Comments by "Philip Rayment" (@PJRayment) on "37 Bible Characters Found Through Archaeology" video.

@paradoxmo "Traditionally the Torah / Pentateuch is attributed to Moses ..." Not just traditionally, but also attributed to Moses by Jesus (God) Himself. "...but scholarly consensus is that the earliest parts weren’t written until around the 7th century BCE..." The scholarly consensus of people who reject that it was written by God. In fact there are no good reasons for this conclusion. The accounts of the Israelites in Egypt include details such as place names that were known at the time, but long forgotten by the 7th Century BC. Also, an artifact has been found with a bit of text from Numbers, which artifact is dated to around 800 BC, showing that the '7th century' claim is wrong. "Moses definitely didn’t literally write the books." Only if those critics are correct, but they are not.
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"...the beginning books are very general narratives..." How do you come to that conclusion when they records details of names and dates, including family trees? In fact the most-precisely dated event in the Bible (albeit using relative dates) is that of the flood, which records down to the day that it started and finished.
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@frogsnack7072 "Moses also wrote the first five books, so some of it is history that he knew from his relatives ... so a lot was probably passed down, but we may assume he's not telling a story that he witnessed directly." Clearly he was describing some events that he didn't witness personally. However, Genesis has a number of toledoths which indicate that Genesis is compiled from a number of separate documents. Moses would have become the owner of these ancient documents that most likely were written by people who did witness the events. In fact the genealogy of Adam in Genesis 5 refers to it being a written record.
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And that's only one of numerous examples that could be cited. You'd think that by now they'd stop assuming that if there's no extra-biblical evidence for biblical history, they'd stop assuming it's wrong. But of course that would require someone with an open mind.
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"These same 37 "people" are not mentioned outside the box of the bible in any other written literature,..." In other words, them being mentioned in the Bible and outside of the Bible is not evidence for their existence, so what would be evidence of their existence? I'm always amused frustrated by sceptics who claim that there is no evidence simply because they reject the evidence that exists. That's simply being in denial. "Otherwise the statues of Greek "Gods" would be PROOF these "Gods" were real." First, "proof" is not the same thing as "evidence". Second, they could in fact be "real". For example, Zeus is the Greek equivalent of the Roman god Jupiter, whose name apparently derives from Japheth, one of Noah's sons. So worship of Zeus might have begun as ancestor worship—i.e. worship of their real ancestor Japheth.
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"For those in Christ, no proof is needed." Where do you get that idea from? Paul said that if Jesus didn't rise from the dead (i.e. if we didn't have evidence of that), then our faith is in vain. The Bereans were commended for checking what Paul told them, rather than just believing it without question. But you've got a point. When Thomas said that that he wouldn't believe that Jesus had risen from the dead unless he saw the evidence, he was told to not worry about the evidence, but to simply have faith. Oh wait—no, he wasn't told that. He was given the evidence! "For the lost, there's never enough." That part often seems to be true, but then there are plenty of exceptions, such as Lee Strobel, the investigative reporter who set out to show that the Bible was wrong, only to end up being convinced by the evidence.
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"The Bible/Torah was written during the Babylonian captivity by elitists for goatherders." Evidence please (and not just sceptical opinions). Moses mentions details of Egypt, such as place names, that existed at the time, but had been long forgotten by the time of the Babylonian captivity. An artefact dating to around 800 BC has been found with some text from the book of Numbers, showing that it existed earlier than that captivity.
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Fiction. But of course if it's real, then it's based on history. And Jesus and the (other) New Testament authors treated it as actual history.
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@heisenbones420 "I wouldn't say its fiction,..." The clear implication of your question is about it not being history. Whether you call it fiction or myth or legend, the effect is the same in this context. "... as he started in the video its rather legendary, and there is a Big difference" In this context (of your question), what is that supposed big difference?
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So you're saying that the title is wrong because we didn't find the actual people, just mentions of them? I'm a pedant, but I think that's going to far.
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@blond7899 "Grasping at straws" Perhaps so, if he really mean 'begging', but otherwise that's a quote from the Bible, not a grasping at straws.
