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Author | Topic: The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible. Which came first? | |||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1375 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
the following paper was very well written i dear god, i seriously hope this is not what you consider well written. let's tackel a few issues first:
quote: this is the site it's on, a personal site for this david deal guy. keep this mind, this person has an agenda to sell. let's flip to the end of the paper, for a second. here's his "end"notes (footnotes?)
quote: lots of bible references, general unspecificness, and he cites himself. generally bad form.
quote: ok, he actually references himself twice. really bad form. i also want to point out that he's using strong's concordance, an interlinear text, and two translations of gilgamesh. so don't trust him on any of the language issues, because he doesn't know akkadian or hebrew. anyways, on to the text. i'm not sure how far i can get into this tonight:
quote: all kinds of bad signs here. we're not talking about someone who's academically comparing texts, or analyzing and dating them based on anachronisms. we're dealing with some who "believes in the validity of the bible." which is correct, the Bible or some akkadian myth? how about neither, mr. deal? why does one have to be correct? why are you concerned with correctness? and "some akkadian myth" is a tad disdainful, don't you think? it's not just "some akkadian myth" it's "The world’s oldest written document."
quote: mountains are natural objects. ziggurats are man-made.
quote: and there we go. there's the problem. he considers the book of genesis to be history. it reads exactly like gilgamesh, stylistically. why is one history, and the other myth? it is obvious that the author is not entering into this with an objective mindset -- gilgamesh is challenging his historical view of the bible, and he has a personal need to invalidate it somehow.
quote: ok, now, i haven't read gilgamesh in a long time, so frankly i didn't gt any of that. but it seems like it's jumping to a lot of conclusions about who's who, and it cites only source -- the reference from ezekiel. so lots of assertions about babylonian mythology, no references. passing reference to the bible that has nothing to do with anything, reference. bad, bad, bad. then it goes back to bare assertions.
quote: this is even worse. he's trying to compare the writings of two different cultures (which is fine, btw, lots of mythology DOES carry over) but makes what is a very wild statement. enki and enlil are "yah yahweh" and satan. which one is which? and what do you have for evidence? maybe if we were charging that esther and mordechai are ishtar and marduk, it might be ok. the names there are clearly similar sounding, and maybe there's some mythological similarity too. but this? no. and that reference? it's to a psalm, and isaiah. "yahweh" btw is ha-shem b'elohym. the name of god. "yah" is a derivative of that name. most english translations render this "lord god" since "yah" is commonly rendered "god" and yahweh "LORD." look above for the reference. "read the hebrew..." like he can. the psalm, btw, doesn't contain the phrase. it says, in english,
Psalm 68:4 or 5 writes: Sing unto God, sing praises to His name;extol Him that rideth upon the skies, whose name is the LORD; and exult ye before Him. that LORD bit is "yah" and it clearly identifies him as god and no other. here's the verse from isaiah
Isaiah 12:2 writes: הִנֵּה אֵל יְשׁוּעָתִי אֶבְטַח, וְלֹא אֶפְחָד: כִּי-עָזִּי וְזִמְרָת יָהּ יְהוָה, וַיְהִי-לִי לִישׁוּעָה. Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for GOD the LORD is my strength and song; and He is become my salvation.' i think he is grossly perverting the meaning of this text. he's confalting "yeshua" (salvation) with "yehoshua" (joshua/jesus) and asserting that "yah yahweh" is a lesser god -- christ. in other words, one of those gods he mentions in gilgamesh is christ. like i said, it's wild. but the clear meaning of this verse is that GOD, (el or elohym) in the beginning of the verse is salvation. and yahweh is that god.
quote: el/elohym, btw, is a wind-god.
quote: this may or may not be a good point. but poorly written. also, enki/ea is a water god, not a sky god. enlil/ellil is a wind god, like el/elohym. "oops."
quote: the fish is a symbol, because, well,
wikipedia writes: The ichthys also may relate to Jesus as a "fisher of men," or an acronym of the Greek letters (Iota Chi Theta Upsilon Sigma) to the statement of Christian faith "‘ ‘ " (Isous Christos Theou Huios Str: "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior"). not related. sorry.
quote: they're called "muslims" now. and the reference for "mountainds of the kurds" is "mountains of the kurds." what?
quote: jumping to all kinds of conclusions. also, say it with me:
Genesis 8:4 writes: אֲרָרָט ARaRaT. ah-rah-rat. and if you look for ararat in the bible, you find it in two verses. here's the other.
