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Author Topic: Judaism and "faith"
Mucous
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quote:
Originally posted by Lisa:
Fooey. You say that after the fact.

After what fact?
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Xavier
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quote:
The god-kings of Egypt tried to wipe out any record of Pharaoh Akhnetan. How'd that work for them? You aren't being realistic.
We have no idea how large the primitive tribe is in my story. We don't know what the extent of the dissent was.

Suggesting the possibility of small scale dissent being squashed (and with no record kept) in a primitive tribe does not seem unrealistic to me.

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MattP
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quote:
Originally posted by Mucous:
quote:
Originally posted by Lisa:
Fooey. You say that after the fact.

After what fact?
She's saying that you already believe that evolution occurred because of fossils, and it's upon *that* belief that you're saying that genetic phylogeny would support evolution without fossils.

I disagree with this, as there really isn't any other good explanation for the nested hierarchy of genetic similarities that has been discovered. When you couple that with what we've been able to directly measure regarding rates of mutation, effects of mutation, selective breeding, etc. I think it unlikely that evolution wouldn't be the conclusion.

[ September 21, 2010, 02:03 PM: Message edited by: MattP ]

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Dante
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For a very good look at how history is written by the winners--especially in the ancient world--check out Baruch Halpern's David's Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King. He argues fairly persuasively that, among other things, David was probably a usurper and possibly a Philistine one.
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Samprimary
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You can know that there are bloodbaths that we don't know about today and that we will probably never know about. Every so often, people will stumble upon the evidence of a previously unknown slaughter. It is implausible that we have discovered every one. Therefore, you have a way of demonstrating a situation in which a lot of people were systematically murdered somewhere and there remained no record of the event.

Going back from the modern era, an entire ethnic group in the central americas in 1275 called the Gallina were genocidally massacred, leading to the swift extinction of their culture, and evidence of this event, or any record of the murdering of the Gallina, had not really surfaced until relatively recently. No record was preserved of the event, it had to be pieced together from archaeological data. Other things happening earlier and in less ways that leave historical clues, such as if individual dissidents of a cultural movement in a region were killed off, can have happened and not enter the record, even if there was 'bloodbaths.' Like I said, they can occur and escape the record of dissent. Especially when not held to artifical standards of plausibility.

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Amanecer
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quote:
I am a dictator of a small and primitive clan. I decide one day that to cement my power, I will devise a myth claiming that my rules were not created by me, but passed down by a deity.
I tend to think that religions, power seminars, etc. are started by people who at least *mostly* believe what they are preaching. People who believe are just so much more convincing. This was reinforced to me a few years ago when I worked as a secretary in a home office. The lady I worked for had a husband who truly believed that he had visions and messages from God. He would review her business Christmas card list and determine who God really wanted to receive the cards. I got to fill out paperwork for them to get concealed handgun licenses because he had a vision that they needed to start carrying them. He was an incredibly kind, caring, and sincere man. Under the right conditions, I could see myself being persuaded by his intensity and sincerity. In an isolated tribal setting, I imagine that such personalities could easily become celebrities with many followers.

And as Raymond said, it's just so easy to convince ourselves. I enjoyed the article that scholarette referenced and here was a recent one in a similar vein http://www.slate.com/id/2267299/. Just by asking people to write a story about a guy named Tyrone versus a guy named Brad (priming them for racial stereotypes), people were more likely to believe that Obama was the Anti-Christ. We are all connected, and the prominent ideas that surround us have a profound effect on how we will interpret new information.

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TomDavidson
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quote:
None of them claim that the information in their religion was known continuously throughout the generations...
So what if they did? Why would it matter?
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The Rabbit
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The evidence that 3 million people saw G_d at Sinai is found in the Torah and the Jewish oral tradition. Using evidence from the Torah and the oral tradition to prove that the Torah and oral tradition are true constitutes a tautology. It's circular reasoning.
It begs the question, "Is there any independent evidence that would corroborate this account?"

Frankly, many parts of this claim (aside from the miracle itself) are mind bogglingly unlikely given modern objective evidence. Lets start for example with the number of people who reportedly witnessed the events -- 3 million (based on the Torah number of 600,000 adult men). That's a mind boggling huge group of people to be camped in the desert. For perspective, if the camp of Israel had the same population density as modern day Cairo (the most densely populated city in the world), It would have covered an area of 94 km2. If it was roughly circular it would have been about 6 miles in diameter. Such a massive camp of people around Sinai would certainly have left evidence of their presence, graves, trash heaps, dropped ear rings, abandoned children's toys. But archeologists have never found evidence that such a large group camped at Sinai.

To put this number in greater perspective, the entire population of Egypt at this time is estimated be from 2 - 5 million based on the archeological evidence. Even looking at the large end of that, 3 million Hebrew slaves would have been more than half the population of Egypt. Even if you grant the unlikely proposition that the Egyptians never wrote anything about their slaves, or that they destroyed all the records of the Hebrew slaves after their departure, the sudden exodus of better than half the population would have caused a major social and economic upheaval in Egypt that would be evident in the archeological records.

