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Ancient Sources: History and Theology.

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  • #61
    Originally posted by Hypatia_Alexandria View Post

    How about Jericho?
    What about it?
    Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
    But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
    Than a fool in the eyes of God


    From "Fools Gold" by Petra

    Comment


    • #62
      Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
      It wasn't all that long ago that scoffers such of yourself claimed that Pilate never existed because we had no record of him. That Christian's simply concocted him out of whole cloth.
      Philo and Josephus both mention him.

      Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
      Then in the early 60s all of that changed when the "Pilate Stone was uncovered during an archaeological dig at Caesarea Palestinae. And since that time some coins and a ring have been found bearing his name.
      That later archaeological evidence confirmed his existence.

      Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
      So for you to disdainfully sniff that there is "no extraneous contemporary evidence that Pilate was married at this time" is at the very least disingenuous and likely dishonestly duplicitous.
      The fact remains, as you have stated, that we know very little about this historical figure.

      However, I still have no idea why anyone thinks that even if he was married why his wife would have been present in Jerusalem at this time.

      Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
      What I mean is that you have repeatedly demanded all sorts of contemporary documentation for someone you argue "had no impact on the world. He lived and died a nonentity" and then use the scarcity of such material to argue against his existence.
      You, along with some other Christians here, have an unfortunate tendency to conflate a real Galilean Jewish peasant who was executed by the Roman Praefectus of Judaea with a much later theological construct. The two are not the same.

      Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
      But here we have a governor that we didn't have a scrap of documentation about outside of Christian sources.
      Again, I note that you appear to have forgotten the comments on Pilate from both Philo and Josephus. Or perhaps you did not know about them!

      Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
      And ironically, even with only the tiny fragments we have, as Warren Carter informs us in Pontius Pilate: Portraits of a Roman Governor, modern scholars know a good deal more about him than about any other of the Roman governors there
      There have been a variety of works on Pilate. The earliest is G.A. Miiller’s, Pontius Pilatus, der funfte Prokurator von Judda und Richter Jesu von Nazareth published in Stuttgart in 1888.

      Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
      Apparently, for some all we have is a name.

      So much for demands for contemporary documents mentioning someone.
      Firstly, and regrettably, so many ancient sources have not survived and secondly you need to realise that this province was not overly important as evidenced by the rank of those early Praefecti. They were men of the equestrian classes. Judaea was a comparative backwater. Yes it had geographical importance to Rome given its location on the Mediterranean littoral but the two really significant Roman provinces were Syria and Egypt.
      "It ain't necessarily so
      The things that you're liable
      To read in the Bible
      It ain't necessarily so
      ."

      Sportin' Life
      Porgy & Bess, DuBose Heyward, George & Ira Gershwin

      Comment


      • #63
        Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post

        What about it?
        The Hebrew bible is wrong.
        "It ain't necessarily so
        The things that you're liable
        To read in the Bible
        It ain't necessarily so
        ."

        Sportin' Life
        Porgy & Bess, DuBose Heyward, George & Ira Gershwin

        Comment


        • #64
          Originally posted by Hypatia_Alexandria View Post

          The Hebrew bible is wrong.
          Whatever you say, little lady.
          Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
          But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
          Than a fool in the eyes of God


          From "Fools Gold" by Petra

          Comment


          • #65
            Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
            That is exactly what we should expect to see from four separate accounts.

            What was actually experienced and seen?
            • One angel descending and an earthquake?
            • One young man who sat on the stone?
            • Two men in dazzling clothes who just appeared?
            • Two angels sitting where the body should have been in the tomb?

            Who actually went to the tomb?
            • Mary Magdalene and the other Mary?
            • Mary Magdalene, Jesus' mother, and Salome?
            • The "women"?
            • Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved?

            "It ain't necessarily so
            The things that you're liable
            To read in the Bible
            It ain't necessarily so
            ."

