[Editor's Note: I had originally intended this article to be Part Four in my "Crimes by Speculation" series, but upon proofreading it, I decided that it would be more appropriate to post it as a companion article to my original rebuttal of Turkel's paper-shortage quibble.]
At the end of Part Three of my replies to Robert Turkel's Crimes by Omission, I made the following comment about a two-line paragraph at the end of his article.
Turkel attached a two-line paragraph at the end of his article in which he boasted that he had rebutted the arguments that I posted in "The Paper Shortage." In yet a fourth part in this series, which I will post after I have finished a work in progress that replies in detail to Glenn Miller's attempt to justify the morality of the many examples of Yahwistic massacres in the Old Testament, I will show that Turkel skipped most of my rebuttals and flagrantly lied about what I had included in my article, which he, of course, did not link his readers to. I am delaying the posting of the fourth part of this present series, because Turkel has cited Miller's article as a solution to the moral problem posed by the massacres, and I will want to put links into part four to my replies to Miller's article to show that in Turkel's so-called reply to my paper-shortage rebuttal, he violated some of his own standards of argumentation.
That four-part reply to Miller turned out to be a series of seven articles, which begin here. It is a detailed, point-by-point reply that skipped nothing, which neither Miller nor Turkel will ever reply to beyond perhaps making passing comments about it or selectively quoting bits and pieces of it so that they can claim that they have replied to it. When I finished this series, I returned to Turkel's "Crimes by Omissions" and found that he had omitted the two-line paragraph that I had promised to reply to when I had finished my work in progress on Miller's defense of Yahwistic massacres in the Old Testament. I can't say that I was surprised to see that the paragraph had been removed from Turkel's article, because such deletions are commonplace on his website. As I showed here, in just one of many examples I could cite, if he gets caught in a blunder, he will either revise it away or else remove the article altogether. However, to make sure that his boast of having "rebutted" my paper-shortage article would be available when I completed my reply to Miller, I copied it before I put the "Crimes by Speculation" series on hold.
See Skeptic X respond to a tiny part of this with already rebutted arguments months back, here.
A tiny part? I replied to only a "tiny part"? Turkel is the one who replies to tiny parts through his selective-quoting method of "answering" his opponents. When I reply to him, I reply point by point, and he knows that I do. Those who check the links that I will include in this article will see that I have answered his paper-shortage quibble in detail and certainly not in just tiny parts. I will even show that many of his quibbles have been answered repeatedly in my rebuttal articles.
Turkel had also changed his links in his two-line statement above, but I was able to use search options to locate the two articles in which he claimed to have "rebutted" my replies to his paper-shortage claim. For the benefit of those who have not yet read "The Paper Shortage," I will summarize his paper-scarcity quibble before I begin my point-by-point reply to his latest "rebuttals," most of which just recyled what I have already answered. He claims that ambiguities and apparent biblical discrepancies often resulted from a scarcity of scroll materials that prevented writers from giving complete accounts of what they were reporting, and so these should not be considered actual discrepancies. After his usual sarcastic introduction, Turkel's first article linked to in the title above, began with a partial quotation from his original article, in which he argued that the cost and scarcity of scroll materials in ancient times required writers to be ambiguously brief at times.
First of all, you are limited to using only about 20 sheets of paper. What, you say? No more than that? Sorry. Office Depot won't be open for another 1900 years, and neither will WalMart, or Eckerd's, or any other place you are thinking of buying paper. You're not going to be writing on paper. You'll be writing on a scroll, and scrolls are both expensive and go no larger than a certain size. As Gamble reports in Books and Readers in the Early Church [44-50, 266]:
Scrolls could be fashioned to any length desired, but practically speaking, the mean length was seven to ten meters. "A roll of ten to eleven meters was too cumbersome for the reader to handle... authors of long new works made their own divisions by taking the customary length of rolls into account."
A roll of papyrus of typical quality "cost the equivalent of one or two days' wages, and it could run as high as what the labourer would earn in five or six days..."
Now maybe if you are wealthy, or know someone who is, you can get another scroll and do a "Life of Jesus, Part 2", [sic] perhaps a shorter half. But if you do, bear in mind that generations beyond you (and how can you anticipate WalMart [sic], or the printing press?), in order to preserve your work, will have to also buy two scrolls. If you want your work to get out to people, that's not a very smart move. Your work is going to cost more to keep around than a work with one scroll. So you'd better plan carefully what you want to put on those scrolls...
These paragraphs were cut and pasted from his original article, so since I replied to them in this section of "The Paper Shortage," I don't need to rehash my replies here. Unlike Turkel's links to his articles, which tell readers to go "here" and "here" and "here," where they will have to read entire articles, often lengthy ones, to try to figure out what he was referring to, the link above will be, as my others will too, specific ones, which in this case will take readers directly to the section of "The Paper Shortage" where I quoted the same paragraphs from Turkel's original article and replied to them point by point. Rather than wasting time repeating my previous rebuttals of Turkel's quibbles, I will go directly to the part of his "rebuttal" article in which he very selectively tried to reply to my counterarguments in "The Paper Shortage." As usual, this will not be a reply to "tiny parts" of Turkel's quibbles. I will reply point by point and use the headers Turkel and Till to assist readers in following who has said what. I, of course, am "the certain skeptic" and "Skeptic X" he refers to, whose articles he never links his readers to.
Turkel:
For a bit now I have observed some of a certain Skeptic's cohorts
putting this one [his
paper-shortaged quibble] on their Laugh List, though why it should be
so wasn't until
recently actually explained by any of them beyond comments of the
"yeah, right" variety.
Apparently the diode and processor crowd can't visualize living in a
world where 20 sheets of
paper would cost them, say, $250 (two days' salary for an average shmoe
in the business world).
No, they don't provide any data about the price of paper actually being
cheap back then, or
paper being widely available -- that's not how these guys work. Their
way is "take a quick
look and announce an opinion". [sic] The lead, who [sic]
we call Skeptic X
these days because of his obvious desire to see his name in print, had
this blip on the
screen to offer, in line with his usual analogical impairment:
Till:
I just have to interrupt here to comment on Turkel's dishonesty. He
said that he called
me "Skeptic X," because I like to see my name in print, but if I really
were obsessed with
wanting to see my name in print, I could type "Farrell Till" into the
Google search window
and start opening the 29,000 hits that my name will get, so I wouldn't
need to see my name in
any of Turkel's articles to satisfy this compulsive vanity that he has
dreamed up and
attributed to me to explain why he tries to hide from his readers the
identities of those
whose articles he "replies" to. The real reason why he doesn't refer to
me by name, of
course, is the same as why he refuses to link his readers to my
articles when he
"replies" to them. He very rarely links readers to any articles of
biblical skeptics when he
is "answering" them, and that is because he wants to reduce as much as
possible the chances
that his readers will be able to access those articles and see just how
much he is evading.
In refusing to link to my articles, Turkel reneged on an agreement that
we reached in private
correspondence before the
land-promise debates
began. More details about this agreement and Turkel's prompt reneging
on it can be seen in
"Where Are the Links?"
I may as well call a spade a spade here and say that Robert Turkel is a liar, and this nonsense about not referring to me by name because of a desire I have to see my name in print is just another example of his lying. He avoids using my name and linking readers to my articles for the reason that I mentioned above. He writes for a loyal, sycophantic audience, which obviously has deep emotional needs to believe that a sweet by-and-by is waiting for them after this life, enough of whom are PayPal contributors to enable him to stay home instead of trudging off to work each day. I know of at least one former contributor who has abandoned his ship, and so he wants to minimize as much as possible the chances that other PayPal readers will find the articles he is "answering" and see just how much he ignores in his so-called "replies." Seeing this might cause them to wonder if they should continue supporting an "apologist" who doesn't reply to most of his opponents' rebuttal arguments.
Let's look now at the "blip on the screen" that Turkel flagrantly misquoted.
But writing materials were not in such short supply that needless repetition was often done, as in the cases of Isaiah 37 and 2 Kings 19 and 2 Samuel 22 and Psalm 18. And there seemed to be enough writing materials for parallel accounts like those in the books of Samuel and Kings and the Chronicles and the synoptic gospels. Sometimes these parallel accounts were almost verbatim.
Well, that's Skeptic X for you; any old parallel will do no matter how remote. Now let's fracture that analogy, shall we?
Till:
I repeatedly warn readers that when Turkel "replies" to an opponent, he
quotes him only
selectively, and so his readers, who are never linked to what he is
replying to, won't know
just how much he is evading. If readers will go to
this section of
"The Paper Shortage," they will see that the six-line paragraph that
Turkel "quoted" above
is actually a mutilated version of a much longer section in which I
gave more details than the
four examples that he selectively included above. That section ran for
some 20 paragraphs
and identified various other examples of verbatim or almost verbatim
repetitions in both the
Old and the New Testaments. Turkel, as usual, chose an evasive course
that will make his
readers think that he is answering an opponent's arguments when really
he isn't answering much
of anything. We will see him claiming later that I had offered only two
examples of verbatim
repetition in my article, but the record will show that I cited or
quoted several.