The bottom line is that there is no evidence to corroborate the Jewish claim that 3 million Jews fled Egypt and camped at Sinai between 1300 - 1200 BCE (or any other time period for that matter). While it is impossible to disprove the claim, the archeological evidence which does exist weighs very strongly against the Jewish claim.

Now for many people, it's no big deal to shrug this off. One can easily rationalize that it was only 3000 people and the number has "improved" with the telling over the years. It wouldn't be surprising not to find archeological evidence for such a small group. It wouldn't be shocking that the Egyptian records make no mention of a minority group that made up only a fraction of a percent of the total population. And you know, 3000 people seeing God would be pretty amazing.

But that rationalization doesn't work if you believe that the Torah was dictated by God to Moses letter by letter and has been flawlessly reproduced for thousands of years. The 3 million number is based on the report in the Torah that there were 600,000 adult men (which perhaps creates a little wiggle room but not nearly enough to resolve the lack of corroborating evidence). If the number in the Torah is wrong that leaves only a few possibilities, either the book hasn't been perfectly preserved, it wasn't dictated by God but was written by perhaps inspired but flawed humans, or God embellished the story. That last option (which is the only one compatible with Orthodox Jewish belief as I understand it) is the one I find most disturbing. If God lied about the number of people when he dictated the Torah, what else did he exaggerate? Why should we trust (let alone worship) a God that lies?

To believe that 3 million people saw God at Sinai, you must believe that the Torah and the Jewish oral tradition are more reliable sources of evidence than archeology. You must believe that the Torah and Jewish oral tradition are immune to the scientifically demonstrated weaknesses of human memory and reporting. The Jewish religion rest on unquestioning faith in the reliability of the Torah over all other types of evidence.

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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by Dante:
For a very good look at how history is written by the winners--especially in the ancient world--check out Baruch Halpern's David's Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King. He argues fairly persuasively that, among other things, David was probably a usurper and possibly a Philistine one.

<snort> Whatever.
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Dante
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quote:
<snort> Whatever.
I suggest that reading the book and critiquing its arguments would be a more valuable persuasive tool than snorting and one-word responses. Unless you're trying to persuade people that you're an ass or a bit simple. If so, you have actually mastered the rhetorical situation.
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The Rabbit
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quote:
None of them claim that the information in their religion was known continuously throughout the generations, and none of them claim that they were witness to the information coming to the world. They all acknowledge that Hubbard started it.
This is a strawman which reflects a very poor understand of the religions you are criticizing. Using Hubbard as an example, shows you have no intent of discussing these issues in good faith.

The Christian Bible records thousands of witnesses to miracles and hundreds to the resurrection of Jesus. Islam also teaches of miracles that were witnessed by the thousands. Mormon's teach that every person can receive direct revelation from God and there are millions of Mormon's alive to day who believe that God has revealed himself personally to them. They aren't identical to the Jewish claim, but they aren't categorically different either.

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rivka
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Rabbit, how do you get 3 million? Most estimates I've seen for total numbers are more in the neighborhood of 1.5 million.
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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:
Originally posted by Dante:
For a very good look at how history is written by the winners--especially in the ancient world--check out Baruch Halpern's David's Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King. He argues fairly persuasively that, among other things, David was probably a usurper and possibly a Philistine one.

<snort> Whatever.
Stage Three Lisa: derisory dismissals.
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Raymond Arnold
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Question for... well, for anyone in the thread really (obviously I'm referring primarily to religion here, but this applies just as much to other beliefs and I'm pretty confident that Tom and Sam and others are guilty of this in some area). When you hear someone say "here's some evidence against <insert belief that you hold very strongly>," is your mental response "okay, their evidence is going to be flawed, what are possible reasons it might be flawed?" or is it "okay, if their evidence turns out to be good, how am I going to need to change my beliefs?"

I am certainly guilty of this myself (thinking the former rather than the latter). But I am at least aware that when I do it, I am being... if not genuinely delusional, then at least irrational. (I'm a little unclear about the technical differences between the words delusional, irrational and insane).

@Dante and Lisa - one hand, reflexively dismissing the book is not the mark of someone genuinely interested in the truth. On the other hand, bringing up the book in the first place is kinda pointless, since the title (at least in context of this thread) is deliberately inflammatory, reinforcing the very mental roadblocks that a conversation like this should be trying to bring down.

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Mucous
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quote:
Originally posted by MattP:
I think it unlikely that evolution wouldn't be the conclusion.

I agree of course, I just wasn't sure with the interpretation of what she said. If your interpretation is correct, I would only add for her that this is not even a particularly controversial/non-religious position. For example, Francis Collins has gone on record at least twice that genetics is a stronger source of evidence for evolution than the fossil record.
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Javert
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I think one of the key problems, which I'm sure others have touched on, is that somehow oral tradition is supposed to be considered good evidence. But it really isn't, at least not when that's all one haves.

