The historical content of the Bible confirmed again.

[old man emu]

It seems that over the past 10 to 15 years archeologists have been able to confirm another bit of the Old Testament to be based in fact. Just as  Heinrich Schliemann believed that Homer's Illiad was based on facts and discovered Troy,  the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah can be shown through the scientific method to be true by following the text of Genesis to locate the remains of the city that probably was Sodom.

 

Leaving aside the religious lesson applied to the event, the archeologists have come to the conclusion that Sodom and surrounding lesser cities and towns were destroyed during the time of Abraham by of all things, a meteor that exploded in the air above those urban areas. Evidence has been found of instantaneous high temperatures in the 3000 C range that caused effects which we associate with the nuclear explosions in the air above Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Such an airburst could well be described as fire coming from the sky, and after the explosion's pressure wave hit the ground it would have thrown rocks into the air, causing them to ignite as well. 

 

It is interesting that in a peer-reviewed paper written by a group of 20 or so astrophysicists, many stating themselves to be atheists, confirmed from evidence available that such an airburst explains the unique artifacts found in the demolition layer of that site. Such airbursts re not uncommon. Apparently NASA has identified upwards of 500 instances all over the World .

 

Have a watch of this. It is an interview with the archeologist who has been working on the site of the destroyed city.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Very interesting, but where are images of what they’re talking about? Luckily, I was able to look it up on GE.

 

This bloke is likeable and easy to listen to. He’s obviously done decades of careful archaeological work, but is perhaps too influenced by the dogma of his sponsoring institution:

‘The school holds that biblical scripture, specifically "the ancient Hebrew Tanakh and the New Testament", is "the only written, divinely inspired representation of reality given by God to humankind, speaking with absolute and authority in all matters upon which it touches."^[4]’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Southwest_University

His expose is evidence that the Bible records past events and describes their location, but is not a convincing arguement that God did all this. The events happened and the stories were passed down and incorporated into religious dogma.

 No doubt The Bible is a useful historic resource, but we should realise how much its text has been manipulated, censored and edited over the last couple of millenia. 

[old man emu]

8 hours ago, Old Koreelah said:

His expose is evidence that the Bible records past events and describes their location, but is not a convincing arguement that God did all this.

 

I took particular care to tell people that I was not interested in connecting what the physical evidence suggests with an interpretation of why it happened that is based on a belief in a deity.

10 hours ago, old man emu said:

Leaving aside the religious lesson applied to the event,

I didn't hear him say anything in that interview that suggested that he was trying to push the "Good did this" barrow. Obviously, in his personal life, he is strongly influenced by the Bible, and obviously has that Bible Belt ability to quote from it at will.  His desire to find the "Cities of the Plains" was sparked by his knowledge of the biblical text, but did you also notice that he did not go into what is written about the post-event actions of Lot? He spoke about the pre-event information in the bible.

 

As to the imposition of a religious theme to the event, how would you try to describe to me by using idea I already have, something unique. I haven't seen Min Min lights, but how would they be described without resorting to modern knowledge of plasma physics?

 

I have previously posted items in which I have suggested that archeological and physical evidence indicates that the Bible is not only a religious treatise, but the historical record of the Hebrews, equal to the histories of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans inscribed upon stone monuments. What is presented by this person is simply another example of a transition from the oral to the written method of preserving a group's history.

[nomadpete]

It's OK.

We get it OME.

 

Your post reaffirms awareness that many a legend has it's roots in a provable natural event.

[Marty_d]

As a historical record the bible is about as much use as a cookbook that doesn't describe the ingredients. 

Why you'd want to try to draw correlations between a book of myths and actual historical events is beyond me. 

The original authors had a world view which was blinkered by their ignorance of basic science and the world outside the Mediterranean basin.

Hence a localized flooding event becomes a world wide catastrophe in which one man builds a wooden ship which saves 1 pair of every animal...

Plus as OK pointed out, the bible you read today was a translation of a translation of thousands of contradictory documents,  of which anything that didn't meet the strange moral standards or agreed narrative of the church hierarchy,  was excluded. 

[nomadpete]

I think Marty just fell down the wrong rabbit hole.

[old man emu]

3 hours ago, nomadpete said:

I think Marty just fell down the wrong rabbit hole.

Which is the problem the is encountered when one has an "all or nothing" viewpoint. I could post a link to a video in which the presenter claims that fossils were not the product of unique initial conditions and eons of time, but that any fossil can be formed in a day. To illustrate his argument he produces fossils in the act of eating other organisms; fossilised animals with their final footprints also preserved, and claims that soft-bodied organisms such a jellyfish would have rooted away to mush before they could have been covered with the first layers of sediment. His clincher in regards to fossilised fish was that dead fish float. They don't sink to the floor of the body of water they lived in. Obviously has never seen a waterhole dry out. A prime example of that is fossil bed at Canowindra, NSW. The Canowindra fauna is a very rich Late Devonian fish fauna. All of the fossil specimens are preserved on a single bedding plane, part of an ancient fish community which had been trapped in a pool of water which dried up, killing the fish. Incoming sediments later buried these fishes quickly and quietly, with minor disturbance to the fish skeletons. 

[facthunter]

 I  don't think ALL dead fish float. They might float when they Bloat. The more salty the water the more buoyant things are in it.. Nev

[old man emu]

Does a flathead or a flounder float off the bottom when it dies?

[facthunter]

I haven't seen any do it but in the Murray there were plenty of dead fish floating. I put that down to the way they were rotting (generating gases).  Nev

[old man emu]

When you consider the many, many billions of creatures that have lived since Life started, the number of fossils is infinitesimal. Since we know that anything is possible, it is only the probability of something happening that needs to be slightly more than zero for it to actually happen.

