Ibn Khaldun, a Neglected Source of Antichristianity or Attacks on the Bible

Ibn Khaldun, a Neglected Source of Antichristianity or Attacks on the Bible · Responding to Tim Zeak on Exodus, part I · More on Exodus, not on Tim Zeak, for now · Some Have Claimed Ezra Wrote Moses · Israelites at the Exodus

Let's quote a passage which to this day could be a standard of Anti-Biblical Criticism, his Introduction to the Muqaddimah.

This is especially the case with figures, either of sums of money or of soldiers, whenever they occur in stories. They offer a good opportunity for false information and constitute a vehicle for nonsensical statements. They must be controlled and checked with the help of known fundamental facts. For example, al-Mas'udi and many other historians report that Moses counted the army of the Israelites in the desert.33 He had all those able to carry arms, especially those twenty years and older, pass muster. There turned out to be 600,000 or more. In this connection, (al-Mas'udi) forgets to take into consideration whether Egypt and Syria could possibly have held such a number of soldiers. Every realm may have as large a militia as it can hold and support, but no more. This fact is attested by well-known customs and familiar conditions. Moreover, an army of this size cannot march or fight as a unit. The whole available territory would be too small for it. If it were in battle formation, it would extend two, three, or more times beyond the field of vision. How, then, could two such parties fight with each other, or one battle formation gain the upper hand when one flank does not know what the other flank is doing! The situation at the present day testifies to the correctness of this statement. The past resembles the future more than one (drop of) water another. Furthermore, the realm of the Persians was much greater than that of the Israelites. This fact is attested by Nebuchadnezzar's victory over them. He swallowed up their country and gained complete control over it. He also destroyed Jerusalem, their religious and political capital. And he was merely one of the officials of the province of Fars.34 It is said that he was the governor of the western border region. The Persian provinces of the two 'Iraqs,35 Khurasan, Transoxania, and the region of Derbend on the Caspian Sea36 were much larger than the realm of the Israelites. Yet, the Persian army did not attain such a number or even approach it. The greatest concentration of Persian troops, at al­Qadisiyah, amounted to 120,000 men, all of whom had their retainers. This is according to Sayf 37 who said that with their retainers they amounted to over 200,000 persons. According to 'A'ishah and az-Zuhri,38 the troop concentration with which Rustum advanced against Sa'd at al-Qadisiyah amounted to only 60,000 men, all of whom had their retainers. Then, if the Israelites had really amounted to such a number, the extent of the area under their rule would have been larger, for the size of administrative units and provinces under a particular dynasty is in direct proportion to the size of its militia and the groups that support the (dynasty), as will be explained in the section on provinces in the first book.39 Now, it is well known that the territory of the (Israelites) did not comprise an area larger than the Jordan province and Palestine in Syria and the region of Medina and Khaybar in the Hijaz.40 Also, there were only three generations41 between Moses and Israel, according to the best-informed scholars. Moses was the son of Amram, the son of Kohath (Qahat or Qahit), the son of Levi (Lewi or Lawi),42 the son of Jacob who is Israel-Allah. This is Moses' genealogy in the Torah.43 The length of time between Israel and Moses was indicated by al-Mas'udi when he said: "Israel entered Egypt with his children, the tribes, and their children, when they came to Joseph numbering seventy souls. The length of their stay in Egypt until they left with Moses for the desert was two hundred and twenty years. During those years, the kings of the Copts, the Pharaohs, passed them on (as their subjects) one to the other."44 It is improbable that the descendants of one man could branch out into such a number within four generations.45 It has been assumed that this number of soldiers applied to the time of Solomon and his successors. Again, this is improbable. Between Solomon and Israel, there were only eleven generations, that is: Solomon, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed ('Ubidh, or ' Ufidh), the son of Boaz (Ba'az, or Bu'iz), the son of Salmon, the son of Nahshon, the son of Amminadab ('Amminddhab, or Ham­minddhab), the son of Ram, the son of Hezron (Had/srun, or Hasran), the son of Perez ( Baras, or Bayras), the son of Judah, the son of Jacob. The descendants of one man in eleven generations would not branch out into such a number, as has been assumed. They might, indeed, reach hundreds or thousands. This often happens. But an increase beyond that to higher figures46 is improbable. Comparison with observable present-day and well-known nearby facts proves the assumption and report to be untrue. According to the definite statement of the Israelite Stories,47 Solomon's army amounted to 12,000 men, and his horses48 numbered 1,400 horses, which were stabled at his palace. This is the correct information. No attention should be paid to nonsensical statements by the common run of informants. In the days of Solomon, the Israelite state saw its greatest flourishing and their realm its widest extension.

From THE MUQADDIMAH
Abd Ar Rahman bin Muhammed ibn Khaldun
Translated by Franz Rosenthal
http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ik/Muqaddimah/

Specifically:

INTRODUCTION
http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ik/Muqaddimah/IntroMaterial/Introduction.htm

Now, let us analyse his errors.

I First, it seems he had not read the accounts of the Torah.

For example, al-Mas'udi and many other historians report that Moses counted the army of the Israelites in the desert. He had all those able to carry arms, especially those twenty years and older, pass muster. There turned out to be 600,000 or more.

For some reason, he doesn't go to Numbers, the original source, but to "al-Mas'udi and many other historians" presumably all of them Muslims.

This is reflected in:

It has been assumed that this number of soldiers applied to the time of Solomon and his successors. Again, this is improbable.

On this item, however, he seems to have checked, finally, with the Bible or a source closer to it than the historian who considered the 600 000 as being under King Solomon.

According to the definite statement of the Israelite Stories,47 Solomon's army amounted to 12,000 men, and his horses48 numbered 1,400 horses, which were stabled at his palace. This is the correct information.

Indeed. This is a correct reference to what can be read in Kings or Paralipomenon. I don't feel any need to actually check, it rings true.

II Now, we have a second error:

In this connection, (al-Mas'udi) forgets to take into consideration whether Egypt and Syria could possibly have held such a number of soldiers. Every realm may have as large a militia as it can hold and support, but no more. This fact is attested by well-known customs and familiar conditions.