100 people could come up to me, today, and explain in detail how they witnessed an extraterrestrial spacecraft fly over their city. Being a skeptic, if all they had was their word, I wouldn't believe them. I wouldn't assume they were lying, but if all they have is an anecdote then it's just not convincing enough.

That said, should I believe that story more or less if it happened today or a thousand years ago?

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Dante
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quote:
On the other hand, bringing up the book in the first place is kinda pointless, since the title (at least in context of this thread) is deliberately inflammatory, reinforcing the very mental roadblocks that a conversation like this should be trying to bring down.
I disagree. I think in a conversation on the historicity of claims from the Bronze Age/Iron Age Near East, Halpern's book is extremely relevant. And I don't understand how it is "inflammatory" to use the title of scholarly work by a respected academic, much less "deliberately" so.

Edited to add that bringing up the book was also relevant as an example of how a single powerful figure could shape history to the extent that his royal progaganda became accepted tradition.

And then edited for a typo.

[ September 21, 2010, 03:23 PM: Message edited by: Dante ]

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King of Men
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quote:
Originally posted by rivka:
Rabbit, how do you get 3 million? Most estimates I've seen for total numbers are more in the neighborhood of 1.5 million.

Presumably by assuming 3 children and 1 woman for every adult male; but in any case, are you suggesting that this factor 2 is actually important to the argument? 3 million or 1.5 million, there's going to be archeological traces. It's a bit like that style of Holocaust denial which proposes that the number is not 6 million, but 600k. I mean, suppose that's true; big effing deal, right?
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Xavier
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quote:
I tend to think that religions, power seminars, etc. are started by people who at least *mostly* believe what they are preaching.
I agree. I didn't submit that as the most likely story of how the national revelation myth got started, but merely one possible explanation (that doesn't require a supernatural being).
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rivka
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quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
but in any case, are you suggesting that this factor 2 is actually important to the argument?

Nope. I was just curious.
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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by Dante:
Edited to add that bringing up the book was also relevant as an example of how a single powerful figure could shape history to the extent that his royal progaganda because accepted tradition.

The Kim dynasty was getting away with it earlier on despite the fact that it's infinitely harder to do in the jam-packed and media saturated modern world.
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scholarette
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quote:
Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:
Originally posted by Xavier:
I am a dictator of a small and primitive clan. I decide one day that to cement my power, I will devise a myth claiming that my rules were not created by me, but passed down by a deity.

I tell my trusted guards and lieutenants that my grandfather was visited by a deity and the rules were given to him and passed down to me.

One of my lieutenants goes a step further and says that his grandfather was there as well. I give him great favor for his ingenuity and support.

Others catch on and make similar claims that their ancestors were there. Before long, claiming to have an ancestor that was at the revelation becomes a requirement for favor by me.

Some doubt my claims. I threaten them with death or kill them outright. Most go along willingly enough. After all, my story gives them a divine right to the land we all occupy! Why question it?

My supporters pass these claims onto their children, as surely they must never waver in their dedication to me. The tale grows in the telling. It isn't many generations long before all sorts of embellishments are added.

Eventually, the current tale is encoded in scripture and becomes the basis for a religion.

Obviously this is just one possible way for this tale to develop (pulled from my rear), there are many other ways it could have happened, none relying on the supernatural.

I consider myself a pretty "unbiased and calm observer", but this national revelation story just doesn't seem to hold as much water as Judaism seems to think it does.

Give me a timeline when this could have happened with Judaism. It has to include the ability for such a bloodbath to occur without any record of it, and without any record of dissent. And it has to show a record of development. If there were no fossils, would you consider evolution a tenable hypothesis? Just because you can come up with a story for it?
I don't see why there needs to be a bloodbath or dissent. A skilled charismatic leader can probably cement his rule with just a few deaths, which are conveniently dismissed as things like failure to follow the sabbath. He is giving every reason in the world to support him, assume the economy is good under him, borders are secure- why not go with it. Heck, a stable society is enough for most people to assume their leadership is from God, so what if your leader goes one step further to claim everybody witnessed the choosing a generation back?
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Raymond Arnold
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quote:
I disagree. I think in a conversation on the historicity of claims from the Bronze Age/Iron Age Near East, Halpern's book is extremely relevant. And I don't understand how it is "inflammatory" to use the title of scholarly work by a respected academic, much less "deliberately" so.
I want to clarify that I wasn't accusing you of being deliberately inflammatory. Merely that choosing that book as your evidence was unintentionally inflammatory. Yes, it was certainly relevant. If humans brains tended to work differently than they do it would have been a perfectly good thing to bring up.

I'm a little wary of the extent to which I am currently relying on lesswrong.com for advice on how to think and argue, but this particular article does strike me as extremely relevant: Politics is the Mind Killer. While it refers specifically to modern politics, I think it generally applies to any ideological argument.

When you're discussing the validity of Judaism with people who care about it, bringing up a book entitled "David's Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King" is usually going to produce pretty much the reaction you got from Lisa. Armoth's reaction may be different, but if so, that frankly is a reflection of Armoth being significantly more reasonable than the average person than about how useful that book title is in a discussion like this.

