Roymond

Ah, but they've served as plot points in a number of fun novels!

Actually there are rivers cutting that fast; it doesn't really take much. The only unusual thing about the Grand Canyon is that the land above it is so roughly level; most rivers that cut fast are in very rough territory, e.g. the Himalayas. Makes me wish I'd taken the next hydrology course in the geology sequence.

Wait a minute -- it flowed the opposite direction? That's intriguing!

A healthy warrior at the time of Joshua would have been about 5' 2", several inches taller than an ordinary 'peasant'.

Depending on where and when, the length of a cubit often changed with the crowning of a new king: the new king's arm measure determined the length of the cubit for his reign! Just imagine trying to keep standardized weights and measures.....

As I recall, the Kings List works out to a Creation date something like 24o,000 B.C.

IIRC there's another Hebrew text that puts Goliath at 6' 9". Given that a typical ANE warrior of the time would have been 5' 2" or so, 6' 9" would have been more than a little scary since the spear someone wielded tended to be 20% longer than their height, making for a deadly difference in reach of weapon.

That's a silly attitude; it prevents learning. Ashkelon had maybe 15,000 people, so what has been found is just a scratch and thus probably doesn't tell us anything about how truly important people were buried. I can't remember if Ahekelon was recorded as having any; I know Gath was. If it wasn't recorded that Ashkelon had giants, then the archaeology won't tell us anything about giants anyway. Assuming the Anakim were 9' tall, which is physiologically possible if they weren't ordinary humans, then by the time of Numbers their DNA would likely have dropped them down to about 7' tall since they would have had to marry ordinary women. And 7' tall warriors when the typical Hebrew warrior at the time was probably about 5'2" would be giants -- easily tall enough to frighten the scouts into regarding themselves as "grasshoppers". What's fascinating is that the peoples in the land whom the Israelites were ordered to exterminate all are recorded as having at least partly descended from the Anakim, and if you read between the lines plus look at some of the literature from outside the Bible (especially the Book of Enoch, that several biblical writers quote on occasion) they descended from the "Watchers", mighty angels God appointed to guide and "watch" the nations of the ancient near east who weren't supposed to get involved in mundane human affairs but did so anyway, and for the sake of humanity all their descendants needed to be eliminated. The really big bones are hoaxes. If you separate out those there are skeletons 7' tall from about the time of Joshua, which would point to people 9' tall centuries earlier -- who would have been nearly twice as tall as most ordinary people back then, especially if they wore gear to increase their height. It would be like someone today who was 5' 8" tall encountering someone a full 10' 6" in height -- more than a little intimidating.

Not at that dig, anyway, which is at Ashkelon, the wrong town for Goliath. I'd have to dig to find the location where the 7' skeletons were found, but I think it was at what archaeologists think was Gath -- Goliath's town.

They've also been demonstrated to be fraudulent. That's sad, especially since actual discoveries have found skeletons as tall as 6'9" and possibly 7', which may not seem giant to us (think NBA players) but given that someone 5'5" back then was tall and 5'2" was normal would have been towering! I'm 5'10" and I've met someone who was 7'2", and he seemed like a giant; to someone only 5'2" 7'2" would be terrifying.

I heard about that. I'm wondering if there's any kind of connection to the ancient altar found near there and identified as possibly being an altar erected by Joshua.

Is he one of the people who think this drawing: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/mount-sinai-02.jpg depicts the Ten Commandments? That's a hilarious claim given the ignorance behind it: that drawing is a horned altar, not a sketch with one spot for each commandment! OTOH, not everyone back then used horned altars; it might be worth a look to see if Israel did that early -- and whether such altar were used in the Egyptian calf-cult behind the Golden Calf. If so, this could be an indication of Israel's idolatry....

The Ark of the Covenant shouldn't exist any longer. Its function was to provide a place where God's presence would deal mercy to Israel, and that function was ended the moment Jesus declared "It is [now and forever, totally] finished!" Just as the curtain in the Temple tore in two, so the Ark of the Covenant would have shattered at that very moment as it became useless -- in fact not just useless, but false because Jesus is the true Ark of the Covenant. As for this amateur archaeologist . . . he should have gone to a graduate school for a degree in archaeology before setting out and making a fool of himself.

It's strange that people keep bringing up YEC and evolution when neither has any bearing on the matter. It's as thought they can't conceive that someone is interested in the text and not anything outside it.

Yeah. Not only does he not know Hebrew and/or Greek (as has been admitted) yet tell those who do that they are wrong, it's now plain he doesn't know how to do basic research. He's making the error of treating secondary sources as authoritative when the primary sources are available. Doing that just once on a paper when I was in grad school was sufficient to have the paper tossed in the trash -- and get told to start over from the beginning. I'd work through another couple of dozen but it's a bit late at night for me to keep track of what information I've got open on which browser tab.... I will comment that it is so much easier to have the Masoretic and other texts online instead of the way I did it in grad school, having to have the actual books (or a LOT of photocopies!) spread out across a dining room table!

So you found the same as I did: it's a lousy source because it has internal contradictions plus it deviates from the basic meaning with no cause to do so -- and often makes nonsense when it does so!

