Henke 2022di

False Prophets Now and Then

Kevin R. Henke

September 15, 2022

In Henke (2022b), I quoted Henke (2022a) and stated:

“In Henke (2022a), I proposed four hypotheses to explain Genesis 3 with its Talking Snake story:

1. The Talking Snake existed and the account in Genesis 3 was accurately passed down by Adam to Moses. Moses then wrote it down in Genesis. There would have been no human eyewitnesses for most of the events in Genesis 1-2:14. If Genesis 1-2:14 is history, God would have to have given the information in these verses as visions.

2. Moses saw Genesis 1-3 and perhaps most or even all of everything else in Genesis through visions given by God. There didn’t need to be a continuous human transmission of information from Adam to Moses. Visions from God would not be open to errors unlike written or oral transmissions from Adam to Moses.

3. The Talking Snake of Genesis 3 was part of a made-up campfire story, a parable or based on a pagan myth that eventually was taken as fact by the ancient Israelites, like how President Reagan and his fans mistook fictional stories from World War 2 as real. William Tell (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/in-search-of-william-tell-2198511/ ) and a number of Roman Catholic saints (https://listverse.com/2014/05/17/10-beloved-saints-with-fictitious-biographies/ ) are probably also myths. Of course, in the United States, pro-abortionists regularly use fictional TV shows to convince Americans that abortion is a good thing. Even though they are fiction, many people believe the propaganda. Right now, a lot of Russians are believing the fictional propaganda their government is inventing about Ukraine. People also often pick and choose parts of fictional stories that they want to believe and ignore the rest, such as individuals believing in the existence of “The Force” from the Star Wars movies, while recognizing that the rest of the movies are fiction. A lot of people are gullible and believe fictions are real.

4. “Prophets” or others claimed to have visions from God about events that supposedly happened thousands of years earlier. These visions were delusions or outright lies, but a lot of people came to believe them. Joseph Smith also did this and Kat Kerr continues with this nonsense in the US.” [my emphasis]

The bolded paragraph is Hypothesis #4, which states that delusions or deliberate lies were used to construct and promote Genesis 3.

A lot of Lundahl (2022m) consists of simply quoting email exchanges that he and I had back in February 17-18, 2022. This is fine, although in some cases, Lundahl (2022m) neglects to mention relevant updates and references that I later gave on the topics in Henke (2022b).

Lundahl (2022m) then states:

He already said so much in letter XV [email to Mr. Lundahl on February 17, 2022 at 7:29PM Eastern US time]:

Kevin R. Henke: ‘There are partial copies of Genesis in the Dead Sea scrolls, but the bottom line is that we don't know who wrote Genesis 3 or when. It's very possible that the writer sincerely thought that Genesis 3 was an inspiration from God about events that occurred thousands of years ago from the author's time. However, that does not make it history any more than the ramblings of Joseph Smith about supposed events that occurred in the Americas thousands of years ago before him or the delusions or lies of Kat Kerr about "Christmas Town" in Heaven. It does not take very long for a charismatic con-man to form a religion and get millions to believe fiction and half-truths - Mohammad or Joseph Smith. Any blood relationships of Mormons to 18th and 19th century novelists doesn't matter at all. The point is that there are millions of people believing that fiction was actually ancient history.’ [my emphasis]

I previously commented on this email exchange about Mormonism in Henke (2022dh). Here is what Mr. Lundahl said about Kat Kerr in an email reply to me on February 18, 2022 at 7:37AM Eastern US time, which is quoted in Lundahl (2022m):

“Kevin R. Henke wrote: "We have millions of Americans that believe that false prophets like Kat Kerr regularly go to Heaven and see Jesus and theme parks there."

That is not properly speaking historical. It's allegedly prophetical. I have no clue who Kat Kerr is and therefore not whether he [she] is a true or false prophet, but suspect the latter. Please note, the one series of events in Genesis we have from prophecy rather than history is the Six Day account.”

As I stated in Henke (2022a) and Henke (2022b), advocates of Hypothesis #2 argue that all of Genesis was given to Moses through visions (“prophecy”) or audible communications from God because Moses didn’t live during the time when the events in Genesis supposedly occurred and there’s no evidence of Moses ever receiving any written documents from Adam, Noah, Abraham, etc. any more than Joseph Smith received plates from Moroni. As I further discuss in Henke (2022dL), because there is no evidence that Adam, Abraham and Moses ever existed, Lundahl (2022m) can’t claim that these Patriarchs had effective oral transmissions of Genesis 3 either. Assuming that he even lived, Moses would not have remembered who his parents or siblings were because he was abandoned as an infant (Exodus 2:1-10). Of course, as I have repeated numerous times, Hypotheses #3 and #4 stress that there’s no evidence of any history in Genesis.

Besides Mr. Lundahl’s statement on Kat Kerr in his February 18, 2022 email, which is quoted above and in Lundahl (2022m), Mr. Lundahl also stressed in Lundahl (2022c) that the “prophecies” of Kat Kerr have nothing to do with history or as Mr. Lundahl said in his email:

“That is not properly speaking historical. It's allegedly prophetical.”

No matter how lies are invented, either through false “history” or false “prophecy”, they may be believed and widely spread in the future. Both false “history” and false “prophecy” are relevant to the Bible (also see Henke 2022bw; Finkelstein and Silberman 2001).

Instead of commenting on one of my old emails, Lundahl (2022m) should have commented on my more recent statements in Henke (2022b), where I responded to his same complaint in Lundahl (2022c). Mr. Lundahl in Lundahl (2022m) could have avoided all of his disorganized mess if he would have simply carefully read Henke (2022b) rather than solely relying on what I said in an older email. Here’s my statement from Henke (2022b), which concisely responses to Mr. Lundahl’s statements on this issue in his email, Lundahl (2022c), and also Lundahl (2022m):

“Contrary to Lundahl (2022c), Joseph Smith Jr. and Kat Kerr don’t have to be “historians” to start spreading lies that become popular over time. We can also add the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard to the list of liars that have created a religion with millions of now deceived followers. Granted, Kat Kerr mostly makes up false prophecies about present and future events, but her lies and the lies of other TV “prophets” may live on long after their deaths. Nevertheless, Joseph Smith Jr. and L. Ron Hubbard invented false histories. Joseph Smith made up stories about a person named Moroni that supposedly lived in the 5^th century AD, L. Ron Hubbard made up a story about Xenu and volcanoes from 75 million years ago and Hypothesis #4 states that some individual in ancient Israel made up a story about a Talking Snake in a garden that lived thousands of years earlier. Lundahl (2022c) is failing to realize that if clever liars have access to a forum of gullible people, their lies can widely spread over time and become part of a religion.” [my emphasis]

Although L. Ron Hubbard’s church of Scientology claims millions of members, I should note that the actual number of Scientologists is probably not nearly that high. Nevertheless, the cult is very wealthy and influential.

Reference:

Finkelstein, I. and N.A. Silberman. 2001. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts: The Free Press: New York, USA, 385pp.