Again, i recommend you look into the archaelogical study Bible

I'm not doing this petty stuff with you here.  I've allowed this conversation to continue because you've for the most part stuck with the idea of history, archaeology and how that ties into the Bible.  

If you're going to start insinuating, I think we're done here.  anyone who's been following this thread from the beginning will know how far off base you are here, especially seeing as we've already established the dating of the books that we've gotten to so far and none date earlier than I think it was 3rd century B.C. by content.  

Maybe you should sit back for a bit and let PJTS and I continue... you might learn something

yes, I remember.  Good question.  

You are right, though it is the dispensationalists and religious sects that like to cloud things.  I love asking them questions.

In the real world it is a fast pace thinking game.  You need to ask the right questions and keep your focus no matter how effective they are at derailing, which is usually the imediate tactic when an answer can't be said strait out.  (in other words, you need to know the angles before getting into it)  Derailing is cleaver in the real world because they will begin with what sounds like an answer to the question and next thing you know, you're talking about something completely different.  In the real world, you can't forget the point of your question no matter how far it goes.  I also try to make sure they don't get more than 2 steps away from the point.  If they derail too far, I stop them in mid.... lecture... and bring them back to my point and repeat the question.  

The biggest thing in the real world is not what you ask, but how you ask it.  If you act like you're asking as a challenge, you're going to lose them who don't want to face the facts.  You always need to ask as if you really want to know their understanding or perspective.  Keep your attitude in check.  Then when their perspective comes out, bring up a contradiction in their understanding and see where it goes.  

Another big point is to admit when you don't have an answer.  If they gave you a response that literally caught you off guard, admit you need the time to look into it more and move on from there.  Invite a followup to address the issues you weren't ready for.  
 

In the real world, an honest discussion takes many many sessions, not just one sitting.  There's just too much information to cover in one sitting

Just because writing indicates in it that the name of a person wrote such and such or is written in the 1st person ascribing it to an individual does not make it so.

L Ron Hubbard's 10 book series Mission Earth was written as the confessions of Soltan Gris in the 1st person.

It is however Sci-Fi and not of reality.

All this actualy indicates is the writer who wrote these particular storytale sections was likely the same. It does not make him to be Moses who has no establishment as a basis in history as a point of reference.

Again, this is not proof it was not fiction. Joshua has no reference point in history either.

Or so one guesses. How do you know Ezra wrote personal memoirs. Is there a copy still around?

Psalms which we haven't covered also has stories in them based on Sumerian and Canaanite myths and perhaps Egyptian as well.

As Solomon has no hard fastened point in any history other than the OT stories this again is a guess.

Clearly the guy named Isaiah did not write all of the book, there are events in the 2nd part that happened long  after he was worm food.

Once again, there are no documents that establish he existed other than the OT.

Another book with the same style is Deuteronomy which Richard Elliot Friedman details as to why in his book 'Who wrote the Bible'.

This seems to fly in the face of Mosaic authorship. Thus the writer of Jeremiah and Deuteronomy was the same and it was this writer who created The Book of the Law.

So a priest or supposed prophet created it, pretty much eliminating it was handed out on etched tablets by the god.

As were they all pretty much.

The writer of Ezekiel has many issues with accuracy, we will eventually get to it.

I spent over a year and a half debating the Book of Daniel with Gramps. I consider it was a 2nd century BCE origin which I went into extreme detail in discussing, so no not written by Daniel.

See above, Did Soltan Gris really write a confession in Hubbard's books?

Probably with good reason, because of the problems found within. We'll also get to it someday.

Leaves a lot of room for guessing doesn't it?

This does not indicate it was so, only the writer said so.

In Bart Ehrman's book Forged, he details how writers used the name of a supposed well known person to give the writing legitimacy. Many NT books are in fact forgeries by writers using the names of the supposedly well known, as for example Ephesions, Colossians, 1 & 2 Tim, Titus, 2 Thessolonians which were not written by Paul.

The book of Enoch is an example as well, though not in most bibles, it is in the Ethiopian and was not written by Enoch right before the supposed flood.