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"For the last 50 years, huge sums of money have been spent (it's no secret, see History, Discovery and similar channels) ..." Yep, good, anti-biblical sources there. "In order to find or confirm on a scientific basis anything from the Bible. Result: almost none, only assumptions and loose constructions." Then how come we've had archaeologists such as William Albright saying “There can be no doubt that archaeology has confirmed the substantial historicity of the Old Testament tradition.” And thanks to jeffmacdonald9863 for answering another aspect of your comment.
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@algurevich9141 "Moses was bronze age..." According to this video, which adopts a secular view of such things, as I've explained in a separate comment. "Even if Moses never existed, which can be proven with reasonable certainty,..." Oh? How can it be so proven? "...it should not affect your faith. Faith needs no proof." Incorrect. You're referring to the atheist's blind faith. Biblically, faith is based on evidence. For example, we have evidence of God being trustworthy, so we have faith that what God tells us, that we can't check for ourselves, is also correct. It's just like you sitting on a chair. You don't stress-test it before sitting on it, because you know that chairs don't normally collapse under your weight. So because you have this evidence of what chairs normally do, you have faith that this one will hold you. The Apostle Paul himself said that if we didn't have the evidence of Jesus' resurrection, then our "faith" would be in vain.
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@UsefulCharts "For example, the Greeks traced their king's lineage all the way back to Zeus. Does that mean Zeus is real?" If Zeus (the Greek equivalent of the Roman Jupiter) is actually Japheth, the ancestor of the Greeks, then yes! Whilst no doubt there is ancient fiction, far tot much history has been rejected as fiction, only for us to later discover that it was real or has a real basis.
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Oh dear, that old bad Spiderman analogy? Do you think that nobody is able to tell the difference between history and fiction? Do you regard all ancient history is fiction on the same basis, or only the Bible? "To purport that because Jerusalem exists it stands to reason that donkeys spoke, whales swallowed and regurgitated humans, seas were parted, corpses were reanimated, etc. is so unbelievably feeble minded, I almost assume that it’s trolling." Ignoring the fact that this video is not drawing any such conclusion, you're clearly misrepresenting the Bible, which makes no mention of donkeys speaking, whales swallowing and regurgitating humans, nor seas being parted. What the Bible does record is one donkey speaking thanks to the supernatural intervention of an angel, one specially-prepared "great fish" (no whale is mentioned) swallowing a human, and one sea being parted miraculously. These are all presented as being due to God's direct intervention, not as natural or repeated occurrences. So who's trolling? Unless you want to argue that God couldn't or didn't do such things, that is no reason to reject them. "The Bible is an allegorical work of fiction..." Evidence please. It purports to be history. It's written as history. Millions accept it as history, including archaeologists such as William Albright who said that “There can be no doubt that archaeology has confirmed the substantial historicity of the Old Testament tradition.” You can't simply assert the contrary without making a good argument for that being the case. "It is NOT divinely written or historically accurate." Evidence please. "It’s barely even readable,..." Utter nonsense. "...chock full of misconceptions..." What misconceptions? "...and omissions, etc." Well, duh! Nobody claims that it includes everything that ever happened! "...I just can’t get over how people can turn off their brains whenever religion is involved." Atheists in particular. Christians, on the other hand, have used their brains and their Christian worldview to found the university system, universal education, and science.
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He did, although there is evidence in Genesis that he actually compiled that book from older documents.
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@jeffmacdonald9863 "That's tradition,..." It's history, actually, recorded in that reliable history book, the Bible. "...but it has to be taken completely on faith." Biblical faith, which is evidence-based. Not the atheistic blind faith. "There's a good deal of evidence against it." Such as? There is good evidence for it. For one, it includes details, such as place names, of Egypt that we've found evidence of, but which were unknown at the later time that they were supposedly written.
