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The Camel Who Wasn't
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Robert
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Feb 13, 2014 12:59PM
Very apropos illustration, Brent. Lee, there was a flood and it was worldwide in that it concerned the Eastern Mediterranean where civilization was centered. Noah lived near a thriving, cosmopolitan, advanced metropolis - it's where he got the supplies for his ark and where the sins of the day were practiced wholesale by all. It was called Atlantis and is near the modern town of Uskudar in Turkey where the Sea of Marmara meets the Bosporous. Of course, it was buried by the flood, but is ready to be unearthed. Because I know where it is, want to sponsor an expedition for me?
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I've never bought into the "local flood" theory, since it contradicts the point of the flood story. If the flood didn't destroy everything on the earth, there is no reason for all the animals.I'll refund your expedition after you find Atlantis, Robert.
Anyway, having upheld my point that apologetics should stay the heck away from anything that happened before roughly the time of King David, along with any claims about the bible (infallibility or inerrancy or inspiration) that requires the truth of those stories, I'll crawl back under my rock. You guys may now ignore those pesky camels.
(btw, they might not have been dromedaries in the bible, where it is translated into "camel," but rather any domesticated pack animal like a mule or donkey - so you have my permission to go back to thinking the bible is inerrant for now.)
It did destroy everything God wanted destoyed - all the people and animals (by virtue of close contact with Homo) to be killed were clustered in the Mediterranean/Euphrates region. I'm glad I have your permission to believe the Bible, Lee, I don't see how I could have possibly taken another breath without it. Critters had spanned the globe for billions of years before Noah, but they were unaffected by the flood because they weren't contaminated by humans. Thus, artist depictions of kangaroos and caribou boarding the ark are in error. Only those species indigenous to the Middle East were represented.
Greeting comrades,Is this not exactly what I was arguing? I am no archeologist, geologists, or paleontologists, but I am a historian and theologian, and my point was there was a serious bias here that was not reporting all sides of possible conjectures given the facts.
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/j...
There's been so much said here that I don't know what to say except that I am one who believes in the inerrancy of the Bible.I can not answer all the questions, questions even I have, but I take it by faith. I feel I am blessed to hold to the truths of the Bible.
I am on my 2nd time reading it from beginning to end and I learn more now than I did the first time. But still, as I said, there are thing God does not give us the answers to but by faith we believe and if He chooses, one day in Eternity He will explain it all.
Brent - even Lee realized there was more to this story. Because he is worthless at witnessing for Jesus, his only contribution to the board is "Bible-baiting."
Don't be alarmed at all the back and forth, Judy; it's mostly posturing, hot air, and maybe a little Biblical truth thrown in when we can think of nothing more self-serving to say.
I took a quick peek, Brent, thanks. I confess, I could give the report more credence if it were not from an obviously biased source. References to Egypt and Mesopotamia are irrelevant to the study, but the Ugarit reference is interesting. I wish they had said more about that. A "list of domesticated animals" does nothing to say they were used as such in Ugarit, or Israel.
Anyway, the counter-argument boils down to "other nearby civilizations domesticated camels, why would we think Israel didn't?" (The answer, of course, is that the evidence says they didn't.)
Let's look at a similar example. The evidence says pigs were eaten all around Israel, but we can't find evidence in Israeli households. Shouldn't we ignore the evidence and assume Israelis ate pigs, like all their neighbors did?
Oh, wait, this time the evidence SUPPORTS the Bible, so I guess it's ok. But you can't have it both ways.
Robert wrote: "Brent - even Lee realized there was more to this story. Because he is worthless at witnessing for Jesus, his only contribution to the board is "Bible-baiting.""What on earth do ancient camel bones have to do with witnessing for Jesus?
Judy, I echo Robert, don't be alarmed at all. My problem is not what you believe about the Bible, but with apologists who dishonestly try to push those beliefs on others, without acknowledging that the evidence is against them. As I said in another thread, there is no shame in believing against the evidence, only in pretending the evidence isn't there.
No one is being dishonest here, Lee. We're critically evaluating each other's beliefs and opinions.
Sorry if I overstepped. If an apologist is genuinely unaware of the evidence, there is no dishonesty. If an apologist merely refuses to acknowledge the evidence, I would consider that dishonest. An interesting situation arises with topics like evolution. Among all non-religious educated researchers, evolution is so strongly attested that it is considered a fact, like gravity. Yet there are many "scientists" who publish fringe research "proving" creation, that can sincerely confuse apologists. Evidence gets so buried in nonsense that it never meets the light. An honest apologist SHOULD be able to see beyond the bias of religious researchers to acknowledge the evidence, but sometimes cannot. This is a legitimate failing, not dishonesty.
Lee wrote: "http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/sci...This discovery isn't anything new; it just confirms what we thought we knew all along. That the camel wasn't domest..."
