Allegories Gone Wild – And The Walls, They Came A-Tumbling Down…Or Did They?
2 December 2007 by KA(Or, how some bad construction turned into a fairy tale)
When the walls
Come tumblin down
When the walls
Come crumblin, crumblin
When the walls come
Tumblin, tumblin down - Crumblin’ Down, John Mellencamp
A quote from McDowell’s Evidence That Demands A Verdict kept circling in my mind lately. This one:
“It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever contravened a Biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries. They form tesserae in the vast mosaic of the Bible’s almost incredibly correct historical memory” (Dr. Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert [New York, Grove, 1960], p. 31).
I went searching, and found these as well:
“Of the hundreds of thousands of artifacts found by the archeologists, not one has ever been discovered that contradicts or denies one word, phrase, clause, or sentence of the Bible, but always confirms and verifies the facts of the biblical record.” – Dr. J. O. Kinnaman.
(I couldn’t find much dirt on the first or the following gent, this little piece really outlines what a wack-a-doodly-o Herr Kinnaman was.)
Dr. Robert Dick Wilson, “After forty-five years of scholarly research in biblical textual studies and in language study, I have come now to the conviction that no man knows enough to assail the truthfulness of the Old Testament. When there is sufficient documentary evidence to make an investigation, the statement of the Bible, in the original text, has stood the test” (Dr. Robert Dick Wilson, Speaker’s Source Book, p. 391).
Stood the test? ‘Almost incredibly correct historical memory’? Not only do we know that indeed, the Great Deluge never occurred, the Tower of Babel was an utter fabrication, and the Exodus was likely the expulsion of the Hyksos (who were actually running the show, not the abject slaves they were painted to be), a great many of the alleged ‘historical events’ that occurred in the benign Necronomicon were either
A. Altered, or
B. Not jotted down properly at all.
Case in point: Jericho.
Conservapedia actually says this:
At the moment there is no consensus in the archaeological community on when or how Jericho was destroyed.
However, the different conclusions are not over whether evidence was found that matched the biblical description, but over the timing.
There’s nothing quite like…understatement.
The answers.com entry has this to say:
A destruction of Jericho’s walls dates archaeologically to around 1550 BC in the 16th century BC at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, by a siege or an earthquake in the context of a burn layer, called City IV destruction. Opinions differ as to whether they are the walls referred to in the Bible. According to one biblical chronology, the Israelites destroyed Jericho after its walls fell out around 1407 BC: the end of the 15th century. Originally, John Garstang’s excavation in the 1930s dated Jericho’s destruction to around 1400 BC, in confirmation, but like much early biblical archaeology, his work became criticised for using the Bible to interpret the evidence rather than letting the facts on the ground draw their own conclusions. Kathleen Kenyon’s excavation in the 1950s redated it to around 1550 BC, a date that most archaeologists support. In 1990, Bryant Wood critiqued Kenyon’s work after her field notes became fully available. Observing ambiguities and relying on the only available carbon dating of the burn layer, which yielded a date of 1410 BC plus or minus 40 years, Wood dated the destruction to this carbon dating, confirming Garstang and the biblical chronology. Unfortunately, this carbon date was itself the result of faulty calibration. In 1995, Hendrik J. Bruins and Johannes van der Plicht used high-precision radiocarbon dating for eighteen samples from Jericho, including six samples of charred cereal grains from the burn layer, and overall dated the destruction to an average 1562 BC plus or minus 38 years. Kenyon’s date of around 1550 BC is widely accepted based on this methodology of dating. Notably, many other Canaanite cities were destroyed around this time.
If the dates of certain schools of archaeology are to be accepted, then scholars who link these walls to the biblical account must explain how the Israelites arrived around 1550 BC but settled four centuries later and devise a new biblical chronology that corresponds. The current opinion of many archaeologists is in stark contradiction to the biblical account.
