BBS Jerusalem
Introduction
BBS has plunged ahead on the basis
of older, disproved concepts of the history and science of writing. One error leads to another until a worn-out
false conclusion is presented. Not only
that, but we do not even know if Moses wrote in Cuneiform, Hieroglyphic, or paleo-Hebrew: so it is futile to insist on
original dates as late as 950, when writing technology was already well developed
by the eighteenth, thirtieth, or even fortieth century. There is no technical reason why the entire
book of Genesis could not have been recorded as a log from 4000 onward in
Hieroglyphic: in which case Moses could not possibly be its author. The neutral point of view must leave the door
open for all possibilities for which there is credible evidence. The Bible is every bit as much an
archaeological artifact as any other find.
Moreover, each of us has the tendency to read into the Bible,
that which it does not actually say: so we jump to false conclusions. Tradition is important, but its weight is
easily abused. Music and poetry are not
inherently traditional in nature. We
cannot rewrite Genesis or Exodus from Psalms.
The idea that E originates from a Canaanite rebellion, while J is
founded in a Canaanite excursion leads to internal contradictions: namely, that
neither J nor E can possibly find a backdrop in Jerusalem. Jerusalem herself has tended to be more of a
backdrop for religious strife than for religious peace. Radiocarbon dating establishes a probability
that the City of David dates long before David, not after him. That the City of David is actually an older
Jebusite castle or fortress is in exact keeping with the Scripture in 2 Samuel
5. Too many archaeologists look to 14C
as the magic bullet that resolves all dating problems; frequently the
scientific and statistical implications of 14C are not understood at
all.
Script[1]
Jerusalem
(time 57:20)
McCarter: Surely, if there was a scribe that could write this
alphabet that far away, way out in the boondocks at the extreme western [northern]
boundary of the kingdom, surely if there was a scribe who could do that out
there, there were scribes, much more sophisticated scribes back in the capital.
N: Could these scribes have been in the court of King David
and his son Solomon? Could they have
been the earliest biblical writers?[2] In the eighteenth century, German scholars
uncovered a clue to who wrote the Bible hidden in two different names for God.[3]
Coogan: According to one account Abraham knew God by His
intimate personal name, conventionally pronounced, Yahweh.
N: Passages with the name Yahweh, which in German is spelled
with a J, scholars refer to as J [950].
Coogan: But according to other accounts Abraham knew God
simply by the most common Hebrew word for God, which is Elohim.[4]
N: So the two different writers became known as E [850] for
Elohim and J for Yahweh. Most likely
based on poetry and songs passed down for generations. They both provide a version of Israel’s distant
past. The stories of Abraham and the
Promised Land, Moses and the Exodus.
Coogan: The earliest of these sources is the one that is known
as J, which many scholars dated to the tenth century BC, the time of David and
Solomon.[5]
N: And because the backdrop for J’s version of events is the
area around Jerusalem, it’s likely he lived there, perhaps in the royal courts
of David and Solomon. For over a hundred
years archaeologists have searched Jerusalem for evidence of the kingdom of
David. But excavating here is
contentious, because Jerusalem is sacred to today’s three monotheistic
religions.
Joan R. Branham:[6] For Christians, Jesus comes
in His final week to worship at the Jerusalem temple. He’s crucified. He’s buried. He’s resurrected in the city of
Jerusalem. For Islam, it is the site
where Mohammed comes in a sacred night journey.
And today the Dome of the Rock marks that spot. In Judaism, the stories of the Hebrew Bible:
of Solomon, of David, of the temples of Jerusalem; all of these took place of
course in Jerusalem. So Jerusalem is a
symbol of sacred space today, important for all three traditions.
N: Despite the difficulties, Israeli
archaeologist Eilat Mazar, when
digging in the most ancient part of Jerusalem, today called the City of David.
Mazar:
We started excavations here, because we wanted to check and to examine the
possibility that the remains of King David’s palace are here.
N:
But because this area has been fought over, destroyed, and rebuilt over
thousands of years it was a long shot that any biblical remains would
survive. But then….
Mazar:
Large walls started to appear: three meter wide, five meter wide. And then we started to go all
directions. It goes from east, thirty
meters to the west and you don’t see the end of it yet.
N:
Such huge walls can only be part of a massive building. And Mazar believes her excavations to date,
represent only twenty percent of its total size.
Mazar:
Such a huge structure shows civilization and the capability of
construction. It can be only one
structure.