Let us again confer the correct info on King Solomon's army:

Solomon's army amounted to 12,000 men, and his horses48 numbered 1,400 horses, which were stabled at his palace.

What has changed between Moses and King Solomon?

King Solomon had a professional army, to which the observation applies that so many professional soldiers need so many more civilians economically supporting them. Moses did not have any civilians (except wives and children, very old or invalids, and of course the Levite tribe) supporting his "soldiers", since all men who were able to fight were mustered, and since the economic upkeep was on God's providence, through the gathering of mannah.

Moreover, an army of this size cannot march or fight as a unit. The whole available territory would be too small for it. If it were in battle formation, it would extend two, three, or more times beyond the field of vision.

Very possible it cannot fight as a unit. Do we know for a fact that it ever did fight as a unit? It seems more probable, the twelve units called tribes knew each other by sight as to captains, and the captains knew their men by sight and these them, so that any one not known at all by sight would be presumed an enemy.

Fighting was, before the turn around carbon dated 1200 BC (like fall of Troy and of Hattusha) more of a matter of individual exploits adding up to an overall pressure one way or the other. The opponents would have been in a similar position.

Also, the marching was arranged by the pillar of fire, a miracle by God.

How, then, could two such parties fight with each other, or one battle formation gain the upper hand when one flank does not know what the other flank is doing!

Yeah, chariot fighters like battle of Kadesh must be a myth, right ... everything was always done by infantry plus cavalry, at tactic formations moving in strict coordination, and why, because ....

III Third error:

The situation at the present day testifies to the correctness of this statement. The past resembles the future more than one (drop of) water another.

No, it doesn't. King Solomon may have said no thing is new under the sun, but the arrangements between things do change in some detail, and he was also not taking miracles into account.

Ibn Khaldun simply voiced the irrational prejudice of "uniformitarianism". A degree of uniformitarianism in which modern ideology does not agree. No Agricultural Revolution in Neolithic, no Industrial Revolution in Modern Times, all that is mythological ...

Hence of course his idea that soldiers need to be professional soldiers depending on an administration exploiting a larger number of civilian subjects to nourish and arm the soldiers.

IV Fourth error in connexion with this.

Furthermore, the realm of the Persians was much greater than that of the Israelites. This fact is attested by Nebuchadnezzar's victory over them. He swallowed up their country and gained complete control over it. He also destroyed Jerusalem, their religious and political capital. And he was merely one of the officials of the province of Fars.

Yeah, right, Persians controlling Iraq up to Muslim Conquest is also one of the constants, that Nebuchadnezzar could have been an independent ruler, a sovereign under God or under his gods, doesn't strike him as even possible. Ill informed Ibn Khaldun depending on .... note 34 says: Al-Mas' di, Muruj adh-dhahah, I,117, describes him as governor of the 'Iraq and the Arabs for the Persian King (King of Fars). Cf. also at-Tabari, Annales, I, 646.

Exit Cyrus from history, then .... So Ibn Khaldun was preferring the secondary literature of the school he belonged to over the primary sources of the time, like the Bible, which is a very common mistake among historical critics of the Bible to this day.

The point he was making was of course in relation to the improbability of Moses disposing 600 000 professional soldiers. But the illustration he gave involved a phrase betraying this bias, which can be considered as a Fourth Error. It is related to the third, since, if the third is true, a modern historian and a situation known within their time of observation (during which indeed Iraq provinces depended on Fars prior to Islamic conquest) would be as adequate a key to a much older situation as sources from then, plus better understandable.

V Now, in relation to Moses' mustering 600 000 fighters, here is a Fifth error:

Also, there were only three generations41 between Moses and Israel, according to the best-informed scholars. Moses was the son of Amram, the son of Kohath (Qahat or Qahit), the son of Levi (Lewi or Lawi),42 the son of Jacob who is Israel-Allah. This is Moses' genealogy in the Torah.43 The length of time between Israel and Moses was indicated by al-Mas'udi when he said: "Israel entered Egypt with his children, the tribes, and their children, when they came to Joseph numbering seventy souls. The length of their stay in Egypt until they left with Moses for the desert was two hundred and twenty years. During those years, the kings of the Copts, the Pharaohs, passed them on (as their subjects) one to the other."44 It is improbable that the descendants of one man could branch out into such a number within four generations.45 ... Again, this is improbable. Between Solomon and Israel, there were only eleven generations, that is: Solomon, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed ('Ubidh, or ' Ufidh), the son of Boaz (Ba'az, or Bu'iz), the son of Salmon, the son of Nahshon, the son of Amminadab ('Amminddhab, or Ham­minddhab), the son of Ram, the son of Hezron (Had/srun, or Hasran), the son of Perez ( Baras, or Bayras), the son of Judah, the son of Jacob. The descendants of one man in eleven generations would not branch out into such a number, as has been assumed. They might, indeed, reach hundreds or thousands. This often happens. But an increase beyond that to higher figures46 is improbable. Comparison with observable present-day and well-known nearby facts proves the assumption and report to be untrue.

I think he is making demography purely empirical and its empirical material purely from examples close at hand. The demographic expansions of humanity after Flood and of Israelites in Egypt are not beyond the possibility of human childbearing.

The one man had 12 sons (and one daughter). Their wives were usually from families of uncles or aunts. Let's say each man from then on has 7 sons, and ignore the women, and let's do some maths. (In fact, I presume women are equal in number of men, which is true on so rough a level of maths as the one I am here using):

12*7 = 84 (first generation after)
84*7 = 588 (second generation after)
588*7 = 4 116 (third generation after)
4 116*7 = 28 812 (fourth generation after)
28 812*7 = 201 684 (fifth generation after)
201 684*7 = 1 411 788 (sixth generation after)

So, in sixth generation after Jacob, on this model, Jacob's descendants would be many more than 600 000. This means, Ibn Khaldun need only be wrong about the number of generations over the population as a whole which passes between Jacob's going to Egypt and the Exodus, during the 220 years (if he took that as four generations, he is counting 55 years per generation, which is a tad bit long - unless applied to males having trouble financing a marriage, but while my grandfather was born when his father was 50, he was far from the oldest child, he was rather the very youngest).

