Henke 2022dm

How does Mr. Lundahl Reliably Separate Lies from Truth in Historical Accounts?

Kevin R. Henke

September 15, 2022

Starting with this essay, I am replying to some responses that Lundahl (2022m) gave to a series of questions from Henke (2022b). In a section of Henke (2022b), I reintroduced the four hypotheses on the origin of the Talking Snake story in Genesis 3 and, after some discussions, I gave a series of questions for Mr. Lundahl to answer dealing with his support for Hypothesis #1. Here is the lengthy section from Henke (2022b):

“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.

This is a serious issue for conservative Christianity. If the Talking Snake story is fiction, then how did Adam and Eve fall into sin? Did Adam and Eve even exist? If there was no Fall, then why did Jesus need to die for an Atonement for sin? If Genesis 3 never happened, what keeps the entire foundation of conservative Christianity from collapsing? Thus, any conservative Christian must find some way of demonstrating with either Hypothesis #1 or #2 that Genesis 3 is history and that Hypotheses #3 and #4 that promote Genesis 3 as probable myth must be false.

As indicated in Lundahl (2022c), Mr. Lundahl accepts Hypothesis #1. In Lundahl (2022d), he argues that “historical events” in Genesis 3 could have been successfully passed down from Adam through Moses using Hypothesis #1 by comparing the number of generations between Adam and Moses with the number of generations between the battle of Granicus (May 334 BC) and when it was recorded and the fall of Troy (1179-1185 BC) and when it was recorded centuries later. Besides containing individuals that are unidentified and solely hypothetical, his Granicus and Troy chains also mention Nestor, Diodoros Sikeliotes, Arrian and Homer. For his hypothetical 20-year-olds, Lundahl (2022d) simply assumes that they would accurately remember the details of the events many years later. Unfortunately, Lundahl (2022d) fails to realize that the memories of his hypothetical 20-year-olds would tend to considerably fade and distort long before they turn 80. Human memories are not that good and, in reality, details are often lost or even completely fictionalized over time. A good example of memory loss and alteration are seen with the eyewitnesses of the Challenger and the September 11^th disasters. See Neisser and Harsch (1992) and Greenberg (2004). Tepper (2014) also gives a layperson’s summary of the Challenger study at: https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0128/Where-were-you-when-the-Challenger-exploded-Why-your-memory-might-be-wrong Years later, people are often shocked by what they wrote or said in videos immediately after the events. They are no longer remembering the events correctly. People also lie and boast about seeing events that they really did not. As I have seen with some of my relatives, senile individuals in their 80s may actually come to believe some of the stories that they obviously made up.

Lundahl (2022d) then states:

“The Battle of the Granicus in May 334 BC / Troy Conquered 1180 BC (between 1179 and 1185) - someone was 20 and could recall it well.

60 years passes, he is 80 and dies, but before that, someone who is then twenty has been formed by him : 274 / 1120.

60 more years, handed on to third minimally overlapping tradition bearer : 214 / 1060.

Fourth needs to take over as Nestor - within the minimal overlapping generations, not overall - in : 150 / 1000.

Fifth : 90 (had Diodoros Sikeliotes as younger contemporary) / 940.

Sixth : 30 / 880.

Seventh : 40 AD / 820.

Eighth : 100 AD (we are talking Arrian) / 760 (we are talking Homer).

In Masoretic chronology, Moses would be eighth from Adam, as Haydock said, and in LXX (without the second Cainan) Abraham would be sixth from Adam, Moses 12th.

In each of the three cases, we believe the eighth generation account to be reliable because:

· it was in its time believed to be history (or it wouldn't have acquired that status later)

· there is no reason specifically to believe someone specific actually frauded about it being history, no potential Joseph Smith in sight.

If it is adequate in two of the cases, there is no real reason why it wouldn't be so on the third case too. Except obviously, Henke has, contrary to his announced agnosticism, a pre-set agenda excluding talking snakes and such. But that agenda is - however respectable it may be in academia - no actual reason to exclude the history of Moses from historicity.”

