Category Archives: News

Another Reason Why Biblical Studies and Archaeology Should Not Be Done Via the Mainstream Popular Media

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Ah, the paleobabbling media now gives us proof that it is also clueless with respect to intellectual discourse. Mark Goodacre reports that Nicole Austin, the Associate Producer on The Resurrection Tomb Mystery documentary (The Jesus Discovery in Canada) has accused him of slander.

So, let me see if I understand the power of Ms. Austin’s contention correctly. Mark and other bloggers have expressed deep doubts and reservations about the claims made in this “documentary,” and have made those reservations public, along with their reasons. And … well … I guess that’s all.

How dare they!

Honestly, I didn’t realize that freedom of speech had been outlawed in Canada, or that expressing one’s opinion about an academic matter was slander. Disagreement means slander?  Really?  Hmmmm. Can we disagree with Ms. Austin about any matter and not be a slanderer?  Like her grasp of what academics do?  Maybe the cure (besides requiring those who disagree to just plug their pie-holes) is that Ms. Austin gets to say things to the public and those who disagree don’t. We can just talk amongst ourselves (with the telescreens off, of course). That will work (in a world where TV channels are all run by a ministry of propaganda anyway).

The fact that some journalists seem unaware that disagreement is a significant part of academic discourse is just another reason why they should not be the starting point for this sort of material. Granted, that would mean less publicity and cash for those initiating the process, or for Ms. Austin’s production company. It may result in fewer DVD sales down the road. What a shame. But things will pick up when this all happens again next Easter season.

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New Archaeo-Journalist PaleoBabble on the Mosaic Law

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I think I’ll go out on a limb and label this journalistic paleobabble.  The press release breathlessly proclaims:

Archaeologists working in Turkey have unearthed an Assyrian tablet dating to around 670 BCE that “could have served as a model for the biblical description of God’s covenant with the Israelites.” What this fascinating discovery suggests, of course, is that the Bible tale of a divine pact does not represent “history” or a “factual” event, but is instead a fictional rewrite, borrowing or plagiarism of this older Assyrian treaty.

Wow.  An Assyrian tablet from the 7th century BC that could have served as a structural model for the biblical law covenant? Really?  Ooh, I’m getting goosebumps.

Folks, there’s already been a pile of comparative literary-critical work done in this area with many other ancient Near Eastern covenants recovered from cuneiform tablets (Akkadian, Hittite).  Here’s a sample.  There are whole books written on this subject.

The fact is that biblical covenants follow known covenant patterns precisely because the biblical writers weren’t morons. Think of this sort of genre criticism/comparison this way.  If you hired a lawyer who wrote up a legal brief, presented it to the court, and then the judge said, after reading it, “Is your lawyer a doofus? Doesn’t he know how these things are written?” you’d probably better fire him/her.  In other words, there was a *proper* way in literary terms to write a covenant.  Trained scribes know that sort of thing. And that doesn’t speak to time of origin, either. It is well known that earlier documents of the Hebrew Bible were edited and put into final form during the Babylonian exile.  That means that trained scribes fashioned the final form with literary skill. Larry, Moe, and Curly weren’t the ones doing it. They weren’t numbskulls who asked “hey, now that we decided to write a covenant, what should we put in it? I sure wish we had an Assyrian tablet to copy from.”  They were trained in proper form, knew what they wanted to write about their covenant with their god, and did so.

It wasn’t rocket science, and this discovery covers old ground. Just more sensationalistic paleobabble from where I sit.

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Akhenaten’s Mummy Identified via DNA Testing?

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I just wanted to post an update on what has emerged as a controversy regarding the identification of Akhenaten’s mummy (or not). The Egyptology News blog has been keeping up with the discussion pretty closely. Yesterday a post appeared in favor of confirmation that the mummy of KV55 is indeed Akhenaten. It’s cranial features certainly would be in concert with that (below).

The identification was put forth as a result of new DNA testing on several mummies published a month ago in the Journal of the American Medical Society (JAMA).

However, the KV64 blog has a pretty technical summary on why the KV55 mummy is “probably not” Akhenaten, and argues that the DNA evidence is on *that* side of the debate. Here are the summary’s conclusions:

Combining the DNA data with known historical facts shows that Akhenaten is probably not the KV55 mummy.

