Lundahl (2022t) Again Fails to Address the Knowledge Gap in Genesis
Kevin R. Henke
October 22, 2022; Footnote added November 25, 2022
In Henke (2022bh) and Henke (2022b), I stated the following:
“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).
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 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.” [emphasis in original]
Lundahl (2022t) is largely a response to my nine points. Actually, Lundahl (2022k) earlier responded to these same nine points when they were originally listed in Henke (2022b). In my essays (Henke 2022bh through Henke 2022br2), I thoroughly refuted the responses in Lundahl (2022k). From Lundahl (2022t), here are Mr. Lundhahl’s additional comments on my point #1 about people lying and making up stories:
“Those two are very different. Lying involves making up a story, or rather a salient part of it, but making up a story is not automatically lying.
A liar, unlike a poet of fiction, wants to be believed, as to prosaic actual fact. In order to achieve this, he has to calculate what he is likely to get away with.
Those who don't see the difference are horrible art critics : they criticise sci-fi or fantasy for "it's so fake" (just because the setting isn't mundane, it would be something else if the reason for the comment were bad psychology or psychology mismatched with the facts about the character (I saw some Tolkien fans do that criticism with the Galadriel of Episode 3)). In fact, the fiction writer is not trying to convince people that things happened. He's trying to make them experience it as if it happened, that's another thing, but he's not trying to elicit the judgement after reading or watching that it is a fact. This gives him much more freedom, he doesn't need to consider what he "can get away with" but only with what he can paint in words.
Now, the whole point is, the liar who does get belief is limited to "what he can get away with" - if someone wants to argue early chapters of Genesis are a fraud, he needs to explain how it was successful. One line would be - as for book of Mormon or as for Silmarillion, if it had been seriously put forth as lost and recovered history, like the book of Mormon was, that at one point Genesis' early chapters were "lost and recovered history" - a status excellently suited for introducing frauds or passing off fiction as fact, unless the content actually contradicts something which already is a basic belief of some member of the audience. A Catholic would not believe the Book of Mormon if attending to the fact that the Church according to Matthew 28:16-20 needs to be present on earth from Ascension to Harmageddon. An Atheist would not believe the Book of Mormon if it contained miracles, and would usually also not believe it because it referred to a people as a holy people of Christians, a category to which he gives no special status (in theory).
That is why it is important that:
· a) we find no particular point at which early chapters of Genesis was "lost and recovered history" rather than "history" to the earliest known audience;
· b) we find bridges from those early chapters up to Christ all over the Old Testament (least detailed in the time between Daniel and Maccabees);
· c) we do not find Mormons changing the status of Book of Mormon from "lost and recovered history" to "history."
But if Henke wants to word it as "Mormons sucked at distinguishing history from fiction" he is simply misstating the very real case against Book of Mormon.
And he's forgetting that it never ever had the status of Spiderman or Rapunzel among Mormons. Or of simple normal transmission.” [my emphasis; italics emphasis in original]
In my previous essays (Henke 2022ij and Henke 2022ik), I responded to the unbolded first part of the above quotation from Lundahl (2022t).
In response to the bolded statement in Lundahl (2022t), Mr. Lundahl is failing to realize that biblical Christianity, like Mormonism, also has a serious gap in history. As I explained in Henke (2022go), there is a serious knowledge gap between when Genesis was written and our earliest known copies in the Dead Sea Scrolls that Mr. Lundahl continues to ignore in Lundahl (2022t):
“No doubt, the Qumran community believed that Genesis was history, but their opinions are not good evidence to demonstrate that Genesis actually is history. Again, we don’t know when Genesis was written. It could have been as much as 1,000 years before the Qumran community and a lot of lying, misinterpretations, and editing of texts could have occurred in 1,000 years. That is, there is a huge knowledge gap between the Qumran community and the origin of Genesis without a proper chain of custody (Henke 2022fd). Tov (2001, p. 9 and following) also warns us that the ancient Hebrews did not treat their biblical texts as carefully as the later Soferim and Masoretes did.