Anyway, he boasted above that he intended to "fracture" my analogy, so let's take a look at how he "fractures" analogies.
Till:
I have often noted that inconsistency is almost a cottage industry on
Turkel's website,
because he will say whatever suits his purpose on any given day
regardless of whether it is
consistent with what he has said at other times. In
"Magdalene
Magilla," which Turkel
posted in January 2001, he ridiculed me for having taken the position
that clarity and
consistency in the resurrection narratives were vitally important,
because they would become
the primary evidence, throughout the entire Christian era, that a
"savior" had died and then
risen from the dead. At that time, he took a position opposite to the
one he stated above and
said that the gospels were not intended to be "evangelistic" documents.
Once again it's no more than a matter of Skeptic X setting a standard based on his own miseducation and preferences and asking why God didn't descend to kiss his patoot dutifully for his own satisfaction.
I will interrupt again to make a point that I often have to repeat in my replies to Turkel, who frequently tries to dismiss legitimate objections to biblical problem passages by saying that I am upset because "God didn't descend to kiss [my] patoot dutifully for [my] own satisfaction." Besides begging the questions of "God's" existence and his involvement in the writing of the Bible, Turkel's constant repetition of this comment doesn't in any way explain whatever biblical problems have been identified. He resorts to this "cutsy" evasion so often because he knows that he cannot answer perfectly legitimate questions that have been raised about the Bible. Among other inadequacies in this "reply," which has become sort of a theme song for him, it offers no evidence at all of exactly why my examples of apparently needless repetition in the Bible set "a standard based on [my] own miseducation and [my] own satisfaction." He just abstractly declared that it did and expected his choir members to click their heels, extend their arms in salute, and shout, "Sieg heil!"
Let's suppose that Turkel identified some problem in the Qur'an, which was then waved aside by a Muslim who said, "This is no more than a matter of Turkel's setting a standard based on his own miseducation and preferences and asking why Allah didn't descend to kiss his patoot dutifully for his own satisfaction." Would Turkel consider that a satisfactory explanation of whatever Qur'anic problem he may have identified? Of course, he wouldn't, but he tries to get by with this kind of evasion when he "replies" to skeptics who have identified problem texts in the Bible. I am not going to talk about Turkel's patoot; instead, I will just call a spade a spade and say that it is way past time for him to lay aside his illusions of comedic talents and set his fat ass down at his computer to try to get serious about explaining discrepancies and inconsistencies that skeptics have identified in the Bible instead of trying to wave them aside with barrages of sarcasm and pathetic attempts at humor.
Turkel's misquotation of my "blip on the screen" continues below. Notice in particular the part of the quotation below, from Turkel's "reply," that I have emphasized in bold print.
Turkel [misquoting Till]:
As noted in the link above, what Skeptic X calls "careless", [sic] the Easterners call ma besay-il -- it doesn't matter. And it doesn't. For McTill's white-sheet-wearing information, these narratives that he thinks "were going to become the primary documents in establishing that a man died," etc. were no such thing. The Gospels were written as biographies of Jesus and were not (despite their [mis]use today as such) evangelistic documents, other than to some extent the Gospel of John.
Till:
Readers can go to "It
Doesn't Matter?" to see a detailed reply to Turkel's ma besay-il
nonsense, but
since it isn't relevant to the main issue here, I won't bother to quote
any parts of my
rebuttals in that article. I want readers to see here that contrary to
the position stated
in his article that I am now replying to, Turkel had previously said
that the gospels were not
intended to be "evangelistic documents." Further along, in the article
just quoted from, he
said that a view that the gospels were evangelistic documents had come
only after "non-knowledge
[sic] of the interaction and purposes of orality and literacy in
the ancient world,
and after years of using the Gospels as evangelistic documents they
were never intended to
be." In January 2001, then, the gospels were not evangelistic in
their intent, but
suddenly on February 20, 2005, when Turkel posted the article I am now
replying to, the
gospels, which were previously not "evangelistic documents" and which I
was stupid for
thinking they were, had suddenly become evangelistic and had been
written for "generations
beyond the Gospels."
Inconsistency has become a sort of stock-in-trade for Turkel. In "Oral Arguments," which he also posted on February 20, 2005, he took the position that the gospels were intended to be evangelistic documents, which clearly contradicted what he had said in his reply to me (just quoted above).
Being that Christianity was evangelistic, even if we could prove a widespread notion in the early church that Jesus' return was imminent, this would actually support the idea of recording the words and deeds of Jesus on paper, since there were only so many Apostles and evangelists to go around; whereas documents could be sent all around the Roman Empire, and be left behind when the Apostles moved on!
On the same day (February 20, 2005), then, Turkel posted one article that argued that the gospels were not intended to be evangelistic documents and another one that argued that they were so intended. So which is it? Were the gospels written to be evangelistic documents or not? When it suits his purpose, Turkel will say that they were not so intended, but when it is to his benefit to say the opposite, he will say that they were evangelistic. Not much confidence, then, can be put into his claim that Old Testament authors could splurge on writing materials, because they were writing documents that weren't "intended for distribution to a widely spread audience," whereas New Testament writers had to cut corners and think about the expense that would be involved in making multiple copies for "a larger number of people both in time and space."
If this is Turkel's idea of "fracturing an analogy," I suggest that he think again. Common sense should tell anyone who doesn't have an inerrancy axe to grind that if the omniscient, omnipotent one was going to stop routinely dropping in to chat with his favored ones and stop performing miracles, like those that permeate the pages of the Bible, and leave the world with nothing but his "revealed word" to guide people into his eternal truths, he should have taken special pains to make sure that this revelation was written clearly enough to be understood. Rather than doing that, however, Turkel expects us to think that New Testament writers sat around during the writing process, desperately wringing their hands and wondering what they could leave out to make their scrolls of "God's word" brief enough that "multiple copies" of them could be made economically.
Earlier, I quoted where Turkel tried to dismiss rejections of his paper-shortage quibble by saying that skeptics had put it on their "Laugh List," but if he wonders why we have laughed at it, he should sit for just a moment or two and try to reflect on the silliness of what he is claiming: the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the universe unfolded a "plan of redemption," after his creation turned bad, but left the work of recording the revelation of that plan entirely to writers who would have to scrounge around the best they could to find adquate scroll materials to write it on. If after thinking about this for a while, he still doesn't see the silliness of it, then he needs more help than I could ever give him.
All through "Crimes by Speculation - Part Three," I pressed Turkel to explain why an omniscient, omnipotent deity, who had performed so many miraculous wonders for the Israelites and other Old Testament characters, would not have intervened in some way to make sure that the ones he had chosen to write the New Testament gospel accounts would have had adequate writing materials to do a thorough job of reporting what needed to be said in order for their accounts to be clear to their readers. Here is one example of where I presented this issue to Turkel.
In the section of my article just linked to above, I replied to Turkel's last comment, so rather than rehashing that answer I will ask him some more questions and then urge him to answer them and my questions above. Did "God" leave the expense of securing adequate writing materials entirely to the ones whom he chose to write the biblical books? Did he provide any kind of direct help or at least providential help to their acquisition of scrolls? If not, does this mean that the omniscient, omnipotent one who parted the Red Sea for the Israelites, sent them manna down from heaven for 40 years, brought forth water for them from rocks, etc., etc., etc. just didn't consider his "inspired word" to be important enough to lift even a finger to help his chosen authors do it the right way?
A main issue in the "Crimes by Speculation" series was the failure of "John," who was presumably present on crucifixion day, to include in his gospel account such phenomenal events as the three hours of midday darkness, the earthquake that shook open nearby tombs, and the subsequent resurrection of "many" saints who had been buried in those tombs, so in the section linked to above, I pressed Turkel to address that problem too and explain to us why the omniscient one would not have made sure that "John" had adequate space on his scroll to report these remarkable events.
Now as for "John's" gospel, exactly how long was the scroll on which he wrote the fourth gospel? Did he use every last inch of it? If not, how much was left over? If any was left over, was this space long enough to squeeze in "Matthew's" brief description of the earthquake and the resurrection of the saints?
Turkel is making an "argument" [quibble] that is based on an assumption that he doesn't know is factual, because he cannot argue that "John" omitted material because he just didn't have enough room for it unless Turkel at least knows the exact size of "John's" original scroll. In a word, he is arguing from silence, which he audaciously accused skeptics of doing in the matter of why eyewitness authors would have omitted references to sensational events like the midday darkness, earthquake, and resurrection of "many saints."
As I said above, I pressed Turkel throughout the "Crimes by Speculation" series to address these serious problems in his paper-shortage theory, so those who want to see more on the issue can go to this section of Part Three and read where I again pressed for an explanation of why an omniscient, omnipotent deity, who had intervened so often on behalf of the Israelites, would have left New Testament writers completely on their own to scrounge up enough scroll materials to write their books. I would like to see Turkel try to address this problem beyond just saying that I am upset because "God" didn't descend to "kiss my patoot."
