Early Civilizations and Bible Chronology

by xelder 109 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Balaamsass

  Well I wasn't there..so I don't know, what I don't know, but this is all facinating.

  I have been watching National Geographic and History channel programs on ancient underwater cities. I am amazed at the number of very advanced cities under 100-200 feet of seawater around the world. Climatologists doing Ice core samples in the artic are helping date some of this stuff...very old from before the last ice age ended and water levels raised. (If my home in downtown LA sunk 200 ft below the sea..I would explain it to the grand kids as "a great flood", of course the story might have gotten exagerated over time.) However the Dates are WAY older than Watchtower claims no matter whose system you use.

  I can't remember the shopping list for a few hours...I can't imagine a verbal history being accurate after thousands of years.

  sizemiks link was one of the very old cities spoken about..not underwater of course. Also interesting what they found under the English channel. Handmade axes...something I would have brought along with me if I was leaving town.

  Any recommendations on a good CURRENT read on ancient cultures?
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  mP

  @Larsinger

  There is no proof Arkenaten was the pharoah of the Bible. At no stage does Moses give us the pharoahs name. How does a perfect God not know the name of the pharoah within the exodus story ?
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  Leolaia

  Your final "point" is irrelevant, because they don't use dendrochronology to confirm building dates, they use it to cross-referrence C-14 samples of the wood itself.

  And that's the beauty of modern dating techniques....there are often multiple independent methods of determining a chronology, which can be used to reduce the margin of error. Thus we know that there were two eruptions of Iceland's Hekla volcano around 2310 BC (Hekla-4) and 1159 BC (Hekla-3), and a third eruption of an unidentified volcano (possibly Santorini) in 1628 BC. For example, the tree-ring sequences from bogs in three different localities (Ireland, England, and Germany) point to the same date for the eruption:

  

  This has been supplemented by other tree-ring sequences elsewhere in the world. The upper timber line in California experienced unusual frost damage in 1627 BC (due to lowered temperatures likely due to volcanic ash), and an Anatolian tree-ring sequence fixed by radiocarbon dating finds major growth anomalies in 1628 BC and 1159 BC. An olive branch on Santorini buried in ash from the Santorini eruption has been radiocarbon dated to between 1627 and 1600 BC. The Dye-3 Greenland ice core shows that a volcanic event occurred around 1620 ± 20 years, and the GISP2 cores have an acidity peak at 1623 ± 36 BC. So multiple dating techniques converge on the same range of dates.

  On the convergence between ice core dating and dendrochronology:

  "For the oaks crossing the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries BC the question was posed: what percentage of trees put on their narrowest rings in each decade and how many sites were involved? This approach showed that the decade of the 1620s -- with eight trees from four sites showing narrowest rings -- was fairly easily picked out from those two centuries (if the percentage of trees with the narrowest rings was multiplied by the number of sites then the 1620s 'scored' some 120 'units'). The next thing was to check through a lot more decades and see how common such scores were. The first major test was to look at all the decades in the second millennium BC. The high scores were the 1940s BC, the 1840s, and the 1140s. This immediately showed that scores as high as that in the 1620s were rare. However the really interesting point was the high score in the 1140s BC. The decade of the 1150s also had a high score. Here was an 'event' which was possibly more impressive than that in the 1620s. A quick search of the dates listed by Hammer et al. showed that the 1150s/1150s fell within the error limits of their 1120 ± 50 BC acidity peak -- one which they attributed to an eruption of the Icelandic volcano Hekla. Clearly it was essential to search the rest of the record. The result was astonishing. In the whole of the prehistoric Irish record -- from 95 to 5200 BC -- there were only three decades with scores higher than the 1620s. These were the 4370s BC, the 3190s BC, and the 1140s BC. As noted above, Hammer et al. had cited [ice core data for] major volcanic eruptions at 4400 ± 100 BC, 3159 ± 90 BC and 1120 ± 50 BC. The procedure might be simple, but it appeared to produce the answer straightaway. What were the chances, I asked, of someone, looking for support for a volcanic eruption postulated by a tree-ring worker, finding a series of dates which coincided with the dates of volcanic eruptions postulated independently by ice-core workers? The implication had to be that the Irish trees were recording the climatic downturns associated with the dust-veils which were recorded as significant acid layers in the Greenland ice-cap" (M. Baillie, A Slice Through Time: Dendrochronology and Precision Dating, 1995, p. 77).
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  ninja_matty69

  @iwanttobelieve

  Don't let anyone knock you - you are actually very good at cutting and pasting. well done.

