• Acts chapter 16 (plain text)

    From JTEM@jtem01@gmail.com to alt.atheism,sci.skeptic,alt.paranormal on Tue Jun 9 21:24:23 2026
    From Newsgroup: alt.paranormal


    So the Old Testament of the bible is fake.

    Here's one of the very funky results of this
    fraud:

    Someone on Tumblr (NOT me) raised the subject
    of 1 Kings. Wait. Before getting to my translation
    issue, let be quote the passage:

    : "The word of the Lord came to him [Elijah the
    : Tishbite], saying, 'Go forth from here and
    : turn eastward, and hide yourself by the Wadi
    : Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. You
    : shall drink from the wadi, and I have commanded
    : the ravens to feed you there"... The ravens
    : brought him bread and meat in the morning, and
    : bread and meet in the evening, and he drank
    : from the wadi. - 1 Kings 17 2-4, 6.

    In his post he goes on to talk about the ravens,
    their imagery, what they represent (even quoting
    Poe's "Raven" at one point). But...

    But my question isn't regarding his commentary
    though, it's regarding the translation of
    "Ravens." Nearly everyone readily admits that
    it's an uneasy fit, this "unclean" animal is
    actually denounced as an "Abomination" in
    modern translations of Leviticus, So, it seems
    heavily unlikely that God would choose them
    as his servants, that they would be God's
    personal messengers who service & save a
    biblical Prophet. It don't make too much sense.

    "Ravens" in 1 Kings is a highly problematic
    match, and the most popular alternative is
    "Arabs." Well, "Arab Merchants" specifically.
    But why not "Arabs"? The Nabataeans were
    unsettled people. They disdained permanent
    settlements. They also fiercely defended
    their desert nomad heritage INCLUDING the
    time honored tradition of hospitality. What
    is the legend of "Sodom & Gomorrah" but a
    morality tale denouncing the settled culture
    and promoting the Arab (Nabataean) lifestyle?
    The settled/city people are depicted as
    lecherous while Lot, our Arab, is a "Righteous"
    man who would cast his own daughters to the
    mob in order to protect his guests.

    There is a "Refutation" (of sorts) for
    translating 1 Kings as "Arabs" instead of
    "Ravens." It's not very compelling though.
    Most arguments are based on the severe
    BACKDATING of the biblical tales. They
    claim that there were no "Arab" (merchants)
    in the Levant at that time. But, like I
    said, this is all based on a backdating of
    the bible. But...

    We know that 2 Kings, for example, could
    not possibly have been written before the
    very end of the 4th century BC(E). The
    bible has it's King Amaziah battling the
    Edomites in the (early) 8th century BC(E),
    when the whole thing is nothing more than
    a (very) thinly veiled retelling of
    Antigonus' attack on the Nabataeans more
    than 400 hundred years later. So if we
    have absolute/positive proof that 2 Kings
    is backdated by more than 400 years, why
    should we assume that 1 King is a literally
    true telling of 9th century events?

    Oh. Another objection to the "Arabs"
    translation is achieved only by tacking
    on "Merchants" and insisting that this
    couldn't be true. The solution seems
    simple enough, stop insisting on tacking
    on the word "Merchants." There. All your
    discomfort is gone.

    The Nababaeans are the match to the "Hebrews"
    of the bible, and these would be the Arab
    merchants -- traders.

    The apparently practiced circumcision, had
    an oral tradition, had a tradition of NOT
    depicting their god... the lifestyle of
    the "Hebrews"...

    They were influenced ("Corrupted") by
    Hellenistic culture, eventually. Some of
    there religious beliefs were written down,
    for example, They left some religious
    predictions and if you look at Petra,
    despite retaining the tradition of living
    in tents, they carved monumental tombs!

    Well. They hired people to carve them.

    There are no other matches to the biblical
    "Hebrews."

    Nor of the Ravens-turned-Arabs.
    --
    https://jtem.tumblr.com/
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