[1] Kruger & Dunning, ‘Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (77.6.1121-1134), 1999.

[2] Darwin, ‘The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex’ volume 1, p. 4 (1871).

[3] Commonly misquoted as ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing’, this phrase is a line from English poet Alexander Pope’s poem ‘An Essay on Criticism’ (1709).

[4] Kruger & Dunning, ‘Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (77.6.1132), 1999.

[5] Ibid., pp. 1131.

[6] ‘Incompetent individuals, compared with their more competent peers, will dramatically overestimate their ability and performance relative to objective criteria.’, ibid., p. 1122; the importance of formal academic and professional qualifications is that they constitute objective criteria by which competency can be assessed, so we should place less trust in those lacking such qualifications.

[7] ‘These findings suggest that unaccomplished individuals do not possess the degree of metacognitive skills necessary for accurate self-assessment that their more accomplished counterparts possess.’, ibid., p. 1122; we cannot rely on those who are not academically and professionally qualified in a particular field, to assess accurately their own authority and competence in that field.

[8] ‘We propose that those with limited knowledge in a domain suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to recognize it.’, p. 1132;. it is far more likely that an unqualified non-professional will be wrong in a given field of specialization, than a qualified professional whose competency has been recognized formally by their equally qualified peers

[9] ‘Second, the bungled robbery attempt of McArthur Wheeler not withstanding, some tasks and settings preclude people from receiving self-correcting information that would reveal the suboptimal nature of their decisions (Einhorn, 1982).’, ibid., p. 1131; by keeping themselves predominantly in the intellectual company of those who agree with them, individuals experiencing the Dunning-Kruger effect place themselves in a setting which typically prevents their errors being exposed, instead keeping them in a kind of intellectual echo chamber in which their views are reinforced by being repeated back to them with approval by those unqualified to assess them competently.

[10] ‘One reason is that people seldom receive negative feedback about their skills and abilities from others in everyday life (Blumberg, 1972; Darley & Fazio, 1980; Goffman, 1955; Matlin & Stang, 1978; Tesser & Rosen, 1975)’, ibid., p. 1131; avoidance of scrutiny by professionals enhances this effect, keeping the unqualified away from those who are best able to expose their errors, and preserving their self-delusion that they are correct.

[11] This is a self-delusional identification since neither Copernicus nor Galileo were ‘gifted amateurs’ opposing a body of professionals (both men were professionals, holding formal teaching positions), and Galileo in particular knew that the subject should be decided by professionals astronomers, placing no value whatsoever on the opinions of the unqualified; writing against the papal edict silencing publications on heliocentrism in the preface of his ‘Dialogue’ (1632), Galileo scorned the unqualified amateur: ‘Complaints were to be heard that advisors who were totally unskilled in astronomical observations ought not to clip the wings of reflective intellects by means of rash prohibitions.’,  Galileo, quoted in Næss, ‘Galileo Galilei: When the Earth Stood Still’, p. 131 (2005).

[12 ‘Third, even if people receive negative feedback, they still must come to an accurate understanding of why that failure has occurred. The problem with failure is that it is subject to more attritional ambiguity to success. For success to occur, many things must go right: The person must be skilled, apply effort, and perhaps be a bit lucky. For failure to occur, the lack of any one of these components is sufficient. Because of this, even if people receive feedback that points to a lack of skill, they may attribute it to some other factor (Snyder, Higgins, & Stucky, 1983; Snyder, Shenkel, & Lowry, 1977).’, ibid., p. 1131; when an unqualified non-professional attributes opposition to or dismissal of their theories by qualified professionals as a conspiracy to maintain the intellectual status quo, the Dunning-Kruger effect is very likely responsible: an example is the Science and Public Policy Institute (a non-profit group in the US which opposes the scientific consensus on global warming), ‘People who are not scientists, or even experts on the subjects they write about often write the SPPI reports, and many convey conspiratorial themes. For example, an SPPI publication by Joanne Nova, who describes herself as a “freelance science presenter, writer, & former TV host”, exemplifies not only the ‘Dunning-Kruger’ effect (Dunning et.al. 2003), but also the inactivist movement’s frustration with mainstream climate science and its inflated sense of victimhood.’, Elshof, ‘Can Education Overcome Climate Change Inactivism?’, Journal for Activism in Science and Technology Education (3.1.25), 2011.

[13] Allocentric means ‘focused on others’, or ‘aimed at others’.

[1] A theist believes in a personal god who can be known by revelation (Christians are theists), and a deist believes in an impersonal god who cannot be known by revelation (some Buddhists sects are deists); neither are atheists.

[2] Commonly misquoted deists (believers in an impersonal god), are Epicurus (Greek philosopher), Xenophanes (Greek philosopher), Anaxagoras (Greek philosopher), Euhemerus (Greek philosopher), Marcus Aurelius (Roman emperor and philosopher), Abul ʿAla Al-Maʿarri (Arabian philosopher), Abu Bakr al-Razi  (Arabian philosopher), Ibn al-Rawandi  (Arabian philosopher), Denis Diderot, François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire), Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, David Hume, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Ulysses Grant, George Washington (some historians believe he was a highly unorthodox theist), Thomas Paine, and Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain).

[3] Commonly misquoted theists (believers in a personal god), are Al-Ghazali (Muslim), Al-Haytham (Muslim), Thomas Hobbes, Blaise Pascal (Christian of the Jansenist sect), John Adams (American president, and Unitarian Christian), and Annie Besant (Theosophist and mystic).

[4] Commonly misquoted agnostics (undecided as to whether or not any god exists), are Prodicus (Greek philosopher), Protagoras (Greek philosopher), Cicero (Roman orator, politician, and historian), Omar Khayyam (Persian philosopher, poet, mathematician, and astronomer), Robert Ingersoll, Henry Mencken, Ibn Warraq, Charles Templeton, Bill Maher, Karl Popper, David Attenborough, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Émile Durkheim, Stephen Jay Gould, Milton Friedman, Carl Sagan, and Bart Ehrman.

[5] Hitler’s religious beliefs are a matter of scholarly debate, but despite his repeated affirmations of Christianity and professions of belief in a personal God in his public writings and speeches, a number of historians and several people who knew him personally believe that his Christianity was a show, and that although religious he was actually anti-Christian; ‘Michael Reissman’s analysis of Hitler’s conception of God suggests that it had much more to do with a providential deity who had chosen him to lead the German people in accordance with ancient principles of leadership than with any Christian concept. As Goebbels commented at Christmas 1939, ‘The Führer is deeply religious but entirely anti-Christian’.’, Bonney, ‘Confronting the Nazi war on Christianity: the Kulturkampf newsletters, 1936-1939’, p. 20 (2009); ‘Hitler’s own religious views underwent significant change in the latter half of the Third Reich. He gave up on the Protestant Church after three failed attempts to achieve unity within its ranks. It is only in the period after this failure that we begin to see some of the anti-Christian remarks for which he is so famous. In October 1937, Hitler commented privately: “I have been freed, after an intense inner struggle, from the still living and childish imaginnings of religion….I now feel as liberated as a foal in the pasture.” Although he did not say so explicitly, the personalistic tone of the comment reveals that this was primarily a reference to his original Catholic faith, not to all religion per se.’, Steigman-Gall, ‘The Holy Reich: Nazi conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945’, p. 252 (2003); Speer (Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production, and close personal friend), indicated Hitler’s profession of support for Christianity was politically motivated, ‘Hitler usually concluded this historical speculation by remarking: “You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?’, Speer, ‘Inside the Third Reich’, p. 96 (1970).

[6] ‘When Stalin was a student at the Tiflis Russian Orthodox Seminary, where his mother sent him to become a priest, he becamse a closet atheist. (Many would late note, however, that his works were influenced by a distinctly biblical style.) His atheism remained rooted in some vague idea of a God in nature. Stalin once read a book by Antole France and was particularly impressed by the following line: “If Napoleon had to choose a religion, he would have chosen the adoration of the sun.” Stalin had circled the word “sun” and written in the margin, “Good!”’, Zubok & Pleshakov, ‘Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khruschev’, p. 20 (1996); while historians do not debate that Stalin was an atheist, his atrocities cannot all be attributed simply to him being an atheist, though his anti-religious atrocities (such as his imposition of state atheism by force and his persecution and murder of hundreds of thousands of people because they were religious), certainly can as they were motivated directly by his atheism.

[7] ‘To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.’, Darwin, ‘The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection’, p. 143 (6^th ed. 1882.); although this makes Darwin look as if he is saying the eye could not possibly have evolved, Darwin goes on to explain that he believes the evolution of the eye is both possible and likely, ‘Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case ; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered subversive of the theory.’., ibid., pp 143-144.

[8] ‘The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained.’, ibid., p. 287, however, Darwin goes on to provide a possible explanation, ‘To show that it may hereafter receive some explanation, I will give the following hypothesis.’, p. 287; the context shows Darwin was referring to the lack of pre-Cambrian fossils, but since his time multi-cellular fossils pre-dating the Cambrian era have been discovered, such as the Ediacaran biota.

[9] ‘But, as by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?’, ibid., p. 134; Darwin goes on to answer his own question, ‘It will be more convenient to discuss this question in the chapter on the Imperfection of the Geological Record; and I will here only state that I believe the answer mainly lies in the record being incomparably less perfect than is generally supposed. The crust of the earth is a vast museum; but the natural collections have been imperfectly made, and only at long intervals of time.’, ibid., p. 134.

[10] ‘Long before the reader has arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to him. Some of them are so serious that to this day I can hardly reflect on them without being in some degree staggered…’ ibid., p. 133; however, Darwin continues, ‘but, to the best of my judgment, the greater number are only apparent, and those that are real are greater not, I think, fatal to my theory.’, ibid., p. 133.

[11] ‘Not one change of species into another is on record… we cannot prove that a single species has been changed.’, commonly mis-attributed to a book entitled ‘My Life & Letters’ (though Darwin never wrote a book by this title), Darwin’s original words appear in a book written by his son, ‘When we descend to details, we can prove that no one species has changed; [i.e. we cannot prove that a single species has changed] nor can we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, which is the groundwork of the theory.’, (text in square brackets is in the original), Darwin (ed.), ‘The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, including an autobiographical chapter: edited by his son Francis Darwin’, volume 2, p. 210 (1911); this was speaking only of the evidence available in his own time, and scientists say such proof does exist today.

[12] Darwin repeatedly insisted that he was not saying he had proof of evolution, but did make clear that he believed it was the best explanation of the observable biological record; ‘I am actually weary of telling people that I do not pretend to adduce direct evidence of one species changing into another, but that I believe that this view in the main is correct, because so many phenomena can be thus grouped together and explained.  But it is generally of no use; I cannot make persons see this.’, Darwin, letter to FW Hutton 20 April, 1861, in Darwin & Seward (eds.), ‘More Letters of Charles Darwin’, letter 124, volume 1, p. 184 (1903).

