I've been reading a lot about the Documentary Hypothesis over the past week and found it very interesting. Granted, it is only a hypothesis and not a theory but it does do a remarkable job at explaining some clunky narratives in the Pentateuch.

Wagga, I would be interested to know your thoughts on this video since you are a historian.

Interesting video but I think it's a load of nonsense.
Monotheism gave way to Polytheism, not the other way around. There are refutations against Enuma Elish giving rise to the Bible.

http://creation.com/is-genesis-1-just-reworked-babylonian-myth
http://www.tektonics.org/af/armstrongk01.php
http://www.tektonics.org/af/babgenesis.php

Also, the three reputedly different gods (El Elyon, El Shaddai and Yahweh) aren't different gods but expressions/understandings/facets of the one true God. As for Baal himself, he came about when Nimrod was deified, after the Tower of Babel. Those who didn't worship the one true God, deified their ancestors and kings and champion warriors and combined them together, also adding mythic exaggerations to spice up history.

Commandments like "You shall have no other gods before me", doesn't acknowledge the existence of pagan gods (as in that they were real gods) but the existence of paganism being rife amongst God's people (as was mentioned earlier, the worship of Asherah and Baal). God commanded a return to belief in Him and only Him, because He was their Creator, Saviour and Lord.

I was thinking on my way to work today... In the opening chapters of Genesis, it says that God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Assuming that this was historical fact, why did he put the Tree there in the first place? Was he just testing them for the sake of testing them? If he never intended Man to have the knowledge of good and evil, why didn't he leave the Tree out of the Garden?

It's true that Bible illiteracy is at an all-time high, but I really question if those people where Christian then. Also, I have yet to find a non-Christian who knows more than most Christians about their religion. They proclaim to know much but they seem to twist it and turn it to their own liking or to discredit the Bible.

It was only 2 Christians so yes most do know more about the bible than me. Al ot of non-Christians that use to be christians tend to know a lot about the bible since they read deep into it and decided not to believe it anymore.

W4J. Thanks for the video, it helps explain a few things when it comes to terminology, and language.
IlF. I cannot speak for the people you describe as once believing as I have never met them.
As for those whom I do know I can say usually come from similar backgrounds.
The first usually based their faith more in/on a particular pastor/priest. They put their trust in this person's teaching rather than study themselves. When this teacher fell away, or was exposed as hypoctitical the followers then fell away as the person who, they trusted with their faith failed them.
The other folks usually were the ones who were "born into" a christian professing family that they may have rebelled against, or were christian in name only.
In both cases, interestingly, these people sometimes become more interested in the bible than when they "believed". If for no other reason than to disprove the faith they never really had.

A great introductory article on the pagan saviour god parallels:
http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/pagint.php

A treasure trove of information to critically refute such claims:
http://www.tektonics.org/copycathub.html

It was only 2 Christians so yes most do know more about the bible than me. A lot of non-Christians that use to be Christians tend to know a lot about the bible since they read deep into it and decided not to believe it anymore.

Okay, thanks for clarifying that, Fauns. As your second point I have to disagree. The non-Christians who were formerly Christians may think they know much about the Bible, but they would be mistaken. They have allowed their standard to be something other than the Bible. If we use the Bible as our measuring stick and look around us, it's not surprising that what we see around us can be traced back to the truth of the Bible.

I was thinking on my way to work today... In the opening chapters of Genesis, it says that God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Assuming that this was historical fact, why did he put the Tree there in the first place? Was he just testing them for the sake of testing them? If he never intended Man to have the knowledge of good and evil, why didn't he leave the Tree out of the Garden?

I can only answer from one of my own experiences which parallels your question. Years ago, I made a cake for dessert that evening, icing it as well. My two mischievous children watched me interestedly, and when I finished, I told them not to touch the cake, left on the sideboard whilst I hung out the washing. They knew that the cake was meant for when Daddy came home, when we could all eat it. But by the time I finished the laundry, I found the cake with a spiralling ridge where one of my little darlings had been helping herself to the icing on the cake. It was easy to find the culprit, due to the remains of icing on her fingers and around her mouth.

