Answering LAM

1) Barry Cunliffe's theories and mine (Celts and post-Babel), 2) Etruscans, hlaf-laib-leipä, Gullah, Hungarian Origins, 3) Scythian Debate to my Lithuania Blog, 4) Altaic Chauvinists and Patristic Backup, 5) Atta and Fadar, 6) Thrown Out of Group, 7) Answering LAM, 8) Attacked on Evolution of Languages Disproves Tower of Babel Subject Again

"I am an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church and a longtime biblical scholar."

L is a female name, and πρεσβυτεροι are, like επισκοποι and for that matter διακονοι exclusively men. Πρεσβυτερος in the Biblical sense does not translate as "elder" but transcribe as "priest". A Church that started after 1517 and not as a legitimate and pious branch of a previous one (like English as a branch of Roman, through St Augustine's mission to Canterbury) and this leading back to Apostles is no true Church.

A longtime Biblical scholar who has missed all this does not have my full respect.

"There are many things in the Bible that are quite true. Others have preserved true patterns even though the details may have become a bit messed up over time. Many of the texts were transmitted orally before they were written down."

Well, that is blatant heresy. At least if by "may have been messed up" you mean "were probably messed up". Trentine Council and Pope Leo XIII clearly state that God is author of all the Bible. All the 72/73 books (depending if you count Baruch as a separate one or as appendix to Jeremiah).

"The Old Testament was edited at Alexandria, and changes were made so that the texts supported a monotheistic religion."

I heard such things at age 13, though back then it was Ezra in Babylon who was to have been responsible for such edits. I did not believe that theory then, do not believe it now. Reconstruction is not history. Tradition at least purports to be so.

"The oldest part of the New Testament that we have are Paul's letters."

No, once again, the oldest part is Gospel of St Matthew.

"There was no scribe (or tribe of scribes, given the geographic territory that had to be covered) following everyone around and writing things out longhand."

Not EVERYONE no. But probably either the Hebrews and predecessors beyond Noah even before Moses and at least from Moses on had such, or otherwise the relevant pieces of Genesis were learnt by heart before someone was entrusted to count as accredited transmitter of the story. Until Moses invented the alphabet and took it down.

Also, there is a double meaning in scribe. Someone writing down things for future memory is one thing, someone delegated to write down specific types of juridic acts, as the Levites so employed were, is another.

St Matthew had the training of a Levite. Adam, whether he knew writing or not, was his own scribe as is any pioneer. If two Europeans get into the wilderness and carry a book of white paper and a pen with them, or a set of pencils, it is they who are the "scribes" for that journey, because they are the only ones who write in English, Spanish, French or whatever their language, or even Russian if you go to Siberia or Alaska instead of most of Americas.

My position about Adam was not that Moses had appointed him to write his story for the benefit of Israel, it is that he was the first man as far as his story was concerned and he was never contradicted by subsequent events. Never was any man or woman found who could not be traced back to him, up to Noah. And after the Flood, never was any man found who could not in at least some degree of probability be supposed to have descended from Noah. For the close range, a set of peoples is very clearly identified. For longer range, like China or Americas, or many peoples of Europe that differ, we must suppose that peoples both split up and coalesced.

Any argument about Americas indigenous population having no chance of getting there from Mount Ararat is contradicted by both Straits of Bering and voyages of Thor Heyerdahl.

Your security about Indo-European Urheimat and Ursprache theories being correct - and you state the Wellentheorie version of them very well - forgets that there were no scribes among them, if you were right, to take note of all this.

"I know the argument about God making sure everything was transmitted without error, but that does not explain why there are two creation stories in Genesis."

Story one is a panorama, story two goes into detail for the most important event in story one. And story two includes what Adam could know autobiographically, whereas story one goes back beyond that, including what had been divinely revealed either to Adam or later to Moses, or even to both.

"It doesn't explain why there is a good, old-fashioned IE storm god scripting things in the Old Testament and a Triune God in the New Testament."

Ah no, the God of the Old Testament is not Teshub. It is the Triune God. First hint in Genesis: "God said to each other let us make man in our image".

This had been maltreated by misbelieving Jews afterwards who have given Talmudic explanations to this and other instances that are erroneous.

"It does not explain why we have variant texts floating around that do not agree with the 'official' version, nor why there are disagreements within the 'official' version, nor why archaeology and historical sources sometimes support the text and sometimes do not."

First of all, the Bible itself is our most important historical sources. Other ones by other peoples are if not totally without benefit at least tainted by idolatry.

Some things in the story of the Bible it would be very hard for them to stomach and admit. But familiarity with Biblical events shines through at unlikely places.

Agamemnon hoped to obtain a sun miracle like Joshua's. Meaning he did not attribute the odd behaviour of the sun to Helios being angry for what his father did to Thyestes.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St John's Feast
27-XII-2013