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The book of Enoch (a non-canonical pseudopigraphal book) is a wild story that expounds on the strange events of Genesis 6:1-4 and is quoted by Jude and Peter. The fact that some of the DSS versions contain forgeries is interesting. I have always suspected there were a very ancient Enoch texts that are now lost and what we do have contains many forgeries.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Catholic Church at the Council of Rome formally defined what books were considered authentic and which ones were not (and this list was, with some reduction, also used by Protestants). The Book of Enoch was a bit contentious because of the quotation in an inspired book - but it was ultimately determined to be not inspired, and the quotation not necessarily either. (I.e. Imagine if scripture quoted a Roman decree…
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If you want to live your life via the scientific method, awesome - it's a really powerful technique for refining the accuracy of predictions.
It can't ever rigorously conclude whether anything was ever divinely inspired, though.
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Naturalism insists that anything which is supernatural cannot be scientifically investigated, by definition. If you want to live your life via the scientific method, awesome - it's a really powerful technique for refining the accuracy of predictions. It can't ever rigorously conclude whether anything was ever divinely inspired, though.
Lots of question marks: How do we know what's a forgery and what's not? Did someone take authentic originals and write additional text over them? Where do these forgeries come from? How are all of these fragments not in one place under guard? How are forgeries of this even possible? I need more context to understand.
There's a concept called "provenance" which is basically "how sure are we that it's authentic". What work like this is doing is comparing scrolls with uncertain provenance to items of very secure provenance like known fragments from the original excavations. You can find forgeries everywhere in the antiquities trade. Some of them are modern productions, but many (see all pieces of the true cross in churches around th…
> he downloaded an open-source knockoff Reading this snapped me out of my Gell-Mann amnesia.
> he downloaded an open-source knockoff Reading this snapped me out of my Gell-Mann amnesia.
Gimp eh? Well we're not going to put that in the article. We're serious people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Naturalism insists that anything which is supernatural cannot be scientifically investigated, by definition. If you want to live your life via the scientific method, awesome - it's a really powerful technique for refining the accuracy of predictions. It can't ever rigorously conclude whether anything was ever divinely inspired, though.
The burden of proof rests on those who make fantastical claims, not on everyone else to disprove their claims.
Burden of proof is a whole different discussion.
This sounds like he's using handwriting analysis on ancient text. I don't think modern handwriting analysis has a stellar record, I can't imagine it works great on scraps of parchment from thousands of years ago.