N:
This huge complex may be evidence of a kingdom, but is it David’s kingdom? For these walls to be David’s palace, they
would have to date to his lifetime around 1000 BC.[7] The problem is, stone walls can never be
dated on their own. Biblical archaeologists
date ruins based on the pottery they find associated with those ruins. Pottery dating is based on two ideas: pottery
styles evolve uniformly over time,[8] and the further down you
dig the further back in time you go.[9] If pottery style A comes from the lowest
stratum; then it is earlier than pottery style B that comes from the stratum
above it. By analyzing pottery from well
stratified sites, excavators are able to create what they call a relative
chronology.[10] But this chronology is floating in time
without any fixed dates. To anchor this
chronology William Foxwell Albright,[11] considered the father of
biblical archaeology, used events mentioned in both the Bible and Egyptian and
Mesopotamian texts to assign dates to pottery styles. Albright’s chronology, slightly modified, is
what Mazar uses to date her massive buildings, and what most archaeologists use
today.
Mazar: What we found is a typical tenth
century pottery … with burnished … you can see from inside. Together with an import, a beautiful black and
red juglet. What is so important, is
that this is a tenth century typical juglet.
N: So has Mazar discovered the palace of
David? She adds up the evidence. The building is huge. It is located in a prominent place in the
oldest part of Jerusalem. And the
pottery, according to Albright’s Chronology, dates to the tenth century BC, the
time of David. Mazar believes she has
indeed found the palace of David. But
that evidence, and indeed the kingdom itself, rests on the dates associated
with fragments of pottery. And some
critics argue the system for dating that pottery relies too heavily on the
Bible.
Finkelstein: Archaeologists in the past did
not rely too heavily on the Bible, they relied only on the Bible. We have a problem in dating, how do we date
in archaeology? We need an anchor from
outside.[12]
N: Today, there is a more scientific method[13] to anchor pottery to firm
dates, radiocarbon dating. It is a
specialty of Elisabetta Boaretto[14] of the Wiseman Institute.
Boaretto: the first step, is of course, investigating
collecting … sticks, or seeds, or charcoal to the archaeological context.
N: If an olive seed is found at the same
layer as a piece of pottery, the carbon in the seed can be used to date the
pottery. When the seed dies its
radioactive carbon 14 decays into stable carbon 12 at a consistent rate over
time. By measuring the ratio of carbon
14 to carbon 12, Boaretto can determine the age of the olive seed, which in
turn can be used to date the pottery.
Boaretto has meticulously collected and analyzed hundreds of samples[15] from over 20 sites
throughout Israel.[16] Her carbon samples date the pottery that
Albright and most archaeologists associate with the time of David and Solomon to
around 75 [925] years later. For events
so long ago, this may seem like a trivial difference. But if Boaretto is right, Mazar’s palace of
David, and Tappy’s ancient Hebrew alphabet have to be re-dated. This places them in the time of the lesser
known kings, Omri, Ahab, and his despised wife, Jezebel, all worshipers of the
Canaanite god, Ba’al. With no writing or
monumental building, suddenly the kingdom of David and Solomon is far less
glorious than the Bible describes.
Finkelstein: So David and Solomon did not
rule over a big territory. It was a
small chiefdom, if you wish, with just a few settlements, very poor, the
population was limited, there was no manpower for big conquests, and so on and
so forth.
N: This would make David a petty warlord, ruling
over a chiefdom, and his royal capital, Jerusalem, nothing more than a cow
town.
Finkelstein: These are the results of the
radiocarbon dating. He or she who
decides to ignore these results, I treat them as if arguing that the world is
flat, that the earth is flat, and I cannot argue anymore.
N: But it’s not so simple. Other teams collected radiocarbon samples,
following the same meticulous methodology.
According to their results Mazar’s palace and Tappy’s alphabet can date
to the tenth century [1000-901], the time of David and Solomon. How can this discrepancy be explained? The problem is that these radiocarbon dates
have a margin of error of plus or minus 30 years, about the difference between
the two sides.[17] Pottery and radiocarbon dating alone cannot
determine if the kingdom of David and Solomon was as large and prosperous as
described in the Bible. Fortunately, the
Bible offers clues of other places to dig for evidence of this kingdom.[18]
Writers
“Could they have been the earliest
biblical writers?” No, absolutely
not! When Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918)[19] first penned the original
Documentary Hypothesis, this argument might have seemed to hold water. Subsequent discovery of evidence and
scholarship have proved it to be a sieve.
In 1918 it may have been true that evidence for writing, especially
alphabetic writing, was unknown prior to around 1000 BC. This, if it stands as the only evidence,
makes the Mosaic authorship of Torah absolutely impossible. After all, if no one is writing, then Moses cannot
be writing.