All that is needed for this to have happened is, Goshen being, like post-Flood world, a place where people could easily find new land to exploit in whatever ways applicable (hunting, fishing, gathering for immediate post-Flood, mostly, and farming and herding for Israelites in Goshen), which would be the case if Joseph when asking for Goshen was planning on a great demographic growth - a bit as if one had given all Yellowstone as reservation to a Sioux tribe, after a few generations they would be really numerous.

These conditions of Goshen were then prolonged by walk through the wilderness and by expulsion of Canaanites.

Also, Moses and David probably had fewer generations back to origin than the medium or median (whichever you prefer) of their contemporaries. Like Ham's wife had fewer generations to Adam than Ham, on the patrilinear lineage from her father back, and the Neanderthal and Denisovan heritage whatever daughter in law it came with arguably had more generations back to Adam than even Noah.

VI A more general sixth error, Ibn Khaldun is presuming rational criticism is superior to acceptance of tradition back to the sources.

This bring us presumably (though not cited here) back to a theological ....

VII ... error number seven, he believes a rational preference for "God's revelation" in Surah 5 trumps acceptance of Christian tradition the Gospels were written within decades of events and obviously record Our Lord better than a spurious (though widely witnessed) revelation to one single man providing no miracles to back it up centuries later.

How are we to be more correct than he on these issues?

i) Read what you assess as first hand as is available. If you can find Bellum Gallicum, don't rely on modern summaries, if you rely on summaries, prefer the scraps and bits they give from Bellum Gallicum, if you are assessing Alesia; dito with Moses over Arabic historians.

ij) Take into account that conditions can change, even drastically. As with change from citizens armed to professional soldiers.

iij) Don't be Uniformitarian! Don't believe Ibn Khaldun on this!

iu) Don't be administrational Uniformitarian (other good example, don't presume just because Roman right was very good in Justinian's time that the time of Persecutions - Nero to Diocletian - was better than Verres in relation to creative tortures). Check up if conditions have changed or at least conceivably could have.

u) Don't be a demographic uniformitarian. A population growth impossible in modern Naples would not have been impossible starting from Mount Chudi in Turkish Armenia or in Goshen, dito for one impossible in Baghdad or Cairo.

uj) Prefer oldest possible tradition over reconstructions considering it as error, whenever it is at all possible on your world view, and prefer one which leaves as few items as possible impossible, so you can learn more from unedited historic sources.

uij) Be a Christian, not a Muslim, prefer Gospels over Sura 5. It is also a good thing for your soul, if you care about that.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Cergy
St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist
21.IX.2019

Starting a Video with Now Deceased Acharya Sanning

Here is her opening statement:

So there is an old saying, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." It is not incumbent on me to disprove extraordinary claims of supernatural beings doing miraculous and magic activities. It is incumbent on the person making those claims to prove their contentions.

It is not incumbent on me to disprove extraordinary claims of natural beings doing very unnatural activities, like writing a novel and then mistaking it for history, or undergoing very unnatural activities, like being new to a message and then believing that message is what one remembered since years earlier, just because one was told it. And that is about the kind of contention Acharya was making about the Gospels, if one boil them down to essentials.

I'm now at 0:25 in this video which is so nostalgic, since refuting Acharya was something I enjoyed back when she was alive.

Are the New Testament gospels history? Where's the proof? | Acharya S | D.M. Murdock
Stellar House | 1.III.2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsaRQDxmLqY

And here is a pearl leading up to 0:56:

I'm not claiming that for example the Greek son of god Hercules, whose life resembles that of Jesus Christ in many ways, is actually a real historical figure.

Once upon a time, the Catholic Saint Francis Xaver was asking whether the god of the Japanese, Bodda, was just a figment of imagination or a real historical figure. He concluded for the former, because they said Bodda had lived for 9000 years in many existences, both as god and as beast and as man, and since this is untrue about any man, he was not a historical figure. Most moderns would conclude for the contrary about Siddharta Gautama.

Now, that Catholic Saint, whom as a Catholic Saint some benighted Americans might have considered as "not a historical figure" started a fad.

Acharya was repeating this fad.

A Church Father had said about Hercules "he was not (a) god, but a strong man". I'll take that Church Father's view of Hercules over Acharya's any day of the week.

In claims about Hercules, some I can't accept, like visit to Netherworld bringing up Cerberus or visit to where Atlas was holding the sky on his shoulders.

However, 9000 years of incarnations in many shapes is also a claim I won't accept about the background to Siddharta Gautama.

I will believe one had to do ten great works (note that those I reject are numbers 11 and 12 and he can have added them himself while bragging) and the other imagined having found 4 noble truths and a noble 8 fold path.

I'm divided about what to do about Centaurs, and so was St. Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus about the one showing St. Anthony the way to St. Paul the First Hermit. Or he noted St. Anthony was in two minds about it.

The hydra of Lernaean marshes probably was a diabolical apparition, and I don't think Hercules was a Christian doing a legitimate exorcism.

At 2:05 it is clear that she thinks, identity of motifs is identical non-factuality of story. I don't. It could be identical factuality of both, contrasting factuality of both, plagiarism of true motif by false story (Hercules defeating Thanatos to get Alcestis back to life could be plagiarised from Elijah and Elisha doing real awakenings of dead people, and while they are later than Hercules - arguably during Judges - they are earlier than the Euripidean play Alcestis - also, the story is set in Thessaly, not in Hercules' homequarters), or even a mythological dream motif being answered by a real one (Bacchus turning water to wine - though our earliest source is after Christ! - could be something Christ was responding to in His real miracle at Cana).

