Take One Tablet, And Bingo! The Bible Is Fact!
5 August 2007 by KA
I came across this bit of tomfoolery, and I gotta say:
Are you kidding me?
“The sound of unbridled joy seldom breaks the quiet of the British Museum’s great Arched Room, which holds its collection of 130,000 Assyrian cuneiform tablets, dating back 5,000 years.
“This fragment is a receipt for payment made by a figure in the Old Testament.”
Oh yippee.
“But Michael Jursa, a visiting professor from Vienna, let out such a cry last Thursday. He had made what has been called the most important find in Biblical archaeology for 100 years, a discovery that supports the view that the historical books of the Old Testament are based on fact.”
Oh, one tiny piece of evidence is suddenly pivotal? Is the case for the ‘historical’ bible that flimsy?
Apparently so.
“Searching for Babylonian financial accounts among the tablets, Prof Jursa suddenly came across a name he half remembered - Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, described there in a hand 2,500 years old, as “the chief eunuch” of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon.”
“Prof Jursa, an Assyriologist, checked the Old Testament and there in chapter 39 of the Book of Jeremiah, he found, spelled differently, the same name - Nebo-Sarsekim.”
My question is: how common was this name?
“Nebo-Sarsekim, according to Jeremiah, was Nebuchadnezzar II’s “chief officer” and was with him at the siege of Jerusalem in 587 BC, when the Babylonians overran the city.”
Oh, how nice for y’all. No evidence of any of the big names in the bible, but one minute find can make all the difference!
That is, if you’re reaching.
“The small tablet, the size of “a packet of 10 cigarettes” according to Irving Finkel, a British Museum expert, is a bill of receipt acknowledging Nabu-sharrussu-ukin’s payment of 0.75 kg of gold to a temple in Babylon.
“The tablet is dated to the 10th year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, 595BC, 12 years before the siege of Jerusalem.
“Evidence from non-Biblical sources of people named in the Bible is not unknown, but Nabu-sharrussu-ukin would have been a relatively insignificant figure.”
And insignificant it remains…to the world at large. In fact, it’s just foolish to think that one small find contradicts the vast amount of historical data which proves that old grimoire false.
“This is a fantastic discovery, a world-class find,” Dr Finkel said yesterday. “If Nebo-Sarsekim existed, which other lesser figures in the Old Testament existed? A throwaway detail in the Old Testament turns out to be accurate and true. I think that it means that the whole of the narrative [of Jeremiah] takes on a new kind of power.”
‘New kind of power’? Have these yobbos even read the narrative? It’s chock full of historical errors. The entire Old Testament is filled to bursting with inaccuracies, as I’ve shown here. Jeremiah made all kinds of fuck-ups, from how long the Israelites would be restored from the Babylonian captivity, to the relatively ‘minor’ error that the temple would never be destroyed again.
“The full translation of the tablet reads: (Regarding) 1.5 minas (0.75 kg) of gold, the property of Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, the chief eunuch, which he sent via Arad-Banitu the eunuch to [the temple] Esangila: Arad-Banitu has delivered [it] to Esangila. In the presence of Bel-usat, son of Alpaya, the royal bodyguard, [and of] Nadin, son of Marduk-zer-ibni. Month XI, day 18, year 10 [of] Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.
Next thing you know, they’ll be producing Moses’ left testicle.
It’s an allegorical leap of faith, to think that some miniscule detail of minor import is going to lend credence to a defunct tome. And that chasm they’re leaping across? It’s a loonngg way down.
Metaphorically speaking, of course.
This is the Apostate, signing off.
5 August 2007, on 5:52 am
a discovery that supports the view that the historical books of the Old Testament are based on fact.
A classic example of what Wikipedia calls weasel words.
5 August 2007, on 10:05 am
Lol, this is fucking hilarious! A figure in the old testicle?? Please! That basically means any mention of, say, the name Abraham would be vindication. What a bunch of fucknuts.
5 August 2007, on 12:16 pm
These things should be seen in light of the claims to have found archaeological confirmation of the Illiad–maybe there was a real war, but the shit with the gods is still bogus.
