More on the St. Philomena Hoax and Genesis as a Work of Fiction Pretending to be History
Kevin R. Henke
December 3, 2022
In Henke (2022es), I extensively discussed and provided links on the St. Philomena Hoax. I further commented on the hoax in Henke (2022Ln) and how it’s a case of the Roman Catholic Church abusing archeology to promote a false story.
This hoax originated in the 19th century Roman Catholic Church and had the blessing of the Vatican at that time. Today, the Hoax seems to be an embarrassment for the Vatican. In contrast, Mr. Lundahl in Lundahl (2022n) still believes that St. Philomena was real.
In Henke (2022ew), I again mention the St. Philomena hoax and some related issues. Mr. Lundahl then writes an extensive reply to Henke (2022ew) at the end of Lundahl (2022z). In this response, I will substantially comment on Mr. Lundahl’s statements in Lundahl (2022z). Because Mr. Lundahl refuses to write a stand-alone and coherent essay (Henke 2022d), I unfortunately have no choice but to insert my own comments into his. To further distinguish my statements in black from his in red, I’ve added indicators to the following quotation from Lundahl (2022z):
Henke (2022ew) states: ‘Yet, Lundahl (2022n) believes that a 19th century nun had visions that constructed an entire biography for St. Philomena, which included people, various events, her supposed status as a Greek princess and even giving the saint’s birth date as January 10.’
Lundahl (2022z) replies: ‘Yes. Arguably the nun was celebrating her own birthday, and was curious about the saint's.
My current reply: There’s no evidence that any of the nun’s stories about St. Philomena every happened or that St. Philomena ever existed. Anyone can make up a false biography about an individual that never existed, including giving the imaginary individual a birth date. The 19th century Vatican should have known better than to trust unverified stories coming from this nun and her accomplices.
Henke (2022ew) states: ‘If Mr. Lundahl did not know anything about the 19th century origin of St. Philomena and simply read her biography, how could he distinguish it from a supposed historical account passed down by humans?’
Lundahl (2022z) replies: ‘What exact text was ever published about St. Philomena without this miraculous intro?
How would I ever be able to a) ignore the 19th C. discovery of relics and b) at the same time know of the biography?’
My current reply: Sure, the St. Philomena story was created less than 200 years ago and we still know how it was the creation of a likely 19th century delusional nun misinterpreting some archeological relics. But, what might happen 2,000 years from now when Roman Catholics only hear the detailed bibliography about St. Philomena, but the details on how the story came from the fertile imagination of a nun has been lost? Again, I’m asking: ‘If Mr. Lundahl did not know anything about the 19th century origin of St. Philomena and simply read her biography, how could he distinguish it from a supposed historical account passed down by humans?’ I don’t think that he could. Mr. Lundahl needs to know about the nun’s account to recognize that the St. Philomena story is “prophecy” and not history. As discussed below, Mr. Lundahl later in Lundahl (2022z) finally recognizes what my question is saying and then he responds to it.
Today, many of the crucial details about the origin of the Pentateuch have been lost. Without any justification, Mr. Lundahl just assumes that the Pentateuch is history. But what happens if the Pentateuch is nothing more than works of fiction created by ancient Yahwehistic priests? I considered this possibility and explained how it could have happened in Henke (2022LL). Based on the historical and other errors in the Pentateuch as discussed in Finkelstein and Silberman (2001), it seems that the Pentateuch is a work of fiction written centuries to millennia after the supposed events that it describes. If we actually knew how the Pentateuch was written, when it was written and the individuals that wrote it, I don’t think that any reasonable individual would accept the Moses myth.
Henke (2022ew) states: ‘If the entire detailed story of St. Philomena could be based on “visions”, why not the entire story of Adam or Moses?’
Lundahl (2022z) replies: ‘Because, very simply, St. Philomena's discovery by archaeology and miracle has not been mislaid.’
My current reply: We are certainly fortunate enough to know about the fictitious origin of St. Philomena. We don’t have those kinds of crucial details with the Pentateuch. Those details have been “mislaid.” Again, we don’t know who wrote the Pentateuch, when it was written, and how it was handled until the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls. We can’t assume that Moses existed and wrote it, especially when Genesis is anonymous and lists no author.
Lundahl (2022z) continues: ‘Here there is a new proposed scenario for non-facts to be accepted as facts. Three steps.
i
Unknown and therefore not accepted.
ij
Miraculous recovery - real or false - and accepted as "lost but spectacularily recovered history."
iij
The story of the miraculous recovery is for some reason forgotten, that story it contained is preserved, and as a result the status changes to "history, normally transmitted" ... and the fact of step i is forgotten.