I AM interested in the book, and if you were presenting the book more for other people on the sidelines who aren't so investigated in this debate, that's certainly reasonable.

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The Rabbit
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quote:
Originally posted by rivka:
quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
but in any case, are you suggesting that this factor 2 is actually important to the argument?

Nope. I was just curious.
Rivka, I got the 3 million number from aish.com which was the first pro-Jewish site I got when I googled the topic. Looking further, it does seem like a commonly used number but I agree it's very likely too high. If you assume a demographic distribution similar to the US and "Adult Male" to mean males over age 14, you would get 1.5 million. If you assume a demographic distribution more typical of current African countries you would get 2.5 million. I noted in my original post that there is some wiggle room based on the account in the Torah, but there is nowhere near enough wiggle room to explain the complete lack of corroborating evidence.

Also please accept that I am not trying to prove that God did not appear to millions of Jews at Sinai or that the Torah and Jewish oral tradition are invalid. Nor am I trying to demean Judaism or those who believe it. I was simply trying to demonstrate that the claim that Judaism, unlike all other religions, can be objectively proven to be true is invalid. The Kuzari Principal is not logically sound.

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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
The evidence that 3 million people saw G_d at Sinai is found in the Torah and the Jewish oral tradition. Using evidence from the Torah and the oral tradition to prove that the Torah and oral tradition are true constitutes a tautology. It's circular reasoning.
It begs the question, "Is there any independent evidence that would corroborate this account?"

Well, in the first place, tautologies aren't without value. They do rule out internal contradictions, which is a pretty big plus. I mean, take the Christian geneaologies of JC at the beginning of Matthew and Luke. That's a contradiction. So I'm not about to turn up my nose at a consistent claim that happens to be tautological.

quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
Frankly, many parts of this claim (aside from the miracle itself) are mind bogglingly unlikely given modern objective evidence. Lets start for example with the number of people who reportedly witnessed the events -- 3 million (based on the Torah number of 600,000 adult men).

I get closer to 2 million, but why quibble?

quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
That's a mind boggling huge group of people to be camped in the desert.

It certainly would be if they had to feed themselves and cloth themselves

quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
For perspective, if the camp of Israel had the same population density as modern day Cairo (the most densely populated city in the world), It would have covered an area of 94 km2. If it was roughly circular it would have been about 6 miles in diameter. Such a massive camp of people around Sinai would certainly have left evidence of their presence, graves, trash heaps, dropped ear rings, abandoned children's toys. But archeologists have never found evidence that such a large group camped at Sinai.

Then again, it might depend on where Sinai was. I mean, are you talking about Jebel Musa? Har Karkom? Mount Sin Bashar? Mount Helal? Hashem el-Tarif? Jebel el-Madhbah? Jebel Baggir? Hala el-Badr? Jebel el-Lawz? An as-yet-undiscovered location? Since you're making some categorical statements, you must have a particular site in mind, no?

quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
To put this number in greater perspective, the entire population of Egypt at this time is estimated be from 2 - 5 million based on the archeological evidence. Even looking at the large end of that, 3 million Hebrew slaves would have been more than half the population of Egypt. Even if you grant the unlikely proposition that the Egyptians never wrote anything about their slaves, or that they destroyed all the records of the Hebrew slaves after their departure, the sudden exodus of better than half the population would have caused a major social and economic upheaval in Egypt that would be evident in the archeological records.

You mean like the total collapse of Egypt at the end of the Old Kingdom? In any case, the Hebrew slaves lived in Goshen (in the eastern Nile Delta). How much excavating has been done of that region in the Old Kingdom?

Also, estimates of ancient populations are commonly low, for the simple reason that modern folks have a lot of contempt for people back then, and can't imagine them having any better skills with agriculture than modern desert nomads. Which is fallacious on the face of it.

quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
The bottom line is that there is no evidence to corroborate the Jewish claim that 3 million Jews fled Egypt and camped at Sinai between 1300 - 1200 BCE (or any other time period for that matter). While it is impossible to disprove the claim, the archeological evidence which does exist weighs very strongly against the Jewish claim.

"Lack of evidence is not evidence of a lack." Come on, Rabbit. You know better than that. So very little of the region has been uncovered that saying things like that is laughable.

quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
Now for many people, it's no big deal to shrug this off. One can easily rationalize that it was only 3000 people and the number has "improved" with the telling over the years.

No fears. You won't catch me doing that. In fact, if you can prove that it was only 3,000 people, I'll abandon Judaism like a hot potato.

quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
It wouldn't be surprising not to find archeological evidence for such a small group. It wouldn't be shocking that the Egyptian records make no mention of a minority group that made up only a fraction of a percent of the total population. And you know, 3000 people seeing God would be pretty amazing.