This idea fails for two very simple archaeological
reasons. 1. Subsequent discoveries have
pushed the origin of alphabetic writing well back into the eighteenth century,
hundreds of years before Moses was born.[20] Cuneiform
predates even that by millennia.[21] Hieroglyphic is older still.[22] The BBS insistence on Tel Zayit evidence, if
believed, sets the scholarly study of writing back by a century or more. 2. There is no evidence disproving that Moses
wrote in Cuneiform, Hieroglyphic, or some form of paleo-Hebrew. Lacking these two pillars, no reason remains
to believe that “the earliest biblical writers” suddenly appeared in 950
with a J writer.
The continual reassertion of such
long disproved notions about the history and science of writing is not a
neutral point of view. The reader can
easily verify all these facts with an online computer search for any of the key
words used in this section on “Writers”.
Numerous scholarly articles are easily found. What “German scholars uncovered [in the eighteenth
century]” or think they may have uncovered is not necessarily relevant today:
especially, when subsequent research has repeatedly disproved their hypotheses.
If writing is well established hundreds
of years before the fourteenth century, before the date of the Exodus, then
scholarly necessity for alternative solutions no longer exists.
Names
The supposition that “Abraham knew
God simply by the most common Hebrew word for God, which is Elohim” is exactly
that, speculative supposition. We simply
do not know what Abraham did or did not know about the name of God. We only know what is written in Genesis. Abraham may very well have known El, or
Elohim by his name Yahweh. Adam, Noah,
and Jacob may have had the same knowledge.
Alternately, Abraham, et alia may not have known the name Yahweh, or
even El, or Elohim for that matter.
Yahweh could be an editorial note: we do not know the grammatical rules
for end-noting, foot-noting, or parenthetical expression prior to the
fourteenth century.
Most of what we do know about
Abraham is written in Genesis. What we
do know is that Abraham is a monotheist, who knew and spoke with God on a
personal basis. We also know that
Abraham is a key person in a long genealogy of others who also responded to a
personal speaking relationship with God, by whatever name(s) He disclosed to
them. There is every reason to believe
that this line of matriarchs and patriarchs did their utmost best to see that
such monotheism was maintained in the family.
The tragedy of family life is that children walk away from family values
on a fairly regular basis.
Similarly, the supposition that
Moses is the first man to know the name Yahweh is equally unfounded, as are other
claims for the name’s origin, through disclosure to Jethro, Midianites,
Edomites, Shasu, or any other. What we
do know is written in Exodus. We are not
told, and do not know, why Moses received the name Yahweh. He could have been brainwashed by the
incessant barrage of Egyptian idolatry; he could have failed to understand the
context, and needed reassurance that he was talking to God, and not some demon;
he could even be the first person to receive the name, Yahweh: yet, all of
these are conjectures: for Exodus does not stipulate any of these conditions,
or their reasons. We only know that
Moses asked for the name and received it.
Tradition
We have already showed that there is
no reason for Exodus to have been “based on poetry and songs passed down for
generations.” Everything about the
Exodus account marks it as a sort of daily log or diary, kept up to date on a
regular basis. There is neither evidence
nor need for it to be composed from other documents, and certainly not as late
as 950 (J) or 850 (E). Nor is there any
real explanation for why J supposedly precedes E at all, let alone by a whole
century.
We have conceded the point that there
is no evidence to show that Genesis as a whole is anything other than oral
tradition, yet Genesis is not made up exclusively of “poetry and songs”: we
have excellent examples of what “poetry and songs” look like in Israelite
culture; the genre of Israelite “poetry and songs” is quite distinct from the
genre of Genesis.[23]
Nor is there any subject matter in
surviving Israelite “poetry and songs” from which anyone might fabricate a J or
an E, or a Genesis or an Exodus: the evidence seems to indicate that the
“poetry and songs” derived from historical accounts and not the other way
around.
Nor do J and E really “provide a
version of Israel’s distant past.”
Except for Genesis, the bulk of Torah refers to events that occur
between 1406 and 1364: hardly distant past in relationship to a pseudo-date
like 950. A span of four centuries is
barely the scope of modern history to us, so that in 2015 AD the “distant past”
might refer to a discussion of the Bronze Age or of Neanderthalensis. In 1010 the Bronze Age is current events or
recent news, not the “distant past”. The
idea that there are two versions before us, is an invention for which the
evidence is minimal.
How is it that “the backdrop for J’s
version of events is [supposed to be] the area around Jerusalem,” when its
contents refer to Creation and Adam, Noah and the Flood, the early development
of Sumerian civilization, the dispersion of peoples throughout the ancient
world, and the rise and fall of Egypt, the world’s first true empire. Nothing about J pivots on Jerusalem:
Jerusalem is a nonentity, just one of many other city-states until 1010. Hazor is the premier city-state of the era.