The simple answer is, we have no known example of such a change of status.’
My current comments: I like Mr. Lundahl’s three-step process. I think that Mr. Lundahl’s process is highly probable. While Mr. Lundahl claims that “we have no known example of such a change of status” involving his three-step process, I frequently see examples of “recovered fake histories” being changed to “normally transmitted” histories among the extensive family trees at Ancestry.com. In my family tree, this is commonly seen among my mom’s Holloway and Wallen ancestors. On paper, the trees look like centuries of “history, normally transmitted.” However, when you start looking at the details, errors are common: children are supposedly older than their parents, children born years after their mothers died, etc.
Now, it’s obvious that a group of people using Ancestry.com had an ancestor with unknown parents. There would have been many possible parents listed in the databases, but they were not initially accepted by the users of Ancestry.com due to a lack of supporting evidence (step 1). Finally, someone at Ancestry.com because of shear speculation, clairvoyance, or who knows what, decides that a couple of the possible candidates must have been the parents (step 2). Perhaps, these candidates descended from nobility and someone really desperately wanted to be the ancestor of kings and queens. So, he/she constructed an attractive family tree that looks very “normally transmitted”, but is actually a work of fiction (step 3). These examples are numerous at Ancestry.com. Because people want to be able to brag that their ancestry goes back a thousand years and includes kings and queens, they get sloppy in putting together their family trees. Many other users at Ancestry.com notice how supposedly complete and thorough the tree is, so they use it without carefully checking them and realizing that it’s a work of fiction.
Hypotheses #3 and #4 in Henke (2022a) and Henke (2022b) would also indicate that Mr. Lundahl’s three step process is far more probable than a Talking Snake and magic fruit trees actually being real. Furthermore, although the William Tell story probably did not involve a miraculous recovered “history” (step 2 of Mr. Lundahl’s three step process), the evidence indicates that the story went from a Scandinavian fable to Swiss “history” (Henke 2022ek). So, works of fiction may eventually be misinterpreted as history as Hypothesis #3 states.
Lundahl (2022z) further states: ‘The one possibility (I can think of) would be of the information going through a bottleneck. For instance, the Catholic Church is nearly wiped out. Nearly no one of the survivors has heard of St. Philomena. The one who has heard from his mother while doing a prayer to her, and mother told only part of the story, like why St. Philomena would understand the issue. A bit how manuals in Greek mythology for children leave out the prophetic status of the Theogony, and go directly to Uranus and Gaia. He grows up and transmits the knowledge he has, rather than the one his now dead mother had.’
Such a bottleneck has not happened with the Catholic Church. A similar bottleneck giving Mormons the impression Book of Mormon was a normally preserved chronicle ending in Late Antiquity has also not happened. On my view, such a bottleneck has a very low probability, even while involving no miracle.
My current reply: Here, Lundahl (2022z) finally addresses my earlier question: ‘If Mr. Lundahl did not know anything about the 19th century origin of St. Philomena and simply read her biography, how could he distinguish it from a supposed historical account passed down by humans?’ Yes, this bottleneck situation could happen as Mr. Lundahl speculates about the future of the St. Philomena story. Actually, such a “bottle neck”, or better described as a knowledge gap, exists in Jewish history from the time that Genesis was written to the Dead Sea Scrolls. All of the claims about Adam, Abraham, Moses, etc. are baseless stories (Henke 2022iL). A similar knowledge gap exists in the Church from the time of Christ to the mid-2nd century (Henke 2022ei). Except for seven of Paul’s letters, we know virtually nothing about how the Church formed and what the 12 or so Apostles actually did, assuming that all 12 of these Apostles actually existed. The book of Acts is not a trustworthy history of the early Church and 1 Clement is vague and possibly based on false rumors (Carrier 2014, pp. 359-386, 308-315). If Mr. Lundahl wants to see plenty examples of such “bottlenecks”, again, I recommend that he get a subscription to Ancestry.com and look at the family trees in detail. Nevertheless, even if we were unable to find any examples of Mr. Lundahl’s “bottlenecks”, he is making a serious mistake of thinking that such a plausible event could never have happened. There’s always a first time for everything.
