Magi Mike’s Blog

A research abstract at PhysOrg.com tells us:

Researchers have long been fascinated by the secrets of Ramet Rahel, located on a hilltop above modern-day Jerusalem. The site of the only known palace dating back to the kingdom of Biblical Judah, digs have also revealed a luxurious ancient garden with an advanced irrigation system.

The rest of the review shows that this summary statement is wrong. The garden and palace are not from the time of the “biblical kingdom of Judah”, which ended with the Babylonian conquest in 586 BC, but from the Persian period which must have been at least fifty years later, and was more likely 200 years later in the fourth century BC.

The evidence is provided by the nature of the irrigation systems which were like those the Persians were noted for constructing, the exotic plants in the garden which came from Persia and further east, and C14 dating will have left little room for doubt. When it comes to the bible, there is no such thing as lying.

The truth is that the biblical kingdom of Judah is largely fictitious. Little of its scriptural history has ever been found confirmed in the ground, and much of what has, like the claim here, is false or misreported. The evidence as opposed to the myth suggests the kingdom of Judah existed just 150 years—from about 730 BC to 586 BC—as a rump of the previous kingdom of Israel, and a puppet of the Assyrians. It was left poor and uncolonized by the Babylonians, and was not resettled as soon as the Persians took control, as the myth makes out, but much later probably in response to a rebellion in the fifth century that required a Persian punitive expedition to Jerusalem. It is after this that the palace and garden described in this work flourished.

How Darius II founded Judaism is explained in detail at the main askwhy website.

A study, coauthored by Notre Dame social scientists, Darren W Davis and Donald B Pope-Davis, focusing on African American Catholics, challenges common assumptions about one of the Black community’s less popular Christian churches. Commissioned by the National Black Catholic Congress and the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Church Life and Office of the President, it tested whether anecdotal accounts that Black Catholics were becoming increasingly disengaged from their religion were true. It is historic in that it is the largest sample of African American Catholics ever surveyed on their faith. Although the focus of the survey is on African American Catholics, a comparison is made with white Catholics, yielding notable findings about them too. Among the findings of the survey are:

• On almost every measure of religious engagement, African American Catholics are considered stronger in their faith than white Catholics:
  • 78 percent of Black Catholics report that their parish meets their spiritual needs compared to only 69 percent of white Catholics.
  • 76 percent of African American Catholics say their parish meets their emotional needs, compared to 60 percent of white Catholics.
  • 48 percent of African Americans attend church at least once per week, compared to only 30 percent of white Catholics.
• A major difference in the religious engagement between African American Catholics and white Catholics is the importance each group attaches to social networks in the parish.
  • 29 percent of African Americans considered it was important that friends attended their church, while only eight percent of white Catholics considered it important.

African American’s increased appreciation of religious social interactions and tendency to attend all Black parishes contributes to their satisfaction. Davis commented:

This finding also shows up among African American Catholics who attend predominantly black parishes. A greater sense of community that comes from worshipping with others who share cultural heritage heightens religious engagement. Whatever forces are working against white Catholics’ religious identity and engagement were set in motion decades ago and those forces do not appear to be working against African American Catholics. Thus, it is quite possible that understanding African American Catholicity may inform us about the religious challenges of white Catholics. Too often we approach questions of religiosity in a vacuum. Comparable studies of religiosity are critical.

While there is generally high satisfaction with various aspects of Mass and church service, such as preaching, music, readings and prayers, Catholics’—both white and black Americans—level of satisfaction with these aspects of Mass are noticeably lower than Protestants. Pope-Davis noted:

This finding is interesting because we often hear anecdotal complaints about the Catholic Mass as quiescent, but most Catholics do not share this view. But, relative to the components of Protestant church service, Catholics are not as satisfied.

Racial Discontent

Despite their high level of religious engagement, African American Catholics are not completely satisfied with the scope of racial inclusiveness in the Church:

• About one in four African American Catholics perceive racism in their parish:
  • 32 percent say they are uncomfortable because they are the only person of color in their parish
  • 26 percent say that fellow parishioners avoid them because of their race,
  • 24 percent say that fellow parishioners reluctantly shake their hands
  • 25 percent say they have experienced racial insensitivity toward African Americans from their priest.
• African American Catholics see room for growth in the racial positions of the Catholic Church:
  • 37 percent are satisfied with the targeting of black vocations
  • 38 percent are satisfied with the Church’s emphasis on black saints
  • 40 percent are satisfied with promoting black bishops
  • 40 percent are satisfied with the Church’s support for issues like affirmative action
  • 44 percent are satisfied with the Church’s position on problems in Africa
  • 45 percent are satisfied with the promotion of racial integration in the Church.
• But 23 percent of African Americans consider the Catholic Church racist against African Americans.

