What do Atheists believe the Bible as?

[DeistPaladin]

Yes that does seem a stretch.

Oh, did I mention zero infant mortality has to be part of the math? Plus we haven't factored in the Egyptian massacre of Jewish male babies at the time Moses was born?

However, there were more than just descendants of Jacob who left, there were other slaves and even Egyptians. Nowhere does it say that 600 000 Jews left Egypt.

So "children of Israel (Jacob)" =/= descendants of Jacob? Remember that "Israel" was Yahweh's name for Jacob.

Genesis 32:28 And he (Yahweh) said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel

[TheCarlisle]

Yes that does seem a stretch.

Oh, did I mention zero infant mortality has to be part of the math? Plus we haven't factored in the Egyptian massacre of Jewish male babies at the time Moses was born?

However, there were more than just descendants of Jacob who left, there were other slaves and even Egyptians. Nowhere does it say that 600 000 Jews left Egypt.

So "children of Israel (Jacob)" =/= descendants of Jacob? Remember that "Israel" was Yahweh's name for Jacob.

Genesis 32:28 And he (Yahweh) said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel

After all of the plagues, Egyptians were imploring the Pharaoh to let the slaves go. After much of their crop and animals have died, the people of Israel were set free. It makes sense to think that other Egyptian people would leave with the slaves after see the power of the true God and how the Egyptian gods have forsaken them.

By the way, why do you call God Yahweh while it's so much easier to say that three letter word?

[DeistPaladin]

After all of the plagues, Egyptians were imploring the Pharaoh to let the slaves go. After much of their crop and animals have died, the people of Israel were set free. It makes sense to think that other Egyptian people would leave with the slaves after see the power of the true God and how the Egyptian gods have forsaken them.

I don't suppose you can cite chapter and verse to support this claim? In any event, the Bible says "children of Israel". Barring any verses to the contrary, I think the straightforward translation is that this number reflected the "children of Israel" like it says.

By the way, why do you call God Yahweh while it's so much easier to say that three letter word?

I'm a deist. I don't believe Yahweh is God. Any more than you believe Zeus or Allah is God.

[TheCarlisle]

I'm a deist. I don't believe Yahweh is God. Any more than you believe Zeus or Allah is God.

You cannot say, "And Yahweh said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel." if Yahweh is not God. Since they are different entities, their names cannot be interchanged so lightly. God is the name of the only god in the Bible. God said that quote, not Yahweh (which I assume is also a god?).

Anyways, when you cherry-picked the verses in Exodus, you came to the wrong conclusion. Israel was in Egypt for a much longer time than 80 or so years; which is nowhere near the time needed to build cities with even 700 people. If what you were saying was true, it would be a gaping hole in Christian history and much fewer people would believe in Christianity. As it stands about 1.1B people are Catholic.

http://www.christnotes.org/commentary.ph...es&b=2&c=1
"As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Then the LORD said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”

Genesis 15:12-16

[Minimalist]

Take your time to read it.

I've seen it all before and it is the same silly pseudo-scientific shit as before. You take 1,000 years of Egyptian history and look for an anomaly and then say Yep - THERE THEY ARE!!! THERE ARE THE FUCKING JEWS!!!!

Sorry, boy. History doesn't work that way. All of the mental masturbation used by people like Hershel Shanks ( who is not an archaeologist....he is a lawyer who runs a magazine selling salvation to gullible shitheads) goes away when you understand that the initial drafts of what later came to be the OT were not written until the 7th century BC and were then heavily edited in succeeding centuries.

They Hyksos were Canaanites...probably originally came as either a mercenary unit hired by the Egyptians ( most likely ) or as refugees from one of the periodic droughts in Canaan ( less likely.) When the Middle Kingdom collapsed in political disarray the Hyksos were uniquely situated to set themselves up as a dynasty in the northern part of Egypt. They do not seem to have ever controlled the whole country which led to the rise of competing dynasties in the south. Eventually, the founder of the 18th dynasty ( Ahmose I... look closely at that name, btw) drove them out of Egypt, pursued them back to Canaan and crushed them. In the process he set up a 4 century Egyptian hegemony over Canaan which only ended in the mid- 12th century BCE. Canaanites were not "Jewish" however.

