Quote:But talking about 8th through 3rd c. is not in the running for being called rapid or sudden.

But Finkelstein is not talking about the 3d century. The rapid increase in population occurs in the 8th-7th centuries and went from a small village to something in the 10-12,000 range. In the 6th century the town is sacked and burned by the Babylonians and remains vacant until the Persian period. Even then, based on the built-up area, Finkelstein calculates that there was little more than a small compound of perhaps 400 people ( back to not much more than Athas' fortified manor house concept!). To be fair, another Israeli archaeologist, Oded Lipschitz, suggests a population of 1,000. However, both are a far cry from the ludicrous numbers of Ezra 2

Quote:64 The whole company numbered 42,360, 65 besides their 7,337 male and female slaves; and they also had 200 male and female singers. 66 They had 736 horses, 245 mules, 67 435 camels and 6,720 donkeys.

The amusing thing is that even after the Romans and/or Herod the Great installed aqueducts to increase the water supply the city never had a population of that size. Just made up shit by the bible thumpers.

(April 5, 2013 at 11:43 am)Minimalist Wrote:

Quote:But talking about 8th through 3rd c. is not in the running for being called rapid or sudden.

But Finkelstein is not talking about the 3d century. The rapid increase in population occurs in the 8th-7th centuries and went from a small village to something in the 10-12,000 range. In the 6th century the town is sacked and burned by the Babylonians and remains vacant until the Persian period. Even then, based on the built-up area, Finkelstein calculates that there was little more than a small compound of perhaps 400 people ( back to not much more than Athas' fortified manor house concept!). To be fair, another Israeli archaeologist, Oded Lipschitz, suggests a population of 1,000. However, both are a far cry from the ludicrous numbers of Ezra 2

At some point it appears we are posting at cross purposes. I was responding to how I read your post which appeared to say the pop increase was over five centuries. No mind.

Other than Finkelstein and Silberman's (?) book Finkelstein appears to be very mindful of his funding, keeping away from controversy after that and avoiding the juicier issues even in the book. He could lose his funding and maybe his job if he were aggressively against the mythology. Zionists politics is ruthless.

In any event an increase in city size can have at least two explanations, the first being total population increase and the other being simply a greater fraction living in cities. The latter would be a change from farming village to city. Given the increase in number of farmers suggested by the ratio of sizes an increase in total population does not appear reasonable unless it was something like using a plow or terraced farming or discovering there is a market for olives. 7th c. would be impossibly late for such discoveries.

Thus I would go with the latter the change from farming villages with a few specialized functions to real cities with populations that never farm anything and are specialized in their work like centralized wine making or olive pressing.

Quote:

Quote:64 The whole company numbered 42,360, 65 besides their 7,337 male and female slaves; and they also had 200 male and female singers. 66 They had 736 horses, 245 mules, 67 435 camels and 6,720 donkeys.

The amusing thing is that even after the Romans and/or Herod the Great installed aqueducts to increase the water supply the city never had a population of that size. Just made up shit by the bible thumpers.

Again rather than exaggerations large numbers appear to have been used as adjectives. At least that is my view. If it were exaggeration I would expect numbers to always increase to one-up the last claim. With such a limited literate and "numerate" population who are the numbers supposed to impress? Only the ruling class could even pretend to read it and they would know the real numbers. Or maybe they were somehow sacred or calender numbers.

When it comes to the Persians and Greeks the number of Persians could as likely be the claim of the Persians as the Greeks. The clearest reason for the large number would for the Persians to intimidate the Greeks and the Greeks just repeated it.

Archaeological surveys of Judah in the 10th century confirm only a handful of small villages/hamlets - on the order of a dozen or so - and an economy which was based on herding. The estimate for the total population of Judah is on the order of 20,000. One might reasonably speculate that the primary reason the area was not overrun by some conqueror is that it was poor and of no value to anyone. People like to claim it was "strategically located" but this is really not true. It is inland, well away from the coast, and the most vital stretch of real estate went through Philistia towards Megiddo where the trade routes were located. Judah wasn't worth shit until it began to build up....and then it became a rather hapless target.


