The TektonTV Thread

[jpholding]

and that J.P "pwned" himself somehow? What? I don't understand how he reached that conclusion. Do I need more coffee to get my brain around it?:)

Apparently, because I did all that work for refuting something that he actually didn't agree with. (Riiiiight.)

But like that matters? He's far from the only one who argues that Elisha was old -- some of his own drones came by in defense last time, including that one who memorably got the two Joashs mixed up. Like I say -- Dumbass Palmer thinks he's the center of the universe.

[ukchristian28]

The only valid point he makes in his first video is that you don't name the scholars you are drawing your information from. I think that is something you ought to consider doing in your next reply.

[jpholding]

The only valid point he makes in his first video is that you don't name the scholars you are drawing your information from. I think that is something you ought to consider doing in your next reply.

Maybe. If I do I'll put it in a supp article. But so much of that is now common knowledge for me that it'd be tedious.

Meanwhile, catch this from one of his drones"

For someone who asserts that they didn't know of male pattern baldness back then. King Ahab sure looks bald in your cartoon. Of Course, the coins we have of him depict a man with a full head of hair and a beard, but don't let facts stop your drawings.

GregQzag

Yeah, that's it. Next he'll whine that Ahab never ate beer and pretzels.

[Hamster]

Uh, did a little fact-checking on your videos, Holding, turns out there's no evidence that Elisha was a shapeshifter. Checkmate.

[jpholding]

Uh, did a little fact-checking on your videos, Holding, turns out there's no evidence that Elisha was a shapeshifter. Checkmate.

Simple: God gave him that power to go along with the bears' super speed.

BTW that makes three of his drones now who have apparently been impressed into thinking he makes a good point re Lev. 13:40. It looks to be his one new and serious argument on the subject, and its so dumb it makes Farrell Till's head hurt.


So has anyone watched his second one yet? I won't have time until tomorrow, because I have a deadline on a freelance article.

[ukchristian28]

Deutrtonomy 14:1 doesn't seem relevant. Apparently it is talking about pagan practices involving mutilating oneself and shaving between the eyebrows, not shaving the whole of the head. Honestly, it only takes a little bit of research!

[Chrawnus]

It's funny how he asserts that "yaled" translates 72 out of 89 (90 according to E-sword) it refers to a child. I'm actually checking that, and it seems he's making a blunder there. For example, Joseph is called yaled by Ruben in Gen 37:30 and Gen 42:22 and the KJV translates it as child, but we know from Gen 37:2 that Joseph was atleast 17 years old when he was thrown into the well/pit.

In Gen 44:20 it's translated child, and there it refers to Benjamin, however, he cannot have been that young, since he was able to travel with the rest of the brothers from the land of Canaan to Egypt to buy grain the second time the brothers went there.

In 1 Ki 14:12 it's used of Abijah, Jeroboam, but there it is a bit unclear how young he is. Some commentaries I read on the matter (John Wesley, Matthew Henry, JFB, Barnes) seem to think he was the oldest son, and heir to the throne. One commentary (JFB) even states that he "was of age". If these commentaries are right, then child as we understand it is not a proper translation here.

In 1 Ki 17:21-23 it is used three times of a widows son (the one in Zarephath in Sidon), but there it is ambigious, it could refer to both a small child, or a youngster.

In Eccl 4:13, yaled is used to refer to a "poor and wise" child/youth/young man and compare it to an old and foolish king. Here youth or young man works much better than child, since it's not very clear how a young child could be considered wise, but it's not as hard to understand how a youth or young man could be considered wise.

In 30:26, yaled is used of all of Jacob's children while he is working for Laban. Given the considerable number of children (11) it's not unreasonable to think that some of them could have been youths at the time.

In 33:1-2 it's used again of Jacobs children (3 times), and while again, all of them could be considered children it's not unreasonable to think that some of them could have been youth's, especially as there would have been some time between 30:26 and 33:1-2. The same can be said of Gen 33:5-7 (4 times).and Genesis 33:12-14 (2 times). In 12-14 it is said that his children are frail/tender which could indicate that they were small children, but for that to be true not all of them have to be small children, only some of them.

In Exo 21:4 it is used of the children of a slave woman. Since the emphasis is on the bloodrelation between the woman and the children the age is not important it can refer to a man of any age, as long as the man is the child of said woman.

In 1 Sa 1:2 it is used to refer to the fact that Elkanah's (the father of Samuel) wife Peninnah had children, while Hannah had not. Again, the "children" could be any age, as long as they were Penninah's sons.

