(December 11, 2013 at 2:04 pm)Minimalist Wrote: I've long thought ( no evidence...just a gut feeling based on human nature) that the reason for those silly genealogies was to somehow write into the narrative a glorious history for the people who commissioned the various re-writes from the scribes. In much the same way other ancient figures....Caesar, Alexander....found ways to link themselves to the gods.
That sounds plausible, given human nature. It'd be pretty cool to learn that some of the greatest characters in those books paid for the privilege of getting credit for parting seas and making the sun stand still in the sky.
A: So, let me get this right, you want to have 30 wives and 70 concubines?
B: Sounds kinda low, doesn't it? Fuck it, here's another gold piece. Let's make it 300 and 700, shall we?
A: Whatever you say, "Solomon."
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
