More on the Bogus “First Known Audience” Scheme
Kevin R. Henke
September 27, 2022
Mr. Lundahl strongly believes in his “first known audience” scheme, where if the original authors and the “first known audience” associated with a story believed that it was true, then the story must have happened. Using the examples of William Tell (Henke 2022ek) and the St. Philomena hoax (Henke 2022es), I demonstrated that large numbers of people can very quickly accept false stories as fact. With St. Philomena, belief in the hoax widely spread once the 19th century Vatican gullibly accepted the story as fact and encouraged Roman Catholics to believe it.
In Henke (2022aj), I further denounce the validity of the “first known audience”, which includes the following statements:
“Philosophy and history cannot and should not be separated into two different debates as Lundahl (2022i) mistakenly believes. They must be part of the same debate. This is why Mr. Lundahl is having so many problems in this debate trying to justify the existence of the Talking Snake of Genesis 3 and many other topics. He doesn’t have the good scientific or historical evidence to support his claims. Furthermore, as explained in Henke (2022b), Henke (2022bh), and my other essays, Mr. Lundahl’s “first known audience rule” is a dogmatic and worthless proclamation based on demonstrably false assumptions. People lie all the time and there is often a large “first known audience” that gullibly believes the lies. As I’ve stated before, the archeological results in Finkelstein and Silberman (2001) demonstrate that the ancient Israelite “first known audience” was wrong about the events in the Old Testament book of Exodus.” [my emphasis]
Lundahl (2022r) then replies to the bolded statements:
“This involves giving a good case why the audience would believe the lie. It's about something very vague? Like personal culpability - cultural culpabilty - "genetic cumpability" ... or only perceived culpability of some other group. Fine. But about precise statements of individual facts, no, not if checking is possible.
Actually, the case of William Tell gives a very good reason for why the story was widely taken as fact in Switzerland – it supports Swiss pride and nationalism (Mitchell and Mitchell 1970). People want to believe that their national ancestors were courageous, just, special and great, and that their country is better than the countries of their enemies. They want to believe that their god(s) are better than the god(s) of their enemies. So, people commonly make up and believe false stories that support their nationalism and religious pride, and that attack the integrity of their enemies. We also see questionable stories and lies being taken as fact with the American nationalist legend of George Washington and the cherry tree, as well as the anti-Catholicism in the Christopher Columbus “history” of Irving (1828) (Henke 2022dg).
If no Exodus happened in 1510 BC, it was easy for any audience of the book to check in 1500 BC or maybe later up to 1470 they had no memories of walking through the Red Sea on dry sea bottom. If no Exodus happened in 1510 BC and the book was from after 1470 BC, it was easy to check no one recalled having heard of such a walk through the Red Sea before the book was produced.”
Here, again, Lundahl (2022r) makes a series of fallacious assumptions. Mr. Lundahl simply assumes that the Exodus actually happened and that people around 1510 BC could have easily verified that it happened. But, what if the Exodus never happened as archeologists Finkelstein and Silberman (2001) claim? We don’t know when Exodus was written. Exodus could have been written in 1510 BC, but it could have been made up much later, long after the Exodus supposedly happened. If the story was made up by some “prophets of God” sometime between 300-1400 BC, how would it have been “easy for any audience” to check the validity of story that supposedly occurred 100 to 1200 years earlier? At that time, most people struggled in poverty day by day. Even if they were skeptical of these stories, very few of them would have had the time, money, literacy or energy to conduct a thorough investigation by traveling, getting access to documents and learning to read them, and interviewing a large number of people. Even if they could write up a critical summary against the national religion, would their religious and national leaders allow the document to survive and be widely distributed and preserved?
Using a more recent example, when the stories about St. Philomena were made up by a nun in the 19th century, members of the “first known audience” in the Vatican failed to be skeptical. They blindly accepted the story because they wanted it to be true and millions of Roman Catholics followed their leaders. We simply cannot take the Exodus account at face value. We have to be skeptical and actually look for evidence to demonstrate that it actually happened (Henke 2022dv).
Putin’s draft mobilization seems to be now turning a lot of Russians against war. However, even those that oppose the Russian draft mobilization would not necessarily be pro-Ukrainian. They may simply want the professional soldiers of the Russian army to fight the Ukrainian “NAZIs”, and not their civilian husbands, brothers, fathers, sons and grandsons. Russian nationalists don’t want to investigate the situation and find out that they have been deceived. No one wants to believe that they have been tricked and deceived. Most Russians still want to believe Putin and his lies. This is nationalism, this is human nature.
References:
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.
Irving, W. 1828. A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus: John Murray, London, UK.
Mitchell, R.E. and J.P. Mitchell. 1970. “Schiller’s William Tell: A Forkloristic Perspective”, The Journal of American Forklore, January – March, v. 83, n. 327, pp. 44-52.