Finally, Lundahl (2022m) Tells Us Who Haydock Was
Kevin R. Henke
September 15, 2022
Starting with Henke (2022dm), I am replying to responses that Lundahl (2022m) gave to a series of questions and statements from Henke (2022b). In Henke (2022b), I reintroduced the four hypotheses on the origin of the Talking Snake story in Genesis 3 and I gave a series of statements and questions for Mr. Lundahl to answer dealing with his support for Hypothesis #1 and other issues. In Lundahl (2022d), Mr. Lundahl refers to individual named Haydock without even telling us who he is. Finally, in response to the nineth statement/question from Henke (2022b) in bold, Lundahl (2022m) fortunately provides some complete information on the identity of Haydock:
“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 11th 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?
· [#2] Where is the evidence that Moses and Adam even lived?
· [#3] Where is the contemporary evidence that this individual named Moses had anything to do with the origin Genesis 3?
· [#4] Why should we believe the genealogies in Genesis at all when Lundahl (2022d) admits that there are inconsistencies between the Septuagint (LXX) and the Masoretic texts? Although Lundahl (2022d) believes that Moses was the 8th from Adam, there’s absolutely no evidence or reason to trust this claim (Price 2017, pp. 59-92).
· [#5] Why should we believe the genealogies in Genesis, when someone can easily make up genealogies and effectively pass them off to millions of gullible people (e.g., Ether 1:6-32 in the Book of Mormon)? As seen in the Book of Mormon, any liar can claim to be an “eyewitness” to any event.
· [#6] Millions of people believe in the Book of Mormon, astrology and other nonsense. So, certainly, with time nonsense may commonly attain a false status of science or history in the minds of millions of gullible and ignorant people. Just because stories became popular and were viewed as history by ancient people, why should we believe their opinions on history? Everything from office gossip to the Book of Mormon to countless urban legends refute Mr. Lundahl’s claim that an account must be history or otherwise “it wouldn't have acquired that status later”. Large numbers of people believe lies all the time and if lies are repeated enough over time and passed onto children as fact, people come to believe that they’re true. Why should we take the views of an ancient and often superstitious people as authoritative on anything?
· [#7] How does Mr. Lundahl know that “there is no reason specifically to believe someone specific actually frauded about it being history, no potential Joseph Smith in sight” when whoever wrote Genesis 3 disappeared from history thousands of years ago? How can Mr. Lundahl confidently proclaim that Moses and not a conartist or deluded priest wrote Genesis 3 when conartists and deluded people have always been common and he doesn’t have a shred of evidence that Moses even existed? Because conartists frequently promote lies and millions of gullible people often believe them (e.g., Joseph Smith Jr. and Putin) and because Mr. Lundahl is making a specific claim that a Talking Snake existed and defied everything we know about reptile physiology, Mr. Lundahl has the burden of evidence, and not me, to demonstrate that Genesis 3 is history and that a Talking Snake actually existed. The following two excuses in Lundahl (2022d) are groundless assumptions and not evidence:
In each of the three cases, we believe the eighth generation account to be reliable because:
o it was in its time believed to be history (or it wouldn't have acquired that status later)
o there is no reason specifically to believe someone specific actually frauded about it being history, no potential Joseph Smith in sight.
· [#8] The earliest known audience that accepted Genesis 3 wrote the Dead Sea scrolls and lived thousands of years after the supposed event in the Garden of Eden. How did they reliably know the origin of Genesis 3 any more than we do? How does Mr. Lundahl know that Genesis 3 is history? Was he there? So, where is the evidence? Why should we believe Mr. Lundahl and Hypothesis #1?
· [#9] Lundahl (2022d) needed to give a decent reference for Haydock and why we should even believe Haydock’s opinions of Genesis. [bolded my emphasis; bolded and italics in original]
Lundahl (2022m) makes an opening reply to my bolded question and, once more, forgets about the needs of our readers:
“Yeah, forgot Henke's basically total lack of Catholic culture.”