Jeremiah 51:27 writes: Set ye up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet among the nations, prepare the nations against her, call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz; appoint a captain against her; cause the horses to come up as the rough caterpillers. "hari ararat" are the mountains in the kingdom of ararat. mountains, plural. so the fact that there is a mountain today with the same name in english is purely coincidence. so that whole bit about kurds and whatnot... probably wrong.
quote: i hate to point this out, but genesis is strongly ethnocentric (it's concerned largely with the hebrew people) and reads like mythos (it's a collection of etiological tales). and it was most certainly written after the fact. even the extreme orthodox jews and the fundamentalist christians contend that moses wrote the torah -- not that noah wrote the flood story as it was happening. as such, the absolute earliest date for genesis 1250 bc or so, depending on when you like to guess that moses lived.
quote: WHAT?!? ok, i quit. This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 12-04-2005 02:12 AM
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1375 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Gilgamesh, in contrast, is somewhat more complete and less edited. and a lot shorter. a fair comparison might be gilgamesh vs. genesis.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1375 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
ok, why not some more.
quote: said the talking snake. listen, anyone reading the bible and gilgamesh one next to the other would never contend that the bible obviously sounds historical and gilgamesh obviously sounds mythical. faith, i think, made such a claim once -- so i posted comparable passages next to each other. they read exactly the same in parts of the flood story (which is being reported secondhand in the gilgamesh, i might add). and there's humor in the bible.
quote: so does scientology. xenu brought us all here and blews up with atomic bombs in volcanos 75 million years ago (BEFORE the dinosaur extinction and possibly causing it). the fact that a story talks about things that happened a long time ago doesn't mean it's older. you date a story based on the most recent anachronism, not what it talks about. gilgamesh simply doesn't cover creation. it talks about gilgamesh. i could find you other babylonian mythology that DOES cover creation, if you like, and sounds a lot like the bible too.
quote: alright, that bit about before creation, frankly, is nothing but interpretation. and, as has been discussed here at length, job 40 and 41 do not talk about dinosaurs. behemoth appears to be describing an elephant (tail=penis. notice it's connection to virlity and "stones"?) and leviathan is lothan from babylonian myth, a 7-headed fire-breathing water dragon, and one of the sources for the image of satan in revelation. yes, that's right, he MISSED a correlation between the bible and babylonian myth in favor of a crazed-fundamentalist approach.
quote: well, as i stated, noah himself didn't write about the flood. some say moses did, but that's HIGHLY debatable (you know, with evidence). so clearly he means divine authorship. in which case, wasn't god a little more than a passive observer? and isn't it obvious that this is the position he's starting from? the bible = the word of god = 100% true. bias all the way, not a reasoned analysis and comparison of the texts. This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 12-04-2005 02:27 AM
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1375 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
what is it about crackpots that you find so appealing randman?
quote: quote: now, hebrew spelling is a little flexible, i know. but i'm pretty sure that "gilgamesh" in hebrew would be גילגמש, GYLGaMeSH. double mem's, as far as i know, don't exist in any word without a vowel between them. and if you want to make an "ee" sound (as in gil) you have a yud and one of the e-sound vowel points below the gimel. while we're on it, the hebrew word for "reveal" is גלה, GaLaH. גל, GaL is the word for "pile" or "cover" especially at a burial. so that's not a good point.
