Little 'amazing biblical facts' such as this one are extremely easy to show up for what they are, food for a weak faith.
So many Christians NEED little soundbites such as this to bolster their extremely weak faith, they cannot just accept the Bible for what it is. It appears to me that fundies really think that these 'astounding facts' demonstrate some supernatural force behind the authorship of the Bible, and this in turn convinces them that the Bible really is God's word. What they never seem to realise is that almost all of these 'amazing facts' are easily shown to be untrue.
But, Tal will never admit that his source is wrong, because to do so would mean that he would have to accept the possibility that any source he ever uses may also be wrong, and this is traumatic for him at this stage of his development.
The original claim also incuded one of my pet hates, this is when a 'scholar' writes something along the lines of:
Many scholars denied the ......
Some scholars have claimed.....
At that time certain scholars did not believe.....
I have no problem with presenting an argument like any of the above, but what freaks me out is that none of these scholars are ever named, and we are never given a reference for any of the scholars who denied this or claimed that, why do they never reference anything when presenting these 'amazing facts'?
To argue that 'scholars denied the existence..' without giving the name of one of these scholars is something that a 12 year old would do, it is something that a high school student should learn to avoid very early on in their high school career.
It just shows the quality of fundy research. But, what is more alarming, is that adults read garbage like this and are impressed with it!
Heartbreaking.
Brian.