Post by Admin on Dec 25, 2020 0:52:40 GMT
1. JERICHO
2. TOHU WA BOHU futureschool.boards.net/post/242/thread
3. BARBARA WALKER'S BIBLICAL MYTHS futureschool.boards.net/post/244/thread
JERICHO
JERICHO; JOSEPH
Testing Rohl's Test of Time [Journals] [Aeon]
_From: Aeon V:1 (Nov 1997) Dale F. Murphie
... David Rohl's impressive book is unlikely to weather the test of time. Lending itself towards an eight word summary - "brilliant, exciting, compelling but regrettably wrong, wrong, wrong"....
_Jericho. ...
According to Rohl, there was no walled city of ____Jericho during the Late Bronze Age during which, according to the conventional chronology, the Israelites were supposed to have destroyed the city. Biblical ____Jericho, destroyed by Joshua's forces, Rohl insists, is to be identified with the Middle Bronze Age city at Tell es-Sultan.[20] ... Meanwhile Rohl's wide-ranging re-examination of major sites in the Holy Land - Hazor, Shechem, Shiloh, Megiddo, Jerusalem, et al. - provide great information of immense value in consolidating Israel's historical past. His alignment of all these events with Middle Bronze II shows not that the Biblical record is wrong, but that the conventional dating for MBII and the others is astray. Once again these results illustrate the value of the written word over secondary forms of enquiry and reinforce this writer's proposition that present chronological problems arise simply from a batch of preconceived and ill-judged scholastic notions.
... _Lanayu.
Editorial insertion: According to Rohl's reconstruction, Labayu, mentioned in the el-Amarna correspondence as ruler of Palestine's hill country, is to be identified with the Biblical Saul, first king of the Israelite nation. [21] Saul's son, called Ishbosheth in the Old Testament, but really named Ishbaal, is to be identified with the Mutbaal mentioned in the same el-Amarna correspondence. [22] Labayu was king of Shechem - nothing else; certainly not Saul, neither his contemporary. In October 1989 this writer prepared a lengthy paper with limited circulation on this subject. Briefly, the thrust centered upon the lack of any Hebrew text confirming Egyptian hegemony and the singular lack of Egyptian reprisals against Saul's newly raised standing army. Also countered was the Mutbaal correlation with Saul's son, Ishbosheth. Additionally, the notion that the el-Amarna cuneiform library relates to the same time frame as David and Saul wilts with the defeat of the earlier proposition that Ramesses II is to be identified as Shishak and that the contemporary eclipse dates to -1012. The Israelites in Egypt Editorial insertion: Although most commentaries on the Old Testament insist that the Israelite sojourn in Egypt lasted 430 years, Rohl is of the opinion that the actual duration was 215 years. [23] That Israel spent just 215 years in Egypt is fairly common Hebrew historical fare, even extending to embrace the proposition that they came out on the very anniversary of the day they went in. The 430 years specified backdates to the time of Abraham's celebrated journey to the Nile Kingdom in company with his wife Sarah, so that the two events have become generally confused. The New Testament account by Stephen confirms that this confusion existed even in the meridian of time, but fortunately earlier records correct the error. In this regard, the words of Josephus clarify the position, "They left Egypt in the month Xanthicus, on the fifteenth day of the lunar month; four hundred and thirty years after our forefather Abraham came into Canaan, but two hundred and fifteen years only after Jacob removed into Egypt." [24] Joseph Editorial insertion: Rohl's conclusion concerning Joseph, the son of Jacob, was that he became vizier of Egypt during the reign of Amenemhet III, who was the most powerful pharaoh of Egypt's Middle Kingdom. According to this scheme, Joseph would have continued in office through the reigns of the first rulers of the 13th Dynasty. [25] His palace was to be found in the regional capital of Avaris, unearthed by Manfred Bietak at Tell ed-Daba. [26] The linchpin of Rohl's ploy to catch the attention of the non-specialist reader is his rehearsal of discoveries by Manfred Bietak's Austrian Archaeological team at Tell ed-Daba. These are of great value simply because they embrace great possibilities. But the fact that a statue of Amennemes (Amenemhet) III was recovered from the same ruins does not at once mean that he was contemporary and that we should rush to embrace the New Chronology, for there are intrinsic problems with the theory when compared with the full corpus of Hebrew annals. Nevertheless, it is but natural to strike for the best chronological template and sieve the options, exercising care however to realise that anything less than 100% alignment is vulnerable. Such will prove the limiting factors of Rohl's Dynasty XII projections as we follow into the flood theory below. On the other hand, possibilities of a Joseph-Amennemes III synchronism will clearly attract much attention and strike a responsive chord in a wide cross-section of Judaeo/Christian readers. Joseph and Dynasty XII Editorial insertion: The extremely high levels of the Nile recorded at the Semna Gorge during the twentieth year of Amenemhet III were the real cause of the famine in Egypt, which famine