Im not.using google AI “because i believe it”…i used that reference because its the general scholarly answer to the dilemma.
Btw, note the url links next to.google AI responses? Those links actually mean something and you should click on them for referencing the AI responses😉
As is usual with the naysayers here…they are flogging a dead horse, this has been dealt with by scholars in the past and fully explained…this is wasting intelligent conversation, its time to move on!
Again you ignore the other passages of scripture about this.
I can only explain the notion of cross referencing to you, if you cannot grasp the principle, what more can one do?
Ive cited a catholic chrlurch reference that also explains this along with the text in Judges. If you ignore those…then you are left wallowing in the mire of being unable to reconcile said issues.
The point is, either Joshua existed and fought the Canaanites during the conquest of the land after Egypt or, he did not and its a myth. So which is it going to be?
I sense that the root of the issue here isnt actually this biblical story…its the credibility of the bible historical narrative itself. You are unable to reconcile many biblical dilemmas such as this one…id suggest that means to you Christianity is a fairytale.
Your version of Christianity is a fairytale to me.
Also citing Catholic sources means nothing to me. Like what Pete Enns says carries a thousands times more weight to me than what the pope or the catechism says. The catechism is just a selection of authors from various periods weaved together to push specific narratives.
So do I think Joshua existed? Maybe. Probably not but maybe and if he did exist it’s not like how people like you image it. If he did exist, his story was heavily mythicized and written to pattern the story of Moses.
What you call cross references, I call redactions.
You keep coming back to that – hardly anyone else even suggests such a thing.
So? There are gobs of such things in ANE literature – or at least that look that way; what you call “historical narrative” frequently isn’t.
It’s the “well it looks that way to me” fallacy.
Nope – there are numerous ANE genealogies with accompanying narratives all over. To be consistent, you’d have to hold that those are also to be read as literal.
Fallacy of selective application of criteria.
And of course there is no evidence suggesting it is.
Specific references would be good for such statements. What comes to mind is Joshua 10:40, which refers to “all that breathed”. By the YEC approach to the Flood, we should conclude that Joshua left not a single animal alive!
Regular YEC inconsistent application of criteria again – not only do they pick and choose what to read literally in the scriptures, they pick and choose when to believe archaeology.
Maybe you should pay attention to the Bible and not that AI:
So Joshua . . . left none remaining, but devoted to destruction all that breathed.
So every last mouse and bird and snake got killed?
So now you agree that ancient Hebrew literature indulged in “exaggerated hyperbolic accounts”? We knew that already.
No kidding. I think Grok is better than ChatGPT – at least I haven’t caught Grok inventing sources yet – but it doesn’t have the ability to distinguish well between old data and new, or between good scholarship and hogwash.
Yeah, I noticed Quora cited, though without a specific reference. Quora is no longer trustworthy, hasn’t been for nearly ten years now – you can find people writing answers with footnotes that insist that “Jesus” is pronounced “Yay-Zeus” and means “Praise Zeus!” right along with answers that actually trace where the Greek “Iesous” came from, as one example.
And YEC ignores it when convenient. The Detroit Catholic article is correct; ancient Hebrew engaged in “exaggerated hyperbolic accounts”, starting in Genesis and right on through into the two kingdoms period.
That’s not the issue – the issue I see is the YEC inconsistent application of criteria.
What dilemma? You keep using that word, but I have yet to see an actual dilemma where you claim one.
I think Pierre Teilhard may have been on to something when he said that God was what the universe was evolving towards but also that God is pre-existing since otherwise the universe wouldn’t have a blue print. Life is just the latest stage in a cosmic evolutionary process towards the divine. So did God create life? Yes, but I would say he created it by including it in the programing of the universe.
Actually Gary Michuta at Detroit Catholic isn’t bad at all – he tends to do his homework.
That’s an interesting podcast, though not much depth.
Systems design rather than product design.