No, it’s not just about me! When Mr. Lundahl in Lundahl (2022d) and Lundahl (2022m) ignores proper referencing and is even proud of doing so (e.g., Henke 2022e; Henke 2022q), he demonstrates that he doesn’t even care that many of our readers may not be Roman Catholic and even those that are Roman Catholic may not even know who Haydock was. Mr. Lundahl simply refuses to take a few minutes to write a decent reference and bibliography, and inform his readers of where he is getting his information. He needs to demonstrate to his readers that his sources are reliable, and not possibly outdated because they’re from the 19th century and earlier. Mr. Lundahl is more interested in showing off and reminding his audience that he knows things that we’ve probably never heard of. This is senseless bragging and not properly communicating with our readers about his sources.
I sincerely appreciate that Lundahl (2022m) has finally revealed who Haydock was with a good and complete reference:
HAYDOCK CATHOLIC BIBLE COMMENTARY
https://www.ecatholic2000.com/haydock/title.shtml
This Catholic commentary on the Old Testament, following the Douay-Rheims Bible text, was originally compiled by Catholic priest and biblical scholar Rev. George Leo Haydock (1774-1849). This transcription is based on Haydock's notes as they appear in the 1859 edition of Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary printed by Edward Dunigan and Brother, New York, New York.
See also:
The additional Notes in this Edition of the New Testament will be marked with the letter A. Such as are taken from various Interpreters and Commentators, will be marked as in the Old Testament. B. Bristow, C. Calmet, Ch. Challoner, D. Du Hamel, E. Estius, J. Jansenius, M. Menochius, Po. Polus, P. Pastorini, T. Tirinus, V. Bible de Vence, W. Worthington, Wi. Witham. — The names of other authors, who may be occasionally consulted, will be given at full length.
In other words, he was a Bible scholar, he went through every chapter of the Bible and he provided comments, very usually from earlier commenters (all of which including himself conservative ones) and some of himself, and he had found no comment in earlier commenters allowing him to conclude of any other origin of Genesis 3 than oral transmission, most specifically, if anyone had claimed Moses knew it by revelation or restored it after it was completely forgotten, he would have mentioned this as an alternative.” [my emphasis]
Here, Lundahl (2022m) admits that Haydock lived from 1774-1849 and that the above links only contain commentaries from conservatives; that is, Mr. Lundahl is only interested in the opinions of individuals that thought like he does. Haydock, like other conservative Christians as well as many Jews going back to the Qumran Community and no doubt somewhat earlier, simply assumed that the Talking Snake existed and that Genesis 3 was “history.” They did so without a shred of evidence that any of the events in Genesis 3 ever happened, and Mr. Lundahl continues that long and fraudulent tradition.
Mr. Lundahl is obviously not interested in diverse opinions, even from more moderate or liberal Roman Catholics, such as the contributors to The New Jerusalem Bible. Of course, Haydock…”found no comment in earlier commenters allowing him to conclude of any other origin of Genesis 3 than oral transmission, most specifically, if anyone had claimed Moses knew it by revelation or restored it after it was completely forgotten, he would have mentioned this as an alternative” because he lived in the 18th-19th centuries before modern Biblical archeology and critical scholarship on the Bible had begun. Perhaps, if Mr. Lundahl had bothered to carefully check late 20th to 21st century commentaries on the Pentateuch, as well as archeological books and journal articles on the history of ancient Israel, he would have discovered why very few modern scholars believe the Moses story. Why is he so afraid that modern Roman Catholic scholars have been “brainwashed” by Vatican II and won’t conform to the Medieval dogma that he wants?
References:
Greenberg, D.L. 2004. “President Bush’s False ‘Flashbulb’ Memory of 9/11/01” Applied Cognitive Psychology, v. 18, pp. 363-370.
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.
The New Jerusalem Bible: 1985. Doubleday: New York, NY, USA.