I do doubt their research and have mentioned it in regard to the books we have analyzed and specifically in extreme detail for the Book of Daniel to Gramps.

We can go into this more as we go through these books.

The cities and culture of Mycanae are known from external evidence such as archaeology and history. Information from archaeology and history contradicts the existence of the culture, people and events described in the Septuagint.

I have established that parchment was in fact used to record fiction. There are many other examples. Therefore your argument from expense if false by inspection.

2 Kings 12

Verse 1 says all Israel went to Shechem to make Rehoboam king. Would that be the 1000 -5000 people?

Rehoboam starts off by consulting with the old wise men who advised him to reduce tribute or taxes. He also consults with his younger advisers who told him to increase the burdens and punishments.

So Rehoboam follows the ill advised younger generation and raises the burdens and punishments.

This was the cause of Israel to revolt against the house of David and form their own kingdom. Then all Israel heard Jeroboam was back from Egypt they made him king over all except Judah.

Rehoboam plans to go to war bringing 100,000 plus warriors against Israel. Though there weren't 100,000 people anywhere in Palestine at the time.

But the god intervenes and tells them not to fight their brethren.

So Jeroboam leads Israel into sin against the god.

He thought that if the people continued to worship and sacrifice in Jerusalem they would eventually go back to the house of David. So he had 2 calves of gold made placing one at Bethel and one in Dan. The people then worshiped in both places with priests that were drawn of the lowest of people and not of the tribe of Levi.

2 Chron 10 is similar but with the following additions:

Supposedly Rehoboam fortified the cities of Judah for defense including: Bethlehem, Etam, Tekoa, Beth-zur, Sho-co, Adul-lam, Gath, Mareshah, Ziph, Adoraim, Lachish, Azekah, Zorah, Aijalon, and Hebron. He put stores of food, wine and oil in each. He also put captains and weapons stores in each.

Inclusion of Gath is erroneous as it was a Philistine city at the time and was destroyed by King Hazel of Aram-Damascus circa 830 BCE.

The only city that possibly was actually fortified in this period would be Lachish which archeology indicates dates to probably the early 9th century BCE, though it also had a history as an Egyptian administration.

Supposedly the Levites left all the cities of Jeroboam's kingdom and went to Jerusalem as they were prevented from doing their jobs as priests by Jeroboam.

This story pretty much sounds like a justification of the establishment of the 2 city state kingdoms, that's the goal of the writer anyway.

However, it fails at go.

The unreasonable attitude of Rehoboam is plainly stupid. He's just become king, instead of just starting off where he was he somehow needs more cash and tells them he will be a complete tyrant providing severe punishment to all that opposed him.

Pretty stupid! Or a storytellers fictional enhancement to give basis for the split of the never existing United kingdom.

Pretty much this attitude might have resulted in a very short reign, like 5 minutes.

The 2 calves of gold are part of the myth creation by the writers to connect to the storytale of the golden calf in Exodus.

However, the symbol of El the Canaanite god was a bull. See the correlation here?

In the 2 Chron version Jeroboam kicks out or prevents the Levites from performing the tasks so they flee. Another stupid action to help put forth the storytale. As the Levites were supposedly the priests of all, their presence would have been more beneficial than detrimental. So this would mean that Jeroboam would have to create an entire new priest class and a religion all at once. This enables the storytale of the north falling into idol worship even though that's what was always the case in Palestine.

Not needed, as this area is well established as following the Canaanite gods in archeology so the institution of 2 golden calves and the associated storytales attached with it is a buildup for the north becoming evil and falling away from the god Yahweh. Not that anything suggests from archeology that the god Yahweh was ever as described in the OT or that the city states of Shechem-Samaria and the village of Jerusalem were ever a combined nation.

The Rehoboam-Jeroboam split is needed to build the fantasy story to show why evil Israel is eventually destroyed by Assyria and Judah is supported by the god, at least for a while. Eventually Judah must be destroyed as well to fit into current history as some people might have knowledge of the facts before Babylon came into the area in the 6th century BCE and forced obedience and tribute.

But more on this as we go along.

So these versions I see as more storytelling.