The Wikipedia entry on Biblical Criticism (the neutrality of the entire entry is disputed, gee, what a frelling surprise) has this to say:
The account of Joshua has more difficulty vis-a-vis the archaeological record, since Jericho and other settlements do not show signs of violent disruption in the time period required for the Israelite invasion (However, the Bible tells of the rebuilding and population of Jericho, among others destroyed by the Israelites). Neither does there appear to be any systematic destruction of cities, but instead only independent events occurring at significantly different times, more in agreement with events presented in the Book of Judges.
(Emphases mine.)
This wholly bibble is just rife with so many writhing contradictions, it’s just staggering that anyone could take the bleeding thing seriously. As if it’s not bad enough the adherents of said Iron Age tome seem to be incapable of ironing out their differences about what the flipping thing says (and 2000 years of constantly arguing over it says all you really need to know how farcical the whole brouhaha is), the raging historical inconsistencies are yet another nail in the coffin of this dying, blind shambling giant.
Which of course, prompts the outcry, “This is all outta context!” (Christlation: ‘The bibble doesn’t say what it says, it says this [insert allegorical dance step of choice here].”)
I think the word I’m searching for, is Pshaw!
Till the next post, then.
2 December 2007, on 6:26 am
There is I think a more up-to-date analysis of the archeological record, “The Bible Unearthed” by Finkestein and Silberman. There is the book and the video.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1B3GGGL_en___CA215&q=%22The%20bible%20unearthed%22%20video&btnG=Search&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wv
http://www.amazon.com/Bible-Unearthed-Archaeologys-Vision-Ancient/dp/0684869136/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196590572&sr=1-2
“In fact, the authors argue that it is impossible to say much of anything about ancient Israel until the seventh century B.C., around the time of the reign of King Josiah. In that period, “the narrative of the Bible was uniquely suited to further the religious reform and territorial ambitions of Judah.” Yet the authors deny that their arguments should be construed as compromising the Bible’s power. Only in the 18th century–”when the Hebrew Bible began to be dissected and studied in isolation from its powerful function in community life”–did readers begin to view the Bible as a source of empirically verifiable history.”
The patriarchs did not exist and there was no Exodus. As to the Jericho site, there were many towns that were built and destroyed there.
2 December 2007, on 6:42 am
As to Jericho, it is presented in Part 3 of the video I linked above.
2 December 2007, on 10:34 am
“Mash those potatoes, don’t be shy.
Feels so good, don’t you ask me why.
The night is wild but I’m in control.
You gotta brush your teeth with rock and roll.
You gotta knock it out, rock it…ooh yeah!
You gotta sock it out, rock it….ooh yeah!
You gotta rock, rock, rock it…..ooh yeah!
Till the Walls Come Tumbling Down.”
– J. Geils Band
The Buy-bull is nothing more than a down market Iliad- or Epic of Gilgamesh, with the divine soap opera of multiple gods replaced by a thuggish brute of an almighty that torments for sport- hardly Thucydides or Herodotus. Even if the historical events therein were one hundred percent accurate, with the shards, stones, and midden heaps to back it up, it wouldn’t say anything about the legitimacy of plagues, parted seas, floods, apples, serpents, and/or trumpets.
The flood story is pervasive and multicultural enough to be based in some sort of fact. Say, the inundation of the Black Sea by a swollen Mediterranean via the Bosporus “Strait”- formerly “Isthmus”(?), roughly 10,000 years ago, resulting in shorelines backed up some three hundred feet and the curious delineation between salt and fresh water layers in that body- not to mention the anoxic bottom.
Sometimes, I wonder why the founding fathers, being fundies and all, didn’t make the second amendment about the right to keep and bear the jawbones of asses- which really would solidify Rush Limbaugh’s patriotism.
2 December 2007, on 12:08 pm
Christlations… Love the term and I plan to use it when arguing in the rusty crusty hinges of the Bible belt….I need a tetanus shot.