Davis points out:

Asking questions about abstract racism in the Church breaks down somewhat when asked about specific elements of the Church. This is not that unusual in survey research. But, it is clear that while there are still challenges for many African American Catholics in their parishes, the views of the institutional Church are more jaundiced or jaded.

The survey also uncovered notable national demographic trends that are evident within religious denominations that have great consequences for the future church:

• 53 percent of African American Catholics and 53 percent of African American Protestants are at least 45 years old, compared to 63 percent of white Catholics and 62 percent of white Protestants
• 33 percent of African American Catholics and 35 percent of African American Protestants are married, compared to 21 percent of white Catholics and 14 percent of white Protestants.
• A larger percentage of African American Catholics have college degrees than African American Protestants, but a larger percentage of Catholics are college educated.

Summary

The US’s estimated three million Black Catholics are highly educated and deeply engaged in the church. They value the social and communal aspects of religious worship and some are concerned about the status of racism within the church—some are discontent about racial inclusiveness in the church. Nearly one in four respondents felt that the Catholic Church is racist against African Americans. More than 31 percent say they are uncomfortable because they are the only person of color in their parish, and about a quarter say that fellow parishioners avoid them because of their race, that fellow parishioners reluctantly shake their hands and that they have experienced racial insensitivity from their priest.

The research team hopes that the information gathered in the survey will help the Catholic church respond more efficiently to the needs of parishioners. Pope-Davis observed:

The forces that shape white Catholicity are different from the forces that shape African American Catholicity.

Israeli archaeologists have uncovered ancient coins near the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City which challenge the assumption that all of the walls of the Second Temple were built by Herod, the Roman puppet king of Judah, in his long project to reconstruct the Jerusalem Temple. The Western Wall was the perimeter and retaining wall of the Jewish Temple destroyed by Jerusalem’s Roman conquerors in 70 AD. Also called the Wailing Wall, it is now a shrine for pious Jews. Ignorant people think it is part of Solomon’s temple, while others, largely on the basis of the bible, say it was built by king Herod, the gospel baby killer. Even archaeologists and scholars largely agreed that Herod had built the Temple and its retaining walls in an enormous project begun about 22 BC and completed by his death in 4 BC. Every Jerusalem tour guide has Herod as the answer to the question, “Who built this massive wall?”

In 2011, Israeli archaeologists reported they had found ancient coins buried under the foundations of the Western Wall minted 20 years after King Herod’s death in 4 BC. Eli Shukron, an archaeologist from the Israel Antiquities Authority who led the dig, with Professor Ronny Reich of Haifa University, explained:

Until today, accepted wisdom said that all the walls were built by Herod. When we found these coins which were dated about 20 years after Herod’s death, we understood that it couldn’t have been him who built this part of the wall.

No wall can be built without first laying down its foundations, so anything found beneath them must have been dropped or put there before the foundations were laid. In fact, these coins were not directly under the foundations of the wall, but in an underground ritual bath (mikveh) filled in to allow the foundation stones of the Western Wall to be laid across part of it. These coins were in the part not built on, but were beneath the infill, so were dropped or put there before the mikveh had been filled in so that the wall’s base could be constructed. The Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement:

This bit of archaeological information illustrates the fact that the construction of the Temple Mount walls and (the adjacent) Robinson’s Arch was an enormous project that lasted decades and was not completed during Herod’s lifetime.

According to Israel Antiquities Authority, of the several coins found, the latest of them were struck by the Roman Prefect of Judea, Valerius Gratus, in the year 17/18 AD. By that time, Tiberius was emperor, and Jerusalem had been ruled by Roman governors for a decade. As construction could not have started before then, the coins may back up Josephus’s story that the wall was finished by Agrippa II, Herod’s great grandson. Or the building of the wall might have been much later by Hadrian, who rebuilt Jerusalem and made it into a gentile city called Ælia Capitolina.

Josephus wrote that, when the work finally ended in 63 AD, 18,000 builders and masons were unemployed. To avoid trouble, Agrippa set them to paving the streets of Jerusalem. But it was only postponing the trouble, for soon the streets were paved, and again there was an army of tough men unemployed. According to Josephus, their agitation was important in bringing on the Jewish war against the Romans beginning in 66 AD, which led to the closure and partial demolition of the temple.

