Español mañana Last year: Boris the Terrible Dreams About Shavuot, With Biblical Criticism Disclaimer: If you have never read the illogical claims of Bible critics, and never will, good for you! Feel free to skip to the fun parable. Otherwise, please read and respond with your thoughts!
I find that most biblical criticism and or biblical archeology (on both the religious and non religious sides) are just interpreting their evidence based on their priors . It generally should just be taken as what is actually found imo, rather than its interpretation mostly. However, this can be useful or not useful in figuring out whether Tanach took place if we see a lot less evidence than one would expect given an event took place (for example, the 2 million people in exodus is really weird considering the scarce evidence - this certainly doesn't mean it's absolutely false, but we should certainly decrease our credences that it happened.
I also think using Tanach as a proof of a claim should be quite weird for academics, as the concensus is that there are multiple genres mixed into stories and such (historical fiction, mythology, poetry, and non fiction). Therefore, it doesn't seem super surprising that they may update their evidence towards the Bible every so often, but it's just hard to find an equilibrium for in which parts you trust the text. I believe this is true for most mythological ancient near eastern texts, so I'm not sure the academics are being inconsistent about this (though I could totally be wrong).
Great satire! You bring illogic to its logical conclusion and you get absurdity. חג שמח
Thanks!
I love reading your informative and witty posts. I have to say I think this is my all time favorite!
You are the sweetest!
I find that most biblical criticism and or biblical archeology (on both the religious and non religious sides) are just interpreting their evidence based on their priors . It generally should just be taken as what is actually found imo, rather than its interpretation mostly. However, this can be useful or not useful in figuring out whether Tanach took place if we see a lot less evidence than one would expect given an event took place (for example, the 2 million people in exodus is really weird considering the scarce evidence - this certainly doesn't mean it's absolutely false, but we should certainly decrease our credences that it happened.
I also think using Tanach as a proof of a claim should be quite weird for academics, as the concensus is that there are multiple genres mixed into stories and such (historical fiction, mythology, poetry, and non fiction). Therefore, it doesn't seem super surprising that they may update their evidence towards the Bible every so often, but it's just hard to find an equilibrium for in which parts you trust the text. I believe this is true for most mythological ancient near eastern texts, so I'm not sure the academics are being inconsistent about this (though I could totally be wrong).