Is OT the oldest book in the world?

Saint

Saint

Valued Senior Member
Is Hebrew OT the oldest book in the world?
If it is about beginning of the world, then it must be the oldest book, is there any proof or disproof about this point? ;)
 
Gilgamesh is the oldest book in the world, c. 2700BCE. Compared to even things like the inscriptions on the pyramids (and other Egyptian temples) the OT is a mere stripling, most of which dates from between 600 BCE and 300 BCE.

If it is about beginning of the world, then it must be the oldest book, is there any proof or disproof about this point?
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Notwithstanding the wink, there is no "proof or disproof", it's simply a fallacious statement. This is a book about the Big Bang which took place 13.7 billion years ago, but it ain't a 13.7 billion year old book. Genesis does not claim to have been taken down at dictation speed by any eyewitness to the events.
 
Silas said:
Gilgamesh is the oldest book in the world, c. 2700BCE.
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I've also heard that it is the four Vedas (Rg Veda, being the oldest) age accounts vary.

I've also heard that it is The Book of Changes from 3000 BCE.
I've also heard that it is The Pyramid Texts from 3100 BCE.
etc...
But no, it is certainly not the Torah.
 
Beowulf was "written" about 1100 CE (at least that's the oldest extant manuscript).
About 4000 years after The Book of Changes.
Although the folklore is sometimes dated as far back as 700 CE, the story was written with direct references to places and stories in the Bible, so it couldn't have been written BEFORE it.
 
If it's in Etruscan, it probably dates from the first millennium BCE. At any rate, Googling has failed to find any reference to this, so if you could provide a link, that would be good.
 
This[/url] is a book about the Big Bang which took place 13.7 billion years ago, but it ain't a 13.7 billion year old book. Genesis does not claim to have been taken down at dictation speed by any eyewitness to the events.[/QUOTE]

This is actually only half correct. The claim for Genesis is not that it was written at the moment of creation but that it is a record of an eye-witness (i.e. God the Creator) albeit written down much later by a human being(although perhaps not as much later as some might believe!). You can choose to believe it or not but that certainly is the claim.

Who was the eye witness around with a suitable calendar to tell us that a 'Big Bang' heppened 13.7 billion years ago (statement of absolute fact). Was his calendar right? Are you sure it was not 13.6, 13.5 etc.?

The faith that atheists have in absolutely accurate extrapolations (to one decimal place) based upon a whole series of totally unproven (and indeed unprovable) a priori assumptions does I have to say never cease to amaze me, particularly as 'The Big Bang' is not even universally agreed to have happened even amongst atheists and is actually only a 'flavour of the month' (or possibly of a few decades). It could well go out of fashion and be replaced by a new 'absolute fact' with a very different start date at any time, just as previous atheistic 'facts' about the origin of the universe have come and gone.

As this is meant to be a science forum, why is it that people do not understand that science.

Dictionary Definition: . 'The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.'

It is about producing a hypothesis (theory, idea, etc.) and then seeing whether it fits known facts (data) available from research, experiment etc. If it fits all the data available well, it can be considered a 'reasonable' hypothesis (theory idea etc.) until (if) someone produces a theory which fits the data better. Hypothesis 1 then has to be 'scientifically' disregarded in favour of Hypothesis 2. Note the words 'fact' and 'proof' do not appear in the dictionary definition. It is 'a theoretical explanation' (note especially 'theoretical' and 'a' not 'the').

Science is not about the absolute proof of anything, not even physical things in the here and now let alone what may or may not have happened long ago.

The truth is that the various origin theories including 'Big Bang' are actually simply metaphysical philosophy masquerading as science.

regards,



Gordon.
 
From the article you linked to:
The book dates back to 600BC
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Being the oldest extant book is a great deal different than being the oldest book.

Cool article, though.
Thanks
 
Gordon,
That's all well and good, but the question was regarding the oldest "book", not the oldest story.
 
Even then, it's not the oldest "book" in the strict definition of the term. It may count as being the oldest codex, specifically a book made up of multiple pages, though those pages are 24 carat gold rather than any parchment or paper.

Gordon said:
Who was the eye witness around with a suitable calendar to tell us that a 'Big Bang' heppened 13.7 billion years ago (statement of absolute fact). Was his calendar right? Are you sure it was not 13.6, 13.5 etc.?