Coming from a culture based around a religion where there were only a handful of witnesses, it's understandable that you'd think so, but I would tend to disagree.

quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
But that rationalization doesn't work if you believe that the Torah was dictated by God to Moses letter by letter and has been flawlessly reproduced for thousands of years. The 3 million number is based on the report in the Torah that there were 600,000 adult men (which perhaps creates a little wiggle room but not nearly enough to resolve the lack of corroborating evidence). If the number in the Torah is wrong that leaves only a few possibilities, either the book hasn't been perfectly preserved, it wasn't dictated by God but was written by perhaps inspired but flawed humans, or God embellished the story. That last option (which is the only one compatible with Orthodox Jewish belief as I understand it) is the one I find most disturbing. If God lied about the number of people when he dictated the Torah, what else did he exaggerate? Why should we trust (let alone worship) a God that lies?

Bingo. That's my problem with people who try and say, "Okay, well, Sinai wasn't really a historic event, but God still inspired people to write the Torah." A lying deity like that doesn't interest me in the least.

quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
To believe that 3 million people saw God at Sinai, you must believe that the Torah and the Jewish oral tradition are more reliable sources of evidence than archeology.

Why? You've presented no archaeological evidence that runs counter to the Jewish oral tradition.

quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
You must believe that the Torah and Jewish oral tradition are immune to the scientifically demonstrated weaknesses of human memory and reporting.

I don't think so. It isn't human memory that's the big thing here. It isn't even the incredibly wide redundancy built into the system. It's the simple fact that God promised we wouldn't lose it. Yes, yes, I know. "Circular." "Tautology." But at least it's consistent.

quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
The Jewish religion rest on unquestioning faith in the reliability of the Torah over all other types of evidence.

Not really.
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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:
Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:
Originally posted by Dante:
For a very good look at how history is written by the winners--especially in the ancient world--check out Baruch Halpern's David's Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King. He argues fairly persuasively that, among other things, David was probably a usurper and possibly a Philistine one.

<snort> Whatever.
Stage Three Lisa: derisory dismissals.
And you think there's some reason I should waste time taking such claims seriously? "The Israelites were originally Canaanites". "David was originally a Philistine." It's all deconstruction for deconstruction's sake, and for the sake of having something new to publish.
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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by Dante:
quote:
<snort> Whatever.
I suggest that reading the book and critiquing its arguments would be a more valuable persuasive tool than snorting and one-word responses. Unless you're trying to persuade people that you're an ass or a bit simple. If so, you have actually mastered the rhetorical situation.
Life is short. There are a ton of books out there. Right now, I'm midway through the third book of Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy. Which at least acknowledges itself as fiction.

Do you know how many lame theories I've seen bandied around? Abraham tribes, Jacob tribes, migration vs. emergence vs. conquest, ad nauseum. Don't make the mistake of thinking that I haven't read this sort of pap. I just don't think it necessary to wade through every puddle that's been piddled by some "scholar" with a radical new theory.

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TomDavidson
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quote:
In fact, if you can prove that it was only 3,000 people, I'll abandon Judaism like a hot potato.
Why? What would the number matter?

quote:
But at least it's consistent.
And thus a hobgoblin.
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The Rabbit
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quote:
Well, in the first place, tautologies aren't without value.
As evidence for anything but consistency, they are completely without value.

quote:
I mean, take the Christian geneaologies of JC at the beginning of Matthew and Luke. That's a contradiction.
Much in the same way that the second chapter of Genesis contradicts the first chapter of Genesis. I'm sure you have your explanation for why what appears to be a clear contradiction isn't really a contradiction but then Christians have their explanation for why the geneologies in Matthew and Luke aren't really contradictory either. Until you've bothered to do more than understand a very weak strawman of Christianity, you'd be better off laying off the mockery and red herrings.
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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by Raymond Arnold:
@Dante and Lisa - one hand, reflexively dismissing the book is not the mark of someone genuinely interested in the truth.

<shrug> Who says it was reflexive? Have you read Kamil Salibi's The Bible Came from Arabia? It's a crank theory that the land of Israel in the Bible was really a place in Arabia. By playing creative games with transliterations, he identifies all sorts of place names to make his case. Lame. How about Ahmed Osman's Stranger in the Valley of the Kings? He proposes that King Tut was Jesus. And Joshua. Gunnar Heinsohn has suggested that Akhnaton, Necho II, Darius I and Hammurabi were all the same person. Jesse Laskin equates Ptolemy I, Horemheb, Ramses III and Thutmose III.

I could go on for quite a while. I've read all of those. I've read Finkelstein and Silberman's nutty ideas about the Torah being created at the time of Josiah. The Bible Unearthed is about 2.5 feet from where I'm sitting right now. I've spent countless hours really such garbage, largely in hopes of finding a pearl in the midden heap. And maybe I'll read this looney book about David as a Philistine as well. Because even it might contain something of value. But to bring that sort of nonsense in this discussion is not indicative of a desire to debate anything honestly. "Ooo, ooo, did you read this screed? Huh? Huh? Well, if you didn't, then you don't know what you're talking about!" Feh.

quote:
Originally posted by Raymond Arnold:
On the other hand, bringing up the book in the first place is kinda pointless, since the title (at least in context of this thread) is deliberately inflammatory, reinforcing the very mental roadblocks that a conversation like this should be trying to bring down.