plays such a major part in the Biblical tale of Joseph. Such high flood levels disallowed the sowing of seed and so harvests were detrimentally affected. [27] The Island of Philae on the Nile with ancient nilometer to the right. Could Egypt's seven years famine, mentioned in Genesis, have been caused by a high flooding of the Nile? Rohl's prognosis that the 7 year famine was attended and caused by exceedingly high Niles is forthright, refreshing, and challenging, but, on closer examination, potentially strained even to the point of being desperate. It is strained in having no option other than to canvas high water levels for the source of the problem in the face of the general concept that famine is the result of exactly the opposite condition. It became desperate when, in order to sketch Joseph into the scheme as the Vizier of Amennemes III, the famine had to be inescapably the byproduct of some 46 years of reported high Niles. Mark you well, though, disqualification of the interpretation of the high Nile readings readings at Semna, will not be sufficient in itself to separate Joseph from this particular time frame. There are other critical arbiters. Meanwhile, the fact will always remain that excessively high water levels would have proven a mixed blessing to those downstream, scouring existing fields of some but adding to the planting area of others, although when the river returned to normal any gain would have turned out to have been but temporary: "What the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away" - so to speak! On the other hand, any excessively low Nile would have been a downer simply due to the resulting inability to effectively irrigate existing planting areas, thus reducing the annual harvest, whilst a series of same could have reduced an otherwise strong agricultural nation to virtual penury - hence the dread spectre of famine. But we would do well here to focus on Amennemes, for he seems the key to this situation rather than Joseph. We know, for example, that this Pharaoh was a particularly strong ruler, renowned throughout the length and breadth of the land for massive projects, not the least of which involved water storage and reticulation on a gargantuan scale. It is he who is credited with diverting much of the Nile flow into the Faiyum depression to create that which came to be known as Lake Moeris (the Lake Nasser project of his time). Indeed, were a newcomer to Egyptian history challenged to identify a candidate for the legendary Menes (who organised a system of dykes and channels to bring the Nile River under control), on the face value of works alone (to but scarcely note the remarkable similarity of names), he could do far worse than nominate Amennemes for the plum role. This particular Pharaoh would also be in a much stronger position, socially, culturally, industrially and expediently, than some character at the dawn of Egyptian history, for this section of Dynasty XII was essentially at peace. In the 1966 edition of KUSH, Journal of the Sudan Antiquities Service, Volume XIV, Jean Vercoutter advanced a detailed paper entitled "Semna South Fort and the Records of Nile Levels at Kumma". This article was based on field work carried out during the winter of 1956-57 when international archaeological efforts focused on the area prior to abandoning same to the encroaching waters of Lake Nasser. Long since submerged beneath the rising waters of the Aswan dam, no further investigation is possible and we are beholden to the specialist efforts, of which Vercoutter's is typical, of those who worked so hard to produce as comprehensive a body of information as possible in the short time available to them. Vercoutter's segment of the investigation focused on the Twelfth Dynasty rock inscriptions, which give rise to Rohl's flood/famine prognosis, with the now highly pertinent conclusion that during the Dynasty XII period, specifically in the reign of Amennemes III, an artificial dam was erected across the minor channels of the cataracts at Semna to restrict the flow to the main channel only. The artificial water level created as flood waters, backed up behind the funneled downstream exit, was recorded annually and became the reported high river levels which have so thoroughly bewitched, if not bemused, our current guide. By such simple methods, Egyptian engineers were able to better manage the river, in terms of military and commercial transport, for a longer proportion of the overall year, retaining sufficient depth of water in the main channel to overcome the natural disadvantage which the cataracts otherwise presented. Logically the technique was used at additional locations between the second and third cataracts at convenient points, where steep banks of the river, islands in the stream, and natural rock transverse spurs combined, transforming the entire stretch, at least that below Semna, into a seasonal inland sea, complete with veritable harbours. At the same time, the structures did nothing to impede the ultimate passage of flood waters downstream to their annual appointment with a panting delta and the Mediterranean beyond. Once the flood passed and the river returned annually to its normal low level, inspection and preventative maintenance was an easy matter for as long as the strategic imperative remained, which