2 December 2007, on 7:33 pm
I know this may seem OT, but…
Last night as I was driving home after listening to “Sweet Honey In The Rock” (who do sing about all that GODGET stuff, but also do a bang up job of tellin’ folks to get off their asses and VOTE, VOTE, VOTE), I was listening to “The Walls Came Down”, by The Call. It’s interesting that at the end of the song, the front man is singing that he doesn’t think there’s any Russians and he know’s there ain’t no Yanks–just corporate criminals, playing with tanks. What I find amazing is the total disconnect in the minds of the credulous faithful that lets them remain blind to their own hypocrisy. I know it’s there, but they sure as fuck can’t see it.
2 December 2007, on 9:17 pm
“It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever contravened a Biblical reference.”
Is this guy for real?
Oh that’s right, I forgot, we can totally disregard the multitude of fossil deposits. After all, those aren’t reliable–they were created by Satan to lead us away from belief in Gob and a literal interpretation of the (two contradictory) creation story(s).
(OT slightly–so the Devil can create things?–such as fossil deposits, and Gob is either powerless to stop him or chooses not to–making Gob either less than omnipotent or just a lazy asshole. And if Satan can create things as elaborate as fossils, that makes him, at the least, god-like, making the claim of xtian mono-theism ring hollow. I’m dizzy now. No wonder so much of the xtian’s time and energy is devoted to appologetics. It must be tiring to be xtain these days–I know it was for me when I was all Jesusey.)
3 December 2007, on 12:26 am
That’s the wonderful thing about the fuckknobs’ Good Imaginary Friend/Bad Imaginary Friend dichotomy. If one didn’t do it, the other must have. A pesky little discrepancy in scripture? No such thing. Science harshing your Genonsense/YEC mellow? It’s just that old satanic trickery, never you mind. It really saves wear and tear on the old brain.
3 December 2007, on 2:09 am
The “Naked Archaeologist” on History Channel is a perfect example of these “archeapologists”.
He uses the babble to verify itself, instead, as stated above, letting the facts speak for themselves.
There’s just no way in hell you’re going to be able to prove how the walls of a city fell, especially if you’re trying to prove they fell by marching and trumpeting.
You’d think, as the perfect word of gawd, that the babble, or any wholly book, would be written so perfectly that there would be no ambiguity, no room for interpretation. But no, the writers knew what they were doing, creating a method of control.
3 December 2007, on 2:18 am
bernarda:
Actually, a very common practice in the ancient ME.
Thanks for the links, BTW.
RDG:
Interesting that you brought up Herodotus. This old post shows that the Big H wasn’t above telling some tall tales.
The Ryan-Pittman study, if memory serves.
Sweeeet.
BB:
Be forewarned – it tends to piss a lotta them off.
Fritzy:
All those guys were real, but ‘for real’? Doubtful at best.
3 December 2007, on 8:03 pm
Another good archaeological post, KA.
And once again I say: if archaeology has “proven” the babble, then it has also “proven” Homer’s Illiad among others. Finding Troy and evidence of warfare on the site effectively “proves” that the fabled Trojan War actually took place, which then “proves” that the gods came down and fought alongside the great heroes, just as Homer describes.
Cognitive dissonance, wilful ignorance, blind faith, etc., etc…
5 December 2007, on 7:46 am
Since you haven’t started your war on xmas yet, here is a possibility to expand it to war on hannakuh too.
First, the inevitable Christopher Hitchens,
http://www.slate.com/id/2179045/fr/rss/
“Thus, to celebrate Hanukkah is to celebrate not just the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness but also the accidental birth of Judaism’s bastard child in the shape of Christianity. You might think that masochism could do no more. Except that it always can. Without the precedents of Orthodox Judaism and Roman Christianity, on which it is based and from which it is borrowed, there would be no Islam, either.”
A bit more detail in another article here.
http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/my-real-holiday/
5 December 2007, on 6:53 pm
At Pharyngula I found a link to this editorial – a call to action to real archeologists to make a pre-emptive strike against their field’s equivalent of IDiots before their incursions are too strong to turn back easily.