To Reaffirm "Earliest Known Audience"

Second Round essays: Henke Can't Read · Henke Can't Argue Philosophy Very Well Either · Henke Still Can't Read - Or Hasn't Done so To Lewis · To Reaffirm "Earliest Known Audience" · The Philosophy of History of Henke : Given without References, Refuted without References · He Applies It · (Excursus on William Tell and Catholic Saints) · Continuing on Section 5 · We're Into Section 6!

We'll start with a strawman, and finish with Henke's principled objection to "earliest known audience".

// Lundahl (2022a) further cites the story of the talking donkey in Numbers 22:22-41. As with his other references to the Bible, he cites this story without providing a shred of evidence that it actually happened. //
// Without giving a proper reference, Lundahl (2022a) refers to a Bishop Challoner and states that angels are capable of making a donkey talk without violating natural law. Once more, Mr. Lundahl commits the fallacy of circular reasoning. //
// He has done absolutely nothing to rationally convince us that any of these stories ever happened. He just expects us to accept that this account in Numbers was history because it’s in the Bible. //

Henke forgets that, the title of this essay was Several Types of "Supernatural" Featured in Stories Believed to be True and that the top just below the title featured how Henke defines the supernatural.

// I define a supernatural act or “magic” as a feat that violates the laws of chemistry and/or physics. [etc.] //

The whole point of this essay (therefore of this section of my answer in round 1) was defining and differentiating, not proving.

// When discussing the Cyclops, Lundahl (2022a) indicates that he prefers to divide Greek mythology into “divine myths” and “heroic legend.” He further states that the former is generally not believed by Christians, but the latter is generally accepted unless there are specific reasons against it. //

Generally accepted historically speaking. I was not claiming that Christians today do so.

// However, I would argue that unless either mythical group has good external evidence, there is no good reason to believe any Greek mythology, no matter how they may be classified or subdivided into different categories. //

My point is that heroic legend at least for some of the external action has fairly good historic evidence - narratives believed to be historic by the first audience. For divine myths like most in Theogony or like Genesis 1, not falling under human observation at all or claiming to do so, the proper argument is prophecy, and I think God speaking to Moses after parting the Red Sea is a superior reason to believe genuine prophecy took place over Hesiod seeing and hearing the song of nine muses, whatever between demons, witches, or his own imaginations these were. But Hesiod being a shepherd and Moses having parted the Red Sea are on the other hand per se historically known things if true.

// In an absolutely rambling and incoherent paragraph on the “cynosecphaloi”, dogs and St. Christopher, Lundahl (2022a) uses a racist term. //

To be precise, gook. My point being that the word "cynoscephaloi" by those first using it to describe people they had seen basically corresponds to gook.

// Although he tried to defend his use of this insulting term in a footnote and he states that he did not mean for it to be an insult, there’s absolutely no justification for using it. //

There obviously is, if I think the original meaning of the word cynoscephaloi was the exact nuance of gook. It is less polite to compare a slit eyed person to a Molossus dog (corresponding to pit bulls) than to state he is a producer of silk (the word Seres means both Chinese and silk).

Citing myself as to the passage Henke considered "absolutely rambling and incoherent" : But let's take "cynoscephaloi" ... I think the real key is that the dog breed molossoi look like pit bulls, and these are slit eyed. Not sure if St. Christopher was a gook** or had hairy face (I tend to identify him, before his conversion, with Clodion, ancestor of Merovingians).

My point being that "cynoscephaloi" would by other users of the word have been (incorrectly) supposed to mean someone had the full anatomy and hairiness of a dog head above his shoulders. The proto-Merovingian Clodion is by some described as very hairy. So, someone not knowing what "cynoscephaloi" originally referred to would consider Clodion a "dog head" because his face was furry. Hence my suspicion St. Christopher was Clodion (before he became a Christian, while he was serving first a very mighty king and then Satan).

The one thing to keep in mind with either is, ancients and medievals were not communicating looks of objects and living creatures so much by depictions as by words. And that tends for messy representations, once the depictions do get made.

// Once more, Mr. Lundahl provides no reference for Hovind’s statements. Nevertheless, I know a lot about Hovind and I’ve even spoken with him over the phone. Hovind is totally incompetent on science and doesn’t know anything about paleontology. I’ve even read Hovind’s diploma mill “doctoral dissertation.” It’s absolutely dreadful and incompetent. //

In his videos, getting the exact right one (which Henke wouldn't want to watch anyway) would be a chore. Hence a fairly good excuse for not going through it as Henke would not use the reference anyway.