is to say until the end of that dynasty. This engineering initiative by Amennemes III, somewhat akin to a series of open locks at the northern end of this strategic 150 mile length of river, was infinitely preferable to the labour-intensive digs into solid gneiss of his predecessor, Sesostris III, [28] while at the same time delivering the widest range of benefits. (The perceptive reader will have already noted that high water readings would be several metres above today's levels all along this section of the river until the system ultimately broke down and the manmade portions were swept away in the resulting torrent, possibly decades later.) As yet another working model, this scheme was eminently worthy of that great Pharaoh who presided over the Faiyum project in middle Egypt and set his seal as the el supremo of water management à la Menes. Unfortunately, Rohl dismisses the sufficiency of the foregoing scenario (for which rather surprisingly some evidence remained) in an instant, to claim an audience for that which will be seen, in a moment, to be the extremely precarious "more water coming down the river" theory. Vercoutter only gets a footnote airing [29] which, unless the reader happens to be familiar with
Evidence of An Inversion Event? [Journals] [Aeon]
Is there any possibility that Stone Age people from the early Holocene have passed down oral histories relating to an inversion event, and that fragments of these oral histories have reached us? Were these people sophisticated enough to have passed down any meaningful information? An indication of their advancement is given by excavations at ____Jericho that have uncovered structures built about 10,000 yr BP. A strong stone wall appears to have enclosed a 10 acre town site. Around the outside of the wall there is a 24 ft wide by 6 ft deep rock-cut ditch. The fortification included a 28 ft diameter stone tower.(40) In later Middle East Stone Age sites glazed pottery and copper articles are found. The use of copper increased markedly after 6,000 yr BP, but stone continued to be used for tools and weapons until the development of bronze, a hard alloy of copper and tin, which occurred about 4,000 yr BP. The first written materials
-----
JERICHO MYTH
Myth doesn't mean fiction. It means imaginative report. I suspect that the story of Jericho is myth, because of this Biblical passage: (Deuteronomy 9:1) 9 “Hear, O Israel: you are to cross over the Jordan today, to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, cities great and fortified up to heaven,"
Cities fortified up to heaven seems likely to refer to the Saturn configuration in the pole star position in the sky.
I searched on Jericho at Catastrophism.com and found the following. Jericho surely did exist, but the Jericho myth seems to combine imagery from the Saturn configuration and the actual city on Earth.
Testing Rohl's Test of Time [Aeon]
_From: Aeon V:1 (Nov 1997) Dale F. Murphie
... David Rohl's impressive book is unlikely to weather the test of time. Lending itself towards an eight word summary - "brilliant, exciting, compelling but regrettably wrong, wrong, wrong"....
_Jericho. ...
According to Rohl, there was no walled city of ____Jericho during the Late Bronze Age during which, according to the conventional chronology, the Israelites were supposed to have destroyed the city. Biblical ____Jericho, destroyed by Joshua's forces, Rohl insists, is to be identified with the Middle Bronze Age city at Tell es-Sultan.[20] ... Meanwhile Rohl's wide-ranging re-examination of major sites in the Holy Land - Hazor, Shechem, Shiloh, Megiddo, Jerusalem, et al. - provide great information of immense value in consolidating Israel's historical past. His alignment of all these events with Middle Bronze II shows not that the Biblical record is wrong, but that the conventional dating for MBII and the others is astray. Once again these results illustrate the value of the written word over secondary forms of enquiry and reinforce this writer's proposition that present chronological problems arise simply from a batch of preconceived and ill-judged scholastic notions.
OTHER BIBLE MYTHS
ATENIST THEORY
I searched on "Bible myths" at Catastrophism.com and got a couple of interesting excerpts. One says this.
The Bible Myth: The African Origins Of The Jewish People by Gary Greenberg [Velikovskian]
_From: The Velikovskian Vol. V, No. 1 THE BIBLE MYTH: THE AFRICAN ORIGINS OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE, Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1996. 308 Pages By: Gary Greenberg. Reviewed by: Lynn E. Rose
_The title and subtitle of this book are somewhat broader than the content. For Greenberg does not reject all of the Bible as myth, only the earlier portions of Biblical history. Often, Greenberg treats even the origin accounts more as garbling or transmogrifications than as fabrications. Thus, it is significant that he does not deny that there was an Exodus, that there was a Moses, that there was a David, and so on. Perhaps the title of Chapter 15, "Rewriting the History of Ancient Israel's Origins", would have been a much more accurate title for the book as a whole. The word "African" in the subtitle is also rather misleading. ... Greenberg is referring primarily to Egyptian origins, and not to Africa as a whole.
