Self-Hating Jews At TAU Claim Camels Were Not Used In Genesis Period

[Binyamin Yisrael]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/camels-in-the-bible-182042100.html

[muman613]

I doubt that this is true. I find scientists are usually quick to assume things which are not true, and only over time is it shown that they have things totally backwards.

This is one reason I find carbon dating to be questionable.

[muman613]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel#Domestication
Most camels surviving today are domesticated.[35][61] Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans from Asia into North America, 12,000 to 10,000 years ago.[2][60] The only wild camels left are the Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert.[9]

Like the horse, before their extinction in their native land, camels spread across the Bering land bridge, moving the opposite direction from the Asian immigration to America, to survive in the Old World and eventually be domesticated and spread globally by humans.

Dromedaries may have first been domesticated by humans in Somalia and southern Arabia, around 3,000 BC, the Bactrian in central Asia around 2,500 BC,[14][62][63][64] as at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran.[65]

In accord with patriarchal traditions, cylinder seals from Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia showed riders seated upon camels.[66][67]

It is possible that Abraham had camels according to this history.... Abraham was born in 1948 (which is 3826 years ago)... This (according to my imperfect calculation) would place it about 1812BC... If the camel was domesticated around 3000BC then the camel had been around for 1188 years...

[edu]

http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2014/02/top-israeli-archaeologists-ignore-evidence-validating-the-bibles-narrative-on-camels-caught-lying-about-proof-2892864.html
offers 2 reasons why those self hating Jews are wrong.
Elsewhere I read that there are archaeological documents describing use of camels in the period in which the TAU researchers claim camels were not used.
Unfortunately it will take too much time right now to provide the exact archaeological source, for this rebuttal.

[edu]

http://ohr.edu/2053

The Torah contains a vast amount of historical material. Evidence that the Torah is true must also apply to this material. Since questions have been raised about the factual accuracy of the Bible as an account of ancient history, we ought to discuss that for a bit.

The Bible talks about the lives of the Patriarchs, wars, migrations, famines, marriages, and all kinds of other events in ancient history. How reliable is that record? Here is a popular way to investigate the reliability of the Bible. The Bible is what is in question and therefore we should not assume that it is true. Now, if we can find other ancient records, for example, ancient hieroglyphics, Syrian records, or Babylonian records, then we could check the Bible against them. If the Bible agrees with them, that is indication and evidence that the Bible is correct. If the Bible disagrees with them, then that shows that the Bible is incorrect. That is an objective, neutral way of assessing whether the Bible's account of history is correct or incorrect.

Does that strike you as fair? I should hope not because it isn't fair. The mere fact that the Bible would contradict other ancient records doesn't prove that the Bible is wrong. Maybe the other records are wrong! A mere contradiction only shows that somebody is wrong. Why assume that the Bible is wrong? That would just be a hidden prejudice against the Bible. When there is a contradiction between the Bible and other ancient sources, then the question has to be raised: How can we best understand the nature of the contradiction, and which source do we rely upon?

Now, in making that evaluation you must know one fact - all ancient histories were written as propaganda. This is something upon which historians and archaeologists agree. The function of ancient histories was to glorify contemporary powers, and therefore they would not record their own defeats. After all, the scribes were their employees. You see this, for example, in the following type of historical chain of events. You read in the hieroglyphs that Pharaoh X raised a great army and conquered a number of provinces, and his son Pharaoh X Jr. raised even a larger army and conquered more provinces. Then, there is a hundred year gap in the history. What happened during that 100 years? For that you have to go to the Babylonian records. That is when the Babylonians were kicking the stuffing out of the Egyptians. The Egyptians don't record that because that doesn't glorify their empire. They just leave it out.

An example is the question of the Exodus. Why is it that no ancient Egyptian records mention the Exodus? The answer is that the Egyptians never recorded their defeats. Therefore, since the Exodus was a massive defeat, you would not expect them to record it. So, its absence from their records is not evidence against the Exodus.

Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 | Section 4
Now if we are talking about the accuracy of ancient history, the key question is archaeology. Archaeology is supposed to uncover the actual evidence that these events did or did not occur. I am going to give you a brief review of the situation in archaeology with respect to the Biblical narrative. Most of this is referred to in a book called Biblical Personalities in Archaeology by Leah Bronner.