Anything is possible but Herodotus was at best a very small child while Xerxes' army was marching into Greece and we have to assume that his history dates from a later period when the Persians had been defeated and expelled. Therefore, wherever the number came from, Herodotus' use of it sounds more like Greek propaganda ( Look what WE did!) than anything else.

(April 6, 2013 at 11:46 am)Minimalist Wrote: Archaeological surveys of Judah in the 10th century confirm only a handful of small villages/hamlets - on the order of a dozen or so - and an economy which was based on herding. The estimate for the total population of Judah is on the order of 20,000. One might reasonably speculate that the primary reason the area was not overrun by some conqueror is that it was poor and of no value to anyone. People like to claim it was "strategically located" but this is really not true. It is inland, well away from the coast, and the most vital stretch of real estate went through Philistia towards Megiddo where the trade routes were located. Judah wasn't worth shit until it began to build up....and then it became a rather hapless target.

Philistia and Judah are bible places. They did not exist.

I have no idea why you would speculate the region was not ruled by some known city-state. The New Kingdom of Egypt ruled the eastern Med up to the Euphrates and there is some evidence of an Egyptian garrison at Jerusalem. The major land trade route in this region was from the Red Sea to the Euphrates dominated by the Naboteans of Petra fame. This ran east of the Jordan.

The Red Sea was the important sea trade route for Egypt before the Med got civilized enough to be worth trading. They built a fair bit of a canal connecting it with the Nile. It was their gateway to Yemen and on to India. Our "the world began with Greece" view is far from accurate. The original civilized world was India, Iran, Mesopotamia and Egypt. Civilization in the Med doesn't really begin until Mycenae but then later the Greeks are still attributing everything they do to the Egyptians.

Anyway back to Jerusalem the pre-Hadrian renovation had pyramids and sphinxes as the common decorative motif. The Maccabean revolt was in favor of Egyptian rule even if Ptolemaic Greek. And getting back to some obvious things Amun and Yahweh share enough obvious characteristics that they are clearly the same god. And there are still Jews around the world that wear forelocks in imitation of the curly horns of Amun's ram head.

As to estimating population the near insurmountable problem is defining the borders of the region back then. And for the hill country knowing what the regions might have been or what they were called. The political organization in those days was city-state. It had to be a real city as villages by definition would not have had specialized armies and such. All of which gets us back to village/city and population being an important consideration.

A settlement has to have a relatively large population and defensive walls and food and water storage to survive a siege. Of course a settlement might have been enough to be called a city-state but if we don't have the evidence there is nothing to talk about.

Quote:Anything is possible but Herodotus was at best a very small child while Xerxes' army was marching into Greece and we have to assume that his history dates from a later period when the Persians had been defeated and expelled. Therefore, wherever the number came from, Herodotus' use of it sounds more like Greek propaganda ( Look what WE did!) than anything else.

Herodotus from long before Alexander. He claims to have visited and looks like he did. His style is that of the kind of person you want as a dinner guest. He clearly mixes observed facts with amusing tales he learned while traveling. The kind of tales one hopes a dinner guest will tell. Thucydides didn't like the dinner guest style and did a version of history much more like our own. Perhaps Herodotus should be considered the first anthologist instead of first historian. Anyway hardly important to the digression.

As to the importance of the hill country, you recount a hinterland, more hillbilly than civilized. As to my issue of the origin of the OT stories we can jump ahead to Alexander. His conquests are well chronicled from two sources. He did not conquer Jerusalem.

That means it was ruled by some city he did conquer. This was so "embarrassing" to Judean claims of being an ancient people that Josephus invented a tale of Alexander visiting Jerusalem and praising it ruling priests and their wisdom and they donate a few hundred chariots to his campaign. Amusing but desperate.

