Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 11:26 am
Here's the part about your kind of person that I don't get. A fair person treats all propositions the same or at least tries to treat all propositions the same.
Thanks, SA. So you have not changed your view that I am not a fair person, do not even believe in fairness. Then I have clearly wasted my time even bothering to take any time with you at all.
Here's the part about "your kind of person I don't get. A fair person" looks into the arguments and evidence of other positions and tries to understand them. You have demonstrated not the least interest in doing so. I really don't get that.
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 11:26 am
So we look back almost 3000+ years. It looks like "Israel" is the name of the northern land, "Judah" is the name of the southern land.
Here's the part about your kind of person I don't get. You simply ignore all the evidence that is put before you if it contradicts your belief. I cannot understand a person who does that.
I even point to videos of a conference where the same point is clearly established and noted -- that there was no "Israel" as you think of it in the Persian era -- and you simply ignore that and refuse to consider the possibility you might be wrong.
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 11:26 am We don't really have a lot of information about "Edom," "Moab" and the rest of these fucking places and we agree to kind of say "this is Israel" "this is Judah" "this is Edom" "this is Moab."
Another thing about you I don't get: you simply ignore the fact that a new book (I linked to it earlier) of several hundred very large pages of what we know about Edom has been published and you continue to refer to Edom as if we can say next to nothing about it. You are not the least curious, it appears, to learn what we do know.
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 11:26 am
None of the knowledge is perfect. None of the knowledge is "exact." It's like looking at the world when you don't have your glasses on recognizing that you don't have your glasses on.
Woah there -- Here is another thing about you I don't get: You have demonstrated that you don't even care to inquire or find out what knowledge is out there among the specialists in those areas yet you dare to claim that you know they don't know the things they say they know. Many many times in the video lectures you hear them say they don't know something, or that they are speculating when they are speculating, but when the say they KNOW something they make it very, very clear HOW they know it and it is clearly indisputable.
You don't come across as the least interested to learn anything new.
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 11:26 amWe have to make a choice. We CHOOSE to treat all ancient locales equally. If we have more information about one place we recognize that too.
Exactly. And that's exactly what I do. And what the scholars in the videos do, too.
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 11:26 amBut what you do is, and I can only attribute this to the hyper partisanship you were raised in,
Either you have a very short memory or you really don't bother to read my replies with any care or detail. I have told you before I was raised in a liberal Methodist family. So what is this "hyper-partisanship" I was raised in? Please tell me and let me know you actually read my replies. And second -- why do you continue to resort to this kind of character attack instead of responding by saying, Hey, that's something that challenges my beliefs, I must look into what those scholars are saying!
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 11:26 ampoint a finger and yell "fire" that our information isn't exact about what the borders or the boundaries or the history or the culture of ancient Israel, the northern kingdom.
No, SA, that is what you do -- say our knowledge isn't' exact. I advised you to listen to videos because the professors are making it very clear that certain knowledge IS VERY EXACT. And I pointed to very EXACT evidence that you have chosen to ignore. You have only made sweeping generalizations in response and failed to point out what piece if evidence offered earlier is actually vague or inexact.
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 11:26 amBut when it comes to something you like, like let's the non-existence of Jesus.
Okay -- I am now convinced you don't bother to read my responses in full. I have never argued for mythicism. You have clearly never read anything I have written about Jesus mythicism. But for our purpose -- I ask you to go back and actually read my earlier response. I am NOT saying Israel is a myth. But what IS a myth is when people believe in X without evidence.
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 11:26 amThe situation is the exact opposite. There is all this evidence of Jesus having been born, having a mother named Mary, being Jewish, having brothers, having died, having been buried, having had a lasting effect on history. But here you actively attack the weight of historical evidence.
Rubbish. Show me where I have ever "attacked the evidence". You are talking in your ignorance.
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 11:26 amWhy?? I think you are driven by personal animus. Whether or not you like something leads you to be attack or develop arguments for the evidence that supports or denies a proposition.
Says the person who attacks me personally at the drop of a hat and refuses to look into any argument, even by scholars, that present a conclusion he does not like.
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 11:26 amWhy do you call out the lack of evidence about the northern kingdom of Israel? You don't like it.
I have asked you for the evidence to the contradictory and you went quiet. I gave you the evidence for the fact that every scholar I am aware of takes for granted. But a person who rejects all of that and refuses to counter with evidence of their own is usually regarded as a "kook" in the real world. That is the position you are cornering yourself into.
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 11:26 amSo basically you are driven by what you like or don't like, what you want to be true, what you don't want to be true, all a priori to the situation.
I asked you for a discussion of the evidence. You said discussion was a lot of hot air
going nowhere. So why are you even putting in an appearance on a discussion forum? Are you here to derail it wherever you can with your own idiosyncratic ignorance? That's what other people here have said openly about you -- I tried to believe in you a bit more but now must conclude I was mistaken.
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 11:26 amThat's where I am different. The Jewish sources say the northern kingdom was called "Israel" they were called "Judah" Josephus doesn't call Judea "Israel" or Jews "Israelites" that's probably enough to set the boundaries around a thing called "Israel" which was just the land mass around Shechem.
The Jewish scholars in the video, and non-Jewish ones, disagree with you because you are conflating evidence from different time periods as if it all referred to the one and same thing without break. You refuse point blank to respond to the evidence set out that confirms the view of everyone else in scholarship and just repeat your beliefs without expressing the least interest in examining another point of view, let alone actually discussing it.
You did the same with Russell Gmirkin. After all his efforts you just said, I disagree and continued to repeat outright falsehoods that had been demonstrated with evidence to be falsehoods. You simply ignore alternative views and attack the characters of those who hold them.
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 11:26 am
I don't have an agenda. I am not active trying to "overturn" stuff.
You really don't know how totally unaware of your own self you come across here. Recall
your earlier comment that would seem to otherwise explain your opposition to intellectual curiosity and learning by your own admission.
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 11:26 am"Israel" in the northern kingdom because the Jewish sources say so.
Jewish sources do say so. But Jewish sources are not all of one kind and at one time. Jewish sources also say it was not called Israel at a particular time. Jewish sources point to change. Israel in the north, then Samaria, then Israel applied to Jews in the south.
You not only refuse to discuss the evidence I have set out to make this clear, you refuse even to listen to conference videos where professors say the same and it is accepted by all without any controversy by the researchers most knowledgeable in the actual evidence.
I had hoped to give you the time of day and lead you just an inch away from appearing as what some people unkindly refer to as a "crank". But I see my time was not well spent.