There is no such thing as The Bible

The higher critic has plenty of evidence. The style of writing varies, as well as the vocablulary and the grammer. SO does the referencs.I don't know enough from the Hebrew , but I do know that since the majority of Hebrew scholars that do not have a religious axe to grind accept it, there must be something to it.

Arachnophilia: Your mentioning the 2Kings 14:6 taken from the book of Deuteronomy is correct. However, you failed to notice the person quoting it in 2Kings lived two hundred years BEFORE the book of Deuteronomy was 'supposedly' written during the reign of Josiah. How can a person quote from a written source if that source isn't written for another two centuries?

the same reason that the book of kings checks every king of israel against deuteronomy -- kings was not written by the people it's about. it was written afterward, around the time of the exile (just before or just after, depending on who you talk to).it's what's called an anachronism. how did isaac, who lived before moses, meet rebekah over his camels when camels weren't domesticated until well after moses?also, i might point out that the person quoting deuteronomy is not the person in the story. it's the author. the person in the story is acting in accordance with it.kind of a moot point, though. because the book josiah finds is definitally deuteronomy -- no scholars doubt this. so even if the book is legit (NOT a forgery), it's still an anachronism to be mentioned earlier in second kings.

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i think the case is pretty strong to anyone with a literary background. i mean, it's really not that hard to tell they were written by different people.why does one chapter refer to god one for the entire chapter, and then the next chapter refer to god a different way for the entire chapter? why are there distinct writing styles? why are there contradictory components? the evangelical notion of "god wrote it" or "moses wrote" fails to explain these descrepencies. it sounds like it has multiple authors. uh, i doubt that's the reason. that was a long-held assumption, but we know better now -- and one of the reasons we do is (believe it or not) that JEPLD theory. the fact that there appear to be independent and contradictory sources indicates that redactors who compiled the torah were concerned with internal accuracy of their sources: they were copying off of source documents.this is the fundamental conjecture of this particular view. it's not a criticism. not every analysis is a criticism. they are independent, and contain two fundamentally different stories of creation and its chronology. lots of interpretative readings try to fit the two together, and that's ok. but anyone reading them can tell they are not the same story. god has one name, period. god's name is יהוה. there are no other NAMES for god.genesis 2 refers to god by this name, added to his title: יהוה אלהים. yahweh elohym, "the LORD God." at some point, speaking or writing the name of god, יהוה, became taboo. they jews avoided speaking it, replacing it with אדני (adonay) when spoken. in comparison, whole sections of genesis omit the proper name of god, referring to him JUST by his title, אלהים (elohym).this not only indicates two different specific authors, but that they either wrote at different times or wrote in different areas (maybe one in israel, one in judah). i don't think so. i think it's reading it critically -- actually THINKING about it, internalizing it, and understanding it. not thinking about it and not understanding it is just paying it lip service. if you respect the bible, understand it. if someone wrote a book about the great political scandals, and mentioned that "this was before the presidency of george w. bush," commentary aside, couldn't you conclude that the book was written after january 20th, 2001?taken alone, MAYBE it would be a minor editorial change. maybe just a new edition with a few good updates. but the problem is WHAT the book of genesis is. quite obvious to any reader should be that it's a book of etiologies. it's origins: why things are the way they are NOW (at the time of writing).look at any number of stories. why we get married. why place names are what they are. why israel is called israel. it's not written by the people living these events, it's written by people later using these events to explain why certain customs exist in their modern society. place names are often given in reference to what they are called now. it'd be like us saying "the tower of babel, which is in iraq." when that particular tower was built, it sure wasn't called iraq. so seeing references to chaldeans is not suprising. certainly they would have been useful for CARRYING stuff. reportedly, the hebrews did "borrow" a lot of stuff from the egyptians. certainly not very many, you're right. but that's because camels were domesticated at least 300 years after moses. that's a little more than an editorial change, don't you think? how do isaac and rebekah meet without camels? it's called "the holy roman empire." ever heard of it? why does the author of exodus fail to note WHICH pharaoh ruled egypt? that'd be a really good way to date the exodus, solving a lot of debates here. scholars generally agree it refers to ramses ii, but the book never spells it out. why not?...it'd be consistent with the dating methods, too. you can't have a date for the exodus without saying, for instance, "in the 13th year of the reign of Ramses II of Egypt" ...but then again, i think that answers my question.the author did not have a DATE for the exodus. shouldn't someone living at the time of moses know the name of the person responsible for their torture and oppression and slavery?This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 10-05-2005 05:01 PM