... Ironically, the principal virtue of the book is its clarity. Greenberg tells us exactly what he thinks and exactly what he is doing. In contrast to many other authors, Greenberg's overall position is best summarized in his own words: "In this book I offer a radical new solution to the mystery of Israel's origins, one that places its earliest roots in fourteenth-century B.C. Egypt during the reign of the monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaten. I call this the Atenist theory, after the unique deity that he worshiped [sic]. It holds that the refugees departing from Egypt during what later became known as the Exodus were native Egyptians, devoted followers of the pharaoh Akhenaten." (Pages 3-4) "In this book I will argue that Moses was the chief priest of the Aten cult and that at the time of Akhenaten's death Moses fled from Egypt to avoid execution. Upon Horemhab's death he returned to Egypt and attempted a military coup, the purpose of which was to restore the Aten cult to the throne. His allies included the persecuted remnant of Akhenaten's following, large numbers of badly treated sick and diseased Egyptians, assorted opponents of Ramesses I, and an army belonging to the Canaanite kingdom of Shechem, whose rulers were openly hostile to Egypt's demands for submission. "Moses's actions brought the nation to the brink of civil war. The confrontation ended with a negotiated truce that guaranteed the insurgent army safe passage out of the country. This truce and safe passage out of Egypt was the Exodus." (Page 7) Note that the Atenist theory leaves no room whatsoever for the 2000 years' worth of Biblical patriarchs who are supposed to have lived – presumably in Asia – prior to the Servitude in Egypt.
BIBLE MYTHS, INCLUDING JONAH etc
You can read the following old book online at the link. It has a zoom button on the lower right. It's interesting that they had enough information on ancient documents at that time to be able to find so many parallels.
T.W . Doane, Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions (N.Y., 1882)
archive.org/details/biblemythsandthe00doanuoft/mode/2up
CHAPTER I THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN ...................................... 1
CHAPTER II THE DELUGE ....................................................... 19
CHAPTER III THE TOWER OF BABEL ............................................... 33
CHAPTER IV THE TRIAL OF ABRAHAM'S FAITH ..................................... 38
CHAPTER V JACOB'S VISION OF THE LADDER. ...................................... 43
CHAPTER VI THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT ............................................ 48
CHAPTER VII RECEIVING THE TEN COMMANDMENTS ................................... 58
CHAPTER VIII SAMSON AND HIS EXPLOITS ............................................ 62
CHAPTER IX JONAH SWALLOWED BY A BIG FISH ........................................ 77
_The rest of the book compares Biblical claims about Jesus to myths from other sources. I accept that the claims about Jesus may be myth-based, or it may be that he re-enacted myths. What seems to virtually prove Jesus' existence and "resurrection" is the shroud of Turin, which has apparently his image imprinted by bright light that came from his body after death and which has pollen from plants that likely only grew in the Jerusalem area 2,000 years ago etc.
_This is from page 80 about Jonah and the Whale.
"The most prominent mythical characteristic of the story of Jonah is his celebrated abode in the sea in the belly of a whale. This trait is eminently Solar. ... As on occasion of the storm the storm-dragon or the storm-serpent swallows the Sun, so when he sets, he (Jonah, as a personification of the Sun) is swallowed by a mighty fish, waiting for him at the bottom of the sea. Then, when he appears again on the horizon, he is spit out on the shore by the sea-monster.1
_"The Sun was called Jona, as appears from Grater's inscriptions, and other sources.2
_"In the Vedas the four sacred books of the Hindoos when Day and Night, Sun and Darkness, are opposed to each other, the one is designated Red, the other Black?
The Red Sun being swallowed up by the Dark Earth at Night as it apparently is when it sets in the west to be cast forth again at Day, is also illustrated in like manner. Jonah, Hercules and others personify the Sun, and a huge Fish represents the Earth. The Earth represented as a huge Fish is one of the most prominent ideas of the Polynesian mythology.3"
_Note that the Sun normally doesn't set for 3 days. So if it did, it was likely referring to a catastrophic event.