            Sportin' Life
            Porgy & Bess, DuBose Heyward, George & Ira Gershwin

            Comment


            • #66
              Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post

              Whatever you say, little lady.
              Archaeology shows it is wrong.
              "It ain't necessarily so
              The things that you're liable
              To read in the Bible
              It ain't necessarily so
              ."

              Sportin' Life
              Porgy & Bess, DuBose Heyward, George & Ira Gershwin

              Comment


              • #67
                Originally posted by Hypatia_Alexandria View Post

                Archaeology shows it is wrong.
                You'll need to elaborate. I'm not just going to take your word for it.
                Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                Than a fool in the eyes of God


                From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                Comment


                • #68
                  Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post

                  You'll need to elaborate. I'm not just going to take your word for it.
                  First, a note on the Bible and historicity from Thomas L Thompson’s The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel [1990, Jonathan Cape] [see Chapter 2, Confusing stories with historical evidence]

                  "The Bible's world does not belong to the discipline of archaeologists. It has never been found in any tell: not even Jericho or Megiddo. The question is not really the simple one of historicity: whether the Bible's tales in fact happened, or might be dramatically illustrated with the help of biblical archaeology's naive realism. Of course, there was an Israel! The name itself is used already at the close of the Late Bronze Age on an Egyptian monument to refer to the people of Canaan that Pharaoh Merenptah's military campaign into Palestine fought against. But it is not this Israel that the Bible deals with. Our question involves more complicated issues of literary historicality and reference, of metaphor and literary postures, evocation and conviction. The Bible doesn't deal with what happened in the past. It deals with what was thought, written and transmitted within an interacting intellectual tradition.

                  It may perhaps appear strange that so much of the Bible deals with the origin traditions of a people that never existed as such. This metaphorical nation's land and language; this imagined people's history, moreover, is an origin tradition that belongs to the 'new Israel', not the old. The Bible does not give us Israel's story about its past - or any origin story confirming Israel's self-identity or national self-understanding. The tradition gave not Israel but Judaism an identity, not as a 'nation' among the goyim, but as a people of God: an Israel redivivus in the life of piety. Naively realistic questions about historicity have always been most out of place when it has come to Israel's origins - if only for the fact that the genre of origin stories that fills so much of the Bible relates hardly at all to historical events, to anything that might have happened. It rather reflects constitutional questions of identity."

                  And some comments on Jericho and other key sites in the Conquest narrative from The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel; Invited Lectures Delivered at the Sixth Biennial Colloquium of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, Detroit, October 2005 by Israel Finkelstein and Amihai Mazar. Edited by Brian B. Schmidt, [2007, Brill]

                  "First, excavations at key sites mentioned in the Conquest narratives of the Bible, such as Jericho, ¡Ai, Gibeon, Heshbon, and Arad, showed that they were either not inhabited in the Late Bronze Age or else were insignificant villages. Second, new finds at Lachish and Aphek and the re-evaluation of finds from the older digs at Megiddo and Hazor indicated that the collapse of the Late Bronze Canaanite city-state system was a long process that took at least several decades. Third, historical and archaeological studies have shown the strength of the Egyptian grip on Canaan as lasting well into the second half of the twelfth century BCE.; Egypt could easily have prevented an invasion of Canaan by a rag-tag army. Fourth, it has become clear that the collapse of Late Bronze Canaan was part of a wider phenomenon that encompassed the entire eastern Mediterranean. Fifth, the large-scale surveys that were conducted in the central hill country in the 1980s indicated that the rise of ancient Israel was just one phase in a long-term, repeated, and cyclic process of sedentarization and nomadization of autochthonous groups."
                  Last edited by Hypatia_Alexandria; 05-13-2021, 05:38 PM.
                  "It ain't necessarily so
                  The things that you're liable
                  To read in the Bible
                  It ain't necessarily so
                  ."