In Dan 1:4 it used to refer to the youths who was brought to Babylon along with Daniel, and here it is more properly translated youths which NASB does.

In Dan 1:10 it is used of the youths who are the same age as Daniel, and therefore a more proper translation is youth, and not child. The same can be said of Dan 1:13 1:15 and 1:17 (where it is used of Daniel and his friends).

So in atleast 22 of the 72 cases where the KJV translates yaled as child or children the age of said "children" is either ambiguous or is referring to youths/young men. It could even be more, but I'm too lazy to check.

Though I wonder how the 72 figure would hold up if one checked with newer translations.

[jpholding]

Though I wonder how the 72 figure would hold up if one checked with newer translations.

It probably wouldn't. He most likely just used a simple count of the AV like available from blueletterbible.com. If that's his argument I'll be tearing it into ribbons easily.



I'll repost here something from Screwballs:

**

And now, I will issue a Platinum Screwball nom to Dumbass Palmer himself. I had noted that people in Bible times had no idea what normal male pattern baldness was. His response was to point to Lev. 13:40:

A man who has lost his hair and is bald is clean.


Uhhh...as I will point out in an update to be posted shortly...while this MAY indeed be a description of someone who is undergoing normal male pattern baldness, it is not a diagnostic recognition of it. Their assumption would be that the man had lost his hair due to some disease, or due to loss of virility. They would have had no conception of male pattern baldness as some natural, genetic condition with no specific relationship to loss of virility. Dumbass Palmer is arguing that they were aware of normal male pattern baldness thousands of years before it was diagnosed.

That has got to be the biggest blunder Palmer had made so far in this exchange. Maybe he'll say God told them about it, like He told them (some) about bats.

***

[jpholding]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ozy4i1JTSE

Updated baldness vid.

[jpholding]

OK, time to review Dumbass Palmer's next one...27 minutes, sheesh...

:49 Reiteration: age and baldness are marginal issues for the Skeptic! (Tell that to his friends who make it part of THEIR case and get in a huff when corrected.)

1:10 claims I "shift away" in having the kids come from Bethel. No, not hardly. Bandits and do-badders are just as much able to do urban work as rural. Also errs in thinking I suppose that they were "actual representatives of the city" who were "sent out" as official representatives. Nope -- never said that. I do indicate that they took it upon themselves to take the role that would ordinarily be taken by elders, and in so doing, would have been usurping the position of the elders illicitly -- think of it the same way mafia bosses might run a town.

2:58 here's the bit referred to earlier, which is his survey of the KJV where he says 72 of 89 times it is translated "children". Oh my...gonna kick his tail hard on that one....

4:32 Namaan's skin must have been like a baby's because the "sense" of the passage is that a "miracle has occurred" and it would be more "dramatic" if his skin were like a baby's.

Good night, he sounds like a fundy preacher!

5:00 It also had to be like a baby's because we have a phrase TODAY, "soft as a baby's skin." "duh:

5:59 Re a female version of qatan na'ar in 2 Kings 5:2: The female version of na'ar always refers to an unmarried girl, that must be a small child too. It can't mean "social status" because she is defined already as someone who waits on her masters.

6:33 "Dah, how can Holding find so much context in 2 Kings to define qatan na'ar and not everywhere else? That means we can also define all the other uses as 'vagrant wanderers'." Then he spends the next 4 minutes burning THAT strawman.

He sure is counting on his memetic drones eating this up, isn't he? I never equated "vagrant wanderer" with qatan na'ar; my literal rendering of that in 2 Kings 2 was "insignificant men" and their profession was designated as vagrant wanderers by other contexts. To make his drones even more confused, at the end he mixes the two meanings as though I were saying, "low class vagrant wanderers" was the whole meaning of qatan na'ar.

11:39 "Dah, why didn't Holding pick up my challenge about other words that could have been used, like bandits?"

12:20 First he says, "Dah, is making fun of baldness really that serious a crime?" Yes, he continues to tell his drones that it was nothing but "good natured ribbing." I'm going to have a few words to say about honor challenges after this...

13:14 For the first time he actually makes use of his stolen bowdlerized Bomber, though only as a still picture

13:29 But then, contrary to his tone in 12:20, he now shows my material about Elisha as covenant broker.

14:05 It couldn't be treason unless the pagan qatan na'ar actually believed in Yahweh as god.

Oh my word. Someone is very stupid about the nature of ancient polytheism....

14:37 If they had wanted to rob Elisha, they would not have called attention to themselves but snuck up on him.

15:04 The story works well as describing little kids because little kids are naughty like that.

