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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (769237)	2/13/2014 11:17:30 AM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576462

What a bunch of baloney. Camels were domesticated twice thousands of long before they're mentioned in the Bible (in central Asia and in southern Arabia). It would have been amazing if no camels ever got to Palestine from southern Arabia ... they were after all domesticated precisely for use as long distance pack animals through deserts and arid country. But because we haven't found a skeleton of one there yet, they're pretending to know that no camel ever got to Palestine. There were big kingdoms in the middle east from ancient times - Egypt, Hittite empire, Mittanni, Babylonia, Sumer, Akkad, and Mineans in southern Arabia. There was a trade in spices like frankincense and myrrh from southern Arabia to all these kingdoms from very early times. ..... There are two species of quadruped animal of the deserts of the world known as camel, both of which have implications for archaeology. [ That means camels were domesticated twice in two different places. ] The Bactrian (Camelus bactrianus) (two humps) resides in central Asia, while the dromedary (Camelus dromedarius) (one hump) is found in North Africa and the Near East. Camels were (and are) used for transportation, but also for their milk, dung, hair and blood, all of which were used for various purposes by nomadic pastoralists of the deserts. Dromedaries were probably domesticated in coastal settlements along the southern Arabian peninsula somewhere between 3000 and 2500 BC. The earliest reference to camels in Arabia is the Sihi mandible, a camelid bone direct dated to ca 7100-7200 cal BC, or about 8200 RCYBP. Sihi is a Neolithic coastal site in Yemen, and the bone is probably a wild dromedary. The earliest camels in Africa are from Qasr Ibrim, Nubia, 9th century BC. Evidence for the domestication of Bactrian camels has been found as early as 2600 BC at Shar-i Sokhta (also known as the Burnt City), Iran. archaeology.about.com Seriously, suppose there were hundreds of camels in Palestine at the time of the patriarchs ... what are the odds of a skeleton being found? Pretty small.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (769237)	2/13/2014 11:32:00 AM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 1576462

Lefty sheperd HATES the Bible.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (769237)	2/15/2014 9:32:04 AM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 1576462

All those media stories claiming a non-existent problem with there being camels in ancient Israel are based on sloppy atheist-driven scholarship: ... Among other evidence, Kennedy notes that a camel is mentioned in a list of domesticated animals from Ugarit, dating to the Old Babylonian period (1950-1600 BC). [ Note: Ugarit is an ancient city (and archeological site) on the coast of Syria. Are people going to claim the Ugarit tablets found there are late forgeries? How would that work, since the city was destroyed around 1200 BC and not discovered again till 1928? ] He concludes, "For those who adhere to a 12th century BC or later theory of domestic camel use in the ancient Near East, a great deal of archaeological and textual evidence must be either ignored or explained away." In an interview with Christianity Today, Kennedy said that he noticed archaeologists who work in Israel and Jordan seem to date camel domestication later than those who work in Egypt and Mesopotamia. "[Israel] doesn't have much writing from before the Iron Age, 1000 BC," he said. "So there aren't as many sources to look at. Whereas in Egypt, you have writing all the way back to 3000 BC and in Mesopotamia the same thing." Based on Egyptian and Mesopotamian accounts, Kennedy believes domestication probably occurred as early as the third millennium BC. He also believes the TAU researchers not only ignored evidence from outside Israel, they also assumed too muchabout their own research. "All they really tell us is that at that particular place where they were working they found some camel bones that they interpreted as in a domesticated context between the ninth and 11th centuries BC," Kennedy said. "It doesn't tell us that camels couldn't have been used in other nearby areas earlier than that." Archaeologists usually remember that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." The absence of evidence for Hittites once fueled some 19th-century debates over the Bible—until the vast Hittite empire was discovered in Anatolia. Questions about the Book of Daniel once focused on the absence of the prominently featured Belshazzar from Babylonian king lists—until it was discovered that Belshazzar was actually the son of Nabonidus, and co-regent. [ Yes, at one time, eager debunkers claimed the Bible had invented an entire mythical ancient people, the Hittites. Then archeologists discovered the Hittite empire. Whoops, on to camels or whatever we can find. ] http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/february-web-only/latest-challenge-bible-accuracy-abraham-anachronistic-camel.html?paging=off There are a lot of people far too eager to attack the Bible.