                  Sportin' Life
                  Porgy & Bess, DuBose Heyward, George & Ira Gershwin

                  Comment


                  • #69
                    Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                    Provide examples not excuses
                    I did. In the OP.
                    "It ain't necessarily so
                    The things that you're liable
                    To read in the Bible
                    It ain't necessarily so
                    ."

                    Sportin' Life
                    Porgy & Bess, DuBose Heyward, George & Ira Gershwin

                    Comment


                    • #70
                      Originally posted by Hypatia_Alexandria View Post

                      First, a note on the Bible and historicity from Thomas L Thompson’s The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel [1990, Jonathan Cape] [see Chapter 2, Confusing stories with historical evidence]

                      "The Bible's world does not belong to the discipline of archaeologists. It has never been found in any tell: not even Jericho or Megiddo. The question is not really the simple one of historicity: whether the Bible's tales in fact happened, or might be dramatically illustrated with the help of biblical archaeology's naive realism. Of course, there was an Israel! The name itself is used already at the close of the Late Bronze Age on an Egyptian monument to refer to the people of Canaan that Pharaoh Merenptah's military campaign into Palestine fought against. But it is not this Israel that the Bible deals with. Our question involves more complicated issues of literary historicality and reference, of metaphor and literary postures, evocation and conviction. The Bible doesn't deal with what happened in the past. It deals with what was thought, written and transmitted within an interacting intellectual tradition.

                      It may perhaps appear strange that so much of the Bible deals with the origin traditions of a people that never existed as such. This metaphorical nation's land and language; this imagined people's history, moreover, is an origin tradition that belongs to the 'new Israel', not the old. The Bible does not give us Israel's story about its past - or any origin story confirming Israel's self-identity or national self-understanding. The tradition gave not Israel but Judaism an identity, not as a 'nation' among the goyim, but as a people of God: an Israel redivivus in the life of piety. Naively realistic questions about historicity have always been most out of place when it has come to Israel's origins - if only for the fact that the genre of origin stories that fills so much of the Bible relates hardly at all to historical events, to anything that might have happened. It rather reflects constitutional questions of identity."

                      And some comments on Jericho and other key sites in the Conquest narrative from The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel; Invited Lectures Delivered at the Sixth Biennial Colloquium of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, Detroit, October 2005 by Israel Finkelstein and Amihai Mazar. Edited by Brian B. Schmidt, [2007, Brill]

                      "First, excavations at key sites mentioned in the Conquest narratives of the Bible, such as Jericho, ¡Ai, Gibeon, Heshbon, and Arad, showed that they were either not inhabited in the Late Bronze Age or else were insignificant villages. Second, new finds at Lachish and Aphek and the re-evaluation of finds from the older digs at Megiddo and Hazor indicated that the collapse of the Late Bronze Canaanite city-state system was a long process that took at least several decades. Third, historical and archaeological studies have shown the strength of the Egyptian grip on Canaan as lasting well into the second half of the twelfth century BCE.; Egypt could easily have prevented an invasion of Canaan by a rag-tag army. Fourth, it has become clear that the collapse of Late Bronze Canaan was part of a wider phenomenon that encompassed the entire eastern Mediterranean. Fifth, the large-scale surveys that were conducted in the central hill country in the 1980s indicated that the rise of ancient Israel was just one phase in a long-term, repeated, and cyclic process of sedentarization and nomadization of autochthonous groups."
                      In fact, we know quite a lot about the city of Jericho, and it all squares with the Biblical record. There is evidence that the city was occupied into the late Bronze age, we know the walls around the city collapsed all at once, and there is the curious detail that excavations have found jars filled with scorched grain which is consistent with the Biblical account that the attack occurred around harvest time, that the city was conquered quickly without a prolonged siege, and that the Israelites took no plunder from the city but burned it instead

                      https://biblearchaeology.org/researc...lls-of-jericho
                      https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2...es-at-jericho/
                      Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                      But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                      Than a fool in the eyes of God


                      From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                      Comment


                      • #71
                        Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                        In fact, we know quite a lot about the city of Jericho
                        We do indeed.

