You heard it right…the old professor is going biblical……surprise!
I do not normally post much on religion and such…..I have on occasion broken my pledge of not doing so….just so you know…I do not write on religion because it is a personal choice…..I have my beliefs and I do not wish to share those and open myself open to debate and insults….religion is between the person and his/her god….and the rest of us need to just move on……
This one is about Solomon…the son of the great king David……first they say the Bible…but if I am not mistaken the Old Testament is basically the Torah……that would make it Jewish…..but I nitpick…..
An ancient pottery shard seems to support the Biblical story of King Solomon and shows he was running a pretty complex operation 3,000 years ago—at least according to one Israeli scholar. “We are dealing here with real kings, and the kingdom of David and Solomon was a real fact,” Gershon Galil tells Fox News. He bases this on the “Ophel inscription,” the oldest alphabetical writing ever found in Israel. Galil translates the 8 letters on a clay-jug fragment as yah-yin chah-lak, or “inferior wine.” This, he says, was the cheap stuff given to laborers who built the young city of Jerusalem. Galil says this indicates an advanced bureaucratic system that could label wine, note where it came from, store it, and so on, reports the Archaeology News Network. Galil dates the shard to the middle of the 10th century BCE, which places the Jews in Jerusalem earlier than scholars have believed, to a time when the Bible says King Solomon ruled. Galil takes this as proof that Solomon ordered the building of the First Temple. Others have said Judean King Hezekiah had it built in Solomon’s name, a notion Galil dismisses.
Now we can have a spirited debate on the Solomon thingy……
So is written so shall it be……
A set of bones—and not human ones, at that—is “challenging the Bible’s historicity,” say two Tel-Aviv University researchers. Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef and Dr. Lidar Sapir-Hen have carbon-dated the oldest known domesticated camel bones found in the southern Levant, where Israel sits, and what they discovered is that the creatures were likely introduced to the region around the 9th century BC. And that doesn’t sync with the timing of the Bible, which features the pack animals as being present centuries earlier, in the Patriarch-era of Abraham, Joseph, and Jacob, which ran from roughly 2000 to 1500 BC. “This anachronism is direct proof that the text was compiled well after the events it describes,” per a press release on the study. And the dating is much more precise than what was previously calculated, explains Ben-Yosef: “By analyzing archaeological evidence from the copper production sites of the Aravah Valley, we were able to estimate the date of this event in terms of decades rather than centuries.” What they found was that copper sites active in the region in the 9th century BC contained camel bones, but none of the ones active earlier did; the earliest archaeological layer to contain them dated to the last third of the 10th century BC. The Times of Israel notes that domesticated camels didn’t originate in that region, however; that honor goes to the Arabian peninsula, which is believed to have used them as pack animals since 2000 BC. Egyptians probably introduced them to Israel.
Now that I have that piece of history outta the way…..go back to watching the Olympics….and I will be back tomorrow……
Nitpicking is a good idea now and then my friend, in this case as I, as a gentile reading this complete set of books, see it, this is just what the bible is trying to tell the Jew and gentile, the old testament is a set of books to help both understand the Torah. A little of the new testament was to explain the reason for the Torah and the old books?
Ever noticed that God of the Torah and God of the New Testament seem to be two separate entities?
“A set of bones—and not human ones, at that—is “challenging the Bible’s historicity,” say two Tel-Aviv University researchers.”
For more challenges to the historicity of the Bible, some of your readers might want to trip over to John Zande’s blog, The Superstitious Ape, and read articles like this that essentially reveal that the first 5 books of what we refer to as the OT are myths, acknowledged by many Jewish scholars, some who are even of the more conservative persuasion.
For sure Larry it is a well written and informative blog……thanx for pointing John’s blog out….I know he will appreciate….chuq
I was chatting with Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef a few months ago. Nice bloke. Galil, though, is no archaeologist, rather a Professor of Biblical Studies. Still, the question of just how urbanised Judah was prior to the 8th century is still up for some debate. The maximalists (often funded by Christian groups) do tend to make some wild claims based on pretty much nothing (which leads to a lot of eye-rolling), but there’s room to examine the evidence as/if it comes to light. This question though shouldn’t be confused with the existence of the Patriarchs, Egyptian captivity, Moses, Exodus and Conquest. These matters have been well and truly settled over two generations ago: its all myth.
I once chatted up a guy that called himself a Biblical archeologists and come to find out he was just a biblical “scholar”….to use a term…LOL
Yeah, some people do play pretty loose with their “expertise” in the field. Christians are notorious for funding terrible “research;” which means “here’s a cheque and the conclusion, go find the evidence!” Galil, though, is certainly knowledgeable, and in some way qualified to comment on finds, but if he drifts into actual interpretation then he’s getting out on thin ice.
I know what you mean….look t the creationism theme park….Christians funded that so they will give cash to anyone that pretends to know stuff….like I said the Ark is somewhere in Babylon (Iraq) if it is ever to be found….
Camels did exist during the time of the Old Testament!!! DESPITE THE ASSERTIONS IN YOUR ARTICLE evidence continues to amass that camel domestication was widely known earlier. Randall Younker adds Late Bronze Age I petroglyphs (Greek = rock/carving) depicting domesticated camels from the Sinai to that evidence. What about the dating of the bones used by Dr.Lidar Sapir-Hen and Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef of Tel Aviv University in this case on the camel? Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell takes them to task in the article “The Bible Wins the Debate with Carbon-Dated Bones.” http://thedailyhatch.org/2014/02/13/despite-what-lidar-sapir-hen-and-erez-ben-yosef-of-tel-aviv-university-say-camels-did-exist-during-the-time-of-the-old-testament/
Everette thanx for the visit and the comment….but first of all it is NOT MY ASSERTION….I read the article and thought I would pass it along to my readers….I try to find stuff that may be interesting top my readers on weekends because I try NOT to post on my forte politics during that time…..if I was a ‘dirt’ person I might like to debate but since I am not I will accept your premise.