You could try being specfic and giving some references.

Zwaarddijk, thank you for noticing the accuracy of some of the statements I made. Your points of rebuttal are well taken.

Logical bob, when you say, "you don't know what you are talking about," that's just rude, and may disrupt the flow of this thread. You could nicely point out the errors, and it would be better accepted.

20 years ago, when I first started out being interested in debunking the Bible, references were not important to me then, they are now, and I'm doing a better job of paying attention to that.

I have a hard time reconciling

Grace wrote:I've spent 20 years reading, and taking notes. So, everything that was said and written about this fairy tale book is wrong? I don't think so.

with

Grace wrote:Zwaarddijk, thank you for noticing the accuracy of some of the statements I made. Your points of rebuttal are well taken.

Obviously there will be wrongs in print about the Bible. There's a vested interest among the Christians to print wrongs in favour of it. But there's also an interest among people that want to debunk Christianity - an interest that at times is large enough to present various pseudoscholars, conmen, etc to publish claims that don't hold up to scrutiny. By now, less than half of the claims you have presented here are held by serious scholars (viz. the nonhistoricity of exodus, as well as the corroborating evidence thereof (e.g. no mention of any pharaoh by name, lack of ...), the idea that the onset of Genesis is derivative of the creation story from another culture, and that Solomon didn't write the works attributed to him.

The more notable claims you've made, though - the Bible not written by Hebrews at all, Psalm 46 written by Shakespeare, Exodus written by adventure-starved acacia-high young males, Song of Solomon written to confuse Christians, inconsistent spelling as proof of lack of education, - why would Exodus even mention the wars between Persians, Hittites and Assyrians? Exodus is not set in any of those areas - ... the claim that the authors of Exodus were ignorant (by the standards of that time) is also kind of difficult to stomach - the laws set up in it do derive from earlier sets of laws, so at least somewhat knowledgeable of Hammurabi's laws, altho' usually the Exodus' claim that the Israelites trecked around for 40 years is proof that the author was ignorant of local geography, it's obvious from the text that he knew it was a short trip, as the time it allegedly took is presented as a punishment - pretty much a miraculous punishment according to the author. (so the author was aware it can be traversed in a way shorter time)

Zwaarddijk, I never professed to be a scholar. Are you? What school of theology did you attend? Do you have a post graduate degree?

I began questioning Exodus 20 years ago when my Egyptian friends pointed out the obvious errors. I had to wrestle with the fact that I was gullible to have believed such nonsense.

You claim I said, "the Bible not written by Hebrews at all"-- those are your words, not mine. I said parts of the OT were written by people from other lands, not Hebrews. If that turns your stomach, I'm sorry, but it is true, beginning with Psalms. Scholars claim Psalms was not written by David; Proverbs was not written by Solomon; Ecclesiastes was not written by Solomon; The Song of Solomon was not written by Solomon; Isaiah was not written by Isaiah; and Lamentations was written by 5 different people. If I am wrong to believe what I have read, then please point it out nicely. Dont use high brow snobbery with me. It's not going to work.

I am searching for the truth, and I will find it with or without your help. The truth of the Bible should not be the intellectual property of scholars alone. Every one has a right to know the truth.

Leviticus: 3rd of the 5 Pentateuch. Also known as the Torah, or the 5 books of Moses (take your pick).

It is my humble opinion, without the help of a scholar, that this is the most boring book in the entire Bible. After 24 pages and a humongous list of foods the people can't eat, I'm left to wonder, what the hell can they eat? oh, yeah... manna from heaven, I forgot.

They had laws for everything:
-- they were against homosexuality
-- against adultery
-- They avoided bloody women and their bedding
-- They couldn't touch a dead man's seamen before the sun went down, but OK to touch it after the sun goes down (???)

Here's a list of people who couldn't offer sacrifices:
-- any one with a bodily defect
-- blind
-- lame
-- broken nose
-- extra fingers and toes
-- a humpback
-- a dwarf (now wait just a cotton pick'n minute -- leave the little guys out of this -- that's where I draw the line!)
-- pimples (I guess that excludes teenage boys)
-- imperfect testicles.... WHOA!

No mention of pedophile Rabbis, I'm sure there were some, guess that's OK...

So who wrote Leviticus? Obviously Hebrews, but who were they? This time I think it was a bunch of old disgruntled woman-haters against progress. No wonder there was so much rebellion among the youth.

I'm intrigued by the level of insight offered by this extraordinary analysis. Please, do go on!

Grace wrote:Zwaarddijk, I never professed to be a scholar. Are you? What school of theology did you attend? Do you have a post graduate degree?

I am not a scholar of theology, but I think it the duty of anyone that wants to discuss a topic to educate themselves. Some such education is trivial - e.g. realizing that KJV wasn't the first translation of the Bible into a modern language.

You claim I said, "the Bible not written by Hebrews at all"-- those are your words, not mine. I said parts of the OT were written by people from other lands, not Hebrews.