"John's" alleged purpose in writing his gospel was to report "signs" that Jesus had performed that would make his readers believe that Jesus was "the Christ" (John 20:30-31), yet Turkel's position is that John didn't mention the midday darkness, the earthquake that shook open tombs, and the subsequent resurrection of "many" saints who had been in the tombs, because he just didn't have the space on his scroll to include that information. All through my "Speculation" series, I emphasized that Matthew had claimed that the Roman soldiers at the scene of the crucifixion had been induced by these events to declare their belief that Jesus was surely the son of God (Matt. 27:51-54), but Turkel expects us to believe that after reviewing his "notes," the author of John decided to leave out the very signs that had caused pagan witnesses of the crucifixion to do the very thing that "John" wanted his readers to do, i. e., believe that Jesus was the son of God. How much sense does that make?
Here is just one place where I pressed Turkel to address this problem.
Now in reply to Turkel's question above, I will just repeat what I have already said. If the central purpose of my "biography" is to encourage the readers to believe that Jesus was "the Christ," I would certainly include the extraordinary events reported by Matthew, which caused the Roman soldiers to declare, "Surely, this was the son of God." After all, if one's purpose is to instill belief in one's readers, why not include that which has been proven to cause nonbelievers to believe? Wouldn't reporting that be more important than telling of, say, how Jesus once sat on a mountain with his disciples? Did anyone who saw Jesus on that occasion proclaim, "Holy smoke, Jesus is sitting on a mountain, so he must be the son of God"?
I repeated this problem here and here and here. In a word, Turkel has been bombarded with a problem that he won't address, but someone who seems to know all about what the writing purposes were of all biblical authors should be able to say something about this other than to dismiss it with the claim that I am upset because "God" wouldn't "kiss my patoot."
If there is any merit at all to this cost-cutting quibble that Turkel has been trying to sell, I would think that he would be able to quote ancient manuscripts in which the authors said that they had to be brief because they couldn't afford the cost of longer scrolls that would allow them to include more information. Unless Turkel can cite such evidence as this, his paper-shortage "explanation" of ambiguities in the Bible will remain nothing more than the desperate quibble of someone who obviously recognizes that there are problem passages in the Bible but still wants to believe that it is "the word of God."
In this section of "The Paper Shortage," I also asked Turkel to tell us why the omniscient, omnipotent one didn't anticipate the coming of Wal-Mart, the printing press, and other inventions that would make the copying of biblical books much more economical than in ancient times, but, as usual, he chose to skip this so that readers who have not been linked to my rebuttal article would never suspect that he is being evasive. I will quote here the most relevant part of that section so that Turkel can evade it again.
Maybe Turkel can also explain why the "Holy Spirit"--who was presumably guiding "John" and the other chosen ones into "all truth" (John 16:13)--could not have "anticipated" Wal-Mart or the printing press? Is Turkel implying that the Holy one was unable to know what the future held,or is this just more of his say-anything-and-the-gullible-will-accept-it approach to "apologetics."
In this section of "Crimes by Speculation - Part Three," I replied in detail again to Turkel's cutting-and-pasting of his paper-shortage quibble, so I also addressed there Turkel's quibble that Wal-Mart and the printing press could not have been anticipated in biblical times.
Uh, God couldn't anticipate Wal-Mart and printing presses? If so, he's not very omniscient, is he? And if Turkel removes "God" from the process, he reduces the Bible, as I said earlier, to a worthless collection of ancient writings that isn't worth a pint of cold spit.
Another comment is in order here. How does Turkel know that "John" didn't know someone who had the means to provide him with an adequate scroll and the willingness to do so in order to be a part of spreading "God's" plan of eternal salvation?
Readers who want to see more rebuttals of Turkel's paper-shortage quibble can access the above link to "Crimes by Speculation - Part Three," which, to my knowledge, Turkel has not yet replied to. He had argued that because of a serious problem of limited space on his scroll and the cost that would have been involved in sewing an additional length of parchment onto his scroll, "John" had to leave out of his gospel references to such phenomenal events as the three-hour darkness at midday, the earthquake that shook open nearby tombs, and the subsequent resurrection of "many saints," who went into the city and appeared to "many," which the synoptic gospels had included.
I presented to Turkel a list of questions about the length and cost of "John's" scroll, but I have seen no attempts to answer those questions, which I will repeat here so that he can ignore them again.
How much did this scroll cost "John"?
Did "John" use every inch of this scroll?
Did he have any space at all left over when he wrote the final verse of this gospel?
If he did have space left at the end, how long was that space? Two inches? One inch? A half inch? How much?
If "John" had, say, a half inch left at the end, would that have been enough space for him to squeeze in, "When Jesus died, a great earthquake shook open the tombs of many saints, who went into the city, after his resurrection, and appeared to many, and the centurion seeing the earthquake and what took place said, 'Surely, this was the son of God'"?
If "John's" scroll didn't even have an extra half inch to squeeze this information in, how much extra would it have cost him to have bought a scroll a half inch longer or to buy a half inch of scroll material to tack onto the end?
As I said in the article from which I cut and pasted these questions, if Turkel can't tell us exactly how long John's scroll was and whether he used every available inch of it at the end, then he cannot argue--with a straight face--that "John" had to omit references to the earthquake and resurrection of the "many" saints because he had neither the room to include it nor the financial means to increase the length of the scroll. If Turkel does continue to recycle this ridiculous quibble--and I have no doubt that he will--he will be arguing that "John" was unable to include these miracles on a scroll of unknown size and that "John," whose financial means at the time are unknown to us, couldn't afford either the cost of a longer scroll or augmentation of his scroll that had allegedly run out of space. Talk about an argument from silence!
Finally, let's consider Turkel's claim that Old Testament books "were not intended for distribution to a widely spread audience." He, of course, believes that the Pentateuch was written by Moses after the exodus; consequently, he must think that the audience for whom Moses' scrolls were intended totaled 2.5 to three million, so in terms of the times, that wouldn't exactly have been a limited audience. Traveling wasn't easy in those days, and the law of Moses, which required sacrifices to be made in the place where Yahweh had chosen to put his name (Deut. 12:5-11), which, of course, was Jerusalem (1 Kings 9:3; 1 Kings 11:36), recognized that going to Jerusalem every time a sacrifice was required would not have been at all convenient back then for people living in a nation that spanned about 100 miles from Dan to Beersheba, so the law made provisions for exceptions.
Deuteronomy 12:21 If the place where Yahweh your God will choose to put his name is too far from you, and you slaughter as I have commanded you any of your herd or flock that Yahweh has given you, then you may eat within your towns whenever you desire.
The law, however, was clear in requiring that all Israelites, for all times, be thoroughly instructed in the provisions of the law. This was made clear to the Israelites even before they left Egypt.
Exodus 10:1 Then Yahweh said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh; for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his officials, in order that I may show these signs of mine among them, 2 and that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I have made fools of the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them--so that you may know that I am Yahweh."
Exodus 12:24 You shall observe this rite [the Passover ceremony] as a perpetual ordinance for you and your children. 25 When you come to the land that Yahweh will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this observance. 26 And when your children ask you, 'What do you mean by this observance?' 27 you shall say, 'It is the passover sacrifice to Yahweh, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck down the Egyptians but spared our houses.'" And the people bowed down and worshiped.
Exodus 13:5 When Yahweh brings you into the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, which he swore to your ancestors to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, you shall keep this observance in this month. 6 Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a festival to Yahweh. 7 Unleavened bread shall be eaten for seven days; no leavened bread shall be seen in your possession, and no leaven shall be seen among you in all your territory. 8 You shall tell your child on that day, 'It is because of what Yahweh did for me when I came out of Egypt.' 9 It shall serve for you as a sign on your hand and as a reminder on your forehead, so that the teaching of Yahweh may be on your lips; for with a strong hand Yahweh brought you out of Egypt. 10 You shall keep this ordinance at its proper time from year to year. 11 "When Yahweh has brought you into the land of the Canaanites, as he swore to you and your ancestors, and has given it to you, 12 you shall set apart to Yahweh all that first opens the womb. All the firstborn of your livestock that are males shall be Yahweh's. 13 But every firstborn donkey you shall redeem with a sheep; if you do not redeem it, you must break its neck. Every firstborn male among your children you shall redeem. 14 When in the future your child asks you, 'What does this mean?' you shall answer, 'By strength of hand Yahweh brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery. 15 When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, Yahweh killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from human firstborn to the firstborn of animals. Therefore I sacrifice to Yahweh every male that first opens the womb, but every firstborn of my sons I redeem.' 16 It shall serve as a sign on your hand and as an emblem on your forehead that by strength of hand Yahweh brought us out of Egypt."
Judaism was an ethnocentric religion that until later in its history made no efforts to proselytize people from other ethnic groups, but with respect to those who were ethnically Jewish, it was an aggressive religion, which required all Jews to be instructed in the law and Israelite history. As the texts quoted above show, "Moses" made clear to the Israelites of his time that they were to assume the responsibility of seeing that the precepts of their religion were passed along to their descendants. That duty was emphasized to them before they entered Canaan.
