Posted on 04/23/2012 6:45:30 AM PDT by NYer
Can you read the Old Testament and come away thinking it was Israel “idealizing” their past? If so, they did a really bad job of sugarcoating things to make themselves look good. However, they were excellent at making predictions/prophecies.
Note: gratuitous use of straw man “some skeptical scholars”. In what, the 17th Century?
There has been almost continual archeological excavations going on in the Middle East since the 19th Century, probably a bit earlier, the vast majority of which was done by either religious scholars investigating religious archaeology, or secular scholars investigating secular archeology. While there was considerable overlap, there was very little interest in “debunking” as compared to confirming what had been written, which was not an easy task.
The French campaign in Egypt and Syria under Napoleon Bonaparte (1798–1801) caused an explosion in Egyptology (including the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, the first great breakthrough in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics), that was to a great extent driven by religious scholar archeologists looking for traces of the Hebrews in Egypt as well as creating a Pharaonic timetable in hopes they could have some idea of when this all took place.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a single scholar in archeology who for a moment thought that the Davidic and Solomonic kingdoms were mythical. While nothing remains of the 1st Temple (Solomon) but its dimensions, there seems to be few doubts that the 2nd Temple was accurate to the 1st, excepting the additional features added by Herod the Great.
Thanks for posting. BFLV
Just to tick them off, I refer to CE and BCE as “Christian Era” and “Before Christian Era.”
Good one. I'll have to remember that. (Though I will continue to use B.C. and A.D.)
Of the historians of the Enlightenment, the only ones who are reliable are Hume and Gibbons. Hume was a political conservative and Gibbons was a first rate scholar who grudgingly let the evidence speak for itself, which is why his tone is so ironical. The rest were like Voltaire, propogandists, and faux scholars. Voltaire, whose idol was Newton, had a high school student’s knowledge of physics. His historical technique was methodical doubt. So he begins by doubting the value of everything and then twisting the evidence to fit his conclusions. He despised everything medieval because of his hatred for the Church,and despite his love of England, refused to see that its institutions were all rooted in medieval practice. Burke rejected the French Revolution because took the historical picture and touched it up, adding warts to what it disliked and removing them from those things it did like.
Speaking of, the more we dig into Washington story, the more he seems alive and a truly heroic figure. They have made several movies about the winter campaign in New Jersey, and none of them capture the true story. If they showed what really happened the movie critics would pan it. At Princeton, for instance, he rallies the troops and gets them into line to receive the British attack. he sat there as unmoving as a statue and bullets came whizzing around. The troops took one look at him and forgot themselves and turned back British regulars.
Anyway, our world has little respect for the truth.
Good! Did you do the animation?
One of Washington’s great secrets was that his true forte was as a spymaster. He had an impressive network of spies, many of whom were women, and many whose identities are still unknown, either because that information is lost, or just as likely, because they were so connected to the crown that it would still be an embarrassment today.
Only one of his spies, Nathan Hale, was ever captured, and as one historian noted, Washington must have had a bad hangover on the day he recruited him. After being captured, he basically demanded that he be tried and executed, instead of being sent back to Britain where he likely would have gotten a few years in prison. And to make matters worse, because he was executed, the Americans had to respond by hanging a known British spy, John André, four years later.
John André, to make matters worse, was a very charitable and amiable individual, who though he had worked with Benedict Arnold in his treachery, was beloved by those who knew him. Among whom the consensus was that he was hung because they had to hang somebody.
Finkelstein (advisor to Nat'l Geographic) often talks about the possibility.
The new Mt Vernon Museum has wax representations of Washington at different ages, pictures of which ought to make their way into the text books but probably won’t. years ago, afdter reading Flexner”s biography, I commented to a college that they ought to have the aging President Washington played by John Wayne. He laughed, and Wayne was such a famous face that he would have had to work past that. But with the right script, Wayne could have pulled it off, I think. Certainly after he had been slowed by cancer. But it would take an out-size actor to capture the man.
Finkelstein has his reputation invested in this theory. One can make up a lot of stuff if the places under investigation have remains three thousand years ago, and no one says that David’s kingdom had many monumental structures
Finkelstein has his reputation invested in this theory. One can make up a lot of stuff if the places under investigation have remains three thousand years ago, and no one says that David’s kingdom had many monumental structures
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Thanks NYer. |
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