2:20 to 3:04:

On the other hand, however, in order to convince themselves that, 2000 years ago, the God of the cosmos came to Earth, through the womb of a young virgin girls of a particular ethnicity, performed miracles like healing the blind, walking on water and raising the dead, transfiguring on a mount, calming a storm, being crucified himself obviously and then resurrecting himself and ascending into heaven, they require ... well, pretty much no proof, no evidence, other than the New Testament, a few books, a few hundred pages, that is all they require.

On the proof question, Lord of the Rings is over a thousand pages, and it doesn't convince me that Frodo Baggins carried a ring to Mount Doom. Collected corpus of Sherlock Holmes is also much larger than the four Gospels and references to their action in the rest of the New Testament, and I would still not claim that Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson lived on Baker Street (other than when writing a now half written fan fiction novel about Susan Pevensie, at the start of The Magician's Nephew, London is identified as a city where Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson lived on Baker Street, so their reality is assumed in the London where Susan faces hearing of the train accident and so on : I excepted the Bastables, thinking Digory Kirke - writer of first six volumes and the one asking Lucy and Eustace questions about the Dawn Treader - could have mistakenly concluded for their existence, and he was none the worse a researcher for that on what he was rexsearching).

Now, the claims are not "extraordinary" in the sense of being utterly improbable.

If there is a God of the cosmos there is one. If he ignores Earth, regularly visits Earth in diverse avatars, or came once, he does one of these things, and we should not have a prior to factual evidence adherence to one of the alternatives about His ways.

Through the womb of a young virgin makes sense insofar as He had created Adam with no previous human, Eve with no previous woman, most of us with both a man and a woman, and now made the man who was Himself with no human actual father. That she should be of a particular ethnicity is more probable than that she should be of no ethnicity at all and She was indeed a daughter of Israel, of the house of David in the tribe of Judah and related to Cohen level Levites.

Some people think, just because the God of the cosmos has a very general overview, He somehow cannot have any particular attachments. About tantamount to claiming Deism, a "God of the cosmos" who ignores Earth.

That He should perform miracles is fairly obviously required if He wanted to identify Himself as the God of the Cosmos. Precisely because the claim "this man is the God of the cosmos" really is a very extraordinary claim about any man, and should not have been believed even about Him without extraordinary evidence.

And obviously, He arranged for the miracles to be believable to this day and up to Doomsday. Hence we are not stranded with a book fallen from heaven or hell or nowhere in particular, as with Tolkien and Doyle, we have some evidence about how the first public took the books. However, unlike the evidence about Tolkien fans and Sherlock cosplay, the evidence about people hearing the Gospel read from the pulpit indicates they believed it to be factual. Hence the importance of the Church.

The idea that Gospels could have been assembled in the time of Constantine, 280 years after the events, or more is like claiming there were Tolkien fans (not counting porcelaine and pianos) well in advance of JRRT publishing The Hobbit. It's about as absurd - taken another way - as claiming that while I recall events years ago, I was only created Last Thursday. And this extremely extraordinary claim about how Gospels came to be believed is something that Acharya wants us to swallow without providing evidence.

3:21 she dreams (dreamt, she knows better now) that standards for proving an authorship from 1:st C can be parallelled on those for proving most from 19th C.

No, we don't have autographs of Gospels (any more, I presume they disappeared during Iconoclast controversy in Constantinople), but neither do we for 1:st C BC author Julius Caesar. Our earliest papyrus fragments for a Gospel are much closer to traditionally purported authorships than that 10th C or 11th C manuscript from which we have Corpus Caesareum.

At 3:30 she ignores that Papias was well before end of 2:nd C.

In other words, they are not quoted verbatim anywhere before that.

In the scraps of the evidence available to us, and she was presuming on titles and authors being insufficient mentions without verbatim quotes.

Next she lies about historical record, mentioning them since Papias was before that.

Then she requires historical record outside the obviously meant as historical record in New Testament for existence of NT characters like St. Paul, and she seems to have mixed up some things about him:

4:11 to 4:14

where he's brought before Caesar, he's ... rampaging with hundreds of troops

Acts 26:32 states that St. Paul did appeal to Caesar, but nothing about his rampaging with hundreds of troops.

From 1:st C. we cannot expect a registrar's account of everyone who was appealing to Caesar and got tried by him. And the rampaging, who says it even happened? It's not a Biblical claim.

Tertullian claims to have had access (not sure whether directly or indirectly) to imperial records in which St. Paul's martyrdom is described.

See page 33 in

Acts of Paul: The Formation of a Pauline Corpus
By Glenn E. Snyder
https://books.google.fr/books?id=K9g3_FI3ruEC&dq=acts+of+saint+paul&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Most of the imperial records available then are lost now. Paul or no Paul.

4:42 she makes a blooper or a deceptive equivocation:

there's no information in writings of the day (contemporary writings)

OK, how much coherent narrative do you get about even Caligula in Pliny? And wasn't Naturalis historia published after Caligula died? And isn't it even so a long collection of essays on various topics, where Caligula occasionally gets thrown in because he was a somewhat extravagant character?

As she mentions early Christian martyrs, here is my reconstruction on how martyrologies came to be written:

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Feet and Martyrologies
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2019/02/feet-and-martyrologies.html

And here is a taste on how dry it is:

11 Julii Quinto Idus Julii. Luna ... xiv. F

Romae sancti Pii Primi, Papae et Martyris; qui martyrio coronatus est in persecutione Marci Aurelii Antonini.

Bergomi sancti Joannis Episcopi, qui, ob tuendam catholicam fidem, ab Arianis occisus est.

Sidae, in Pamphylia, sancti Cindei Presbyteri, qui, sub Diocletiano Imperatore et Stratonico Praeside, post multa tormenta, injectus in ignem et nil laesus, demum in oratione reddidit spiritum.

Cordubae, in Hispania, sancti Abundii Presbyteri, qui, in persecutione Arabica, cum in Mahumetis sectam inveheretur, martyrio coronatus est.

Nicopoli, in Armenia, natalis sanctorum Martyrum Januarii et Pelagiae, qui, equuleo, ungulis et testarum fragmentis per dies quatuor cruciati, martyrium impleverunt.

In territorio Senonensi sancti Sidronii Martyris.

