Fortigurn wrote:
To state that the only way that information could have been communicated over that time is by oral tradition, is simply untrue. That is not an opinion, that is based on the fact that writing had already been invented before Abraham lived, and people were actually using it to communicate information. Various Akkadian tablets managed to survive numerous wars and invasions, two major cultural changes, and three different scribal languages (Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian), to end up copied in the late Babylonian era with their message intact - that's covering some 2,000 years of scribal tradition from around 2,500 BC to 500 BC. So please don't tell me information could only be transmitted from Abraham's day to 1,000 years later by oral tradition. It's clearly untrue.
You state that your conclusions are based on fact, and yet you state:
To state that the only way that information could have been communicated over that time is by oral tradition, is simply untrue. ...So please don't tell me information could only be transmitted from Abraham's day to 1,000 years later by oral tradition. It's clearly untrue.
Please show me where I made the statement you attribute to me where I say the only way...is by oral tradition. Your statement is obviously not based on fact.
You state that writing had been invented before the time of Abraham, and I fully agree. There are no extant written accounts of Abraham that are dated to his time, but there are cuneiform tablets describing the epic of Gilgamesh, circa 3500 BC and over 25000 cuneiform tablets uncovered at the palace of Mari, on the Euphrates. Mari has a history that includes what is surmised to be the time of Abraham, circa 2000 BC. Translation of some of these tablets sheds light on the culture and commerce of the time. There are many other cuneiform tablets in existence, but none provide information from which authors of the Old Testament did or even could draw from.