What I am saying is that the Catholic church is not something that Carrie’s weight with me. Someone saying well the Catholics says this or that, does not matter. Plenty of Enns videos go in depth. What I was saying is that while I have no issues with Catholics, Catholics themselves does not mean higher authority to me. Someone could say well the pope says this means this and to me that’s no different from anyone else’s opinions on it
The difficulty is that there is a wide range of possible exact genres. There’s no good reason that I know of to doubt that Joshua led an invasion of Canaan that defeated several city-states. But there’s no good reason to ignore the existence of hyperbole in the narrative. Reading the whole book of Joshua, we see that the Israelites defeated several armies but only destroyed three “cities”, that some locals joined up with the Israelites, and that many unsubdued people remained at the end of the book. The Israelites mainly settled in the central hill country.
A careless reading, whether by someone naively accepting or rejecting the narrative, may imagine large armies in huge battles and a total conquest. But most of the “cities” would probably be “towns” to most modern people, and a few thousand is about the maximum size of any of the relevant “armies”. The archaeological data indicating that does not mean that the biblical account is untrue, but it does mean that we misinterpret it when assuming this is like a reporter’s dispatch from the front in WWII.
Similarly, data from many lines of evidence can help us to determine whether a particular interpretation of Genesis 1 is likely. Does it reflect the ways of writing and thinking known for the ancient Near East, or not? Quite apart from the failings of Marxism, interpreting the Bible or Shakespeare or the like as promoting Marxism is silly - Marxism did not exist. Of course, one might legitimately find something in the Bible addressing a topic that also interested Marx, but that is not the same as liberation theology’s attempt to interpret the Bible as teaching Marxism. Likewise, reading Genesis 1 as a scientific and modernistic historical narrative is not historically reasonable. It is talking about historical events in the broadest sense, but the purpose is to teach theological points in an engaging manner (at least to the original audience, for whom the genealogies were not unpronounceable names but relatives of interest).
eh??? What Catholic sources? I am protestant like id suggest almost everyone else is on these forums.
Secondly, Pete Ennes may be a scholar, however, this does not mean his claims are theologically correct (they are not btw). For example:
Enns looks at three issues raised in modern biblical scholarship that he feels are mishandled by Evangelicals: (1) the strong similarities between the Old Testament and the literature of other ancient societies; (2), theological diversity among the Old Testament authors; (3) how New Testament writers interpreted the Old Testament in inventive ways that reflect Jewish practices of the time
I can easily discredit all three of the above claims by Ennes with a single statement…internal biblical consistency and cross referencing!
I cannot for the life of me understand how it is that supposedly well educated individuals cannot grasp the concept of biblical internal consistency across thousands of years of writings and different writers with different historical and cultural influence who agree on the history in question (flood and sodom/gomorah).
Moses- raised in Egypt, training in Egyptian elite education
Jesus - son of God, is God
Apostle Peter - eyewitness to Christ’s training, cited the readings of the prophets, and claimed direct revelation from God in heaven. That almost certainly included visions because the O/T prophets and also the apostle John (who received visions for book of Revelation).
The arguments put forward by TEism just don’t stand up to the internal consistency stink test and whats worse, theologically they are catastrophic for the TEist interpretation of religion.
omg…ive already explained how to follow the referencing links in google AI…seems you cant read.
There is this little thing to the immediate right of the quote that AI is sourcing…it looks like this
secondly, given Quora is a forum platform (that you say isnt trustworthy), what gives you more credibility than the individuals on quora given that you almost never cite adequate references for any biblical claims you make?
and yet we know that the Army that conquered Syria during the reign of Shalmaneser III consisted of at least 120,000 soldiers! ( Healy, The Ancient Assyrians , p. 23)
I think you are intentionally trying to limit the human population in order to explain away the biblical statement of 185,000 for Sennacheribs army. Even if the Bible writer has overstated its size, based on Shalmaneser’s army size, its still absolutely huge.
btw here’s the interesting thing…according to the secularly accepted model:
Shalmaneser III reigned 853-824,
Sennacherib reigned 705-681.