I didn't claim it was solely that that proved authorship did I...  It only affirmed it.  I'm also not aware of such creative works in history quite like your example where authorship is given to a fictional character, do you have some research on that?

remember my mentioning writing style, verbiage and terminology?  All have a part... these were not wild assumptions just because they couldn't put another name to the common writings.

Joshua is a difficult book to defend in history on either ground.  Again, not wild assumptions made by educated people here.

It's my understanding that scholars have little if any doubt they are directly written by Ezra.  there is evidence of an unknown compiler of the memoirs.  They would have been responsible for the final, cannonical form.   This would suggest to me we don't have the originals, but likely compiled copies.  It's important to note Ezra and Nehamia were 1 book until the middle ages.  They were later separated.  

A lot of influence from all 3 sources shows up throughout the OT

In all my research, one thing I know for sure is a Biblical scholar doesn't take a guess... if they really don't know, instead of guessing, they will say; "we don't know".  This has been consistent with literally everything I've looked into.  We can admit that there's no shame in not knowing something.  

authorship aside, how does that in any way suggest how any part of any book was originally written?

a year and a half debate!  Dude I hope you have some notes on that... i want!

naw, i was just getting lazy.  Took a lot of homework to go through the research on authorship for the whole OT.  

again, I have yet to see in history such evidence of writings claiming fictional characters as authors.  I'm pretty sure that's a more modern day thing.. (modern being the last 500 years or so)

Some of those you referenced were named after a location and/or people and not a specific well known name like you suggested.  NT books in a few cases were titled what they were because it was who they were written to or for, not by.

a fun read either way

can't wait to get to that book with you

Please give me a link to this contradictory evidence... I've been looking for it for years. 

Not much i can add to it at this point.  The timeline's still consistent.   The numbers exaggerated obviously.  Validity in history?  Hard to say either way when it stands by itself.  Referencing to the Bible as a whole, it's self supporting to be valid in history.  Unrelated authorship paints a pretty steady timeline through these harder to support stories.  That's hard to do if in fact false.

Calling believers scholars does not make them any more credible than any other believer. They start with unsubstantiated, unevidenced assumptions. In this case they assume there was a time in Babylon and that an Ezra existed even though it is only found in the Septuagint stories.

Archaeology only says that the Babylonians replaced one king with another. Nothing is said about taking people to Babylon. That is a myth believers love to confuse with the only real evidence.

Are you really saying you want links to the existence of Greek plays and fiction including Aesop's fables? If they exist they show fiction was preserved. QED

be it that you've been making such a claim and in future posts are basically refusing to look at a resource I suggested, I need to to cite your research so that I may respond to it properly.   You claim there is no evidence of a literate culture.  What is there evidence of then?  What of those literate monks that history accepts as the go to guys for translations... are they myth as well?

this it taking the perspective that each book is literally one literary piece from the author.. in many cases that's not true.  Basically compare any other piece of literature to it... they're taking their writing style...

What it comes down to is it is a particular person.  Maybe that person's name isn't really what they claim, regardless, it doesn't change who wrote it.  Ezra might really have been called Billybob and through the generations the name got lost... either way, that same person still wrote it and is still the same person that is understood to have written the book and is known to those who they were writing to or for.  It's the unique style and language of each piece that makes it clear of a specific author and character in history.  These people in most cases are talked about in other unrelated writings in the Bible.  

another mistake in perspective is to assume that all the books in teh Bible are there because they are "related"  they may be congruent with the timeline, but they were written over 100's of years by many different unrelated people.  Unless you're specifically looking for a piece of literature that woudl be "unrelated" by not talking about the subject of God, the literature is in the Bible.  It would be unrealistic to look for literature that focus on a different subject be it that most authors dont' write about many different topics.  

I gave you a source.  In my experience on this site of "telling people" what I know, the followup always is "show me the studies"... I like to skip the BS on this thread and go right to the studies.  I don't expect you to take my word on it and if you do, you're a fool... Look it up.  They didn't make a whole Bible based on archeology because they were trying to "blow smoke out their asses".  