The mikveh and the coins were discovered metres from the Western Wall during controversial excavations of a 2,000 year old drainage channel which stretches from a site near the Western Wall and close to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third holiest site in Islam and known to Moslems as Haram al-Sharif or the Noble Sanctuary. It then runs under the Old City walls to end in the Arab neighbourhood of Silwan. Jerusalem has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six Day War, so Palestinians consider excavations there as being an illegitimate and provocative desecration of a Moslem holy place.

Philip Jenkins writes (The Jesus Wars):

The Church organized public exhibitions to show how the Pagan priests had contrived some of the miraculous tricks by which they overawed the simple.

This sentence should give pause to the faithful but gullible readers of the bible, for some of the Old Testament miracles might have been priestly magic on just the lines the Christians here were debunking. The ancient Greeks arranged for water to turn to wine on a grand scale by clever plumbing. They could do “Open Sesame” types of miracles by having immense stone doors that would open at a touch. The ancient Persians had batteries of iron and copper rods dipped into wine or citrus juices, with which they must have been able to make sparks, and might have been able to use to light barrels of oil instantly. Perhaps the Greeks used the same trick for instant illumination at Eleusis.

So the rumblings and pyrotechnics on Mount Zion described in the bible could have been a show put on for the faithful believers, especially as we read they could only be observed by the people from a distance, so they had no idea what was really going on.

My book (What Evolution Is, 2001) attempts to explain evolution. I don’t need to prove it again, evolution is so clearly a fact that you need to be committed to something like a belief in the supernatural if you are at all in disagreement with evolution. It is a fact and we don’t need to prove it anymore. Nonetheless, we must explain why it happened and how it happens.

Ernst Mayr, 1904-2005

Ernst Mayr was a long lived and very eminent biologist, who based his thinking on the theory of evolution, just as all successful biological scientists must. He was interviewed by edge.org, just a few years before he died and was asked:

“How do you account for the fact that in this country, despite the effect of Darwinism on many people in the scientific community, more and more people are god fearing and believe in the 8 days of creation?”

To which he replied: “You know you cannot give a polite answer to that question”.

The Edge interviewer insisted:

We appreciate impolite, impolitical, answers.

So Mayr replied, saying:

They recently tested a group of schoolgirls. They asked, “Where is Mexico?”. Do you know that most of the kids had no idea where Mexico is? I’m using this only to illustrate the fact that—and pardon me for saying so—the average American is amazingly ignorant about just about everything. If he was better informed, how could he reject evolution? If you don’t accept evolution, then most of the facts of biology just don’t make sense. I can’t explain how an entire nation can be so ignorant, but there it is.

The Reason a Whole Nation can be Ignorant is Religion

In the Dark Ages, Europe was called Christendom. It was under Christian dominion, and few people could read because the Christians neglected all scholarship, and the whole of classical learning in favour of devotion to God. Only clerics were supposed to be able to read, and what they were supposed to read was devotional writing, especially, of course, the bible, although it was available only in Latin. Many monks could not even read their bibles, and simply learnt passages off by heart to mumble their way through Mass, which was also given in Latin. A few scholarly monks could read and write, and are now famous—they are remembered for it! They were, of course, the teachers of the ordinary clerics, who didn’t bother to do their lessons. So it continued for 600 years.

The situation in the USA now is getting similar to how it was in the fifth and sixth centuries in Europe when classical scholarship and even cleanliness was being discouraged as vanity by the clerics. The modern clerics, right wing pastors interested more in money than morals, oppose modern learning, like the theory of evolution, and large numbers of Americans follow them in decrying evolutionary theory and science in general. The outcome can only be bad—a parallel with medieval Europe. The USA cannot possibly remain the leading technological nation while teaching religious dogmata rather than modern science. Already the USA is falling completely behind countries like China and India, and is in a state of economic collapse.

Americans have to decide whether they want to retain the leadership they established over the twentieth century, or rapidly fall into a vainglorious yet worthless piety ending in the destitution of a new Dark Age.

J C Flugel, an eminent psychologist of the mid twentieth century, pointed out (Man, Morals and Society):

When those who assert the existence of God, at the same time reveal that they ardently desire Him to exist, we are justified in feeling a little skeptical.