[facthunter]

On the way to where we are today  there have been many extinctions as conditions for  life for them altered and they couldn't adapt quickly enough . Anything that's alive today has ancestors (common DNA ) that go right back to the first unicellular creatures, unless something extra arrived here from outer space.   Nev

[Bruce Tuncks]

All it would take to destroy the theory of evolution would be a fossilized rabbit in pre-cambrian sediments. Alas for the theists, such a thing has NEVER been found.

[Bruce Tuncks]

People float too. they bloat when they start to rot. This is why the mafia weigh you down. I dunno how long you float for, it would not be for ages.

[Old Koreelah]

1 hour ago, facthunter said:

On the way to where we are today  there have been many extinctions as conditions for  life for them altered and they couldn't adapt quickly enough . Anything that's alive today has ancestors (common DNA ) that go right back to the first unicellular creatures, unless something extra arrived here from outer space.   Nev

Just a few recent events that almost wiped out our species:

[Marty_d]

7 hours ago, old man emu said:

Which is the problem the is encountered when one has an "all or nothing" viewpoint.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.  My question is why you would be trying to give historical significance to a collection of myths in the first place. 

It's like saying that because there are legends of werewolves, vampires and Cyclops, these things must have existed. 

[nomadpete]

Quite the contrary, Marty.

Discovery of a factual part of a legend doen not prove anything other than the spark of truth that may have spawned a grand story.

 

For instance, acknowleding a major natural destructive event such as a meteorite does not in any way prove anything spiritual at all. But it is highly likely and understandable that it would create stories that are retold for generations. And we all know how stories get embellished with every retelling.

 

[Marty_d]

10 hours ago, nomadpete said:

Quite the contrary, Marty.

Discovery of a factual part of a legend doen not prove anything other than the spark of truth that may have spawned a grand story.

 

For instance, acknowleding a major natural destructive event such as a meteorite does not in any way prove anything spiritual at all. But it is highly likely and understandable that it would create stories that are retold for generations. And we all know how stories get embellished with every retelling.

 

That's a good point Peter.  Many stories in the bible may have a starting point in observed phenomenon, but be totally misinterpreted because of the lack or knowledge at the time.

 

My point is that the same could be said of any myth. Vampires for example are based on a real historical figure - Vlad III of Transylvania - but although he did kill over 80,000 people (a quarter of those by inpaling), he never sucked blood, turned into a bat or was incapacitated by garlic. As for fear of the cross,  pope Pius II approved of his victories against the Ottoman invaders, so that bit of the myth is not likely either.

 

 

Edited September 9, 2023 by Marty_d

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, Marty_d said:

Vampires for example are based on a real historical figure - Vlad III of Transylvania

Sorry, Marty, but while Vlad the Impaler might be spoken of as a monstrous person, he is not the source of the vampire in Slavic culture. The notion of vampirism has existed for millennia. Cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, Manipuri and Romans had tales of demons and spirits which are considered precursors to modern vampires. Despite the occurrence of vampiric creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the entity known today as the vampire originates almost exclusively from early 18th-century southeastern Europe amongst the Slavic peoples.

 

The name Dracula was for centuries known as a nickname of our Vlad. Diplomatic reports and popular stories referred to him as Dracula, Dracuglia, or Drakula already in the 15th century. He himself signed his two letters as "Dragulya" or "Drakulya" in the late 1470s. His name had its origin with his father, Vlad Dracul ("Vlad the Dragon" in medieval Romanian), who received it after he became a member of the Order of the Dragon. Dracula is the Slavonic genitive form of Dracul, meaning "[the son] of Dracul (or the Dragon)".In modern Romanian, dracul means "the devil", which contributed to Vlad's reputation.

 

What is likely to be the factual basis for the vampire? In most cases,  a vampire is the animated corpse of evil beings, suicide victims, or witches, that is believed to have been revived from death to haunt the living. Vampires were usually reported as bloated in appearance, and ruddy, purplish, or dark in colour. Blood coloured fluid, is often seen seeping from the mouth and nose This is what a human corpse looks like in the very early stages of decomposition. As part of the blood sucking myth, the seeping blood coloured fluid was often attributed to the recent drinking of blood by the corpse.

 

 

[Marty_d]

In either case OME there is no actual vampire.

[facthunter]

Except the Saddler and the De Havilland, To mention PLANES. Nothing in the bible teaches much about them.  Liking them might even be IDOLATERTY. Nev

[spacesailor]

WRONG !.

Vampire bats Do exist,  they feed on the blood of an ox like bovine .

Possibly South America .

I saw it on a ' wildlife doco ' , long time ago .

spacesailor

[Bruce Tuncks]

They were very bad at diagnosing death in those days, Now we know that the"resurrected" person had not been really dead.

Edited September 10, 2023 by Bruce Tuncks

[Bruce Tuncks]

We know now that the person could not have been really dead.

[nomadpete]

On 08/09/2023 at 9:04 PM, old man emu said:

It seems that over the past 10 to 15 years archeologists have been able to confirm another bit of the Old Testament to be based in fact.

The original post. I see no connection with bats.

 

Note the wording....

'BIT of the Old Testament'

Nowhere does it claim any confirmation  of the entire  fairy story. Just a bit. And that evidence indicates a strong possibility that a meteor destroyed a town in ancient times, and it MIGHT have been the town of Gomorrah (if it existed) and it MIGHT have started a imaginative story that eventually was written in an old book.

 

No, NO werewolves here. NO proof of wifely pillars of salt. No proof that anything is significantly true or accurate in the Old Testament, except that an ancient town had a disaster.