                        Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                        , and it all squares with the Biblical record.
                        No it does not, insofar as Joshua allegedly destroying it. At the period the Conquest was supposed to have taken place the cities of Canaan were unfortified.


                        Re Kenyon's discoveries at Jericho,in her first season Kenyon discovered that overlying the Middle Bronze Age defences was Iron Age material dating back to around the seventh century BCE. There was no evidence of any defences from the late Bronze Age, purportedly the period of Joshua. Those findings showed that Garstang's original datings had been wrong. The pottery that he had discovered was clearly Early Bronze Age and was dated to the third millenium BCE not to the period associated with the Conquest of Joshua.

                        Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                        There is evidence that the city was occupied into the late Bronze age
                        There was no settlement of any kind in the thirteenth century BCE. The earlier Late Bronze Age settlement was small, poor, insignificant and unfortified. Nor were there signs of any destruction.


                        As a further point of interest another discrepancy between archaeology and the Bible was found at the site of ancient Ai, where so we are told Joshua carried out his clever ambush. This site was identified as Khirbet-et-Tell, a large mound in the eastern area of hill country to the north-east of Jerusalem. Its geographic location closely matched the biblical description and nor were there any alternative Late Bronze Age sites within the vicinity. Excavations there in the 1930s discovered the remains of a huge Early Bronze Age city that was dated to over a millennium before the collapse of the Late Bronze Age. However, there was no indication [either by pottery sherds or any artefact] that there was a settlement there in the Late Bronze Age.

                        [See, Miriam C. Davis Dame Kathleen Kenyon: Digging Up the Holy Land, Routledge, 2016; and Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, Simon and Schuster, 2001]




                        "It ain't necessarily so
                        The things that you're liable
                        To read in the Bible
                        It ain't necessarily so
                        ."

                        Sportin' Life
                        Porgy & Bess, DuBose Heyward, George & Ira Gershwin

                        Comment


                        • #72
                          ...glyphic/inscriptional evidence and ceramic typology would indicate that Garstang’s original date of ca. 1400 BC is the correct date. This would support the biblical chronology of Joshua’s army destroying Jericho in what we now call the Late Bronze Age I.

                          https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2...on-at-jericho/
                          Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                          But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                          Than a fool in the eyes of God


                          From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                          Comment


                          • #73
                            Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                            ...glyphic/inscriptional evidence and ceramic typology would indicate that Garstang’s original date of ca. 1400 BC is the correct date. This would support the biblical chronology of Joshua’s army destroying Jericho in what we now call the Late Bronze Age I.

                            https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2...on-at-jericho/
                            Well firstly he is not an archaeologist, he's an engineer, and secondly he has fallen off his perch. https://creation.com/dr-bryant-g-wood

                            I therefore do not think we need to give his ideas a great deal of credence.
                            "It ain't necessarily so
                            The things that you're liable
                            To read in the Bible
                            It ain't necessarily so
                            ."

                            Sportin' Life
                            Porgy & Bess, DuBose Heyward, George & Ira Gershwin

                            Comment


                            • #74
                              Originally posted by Hypatia_Alexandria View Post

                              Well firstly he is not an archaeologist, he's an engineer, and secondly he has fallen off his perch. https://creation.com/dr-bryant-g-wood

                              I therefore do not think we need to give his ideas a great deal of credence.
                              And we're just supposed to take your word for it, are we?
                              Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                              But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                              Than a fool in the eyes of God


                              From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                              Comment


                              • #75
                                Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post

                                And we're just supposed to take your word for it, are we?
                                I gave the link for his credentials. He is a "Creationist Archaeologist" whatever that is supposed to be. Perhaps it is akin to a flat earth astronomer!


                                "It ain't necessarily so
                                The things that you're liable
                                To read in the Bible
                                It ain't necessarily so
                                ."

                                Sportin' Life
                                Porgy & Bess, DuBose Heyward, George & Ira Gershwin

                                Comment

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