As far as the alleged "Conquest" goes, modern archaeology has dismissed the fanciful notions of any blood-thirsty bastard named "Joshua." There are destruction layers at many sites, scattered over a two hundred year period and a number of the sites which "Joshua" conquered did not even exist in the Late Bronze Age. As William Dever wryly pointed out, "the big miracle of Joshua was that he conquered cities that weren't even there."

Which ( dismissing the literature of Sinuhe for being "literature" and which has nothing the fuck to do with Jews, anyway) brings us to the Merneptah stele which I am going to guess you have never read beyond the one line which gives you a hard on because you think it says what you want it to say.

Here is a full translation - 150 lines of bombastic bullshit.

http://bibledudes.com/biblical-studies/f...lation.php

The pharaoh, the steady arm of Ra crushing the Libyans in the Western Desert of Egypt causing them to flee from his sight....amusing as Merneptah would have been in his 60's by the time he came to the throne and one suspects the reality is that junior commanders did the fighting while he sat on his ass in the capital. Oddly, the stele is a copy ( more or less ) of an inscription which appears on the temple walls at Karnak, except for the last 10 lines which lack the gloriousness of the first 140. There are two problems with the traditional way of reading the stele. One, it never says that the pharaoh did any of the things in Canaan which he is credited with in Libya. Instead, we get:

Canaan is captive with all woe.
Ashkelon is conquered, Gezer seized,
Yanoam made nonexistent;
Israel is wasted, bare of seed,
Khor is become a widow for Egypt.

The problem is that Canaan, Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam had been controlled by Egypt for 4 centuries ( as noted above.) Khor (Syria) is a bizarre reference to our ears but the demarcation line between the Egyptian and Hittite empires was the Orontes river in Syria so perhaps this is an admission by Egypt that they can no longer dominate Syria?
Then we have the line that obviously makes you giddy "Israel is wasted, bare of seed." Again, as with the above, there is none of this "strong arm of Ra smiting the enemies of Egypt" shit. Moreover, there is another problem with that line. It does not say " Israel." What it says, in Egyptian (as that is the language the stele is written in ) is "Ysirir." The word was associated with "Israel" by 19th century archaeologist, Flinders-Petrie because it "sounded like Israel" but that is, really, absurd. We don't know what the Egyptians meant by the word and, most importantly, it appears no where else in the entire body of Egyptian writing we have found. If you want to get into what "sounds like" something we have the Jezreel Valley in the same general area as the named sites. A well known agricultural region and the basis for the later economic superiority of the northern kingdom of Israel over the southern kingdom of Judah. What better way to describe burned out farms than to call them "bare of seed?" As always, religious freaks see only what they want to see.

For that matter, the notion that we can read and translate ancient Egyptian word for word the way we do French and German is wrong. Take that first line. Other scholars have read it as "Canaan is plundered of everything." One could go on and on with this but the basic point remains. Unlike the beginning of the inscription ( the glorious part which did make it on to the temple wall) the last ten lines read like a modern after-action report. "Yeah - we won the war but we suffered some defeats in the process."

Now how do you know that this text wasn't written to counter the alleged delusions of Christianity,

I'm not sure you are saying what you want to say, there. Celsus was most definitely writing to counter the alleged delusions of xtians. It's a job which many of us now carry on because you are still just as deluded as you were then.

[Cinjin]

You cannot say, "And Yahweh said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel." if Yahweh is not God. Since they are different entities, their names cannot be interchanged so lightly. God is the name of the only god in the Bible. God said that quote, not Yahweh (which I assume is also a god?).

hmmm ... this is a most definitely flawed statement, but since you are debating with someone I really respect, I'm just going to digress and let DP do what he does best.


You do get partial credit though for enabling me to watch a good show.

