On The care and Feeding of the Bible critic

No critics were harmed in the making of these pages

   Bible critics are a curious breed,but very unpredictable.They consume huge amounts of anything anti Biblical,but refuse to hunt,preferring to take what others have found.They place a great deal of faith in nothing being evidence of something.They will
attack when corrected,and tend to form a pack with almost anyone in agreement with them.Most can be trained although they
tend to be stubborn and require absolute evidence from Bible defenders,while being more lenient of other ancient texts.They have the peculiar habit of rejecting new ideas in favor of older outdated ones.Care should be taken in offering them evidence that can be disputed,which only adds to the confusion.Such evidence should be presented as a possibility only and not as definite proof..Their most common belief is that absence of evidence is evidence of absence,which isn't a scientific approach but is useful when there is no evidence available to support their argument.A negative is a useful tool for those who believe that if you can't dazzle them with brilliance,baffle them with bull.They can sometimes be as much of a pain as a spell check,when they attempt to change things that shouldn't be changed.Regardless of what the spell check believes,Joseph does not need to be changed to Josephina.It destroys the context of the Bible.Although it's possible to teach an old critic new tricks,it is sometimes less confusing to teach one thing at a time,until it is completely understood.It may be necessary to begin with something simple such as, "a clean bowl is not evidence that the owner never ate soup."
   Over the years Bible critics and skeptics have added to their list of "questionable" scriptures from the Bible,mostly due to archeology proving their early list was unfounded.The opinions and questions they bring up range from absurd to more absurd.Defenders of the Bible are expected to know the minds of the ancient writers,especially concerning history,while historians are seldom questioned about the validity of non Biblical inscriptions or text discovered by archaeology.By using history many of those Biblical questions can be answered.The one exception is the belief in Creation.Noone can intelligently expect a theologian,scholar or Bible student to be able to show proof of Creation.There will be no written inscriptions,no pottery shards,no tools or half eaten apple that can be dated anywhere near the beginning of man.The oldest tree known to man,so far,is around 2,000 years old,so there may not be much of a chance of finding a tree carving that states"Adam loves Eve."There are,however, non Biblical texts that not only mention Creation,but a place called Eden (Iden,or Idin).
   Most other aspects of the Bible can,and has been,answered by archeology,the earliest of which is the flood.While it is often brought up around the water cooler between defenders and critics,most don't question whether or not it happened,but whether or not it was global or local.Many Bible scholars teach that the flood was global,but the Bible does not specifically say that it was.The Bible uses the words earth and world,much like kings of the various empires did,when they claimed to be "king of the earth,"or "king of the whole world," as Cyrus did:
I am Kurash [ "Cyrus" ],
King of the World, Great King, Legitimate King,
King of Babilani, King of Kiengir and Akkade,
King of the four rims of the earth,
Not many people would take that to mean that Cyrus had dominion over North America.The same is true for Nebuchadnezzer who claimed to be"king of the world,"as did most of the Assryian kings.The world,in ancient times,including the time of the flood, was that part of the globe that the people knew of.Beyond that,was the "ends of the earth." The people did not disperse until the confusion of tongues at the tower of babel,sometime after the flood.The areas they inhabited according to their languages are given in the Table of Nations in Genesis which has turned out to be very accurate according to Linguists.It can actually give us a hint as to exactly when the people began to disperse outside Mesopotamia.Genesis 10 gives a list of those settlers,and claims the sons of Noah were the ancestors of all who overspraed the earth.Although the Bible is concerned mainly with the Semites,it also gives the origin of the gentiles.Among the sons of Japeth was Gomer,Magog,Madia and Javan.The name Madai,Media has shown up in ancient records,as being in the Iranian plateau. Gomer was also in Anatolia, not Germany,although there was a Gomer in Mayberry.The Biblical Javan shows up in the phrase"Aryan Yavanas" which means younger race.The name is mentioned in the Amarna tablets discovered in Egypt.They left the area of Madia and ventured across Anotolia and eventually into Greece.The Semites included the Amorites,Hebrews,Canaanites and Chaldeans,among others.Most critics have the notion that the Semites,especially the Israelites were uneducated illiterate people who passed their time inventing a history.According to real educated archaeologists,that was not true.
