Henke 2022br2

Warped and Inaccurate Views of History and Fiction in Lundahl (2022L)

Kevin R. Henke

September 15, 2022

In Henke (2022b), I stated that:

“In Lundahl (2022d), Lundahl (2022f), Lundahl (2022b), and in several of his emails, Mr. Lundahl makes a totally unwarranted assumption that if the earliest known audience believed that Genesis 3 or another claim in an ancient text was historically true, then the claims must be true. Of course, this assumption is nonsense for the following reasons:

1. People lie and make up stories.

2. People misinterpret natural events and sometimes credit them to supernatural forces (e.g., volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, severe storms, draught [sic, drought]).

3. The history of Mormonism, Scientology, etc. demonstrate that lies can become accepted by thousands or even millions of gullible people in a short amount of time, perhaps in no more than decades or a century.

4. Even if ancient historians (such as the five ancient biographers of Alexander the Great, Section 6.0) were sincere and honest, they still may have included inaccurate information, false rumors and misinterpretations in their works.

5. We don’t know who wrote Genesis 3 and when it was written.

6. The Dead Sea scrolls have the oldest known fragments of Genesis. This was about 1,000 years after Moses supposedly wrote the book. So, how could the writers of the Dead Sea scrolls have reliably known anything about events that occurred perhaps a thousand or more years earlier? How does Mr. Lundahl know that Genesis 3 is not a fabrication that may have been additionally altered or rewritten long before the Dead Sea scrolls? Why should anyone trust the claims in Genesis? Lundahl (2022c) assumes that God would have protected Genesis from corruption, but this assumption is totally without merit.

7. The biology of snakes is incompatible with them talking and there’s no evidence of either a supernatural or biological Talking Snake ever existing.

8. As further discussed in Section 5.0 [of Henke 2022b] and Henke (2022a), Hypotheses #3 and #4 on the origin of the Genesis 3 Talking Snake are rational, but Hypotheses #1 and #2 are not.

9. Mr. Lundahl has the burden of evidence to demonstrate that the claims in Genesis 3 and elsewhere in the Bible are factual.

Mr. Lundahl fails to realize that ancient histories by themselves cannot be trusted, especially if they were written centuries or millennia after the supposed event that they are describing or if the documents are copies of copies of copies of copies... and not the originals Even if an ancient history happens to be an original copy describing an event that occurred at the time that the document was written, unless a claim in an ancient history is confirmed with independent external evidence, either in another manuscript or from archeology, there’s no reason to accept it as reliable history. There’s a big difference between an historical claim and a reliable historical claim.” [my original emphasis in italics and bold]

Lundahl (2022L) then comments on my bolded and italicized claims in Henke (2022b):

“This involves two things, from my perspective, as I disagree with the first, and agree with the second, with a qualification:

(1) unless a claim in an ancient history is confirmed with independent external evidence, either in another manuscript or from archeology, there’s no reason to accept it as reliable history.

This is where I diagree, and which would make Alexander's carreere unknowable. And lots of other things.

(2) There’s a big difference between an historical claim and a reliable historical claim.

Indeed. but the difference is bigger between any historical claim and straightforward fiction. This is key to my argument.

The rest actually is a padding on the routine token methodology of historians (dealing with ancient history).”

Once more, our readers have to endure Mr. Lundahl’s irrational stubbornness just because he won’t use a spell checker and modern spelling. Nevertheless, on point (1), Lundahl (2022L) is failing to realize that it’s more important to have a few historical accounts that are known to be reliable than blindly accepting a large number of claims in old manuscripts about Alexander the Great, Moses and other characters that could be either historical or imaginary. Quality of information is more important than quantity of information when it comes to history and most other disciplines. If someone claims that he has enough information to write three history books, but if none of that information has been confirmed with external evidence, then his books are not histories, but nothing more than large collections of unverified rumors and stories.

As I explained in Henke (2022b), archeology is very important in confirming the reliability of ancient written accounts and the written accounts can provide important insights into archeological discoveries and even tell archeologists where to look for possible evidence. Lundahl (2022L) is telling his readers to just blindly believe whatever the Bible or even accounts about Alexander the Great tell them. Because any document may contain lies and misinterpretations among authentic historical accounts, Mr. Lundahl’s approach to understanding the past is totally irrational and sloppy.

On point (2), I certainly see a huge difference between the archeologically confirmed history of Alexander the Great as I discussed in Henke (2022b) and the silly cartoon and probable fictional story of Genesis 3. Nevertheless, sometimes authors deliberately write fictional stories to make them look as realistic as possible. They do such a good job that many of their readers are mistakenly convinced that these novels are factual, such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin or The DaVinci Code. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was such a realistic work of fiction that it had a huge impact on changing attitudes towards slavery. Also, both secularists and conservative Christians have written extensive rebuttals to the commonly held myth that The DaVinci Code is history (e.g., Price 2005). Contrary to Mr. Lundahl’s “earliest known audience” charade, sometimes novels can be so realistic that they spur people to social justice or mislead them. Lundahl (2022L) needs to be far more careful in separating out what is probably history from what is likely fiction.

Reference:

Price, R.M. 2005. The Da Vinci Fraud: Why the Truth is Stranger than Fiction: Prometheus: Amherst, New York, USA, 296pp.