Also, maybe you should look back in this thread.  I really don't like going in circles.  We've covered a bit already.  I've also got a science vs. religion thread, not as long, but that covers a geological and scientific angle to Bible miracles and God's work.  

I gave a rational case why we can't find clear evidence of the particular temple in question.  lack of evidence in this case only leads to assumption of the conclusion because of the refusal to allow archaeological digs in the area.  Evidence of the later temple is there and it's not completely out of the question that an earlier smaller temple was built on the very spot hundreds of years prior.  We can't dispute a conclusion based on that.  

If you're waiting for "physical evidence" of history this far back, maybe you should just follow this thread for a while longer until the opportunity comes up.  I can tell you don't have much experience in history and that's fine.  It's ignorant to base conclusions on nothing.  You're no better than any other dispensationalist believer out there that takes the word of the church with that perspective.  

What do monks have to do with bibleland?

The evidence which does exist is of an agrarian, pre-literate culture. All literate cultures have left copious written material to find.  The material has been sufficient to reconstruct their culture and history independent of any stories about them. Additionally the reconstruction has been able to correct false stories about them such as the nonsense about Egypt in Genesis and Exodus.

The majority of the written material found is government decrees and legal documents. The least material found is religious.

Contrast this with next to nothing at all found in bibleland keeping in mind that special pleadings for bibleland are not permitted. Further note what has been found is in early Phoenician script which is a known written language used in the region.

This is what literature leave to be found. These are not found in bibleland.

Therefore the invention of "fragments" is a fantasy without foundation in fact.

Style per se immaterial. DATING the style is the issue here.

Or a 2nd c. BC Greek educated person was the author. You say nothing that could lead to dating the material.

Again no evidence of when they were written. You repeat an unevidenced rationalization supposedly explaining differences  but which cause their own problems. As you insist upon Ezra and friends writing the material from prior to their time everything they wrote would be in the same style and consistent. Attempts to get around that merely add complexity when the simplest answer is a mess of stories from 2nd c. BC Egypt.

Against Apion was written by Flavius Josephus in the late 1st c. AD. It includes the prototype for outrageous claims of antisemitism by endorsing clear nonsense and declaring anyone who refuses to believe the nonsense refuses only because they hate (or envy) Judeans. (Which is a copyrighted methodology used by Jews still today.)

Citing Against Apion puts your claims in a very, very bad light for another reason. One of the things Josephus claims to be doing is refuting the ideas of Apion on the origin of the Judeans. That raises several problems. Why did not Apion know of Genesis and Exodus if they existed in his time? Even more interesting, if the Septuagint were considered a credible history of the origin of the Judeans, it is very difficult to explain why Josephus never mentions it when in fact it would be the trump card to the entire refutation.

Instead Josephus claims the Judeans were originally Hittites and ruled Egypt for a hundred years -- yes, he invented that nonsense. But what is interesting is he did not consider Exodus credible else he would know the "true" story. Maybe he did not know of it at all.

Odd that a priest of the Yahweh cult would demand people believe the Hittite story under penalty of being called an antisemite and also know nothing about Exodus.

That you do raise Against Apion is confirmation to me you believers know nothing about the subject but sling crap and claim the crap is proof positive.

And that is WHY I insist YOU present the physical evidence. The sources believers "recommend" never turn out to be what they claim and it turns out believers have never read what they recommend. You would never have mentioned Against Apion if you had both a) read it and b) were in your right mind.

This is very unclever save as it also scotches biblical Israel. That is not biblical Israel therefore there was no biblical Israel. Further the archaeology of the Jerusalem region supports Egyptian records, that it was one of their outposts. The pyramid and sphinx were common motifs in Jerusalem down to the 2nd c. AD before Harian rebuilt the city. Additionally there is no mention of any Solomon in any records of any contemporary kingdom while the contemporary kingdoms mention each other.

This is a very old gimmick too. The issue is a kingdom ruled by Solomon from the Nile to the Euphrates while believers try to limit it all to the one place they can't dig. The only archaeological evidence from the supposed "time" of Solomon is of a preliterate, agrarian culture. THEREFORE biblical Israel has already been discredited and there is no point in considering it further regardless of any magic temple.