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where in the bible does it refer to five books of the law? nearest i can tell, it only refers to the law as a singular entity, much like we refer to the "the bible." or "the book of psalms" (there are FIVE books in psalms)the problem is actually that we have a tendency to lump things together. we think of the bible like one book. they thought of the law like one book. take this backwards a step, and it's easy to see how multiple sources, each carefully kept internally consistent, get combined. it's the same process the redactors seem to have used.imagine our bible had no book headings, no sections headings, no chapter headings, and no verses. imagine it had no punctuation, no spaces, and no vowels. this is how hebrew was written until about 200 ad. this is how jesus would have read the torah, and the nevi'im (prophets). easy to see how it could get jumbled, hmm?genesis was likely 3 independent books, that upon their first separation got re-arranged (much like christians have re-arranged the jewish "bible") into chronological order of events. we have four separate gospels -- and you've accepted that they're directed to different people and are by different people based on their style. imagine if we cut them up, and re-compiled them?might we end up with something that looks like genesis? it would have two or three different versions of certain stories, such as the nativity. it wouldn't agree with itself. it'd use different wording and different grammar. and it'd look like a book with four sources. it'd look a lot like genesis. i'm not really interested in apology, especially stuff that doesn't make sense:

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Aside from the moral question of deception which a late Deuteronomy would seem to imply if it claimed to have Mosaic authority,[8] there seems to be a more basic flaw to this position, namely, that 2 Chronicles 34 places the reforms under Josiah’s rule prior to the finding of the “book of the law” during Josiah’s twelfth year of power (1 Chron. 34:3-7). The significance of such an observation is not only in what may appear to be a contradiction in synoptic Old Testament passages, but in the fact that if the chronology of 2 Chronicles 34 can be demonstrated to be true, then the basis of a late Deuteronomy -- written for the purpose of reform -- will be undermined. The problem lies in explaining the order of events in 2 Kings 22-23.

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if the book is found AFTER the reform begins, then it affirms the purpose of reform, and gives josiah a prior MOTIVE for forging such a book. i do happen to think that the first four of the modern books of the law were compiled during or post-exile, but from pre-existing fragments. much of the bible seems to have been put together or at least fundamentally editted at this time (many of the prophetic books, for instance, were written around this time).i'm not if they had a book of the law or not, or if what we have now is reasonable close to what they had. i assume they had something, though i don't really have anything to base that on. the point was that jesus did not write down his own teachings. the idea of the logic was to apply that backwards to older exilic prophets. the gospel of thomas, for instance, opens with "these are the secret says which the living jesus spoke" and there many similar statements in the prophets -- and a similar one in deuteronomy.they indicate someone recording what what the subject of the book said -- not the author.

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well, yes, i knew (almost) all of that, except for these bits: i wasn't aware the twelve minor prophets were treated as a single book, and that ezra and nehemiah were treated that way too. it illustrates my point above, however, about how multiple books are often combined into single books.i actually have a pretty good edition of the recent JPS translation of the tanakh. it's my favourite edition -- but i'm in the market for a nice hard-bound one, either side-by-side or interlineal with the hebrew.

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Arachnophilia: I don't agree that the quote in 2Kings 14:6 is an anachronism. 2Kings 22:14-16 states the book of the Law was found, not written during the renovation of the Temple in the reign of King Josiah. The Welhausen critics say Deuteronomy was written during King Josiah's reign. 2Kings 14:6 destroys the Welhausen's theory Deuteronomy was written during Josiah's reign.

Same goes for post-Flood references in Gen :2
13: Ethiopia
14:Assyria/Asshur
14:Euphrates
Either these areas/cultures survived the Flood, or Moses (or whoever) is relating the creation tale to contemporaries using current terms.
Which either means the Garden of Eden was created post-Flood, or Genesis isn`t chronological.
Which means----- I think I`m getting a headache

ok.let's make this really easy.the book of the law that was found was deuteronomy. we can identify that much, right?so even if it's just found, not written, how is the earlier reference NOT an anachronism? why is it out of place if it's written then, but NOT out of place if it's found then? what's the difference? either way, they did not have this book at that time ---- BUT they did have it when the book of kings was written. that's like saying the book of mormon destroys the idea that the europeans brought horses to the new world.