quote: אנחנו is the hebrew word for "we" so i dunno what he's getting on about. rearrange a few letters? also, the word for ship (at least the one he's thinking of) seems to be אניה, 'ONYaH. not An. "of us" doesn't even seem to be a word. biblical hebrew incorporates personage into verbs and objects. and that possesive "our" is like the yud at the end of "israeli." it makes the noun and adjective, and describes someone as being of that group. so not a good point here, either. This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 12-04-2005 03:43 AM
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1375 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Speaking of anachronisms, I still haven`t had a good reply from the anointed on Gen 2:14- 'Asshur/Assyria' being referred to in pre-Flood days. well, that'd be like us saying "the euphrates, which is in iraq." it wasn't iraq then, but it's iraq now and a point of reference the audience can understand. it's simple a text explaining how things got to be the way they were contemporary to the authorship; where current (at the time) practices and names came from. of course, following that logic backwards, it means that genesis could not have been written prior to the birth of the assyrian empire. i don't know why the concept that books are generally written after the fact is lost on fundamentalists. i highly doubt it was noah's diary, and abraham's diary, and joseph's diary. they sure coulda written more about themselves. This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 12-04-2005 08:34 PM
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1375 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
This should be referenced, and/or some supporting evidence given. Who actually says it is the oldest written document, what does the author actually mean by 'document'? This type of error is repeated throughout, heavens the author makes claims about certain events and people in the Epic, yet he never gives verse references. yet he's very quick to reference something -- anything -- from the bible, even in a passing and offtopic reference. This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 12-04-2005 08:37 PM
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1375 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
here's some comparable passages (which i stole from an earlier post of mine that faith never answered)
quote: quote: quote: quote: now, put aside religious belief for a second here, and tell me: what makes genesis history, but gilgamesh myth? if one is the 100% inerrant word of god, shouldn't it stand out a little better? the only differences i see are in lengths of time, and the kinds of birds. and one is told secondhand in first person, where as the other is told third person. |
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1375 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
quote: ref for jonah, not for the history. please note, that references that "nineveh" appears in jonah, not why the book of jonah is dated to 843 bc. general knowledge, referenced. actual scholarly subjects, not referenced. fastest way to get accused of plagairism. it's disappointing, too. i'd actually be interested in something on why jonah is dated a certain date. but then again, i also wouldn't call 1839 "modern times." just shows the timeframe this guy's living in.
quote: this is of course wrong, not mention spelled incorrectly.
wikipedia writes: The Greeks knew him as Sardanapal; Latin and other medieval texts refer to him as Sardanapalus. In the Bible he is called As(e)nappar or Osnapper (Ezra 4:10). Ashurbanipal - Wikipedia quote: huge logical fallacy here. the movie "jurassic park" features a dinosaur it calls "velociraptor." but it's more than twice a velociraptor's size, and has entirely the wrong skull. sometime after the movie was made, paleontologists dug up a dinosaur that exactly fit that description. had paleontology prooved "jurassic park" true? no, it's still fiction. a fiction can easily include real places and people -- the existance of those people and places does not the proove a text to be accurate.
quote: two problems. first the logically fallacy. i put together a library this summer in my local university's math department. one of the books there is was published in 1898. now, the math dept library hasn't existed that long. i haven't been alive that long. the math dept. itself hasn't existed that long. the UNIVERSITY wasn't here in 1898. it's entirely possible for a book to be older than the collection it's in. if you really think about for a second, the library had to exist before it could be written about. so the fact that it's in the bible puts that part of the bible AFTER the library's construction. (duh) second, we know where utnapsihtim's story came from. the book i have on gilgamesh indicates that utnapishtim's story is taken from another akkadian myth.
wikipedia writes: Akkadian (Atrahasis Epic) The Babylonian Atrahasis Epic (written no later than 1700 BC), gives human overpopulation as the cause for the great flood. Flood myth - Wikipedia quote: wow. just wow. how could you say this was elegantly written?
quote: "from" not "form." so, yes, then we come to a talking snake.
quote: so the fact that it talks about gods and goddesses makes it a myth? ok. how about "the sons of god," "satan," "lucifer," "azazel (scapegoat)," "ba'al," "beezelbub" and various spellings, "leviathan," "behemoth," "gog and magog," "the great red dragon," etc? sadly, he missed ANOTHER references. in ugaritic myth, el (as in elohym, god of the hebrews) is commonly typified by a bull. the association with the hebrew god and cows is well understood. when they make an idol of him, what is it? a golden calf. think about it.
quote: i don't what i can say to that. i guess he thinks mythological snakes are ok in gilgamesh, because they're ok in genesis. but scorpion men, no.
quote: what kind of logic is this guy using? what is he using to date these stories? they're BOTH recounted stories, not written during the event itself. common sense tells us that. like i said above, i know of other stories that go back even further. keeping on the utahraptor theme i started above, i have a book by dr. robert bakker called "raptop red" that takes place ~100 million years ago. that kind of beats the bible for timeframe of events. you can't use the chronology of a story to date it. period. you have to use the anachronisms, comparing to historical fact and archaeology. a story can talk about times and places long ago and in galaxies far far away, but that doesn't mean that's when and where it was written.
quote: for godssake, it's spelled semitic. he's just using that because it comes from "shem," the name of noah's son. but let's get this straight, for a second, from a strictly biblical perspective.