This leaves us with a Jerusalem far different from religious tradition. No surprise there. It also raises issues of how things worked in those days. Although Persian rule is viewed as despotic and Alexander's success partly attributed to local support of him as liberator as happened in Egypt he had to conquer most of the cities on the eastern Med. They were apparently resisting for themselves separate from getting rid of the Persians. Yet from way earlier we find Herodotus naming them and the their three regions, Syria, Palestine and Cyprus, as a tributary unit. I forget his term but sort of like the three were a single province for tax purposes.

As to Jerusalem, as there is nothing significant found in bibleland from even the Greek period including inscriptions the idea it was a other than agricultural is untenable. In all the region only a city called Samaria and assumed to be that of Omri shows any signs of local wealth and that from being a trade center.

Belief and Knowledge

The physical evidence is conclusive. It is impossible for the Old Testament to have been written in bibleland prior to the arrival of Greeks and for all practical purposes not for a century or more later.

All the physical evidence points to the Septuagint, aka Old Testament, having been written in Egypt no earlier than the mid 2nd c. BC when the Egyptian empire sponsored the Maccabean revolutionaries against the Seleucid empire. This was created as a backstory to legitimize Maccabean rule as priest-kings.

Knowledge comes from what is experienced by the physical senses. Belief comes from what we are told by other people who have no physical evidence to support what they tell us. Only knowledge matters. Belief is not knowledge. Belief is worthless.

Regarding knowledge one needs explain observed facts. An explanation of facts is called a theory. If you like it can be called an hypothesis, sort of a theory in waiting, until it is discarded as false or confirmed and elevated to a theory.

A theory must explain all the available facts. If there are different theories for different facts then both are wrong.

When it comes to theories which explain facts the simplest is most likely correct. A basic theory which explains some facts and then has added complications to explain other facts is trumped by a single theory which explains all the facts.

No matter how impressive a theory a single contrary fact demonstrates that it is at best incomplete and most likely wrong. That is what Einstein said about his theories. Extraordinary evidence is not required. A single fact will do.

That the Yahweh cult was created in Alexandria in the mid 2nd c. BC is the simplest explanation and explains all the available facts and is contradicted by no physical evidence.

On the contrary every other explanation fails to explain all the evidence and are also all contradicted by well known physical evidence which their proponents simply ignore, pretending it does not exist, hoping no one will notice, pretending imaginary future discoveries will vindicate them.

Arguing towards a pr-conceived conclusion is a logical fallacy.
Any argument against the following cannot assume religious traditions are correct as part of the argument. The who point of this exercise is to point just how much is not more than unprovenenced religious traditions for which there is no evidence.

Things everyone thinks they know that no one really knows

We might warn a child, "Don't eat that. You don't know where it came from." It is just as important to warn an adult "Don't believe that." for the same reason.

Back on the home page I gave a list of seven items which are only beliefs. They all refer to beliefs that have been with us for centuries but are only religious traditions not knowledge. We don't know where they came from. Take the same good advice you would give to a child.

Religious traditions pretend to claim replace "no one knows" with "everyone knows" even though there is no physical evidence to support what everyone is supposed to know. This supposed knowledge is nothing more than worthless belief.

No one knows why the books of the Old Testament books were written.
You can read every word of the Old Testament and discover there is not one single statement as to why they were written. There is no statement Yahweh ordered it. There is no statement as to who commissioned them.

The very nature of the historical books indicates they were written after the 5th c. BC when the Greeks invented writing history. One cannot write chronological history until it is invented. Anachronisms are not allowed.

No one knows who wrote them.
At one time there was a tradition that Moses wrote the first five books, the Torah, the books Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and Leviticus. This is a long discarded idea save for some few very benighted fundies. Back when this was believed all kinds of internal evidence was found to show they were older.

These days it is more popular to believe they were written after the return from the (mythical) captivity in Babylon but even then there is no statement as to who did it. They just sort of appear in this belief system but retain all the indications of the Torah being older that were invented to explain differences under the belief that Moses wrote them.