2. TOHU WA BOHU futureschool.boards.net/post/242/thread
3. BARBARA WALKER'S BIBLICAL MYTHS futureschool.boards.net/post/244/thread
JERICHO
JERICHO; JOSEPH
Testing Rohl's Test of Time [Journals] [Aeon]
_From: Aeon V:1 (Nov 1997) Dale F. Murphie
... David Rohl's impressive book is unlikely to weather the test of time. Lending itself towards an eight word summary - "brilliant, exciting, compelling but regrettably wrong, wrong, wrong"....
_Jericho. ...
According to Rohl, there was no walled city of ____Jericho during the Late Bronze Age during which, according to the conventional chronology, the Israelites were supposed to have destroyed the city. Biblical ____Jericho, destroyed by Joshua's forces, Rohl insists, is to be identified with the Middle Bronze Age city at Tell es-Sultan.[20] ... Meanwhile Rohl's wide-ranging re-examination of major sites in the Holy Land - Hazor, Shechem, Shiloh, Megiddo, Jerusalem, et al. - provide great information of immense value in consolidating Israel's historical past. His alignment of all these events with Middle Bronze II shows not that the Biblical record is wrong, but that the conventional dating for MBII and the others is astray. Once again these results illustrate the value of the written word over secondary forms of enquiry and reinforce this writer's proposition that present chronological problems arise simply from a batch of preconceived and ill-judged scholastic notions.
... _Lanayu.
Editorial insertion: According to Rohl's reconstruction, Labayu, mentioned in the el-Amarna correspondence as ruler of Palestine's hill country, is to be identified with the Biblical Saul, first king of the Israelite nation. [21] Saul's son, called Ishbosheth in the Old Testament, but really named Ishbaal, is to be identified with the Mutbaal mentioned in the same el-Amarna correspondence. [22] Labayu was king of Shechem - nothing else; certainly not Saul, neither his contemporary. In October 1989 this writer prepared a lengthy paper with limited circulation on this subject. Briefly, the thrust centered upon the lack of any Hebrew text confirming Egyptian hegemony and the singular lack of Egyptian reprisals against Saul's newly raised standing army. Also countered was the Mutbaal correlation with Saul's son, Ishbosheth. Additionally, the notion that the el-Amarna cuneiform library relates to the same time frame as David and Saul wilts with the defeat of the earlier proposition that Ramesses II is to be identified as Shishak and that the contemporary eclipse dates to -1012. The Israelites in Egypt Editorial insertion: Although most commentaries on the Old Testament insist that the Israelite sojourn in Egypt lasted 430 years, Rohl is of the opinion that the actual duration was 215 years. [23] That Israel spent just 215 years in Egypt is fairly common Hebrew historical fare, even extending to embrace the proposition that they came out on the very anniversary of the day they went in. The 430 years specified backdates to the time of Abraham's celebrated journey to the Nile Kingdom in company with his wife Sarah, so that the two events have become generally confused. The New Testament account by Stephen confirms that this confusion existed even in the meridian of time, but fortunately earlier records correct the error. In this regard, the words of Josephus clarify the position, "They left Egypt in the month Xanthicus, on the fifteenth day of the lunar month; four hundred and thirty years after our forefather Abraham came into Canaan, but two hundred and fifteen years only after Jacob removed into Egypt." [24] Joseph Editorial insertion: Rohl's conclusion concerning Joseph, the son of Jacob, was that he became vizier of Egypt during the reign of Amenemhet III, who was the most powerful pharaoh of Egypt's Middle Kingdom. According to this scheme, Joseph would have continued in office through the reigns of the first rulers of the 13th Dynasty. [25] His palace was to be found in the regional capital of Avaris, unearthed by Manfred Bietak at Tell ed-Daba. [26] The linchpin of Rohl's ploy to catch the attention of the non-specialist reader is his rehearsal of discoveries by Manfred Bietak's Austrian Archaeological team at Tell ed-Daba. These are of great value simply because they embrace great possibilities. But the fact that a statue of Amennemes (Amenemhet) III was recovered from the same ruins does not at once mean that he was contemporary and that we should rush to embrace the New Chronology, for there are intrinsic problems with the theory when compared with the full corpus of Hebrew annals. Nevertheless, it is but natural to strike for the best chronological template and sieve the options, exercising care however to realise that anything less than 100% alignment is vulnerable. Such will prove the limiting factors of Rohl's Dynasty XII projections as we follow into the flood theory below. On the other hand, possibilities of a Joseph-Amennemes III synchronism will clearly attract much attention and strike a responsive chord in a wide cross-section of Judaeo/Christian readers. Joseph and Dynasty XII Editorial insertion: The extremely high levels of the Nile recorded at the Semna Gorge during the twentieth year of Amenemhet III were the real cause of the famine in Egypt, which famine plays such a major part in the