OMG! I have had a lot of these questions too and this is so funny... never made sense to me.. its a scripture the society has never expounded on.....
Feels nice to have a good laugh in the middle of the day! Stay safe!
The camp of Israel and the problem of pooping
by FFGhost 46 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Simon
Zerah the Ethiopian would have wiped the field with him!
Later Zeʹrah the E·thi·oʹpi·an came against them with an army of 1,000,000 men and 300 chariots
You might want to brush up on your real history - Alexanders 35,000 men beat an army estimated to be 1,000,000 in one of the most impressive victories against overwhelming odds in history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaugamela
Of course ancient sources always overestimated the size of armies back in those days, the bible writers were no exception.
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FFGhost
ancient sources always overestimated the size of armies back in those days, the bible writers were no exception.
That's the point of my thread!
Bible writers used huge numbers all the time, and never really cared about accuracy or being taken literally.
But the WTS (and other Biblical fundy groups, to be fair) ties itself into knots by accepting those weird numbers as absolutely factually true, which leads, paradoxically, to a lack of faith in the Bible because anyone with at least 3 functioning brain cells (I modestly include myself in that group) can see that it's a load of codswallop to think it literally happened exactly as written.
If the WTS were to come out and say "obviously, there weren't 3 million Israelites wandering around over a few hundred miles of desert for 40 years - but the writer is trying to convey XYZ message by saying so" then they'd be approaching reasonableness.
But of course if they were to do that, they couldn't claim that all the world's problems were caused because a talking snake persuaded a naked lady to eat a piece of fruit, and their whole house of cards would collapse.
So they prefer to reinforce the absurd notion that the Bible's stories are literal, factual, accurate reports and thus remain in power. Big fish, little pond, etc.
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Rocketman123
Bible writers used huge numbers all the time, and never really cared about accuracy or being taken literally.
Yes there many incidences of over exaggeration in numbers all over the bible, such as the age of notable men Adam, Moses etc. some stated to have lived 900 plus years.
Well we know that didn't happened because at the same time of these supposed occurrences/people other ancient civilizations and their inhabitants existed and they didn't live as long as that.
The ancient Hebrew writers were true bullshitters done so intentionally to create something special and unique toward themselves.
Kind of like the writers of the Watchtower Corporation but these men had literature to proliferate and sell.
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fulltimestudent
Thank U FFGhost for a great analysis.
Considering the contemporary situation in shit-splattered India it's quite appropriate. I read quite fast in order to cover 4 pages of comments, but I don't recall any mention of how anyone with diarrhea would have coped with that instruction.
Once again, as an uncouth and unrepentant unbeliever .I can only say - Aw Shit !!
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Anony Mous
Before the Romans, history wasn’t really written as a factual statement, the Greeks started with that style of history writing.
Ancient history was primarily oral and thus the underlying message was more important than the details. Hence you get epics and mythology, but most of the details are lost to history. What historians do is find the items in the stories that overlap, extract those and then compare with other records which were accurate (such as records on trades, census information etc) to get a roughly factual statement.
The problem is the Bible, until the New Testament has no archaeological evidence, the Jewish religion and Jews as an identity only proliferated about 1000 years before the Christians, so anything older is taken from prior tribes and civilizations and other religions (King David and the 12 tribes) and worked into a new jacket of a unifying monotheism. There is a line of truth in it (eg there were probably more than 12 tribes in the area and the “10 tribes” were unified from a selection of those but it is not factual history which you can take at face value, modern day you would call it alternative history or “based on a true story”.
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Overrated
No one had common sense about taking a crap? And What ? No T paper?
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smiddy3
Maybe eating Manna doesn`t turn into shit , just saying.
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HowTheBibleWasCreated
Someone has been reading the atheists book of bible stories by an ex-witness
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HowTheBibleWasCreated
Anony Mous I'm a biblical minimalist but I disagree. The history meets the bible at 1 Kings not the new testament. There is no reason to doubt a certain king after omri ruled and then died at a set year or that another guy (or girl in one case) overthrew them etc. This last until the Babylonian exile. (Remember I'm not saying all the stories in Kings are true but certain details such as Hezekiah's water tunnel etc are.
As for the New testament the most accurate book is Acts in places it quotes Josephus.