No one knows when they were written.
As with the above, the "when" varies from Moses and then forward in chronological order starting with Moses to the bulk of them at one time after the mythical return from Babylon. The former is absurd and the latter presents its own problems. The most obvious is back when everyone declared Moses wrote them people saw signs of the language evolving. Now that they were all written at once the signs of evolving are still there. The differences require an explanation that does not involve centuries of change.

This brings up a requirement for an explanation of the facts, a theory. An explanation must apply to everything. Mutually exclusive explanations are not permitted. If one invokes creation after the return to explain one problem it is not permitted to invoke Moses and creation over centuries to explain a different problem. Only one can be correct.

Thus it is an absolute test of the plausibility of an explanation, a test of a hypothesis, to apply it to all aspects of the Old Testament. If it creates more problems than it answers, if contradicts other explanations rather than explaining them all then it is back to the drawing board.

Mutually exclusive explanations are required because it is the only way to force fit the stories into the religious tradition that they have some relation to real events.

If one wants to salvage the idea they were created in bibleland it is required to produce a theory which explains the "evidence" of an evolving language and the fact they were all written at the same time by the same people. Hypothesizing the oldest five were transcribed legends does not explain why the written versions are different.

No one knows the original language in which they were written.
By rights had the first five been written by Moses they would have been written in Egyptian. If we go by the written language in bibleland they would have been written in Phoenician or in Babylonian if the authors had recently "returned" from captivity there. If they were written later then Phoenician would have been replaced by Aramaic.

If they were written after the arrival of Alexander and Greek rule they would have been written in Greek. Unsurprisingly the oldest known version of the Old Testament is the Septuagint in Greek.

As what is called Hebrew is a pidgin of Aramaic and Greek the simplest explanation for the differences which once indicated age differences are simply translations of the Septuagint by people with varying mastery of Greek. This neatly accounts for all of the Koine Greek constructions that are found in "Hebrew." See, Hebrew is Greek by Joseph Yehuda, Becket Publications, Oxford, 1982.

Before Koine Greek was discovered in Alexandria in the late 19th c. only classical Greek was known. Believers pointed to the "Hebraicisms" in the Septuagint to show it was a translation from Hebrew. After Koine Greek was discovered it was clear the "Hebrew" was derived from Koine Greek. The "proof" the Septuagint was a translation now proves the Hebrew is the translation.

Note this has been known for over a century but some believers will still cite the Hebraicisms as though it had never been discredited. Note also this suggest the suspicion or perhaps belief that the Septuagint was the original existed long enough ago for believers to "refute" the idea by pointing out the Hebraicisms. In other words my conclusion is far from original but goes back well over a century, long enough ago that it was at one time refuted. I have yet to find evidence for this.

No one knows when the idea they were religious works started.
Take two Hollywood examples. The Clash of the Titans and The Ten Commandments. While both are entertaining only the latter could be considered religious. The references to the Septuagint from ancient times indicate it was considered in the category of Clash of the Titans rather than The Ten Commandments. They were just stories about gods having no more meaning or value than any other story about gods.

Without a suggestion of special importance for a religion we cannot assume they had any special importance to anyone. When Josephus tells the story of the life of Moses he tells of him leading armies and conquering Nubia. This is not particularly different from the apocryphal gospel of Jesus as a child. There is no recorded reaction, positive or negative, to either additional material in ancient times. It is a modern attitude that rejects the gospel while Disney makes a movie of the Prince of Egypt using material from Josephus. Go figure.

No one knows when they became a component of a religion.
Clearly Josephus in the late 1st c. AD does not consider them to be an important part of Judaism. While parts of his Antiquities of the Jews largely parallels the Septuagint he refers to his source as temple records rather than an existing collection. In fact his entire exercise in writing Antiquities of the Jews makes no sense if in fact the Septuagint were taken as a component of the religion as they would be the fundamental basis for and the most important of the temple records in a language other than Greek.

In the second book of Against Apion where reference to the Old Testament as authoritative is almost imperative as it trumps Apion, Josephus does not mention it at all. In the world of Josephus citing an ancient text would have carried much greater weight than it would today. If the Septuagint had existed in Apion's time it is as difficult to understand how he would not know of it as to understand why Josephus does not point that out in Against Apion.