Biblical tale of Joseph. Such high flood levels disallowed the sowing of seed and so harvests were detrimentally affected. [27] The Island of Philae on the Nile with ancient nilometer to the right. Could Egypt's seven years famine, mentioned in Genesis, have been caused by a high flooding of the Nile? Rohl's prognosis that the 7 year famine was attended and caused by exceedingly high Niles is forthright, refreshing, and challenging, but, on closer examination, potentially strained even to the point of being desperate. It is strained in having no option other than to canvas high water levels for the source of the problem in the face of the general concept that famine is the result of exactly the opposite condition. It became desperate when, in order to sketch Joseph into the scheme as the Vizier of Amennemes III, the famine had to be inescapably the byproduct of some 46 years of reported high Niles. Mark you well, though, disqualification of the interpretation of the high Nile readings readings at Semna, will not be sufficient in itself to separate Joseph from this particular time frame. There are other critical arbiters. Meanwhile, the fact will always remain that excessively high water levels would have proven a mixed blessing to those downstream, scouring existing fields of some but adding to the planting area of others, although when the river returned to normal any gain would have turned out to have been but temporary: "What the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away" - so to speak! On the other hand, any excessively low Nile would have been a downer simply due to the resulting inability to effectively irrigate existing planting areas, thus reducing the annual harvest, whilst a series of same could have reduced an otherwise strong agricultural nation to virtual penury - hence the dread spectre of famine. But we would do well here to focus on Amennemes, for he seems the key to this situation rather than Joseph. We know, for example, that this Pharaoh was a particularly strong ruler, renowned throughout the length and breadth of the land for massive projects, not the least of which involved water storage and reticulation on a gargantuan scale. It is he who is credited with diverting much of the Nile flow into the Faiyum depression to create that which came to be known as Lake Moeris (the Lake Nasser project of his time). Indeed, were a newcomer to Egyptian history challenged to identify a candidate for the legendary Menes (who organised a system of dykes and channels to bring the Nile River under control), on the face value of works alone (to but scarcely note the remarkable similarity of names), he could do far worse than nominate Amennemes for the plum role. This particular Pharaoh would also be in a much stronger position, socially, culturally, industrially and expediently, than some character at the dawn of Egyptian history, for this section of Dynasty XII was essentially at peace. In the 1966 edition of KUSH, Journal of the Sudan Antiquities Service, Volume XIV, Jean Vercoutter advanced a detailed paper entitled "Semna South Fort and the Records of Nile Levels at Kumma". This article was based on field work carried out during the winter of 1956-57 when international archaeological efforts focused on the area prior to abandoning same to the encroaching waters of Lake Nasser. Long since submerged beneath the rising waters of the Aswan dam, no further investigation is possible and we are beholden to the specialist efforts, of which Vercoutter's is typical, of those who worked so hard to produce as comprehensive a body of information as possible in the short time available to them. Vercoutter's segment of the investigation focused on the Twelfth Dynasty rock inscriptions, which give rise to Rohl's flood/famine prognosis, with the now highly pertinent conclusion that during the Dynasty XII period, specifically in the reign of Amennemes III, an artificial dam was erected across the minor channels of the cataracts at Semna to restrict the flow to the main channel only. The artificial water level created as flood waters, backed up behind the funneled downstream exit, was recorded annually and became the reported high river levels which have so thoroughly bewitched, if not bemused, our current guide. By such simple methods, Egyptian engineers were able to better manage the river, in terms of military and commercial transport, for a longer proportion of the overall year, retaining sufficient depth of water in the main channel to overcome the natural disadvantage which the cataracts otherwise presented. Logically the technique was used at additional locations between the second and third cataracts at convenient points, where steep banks of the river, islands in the stream, and natural rock transverse spurs combined, transforming the entire stretch, at least that below Semna, into a seasonal inland sea, complete with veritable harbours. At the same time, the structures did nothing to impede the ultimate passage of flood waters downstream to their annual appointment with a panting delta and the Mediterranean beyond. Once the flood passed and the river returned annually to its normal low level, inspection and preventative maintenance was an easy matter for as long as the strategic imperative remained, which is to say