[DeistPaladin]

You cannot say, "And Yahweh said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel." if Yahweh is not God. Since they are different entities, their names cannot be interchanged so lightly. God is the name of the only god in the Bible. God said that quote, not Yahweh (which I assume is also a god?).

OK, apparently I haven't been clear enough.

You do know that the OT was written in ancient Hebrew, not Jacobian English, I'm sure. The term for the ancient Hebrew god, the one you also revere, was called "YHWH", alternatively pronounced "YaHWeh" or "YeHWovaH" (Jehovah). I didn't invent the name "Yahweh". That's the name the Jews give to their god, which you claim is your god, as combined with Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Now, I understand that when you say "God", you mean "Yahweh/Jesus". When a Muslim says "God", they mean "Allah". When I say "God", I mean the Creator, who likely bears no resemblance to any of the gods invented by humanity.

At this point, you may be a little confused, because to you, Yahweh/Jesus IS the Creator and therefore God. Try to think now about the Muslim who thinks Allah is the Creator and therefore God. Think about your view of his claim. Now you understand how I view your claim that Yahweh/Jesus is God.

As you view Zeus, Odin, Ra, Allah, Shiva, Chetzaquatil, etc, this is a view I share. What makes us different is that I place Yahweh and Jesus in the same mix of false idols and imaginary gods. When you understand how you view all these pagan gods, you understand how I see yours.

This gets back to your question of how I see the Bible. It's your mythology.

Anyways, when you cherry-picked the verses in Exodus, you came to the wrong conclusion. Israel was in Egypt for a much longer time than 80 or so years; which is nowhere near the time needed to build cities with even 700 people. If what you were saying was true, it would be a gaping hole in Christian history

And that's just one of many fun facts about the Bible. The thing is, few Christians read the Bible (and, I venture to speculate even fewer Catholics). Most Christians treat the Bible like a computer software license agreement. Nobody reads it. They just scroll to the bottom and click "I agree". Those who do deconvert from Christianity to atheism often cite reading the Bible as their first step to deconversion.

“Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.

People lived hundreds of years back then, sometimes several hundred, if the OT is to be believed. So four generations in 400 years seems... consistent.

So do you think people lived hundreds of years back then? And Jewish-Egyptian women had about 50 or so children each? Oy!

[TheCarlisle]

---

[quote='Minimalist' pid='155440' dateline='1311010531']

Take your time to read it.

I've seen it all before and it is the same silly pseudo-scientific shit as before. You take 1,000 years of Egyptian history and look for an anomaly and then say Yep - THERE THEY ARE!!! THERE ARE THE FUCKING JEWS!!!!

Sorry, boy. History doesn't work that way. All of the mental masturbation used by people like Hershel Shanks ( who is not an archaeologist....he is a lawyer who runs a magazine selling salvation to gullible shitheads) goes away when you understand that the initial drafts of what later came to be the OT were not written until the 7th century BC and were then heavily edited in succeeding centuries.

They Hyksos were Canaanites...probably originally came as either a mercenary unit hired by the Egyptians ( most likely ) or as refugees from one of the periodic droughts in Canaan ( less likely.) When the Middle Kingdom collapsed in political disarray the Hyksos were uniquely situated to set themselves up as a dynasty in the northern part of Egypt. They do not seem to have ever controlled the whole country which led to the rise of competing dynasties in the south. Eventually, the founder of the 18th dynasty ( Ahmose I... look closely at that name, btw) drove them out of Egypt, pursued them back to Canaan and crushed them. In the process he set up a 4 century Egyptian hegemony over Canaan which only ended in the mid- 12th century BCE. Canaanites were not "Jewish" however.

As far as the alleged "Conquest" goes, modern archaeology has dismissed the fanciful notions of any blood-thirsty bastard named "Joshua." There are destruction layers at many sites, scattered over a two hundred year period and a number of the sites which "Joshua" conquered did not even exist in the Late Bronze Age. As William Dever wryly pointed out, "the big miracle of Joshua was that he conquered cities that weren't even there."

