Well, I think the bible’s historicity is very important and it lends credibility to the text as a whole. If its historically inaccurate, the next logical question is, what else isn’t accurate? The beauty of the bible is that it’s a unit made up of many books and if you discredit one part, you inevitably or inadvertently find yourself discrediting other parts. An example would be the argument that Luke, the author of Acts and companion of Paul, may have embellished certain aspects of Paul’s life. Therefore, if someone clings to that argument, it inadvertently puts the gospel of Luke into doubt because if Acts contains fabrications why would his gospel account be devoid of them? Not stopping there, since the gospels mirror each other, one ends up not only doubting Luke’s account but the other three accounts aswell.
Another example would be the prophecies. Micah 5:1-3 listed the place that would become Christ’s hometown. Now, if you say that the Jerusalem of 1-33A.D wasn’t the same as that of the Davidic era, what gives? Your exact words: ”I am saying there is no evidence of ancient Israel from a BC perspective.” Therefore, if you are fully convinced of your hypothesis then you cannot accept those prophecies because it simply doesn’t make any sense and it doesn’t stop there. If you doubt the old oracles, what reason do you have to believe the ones relating to the future?
I also think that the book you mentioned, from which you also quoted, is attempting to do what HolyBlood HolyGrail was attempting to do. These are precarious times and there are forces moving to discredit Scripture from every possible angle. We talked about it in another thread, that when Dan Brown’s book came out in 2006, a couple years later a Havard professor was ‘gifted’ with a parchment that seemed to prove Brown’s fictional account and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if ‘evidence’ was found to prove Finklestein & Silberman’s assertion.
Your thoughts have actually given me a window into what to expect should project Bluebeam be activated, if its going to play out the way we’ve been told. Just to recap:
"The first step in the NASA Blue Beam Project concerns the breakdown [re- evaluation] of all archaeological knowledge. It deals with the set-up, with artificially created earthquakes at certain precise locations on the planet, of supposedly new discoveries which will finally explain to all people the "error" of all fundamental religious doctrines. What is important to understand in the first step is that those earthquakes will hit at different parts of the world where scientific and archaeological teachings have indicated that arcane mysteries have been buried. By those types of earthquakes, it will be possible for scientists to rediscover those arcane mysteries which will be used to discredit all fundamental religious doctrines. This is the first preparation for the plan for humanity because what they want to do is destroy the beliefs of all Christians and Muslims on the planet. To do that, they need some false 'proof' from the far past that will prove to all nations that their religions have all been misinterpreted and misunderstood."
All who value their eternal interests should be on their guard against the inroads of skepticism. The very pillars of truth will be assailed. It is impossible to keep beyond the reach of the sarcasms and sophisms, the insidious and pestilent teachings, of modern infidelity. Satan adapts his temptations to all classes. He assails the illiterate with a jest or sneer, while he meets the educated with scientific objections and philosophical reasoning, alike calculated to excite distrust or contempt of the Scriptures. Even youth of little experience presume to insinuate doubts concerning the fundamental principles of Christianity.
So, something's coming and its going to knock our socks off. We may not have the nitty gritty details but it is coming and if its going to play out exactly like that ^^, you can be sure that they've already gotten the ball rolling, like Finklestein's book, to ease us into what's up ahead.
If iam not settled into what i have now, i will as soon become flotsam and jetsam, spiritually, because when that day comes, the world's best papyrologists will be paraded and the societies to which they belong will altogether affirm the 'proof'. If iam anchorless now, how will i deny the evidence of the senses? For me to deny those discoveries, i will have to maintain an unshakeable faith in the bible as it currently is.
There are a couple problems with including the quote about project Bluebeam. The first problem is that Bluebeam has not been declassified and it is not proven that it is an actual project of some kind from what I remember when I was researching this. I even remember reading the quote that you are citing and there is no known author for this quote, which does create some issues.
In addition to this, the worldview of whoever wrote this pretty clearly has a religious disposition that is inclined to believe that materialism is a threat more than likely because of a perceived connection between materialism and antichrist. I would not argue that materialism is not a threat in some respects. However, because I cannot see how they are forming this conclusion from an original source, I question whether this is the only conclusion there is to gain from wherever this came from.
Is it possible that this conclusion is formed because of the choice to ignore other information? Since there is no source for this and the person who wrote it isn't known, we can only speculate what this means.
So with every decision or belief, this perspective leads in a particular direction that I believe is more concerning than materialism. This is what I had mentioned about trading one form of ignorance for another. The choice to ignore the archeology is like a bridge to materialism because it does not answer the question of where something like the Septuagint came from. Evidence of a Jewish community begins surrounding the time when the Septuagint was created, which was originally meant to include the book of Maccabees that introduced another period of some degree of conquest. History books also indicate that this time included a number of forced conversions to Judaism, which increased the population and the historical presence of a group that does not have a presence prior to this.
So if you ignore the information that archeology is presenting because you believe that the Bible will be strong enough to overcome this "persecution", there will be nothing left but materialism at some point. This is a primary concern that I am trying to introduce with this subject. If this is ignored long enough, it will default into another form of ignorance because knowing that there is no evidence is not the same as knowing why there is a claim that has no evidence to support it.