Thats just a little over 100 years later for the biblical story
Iff the Assyrian army size in 800 was approx 120,000, then its very likely that the bible has not overstated the size of Sennacherib’s army in 700, so your claim there is almost certainly wrong…especially when we know that Assyrian army was mostly conscripts from the areas they occupied!
That doesn’t even address the first and third points and is only arguably relevant to the second one (its problem is confusing theology with perspective).
I have no issue with internal consistency – the problem is that you aren’t arguing for internal consistency, you’re arguing that the content has to conform to modern science.
But they don’t say it’s to be taken literally – that is something you’re adding to the text.
You love to talk about common use of language but in order to sustain the YEC view the common use of language has to be ignored.
You keep making that claim but you never put forward any actual theology.
It isn’t trustworthy – that’s the consensus of all the top writers there. We only stick around because if you cut through all the trash you can still find an occasional gem. And FWIW, several major publications have done research pieces about how Quora is no longer trustworthy.
There aren’t any in what you posted.
And just for information’s sake, I asked google AI some questions yesterday about some novels I had just read, and it made stuff up, inventing the names of novels that don’t exist, getting characters confused, getting the timelines wrong . . . if google AI invents falsehoods about simple novels, there is no way on God’s green Earth I am going to pay attention to it about scripture.
There weren’t enough people in Canaan for armies that size – Shalmaneser had an entire empire to draw on. Your claim is like saying that Monaco should be able to field an army of 20,000 because Poland has 200,000.
You just refuted yourself: Assyria was a huge area to draw from, but you’re trying to use that to argue about the size of armies in Canaan – which had less than 2% of the land area and less than 1% of the population of the neo-Assyrian empire.
It’s the external consistency with the observable facts of the universe that you fail to comprehend.
Joshua’s army, and those of the various Canaanite (s.l.) city-states was the topic, not Sennacherib. Sennacherib’s army was certainly far larger than anything in Joshua, but there are complications of transmission and interpretation of the larger numbers of people (and other numbers) in the Old Testament. Numbers are a major challenge to copy accurately, there may be shifts in number systems, there may be symbolism rather than literal usage, and “thousand” might mean “group” (cf. centurions generally didn’t have 100 men). Thus, caution in interpretation is prudent, and archaeology may give helpful guidance to decide among textually credible interpretations.
I drop links to a variety of denominational and even swcular sources…academia isnt biased, it seeks consistent evidences (that align with the bible in this case).
One thing that surely this forum should have noticed by now…im Seventh Day Adventist however i rarely cite Adventist sources unless there is a particular reason too.
So let me get this straight, an eyewitness records historical writings, because they were actually there and you deny this as evidence? Thats what fools who claim the holocaust is a fabrication or that the moon landing is a tv set do!
Christ lived on this earth, directly passed his knowledfe onto the disciples, that informarion was recorded in the new testament by multiple writers…one of who states the flood and sodom/gomorah are historical, and you deny it.
Obviously your world isnt real…its an illusion.
Sure.
You dropped a Catholic link.
I commented you dropped a Catholic link.
You asked who dropped a Catholic link.
I pointed out you did.
Best luck Adam. I’m out of the convo. As more time goes by the less I’m interested in these forums. For me it’s at a standstill. I’ll probably slowly turn into those ones here for years that just randomly like a comment before ghosting for months.
No St Roymond…you are reading what you want to “hear” not whats actually in front of your eyes…im arguing that modern science interpretstion must align with the bible.
It seems to me that you aegue that modern imdoviduals cannot understand normal language because when they apply a normal language understanding to the bible, it dissagrees with your naturalistic world view.
You say, God created the principles for.lofe then left it to its own “evolutionary” devices to produce us
The bible says "God created man, “He created them male amd female”…that is most definately not.evolutionary and it.portrays a designer actually making a working system…in this case, Adam and Eve.
Indoviduals claiming they dont twist the bible, then as soon as somone quotes the bible with references, they do not address the quote with scripture rather, they head of into a non theological path of human reasoning…that is twisting scripture.
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