The Ethno-Zionist-Revisionism-Old Testament-Bashing Megathread

[The Brain]

How can something be historically revisionist if there's no concept of history?

Err what?

Man, I warned you.  The concept of "history" didn't exist back then, at least not our concept of history.  You might as well talk about "neolithic science"  If you throw out sources describing events that can't physically happen then you pretty much throw away 95% of the written documents from the time period.  Even basic things like Sumerian kings lists.  Hell you are going to throw out books that we know have a firm basis in historical fact, and occur much, much later.  For instance we have throw out the Julius Caesar's commentary on the Gaullic Wars since he describe things we know are not physically possible.

Anyone can eat 100 whoppers.

[Ideologue]

TV/ethnography megathread.

[dps]

What?  I'm pretty sure white Americans are predominantly Scotch-Irish.

As Sheilbh said, a lot of Scots-Irish are Appalachian or Southern and identify only as "American."

I think very few people identify as "Scots-Irish" or "Scotch-Irish".  Usually it's just "Irish" or "Irish-American". 

[derspiess]

Yet our most common surnames come from Britain- Smith, Williams, Johnson, Brown, Davis, etc.

Many German names got Anglicized over time, with a significant bump in the two World Wars.  My last name and my mother's maiden name just happen to work both as English and German.  So we were like pre-Anglicized or something.

Also like Razz we have tons of unmistakably German surnames in my area.  I'd say well over 50% of the white population.

[Eddie Teach]

A lot of continental immigrants dropped their non-English surnames once they moved to America.   And all those last names you just listed could be African-American which, as Oprah would say, is another show.

The wiki page has a racial breakdown. 73% of the 2.3 million Smiths are white. And as Raz suggests, many immigrants didn't actually change their names.

German only comes out on top because British origins are splintered into several different groups and often much further in the past. And because German is "cooler" than English. Though not as cool as Irish.

[CountDeMoney]

TV/ethnography megathread.

Hey, you wanted to talk smack about The Black Stallion, so you get what you get.

[crazy canuck]

It is only with the rise of the Israelite kingdom that there is anything approaching history. Even then, the actual amout of "hard" information we really possess is ludicrously slight - until a couple of decades ago, there was not one single non-Biblical mention of King David. Now there is one - a mention of the "House of David" from the reign of the son of King Ahab (found on a broken stele celebrating a victory over said king).

Anything alleged to occur prior to that is not really "history" at all - it is legend and myth. (Much of what is alleged to occur after that is of course also legend and myth, but increasingly verges on the historical - or at least, historical facts are mingled with the legendary).

Lots of information we have about events before, say, 1400 or so is like that--it all comes from one source or maybe two.

And nobody expects them to be literally historically accurate.  For some reason literalist wingnuts make an exception for the Old Testament.

[CountDeMoney]

German only comes out on top because British origins are splintered into several different groups and often much further in the past.

The Germans were the first big batch of non-English speaking immigrants in the U.S. so yeah, they got a bit of a head start on the rest of the continental Europeans by a few generations.

[CountDeMoney]

And because German is "cooler" than English. Though not as cool as Irish.

I guess professional proficiency in modern general staff structure and combined arms doctrine isn't nearly as cool as being an angry drunk.

[Razgovory]

It is only with the rise of the Israelite kingdom that there is anything approaching history. Even then, the actual amout of "hard" information we really possess is ludicrously slight - until a couple of decades ago, there was not one single non-Biblical mention of King David. Now there is one - a mention of the "House of David" from the reign of the son of King Ahab (found on a broken stele celebrating a victory over said king).

Anything alleged to occur prior to that is not really "history" at all - it is legend and myth. (Much of what is alleged to occur after that is of course also legend and myth, but increasingly verges on the historical - or at least, historical facts are mingled with the legendary).

Lots of information we have about events before, say, 1400 or so is like that--it all comes from one source or maybe two.

And nobody expects them to be literally historically accurate.  For some reason literalist wingnuts make an exception for the Old Testament.

B.S.  Lots and lots of stories are taken at face value.  I don't know of any biblical literalistic who refuse to believe in say, Spartacus or the Pharaoh Sneferu.  While lots of people will go on about "sky fairies" rave about "wingnuts" who believe in parts of the bible but, for some reason are incapable or are unwilling to use that same skepticism on other parts history.

[Sheilbh]

The Muppets !

[Malthus]

I don't think there is any actual evidence, the Bible aside, that there ever were any large population of Jews in Egypt, let alone that there were Jewish slaves etc.

It is best to think of the Exodus as pure mythology, perhaps tangentally inspired by some actual events - sort of like the medieval legendarium of King Arthur.

It is only with the rise of the Israelite kingdom that there is anything approaching history. Even then, the actual amout of "hard" information we really possess is ludicrously slight - until a couple of decades ago, there was not one single non-Biblical mention of King David. Now there is one - a mention of the "House of David" from the reign of the son of King Ahab (found on a broken stele celebrating a victory over said king).

Anything alleged to occur prior to that is not really "history" at all - it is legend and myth. (Much of what is alleged to occur after that is of course also legend and myth, but increasingly verges on the historical - or at least, historical facts are mingled with the legendary).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_Dan_Stele

I'd be really surprised if there wasn't some weird grain of truth in the Exodus story. 

Semitic people lived in Egypt in this period.  It could have started as "hey remember how our great-great-great grandfather was a Hyksos?  Well he wasn't a brutal conqueror-the Egyptians were mean to him."  This is also a period when the Egyptians are starting to expand their control in to Canaan, so it might have started as a story of Semitic peoples fleeing Egyptian expansion in to the eastern wilderness and was then reinterpreted as foreshadowing the Babylonian exile.

Sure, but without more evidence it may prove impossible to determine what that grain is.

Also, don't get me wrong - I'm the last to insist that absence of evidence = evidence of absence. The actual historical information we do know is very, very spotty. That business about King David only being mentioned in one place indicates that (before this discovery, the 'absence of evidence' folks insisted that King David was also pure myth - that POV is now looking somewhat less likely, but is still around).

Another, similar example: the only unequivocal evidence for the existance of Pontius Pilate is a single inscription, discovered in 1961, dedicating a provincial ampetheatre.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontius_Pilate#Historicity_of_Pilate

Thus, a high official of the Roman Empire (both relatively recent, no doubt a generator of tons of official documents during his lifetime, and famous from the Biblical account) is almost totally unknown - yet did exist.

[garbon]

I saw the Tel Dan Stele when it was loaned to the Met.

[The Brain]

Historians are strongly opposed to quantifying their uncertainties.

[Eddie Teach]

lol, the purity of the TV/Movies Megathread must be maintained.