Deuteronomy 4:8 And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today? 9 But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children's children--10 how you once stood before Yahweh your God at Horeb, when Yahweh said to me, "Assemble the people for me, and I will let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me as long as they live on the earth, and may teach their children so"; 11 you approached and stood at the foot of the mountain while the mountain was blazing up to the very heavens, shrouded in dark clouds.
Deuteronomy 6:6 Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, 9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Notice that the last verse quoted above recognized writing as an effective way to see that the precepts of the law were transmitted. In fact, the origin of "phylacteries" or "tefillin," i. e., small pouches containing biblical texts written on tiny parchments, which were attached with leather straps to the forehead or upper arm, was probably referred to in this passage, which despite the cost and scarcity of scroll materials was repeated four chapters later.
Deuteronomy 11:18 You shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem on your forehead. 19 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 20 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, 21 so that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that Yahweh swore to your ancestors to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.
With the passing of time--no doubt when the art of writing had progressed--its importance became more recognized as a means of transmitting important information. Isaiah, for example, was commanded to write the rebelliousness of Israel on a tablet and "inscribe it in a book so that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever" (Isaiah 30:8). Jeremiah was commanded to "write in a book" all the words that Yahweh had spoken to him, and the reason given for the command was that the days were coming when Yahweh would restore "the fortunes of his people," Judah and Israel, and bring them back to the land that he had given to their ancestors (Jer. 30:2-3), so this was obviously a recognition of the likelihood that something written down would be more likely to be preserved for the future. Unfortunately, the promise to restore Israel (v:10) failed to materialize, but on another occasion, Yahweh commanded Jeremiah to write in a book all the words that he had spoken to the prophet (Jer. 36:2), and he considered this command so important that when the king of Judah destroyed the book that Jeremiah wrote (36:23), Yahweh commanded Jeremiah to take another scroll and write those words again (36:27). It is rather difficult to understand why Yahweh would have been so obsessed with having Jeremiah write and preserve this book unless he considered writing an effective means of transmitting his word through generations, so in a time when writing materials would have been even more difficult to come by than in the days of the gospel writers, Yahweh took pains to have his words preserved in writing. We have to wonder, then, why he considered preservation of the "good news" about the resurrection of his savior-son to be as unimportant as Turkel has tried to paint it in all the comments he has made about his paper-shortage theory.
I will say more later about this speculative aspect of Turkel's paper-shortage theory, but let's first take a look at Turkel's second attempt to "fracture" my analogy.
Till:
I assume everyone noticed that Turkel gave no evidence that Ezra and
Nehemiah were bankrolled
by Persian royalty to write the Old Testament books attributed to them.
He has apparently
assumed that because they were permitted by royal decrees to
repatriate, they were therefore
subsidized to write their books, but this is an assumption for which he
has offered no
supporting evidence. Ezra said in the book bearing his name that royal
funds were given to
the repatriates to assist them in rebuilding the temple, but this is
reminiscent of
the claim that the Egyptians gave the Israelites substantial quantities
of gold and silver
prior to their exodus (Ex.
12:35). Did either funding of departing captives actually happen,
or were these simply
traditions or legends that found their way into the sacred literature
of Judaism intended to
give the impression that the god Yahweh pulled strings to make sure
that "his people" would
have adequate funds to see them through the journeys that lay ahead of
them. We have no way
of knowing whether either claim is actually historical, but I doubt
that the Persians felt
any compelling need to finance the Judean repatriation on the scale
claimed in passages like
Ezra
7:11-24 and
8:24-30.
Doing the math
will show that the second of these passages claims that the Persians
gave repatriates over 28
tons of silver and almost three tons of gold. This has the ring of just
more
biblical
exaggeration like that detailed in
this
section
of "Plagued by Inconsistencies - Part Four." For the sake of argument,
however,
let's just assume
that Ezra's claim of elaborate Persian funding of the repatriation is
historically accurate.
That would merely raise the question of why Yahweh would have taken
such pains to see that
scribes had the writing materials they needed to give full accounts of
events that occurred
during the history of a temporary religion, which he intended to
replace with a better and
more enduring one, but didn't bother to see that "John," who was
recording a momentous event
related to the beginning of the permanent religion, which would be
destined to last much
longer than the temporary one, had sufficient scroll space to give
complete, comprehensive
accounts of the death, burial, and resurrection of the "savior," which
abolished the old
covenant
(Col.
2:14;
Eph. 2:15)
and instituted
the new (Heb.
9:15-17).
That is a fly in Turkel's paper-shortage oinment that apparently he is
not at all eager to
address.
As I repeatedly asked in "Crimes by Speculation - Part Three," why would the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the universe, who spent so much time miraculously intervening in the affairs of the Israelites and other Old Testament characters, have viewed with disdain the scribal needs of those whom he chose to write the story of his son, who died and shed his blood for the "sins" of the world? Let's hope that Turkel will find the stomach to address this glaring problem in his paper-shortage theory. If he does, he should keep in mind that saying that my problem is that "God" didn't descend to kiss my "patoot" begs the questions of "God's" existence and his involvement in the authorship of the Bible, but does nothing to answer a perfectly legitimate question.
I have more to say about the works of the "chronicler" [1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah], but I will save these comments for Turkel's claim below--which is a flagrant lie--that in my article that he was presumably "answering," I had "pulled out of [my] mitt only two real cases of repetition."
Till:
Here Turkel assumes the historical accuracy of the Jewish tradition
that the psalms were
written primarily by David, whose historicity has been challenged by
many biblical scholars,
and the authorship of the psalms not traditionally attributed to David
is unknown. Hence,
Turkel is claiming that unknown Jewish writers "had the royal treasury
at hand" to write the
psalms. When he presents real evidence that this claim is true, I will
gladly address it, but
until then it will remain just another of many unsupported assertions
in his articles.
Turkel:
righteous kings would offer such support to prophets like Isaiah.
Till:
What righteous kings? Did everyone notice that Turkel gave no specific
examples of
"righteous kings" who supported "prophets like Isaiah"?
At the beginning of his book, Isaiah claimed that his prophetic ministry spanned the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah (Isaiah 1:1), but only one of those kings, Hezekiah, whom I will discuss later, could be considered "righteous." Uzziah, known also as Azariah, presumably "did that which was right in the sight of Yahweh" (2 Kings 15:3; 2 Chron 26:4), but the first account of his reign went on to say that Uzziah refused to remove the "high places," where people, contrary to clear commands in the law, continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense (2 Kings 15:4). Allowing the high places to remain in place had been a failure of many kings and was particularly galling to the author(s) of the books of Kings, who often mentioned it in assessing the reigns of kings who otherwise "did that which was right in the eyes of Yahweh" (1 Kings 15:14; 2 Kings 22:43; 2 Kings 12:3; 2 Kings 14:4; 2 Kings 15:35). The second account of Uzziah's reign gave more details and said that when he became powerful, "his pride led to his downfall," and he went into the temple to burn incense, where he was confronted with "courageous priests," who tried to tell him that only the descendants of Aaron had been consecrated to burn incense at the altar. Uzziah, refusing to heed their warning, became angry and proceeded with his plan to burn incense, upon which Yahweh afflicted him with leprosy. He remained a leper for the rest of his life and had to live in a separate house (2 Chron. 26:16-21). In all that was said about the reign of Uzziah, Isaiah wasn't even mentioned, except for a claim in 2 Chronicles 26:22 that the "other events of Uzziah's reign, from beginning to end" had been recorded by the prophet Isaiah. This could have been a reference to a lost book called "The Visions of Isaiah" (2 Chron. 32:23), because the canonical book of Isaiah made only three brief references to Uzziah, none of which related any events in his life except to mention his death and were cited for the dating of events in Isaiah's life. Since Turkel has no way of knowing what may have been said about Uzziah in a lost book and since the canonical books give no indication that Uzziah "supported" Isaiah's scribal activities, Turkel cannot know that Isaiah received any financial help from this king. To claim, then, that Isaiah's scribal work was bankrolled by Uzziah would be to argue from silence, but that fallacy would be nothing new in Turkel's articles, would it?
When Uzziah died, he was succeeded by his son Jotham, who "did what was right in the eyes of Yahweh" but, nevertheless, did not take away "the high places" where the people continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense (2 Kings 15:34). His alleged "righteousness," then, was somewhat tainted. He reigned for 16 years and was succeeded by his son Ahaz, who not only did not remove the high places but also participated in the ceremonies in these places to the point of even offering his son as a burnt offering.
2 Kings 16:1 In the seventeenth year of Pekah son of Remaliah, Ahaz son of Jotham king of Judah began to reign. 2 Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem sixteen years. Unlike David his father, he did not do what was right in the eyes of Yahweh his God. 3 He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and even sacrificed his son in the fire, following the detestable ways of the nations Yahweh had driven out before the Israelites. 4 He offered sacrifices and burned incense at the high places, on the hilltops and under every spreading tree.