Rather when Josephus obliquely raises the Septuagint for discussion it is with citation and quotation from the forged Letter of Aristeas. And his citation is used to promote the "miraculous" accuracy of the translation into Greek. Contrast this with later opinions claiming erroneous translations of terms such as young woman into virgin and the like in the Septuagint.

In the first book of Against Apion Josephus declares the Jews were really the Hyksos who ruled Egypt for a century which is clearly in total contradiction to the story in the Exodus. Obviously Josephus did not consider Exodus to be a "true" story in our sense of a factually correct story.

Note here regardless of your opinion of correct or incorrect translation the Septuagint dates from no earlier than the mid 2nd c. BC. Tradition holds it was created in the mid 3rd c. BC based upon the forged Letter of Aristeas. In any event it is a minimum of 2100 years ago.

If you like creation of the Torah by Moses it was "translated" only ten centuries after Moses wrote it. If you like creation after the mythical return from Babylon then it was written only three centuries after the original. No matter how you look at it and considering the early citation of accuracy of translation, that the Septuagint is so much closer to the religious tradition of an "original" text in Hebrew that its translation of intended meaning and usage at the time of translation and for centuries later is accurate. People sitting around centuries later attacking Christianity may be able to argue their much more distant meaning and usage of words but cannot claim the Greek is wrong when Jews living at the time extolled its accuracy.

The Septuagint was first adopted by Christianity in the 4th or 5th century as books to be included in collections which included the gospels and epistles. The authors of the Mishna use them as a starting point to purge the murderous and depraved nature of the Torah.

When Christians began taking note of a version of the Septuagint in a language other than Greek it was not taken as superior to the Greek merely different from it.

No one knows why any particular selection of books was made.
Josephus refers to the Jews as having only 22 holy books. While there have been some vain attempts to mix and match the Septuagint/Old Testament books into 22 there is no evidence such a grouping ever existed. The number used by both Jews and Christians is a near match to the Septuagint.

Bel and the Dragon is out which is perhaps unfortunate as it has the best stories. It is unclear if the Book of Enoch was ever in the Septuagint. It was very popular up through the 3rd c. AD. In this light the earliest uses of the books by the people appear to have been as entertainment.

The book of Ester is included even though it has no religious content whatsoever but is purely about human intrigue. No, it does not tell of a god looking after his people as there is no god mentioned nor credited. It is all a Cinderella story of the power of a beautiful woman over a man. As such it is clearly entertainment.

Save for Ester they were simply god stories like the stories about the Greek gods not to be taken seriously. If a more entertaining story came along it was the more truthful story even if it contradicted the previous. The more powerful the story the more truthful it was in those days. They did not view physical evidence as the sole criteria for what is true.

For example the issues I raise in this work are largely of fact. They are all asking what really happened. Raising such issues two thousand years ago would have elicited a blank "why does it matter" stare. However a dialog on whether the trials of Moses or those of Hercules were truer should not have been hard to start. Neither would the king of Egypt as a tragic hero in the Moses story or as tale of brother against brother, sibling rivalry is a perennial favorite theme. The discourse would be on the aesthetic qualities of the stories in accordance with the standards of the day.

This is something we have read of many times in our own history. Prior to modern times questioning the occurrence or even existence of person or event was far from common. Rather the great debates were over conflicting stories and which was truer to the nature of the story's theme.

Matt Giwer © 2011

Sorry, Mouse. I did not see your earlier reply until just now. Not sure how that happened.....

Anyway,

Quote:Philistia and Judah are bible places. They did not exist.

Egyptologist, Donald Redford, tells us that the Egyptians referred to Canaan as "the land beyond the sand," a picturesque if somewhat awkward way of saying it.