Would you have said then that I should not have made a cake at all? Or should I have put the cake in a bank safe? Nobody is told what would have happened, if Adam and Eve had resisted temptation. Perhaps Eve and Adam could have asked God's permission first, before helping themselves to the fruit they had been told to leave well alone. And maybe a reading of the Magician's Nephew might also provide a better explanation of not touching what doesn't belong to you to touch.

I've been reading a lot about the Documentary Hypothesis over the past week and found it very interesting. Granted, it is only a hypothesis and not a theory but it does do a remarkable job at explaining some clunky narratives in the Pentateuch.

Wagga, I would be interested to know your thoughts on this video since you are a historian.

Yes, I have heard of the Documentary Hypothesis. And yes, it does explain a bit about there being what seems to be two traditions for both the Genesis story of Creation, for the account of the wanderings of the Israelites in the Desert and for there being the parallel accounts of Kings and Chronicles. But I wouldn't let these revisions, reediting and additions complicate matters too much, even for the Torah. You see, the core 10 commandments stay identifiably the same, whether in Deuteronomy or Exodus, even if the account of the Ark of the Covenant's provenance is different for these two books, one version being a less ornate description. By the way, most of the prophetic books of the Old Testament (Isaiah to Malachi) were written after the reign of the Israelite king Jeroboam II (786-746 BC), when Jonah famously went to Nineveh to get them to repent, leaving Israel, itself, to the warnings of Amos and others not to follow neighbouring countries' gods. Jonah is still buried in Iraq, at Nineveh. Allegedly. What is the problem about the bulk of Biblical contributors also ensuring that we, today, still have a Torah or Pentateuch to read?

I did watch the video and wasn't all that impressed with the way it was represented, to infer an atheistic view of the Bible. It is even more useless than inferring an automatic Biblical association of any Archaeological artifact found at all. At least the Bible, itself, is a source material to compare with, whilst the video is basically an opinion with some factual errors. For example, Asherah is not the name of a Canaanite goddess. According to the latest edition of Biblical Archaeological Review (Jan/Feb 2014) Asherah are actually groves and shrines. The Goddess the video might have been referring to was Astarte, a name later corrupted by the Greeks to Aphrodite, and considered by the Romans to be the same as their goddess Venus. And whilst Yahweh may or may not be interpreted to have been a Canaanite chief God originally, possibly called El Shaddei, I don't agree with the Video's opinions. Baal was the one hated by Hebrew Prophets, but this god was also accompanied by Moloch, the Canaanite god to which children were allegedly sacrificed. Why didn't the video mention either Astarte or Moloch as well as Baal?

The video also needs to sort out the differences between Judaism and Zoroastrianism, which did start in 600 BC, among Medes & Persians, the latter not being present at the 609 BC Battle of Carchemish, where Assyria was finally defeated and destroyed. Zoroastrianism, an almost monotheistic religion, could have been influenced by Judaism, which started about 1200 BC, as the Hebrew religion of the Exodus, even before David. Or it may have evolved from Zoroaster's take on polytheism. We simply don't know who Zoroaster was.

As a library science student in 1965 or 1966, I did study the origins of writing and also all about Assurbanipal's library. Archaeological Diggings Volume 20, no. 5 (Oct/Nov, 2013) has a useful article about the Flood story and the differing accounts. It uses archaeological and anthropological evidence to discuss not only Noah's flood but also the Gilgamesh epic of 17th or 18th century, the Akkadian Atrahasis Epic from 1600 BC, and the Sumerian King list, again from 1600 BC. Even though these Sumerian and Akkadian states weren't necessarily contemporary to each other, and even though in each case there is a creation story and a flood story, the details differ, not only from the story of Noah, but also from each other. As does the Roman creation and flood story, legends written down in Ovid's Metamorphoses, at the time of Augustus Caesar, bits of which I found myself translating in Leaving Certificate Latin in 1963-1964.

