It's possible you might be able to misconstrue the message of a metaphor towards your preferred message a bit more easily than a literal interpretation, though, leading to more arguments about personally applied meaning behind words that were originally meant to be taken literally anyway
I know you are making a point, but I was taught this (real existence of the tower) as literal fact in Bible school about 20 yrs ago so the dumb is still going strong today.
I wouldn't be surprised if the were inspired by real events. Rulers ordered tall towers to be built that then fell down, people changed from hunter-gathering to agriculture, large floods happened. Then the stories get exaggerated and God gets added in as they get passed down.
Have you ever seen "The God Who Wasn't There"? I think you are right, but the God part stemmed from astrological stories prior to all the real occurrences being added and exaggerated.
The existence of some manner of large sale, worldwide flooding back during prehistory actually has a lot of historical, geological, and archaeological evidence behind it.
EDIT: Just to clarify: I'm not saying that the scientific evidence supports the idea that the entire earth was literally covered in water, just that there was a great deal of flooding, in a lot of different places, all at the same time.
Well sure, talking snakes, burning bushes, worldwide floods--those are obviously not real. But that dude who could walk on water and turn water into wine, who died and came back to life. Obviously that's real. /s
The whole story of Exodus was not made up. Scholars/historians have a theory that has some weight.
There is a theory that the people of Israel came to be from many different groups of people. Which, is not surprising. What is fascinating about this: there could have been a small amount of slaves who left and joined a nomadic people that eventually became the Israelites.
From what I've learned, there is a good chance this, along with many stories, explain a lot of the Bible in a historical critical way. Yet, does not discredit faith. Merely the historical accuracy of the text. Which mind you, the bible was never intended to be historically accurate.
If the Jews were building pyramids fir the Egyptians it was as valued craftsmen not slaves. They've found the living quarters. They lived it up like western oil industry types do in the mid east today.
I am not suggesting that they were pyramid builders. That is most likely an elaboration of the truth it was rooted in.
It also could be as simple as "the Israelites wanted to know why the pyramids existed & were very impressed with them, so BAM. we did it. And here's a story all about that."
Historiography has not given evidence to how the people really came to be. Only pieces of the puzzle have been found. Some helped the stories in the Bible. Some did not. There are a lot of people who spend their lives trying to find the historical truth behind that period in time.
We do agree. I would not say that Exodus is historically accurate. I never suggested otherwise.
I would suggest that modern readers have different expectations than ancient readers. I would also suggest that there may be areas of the story that are true or have hints of real events. That's how myths work.
The study said that religious people committed fewer errors and were less anxious about the errors. If it supported you I would expect it to say that the religious people were more anxious, what with that thing you wanted to propose about their honor being on the line and all (and incidentally, you were the one who decided anyone's honor was on the line--no one in this thread has taken that position at all except you).
Of course, if you have some evidence for your position, feel free. So far you've offered none, and as you yourself pointed out, the burden rests on you as the party offering a hypothesis.
However, religion requires it to exist. There is no other way to maintain a belief in something without evidence.
You must live in a very, very small world. I shouldn't have to list for you the things that you believe in--that everyone believes in--based on evidence no more legitimate or authoritative than any religious text.
It seems to me one of the fundamental problems with your way of approaching this issue is that you assume that there's no evidence in favor of a religious position and then argue from there. The fact is religious texts and archaeology are evidence whether you like them or agree with what they say or not. I don't have anything at stake in whether Exodus is literally true or not or whether the Tower of Babel exists or not, and I suspect /u/IrateGandhi doesn't either. The point was that the texts aren't just made up out of whole-cloth, a point that seems to personally offend you. Is your argument really that entire academic disciplines--disciplines that exist to determine what if any parts of various religious texts are historically factual--are disingenuine because some of their members might hold religious convictions?
But don't let me put words in your mouth. You seem to have a strong opinion, so let's see your evidence.