There are Assyrian references to the Philisti and Palastu. The Egyptians called them the Peleset. I'm sorry that no one referred to them by their English names but that really would be asking a lot....seeing as how English did not exist at this time. In addition we have a firmly dated series of destruction layers in the mid 12th century at the formerly Canaanite (another name that was not used at the time but is conventional today) towns of Ashdod, Ekron, Gaza, Ashkelon and Gath.
Below the layer, the remains are Canaanite. Above they are Hellenic which is an indication that the Sea Peoples had some Greek heritage.
The Sea Peoples, having battled Ramesses III either lost or fought to a draw. They either then withdrew to Canaan on their own OR were directed there by the Egyptians who subsequently withdrew from their base at Beth Shean apparently voluntarily. In any case, they overran the towns mentioned and we have a definitive shift in pottery styles at that time. They had no written language of their own so we do not know what they called themselves....only what their opponents called them. But whatever they called themselves - they were there.

Quote:The physical evidence is conclusive.

Only if you ignore the pieces you don't like.

Nope...all your evidence is false...written in the early 1920 by a commitee of athiest faking ancient text. Besides...where is your proof that authentics the documents your basing your agruments?? What's good for the goose...is good for the gander. The roman and greek empires. Never really existed...they were made up by european merchents of 1600 to control the trade routes. Everythings a lie. Nothing can be proofed. Everything is faked.

See what happens when you shake the rug too hard, Mouse? All sorts of assholes fall out.

(April 12, 2013 at 4:32 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Sorry, Mouse. I did not see your earlier reply until just now. Not sure how that happened.....

Anyway,

Quote:Philistia and Judah are bible places. They did not exist.

Egyptologist, Donald Redford, tells us that the Egyptians referred to Canaan as "the land beyond the sand," a picturesque if somewhat awkward way of saying it.

So this Redford character assumes there really was a place called Canaan and then claims an Egyptian name is Canaan and therefore Canaan existed. That is not even elliptical. It is a perfect circle as far as reasoning goes.

The geographic area was always there. What it was called is the issue. Egyptians many have called it what Redford said. No one but the unknown people who wrote the bible ever called it that. Because of that it cannot be distinguished from an invented name that no one ever called it.

The consequential problem is, even if we let believers get away with it, is the CanaanITES. With the ITES we expect to find a distinctive culture which left distinctive arkies remains like pottery and such. There is no such thing found.

Further apologist believers are constantly talking about "peoples" migrating into bibleland. To make a difference and bring a culture with them this is not a few families. This is tens of thousands of people. Look into real archaeology and discover there is no talk of any such migrations or mass movements. Only fake biblical arkies talk about it. Why? desperate attempts to salvage bible stories by weaving fanciful LIES about the nature of ancient times. The LIES are necessary to salvage anything from the bible stories.

Quote:There are Assyrian references to the Philisti and Palastu. The Egyptians called them the Peleset. I'm sorry that no one referred to them by their English names but that really would be asking a lot....seeing as how English did not exist at this time.

There are a few rules of names. P is quite conveniently a plosive. PH is a fricative. Those kinds of sounds do not drift between groups rather only within the same types of sounds even over centuries. Now the Greeks like Herodotus had perfectly good ways of spelling such sounds. In fact they did use PH for F and P for P. Herodotus writes Palestina. Mid 5th c. BC for that. The phonetic spelling was constant at least through the 2nd c. AD that I can say I have verified. I have also found 20th c. uses of the name with the same P not PH such as our own discussion. Given pronunciations are a drunkard's walk instead of returning to an older version I think it safe to say the P has always been a P. A related exception appears to be the migration of Joppa to Jaffa but only a period of more than 3000 years.

As you say, there is a mention of a Palastu which looks darned close. I am not aware of Philisti and would much appreciate a reference. However if both are found in the same Assyrian sources then it is most reasonable to consider they referred to two different places. As we know which was and still is Palestine Philisti was some place else.

Quote: In addition we have a firmly dated series of destruction layers in the mid 12th century at the formerly Canaanite (another name that was not used at the time but is conventional today) towns of Ashdod, Ekron, Gaza, Ashkelon and Gath.