You actually said "We may not know who wrote the OT, but we do know it wasn't Hebrews", which in meaning is pretty much the same as "the Bible was not written by Hebrews at all", and quite distinct from "parts of the OT were written by people from other lands, not Hebrews". So ... my rephrasing is more honest to what you said than yours.

If that turns your stomach, I'm sorry, but it is true, beginning with Psalms.

What turns my stomach is purely your backpedaling wrt what you've said, and your rather outrageously bad use of reasoning.
The thing you think I find stomach-turning appears to be a thing I ALREADY FUCKING EXPLICITLY AGREED WITH. Are you under the impression that I am a religious adherent of the Bible? Are you trying to insinuate that that is what I am?

Scholars claim Psalms was not written by David; Proverbs was not written by Solomon; Ecclesiastes was not written by Solomon; The Song of Solomon was not written by Solomon; Isaiah was not written by Isaiah; and Lamentations was written by 5 different people. If I am wrong to believe what I have read, then please point it out nicely. Dont use high brow snobbery with me. It's not going to work.

When have I questioned a SINGLE ONE of these claims? In fact, I explicitly stated that Solomonean attribution is held to be incorrect by scholars. You had not mentioned any of the other books at the time - and I fully agree - none of these were written by David, Solomon, Isaiah, etc. These are not mistakes - but you're making a huge bunch of them in other claims, and when called out on them, you use the correct claims you've made as though they somehow magically made your other claims correct as well. That's not the way the world works.

Funnily, just in the next paragraph, you're questioning the validity of the same scholars that both of us agree with in the previous paragraph, I wonder why you refer to them when it suits you, and accuse them of monopolizing truth the next moment ...

I am searching for the truth, and I will find it with or without your help. The truth of the Bible should not be the intellectual property of scholars alone. Every one has a right to know the truth.

As I said, I am not a scholar. The truth, however, seldom can be reached by wishful thinking - which it seems is your method of choice at times! Modern scholarship has developed methods that are better at approaching truth than mere wishful thinking or conspiracy-theorist thinking is, and what's more, they've made this method available to the public. It's not hard to learn to think critically. I recommend you do it, as your current method as well as rather ill-conceived criticism of scholars make you come off quite like gullible religious people or conspiracy theorists, or people that believe there's elves in their pasture.

Grace wrote:

It is my humble opinion, without the help of a scholar

Is this a jab at me?

, that this is the most boring book in the entire Bible. After 24 pages and a humongous list of foods the people can't eat, I'm left to wonder, what the hell can they eat? oh, yeah... manna from heaven, I forgot.

Most cultures have taboos when it comes to food. Some cultures are nice enough to actually provide an explicit list of these taboos so people not familiar with them can have an easy time learning. In the west, however, it's kind of difficult to find out that rabbit is ok, cat and dog isn't, tuna is ok, relatively recently the dolphin has joined the list of not ok, apes aren't, bear ~is, ...

They had laws for everything:

What legal system wouldn't have a comprehensive set of laws?

-- They avoided bloody women and their bedding

A thing some Jewish feminist atheists actually have experimented with and found quite nice. Several of these atheist women have found that it strengthens romantic relations (because during the two weeks that they sleep in separate beds and aren't permitted to touch, other kinds of interaction and even touchless intimacy becomes important), as well as having other benefits too.

(also, unclean may be a rather odd translation of טמא, as holy books also are considered טמא.)

Here's a list of people who couldn't offer sacrifices:
-- any one with a bodily defect
-- blind
-- lame
-- broken nose
-- extra fingers and toes
-- a humpback
-- a dwarf (now wait just a cotton pick'n minute -- leave the little guys out of this -- that's where I draw the line!)
-- pimples (I guess that excludes teenage boys)
-- imperfect testicles.... WHOA!

These could offer up sacrifices, they just couldn't perform the actual sacrificial ritual - which most of the Jewish people couldn't anyway, so this only excludes some Levites. Many of these also may be for a practical reason - a blind cannot be sure to perform the ritual properly, same goes for the lame, possibly for the humpback as well.

No mention of pedophile Rabbis, I'm sure there were some, guess that's OK...

Rabbis didn't exist at the time the Torah was written. The rabbis only emerged a bit before the onset of the Christian era, but hadn't quite evolved into their modern role until after the fall of the temple.

So who wrote Leviticus? Obviously Hebrews, but who were they? This time I think it was a bunch of old disgruntled men against progress. No wonder there was so much rebellion among the youth.

Could you provide any specific reasons why old disgruntled men would write something like this? Isn't it just as likely that just about anyone with basically any kind of education that one would have in that time would write something like this?

Many of the rules in Leviticus are "purity laws" and so are probably not there for practical reasons at all - ritual purity has little to do with modern hygiene or psychology - so many of the OT laws are completely arbitrary; this is only a problem for those who invest them with more importance than they really have (i.e. fundies and those arguing against fundies). For everyone else, they are simply a codified set of rules for an iron age / classical age culture who didn't know better.