The faith that atheists have in absolutely accurate extrapolations (to one decimal place) based upon a whole series of totally unproven (and indeed unprovable) a priori assumptions does I have to say never cease to amaze me, particularly as 'The Big Bang' is not even universally agreed to have happened even amongst atheists and is actually only a 'flavour of the month' (or possibly of a few decades). It could well go out of fashion and be replaced by a new 'absolute fact' with a very different start date at any time, just as previous atheistic 'facts' about the origin of the universe have come and gone.
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I thought one decimal place was quite funny - that's actually a full 100 million years, or about the time the continents broke up here on earth. Indeed the ability to cross match many different observations, some of which are mind-bogglingly complex, and arrive at a figure as accurate as that, is indeed amazing. I'm not amazed, however, at bizarre concepts of "faith" in this figure, based on "unprovable assumptions", I'm amazed at the capacity of the human animal to make such discoveries and to make further discoveries on that basis. For your information, the only "unprovable assumption" involved in such a determination is that the laws of physics as far as they have so far been determined are what we think they are. The 13.7 billion year figure, by the way, has been arrived at only very recently, in the last decade or less. Prior to that most textbooks would either say "about 15 billion years" or "somewhere between 10 and 20 billion years". That this figure has been refined is hardly a surprise. But you may be sure that every observation and deduction that led to that figure was checked, double checked and triple checked, across continents, by a substantial body of the scientific community, undoubtedly working in many different disciplines.

Gordon said:
This is actually only half correct. The claim for Genesis is not that it was written at the moment of creation but that it is a record of an eye-witness (i.e. God the Creator) albeit written down much later by a human being(although perhaps not as much later as some might believe!). You can choose to believe it or not but that certainly is the claim.
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I'm not quite sure what you're claiming here. The only record in the Bible of the Bible itself being written is the account that Ezra dictated the 94 books (of which the "public" books are the 24 OT law & prophets books, plus 70 "secret" ones). Ezra did this as part of the return from the Exile. It therefore counts as one of the latest events the Bible even admits to, so I'm not quite sure where you got "written down much later, but not as much later as some might believe". Please note, I'm talking about Biblical evidence for biblical composition, let alone what secular scholarship has determined about how and when the Bible was written. Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is only tradition, and not only is not recorded in the Bible, it contradicts it.
 
Much of the sanscrit that forms the Bhagavad Gita dates back some 4000BCE.
 
Actually, the earliest Vedas were written down around 1500-500 BCE. The Bhagavad Gita comes after these if memory serves correct. At any rate, the earliest writings weren't until around 3270 BCE in all human cultures -the 1st examples being Mesopotamian and Indus Valley glyphs that eventually evolved into scripts. The Egyptian dynasties followed soon after.
 
Gordon said:
Who was the eye witness around with a suitable calendar to tell us that a 'Big Bang' heppened 13.7 billion years ago (statement of absolute fact). Was his calendar right? Are you sure it was not 13.6, 13.5 etc.?

The faith that atheists have in absolutely accurate extrapolations (to one decimal place) based upon a whole series of totally unproven (and indeed unprovable) a priori assumptions does I have to say never cease to amaze me, particularly as 'The Big Bang' is not even universally agreed to have happened even amongst atheists and is actually only a 'flavour of the month' (or possibly of a few decades).
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This level of ignorance or gross intellectual deceit cannot go unremarked, even in the Religion section of the forum.

1. No astronomer, astropysicist, or cosmologist has ever declared as an absolute fact that the Big Bang happened 13.7 billion years ago. To make this statement means either you are unaware of the following:
a) All measurements in science are accompanied by an error range. They are characterised by uncertainty in accuracy and precision.
b) Science has no absolute facts. Science has hypotheses and theories, for which varying levels of evidence give varying levels of confidence in the results.
c) All results are provisional.
If you were unaware of these facts you were ignorant. I hope you are now better informed and understand how nonsensical your statements were. If you were aware of these facts, then you were being dishonest. I trust you now feel appropriately chastised.

2. How you have the unmitigated audacity to presume that the Big Bang can only be believed by athiests is beyond my considerable powers of comprehension. There are a multitude of religions and a plethora of theists, who have no difficulty whatsoever accepting the existence of the Big Bang and of the truth of their religion. Your small minded, sectarian, fundamentalist perspective is akin to view from the interior of a toilet bowl: very limited and frequently accompanied by an unpleasant stench.
 
Quite apart from anything else, the Big Bang theory was notable for being resisted by atheists, most notably Fred Hoyle, when it was first promulgated.

Ophiolite said:
1. No astronomer, astropysicist, or cosmologist has ever declared as an absolute fact that the Big Bang happened 13.7 billion years ago. To make this statement means either you are unaware of the following:
a) All measurements in science are accompanied by an error range. They are characterised by uncertainty in accuracy and precision.
b) Science has no absolute facts. Science has hypotheses and theories, for which varying levels of evidence give varying levels of confidence in the results.
c) All results are provisional.
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The problem, Ophiolite, is that he actually said this himself, and was chastising us atheists with being ignorant of the provisionality of scientific determination. At the same time he was casting doubt on results which have been obtained by rigorous investigation to be the best figure obtainable, and I was trying to emphasise the reliability of the figure as opposed to its unreliability and provisionality.
 
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