One hundred years ago it was assumed that Biblical history going back roughly to the time of King David and Solomon is more or less accurate. Bertrand Russell wrote in his History of Western Civilization that we can presume that David and Solomon were real kings. But, beyond David and Solomon, there was no evidence for anything whatsoever, and the prevailing view was that it was myth. It was simply stories invented to glorify mythical, that is to say non-existent, ancestors so as to create a great history for the nation. Many nations did that, such as the Greeks, and it was assumed that the Jews did it as well.

One of the ways that you can tell if this myth-making goes on is that the people writing the myth project into the past their own conditions of existence. They didn't know that 500-1000 years before life was very different. They assumed that life was more or less the same as their conditions of life and projected backwards. Then, what we find from archaeology is that the conditions were quite different from what was described in the myth, and we know therefore that it was a myth. For example, they may have projected back weapons that they didn't have, domesticated animals that they didn't have, trade routes that they didn't have, settlements that they didn't have and so on. That is how you determine if it was myth. So there was the same assumption about the Biblical account of history before David and Solomon.

But in the case of the Bible, archaeology has revealed the exact opposite. Archaeology has uncovered a myriad of details, details that the Bible records about the quality of life and the conditions of life of the Patriarchs which turn out to be accurate to the last detail. These details are accurate in ways that are utterly inexplicable if you think that this is a normal process of myth formation.

So, for example, Abraham in all his wanderings is never associated with the Northern part of Israel, only the Southern part of Israel. Now in the period to which Abraham is assigned by the Bible, the Northern part of Israel wasn't settled. Later, when supposedly the myth was being made up, it was settled. If someone were writing it later, and projecting his conditions of existence on the past, there would be no reason for him to discriminate against the Northern part of Israel.

Another example: the names Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Lavan, and Joseph were in common usage in the Patriarchal period and dropped out of usage thereafter. These names appear in archaeological inscriptions from that period and no later period. In the Bible those names are used only in the book of Genesis. Now, somebody five hundred years later is supposed to be making up this myth. How is it that he just happened to get right names for that period of time?

It was custom in that period of time that if a couple was childless, the husband would take a handmaid of the wife as a concubine and have children with her. If the original wife were then to have a child, the child of the handmaid was protected by law against being disinherited. This legal protection did not exist in later centuries. In the Bible, we have Abraham and Sarah doing this. If a handmaid had a child in the manner just described, the law of the time forbade expelling of the child of the handmaid. This explains why, when Sarah told Abraham to throw Ishmael out of the house, the Torah says that it was "Very evil in Abraham's eyes." It was very evil because it went against the local prevailing law. It wasn't forbidden in later centuries, but in that century it was forbidden. If this had been made up five hundred years later and projected onto the past, it would be inexplicable how they could have gotten this right.

An argument that they used that the account depicted in the Bible was a myth was the idea of camels being domesticated. The Patriarchs are described as having used camels for transportation. It was assumed that this was an anachronism. Camels were domesticated later, but of course the later people didn't know that their ancestors didn't have camels, and if they had camels they would of course have pictured their ancestors as having camels. Their great ancestors couldn't be less than they were.

But, it turns out that this was just archaeological ignorance. We have the eighteenth century B.C.E. Canophorin tablets in Northern Syria which list the domesticated animals and in which the camel is specifically mentioned. Another archaeological discovery depicts a camel in a kneeling position. A seal dating back to this period depicts a rider sitting on a camel. So, it turns out to be an accurate report of the details, not a later anachronistic projection into the past.

There are many examples dealing with Joseph. Take for example the price of a slave. Joseph is sold for twenty pieces of silver. That was the accurate price of a slave in Joseph's time, and at no other time. Slaves were cheaper beforehand, and they got increasingly more and more expensive later. Imagine someone five hundred years later putting in that detail. How would he know what the price of slaves were five hundred years earlier? He certainly wouldn't get it right by accident.

You have the same thing regarding sleeping in Egypt on beds. In Palestine at that time they slept on the ground, and in Egypt they slept on beds, and so therefore the Torah mentions explicitly that when Jacob was in Egypt, he died on a bed.

The investiture of Joseph as viceroy in Egypt follows the pattern from that period. He stood before Pharaoh and had to be shaved because the Pharaohs in that period were shaved. He had a collar put around his neck and a ring put on his finger. There are hieroglyphs of that specific procedure, and of riding in a chariot second to the king. All of these details are accurate.

