Quote:They do that just to sell books.
Or to get cash. In my (Dutch) Newsletter, I give the
Castle of Aemstel Award every month to that press release that is most clearly angling for funds (
more...). In fact, this time, I was surprised that the archaeologists did
not mention Goliath, because usually, they try to connect finds to this prophet or that apostle: no matter how far-fetched the connection is, any Biblical connection guarantees that they can look forward to a miraculous multiplication of money.
Disinformation and illicit logic are even allowed; some time ago, a seal mentioning someone who is also mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah, was presented as evidence for the historical reliability of the Bible
as a whole, while it only suggests the reliability of
Jeremiah. (This is what logicians call a
secundum quid: you prove A, and say you have proved something bigger than A.) However, not even the greatest skeptic has denied the reliability of Jeremiah, and the current debate between minimalists and maximalists has really nothing to do with Jeremiah. It was an interesting find, of course, but there was no need to pretend that it was anything more than that.
Last month's Michael Inscription -which mentions a dead Messiah and is written a century BC- is another case in point; it was presented by Israel Knohl as evidence that we had to rethink the rise of Christianity. I really fail to see how. We now have stronger evidence that notions about a suffering Messiah were present in Second Temple Judaism. No one has ever denied this; and Knohl is mad when he thinks that Christianity did not have its roots in Jewish thought.
