10 Oct 05
Originally posted by telerionSo it's good... Until you back up that fiction claim, we'll keep it at "good", if not downright spectacular!
We could be more precise and say perhaps the the old testament story of the exodus of the israelites from egypt and the conquest of caanan. That's some good fiction.
10 Oct 05
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Originally posted by RatXSome say that absence of evidence doesn't imply evidence of absence, but I think if you are honest enough to do some digging into the archaeology literature that has investigated the claim of at least 600,000 Israelites (certainly far more as this was only a count of the fighting men) plus all their livestock marching from egypt (despite fairly detailed egyptian records through out that time perioid, there is no mention of israelite slaves or their exodus) and hanging out in the patch of desert mentioned in the OT for over 40 years, you'll find that there's not a single trace of their passage. Experts can uncover small settlements of fewer than 300 people. 40+ years of at least 600,000 and more realistically 3 million people eating, pissing, building, herding, and otherwise living, would show up.
So it's good... Until you back up that fiction claim, we'll keep it at "good", if not downright spectacular!
But it's not there. Even the two-bit apologists like Lee Strobel, who if the evidence were there, would be on it like a fly on dung, are silent. The OT gets history of the area pretty well around the 7th century BCE, (certainly because that was when it was written), but when it tries to give accounts of the history and geography before that, it has blatant errors.
The whole story of Moses leading the israelites out of Egypt and Joshua conquering the land of Caanan was a Hebrew folklore made up well after the events were said to occur. All it takes is a bit of courage to investigate what mainstream archaeologists who study that area have to say on the subject. Well and you could do some mathematics to realize that the population growth rates are pretty silly too, especially when one considers what average populations were at the time the story supposedly occured.
10 Oct 05
Originally posted by DoctorScribblesWell...
Books:
The Stand
Shardik
Cat's Cradle
Movies:
Dogma
Life of Brian
Kingpin
South Park Episodes:
Red Hot Catholic Love
Super Best Friends
Passion of the Jew
Christian Rock Hard
Books:
The Name of the Rose (not very sympathetic of Christianity - Eco rarely is - but a cracking yarn nevertheless)
Lord of the Rings (not strictly religious fiction, IMO, but people seem to think it is because Tolkien was a Catholic and LotR has some religious motifs)
Dune (more religious than LotR, IMO; gives the "insider" view of a Messiah)
The Poet and the Lunatics
Chronicles of Narnia
Films:
Ben Hur
A Man for All Seasons (a historical biopic, actually)
The Exorcist
The Third Miracle
Television:
Father Dowling Mysteries (who'd have thunk it? LOL)
10 Oct 05
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Books
The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
Dune - Frank Herbert (all 6 books must be read to really understand the story)
His Dark Materials - Phillip Pulman
The Night's Dawn Trilogy - Peter Hamilton
The Bible
Films
Cecille B de Mille's 10 Commandments
The Matrix Trilogy
The Golden Child
Rosemary's Baby
The Omen
10 Oct 05
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The Divine Comedy (Dante).
The Golden Ass (Apuleius).
A Season in Hell (Rimbaud).
Jerusalem (Blake).
The Anathemata (David Jones).
The Faery Queen (Spenser).
The Handmaid's Tale (Atwood).
Pilgrim's Progress (Bunyan).
The Clerkenwell Tales (Ackroyd).
A Christmas Carol (Dickens).
+ A Glastonbury Romance (John Cowper Powys)