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An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#181

Post by akomtu »

colineartheta wrote: post #118
akomtu wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enoch is not a man. Enochion was the name of the famous third-eye that supposedly (if we believe the story in the book) existed in the pre-atlantian era of the super-giants, cyclopes, who peacefully co-existed with giant reptiles. The eye allowed them to see things thru, so it was called the eye of wisdom. As the civilization progressed and got immersed in sin, the visions that the eye saw became intolerable, and ove…

Have you read the Bible? Or the book being referenced at all? Enoch is very clearly a man. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch

It's a common technique to invent personalities to describe things you don't want to put in plain writing. Literal reading of the Bible, and similar books, won't reveal much.

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#182

Post by ars »

torben-friis wrote: post #82
ars wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's an unfalsifable claim, so it should be ignored in a context of formal logic The claim might be unfalsifiable, but the question is still valid. Basically you are required to answer the question. If you answer "I can't know" your answer is also unfalsifiable, and no better than theirs. i.e. your position on this matter is not superior to theirs.

Admittance of ignorance is undoubtedly better than a lie, in general.

I wrote "I can't know", not "I don't know".

This is a question about the limits on knowledge, not about someone's personal knowledge.

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#183

Post by akomtu »

waynecochran wrote: post #148
Mikeb85 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, Genesis has people that are 900 years old, a talking serpent, a boat that can fit every type of animal, and you take issue with giants lol?

The style of the first 11 chapters of Genesis is very different than the remainder of the book. For instance, Genesis 3 is not meant to be historical prose like chapter 12 and following. Projecting my 21st century world view on an ancient text describing deep mysteries about creation and the fall of man is pure arrogance. For instance, the author of Genesis 3 doesn't expect the reader to think the serpent was merely…

The talking snake most likely refers to a very-knowledgeable snake-people Nagi and their king Dagon. They supposedly lived 12 thousand years ago and had skills and knowledge deemed magical by laymen. India is probably the only nation old enough to have records of that period. "Be wise like a serpent" means "be wise like nagi".

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#184

Post by colineartheta »

akomtu wrote: post #181
colineartheta wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read the Bible? Or the book being referenced at all? Enoch is very clearly a man. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch

It's a common technique to invent personalities to describe things you don't want to put in plain writing. Literal reading of the Bible, and similar books, won't reveal much.

It would be greatly appreciated if you could provide any scholarly evidence, or even a cited critical reading of the Book of Enoch, showing that this character (whom has been a noted point of contention and much thought and writing amongst theologians and secular researchers alike for millennia) is intended to be an invented metaphorical personality of the type that you described.

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#185

Post by moloch-hai »

waynecochran wrote: post #148
Mikeb85 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, Genesis has people that are 900 years old, a talking serpent, a boat that can fit every type of animal, and you take issue with giants lol?

The style of the first 11 chapters of Genesis is very different than the remainder of the book. For instance, Genesis 3 is not meant to be historical prose like chapter 12 and following. Projecting my 21st century world view on an ancient text describing deep mysteries about creation and the fall of man is pure arrogance. For instance, the author of Genesis 3 doesn't expect the reader to think the serpent was merely…

The oldest myths about the origin of death feature, particularly, a sacred tree, and a snake. The snake symbolized immortality, which they got to keep (shedding their skin) but humans lost.

Genesis authors had to retain all the old myth imagery in order to be taken seriously as an origin story, but stripped off the meaning to lay their own on top.

Noah and the dove are also from much older origin myths about where the Earth came from.

Cain and Abel, and also Esau and Isaac, recycle origin twin myths. One twin kills his brother and makes the world out of his body parts, and becomes the first priest.

So Genesis is largely a big mishmosh of origin-myth imagery with a narrative overlaid.

The imagery shows up in Vedic hymns, too, tracing to the same original source, with of course a different narrative overlaid.

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#186

Post by akomtu »

Minor49er wrote: post #89
waynecochran wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reference. I have read Enoch 1 and it is a wild story that in my view is pure fantasy (e.g., giants were 300 cubits tall!?). I have always just assumed that Jude and Peter were quoting some authentic version from earlier and the version I have read was the creation of an imposter.

Not to mention that the nephilim may not have even been giants to begin with. They are ambiguous

Giants usually refer to the atlantean period of very tall people. They supposedly co-existed with the current nation of 5-6 feet tall people, but died out around 12 thousand years ago. India has a story about Ravana, that suspiciously resembles the last atlantean king who went rogue.

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#187

Post by moloch-hai »

colineartheta wrote: post #184
akomtu wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a common technique to invent personalities to describe things you don't want to put in plain writing. Literal reading of the Bible, and similar books, won't reveal much.

It would be greatly appreciated if you could provide any scholarly evidence, or even a cited critical reading of the Book of Enoch, showing that this character (whom has been a noted point of contention and much thought and writing amongst theologians and secular researchers alike for millennia) is intended to be an invented metaphorical personality of the type that you described.

They are all metaphorical.

No one seriously imagines Adam, Noah, or Moses as historical, flesh-and-bone, people, any more than we imagine that of Paul Bunyan, Slue-foot Sue, or Hamlet.

Jesus, too, BTW. Everything written as if of real events came at least two generations after the cult began.

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#188

Post by akomtu »

colineartheta wrote: post #184
akomtu wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a common technique to invent personalities to describe things you don't want to put in plain writing. Literal reading of the Bible, and similar books, won't reveal much.

It would be greatly appreciated if you could provide any scholarly evidence, or even a cited critical reading of the Book of Enoch, showing that this character (whom has been a noted point of contention and much thought and writing amongst theologians and secular researchers alike for millennia) is intended to be an invented metaphorical personality of the type that you described.

The academic literature is sterile in this regard: it's just circling around the theological dogma. I'm saying all this to evoke curiousity so others do some discovery on their own. I think that western scholars havent found much is because this kind of literature is fragmented across many nations and religions.

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#189

Post by moloch-hai »

rthomas6 wrote: post #178
moloch-hai wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a good point. We like our forgeries to be as old as they are supposed to be. Then again, sometimes they do report factual details, or accurately tell us what somebody at the time wanted believed. Best scholarship today says there was no person who walked around Judea telling the parables related in the gospels. It all seems to have been made up two generations after the cult started. Congregations demanded a pe…

I am sorry to be contrarian, but I do not think Richard Carrier represents the best scholarship today, and the mainstream scholarly view is in fact that Jesus was a real person. The theory of Jesus as myth is in fact considered a fringe theory without much scholarly support. Here is one piece of evidence for the existence of an actual historical Jesus: Paul claims to have confronted Peter in person in Galatians, whic…

There are methods to distinguish original text from later insertions and alterations. Paul is generally agreed to be a distinct author writing in the 60s, but with numerous later insertions and alterations, often by Eusebius (or possibly his teacher).

For example, a rant in Thessalonians excoriating Jews for executing Jesus is transparently Eusebius, by several different lines of evidence.

Somebody named Peter could easily exist and be written about without need for a physical Jesus. Lots of cults of the time "had" a Jesus/Yeshua. It was more or less required. Having a live Jesus, and that Jesus actually saying and doing what was very clearly made up decades later, are not the same.

Wikipedia is notoriously unreliable about current scholarship, being heavily 'curated' by retired professors with nothing left to do but defend what they picked up in grad school against new information.

Re: An unorthodox scholar uses technology to expose Biblical forgeries

#190

Post by Maursault »

waynecochran wrote: post #3

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.

Pretty sure the story includes Enoch transforming into an angel and there after was called Metatron, i.e. Enoch effectively became God. That is pretty wild.
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