// See Senter (2019) for a detailed rebuttal of Hovind’s and other young Earth creationist nonsense on fire-breathing dinosaurs. //

Let's see, according to his famous Chicago protocol for references, I should be able to scroll down and find out whether this is a paper or a video or a book.

// Senter, P.J. 2019. Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs? The Hilarious History of Creationist Pseudoscience at Its Silliest: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 211pp. //

It's a book. It is not available in French libraries. Unlike Henke, I did not just give a reference which the other can look up or not, I referred to the actual argument being made, citing myself when citing Hovind's argument : I think Kent Hovind gave a good reply when referring to the bombardier beetle. Yes, Leviathan is described as fire-breathing, so he dealt with it on a seminar on Job (morally not as great as Moralia in Job by St. Gregory), and the explosions coming out from the bombardier beetle would kill it - if they happened inside the head of it. Two liquids are emitted separately and join when coming outside the organism, and then explode.

It is possible Senter refutes this, but Henke does not. Is there an Amazon page with a good preview? Henke hasn't provided a link to such a thing.

Once again, Henke will now reuse the fiction he is only scrutinising my evidence and I am only providing or not providing such. I had stated : “If God can make the mass in kg have no N/m down to gravity of earth, He can endow biology with such clearly more than biological qualities as well. Again, it is not the chemistry of the fruits that will have these effects.”

Here Henke blusters in:

// Before Mr. Lundahl can argue about what God actually did, he needs to first demonstrate that God exists and after that he needs to demonstrate that God was willing to cause Jesus to walk on water, produce magic fruit trees or do anything supernatural. //

I was already saying, more than once, the proof for which I am arguing in this instance, is the historic proof of miracles. I am not providing, unlike CSL in Miracles, a philosophical rationale for God's having to exist and then use that as backdrop for my historic investigation. I am claiming that someone approaching history as a "true agnostic" (something I don't consider Henke's definitions of his agnosticism amount to) would have to:

• use the criterium (referred to more than once), whether first known audience thought of a text as history or fiction
• admit the miraculous occurs
• and that some kind of God or gods exist
• and finally, that on analysis, the miracles of the God of the Bible either require more clearly divine power or are better documented than those of heroic legends in Greek mythology

Transsubstantiation is now considered to be a misspelling ...
Trans-substanti-ation
... I have shown the constituents of the Latin word correctly and the word is originally Latin. A murrain on Merriam Webster if he didn't list that as correct!

// Well, when does God change chemical processes directly and when doesn’t he, and how does Mr. Lundahl tell the difference? //

There is no chemical process involved in transsubstantiation. The sacramental one, that is. In the turning of water to wine, there is a chemical change, but not by a chemical process.

// If Lundahl (2022a) wants to actually demonstrate that any transubstantiation miracles occur, //

Let's analyse Henke's spelling, shall we ... "transubstantiation"

tran-substant-iation? There is no prefix "tran" but there is "trans"
trans-ubstanti-ation? There is no prefix "ub" but there is "sub"
trans+sub+stanti+atio = transsubstantiatio, best borrowed into English as transsubstantiation.

Now let's go to Henke's criterium:

// he needs to get the Roman Catholic Church to submit the consecrated bread and wine for a thorough analysis. //

• 1) Beside the point, since it is only the "substantia" that changes, while the chemical processes (that a thorough analysis can show) are part of the "accidentiae" which remain;
• 2) Transsubstantiations in the sacramental sense are not the only transsubstantiation miracles, like we have the Biblical narrative as showing Christ changed water to wine (a visible and analysable transsubstantiation, since there the accidents changed as well) or like events when the consecrated host has visibly changed to having also the accidents of Christ's for instance heart tissue, and this has been analysed by biologists.

// So, Mr. Lundahl’s claim that transubstantiation miracles don’t defy chemistry is probably only true because nothing miraculous actually happens. //

Above chemistry does not mean "breaking the laws of chemistry" - neither water nor wine admit an atom of Oxygen to have three bonds to three atoms of Hydrogen, for instance.