  With regards your own thoughts thank you for corroborating what i have said. One must have a great deal of faith to beleive these tree men with pre-conceived notions of what they believe have accurately compared hundreds of different trees with thousands of lines. I think the margin of error coupled with scientific bias is a problem. Its this same problem that leads these people to dream up the histories.
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  jgnat

  I want to believe is more believable. Ninja, I am sure there are tree women, too.
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  I Want to Believe

  ninja_matty69: "One must have a great deal of faith to beleive these tree men with pre-conceived notions of what they believe have accurately compared hundreds of different trees with thousands of lines."

  Oh, I think I see the problem; you have a pre-conceived notion that scientists are lazy and biased. Such a pessimist

  And you also seem to think hundreds and thousands are big, daunting numbers. They're not.
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  Terry

  Having noted that, I've found an aggressive avoidance of linking the Exodus to Akhenaten, the pharaoh who became a monotheist who we can now confirm appeared at the time of the Exodus, thus linking his monotheism to the 10 plagues. So lying archaeologists and the academic world is always going to be a problem with chronology, because so many are anti-Biblicists. That is, when something does show up in archaeology to agree with the Bible you have aggressive avoidance or dismissal of that evidence.

  Conspiracy theories are a red flag, to me, that critical thinking has been abandoned altogether.

  The bible doesn't really exist as a document to prove anything. It has no provenance and no original manuscripts, no autograph uncorrupt exemplars and there were no NUMBERS in the original languages (only letters doing double-duty as quantity equivalencies). Gematria arose as a result and numerology chased many a good mind down ratholes of meaningless eisogesis.

  Try for just five minutes sitting quietly in a chair and asking yourself this question: "What if I have it backwards? What if the bible inerrantists are the problem?"
• 

  ninja_matty69

  "I want to believe is more believable. Ninja, I am sure there are tree women, too. "

  Well i'm sure if nothing else his position is more palatable.

  "Oh, I think I see the problem; you have a pre-conceived notion that scientists are lazy and biased. Such a pessimist". Don't you believe in scientific bias? Unbelieavble - are you out of third grade yet? Google Piltdown man. Dawkins herring gull. Schons Physics fraud. Global warming controversy. Fossil Ida Extraordinary Find is ‘Missing Link’ in Human Evolution . Darwins ostrich. Darwins slow/gradual evolution. Each of these has a common denominator. They twisted facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts.

  Now perhaps some of the readers didn't see through the flaws in your message (i assumed they would). I guess when one quotes from wiki it looks really good to the gullable.

  I will spell it out...

  "Firstly multiple tree rings can occur in wet years. So now you've managed to match your super thin lines with dozens of other trees and your sure mind that you have not made a mistake (after all one half a milimeter ring is totally different from another half a milimeter ring) have you factored this in?"

  And you said "Yes, they do factor that in."

  The rings look the same. How do they factor in whether 5000 years is really 6 rings in every 5 years as oppose to 6 rings every 6 years? This can put you out by 1000 years. What if its two rings every year?. Take your time don't make the obvious mistake when you answer....
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  konceptual99

  The question for me on this as someone currently examining my faith and reasons for remaining an active Witness is what is the logical conclusion of accepting any other position than that presented by the society on Adam and Eve and by extension the whole creation account.

  The reality is that if the account is in anyway wrong or not literal then the whole framework of the society's doctrine collapses. Personally, I am finding it increasingly hard to rest my faith in something that is countered by so much contemporary science. Of course science is not flawless and it would be foolish to simply accept everything that is said in the name of science but surely it is dogmatic ignorance to simply dismiss every facet of a scientific position simply because it doesn't support the Bible 100%.

  It's true many scientists are atheist or agnostic and not out to prove the Bible's position but that does not mean they are out to disprove it either. Generally they are just looking for deepening mankinds' understanding of what is around us, furthering our knowledge.

  I for one wish the society would be far more open with seeking to harmonise established scientific theories (and I mean theory rather than hypothosis) with the Bible instead of ignoring the points raised and just appealing to blind faith.
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  I Want to Believe

  ninja_matty69: "How do they factor in whether 5000 years is really 6 rings in every 5 years as oppose to 6 rings every 6 years? This can put you out by 1000 years. What if its two rings every year?."

  Well, I'm sure there's a way (I'm not a dendrochronologist so I don't want to speak out of turn, but they do have very sophisticated equipment and techniques; it is a science, after all, not a backyard hobby as you seem to think) but here's how they know that they didn't miss that many:

  C-14 dating independantly comes to the same date range on that wood. So if you wonder how many double-ring years might have been missed, the C-14 will give you that margin of error.