That a name is conventional today is solely a bible convention. In using a bible name believers can make all kinds of audacious claims without having to admit to circular reasoning. I am sure you have read many of them. If on the other hand they were required to rephrase their claims with IF we assume this was called Canaan THEN ... the circular nature of the claim would be obvious.

For example you use what you call "formerly Canaanite towns" in place of the honest IF we assume these six were Canaanite towns THEN these six Canaanite towns show destruction around the same time. (A time when the New Kingdom of Egypt was taking over/ruled the region.) Your statement is not obviously a circular argument. The restated is an obvious circular argument.

Factually I have not heard of a Gath having been identified. Again a reference would be appreciated. This is the first time I have considered the culture of those places but I am quite certain Gaza, Ashkelon and Ashod represent three different cultures.

As to actually identifying cities one of my first insights into real arkies preserving their funding was reading a couple of the papers. The first sentence was "something, something thought to be the biblical city of something." The second sentence explained that it did not match the bible description of location and that nothing was at the bible location. The third sentence said to the effect, we ignored that and got down to real archaeology. The rest of the paper was real archaeology with not the slightest reference back to the first sentence.

Ever since that I have taken any naming of a bible city with a grain of salt until I can find the actual paper. So far not a single one (granted not many) have shown any cause to identify the city by the bible name. This applies to presently existing cities like Jerusalem too. There is no known connection I have come across which would connect the bible Jerusalem with the Greek era Jerusalem even in the matter of location. This of course starts with the premise the bible stories about Jerusalem have anything to do with any city on that hit at any time in history.

Quote:Below the layer, the remains are Canaanite. Above they are Hellenic which is an indication that the Sea Peoples had some Greek heritage.

Any name chosen for the land would be based upon the names found from archaeology and from ancient texts. Any remains found are Palestinian remains. That there were Mycenaean colonies (or Hellenic but not Greek) is quite well known. Perseus and Andromeda and the Medusa are set in Joppa or modern Jaffa. Hellenic culture appears to have started in southern Turkey and spread first eastward and then south along the Med as colonies. Only after its unexplained hiatus does it reappear in Greece.

Quote:The Sea Peoples, having battled Ramesses III either lost or fought to a draw. They either then withdrew to Canaan on their own OR were directed there by the Egyptians who subsequently withdrew from their base at Beth Shean apparently voluntarily.

I have never heard of any legitimate claim that the origin or identity of the sea people has been made. A reference to "their base" being identified would be appreciated.

Since they did arrive by sea, hence their name, the idea they arrived in any huge numbers making one ask after the kind of landing craft they used. The simplest explanation is they were sort of like Viking invaders of Britain. And when Egypt got its act together exterminated them.

However if they did withdraw it is proper to use the known historical name and say they withdrew to Palestine.

Sidebar: Are you aware there is an entire modern Zionist myth that Rome invented the name Palestine in the 2nd c. AD?

Quote:In any case, they overran the towns mentioned and we have a definitive shift in pottery styles at that time. They had no written language of their own so we do not know what they called themselves....only what their opponents called them. But whatever they called themselves - they were there.

Quote:The physical evidence is conclusive.

Only if you ignore the pieces you don't like.

I do work quite hard to avoid that error. I do not ignore people calling the region Canaan in order to claim the cities are Canaanite instead of Palestinian. Interpreting finds with the assumption the bible is correct is not rational.

Try this example with identifying cities. Although it is popularly believed Schliemann discovered Troy back in the 1870s it was only about five years ago, nearly a century and a half later, that there was general agreement the city he found even matched the description of Ilium. Still there is no consensus that any of the events in the Iliad actually occurred or that any of the people were real. The standards of evidence were and ARE that high in real archaeology. Bible stories do not get exemptions for the rules nor special treatment.

Compare that the ZERO skepticism among "biblical" archaeologists regarding any claim of any discovered city. Those folks have no standards of evidence at all. And yet you confidently named six cities and gave them a common culture which comes only from them. Consider this false confidence using the bible as a guide carries along with it assumptions that all the bible stories about those cities are true or true but exaggerated or some sort of reflection of real events.

