Posted 20 October 2005 - 11:07 PM
Genesis 11:
" 1Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words.
2It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land (A)of Shinar and settled there.
3They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." And they used brick for stone, and they used (B)tar for mortar.
4They said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top ©will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves (D)a name, otherwise we (E)will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth."
5(F)The LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.
6The LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have (G)the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.
7"Come, (H)let Us go down and there (I)confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech."
8So the LORD (J)scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city.
9Therefore its name was called [a](K)Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth. "
What do we have? "A plain in the land of Shinar?" That is the entire region of Iraq, in which there are thousands of discovered ancient buildings. Come on; there is NOTHING in that story that defines where the thing is, or what it looked like. There are NO other references to Babel anywhere else in any of the remaining books of the Bible. If you make a claim that you have found the Tower of Babel, you are saying you found THAT tower. The same if you found wood and claimed it to be a part of Noah's Ark: you wouldn't be saying "this may be a part of a boat;" you'd be acknowledging and affirming the Genesis Flood myth. As for material outside the Bible story, you have Herodotus, the founder of history, though not history as we know it. He made stuff up, like all of the ancient writers. If it so happens that the folks in Mesopotamia in Herodotus's time called the thing he looked at "Babel," then so be it. He was looking at Babel. But you gotta be wary about the ancient histories. They were filled with preconceptions and bigotries, and were designed to bolster myths and prejudices, not to challenge them.
I agree that this is different from making up an elaborate fiction about a war in an existing city that people agree is real. Myths about London don't make London less real; understood. It's really not the fact, though, that archaeologists agree that Troy is real; there is a sort of quiet conspiracy to acknowledge its possibility however, the way that Bristish historians have elaborate ways of backing up the weirdest aspects of the King Arthur myth, right down to Excalibur and the Holy Grail. It's nice to believe in it, and of course really giant myths that everyone is familiar with are good for archaeology.
I have read the Iliad, and there is a chapter where Homer names more than 200 leaders and enumerates their ships and crews. We don't have such a detailed history of the Crusades. And it is a bit interesting that if you follow all of the stories of the individual characters, they eventually become related to one another in multiple ways. These myths were like ancient comic books; the stories became more elaborate as frequently as the stories were told. This by the way is the basis for my claims that The Iliad is not history.
I guess you felt it dismissable, but I noticed you left out my WTC analogy, and also the fact that Herodotus wrote the "history" of the Amazon women. I understand your main points however: Babel existed, and we know exactly where it is, adn Troy existed, and we know exactly where it is. At the same time we are not sure that any single thing said about either place is true, from the linguistic diaspora to the decade-long war with Greece that noone can prove ever happened.
This business about physics and such: I really don't get what you're after now. You're trying to claim that Noah's Ark is a real historical possibility, and as your argument you say "we don't know everything." Are you saying that at some point in the FUTURE we may know enough about shipbuilding that we'll be able to get all of those animals into a boat about the size of a football field? And that this science, discovered at some point in the future, is the science that Noah had at his disposal some thousands of years in the past? I say this is wrong: the boat is too big for someone to build at that time, yet too small to hold all those animals. The former complaint can be challenged by your claim, but the latter is rigid and irrefutable. It's simply a law of physics that stuff won't fit inside something that is too small to contain it.
As for the explanation of the Flood myth, I like Rememberer's. At the same time, it is such an elemental story I don't think it actually requires any historical impetus: people knew about Floods already, so they made a story about a really BIG one. There are many ancient stories like this, a lot of them involving really big people or buildings or fish or boats and such.
Your final comment: "Be learned about your subject before taking such an immovable stance, please." Just because I don't agree with the things you have read does not mean that I am not learned about the subject. The more I read about Troy and the history of the wars, the more obvious it is to me that it is myth, like the tales of King Arthur and his knights or Robin Hood, or Zorro, or Batman. Others may read it and be impressed by how elaborate the stories are, and conclude that they must be true. You can't accuse either side of not reading the stuff just because you come to differnt conclusions.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).