// Mr. Lundahl claims that Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541) of Vienna may have changed a copper coin into gold: //

I started to show this confidence in the legend of Paracelsus at Küssdenpfennig, then actually withdrew that confidence on fact checking that the oldest known retelling of that legend was from the Enlightenment - two hundred years or so after Paracelsus, and which could have a double motive for inventing that legend : a) discrediting legends by adding unbelievable ones, b) encouraging alchemy (which actually clearly was a thing in Enlightenment times, Goethe being an example of an adept, Cagliostro being a back then famous and often taken seriously fraud).

I made a fact check after my initial statement, and changed my mind, fairly quickly. In Henke's type of purely Academic essays, I would have not let the initial thought stand, I would have sought the confidence of people whose confidence could be shaken by that initial thought.

// Lundahl (2022a) even suggests that Paracelsus might have had a contract with the devil. //

There is a legend (another one than Küssdenpfennig, so not necessarily from the Enlightenment era) about such a contract and how he wheedled himself out of paying his soul, yes. It came to mind when I was, briefly, as in my childhood, considering the Küssdenpfennig legend as correct.

// So, why would Lundahl (2022a) even need to consider the possibility of demonic activity when this entire story can be explained away as a legend or a simple trick? //

... when the legend could be explained as a fake legend, an apocryphal one, or as recording a simple trick, to use my vocabulary.

Well, because I am classifying different kinds of supernatural, as indicated in the title. Not discussing the veracity of each claim.

// Now, the title of Lundahl (2022a) is “Several Types of ‘Supernatural’ Featured in Stories Believed to be True.” However, when his essay is carefully studied there’s absolutely no reason to believe any of the stories that he thinks are true. These stories range from just quoting the Bible to absurd suggestions that demons might assist David Copperfield in his stage shows. //

Again, I am in this essay not concerned with proving even one single of these stories, I am only concerned to give a better classification and definition of each than Henke provides.

// Mr. Lundahl makes a totally unwarranted assumption that if the earliest known audience believed that Genesis 3 or another claim in an ancient text was historically true, then the claims must be true. //

I defy Henke to give even one occurrence where I said it in this exact manner.

My claim is, if the earliest known audience of a text believed it to be historic, it should be treated as historic, not as fiction. Not all history is true history, but some things alternative to truth are totally possible in fiction, which are not so in historic narratives, since these limit the scope to plausibly analysing fraudulent claims as such and plausibly analysing misunderstandings as such, and plausible combinations of either.

I do not need to believe Paracelsus had an actual contract with the devil, since that could be a misunderstanding on the part of his contemporaries, just as Gerbert (Pope Sylvester II, if I recall correctly) was considered as having made such a contract, because he was exceptionally using some not commonly used mathematical algorithms, probably no more diabolic than long division.

That there is in the Enlightenment era a story about his changing a copper penny into gold doesn't break this, since the Enlightenment era was (like Henke) obnoxiously negligent of distinctions about historicity and generally started to believe legends were a sort of fiction, to which one could obviously add.

However, it could be that the Küssdenpfennig legend should actually be classified as fake history (rather than entertaining fiction) : the owners of that house wanting to obliterate a memory of stingy rich people who "kissed each penny" like Uncle Scrooge, by claiming (falsely) it came from a "near miracle" by Paracelsus, done to sympathetic poor people.

Let's go through Henke's principled objections to my theorem, "if the earliest known audience took it as history, it is a historic, not a fictional text" - here:

1. People lie and make up stories.

Those are two different things. A liar also makes up his story on some level, changing real for made up, where that is strategic for a purpose, but a poet makes up all of his story.

I think this is in fact the key principle Henke should ponder before answering any more. So much of his argument depends, so far, on equating Spiderman with Book of Mormon and with Russian reports on who it was who liberated Prague and how after most of WW-II was over.

2.People misinterpret natural events and sometimes credit them to supernatural forces (e.g., volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, severe storms, draught).

And supposing the supernatural to exist they often, when not Christian, misinterpret the supernatural too. Laios, Iocaste and Oedipus, if indeed consulting "Apollon" (that part could be anachronistic) would have been safer for their happiness if they had seen "Apollon" = "Apollyon" - but they were pagans and hadn't read the Apocalypse.

The fact that some supernatural claims are based on misunderstood natural events doesn't in any way shape or form prove this is always the case, rather each case should be judged on its merits.

3.The history of Mormonism, Scientology, etc. demonstrate that lies can become accepted by thousands or even millions of gullible people in a short amount of time, perhaps in no more than decades or a century.

