Posted on 02/05/2014 5:24:50 PM PST by workerbee
Archaeologists from Israel’s top university have used radiocarbon dating to pinpoint the arrival of domestic camels in the Middle East -- and they say the science directly contradicts the Bible’s version of events.
Camels are mentioned as pack animals in the biblical stories of Abraham, Joseph and Jacob, Old Testament stories that historians peg to between 2000 and 1500 BC. But Erez Ben-Yosef and Lidar Sapir-Hen of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures say camels weren’t domesticated in Israel until centuries later, more like 900 BC.
“In addition to challenging the Bible's historicity, this anachronism is direct proof that the text was compiled well after the events it describes,” reads a press release announcing the research.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Who knows? More than likely, they are trying to discredit the bible, but I heard someone say, the Bible is an anvil that has worn out many a hammer. Considering all the attempts to wipe it out, the fact that we even have a Bible today, is quite remarkable.
My father called it a w-rope. It was tied to the legs over the back and was strung threw the yoke and collar to the harness then around the cheeks. If the horse lowered the head to kick the rope would pull the feet out from underneath, and if kicked only one leg it pull another leg out from underneath it. Evidently they could walk though and after a couple days the horse would be domestic.
Not really viz-
Further support for early camels in Egypt is cited by Mohamed El-Nadi, founder of the Egyptian web site el-shella.com, his source appears to be BGA (the Dutch foundation and journal for Bible, History and Archaeology, again.7
“A tomb that was dated to the first dynasty (about 3000 B.C.) and opened in 1905 contained a lime-stone vase that had the shape of a lying dromedary camel. The vase depicts a dromedary that carries a burden. H.S. Smith of London University pointed out that pictures of camels existed in Egypt already in the pre-dynastic period (before 3000 B.C.).
An earthenware head of a camel from times previous to the first dynasty was found in Maadi near Cairo in 1930. A rock carving of similar age depicting a dromedary and other animals was found in Wadi Natash el-Raiyan, in the eastern desert, also around 1930.
In a gypsum quarry, under half a meter of gypsum powder, a string made of camel’s hair was found. Pottery from the same layer was dated to the third or early fourth dynasty (about 2640-2500 B.C.). The string had presumably been used by a miner to keep his clothing together. This too is just a piece of evidence that camels were known in Egypt even in those days. At the beginning of the 20th century a statuette of a dromedary carrying two water jars was found in a tomb at Rifeh. The tomb reigned in the 13th century B.C., and was not used again in later times. The water jars were of the type used during that century. A glaze picture of a dromedary with water jars found in Benha dating as early as 1300 B.C..”
There is a picture of a camel, with a rider on its back, found in the ruins of Tall Halaf in Iraq, which dates back to between 3000 and 2900 B.C..
In 1912, near Aswan, in Egypt, a rock painting was discovered which showed a man pulling along a camel on a rope, plus seven hieroglyphic characters. On account of the writing Möller dated the inscription to the period of the sixth dynasty (2320-2150 B.C.), and Schweinfurth concurred. However, Croft disagrees regarding the figures as graffiti from the 19th dynasty (1300 B.C.).
http://www.studylight.org/ls/ds/index.cgi?a=518
“Wait, are they saying a camel can’t get through the eye of a needle?”
The reference stems from laden pack camels not being able to enter through a city’s gates without first unloading, passing thru, then reloading on the other side. It does beg the question, why weren’t the architects aware of the need to build a gate large enough and high enough to accomodate a fully-laden camel? Were there no camels around at the time the gates were built?
Done on purpose as a security measure.
I think that, on balance, there is more evidence to support the Bible than to disprove it. It’s also important to remember that the purpose of the Bible is not to describe the complete history of the world. The Bible is to recount man’s relationship with God (the One True God, not Allah).
Calling it “proof” was such a stretch that I laughed out loud as I read it.
Why weren’t the gates tall and wide enough for a camel to walk through ...
I heard that the “eye of the needle” could be the people-sized door in the full-sized city gate. A camel could get through it but only if it was unpacked and made to crawl through on its knees.
City gates were locked at night, so if you got there late you had to do all this with your camels.