Lundahl (2022z) rambles on: ‘It's arguably easier to confuse two different people (if Jean Colson was right, young Irenaeus learned of a John he mistook for John son of Zebedee, one of the twelve, and who was actually a John Cohen and not one of the twelve, but also a disciple, the loved one, this being the author of the Johannine corpus) or two different epochs (the German or Germanic legend* [no * footnote in Lundahl 2022z] given in a manual of such as "Die Rabenschlacht" features Dietrich of Bern - Theoderic of Verona - as beating Ermaneric at Ravenna, in reality Ermaneric and Theoderic won two different battles at Ravenna). But the change of status from spectacular recovery of lost knowledge to simple retention of never lost knowledge has no precedent I know of in the case of legends distorting somewhat the real facts. You see, the spectacular is not very likely to be lost by simple oblivion. And a spectacular recovery of lost knowledge (by Joseph Smith, by a 19th C. nun, by a team of researchers having "Lucy in the Sky with the Diamonds" on the radio) is precisely spectacular. Therefore highly unlikely to be forgotten.’
My current reply: Yes, because the history of the 1st and early 2nd century Church is so poorly documented (again, Acts is not trustworthy, Carrier 2014, pp. 359-386, 308-315), there is plenty of confusion over the identities of various individuals in early Christianity and whether some of them actually existed or not. John the Elder, the supposed author of 2 and 3 John, was probably not John the Apostle and son of Zebedee. There is also a lot of confusion over James the son of Zebedee, James the “brother” of the Lord and James son of Alpheus, and whether any of them had anything to do with writing the New Testament epistle of James. As for “spectacular” stories, like that of St. Philomena, they are made up all the time (Henke 2022es).
Henke (2022ew) states: ‘Although both conservative Christians and Orthodox Jews know that Genesis 1:1-2:14 must have come from God, notice that there is no verse in Genesis 1:1-2:14 indicating that Moses “was in the spirit” or that he had a dream or vision when he saw the creation. Moses or any other author isn’t even mentioned anywhere in Genesis.’
Lundahl (2022z) replies: ‘There is however information in the Book of Jubilees on Moses getting a vision of the six days. And I think this view is shared by Catholic authors, mainly, though many or most would deny the "fuller account" in that book to be genuine. If that fuller account is not so, the "fuller account" but not the fact Moses had a vision for that six days period, is fan fiction put into the margin of accepted fact. Like a certain film from 1944 (possible credit for Reagan mistaking fiction for fact).’
My current reply: Unlike Ronald Reagan, there’s no evidence that Moses ever existed (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001). People often add fictional stories to accounts of both historical and fictional characters (e.g., the cherry tree story with George Washington and the Book of Jubilees with Moses).
Henke (2022ew) states: ‘There are also plenty of other verses in Genesis, where there were no human witnesses and the information must have come from God or an angel according to both conservative Christians and Orthodox Jews. For example, how did Moses know about the conversation between God and the angels in Genesis 11:6-7 unless God or one of his angels told someone?’
Lundahl (2022z) replies: ‘I'd consider Heber or Peleg got that vision. You are giving exactly one example, and yet you propose "plenty of other verses" - and this is only dealing with the Orthodox view that Genesis is true both history and theology. For non-Christians, lots of such examples (in Genesis this one) could be someone's theological interpretation of the events. I do not share this view, but my point is, these non-believers do not get a case against normally transmitted history from that.
Summing up the case for hypothesis #2 / hypethesis #4 depending on theological view of the vision (true from God or neither true nor from God), out of 680 chapters of Biblical history, some of which involve accounts of prophetic events, encounters with God or visions, like much about Moses and some in Daniel, Henke is not presenting even two of these chapters as arguably prophecy rather than history. Because the stray verses in Genesis 11 and possible addition for Genesis 18 very much do not add up to the rest of Genesis 2, after the parts where Adam was no witness.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
16th Lord's Day after Pentecost
25.IX.2022’”
My current reply: I’m not going to go through all of Genesis and cite every example where no human witnesses were present for an event and where they’re either works of fiction (most likely) or were given by “visions” from God or angels to some human being. Mr. Lundahl is also simply throwing out worthless speculation about Heber or Peleg receiving Genesis 11:6-7 as a vision rather than Moses. There’s no evidence that Heber, Peleg or Moses ever existed. Again, Mr. Lundahl has the burden of evidence to demonstrate that Genesis is history (Henke 2022mb). He’s failed to do that. Mr. Lundahl can’t produce any external evidence to demonstrate that Moses ever existed and he can’t even produce a single fragment of the supposed documents that Moses used to construct Genesis. In turn, I don’t have to demonstrate that Genesis is fiction. That’s the default position (Henke 2022dv). Mr. Lundahl’s Hypothesis #1 of Henke (2022a) and Henke (2022b) is no better than Hypothesis #2 (Moses got all of Genesis in a vision from God), and both of these hypotheses are far less likely than Genesis being a work of fiction as stated in Hypotheses #3 and #4.
References:
Carrier, R. 2014. On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, Sheffield Phoenix Press: Sheffield, UK, 696pp.
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.