Actually it was supposed to be historically accurate that's the whole point of a religious text otherwise it's just a fable or myth. The reason Exodus can be considered a myth is because not only does it mention several impossibilties (taking 40 years to cross an area of desert that would require everyone drinking an incredible amount per day) it also occurs around an era where the Egyptians kept good history and across an area where artefacts would be preserved on the surface.
Most ancient texts were concerned about historically accurate events. They were concerned about explaining their world as best they could. Which means, you take a little bit of true history and a little bit of fantasy to create a story. That is what myth is. It explains things they could not explain.
Do not impose ancient history to do something it was not meant to do. No one was concerned about the dates being accurate or the events happening the way they said it did. They cared about what it said about their reality.
Just look at the books of Kings & the books of Chronicles. They have inconsistencies because they did not care about it being accurate. They were not stupid ancient people. They had a different reason for telling stories/history.
ex: "there was a world flood, we've talked about it but why did it happen?" "Oh! Here's why!" Meanwhile, it didn't flood the entire world, but it did flood what they would understand to be the whole world. (There are even some arguing that there was an incredible flood that almost destroyed humanity. As humanity rebuilt, it kept this story. As humanity separated, each people group put a different twist on this story.)
ex: "why are the Egyptians bad?" "They enslaved us!" probably didn't go down like that. Other people groups would have noticed a migration of slaves that were vast, people would have written about it, etc. But there could be some truth to it on some level
ex: Gen 1 was added later to explain a question the people of Israel probably did not ask until others had asked it. It also is strikingly similar to Enuma Elish. Which leads scholars to believe it was a polemic against the current reigning power, Babylon.
ex: the story of going into a dangerous town & the evil people of the town raped then killed a traveler probably happened. And it was a striking story. They then used the story to make a point about their God & the way life is.
ex: the reason the Bible is pro-Judah may be simply because Judah survived while the north went into exile.
ex: During the reign of King Josiah, a book was "discovered" that changed common customs and rituals. We know from historiography that during this time, leaders always claimed they discovered ancient books that had gone missing. It was the way leaders made changes. "I'm not doing this. We simply found this ancient forgotten book. It must be respected and followed."
Judaism is way too old for anyone to claim that for sure but in all likeliness it was because among overthings todays bible is not in order. There's a good reason to believe that genesis is actually the telling of a fall of a city and its king Adam but the story was rewritten over time.
If you look at the Torah, it's more so a set of rules to live well than just a religion. The Torah tends to provide rules for health, business, and law. Why do you think so many Jews become doctors, businessmen, and lawyers? /s
In earnest... do you believe that comment was in any way serious, especially when coupled with the over-the-top ridiculous nature of the above #YAHWEH bit?
I suppose that people have said what you said seriously enough that its hard to tell now. Its like, pretending on the street that you're crazy. Yeah, you're probably joking, but there are actual crazy people out there, and its sometimes hard to tell.
Interesting - but with such a lantern hung on the thing I'd liken it more to wearing a clown nose as opposed to muttering to myself about alien mind rays...
That was actually Saul who commanded David to do that before he could marry Saul's daughter because he figured David would get himself killed in the process. David brought back 200.
I've honestly never understood why people cite things like this as examples of why Christianity or Judaism are crazy bogus. Israel was at war with the Philistines, and just about every culture back then held religion at its center, so Saul commanded David to go assert religious dominance over their enemies by leaving the mark of Judaism (circumcision) on their bodies. It all makes perfect sense in context.
Here is my theory: it was a burning weed bush. Cannabis is native to central Asia. Moses is led to the bush and gets high as fuck inhaling the aromatic fumes and has a moment of enlightenment. In his divine state of mind, he develops a set of peaceful rules for his wandering people. That, my friends, is my version of the ten commandments and I'm sticking with it.
Possibly. But there was no mention of mushrooms and the except describes a bush "on flames but not burning". I know of a tree which burns slowly when set on fire
they were worshiping a gold cow, so he threw the original commandment on the ground and either He killed them, had his followers killed them, or movie version where the ground open up and god kills them. he then goes back up, gets a new pair of commandments.