Genesis 10:6-10 writes: And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan. And the sons of Cush; Seba, and Havilah, and Sabtah, and Raamah, and Sabtecha: and the sons of Raamah; Sheba, and Dedan. And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Babylon, Uruk, and Akkad, according to the bible, are from HAM, not Shem. so akkadian would not be a "shem"itic language. and you can't just take a name from one language and transliterate into another language like that. i mean, look at how "yehoshua" becomes "iesous" in greek and then "jesus" in english, and "joshua" in english the other way. similar letters don't make similar sounds. for instance, king xerxes shows up in the bible as "ahasuerus" anyways. on to the hebrew, because that's wrong too. נפש does indeed mean "person" or "living being." but it's pronounced "nePHesh." he likes to add h's in english, but he forgot one. in every native hebrew word (excluding ones from other languages i mean), a FEH only has the hard "P" sound at the beginning of a word. you tack something on the beginning, it makes an "F" sound. but the word for righteous is צדיק (tsadiq). i don't know where this "tam" business comes from. the actual phrase used to describe noah is אִישׁ צַדִּיק, 'iSH TSaDYQ. righteous man. since he gave a reference for "uth" i could check it. here is the reference he gave. notice something? wrong word. the one he wants is the next one, "oth." so, "oth b'nephesh tsadiq." doesn't sound like "utnapishtim" to mean at all.
quote: utnapishtim was immortal. noah died. sorry, but immortality was the whole reason gilgamesh sought him out.
quote: why do i have to keep trotting this dead horse out for fundamentalists? shem lived 500 years after the flood. (600 total) his son lived about 500, too, as did his grandson and great grandson. you can find this all in genesis 11. if we are to believe the bible, this sort of age-limit was COMMON after the flood.
quote: the whole point of the story is immortality. you can't compare gilgamesh's plant at the bottom of sea with the tree of life (as he did above) and ignore the obvious meaning of the word "immortal."
quote: what does biblical analysis have to do with gilgamesh? it's not the bible. we shouldn't have to check everything against the bible, either. and not everything requires a sense of apologistic interpretation -- gilgamesh says immortality. it's about the quest for immortality, not just long life.
quote: ?
quote: ea overruled enlil, and enlil blessed them with immortality as a form of apology, i think. utnapishtim indicated that there was no real way to be immortal, save it be granted by the gods -- and then tells his story of how he was granted immortality by the gods.
quote: that's reading a lot into it, and drawing connections where there are none. the secret is that just as everyone must sleep, everyone must die too. utnapishtim is trying to tell gilgamesh that he cannot give him immortality.
quote: יום means "day." period. it does not mean a thousand years. this is nothing but pure apologistic interpretation that thinks it can squirrel out of what the text actually means by redefining words. this particular bit of dishonesty or ignorance annoys me to no end. then he goes into a long bit of prophetic interpretation from something that's NOT prophecy. he regards the model for the hebrew week to be indicative of when the apocalypse is coming. he even gives an estimated timeframe: the year 6000.
quote: since i actually LIKE the bible, i've read it before, and it has something to say about this:
Matthew 24:36-39, 42 writes: But of that day and hour knoweth no [man], no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noe [were], so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. [...] Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. also, my hebrew calendar says it's 5766.
quote: again, how can adam and eve be about a loss of immortality, but the comparable story in gilgamesh NOT be? don't forget, i'm not making this comparison, he is.
quote: i've seen this interpretation a thousand times, but it's still wrong. adam and eve were created mortal, from the simple fact that they needed a tree of life to stay alive. god's intention for them was clearly immortality, and they failed him, yes. but they were not created immortal is denying them the tree of life sentances them to death. so the story is not about a loss of immortality in that sense. "seed of the woman" is us. all of us. it explains the animosity between us and snakes -- why they get under our skin and creep us out. why we like to kill them. it's part of the curse on the snake. the other part of the curse on the snake explains why the snake is a snake, with no legs. why it licks the ground. it is impossible that the story is referring to anything else, other than strictly allegorically. imo, the messianic context is not there, even if people choose to read it that way.