2 Chronicles 28:1 Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem sixteen years. Unlike David his father, he did not do what was right in the eyes of Yahweh. 2 He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and also made cast idols for worshiping the Baals. 3 He burned sacrifices in the Valley of Ben Hinnom and sacrificed his sons in the fire, following the detestable ways of the nations Yahweh had driven out before the Israelites. 4 He offered sacrifices and burned incense at the high places, on the hilltops and under every spreading tree.
Both biblical accounts not only described Ahaz's reign as an unrighteous one but also illustrated my main point: contrary to Turkel's claim that the scarcity and cost of scrolls forced biblical writers to omit important details in their records, the frequency of repetition in the Bible shows that they faced no such restrictions. Instead, the repetition testifies to the likelihood that biblical writers felt free to write on their scrolls whatever they considered important without regard to whether other writers had also said it. Since nothing was said in the biblical accounts of Ahaz's reign that even implied that he bankrolled Isaiah's scribal works, Turkel, in typical style, is arguing from silence when he says that kings "support[ed] prophets like Isaiah." Futhermore, verbatim repetitions in the Bible, like those that I identified in "The Paper Shortage," which were even more repetitive than the two passages just quoted, indicate that biblical authors sometimes knew that they were copying word for word what had previously been recorded by other writers. Surely, they would not have done this if the scarcity and cost of scroll materials had been any kind of significant restraining influence on the content of their records.
Hezekiah was the only other king who reigned during the prophetic ministry of Isaiah, and the three main records of his reign described him in glowing terms of righteousness (2 Kings 18-20; 2 Chron. 28-32; and Isaiah 36-39). The writer of 2 Kings, in fact, said that there was no king before or after Hezekiah who had "trusted in Yahweh, the god of Israel, as he had done (2 Kings 18:5), but this appraisal has to be received with caution, because the same book gave an almost verbatim assessment of king Josiah.
2 Kings 18:5 Hezekiah trusted in Yahweh, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him.
2 Kings 23:25 Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to Yahweh as he did--with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses.
Appraisals of Israelite/Judean kings, then, were somewhat like the opinions that modern writers have about important government officials. There are political writers, for example, who think that George W. Bush has been an outstanding president, whereas others think that he has been one of the worst if not the worst. Therefore, we can hardly determine the true character of an ancient king on the basis of what contemporary writers may have said about him, especially when the number of surviving records is as limited as they are, but there is no doubt that the surviving accounts of Hezekiah's reign were highly complimentary, so for the sake of argument, I am going to assume that these records of Hezekiah were basically accurate and that he was a king who had been held in high esteem by the Yahwists of his time. That would in no way prove that he financed Isaiah's scribal activities, because none of these surviving records make any mention of royal funds that were appropriated to support Isaiah or any other prophet; therefore, when Turkel says that "righteous kings would offer such support to prophets like Isaiah," he is again arguing from silence.
The assumption that "righteous kings" subsidized Isaiah's prophetic ministry would not explain how prophets like Jeremiah, who denounced his contemporary kings and was in turn opposed by some of them, could have "afforded" scroll space for a book over twice as long as the gospel of John, which Turkel claims (without evidence) that "John" truncated because of the cost of scroll materials. Jeremiah's minstry began in the 13th year of Josiah's reign and extended through the "end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah" (Jer. 1:2-3). As noted above, Josiah was said to be the most upright of all the kings of Judah and Israel, except for Hezekiah, who received the same praise from the author(s) of 2 Kings, but Josiah's sons Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim and grandson Jehoiachin were not so favorably considered. Jeremiah harshly condemned them in such passages as Jeremiah 22, which was presumably spoken after the reign of Jehoiakim, who had succeeded his brother Jehoahaz [Shallum], who had reigned for only three months, after which he was deposed by the Egyptians and exiled to Egypt (2 Kings 23:30-35). To follow the denunciations in this passage, readers should keep in mind that Jehoiakim, who succeeded his brother Jehoahaz [Shallum], reigned for eleven years (2 Kings 23:36) and was succeeded by his son Jehoiachin, who then reigned for three months and was deposed by Nebuchadnezzar, who installed his uncle Zedikiah as the last king of Judah (2 Kings 24:17-18).
Jeremiah 22:1 This is what Yahweh says: "Go down to the palace of the king of Judah and proclaim this message there: 2 'Hear the word of Yahweh, O king of Judah, you who sit on David's throne--you, your officials and your people who come through these gates. 3 This is what Yahweh says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of his oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the alien, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place. 4 For if you are careful to carry out these commands, then kings who sit on David's throne will come through the gates of this palace, riding in chariots and on horses, accompanied by their officials and their people. 5 But if you do not obey these commands, declares Yahweh, I swear by myself that this palace will become a ruin.'" 6 For this is what Yahweh says about the palace of the king of Judah: "Though you are like Gilead to me, like the summit of Lebanon, I will surely make you like a desert, like towns not inhabited. 7 I will send destroyers against you, each man with his weapons, and they will cut up your fine cedar beams and throw them into the fire. 8 People from many nations will pass by this city and will ask one another, 'Why has Yahweh done such a thing to this great city?' 9 And the answer will be: 'Because they have forsaken the covenant of Yahweh their God and have worshiped and served other gods.'" 10 Do not weep for the dead king or mourn his loss; rather, weep bitterly for him who is exiled, because he will never return nor see his native land again. 11 For this is what Yahweh says about Shallum [Jehoahaz] son of Josiah, who succeeded his father as king of Judah but has gone from this place: "He will never return. 12 He will die in the place where they have led him captive; he will not see this land again. 13 Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice, making his countrymen work for nothing, not paying them for their labor. 14 He says, 'I will build myself a great palace with spacious upper rooms.' So he makes large windows in it, panels it with cedar and decorates it in red. 15 Does it make you a king to have more and more cedar? Did not your father [Josiah] have food and drink? He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. 16 He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?" declares Yahweh. 17 "But your eyes and your heart are set only on dishonest gain, on shedding innocent blood and on oppression and extortion." 18 Therefore this is what Yahweh says about Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah: "They will not mourn for him: 'Alas, my brother! Alas, my sister!' They will not mourn for him: 'Alas, my master! Alas, his splendor!' 19 He will have the burial of a donkey-- dragged away and thrown outside the gates of Jerusalem. 20 Go up to Lebanon and cry out, let your voice be heard in Bashan, cry out from Abarim, for all your allies are crushed. 21 I warned you when you felt secure, but you said, 'I will not listen!' This has been your way from your youth; you have not obeyed me. 22 The wind will drive all your shepherds away, and your allies will go into exile. Then you will be ashamed and disgraced because of all your wickedness. 23 You who live in Lebanon, who are nestled in cedar buildings, how you will groan when pangs come upon you, pain like that of a woman in labor! 24 As surely as I live," declares Yahweh, "even if you, Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, were a signet ring on my right hand, I would still pull you off. 25 I will hand you over to those who seek your life, those you fear--to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and to the Babylonians. 26 I will hurl you and the mother who gave you birth into another country, where neither of you was born, and there you both will die. 27 You will never come back to the land you long to return to." 28 Is this man Jehoiachin a despised, broken pot, an object no one wants? Why will he and his children be hurled out, cast into a land they do not know? 29 O land, land, land, hear the word of Yahweh! 30 This is what Yahweh says: "Record this man as if childless, a man who will not prosper in his lifetime, for none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the throne of David or rule anymore in Judah."
Afterwards, when Jehoiakim had destroyed a scroll that Jeremiah had written, a similar prophecy of Jehoiakim's fate was written.
Jeremiah 36:30 Therefore, this is what Yahweh says about Jehoiakim king of Judah: He will have no one to sit on the throne of David; his body will be thrown out and exposed to the heat by day and the frost by night. 31 I will punish him and his children and his attendants for their wickedness; I will bring on them and those living in Jerusalem and the people of Judah every disaster I pronounced against them, because they have not listened.
That a Judean king would provide funds to support the scribal activities of a prophet uttering denunciations of the royal family like these would have been about as likely as George W. Bush's agreeing to pay for the production expenses of Michael Moore's next documentary movie. Jeremiah, in fact, claimed, as noted earlier, that king Jehoiakim destroyed a scoll that Yahweh had commanded the prophet to write (Jer. 36:20-24). Later, when Zedekiah was king, Jeremiah was accused of aiding the Babylonians, who were besieging Jerualem, and was imprisoned in a dungeon (Jer. 37:3-15). Although the king later released Jeremiah from the dungeon and put him under house arrest in the courtyard of the royal guard, where he was provided with food (Jer. 37:16-21), he was later imprisoned again in a dungeon filled with mire (Jer. 38:4-13), so there is no indication at all that the king provided him with scroll materials so that he could record in writing his continual tirades against the royal family. Common sense should tell even Turkel that none of the last three kings of Judah would have wanted to help a prophet like this to record denunciations of their reigns. Nevertheless, Jeremiah somehow managed to produce a scroll that was over twice as long as the gospel of John, and the last chapter of this scoll was an almost verbatim repetition of the last chapter of 2 Kings.