   Although critics tell us there were no Chaldeans in Mesopotamia until the Babylonian empire in the 7th century BCE,they were mentioned in texts prior to the 2nd millennium BCE.They came from the area where the Bible tells us Noah's ark landed following the flood.They left a rock inscription that is similar to the Biblical covenant given to Noah,but was inscribed around 2,000 years prior to the time of Moses.There is evidence that the Biblical flood was a real event,but the belief that it was global is a matter of individual interpretation.The history of the Semites given in Genesis centers around Mesopotamia,until the time of Abraham,where the setting changes to Syria and Canaan.Archaeology has provided evidence that not only makes the stories of Abraham possible,but gives enough detail to tell us there must have been eye witnesses.There is at least one famine that can be placed withing the period of Abraham and one in the period of Isaac.Abraham's contact with the Amorites, including Chedoloamer,shows little doubt that an eyewitness recorded the events.The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.,could also have been recorded in such detail only by an eye witness.Both events have been proven true by archaeology.The story of Joseph can be shown to have been a possibility,as well as the enslavement of the Israelites.There are Egyptian accounts of Asiatics being elevated to important governmental positions.Critics who have the opinion that Moses was too uneducated to have written the Pentateuch,seem to avoid the Biblical account of Him being raised in the Egyptian palace.It was not unusual for the Egyptians to adopt a child,regardless of it's race.The plagues that struck Egypt are not only a possibility,but some historians believe there are actual Egyptian texts that recorded the event.The texts do record a calamity of unequaled proportions that struck Egypt,and have been dated around the time the Bible gives for the Exodus.
   There is evidence that the Israelites may have been in the Sinai,and leaves little doubt that there was at least an eye witness that was familiar with the Israelites crossing the Red Sea and their encounter with poisonous quail. There was,without question,a conquest at the time the Bible places Joshua in Canaan,and the conquerers were without a doubt Hebrews.Archaeology has also shown why a conquest would have been possible,in spite of Canaan being under Egyptian control.There is evidence to discount the claim that the cities Joshua destroyed had been in ruins prior to the Biblical conquest,which is especially true of Jerico.Not only was Jerico a walled city at the time of Joshua,but archeology has shown that there were many large walled cities in Canaan at that time.Some dated back prior to Abraham.The truth and accuracy of the Bible has surprised even some scholars,especially those who once believed that the book of Judges needed to be rewritten to accommodate archaeology.The length of rule of each judge along with the time of subjection didn't coincide with what archeology had earlier discovered,which prompted many to reduce the chronology of the entire book,and offer suggestions based on personal opinion about why the book of Judges is believed to be wrong.Not only critics,but some Bible scholars have placed the book of Judges under attack.That includes the accounts of the conquest,which some have determined are contradictions of the account in Joshua.That,of course,isn't true but sometimes scholars attempt to compromise with critics,by making up reasons for Biblical contradictions.
   With the discovery at Tell-Dan,there is now evidence of a king David,which means there is a very good possibility there was also a king Solomon.With new evidence and deeper study of the Scriptures,some have now admitted that it was never wrong.It was their understanding and the misinterpretation of archaeological evidence that was wrong.When critics can no longer dispute the evidence of one event,they will resort to attempting to discredit other parts of the Bible. One of the strangest critical reviews I have run across was on the book of Jeremiah.The author seemed to be confused about the prophesy of the length of time of the desolation of Jerusalem.According to the critic:
"Jeremiah's message was that God is dependent on man to carry out his wishes in the world,
a view very much in contrast to the writers of Exodus, who had Yahweh being a powerful,
independent and even capricious god. And Jeremiah warns that only following the dictates
of God would keep the newly ascendant Babylonians at bay. But it was not enough. He
predicted that Babylon would conquer Palestine and the occupants of that land would spend
70 years in captivity by the rivers of Babylon. Well, the captivity happened, but it didn't last 70 years."