I am doing nothing more than applying the real standards of the science of archaeology to claims of discoveries in bibleland. I would first prefer a century and a half if that it what it takes to verify a city is in fact the one mentioned in the bible stories. I would never take a confirmation of a city matching the description as having anything to do with the stories which mention the city.

But as I said bible diggers have no standards. They are not skeptical. Those few that sort of do have standards will fake it in the first few sentences of their publications. Needless to say believers never look passed the first sentence.

---

(April 12, 2013 at 6:04 pm)ebg Wrote: Nope...all your evidence is false...written in the early 1920 by a commitee of athiest faking ancient text.

Name of the committee, its members and the rest of the details which will distinguish that statement from a lie. Please do.

Quote: Besides...where is your proof that authentics the documents your basing your agruments?? What's good for the goose...is good for the gander. The roman and greek empires. Never really existed...they were made up by european merchents of 1600 to control the trade routes. Everythings a lie. Nothing can be proofed. Everything is faked.

You are obviously quite desperate here. You are resorting grade school level claims.

I have made no claims whatsoever about Roman or Greek empires existing or not and I have no interest in your beliefs on any subject. I am only interested in what physical evidence you might have. I doubt I have missed anything that related to my theory of origin.

As for proof, that is a very specific word. It only applies to math and logic. It does not apply to science or anything else. If you wish to discuss the subject at least learn to use words properly.

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(April 12, 2013 at 6:55 pm)Minimalist Wrote: See what happens when you shake the rug too hard, Mouse? All sorts of assholes fall out.

What might be worst is that people who make a popular reputation for themselves will often backtrack and be as dumb as this guy. I just looked into the second Finkelstein book where he weaves a fanciful tale claiming to show Saul, David and Solomon were real people but the stories were distorted. With reading the Amazon "look inside" parts and the comments it appears it appears he is all argumentation with zero physical evidence.

In other words that guy might be Finkelstein. It is all so unfortunate.

Quote:So this Redford character assumes

Hmmm.... here is the "Redford character's" bio. I'd like to see you compare your qualifications and experience in the subject to his.

Quote:Redford received his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D from the University of Toronto, and was an Assistant/Associate Professor (1962–1969) and full Professor (1969–1998) at the same university. He moved to Pennsylvania State University in 1998.

Redford was the winner of the 1993 "Best Scholarly Book in Archaeology" awarded by the Biblical Archaeological Society for his work Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times.[1] In the book he argues that the experiences of the Hyksos in Egypt became a central foundation of myths in Canaanite culture, leading to the story of Moses. He further argues that almost all the toponymic details in the Exodus story reflect conditions in Egypt not earlier than the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, the Saite period, namely the 7th century BC. Whoever, Redford argues, provided the author of Exodus with these details had no access to Egyptian material earlier than that date.[2] This view was expounded upon in The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman.

Redford's work in editing The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, published in 2001, earned the American Library Association's Dartmouth Medal for a reference work of outstanding quality and significance. Since 2006 he is also in the editorial board of RIHAO.

You see, far from being a character...even one with a web site, Redford is a recognized expert in the field.

Quote:However if they did withdraw it is proper to use the known historical name and say they withdrew to Palestine.

This would be some 6 centuries before the first recorded use of the term "Palestine" by Herodotus.

Quote:I just looked into the second Finkelstein book where he weaves a fanciful tale claiming to show Saul, David and Solomon were real people but the stories were distorted.

I read the book some time ago...it is still on my bookshelf. i don't recall this particular characterization but I do recall the anachronism of "Goliath's" armor...which is a dead on description

Quote:5 And he had an helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of brass.

6 And he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders.

7 And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam; and his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron: and one bearing a shield went before him.

1 Samuel 17

of a Greek hoplite



a type of fighter which post-dated the ridiculous David/Goliath legend by 3 centuries or so. Further, Greek hoplite mercenaries were employed in the Pharaoh Necho's army but that brings us full circle back to Donald Redford and the Saite Period.