How or why is it that the backdrop
for J is not the Shasu of Yhw, or Midian, or Edom, or the central Canaanite
highlands to the north? According to the
BBS original assumptions the backdrop for E is disgruntled Canaanites from
Hazor, who are only joined by migrant Canaanites, bearing J with them, at a
later date. The claim of a Jerusalem
backdrop fails because of numerous internal contradictions. Jerusalem and J have nothing in common.
Tradition is very important to most peoples. Here is the fascinating record of a family
tradition. The incident begins with
Jeremiah tempting the Rechabites who
traditionally refused to live in houses or drink wine, just because their
father said so. This is the stuff of
which tradition is made.
Then the word of the Lord
came to Jeremiah, saying, Thus says the Lord
of hosts, the God of Israel; Go and tell the men of Judah and the inhabitants
of Jerusalem, Will you refuse instruction or refuse to listen to My words? says
the Lord.
The words of Jonadab the son of Rechab, that he commanded his sons not to
drink wine, are obeyed: for to this day they drink no wine, but obey their
father’s commandment. Nevertheless, I
have spoken to you, rising early to speak; but you did not listen to Me.
I have also sent all My servants the prophets to you, rising early to
send them, saying, Return now, every man from his evil way, and change your behavior,
and stop going after other gods to serve them, and you shall live in the land
which I have given you, and your fathers: but you have not turned your ear, or listened
to Me.
Because the sons of Jonadab the son of Rechab have obeyed the commandment
of their father, which he commanded them: but this people have not listened to Me…. Therefore, thus says the Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel,
Behold, I will bring on Judah and on all the inhabitants of Jerusalem all the
evil that I have pronounced against them: because I have spoken to them, but
they have not listened; and I have called to them, but they have not replied.
Jeremiah said to the house of the Rechabites, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Because
you have obeyed the commandment of Jonadab your father, and kept all his
precepts, and done according to all that he has commanded you: therefore thus
says the Lord of hosts, the God of
Israel; Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not lack a man to stand before Me forever.[24]
The Scripture specifies which Levites will carry the
Tabernacle parts, and how they fit together.
But the methods of carrying and assembly, these were traditional skills
passed down within the family. Yahweh
merely asked that a thing be done; how the Israelites went about doing it was
left to them and their tradition. J and
E are not like that at all; J and E are not traditions passed down, but
inventions of the human mind.
Unanimity
The leap to Jesus and Jerusalem is irrelevant to the point
at hand. The introduction of “sacred
space” in Jerusalem is supposed to provide some sort of unanimity among all
peoples, and peace in the world. This is
a sentiment devoid of fact. Few Christians,
Islamists, or Jews are apt to find a comfortable place of cooperative
relationship here. If peace were really
that simple, strife in the Promised Land would have ended long ago. The ongoing strife in the Promised Land is
sufficient testimony that these three religions have no common ground and no
common “sacred space”. If anything, it
is the “sacred space” over which they continue to fight so viciously. “Sacred space” is simply not germane to the
origins of monotheism and Scripture.
City
of David
What a delight after all this obfuscation to meet Eilat Mazar.
What a breath of fresh air she is.
The sheer mass of what Mazar has uncovered speaks to a highly developed
and well established society. Part of
the problem is that walls easily last for centuries. Is this the personal residence of Israel’s
second king? There is an excellent
chance of that, just as there is an equal chance that it is also the personal
residence of Israel’s last king, and every king in between; handed down through
the generations; remodeled, repaired, and enlarged dozens of times. It very likely is the house and city of
David, par excellence. There is nothing
fundamentally wrong with Mazar’s reasoning.
On the other
hand, exactly what was dated?
Specifically two items: a potsherd and a juglet. The wall was not dated. Inherent to all construction methods and habitation
sequences is the idea that the building is erected first, then people move
in. Granted, the potsherd could be a
piece of workman’s debris left behind from construction. The precious juglet most likely came in with
a lady of the house. Usually, buildings
are older than their contents; yet not always.
The very old Merneptah Stele is housed in a modern museum. The point is that the chronological
relationship between the juglet and the wall is tenuous. When a lurking olive seed is added to the existing
relationship, the problem becomes more uncertain. Each interface between objects introduces new
sources of error. The assumption that
the seed dates the juglet, which dates the wall is the only relationship we
have: yet it is a very dangerous one.
