Time to scoop up the camel shit deposited by our pet fundamentalist.
My post denying the historical reliability of the Bible was based largely on a summary of the book by Finkelstein and Silberman The Bible Unearthed, which I made two years ago. Regrettably, in trying to condense a book of almost 400 pages into a 2-page precis I left out a qualifying phrase which should have been included, so that I stated incorrectly that the camel had not been domesticated until 1000 AD.
I have borrowed the book again, and here is everything that Finkestein and Silberman have to say on the subject with the words I should have included in italics.
John V said absolutely nothing in support of biblical inerrancy; he only carped about the date that the camel was "domesticated." I willingly concede that the dromedary camel was domesticated as a meat animal in southern Arabia over 1000 miles from Palestine sometime in the third millennium, say 2500 BCE, and the Bactrian camel was likewise kept at the same time in Iran, again a long way off, but this furnishes absolutely no support for the historicity of the biblical narratives.
I am at a loss to understand the point of John V's argument. Does he think that if he shows an atheist is not infallible, he has proved the Bible is? He has made no attempt to refute any of the examples of biblical errors, and "elephant-hurling" (whatever that may be) is a pathetic cop-out.
My post denying the historical reliability of the Bible was based largely on a summary of the book by Finkelstein and Silberman The Bible Unearthed, which I made two years ago. Regrettably, in trying to condense a book of almost 400 pages into a 2-page precis I left out a qualifying phrase which should have been included, so that I stated incorrectly that the camel had not been domesticated until 1000 AD.
I have borrowed the book again, and here is everything that Finkestein and Silberman have to say on the subject with the words I should have included in italics.
Quote:The biblical text reveals some clear clues that can narrow down the time of its final composition. Take the mention of camels, for instance. The stories of the patriarchs are packed with camels, usually herds of camels; but as in the story of Joseph's sale by his brothers into slavery (Genesis 37:25), camels are also described as beasts of burden used in caravan trade. We now know through archaeological research that camels were not domesticated as beasts of burden earlier than the late second millennium and were not used in that capacity in the ancient Near East until well after 1000 BCE. And an even more telling detail—the camel caravan carrying "gum, balm and myrrh," in the Joseph story—reveals an obvious familiarity with the main products of the lucrative Arabian trade that flourished under the supervision of the Assyrian empire in the eighth-seventh centuries BCE.I apologize for my lapse in accuracy. However, the qualifying phrase changes absolutely nothing about the evidence for my basic contention that the biblical narratives of the patriarchs contain unhistorical details. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were supposed to have lived ca. 2000-1800 BCE. Finkelstein and Silberman say that the camel was not domesticated as a beast of burden until late in the second millennium, ca. 1200 BCE, and was not used as such in the ancient Near East until well after 1000 BCE. The majority of other scholars cited in the discussion agree with them.
Indeed, excavations at the site of Tell Jemmeh in the southern coastal plain of Israel—a particularly important entrepot on the main caravan route between Arabia and the Mediterranean—revealed a dramatic increase in the number of camel bones in the seventh century. The bones were almost exclusively of mature animals, suggesting that they were from traveling beasts of burden, not from locally raised herds (among which the bones of young animals would also be found). Indeed, precisely at this time, Assyrian sources describe camels being used as pack animals in caravans. It was only then that camels became a common enough feature of the landscape to be included as an incidental detail in a literary narrative.
John V said absolutely nothing in support of biblical inerrancy; he only carped about the date that the camel was "domesticated." I willingly concede that the dromedary camel was domesticated as a meat animal in southern Arabia over 1000 miles from Palestine sometime in the third millennium, say 2500 BCE, and the Bactrian camel was likewise kept at the same time in Iran, again a long way off, but this furnishes absolutely no support for the historicity of the biblical narratives.
I am at a loss to understand the point of John V's argument. Does he think that if he shows an atheist is not infallible, he has proved the Bible is? He has made no attempt to refute any of the examples of biblical errors, and "elephant-hurling" (whatever that may be) is a pathetic cop-out.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
