(April 11, 2012 at 11:39 pm)michaelsherlock Wrote:You’ve proved people can write fiction, which is a point of defense, not evidence. At the start of this thread you presented what you thought was conclusive evidence Genesis was written in the 6th century BC. I explained, using context and culture, why the authors/compilers might include what they did. That put us on argumentative neutral ground. In addition, I claimed the details in Genesis would be unrealistic to know without being in a certain place or having documents from ancestors who were in that place. You then provided the counterargument above. That puts us on argumentative neutral ground again. Saying the writers of Genesis are capable of deception is not the same as giving evidence they actually did.Quote:I made the case that the author(s) had to know details from times far prior to the 6th century BC. That would suggest the author(s) lived prior to 6th century BC.
Not necessarily. Here goes;
Two years ago, there live a man by the name of....Abraham (popular name from the 2nd millenium BCE~), now Abraham and his son....Isaiah (popular name 1st Millenium BCE) lived in the land of Akkad (1st millenium BCE), now at this time Abraham's cousin, George Bush, who was the son of the President of the U.S.A, was moving from Alexandria in Egypt, where a great library was ( possibly late 1st millenium BCE~till about 4th century CE, but if "library was" meant that there used to be a library there before the author wrote this two years after Abraham, then who knows when it was written).
written in 2012, using names from the 2nd millenium bce onwards.
Ok I will just stop it here. The point is that I can make up a story by
sourcing the Bible and make it look like it was written much earlier than it was, although as I am a "religious nutbag" who is credulous and full of emotional distractions, I will probably accidentally include information that will reveal, more accurately, the time in which I wrote this terrible drival.
Do you want to make a case in which the writers did consciously and maliciously deceive? If so, consider what that claim entails. At some point, the Hebrews came to belief in God. When and how? Imagine you and I writing about a brand new Ferrari god in present tense just to screw up the lives of gullible people in the year 2192 who we won't ever know—that is what you’re proposing the Hebrews did. These gullible people would essentially be picking a dusty book off the used bookstore shelf and turning it into their religion. History makes a different claim. It says religions get made in the now. In all the well known religions, people are swayed by something convincing that just happened. In Islam, Muhammad returned to town saying he just received a vision from God. In Buddhism, Buddha claimed to just have received enlightenment on how to live. In Christianity, people saw or thought they saw Jesus alive just after he died. All these people needed empirical evidence before any spiritual reaction. Did one of the Jewish Patriarchs do something special that prompted Judaism? If so, why isn’t it highlighted over the rest?
I also do not see the significance of your claim that Genesis was written later. The other four books of the Torah were written in a similar style, indicating a shared time period. There are references to the Hebrews' God before the 6th century—meaning their belief came from somewhere apart from Genesis. There are also books like Job which seem either to be from an earlier time or had its “time period” mimicked extremely well. Have you devised a model describing how the Hebrews came to belief in their God, step by step? I’d like to see it, if you are willing.