Iconii, in Lycaonia, sancti Marciani Martyris, qui, sub Perennio Praeside, per multa tormenta pervenit ad palmam.

Brixiae sanctorum Martyrum Savini et Cypriani.

In territorio Pictaviensi sancti Sabini Confessoris.

Et alibi aliorum plurimorum sanctorum Martyrum et Confessorum, atque sanctarum Virginum. R. Deo gratias.

Martyrologium Romanum : JULIUS
http://www.liturgialatina.org/martyrologium/17.htm

5:40 to 5:52

why would the Evangelicals - the Evangelists - leave out these various important parts from one Gospel to the next? You have one story in one Gospel and it's completely omitted in another.

Heard of being lazy or sloppy? Not writing Academic papers?

Marshall Adresses an Important Misunderstanding

C. S. Lewis and lots of others have argued, the fact of objective morality requires that there is a God - more specifically an eternal mind that is eternally moral before the finite minds are intermittently moral.

However, in debates, it so often happens "I don't need a God to tell me what's moral".

Here is the argument as repeated by Wallace Marshall, PhD.:

• If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
• Objective moral values and duties exist.
• Therefore, God exists.

And here is the self same adressing the misunderstanding and related ones:

To head off some common misunderstandings, note that the argument doesn’t claim that God needs to inform us, say in a revelation of some kind, about what’s right and wrong. Nor is it claiming that people need to believe in God in order to behave ethically. Rather, it’s about moral ontology: what morality is, and what seems necessary to ground it. Finally, note that each of the premises finds support among atheists.

The Carrier-Marshall Debate: Marshall’s Ninth Response
by Richard Carrier on July 4, 2019
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/15591

Note, we can here adress a misunderstanding from the opposite side too : some Puritans think, we most certainly do need God to reveal what is right and what is wrong, because we are so totally corrupt after Adam's sin in our nature that we have nothing to trust at all in our own moral experience.

This is however against the Bible:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those men that detain the truth of God in injustice: Because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them. Romans 1:18, 19

If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children: how much more will your Father who is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him? Matthew 7:11 (closely paralleled by Luke 11:13)

In other words, people not justified are inexcusable for evil acts (in Romans 1 primarily idolatry) because they know of themselves what is right, and they are able to give good gifts to their children, even if they are evil, that is not justified. So, while they have a somewhat darkened moral sense, which needs correction from revelation, they do have a moral sense. Objective moral values and duties are accessible even to the non-Christians and even to those who having the faith are not justified.

Hence, this line of apologetics is perfectly licit.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Fontenay les Roses
St. Anthony Maria Zaccaria
5.VII.2019

Puddle Analogy

It so happens, Frank Turek's questioner and Frank Turek himself don't give the puddle analogy in very much detail.

This is what Genetically Modified Skeptic criticises first about a Turek video, in this video: "Atheists can't answer this question!" ...But We Can.

Now, before adressing it, I'll adress the puddle analogy.

I think I already did, but here is Douglas Adam's analogy in his own wording cited after a post about it:

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!” This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.

From : The Truth Will Make You Mad : The Puzzle of Existence and a Puddle of Doubt
https://thetruthwillmakeyoumad.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/the-puzzle-of-existence-and-a-puddle-of-doubt/

Well, holes do fit puddles very neatly.

A universe in which ground is uneven, in which water is heavy trying to get down to a centre of gravity and takes its shape from what hard objects stand between it and that centre of gravity, and in which water comes and goes over the ground is certainly meant to have puddles in it. Because puddles are good and desireable. Up to a point where you find a child having jumped in one needs to get the clothes changed, especially shoes and socks and probably pants, or if a girl stockings.

There is more to be said, if the puddle actually could think, the puddle would be an image of God - and already for that reason be a reason there is a universe.

The thing is, Adams seems to have two arguing points against teleological argument:

• 1) How about arguing equally persuasively that the universe was created for sth Christians do not say it was created for?
• 2) How about showing the egotism behind argument of fine tuning is not getting its way when it comes to guarantee the own survival?

And puddle analogy fits both points well at once.

First, Christians state the universe was created for man and in general for life, and a puddle is neither a man nor even a biological entity at all.

Second, puddles do individually dry up.

So, while the universe was more made for man than for wolves and more for wolves than for puddles, the universe was made for puddles too. Christians need to start saying the universe was made for puddles. Though not in the first place.

And while that puddle would be wrong in thinking it would individually survive, it would have been right to conclude instead (especially while starting to dry up) "I might not always be around, but the universe was made for the likes of me, and if I dry up, another will take my place, sooner or later!"

But as said, the analogy as presented breaks down because puddles do not think. They are not images of God.

It's about the same trick as when Heliocentrism was advertised in the 18th Century heavily with arguments like "Sirius (or any other star) must exist to be the sun of some planet, that planet must have inabitants, and those inhabitants, if trusting their senses, would also conceive of their planet as centre of the world, which it could be as well as Earth or as ill as Earth, but not concomitantly with Earth, therefore arguably neither planet is the centre."

Here we don't have a hypothetical sentient inhabitant of an exoplanet, we have hypothetical sentience of a puddle. And in both cases, the hypothetical parallel by a hypothetically as sentient as we being concluding with hypothetically equal absurdity or congruity to be central in one way or the other, as to place or as to purpose, is used as a very hypothetical reductio in absurdum.

But apart from that, any child who likes jumping into a puddle will tell you the universe ought to have puddles in it! And any parent would answer, the puddle was made for the child, so he could enjoy the puddle, and therefore the universe was made for that child. Which is much closer to very strict truth.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibl. Audoux
Sts Peter and Paul's vigil
28.VI.2019

PS : Now I'll read "The Puzzle of Existence and a Puddle of Doubt" before watching the video by GMS.