15:27 The possession of rocks and cudgels is supplied by my imagination.

15:47 Anyone notice his toon of me is several years out of date?

15:51 Reburns the strawman of earlier, now applying "insignificant male" to all the other uses of qatan na'ar (even though I didn't say all of them could take that meaning; the part about Namaan sure can't, and I said clearly that it was not likely to apply to Hadad). He's also mixing together "little" and "young" as though they are exactly the same, and assuming "boy" rather than male.

16:56 "Little or young" works best for Solomon because he's referring to his lack of wisdom. Apparently dum dum hasn't heard that kings, in contrast to everyday people, were regarded as repositories of wisdom.

17:40 Though he agrees that it can mean someone of low social status in 1 Samuel, if he finds that in other uses it means little or young, then that means we must poof the Samuel use over to meaning little or young.

19:13 Repeats the yaled silliness.

19:45 Oh my, he went out and spoke with some scholars! And guess what? They just say, "yeah, it's little children"....but, uh, did they give any reasons to think my view was wrong? Nope. One claimed it was a "common idiom" to mean YOUNGER....but oops...didn't I say, how about "younger than Elisha" was also open? And only 5 uses doesn't make for a "common idiom". Plus, none of these guys would have any clue about the relevance and importance of social status in the ancient world (per the Context Group's own assessment).

21:28 One, Michael Segal, did admit my reading was theoretically possible, but said the combination of the two words, plus yaled, makes "little children" preferable. Some argument -- the one I rebutted!

22:15 Roster of commentaries that agree with him (but provide no arguments to rebut mine). Including Clarke's hundreds years old commentary.














More ahead.

[Hamster]

42 babies sneaking up on a bald old man... the picture is clear

[jpholding]

24:18 Spends the next 1 1/2minutes listing Bible translations that agree with him.

26:27 Apparently he thinks when I referred to lack of awareness of monographs, et al I was referring specifically to them being about 2 Kings 2:23-5. Uh no...I mean about the social world of the Bible in general.

And that's it. Piece of cake. Will get right on that.

[jpholding]

Great comment by a viewer:

Bald butt, lol... I must have been delusional when I thought I saw his butt hair chopped off, because I know he lost it naturally.

PrinceOfPerelandra

I'm done with the composition part of the update to Lost Lexicon 2...just need to add effects and such. Should be up in an hour or two. I think I'll eat lunch first.

[ukchristian28]

The frustrating thing about it J.P is that the vast majority of the people who watch his replies to you are just going to pat him on the back and not even bother looking at what you have to say in response. His video already has 321 likes and only 2 dislikes. It's terribly sad really.

[jpholding]

The frustrating thing about it J.P is that the vast majority of the people who watch his replies to you are just going to pat him on the back and not even bother looking at what you have to say in response. His video already has 321 likes and only 2 dislikes. It's terribly sad really.

Of course, and even those who do watch mine don't pay attention. Look what one nimnul just left:

You offer no evidence to support the unlikely assertion that a lack of pictures of bald men in the historical record is a necessary and sufficient cause to believe that baldness was indeed rare at the time. Again, it is a legitimate reservation to reject the assertion for lack of evidence: science suggests male pattern baldness, which is closely correlated to elevated testosterone levels, is a normal occurrence in every male population.

Uhhhh....never mind that within 30 seconds of that part, I ALSO clearly say I don't agree with that argument FOR THAT VERY REASON, even quoting my original response to "DarthBobCat" (a Christian) when he asked about it with V1 of the vid. I mean come on....this is clearly stupidity on a massive scale here.

I already noted too that most won't look at my responses -- you helped me figure that out:

http://tektonforge.blogspot.com/2011...e-boobs-2.html
http://tektonforge.blogspot.com/2011...r-blowups.html

And I'm sure he knows this all, too. As I revamped Raiders Part 2 today, what was amazing was how much of what I said he just ignored -- particularly the points about child soldiers of Hezbollah, and the honor challenge to Elisha (he says I thought they were out to rob Elisha, which I never said anywhere! -- he also attributes at least two other false views to me). He certainly knows he can get away with this because almost no one will check his claims about what I say -- and those that do will not care. For example: How much you want to bet "0gods" will not admit he missed that part of the vid where I explain my disagreement?

His appeal to scholars is a riot too, since in prior contexts he freely has denigrated conservative scholars (including one of the very ones he uses, Provan) because they were conservative, whereas now he feels free to use them for his purposes. So they're OK when he agrees with them, apparently.

If he ever showed up here...he won't...it'd be a blast and a half.