The OT was written by the Hebrews (or more accurately the ancestors of the Hebrews). But much of it was written when they were polytheists. This is why God has so many names, and many other older gods became angels and demons in the modern bible.

This is a fact accepted by many biblical scholars and historians, many of whom are believers. I honestly don't understand how they can reconcile this fact with their faith. The more intelligent a theologian the greater capacity for suspension of disbelief they must have…

Sankari wrote::coffee:

I would genuinely appreciate your input in particular in this thread - should I take your as a sign that you're approving of the quality of my input, or that you're kind of dispassionately watching me make an ass out of myself?

(srsly)

Grace wrote:Exodus:

There are no records outside the Bible of Israelites in Egypt, their enslavement, or their escape. No events in this book are found any where in Egyptian records, or uncovered by modern day archaeologists.

Exodus doesn't mention the pyramids, or the well known wars between Persians, Assyrians, and Hittites.

There is no mention of well known pharaohs, only the title, 'Pharaoh' is used as the name of the pharaoh -- ridiculous!

There is no reference to the 10 plagues of Egypt any where outside the Bible.

So, who wrote the book of Exodus in the Bible? Of course no one knows because the writer(s) are anonymous. But this much we can know -- it was not Moses, Joseph, or Pharaoh. The writer(s) were painfully ignorant of the world outside their little nomadic tent city. They were not scholars, and their education was only barely passing being that they could not spell the names of people or places correctly.

I'm going to guess that it was a group of very young idealistic males, hungry for adventure, but hopelessly stoned on the fumes of acacia wood. Acacia wood was mentioned 25 times in the book of Exodus.

My theory about Exodus is that the Jews hated the Egyptians, so they made up a fairytale in which God punishes the Egyptians for their wrong doings. The reality is that Israel has been an Egyptian province for a couple of centuries and was independent at the time of king David. Just like other nationalists they didn't like the reality, so they did as if they were a great unbeatable nation. Though the Egyptian slavery may be allegorical to the Egyptian occupation.

Sankari wrote:I'm intrigued by the level of insight offered by this extraordinary analysis. Please, do go on!

Yes, this thread is really .

Daan wrote:My theory about Exodus is that the Jews hated the Egyptians, so they made up a fairytale in which God punishes the Egyptians for their wrong doings. The reality is that Israel has been an Egyptian province for a couple of centuries and was independent at the time of king David. Just like other nationalists they didn't like the reality, so they did as if they were a great unbeatable nation. Though the Egyptian slavery may be allegorical to the Egyptian occupation.

The one problem there is that Exodus makes the Hebrews come off as rather terrible. The authors/redactor(s) must have had more complex intentions than just making up a great past - they made a rather dodgily great past, if they were aiming at greatness. Most what we know of ~nationalist propaganda of the time seems less full of regrettable moments.

No idea. Who wrote the Three Little Pigs? How about Little Red Riding Hood? Obviously not the same author or authors, as stylistically the books are very different. However, the Big Bad Wolf appears in both. This gives us two independent accounts of the Big Bad Wolf, leading to the inescapable conclusion that the Big Bad Wolf did, in fact, exist. Wolf Mythers routinely ignore this evidence. Why in the world would two separate authors manufacture fables about the same creature? It makes no sense. The most parsimonious explanation is the authors were writing about an actual creature and actual events.

Zwaarddijk: "Is this a jab at me?" NO! Stop this! It's paranoid thinking. I figured you weren't a scholar because you are not nice. Scholars are flattered when people seek their council.

" You claim I said, "the Bible not written by Hebrews at all" -- we both errored on this one. You misquoted me, and I should have said 'not all Hebrews wrote the OT.'

rJD, thank you for your insight, I really appreciate it.

MacIver, thank you for your insight, I really appreciate it.

Daan, thank you for your theory, it made me ponder a bit -- hee hee!

laklak, (stepping off the track a bit) why were there so many fairy tales about sleeping princesses coming out of Germany? Because so many precious young daughters did go to sleep and they never woke up. They didn't know what caused the sleeping sickness, and it wasn't until centuries later it was given the name hypothyroidism. Not until 1955 did injections become available to save the lives of these women. 5 years after that pills became available that ended the painful weekly intramuscular injections. (Stepping back on the track).

I've spent 20 years of my life sifting through 3,000 years of nonsense. I'm not an expert now, but someday I will be. Maybe when I'm 60, 70 or 80 I'll be at the level of Zwaarddijk. I'm not going back to school. My career in another field is set, so I will be studying the Bible as a liberal skeptic on my own. When I become an expert, I vow I will not become a high-brow snob. What ever I learn I will share gladly.

Zwaarddijk wrote:

Sankari wrote::coffee:

I would genuinely appreciate your input in particular in this thread -

Thanks, I do appreciate that. But right now I'd rather watch the show. I may apply for a speaking role in the third act if it looks like a good one. We shall see.

should I take your as a sign that you're approving of the quality of my input, or that you're kind of dispassionately watching me make an ass out of myself?

(srsly)

You can rest assured my post was not aimed at you.