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Whilst this is useful information for what it covers, it unfortunately takes a rather secular view of history. The entire concept of a bronze age and an iron age is secular. According to the Bible people were working in bronze and iron just a few generations from Adam. But with the flood, a lot of working knowledge of such technology would have been lost. Further, with the dispersal from Babel resulting from the confusion of languages, you had family groups (presumably) setting out on their own, each with an incomplete working knowledge of pre-flood technology. As they settled, it would take time to rediscover both the technology and the resources needed to produce it. But generations, not ages. Further, the video places Adam and Eve in the period from 3300 BC (but secularises that to BCE), even though it is clear from a study of the time periods listed in the Bible that they dated from about 4000 BC. It also claims that "the Hebrew Bible is basically an iron-age book" (i.e. from 1200 BC onwards, according to the video), which ignores that Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and Job all describe events mostly prior to this period, and there is no good reason for thinking that they date from later. Those books are about 30% of the Old Testament. Similarly, the claim that the "bronze age" stories of the Bible read more like myth and legend seems to be baseless. Certainly the video didn't justify that claim. How is it "more like myth and legend" to provide names, dates, and genealogies? Further, the accounts of the Israelites in Egypt include details, such as place names, that have been shown to have existed at the time but which had changed in later times, showing that the accounts are contemporary. In addition, other names are also known from extra-biblical sources, including Noah's son Japheth and all the people listed in the 'table of nations' in Genesis 10. Further, some of the events recorded in the Bible are known from other sources, including creation itself (there is, for just one example, an Australian Aboriginal story of the first woman bringing death and suffering into the world by eating the forbidden produce of a tree), the flood (literally hundreds of stories from around the world, some with some remarkably similar details), and a few mentioning the confusion of languages.
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@UsefulCharts "What is the Bronze Age extra-biblical source for him?" Bronze Age? I've already rejected use of that term. "Can you provide me a source for where the name Japheth can be found in a contemporary extra-biblical source?" No. I said extra-biblical sources, not contemporary sources. Bill Cooper's After the Flood says "... we find that the early Greeks worshipped him as Iapetos, or Iapetus, whom they regarded as the son of heaven and earth, the father of many nations. Likewise, in the ancient Sanskrit vedas of India he is remembered as Pra-Japati, the sun and ostensible Lord of Creation. As time went by, his name was further corrupted, being assimilated into the Roman pantheon as Iupater, and eventually Jupiter ... None of these names are of Greek, Indian, or Latin origins, but are merely corruptions of the original name of Japeth. Both the early Irish Celts and the early Britons traced the descent of their royal houses from Japheth, as did also the early Saxons who corrupted his name to Sceaf ..." "You also said every name in the Table of Nations can be found as well. So, I'm curious about Arphaxad." From an online article about the grandsons of Noah, "Arphaxad was the progenitor of the Chaldeans. This ‘is confirmed by the Hurrian (Nuzi) tablets, which render the name as Arip-hurra—the founder of Chaldea.’ "
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@seanhammer6296 "Here's the very first thing that comes up in a simple search: "when was Torah written?":" That's odd, because if I do the same search, that doesn't come up. Second, if I search for part of that result, it still doesn't find anything. "This is based on a number of arguments, including the lack of archaeological evidence for the Exodus story..." So the very first "argument" mentioned is an argument from silence? That's a very weak argument. "...and inconsistencies in the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." What inconsistencies? "However, some scholars believe the Torah was written during the Hellenistic period (333–164 BCE)." So you ignored my request to not provide sceptical opinions? My previous reply already provide some evidence contradicting that, and you haven't shown my evidence to be wrong. "Ok, your turn. What makes you think Moses ever even existed?" I've already given you some, and you've not refuted any of it. And yet you ask for more? "...no citing the Bible." Typical. "Give me evidence without citing the main source of evidence"! This shows your bias. Famous archaeologist William Albright wrote “The excessive scepticism shown toward the Bible by important historical schools of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, certain phases of which still appear periodically, has been progressively discredited. Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details, and has brought increased recognition to the value of the Bible as a source of history.” Edward Musgrave Blaiklock, another famous archaeologist, wrote “Near Eastern archaeology has demonstrated the historical and geographical reliability of the Bible in many important areas. By clarifying the objectivity and factual accuracy of biblical authors, archaeology also helps correct the view that the Bible is avowedly partisan and subjective. It is now known, for instance, that, along with the Hittites, Hebrew scribes were the best historians in the entire ancient Near East, despite contrary propaganda that emerged from Assyria, Egypt, and elsewhere.” So your turn again: what actual evidence is there that Moses didn't write the Pentateuch?
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