God has never been dependent on man to carry out His wishes,but He has always used man.All through the Bible,including the Exodus,God has used man to accomplish what he had in mind for man.Not only did the scribes of Moses time write differently than in Jeremiah's time,the events and surroundings were different.The critic uses the date of the destruction of the temple as a starting point,and the order to return as an ending point.The Bible,however,uses the destruction of the temple and the rebuilding of the temple,a period of 70 years,which Jeremiah called a desolation. and an abomination.The following may have been written by the same critic.It contains the same lack of knowledge in history or the Bible
If Moses "really" wrote the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Primary History) in the 16th or 15th century BCE, his writing would be in a form known as Proto-Sinaitic, found on stone tablets in the Southern Sinai in association with Egyptian mining areas of the 15th century BCE (also found in Canaan in earlier centuries, the 17th-15th BCE). Thus Moses would have employed 27 consonants in his writing style, as well as differing "inflectional endings," but we don't find them in use or even as archaically preserved snippets of verses or even an occasional archaic word. The Pentateuch's very language indicates it CANNOT be a document of Moses' days and the 16th/15th century BCE.
Once again,for those critics who aren't familiar with the Bible,Moses was raised in the Egyptian palace,which is confirmed by the Jewish historian Josephus and the Egyptian historian Manetho,as well as the book of Acts.He would have been taught in the Egyptian language,not proto-Sinaitic which was used by the Canaanites,Phoenicians and Medianites.Moses never saw Canaan or Phoenicia,and was 40 years old before he spent time in Median.To set the record straight,the earliest proto-Sinaitic inscriptions found in Canaan go back to the 19th century
BCE,not the 17th:
Beit-Arieh (1987), notes that the "earliest" Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are not to be found in the Sinai,
but in Canaan, in the 19th century BCE,
whereas the Serabit el Khadim inscriptions are of the 16th/15th century BCE.
The very history of Moses indicates he COULD NOT have written in proto-Sinaitic.In reality,not all Hebrews used proto-Sinaitic and not all Canaanites used it.That may be the reason for calling it proto-Sinaitic rather than proto-Canaanite.It contained similarities to both Hebrew and Egyptian.It would have been possible for Moses to have been taught to read and write by the Israelites and still not have had to use proto-Sinaitic.The above only shows the lengths a critic will go to in an attempt to prove the Bible wrong.
   Most critics also have a misunderstanding of Egyptian history,most especially the availability of evidence that discounts the Bible.The truth is that there is no such evidence,and ancient Egyptian cannot "be read with thee ease of a newspaper," unless the critic was referring to reading a newspaper written in a foreign language with many pages missing.That is what archaeologists run into while translating and interpreting Egyptian.They have the job of putting together a puzzle of an unknown picture with most of the pieces missing.No two agree on every translation or interpretation,which leaves the history writer with nothing more definite than a possibility.To turn those pieces into something that can be called positive proof,requires a great deal of research.The historian Roland G. Kent wrote concerning "Old Persian":
"It was thanks to Darius the Great that we have been able to decipher the cuneiform script,
which had fallen into even deeper oblivion than Egyptian hieroglyphs."
That would also seem to contradict the critic that wrote the following:
"the Persians had captured the civilizations of Babylon and Assyria in the land of the two rivers a civilization that went
back as far as the Egyptians did, and had permanent archives written on clay tablets in their cuneiform
script.Knowledge of the Assyrian diplomatic correspondence allowed the Persian governors to write the histories of
Israel and Judah, so there is no reason why they should not have known of a suitable pharaoh to allocate to the
enslavement period."
