Computer Network Piecing Together a Jigsaw of Ancient Jewish Lore 127
First time accepted submitter aravenwood writes "The New York Times and the Times of Israel report today that artificial intelligence and a network of 100 computers in a basement in Tel Aviv University are being used to match 320,000 fragments of documents dating as far back as the 9th century in an attempt to reassemble the original documents. Since the trove of documents from the Jewish community of Cairo was discovered in 1896 only about 4000 of them have been pieced together, and the hope is that the new technique, which involves taking photographs of the fragments and using image recognition and other algorithms to match the language, spacing, and handwriting style of the text along with the shape of the fragment to other fragments could revolutionize not only the study of this trove documents, which has been split up into 67 different collections around the world since its discovery, but also how humanities disciplines study documents like these. They expect to make 12 billion comparisons of different fragments before the project is completed — they have already performed 2.8 billion. Among the documents, some dating from 950, was the discovery of letters by Moses Maimonides and that Cairene Jews were involved in the import of flax, linen, and sheep cheese from Sicily."
Re:Dates? (Score:5, Informative)
According to Wikipedia, Maimonides lived Passover Eve, 1135 to December 12, 1204; how was he able to write a document in 950?
The summary states "Among the documents, some dating from 950 ...". It is pretty clear that the "950" refers to the earliest known date of any of the documents, not the date of all of them.
Re:Once upon a time (Score:4, Informative)
People made stuff up and years later, hundreds of millions of people thought it was real ...
Some of the documents are religious texts, but many others are bills, receipts, inventory lists, and even personal letters. These mundane documents often shed a lot of illumination on how ordinary people lived their lives. Archeologists often learn far more from looking at a civilization's garbage dumps, than from their treasures.
Nontrinitarianism is another possibility (Score:4, Informative)
Saying the names of god, all 9 \times 10^9 of them (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps it's a fear of the end of the world that leads to such superstitions such as not saying god's name, or in Harry potter stories the continual references to "He who shall not be named" for [spoiler alert!!!] Voldemort (vol-de-mort? flight of death? orgasm? wtf???]
The summary from wikipedia:
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They rent a computer capable of printing all the possible permutations, and they hire two Westerners to install and program the machine. The computer operators are skeptical but play along. After three months, as the job nears completion, they fear that the monks will blame the computer, and by extension its operators, when nothing happens. The Westerners delay the operation of the computer so that it will complete its final print run just after their scheduled departure. After their successful departure on ponies, they pause on the mountain path on their way back to the airfield, where a plane is waiting to take them back to civilization. Under a clear night sky they estimate that it must be just about the time that the monks are pasting the final printed names into their holy books. Then they notice that ''overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.''
Re:YHWH: the name above all [other] names (Score:4, Informative)
"The problem is that none of the mythologies make any sense unless you are already a believer." Kindly wish to back that up? Simply repeating ignorant arguments that you've heard like a parrot is meaningless.
Let's stick to the scriptures of these religions, for the sake of argument (since that's essentially how this thread got started, with someone posting a critique of Islamic scripture).
It's pretty clear that theologians in each of these religions have debated the internal consistency of their scriptures [wikipedia.org] for thousands of years. They've come up with various solutions, but the fact is that the most learned scholars of Christianity and Judaism clearly recognize that their own scriptures have apparent flaws when read at face value... and they've spent considerable time and effort to reconcile them.
So, aside from GP's use of the term "mythologies" (which can be offensive to believers), I don't get how he's wrong. Scholars of these religions themselves recognize that their own scriptures don't quite make sense until you figure out how to make them make sense... which usually means you're already a believer in that religion to go to that trouble.
Including your next bit of ignorance: "When you have a monotheistic religion where EVERYTHING was created by a single omnipotent, omniscient god then arguing about whether that god created "evil" or "sin" is kind of silly." Where does the Bible say that God created EVERYTHING including the acts of men who were given free will to make their own choices? I'm not here to argue for or against anything but allowing stupid people to get away with saying stupid things.