Lee, I looked up an article on camels by G. S. Cansdale in the ZONDERVAN PICTORIAL DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE, vol.1, page 695 (1975). Zueuner, as far back as 1963, disagreeing with Albright and Bodenheimer, argued for a late domestication of camels. Curiously enough, Zeuner in a footnote, cites a "limestone camel-shaped receptacle" -- with the camel bearing a load. This receptacle supports the view that the domestication of camels occurred by the about the fourth millennium B.C. (first dynasty). To me that's pretty strong corroboration of the Biblical record and of an of an early domestication date.
History is not science as Niall Ferguson has pointed out. However, this tendency, by Zeuner and others, of not even regarding the Biblical record as data, to me borders on the dishonest. Sure, Zeuner explained away the Genesis 24 record of camels as a later scribal addition, but on what basis? The Biblical record, as data, ought to stand beside whatever circumstantial evidence the debunkers such as Zeuner generate. That's simple intellectual honesty.
No, Peter, the Bible should not stand beside other evidence. It should for an historian, I agree, but it should not for an apologist, whose purpose is to prove the Bible true.
Great insight, Peter. Appreciate your presence.
Lee - the many "scientists" publishing fringe research "proving" creation is large and getting larger. Evolutionists are the ones who confused people with their bogus claims. The Biblical version of creation is correct, and evolutionary biology would be smart to start dialing back their bluster or they'll end up a non-science like alchemy.
Can you name one, Robert? A single non-religious scientist anywhere who argues against evolution?
Would you classify any theist as "religious" Lee? In that case you're begging the question! HahaThere are numerous physicists, cosmologists, and others that are well-grounded theists.
Lee - Sir Fred Hoyle, a prominent British jack-of-all trades scientist who was knighted for his accomplishments and is a noted atheist argues, as I do, that life could not have randomly arisen on earth because of the complexity of the molecules involved. He joins a whole chorus of other scientists who disbelieve evolution, but won't credit God so claim life arrived on earth by spaceship, comet, witchcraft, cosmic legerdemain, or because Obama wrote an executive order decreeing it so.
Lee - are you finally taking the final step and disavowing God created the heavens and the earth? Couldn't maintain agnosticism so had to become a full-fledged atheist, huh? Well, Guillermo will be happy, he finally has a comrade.
oops, we are not talking about the same thing. Evolution doesn't speak to the origin of life, only to what happened after that. If your discussion is about how life began, I need to step back and admit that that remains up in the air.I also have no problem with guided evolution ... the idea that God stepped in on occasion to make sure it went the direction he wanted it to. That does not contradict the evolutionary evidence.
Robert, I also argue through mathematics that a creator or creators is more likely than not. Unfortunately, my argument says nothing about the nature of our creator, so it does theists no good at all.
Brent, I think I recall being down this road with you before. Correct me if I'm wrong. While there are a number of religious scientists who believe evolution happened, there seem to be zero non-religious who believe it didn't. Extraterrestrial seeding, for example, is a reasonable explanation of how life began, but those who argue for this still accept evolution as a fact. My point is the only people who do NOT are those whose religion convinces them otherwise.
Right, Lee, lets not confuse theism with Darwinian evolution which presupposes intelligent life. We are both attacking straw men, let's get back on focus here.
In scholarly circles, there is a well-known argument that the camel was not used as a beast of burden prior to the close of the second millennium BCE,[32] i.e. not until long after the era of the Patriarchs. This argument, which was based at the time on the knowledge available in the 1960s, has not been mentioned for over thirty years! In his book, The Camel and the Wheel (published in 1975) Richard W. Bulliet refers to a fragment from a document from Alalakh in northern Syria (stratum VII, dated from the 17th century BCE)[33] in which mention is made of “one portion of food for the camel.”[34] We therefore know that by that time, the camel was domesticated, and it is possible that it began even earlier."Yitzhak Meitlis, PhD, received his doctorate in archaeology from Tel Aviv University. He also holds degrees from the Hebrew University and Bar Ilan University. He is a professor of biblical archaeology at Herzog College."
I guess the argument is revived, but it would seem to be specious.
That's cool, Ned. That's getting awful close to Israel. I'll see if I can find out more about this.
What I am finding is that Bulliet accepts that the lack of evidence, pictorial or otherwise, supports late domestication but that he thinks they were domesticated slowly over a long period of time. Others pick up on this and argue that a very few WERE domesticated in the second millennium BC, so few that they do not appear in archaeological record. Presumably, it was Abraham's crew that domesticated camels (maybe he picked up a few in Egypt?). It's argued that this is consistent with the Bible, which lists a few camels but not very many.
Certainly I would expect a domesticated camel to have been a luxury item available only to the wealthy, i.e. a status symbol. I think the biblical descriptions bear this out.
i guess it would be a luxury item in an area where extremely few are domesticated. ;)
