Interesting Find in Turkey

[Minimalist]

Since we don't have an archaeology section of the board this will have to do.


http://www.archaeologydaily.com/news/201...ablet.html

Canadian archeologists in Turkey have unearthed an ancient treaty written in cuneiform that could have served as a model for the biblical description of God's covenant with the Israelites.

The tablet, dating from about 670 BC, is a treaty between the powerful Assyrian king and his weaker vassal states, written in a highly formulaic language very similar in form and style to the story of Abraham's covenant with God in the Hebrew Bible, says University of Toronto archeologist Timothy Harrison.

Sure to burn the asses of fundies everywhere.

[Disinter]

Nice! This will surely stir up some controversy. I wonder what the excuse (from fundies) will be this time.

[tavarish]

My guess is that this will be largely ignored.

[Minimalist]

Nice! This will surely stir up some controversy. I wonder what the excuse (from fundies) will be this time.

My guess is that this will simply be turned around. IOW, they will assume that the Assyrians "copied" the wording from their silly fucking bible.

Dismissing the religious shits for the non-entities they are, what is really interesting is that the idea lends credence to the centrist camp of Israel Finkelstein and Ami Mazar. This OT gibberish clearly had a basis in pre-Exilic reality at least in the sense that there was some folklore/legal forms in existence that could be swept up by the biblical writers when they sat down to do the job.

[AngelThMan]

Nice! This will surely stir up some controversy. I wonder what the excuse (from fundies) will be this time.

I'm not a fundie but I can tell you that the timeline doesn't quite work. 670 BC is way after the bible was started, which dates back to a religion that's 5,000-6,000 years old. Who copied who?

[Tiberius]

I guess you didn't read the actual article...

Although biblical scholarship differs, it is widely accepted that the Hebrew Bible was being assembled around the same time as this treaty, the seventh century BC.

I think historians / archaeologists might know a bit more about history than you do...

[Minimalist]

Nice! This will surely stir up some controversy. I wonder what the excuse (from fundies) will be this time.

I'm not a fundie but I can tell you that the timeline doesn't quite work. 670 BC is way after the bible was started, which dates back to a religion that's 5,000-6,000 years old. Who copied who?

Hate to tell you but you ARE a fundie.

Apparently,, you don't know WTF you are talking about.

[AngelThMan]

I guess you didn't read the actual article...

Although biblical scholarship differs, it is widely accepted that the Hebrew Bible was being assembled around the same time as this treaty, the seventh century BC.

I think historians / archaeologists might know a bit more about history than you do...

As the article itself states, biblical scholarships differ on this. It's difficult to pinpoint when exactly the bible was started, as 5,000 years ago there was no written language. The stories of the bible had been passed down for many generations, even thousands of years, before they were ultimately scribed. So the writing of the bible began with the stories that were passed down verbally.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_was_the_Bible_written

[tavarish]

I guess you didn't read the actual article...

Although biblical scholarship differs, it is widely accepted that the Hebrew Bible was being assembled around the same time as this treaty, the seventh century BC.

I think historians / archaeologists might know a bit more about history than you do...

As the article itself states, biblical scholarships differ on this. It's difficult to pinpoint when exactly the bible was started, as 5,000 years ago there was no written language. The stories of the bible had been passed down for many generations, even thousands of years, before they were ultimately scribed. So the writing of the bible began with the stories that were passed down verbally.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_was_the_Bible_written

Have you heard of cuneiform? You know, pretty much what the article was about?

The cuneiform writing system was in use for more than 30 centuries, as the world's first system through several stages of evolution, from the 34th century BC down to the 1st century AD.[6] It was completely replaced by alphabetic writing in the course of the Roman era and has left behind no descendant systems in continued use. For this reason, it had to be deciphered from scratch in 19th century Assyriology. Successful completion of decipherment is dated to 1857.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_script

[Disinter]

So AngelThMan, if the stories of the bible were passed down verbally then at what point did they conceive the stories? Were they conjured out of superstition? Perhaps god showed up in the middle of evolution and said "hey guys, listen to this!". Or maybe god planted the ideas magically into their head?