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the question is how many anachronisms does one need to conclude that a book was not written during the time of the people it claims to be about?

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OK, let me see if I got what you were telling me -It is known that the Roman governor Quirinius took a census in AD 6 when he was governor of Syria. Since this would be after Herod's death and after Jesus' birth, some assume that Luke made a mistake and mixed up his dates (see Lk. 2:1-2).However, records of the time suggest Quirinius may have served two terms in Syria, one before (from 12-2 B.C.) and one after (A.D. 6) Jesus' birth (a Latin inscription discovered in 1764 seemed to indicate this).Another possibility is the word translated 'first' here, may be used in the sense of 'earlier' or 'prior'. Because of the awkward construction of the sentence this is not an unlikely reading apparently. In this case Luke would be referring to a census earlier than that taken by Quirinius. Undoubtedly, people living in first century Palestine would have remembered the census Luke alludes to, and it is not surprising that no written record of that census should have survived 2,000 years.

Re. Gen. 1 & 2 -
1) Gen. 1 is the creation of the world, Gen. 2 is the creation of humankind. No known creation story from the ancient Middle East has a structure similar to Gen. 2, indicating that it is not intended as a creation account.
2) It was common practice in the ancient Middle East for their gods to have more than one name or title, so it's a stretch to say, therefore, that Gen. 1 & 2 must have had different authors.
3) Biblical names have theological significance. Elohim was the culture's general name for God. Yahweh is God's personal name, associated with his redemptive, loving involvement with humankind. It is thus completely appropriate for Moses to use Elohim in his record of God's work as the creator of the material universe in Gen. 1 and to use Yahweh in his account of God's unique, intimate, hands-on involvement in the creation of Adam & Eve in Gen. 2.According to my sources -EPN - The Emergency, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (EPN)......camels were first domesticated about 4,000-5,000 years ago in Southern Arabia, in time to be around for Isaac and Rebekah around 2000 B.C. in Genesis.Your remarks about world history are rather broad, though some world history may not be accurate, to argue that all world history is made up at a later date is ridiculous. Nothing wrong in being skeptical but to be that cynical is not healthy. Of course, re. origins, you assume we evolved from animals so, all creation stories are a priori false to you and your critic friends, aren't they? But that would be on the basis of an evolutionary assumption. Needless to say, I don't hold to that assumption.Re. dates for the Exodus, the Bible is clear that it took place 480 years before Solomon's Temple began to be built (1 Kings 6:1), 450 years elapsed between the Exodus and the establishment of David in Jerusalem (Acts 13:19-20). In Judges 11:26, Jephthah (who judged around 1100 B.C.), speaking to the Ammonite invaders says that Israel occupied Heshbon for 300 years. We know Solomon and David were around in the tenth century, so all put the Exodus in the 1400-1450 B.C. range. Which would put Moses birth around 1525 B.C. in the reign of Thutmose 1, who, guess what?...had no sons, only a daughter (see Ex. 2).The Roman Empire ceased to exist around the 5th century AD and it did not become 'Holy' so to speak, until 3 centuries after Christ's death!!! And what about the last 1500 years???

Like I said before, show me the manuscripts of these 'multiple books' and you'd have a case. I can't believe you can buy into this stuff based on imagination only!!! I really wish I knew what was motivating you because it sure isn't evidence!! It's all theory my friend, just wondering what the goal is, to prove the Bible is hogwash...why??? What are your beliefs?? What axe do you have to grind??
Re. writers, if Daniel did not write the book of Daniel why IS it in his name? If Jesus did not write a book why ISN'T there one in his name?? You are not being logical.

i wouldn't be so sure of that.

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[The gods] "Had created the cattle of the field, the beasts of the field,
and the creatures of (the city?) ['the city' is a guess for a broken part of the tablet]
After they had [line damaged] unto the living creatures [line damaged]
And had apportioned their portions to the cattle of Sumuqan [god of cattle]
and to the creatures of the city,
And had [line damaged] all the creatures, the whole of creation [line damaged]
[line damaged] which in all of my family [line damaged]
Ningiku [Ea] created two servants [literal translation-little ones or young ones] [line damaged]
He made them more glorious than all other creatures."