Umm, again, there are literally thousands of years of Jewish and Christian theologians who have debated the Problem of Evil [wikipedia.org].
If it was readily apparent that "evil" came from ?? (some other source outside of Creation, which is supposed to be all there is), while God made everything else, I doubt that the most learned folks in Christianity and Judaism would spend millennia trying to figure this problem out.
Of course you feel it doesn't make any sense. Regardless of its own merits you seem to lack the intelligence to even know what it says, much less make a judgment on its contents.
Given that the GP seems aware of conflicts in Christianity and Judaism that go back thousands of years, while you seem to be incredibly ignorant of the philosophical history of the religions you're trying to defend, I don't think you should be pontificating about the "lack of intelligence" in others.
Re:YHWH: the name above all [other] names (Score:4, Informative)
Thank you for spending all that time getting around the fact that scripture is what matters to people that believe
Given your use of terms, I'm going to assume you're arguing from a Christian (and not Judaic) position.
The sola scriptura [wikipedia.org] doctrine was not particularly strong until the Reformation, when Martin Luther championed it. For most of the history of the church, and still in the Catholic, Orthodox, and many Protestant Churches (Episicopal, Methodist, etc.), church tradition has also been an essential source for understanding Christianity. There has been a very strong tradition of the smartest Christian theologians debating the "Problem of Evil" for all of church history. (For the record, the rabbinical tradition in Judaism has done similar things.)
Whether YOU think it's a problem or not is irrelevant. Perhaps in whatever branch of Christianity you believe in, it isn't perceived to be a problem. Fine. But for the vast majority of Christian theologians throughout history, it was something that merited significant discussion.
and you couldn't come up with a single verse to back up God making Evil or the Bible saying God is responsible for everything. Good job.
It's not my job to educate you on the basics of your religion. Nor is it my job to READ for you -- did you even look at the links I gave in my post?
If you skimmed the "Problem of Evil" article, you'd discover that there are in fact parts of the Bible that many people have interpreted to imply that God is the ultimate source of Evil.
The most obvious example (discussed in the link) is the entire book of Job [wikipedia.org], where God is the one responsible for inflicting all manner of bad acts upon Job's family. When Job -- who according to scripture itself, did nothing wrong to deserve this -- dares to question God's plan, God just yells at him from a whirlwind for a while, saying essentially, "Were you there when I laid the foundations of the world??" Implication: You have no concept of how great my power is or why I need to wield it in certain ways. And if I decide to inflict evil into the world, or even on you and your family, that's my business... you can't hope to understand why.
Again, just going on sources mentioned in my link, another common passage discussed is Isaiah 45:7: "I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things." And there are plenty more verses that other theologians have discussed in this context.
And please note that I'm not the one interpreting these passages to imply that God created evil -- it's many Christian theologians who debate these points. I wouldn't presume to interpret the Bible for you, but you have to acknowledge that a lot of smart Christians -- who probably know a lot more about the Bible than you do -- have seen problems here.
By the way, you're the one skirting the logical problem here, which is perhaps what troubled Christian philosophers the most. Regardless of what scripture says, if a Christian believes in an all-powerful and all-knowing God, that God should have the power to create good things. For some reason, he chose to create humans that could also do evil. From scripture, it seems implied that he created the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the book of Genesis, so it appears he even made it possible for humans to acquire the knowledge to do evil. (Of course, in the story, Satan is involved in this acquisition, but most Christian theologians acknowledge that Satan too much have been created by the all-powerful God, so that tempting toward evil must also have ultimately been part of God's creation.) Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing, and presumably all-good God choose to create beings that MIGHT do evil?
"The Problem of Evil" is a major theological conundrum that philosophers have debated for centuries. The fact that you think you solved it in a couple sentences speaks of great ignorance and great arrogance.