Again, skepticism is the default approach (Henke 2022dv). I don’t have to try to demonstrate that Genesis is not history, even though the geologic evidence is solid that no worldwide Flood ever occurred about 4,300 years ago and that the Earth is far older than 7,000 years old (e.g., Strahler 1999; Prothero 2007; Dalrymple 1991; my website). Mr. Lundahl has the burden of evidence to demonstrate that the accounts in Genesis actually happened and that the book was well preserved from the time that it was written to our earliest copies. No one has done that.”
I also discussed the Genesis knowledge gap and its critical importance in a number of my other essays in this debate. I stated in Henke (2022dp):
“Lundahl (2022m) has repeatedly failed to deal with the huge knowledge gap in Genesis between when it was written and the time of the earliest known copies in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Where’s the evidence that supports Moses supposedly writing Genesis? Genesis does not even list an author. It’s anonymous. How did Moses know that Aaron was his brother or how did Moses know the identities of his parents or his other ancestors unless it’s fiction or God told him as advocates of Hypothesis #2 [in Henke (2022b)] claim?* How do we really know that Moses actually existed? Mormons would further claim that while the churches were miscopying and altering the Bible over centuries, the divinely inspired and eye-witnessed Golden Plates were safely in the ground and unaltered from the 5th to the 19th century AD.
Mr. Lundahl’s “first known audience”, “collective memory” and arguments about traditions are totally inadequate excuses for why anyone should think that Genesis is history. I total reject his weak excuses and so would many others. Mr. Lundahl, “you do not need to bring it up again, it may be a dear speaking point to you, but as for this debate, I have already answered it several times over.” Mr. Lundahl has to do better. We need reliable archeological and other external evidence of Adam and Moses. Dogmatic proclamations from traditions are not historical evidence of anything. Mr. Lundahl’s arguments for the reliability of Genesis simply aren’t good enough and even the Mormons know it. That’s why they trust the Book of Mormon more than the Bible with all of its “normally transmitted” human-produced imperfections and corruptions. Now, every time Mr. Lundahl mentions the knowledge gap between the time when the Golden Plates were supposedly created and when Joseph Smith Jr. supposed found and translated them, but that a similar gap supposedly does not exist for Genesis from the time it was written to the Dead Sea Scrolls, I’m going to keep challenging his view until Mr. Lundahl understands how he has no justification for trusting any of the baseless and undocumented claims in Genesis.” [emphasis in original]
*It turns out that Moses’ sister supposedly saw Pharoah’s daughter take Moses (Exodus 2:4). If this event ever happened, it could explain how Moses knew that Aaron was his brother.
In Henke (2022dv), I further warned Mr. Lundahl:
“Skepticism is always the first and default position in any investigation. Skepticism says that there are many possible explanations for an event and that, at least initially, we don’t know which one is correct. Nevertheless, because the supernatural has never been demonstrated under strict present-day laboratory conditions, any explanation relying on the supernatural is less likely, but not impossible (Henke 2022ae). So, my approach to any historical claim is skepticism, caution and being conservative. Mr. Lundahl, however, takes a careless approach, where groundless claims about Moses, Adam and a Talking Snake are simply accepted at face value as “history” until “proven” otherwise. What’s even worse, if the claim is in the Bible, Mr. Lundahl seems to accept it as fact even if the evidence, such as the numerous examples in Finkelstein and Silberman (2001) and other archeological sources, say otherwise. The point is, a huge and unknown gap exists between when Genesis was written and our earliest copies in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Lundahl (2022m) just assumes that nothing nefarious happened in that gap, someone named Moses wrote Genesis and it was successfully passed down to us from generation to generation without any corruption or interruption. Mr. Lundahl has no evidence to back up his blatant assumptions. He has a serious chain of custody problem with Genesis that would never stand up in a court of law. He has no way of confirming who the author of Genesis was and that it was passed down through the generations without corruption or interruption. Not only are his assumptions totally without merit, but they are circular and fallacious. Mr. Lundahl believes the Bible is historical because the Bible says so. Instead, he should first embrace skepticism and not accept at face value whatever Genesis or any other document says. Again, skepticism is always the first and default position in any investigation.