quote: six days and seven night ≠ six days and night, and one day and night. one is seven days, the other is 6 and a half.
quote: "gods" in gilgamesh is plural. there are a bunch of them, all immortal. "elohym" in hebrew is singular, and there is only ONE god, yahweh. that's a rather important distinction. and most people don't see the "hope of immortality" because it isn't there. gilgamesh LOSES it.
quote: haha jesus was a wooden robot! (seriously, badly written) i'll avoid the crackpot noah's-ark-ararat stuff for now.
quote: clearly, the bible NEVER exagerates numbers.
Genesis 9:29 writes: And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died. quote: so, incredulity towards gilgamesh is ok, but not towards the bible? now, the bible never specifically says how long it took noah to build the ark, but we can infer that it was less than 100 years. also, the ark in genesis was 300x50x30 cubits. the one in gilgamesh was 120 cubits, cubed. (because it was a cube...)
quote: ok, i just said above it took noah less than a hundred years. that's because shem was born before god told noah to build the boat. shem was 98 (or so) when he got off the boat. so a good estimate is that noah had 98 years to build the boat.
quote: yup. ron wyatt with better pictures.
quote: usually ships have anchors, as well as ballasts, yes.
quote: may or may not be right. i'm unable to determine at this point. most of the rest of this has little to do with gilgamesh, and mostly about the ark. surprise, suprise.
quote: that's a CHET at the end of noah, and it's called a TSADI. definitally doesn't know hebrew.
quote: mesha just means "drawn" as in from a well. the water bit may or may not be implied. and, yes, worry too much about the vowels in hebrew. although they're STILL not commonly written (except in published books), they do dictate parts of speech. "mosheh" does come from "mashah" as does "meshah," and they all have similar meanings -- but they're not all THE SAME.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1375 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Hey, Arach, you spoiled the fun. I wanted to see the mental gymnastics no no, my common sense doesn't spoil the mental gymnastics at all. just watch and wait until one responds. they don't like the idea that the bible was written by someone later on, it had to have been written by adam, and noah, and abraham, and isaac, and jacob... who all of course sound exactly the same and wrote so very little about themselves because they were "inspired." clearly anachronisms don't mean anything, because an omniscient god would have known they'd be called by those names later on, even though they're not now.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1375 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
First, by equating anyone who believes the evidence of the Bible as a "fundie" you are relying on a modern negative cultural stereotype/ad hom argument. now, maybe the "fundie" label is a tad derogattory, but thatis the definition of fundamentalism, ray.
Dr. Scott says (paraphrase): "Social Evolutionists predicted modern Biblical monotheism would be found to have an origin in ancient idol worship. In fact they did evidence this claim via archaeology. Theist archaeologists became enraged and predicted they would find evidence proving all idol worship to have monotheist origins, that is prior to idol worship the world worshipped one universal Deity. They in fact proved their claim and prediction via archaeology." well, now we know where you get the whole "enraged" bit. no suprise here, i guess. but i would like to point out the obvious fact (you know, via archaeology). the oldest monotheistic religion was "idolatrous." they worshipped the sun god, amun (ra), in egypt. even taking the biblical account literally, the birth of the hebrew faith was a cohesive religion has sometime later, leaving egypt. compare the dates for akhenaten's religion, and the construction of the city of raamses, which the bible reports was constructed by hebrew slaves. gene scott's a pyramidologist, right? surely he knows all about amenhotep iv, and his son tutankhamen.
Second, yes we know Moses wrote major portions of the Torah, however. how?
Would it please you if I concede Deuteronomy was written, probably by Jeremiah ? jeremiah? does that mean you agree that it was written during the reign of josiah? what signs point to authorship by jeremiah? i'm legitimately curious about those last two points, btw. i'm not being a smartass here. i suspect you're not going to offer real answers, but i'd like to see some references anyways (non-gene-scott references that is).