The skepticism arises because one has to suspect “wishful thinking” is the basis of their assertion. The desire that God exists burns so furiously in the believer’s busom that they convince themselves it must be so. It is a self deception.

There is another, a better reason for skepticism, that of the scientist. The scientist is skeptical on principle about any claim that is not tested until such time as it is adequately tested and shown to be so. It is a principle that excludes all self deception and gullibility, which otherwise would lead us to accept whatever we choose or prefer out of the many available explanations whether possible or impossible.

Added to the skeptical principle in science is the principle of Ockham’s Razor, introduced in the later middle ages by a cleric in an attempt to eliminate what might be called Sufism—the multiplication of “explanatory” entities—from Christian theology. It found its most valuable place in science in successfully keeping scientific hypotheses to a minimum of complexity.

So, for example, the believer will say the postulation of God explains inexplicable things like the existence of the universe, why we are here, what we do after death, and so on. It does no such thing, and violates both the skeptical principle and Ockham’s Razor.

Take the case of the creation of the universe. We can certainly observe the world in which we live, but we cannot observe a God. The believer invents an entity, God, for which there is no direct evidence, to explain a very large and evident entity that we know does exist, then says that the nonentity created the large and evident entity, QED. On the skeptical principle, we have to reject the argument because there is still no evidence for the imaginary entity, God, other than our new conjecture that He created the universe. That is circular. God is a fudge! His imagined supernatural nature is another fudge, one which explains why God cannot be detected!

And we now have two entities to consider, the universe which we confirm in our daily lives, and God, which is a fudge to explain the universe, but otherwise leaves no traces anywhere. We are actually no better off, because, even if we are convinced by the fudgy explanation, we still have something to explain—God. Contrary to the clerical Razor of Ockham, we have mutiplied entities from one to two, and are left as badly off as before with an explanation for one of them still needed.

That, of course, is no problem to the Christian, devoid of any need for principle, but overflowing with Sufi answers. The existence of God needs no explanation because He is eternal, He lives forever and is the Prime Mover of everything else. Yet God is explained by introducing a new principle, that of an eternal life for God. But, if God, the imaginary entity, can be eternal, we are left with the question of why the universe itself could not be eternal, again using Ockham’s razor to cut out the superfluous entity with the astonishing properties it has to have for it to perform all these miracles.

The universe is before us. If it were eternal, then that would suffice to remove the need for the postulate of God. The believer will jump forward full of agitation, telling us that science has shown the universe has a beginning in the Big Bang. It is not eternal, so we must go for the believer’s hypothesis of God. Well, if believers could formulate God mathematically, we might begin to be convinced, but so far they cannot. Science however has found and tested a large number of mathematical theorems that can still offer us naturalistic explanations, even if they are getting more and more wonderful, beginning to look like Sufi science, perhaps, with the difference that these mathematics work!

The discovery of complex numbers allows physicists to postulate virtual events, events that take place in complex time. Maybe complex time is God, for the Big Bang has been explained as no bang with the use of complex time. We think of time as being linear, starting from the Big Bang, but complex time yields a multidimensional time, not just the linear one, and that means time need not begin at all. The linear time that we experience is an illusion, and what seems like a bursting forth of vast amounts of energy in linear time is more of a continous pulsation in virtual time.

Then again, there is the theory of quantum mechanics which has led to truly wonderful things, not least of which is the notion of the multiverse. It seems that all events possible can happen somewhere in this multiverse which therefore is indeed conceptually infinite, though there may be a limit set by the graininess of space and time themselves, but even so there could be so many universes withing the multiverse, that even God would need assistance. Unless of course we postulate a multitude of Gods serving each possible universe, and perhaps a multi-God in change of the lot!

Science is apparently confirming that something transcends the universe we can observe directly, just as believers have believed. It is the multiverse. Perhaps that is God, but it is not a personal God at all. If anything, it is like the God of the Stoics and the Deists, a set of transcendent laws that even the believer’s local God must be subject to.

Superstitious and ritual behavior can be recognized in many animals, not just humans. The first description of superstitious behavior in animals came from psychologist B F Skinner in 1948. He put hungry pigeons in cages, offering them a few seconds of access to food trays at regular intervals. As long as the intervals were short, the birds began offering up behaviors—like turning round in a particular direction, rocking from side to side or tossing their heads up as if they were lifting a bar. They did these things “as if there were a causal relation between behavior and the presentation of food” (Skinner). Once the behaviors were established, they tended to persist, even as time intervals between feeding lengthened. Skinner’s work compared pigeon behavior to conditioned responses—the birds evidently thought their actions were causal when they were not. Moreover, they persist even when experience shows they are false.