In my years of debunking the efforts of biblical inerrantists to defend the Bible, I have encountered many silly "explanations" of discrepancies, but Turkel's paper-shortage conjecture is about the silliest of them all. It deserves to be put at the top of the "Laugh Lists" of biblical skeptics, and it doesn't cease being ridiculous just because of some derogatory comment that Turkel may make about the "Laugh Lists" of skeptics.
Turkel:
One copy of Isaiah would be no burden under such circumstances.
Till:
I have often asked if Turkel ever thinks before he writes, and his
statement above prompts me
to ask it again. If one copy of Isaiah would have been no burden for
Isaiah, then making one
copy of it would have been no burden on whoever may have wanted to copy
it. Then, in turn,
making one copy of the copy would have been no burden on whoever may
have wanted to copy the
copy, and so on ad infinitum. When Turkel argues, as he did
above, that the making of
"multiple copies" in a time when everything was written on scrolls
would have been an expensive
endeavor, he seems to think that when Isaiah wrote his scroll or when
"John" wrote his, they
would then have had to engage in making several more copies of it, much
in the same way that
a modern publishing company prints multiple copies, but with the
exception of scroll
production in early monasteries and religious colonies like Qumran,
there is no indication
that the transmission of "books" was done in that way. Thus, if making
one copy of a book
would have been "no burden" on its author, making one copy of it would
have been no burden on
the person who copied it and then no burden on whoever copied the copy,
and so on. This
process could be compared to the transmission of information by
computer disks. If an article
is electronically recorded on a disk, the author would incur
prohibitive costs if he had to
pay for making, say, ten thousand copies of it on individual disks, i.
e., one disk for
each copy. If, however, the author copied it to one disk and then
someone who wanted a copy
of it bought his own disk to make the copy, that would put no
particular "burden" on the
author of the article. If, then, third and fourth and fifth, etc.,
etc., etc. parties wanted
to make their copies on disks that they had paid for, the author would
incur no prohibitive
expenses. In the early days of computers, for example, I copied many of
my articles on disks
that readers of The Skeptical Review sent to me with return
postage, so my only cost
was the time spent making the copies. If making one copy of Isaiah
would have been "no
burden" on Isaiah, then, by his own admission, Turkel's paper-shortage
conjecture falls like
a house of cards.
Turkel:
In contrast the NT writers, though they may have had the backing of
members of the educated
Roman class, still did not have deep pockets to pull from -- not to the
level of the king of
Persia.
Till:
And there is no indication that they needed deep pockets. If, say, the
apostle Paul wrote an
epistle on a scroll and sent it to the Corinthians, deciding whether it
merited being copied
would have fallen to them, wouldn't it have? A collective group, which
was praised by Paul
for its generosity in contributing funds to the needy in Jerusalem
(1
Cor. 16:1-2), would
surely have been able to make copies of the letter without incurring
any unreasonable costs.
We can intelligently surmise from a statement that Paul made to the
Colossians that such
copying as this probably took place in the early church.
Colossians 4:16 After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea.
If Paul were held in any esteem at all among the Colossian Christians, I doubt that they would have just sent the original of this letter to Laodicea and risked losing it (as apparently happened to the epistle to the Laodiceans). More likely, they would have made a copy of it and sent the copy to Laodicea. Just as one copy of Colossians would have been "no burden" on Paul, the making of a copy to send to Laodicea would have been no burden on the Colossians. Anyone who then chose to make a copy of this copy would have been under no particular financial burden. The "deep pockets" that Turkel claims would have been necessary if longer scrolls had been written is a straw man that exists only in Turkel's mind, which is obviously desperate for some way to "explain" ambiguities and important omissions in biblical books.
Turkel:
Till:
I showed above that there is no textual evidence at all to support
Turkel's claim that Ezra
was funded "by Persian largesse," so I want to concentrate here on
exposing Turkel's flagrant
dishonesty. He said that I "pull[ed] out of [my] mitt only two real
cases of repetition,"
but he has to know that I cited many more than just two examples of
repetition. To show how
even his rewriting of the paragraph identified more than just two cases
of repetition, I am
going to quote again his mutilated version of a statement that I made
in
this
section of
"The Paper Shortage," which quoted many more examples of biblical
repetition than the ones
that Turkel included in his misquotation below.
But writing materials were not in such short supply that needless repetition was often done, as in the cases of Isaiah 37 and 2 Kings 19 and 2 Samuel 22 and Psalm 18. And there seemed to be enough writing materials for parallel accounts like those in the books of Samuel and Kings and the Chronicles and the synoptic gospels. Sometimes these parallel accounts were almost verbatim.
Notice that in addition to the two examples of repetition in Isaiah 37 and 2 Kings 19 and 2 Samuel 22 and Psalm 18, even Turkel's version of my statement mentioned "parallel accounts like those in the books of Samuel and Kings and the Chronicles and the synoptic gospels." Readers who click the link to "The Paper Shortage" will see that I actually "pull[ed] out of [my] mitt" many more examples of repetition than these, but even if all of these parallel accounts were quoted, readers would see dozens of examples of verbatim or almost verbatim repetition. I don't intend to impose on the patience of readers by quoting all of these examples, but I will cite enough of them for readers to see Turkel's dishonesty when he says that I had identified "only two real cases of repetition."
Parallel Accounts in Samuel/Kings and the Chronicles: I will quote the almost verbatim texts in my first example of repetition and then only cite the repetitions in other parallel accounts.
1 Samuel 31:1 Now the Philistines fought against Israel; the Israelites fled before them, and many fell slain on Mount Gilboa. 2 The Philistines pressed hard after Saul and his sons, and they killed his sons Jonathan, Abinadab and Malki-Shua. 3 The fighting grew fierce around Saul, and when the archers overtook him, they wounded him critically. 4 Saul said to his armor-bearer, "Draw your sword and run me through, or these uncircumcised fellows will come and run me through and abuse me." But his armor-bearer was terrified and would not do it; so Saul took his own sword and fell on it. 5 When the armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he too fell on his sword and died with him. 6 So Saul and his three sons and his armor-bearer and all his men died together that same day. 7 When the Israelites along the valley and those across the Jordan saw that the Israelite army had fled and that Saul and his sons had died, they abandoned their towns and fled. And the Philistines came and occupied them. 8 The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the dead, they found Saul and his three sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. 9 They cut off his head and stripped off his armor, and they sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to proclaim the news in the temple of their idols and among their people. 10 They put his armor in the temple of the Ashtoreths and fastened his body to the wall of Beth Shan. 11 When the people of Jabesh Gilead heard of what the Philistines had done to Saul, 12 all their valiant men journeyed through the night to Beth Shan. They took down the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall of Beth Shan and went to Jabesh, where they burned them. 13 Then they took their bones and buried them under a tamarisk tree at Jabesh, and they fasted seven days.
1 Chronicles 10:1 Now the Philistines fought against Israel; the Israelites fled before them, and many fell slain on Mount Gilboa. 2 The Philistines pressed hard after Saul and his sons, and they killed his sons Jonathan, Abinadab and Malki-Shua. 3 The fighting grew fierce around Saul, and when the archers overtook him, they wounded him. 4 Saul said to his armor-bearer, "Draw your sword and run me through, or these uncircumcised fellows will come and abuse me." But his armor-bearer was terrified and would not do it; so Saul took his own sword and fell on it. 5 When the armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he too fell on his sword and died. 6 So Saul and his three sons died, and all his house died together. 7 When all the Israelites in the valley saw that the army had fled and that Saul and his sons had died, they abandoned their towns and fled. And the Philistines came and occupied them. 8 The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the dead, they found Saul and his sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. 9 They stripped him and took his head and his armor, and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to proclaim the news among their idols and their people. 10 They put his armor in the temple of their gods and hung up his head in the temple of Dagon. 11 When all the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead heard of everything the Philistines had done to Saul, 12 all their valiant men went and took the bodies of Saul and his sons and brought them to Jabesh. Then they buried their bones under the great tree in Jabesh, and they fasted seven days.
The variations in these passages are so minor that one could almost say that they are verbatim accounts. Their similarity is so striking that reasonable people will recognize that the "chronicler" either copied from the earlier account in 2 Samuel or else both writers copied from another source. Either way, we have to admit that the "chronicler" was copying a text that he knew had already been written about the deaths of Saul and his sons. If writing materials were so scarce and expensive back then, why did he bother to repeat a story that he knew had already been recorded?
I won't quote the texts from other parallel accounts in the Samuel/Kings and Chronicles, but those who bother to check the links I provide from the NASV will see that they too are almost identical. As they go through them, readers should keep in mind that these are only some--not all--of the examples of parallel accounts in these books. Many other shorter examples could be cited.
