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EarlyActs
Guest
Our study of the PATTERNS OF EVIDENCE re EXODUS caused to stop at one point when the Austrian Egyptologist flatly dismissed any connection to the books of Genesis and Exodus. Bieckmann had been working in Goshen, and none of his digs were finding any artefacts Syro-Canaanite.
There were two "layers" that were a problem here. 1, in his training, based on the destructive theories of Germans since Haeckl (late 1800s, biologist who framed the science to cause the German race to be considered highest). These treated Biblical material in a materialist universe and evolutionary scheme. The JEDP theory was the result. The events were not placed or timed where they actually happened but a 'more likely' scenario. "The exodus occurred, but resembles very little of what we find in the book." --Bieckmann.
2, the thing about archeology is that you have to go down further to find earlier material. This may not be true in geology where a cataclysm can deposit as it sees fit! But what Bieckmann et al did was to find a 'level' under Goshen that did not happen to match Genesis--Exodus Egypt settings, and reverse the weight of facts: the findings rewrote Genesis for the time being. Notice, unfortunately, that this matched the above destructive theories.
Dr. Schaeffer dates this line of change, "line of despair", at 1890 in Europe, giving ORIGINS a generation to have its effect. GHIT, 15.
But people must have hope and help. So our knowledge or sense of reality began to change, into what he calls two stories--not two narratives, but actually speaking in terms of house stories. Kierkegaard said that faith was to be taken up in a different way from reason. Everything of real importance was only by a leap of faith. No relation to reasons and facts. Thus as a diagram:
FAITH_______________________________________
THE RATIONAL AND LOGICAL
The two are seen only in their separated levels. What people did not realize at first is that the confinement of the lower mean there was no hope, purpose, meaning that had a logical base. For that, you 'escaped'. That's what a 'leap' is: a sheer act of volition. Nothing about Avarus, Egypt or knowledge about 1st century Judea. GWIT, 21.
As these separated, the upper could be seen in more detail: existentialism appeared, the idea of a 'final' experience or a 'first-order' experience (where you lived but left the normal bounds of reality). Drugs and psychic phenomenon were pursued.
Likewise the sheer grind of the lower: only particulars, without purpose, meaning. Collected in massive amounts. Man is only a machine in this world. GWIT, 22
Aldous Huxley verbalized this about drug use, GWIT, 27.
Then we have the theological version: upper: the crisis 'first-order' experience; faith as sheer optimism without anything to verify or communicate. This in part caused the main appeal of Christian faith to become about crises. That may sound wrong, and it is not meant to sound callouse. But the definitive appeal of Christian faith is not to people in a life crisis. Rather it is the thing which took place in Christ, appealing to the 'just fine, thank you' upstanding person as to the wretched addict. Take the testimony of the athlete turned WW2 soldier stuck in a prison camp and later an alcoholic. All "Christian" content is said to be about his crises. The Billy Graham crusade method was built on this. It is not as though Graham rebuilt the fractured levels of knowledge. What mattered was that God was trying to get through to you about your crisis(es) now.
Lower: Scripture is full of mistakes. General pessimism about life. GWIT, 53.
Notice the curious thing, then, which happened to fundamentalism. Dr. Montgomery, UW Geology, noticed that Christian fundamentalists in about 1900 did not (NOT) believe the Genesis cataclysm to be worldwide. But they did believe in other supernatural things in the Bible, fair enough. They went with the current science, even though that science came from the materialist' presupposition in which this world has been merely a gradualist development. They somehow did not do battle on that geology front.
Still a further chart articulating the split is about modern mysticism, in which language reflects a total loss of anchor:
Upper: a blind optimistic hope of meaning, based on a non-rational leap of faith
Lower: the rational and logical realms which give no meaning. GWIT, 55.
On these lines of separation, we start to see the 'self-affirmations' so common in secular public and education now. Or a city may proclaim that it is "(name)-strong." Notice the misuse of language: "pride" means to upend even categories of child sexual abuse.
(To be fair, there is a type of attachment to a life problem, from which it is important to "let go" and perhaps even add "let God." Without doing so our mental health will suffer. But this is not what leap of faith is meant here, where the underlying thought is that God is too detached to matter.)
In summarizing church history in 1 page, Schaeffer said: 'this age is when people believe the Bible to be historically false but spiritually true.'
Lewis was famously aware of the same thing or split when he decried preachers for rushing to be helpful, and dismissing other questions about faith: "If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all." Unfortunately, people can read that today, and have been so accustomed to thinking that what matters about Christianity is that it is helpful, that they don't know what it means, or why the question came up.
What it means is that it may be helpful, but before that a real man/human wants--and always should want-- to know if it was true! The title of this article by Lewis was "Man Or Rabbit" and men want truth, 'rabbits' want help.
Which brings me back to Avarus, Egypt and Maloney's Exodus doc. It would be extremely interesting to find out some day if Bieckmann consciously avoided 'going deeper.' Had he gone deeper in Goshen, he may have found that Avarus confirmed the presence of Syro-Canaanite artefacts and very specific confirmations of a Joseph figure. A water channel from a lake to Goshen is named the Joseph water way.
Instead an agnostic, Dr. Rohl (in Maloney's Exodus doc), somewhat removed from the German scholarship, has no problem confirming Genesis. (Cp. the geologist Ager about cataclysm. He can't bring himself to confirm Genesis, but he confirms catastrophism on every page of his NEW CATASTROPHISM book).
We who are Biblical thinkers seek the reunification of the split world, for there is none in Biblical view. We must make sure we know it is one of the key issues of our time in order to speak to it, and we are of no help unless we are speaking to it.