Josephus, the first-century A.D. Jewish historian, records the words of Manetho who wrote several books on the history of Egypt:
There was a king of ours, whose name was Timaus. Under him it came to pass, I know not how, that God was AVERSE to us, and there came, after a surprising manner, men of ignoble birth OUT OF THE EASTERN PARTS, and had boldness enough to make an expedition into our country, and WITH EASE subdued it by force, yet WITHOUT HAZARDING A BATTLE WITH THEM. So when they had gotten those that governed us under their power, they afterwards burnt down our cities, and demolished the temples of the gods, and used all the inhabitants after a most barbarous manner: nay, some they slew, and led their children and their wives into slavery. At length they made one of themselves king, whose name was SALATlS....and as he found in the Saite Nomos [Seth-roite] a city very proper for his purpose, and which lay upon the Bubastic channel [of the Nile], but with regard to a certain theologic notion was called AVARIS [RAMESSES], this he REBUILT, and made very strong by the walls he built about it, and by a most numerous garrison of two hundred and forty thousand armed men whom he put into it to keep it....THIS WHOLE NATION WAS STYLED HYCSOS, that is, SHEPHERD-KINGS....BUT SOME SAY THAT THESE PEOPLE [THE HYKSOS] WERE ARABIANS....” These people, whom we have before named kings, and called shepherds also, and their descendants,” as he [Manetho] says, “kept possession of Egypt 511 YEARS.” — Josephus, Against Apion, bk. 1, sec. 14. f.
An ancient tradition, which has been preserved by several Arabian historians of the Middle Ages, further proves the ARAB origin of Manetho’s hated Hyksos kings. This tradition “tells us of a certain Sheddad (the name means ‘a mighty man’), the son of Ad, who made an IRRUPTION INTO EGYPT, conquered the country, and extended his victorious campaign AS FAR AS THE STRAIGHTS OF GILBRALTA. He and his descendants, the FOUNDERS OF THE AMALEKITE DYNASTY, are said to have maintained themselves more than two hundred years in Lower Egypt, where they made the town of AVARIS their royal residence.” (A History of Egypt Under the Pharaohs, by Henry Brugsch Bey. Vol. I. John Murray, London. 1881, p. 266.)
~~~~~~~~~~~
THEY WERE ARABS, WHO CONQUERED A WEAKENED EGYPT AT THE TIME OF THE EXODUS AND THEY BROUGHT THEIR CAMELS WITH THEM.
The accuracy of carbon-14 dating relies on faulty assumptions, and is subject to human bias. At best, radiocarbon dating is only accurate for the past few thousand years.
Science Falsely So Called strikes again.
I found a 1984 penny in a parking lot that was not built until 1998.
It is absolute, incontrovertible proof of time travel, teleportation, alternate universes and likely counterfeiting.
Why are they so obsessed with camels in Israel. Abraham wasn’t from Israel, he was from UR (Iraq) and maybe he brought his camels with him.
Camel meat from young camels was sold in suqs back in the 70’s when I lived in the ME.
Tastes like beef when the camel is young. Nothing weird or smelly about it.
“In addition to challenging the Bible’s historicity, this anachronism is direct proof that the text was compiled well after the events it describes,” reads a press release announcing the research.
So this is what amounts to “science” nowadays? Trying to poke holes in the Bible and making press releases about it?
Yet we are also supposed to believe they are unbiased and have no agenda.
IIrc, the Eye of the Needle was a particular gate, not just any ol’ gate.
The Eye was the “night gate” and made small enough that only one (or two men, side by side, not sure) man at a time, possibly towing a donkey, could get through.
To get camels through if, say, a caravan arrived after the main gates closed for the night and wanted to get themselves and their goods into the city anyway, camels not only had to be unloaded, but put into a kneeling/sitting position and then dragged from the front and pushed from the rear to get them through.
It was a whole different type needle than the ones that angles dance upon the heads of.
It is my understanding there were two types of gates...main gates for commerce and built into one of the main gates was a smaller man size gate. Kinda like the doors used on old fire station doors. Camels could not enter through the man size gate.
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