I Don’t Limit the Options to Only All or None
Kevin R. Henke
October 23, 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; my emphasis in italics]
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). I previously responded in Henke (2022bj and 2022bL) and Henke (2022ij through Henke 2022ip) to his comments on the first three points in Lundahl (2022k) and Lundahl (2022t), respectively. Here are Mr. Lundahl’s comments in Lundahl (2022t) on point #4:
“The objection would be against the parodic strawman.
I will not believe Julius Caesar's biology of elks. He never saw one and some Germanic warrior made fun of him. Or of some Gaul who passed the misinfirmation on.
But I will believe that Julius Caesar fought Germanic warriors and got informations about Germanic conditions.
Inaccurate informations does not mean the text as a whole is fiction.”
Of course, I NEVER said that inaccurate information means that the text as a whole is fiction. I didn’t even say that about the Bible (e.g., King Hezekiah in 2 Kings in Henke 2022a; Henke 2022dg; Henke 2022ex). Even the Klamath Crater Lake, Oregon, USA, myth contains some geological sound observations (Henke 2022fm). Lundahl (2022t) is misrepresenting my views. I don’t limit the options to only all or none.
Now, no historical document is 100% accurate. There are always errors, no matter how hard the author tries to avoid them. The proper approach, as I stated in Henke (2022eu) and my other essays, is to be initially skeptical of the whole document and then individually investigate its claims to find accurate statements. It’s unwise to take Mr. Lundahl’s approach, where if a document claims to be a history or is in a “historical” genre, then just gullibly believe whatever it says until demonstrated otherwise.