Exaggeration is also a method used by Atlantis types to salvage their beliefs.

The real world does not work that way. Once something is shown to be nonsense it remains nonsense. Retreating from the original position is only an attempt to salvage the nonsense. Sort of like saying the Land of Oz is just a child's misunderstanding of St. Louis and trying to declare the Wizard was really the major.

What is gone is gone. Rationalization does not make it still a little bit real.

Have you been here?  They're the go to people for all texts to be transcribed and translated throughout history

see, that's great in all, but it sounds a lot like personal perspective and opinion.  Please give me links or citations to your research, specifically the links that might clarify where you got the information that the "fragments" are fantasy and that all literate cultures have left copious written material to find and how this does not tie in with the bible stories.

that's because we were talking about authorship, not dating.  Granted they go hand in hand, but the dating comes first, then the authorship question.  

Are we going into the dating?  We've covered that as well in this thread... might want to read back before continuing.  We will continue to cover that throughout the other books we cover..  one step at a time

He didn't know Genesis and Exodus for the same reason most "believers" today don't know the Apocrypha.  They were not compiled into a book or recognized as related writings.  They also were not accessible on the internet yet.   Understanding the many directions people could go in at the time, regardless of its credibility it may not have been recognized as such.  That's just taking a guess obviously, but there are many other reasons why it may not have been mentioned including the author may not have wanted to reference it due to personal belief.  

I'm not sure if we could empirically answer it, but either way, it does not seem so far to put the reference in that bad of light... regardless, there are 2 sources, one more credible than this that is also an outside source... the issue again was no source outside the Bible.  This refuted that claim regardless of credibility.  The credibility in question, does not refute the whole of all 3 sources.

I would agree... those stories did not spread as quickly as we might think they would.  Word of mouth was the way of passing stories through cultures and generations, not hard copies.  

Odd that high Jewish leaders would crucify the rescue of the humankind as prophesied in their writings as well... but it happened. (don't tangent on Jesus, just making a point that you made yourself.. just because you're called something doesn't mean you're credible.

It was one of 2 outside sources that were claimed to not have existed.  That was the point.  Regardless, I got that information from a credible source... wiki mentions it too if you look it up.

You're right, i hadn't read Against Apion.  Regardless, its credibility is not in question.  Even if it was a false story, the point was it mentioned Solomon, which means the story was at least known if not the person actually being real.  We've established that typically false stories have true aspects to them regardless of how fictional the story can be.  The level of truth that this particular source holds is not the source for which decides the fate of Solomon.  Be it that the court records agree with this book, i would lean toward the truth side of it... you're really stuck on this aren't you.

so you're saying every contemporary kingdom mentions every other kingdom in existence throughout time?

 the point still remains that through the gold perspective, it was possible and not out of the question.  It fits it in history.  

Dude, we're talking about a specific kingdom, of course we're talking about ONE PLACE right now.  

Instead of coming up with honest rational counters to what is being presented, you're reaching for any excuse you can find without looking at the bigger picture... this is typical of believers who are close minded and unwilling to consider any possibility that their understanding might be flawed.   These are your Jehovah's Witnesses and hardcore Catholics as well as Mormon and other sects of the like... you fall into that category.   

You again and again try to downplay anything I present and yet don't present anything that would further support your perspective.  You've also ignored many requests to further support your own perspective... I don't want you to explain it to me, I want to see the sources.  Thats' how I learn.  If your perspective holds water, I will see it through those links or books, whatever they may be.  

I think I need to remind you that this thread is a walkthrough of the Bible... step by step... when you came in, we were talking about Solomon, specifically a temple.. I have not moved on from that because this thread hasn't.  Then you come in with "believers try to limit it allt o the one place they can't dig".  In this light, it was a very ignorant statement.  believers also get stuck on the few things that might make the opposing side look less credible.  Is that how you want to go out? 

I want to move on with this thread.  stop coming up with excuses and do some actual research or just stop.  Also read back before you post.  We've covered many of the issues you bring up already.  If you want to have a circle battle, we can start another thread.  I'll play all the games you want there.