intending to contradict you rather simply to present where I am and why. Example, you appear to have come across direct evidence the Galilee was not sparsely populated. I have not. I simply argued from its location inland of the Phoenicians which then fed them and gave the farmers ready access to an export market. Every place else we know of with those conditions is or has been well populated to the carrying capacity of the land. Two different approaches arriving at similar conclusions. That is a good thing.

Yes I am remiss in not yet reviewing Shalamansar. I remember having a larger problem with the Assyrians that I have to recall first. It does not negate the story. I am fairly certain it related to how the story got incorporated as a Septuagint theme. Yes, I will be getting back to it eventually.

Quote:The Assyrians wrote about dealing with Hezekiah and Manesseh. We can date those Assyrian kings. It is not rocket science and it is not dependent on the bible at all. Archaeology has shown multiple destruction levels consistent with the Assyrian military campaign at the end of the 8th century which beat the shit out of Judah. One does not need the OT to tell us about Hezekiah. He would hardly have been the first ruler who tried a rebellion and got his head handed to him.

Again, I need to get back into it but is this not also part of Egypt's war to expel and remove their influence?

Quote:That archaeology dates the expansion of Jerusalem to the later 8th century and that Assyrian records place Hezekiah there are not dependent on the OT. However, all of the other pious bullshit about Hezekiah needs to be dismissed. For all we know he was just another Canaanite ruler, perhaps worshiping Yahweh along with Baal and El and all the rest. Only the OT claims he was a jew and without a single artifact to sustain that. (Xtians hate to hear that shit but...fuck 'em. I can't worry about them.)

Of course Yahweh and Ashara were likely the pair for the region that became Judea. The kingdoms in the region had god and goddess pairs rather than single ones like the Greeks and Romans. I have a few examples but can't find them at the moment.

And the disappearance of Ashara best I can find is most likely a 2nd or 3rd c. AD start of a purge of references. By the 4th c. the Strato's Tower has been introduced to cover up Ashara's Temple. The Dome of the Rock is likely built on the eight sided foundation of her temple in Jerusalem. As on wag said, of course her temple was higher than Yahweh's else people could look down and see the priests and priestesses fucking. And back to the uncarved stones being gods there really is a rock under that dome. Google for a picture of the idol stone of Ashara.

So where is the stone of Yahweh? It has to be around there some place.

Quote:I understand that some time this year Dever is coming out with a history of the region which is not based on the bible at all but strictly on archaeology. Dever is a bit pedantic but I'll read that one.

I'll give it a shot but only after getting a feel for it really being separate. Way too many believers have made such claims while always resolving issues by assuming the bible is correct. That will be nothing new.

Quote:Have you read George Athas' The Tel Dan Inscription? Worth your time if you haven't although he is painstaking - to the point of PAIN - in his meticulous approach to the inscription itself.

Never heard of him but here is mostly what I have on the subject.

http://www.giwersworld.org/ancient-histo...rans.phtml

http://www.giwersworld.org/ancient-history/david.phtml

(January 10, 2013 at 7:28 am)Aractus Wrote:

(January 9, 2013 at 9:07 pm)A_Nony_Mouse Wrote: Etc. Before going further lets see if we are on the same page.

1)There are only two candidates to have written the OT. Greek educated people in Alexandria or Greek educated people in Judea.

2)The contents are completely fictional without exception or mental reservation regarding campfire stories or traditions and such. They are fiction in the sense of Buffy the Vampire Slayer not in the sense of Band of Brothers.

3)Whoever created these books did so not earlier than the 2nd c. BC.

Do we agree? Because if we agree there several times in the supporting articles I say it is immaterial if it were actually written in Alexandria. I also point out that "Hebrew" did not exist (no evidence for existence) in the 2nd c. BC and as such Greek or Aramaic are the only candidate languages for the initial version. As there is no sign of an Aramaic that leaves Greek by simplest hypothesis. Is there evidence the simplest is not the most likely?

I get it you're just a Poe atheist.

You've already managed to self-contradicted yourself.

Go and practise falling down.

I am certain you don't give a rat's ass if I ignore you or not. So far your posts have been without substantive content and the style has been juvenile name calling. I have no interest in such an exchange. If you are interested in a substantive exchange it will depend upon your response.

(January 12, 2013 at 3:15 am)A_Nony_Mouse Wrote: If there was any question you have removed all doubt citing a crackpot article on a neocon crackpot website run by a Lebonese Marionite who sold out his own country to Israel.

I thought I would show you what your level of evidence looks like to me. So far you have provided me with no evidence, just endless speculation of one big huge conspiracy. Sorry I don't go for that.

Quote:...
To point out to the clearly illiterate the article makes no claim about finding the first temple.

We all know where the first temple is, and there's presently a mosque built on top of it.

Quote:Wikipedia is unsuitable as a reference for anything beyond the high school level. Just because your teachers accept it does not mean the rest of us will.

Is that really your response?

Do your own research. Don't tell me to spoon-feed you the proper academic publications. Do I tell you to give them to me? No I don't. You give me a wikipedia link and I'll look it up all on my own.

As I said. Go and practise falling down. You're pretty good at it, but with practise you could become a master.

---

(January 12, 2013 at 7:01 am)A_Nony_Mouse Wrote: I am certain you don't give a rat's ass if I ignore you or not. So far your posts have been without substantive content and the style has been juvenile name calling. I have no interest in such an exchange. If you are interested in a substantive exchange it will depend upon your response.

I've heard a lot of crackpot theories in my time, and yours takes the cake.

Why don't you try disproving Halton Arp's cosmology? What's that you say - you can't disprove a negative? No fucking shit. It's up to you to prove your point, not up to me to disprove it.

What's that you say? You don't like Wikipedia? You need me to give you another link? Like this:

(January 12, 2013 at 7:39 am)Aractus Wrote:

(January 12, 2013 at 3:15 am)A_Nony_Mouse Wrote: If there was any question you have removed all doubt citing a crackpot article on a neocon crackpot website run by a Lebonese Marionite who sold out his own country to Israel.

I thought I would show you what your level of evidence looks like to me. So far you have provided me with no evidence, just endless speculation of one big huge conspiracy. Sorry I don't go for that.

Lying about the nature and substance of my posts is sufficient to indicate you have no interest in a substantive exchange of ideas.

Have a better one.