My point is correct because, as we know, there were no modern communication abilities in antiquity, no newspapers, radio, television, etc. etc. kind of an assumption, really. just because they didn't have tv doesn't mean that they lacked the ability to send messages on a large scale. it's been suggested, for instance, that the pyramids were painted in bright colors like egyptian sculpture. it's also clear that leaders did have the power to unify and control large expanses of territory. how do you suppose they did that without the internet?
The scribes of any given kingdom did not know what the scribes of other civilizations were writing or did write. that's not true, at all. the evidence seems to point the other way. besides, one kingdom often oppressed others. do you think that the hebrews lived in egypt for a few hundred years without hearing about egyptian culture? or lived in babylon for 50 or so without picking up some of the legends? the big mistake here is that these texts exist only as text. this is almost certainly not the case. when something is arranged in poetic form, it's usually meant to be spoken, sung, or as my learned professor argued, rapped. this was the primary mode of communication, not the written word. only a few educated people could write, but it seems very unlikely that this would render the entire population clueless to their own traditions. it's sort of like contending that shakespeare couldn't possibly have read the greek's pyramis and thisbe. in reality, the play went through several italian and english intermediaries -- the names "romeus" and "giulletta" included quite early on, a hundred years before shakespeare was even born. and that line, btw, is strictly literature until we get to shakespeare, whose manuscripts we do not have. is it impossible that a travellor carried the story? or that it was heard spoken of in the streets of babylon during captivity?
Common denominators found in ancient sources, logically corroborate any event as a historical fact. Common denominators are spectacular evidence of corroboration. doesn't follow. if it does, i'll insist that you quoting my words in your next confirms my point. look, there it is again. corroboration, and fact. what dr. scott doesn't seem to understand about the bible is that it often directly mocks other mythology. it's not "borrowing" or "plagairizing" or "confirming." it's satirizing. do you honestly think that the story of babel was not meant to make fun of uncompleted towel in babylon, and their legend regarding why their gods stopped it?
Theists claim the correct version of facts is found in the Holy Bible. that should "christians" not "theists." theists are people who believe in ANY god.
The worldwide Flood accounts are impossible to have been manipulated as a conspiracy. They voluminously prove: 1) Flood did happen. 2) A handful were saved on a boat. how big was the flood and the boat?
Because communication was impossible, it is irrational to believe that antiquity, from all over the world somehow invented THE SAME myth simultaneously. but see, that's the thing. they're not all invented simultaneously. babylon's came before israel's. and it's not exactly the same, is it? and since early civilizations tended to grow up around water supplies like rivers, is it impossible that many different flood myths come from many exagerated flood events?
Do you know where the tradition of bobbing for apples comes from ? The Ark bobbing in the stormy sea. [source: C.W. Ceram "God, Graves, and Scholars"] what? what does that have to do with anything?
After the event Moses BEGAN writing the Torah in the Wilderness. Exodus 24:4 "And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD" Numbers 33:2 "And Moses WROTE their goings out according to their journeys by the commandment of the LORD" Notice he did it because God said to do it. i see moses taking down laws, and keeping records. do you think the book is claiming mosaic authorship, or that moses wrote the source for the book? or something else? what parts did moses write, and what parts were later additions?
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1375 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Much of the Torah was in fact translated and modifed from the ugartic texts, which are far older. i'm going to go out on a limb here, and tentatively say that i disagree. i see some sharing of tradition (not sure who got what from whom, although there is a lot of stuff that seems to be the root of judaism in ugaritic religion). but i think that saying the torah stems somewhat directly from the ugarits might be a bit extreme. the languages share a lot of interesting cognates, and it's used very similarly, yes. what information do you have about the similarities of texts, and their respective ages? This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 12-06-2005 09:45 PM
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1375 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
A distinction should probably be drawn between correlation and causation concerning ancient religious scriptures. The Torah and Ugartic works may stem from similar cultures in a similar environmental condition and be otherwise unrelated. or even have both come from another source.
Could statistical analysis of reoccuring idioms or sentence structure be used to test such a hypothesis? probably not. from what i hear, the languages are so full of cognates and similarities in structure (parallelism, for example) that it really wouldn't matter.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1375 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
i think it's probably far more accurate to seem them as part of the same group of semitic religions. correlation is not causality.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1375 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
namely by the use of the word magazine. which also is a holder for bullets. and from arabic.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1375 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
some mythical common ancestor maybe? yes. did you forget how to quote, dear?
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