In 14C
we will build on the assumption that tree rings, calibrate the 14C
reading, while a standard gas calibrates the instruments, which measure an
organic object, which may or may not have a chain of custody, which is measured
an unreported number of times, which is given a date, which may or may not be
related to the law of large numbers, or the central limit theorem, which is
reported as fact without reporting any of the statistical controls or errors,
which is used to date a piece of pottery, which may be from a site many miles
away, while the relationship between the organic object and the pottery is
never explained, etc….
Moreover, the BBS
description of how pottery dating works is absurd.
However, there is
something fundamentally wrong with the reasoning of others as well. The hoped for objective chronology from 14C
dating is unfounded.
Let’s begin with
the statistical idea of half-life. It is
commonly supposed that half-life is some sort of uniformitarian behavior, which
provides invariably consistent results.
We invite you on a road-trip.
The simulation on the right of the page, which is a more
complicated visual of a random walk, makes the point very clearly. At the statistical half-life, the number of
dots in every block are not all reduced by exactly half. In fact, the block left with two dots may
remain in that state for an indefinite length of time. We cannot predict statistically how
individuals will ever behave. We can
only predict how large numbers behave on average.
Let’s take another example.
Let’s take a large sample, nearly 4 million of the world’s population
ranked and graphed by age. Infant
mortality is a problem: we have 100,000 births, 90,000 ones, 80,000 twos, 70,000
threes, and 60,000 fours. From age five
to seventy-five the distribution is relatively stable at 50,000, with only ten
mortalities a year. At age seventy-five
the mortality rate increases rapidly, until most of the population is gone by
age 85. Still we have two 86 year-olds
hanging on, and one each at 87, 99, 103, 107, 114, 121, 128, and 135. To the statistician this is a crude
representation of a “bathtub curve”. In
our graph it looks like anything but a bathtub.[25]
We regret that our Excel graph did not link. Sorry.
Now we calculate and graph the average age, which turns out to
be around 34.7 (the tall line in the middle).
Then we calculate and graph the standard deviation of all the ages and
we get the broad green bell curve, which we chopped off on the left because the
next calculation goes negative which is impossible.
The first thing that raises our suspicions is that the nice
bell curve does not look anything like real life. It could, but it doesn’t. There are graphs of real life statistics that
do look like bell curves, but this is not one of them. No matter, that’s not the main point. In this instance, the standard deviation
tells us nothing about what the population is doing, and the average or mean
age is not very helpful either.
Now we will calculate and graph the standard error of the
mean by dividing the standard error of the population by the square root of the
population, which turns out to be a little less than 2,000. The result of this is the skinny bell curve
in the middle. This curve is so skinny
that we had to magnify it just to see it: it is magnified 100 times. What this standard error of the mean tells us
is how much we can expect this mean to drift year after year, or if we wish to
estimate the average age of the entire world population; and the answer is, at
a 95% confidence, a little more than ±
1 week, or ± 8.185 days. What does this
say about our 135 year old? Absolutely nothing. What does this say about anyone of our
100,000 newborns? Absolutely nothing.
That half-life curve on which so many wish to pin their
hopes begins with a standard error of the mean which is probably closer to 20
years: this turns out to be a difficult statistic to locate. So the 95% confidence interval is probably
more like ± 40 than ± 30,
but we’ll give BBS the benefit of the doubt about this. So we begin with Elisabetta Boaretto’s
measurement(s) which are no doubt, state-of-the-art and meticulous. But note that nobody says exactly how many
samples Boaretto was allowed to take.
The generic “Boaretto has meticulously collected and analyzed hundreds
of samples from over 20 sites throughout Israel.” Is not very reassuring: it
tells us nothing. It’s just not enough
data. We would like to see 100 samples
from 20 locations and at every clearly defined stratum in the City of David
itself.[26] Then with fear and trembling we would begin
to propose a chronological map.
This is not what took place.
We are not quite sure what took place.
It appears that Boaretto was required to map a relationship between
pottery samples and 14C measurements taken from closely associated organic
materials.
Now if a sealed jar of wheat is found in a particular strata
this works pretty well. Hundreds of
samples can be taken from the single jar, and that standard error of the mean
is getting very tight. We may be able to
estimate without adding hardly any experimental error to our original
confidence interval. There are other
sources of error too, but you’re beginning to get the picture. We also know what the jar looks like and if
it happens to be a piece of distinctive, identifiable pottery, we have made
considerable progress.
On the other hand, if an old olive pit is found lying in the
dirt three feet away from a very mundane pot, we may learn nothing of
substance. Either the seed or the pot
could have been displaced from different strata, and there is no necessary
association between them. If only one or
two readings are possible from the seed, the standard error of the mean is not
helping us and the error can be quite large.