It is tempting to consider the KV55 mummy (Tutankhamun’s father) alternatively as Smenkhare although this can be no more than conjecture on the basis of the available data.

There is a very strong probability of a second line of descent from Yuya and Thuya  to the KV62 foetuses.

This secondary line of descent is consistent with the historical Nefertiti.

There is a strong probability of second line of descent from Amenhotep III to the foetuses not via the KV55 mummy.

This second line of descent is consistent with the historical Akhenaten.

It is possible to construct a family tree along these lines which fully fits the STR analysis published in the JAMA paper and which assumes Nefertiti is a granddaughter of Yuya and Thuya.

It is possible, but not essential, to accommodate the Younger Lady and KV21B mummies in this revised family tree as further daughters of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.

Notice that the DNA evidence has received a thorough going-over by qualified interested parties of differing opinions. That’s called peer review. No one is “noticing” any alien DNA. That’s too bad for all those who wanted Akhenaten as an extraterrestrial.

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Evidence for the Biblical Joseph Discovered?

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This just in from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), who translated the news release from Al-Ahram.  The claim is that archeologists have discovered ancient Egyptian coins bearing the name and image of the Biblical Joseph. You can read excerpts of the translation here (also has a link to the article).

I’m not going to call this PaleoBabble just yet, but this paragraph makes it likely:

It was found that the inscriptions of this early period were usually simple, since writing was still in its early stages, and consequently there was difficulty in deciphering the writing on these coins. But the research team [managed to] translate [the writing on the coin] by comparing it to the earliest known hieroglyphic texts… Joseph’s name appears twice on this coin, written in hieroglyphs: once the original name, Joseph, and once his Egyptian name, Saba Sabani, which was given to him by Pharaoh when he became treasurer.

Comments:

1. The biblical Joseph (taking biblical genealogical life spans at face value) would have lived during the Middle Kingdom [ca. 2000-1750 BC) in Egypt (later, in the Hyksos era [ca. 1700-1550], for those who set aside the literal genealogical information). The Egyptian language in *either* period was NOT in its early stages. This is the period of classical Middle Egyptian, which had a copious literary output.

2. Joseph’s Egyptian name was not Saba Sabani, at least according to the biblical record (see Genesis 41:45).

This basically looks like the Muslim equivalent of someone like Ron Wyatt, who came up with archaeological frauds to bolster a literalist, Christian view of the Old Testament. Seems someone wants to do the same for the Quran.  But, there is another distinct possibility: the find is real and the data reported came through a lazy, uninformed journalist and so it sounds inaccurate. We all know that happens with too much frequency. We’ll wait and see.

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Presidential PaleoBabble

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The subject matter may not extend too far back into antiquity in some cases, but historians and scholars of Islam are starting to weigh in on President Obama’s speech in Cairo last week. If you heard it you know that Muslims were credited with a range of accomplishments in an attempt to show that the world owes more to Islam than the desire to subjugate the world. For sure, Islamic culture has indeed made significant contributions, but as Post 2 (below) especially shows, the claims in his speech were exaggerated and erroneous (i.e., he picked bad examples and went overboard in his attempt to kiss up to Islamic wahabists, something previous administrations [notably the Bushes] ought to have avoided as well).

Here are some examples: post1 and post2.

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Replica of Noah’s Ark Completed

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Kind of interesting – a full-scale model of Noah’s ark according to the biblical dimensions (and assuming an 18-inch cubit) built by a guy in the Netherlands.  The link leads to the BBC story, but you can view additional pictures here.

If you are familiar with comparative ancient literature, stories of a great flood (not necessarily global) and the building of a great ship to save human and animal life are found in literature around the world. I take these stories as a sort of “shared collective memory” tradition of some perceptively cataclysmic event, not as PaleoBabble. But there is plenty of Noah’s ark paleobabble, to be sure. One of the more notorious instances is that of Ron Wyatt, who claimed to have discovered the ark (among just about every other interesting biblial artifact). Here’s a link about what one person who bothered to investigate the claims found. Here’s a pretty thorough expose by a creationist organization.

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