Allegories Gone Wild - And The Walls, They Came A-Tumbling Down...Or Did They?

Cross posted at God Is For Suckers!

(Or, how some bad construction turned into a fairy tale)

When the walls
Come tumblin down
When the walls
Come crumblin, crumblin
When the walls come
Tumblin, tumblin down - Crumblin' Down, John Mellencamp

A quote from McDowell's Evidence That Demands A Verdict kept circling in my mind lately. This one:

"It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever contravened a Biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And by the same token, proper evaluation of Biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries. They form tesserae in the vast mosaic of the Bible's almost incredibly correct historical memory" (Dr. Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert [New York, Grove, 1960], p. 31).

I went searching, and found these as well:

"Of the hundreds of thousands of artifacts found by the archeologists, not one has ever been discovered that contradicts or denies one word, phrase, clause, or sentence of the Bible, but always confirms and verifies the facts of the biblical record." - Dr. J. O. Kinnaman.

(I couldn't find much dirt on the first or the following gent, this little piece really outlines what a wack-a-doodly-o Herr Kinnaman was.)

Dr. Robert Dick Wilson, "After forty-five years of scholarly research in biblical textual studies and in language study, I have come now to the conviction that no man knows enough to assail the truthfulness of the Old Testament. When there is sufficient documentary evidence to make an investigation, the statement of the Bible, in the original text, has stood the test" (Dr. Robert Dick Wilson, Speaker's Source Book, p. 391).

Stood the test? 'Almost incredibly correct historical memory'? Not only do we know that indeed, the Great Deluge never occurred, the Tower of Babel was an utter fabrication, and the Exodus was likely the expulsion of the Hyksos (who were actually running the show, not the abject slaves they were painted to be), a great many of the alleged 'historical events' that occurred in the benign Necronomicon were either

A. Altered, or
B. Not jotted down properly at all.

Case in point: Jericho.

Conservapedia actually says this:

At the moment there is no consensus in the archaeological community on when or how Jericho was destroyed.

However, the different conclusions are not over whether evidence was found that matched the biblical description, but over the timing.

There's nothing quite like...understatement.

The answers.com entry has this to say:

A destruction of Jericho's walls dates archaeologically to around 1550 BC in the 16th century BC at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, by a siege or an earthquake in the context of a burn layer, called City IV destruction. Opinions differ as to whether they are the walls referred to in the Bible. According to one biblical chronology, the Israelites destroyed Jericho after its walls fell out around 1407 BC: the end of the 15th century. Originally, John Garstang's excavation in the 1930s dated Jericho's destruction to around 1400 BC, in confirmation, but like much early biblical archaeology, his work became criticised for using the Bible to interpret the evidence rather than letting the facts on the ground draw their own conclusions. Kathleen Kenyon's excavation in the 1950s redated it to around 1550 BC, a date that most archaeologists support. In 1990, Bryant Wood critiqued Kenyon's work after her field notes became fully available. Observing ambiguities and relying on the only available carbon dating of the burn layer, which yielded a date of 1410 BC plus or minus 40 years, Wood dated the destruction to this carbon dating, confirming Garstang and the biblical chronology. Unfortunately, this carbon date was itself the result of faulty calibration. In 1995, Hendrik J. Bruins and Johannes van der Plicht used high-precision radiocarbon dating for eighteen samples from Jericho, including six samples of charred cereal grains from the burn layer, and overall dated the destruction to an average 1562 BC plus or minus 38 years. Kenyon's date of around 1550 BC is widely accepted based on this methodology of dating. Notably, many other Canaanite cities were destroyed around this time.

If the dates of certain schools of archaeology are to be accepted, then scholars who link these walls to the biblical account must explain how the Israelites arrived around 1550 BC but settled four centuries later and devise a new biblical chronology that corresponds. The current opinion of many archaeologists is in stark contradiction to the biblical account.

The Wikipedia entry on Biblical Criticism (the neutrality of the entire entry is disputed, gee, what a frelling surprise) has this to say:

The account of Joshua has more difficulty vis-a-vis the archaeological record, since Jericho and other settlements do not show signs of violent disruption in the time period required for the Israelite invasion (However, the Bible tells of the rebuilding and population of Jericho, among others destroyed by the Israelites). Neither does there appear to be any systematic destruction of cities, but instead only independent events occurring at significantly different times, more in agreement with events presented in the Book of Judges.

(Emphases mine.)

This wholly bibble is just rife with so many writhing contradictions, it's just staggering that anyone could take the bleeding thing seriously. As if it's not bad enough the adherents of said Iron Age tome seem to be incapable of ironing out their differences about what the flipping thing says (and 2000 years of constantly arguing over it says all you really need to know how farcical the whole brouhaha is), the raging historical inconsistencies are yet another nail in the coffin of this dying, blind shambling giant.

Which of course, prompts the outcry, "This is all outta context!" (Christlation: 'The bibble doesn't say what it says, it says this [insert allegorical dance step of choice here].")

I think the word I'm searching for, is Pshaw!

Till the next post, then.