@Corinthian's comment on 'Wikiposters discuss the historical merits of the Biblical Exodus :marseypharaoh: :peperun: :marseyflamewar:'

https://old.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comments/1dxlah6/the_scholarly_consensus_is_that_the_exodus_as/

This 911roofer post introduced me to /r/wikipedia, a subreddit where apparently redditors post wikipedia articles :thisisbait: . From a brief glance it seems that most of these posts are blatant agenda posts designed to bait politisperging and slapfights :slapfight: Let's take a look shall we? :marseydetective:

I found this thread pretty quickly: the linked article is Sources and Parallels of the Exodus. :marseyfsjal: Immediately redditors jump in crowing how fake the bible is:

Not really surprising. All peoples had their origin myths but not all of them wrote them down or had people read them for thousands of years. Most everything in the Bible pre-Babylonian exile is questionable because that's the time at which the strict Yahwists became predominant over the polytheists. The Exodus story makes more sense if you imagine it as one told by an exile community in Babylon trying to reinforce their faith and cultural cohesion. Or returning from exile and refounding a kingdom. There was certainly continuity with earlier legends and memories, but even the best kept legends aren't quite historical records.

Very few people create a myth where they were all slaves at some point in the past.

Another comment springs a multi pronged :slapfight:

Wow shocking….a religious text not being historically accurate after thousands of years and translation…I mean who'd of thunk it

He gets dunked on immediately for being such a neckbeard

Nearly every ancient 'historical' text has the same problem.
Also, the dead sea scrolls are 2300 years old and are in Hebrew and Aramaic, so the translation point doesn't really apply. It's not about translation whatsoever. If genesis is translated or not, it doesn't change the fact that it's an origin mythology, just the same as exodus. (+63)

Ok Ted take it easy. It wasn't meant in the literal sense…see what I did there (-41)

You posted a cringey Reddit atheist take, so I was just actually discussing the content of the article and adding some context to your basically unrelated comment.

Ahh yes the great debate stage of the Reddit machine. I didn't say anything of atheist ideology there Ted. Take it easy will ya..everyone sees how smart you are

Why is this guy calling the other one Ted? I don't get it. Anyhow, the other side of that chain:

Translation has nothing to do with it. It's not some game of telephone Hebrew to Aramaic to Greek to Latin to English or whatever, we understand the Hebrew just fine. It's that the standards and purpose of history writing were radically different back then than now. Also "religion" as a category didn't really exist.

We understand Hebrew in the context of what? Don't you think that's a bit arrogant? I'm sure we understand the technical aspects of Hebrew, but we could never understand the spirit of the text when and while it was written. We argue about the constitution in the US and it's not even 250 years old! Three ancient languages were used and you think we understand the spirit of well enough to understand the multiple translations…nah dawg

K, first of all, it's entirely in Hebrew. Only the fan fiction starts dealing in other languages. Second, we never stopped using Hebrew at any point, so no, it's not arrogant to say we're translating it correctly. Third, yeah, there might be some points we don't fully understand -- heck, we've straight up forgotten the meaning of a handful of words.
But fourth, that doesn't mean that any of the issues here are translation issues. If you're making the argument that it was originally considered metaphorical and not literal or something, that's a historical argument, not a linguistic one. But it's not historically inaccurate because of translation issues, it's historically inaccurate because it was never historically accurate, and I don't see how even possibly translation issues could account for such massive discrepancies.

Never fear though Christcels :marseypastor: , a champion has arisen to defend your honor!

Then the scholarly consensus is wrong. (-59)

Why?

An actual good faith engagement with this? :marseyshook:

I believe in Jesus and he endorses the Old Testament.

A separate subthread:

You think Moses parting the sea is historical rather than mythological?

Yes

Moron

Christ still died for you and I rejoice in that.

This really got them mad:

You rejoice in someone's death ? Seems rather cruel.

Except he didn't actually die, judging by how most Christians seem to think he still exists, and since he is God, all this really means is that God had a weird fetish and needed to inflict torture on himself in order to feel capable of forgiving people who sinned as a result of conditions he set up.