Yes, the Enuma Elish, found in the Assurbanipal library, is an ancient flood story. But even that clay tablet, part of the Gilgamesh epic, and now residing in the British Museum, was very possibly not the original copy of the story it is made out to be in the video, any more than were the parallel stories produced by Sumer and Akkad, bronze age contemporaries of Egypt's earlier dynasties. After all to write a story down from what could have been an oral tradition is the first step, then copies do have to be made from time to time, even if clay tablets are relatively durable, compared to paper, leather, metal, vellum or parchment. Even stone tablets can be broken up into little bits and destroyed. Yes, original old copies from 1600 BC or 1700 BC could have been stored in that library, especially if they were loot. But Assurbanipal, who lived to 627 BC, could have just as easily ordered his scribes to put together copies made from an original oral tradition or to replace a badly damaged earlier copy. As libraries are forced to do from time to time to this day.

And that was Assurbanipal's intention in assembling what has been found at Nineveh, to gather together what sorts of stories about the flood were extant in his day. But Assurbanipal, himself, was the great grandson of Sargon II, the king who demolished Samaria in 720 BC, and carted off the Israelites, destroying the city utterly. If anything survived of Israelite culture it would have been taken to Jerusalem by refugees, there to reside under the Judahite kings, well out of Assurbanipal's reach, especially if, like Manasseh or Amon, they had rejected their own culture in favour of worshipping other gods, and who were therefore not to be trusted.

Yes, I agree with the video that Abraham was the first one in Ur to realize there was only one God, not the multiple gods of Ur. However, Genesis, itself, makes that very clear, as does Abraham's expanded narrative in the Jewish Talmud. So there is no reason to twist the facts of Abraham's monotheistic realization to suit an atheistic point of view as is done in the Video. Abraham was told specifically by his God, to go to Harran, from which he was to go to Canaan. That Genesis account doesn't mean there couldn't also have been a pre-existing oral tradition about the flood, within Abraham's family, clan or tribe, descended from Noah, himself. Just as before I looked up my ancestry, I knew lots of things from what I heard from my grandmother.

The Bible, itself, in Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, tells us about colleges of priests and prophets in Israel and Judah. Or at least in Shiloh. Solomon, who traded with Hiram the Phoenician king of Tyre, and also his father David, both of whom built administrative centres, found by archaeologists, would have had the means to record the Torah and the ensuing annals of their kingdoms, including Judges and Ruth.

And whatever went beforehand, so as the Hebrew captives of Babylon would not suffer the fate of the previous "lost" tribes of Israel, of course there would have been some re-writing, re-compiling and new inclusions, even for the Torah, itself. Also, please don't forget the book found in the Temple and shown to the King Josiah (641-609 BC), still a child at that time. That book, believed to be Deuteronomy, wasn't written then just to suit Josiah. It had already been written some time previously and found in the renovations of Solomon's temple, since destroyed, in 586 BC. Because of the present political climate concerning the Al Aqsa Mosque, which, we believe, occupies the site of Solomon's temple, it would be impossible to conduct any archaeological searches there.

I therefore have to agree with W4J, at least partially, about the video. And I agree with him, fully, about Dan Brown's fictional The Da Vinci Code.

Excellent post, Wagga. You communicated much more eloquently than I ever could have. You're right about there being no pagan god called Asherah. I blundered there. The Asherah poles were used for the worship of a serpent god though, the one instigated by the worship of the serpent staff God told Moses to make and raise up in the wilderness to bring healing and life to all who looked on it.

I'm having trouble pinpointing the exact time in the video, but I think I remember Nye saying that if there was new evidence that challenged the mainstream ideas about the age of the earth or the origin of life, such as anachronisms in the fossil record, he would evaluate it and change his opinion if necessary.

I'm not sure of the timestamp, but here is an image depicting what was said by each.

Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish! Bill Nye and his ilk wouldn't change their beliefs for the world. There's plenty of evidence for creation, for intelligent design etc. it's just ignored or not considered because it doesn't line up with what they believe. The "debate" was a long-winded mess most of the time, but this time-stamp makes it look as if Nye was in the right.

First of all, as I stated, I do not know the timestamp, but I believe that these were the responses given to a question put to both of them during the Q&A section of the debate, and that these were the responses given, but I could be wrong. It is possible that these were taken from to separate sections of the debate.

Second of all, I cannot see how you can say that Bill Nye and others who have been convinced by scientific observations, would never change their minds. As science is constantly improving itself, by working to rid itself of inaccurate, or outdated information. This means that scientists (including Bill Nye) do need to change their minds, as better information becomes available.

It seems to me, (although this may not be the case) that those who promote or believe intelligent design, may be the ones who are ignoring, or not considering the evidence, because at the end of the day, no matter what is presented, if you truly believe your Holy Book, you cannot admit that the evidence for evolution is credible, because if you do, it completely undermines the entire structure of the religion. With no creation, the garden of Eden and original sin are out, which means that Jesus is unnecessary.

At least, that's my take.

@master olive I agree with what you are saying and it was going to be my reply to w4j. I have looked into the "evidence" for creation and well it really isnt evidence and many of it has been disproved my science. Also no the bible is not evidence itself.

It seems to me, (although this may not be the case) that those who promote or believe intelligent design, may be the ones who are ignoring, or not considering the evidence, because at the end of the day, no matter what is presented, if you truly believe your Holy Book, you cannot admit that the evidence for evolution is credible, because if you do, it completely undermines the entire structure of the religion. With no creation, the garden of Eden and original sin are out, which means that Jesus is unnecessary.

At least, that's my take.

Disclaimer -- i'm a young-earth creationist, but for philosophical/theological reasons rather than evidentiary, and have only philosophical support for what i'm about to say.

I don't think it's a matter of ignoring or disregarding evidence on either side so much as a difference of worldview.

The secular evolutionist begins with the presupposition that the material universe is all there is, that everything can be understood with science and reason, that there is no external First Cause to the universe, and no need for one. From that perspective, any evidence indicating a god or outside force simply hasn't been properly understood yet.

The biblical creationist begins with the presupposition that an eternal God created everything, that the Bible might not be a scientific textbook but can be relied upon, that the whole of creation points to a divine Creator and declares His glory. Any evidence that doesn't fit with that viewpoint simply hasn't been properly understood yet.

Everybody starts with a presupposition; they can't operate without them. I suppose it's possible to come prepared to accept whatever the evidence says, but if you aren't willing to change your fundamental premise -- either there is a God or there isn't -- then the evidence can only do so much. As C.S. Lewis put it, Nature does not teach, it only shows us what we come prepared to see.

I don't mean that all scientists let their biases get in the way of the data, or that there is no hope to prove creation (or evolution, i suppose) by the evidence, but i think the fact that intelligent, well-informed people stand on both sides of the argument is an indication that the evidence at present does not spell out "evolution!" or "creation!" in flaming letters ten feet high.

I have to point out that the validity of Evolution will not undermine Christianity or even Creation. The battle is not between Evolution and Creationism. The battle is between Evolution and Young Earth Creationism. There is such a thing as Old Earth Creationism. No matter how it played out in the early days of the universe, it won't say anything either way about the existence (or non-existence) of a Creator. The existence of a Creator is a philosophical question, not a scientific one. Science is the study of things within our universe. A Creator (assuming one exists) would be outside our universe and therefore outside the realm of scientific study.

~Riella

Agreed, Ithilwen.