[13] ‘Undeniably, the fossil record has provided disappointingly few gradual series. The origins of many groups are still not documented at all. Futuyma, ‘Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution’, pp. 190-191 (1983); the title of the book shows Futuyama supported evolution, and the paragraph before this sentence says ‘Contrary to Creationist claims, the transitions among vertebrate species are almost all documented to a greater or lesser extent.’, and the paragraph after the quoted sentence says ‘But in view of the rapid pace evolution can take, and the extreme incompleteness of fossil deposits, we are fortunate to have as many transitions as we do. The creationist argument that if evolution were true we should have an abundance of intermediate fossils is built by denying the richness of paleontological collections, by denying the transitional series that exist, and by distorting, or misunderstanding, the genetical theory of evolution.’, ibid., pp. 190, 191.

[14] ‘The majority of major groups appear suddenly in the rocks, with virtually no evidence of transition from their ancestors.’, Futuyma, ‘Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution’, p. 82 (1983); on the next page Futuyma writes ‘The transitional forms that evolve so quickly, and in such a small area, are very unlikely to be picked up in the fossil record. Only when the newly evolved species extends its range will it suddenly appear in the fossil record. Eldredge and Gould have suggested, therefore, that the fossil record should show stasis, or equilibrium, of established species, punctuated occasionally by the appearance of new forms. Hence, the fossil record would be most inadequate exactly where we need it most — at the origin of major new groups of organisms.’, ibid., p. 83.

[15] ‘Paleontologists have paid an enormous price for Darwin’s argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we almost never see the very process we profess to study.’, Gould, ‘The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History’, p. 181 (1980); the next sentence says ‘We believe that Huxley was right in his warning. The modern theory of evolution does not require gradual change. In fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record. It is gradualism we should reject, not Darwinism.’, ibid., p. 181.

[16] ‘The fossil record had caused Darwin more grief than joy. Nothing distressed him more than the Cambrian explosion, the coincident appearance of almost all complex organic designs…’, ibid. pp. 238-239; Gould later writes ‘His opponents interpreted this event as the moment of creation, for not a single trace of Precambrian life had been discovered when Darwin wrote the Origin of Species. (We now have an extensive record of monerans from these early rocks, see essay 21).’, ibid., p. 239.

[17] ‘We have long known about stasis and abrupt appearance, but have chosen to fob it off upon an imperfect fossil record.’, Gould, ‘The Paradox of the First Tier: An Agenda for Paleobiology’, Paleobiology, (11.1.7), 1985; this is a corruption of what Gould actually wrote, which was ‘Just as we have long known about stasis and abrupt appearance, but have chosen to fob it off up on an imperfect fossil record, so too have we long recognized the rapid, if not sudden, turnover of faunas in episodes of mass extinction.’, ibid., p. 7.

[18] ‘In other words, when the assumed evolutionary processes did not match the pattern of fossils that they were supposed to have generated, the pattern was judged to be ‘wrong.’ A circular argument arises: interpret the fossil record in terms of a particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that it confirms the theory. Well, it would, wouldn’t it? …As is now well known, most fossil species appear instantaneously in the record, persist for some millions of years virtually unchanged, only to disappear abruptly - the ‘punctuated equilibrium’ pattern of Eldredge and Gould.’, Kemp, ‘A Fresh Look at the Fossil Record’, New Scientist  (108. 66), 1985; Kemp was criticizing an approach used by some earlier scientists (but abandoned by his time), not denying evolution or claiming that methods used by scientists are wrong, and his next sentence makes this clear, ‘Irrespective of one’s view of the biological causes of such a pattern (and there continues to be much debate about this), it leads in practice to description of long-term evolution, or macroevolution, in terms of the differential survival, extinction and proliferation of species. The species is the unit of evolution.’, ibid., p. 66.

[19] ‘In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation.” Mark, ‘Who doubts evolution?’ New Scientist, (90.831) 1981; statements from the article making it clear that Mark was actually arguing against special creation and pointing out that scientists use several lines of evidence to prove evolution (not simply the fossil records, which is the least important), include ‘Someone is getting it wrong, and it isn’t Darwin; it is the creationists and the media.’ (p. 830), ‘So what is the evidence that species have evolved? There have traditionally been three kinds of evidence, and it is these, not the “fossil evidence”, that the critics should be thinking about. The three arguments are from the observed evolution of species, from biogeography, and from the hierarchical structure of taxonomy.’ (p. 831), ‘These three are the clearest arguments for the mutability of species. Other defences of the theory of evolution could be made, not the least of which is the absence of a coherent alternative. Darwin’s theory is also uniquely able to account for both the presence of design, and the absence of design (vestigial organs), in nature.’ (p. 832).

[20] ‘On climate change, The Australian is behaving like the media equivalent of a fog machine. Its unreliable reporting should be avoided by those with an interest in factual scientific information.’, Jones, ‘Spinning uncertainty? The IPCC extreme weather report and the media’, The Conversation, 23 November 2011.

[21] ‘The Australian has a daily column called Cut and Paste which should more properly be titled Quote Mining.’, Lambert, ‘The Australian’s War on Science 58: Quote Mining’, Deltoid, 4 February 2011.

[22] ‘Unfortunately for Kerr, [writer for The Australian] the report is available online, so we can see how Kerr quote mined it:.’, Lambert, ‘The Australian’s War on Science 63: Quote Mining’, Deltoid, 14 July 2011.

[1] ‘That a process of alteration and improvement of the chronology was busily carried on in later times, we see from the added synchronisms of the kings of Israel and Judah,’, Wellhausen, ‘Prolegomena to the History of Israel’, p. 278 (1885).

[2] ‘Driver remarked that, “the length of the reigns of the various kings is not the same according to the traditional and the synchronistic figures. Since, however, it is clear on various grounds that these synchronisms are not original, any attempt to base a chronological scheme on them may be disregarded.” Kittel stated his view that, “Wellhausen has shown, by convincing reasons, that the synchronisms within the Book of Kings cannot possibly rest on ancient tradition, but are on the contrary simply the products of artificial reckoning. . . The Israelitish numbers and the parallel numbers referring to Judah do not agree at the points at which we are able to compare them.” Robinson also was impressed by Wellhausen’s evaluation: “Wellhausen is surely right in believing that the synchronisms in Kings are worthless, being merely a late compilation from the actual figures given.” * R. H. Pfeiffer’s opinion was that, “The chronology based on the synchronisms is of course less reliable than the one based on the regnal periods, since the synchronisms were figured from the regnal periods. Neither chronology is wholly accurate . . . In spite of these discrepancies, inaccuracies, and errors, the chronology of Kings is not fantastic.” 5 J. F. McCurdy expressed himself to the effect that, “Many of the numbers given, especially the synchronisms, are erroneous, as is proved by the fact that no attempt to harmonize the two series has been successful . . . Startling inconsistencies are also found where the several synchronisms for the same king are worked out.” K. Marti gave his observation: “The synchronistic notes betray their character as ‘subjective additions of the Epitomator.’ It is clear, to begin with, that this noting of synchronisms was not in actual use during the existence of the two kingdoms. . . Almost along the whole line, the discrepancy between synchronisms and years of reign is incurable.” C. H. Gordon observed: “The numerical errors in the Books of Kings have defied every attempt to ungarble them. Those errors are largely the creation of the editors who set out to write a synchronistic history of Judah and Israel, using as sources two sets of unrelated court chronicles. Combining two elaborate sets of figures was not an easy task. But even with due regard for the difficulties involved, the editors did not execute the synchronisms skillfully.”’, Thiele, ‘Synchronisms of the Hebrew Kings – A Re-evaluation: I’, Andrews University Seminary Studies, pp. 14-125 (1), 1963.

[3] ‘A marked advance in biblical scholarship was made in the publication of The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, U. of Chicago Press, 1951, by Dr. E. R. Thiele. In his revised edition in 1965 (Eerdmans Pub. Co., Grand Rapids, Mich.), Dr. Thiele asserts the soundness of his basic thesis and conclusions as confirmed by scholars since his first edition.’, editorial, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (9.1.60), 1966.

[4] ‘Thiele’s view contains positive elements, but it also poses numerous difficulties. He incorrectly understood the annals of Tiglath-pileser III, and his determination that Menahem died in 742 contradicts the testimonies of the contemporaneous Assyrian inscriptions.10 In his desire to resolve the discrepancies between the data in the Book of Kings, Thiele was forced to make improbable suppositions. He assumed that the system of counting the years of reign changed every few generations, or even after a few decades. This is improbable, and cannot be proved. Similarly, he presumes that the Northern and Southern Kingdoms numbered their years both by the local count and by that practiced by the other kingdom, also for short periods, while this practice ceased in other periods. Thiele even went so far as to assume that while this practice had fallen into disuse, there were scribes who continued to calculate the years in accordance with it. There is no basis for Thiele’s statement that his conjectures are correct because he succeeded in reconciling most of the data in the Book of Kings, since his assumptions regarding Biblical chronological principles are derived from the chronological data themselves, whose reliability is unclear.’, Galil, ‘The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah’, p. 4 (1996).

[5] ‘but his harmonizing approach has not gone unchallenged, especially because of the many shifts in the basis of reckoning dates that it requires (e.g., Jepsen 1968: 34–35)—shifts which were unlikely in actual practice. The numerous extrabiblical synchronisms he invokes do not always reflect the latest refinements in Assyriological research (cf. E.2.f below). In many cases, he posits an undocumented event in order to save a biblical datum (e.g., the circumstances surrounding the appointment of Jeroboam II as coregent; Thiele 1983: 109)’, Cogan, ‘Chronology (Hebrew Bible)’, in Freedman, (ed.), ’The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary’, volume 1, p. 1006 (1996)’, Freedman, DN (1996).

[6]  ’Despite that fact of scholarly dedication, neither Thiele’s carefully argued University of Chicago dissertation, nor anyone else’s, has achieved as yet universal acceptance.’, Kaiser, ‘A History of Israel: From the bronze age through the Jewish Wars’, p. 293 (1998).

[7] ‘Not all scholars are convinced by this solution, and commentators on the prophetic books often accept that dates can only be approximate.’, McConville, ‘Exploring the Old Testament, Volume 4: The Prophets’, p. viii (2002).

[8] ‘The chronology most widely accepted today is one based on the meticulous study by Thiele. Wiseman, ‘1 and 2 Kings’, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, p. 27 (1993).

[9] ‘Increasingly his chronological scheme has come to dominate the majority of scholarly works and it is unlikely that his system can ever be overthrown without altering some well-established dates in Near Eastern history, for Thiele’s chronology is now inextricably locked into the chronology of the Near East.’, McFall, ‘A Translation Guide to the Chronological Data in Kings and Chronicles’, Bibliotheca Sacra (148.589.42-43), 1996.