That measurement and its error must also be related to the pot which has
its own associated dating error: if mundane enough that error could amount to
hundreds of years. Mundane clay pots are
pretty much all the same: worthless for dating.
Now another association must be made with the archaeological artifact,
in this case a wall. Since the wall is
still standing, what are we really looking for?
We are looking for the date when it was first built.
Have no fear, we’re not done yet.[27] “[Boaretto’s] carbon samples date the pottery
that Albright and most archaeologists associate with the time of David and
Solomon to around 75 years later [than 1000].”
75 years later is 925 BC, is roughly 2875 BP. Applying the INTCAL13 calibration curve we arrive at results in the range of 3055 BP ±
12 years, or 1105. Since no error
figures or calibrations were reported for Boaretto’s average, we have to
proceed as if none were made. Hence,
there is no scientific or statistical reason to conclude that Mazar’s walls do not date from as early as 1105 ±
unknown. From another calibration curve
we got more conservative values of 3000 BP ± 30?, or 1050, which is still 10
years before David’s birth. A date of
1050 could indicate that at least some of Mazar’s walls are actually the remains of the
Jebusite fortress which David did not capture until 1003.[28] Once more, we caution that what has been
calculated is average behavior and not the specific behavior of a single sample
or other artifacts associated with it.
There is no good reason to believe that this is not a Jebusite wall,
which could easily be one hundred years old when David took the city.
Since we do not
know what organic materials were found in the close vicinity to the Tel Zayit
abjad tablet, we cannot speak to its dating.
Since the tablet was found in a wall, the foundation strata of that wall
must be exposed. Organic materials or
other time indicators must be found in the vicinity of the foundation. Once the foundation can be dated then we know
that the wall construction cannot be older than that, but it can be
younger. Dating information from the
City of David says absolutely nothing about a stone in a wall many miles
away. Other relationships must be
established, such as the identity of the quarry from which the stone was
taken. If both walls were built from the
same quarry stone, a date relationship could be found in that. There is no automatic dating relationship
developed from 14C.
The leap to the
conclusion “But if Boaretto is right, Mazar’s palace of David, and
Tappy’s ancient Hebrew alphabet have to be re-dated.” Is unfounded. Such a hasty generalization is the byproduct
of total ignorance of statistics and of the science of 14C. We should know better even before a second
study revises the false conclusion.
“These are
the results of the radiocarbon dating.
He or she who decides to” draw conclusions from them without
understanding any of the mathematics or science is arguing that the world is square,
and shouldn’t have begun an argument over matters of which they are
fundamentally ignorant.
“The problem is [not] that these radiocarbon
dates have a margin of error of plus or minus 30 years, about the difference
between the two sides.” The problem is
that radiocarbon dates must be subjected to corrective calibration, which is
still a relatively young idea. Also the
half-life used in dating is the older false half-life. Boaretto’s data cannot simply be contrasted
to the work of another lab. The data
need to be considered side by side, and if necessary recalibrated. This is a place for scientific experts to
provide vetting and peer review of every step of the entire process. Many of the conjectures and opinions voiced
here in BBS, are not those of qualified experts. They are the opinions of those who lack
understanding.
The formation of conclusions based on such flawed analysis
of evidence is equally ludicrous.
Assertions like:
“David and Solomon did not rule over a big territory. It was a small chiefdom, if you wish, with
just a few settlements, very poor, the population was limited, there was no
manpower for big conquests, and so on and so forth.”
or:
“This would
make David a petty warlord, ruling over a chiefdom, and his royal capital,
Jerusalem, nothing more than a cow town.”[29]
have no basis in evidence or science and are dreadfully
false. None of these conclusions
represents a neutral point of view.
Conclusion
BBS has plunged ahead on the basis
of older, disproved concepts of the history and science of writing. One error leads to another until a worn-out
false conclusion is presented. Not only
that, but we do not even know if Moses wrote in Cuneiform, Hieroglyphic, or paleo-Hebrew: so it is futile to insist on
original dates as late as 950, when writing technology was already well developed
by the eighteenth, thirtieth, or even fortieth century. There is no technical reason why the entire
book of Genesis could not have been recorded as a log from 4000 onward in
Hieroglyphic: in which case Moses could not possibly be its author. The neutral point of view must leave the door
open for all possibilities for which there is credible evidence. The Bible is every bit as much an
archaeological artifact as any other find.