until the end of that dynasty. This engineering initiative by Amennemes III, somewhat akin to a series of open locks at the northern end of this strategic 150 mile length of river, was infinitely preferable to the labour-intensive digs into solid gneiss of his predecessor, Sesostris III, [28] while at the same time delivering the widest range of benefits. (The perceptive reader will have already noted that high water readings would be several metres above today's levels all along this section of the river until the system ultimately broke down and the manmade portions were swept away in the resulting torrent, possibly decades later.) As yet another working model, this scheme was eminently worthy of that great Pharaoh who presided over the Faiyum project in middle Egypt and set his seal as the el supremo of water management à la Menes. Unfortunately, Rohl dismisses the sufficiency of the foregoing scenario (for which rather surprisingly some evidence remained) in an instant, to claim an audience for that which will be seen, in a moment, to be the extremely precarious "more water coming down the river" theory. Vercoutter only gets a footnote airing [29] which, unless the reader happens to be familiar with
Evidence of An Inversion Event? [Journals] [Aeon]
Is there any possibility that Stone Age people from the early Holocene have passed down oral histories relating to an inversion event, and that fragments of these oral histories have reached us? Were these people sophisticated enough to have passed down any meaningful information? An indication of their advancement is given by excavations at ____Jericho that have uncovered structures built about 10,000 yr BP. A strong stone wall appears to have enclosed a 10 acre town site. Around the outside of the wall there is a 24 ft wide by 6 ft deep rock-cut ditch. The fortification included a 28 ft diameter stone tower.(40) In later Middle East Stone Age sites glazed pottery and copper articles are found. The use of copper increased markedly after 6,000 yr BP, but stone continued to be used for tools and weapons until the development of bronze, a hard alloy of copper and tin, which occurred about 4,000 yr BP. The first written materials
-----
JERICHO MYTH
Myth doesn't mean fiction. It means imaginative report. I suspect that the story of Jericho is myth, because of this Biblical passage: (Deuteronomy 9:1) 9 “Hear, O Israel: you are to cross over the Jordan today, to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, cities great and fortified up to heaven,"
Cities fortified up to heaven seems likely to refer to the Saturn configuration in the pole star position in the sky.
I searched on Jericho at Catastrophism.com and found the following. Jericho surely did exist, but the Jericho myth seems to combine imagery from the Saturn configuration and the actual city on Earth.
Testing Rohl's Test of Time [Aeon]
_From: Aeon V:1 (Nov 1997) Dale F. Murphie
... David Rohl's impressive book is unlikely to weather the test of time. Lending itself towards an eight word summary - "brilliant, exciting, compelling but regrettably wrong, wrong, wrong"....
_Jericho. ...
According to Rohl, there was no walled city of ____Jericho during the Late Bronze Age during which, according to the conventional chronology, the Israelites were supposed to have destroyed the city. Biblical ____Jericho, destroyed by Joshua's forces, Rohl insists, is to be identified with the Middle Bronze Age city at Tell es-Sultan.[20] ... Meanwhile Rohl's wide-ranging re-examination of major sites in the Holy Land - Hazor, Shechem, Shiloh, Megiddo, Jerusalem, et al. - provide great information of immense value in consolidating Israel's historical past. His alignment of all these events with Middle Bronze II shows not that the Biblical record is wrong, but that the conventional dating for MBII and the others is astray. Once again these results illustrate the value of the written word over secondary forms of enquiry and reinforce this writer's proposition that present chronological problems arise simply from a batch of preconceived and ill-judged scholastic notions.
OTHER BIBLE MYTHS
ATENIST THEORY
I searched on "Bible myths" at Catastrophism.com and got a couple of interesting excerpts. One says this.
The Bible Myth: The African Origins Of The Jewish People by Gary Greenberg [Velikovskian]
_From: The Velikovskian Vol. V, No. 1 THE BIBLE MYTH: THE AFRICAN ORIGINS OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE, Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1996. 308 Pages By: Gary Greenberg. Reviewed by: Lynn E. Rose
_The title and subtitle of this book are somewhat broader than the content. For Greenberg does not reject all of the Bible as myth, only the earlier portions of Biblical history. Often, Greenberg treats even the origin accounts more as garbling or transmogrifications than as fabrications. Thus, it is significant that he does not deny that there was an Exodus, that there was a Moses, that there was a David, and so on. Perhaps the title of Chapter 15, "Rewriting the History of Ancient Israel's Origins", would have been a much more accurate title for the book as a whole. The word "African" in the subtitle is also rather misleading. ... Greenberg is referring primarily to Egyptian origins, and not to Africa as a whole.