[10] ‘Thiele’s system of chronology has been well received over the past 40 years and is now accepted as the basis for Israel’s chronology in a growing number of standard scholarly works.’, ibid., p. 42; see for example: Mitchell, ‘Israel and Judah until the Revolt of Jehu (931-841 B.C.)’, Cambridge Ancient History, volume 3, part 1, p. 445 (1982); Finegan, ‘Handbook of Biblical Chronology’, p. 249 (rev. ed.1998); Hess, ‘Chronology (Old Testament)’, in Porter (ed.), ‘Dictionary of Biblical Criticism and Interpretation’, p. 55 (2007).

[11] ‘Thiele’s chronology is fast becoming the consensus view among Old Testament scholars, if it has not already reached that point.’, McFall, ‘The Chronology of Saul and David’, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (53.101.215), 2010.

[12] ‘Thiele’s chronology (which differs from that of the present paper in only a few places) won the respect of historians because its dates agree with the following dates in Assyrian and Babylonian history: the Battle of Qarqar in 853 bc; the tribute of Jehu to Shalmaneser III in 841 bc; the capture of Samaria by Shalmaneser V in 723 bc; the invasion of Sennacherib in 701 bc; the Battle of Carchemish in 605 bc; and the first capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 597 bc.’, Young, ‘Tables of Reign Lengths From the Hebrew Court Recorders’, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (48.2.232), 2005.

[13] ‘Thiele’s work has become a cornerstone of much recent chronological discussion (cf. De Vries IDB 1: 580–99; IDBSup: 161–66);’, Cogan, ‘Chronology (Hebrew Bible)’, in Freedman, (ed.), ’The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary’, volume 1, p. 1006 (1996)’, Freedman, DN (1996).

[14] ‘Although some would prefer to see transmission errors where Thiele invokes the above principles, his chronology remains the starting point for all discussions of the debate.’, Hess, ‘Chronology (Old Testament)’, in Porter (ed.), ‘Dictionary of Biblical Criticism and Interpretation’, p. 55 (2007).

[15] ‘After 40 years Thiele’s chronology has not been significantly altered or proved to be false in any major area except in the matter of Hezekiah’s coregency.’, McFall, ‘A Translation Guide to the Chronological Data in Kings and Chronicles’, Bibliotheca Sacra (148.589.42), 1996.

[16] ‘It remained then for others to complete the application of principles that Thiele used elsewhere, thereby providing a chronology for the eighth-century kings of Judah that is in complete harmony with the reign lengths and synchronisms given in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. The most thorough work in this regard was Leslie McFall’s 1991 article in Bibliotheca Sacra.22 McFall made his way through the reign lengths and synchronisms of Kings and Chronicles, and using an exact notation that indicated whether the years were being measured according to Judah’s Tishri years or Israel’s Nisan years, he was able to produce a chronology for the divided monarchies that was consistent with all the scriptural texts chosen.’, ibid., pp. 105-106.

[17] ‘In a 1996 article, Kenneth Strand wrote, “What has generally not been given due notice is the effect that Thiele’s clarification of the Hebrew chronology of this period of history has had in furnishing a corrective for various dates in ancient Assyrian and Babylonian history.”28 The purpose of Strand’s article was to show that Thiele’s methodology accomplished more than just producing a coherent chronology from scriptural data. His chronology, once produced, proved useful in settling some troublesome problems in Assyrian and Babylonian history.’, Young, ‘Inductive And Deductive Methods As Applied To OT Chronology’, Master’s Seminary Journal (18.1.112-113), 2007.

[18] ‘Grabbe suggests that the names and sequence of kings in Israel and Judah, and their approximate chronological placement, agrees with what can be gleaned from extra-biblical sources. To this extent the biblical framework (meaning primarily 1 and 2 Kings) is reliable: even if we had no external sources we could have reasonable confidence in the biblical sequence of Jeroboam I, Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Omri, Ahab, Jehu, etc. in Samaria, and David, Solomon, Rehoboam, Abijam, Asa, Jehoshaphat, etc. in Jerusalem, along with their interrelationships. Beyond that it starts to get more and more tricky, with decreasing reliability in the biblical narrative as the detail increases (this is a general statement, and there are sometimes exceptions in specific instances).’, Grabbe, ‘Reflections on the Discussion’, Grabbe (ed.), ‘Ahab Agonistes: The Rise and Fall of the Omri Dynasty’, p. 337 (2007).

[1] ‘God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything’ (2007).

[2] ‘The God Delusion’ (2006).

[3] ‘Unfortunately, however, both authors either fail to appreciate, or have chosen not to acknowledge, the extraordinary importance that a very “personal God” may play in the lives of many individuals forced to deal with these profoundly life-changing situations.’, Markman, ‘Benefits of Religious Beliefs for Cancer Patients: A Response to Dawkins and Hitchens’, Current Oncology Reports (10.185), 2008.

[4] ‘But there is increasingly strong evidence that when confronted with a life-changing challenge such as being diagnosed with a malignancy, a genuine human need exists, as noted by Professor Dawkins and Mr. Hitchins’s headmaster, for the presence of personal spiritual support.’, ibid., p. 185.

[5] ‘Empiric evidence exists that a cancer patient’s ability to successfully deal with spiritual issues at the end of life is associated with less overwhelming despair and intense feelings of hopelessness [15]. Effective coping with these concerns can favorably impact the quality of life [16]. Existing data also support the hypothesis that it is the impact of a general feeling of spiritual well-being—not specific religious beliefs or practices—that is correlated with the favorable effect [17].’, ibid., p. 186.

[6] ‘the overwhelming existing evidence demonstrates that some patients with malignant disease may experience considerable benefit from a strong sense of spiritual well being and the presence of a “personal God.”’, ibid., p. 187.

[7] ‘It is unfortunate that Professor Dawkins and Mr. Hitchens were not willing to fully acknowledge the relevance of these points.’, ibid., p. 187.

[8] ‘Many studies have documented the benefits of religious involvement. Indeed, highly religious people tend to be healthier, live longer, and have higher levels of subjective well-being.’, Mochon, Norton, & Ariely, ‘Who Benefits from Religion?’, Social Indicators Research (101.1), 2010.

[9] It is recognized that not all religious systems provide such benefits; for example, some groups result in negative outcomes due to prejudice against education, or to oppressive power structures and failure to reinforce positive behaviours.

[10] ‘Similarly, although there are exceptions and the matter remains controversial (Sloan et al. 1999), a growing body of research documents an association between religious involvement and better outcomes on a variety of physical health measures, including problems related to heart disease, stroke, hypertension, cancer, gastrointestinal disease, as well as overall health

status and life expectancy. This research also points to differences by religious affiliation, with members of stricter denominations displaying an advantage (Levin 1994). Many of the early studies in this literature suffer from methodological shortcomings, including small, unrepresentative samples, lack of adequate statistical controls, and a cross-sectional design that confounds the direction of causality. Yet the conclusion of a generally positive effect of religious involvement on physical health and longevity also emerges from a new generation of studies that have addressed many of these methodological problems (Ellison and Levin 1998). In one of the most rigorous analyses to date, Hummer et al. (1999) use longitudinal data from a nationwide survey, the 1987 Cancer Risk Factor Supplement–Epidemiology Study, linked to the Multiple Cause of Death file. Their results show that the gap in life expectancy at age 20 between those who attend religious services more than once a week and those who never attend is more than seven years—comparable to the male–female and white–black differentials in the United States. Additional multivariate analyses of these data reveal a strong association between religious participation and the risk of death, holding constant socioeconomic and demographic variables, as well as initial health status. Other recent longitudinal studies also report a protective effect of religious involvement against disability among the elderly (Idler and Kasl 1992), as well as a positive influence on self-rated health (Musick 1996) and longevity (Strawbridge et al. 1997).’, Waite & Lehrer, ‘The Benefits from Marriage and Religion in the United States: A Comparative Analysis’, p. 2 (author manuscript 2003).

[11] ‘The connection between religion and mental health has been the subject of much controversy over the years, and many psychologists and psychiatrists remain skeptical, in part because most of the research has been based on cross-sectional analyses of small samples. The studies to date are suggestive of an association between religious involvement and better mental health outcomes, including greater self-esteem, better adaptation to bereavement, a lower incidence of depression and anxiety, a lower likelihood of alcohol and drug abuse, and greater life satisfaction and happiness in general (Koenig et al. 2001). Recent longitudinal analyses of subgroups of the population provide additional evidence in support of this relationship (Zuckerman et al. 1984; Levin et al. 1996).’, ibid., p. 3.

[12] Religious participation has also been associated with better educational outcomes. Freeman (1986) finds a positive effect of churchgoing on school attendance in a sample of inner-city black youth. Regnerus (2000) reports that participation in religious activities is related to better test scores and heightened educational expectations among tenth-grade public school students. In the most comprehensive study to date, using data on adolescents from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, Muller and Ellison (2001) find positive effects of various measures of religious involvement on the students’ locus of control (a measure of self-concept), educational expectations, time spent on homework, advanced mathematics credits earned, and the probability of obtaining a high school diploma.’, ibid., p. 4.

[13] ‘Several studies have documented an association between religion and children’s well-being. Recent research on differences in parenting styles by religious affiliation reveals that conservative Protestants display distinctive patterns: they place a greater emphasis on obedience and tend to view corporal punishment as an acceptable form of child discipline; at the same time, they are more likely to avoid yelling at children and are more prone to frequent praising and warm displays of affection (Bartowski et al. 2000). As to other dimensions of religion, Pearce and Axinn (1998) find that family religious involvement promotes stronger ties among family members and has a positive impact on mothers’ and children’s reports of the quality of their relationship. A number of studies document the effects of children’s own religious participation, showing that young people who grow up having some religious involvement tend to display better outcomes in a range of areas. Such involvement has been linked to a lower probability of substance abuse and juvenile delinquency (Donahue and Benson 1995), a lower incidence of depression among some groups (Harker 2001), delayed sexual debut (Bearman and Bruckner 2001), more positive attitudes toward marriage and having children, and more negative attitudes toward unmarried sex and premarital childbearing (Marchena and Waite 2001).’, ibid., p. 4.

[14] ‘Overall, we find strong evidence that youth with religiously active parents are less affected later in life by childhood disadvantage than youth whose parents did not frequently attend religious services. These buffering effects of religious organizations are most pronounced when outcomes are measured by high school graduation or non-smoking and when disadvantage is measured by family resources or maternal education, but we also find buffering effects for a number of other outcome-disadvantage pairs. We generally find much weaker buffering effects for other social organizations.’, Dehejia et al., ‘The Role of Religious and Social Organizations in the Lives of Disadvantaged Youth’, NBER Working Paper No. 13369 (2007).

[15] ‘However, as we discuss below, an emerging literature shows a positive effect of religiosity on educational attainment, a key determinant of success in the labor market. These studies suggest a potentially important link between religious involvement during childhood and adolescence and subsequent economic well-being as an adult. Preliminary results from a new line of inquiry at the macro level are consistent with this hypothesis. Using a cross-country panel that includes information on religious and economic variables, Barro and McLeary (2002) find that enhanced religious beliefs affect economic growth positively, although growth responds negatively to increased church attendance. The authors interpret their findings as reflecting a positive association between “productivity” in the religion sector and macroeconomic performance.’, ibid., p. 3.