Now, that means that at least the details of life are corroborated by archaeology. So, the normal assumption that this was written later and projected on the past simply doesn't hold up. It is simply not correct.

Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 | Section 4
Now, I will not say that there are no problems. There are some problems. Some of the problems have to be looked at very carefully to understand what kinds of problems they are. For example, the Exodus. This is a textbook case. If the Exodus took place, what kind of archaeological evidence would you expect to find? You are talking about a large number of people leaving Egypt. You would expect to find implements, clothing, vessels, weapons, and these sorts of things scattered all over the desert. What about bones? People die, especially if they were in a desert for forty years. The truth is though, we don't find anything. Nothing as of yet has been found as archaeological evidence of the Exodus.

Is this then evidence against the Torah's account? It depends on what is being tested. Are you testing the Biblical story? If you are testing the Biblical story, you have to test it in its own terms. You have to accept all of it. It will do no good to take one element of the Biblical story, and then graft onto it other non-Biblical hypotheses and then test the conglomerate, because that is a conglomerate that no one believes in.

Now in the case of the Exodus the Torah says explicitly that during the forty year period their clothing didn't wear out (Deut. 8:4). Now, if you are going to look through the desert for scattered clothing, then you are not testing the Bible. The Bible would say that you won't find anything! The Bible says that they are not there. If you are looking for clothes, you are testing the assumption that there was an Exodus as the Bible says together with your naturalistic account of the evidence which the Bible denies. Nobody believes that! To test the Biblical story you have to take it in all its own details.

Similarly with the bones. The Bible gives no details of how the people died. But Jewish tradition (Midrash) records the following. Each year on the ninth of Av they dug a mass grave, everybody laid down in the grave, and in the morning those who survived got up, and the rest that were dead were covered up and that was their grave. They didn't die from time to time, everyday more or less scattered all over the desert.

Furthermore, the Sinai desert is a big place and sands shift over time. We are talking about sands shifting over a period of three thousand years. Where exactly would you dig? How deep should you dig? How many holes should you put down to have a chance of finding anything? It is not even thirty-nine burial places because in certain places they stayed for many years. There are maybe twenty burial places in the entire Sinai desert. How many holes do you need to put down to have a reasonable probability of finding twenty burial places, each burial place being something like three square blocks? So, the fact that they haven't found the kind of evidence they are looking for is no proof whatsoever. It is not even evidence against the idea of an Exodus.


Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 | Section 4
Kathleen Kenyan excavated Jericho. She says the best date we have for the entry of the Jewish people into the land of Israel is 1400 B.C.E. She says that there is a hundred and fifty year gap between the destruction of Jericho and the entry of the Jewish people into the land. Therefore she concludes that the Jews couldn't have been the ones responsible for destroying Jericho. They just attributed it their ancestors in order to glorify them.

Now how does she arrive at her conclusion that Jericho was destroyed no later than 1550 B.C.E.? [For the details of what follows, see Biblical Archeological Review, March/April 1990 pp. 44-56.] She based her argument on the absence of imported Cypriot pottery. A certain style of pottery from Cyprus was imported into the area from 1550 to 1400 B.C.E., and she found none of it at Jericho. Therefore she concluded that Jericho must have been destroyed earlier than 1550 B.C.E.

But this conclusion is very weak. It can be attacked in at least four different ways.

(1) Method: conclusions based on what you don't find are always weak (see below).

(2) She herself says that Jericho was not on any of the major trade routes - is that where you expect to find imported pottery?

(3) She sank two shafts into what she herself describes as the poor section of the city. Is that where you expect to find imported pottery?

(4) She totally ignored the dating of local pottery which had been found in earlier excavations which do come from dates later than 1550 B.C.E.

Now bear in mind that she was knighted by the British government for her contributions to archeology! I won't speculate what leads to this kind of sloppy argumentation. But surely we don't have to give up our views in the face of criticism like this!

What has happened in Biblical archaeology in the last one hundred years is that it started with a completely negative mind set: none of the Biblical narrative happened, it was all made up. Little by little, piece by piece, that mind set has been refuted in a myriad of details. That doesn't mean they are giving up entirely, they are still holding on to some of the things which they feel haven't yet been established. But this should give us two consequences. One: the trend is gradual verification. There is gradual archaeological corroboration of the Torah's account of history. Two: it should give us some insight into their mental set. They started off with a complete negative, and they are grudgingly admitting piece by piece that some parts have been verified. That means to say that they are imposing an unreasonable standard of proof for the Bible.