See also my THE WORLD-SPLITTER audio at Interplans.net, about Lyell's geology.
THE STAIRCASE
There were two "layers" that were a problem here. 1, in his training, based on the destructive theories of Germans since Haeckl (late 1800s, biologist who framed the science to cause the German race to be considered highest). These treated Biblical material in a materialist universe and evolutionary scheme. The JEDP theory was the result. The events were not placed or timed where they actually happened but a 'more likely' scenario. "The exodus occurred, but resembles very little of what we find in the book." --Bieckmann.
2, the thing about archeology is that you have to go down further to find earlier material. This may not be true in geology where a cataclysm can deposit as it sees fit! But what Bieckmann et al did was to find a 'level' under Goshen that did not happen to match Genesis--Exodus Egypt settings, and reverse the weight of facts: the findings rewrote Genesis for the time being. Notice, unfortunately, that this matched the above destructive theories.
Dr. Schaeffer dates this line of change, "line of despair", at 1890 in Europe, giving ORIGINS a generation to have its effect. GHIT, 15.
But people must have hope and help. So our knowledge or sense of reality began to change, into what he calls two stories--not two narratives, but actually speaking in terms of house stories. Kierkegaard said that faith was to be taken up in a different way from reason. Everything of real importance was only by a leap of faith. No relation to reasons and facts. Thus as a diagram:
FAITH_______________________________________
THE RATIONAL AND LOGICAL
The two are seen only in their separated levels. What people did not realize at first is that the confinement of the lower mean there was no hope, purpose, meaning that had a logical base. For that, you 'escaped'. That's what a 'leap' is: a sheer act of volition. Nothing about Avarus, Egypt or knowledge about 1st century Judea. GWIT, 21.
As these separated, the upper could be seen in more detail: existentialism appeared, the idea of a 'final' experience or a 'first-order' experience (where you lived but left the normal bounds of reality). Drugs and psychic phenomenon were pursued.
Likewise the sheer grind of the lower: only particulars, without purpose, meaning. Collected in massive amounts. Man is only a machine in this world. GWIT, 22
Aldous Huxley verbalized this about drug use, GWIT, 27.
Then we have the theological version: upper: the crisis 'first-order' experience; faith as sheer optimism without anything to verify or communicate. This in part caused the main appeal of Christian faith to become about crises. That may sound wrong, and it is not meant to sound callouse. But the definitive appeal of Christian faith is not to people in a life crisis. Rather it is the thing which took place in Christ, appealing to the 'just fine, thank you' upstanding person as to the wretched addict. Take the testimony of the athlete turned WW2 soldier stuck in a prison camp and later an alcoholic. All "Christian" content is said to be about his crises. The Billy Graham crusade method was built on this. It is not as though Graham rebuilt the fractured levels of knowledge. What mattered was that God was trying to get through to you about your crisis(es) now.
Lower: Scripture is full of mistakes. General pessimism about life. GWIT, 53.
Notice the curious thing, then, which happened to fundamentalism. Dr. Montgomery, UW Geology, noticed that Christian fundamentalists in about 1900 did not (NOT) believe the Genesis cataclysm to be worldwide. But they did believe in other supernatural things in the Bible, fair enough. They went with the current science, even though that science came from the materialist' presupposition in which this world has been merely a gradualist development. They somehow did not do battle on that geology front.
Still a further chart articulating the split is about modern mysticism, in which language reflects a total loss of anchor:
Upper: a blind optimistic hope of meaning, based on a non-rational leap of faith
Lower: the rational and logical realms which give no meaning. GWIT, 55.
On these lines of separation, we start to see the 'self-affirmations' so common in secular public and education now. Or a city may proclaim that it is "(name)-strong." Notice the misuse of language: "pride" means to upend even categories of child sexual abuse.
(To be fair, there is a type of attachment to a life problem, from which it is important to "let go" and perhaps even add "let God." Without doing so our mental health will suffer. But this is not what leap of faith is meant here, where the underlying thought is that God is too detached to matter.)
In summarizing church history in 1 page, Schaeffer said: 'this age is when people believe the Bible to be historically false but spiritually true.'
Lewis was famously aware of the same thing or split when he decried preachers for rushing to be helpful, and dismissing other questions about faith: "If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all." Unfortunately, people can read that today, and have been so accustomed to thinking that what matters about Christianity is that it is helpful, that they don't know what it means, or why the question came up.
What it means is that it may be helpful, but before that a real man/human wants--and always should want-- to know if it was true! The title of this article by Lewis was "Man Or Rabbit" and men want truth, 'rabbits' want help.
Which brings me back to Avarus, Egypt and Maloney's Exodus doc. It would be extremely interesting to find out some day if Bieckmann consciously avoided 'going deeper.' Had he gone deeper in Goshen, he may have found that Avarus confirmed the presence of Syro-Canaanite artefacts and very specific confirmations of a Joseph figure. A water channel from a lake to Goshen is named the Joseph water way.
Instead an agnostic, Dr. Rohl (in Maloney's Exodus doc), somewhat removed from the German scholarship, has no problem confirming Genesis. (Cp. the geologist Ager about cataclysm. He can't bring himself to confirm Genesis, but he confirms catastrophism on every page of his NEW CATASTROPHISM book).
We who are Biblical thinkers seek the reunification of the split world, for there is none in Biblical view. We must make sure we know it is one of the key issues of our time in order to speak to it, and we are of no help unless we are speaking to it.
See also my THE WORLD-SPLITTER audio at Interplans.net, about Lyell's geology.
THE STAIRCASE