Genesis is an anonymous book. The author(s) never identified themselves. So, the person making the claim that Moses wrote Genesis has the burden of evidence. Because we don’t know who wrote Genesis or when it was written, there’s a high probability that the claims in Genesis are unreliable, as well as the tradition that Moses wrote it. Archeological resources, again such as Finkelstein and Silberman (2001), give us very good reasons not to trust the claims in Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, and elsewhere in the Old Testament. Rather than Moses writing a history about a Talking Snake, it’s far more probable that some authority figure made up a story about a Talking Snake, a story with a Mormon-like time gap that supposedly happened thousands of years before the author and first audience were born. A gullible audience would blindly accept that story, especially if the priests had the support of a king that would threaten anyone that did not. If anyone dared to question the priests on why Genesis 3 was reliable, why couldn’t the forger of Genesis 3 simply claim that someone named Moses found some buried Golden Plates from Noah or Abraham or that God told him about Genesis 3 through prophecy? Not surprisingly, conservative Christians and Orthodox Jews would probably protest and claim that there’s no evidence that Moses ever found any Golden Plates from Noah or Abraham! Exactly! With such a huge knowledge gap between the origin of the Pentateuch and the Dead Sea Scrolls, many explanations are possible and it’s doubtful that archeology will ever definitively tell us who wrote Genesis 3 and when. Nevertheless, just trusting at face value whatever the Old Testament says about itself is never justified, especially when the archeology of Israel says that the historical claims of the Pentateuch and Joshua are largely wrong. Although we really don’t know who wrote Genesis, when it was written, or how it was written, natural law and imperfect human nature tell us that Hypotheses #3 and #4 of Henke (2022b) are far more probable than Hypothesis #1 and #2, which tell us that a Talking Snake actually existed. Mr. Lundahl does not understand this. [emphasis in original]
In Henke (2022ej), I also stated:
“While we know that Joseph Smith Jr. lived, we don’t have a shred of evidence that Moses ever existed (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001). We don’t know when or how Genesis was written. There’s a huge knowledge gap between when Genesis was written and the oldest fragments in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Mr. Lundahl has no justification for assuming that the chain of custody is complete and really went all the way from the Dead Sea Scrolls back in an unbroken chain to unsubstantiated characters named ‘Moses’ and ‘Adam.’”
Henke (2022fd) also says:
“As I explained earlier in Henke (2022dn) and as mentioned with the archeological evidence in Finkelstein and Silberman (2001) and other archeological sources, the claims about Israel in Genesis through at least Judges are unreliable and often contradict the evidence. While we have good and fairly complete US and French records since the 1770s, there’s a huge knowledge gap between when the Old Testament was written and our earliest records in the Dead Sea Scrolls. We simply cannot trust whatever any “community” might say about its origin unless we have continuous and reliable records and archeological evidence to support what the community is claiming. People frequently make up stories about their past and how special their ancestors were and how great their gods were. Although the archeological confirmation for Alexander the Great is good, other aspects of ancient European history are more questionable. When it comes to the Bible, Lundahl (2022o) has absolutely no justification for thinking that the Talking Snake, Adam, Abraham, the Flood, and Moses are historical. NONE. He needs to separate past events that have been confirmed with good evidence, archeology and an appropriate chain of custody from the Biblical claims that do not.”
When will Mr. Lundahl finally take this Genesis knowledge gap seriously, embrace his burden of evidence and logically explain how anyone can trust Genesis 3? I don’t think that he can do that. So, he just keeps ignoring the Genesis knowledge problem and pounding the podium with his groundless proclamations about “first known audiences.”
My subsequent essays will respond to the rest of the quotation from Lundahl (2022t).
References:
Dalrymple, G.B. 1991. The Age of the Earth: Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 474 pp.
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.
Prothero, D.R. 2007. Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters: Cambridge University Press: New York, NY, USA, 381pp.
Strahler, A.N. 1999. Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy: 2nd ed., Prometheus Books: Amherst, NY, USA, 552 pp.
Tov, E. 2001. Textural Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 2nd revised ed., Fortress Press: Minneapolis, MN, USA, 456pp.