scholar pretendus cum mentula flaccidus said:
: Thiele's claim that Ptolemy was an historian is inconsistent with Thiele's comment that the Canon was prepared primarily for astronomical purposes not historical purposes.
Neil, you're a friggin' idiot. Now you've switched lanes yet again, and are arguing what Thiele's position ought to have been rather than dealing with what it actually was. Talk about grasping at straws! You keep backtracking and changing your claims -- even going back to ones that have been disproved.
The point we're discussing is not whether Thiele was consistent. The point is whether the Society misrepresented Thiele's stated position. I have proved that it did. You have offered nothing but lame excuses.
Thiele's explicitly stated position was that Ptolemy was an historian, among other things. This statement (and the fact) that Ptolemy published what is properly called the Royal Canon primarily for astronomical purposes rather than historical purposes in no way contradicts Thiele's explicit statement. It simply gives a clearer picture of the primary purpose of the Royal Canon.
Furthermore, the dates given in the Canon are correct, as verified by a great variety of other sources. That proves that Ptolemy's contribution to history, in the form of a king list, was valid.
: How then does Ptolemy declare any historicity
This is a gobble-de-goop phrase. Try to write in standard English, you moron.
: when the Canon omits those kings whose reigns were of little astronomical significance.
Historical information doesn't need to be complete to be called historical information, you moron. Take, for example, the Proclaimers book. It omits a great deal of information about the Society's history, because the Governing Body decided that "the flock" couldn't handle the full truth. That takes nothing away from the information in the book that is actually accurate. Furthermore, to the extent that the authors of the Proclaimers book wrote a history of the Watchtower Society, they can properly be called historians in a narrow sense. Not particularly honest ones, since they misrepresented portions of what they wrote, and they left out critically relevant information -- but they still can be called historians because they wrote a history book that contains a good deal of accurate historical information.
It's similar with Ptolemy's Canon, in terms of completeness. Every date for the kings' reigns is correct, so far as has been determined by many other independent historical sources. The fact that the Canon does not contain a complete list of kings takes nothing away from the historical accuracy of the dates that are set forth.
Once again, it matters not whether Thiele is correct or incorrect about Ptolemy being an historian. The dates in the king list are historically accurate, and the Aid book's attempt to misrepresent Thiele was dishonest.
: For this reason Martin Anstey in his Romance of Bible Chronology, 1913 said of Ptolemy on page 41:" He writes no history. He merely gives a list of names and figures. He is not an historian vouching for the truth of facts of which he has personal knowledge, but the contriver of a scheme filling up gaps in the history he has received, and dating events by means of astronomical computations". So much for Thiele's claim that Ptolemy was an historian.
Fine (but disputable; that's for another thread), but completely irrelevant to our point, which is that the Society misrepresented Thiele's position. If they wanted to dispute his position, that would have been another kettle of fish.
: You did in fact in a previous post on this subject state that Parker & Dubberstein's Babylonian Chronology eliminated the need of Ptolemy's Canon
Once again you show yourself a pathological liar. In your previous post, you claimed the same thing. I showed why you're wrong. Now you're just dumbly repeating the same old lies, as if by repetition they'll stick. I'll repeat what I wrote in my last post:
I never said it did. Why do you always misrepresent things? You are truly a pathological liar.
Nevertheless, it largely eliminated the need for the Canon. P&D used thousands of cuneiform texts to establish hundreds of detailed dates in their chronological tables. In particular, enough information is in those texts to completely establish the lengths of reigns of kings of the Neo-Babylonian period -- which is the period we are interested in. Combined with other ancient sources such as astronomical diaries, stelae, etc., nothing is missing that Ptolemy's Canon mentions. As Carl Jonsson writes (The Gentile Times Reconsidered, 4th ed., p. 99):
Today, historians do not need either Berossus or the Royal [Ptolemy's] Canon in order to fix the length of the Neo-Babylonian period. Its length may be firmly established in many other ways, thanks to the numerous cuneiform documents discovered from this period.
Of course, Jonsson proceeds to list all of this evidence, thus proving his point.
: but I showed in my last post that in fact that the basis of their Chronology was in fact Ptolemy's canon with classical sources.
You showed nothing of the sort. You made a claim. I proceeded to quote Parker & Dubberstein and prove that your claim was false. I repeat what I responded to your selectively misrepresentative quotation:
You left out the rest, you disgusting liar. The very next sentence continues:
Cuneiform chronicles and lists of kings have also been of considerable help in checking and improving on the general framework of chronology. The numerous cuneiform economic texts often furnish an accurate check on the lengths of reigns. Since these texts cover the larger part of the period, from 626 B.C. to the middle of the second century B.C., they are of prime importance. Dates from cuneiform astronomical texts are especially helpful for the chronology of the third and second centuries B.C.
P&D go on to list dozens of other source references, hardly any of which have anything to do with Ptolemy's Canon, but are entirely consistent with it.
How can you be so stupid as to think that I, and other readers, can be so stupid as to miss your lies and sundry misrepresentations?
: The facts are quite clear that the Aid book merely represented Thiele's admission that the Ptolemy was not an historian
Thiele said no such thing, you digusting liar. He said precisely the opposite -- which you admitted at the beginning of your post: "Thiele's claim that Ptolemy was an historian is inconsistent . . ." How can you be so stupid as to make opposite claims in the same post? Are you on dope? Or just a dope?
: and that his canon was not to be regarded as historical.
He never said that either, you disgusting liar.