[16] ‘Ellison and George (1994) find that people who frequently attend religious services not only have larger social networks, but also hold more positive perceptions of the quality of their social relationships.’, Waite & Lehrer, ‘The Benefits from Marriage and Religion in the United States: A Comparative Analysis’, p. 7 (author manuscript 2003).

[17] ‘Recent research has emphasized that religion can play a pivotal role in the socialization of youth by contributing to the development of social capital. Religious congregations often sponsor family activities, stimulating the cultivation of closer parent–child relations; they also bring children together with grandparents and other supportive adults (parents of peers, Sunday-school teachers) in an environment of trust. This broad base of social ties can be a rich source of positive role models, confidants, useful information, and reinforcement of values that promote educational achievement.’, ibid., p. 7.

[18] ‘At the other end of the age spectrum, the social ties provided by religious institutions are of special value to the elderly, helping them deal with the many difficult challenges that tend to accompany old age: illness, dependency, loss, and loneliness (Levin 1994).’, ibid., p. 7.

[19] ‘Most faiths have teachings that encourage healthy behaviors and discourage conduct that is self-destructive; they also provide moral guidance about sexuality. Some religions have specific regulations limiting or prohibiting the consumption of alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, and potentially harmful foods. Several studies show that religious involvement is generally associated with health-promoting behaviors (Koenig et al. 2001) and that such behaviors explain in part the connection between religion and longevity (Strawbridge et al. 1997; Hummer et al. 1999).’, ibid., p. 7.

[20] ‘At the societal level, higher religious involvement is related to increased levels of education (Gruber 2005), lower crime rates (Baier and Wright 2001; Johnson et al. 2000), increases in civic involvement (Putnam 2000; Ruiter and De Graaf 2006), higher levels of cooperation (Norenzayan and Shariff 2008; Shariff and Norenzayan 2007), lower divorce rates, higher marital satisfaction and better child adjustment (Mahoney et al. 2001; for a review, see Sherkat and Ellison 1999).’, Mochon, Norton, & Ariely, ‘Who Benefits from Religion?’, Social Indicators Research (101.2), 2010.

[21] ‘While fervent believers benefit from their involvement, those with weaker beliefs are actually less happy than those who do not ascribe to any religion—atheists and agnostics..’, ibid., p. 1.

[22] ‘Indeed, weakly affiliated adherents may actually be less happy than their unaffiliated counterparts—atheists, agnostics, and those who report no religion at all—and therefore would appear to benefit from abandoning their faith.’, ibid., p. 2.

[1] ‘Some argued that many Hebrew ideas actually originated in Mesopotamia and were borrowed by Israel.’, Chavalas, ‘Mesopotamia and the Bible’, p. 32 (2003).

[2] ‘The idea of Babylonian primacy was perfected by Delitzsch in 1902-1903. In his lectures, he argued that Israel could only be studied in light of Babylonia, and in fact Israelite civilization was derived from Babylonia.’, ibid., p. 32.

[3] ‘Since this portion of the biblical narrative postdates the Mesopotamian traditions (the final form of this portion of Genesis is usually dated to the fifth century B.C.E, although its oral or written sources may be dated as much as six hundred years earlier), it is conceivable, if not likely, that the biblical writer has borrowed and adapted Mesopotamian flood traditions.’, Fant & Reddish, ‘Lost Treasures of the Bible: Understanding the Bible through Archaeological Artifacts in World Museums’, p. 25 (2008).

[4] ‘It is commonly accepted that parts of Genesis 1–11 show literary dependence, either directly or indirectly, on Mesopotamian literary tradition.187 The best test case would be the flood story in Genesis 6–9.’, Smith, ‘God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World’, p. 182 (2010).

[5] ‘As scholars studied the significant differences and omissions between the accounts, they concluded that neither the Mesopotamian nor the biblical author borrowed from the other.’, Couch, ‘The Fundamentals for the Twenty-First Century: Examining the Crucial Issues of the Christian Faith’, p. 177 (2000).

[6] ‘Nevertheless, it adds much that is significant for the Near Eastern mythological horizon, and perhaps even provides a number of interesting parallels to the motifs of the biblical paradise story as told in the second and third chapters of Genesis.’, Kramer, ‘Sumerian Myths and Epic Tales’, in Pritchard (ed.), ‘Ancient Near Eastern texts relating to the Old Testament’, p. 37 (1950).

[7] ‘The similarities in broad outline and in certain points of detail between the Gilgamesh and the Genesis and the Gilgamesh versions are too striking to be accidental. Both probably derive from a common older Mesopotamian tradition, fragments of which are preserved in the Sumerian version.’, Davidson, ‘Genesis 1-11′, Cambridge Bible Commentaries p. 65 (1973).

[8] ‘It is undoubtedly borrowed from a common religious tradition of flood accounts.’, Brueggemnann, ‘Genesis’, p. 73 (1982).

[9] ‘Although the differences between the two stories may be too great to support a theory of direct literary dependence, most scholars are convinced that the biblical flood narrative is to some degree dependent upon ancient Mesopotamian flood narratives.’, Fant & Reddish, ‘Lost treasures of the Bible: understanding the Bible through archaeological’, p. 21 (2008).

[10] ‘Thus most Assyriologists have long since rejected the idea of any direct link between Gen. 1-11 and Enuma Elish, and nothing else better can be found between Gen. 1-11 and any other Mesopotamian fragments.’, Kitchen, ‘On the Reliability of the Old Testament’, p. 424 (2003); his footnote reads ‘Assyriologists generally reject any genetic relationship between Gen. 1-2 and the Mesopotamian data because of the considerable differences; see (eg.) J.V. Kinnier-Wilson. In D. W. Thomas, ed., Documents from Old Testament Times (London: Nelson, 1958), 14; W. G. Lambert, JTS. n.s., 16 (1965): 287-300, esp. 289. 291, 293-99. and in ISF, 96-113, with addenda; A. R. Millard, TynB 18 (1967): 3-4.7. 16-18, and in ISIF 114-28; T. Jacobsen, in JBL 100 (198 1): 513-29, and translation, both now in ISIF 129-42, plus 160-66.’, ibid., p. 591.

[11] ‘However, it has yet to be shown that there was borrowing, even indirectly. Differences between the Babylonian and the Hebrew traditions can be found in factual details of the Flood narrative (form of the Ark; duration of the Flood, the identity of the birds and their dispatch) and are most obvious in the ethical and religious concepts of the whole of each composition. All who suspect or suggest borrowing by the Hebrews are compelled to admit large-scale revision, alteration, and reinterpretation in a fashion that cannot be substantiated for any other composition from the ancient Near East or in any other Hebrew writing. If there was borrowing then it can have extended only as far as the “historical” framework, and not included intention or interpretation.’, Millard, ‘A New Babylonian “Genesis” Story’, in  Hess & Tsumura (eds.), ‘I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary Approaches to Genesis 1-11’, Sources for Biblical and Theological Study, volume 4, p. 127 (1994).

[12] ‘The two accounts undoubtedly describe the same Flood, the two schemes relate the same sequence of events. If judgment is to be passed as to the priority of one tradition over the other, Genesis inevitably wins for its probability in terms of meteorology, geophysics, and timing alone.’, ibid., pp. 127-128.

[13] ‘The similarities between the Genesis account and the ‘Atra-Hasis Epic’ do not support the idea that Genesis is a direct borrowing from the Mesopotamian but do indicate that Mesopotamian materials could have served as models for Genesis 1-11, as Jacobsen holds. P.D. Miller also admits that ‘there were Mesopotamian models that anticipate the structure of Genesis 1-11 as a whole.’, Tsumura, ‘Genesis and Ancient Near Eastern Stories of Creation and Flood’, in ibid., p. 47.

[14] ‘With Genesis 1-11 we seem to be working more with shared motifs and basic plotlines that originated in Mesopotamia rather than with actually known texts directed [sic] borrowed into Israel.’, Smith, ‘God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World’, p. 182 (2010).

[15] ‘The Bible’s accounts of the creation of the world, the creation of humankind, and the flood were not borrowed from these, but neither are they unique in every respect.’, Arnold & Beyer (eds.), ‘Readings from the ancient Near East: primary sources for Old Testament study’, p. 13 (2002).

[16] ‘The details are not exact and most scholars deny any direct literary dependence but it would seem that both stories emerge from a common tradition or milieu.’, Moyise, ‘Introduction to Biblical Studies’, p. 33 (2004).

[17] ‘The Biblical flood of Noah in the book of Genesis 6-9 shares continuity with the other Ancient Near Eastern flood stories, but is probably not directly dependent on any of them.’, Snell, ‘A Companion to the Ancient Near East’, p. 256 (2005).

[18] ‘But after a careful study of the two, Alexander Heidel has concluded that “no incontrovertible evidence can for the present be produced” in favor of biblical dependence on the Babylonian materials. His conclusion regarding the flood accounts is similar.’, Niehaus, ‘Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology’, p. 22 (2008).

[19] Text

[20] ‘Many who have done thorough linguistic and literary analysis (e.g., A. Heidel, A.R. Millard, D. Damrosch) conclude that literary dependence cannot be demonstrated. Here, as in most of the parallels in the primeval history, it is considered more likely that Mesopotamian and biblical traditions are based on a common source. Some understand this common source to be a piece of more ancient literature, while others consider it the actual event.’, Hill & Walton, ‘A Survey of the Old Testament’, p. (2010).

[21] ‘Among many theorists, George Smith in 1872 [33] famously linked the great Biblical Flood of the book Genesis to an historical event, probably of the 3rd millennium BC, which deposited a 50-cm- sediment-layer in the Mesopotamian lowland.’, Haigh & Křeček, ‘Environmental Reconstruction in Headwater Areas’, p. 14 (2000).

[22] ‘The most characteristic element of the Babylonian account seems to be that the Ark, driven from the South inland against the current of the rivers, was stranded in the northern mountains. This element is so remarkable that it could only have been stimulated by a corresponding natural phenomenon. E. Suss (25ff.) suspects that a violent earthquake in the Persian Gulf may have been the cause. A powerful cyclone from the South, associated with voluminous rain and horrible darkness, drove the destructive waters far into the inhabited land. This event must have taken place in a very ancient time. The news of the terrible catastrophe was preserved through all times. This theory is certainly very plausible.’, Gunkel ‘Genesis’ (1910), Biddle (trans.), p. 77 (1997 English ed.).

[23] ‘This suggests that we are not dealing with a literary dependence or even a tradition dependence as much as we are dealing with two literary perspectives on a single actual event.‘, Walton, ‘Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context: A Survey of Parallels’, p. 40 (1994).

