Human / Religious origins

[looking4one]

They can't even decide WHERE the garden of Eden is located.

Who is they?

Did you view the youtubes I posted above? There lies the answer you seek.

[OREZ]

^^So you don't know anything then?

OOOOh, lookit me. I watched You Choob videos and now I know everything.

Good Grief.

[Glacier]

Those Youtube videos are almost as informative as the ones averagejoe posts.

[cliffy1]

Jeffrey who?

So because someone says some *bleep* that sounds ridiculous and to which basically no one paid any attention your conclusion is that the Bible is a hoax.

Yeah, you're a real scholar.... ain't ya? hyuk hyuk You and Mary Jane, solving ancient mysteries like it were nuthin' hoooweeh.

Those are two separate statements. I made them because this discussion is getting more ridiculous with each new post. American Genesis is pseudoscience just like most of the pseudoscience being posted to justify the bible narrative. Neither have any validity. But don't let that stop you from believing the absurd.

[cliffy1]

The Problem of the Exodus Story and the First Great Revision of Judaism
about 1200 B.C.E.
The fact is that with all that is known of Egyptian history from this time (since scholars can now read the records the ancient Egyptians with the ease of a modern newspaper), and the fact that the history of Egypt in this period is well documented, there is no evidence from the records of Egypt itself that the events of Exodus ever occured, either archaeologically or documentarily in the manner in which the Bible describes the events. The reality is that if a series of plagues had been visited upon Egypt, thousands of slaves escaped in a mass runaway, and the army of the Pharaoh were swallowed up by the Red Sea, such events would doubtless have made it into the Egyptian documentary record. But the reality is that there isn't a single word describing any such events.

Instead, what we do have from Egyptian sources is a remarkably different story of the Exodus. From about the beginning of the second millenium B.C.E., through about 1200 B.C.E., Egypt ruled the region known today as Palestine. How do we know this? We know it not only from Egyptian records themselves, which talk about tribute taken from the various towns and cities in Canaan, but from archaeological evidence within the region itself, which shows a number of settlements which were clearly Egyptian military outposts.

During this time, the region which was to become the land of Israel, occupying the northern highlands between the coastal plain and the valley of the Jordan river, was sparsely populated and densly forested with stands of oak and terebinth trees. This land was populated by one of two groups (we're not sure which), either the Apiru or Shoshu peoples. The former were known to have originated as intinerant nomads, largely on the fringes of lowland society, who may have taken refuge in the highlands, or the Shosu, a more cohesive, well-defined group. The linguistic association of Apiru (sometimes Habiru) with the word, "Hebrew" had long, in the minds of scholars, been considered good evidence that this was the group that gave rise to the Hebrews, but we now know that the association wasn't quite that simple. The name may have been from that source, but the people probably weren't.

In any event, the highlands of northern Palestine which was home to the Kingdom of Israel has a highly variable climate. Agricultural productivity, and the ability of people to sustain trade with the lowlands, was subject to varying climatic conditions, meaning that famine was a frequent occurence. When crops failed and trade could not be sustained, it was not uncommon for people to flee the region and head for refuge where crops were dependable. The nearest such place was the Nile delta in Egypt.

So many of the "Hebrews" (culturally indistinct from the Canaanites at this time), who were citizens of Egypt, fled to the Nile delta. Time and again. Every time there was a famine in Judah, Israel or Canaan, refugees headed for Egypt. The event was so common, and the refugees so numerous, that they eventually became a substantial minority group, influential in Egypt, where they were known as the Hyksos, as is now very clear from the archaeological record.

The story of the expulsion of the Hyksos is easily the closest parallel we have from either the Egyptian record or the archaeological record to the story of the Exodus as recorded in the Bible. There are problems, though. Besides the Exodus story line, the biggest problem is the dates: the Bible places the Exodus at about 1200 B.C.E., yet the story of the Hyksos culminates in 1570 B.C.E. It is quite likely that the story of the Hyksos is the story that eventually, through generations of revisionistic retelling, became the myth of the Exodus -- another example of history being rewritten to flatter the storytellers rather than to record the unvarnished truth.

Anyway, the Hyksos grew in influence until they eventually took control of Egypt, which they ruled, with considerable cruelty and tyrrany during the Fifteenth Dynasty, beginning in 1670 B.C.E. The Egyptians had finally had enough, though, and rebelled against the rule of the Hyksos and drove them out a century later in 1570 B.C.E. They weren't just driven out, either; the Egyptians pushed them back into Canaan with considerable force, driving them all the way to the Syrian frontier, sacking and burning Canaanite cities along the way. Sometime later, the Hyksos capital in Egypt, Avaris, in the eastern Nile delta, was razed to the ground by the Pharoah Ahmose, who chased the last remnants of the Hyksos back into Canaan and even laid siege to Sharuhen, the main Canaanite citadel, destroying it and ending Canaanite influence there. At least one historian claims (a millenium after the fact) that the Hyksos refugees settled in Jerusalem and built a temple there, but the archaeological record does not support the claim of either a temple or large numbers of refugees in Jerusalem from this period.

http://www.bidstrup.com/bible.htm

[OREZ]

That was at least a pretty interesting read. A couple of things about that article:

Speaking of revisionism, the Egyptians were famous for it. Pharaohs boastfully and usually unrealistically painted themselves and their actions in the best possible light and went as far as attempting to obliterate previous pharaohs from records. All cultures seemed to do that so it's always important to try and read all sources in that context. The thing which strikes me about the Bible is how much of it covers the great and often embarrassing failures and general bad behaviour of the nation of Israel. Things do not always seem as glossed over as in the ancient history of other cultures.

So many of the "Hebrews" (culturally indistinct from the Canaanites at this time), who were citizens of Egypt, fled to the Nile delta. Time and again. Every time there was a famine in Judah, Israel or Canaan, refugees headed for Egypt.

The thing is, Israel and Judah weren't homelands from which people would flee during the time period of the famine which the Bible says drove Jacob and his family to enter Egypt because they would not yet exist for generations.

[averagejoe]

Those Youtube videos are almost as informative as the ones averagejoe posts.

Geeesh Glace, you saying my videos are a tad better?

Thanks!

[maryjane48]

so tell us how tools and stone objects dated over 10 thousand years were made by humans only 5000 years old ?

[maryjane48]

The oldest handmade stone tools discovered yet predate any known humans and may have been wielded by an as-yet-unknown species, researchers say.

http://www.livescience.com/50908-oldest ... umans.html

[cliffy1]

Oh No!

First Love Child of Human, Neanderthal Found

modern-human-neanderthal.jpg

The skeletal remains of an individual living in northern Italy 40,000-30,000 years ago are believed to be that of a human/Neanderthal hybrid, according to a paper in PLoS ONE.
- See more at: http://www.livescience.com/28270-neande ... ith-humans.

[maryjane48]

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/09/asia/indo ... d=25364657

[Superst*r]

One can believe we came from monkeys or from God Almighty....

why can't it be both. what if god created primates and they evolved into humans. what if adam and eve were neanderthals