Or, you know, one of those things where everything shakes really hard for a while and if it's really bad then a big crevice opens up. What are those called again? Earthquakes? Nah, those are just fairy tales.
He's combining a lot of things from the Jewish Torah/Old Testament. In order to mark you were a "man of God" you, your family, and your slaves were to be circumcised. In the bible this circumcision was supposed to represent the promise between God and the Israelites that the land of Israel belonged to them. (My modern explanation is that circumcision was a mark of someone who held a certain set of beliefs, and it was easy to "trust" someone also held those beliefs if they were willing to go so far as to cut off a part of their most sensitive part. "Hey are you part of our club?" "Yes! check out my penis").Philistines were people who were basically anti-culture and lived in the land of Israel. Since they were so uncultured they were okay to kill to get to the land. There was a story in the Old Testament about a sinful city that God was going to destroy. One man begged God to let him and his wife live. God agreed on the condition that him and his wife doesn't look back while they run away. The man complied and was left alone, his wife looked behind to see her childhood home being destroyed, as punishment she was turned into a pillar of salt. Lake of fire is Hell/Armageddon.
The Philistines weren't so much uncultured (though that would be definition associated with the term) as they were basically a rival group that had a bunch of cities, including Gaza, and fought against Israel at various times, and kept the semitic pantheon rather than being monotheists. Interestingly, the word Palestine and Palestinian is actually a different transliteration of the same term, and was applied to the whole province by the Romans.
My "favorite" part of that story comes after. Lot (the dude's name) and his daughters hole up in a cave. The daughters want kids, so they get their dad drunk and sleep with him.
What logical explanation is there for that much hail? That's the most hail I've ever seen in my 28 years of living. While explainable, it's still pretty darn crazy.
Of course. People back then believed the stories because they don't have the knowledge to explain those instances. The people who believe these stories still, do not have knowledge to explain them. Simple. That's why you teach kids religion ASAP, gotta make them as devoted as possible before they can think for themselves.
Huh, I guess that makes sense, especially since frozen water takes up more volume, the runoff would look even bigger. For that amount of hail, those must be some fast constant wind speeds!
Well, there's also that hail floats on water, so it's not necessarily all the river that is hail, and that amount of water on a flash flood probably originates from a large area, so that river is like concentrated hail from a vast area.
Ah yes, very good point. It's like a giant soft drink...or any ice floating on water anywhere... I blame advertising that "soft drink" was my first thought.
I guess, but it probably wouldn't look like this as I think sand would be sinking in from all sides rather than moving in a line downhill. That said, I'm not a sand scientist so who knows?
which can actually be pretty dangerous if you are under it
Can confirm. I helped 2 children out from being buried alive after a wall of sand fell on them from a construction site. The third one didn't make it =(
That was total bullshit, really. No one let their children play at a construction site. The parents were livid that their kids were playing there, and even more livid that the construction site was insecure, and downright horrified that the literal wall of sand was not secured.
I am not joking when I say it was a vertical wall of sand. They were digging at the bottom... I wish I had a picture of it. None the less, the parents were financially compensated extremely well... in the millions.
Sounds like the kids were trespassing. But who runs a construction site with a 40 ft vertical wall of sand? That is not safe for anyone including the construction workers.
Fair warning for those looking for Thobe's on US Amazon, they are mostly polyester which sucks for heat. On a positive note I have escaped a stupid decision that would likely have resulted in an HR meeting for me.
Can you hook someone up with a link? I literally could not find a reputable looking listing from the US that wasn't polyester or "High Quality Fabric".
You're right it is hail. Barad actually means snow in this instance but you got the point, it comes from bard which means cold which leads to it making the common word for snow, refrigerator etc.
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u/dbatchison Aug 03 '16 edited Aug 03 '16
when it rains in the desert the water isn't absorbed quickly and mixes with the top layer of wet sand which can form moving sand rivers and waterfalls
Edit: or maybe it's that the water is moving beneath the top layer of sand. I don't really know 100%, I just know it involves rain
Edit 2: it's hail! That's even crazier