[24] ‘The story may have arisen from a specific historical flood that took place in parts of southern Mesopotamia around 2900.’, Tigay, ‘The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic’, p. 214 (2002).

[25] ‘Could not stories be shared by the Bible and surrounding cultures because they are both based on a historical event? Both Scripture and Mesopotamian literature mention a flood because there indeed was a flood.’, Hamilton, ‘Handbook on the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy’, p. 66(2005).

[26] ‘However, there are more options than simply concluding that the Bible borrowed from Babylon. An equally plausible explanation is that both traditions go back to a real event.’, Longman, ‘How to read Genesis’, pp. 86-87 (2005).

[27] ‘On the basis of substantial historical evidence, coupled with many parallel words and phrases, what reasonable conclusions could we make? Here are just three: 1. There is a likelihood that a flood event actually happened. Why would the Akkadians, Sumerians, and Hebrews invent such a story unless there was some historical basis? 2. considering the parallel accounts are describing a historical event in the region of southern Mesopotamia about 2900 B.C., then Genesis also is describing the same historical, regional flood, and not a global deluge. 3. A regional flood would have brought judgment to those in the region. Judgment would have been specific to the sinful Adamite population, those answerable to God, rather than a universal pronouncement upon all mankind everywhere.’, Fischer, ‘Historical Genesis: from Adam to Abraham’, p. 140 (2008).

[1] ‘ln fact, history is littered with examples of human abuse in the name of ‘science’.’, Cardwell & Flanagan, ‘Psychology AS: The Complete Companion’, p. 189 (2005).

[2] ‘”In the name of science,” innumerable animals have been vivisected, decerebrated, and tortured in order to produce “objective” data.’, Stenbers, ‘The Invention of Modern Science’, p. 22.3 (2000).

[3] Shannon, ‘Bioethics’, (4^th ed. 1993), Annas & Grodin, ‘he Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation’ (1995), Hornblum, ‘Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison‘ (1999), Moreno, ‘Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans‘ (2000), Guerrini, ‘Experimenting With Humans and Animals: From Galen to animal rights’ (2003), Weyers, ‘The Abuse of Man: An illustrated history of dubious medical experimentation’ (2003), Goliszek, ‘In the Name of Science: A History of Secret Programs, Medical Research, and Human Experimentation’ (2003), Washington, ‘Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present ‘ (2008), Cina & Perper, ‘When Doctors Kill’ (2010), Chadwick, Have & Meslin, ‘The SAGE Handbook of Health Care Ethics’ (2011); many protests were also made by doctors and scientists against such atrocities.

[4] ‘But the privilege I would like to emphasize is that which is granted by the courts of law and which establishes the inviobility of the researcher’s right to withhold knowledge from public scrutiny.’, Huff, ‘The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West’, pp. 9-10 (2003).

[5] ‘The bland and righteous belief among American academics that any degree of invasion of privacy, any degree of public exposure of the human psyche, is justified so long as it is in the name of science rather than, say, the TV industry,’, Nisbet, ‘Project Camelot’ (1966), in Smith & Bender, ‘American Higher Education Transformed, 1940-2005: Documenting the National Discourse’, p. 408 (2008).

[6] ‘Scientists make authoritative decisions in the name of others, such as on behalf of organizations or collective bodies, or in the name of science itself, and have such decisions made about them. Many of these are ‘gatekeeping’ decisions, and indeed the business of gatekeeping is perhaps the primary means of exercising authority in science.’, Turner, ‘Liberal Democracy 3.0: civil society in an age of experts’, p. 85 (2003).

[7] ‘industrialized science, tied as it is to the structure of the state, carries with it dangerous potential.’, Rosenberg & Marcus, ‘The Holocaust as a Test of Philosophy’, in Rosenberg & Myers (eds.), ‘Echoes from the Holocaust: Philosophical Reflections on a Dark Time’, p. 211 (1990).

[8] ‘The state and its various arms can kill, maim or exploit in the name of science.’, Nandy, ‘Science as a Reason of State’, in Abbas & Emi (eds.), ‘Internationalizing Cultural Studies: an anthology’, p. 27 (2005).

[9] ‘The change of perception was largely, if not soley, due to Darwin’s own work on evolution and published in The Origin of the Species (1859), and The Descent of Man (1871). A host of followers applied evolutionary theory to society and to the Aborigines, who were viewed as primitive, stone-age people who were earlier and less evolved than were Europeans.’, Reynolds, ‘An Indelible Stain?’, p. 146 (2001).

[10] ‘The Australian colonists deeply influenced by Social Darwinism had come to accept that, as a consequence of settlement, the indigenous people were dying out and the process would probably continue until it was complete.’, ibid., p. 146.

[11] ‘Scientific theories and arguments were used to support the inferiority of other races, thereby legitimising crimes committed throughout history and all over the world.’, Weigmann, ‘In the name of science’, EMBO reports (2.10. 871). 2001.

[12] ‘Even under social democratic governments, atrocities took place. In Sweden, for example, 63 000 people—including most resident gypsies—were legally sterilised between 1934 and 1975, mainly because of ‘antisocial behaviour’.’, ibid., p. 872.

[13] ‘Along with the methods of mass killing, science also legitimized the ideological basis, or the motivating cause, for mass murder.’, Rosenberg & Marcus, ‘The Holocaust as a Test of Philosophy’, in Rosenberg & Myers (eds.), ‘Echoes from the Holocaust: Philosophical Reflections on a Dark Time’, p. 210 (1990).

[14] ‘The fact that these claims were advanced and even believed in the name of science, and were expounded by scientific authorities, lent a high degree of credence to popular prejudices and made the acceptance of the idea of mass extermination so much easier for a large number of people.’, ibid., p. 210.

[15] ‘Never did they fake an expert report to save someone’s life.’, Weigmann, ‘In the name of science’, EMBO reports (2.10. 872). 2001.

[16] ‘In the past it was scientists who interpreted racial differences as the justification to murder.’, ibid., p. 874.

[17] ‘The second half of the twentieth century saw a strong movement toward public regulation of experiments on human beings and animals. In the case of human experimentation, initial impetus came from the exposure of atrocities performed in the name of science on the inmates of Nazi concentration camps.’, Guerrini, ‘Experimenting With Humans and Animals: From Galen to animal rights’, p. 137 (2003).

[18] ‘In the 1960s, however, it came to public attention that medical researchers in the United States and the United Kingdom violated the rights of human subjects routinely and with impunity.’, ibid., p. 137.

[19] ‘The established ethical controls did not work, because doctors and researchers had so many personal incentives to pursue what they believed to be important scientific objectives. The classical ethical virtues of a good doctor, as well as the ethical rules of ancient and modern codes, were both simply ignored.’, Drane, ‘A Personal History of Bioethics in Latin America: The Current Challenge to the Medical Profession and the Influence of Pharmaceutical Companies’, in Pessini & de Paul de Barchifontaine (eds.), ‘Ibero-American Bioethics: History and Perspectives’, p. 32 (2009).

[20] ‘In 1965 Henry K. Beecher, the Dorr Professor of Anesthiology at Harvard University, alerted the national press to a number of unethical studies of which he was aware. He had earlier raised these concerns in a professional forum and now “went public” only because he was outraged by his colleagues’ indifference to the issue.’, Guerrini, ‘Experimenting With Humans and Animals: From Galen to animal rights’, p. 139 (2003).

[21] ‘By the 1970s Beecher’s and Pappworth’s expose’s, and the revelation of the Tuskegee study, had demonstrated that biomedical researchers could not be trusted to adhere to the principles of the Nuremberg Code without the coercive inducement of national regulation.’, ibid., p. 141.

[22] ‘Despite the development of both the Nuremberg Code, published in 1947, and the Declaration of Helsinki nearly 20 years later, research was still being done without regard to the health and well-being of its participants. The literature cites many examples (Krguman et al., 1978; Campbell et al., 1992; LoBiondo-Wood and Haber, 1994; Lock, 1995; Dowd and Wilson, 1995; Nicholson, 1997; Homan, 1998)’, Hart & Bond, ‘Using action research’, in Gomm & Davies, ‘Using Evidence in Health and Social Care’, p. 109 (2000).

[23] ‘The question is raised why such a commendable code of ethics has had so little impact in two countries [German and the US] with long histories of unethical therapeutic and nontherapeutic experimentation, unethical eugenically oriented surgery, and medical abuse and exploitation involving Blacks and other disadvantaged groups.’ Byrd & Clayton (eds.), ‘An American Health Dilemma: Race, medicine, and health care in the’, p. 281 (2001).

[24] ‘As health lawyer and bioethicist George J. Annas noted in The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Even where the Nuremberg Code has been cited as authoritative, it has usually been in dissent, and no US court has ever awarded damages to an injured experimental subject, or punished an experimenter, on the basis of a violation of the Code.‘, ibid., p. 281.

[25] ‘not a single volunteer research participant refused to administer severe shocks to counterfeit subjects, when instructed to do so by a scientist in a white coat.’, Scheper-Hughes & Bourgois, ‘Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology’, Blackwell Readers in Anthropology, p. 16 (2004).

[26] ‘It should not come as a surprise that Milgram’s experimenter wore a white lab coat, embodying the authority of the expert research scientist pursuing knowledge. Whether by presence or by uniform, the more salient the authority figure, the more likely people are to obey, as can be seen in Figure 10.6.’, Smith & Mackie (eds.), ‘Social Psychology’, p. 399 (2000).

[27] ‘It was scientific and medical methods, scientific and medical speech that were used in carrying out these crimes in the name of science. Clearly, the scientific value of an experiment is not tainted by the experiment being carried out on murder victims. ‘It would be wrong to condemn them as bad experiments, if they were carried out on mice‘, writes Benno Müller-Hill,’, Weigmann, ‘In the name of science’, EMBO reports (2.10. 874). 2001.

[28] ‘Even today, we prefer to perceive the Nazi era as a period of ‘pseudo-science’. But this is dangerous, as it would relieve scientists from any responsibility for the crimes committed. ‘Criminal acts of this kind are an inexcusable shame, not only for those who prepared them, but also for all those who tolerated them, in fact  for the life sciences themselves, in the name of which they were committed‘, Markl said in his speech.’, ibid., p. 874.

[29] ‘It would be easy to condemn these experiments – most of them conducted without anethesia and in horrific circumstances – as the work of madmen, but bioethicist Arthur Caplan warns that to do so would be to deny their character as a logical expression of the values of German medical science.’, Guerrini, ‘Experimenting With Humans and Animals: From Galen to animal rights’, p. 137 (2003).

[30] ‘Certainly, none of the doctors tried at Nuremberg pleaded insanity; rather, they defended their actions as consistent with the values of science and their duties as scientists.’, ibid., p. 137.

[31] ‘they argued that they were following orders, and that their training as scientists gave them no grounding in ethics that might justify refusing those orders.’, ibid., p. 137.