Archaeology can sometimes establish a positive. If you find something such as a city that was burnt, pillaged, or destroyed, you could assume that there was some sort of military action. It is very difficult for archaeology to establish a negative - for archaeology to establish that something didn't happen. In order for that, you need to know that if it happened I ought to find it here in such and such a place. That is a very tricky judgment. Even if it happened, how do you know you ought to have found it here? Maybe you will find it someplace else. Maybe this isn't the place that you thought it was. There are some cities that have gone through three or four identifications. Remember: they assumed that there were no domesticated camels because they didn't happen to find that cylindrical seal, or that particular hieroglyph. Then they found it and discovered that there were domesticated animals.

So beware of archaeology when it claims to find a negative. To establish that a war didn't take place or that a settlement wasn't there, or that so and so wasn't the king is very difficult. When archaeology claims to establish a positive, then it is more credible. Of course, even then it requires interpretation of what was found, and that is not completely reliable. In any event, I think we are in a position to say that archaeology is no longer the great problem it once was. Archaeology is still in progress. New insights and new deductions are still being drawn and there is a lot yet to be learned from it. New evidence in archaeology is providing gradual (though at present incomplete) verification of the Torah's description of history.10

I will end this chapter with one little insight that is due to William Albright which I think is fascinating for a general picture of ancient history. Albright has a proof that there was an influence of the Jews on the Greeks. The names of the Hebrew letters are words in Hebrew. Aleph, Bet, Gimmel, Dalet and so on all have meanings in the Hebrew. The names of the letters in Greek are obviously related to the names of the letters in Hebrew: alpha, beta, gamma, delta and so on. But, those sounds in Greek have no meaning in Greek. Alpha and Beta are not a Greek words. Where did they get those names for their letters? Albright says, and this has been accepted by the historical archaeological community, they got them from the Jews. Perhaps indirectly the Philistines took them to Greece and gave the letters to them, but it ultimately comes from the Jews.

Now if the very names of the letters of the Greek alphabet came from us, what else came? We know that there was some influence and that they took something from us. The names of the letters in your alphabet are pretty fundamental. Who knows whatever else they could have taken? Instead of thinking that the Greeks may have influenced Judaism, there a new sector of research investigating ways in which the Jews influenced the Greeks!

[edu]

The Bones, Fossils, and Dating Methods of Evolution
 
Posted: Friday, February 24, 2006

by Josh Greenberger


What methods are used by evolutionists to date an archeological find? And do these methods actually support evolution?

Radiocarbon dating is a commonly used method to determine the age of archaeological finds. The process, sometimes referred to as "radiocarbon reading," involves measuring carbon decay.

Radiocarbon dating is basically this: a radioactive isotope of carbon, C-14, is formed in the atmosphere by cosmic rays. As a result, all living organisms absorb an equilibrium concentration of radioactive carbon. When organisms die, C-14 decays and is not replaced. Since we know the concentration of radioactive carbon the organism had when it was alive, and we also know that it takes about 5,600 years for half of that C-14 to decay, and another 5,600 years for half of what's left to decay, and so on, by measuring the remaining concentration of radiocarbon we can tell how long ago an organism died.


 One obvious flaw in this technique is that we don't really know the level of radiocarbon concentration acquired by an organism which lived before such recorded history. Scientists make a bold assumption that the atmospheric concentration of the radioactive material -- carbon or any other element -- being measured has not changed since the organism's death. In addition, scientists make the assumption that the element's rate of decay has not changed since that time. Are these valid assumptions?

After everything scientists have told us, how can they make such assumptions? On one hand, we're being told that the universe has undergone drastic changes since its formation. One moment before the big bang, the universe was nothing like one moment after the big bang. Gas clouds in space have condensed and turned into stars and planets. Moons have formed around some planets. Some planets have undergone evolutionary changes even after formation. Some stars have collapsed into neutron stars, others into black holes. Our universe has seen more changes in those past alleged ten billion years than the fitting room of a busy tailor.