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[Enki and Nintu (the birth-goddess) work to create man]
We-ila [a god], who had a personality
They slaughtered in their assembly.
From his flesh and blood
Nintu mixed clay.
For the rest of the time they heard the drum,
From the flesh of the god there was a spirit.
It proclaimed living man as it's sign,
And so that this was not forgotten there was a spirit.
After she had mixed that clay
She summoned the Anunnaki, the great gods.
The Igigi, the great gods,
Spat upon the clay.
Mami [Nintu] opened her mouth
And addressed the great gods,
'You commanded me a task, I have completed it;
You have slaughtered a god together with his personality.'

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some babylonian stories have elements that are remarkably similar. except that you're ignoring the obvious here. it's NOT two different titles. it's like saying "king steve" and just "king." the title hasn't changed, and the name hasn't changed either. but if there's a whole paragraph where someone writes "king steve" followed by a whole paragraph where the name is omitted, doesn't that look a little funny to you?even alone, you don't have much point. the different conventions for referring to god are just plain suspicious. if they were mixed up, maybe not. but they're not. it's whole blocks of one way, followed by whole blocks the other way. we're talking chapter-length sections here. but the point is that it's NOT alone. grammar and style are different. focus is different. influences are different. you're denying the whole field of literary analysis, down to the level of a teacher being able to tell a student plaigarized their last paper because it sounds different than every other paper he's ever written for the class. no, it's a title. it just means "gods." (sort of in the way we refer to pants -- really a singular item, but sounds plural). now, elohym COMES from a name of a god, yes. el or sometimes elowah, who was a popular wind-god in the surrounding cultures -- see the ugaritic legends for example. but even in babylon, the culture that seems to have influenced quite a lot of genesis in particular as well as the rest of the bible, "el" is the word for god. bab-el is literally "gate of the gods" in babylonian.however, i see no reason to conclude that because el is a name in ugarit that it's a name in hebrew. the hebrew el seems to be a shortening of elohym, not the proper name. this is similar to the few references to yah in the bible (as well as the component to many names -- isa-yah, jeremi-yah, zechari-yah, etc). it's a nickname. ok, let's test that.

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Gen 3:23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

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this is generally considered by christians to be "the fall" of mankind (did he get a spring too?) why is god refered to here in a loving and redemptive way?

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Gen 5:29 And he called his name Noah, saying, This [same] shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed.

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maybe noah's redemptive here, but god's cursing.

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Gen 6:7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

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god regrets that he made man, and vows to destroy them. loving and redemptive?

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Gen 11:8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

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the tower of babel -- loving and redemptive?

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Gen 13:13 But the men of Sodom [were] wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly.

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Gen 19:24 Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven;

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sodom and gomorrah -- loving and redemptive? i could go on here. i'm fairly certain that every major atrocity in the bible is creditted to the glory of god -- by his name YHVH. all of the plagues of egypt -- all done by the LORD all caps. so i don't think your explanation for the dichotomy of naming conventions works out at all. got a better explanation for the obvious differences? evidently my source was in error, i retract the claim. i don't think i argued that all history is written after the fact (though most compiled books about it are) or even that genesis is a history of anything besides tradition. i consider the book of kings to be a history.i would also like to note that i'm not being cynical about anything. for instance, even though i consider kings to be missing a few points, or slightly innaccurate in a few areas for political reasons, when compared with say the records of shalmanessar 3 of assyria, i consider kings to be the more accurate record of the lineage of hebrew kings in israel. shalmanessar calls jehu "the son of omri" but kings gives him different parentage, and even a king or two between him and omri (if memory serves). in this case, since the book of kings was written by someone in the related neighboring kingdom of judah, i think they'd know a little more about jehu's parentage. especially since one of it's sources is "the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel." take this whole bit up in brian's thread. i'm not interested in doing the math. but i'm confident in my statement that there is much debate. i've heard many figures from RELIGIOUS sources. i will however talk about what the bible says: this doesn't add up at all. AT ALL.

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Exd 1:8 Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.

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new pharaoh.

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Exd 1:11 Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.

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has them build the cities of pithom and raamses. nearest i can tell, that makes this particular pharaoh ramses the great, doesn't it? how about the passover?

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Exd 11:5 And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that [is] behind the mill; and all the firstborn of beasts.