Once more, Mr. Lundahl uses fallacious circular reasoning by invoking groundless claims for the existence of two biblical characters (i.e., Moses and Adam) to justify the existence of another groundless biblical character (i.e., the Talking Snake of Genesis 3). Before Lundahl (2022d) can even make these proclamations, he needs to thoroughly answer the following questions, which he has, so far, utterly failed to do:

· [#1] How can Mr. Lundahl demonstrate that any of his three eighth generational examples were passed down uncorrupted and without any mythology?” [my emphasis]

Lundahl (2022m) then responds to my first question, which is bolded:

“Totally uncorrupted is not needed. A historic event is still historic, even if inaccurate. With that in mind, inaccuracies don't tend to radically change the nature of external events. Saying Theoderic defeated Ermaneric at Ravenna is inaccurate, but Theoderic and Ermaneric were both involved in battles that took place at Ravenna, just different ones.

And the "without any mythology" makes me desire to repost a meme from Princess Bride (original object of the meme being another word, namely "love"). Mythology is not just "added" when it comes to heroic legend rather than divine myth, it is either accurate or inaccurate transmission of history.”

Here is where Mr. Lundahl and I differ. I only want to identify claims as history if they’ve been confirmed with external evidence and have a high probability of being accurate. Otherwise, at most, they’re plausible claims still worthy of skepticism. Maybe I’m wrong, but somehow, I don’t think that Mr. Lundahl, as a conservative Christian, would be willing to identify any of the “history” in the Bible as having inaccuracies or corruptions. For the Bible, he would want inerrancy and not just “history”, and the Bible certainly has not been demonstrated to be inerrant. Not by a long shot (e.g., Loftus 2010; Loftus 2011).

When Lundahl (2022m) says that “With that in mind, inaccuracies don't tend to radically change the nature of external events”, he is often horribly wrong. Inaccuracies can totally distort our perception of historical accounts and create dreadful stereotypes about different groups of people and institutions. The myth started by Irving (1828) that the “ignorant” and “backward” hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church believed in a flat Earth until Columbus corrected them fed into decades of anti-Catholicism within the USA. Distortions and outright lies about the history of African Americans and other minorities perpetuated racism. Today, Russian state propaganda is falsely portraying the Ukrainians as “NAZIs” and those dastardly stereotypes are likely to persist in Russia for decades to come and perhaps even longer.

Also, Mr. Lundahl’s persistent use of “heroic legend” and “divine myth” is not useful. Certainly, outright lies, misinterpretations and false rumors are often added to historical accounts, such as Mason Locke Weems eventually adding the likely cherry tree myth to his biography of George Washington. Without external evidence, how does Mr. Lundahl separate what is likely history, what is plausible and what is likely mythology from any historical claims? I agree that accounts about the past often contain errors. Again, this is why my approach to history is to doubt the accuracy of any claim unless it’s supported with external evidence. For historical accounts, verification would include archeological evidence or perhaps verified independent written accounts. Mr. Lundahl is willing to take accounts that he likes as “history” and maybe somehow sort out the errors later. I’m far more cautious and place skepticism first until each historical account, on a case-by-case basis, is demonstrated to be reliable.

Reference:

Greenberg, D.L. 2004. “President Bush’s False ‘Flashbulb’ Memory of 9/11/01” Applied Cognitive Psychology, v. 18, pp. 363-370.

Irving, W. 1828. A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus: John Murray, London, UK.

Loftus, J.W. (ed.) 2010. The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails: Prometheus Books: Amherst, NY, USA, 422 pp.

Loftus, J.W. (ed.) 2011. The End of Christianity: Prometheus Books: Amherst, NY, USA, 435 pp.

Neisser, U. and N. Harsch. 1992. “Phantom flashbulbs: False Recollections of Hearing the News about Challenger” in E. Winograd and U. Neisser (eds.), Affect and Accuracy in Recall: Studies of "Flashbulb" Memories, Cambridge University Press, pp. 9–31.