Darkness is a blank palette on which to place the "art" of creation. But it must be kept in mind that the order of events the Genesis writer is using here is the order of events in the Egyptian creation story. Why would he use that? Because the Israelites had lived in Egypt long enough that they would have known the Egyptian versions of all the ancient near eastern mythological stories, and since they have no come out of Egypt the writer takes the Egyptian version and uses it to set the record straight. Skipping the details, the account follows the Egyptian order of events but changes the details to make the point that everything the Egyptians considered to be gods or even enemies of the gods is just something that YHWH-Elohim made as a tool for His purposes -- and that includes darkness. Remember that at this point there is no sin, no enemy of the people of God, so darkness does not have its later import. The refrain "evening... morning" encloses the period of darkness with its beginning as light fades and its ending as light returns and just makes that darkness part of God's scheme, totally dashing to pieces the Egyptian idea that nighttime was a period when the gods had to band together to fight the power(s) of destruction and make sure the sun would rise again! And why would God start off with an earth that is "tohu wabohu"? Why shouldn't He? The gods of the nations feared the tohu and the bohu, the formlessness and the desolation, but to YHWH-Elohim these are just two more items in His "art" drawer; chaos is not His enemy but His tool, His palette on which to "draw" order. Darkness, chaos, and desolation only become "evil" once the Deceiver slips into the Garden and confuses the mind of Eve, and then Adam chooses to follow her sin; until then they are just created things God made use of. Yet even then they remain God's servants! It isn't in the orderly, vibrant part of Creation that the Forerunner comes to to announce the coming Messiah; no, he deliberately cries out in the wilderness, the place of chaos and desolation, "Prepare the way of the LORD!" And even before that, as Israel wandered in the wilderness, that chaos and desolation served Him as the realm to which the scapegoat was consigned, carrying the weight of the people's sins out where it belonged, in the realm where form and life are at risk. So at this part of God's narrative, to ascribe chaos and darkness to evil is an error: with no enemy yet, it suggests that God can make mistakes. Only once the Deceiver has accomplished the Fall and gotten those two first parents driven out of the Garden do darkness and chaos become tainted with anything ill.

I picked a dozen of the verses at random and read them in the Hebrew. I noticed two things: when you flip to interlinear to see what they're putting in that resource, a fair number of entries contradict the list, rendering "was" rather than "became". Digging further by just reading the Hebrew, it also became apparent that not translating as "was" had no actual justification -- and it was driven home in my Hebrew classes both as an undergrad in the biblical languages program and as a grad student, including not just my professors but visiting scholars, that you only ever deviate from the basic meaning of the Hebrew when there is cause to do so -- and a big reason for that is that Hebrew verb tenses do not at all correlate well with western indo-european tenses so sticking with the basic translation is best. The fact that there is internal inconsistency in what biblehub's resources are presenting makes it a poor resource; that the selected translations use "became" without any justification (because "was" actually fits the Hebrew better) makes the objectivity suspect -- "bias-driven selection" is a very real possibility. Biblehub just got downgraded on my resource list.

Good point. It should be noted that biblehub is not a "source", it is a reference resource -- big difference. I'll also note that it's very easy to use biblehub badly. It has some great aspects, but used on the face of how it presents things it's easy to go wrong. I use the site, but I always check against BAGD and the TDNT for the Greek, plus a couple of different grammars; sadly I don't have access to my TDOT presently so dealing with the Hebrew takes me longer. Anyway, the way biblehub is structured it's very easy to fall into using it for confirmation of a position rather than for researching a position.

That's a very good question. Especially when there's an admission that he doesn't know Hebrew or Greek yet he ventures to correct people who read those languages. It's essentially saying, "I know I'm not qualified to talk about this, but you people who are qualified are all wrong."

The Hebrew does not tell of a global flood, and there is no scientific evidence for it.

I seriously can't stop laughing -- are you seriously claiming that the Earth had vegetation but there was no universe? Tying the existence of the universe to the fourth day is a novel teaching with no basis in the text: the very first verse has God creating everything; that's what the Hebrew phrase "the heavens and the earth" indicates -- all that exists. And in verse 2 there is the t'hom, the "deep", which can mean the ocean but can also refer to the primeval heavens before God started shaping them. At any rate, they knew the Hebrew more thoroughly than anyone here, so when they say the Hebrew indicates an ancient Earth and an even more ancient universe I'll believe them over the amateurs here.

This is not relevant to the question unless you want to forbid public prayers in church and Christians asking each other to pray for them.

The site has no nihil obstat, no imprimi potest, no imprimatur. It lists no connection to any element of the Magisterium, not even an endorsement of a bishop. It has no clergy, neither priest nor deacon, on its staff. It does not appear on any list of official Catholic lay ministries. It is not connected to any recognized ecclesial movements or communities, not any confraternities or fraternal orders. It doesn't even appear in an official list of National or International Catholic organizations. There is no claim of having the supervision of even a Deacon, let alone a bishop! It is without any connection with the Vatican at all, and thus is not an official Catholic site in any way.

Technically, yes, because "pray" means "ask", and was used that way for most of the time there's been a recognizable English language. Are you claiming t1hey never asked other Christians to pray for them? That's quite a claim, and if it were true then you shouldn't be asking other Christians to pray for you, either. The example to follow is the one that fits what the church is: undivided, alive in Christ. And since that applies equally to all saints no matter where they are, it doesn't matter where they are if you ask them to pray for you. You have this idea that somehow asking saints in heaven to pray for you somehow takes the place of praying to God. But there's no difference due to where a saint happens to live. If I'm asking my grandfather to pray for me when he's alive, but then three days later he dies, why should I stop asking him to pray for me? He's still a Christian, still alive in Christ, still able to pray for me. And that fits what the church is, the living body of Christ, which is all I need to know.