Second Samuel 6:2-11 and 1 Chronicles 13:6-14 give almost verbatim accounts of David's attempt to transport the ark of the covenant from the house of Obededom the Gittite to Jerusalem, a venture that cost a man named Uzzah his life when he touched the ark to try to keep it from falling off its cart when the oxen stumbled.
The entire chapters of 2 Samuel 10 and 1 Chronicles 19 contain almost verbatim accounts of the insult to David's emissaries, whom he sent to Ammon on the occasion of their king's death, and an ensuing war between the Israelites and the Ammonites and their Syrian/Babylonian mercenaries that followed the shameful treatment of David's messengers.
The entire chapters of 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21 give almost verbatim accounts of David's census of the Israelites, his subsequent repentance for whatever "sin" was involved in taking a census, the pestilence that Yahweh sent to kill 70,000 Israelites for David's "sin," and David's purchase of the threshing floor of Ornan/Araunah as a place to build an altar to offer sacrifices for his "sin." These parallel accounts differ concerning how many Israelites Joab counted in the census (2 Samuel 24:9; 1 Chronicles 21:5), whether Yahweh offered David a punishment of three or seven years of famine (2 Samuel 24:13; 1 Chronicles 21:11-12), and whether David paid Ornan/Araunah 50 shekels of silver (2 Samuel 24:24) or 600 shekels of gold (1 Chronicles 21:25) for the threshing floor. Otherwise, the accounts are parallel.
Yahweh's granting of wisdom to Solomon was related in 1 Kings 3:5-14 and then repeated in 2 Chronicles 1:7-13. There are more variations here than in the examples immediately above, but the "chronicler" repeated almost verbatim much of what had already been written in 1 Kings.
The work that Hiram did in making the vessels for the temple was told in 1 Kings 7:40-50 and then repeated almost verbatim in 2 Chronicles 4:11-20. The "chronicler" called Hiram Huram, and there are other minor variations, but the two passages are essentially the same.
Solomon's transportation of the ark of the covenant from the city of David to Jerusalem was told in 1 Kings 8:1-11 and then told again in 2 Chronicles 5:2-10 with only a few minor variations.
The dedication speech that Solomon made at the temple in 1 Kings 8:12-50 was repeated almost verbatim in 2 Chronicles 6:1-39.
First Kings 10, which narrated details of the queen of Sheba's visit to Solomon and then listed Solomon's great wealth of gold, silver, spices, horses, cedar wood, etc., was repeated with just minor variations in 2 Chronicles 9:1-28. The only significant variation was the "chronicler's" exaggeration of the number of horses and chariots that Solomon owned. In 1 Kings, he had only 1400 chariots, but the stalls for chariots became 4,000 in 2 Chronicles.
The coronation of Rehoboam and his hardline policies that caused the split between the southern [Judah] and northern [Israel] kingdoms were related in 1 Kings 12:1-20 and repeated with only minor variations in 2 Chronicles 10. The Yahwistically thwarted attempt by Rehoboam to force the northern kingdom to rejoin Judah in a unified kingdom was related in 1 Kings 12:21-24 and then repeated almost verbatim in 2 Chronicles 11:1-4.
There is no need to continue this, because the examples above are sufficient to show that the "chronicler" often copied from the previously written books of Kings [or some other parallel sources], so he obviously wasn't restrained by any cost or scarcity of scroll materials. In addition to his narratives that were almost verbatim parallels to those in the books of Samuel and Kings, the "chronicler" also copied from other biblical texts, as the examples quoted below show.
1 Chronicles 16:7 That day David first committed to Asaph and his associates this psalm of thanks to Yahweh: 8 Give thanks to Yahweh, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done. 9 Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts. 10 Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek Yahweh rejoice. 11 Look to Yahweh and his strength; seek his face always. 12 Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced, 13 O descendants of Israel his servant, O sons of Jacob, his chosen ones. 14 He is Yahweh our God; his judgments are in all the earth. 15 He remembers his covenant forever, the word he commanded, for a thousand generations, 16 the covenant he made with Abraham, the oath he swore to Isaac. 17 He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an everlasting covenant: 18 "To you I will give the land of Canaan as the portion you will inherit." 19 When they were but few in number, few indeed, and strangers in it, 20 they wandered from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another. 21 He allowed no man to oppress them; for their sake he rebuked kings: 22 "Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm."
This was repeated almost verbatim in Psalm 105.
Psalm 105:1 Give thanks to Yahweh, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done. 2 Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts. 3 Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek Yahweh rejoice. 4 Look to Yahweh and his strength; seek his face always. 5 Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced, 6 O descendants of Abraham his servant, O sons of Jacob, his chosen ones. 7 He is Yahweh our God; his judgments are in all the earth. 8 He remembers his covenant forever, the word he commanded, for a thousand generations, 9 the covenant he made with Abraham, the oath he swore to Isaac. 10 He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an everlasting covenant: 11 "To you I will give the land of Canaan as the portion you will inherit." 12 When they were but few in number, few indeed, and strangers in it, 13 they wandered from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another. 14 He allowed no one to oppress them; for their sake he rebuked kings: 15 "Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm."
At this point, David's song of praise in 1 Chronicles 16 deviated from Psalm 105 to copy almost verbatim Psalm 96 in its entirety, after which it tacked on verses from Psalm 106:1,47-48. Obviously, then, the "chronicler" felt no financial need not to repeat that which had already been written in other biblical books.
Parallel Accounts in the Synoptic Gospels: As in the parallel accounts just noted in the Old Testament, the same repetitions abound in the synoptic gospels. Although not quite as verbatim as the examples just noted in the Old Testament books of "history," the same stories were often repeated by the "gospel" writers. The examples below are just a few of many that I could cite.
The "sermon on the mount" was recorded in Matthew 5-7 and repeated in abbreviated form in Luke 6:20-49 as a sermon on a level plain v:17.
The healing of the leper was recorded in Matthew 8:1-4, Mark 1:40-45, and Luke 1:12-15.
The story of Jesus's healing of the centurion's servant was told in Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10.
The healing of Peter's mother-in-law of a fever and others possessed by demons was told in Matthew 8:14-15, Mark 1:29-34, and Luke 4:38-41.
The story of the scribe who proposed to follow Jesus wherever he went was told in Matthew 8:19-22 and Luke 9:57-60.
The healing of the man afflicted with palsy was told in Matthew 9:2-8, Mark 2:3-12, and Luke 5:18-26.
The calling of Matthew [Levi] and the subsequent Pharisaical criticism of Jesus for eating with "publicans and sinners" was told in Matthew 9:10-17, Mark 2:14-22, and Luke 5:27-38.
The story of Jairus's [the ruler's] daughter was told in Matthew 9:18-26, Mark 5:23-43, and Luke 8:41-56.
The so-called limited commission given to the apostles was recorded in Matthew 10:5-23, Mark 6:7-13, and again in Luke 9:1-6.
The feeding of the 5,000 was told in Matthew 14:13-21, Mark 6:32-44, and Luke 9:10-17.
I could cite this many examples of repetition again and then some, but these are sufficient to make the point. In a time when Turkel claims that gospel authors had to write with an awareness that making "multiple copies" of their scrolls would be an expensive endeavor and, consequently, selected their materials accordingly, they nevertheless freely repeated stories that had already been told. About 90% of the gospel of Mark, for example, was imbedded in the book of Matthew, and Luke repeated about half of it. Despite such repetition of the same stories, however, Turkel expects reasonable people to believe that even though the author of "John" was an eyewitness to the crucifixion of Jesus, he intentionally omitted references to such phenomenal events as the midday darkness recorded by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and the earthquake and subsequent resurrection of "many saints" (Matthew 27:41-53). As we have noted, Turkel claims that these events weren't relevant to "John's" writing purpose, but "John" claimed that he had told of "signs" that Jesus performed in hope that they would make his readers believe that Jesus was "the Christ" (John 20:30-31), but the phenomenal events mentioned by Matthew--and in part by Mark and Luke--had caused the Roman soldiers present at the crucifixion to declare that Jesus was surely the son of God (Matt. 27:54). If these miraculous events had been shown to be signs that would convince nonbelievers that Jesus was the son of God and if the avowed purpose of John's gospel was to record signs that would make readers believe that Jesus was the Christ, why would John have omitted the very "signs" that had caused pagan Romans to declare their belief that Jesus was the son of God?
Watch Turkel evade again this huge problem in his paper-shortage quibble.
I will now return to Turkel's "fracturing" of my analogy.
Turkel:
This [the cases of Old Testament repetition that were cited above]
hardly suggests a waste of
paper, but even if it did, note that in no way is such repetition a
contrary indication
against our primary point!
Till:
It isn't? Why isn't it? Turkel's "primary point" was that the cost and
scarcity of scroll
materials had kept writers from giving complete accounts that would
have eliminated confusion
or ambiguity, but why wouldn't the examples that I cited above, which
is only a partial list
of repetitions that I could have cited, kick the props right out from
under Turkel's claim
that biblical authors could have given clearer accounts of what they
were recording if they
had not been working under the restraits of scarce and expensive scroll
materials? Why was
there so much repetition in the Bible if the writers were working under
such restraits?