Now, on the other hand, we're being told, in effect, "Sure everything changed, but not radioactive bombardment and its rate of decay -- they have remained at the same level for billions of years." It's almost as if nature knew that some day archaeologists would have to find fossils which appear to be billions of years old to stay in business.

How does one explain the notion that everything in the universe has undergone drastic changes for billions of years except earth's radioactive bombardment levels and rate of decay, which happen to be crucial and integral parts of any attempt to substantiate evolution? "Nature" owed Charles Darwin a favor?

PROVEN TO FLUCTUATE

The fact is, radiocarbon concentrations have been proven to fluctuate. One of the oldest known living things on earth today is Methuselah, a bristlecone pine tree in California estimated to be about 4,600 years old. Another bristlecone pine believed to be older than Methuselah was cut down for scientific research. Comparing radiocarbon readings with the natural time clock of the tree's year by year rings, showed the radiocarbon dating system to be inaccurate. This inaccuracy showed up in a time period which, by astronomical standards, was only yesterday. Simply extrapolating this known range of inaccuracy over billions of years will show radiocarbon reading to be far less reliable than what scientists would like to believe. Then, taking into consideration that radiocarbon inconsistencies have shown up in such a relatively short period of time, who's to say that the rate of today's radioactive bombardment is not totally out of whack with what it was billions, millions, or even thousands of years ago.

Consequently, a fossil which an archeologist finds to be billions of years old by radioactive dating may in fact be no more than several thousand years old. What's more, an organism could conceivably seem to be, by today's assumptions of yesteryear's radioactive bombardment levels and rate of decay, thousands or even millions of years old only days or months after its death.

ANOTHER DATING SYSTEM

There is another scientific dating system besides the radioactive method. This one analyzes the structural changes in a body's amino acids after death. The same human fossils were analyzed using this method and also using the radioactive method. The two dating systems showed discrepancies between 39,000 and 59,000 years. The proponents of each of the two dating methods argued that the other one was wrong. Obviously, one of these "scientific" methods must be wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt. And the other one? The other one doesn't exactly sound right beyond a reasonable doubt.

So, to find out how long ago an organism died, you might be better off using an old and far more reliable dating method -- a seance in which you conjure up an organism's spirit and simply request the precise date of demise. This may not sound terribly scientific, but you meet some very interesting (living) people at seances.

[edu]

http://www.ridgenet.net/~do_while/sage/v10i10f.htm
Still another web site refuting carbon14 dating

[Kahane-Was-Right BT]

I doubt that this is true. I find scientists are usually quick to assume things which are not true, and only over time is it shown that they have things totally backwards.

This is one reason I find carbon dating to be questionable.

Absurd comment.   "scientists?"  That's a very vague, general term that includes possibly hundreds of different fields.  In this case we are talking about archaeologists, and findings in that field moreso than many others, are clearly open to interpretation.    In particular, there is an obvious logical fallacy in drawing their conclusion about camels - Just because the earliest find they have SO FAR is dating back to this particular time period, does not mean there are not earlier camel remains which they haven't found yet.   Some new discovery could come along and find camel remains in the region from centuries earlier.   Absence of evidence, especially with regard to sparse archaeological findings, is not evidence of absence.    That does not require the denial of basic chemistry in disputing carbon dating.   It just requires a brain.

More than that, some of their statements reflect their biases.  Not shown in this article, but they do find earlier dated camel remains but insist these were not domesticated or not yet capable of heavy lifting.    So they presume to know precisely which camels Avraham and the egyptians used and that this type is not what is described in the Bible?     This is where archaeologists have exited their own field in drawing conclusions about their work - always a red flag!

The science behind carbon dating is not "questionable" except to someone who dogmatically denies its conclusions. 

[edu]

Radio-carbon dating is not reliable. For example, short-lived plant material - seeds, baskets, textiles, plant stems and fruit were found in the tombs of the ancient Pharaohs and some of the samples, for the same Pharaoh differed by hundreds or even thousands of years from the radio-carbon dates received from other objects in the same tomb. (See http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/06/17/4523458-how-old-is-that-mummy-anyway ). Of course, the experts including the one in the article I cited, try to explain away the many holes in their theory by contending, those samples were contaminated, or subject to special conditions.
But the fact remains, if it is proven beyond a doubt that sometimes the method is wrong, you can not really prove anything about dates from this method.