[1] ‘Like the Hellenes of late antiquity, who were convinced that the rise of Christianity meant the end of Greek science,77 Muslim authors blamed the decline of science and philosophy on the Christianization of the Roman empire.’, El-Cheikh, ‘Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs’, p. 106 (2004).

[2] ‘Writing in the Almohad court, Abu Yahya b. Mas’ada similarly places the blame for the decline of science on Constantine the Great:’, ibid., p. 108.

[3] ‘They all stress that the decline began in the fourth century A.D. and that Christianity was its root cause.’, ibid., p. 108.

[4] ‘The common assumption has been that Christianity was anti-intellectual, preferring faith instead of knowledge, and this was responsible for the decline of science from which it did not recover for a millennium’, Lestrel, ‘Morphometrics for the Life Sciences’, p. 66 (2000).

[5] ‘This is an oversimplification, as the picture is considerably more complicated (Lindbe, 1992).’, ibid., p. 66.

[6] ‘Nevertheless, it is agreed by most historians of ancient science that creative Greek science was on the wane, perhaps as early as 200 B.C., certainly by A.D. 200.‘, Lindberg, ‘Science and the Early Church’, in Lindberg & Numbers, ‘God and Nature: historical essays on the encounter between Christianity and science’, p. 30 (1986).

[7] ‘At the end of the second century, when the great Hellenistic kingdoms declined, falling directly or indirectly under the sway of Rome, science seems to have fallen into a state of stagnation. True, the Greek part of the Roman Empire would witness the rise to fame of such great scientists as the physician Galen and the geographer and astronomer Ptolemy, but the golden age of Greek science and, for that matter, of Greek philosophy, had passed.’, UNESCO, ‘History of Humanity: From the seventh century B.C. to the seventh century A.D.’, p. 199 (1996).

[8] ‘Benjamin Farrington, Greek Science (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), would push the decline of Greek science even earlier, to the fourth century BC.’, Lindberg, ‘Science and the Early Church’, ibid., p. 45.

[9] ‘The highly innovative period of Greek science which lasted from about 500 BC to about 300 BC and, in a very real sense reached something in the nature of a termination with the rejection of Aristarchus’ solar-centered planetary system, was followed not so much by stagnation as by ferment of a very different kind from that which had taken place earlier.’, Seitz, ‘The Science Matrix: the Journey, Travails, Triumphs’, p. 22 (1998).

[10] ‘The end of the Alexandrian era marked the eclipse of the ancient Greek science, and the systematic study of the design of machines became stagnant for a long period of time.’, Ceccarelli, ‘Distinguished Figures in Mechanism and Machine Science’, p. 5 (2007).

[11] ‘After about 120 BC, the Greek Science started to lose its originality. Little of worth was produced after 200 A.D.’, Rana, ‘Geographical Thought: A systematic record of evolution’, p. 50 (2004).

[12] ‘It was not only that the first enthusiasm had gone: in addition, from 100 B.C. on, men began to doubt more and more whether after all rational inquiry alone could uncover the workings of the Heavens. And since this problem had been something of a touchstone for natural philosophy, failure in this direction had wider repercussions.’, Toulmin & Goodfield, ‘The fabric of the heavens: the development of astronomy and dynamics’, p. 130 (1999).

[13] ‘One of the reasons why Greek science came to a halt is that the ideas of leading philosophers were accepted as decisive, while empirical tests were barely pursued.’, Devreese & Berghe, ”Magic is no magic’: the wonderful world of Simon Stevin’, p. xiv (2008).

[14] ‘In short, after A.D. 200 much effort is being spent on preserving the results of scientific inquiry achieved in earlier times, but (with the sole exceptions of Diophantos in the 3rd, Proklos in the 4th, and Philoponus in the 6th century A.D.) the original spirit of fresh research has meanwhile been lost.’, Cohen, ‘The Scientific Revolution: a historiographical inquiry’, p. 253 (1994).

[15] ‘Backed by their enormous library, Alexandrian scholars turned more and more to the systematization of past results. They were brilliant compilers, editors, and encyclopedists. Only Ptolemy’s eminent and creative work in astronomy is an exception. When with the advent of Plotinus (third century A.D.) neo-Platonist philosophy captured the minds of creative thinkers, the tide had turned. Later commentators like Proclos or Johannes Philoponus might occasionally venture new ideas of lasting value, and the writings of Simplikios must be regarded as an original contribution, as well as useful to a better understanding of traditional doctrines; but, in general, Hellenistic science had become stagnant.’, Pedersen, ‘Early Physics and Astronomy: A historical introduction’, p. 151 (1993).

[16]‘Greek astronomers began to limit their ambitions, and to concentrate on doing those things that they were already good at doing. They became satisfied with making small amendments to existing mathematical theories; filling in details rather than branching out in new directions. Since the progress of science demands that we should always be trying to solve the problems that have so far defeated us, and not just go on applying the techniques we already have, later Greek scientists in this way contributed positively to the decline of their subject.’, Toulmin & Goodfield, ‘The fabric of the heavens: the development of astronomy and dynamics’, pp. 130-131 (1999).

[17]‘By A.D. 200, astrology had recovered all the ground it ever lost, and had effectively displaced rational astrophysics.’, ibid., p. 130.

[18] ‘Compare Ptolemy’s position, as stated here, with the attitudes of the earlier Greek natural philosophers. We are half-way back to the Babylonians.’, ibid., p. 143 (1999).

[19] ‘The original Greek ambition to explain heavenly happenings in terms of causes familiar to us on Earth has been abandoned.’, ibid., p. 144.

[20]‘Aristotle’s physical distinction between the changeable Earth and the changeless Heavens was now taken with full theological earnestness; things in the Heavens were once again made objects of worship, as they had been in Babylonian times;’, ibid., p. 145.

[21] ‘The Stoics had some valuable scientific ideas, particularly in connection with matter-theory, but for many of them the Divinity of the Heavens – which for Aristotle was a theoretical insight – was important rather as a profound religious truth. On this basis, some of them even built up a sophisticated kind of star-worship, teaching that a man’s soul escaped at death from his body, to be reunited with his own personal star. (Plate 5.) They believed that all natural events were causally determined, but this belief encouraged not scientific enquiry so much as faith in divination. Among the Romans, the serious alternative to Stoicism was the philosophy of Epicurus. This doctrine did no more than Stoicism to encourage scientific work: if anything, the Epicureans were even less interested in questions of astronomy. They turned men’s attention right away from the Heavens, arguing that what went on in the sky was of no concern to men, whose proper business was with the problems of life on this Earth. The Roman poet Lucretius, who popularized Epicurus’ views in the first century B.C., even dismissed the idea of the Antipodes and treated the sphericity of the Earth – which had been a commonplace in Athens for several centuries – as an entirely unproved speculation.’, ibid., p. 147.

[22] ‘But among the significant factors, one must surely acknowledge the fact that for ideological reasons, Greek scientists seldom sought ways of developing practical consequences from their discoveries.’, Olson, ‘Science Deified and Science Defied: The Historical Significance of Science Vol. 1: From Bronze Age to the Beginnings of the Modern Era, ca 3500 B.C. to A.D. 1640’, p. 144 (1983).

[23] ‘It is far from self-evident that Greek science, on the eve of its decay, still possessed an inherent capability for further growth. Rather, there are signs that Greek science had indeed reached the limits set to its natural progress:’, Cohen, ‘The Scientific Revolution: A historiographical inquiry’, p. 396 (1994).

[24] ‘Altogether, to the small extent that Lloyd seeks to explain the lack of continuous growth displayed by Greek thought on nature, he ascribes it to “the weakness of the social and ideological basis of ancient science.”’, ibid., pp. 253-254.

[25] ‘That view is not entirely fair, and the decline of Greek science should not be attributed solely to the Roman conquest. Its seeds must be sought within the Greek civilization itself. According to L. Brunschwig, “The science of antiquity lacked what we regard today as the very condition of knowledge: the connection between calculation and physical experimentation.”‘, Gazale, ‘Number: from Ahmes to Cantor’, p. 37 (2009).

[26] ‘Nevertheless, despite the fertility in ideas, and despite the development of criteria and methods, the dominant cosmological view remained anthropocentric. The victory of geocentricity over heliocentricity was both a symptom and a cause of this.’, Lloyd, ‘Methods and Problems in Greek Science: Selected Papers’, p. 161 (1993).

[27] ‘The anthropocentrism of Greek cosmology and science is in certain respects at least, a weakness.’, ibid., p. 162.

[28] ‘The fundamental reason for the stillbirth of science in ancient Greece was a world view ‘steeped in the idea of eternal cycles.’ According to Aristotle, everything general, including ideas, recurred cyclically, and this undermined the concept of time.’, Haffner, ‘The Mystery of Reason’, p. 155 (2001).

[29] ‘The Great Year was a circular barrier for the Greek mind and deprived it of insights and aspirations which were necessary for the growth of science.’, ibid., p. 155.

[1] ‘Hypatia of Alexandria (ca. 370–415) Egyptian astronomer, philosopher, teacher, and mathematician regarded as the first woman scientist, and the first woman to contribute to the study of mathematics.’. Todd, ‘The Facts on File Algebra Handbook’, p. 66 (2003).

[2] ‘Alic, Margaret. Hypatia’s Heritage: A History of women in Science from Antiquity Through the Nineteenth Century. Boston: Beacon and London: Women’s Press, 1986. Examines biographical and scientific evidence to reveal the lives and accomplishments of women in natural and physical sciences and mathematics. The material dealing with Hypatia claims for her the roles of the last important pagan scientist in the western world, and the representative of end [sic] of ancient science.’, Magill, Moose, & Aves (eds.), ‘Dictionary of World Biography: The ancient world’, p. 583 (1998).

[3] ‘Little known for centuries, Hypatia emerged in the nineteenth century as a symbol for feminists of the historical suppression of women’s accomplishments.’, McIntyre, ‘Hypatia’, in Traver (ed.), ‘From polis to empire, the ancient world, c. 800 B.C.-A.D. 500: A Biographical Dictionary’, The Great Cultural Eras of the Western World, p. 205 (2001).

[4] ‘Synesius refers to two mechanical devices, a hydrometer and a silver astrolabe, that he and Hypatia invented‘. Rosser, ‘Women, Science, and Myth: Gender beliefs from antiquity to the present’, p. 13 (2008).

[5] ‘Synesius of Cyrene (North Africa) a student of Hypatia, credited her with the invention of apparatus for distilling water and measuring the level of liquids.’, Lumpkin, ‘Hypatia and Women’s Rights in Ancient Egypt’, in Van Sertima (ed.), ‘Black Women in Antiquity’, p. 155 (1984).

[6] ‘Usually interpreted as an illustration of barbaric religious fanaticism and intolerance for humanistic inquiry,’, Naylor, ‘North Africa: a history from antiquity to the present’, p. 51 (2009).

[7] ‘Her death presents the perfect symbol of the end of the classical world, the end for a long time of the possibility of disinterested scientific inquiry.’, Whaley, ‘Women’s history as scientists: a guide to the debates’, p. 19 (2003).