Shared : Lita's defense

Defending the Resurrection
4.V.2019 by Lita Cosner answering feedback
https://creation.com/defending-resurrection

Shared : Lita's defense · Robert Sungenis Published a Book · Shorty with William P. Lazarus on Geocentrism · The ultimate bonus of Geocentrism

Answering 11 QQ for Christians

somewhere else : Answering 11 QQ for Christians · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : AronRa Tried to Answer 11 QQ for Atheists

QQ courtesy (or discourtesy) of Gage Blackwood under a video where AronRa gives answers to 11 Questions by a Christian, one which I am coming back to.

Q.1) Who was Cain's wife?

A.) His sister, or possibly his niece.

Q.2)In the week of creation, how was there an "evening and a morning" for three days when the sun wasn't made until the fourth day?

A.) God created a visible light without any physical light source and made it cover half of earth at a time and made it rotate around earth, like Sun does now.

Q.3) Why is there no evidence for Noah's flood and history continuing uninterrupted around the world at this time?

A.) I am sorry, what was the question again? Er, wait, "history" as in history of civilisations and at the time of the Flood?

Because you are dating the archaeology (and non-Hebrew histories) incorrectly in relation to the Flood.

Q.4) How could people in the bible live 500 - 1000 years when lifespans only reached 70 in the 20th century?

A.) You are confused over two issues, I'd say.

One is potential biological lifespan and average lifespan. In the 20th C child mortality decreased so much that average lifespan increased notably, but this has no bearing on how long one can live biologically, only how protected one is from certain types of premature death. Also, cases of diabetes type 1 are living longer now, not just child mortality.

But the fact remains, we have not evolved so as to have longer biologically possible lifespans.

The other is - starting from a presumed "evolution" to longer lifespans lately, you conclude there was never a devolution to shorter ones, when the Bible says there was and you have no scientific argument whatsover to counter this.

Q.5) Why were they already speaking and writing Chinese in China and Sanskrit in India long before god "mixed up languages" at the Tower of Babel? Why don't all cultures around the world trace their origins to the exact same spot in a Babylonia?

A.) I think Australians, Babylonians, Polynesians all very clearly trace their culture to Göbekli Tepe. If the tower was a failed rocket project rather than a failed architectonic project, the Chinese developing fire crackers would be another case of tracing one's culture back there.

Q.6) Why is there no evidence at all for the presence of millions of Israelite slaves in Egypt and a miraculous "Exodus." Why didn't neighboring empires even notice such a major blow to the area's superpower and loss of its army?

A.) What exact neighbour should have noticed what?

I think the Hyksos, alias Amalekites, definitely did notice there was no Egyptian army, and took advantage of it.

What more do you ask?

Q.7) Why is the Ark of the Covenant missing? How do you know it even existed?

A.) Most objects and people in history are missing, and the Ark was deliberately hidden.

Q.8) How could Jesus claim descent from the royal line of King David if Joseph was not his biological father?

A.) The Blessed Virgin was also of Davidic as well as Aaronitic descent. One person in Luke noted as adoptive father of Joseph or his father was biological father of the Blessed Virgin or of Her father.

Q.9) Why is there not a single contemporary eyewitness to Jesus' ministry OUTSIDE the bible?

A.) You are familiar with how well preserved contemporary eywitnesses to anything back then are? For the span AD 30 to AD 96, not very much at all, unless it was essentially divorceable from contemporary public affairs and history. The Roman historians writing this span now preserved are called ... Matthew, Mark, Luke and Flavius Josephus. None other.

Q.10) Why do good people and innocent children suffer terribly while evil rotten people often live long healthy lives?

A.) It was answered in "Consolation of Philosophy" written by Boethius while he was waiting for execution on a charge he was innocent of. Good and bad things both happen to both good and bad people in this life.

• a) a good thing happens to a good man - a foretaste of Heaven so he doesn't get discouraged.
• b) a bad thing happens to a good man - some punishment, since he won't be punished in Hell.
• c) a good thing happens to a bad man - some reward, since he won't be rewarded in Heaven.
• d) a bad thing hapens to a bad man - a warning, so he gets a chance to repent before getting to Hell.

Q.11) Why did god himself in the bible commit or order the murder of millions of innocent people - especially children. How can you worship such a genocidal mons

A.) Thanks for interrupting the charge.

God is Lord of life and death. He is also absolute arbiter of justice and absolutely aware of where people go after they die.

The reason human judges are not allowed to kill innocent babies along with guilty parents is, we are not any of these.

As to the times when Israelites carried out God's collective death penalties on some, well, God used them as an executioner.

In Answer to Rabbi Skobac

Rabbi Skobac* tries to show Christianity wrong about OT:

Matthew then claims that this took place to fulfill a Messianic prophecy from the Hebrew Scriptures:

And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called My son. Matthew 2:15

However, if we examine the source of Matthew's quote, we see that he seriously distorted its meaning:

When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son. Hosea 11:1

The 11th chapter of Hosea describes the early history of the Jewish people after God redeemed them from the Egyptian exile. In scripture, the people of Israel are indeed spoken of as God’s son (Exodus 4:22).

Matthew, here, ignores this context and distorts the true meaning of the verse by claiming that it was actually a prophecy about the childhood of Jesus. It is clear that Matthew obscures the actual meaning by quoting only the latter half of the verse. He omits the first half of the verse that clarifies that it is speaking about Israel.

Here too:

Here Matthew quotes the entire verse, but nonetheless distorts its actual meaning. By examining the original context of this verse from the 31st chapter of Jeremiah, we see that Rachel was not weeping for children who were murdered, but for children who were still alive, but taken into captivity:

Thus said the Lord: Refrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears. For your work shall be rewarded, says the Lord, and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in the end, says the Lord, that your children will come again to their own border. Jeremiah 31:16-17

Two observations in general:

• 1) St. Matthew was a Levite, and while having wasted part of his adult life as an unjust tax collector, he had the training to deal with OT Scripture.
• 2) He, with other disciples, received a lesson or even several ones on how ALL of Moses and the Prophets foretold Our Lord. This means, the "all" is not restricted to what is commonly acknowledged as Messianic prophecies on both sides. It extends to every jot and tittle of the OT books as extant in LXX (so, some more than the ones extant in Hebrew).

