Posted on 07/16/2005 12:22:35 AM PDT by nickcarraway
An encounter with a Bedouin robber in a desert valley has led to what one Israeli archaeologist described as one of the most important biblical finds from the region in half a century.
Professor Chanan Eshel, an archaeologist from Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv, said yesterday that the discovery of two fragments of nearly 2,000-year-old parchment scroll from the Dead Sea area gave hope to biblical and archaeological scholars, frustrated by a dearth of material unearthed in the region in recent years, that the Judean desert could yet yield further artefacts.
"No more scrolls have been found in the Judean desert since 1965. This encourages scholars to believe that if they bother to excavate, survey and climb they will still find things in the Judean desert. The common knowledge has been that there is nothing left to find there," Prof Eshel said. The two small pieces of brown animal skin, inscribed in Hebrew with verses from the Book of Leviticus, are said by Prof Eshel to be from "refugee" caves in Nachal Arugot, a canyon near the Dead Sea, where Jews hid from the Romans in the second century.
The scrolls are being tested by Israel's Antiquities Authority.
Prof Eshel said he was first shown the fragments last year in an abandoned police station near the Dead Sea. A Bedouin had been offered $20,000 (£11,000) on the black market and wanted an evaluation.
You can call me what you wish for as long as you wish if that is what makes you feel good...I was pinged here because I have in interest in archeology. I have commented on the things that seemed important and I have read all the posts.
I was under the impression that this was a free country, and that as a FReeper, I am allowed to join in on conversations I'm interested in. Please, correct me if I'm wrong in that.
I am perfectly capable of forming an opinion when I am given the facts in a situation, but I don't like someone else giving me their opinion of the facts and saying is the truth.
And that's MS. Dude to you, Sir. ;o]
Okay, but where did Moroni's Golden Plates get off to? How come nobody can find them, and Mormons do not look for them any more than O.J. Simpson looks for the real killer?
ROFL!
D'oh! When I said "Dude," I thought, "But what if...." Then I thought, "'Monkey Face'? A woman? Nahhhh."
So, "Dudette" it is.
(Mostly kidding alert in 3... 2... 1....)
So anyway, I should have known you were a woman.
1. You ask questions you don't want answered.
2. When you get answers you don't like, you just ask them again.
3. You later repeat the question, as if no one had already answered it.
4. If anyone complains at your not listening to the answers... well, he's just a bad, bad man!
More seriously, you can do whatever you want until you're banned, if that ever happens. But you're not likely to earn a lot of respect by taking a potshot, then saying "I don't want to talk about it!" and running away.
Oh, as to your earlier remarks about the KJV, I've been reading the Bible in Hebrew and Greek for 30+ years. The areas in which Mormonism and Christianity are galaxies apart are not significantly obscured by any decent English translation.
Dan
Yep, on the basis of Yeshua HaMashiach's (Jesus Christ's) own words:
Do not think that I have come to destroy the Torah or the Prophets. I have not come to destroy but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, Till the heaven and the earth pass away, not one jot or one tittle shall in any way pass from the Torah until all is fulfilled. --Mt. 5:17-18So we see Yeshua promising that the Tanakh, the OT, would not lose so much as a letter before heaven and earth passed away, and later saying that His words would never pass away. Therefore, about the only parts of the NT you might logically claim to have been lost are Acts and the epistles--which from history we know have been preserved with the utmost care! Even if you claimed that some epistle or some part of a Scriptural epistle were lost, you would not lose or change one iota of the meaning of the whole of Scriptures, since God always repeats His lessons over and over again.The heaven and the earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away. --Mt. 24:35
Yeshua was and is God's manifest and visible presence, His sh'khinah, and was therefore in a position to speak with absolute certainty about whether any of His Scriptures would be lost or not. He was and is also God's Living Word, the "action" of God if you will, that created and sustains the universe by His power; the Living Word is certainly in a position to say whether the written Word would be lost.
He said it wasn't and wouldn't be. If you say that it has, then it is the Son of God that you are arguing with, not any of us.
The angels took them back to Heaven.
I'm Catholic, not Mormon, but when the Mormon witnesses come to the door, we get them chairs & non-caffeinated drinks. We're not much on door-knocking ourselves, but when someone comes to the door to witness to US, we figure that it's our responsibility to witness to them. The last pair couldn't get more than a few words in before we redirected the conversation to Catholic theology. They left with a copy of the Catechism, and we haven't seen any since.
"So anyway, I should have known you were a woman."
You make it sound as if being a woman is a bad thing. What would your mother say to that?
"1. You ask questions you don't want answered"
I ask questions because I DO want answers, but I prefer answers that are not "stock"...I've heard all the arguments you have made here today, and I was hoping for something a little more original.
"2. When you get answers you don't like, you just ask them again."
If I ask a question a second time, it's because the first answer was not adequate to satisfy my curiosity.