... Ironically, the principal virtue of the book is its clarity. Greenberg tells us exactly what he thinks and exactly what he is doing. In contrast to many other authors, Greenberg's overall position is best summarized in his own words: "In this book I offer a radical new solution to the mystery of Israel's origins, one that places its earliest roots in fourteenth-century B.C. Egypt during the reign of the monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaten. I call this the Atenist theory, after the unique deity that he worshiped [sic]. It holds that the refugees departing from Egypt during what later became known as the Exodus were native Egyptians, devoted followers of the pharaoh Akhenaten." (Pages 3-4) "In this book I will argue that Moses was the chief priest of the Aten cult and that at the time of Akhenaten's death Moses fled from Egypt to avoid execution. Upon Horemhab's death he returned to Egypt and attempted a military coup, the purpose of which was to restore the Aten cult to the throne. His allies included the persecuted remnant of Akhenaten's following, large numbers of badly treated sick and diseased Egyptians, assorted opponents of Ramesses I, and an army belonging to the Canaanite kingdom of Shechem, whose rulers were openly hostile to Egypt's demands for submission. "Moses's actions brought the nation to the brink of civil war. The confrontation ended with a negotiated truce that guaranteed the insurgent army safe passage out of the country. This truce and safe passage out of Egypt was the Exodus." (Page 7) Note that the Atenist theory leaves no room whatsoever for the 2000 years' worth of Biblical patriarchs who are supposed to have lived – presumably in Asia – prior to the Servitude in Egypt.
BIBLE MYTHS, INCLUDING JONAH etc
You can read the following old book online at the link. It has a zoom button on the lower right. It's interesting that they had enough information on ancient documents at that time to be able to find so many parallels.
T.W . Doane, Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions (N.Y., 1882)
archive.org/details/biblemythsandthe00doanuoft/mode/2up
CHAPTER I THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN ...................................... 1
CHAPTER II THE DELUGE ....................................................... 19
CHAPTER III THE TOWER OF BABEL ............................................... 33
CHAPTER IV THE TRIAL OF ABRAHAM'S FAITH ..................................... 38
CHAPTER V JACOB'S VISION OF THE LADDER. ...................................... 43
CHAPTER VI THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT ............................................ 48
CHAPTER VII RECEIVING THE TEN COMMANDMENTS ................................... 58
CHAPTER VIII SAMSON AND HIS EXPLOITS ............................................ 62
CHAPTER IX JONAH SWALLOWED BY A BIG FISH ........................................ 77
_The rest of the book compares Biblical claims about Jesus to myths from other sources. I accept that the claims about Jesus may be myth-based, or it may be that he re-enacted myths. What seems to virtually prove Jesus' existence and "resurrection" is the shroud of Turin, which has apparently his image imprinted by bright light that came from his body after death and which has pollen from plants that likely only grew in the Jerusalem area 2,000 years ago etc.
_This is from page 80 about Jonah and the Whale.
"The most prominent mythical characteristic of the story of Jonah is his celebrated abode in the sea in the belly of a whale. This trait is eminently Solar. ... As on occasion of the storm the storm-dragon or the storm-serpent swallows the Sun, so when he sets, he (Jonah, as a personification of the Sun) is swallowed by a mighty fish, waiting for him at the bottom of the sea. Then, when he appears again on the horizon, he is spit out on the shore by the sea-monster.1
_"The Sun was called Jona, as appears from Grater's inscriptions, and other sources.2
_"In the Vedas the four sacred books of the Hindoos when Day and Night, Sun and Darkness, are opposed to each other, the one is designated Red, the other Black?
The Red Sun being swallowed up by the Dark Earth at Night as it apparently is when it sets in the west to be cast forth again at Day, is also illustrated in like manner. Jonah, Hercules and others personify the Sun, and a huge Fish represents the Earth. The Earth represented as a huge Fish is one of the most prominent ideas of the Polynesian mythology.3"
_Note that the Sun normally doesn't set for 3 days. So if it did, it was likely referring to a catastrophic event.