Yet such behavior is not free—they have a cost in terms of energy and lost opportunities. It makes no sense for organisms to think something they do influences the future when it cannot. How then can superstitious and ritual behavior arise by natural selection?

In 1977, Peter R Killeen, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University, challenged Skinner’s analysis. He gave his pigeons opportunities to detect whether or not a result was due to their actions or simply random. Killeen found that the birds could judge cause and effect, at least when they had all the information they needed. They could distinguish subtle differences, even scoring as well as humans making the same discriminations. He found it was insufficient data that led birds to the wrong conclusions. The data they had led to the false belief and they had no way of rectifying it.

Kevin Abbott, biologist at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, and co-author with Thomas Sherratt of study published in Animal Behaviour, explains:

From an evolutionary perspective, superstitions seem maladaptive.

Perhaps superstition is adaptive as a placebo, or for social bonding, or maybe it is maladaptive now, but came from traits that once were adaptive, rather like behavioral wisdom teeth.

Foster and Kokko, in 2009 compared superstition to a bet. A mouse, hearing a rustle in the grass, quickly finds a cat leaping on it, and dives into a hole. Subsequently the mouse figures it as an odds on bet it’s a cat whenever it hears a rustle, and dives underground, even when the rustle is just the wind. Its diving habit reflects the mouse’s lack of data—it can’t tell whether the rustle is a dangerous cat in the grass or just the wind.

Abbott and Sherratt’s work goes a step further, designing choice, multiple trials, and experience into their model, so the animal can learn from experience, allowing for change or retention of the superstition or ritual. On any given trial, the animal must decide whether to give the action that maximizes its expected fitness based on current information—exploit—or to give the action that provides the most information about the true nature of the causal relationship—explore. Now the results tend to follow common sense. The animal will stop a superstition if it is not too expensive in comparison with its old ways—the model predicts what we tend to see in real life.

Superstitions are more likely when the cost of the superstition is low relative to the perceived benefits, and when the individual’s prior beliefs suggest that the superstition is true. Both the total number of learning trials available, and the nature of the individual’s uncertainty affect the probability of superstition, but the nature of these effects depends on the individual’s prior beliefs. Humans will be convinced a lucky charm doesn’t work, the more times they carry it only when they originally believed it would. If they did not believe initially, carrying it long enough could give enough apparent positives that they might begin to believe it has some effect. Adaptive learning can be leading us to places we shouldn’t go. But Killeen thinks something is left out of their model:

Sometimes simpler answers suffice. For beasts like us who are never quite sure that we are well enough informed, taking that multivitamin and knocking wood puts the semblance of control back in our hands, and that feels good.

So we have to have some way of distinguishing the validity of a belief, but when the belief is deliberately involved, and is justified whatever the outcome by pseudoscientific explanations and sophistry, it is hard to make the distinctions. That is the case with religions. They certainly offer false feelings of having some control over things through ritual and prayer, and so professional clergy can generally find arguments to pacify doubters. Thus when horrific events shock us as they just have in Oslo, the clergy will say, “Thank God it wasn’t worse”, and immediately hold a memorial service… and lo! people feel better about it!

Archaeologists digging at Tel Shikmona, on the southern edge of Israel’s city of Haifa, starting only at the start of 2011, have uncovered signs of settlement from the late Bronze Age (sixteenth century BC) to the Moslem occupation of the seventh century AD, including a well preserved “four room” house from the time of the Kingdom of Israel (900-700 BC), a Persian city (about 400 BC) and a Byzantine town (about 500 AD). The site was excavated about 40 years ago by the late Yosef Algavish but neglected and piles of rubbish, and construction waste were piled over the site for the decades, and vehicles have ploughed over it. Dr Shay Bar and Dr Michael Eisenberg of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, explained:

We had seen the structure in the old photographs, and were sorry that such a rarely preserved finding had disappeared due to neglect. We were not even sure that we would be able to find it again. It was practically a miracle that we managed to locate and uncover it and that it is still so well preserved.

The photographs of the 1970s excavations he speaks of show a “four room” house dating around 700-800 BC. It is a house typical of Canaanite houses of the time, but which biblicists all too often assign exclusively to Israel, taken to be the “Ancient Israel” of the bible. The state of Israel in that period was itself typically Canaanite with an essentially Phœnician culture and language, Hebrew being a Canaanite dialect. Evidence is a personal seal found in the same excavation, showing an inscription in Hebrew or Phœnician. The archaeologists hope to determine whether the inscription is Phoenician or Hebrew, a bit like wanting to know whether a recording of a New Yorker’s accent is Bronx or East Side.