Is it possible that what this reference to Bluebeam is really saying is that someone is still trying to control whether anyone finds out how these things came to be by controlling the field of archeology? So what we should be concerned with is not the potential for materialism, but the potential that even with archeological efforts there will still be some way to keep humanity in the dark by writing our textbooks to include that archeology proved that such and such never happened rather than that archeology was able to prove what did happen.
Knowing that there is no evidence of ancient Israel from a BC perspective is not the same thing as knowing why there is a claim that the area was known throughout history as Israel with significant historical markers like the exodus and the reign of Solomon. With the introduction of Islam, we can confidently conclude that there was a minimum of 1300 years of a solid presence of people who believed in a Biblical narrative and there has been no evidence of Solomon within this time period. That is a major red flag.
Islam does not teach that the Bible is inaccurate to say that Solomon existed so they would have no motivation to not reveal evidence that proves the existence of Solomon, which should be the easiest evidence to find in the region. They say that the Bible is accusing Solomon of occult practices which he is not guilty of, so the fact that there is no article that would have been used by Solomon. Not one cup, knife or fork is a problem at this point that has nothing to do with Finkelstein. He could simply be a man who isn't willing to risk his own integrity in investigating something that cannot be proven with evidence. 1300 years of occupation by Abrahamic religions couldn't do this either.
So where did the Septuagint come from that originally made these claims to a Greek audience? There is no cuneiform version of this document and there are sketchy stories about how it translated. There is a claim of 70 elders. There was the historical letter of Aristeas that the encyclopedia says was more than likely written by the 2nd century BC Jew impersonating a pagan to try to advertise accepting the Septuagint as truth that should be followed.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Letter-of-Aristeas
So there is no true point of origination for a book that so many have been taught to see as infallible even though they can't be given a clear answer of where it came from and the history of the Masoretic version is even worse. This does place the source of origin for the Bible on an equal level with the quote about Bluebeam that you are using and even something like the Kybalion which claims to have been written by three initiates even though they won't give their own names to be questioned.
Finally, is archeology wasting its time and could all of these questions be answered a lot more quickly if we're able to access the documents stored in the Vatican? So can materialism ever be a true conclusion to the absence of evidence if its foundation is still dependent on a large absence of evidence that could be useful to this discussion?
So my hypothesis is that the same people who created the Septuagint, which inspired deception and impersonation of pagans are the same people who created the Vatican archive. What I am saying is that the documents that created the Septuagint were more than likely stolen which is why the translators of the Septuagint are not identified and the original sources or history of these sources is not available. What I am saying is that this hinders people who believe and creates oppression so that you could say the work of the Protestant movement never finished its effort to be free of the darkness inflicted by the Vatican.
What I am also saying is that there are other ways around the stranglehold the Vatican has on the information it won't release that can be found by science and archeology. For example, we read about laws in the Old Testament, but what if we come into a greater understanding of the laws of the universe. Instead of demanding that we abide by laws that control the carnal nature of man, we would have an understanding of the presence of God that could make this requirement fall away like scales from our eyes.
Let's say we could understand through Quantum physics why there are boundaries that prevent solid objects from dissipating like a bag of marbles when we touch them. Why can't we move through the atomic makeup of a solid object the way we move atoms to an fro every time we move across a room? I am probably making a really bad description of possibilities within string theory, but my intention is to find a more practical way of explaining what it means if the world is made up of microscopic energy boundaries.
If the world is made up of miniature energy boundaries, then this would represent a law that has the potential to demonstrate the presence of God. I feel like this would also bring up questions about whether knowing something this marks the presence of the antichrist for most people as well. As though knowing these boundaries means that somehow they can be manipulated as we would imagine the antichrist to be motivated to do so that it is somehow dangerous to know that the world is held within these boundaries.
However, this is entirely what I mean when I call this a law that demonstrates the presence of God, which is comparable with former laws that were meant to guide the carnal man. Because something like this cannot be changed because of an awareness of it, this is comparable to a law meant to govern the carnal man that cannot be changed. If we can communicate an awareness of a law that governs the boundaries of the universe, this is the same as communicating an awareness of the presence of God because boundaries that cannot be changed do not exist without God.
Alternately, in theory, the ability to change these boundaries through an awareness of them would prove that God doesn't exist. However, there is no reason to believe that this is something to be concerned with. This is no different than knowing everything we know about plant life that makes it easy for many people to already accept that God created the Heavens and the earth. Knowing plant biology has not been able to allow us to manufacture plants from nothing, and this would be related to knowing the presence of laws that supersede those that seek to guide the carnal man as well.
Recognizing these laws determined through science points to the presence of God in a more unifying way. Religious books merely point to the existence of God. However, it has always been the presence of God that has motivated anyone to believe that the Bible is accurately teaching about the existence of God to begin with. As a result, these are the reasons I do not believe I have anything to fear in the pursuit of archeology regardless of how it may change what I have believed prior to its revelation.