It's not clear what the Persians had to do with Israel having a knowledge of a particular pharaoh,since not many Persians knew the names of the Pharoahs.Not even the Egyptian historian,Manetho got the names right.Most of the Egyptian texts left out the names.One of the reasons was possibly the confusion in writing the name that was known by the scribe,which would not be familiar to everyone.Egyptian kings were known by various people by various names.Thutmose III,for instance,one of the pharaohs around the time of the Exodus was known as Menkheperre,Men-kheper-Re,Heqa-Maat,Ra-men-kheper,Tutimose and Tom.His son,Amenhotep II was known by Ra-aa-khepru,Re-es-khu, Okheprure,Min-hotep,Min and Akheperure.His son,Thutmose IV was called Orus,Menkheperure,Re-Men-kheper and Tom.It would still be confusing if archaeologists had not attached Roman numerals to their names.Every book written by archaeologists contain pieces of the puzzle,and after searching through thousands of books,the historian may have enough to recognize that a picture is taking shape.No single book written by an archaeologist or historian will ever paint a complete picture,yet many critics place complete faith in whichever anti Biblical book they run across first.Research is unknown to most of them.One such critic,in claiming that the history of the Bible was fabricated,quoted the archaeologist Immanuel Velokovsky,who stated that the Egyptian word that was translated to mean Israel was controversial.The critics first reaction was that the Mernepthah stele was probably not be referring to Israel.Had he bothered to do a little research,he would have discovered that Velokovsky was actually writing that the translation of Israel was correct in spite of the controversy.The critic would also have discovered that Velokovsky was one of the first to equate the Ipuwer papyrus with the Biblical plagues,and he was a firm believer in the history of the Bible being correct.The critics reaction to stumbling across something that might possibly be interpreted as contradictory to the Bible,is common among critics.
   The pages here are the result of over 20 years of research which is still on going.I have tried not to depend on any one translation or interpretation,using instead the most common understanding among archaeologists.It was my original intent to present my findings in an unbiased way,which has turned out to be impossible.I soon discovered that for anyone to believe in what they are writing they must be biased.Having a biased opinion,however,doesn't mean that texts should be changed or omitted in order to reinforce ones belief.If the available evidence fulfills it's purpose,changes will not be needed. I have also included non Biblical material that refers to,or contains,material that enhances the Bible.One of those is the Book of Jasher.There are many manuscripts that are in harmony with the Bible that were not included in the Canon.That doesn't make them less than reliable.There were many reasons for not including them.Some were not discovered until after the Bible was compiled.The Book of Jasher,once thought to be extinct,was important enough to have been referred to at least twice in the Bible:
"Is it not written in the Book of Jasher?" (Joshua 10:13)
"Behold it is written in the Book of Jasher." (2Samuel 1:18)
Theologians very seldom refer to the Book of Jasher,but according to Joshua and Samuel,some of the Scriptures in the Bible were taken from Jasher.To believe in the Bible is to believe in the sources mentioned in the Bible.Another source not included in Protestant Bibles is the history of Flavius Josephus.He not only wrote the history of the Jews,but also an eye witness account of the Jewish/Roman wars.He traveled with the Romans and was so factual in His recordings that many Jews labeled Him a traitor,although traveling with them was the only way to learn about the atrocities of the Roman army.It is believed that Josephus had access to Nehemiah's library.The book of Jasher may also have been a source of His histories:
"That by this book are to be understood certain records kept in some
safe place on purpose, giving an account of what happened among the
Hebrews from year to year, and called Jasher, or the upright, on
account of the fidelity of the annals."[20]
   Josephus understood the book to be an accurate and righteous enough account to have been stored for safe keeping.The translator of the 1840 CE edition interpreted the name Jasher to mean "the upright or correct record," with "upright" referring to the accuracy of the account.There are apparently at least three copies of a book of Jasher.One is known to be a fake,and one is questionable.The third is believed to have been taken from the Midrash and considered genuine.It begins with chapter 1 verse 1 reading "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and God created man in his own image." Whether or not it is genuine,it does contain subject matter that would not have been known by anyone fabricating a book in the 19th century ACE,unless the author had read a more ancient manuscript.It does,at times,help to clear up obscure passages in the Bible.While only the necessary verses from the book of Jasher are given here,for the sake of space,access to the entire related chapters will be offered for contextual verification.

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