Which ( dismissing the literature of Sinuhe for being "literature" and which has nothing the fuck to do with Jews, anyway) brings us to the Merneptah stele which I am going to guess you have never read beyond the one line which gives you a hard on because you think it says what you want it to say.

Here is a full translation - 150 lines of bombastic bullshit.

http://bibledudes.com/biblical-studies/f...lation.php

The pharaoh, the steady arm of Ra crushing the Libyans in the Western Desert of Egypt causing them to flee from his sight....amusing as Merneptah would have been in his 60's by the time he came to the throne and one suspects the reality is that junior commanders did the fighting while he sat on his ass in the capital. Oddly, the stele is a copy ( more or less ) of an inscription which appears on the temple walls at Karnak, except for the last 10 lines which lack the gloriousness of the first 140. There are two problems with the traditional way of reading the stele. One, it never says that the pharaoh did any of the things in Canaan which he is credited with in Libya. Instead, we get:

Canaan is captive with all woe.
Ashkelon is conquered, Gezer seized,
Yanoam made nonexistent;
Israel is wasted, bare of seed,
Khor is become a widow for Egypt.

The problem is that Canaan, Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam had been controlled by Egypt for 4 centuries ( as noted above.) Khor (Syria) is a bizarre reference to our ears but the demarcation line between the Egyptian and Hittite empires was the Orontes river in Syria so perhaps this is an admission by Egypt that they can no longer dominate Syria?
Then we have the line that obviously makes you giddy "Israel is wasted, bare of seed." Again, as with the above, there is none of this "strong arm of Ra smiting the enemies of Egypt" shit. Moreover, there is another problem with that line. It does not say " Israel." What it says, in Egyptian (as that is the language the stele is written in ) is "Ysirir." The word was associated with "Israel" by 19th century archaeologist, Flinders-Petrie because it "sounded like Israel" but that is, really, absurd. We don't know what the Egyptians meant by the word and, most importantly, it appears no where else in the entire body of Egyptian writing we have found. If you want to get into what "sounds like" something we have the Jezreel Valley in the same general area as the named sites. A well known agricultural region and the basis for the later economic superiority of the northern kingdom of Israel over the southern kingdom of Judah. What better way to describe burned out farms than to call them "bare of seed?" As always, religious freaks see only what they want to see.

For that matter, the notion that we can read and translate ancient Egyptian word for word the way we do French and German is wrong. Take that first line. Other scholars have read it as "Canaan is plundered of everything." One could go on and on with this but the basic point remains. Unlike the beginning of the inscription ( the glorious part which did make it on to the temple wall) the last ten lines read like a modern after-action report. "Yeah - we won the war but we suffered some defeats in the process."

---

Calling me boy, profuse profanity, AND CAPITALIZED SENTENCES. I have no interest in a pissing contest that not only breaks forum rules, but is also senseless. I will ignore you and your posts for now.If I offended you, sorry, I had no intentions to do so.

"An eye for an eye makes the world blind"

[Minimalist]

Calling me boy, profuse profanity, AND CAPITALIZED SENTENCES. I have no interest in a pissing contest that not only breaks forum rules, but is also senseless. I will ignore you and your posts for now.If I offended you, sorry, I had no intentions to do so.

Don't worry. I won't ignore you.

[Autumnlicious]

Calling me boy, profuse profanity, AND CAPITALIZED SENTENCES. I have no interest in a pissing contest that not only breaks forum rules, but is also senseless. I will ignore you and your posts for now.If I offended you, sorry, I had no intentions to do so.

Whoa there, pardner! You better hoist up yer britches before more dribbles out of your oral cavity.

He also broke no rules. And he actually made clear and concise arguments.

Your "I will ignore you and your posts for now" reeks of intellectual cowardice, cowardice I would speculate befitting only the retarded mental facilities of a creationist ape, not that I would want to insult apes. Your retreat certainly stymies constructive debate, of which this forum is founded on.

Minimalist has contributed time and time again. What have you done?

"An eye for an eye makes the world blind"

Quoth the blind man indeed.