Very biasedly put. Kudos.
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TomDavidson
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How do you decide which arguments contain "nuggets of value?"
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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:
I mean, take the Christian geneaologies of JC at the beginning of Matthew and Luke. That's a contradiction.
Much in the same way that the second chapter of Genesis contradicts the first chapter of Genesis. I'm sure you have your explanation for why what appears to be a clear contradiction isn't really a contradiction but then Christians have their explanation for why the geneologies in Matthew and Luke aren't really contradictory either. Until you've bothered to do more than understand a very weak strawman of Christianity, you'd be better off laying off the mockery and red herrings.
Nah. Because I've heard such arguments, and they all founder on the rock of the religion they claim their religion derives from.
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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:
In fact, if you can prove that it was only 3,000 people, I'll abandon Judaism like a hot potato.
Why? What would the number matter?
What? Because it contradicts what the Torah says.
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TomDavidson
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Are you telling me that you're not willing to let some of the Torah's numbers slide? Because, y'know, of all the things in the Torah to let slide, specific numbers -- ages, dates, etc. -- are among the least important, most questionable, and most obviously tweaked for symbolic purposes.
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rivka
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Rabbit, thanks. (Adult males actually means ages 20-60.) I am amused that Aish is using that number, but I agree that they are a reasonable site to get such numbers from.
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Armoth
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I'm in class so I can now only poorly respond, I hope to do a better job tonight, but this thread seems to have grown and fast.

1) The argument that there were so many people so something must have been dropped.

::Shrug:: that's an argument to be made by someone who knows archaeology really well. Is that true, that a people traveling through the dessert, who never built anything permanent, would have left an archeological print in the sand?

Even graves - The Israelites made a big deal of carrying out the bones of Joseph from Egypt so that he is buried in the land of Israel - it's possible that this was the tradition of the generation of the desert. To transport the bodies for burial in the land of Israel.

2) The alternative stories. The root of the Kuzari principle, or the Mass Revelation argument lies in probabilities. Probabilities need to be analyzed in the context of all the details.
All of history, even fairly recent history works this way - we weren't there, we don't know - we rely on human accounts, and the more corroboration, the better.

And here is where it is actually compelling. Forget about bloodbaths and the like - you can't create a scenario where the ideas of one or two men evolves into a mass revelation in front of 2 million. That didn't happen with Christianity or Islam - it's not very plausible.


Realize that you're only playing with around 800-1000 years to make up the mass revelation. The reason I say that is because we have matching scrolls to 2000 years ago. Realize that Islam and Christianity did not evolve that way, when it was definitely in their interest to do so.

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The Rabbit
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quote:
Then again, it might depend on where Sinai was. I mean, are you talking about Jebel Musa? Har Karkom? Mount Sin Bashar? Mount Helal? Hashem el-Tarif? Jebel el-Madhbah? Jebel Baggir? Hala el-Badr? Jebel el-Lawz? An as-yet-undiscovered location? Since you're making some categorical statements, you must have a particular site in mind, no?
Pick your site. No one has found any evidence of millions of Jews camping anywhere in Sinai and plenty have looked. It's certainly possible that they've just missed it. Who knows, next week someone may uncover objective evidence that millions of Jews once camped in Sinai. My point was that no such evidence currently exists.

quote:
Why? You've presented no archaeological evidence that runs counter to the Jewish oral tradition.
The Bible reports that Solomon reigned 480 years after the exodus. That puts the Exodus at 1447 BC, about 700 hundred years after the collapse of the Old Kingdom of Egypt. Archeological evidence indicated there was no major upheaval in Egypt during the time of the Exodus. This is in fact completely inconsistent with the departure of 1 - 3 million people.

quote:
"Lack of evidence is not evidence of a lack." Come on, Rabbit. You know better than that. So very little of the region has been uncovered that saying things like that is laughable.
Come on Lisa, At some point lack of evidence does in fact become evidence of a lack. Based on the Torah account, there are a wide variety of things one would logically predict should exist such as mention of the Jews in the writings of Egypt, evidence of the millions of people camping in Sinai, evidence of upheaval in Egypt and so forth. Lots of people have looked for this kind of evidence yet no one has ever found any. Furthermore, the evidence that has been uncovered for things like the total population of the region makes the numbers reported in Exodus highly improbable.

Once again, I am not trying to disprove the Torah report. I am trying to demonstrate that report in the Torah can not be corroborated by any objective means. Your claim that believing the Torah account does not require "faith" is simply untrue.

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Xavier
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quote:
Forget about bloodbaths and the like - you can't create a scenario where the ideas of one or two men evolves into a mass revelation in front of 2 million.
Says who? To me this argument relies on a distinct lack of imagination.

Someone creates a story that becomes part of the culture. Stories grow in the telling, including this one. They pass it onto their kids as fact. Let bake for a few generations (I doubt you'd need even half of that 800 years) and you've got supposed mass revelation.