: If you have a beef about this article in the Aid book then why do not you ask Raymonf Franz about the alleged misrepresentation? Did not Franz claim to be the author of that particulat article on Chronology in the Aid book?
I was wondering when you'd get around to that, and in fact, have been anticipating it. But there are several points to consider:
First, who the author is, is irrelevant to the fact that said author misrepresented Thiele.
Second, the author's motivations for such misrepresentation are irrelevant to the fact of misrepresentation.
Third, you're being inconsistent yet again, because it's obvious what your intent is. You want to cast aspersions on Raymond Franz's overall credibility in writing Crisis of Conscience and In Search of Christian Freedom by saying that if I can prove that he, as author of the Aid book article, was dishonest, then how can he be trusted to have told the truth in those books? You also want to put me in the bind of having to criticize Raymond Franz, which, in your teeny little JW mind, ought to be to me, a notorious apostate, akin to your criticizing the Governing Body. But you're obviously so stupid that you don't realize that your basic claim in this thread, that the author did not misrepresent Thiele, if true, completely derails your intentions. For if that author did not misrepresent Thiele, there would be no point in trying to discredit Franz.
Fourth, it's obvious that you're engaging in yet another attempt to misrepresent something, this time the simple fact that the Watchtower Society claims that its usually anonymous authors are "divinely directed" and that everything the Society publishes has Jehovah's approval as "spiritual food in due season" -- which again completely derails your intentions. You've obviously read Crisis of Conscience -- otherwise you wouldn't be so familiar with such esoterica as the fact that Franz wrote much of the article "Chronology" in the Aid book -- and Franz makes quite clear that, according to the Society itself, the Governing Body gave its stamp of approval to everything in the Aid book. In particular, Karl Adams was directly appointed by what passed for "the Governing Body" in the 1960s to assign Aid book articles to individual writers like Franz and to approve their writing, and to get the approval in particular of Fred Franz and Nathan Knorr -- the only two men of the actual, true "governing body" at that time -- on any subject that he was not entirely sure would meet their approval. In the Proclaimers book, the Society states:
When research was being done under the supervision of the Governing Body in preparation of the reference work Aid to Bible Understanding . . .
So, no matter whether Franz or some other author misrepresented Thiele, it was done "under the supervision of the Governing Body" and with its approval, which approval, they teach as unalterable doctrine, comes from Jehovah himself. So, Neil, you're stupidly trying to argue, in effect, that I contact Franz and actually confirm that the Society's teaching on this is false!
Now, I want to thank you, Neil, for the opportunity to show how someone even as generally honest and intelligent as Raymond Franz can be sucked in by a cult like the Witnesses and, even years later, deceive himself about his intentions while a member of the cult.
Ray Franz devotes a fair number of pages in the various editions of Crisis of Conscience to the role of the Aid book project in various things, including his own views, and in changing the Society's way of governing congregations, from a one-man rule from 1932 through 1972, to rule by a body of elders. He writes that one of his assignments from Karl Adams was to write the article on "Chronology" in the Aid book. Unable to find any secular support whatsover for the Society's tradition, he had to do something to try to knock down the secular evidence. On pages 29-30 of Crisis of Conscience ("Third Edition--Revised and Updated"; 2nd printing, June 2000) Franz writes:
We found absolutely nothing in support of 607 B.C.E. . . Everything pointed to a period twenty years shorter than our published chronology claimed.
Though I found this disquieting, I wanted to believe that our chronology was right in spite of all the contrary evidence, that such evidence was somehow in error. Thus, in preparing the material for the Aid book, much of the time and space was spent in trying to weaken the credibility of the archeological and historical evidence that would make erroneous our 607 B.C.E. date and give a different starting point for our calculations and therefore an ending date different from 1914.
. . . Again, like an attorney faced with evidence he cannot overcome, my effort was to discredit or weaken confidence in the witnesses from ancient times who presented such evidence, the evidence of historical texts relating to the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The arguments I presented were honest ones, but I know that their intent was to uphold a date for which there was no historical support.
So, despite our heightened appreciation of certain principles, the Aid book nonetheless contained many examples of our efforts to be loyal to the Society's teachings. . . Perhaps its tone, its approach, the effort put forth by most of the writers to avoid dogmatism, to acknowledge that there might be more than one way of seeing certain matters, not to make more of something than the evidence honestly allowed -- these things may have been of principal benefit, though in these too we certainly fell short at times, allowing preconceived ideas to control, failing to hold as firmly as we should have to the Scriptures themselves. . .
Clearly, Franz admits that he and the other Aid book writers approached their subjects with the typical bias of Jehovah's Witnesses who, even today, believe that the Society is "divinely directed". I'm sure that readers can find a huge contradiction in Franz's own words here, where on the one hand he claims to have made honest arguments regarding the Watchtower's chronology, yet on the other hand admits to this huge bias when writing those arguments. One cannot have it both ways. A huge bias on the part of cultists (especially ones who believe that their ideas are divinely inspired) almost always results in arguments that range from outright dishonesty, to subtle dishonesty in leaving out critical information or misrepresenting source references.
And, assuming that Ray Franz did write that little piece in the Aid book that misrepresented Thiele's position, despite his claim of makng honest arguments, it's evident that his biases overcame his desire to make honest arguments -- perhaps even to the point of engaging in the massive self-deception that characterizes Jehovah's Witnesses generally, and Watchtower writers in particular.
So, Neil, your bringing up this point -- as with so many others you've brought up -- has backfired on you.
AlanF
