This offers an interesting twist: http://www.mondovista.com/abraham.html
Terry On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 5:00 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > MJ wrote: > >> However, if - as we believe - the mother tongue of Abraham and Lot >> was Sumerian, and the event was first recorded not in a Semitic >> language but in Sumerian, an entirely different and more plausible >> understanding .... > > OK, at this point the discussion has wandered into *interpretations* of > the events, and we are not assuming that all the words in the KJB are > for-sure true exactly as written because they were dictated by an angel. > Well and good; rationality has entered the discussion. > > However, as soon we we allow rational considerations to temper our > discussion of the events in the early Old Testament, we must also admit > that there was a interregnum or gap between the events and the moment > when the stories were first written down which appears to have lasted > some centuries. In other words, the stories were (very probably) just > an oral tradition for a few centuries before they were written. > > Now, again assuming there was no angel dictating the stories into the > ears of folks a couple centuries later in order to avoid the possibility > of errors in the oral recitations, once we've come this far, we must > consider the fact that oral histories are generally found to be > extremely ephemeral. Events which took place much more than a century > in the past tend to be almost entirely fictionalized, if not entirely > forgotten, if the only means of transmission is oral traditions, > unsubstantiated claims of fabulous memories among primitive peoples > notwithstanding. Such is the conclusion which comes from observing a > handful of cases in which a primitive society without writing had > sporadic contact with an external society which kept written notes > (sorry, don't have a citation handy). The society which depends on oral > tradition is found to forget or mis-remember the "contact" events rather > badly, in contrast to the society in which written records are kept. > > (For a bit of "internal evidence", compare the first, second, and third > books of Maccabees, which appear to differ primarily in how long after > the fact they were formally written down -- and, note well, Maccabees > dates from a period when written records were kept.) > > Given that, it would seem that we're forced to the conclusion that the > events in the early Old Testament are very probably sufficiently > inaccurately recorded that they could be reasonably described as "mostly > fictional", with an occasional grain of truth preserved in them. > > In other words, if you're going to consider possible *errors* in the > text, then you need to consider the global consequences of > "whisper-down-the-lane" effect and not just pick out one word which > might have been "adjusted" a little. > > And with that conclusion one must really wonder what the point is in > discussing the possible exact meaning of one particular word in one of > these stories ... and that, on a mailing list devoted (more or less) to > science. > > Like, who cares what Lot's wife is said to have turned into, since the > story bopped around in the oral tradition for so long before being > written down that it's quite probable that Lot wasn't named Lot, he may > or may not have had a wife, his wife (if he had one) probably wasn't > involved in the events to start with, and the whole thing is more likely > to have come from a border dispute or other mundane event than the > meltdown of an early (and secret) Iranian nuclear reactor (which seems > to be where the discussion is headed). > > Sorry, guys, if you're not going to stick with a literal interpretation > of the received text, then you're driving over a cliff in trying to > interpret the minute details of a known-inaccurate history book. It > just doesn't make sense to take it "sort-of literally" and draw > far-reaching conclusions from that sort-of interpretation... > >