It is in other words normal, and St. Matthew was perfectly aware of it, that parts of OT not in themselves overtly referring to a coming Messiah, but either history or prophetic reflection on history should in actual fact also refer to the Messiah. Note very well, that before St. Matthew (and the other of the disciples) accepted this, including how Isaac carrying the wood for his holocaust prefigures Christ carrying the Cross, they had seen him captured, they had heard of his death (Mary and the Beloved Disciple, probably a young Cohen of the 72 disciples, not a fisherman among the 12, though also named John, had seen Him die, and the women who first witnessed of the Resurrection had also so seen Him) and thereon, they had seen Him alive again.

The proof is not so much one or ten or 100 prophecies fulfilled that were originally considered prophecies, the proof is impossibility of finding a piece of OT history or writing which does not fit Christ, either in His first or in His second coming.

This leads to the Messianic utopia described along with certain Messianic prophecies normally so considered also on the Jewish side. The Catholic Church has fulfilled this utopia time after time.

As Scobac also does here, on those surprised at exaltation in Isaiah 53 context being Gentiles, not Jews:

The majority of people in the world actually believe that Jesus will return in the future and that he will be exalted at that time. In reality, the only people who will be shocked if the subject of this chapter were Jesus would be the Jewish people. But we are not told that the Jewish people will be shocked when the Servant is exalted. It is the rest of the world that will be shocked.

While Christianity exists everywhere, and its correct form, Catholicism, exists almost everywhere, Catholics are one billion, non-Catholic Christians another billion, which makes up only 2/7 of the present world population. No, the majority in the world do NOT believe Jesus Christ will be returning in an exalted manner. The majority of people rather are allergic to this perspective. Rabbis Skobac may be relying on an impression from back in Russian Empire, one that Russian Jewry had within that Empire. Orthodox are the largest non-Catholic body of Christians, one third of the non-Catholic Christian billion, and Russians are the largest of the Orthodox Churches. Tengriists and Muslims were a minority. While Muslims in a sense also believe Jesus will be exalted, they first and foremost believe he will humble himself before a greater Messiah, having been that of Jewish nation, before that of the Islamic nation, the Mahdi. So, Muslims will certainly be shocked, as will Tengriists, as will Hindus, as will Buddhists. If you go out of Russia, a majority of people actually will be shocked if Jesus is exalted as Messiah. Especially as Judge of Living and Dead.

One more, the real Jews in God's eyes are the Catholic Church. At present, Jewish nation is mostly outside the Catholic Church, and as such not the real Israel to which Isaiah was speaking, but rather heirs to the evil men who had Isaiah sawn to death.

While this is so, many Catholics are apostasising, and joining the world who will be astonished to see Jesus Christ exalted, while Jews, even before Henoch and Elijah (though some have claimed Moses and Elijah) return, are already starting to convert.

I am heir of Jewesses who already did that conversion, and perhaps up along the Lundahl ancestry some male Jew who did so before them. I intend to remain so. I also intend to defend it. I would like to make some money as a writer doing so.

If Jews who believe the viewpoint of Rabbi Skobac are stopping me from doing so, hoping they are saving me from a bad thing, preserving me for a good thing, let them back down. They are doing a bad thing to me. I have spent years after years writing, and I have also spent years after years begging, because people (and such Jews are on my list of suspects, though not alone there) have stopped me from earning money as a writer. I am here neither accusing nor excusing anyone in particular. I am noting that Jews who hope for another Messiah than Jesus from Nazareth would have a motive.

I have neither pretended to be a prophet, nor the Messiah. I don't intend to pretend so in the future either.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Sts Macarius and companions
28.II.2019

Oh, by the way:

At this point, we will not discuss the historical credibility of the Gospel accounts. Suffice it to say, there are extremely strong grounds for doubting the veracity of these stories.

Obviously, modern academia is riddled with such Jew serving double talk, doesn't make it true, or Gospels historically false. Now, trusting the Gospels, we are not just dealing with any miracles in general (some of which could be false miracles), we are dealing with raising of dead, healing lepers and a few more. As ONE FOR ISRAEL has pointed out, there is even Talmudic tradition saying these miracles need the Messiah for author. The Egyptian magicians could not replicate the passing through the Red Sea, nor were they able to ward off the plagues of Egypt (which did not touch Goshen), nor were they able to raise the Pharao from the waves where he had drowned./HGL

* WHY JEWS DON’T SEE JESUS IN THE JEWISH BIBLE
Rabbi Michael Skobac
http://jewsforjudaism.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Lifeline-Chanukah-2014.pdf

Was the Lewis trilemma unsound in form, Beversluis?

When it comes to the formulation by Lewis, which is most appropriately so named, probably not:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.

Quoted via wiki, referencing Lewis, C. S., Mere Christianity, London: Collins, 1952, pp. 54–56. (In all editions, this is Bk. II, Ch. 3, "The Shocking Alternative.")

Now, the form has been considered unsound by John Beversluis.

Another criticism raised is that Lewis is creating a false trilemma by insisting that only three options are possible.[36] Philosopher John Beversluis comments that "he deprives his readers of numerous alternate interpretations of Jesus that carry with them no such odious implications".[37] For example, it is logically possible for Jesus's claims (if any) as to his divinity to have been merely good-faith mistakes resulting from his sincere efforts at reasoning, as well as for Jesus to have been deluded with respect to the specific issue of his divinity vel non while his faculties of moral reasoning remained intact. Philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig cites this as a reason why he believes it is an unsound argument for Christianity.[38]

notes 36 to 38 go to:

• Lord, Liar, or Lunatic: C. S. Lewis – Jesus Trilemma, About Atheism, retrieved May 5, 2014
• Beversluis, John, C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), p. 56.
• Craig, William Lane, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, Crossway Books (1994) pages 38–39.

As I just added in that wiki section, this misses (in fact more than) one point on C. S. Lewis' formulation:

Nevertheless, this misses that C. S. Lewis formulated it in terms of

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.