Hundreds of murex mollusc shells were also found at the site, the source of the purple dye called “Tyrean Purple”. Sherds of purple colored ceramic from pitchers evidently used to store the dye extracted from the snails. Imported luxuries from Cyprus and the coast of Lebanon arrived in fine, delicate vessels of high quality ceramic, evidence of extensive trade with neighbors in the region and even overseas. It was the Canaanites of the coastal towns of Tyre, Sidon, Beirut and Arad who were the seamen, not the Israelites, but for a short period before it was annexed by Assyria, Israel was prosperous, perhaps because it controlled trade between the interior and Arabia and the coastal cities.

The Phœnicians (a Greek name for them) were noted traders and merchants and accomplished sailors who traded throughout the Mediterranean and provided the Mediterranean fleet for the Persian shahs. Elsewhere on the site evidence of the Persian settlement of the area was found including a Persian building (fourth century BC) with an oven, clay loom weights and storage pitchers. It was only with the arrival of the Persian colonists towards the end of the fifth century that the Jewish temple state based on Jerusalem began. The colonists identified themselves with, the now defunct but once prosperous, state of Samaria (Israel) to give themselves a mythical history, as the Askwhy website explains.

Above the Persian layer on the eastern side of the tell were Byzantine terraces (fourth-seventh centuries AD) bearing houses with mosaic floors and storage rooms. Dozens of ceramic vessels there were found intact, and many coins, ornaments, pendants, weapons and glass vessels also, suggesting a wealthy people. It seems the area was wealthy from Canaanite times until the Moslem conquest. When Pompey arrived in Palestine in the first century BC, it was still a prosperous, fortified city, but after the Bronze Age and before the ninth century BC it was sparsely settled. It was a long period of drought.

Jewish and Christian Fundamentalists think God wrote their bibles, and as God is perfection, the bible cannot be wrong—it is inerrant. Even less extreme Jews and Christians think the Torah or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses were written by Moses. Others think the various books were written by the authors cited—Daniel wrote Daniel, David wrote the Psalms, John wrote John, and so on.

Modern biblical scholarship suggests biblical text was written by different authors whose work could be identified by seemingly different ideological agendas and linguistic styles, and such idiosyncracies as the different names they used for God. Some of the books were written by priests after the temple had been well established, and they were keen on maximizing their revenue and influence. Other parts reflected a period before the temple was properly established, and before the state of Judah had been set up as a temple state. The Christian part of their bible was obviously written with a view to establishing Christianity.

A computer program for analyzing text—a subset of artificial intelligence known as authorship attribution—developed by Israeli scholars led by Moshe Koppel of Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv, shows the joints in the bible where the different authors texts joined together. It picks out differences in style and word choice to show which parts of a single text were written by different authors.

The program confirmed that the Pentateuch could be split into two parts internally related but different from each other, that 90 percent matched the scholars’ division into priestly and non-priestly authorship. Thus it confirmed in minutes what had taken the scholars one to two centuries of meticulous study, effectively recreating years of work by multiple scholars in minutes. The program indicated differences with scholarship in about ten percent of the text, a notable example being Genesis 1. Scholars had called this priestly but the program did not agree. Similarly, scholars had long believed that Isaiah consisted of three texts concatenated, with the join between the first two being at Isaiah 39. The program points to the join being at Isaiah 33. Of course, it might be the program that is wrong!

The program recognizes Hebrew equivalents, and synonyms. It will notice the use of the word “makel” for “staff” as distinct from “mateh” with the same meaning. As a test, the developers of the program randomly jumbled Ezekiel and Jeremiah into one text. The program sorted out the two components “almost perfectly”, undoubtedly an excellent performance, though the styles and language of the two books are very different.

What the algorithm won’t answer, say the authors, is whether the bible is human or divine. Three of the four authors, religious Jews, belief that the Torah was dictated to Moses in its entirety by God. He just chose to write in a mixture of different styles! For academic scholars, arbitrary changes of style—changes for no good reason such as to suggest a change of mood—indicate cutting and pasting human authorship. Koppel insists:

No amount of research is going to resolve that issue.

He serves to show that belief in God destroys all reason, even in otherwise intelligent people.