(March 26, 2013 at 1:16 am)Minimalist Wrote:Quote:I simply refuse to go beyond the physical evidence.
Okay - so you are not willing to do any detective work. I understand. It's your right.
I did not make myself clear in your terms. Detective work in this case is the search for physical evidence. One then develops a theory to explain the physical evidence.
As there is no physical evidence of the Septuagint/OT stories prior to the mid 2nd c. BC there is no possible theory to address an earlier existence. One can guess, hypothesize, speculate, accept religious tradition of an earlier existence but there cannot be a theory as there is no physical evidence to explain.
Therefore a theory of origin for these stories cannot deal with any date significantly older than the mid 2nd c. BC for the absence of physical evidence.
Now if your or anyone's detective work should uncover physical evidence prior to that timeframe then a new theory is warranted and perhaps necessitated.
I, myself, have been looking for decades for additional physical evidence and found none. I have been involved in public discussion of of OT origins and the people described in it since bulletin boards came into existence. I started usenet discussions on these topics in 1995. Not only have I searched for additional physical evidence I have had scores of believers both Christian and Jewish presenting their physical evidence.
After wading through all the argumentation and actual investigation of what is claimed to be physical evidence about three years ago I came to the conclusion there was nothing of interest prior to the above timeframe.
If you know of something I have missed please tell me. But argumentation is not evidence. ALL argumentation is either contrary to the older "evidence" an extrapolation beyond it, and usually fails to satisfy related issues requiring special pleadings.
For example the existence of something older than the Septuagint in bibleland requires the existence of a scribal culture but there is no sign of one. Thus one has to make a special pleading for bibleland that it had an entirely different scribal culture than every other civilization. Why the special pleading? To argue the religious conclusion that the stories were written and preserved there.
There is absolutely NO excuse to search for and interpret everything to support something that is nothing more than a religious tradition to begin with. And in this case the tradition has its origin in a known forgery. In essence that is no different than "discovering" evidence of the Noatic flood or a 6000 year old earth.