Moreover, each of us has the tendency to read into the Bible,
that which it does not actually say: so we jump to false conclusions. Tradition is important, but its weight is
easily abused. Music and poetry are not
inherently traditional in nature. We
cannot rewrite Genesis or Exodus from Psalms.[30] The idea that E originates from a Canaanite
rebellion, while J is founded in a Canaanite excursion leads to internal
contradictions: namely, that neither J nor E can possibly find a backdrop in
Jerusalem. Jerusalem herself has tended to
be more of a backdrop for religious strife than for religious peace. Radiocarbon dating establishes a probability
that the City of David dates long before David, not after him. That the City of David is actually an older
Jebusite castle or fortress is in exact keeping with the Scripture in 2 Samuel
5. Too many archaeologists look to 14C
as the magic bullet that resolves all dating problems; frequently the
scientific and statistical implications of 14C are not understood at
all.
[1]
What is for the most part an exact copy of the script follows. There are a few places where individual
speakers could neither be heard nor understood: for this we apologize. Every effort was made to be precise: there
were just spots that defeated us. Since
this is a quote in its entirety it seemed unnecessary to mark it with quotation
marks. The notation for each speaker is
tedious enough: Narrator, Reader, etc.
If you discover bothersome errors please reply to this Blog and point
them out. You may verify the script more
easily by starting to replay it where the “time” stamps indicate discussion
begins. The second of these links is
free from advertising and thus easier to use.
This blog is found at:
http://swantec-oti.blogspot.com/
[2] Absolutely
not! This is the whole point of the many
proofs we offered. The probabilities
involved in this question are so small as to be a practical zero. Can pigs fly?
Of course, it might be made possible: but it is not very likely.
[3] We
know far more today than German scholars knew in the eighteenth century.
[4] It
should be clear that Elohim is simply the plural form of El, which is the name
previously assigned to the principal Canaanite deity.
[5] It
is difficult to understand how J can possibly precede E; since E represents
Elohim; which, in turn is the plural of El; who is characterized as the
principal Canaanite deity. If the
Israelites are evolved Canaanites; and if J is a later insertion derived from
the Shasu: then it seems necessary that E precedes J by centuries, and that the
E text is the basic text into which J is written. Thus the first supposition of all Documentary
Hypotheses falls flat. The writing of J
into E is exactly what we would expect if Moses actually met with Yahweh at the
burning bush and made written records of their conversations.
[6]
Joan R. Branham, Professor of Art History at Providence College, no other
bibliography with no special qualifications in archaeology.
[7] Be
specific. 1000 is an absurdity. Soon we will deal with Shishak I and we will
know that Solomon is exactly 970-930, David is exactly 1010-970, and that David
captures Jerusalem in 1003. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenon_(film)
[8]
Yet we have already seen this notion contradicted: for the egalitarian
Israelite society is supposed to have used plain and simple, mundane pottery,
at a time after they had overwhelmed the Canaanite city-states, where more
artistic pottery was in common use. This
is the exact opposite of the pottery dating construct, which also flies in the
face of the fact that wealthy people can afford nice expensive things, while
the poor are always limited to the mundane.
[9]
This idea is also readily contradicted.
In sites, such as Tells where the site is abandoned and left undisturbed
for millennia, this could obviously be true: yet, if and only if, scavengers
had not ever picked over the site, removing important artifacts. In more important sites, where the land was
very valuable, where the site was not abandoned; yet, as soon as one culture
left (a sort of urban flight phenomenon), another took its place, so that the
transition was in fact seamless: any hope of a stratified chronology would be
lost due to the prevailing use. In such
important sites, stratification would not begin until the last inhabitants made
their final departure. A prominent city,
such as Hazor, might be, and probably was, continuously inhabited from before
1400 to 722 or 586 and beyond. In such a
case, chronological stratification would only take place where “slum”
neighborhoods were abandoned, or possibly used for waste disposal. Yet, even garbage dumps may be subjected to
the incessant activity of scavengers: both animal and human.
[10]
This whole presentation of pottery dating is so oversimplified as to be
nonsensical. This is not how pottery
dating works. For an accurate presentation
of how pottery or artifact dating works, it is hard to improve on the “Antiques
Roadshow” TV series. One only needs to
watch for a few hours to realize that provenance trumps everything else, and
important artifacts are dated from specific sophisticated aspects of art and
manufacture which may identify an object to the specific craftsman who made it
and the city where it was made. The art,
which decorates the pottery makes all the difference in the world for dating
purposes. Ordinary mundane pottery has
been made throughout history and is virtually worthless for dating
purposes. On the other hand, the find of
a piece of Mycenaean pottery may establish standardized dates throughout the
entire Mediterranean world. Scarabs and
cartouches are also useful for dating, especially if they are marked with a
particular pharaoh’s identity.