IlF, are you saying, then, that to prove or disprove science, you have to use up-to-date scientific methods, and not rely only on history, geography, archaeology, or literature? If so, you are right. Because you also have to use science and scientific method to prove history, geography, archaeology and also literature, where it is applicable, to verify the names and places in the Bible. Similarly, you can't dismiss science simply because it seems to disagree with your theology. Or dismiss theology, either, because the Bible, which did include all the archaeology, history, geography, and literature as we know it, did not include the specifics of science as we know it today. Apples and oranges, you see.

Look at all the hoo-hah over Richard III over the years. This was a king who was a multiple murderer, a deformed arch-villain immortalised by Shakespeare, and who was summarily discarded after his defeat at Bosworth in 1483. In 2012, a skeleton was found in a car-park, which after much research, was found to be where a pre-Henry VIII priory had been located. Examining the skeleton by DNA evidence provided by a Canadian carpenter, proved that the skeleton was indeed Richard III, and that he really did have scoliosis of the spine as alleged by Shakespeare. Do we then accept Shakespeare's play without question as the truth, and the whole truth, demonising Richard III wholeheartedly, because he was found to be right about Richard's spinal condition? Or do we take a more measured view of that king, realising that those nephews he allegedly murdered were dead meat anyway? Or do we say that Shakespeare, who wrote a somewhat libellous play about Macbeth, always must be taken as writing factually, when I, at least, am aware that the real Macbeth, who killed Duncan in fair battle, as well as Macbeth's stepson, were both murdered by Malcolm Canmore, his pro-English successor on the Scottish throne?

As I was trying to say in a previous post, you can't just pick up a bit of broken china in Jerusalem and say it is from Biblical times, just because you found it in the right area. You have to get the china tested first. Chances are, the broken bit of china came from the restaurant down the road, when someone bumped into the waiter last night, and not from Solomon's temple or David's palace, even if you found the china in the right area. And you can't use the modernity of the bit of china, and the relative absence of ancient pottery to prove that there was no person called King David, or that David's palace never existed. Because, guess what, Eilat Mazar, an Israeli archaeologist, actually did find David's palace last year in Jerusalem.

I guess the same applies to evolutionary theory. If you want to reconcile the Biblical account with the science you really have to know what you are doing and saying about both science and the Bible, quoting both. Science measures to the millisecond what a day might be on this planet. The Bible tells us how to treasure those days we are given, organised in a seven day week.

I'd agree wholeheartedly with W4J that Dan Brown's Da Vinci code was no more or less than the fiction it purports to be. I've been a bit bemused by people getting upset about a trashy adventure novel like that one. Jesus didn't get married as far as we are told in either the Gospels, the letters of Paul, or in Josephus or Tacitus, the non-Christian sources for His existence. The Crucifixion did take place as stated in the Bible, and there hasn't really been a long range conspiracy involving Christ's descendants. The Knights Templar were a religious order which, having delved profitably in banking, attracted the envy and enmity of the French King, Philip IV, AKA Philip, the not so Fair, who used foul means to divest the Knights Templar of their wealth, sending the French Grand Master to be burned at the stake. There is a link between Knights Templar, who fled to Scotland and freemasonry, but it doesn't seem they had anything to do with the Rosslyn Chapel, south of Edinburgh.

Da Vinci did paint the Lord's supper and the Mona Lisa, and yes, the Mona Lisa, at any rate, which I've seen, is a lovely portrait, though I doubt there are hidden meanings in either painting. The Lord's supper painting, however beautiful, does not necessarily depict how the Lord's supper might have looked in the Biblical account. Indiana Jones and the last crusade did get something right in that the cup used by Jesus Christ was probably an everyday sort of cup for those times, and not made of precious metals or Royal Daulton china. On the other hand, Cecil B de Mille's classic film, The Ten Commandments, has Charlton Heston wielding two stone tablets carved with the Hebrew characters used today, and not the Proto Sinaiatic/Canaanite script that would have been probably used by 13th century BC Hebrew escapees.

It seems that fiction and fact need to be disentangled all the time, and that even facts are not what they seem or what people might expect. It doesn't do to be so fixated on single trees that it is impossible to see the hugeness of the forest.