[8] ‘Van der Waerden reiterates the theme that Alexandrian science ceased with her death:’, Dzielska, ‘Hypatia of Alexandría’, p. 25 (1995).

[9] ‘They were from wealthy and influential families; in time they attained posts of state and ecclesiastical eminence. Around their teacher these students formed a community based on the Platonic system of thought and interpersonal ties. They called the knowledge passed on to them by their ‘divine guide’ mysteries. They held it secret, refusing to share it with people of lower social rank, whom they regarded as incapable of comprehending divine and cosmic matters.’, ibid., p. 105.

[10] To her disciples Hypatia was a medium of divinely revealed truths.

[11] In Hypatia’s day there was actually no such thing as a ‘scientist’ in the modern sense of the term, only the ‘natural philosopher’, who studied the natural world and typically combined observations with religious and philosophical commentary.

[12] ‘She [Dzielska] also unearths a number of references to women in the late Greek philosophical world, which show Hypatia’s example to be not so unusual as had been thought.’, Hodgkin, ‘A history of mathematics: from Mesopotamia to modernity’, p. 72 (2005).

[13] ‘(Incidentally, Hypatia is not the earliest known woman mathematician; Pappus had directed a polemic against a female teacher of mathematics named Pandrosion, and a certain Ptolemais is quoted in Porphyry’s commentary on Ptolemy’s Harmonics.)’, Jones, ‘Later Greek and Byzantime mathematics’, in Grattan-Guinness (ed.), ‘Companion Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematicla Sciences’, volume 1, p. 65 (2003).

[14] ‘Hypatia, after all, wasn’t the first woman philosopher. The Project on the History of Women in Philosophy amply documented that there were many women philosophers before Hypatia; she didn’t come along unti lafter the fourth century A.D. Among those who preceded her were numbers of Pythagorean women philosophers from the sixth to the third or second century B.C. and others -’, McAlister, ‘Hypatia’s Daughters: fifteen hundred years of women philosophers’, p. x (1996).

[15] ‘The highly public nature of Hypatia’s career was consistent with the African tradition of Egyptian women,’, Lumpkin, ‘Hypatia and Women’s Rights in Ancient Egypt’, in Van Sertima (ed.), ‘Black Women in Antiquity’, pp. 155-156 (1984).

[16] ‘The invention of the astrolabe is usually attributed to Hipparchus of the second century BC. But there is no firm evidence to support this view. It is however certain that the instrument was well known to the Greeks before the beginning of the Christian era.’, Sarma, ‘The Archaic and the Exotic: studies in the history of Indian astronomical instruments’, p. 241 (2008).

[17] ‘It is generally accepted that Greek astrologers, in either the 1^st or 2^nd centuries BCE, invented the astrolabe‘, Krebs, ‘Groundbreaking Scientific Experiments, Inventions, and Discoveries of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance’, p. 196 (2004).

[18] *In fact her student Synesius wrote her a letter telling her how to make one for him, and explaining how to use it; ‘I am in such evil fortune that I need a hydroscope. See that one is cast in brass for me and put together. The instrument in question is a cylindrical tube, which has the shape of a flute and is about the same size. It has notches in a perpendicular line, by means of which we are able to test the weight of the waters. A cone forms a lid at one of the extremities, closely fitted to the tube. The cone and the tube have one base only. This is called the baryllium. Whenever you place the tube in water, it remains erect. You can then count the notches at your ease, and in this way ascertain the weight of the water.’ Fitzgerald, ‘The Letters of Synesius of Cyrene’, p. 99 (1926).

[19] ‘As the Czech historian Maria Dzielska documents in a recent biography, Hypatia got caught up in a political struggle between Cyril, an ambitious and ruthless churchman eager to extend his authority, and Hypatia’s friend Orestes, the imperial prefect who represented the Roman Empire.’, Lindberg, ‘Myth 1: That the Rise of Christianity Was Responsible For the Demise of Ancient Science’, in Numbers (ed.), ‘Galileo Goes to Jail: and other myths about science and religion’, p. 9 (2009).

[20] ‘her death had everything to do with local politics and virtually nothing to do with science. Cyril’s crusade against pagans came later. Alexandrian science and mathematics prospered for decades to come.’, ibid., p. 9.

[21] ‘That Synesius, a Christian, maintained such close ties with the Greek intellectual traditions and with his teacher Hypatia, suggests that a hybrid amalgam existed between the intellectual pagan and intellectual Christian traditions.’, Wessel, ‘Cyril of Alexandria and the Nestorian controversy: the making of a’, p. 54 (2004).

[22] ‘Among Christian intellectual elites, this Neoplatonic variety of paganism posed no real threat to their theological views. Such easy coexistence between certain pagan and Christian intellectuals suggests that Hypatia’s paganism per se may not have angered Cyril as much as John of Nikiu claimed.’, ibid., p. 54.

[23] ‘Hypatia was a pagan, but she had a lot of students who were Christians and maybe even a few Jewish students.’, Moore & Bruder, ‘Philosophy: the power of ideas’, p. 85 (2001).

[24] ‘Pagan religiosity did not expire with Hypatia, and neither did mathematics and Greek philosophy. (Dzielska 1995, p. 105).’, Hodgkin, ‘A history of mathematics: from Mesopotamia to modernity’, p. 72 (2005).

[25] Socrates Scholasticus, ‘Historia Ecclesiastica’ (c. 439).

[26] ‘Hypatia was unimpressed with what she called religious superstition. She once described how she felt “truth” was different from religious beliefs: “Men will fight for superstition as quickly as for the living truth – even more so, since superstition is intangible, you can’t get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.”‘, Donovan, ‘Hypatia: Mathematician, Inventor, and Philosopher’, p. 43 (2008).

[27] ‘Making matters even worse, Hypatia made public statements against organized religion: All formal… religions are delusive [able to easily mislead people] and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.’, p. 48.

[28] ‘As Hypatia explained, “Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.”‘, p. 43.

[29] ‘She also warned about the dangers of teaching children myths and fairy tales: Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing. The mind of a child accepts them, and only through great pain, perhaps even tragedy, can the child be relieved of them.’, ibid., p. 42; this is sometimes understood as advice against teaching religion to children.

[30] This has derived support from Lynn Osen’s ‘Women in Mathematics’ (1975), which ironically does not attribute these statements to her at all, but to her father Theon; ‘”All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final,” he told her. “Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all” (Hubbard 1908, p. 82).’, Osen, ‘Women in Mathematics’, p. 24 (1975).

[31] ‘The most creative is the exciting account of Hypatia’s educational training and life composed by Elbert  Hubbard in 1908, who made up most of it to compensate for the lack of historical evidence. He even invented quotations that he attributed to Hypatia, and had a suitably ‘ancient’-looking picture of her in profile drawn to illustrate the piece.’, Cohen, ‘Philosophical Tales: being an alternative history revealing the characters, the plots, and the hidden scenes that make up the True Story of Philosophy’, p. 47 (2008); all quotations attributed to Hypatia or her father are the invention of Hubbard, who had no historical training.

[32] ‘”All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final,” said Theon to Hypatia. “Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.”‘, Hubbard, ‘Little journeys to the Homes of Great Teachers: Hypatia’, pp. 82-83 (1908).

[33] ‘Said Hypatia, “Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child-mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after-years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth – often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you can not get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.”’, ibid., pp. 84-85.

[34] ‘In his ability to see the good in all things Hypatia placed Plotinus ahead of Plato, but then she says, “Had there been no Plato there would have been no Plotinus, and although Plotinus surpassed Plato, yet it is plain that Plato, the inspirer of Plotinus and so many more, is the one man whom philosophy cannot spare. Hail Plato!!”‘, ibid., p. 93

[35] ‘”To rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world, is just as base as to use force,” said Hypatia in one of her lectures.’, ibid., p. 99.

[1] ‘The gilding of the furnishings, as of the altar, is reasonable, but not that of the whole interior; cf. Stade, and Nowack, Arch., 2, 29, n. I.’, Montgomery, ‘A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Kings’, p. 152 (1951).

[2] ‘Such extravagant description appears to be a step forward in the process of exuberant imagination, continued by the Chronicler, for whose fancy even the 120-cubit high portico was overlaid with fine gold (2 Ch. 3^4ff.).’, ibid., p. 152.

[3] ‘Some have regarded this description as exaggerated.’, Hicks, ‘1 & 2 Chronicles’, College Press NIV Commentary, p. 306 (2001).

[4] ‘Some have questioned the authenticity of this description, labeling it unabashed exaggeration.’, Long, ‘1 & 2 Kings’, College Press NIV Commentary, p. 147 (2002).

[5] ‘Despite all exaggerated accounts of Solomon’s wealth and commercial success, which were written to give him honor and prestige, there is an historical kernel in the reports of his wealth.’, Esler, ‘Ancient Israel: The Old Testament in its social context’, p. 105 (2006).

[6] ‘Evidently, we can not take the figures about Solomon’s mercantile activities and revenues given in the account at face value. They must have been fabulously exaggerated. Nevertheless, in Ishida’s assessment, which I share, “We can hardly deny the substantial historicity comprised in them” (p. 109).’, Corral, ‘Ezekiel’s Oracles Against Tyre: historical reality and motivations’, p. 112 (2002).

[7] ‘Here were many articles of furniture plated with sheets of gold, beaten and engraved, a wealth of elaborate golden jewellery, a golden dagger, the king’s gold mask, and, eclipsing all, his coffin of solid gold.7 Its weight is 110.4 kg (243 lbs). Particularly relevant for the present study are the shrines that stood in the tomb. There is a small wooden shrine (50 cms high, 26.6 cms wide, 32 cms deep, 19¾ x 10½ x 12¾ inches) made to hold a statue. Sheets of gold cover it entirely, within and without, embossed and engraved with scenes of the king’s life, magical figures, and inscriptions.’, Millard, ‘Solomon In All His Glory’, Bible and Spade (11.2-3-4.64-65), 1982.

[8] ‘In the Temple of the Sacred Boat at Karnak stood twelve columns erected by Tuthmosis III, about 1450 BC, each about 3½ metres high, designed to represent bundles of papyrus. Each was entirely covered with gold, fastened in slits cut at suitable points in the pattern. In another hall at Karnak were fourteen columns. Their design was similar, a papyrus stem, and they, too, were plated with gold from top to bottom. These pillars were larger; an inscription states that they were 31 cubits, that is 16.25 metres high (53 feet).’, ibid., p. 67.

[9] ‘Tuthmosis III (c. 1490–1436 BC) recorded his building of a shrine ‘plated with gold and silver’, and of a floor similarly made. Amenophis III in the next century decorated several structures in this way. Of one temple in honour of Amun at Thebes he claimed it was ‘plated with gold throughout, its floor is adorned with silver, all its portals with electrum’, while the temple at Soleb had the same treatment, except that ‘all its portals are of gold’. Ramesses II (c. 1297–1213 BC) provided his mortuary temple at Abydos with doors ‘mounted with copper and gilded with electrum’. Later in this period, Ramesses III (c. 1183–1152 BC) ornamented temples in exactly the same way. At Medinet Habu he constructed a shrine of gold with a pavement of silver, and doorposts of fine gold.’, ibid., p. 68.