Just for fun,
[11]
William Foxwell (and Ruth) Albright
(1891-1971), American archaeologist, biblical scholar, philologist, and
ceramics expert with Johns Hopkins
University and American Schools of Oriental Research. Works: Tell el-Fûl (1922: Gibeah), Tell Beit Mirsim (1933–1936), theory of ceramic
pottery dating.
[12] To
date, 14C has failed to provide such a necessary anchor. 14C dating has subjectivity issues
all its own. Still, 14C dating
has increased our knowledge base, but it needs to be held in balance with other
knowledge.
Also the claim, “This dates that,” is dangerous. What we should have said is, “No evidence was
found that contradicts a 1003 date.” Or
we might have said, “The available 14C evidence is consistent with expectations
for objects from 1003.”
[13]
This method may be more scientific, but it is not necessarily more
accurate. 14C is not a magic
bullet. No dating method is superior to
provenance; and no analysis is superior to people who are willing to think.
[14] Elisabetta
Boaretto, 14C researcher with Weizmann Institute, no
other bibliography with no other special qualifications in archaeology.
[15] This
is far too small a sample set. That
being said, organic materials are not often found on archaeological sites,
because they have decayed to nothing long, long ago. Even when the conditions are ripe for the preservation
of organic objects, as soon as the site is disturbed the object crumbles to
dust before the archaeologist’s startled eyes.
Many artifacts of relatively recent discovery are already gone. Preservation of artifacts has its own
complicated and detailed technology. As
small as this sample set is, it may represent 100% of the organic objects
available at that time. 14C
methods cannot be applied where no organic materials exist.
[16]
This amounts to perhaps five or ten samples per site, in sites that likely have
more than one age strata and more than one period of development. To detect and evaluate a base we would like
to see as many as one hundred samples from each representative area. In a site with multiple strata and
developments we would like to see a thousand samples. In complicated and complex sites we would
like to see many more.
[17]
The profound problem, easily overlooked here, is not that Boaretto or her
successors did their work inadequately or poorly and thus arrived at different
results. The problem is the meagerness
of the sample size. In mapping an idea
where millions of samples would not be too many, only a few hundred were found
and tested. Not every site yields
organic remains that may be associated with distinct architectural features, so
the map is left with un-plotted holes in it.
A few hundred samples would only be sufficient for a single small
site. Moreover, buildings tend to remain
in use for decades, even centuries. The
palace of David, most likely provided the space for the additions and
remodeling of all his successors.
[18] How
ironic, since we have lost sight of the trail of evidence here at Jerusalem,
that we should have to return to the Bible to get our bearings again.
[23] This
is easily and simply tested by reading any English translation of Genesis and
Psalms, comparing them with each other.
[24]
Jeremiah 35:12-19
[25] The
technical difference is that we are graphing the number of lives. A bathtub curve graphs the mortalities: thus
it is high at both ends and low in the middle, forming a bathtub shape. Also a bathtub curve is graphed on ln paper,
to make the tub bottom look flat: the bottom of the tub is actually an
exponential curve. There are several
other differences with a bathtub curve that are not germane to the point at
hand, which is that neither the mean nor the standard error of the mean have
anything to say about the behavior of individuals.
[26] A
set of 100 samples, at 20 locations, with a minimum of 10 well-ordered strata,
amounts to a total set of 100 x 20 x 10, or 20,000 samples. What we have is one tiny olive seed. Figure.
[28] 2
Samuel 5:6-10
[29] The
reference to “cow town” is actually insulting.
[30] The
reader is invited to attempt this. First
read Exodus, Chapters 5-19, making sure that the material is well
understood. Now read Psalm 78:40-53. Now, with the Bible open to Psalm 78:40-53,
attempt to write an account of Exodus, Chapters 5-19. Finally, with the Bible open to Exodus, Chapters
5-19, try to write a Psalm like Psalm 78:40-53.
Which was easier to do? Which
makes more sense to do?
This process is like a flow process. Once we understand what is going on, most of the
logical relationships work equally well in either direction. It is still important to know which end of
the river is source, and which mouth.
Attempting to make Exodus, Chapters 5-19 into the mouth of the river
instead of its source, leads (for me) to absurd results. What is your conclusion? I think that BBS is living in d’Nile.
[31] If you have been blessed or helped by any of these meditations,
please repost, share, or use any of them as you wish. No rights are reserved. They are designed and intended for your free
participation. They were freely
received, and are freely given. No other
permission is required for their use.
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