In this case, I don’t think there’s any serious doubts among historians that the Babylonian exile story is based in part on fact. Indeed, it’s thought that the return from exile spurred the collection of a lot of the allegedly older Biblical material. Given that, confirmation of mundane details of the story is unremarkable. Nothing’s really changed; the Book of Daniel is still a forgery, for example.
5 August 2007, on 12:21 pm
Christopher Heard, a Christian blogger and associate professor of religion at Pepperdine, has a skeptical post on this find. He wrote
However, he’s not as skeptical as Hector Avalos (atheist professor of religion at Iowa State), whose comment on a now-unavailable news story Heard quotes.
5 August 2007, on 12:38 pm
So, if I write a novel that (way, WAY in the future) is incorporated into an anthology that becomes a best seller and forms a “guidebook for living justly”…
…AND I just happen to mention an actual incident, for which there is a document that also survives…
…AND though my book is 99.5% fiction but does contain a small something that really happened…
…does the actual event make all of my fiction now FACT?
Just saying.
5 August 2007, on 2:38 pm
To those people that think of the world in realistic terms but still need hocus-pocus in their life this will translate into if X than Y. I’ve seen stupider reaffirmations of faith. However, this proves absolutely nothing. I, like KA, would like to know how common this name was. Who the hell knows if it is even the same dude. Besides, weren’t the Babylonians “bad guys” in the bible?
5 August 2007, on 3:02 pm
Nabu-sharrussu-ukin,
Nebo-Sarsekim
I dunno about y’all; I can barely see the difference!
Scribes who can’t spell; eunuchs who can’t read their own names. It’s a topsy-turvy world. We need a visionary, someone with a mission of NO Scribe or Eunuch Left Behind!!!
Of course, mebbe one of those was a stage name…?
5 August 2007, on 3:57 pm
Nebo-Sarsekim really existed and used an alias? That’s it for me, folks. My entire belief system has crumbled, and it’s back to church I go.
5 August 2007, on 4:40 pm
Naomi - my favorite analogy goes like this:
1000-2000 years from now, archaeologists uncover a copy of King’s The Dead Zone. It mentions Reagan, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, along w/naming some real State capitals.
They then uncover proof that Hendrix, Joplin, Reagan, the named State capitals all existed.
It’s not unusual for writers to pepper their fictions w/facts.
Chris - nice point w/the Iliad.
Don’t get me started w/the book of Daniel; what a joke that thing is.
5 August 2007, on 7:26 pm
What about the whole exodus out of Egypt thing? I mean, the fact that there is zero- nil, nada, archaeological evidence that it ever even happened? That’s more of an “Aha” moment on the disbelief side than some royal castrato’s ticket stub is to the other.
Also, I’m going out on a limb here, but, considering that my old bass rig(two early’70’s, all tube AmpegSVT heads pushing close to 800 watts through 8 10″s, 4 15″s, and 1 18″ speaker, augmented by a bass tuned down to C# and then into drop-D) might, just might have rumbled a poorly mortared cinder block wall to the ground, there’s no way in hell that a horn, even in the hands of Satchmo, could level bronze age city walls.
And, KA, they better not have found Moses’left testicle because I was assured when I bought his right one that I had a keepsake that was one of a kind. My worst fear is that he’ll turn out to have been a polyorchid…sigh.
5 August 2007, on 9:03 pm
RDG:
We could go on at length about all the dubious occurrences of the ‘good book’. All unsupportable by any evidence whatsoever.
Never mind the 40 years it took them for a 10 day journey.
HA! I hear if you plop it into plum wine, & mutter ancient words over it, it’s a potent love spell (hehehehe).
Or is that 1 of Argus’ eyes? I forget.
5 August 2007, on 9:57 pm
That would be funny if some ancient prophet’s penis was venerated as a holy relic.
Armies would march under it’s banner, a priest holding the shrivelled member aloft to rally the troops as they prepare to march across the battlefield.
6 August 2007, on 12:40 am
Tommykey, if the penii were actual bones, you can bet your ass that they’d litter reliquaries all over Europe- as a matter of fact, I think there was a saintly foreskin somewhere or other. Now, with the new, what theology? literature? plain old zaniness that woman was created from the penile bone that men once had and, now, are the only primates to be bereft of one…
7 August 2007, on 3:01 pm
That’s a Fig newton he’s holding up! Lol!