Turkel:
What? Does Skeptic X expect a compiler of Isaiah's words and deeds to
leave out 2 Kings 19?
What's he going to do, write in a note, "see other scroll"?
Till:
I love it when Turkel sticks his foot into his mouth, and in what he
said immediately above,
he crammed it all the way down his throat. In another lame attempt at
humor, he has shown
again that his knowledge of biblical content is about as shallow as a
sidewalk puddle after
a summer shower, because the Old Testament is full of examples where
biblical writers did the
very thing that Turkel seems to think that they couldn't have done.
When narrating the
exploits of biblical characters (especially kings), instead of telling
everything that the
characters had done, they would refer their readers to other books that
had recorded those
events. The examples below are just some of those that I could quote.
1 Kings 11:41 As for the other events of Solomon's reign--all he did and the wisdom he displayed--are they not written in the book of the annals of Solomon?
1 Kings 14:19 The other events of Jeroboam's reign, his wars and how he ruled, are written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel.
1 Kings 14:29 As for the other events of Rehoboam's reign, and all he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?
1 Kings 15:7 As for the other events of Abijah's reign, and all he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?
1 Kings 15:23 As for all the other events of Asa's reign, all his achievements, all he did and the cities he built, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?
1 Kings 15:31 As for the other events of Nadab's reign, and all he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel?
1 Kings 16:5 As for the other events of Baasha's reign, what he did and his achievements, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel?
1 Kings 16:14 As for the other events of Elah's reign, and all he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel?
1 Kings 16:20 As for the other events of Zimri's reign, and the rebellion he carried out, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel?
1 Kings 16:27 As for the other events of Omri's reign, what he did and the things he achieved, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel?
1 Kings 22:39 As for the other events of Ahab's reign, including all he did, the palace he built and inlaid with ivory, and the cities he fortified, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel?
There are some 20 other examples like these in the books of Kings, so I will skip these and go to other books to show that doing what Turkel, in his failed attempt at humor, said that biblical writers could not have done was, in fact, often done. Notice that some of the examples below referred readers to multiple books where other events in the lives of biblical characters had been recorded.
1 Chronicles 9:1 All Israel was listed in the genealogies recorded in the book of the kings of Israel.
2 Chronicles 9:29 As for the other events of Solomon's reign, from beginning to end, are they not written in the records of Nathan the prophet, in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite and in the visions of Iddo the seer concerning Jeroboam son of Nebat?
2 Chronicles 12:15 As for the events of Rehoboam's reign, from beginning to end, are they not written in the records of Shemaiah the prophet and of Iddo the seer that deal with genealogies?
2 Chronicles 13:22 The other events of Abijah's reign, what he did and what he said, are written in the annotations of the prophet Iddo.
2 Chronicles 20:34 The other events of Jehoshaphat's reign, from beginning to end, are written in the annals of Jehu son of Hanani, which are recorded in the book of the kings of Israel.
2 Chronicles 32:32 The other events of Hezekiah's reign and his acts of devotion are written in the vision of the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel.
This second list of examples is as incomplete as the first one. Altogether, there are some 50 examples in the Old Testament where writers, instead of repeating something that they knew had been written elsewhere, would refer their readers to those other sources. I stopped with the last example above because it referred readers to the "vision of the prophet Isaiah" and "the book of the kings of Judah and Israel" rather than repeating "other events of Hezekiah and his acts of devotion." This is significant because Turkel (above) tried to justify the unnecessary repetition (in 2 Kings 19) of chapter 37 in Isaiah by asking, "What's he [Isaiah] going to do, write in a note, 'see other scroll'? Well, the answer to that question would be, no, because the book of Isaiah was written before 2 Kings 19, but there is no reason at all why the writer of 2 Kings could not have said, "As for Hezekiah's deliverance from the siege of the Assyrians by an angel of Yahweh, which went through the Assyrian camp and killed all of its soldiers, has this not been written in the book of the prophet Isaiah?" Instead, the author of 2 Kings copied an almost verbatim account of what had been previously written in Isaiah.
My answer to Turkel's question then is yes. There is no reason why the author of 2 Kings could not have said, in effect, "See other scroll," and referred his readers to what Isaiah had already recorded. Let's see Turkel tell us now why this biblical writer, instead of writing a verbatim repetition of events already recorded by another author, could not have done what biblical writers did in at least 50 different places and referred his readers to another scroll.
Will someone send Turkel a Handi-Wipe so that he can clean the egg off his face?
Turkel:
The compiler of Isaiah's oracles and of the Kings annals had differing
purposes; there is
nothing to prevent such double usage with respect to available supplies.
Till:
Apparently not, so now let Turkel tell us why a far more important
purpose that the gospel
writers had when they were confronted with the task of taking the "good
news" beyond the
borders of the Roman Empire should not have enjoyed the same freedom to
tell everything
necessary to make their gospels credible. We noted above that Turkel
has said that making
only one copy of Isaiah would have put no burden on the prophet, so why
wouldn't the same
have been true for the gospel writers, whose books were much shorter?
Is Turkel going to
argue that telling about the "signs" that had caused the Roman soldiers
to declare their
believe that Jesus was the son of God would have bankrupted "John"? If
so, what is his proof
of this? As I asked above, how long was the scroll that "John" used?
Did he use every last
inch of it? How much did it cost him? How much would it have cost
"John" to sew on a short
extension that would have enabled him to record the signs that had
caused pagan Romans to
believe that Jesus was the son of God?
If Turkel can't answer these questions, then he will be arguing from silence that "John" didn't have enough room on a scroll of unknown size and cost to record phenomenal events that were clearly within his goal to tell the "signs" in the life of Jesus that would make readers believe that he was "the Christ."
See Bobby hop. See Bobby skip. See Bobby jump. See Bobby hop, skip, and jump right over this huge problem in his paper-shortage quibble.
Turkel:
And in any case, as noted, neither Isaiah nor the Kings writer, that we
know of, were
constrained by the limits of funding and of needing to keep in mind the
production of
multiple copies across an empire, for people from all backgrounds and
nations.
Till:
The same could be said of "John." As far as Turkel can actually know,
"John" was not
constrained by the limits of funding and the need to produce multiple
copies, because as I
noted above, the copying of scrolls was done by those who wanted
copies, and when organized
religious groups developed--like monasteries or even
congregations--there was group
cooperation in making copies deemed important to the groups' purposes.
Hence, "John" would
not have encountered any prohibitive expenses in making "multiple
copies." Furthermore,
Turkel doesn't know the financial means of "John" or "Matthew" or
anyone else who wrote New
Testament books. Like the fictional nutcase named Don Quixote, Turkel
is fighting windmills
in a ridiculous attempt to "explain" ambiguity and confusion in the
Bible.
Turkel:
So it is of X's latest paper delivery scheme. But for sheer humor
value, nothing beats the
comment of X fan J. E. Hill, who as usual imposes his own personal,
graphocentric confusion
on others, and thinks this is the answer:
Till:
Well, I disagree. The "humor value" of Turkel's claim that "John"
didn't have enough space
on a scroll of unknown length to write everything that needed to be
written about the
crucifixion and resurrection and his claim that the unknown financial
means of "John" did not
permit him to "buy" a larger scroll or increase the length of the one
he had certainly
exceeds anything that J. E. Hill could have said, but let's look at
Hill's comment that
apparently put a burr under Turkel's saddle.
Turkel [quoting Hill]:
When I read that "lack of paper" defense, I just shook my head, and wondered why Yahweh didn't give them enough writing material to eliminate all the confusion.
Frankly, some people's confusion is so great that no miracle will be able to fix it!
Till:
And this explains what? I have repeatedly asked Turkel the same
question: why would an
omniscient, omnipotent deity, who had performed for the Israelites such
wonders as the parting
of the Red Sea, the sending of manna down from heaven for a period of
40 years, the gushing
forth of water from rocks, etc., etc., etc., just so that he could get
his "chosen ones" from
Egypt to Canaan, not have lifted a finger to make sure that "John" and
the others who
were recording his "plan of salvation" for all mankind throughout the
rest of human history,
had adequate scroll materials to tell everything about that plan that
was necessary to make
it credible and understandable, but he doesn't seem to be too eager to
answer that question.
He prefers to make pathetic attempts at humor and postulate
unverifiable theories about the
financial support that "righteous kings" gave to biblical writers who
engaged in repetition.
I have now answered point by point everything in the first article that Turkel claimed answered my rebuttal of his paper-shortage quibble. He, of course, will never reciprocate by replying point by point to my rebuttals above. If he does surprise me and post a reply as detailed as my rebuttal arguments above, I will reply in kind. If he doesn't, there will be no need for me to waste more time on any additional evasions he may post.
I will, however, write a point-by-point reply to his second article, which he linked his readers to with the claim that it had "already rebutted" my arguments "months back."
To access a reply to Turkel's claim that he has
"already replied" to my arguments in "The
Paper Shortage," go to "The
Paper Trail Resumes - Part Two."