I don't know how many Scientologists believe fraudulent claims involving Xenu, and how many just seek a method for living (like dianetics seems to be a kind of hypnotherapy with very light trance and heavy coaching). For Mormonism, the claims in the book of Mormon are in a sense accepted as historic, but in another sense, they aren't. a) Because the first audience includes US citizens who did not become Mormons, b) because even those who became such, considered the transmission of the facts to be of a miraculous order (involving golden plates) and not of a historic order (involving for instance Joseph Smith interviewing Indians).

4.Even if ancient historians (such as the five ancient biographers of Alexander the Great, Section 6.0) were sincere and honest, they still may have included inaccurate information, false rumors and misinterpretations in their works.

Indeed. The absence of false claims is to me not synonymous with "historicity" in a general sense, but with "inerrancy" - and while I believe both to be true of Genesis 3, I believe them to be different truths about it. Since I know Henke to be a non-Christian, I am at first mainly concerned in establishing historicity, not inerrancy.

5.We don’t know who wrote Genesis 3 and when it was written.

First known audience considered it to have been written by Moses, and considered Genesis 1 to be based on a vision granted him on Sinai. They are not known to have made a parallel claim of prophecy for the parts that could be historically transmitted. This means, Genesis was finished as book after the Exodus event, and by Moses, who had access to revelation for a limited part of it and historic traditions and documents for the rest.

6.The Dead Sea scrolls have the oldest known fragments of Genesis. This was about 1,000 years after Moses supposedly wrote the book. So, how could the writers of the Dead Sea scrolls have reliably known anything about events that occurred perhaps a thousand or more years earlier? How does Mr. Lundahl know that Genesis 3 is not a fabrication that may have been additionally altered or rewritten long before the Dead Sea scrolls? Why should anyone trust the claims in Genesis? Lundahl (2022c) assumes that God would have protected Genesis from corruption, but this assumption is totally without merit.

This is so parallel to Plutarch's parallel lives, to Caesar's corpus (corpus caesareum), to probably Arrian as well, even if I couldn't find the earliest preserved manuscript for Arrian. The solution is, for books this old, "earliest known manuscript" adds a terminus ante quem, but furnishes nothing like a terminus post quem. The authorship is in all the secular cases based on earliest known audience, precisely as genre historic vs fictional is, "epic poetry" and "tragedy" being among historic genres, and not by the accident of not having a manuscript preserved to us prior to 1000 years after the purported original.

7.The biology of snakes is incompatible with them talking and there’s no evidence of either a supernatural or biological Talking Snake ever existing.

I took in Bishop Challoner's comment on Bileam's ass in order to clarify that the biology of snakes is irrelevant, the claim if true involves an angel vocalising something as coming through a snake.

8.As further discussed in Section 5.0 and Henke (2022a), Hypotheses #3 and #4 on the origin of the Genesis 3 Talking Snake are rational, but Hypotheses #1 and #2 are not.

I already refuted that claim, his hypotheses #3 and #4 basically involving a process where made up stories (comedy's like Menaechmi, novels like Apuleius' Golden Ass, comic books like Spiderman, fantasy novels like Lord of the Rings) for no reason at all get to be considered as historically transmitted arguably true stories.

9.Mr. Lundahl has the burden of evidence to demonstrate that the claims in Genesis 3 and elsewhere in the Bible are factual.

Before discussing factuality of any specific claim, I am establishing historicity of the genre, based on the principle of "earliest known audience."

Mr. Henke has here the burden of evidence to prove at least plausibility of either:

• changing the genre attribution from fictional entertainment to historic narrative
• or plausible misunderstanding or fraud behind a specific claim in spite of historic genre of the text.

And making or even plausibly arguing a claim that such and such a Biblical claim is impossible does not fulfil that onus probandi. While, if totally logically argued from totally good facts (won't happen, I'm confident), it would prove that for instance Genesis 3 must involve a non-fact, it doesn't show how it specifically could do so.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Venancius of Camerino
18.V.2022

Camerini sancti Venantii Martyris, qui, annos quindecim natus, sub Decio Imperatore et Antiocho Praeside, una cum aliis decem, gloriosi certaminis cursum, cervicibus abscissis, implevit.

PS, details on how the Iliad could, while containing falsehoods (like Achilleus' mother being a goddess) be fully historical, see my analysis in reply to Lady of the Library:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : On Homer's Trojan War
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2022/05/on-homers-trojan-war.html