h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Anyway...for my daughter's Black History Month project, I got her to do His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I. (Everyone else did either King or Mandela). Now he *is* god. Or Jah, leastways. And liveth I-ternally. Possibly.

Should've got her to do Jesus...

Gif

What about Jean-Jacques Dessalines?

In fact any study of black history should do Haiti, it has a fascinating history; easily the most interesting history in the Caribbean.

Funny you should say that. My son did Toussaint Louverture. I'm a big fan of CLR James' book, 'The Black Jacobins'.

My other suggestion was Tommy Smith and John Carlos.

So not Lenny Henry then?

Gif

Evidence for King David?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081121-biblical-city.html

Gif

Jesus & Mo are spot on again!

http://www.jesusandmo.net/2008/11/26/zurich/

Gif

It looks more like an archeological discovery of a location known as Sha'arayim to me.

Mikey

No reason to suppose that King David didn't exist. The question is...was he anything special?

Incidentally, I was in a church yesterday. !!!!! . It was for a pet show. (One of our guinea rabbits came third). Perusing a noticeboard, I remembered why I seldom enter churches. There was a notice for an event to '...share the faith of isolated evangelical Jews in Palestine'. Illegal settlers, they mean. And this was in a mainstream, CofS church!

Has anyone seen episode 11x02 of South Park "Cartman sucks".

I raise this as it is a fantastic pastiche of the "god camps" and the brainwashing. butters gets sent there due to being "Bi-Curious"....

I highly recommend it....

FB

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy

"No reason to suppose that King David didn't exist."

Sure there is: null hypothesis. You might as well say no reason to suppose that King Arthur didn't exist.

the bible is a written account of an oral tradition

everyone thought homers illiad and odessy was a story till they discovered troy

we can probably say that most of the story of the bible is true to some extent, it has just had the brush of fantasy run over it a few times like any good story

remember the winner writes the history, and so god was on OUR side

We can probably say that _some_ of the stories in the bible have some factual basis..

But there is evidence that a significant portion is pure fabrication:

"The problem is that we don't really have any good archeaological evidence to support the Abraham story, and there is much archaeological evidence to contradict it. The land where Abraham supposedly settled, the southern highlands of Palestine (from Jerusalem south the the Valley of Beersheba) is very sparse in archaeological evidence from this period. It is clear from the archaeological record that its population was extremely sparse - no more than a few hundred people in the entire region, and the sole occupants of the area during this time were nomadic pastoralists, much like the Bedouin of the region today. We know from clear archaeological evidence that the peoples known as the Phillistines never even entered the region until the 12th century B.C.E., and the "city of Gerar" in which Isaac, the son of Abraham, had his encounter with Abimelech, the "king of the Phillistines" (in Genesis 26:1) was in fact a tiny, insignificant rural village up until the 8th century B.C.E. It couldn't have been the capital of the regional king of a people who didn't yet exist!
This isn't the only problem with the account of the Age of the Patriarchs, either. There's the problem of the camels. We know from archaeological evidence that camels weren't domesticated until about the late second millenium B.C.E., and that they weren't widely used as beasts of burden until about 1000 B.C.E. - long after the Age of the Patriarchs. And then there's the problem of the cargo carried by the camels - "gum, balm and myrrh," which were products of Arabia - and trade with Arabia didn't begin until the era of Assyrian hegemony in the region, beginning in the 8th century B.C.E."

http://www.bidstrup.com/bible.htm

The recent NOVA episode also covered some of this, very lightly: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bible/

Your post, Tal, conjured up an image in my mind:

The rationalist floats along on a vast sea of potential discoveries in a boat that has been hammered together over generations. The boat has a few leaks, but nothing unmanagable, and the boat is ever expanding. Meanwhile there are a large number of people outside the boat struggling to stay afloat, never admitting that they are struggling, and shouting very loudly 'the straws at which I clutch are far, far better than your boat, for they are God's straws!.'

And the boat rows on in its stately voyage of discovery, at least one of its crew still a little delirious from his bout with the flu.

Arr, matey! A tot o' rum will fix ya up proper!




btw, I think it's a sailboat

mmm. a tot of rum.


my personal favourite:
http://www.pussers.com/

I have a suspicion that using Sha'arayim as evidence for the existence of David is falling for the logical fallacy of 'seeking only to confirm'.

We know from other evidence that the bulk of the OT was written (at least in its current form) around 600-500 BC, whereas David is supposed to have lived around 1000 BC. Therefore if we want evidence that some of its sources are much earlier, we shouldn't be looking for things that existed in 1000 BC, we should be looking for things at *didn't* exist in 600 BC.

In other words, if the ruins of Sha'arayim were still around in 600 BC, it's no surprise that they might be associated with David, even if he was invented from scratch in 600 BC. After all, how many places are there in Britain associated with King Arthur, Robin Hood, etc.? What *would* be surprising would be if the David story contained information that would not have been obvious to writers in 600 BC - names and dates that can be confirmed by archaeology, for example.

Gif

Darwin's Ark?

the bible has been written and re written countless times and everyone put their own bias into it

take Jonah for example, there are no whales in the med. Jonah was swallowed by a giant sea creature, and in translation by a monk in a monastery on the Scottish isles, the sea creature became a whale because he knew about whales and applied his bias

the camel problem was probably the same, the verse was probably something like "he carried his goods on beasts of burden" and at the time of re writing the local beast of burden was the camel and so a small change entered the text.

how many time s has it been copied and rewritten and how many tiny changes have been wrought