"3. You later repeat the question, as if no one had already answered it."
I will continue to ask a question if I feel I am being fed a dose of misinformation. If I get the same answer repeatedly, then, yes, I will ignore it.
"4. If anyone complains at your not listening to the answers... well, he's just a bad, bad man!"
Contrary to your opinion, I don't think men are bad for what they think, say or do. If I can see that a discussion is going nowhere, I will ignore it, because it is counter-productive to what FR is all about.
"More seriously, you can do whatever you want until you're banned, if that ever happens. But you're not likely to earn a lot of respect by taking a potshot, then saying "I don't want to talk about it!" and running away."
I suspect the only way I will get banned is if someone complains about a post I made or an answer I gave, or a non-response to an answer I have heard time and time again.
Since when is stating an opinion "taking a pot-shot?" I don't care for a lot of the things you have said, or the way you have delivered them, but I will defend your right to say and do them, especially here. And, as you can see, I have not run away.
"Oh, as to your earlier remarks about the KJV, I've been reading the Bible in Hebrew and Greek for 30+ years. The areas in which Mormonism and Christianity are galaxies apart are not significantly obscured by any decent English translation."
I chose the KJV because I like it. I have several other Bibles that I also read, but I prefer the KJV, if that is OK with you. *not*
Have I answered all your questions?
You have indeed managed to deal, in some manner, with every word I said, yet somehow without actually dealing with one point I was making or had previously made to you.
I'm content to let the record stand as is, rather than expend further unrecoverables.
Dan
"You have indeed managed to deal, in some manner, with every word I said, yet somehow without actually dealing with one point I was making or had previously made to you.
"I'm content to let the record stand as is, rather than expend further unrecoverables."
If you were looking for some deep theological dissertation on the points you have made, you were looking in the wrong place. If I can see that you are adamant in your opinions on a certain subject, why would I antagonize you with statements that I know you are going to disagree with, or turn around, or obliterate?
That would show a certain naivete on my part, don't you think? Not to mention the fact that it would most definitely bring out the people with the torches, and ONE of us would get flamed.
You show up on a lot of Religious threads, and that's good, if that's where you want to be. As I said earlier, I was pinged to this thread because I'm interested in archeology, and this thread suddenly became about the differences in religions instead of the wonderful find in the desert.
I was disappointed in that, because I have seen your posts and admired them.
'Face
My precise point. You said that, and were answered. And you still said it again, and again. My point exactly.
Dan
"My precise point. You said that, and were answered. And you still said it again, and again. My point exactly."
Your point is what, again?
*psych*
That is the point - and that is what makes this archeological find relevant.
If it wasn't for the differences in religions, nobody would give a twit about this "wonderful find in the desert."
"...If it wasn't for the differences in religions, nobody would give a twit about this "wonderful find in the desert.""
Hmmmm....so much for archeology as a science...
I have been skeptical of these claims since the "James brother of Jesus" burial box hoax.
Antiquities is a huge business, and forgeries of antiquities are common. I mean, there is only a very small population of "experts" who can verify if something is authentic or a hoax.
Sounds like they were on loan from Heaven's library, and had to be returned.
I think Mormon's are the best. I can't think of a single Mormon I haven't liked, upon meeting. What's more, the more I get to know a particular Mormon, the more I appreciate them. Wonderful people, wonderful culture. But, geez, the Religion part of it is so risible. It's a shame really that such great people have a religion whose historical aspects are like an urban myth.
That would be known as a translation decision, not a loss from the original text. Your version translates the Greek nomos as Law. While it does mean that, nomos was also the Greek word used to translate the Hebrew Torah, and that is clearly what is in view here (as agreed by pretty much everyone), so I prefer the more specific translation.
You can say nothing has changed, I will say the law is the same, the words really don't matter unless they try to change the law's meaning, or are missing.
Insofar as a translation or copy is concerned, I agree. For example, I'm not concerned about spelling errors, variant spellings, or reordering of the words in sentences in the original Greek manuscripts in the NT, since none of these change the meaning. Neither am I concerned about scribal errors on some (not all) of the Hebrew Tanakh scrolls for the same reason. The enormous number of very old manuscripts from all over the word and discoveries like the Dead Sea Scrolls have proven that the text is sound. Centuries of archaeological and historical work have proven the Bible's record over and over again, and there is no discovery that disproves anything recorded in Scripture. The Book of Mormon cannot claim the same.
Hey, can you pass me your copy of the book of the wars of the lord? or the book of Jasher?
The fact that another book is referenced in Scripture does not make that other book Scripture. Sha'ul (Paul) quoted from pagan philosophers from time-to-time--are you going to say that we should canonize the pagan writings because of that?
But, if you want to read the Book of Jasher, here. We can't say for certain that it's as pure as Scripture, and it's generally considered to be pseudographia (a false text; i.e., not the original Book of Jasher), but go ahead and sate your curiosity.
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