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and interesting fact about hebrew is that it has gender. words that end in -ah -t are typically female, (their plural being -ot) and words that end in other consonants are ALWAYS male. here, the phrased used is מִבְּכוֹר פַּרְעֹהthat -ah ending word if "faraoh" and the other one, the one that ends with a resh (a backwards r) is the word for firstborn. it's a male noun. now, i could probably make it female nowadays, you'll say, but then it was gender-neutral. sure. it's even that way in modern hebrew -- if i have a mixed gender plural, or i don't know the gender of the person, it's male. but when do you ever hear about a firstborn daughter being important in patriarchal societies? you don't.the nlt, for instance, says:

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All the firstborn sons will die in every family in Egypt, from the oldest son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the oldest son of his lowliest slave. Even the firstborn of the animals will die.

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exodus 4 even specifies SON in the kjv:

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Exd 4:22 And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel [is] my son, [even] my firstborn:
Exd 4:23 And I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, [even] thy firstborn.

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i'd say that sort of rules out a pharaoh without a son. so i doubt highly it was thutmose.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 10-06-2005 01:46 AM

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people who live in grass houses shouldn't stow thrones. or something like that.but what you, and every other creationist here, need to realizes is that academic scholarship and literary criticism is not "imagination only." people don't sit around going "let's make stuff to discount the bible" as much as you probably think that's the case. like i pointed out, the distinct authorship of deuteronomy was first put forth by jews in the middle ages -- no doubt religious ones at that.the evidence, frankly, is in the text. it just takes reading it an educated way. put aside your beliefs for a little while and just read it for it what is. anything else is probably sacrilege. i'm sorry to disappoint you, but it is the evidence. i spoke earlier about treating the bible with respect -- respect it deserves, not worship it does not. if i were an athiest, discounting the bible as fiction would be pretty easy for me. "people just made it up," i'd say and be done. but do you think i'd be learning hebrew if it weren't for a deep interest in the bible?if you look back a bit on this board, you'll find a reference i made to faith about deuteronomy. even though i consider it a politically motivated forgery from the divided kingdom period, and not the work of moses let alone god -- there is still something in it i find rather interesting. there's a passage that jesus quotes (i cited it above) about not tempting god.i think this is a fundamental truth, part of the word of god.i think it is a very powerful testament to workings of god that he can put something beautiful and fundamentally true into a book written to decieve and to be harmful. i think that's a little mightier than a god who just dictates to scribes.as for my beliefs -- i'm a christian. honestly, people who think they understand the bible because they go to church every sunday for indoctrination sort of annoy me. i think the bible deserves to be looked on levels beyond some particular sect's set of views about how it should be read and what it they really meant to say.it's an interesting library of books. it deserves to be picked apart, studied, thought about, processed, and understood. context, influences, sources, and concepts deserve to be investigated and researched. like i said, anything else is lipservice. because, it's the words that he said. listen, i'll give you a pretty strict analogy for this. technically speaking, william shakespeare did not write the play "hamlet" that we have today. but, you say, we all know that he did in fact write hamlet.yes and no -- he didn't write it down, apparently. or any of his plays. if he did, we certainly don't have them. anyone well read in shakespeare knows this, btw. we have three sources for shakespeare plays. we have a quarto, and two folios. the quarto appears to have been written by someone in the audience who just couldn't keep up. if you want to read the most mangled version of a shakespeare play ever, find the quarto version. the two folios are fairly accurate -- they might have been written by actors in the plays, as notes or whatever. these three versions differ slightly. it's clear they were remembered, and put to paper by different people, dealing with the same source material. shakespeare's copies, if they ever did exist, do not today.so why does hamlet have the line "by william shakespeare" under the title? well, because it *IS* by william shakespeare. he just didn't write it down, but it's his words. daniel may not have been written by daniel, but by someone else. but it might well still be the prophet's words. if we cut up the three synoptic gospels and made them into one book, it might be called "the book of jesus." similarly, the book of isaiah seems to have three sources (although some argue that it's three different prophets altogether, since two sections appear to have been tacked onto the end wholesale). with jesus, though, we don't have one compiled book of what happened. although i might argue that luke TRIES to be that book -- we might easily discard the other three gospels and just keep luke. i think most of the important stuff is there.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 10-06-2005 01:41 AM

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