I'm really struggling to see how this seems so implausible.

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TomDavidson
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quote:
you can't create a scenario where the ideas of one or two men evolves into a mass revelation in front of 2 million
I've already given you a couple scenarios in which one or two men produce a situation in which their great-grandchildren completely believe their ancestors had a mass revelation.

Why forget bloodbaths?

quote:
Realize that you're only playing with around 800-1000 years to make up the mass revelation. The reason I say that is because we have matching scrolls to 2000 years ago.
No. The matching scrolls give us a lower bound on the age; the story could easily be older.
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Armoth
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Actually Rabbit, where do u get your numbers from? My number puts the Revelation at about 1313 BC which is around the time of King Tut, whose father turned Egypt upside down, destroying all foreign gods and for a short time, having Egypt worship one god, the sun-god.
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TomDavidson
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I'm sure if you try hard enough, you'll eventually find a sufficient upheaval that could be blamed on the disappearance of a third of the country's population despite no mention of it being made anywhere else.
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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
How do you decide which arguments contain "nuggets of value?"

Really? You want that while I stand on one foot?

My rule of thumb is that the best working model is that which:

1) Explains the greatest amount of the available data,
2) Provides the best explanations for that data which does not fit the model,
3) Requires the fewest unproven or unprovable propositions in order to be true.

The importance of these three elements is in the order stated (descending), and the word "best" in the second element is necessarily subjective.

When I get new information, I try it out in two ways.

1) I see if it fits my integrated view of reality or not. If it does, fine. If it doesn't, I look at how much of a conflict there is, and whether it tilts the balance to the point that a different view makes more sense.

2) I see if it fits with any information that I've previous rejected as being insufficiently convincing. If it does, I put it there, like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle, because who knows? If the next few pieces of information on that subject fit there better than elsewhere, maybe that'll tilt the balance.

I assume that's how most people do it, no? It's more of an inductive way of reasoning than a deductive way, but it suits me.

Back in 1994, I was working on a design for an economic system. Looking back on it now, it's just embarrassing, but I was fairly happy with it. But then I was over at a friend's house and saw a book on her shelf called Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. I'd never read anything by Ayn Rand before except the first four pages of Atlas Shrugged and possibly Anthem, but I figured it might be worth a read. And it trashed my world view. I've had my life turned upside down like that maybe 4 times in my life, and every time was pretty overwhelming and life altering. But when it happens, I can't just stick with the direction I've been going. I'd kill myself.

Honestly, if I flipped on the issue of Judaism being true, I might continue to be observant just because of my partner and daughter. But I sure as hell wouldn't be spending time defending it. There was a time when the opposite happened. I was so overwhelmed after I realized I was gay that I stopped being observant entirely. For about 11 months. But I continued to defend it, because despite my feeling that it was hurting me, I remained convinced that it was true, and ignoring that would have hurt more.

I'm entirely aware that neither you nor the other folks who've been dogpiling me in this thread are going to believe any of that. You have your minds made up, and don't even recognize how closed your minds are. But that's fine. Maybe someone will read it and will hear that I'm telling the truth.

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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by Armoth:
Actually Rabbit, where do u get your numbers from? My number puts the Revelation at about 1313 BC which is around the time of King Tut, whose father turned Egypt upside down, destroying all foreign gods and for a short time, having Egypt worship one god, the sun-god.

Gah.

Armoth, the date of 1313 BCE (it's 1311; the system we use today is 2 years different than Seder Olam) is predicated on a chronology that includes the First Temple being destroyed in 421 BCE. If that's true, then all of the preceding history (which is interlinked) has to come down the same 166 years, and 1311 in Egypt would be the equivalent of 1145 BCE in the history books. Which is conventionally when Ramses V died.

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TomDavidson
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quote:
I'm entirely aware that neither you nor the other folks who've been dogpiling me in this thread are going to believe any of that.
No, I believe it. I simply think that in the case of ancient history (especially ancient religion), there just aren't enough data points out there that could possibly lead you to effectively evaluate #1, #2, or #3. If, for example, you consider your "available data" to include "two million people heard the voice of God" instead of "this book says around two million people heard the voice of God," then the actual underlying issue isn't even subject to analysis. By the same token, if you aren't including in your count of "unprovable assertions" the idea that God doesn't want you to flip lightswitches on Saturday, you're not really getting a fair count on #3.
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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:
Why? You've presented no archaeological evidence that runs counter to the Jewish oral tradition.
The Bible reports that Solomon reigned 480 years after the exodus. That puts the Exodus at 1447 BC, about 700 hundred years after the collapse of the Old Kingdom of Egypt. Archeological evidence indicated there was no major upheaval in Egypt during the time of the Exodus. This is in fact completely inconsistent with the departure of 1 - 3 million people.
You know, you can disagree with me about the fact that the Old Kingdom ended around 1475 BCE, but it doesn't make any sense for you to ignore the fact that it's what I think, for reasons that have no religious connection. It just turns your argument into a flawed syllogism.