This means, the Lewis trilemma as per naming author, is a general principle, applicability of which to Jesus is established elsewhere (i e, C. S. Lewis was dealing with a subset of the pentalemma, since already in other places excluding guru hypothesis or lacking historical veracity). The trilemma branches out where the overall questions deals with whether Jesus

• said it
• and meant it about the God of Judaic Theism.

Lewis was establishing elsewhere he believed there was excellent ground to take Gospels as eyewitness accounts (his arguments particularly involves John chapter 8, the passage recently disputed since omitted in Sinaiticus, if I recall correctly).

So, overall question whether He said it, elsewhere dealt with in positive, overall question whether He meant it about the God of the Torah and not about some Pantheistic concept also elsewhere dealt with in positive. The trilemma is formulated as a general law, applicable to Jesus in this precise case. It is not, except by concentration on nude quote in isolation, a trilemma exhausting all that could be said about Jesus. Once question is correctly limited, we see the trilemma as a correct answer.

Now, another thing, it is also formulated as a response to a specific back then popular meme:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.

A man ready to accept Christ as a great moral teacher is obviously accepting Him as historical. He is obviously also accepting in some sense His teachings are accessible. If he means "by reading the Gospels" he must be admitting both a historicity at least for logia and the context that is clearly Judaic and not Hindoo. If instead he actually means Jesus was a guru, he is probably accessing info on Jesus from some ... Hindu guru, or some seance, or some dream, or sth else, but not from a well informed reading of the Gospels in historical context.

Any argument for Christianity is unsound if isolated from the facts making it applicable, and many would be inadequate as overall arguments for Christianity in isolation, since the facts making it applicable are not directly stated in it.

The writer G.K. Chesterton used something similar to the trilemma in his book, The Everlasting Man (1925),[11] which Lewis cited in 1962 as the second book that most influenced him.

In fact, GKC was more like stating the uniqueness of the claim, in a passage leading up to the claim.

This quality of something that can only be called subtle and superior, something that is capable of long views and even of double meanings, is not noted here merely as a counterblast to the commonplace exaggerations of amiability and mild idealism. It is also to be noted in connection with the more tremendous truth touched upon at the end of the last chapter. For this is the very last character that commonly goes with mere megalomania; especially such steep and staggering megalomania as might be involved in that claim. This quality that can only be called intellectual distinction is not, of course, an evidence of divinity. But it is an evidence of a probable distaste for vulgar and vainglorious claims to divinity. A man of that sort, if he were only a man, would be the last man in the world to suffer from that intoxication by one notion from nowhere in particular, which is the mark of the self-deluding sensationalist in religion . Nor is it even avoided by denying that Christ did make this claim. Of no such man as that, of no other prophet or philosopher of the same intellectual order, would it be even possible to pretend that he had made it. Even if the Church had mistaken his meaning, it would still be true that no other historical tradition except the Church had ever even made the same mistake. Mahomedans did not misunderstand Mahomet and suppose he was Allah. Jews did not misinterpret Moses and identify him with Jehovah. Why was this claim alone exaggerated unless this alone was made. Even if Christianity was one vast universal blunder, it is still a blunder as solitary as the Incarnation.

The purpose of these pages is to fix the falsity of certain vague and vulgar assumptions; and we have here one of the most false. There is a sort of notion in the air everywhere that all the religions are equal because all the religious founders were rivals, that they are all fighting for the same starry crown. It is quite false. The claim to that crown, or anything like that crown, is really so rare as to be unique. Mahomet did not make it any more than Micah or Malachi. Confucius did not make it any more that Plato or Marcus Aurelius. Buddha never said he was Brahma. Zoroaster no more claimed to be Ormuz than to be Ahriman. The truth is that, in the common run of cases, it is just as we should expect it to be, in common sense and certainly in Christian philosophy. It is exactly the other way. Normally speaking, the greater a man is, the less likely he is to make the very greatest claim. Outside the unique case we are considering, the only kind of man who ever does make that kind of claim is a very small man; a secretive or self-centered monomaniac. Nobody can imagine Aristotle claiming to be the father of gods and men, come down from the sky; though we might imagine some insane Roman Emperor like Caligula claiming it for him, or more probably for himself. Nobody can imagine Shakespeare talking as if he were literally divine; though we might imagine some crazy American crank finding it as a cryptogram in Shakespeare's works, or preferably in his own works. It is possible to find here and there human beings who make this supremely superhuman claim. It is possible to find them in lunatic asylums; in padded cells; possibly in strait waistcoats. But what is much more important than their mere materialistic fate in our very materialistic society, under very crude and clumsy laws about lunacy, the type we know as tinged with this, or tending towards it, is a diseased and disproportionate type; narrow yet swollen and morbid to monstrosity. It is by rather an unlucky metaphor that we talk of a madman as cracked; for in a sense he is not cracked enough. He is cramped rather than cracked; there are not enough holes in his head to ventilate it. This impossibility of letting in daylight on a delusion does sometimes cover and conceal a delusion of divinity. It can be found, not among prophets and sages and founders of religions, but only among a low set of lunatics. But this is exactly where the argument becomes intensely interesting; because the argument proves too much. For nobody supposes that Jesus of Nazareth was that sort of person. No modern critic in his five wits thinks that the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount was a horrible half-witted imbecile that might be scrawling stars on the walls of a cell. No atheist or blasphemer believes that the author of the Parable of the Prodigal Son was a monster with one mad idea like a cyclops with one eye. Upon any possible historical criticism, he must be put higher in the scale of human beings than that. Yet by all analogy we have really to put him there or else in the highest place of all.

A few paragraphs down from beginning of Part II On the Man Called Christ, chapter iii The Strangest Story in the World
http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/everlasting_man.html#chap-II-iii

Where we also get the answer to Hitchens, if he thought Christ mad.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Severian of Scythopolis
21.II.2019

Scythopoli, in Palaestina, sancti Severiani, Episcopi et Martyris, qui, Eutychianis acerrime se opponens, gladio peremptus est.

His killer was an Eutyches-follower (or his killers were, if more than one) that is, more or less a Copt. His city is now called Bisān or Beit She'an.