After reading this incredibly intelligent discussion I wanted to go into the article itself to see what was happening :marseywisetalking: :!marseywisetalking: No real drama on the talk page unfortunately but I did notice :!marseydetective: some fun stuff in the article itself:

>Egyptologist Jan Assmann suggests that the Exodus narrative combines, among other things, the expulsion of the Hyksos, the religious revolution of Akhenaten, the experiences of the Habiru (gangs of antisocial elements found throughout the ancient Near East), and the large-scale migrations of the Sea Peoples into "a coherent story that is fictional as to its composition but historical as to some of its components."

:marseynoooticer: Hmm, very interesting. So just in these few lines we have: the Jews were kicked out (chuds is this country 1/109?) and the Hebrews were originally insular, antisocial, and criminal? :marseynooticeglow:

And all written by a guy named Assman :marseytwerking: :!cocka:

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BWC 6d ago #6735845

!Christians I found the Trent Horn vid, dunno if you care. I think he includes the SSPX clip in there, too. !Catholics YEC are less wacky fun like Ken Ham and more just kinda pathetic grifters. I was ashamed to learn one of the parishes in my city back home hosted them, turned me off from joining the coop when we have kids. I'm gonna get longpostbot pinged but here's the St. Augustine quote showing that YEC is by no means a longstanding tradition, from The Literal Meaning of Genesis:

"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion."

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GeneralHurricane her/time Hillary 2024! This is our year :!marseyhillary:

Corinthian 6d ago #6735914

I get the impression that late 19th century atheists were like "hey let's apply rational literalism to the Bible to deboonk it" and Cathchads and Mainline Protestants were like "what? We've never had a tradition of literalism" but then a few smaller denominations were like "hey those atheists sound smart we're going to double down on literalism to own them" and somehow the fundie movement just kept growing.

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GeneralHurricane 6d ago #6735960

It was definitely a low Church phenomenon yeah, though I guess you could argue Catholics/Lutherans/Anglicans have our own issues with some of the Saint hagiographies featuring lake monsters and dragons. That actually might be the justification RadTrads find for YEC(?) but I don't waste energy arguing with them on that specific topic.

:#marseyarchangelchop:

Dragons are real though 100% so I'll give them that one.

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C333 Dino/Dinos :marseycapydinosaur:

Corinthian 6d ago #6736183

There's an orthodox :marseybegoneprot: I like called Johnathan Pageau who has videos talking about symbology in scripture/iconography/art in general. Personally I think :marseychildclutch: he goes way overboard/over my head many times but some of it is a really :marseythinkorino2: interesting :marseylaying: way to look at things.

C333 6d ago #6737041

He was the Orthobro I mentioned but couldn't recall the name of last week when someone brought up Jung yeah. I don't put a lot of weight in it, kinda feels pseudointellectual :marseymid: to me and ignores the far more interesting mystery about dragons which is how they came to exist in the mythos of multiple cultures prior to their having contact. One popular theory used to be dinosaurs like the RadTrads were promoting but the only one paleontologists would now say that's probable for is China because they do have fossils visible from the surface.

Jung folks also are kinda infamous for bad and purposefully selective readings of mythology, in China they're(dragons) seen as benevolent and bringers of good fortune. Similarly, some Greek traditions held snakes to be healers (hence the Staff of Asklepios) but that obviously contradicts our natural aversion/fear of them.

Corinthian 6d ago #6737329

I don't put a lot of weight in it, kinda feels pseudointellectual

I agree :marseythumbsup: sometimes but others look like legit symbology to take into account with ancient :marseytheorist: artwork. I take it on a case by case basis. Bought on of his iconography carving :marseypumpkin2: classes and that was pretty :marseyroan: legit.

more interesting mystery about dragons which is how they came to exist in the mythos of multiple cultures prior to their having contact.

I agree :marseythumbsup6: but I think :marseymindblown: understanding what they represent to each culture and knowing where :marseydrama: they differed and were similar is part of understanding that.

some Greek traditions held snakes to be healers (hence the Staff of Asklepios) but that obviously contradicts our natural aversion/fear of them.

You could also say the same about the bronze serpent :marseysnek: in numbers.

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