All fish are philosophers
Socrates is a philosopher
Therefore, Socrates is a fish

Since fish aren't philosophers, and since the Old Kingdom fell in the 15th century BCE, Socrates isn't a fish, and your argument is empty.

For the purposes of this discussion, you have to either posit that I'm right about when the Old Kingdom ended and argue your point despite that, or you have to demonstrate that I'm wrong about it. You haven't even attempted to do either.

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Dante
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Raymond,

quote:
When you're discussing the validity of Judaism with people who care about it, bringing up a book entitled "David's Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King" is usually going to produce pretty much the reaction you got from Lisa.
I see what you're saying. I guess from my perspective, I wasn't addressing the "validity" of Judaism.

I actually thought about taking Lisa's posts into my first-year composition class to talk about reasoning, argumentation, and fallacies.
quote:
The god-kings of Egypt tried to wipe out any record of Pharaoh Akhnetan. How'd that work for them?
False analogy.
quote:
It's all deconstruction for deconstruction's sake, and for the sake of having something new to publish.
Hasty generalization, non sequitur, ad hominem, association fallacy, etc.

quote:
Don't make the mistake of thinking that I haven't read this sort of pap. I just don't think it necessary to wade through every puddle that's been piddled by some "scholar" with a radical new theory.
So you're calling an argument whose evidence you've never studied "pap" and using derisive quotation marks for a scholar who is well-respected in his field simply because you don't like what he says?

Lisa, do you post here in the attempt to actually communicate about ideas or just to present your opinions as self-evident fact and defend them principally with derision and scorn? I just want to know if I should go ahead and put you on my "don't bother responding to" list.

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Armoth
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:
if you can undermine the strength of the mass revelation and the unbroken line of tradition toward that...
Sure. Here's a whole jumble of possibilities:

About ninety people saw something happen one day that they didn't understand, similar to seeing the Virgin Mary in the sun. One guy came along and put it into some context. As they passed the story down, the number of people present grew in the same way that, today, everyone alive in the '60s was at Woodstock. From time to time, skeptics questioned the story. Since the culture had a long tradition of killing dissidents and re-discovering lost law (consider Josiah, in Kings, "re-introducing" the book of Deuteronomy to people), it was fairly simple to ensure that the story kept the desired shape as the cult grew; after all, the story itself includes a description of how nearly a third of the people present for the revelation got themselves killed for not being sufficiently loyal to God. Surely the survivors would be highly motivated to accede to the public story.

No miracle is needed; social pressure and the threat of expulsion does it all, especially at a distance of even a small handful of generations. How many grandchildren of people kicked out of the tribe for not believing their ancestor's story about the time they heard God would have bothered to keep their objections alive in story and song?

Are you talking about these Tom? Because first of all, where are you pulling your stat a third killed? I see 3 thousand killed. That's not even close to a third of 2 million.

Now, in your story, they saw something they didnt understand and a dude explains it in the form of tons of commandments and precepts? If you say those evolved, how did it happen, what did he tell them at that time? 10 commandments? They believe in Moses? And the story of the exodus? And the miracles that also constitute a sort of mass revelation - that weren't exactly minor miracles that can be explained away?

Also the story of Josiah, read in context, is pretty much hyperbole.

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Mucus
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quote:
Originally posted by Armoth:
... Realize that Islam and Christianity did not evolve that way, when it was definitely in their interest to do so.

Curiously, one could flip this on its end and say that it was actually in the interest for Christianity and Islam to "not" have this kind of mass revelation because it was in their interest to "evolve that way."

After all, it certainly seems Christianity and Islam are a lot more fit for survival based on their past growth rates/fitness, which would be the obvious way to evaluate self-interest for evolution.

(Note: This of course has no bearing on which of the three are true)

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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
If, for example, you consider your "available data" to include "two million people heard the voice of God" instead of "this book says around two million people heard the voice of God," then the actual underlying issue isn't even subject to analysis.

I don't. "Two million people heard the voice of God" is a conclusion; not an axiom.
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Armoth
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quote:
Originally posted by Mucus:
quote:
Originally posted by Armoth:
... Realize that Islam and Christianity did not evolve that way, when it was definitely in their interest to do so.

Curiously, one could flip this on its end and say that it was actually in the interest for Christianity and Islam to "not" have this kind of mass revelation because it was in their interest to "evolve that way."

After all, it certainly seems Christianity and Islam are a lot more fit for survival based on their past growth rates/fitness, which would be the obvious way to evaluate self-interest for evolution.

(Note: This of course has no bearing on which of the three are true)

I think Christianity and Islam have to rely on the mass revelation, which they do. But no, size is not a good barometer of truth as Christianity and Islam cancel one another out.

I think that we can all agree that mass revelations are more compelling that single revelations. Given that premise, I would argue it is in Christianity and Islam's best interest to have evolved a mass revelation, especially considering that they were both founded on Judaism that is founded on such a mass revelation.

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