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

I wonder how GN will spin those out to his favor?

'a little sure of ourselves when your gettin creamed by matholwch'

Don't talk rubbish. You of all people should know that I was doing working today and will be tomorrow. I shall try to have a reply to those comments either on Sunday or Monday but certainly by Tuesday.

Hi Good News

I shall look forward to it.

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\

I've asked this before, but it bears asking again.

When you claim the Bible is inerrant, GN, are you claiming this by definition, or are you claiming that everything in the Bible has been empirically shown to be true?

If the former, you are merely redefining the word inerrant, making your claim a tautology. The latter simply cannot be defended. There are many claims in the bible that are not corroborated elsewhere (some, or even all, *could* turn out to be true, but for the moment their truth status would be undecided).

Among these uncorroborated claims are that God gave the land of Canaan to the Jews/Israelites. That the Israelites were held in captivity in Egypt (and even the Bible says that they were then only a single large family who would scarcely have occupied the whole of Canaan). That the Jews were a recognisable people in Canaan during the Monarchy period, different to their neighbours (no sign of them has been found in the archaeology of the period, which reveals only a Canaanite culture).

The Jews as a group only appear in the historical record in Persian times, and functioned only as a theocratic state in Jerusalem and its environs. Even the dispersal of the Jews by the Romans would not have significantly changed the cultural identity of the region, which remained Semitic, like most of the inhabitants of the region between Persia and Egypt.

Thereafter the region was ruled in turn by Byzantine Greeks, Arabs, Persians, Mongols, Turks, and finally as a mandate by the UK. But the people who lived there were still essentially the same people who had lived there for at least two and a half millenia, and probably a lot longer.

But when the state of Israel was founded these people were not, as in previous times, left in situ to get on with things as long as they paid their taxes, they were displaced. They have become refugees in what's left of the land that they once lived on. This is the difference - the displacement. And ironically, it is this which has created the Palestinians' sense of themselves as a distinct people (though not yet as a country).

As a more appropriate analogy, GN, if you shared a house with someone, then went away for two thousand years, what rights would your descendants have to occupy that property?

Noggin