[10] ‘Esarhaddon of Assyria (680–669 BC) told how he restored the shrine of his national god, Assur, and ‘coated the walls with gold as if with plaster’. His son Ashurbanipal claimed much the same, ‘I clad its walls with gold and silver’. In Babylon a century later Nebuchadnezzar recorded his enrichment of the shrines of his gods, ‘I clad (them) in gold, and made them bright as day’, and Nabonidus (555–539 BC) followed him, ‘I clad its walls with gold and silver, and made them shine like the sun’. The tradition stemmed from much earlier times in Babylonia, for Entemena of Lagash built a temple for his god ‘and covered it with gold and silver’ about 2400 BC.16’, ibid., pp. 68-69.

[11] ‘While words like ‘a gold statue’ or ‘a gold bed’ in ancient documents should not be pressed to mean ‘made of solid gold throughout’ or ‘the purest gold’, they can be understood to mean ‘gold all over’, that is to say, nothing else could be seen.’, ibid., pp. 69-70.

[12] 1 Kings 9: 28 They sailed to Ophir, took from there four hundred twenty talents of gold, and then brought them to King Solomon.

[13] ‘The expression “gold of Ophir” occurs not only in the Bible, but also on an eighth-century B.C. ostracon* found at Tell Qasile in Israel. That ostracon, while showing that the name was current to designate the origin or type of gold, throws no light on Ophir’s location.’, Millard, ‘Does the Bible Exaggerate King Solomon’s Golden Wealth?’, Biblical Archaeology Review (15.03), May/June 1989.

[14] 1 Kings 10:14 Solomon received 666 talents of gold per year; commentators are divided as to whether this represents an annual income, or the income of one particular year.

[15] ‘On the basis of these figures, Solomon’s gold can be computed as: 120 talents==3,960 kg==3.9 tons from Tyre, and the same from Sheba; 420 talents==13,860 kg==13.6 tons from Ophir; 666 talents==21,978 kg==21.6 tons in one year.’, Millard, ‘Solomon In All His Glory’, Bible and Spade (11.2-3-4.72), 1982.

[16] ‘Indeed, J.B. Pritchard argues that the narrative’s references to gold, pure gold and silver and its allusions to the respect which Solomon’s peers showed to him are ‘popular—even folkloristic’ elements of the history of Solomon’s age.’, Younger Jr, ‘The Figurative Aspect and the Contextual Method in the Evaluation of the Solomonic Empire: 1 Kings 1–11’, in Clines, Fowl & Porter (eds.), ‘The Bible in Three Dimensions: Essays in Celebration of Forty Years of Biblical Studies in the University of Sheffield’, p. 159 (1990).

[17] ‘The only ancient text that reports the annual income of a powerful king in Old Testament times is the Hebrew Bible. In 1 Kings 10:14 the figure of 666 talents of gold (almost 25 U.S. tons) is given for Solomon. This may refer to a particular year, just as the 420 talents (15.75 U.S. tons) from Ophir refers to a particular source (1 Kings 10:11). Only two figures in ancient records approach the amount of 666 talents: the total of Pharaoh Osorkon’s gift to the gods and the amounts of treasure Alexander the Great found in Persia.’, Millard, ‘Does the Bible Exaggerate King Solomon’s Golden Wealth?’, Biblical Archaeology Review (15.03), May/June 1989.

[18] 1 Kings 9: 28 They sailed to Ophir, took from there four hundred twenty talents of gold, and then brought them to King Solomon.

[19] ‘We learn from firsthand sources that Metten II of Tyre (ca. 730) paid a tribute of 150 talents of gold to our old acquaintance Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria, while in turn his successor Sargon II (727-705) bestowed 154 talents of gold upon the Babylonian gods – about 6 tons in each case. Going back almost eight centuries, Tuthmosis III of Egypt presented about 13.5 tons (well over 200 talents) of gold in nuggets and rings to the god Amun in Thebes, plus an unknown amount more in a splendid array of gold vessels and cult implements. Worth almost a third of Solomon’s reputed annual gold revenue, this was on  just one occasion, to just one temple.’, Kitchen, ‘On the Reliability of the Old Testament’, pp. 133-134 (2003).

[20] ‘So a king of Assyria wrote to the Pharaoh about 1350 BC, ‘Gold is like dust in your land, one simply gathers it up.’ A contemporary king repeated this statement six times in letters to the Pharaoh! The Assyrian went on ‘Why do you think it is so valuable? I am building a new palace, send me enough gold to decorate it properly! When my ancestor wrote to Egypt, he was sent twenty talents of gold. . . . When (another king) wrote to Egypt to your father, he sent him twenty talents of gold . . . send me much gold!’ (Twenty talents by Babylonian standards was 600 kg or 11.7 cwts.).’, Millard, ‘Solomon In All His Glory’, Bible and Spade (11.2-3-4.73), 1982.

[21] ‘When Damascus surrendered to Adadnirari III, probably in 796 BC, the Assyrian received 2,300 talents of silver (69,000 kg; 67.76 tons), 20 talents of gold (600 kg; 1,320 lbs), and much else. Some sixty years later Tiglath-pileser III subjugated Samaria, placing Hoshea on the throne as his nominee. Samaria paid 10 talents of gold (300 kg; 660 lbs) as tribute (and an unknown amount of silver). The same emperor received the submission of Tyre, and with it the large sum of 150 talents of gold (4,500 kg; 4.4 tons).’, ibid., p. 74.

[22] ‘During the reign of Tuthmosis III the yield of the gold fields at Wawat in Nubia (the Sudan) for three years was 232.4 kg (512 lbs), 258.8 kg (570 lbs), and 286.1 kg (630 lbs). These may be exceptional figures, yet they show what sort of income was available from a single source. In the Annals of the same pharaoh, the booty taken between his twenty-second and his forty-second years amounted to over 11,500 kg (11.3 tons) of gold. His successor, Amenophis II (c. 1427–1401 BC) claimed the weight of gold vessels he took from the Levant was 6,800 deben (618.5 kg; 1,360 lbs).’, ibid., p. 75.

[23] ‘None of these figures approach the amounts recorded for Solomon except for the booty gathered by Tuthmosis III (11,500 kg; 11.3 tons).’, ibid., p. 75.

[24] ‘In Egypt Shishak’s successor Osorkon I gifted some 383 tons of gold and silver to the gods and temples of Egypt in the first four years of his reign, many of the detailed amounts being listed in a long inscription (now damaged) (figs. 22A, B). That sum would (in weight) be equivalent to almost seventeen years of Solomon’s annual gold revenue,’, Kitchen, ‘On the Reliability of the Old Testament’, p. 134 (2003).

[25] 1 Kings 1425 In King Rehoboam’s fifth year, King Shishak [Sheshonq] of Egypt attacked Jerusalem. 26 He took away the treasures of the LORD’s temple and of the royal palace; he took everything, including all the golden shields that Solomon had made.

[26] ‘His reign is poorly documented, nothing hints at a far-reaching military adventure, bringing home rich booty.’, Millard, ‘Solomon In All His Glory’, Bible and Spade (11.2-3-4.76), 1982.

[27] ‘Osorkon’s father was Sheshonq 1 (c. 945–924 BC), the Shishak who took the gold from Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem and from the Judaean treasury.’, ibid., p. 76.

[28] ‘Where could Osorkon have obtained such immense wealth, to spend on such a scale after only three and a third years of his reign? Barely five years earlier, Osorkon’s father Shishak had looted the wealth of Jerusalem. It seems unlikely to be a mere coincidence that almost immediately after that event Osorkon could dispose so freely of so much gold and silver.*The vast amounts of Solomon’s golden wealth may have ended up, at least in part, as Osorkon’s gift to the gods and goddesses of Egypt.’, Kitchen, ‘Where Did Solomon’s Gold Go?’, Biblical Archaeology Review (15.03), May/June 1989.

[1] ‘According to Smith, the letter in question was found on the final blank pages of the works of Ignatius of Antioch, the latter of which was copied in 1646. The handwriting of the extract is written in a different hand from the works of Ignatius and has been dated to c. 1750, about a century later than the Ignatius works of which it is a part. In the letter published by Smith, Clement replies to a certain Theodore who has been troubled by the teachings of the gnostic Carpocratians, a sect that indulges in illicit sexual practices based upon a variant version of the Gospel of Mark. Clement refutes the Carpocratians by citing two passages from the suspect version of Mark, which Morton Smith calls the Secret Gospel of Mark.’, Edwards, ‘The Gospel According to Mark’, Pillar New Testament Commentary, p. 509 (2002).

[2] ‘It was not until 1973 that the text, along with Smith’s translation and notes, was finally published.’, Charlesworth & Evans, ‘Jesus in the Agrapha and Apocryphal Gospels’, in Chilton & Evans (eds.), ‘Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research’, p. 526 (1994).

[3] ‘Smith recognized that Markan vocabulary and sentence construction could point either to Mark’s authorship or to imitation of Mark by another author. Smith noted three features that suggested imitation:’, Brown, ‘Mark’s Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith’s controversial discovery’, p. 6 (2005); Brown is a supporter of the authenticity of the letter, which he defends comprehensively in this work.

[4] ‘More generally, he noted that “The text was more like Mark than a section of Mark should be.”‘, Brown, ‘Mark’s Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith’s controversial discovery’, p. 6 (2005).

[5] ‘‘The style is certainly Mark’s, but it is too Marcan to be Mark’; such was already C.C. Richardson’s verdict in 1974, and E. Best in 1979 confirmed this judgment in detail. In Mark itself the Marcan peculiarities of style are nowhere so piled up as in the ‘secret Gospel’!’, Merkel, ‘Appendix: the ‘secret Gospel’ of Mark’, in Schneelmelcher & Wilson, ‘New Testament Apocrypha: Gospels and related writings’, p. 107 (1991).

[6] ‘Smith refers to three ‘semitisms’, which, however, often occur in the Synoptics; as Smith himself admits, such semitisms are easily imitated.’, ibid., p. 107.

[7] ‘Suspicion surrounded the text in part because after being photographed by Smith in 1958 and then a team of scholars in 1972, the text mysteriously disappeared, making it impossible to subject the text to the testing necessary to authenticate it even as an eighteenth-century production. The text still has its advocates.’, Köstenberger, Kellum, & Quarles (eds.), ‘The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament’, p. 1343 (2009).

[8] ‘M. Smith photographed this text, which breaks off in mid-sentence on the third page, but did nothing about safeguarding the original, which to this day has not been accessible to anyone else. Only in 1973 did he publish the text with an extensive commentary; at the same time he published a popular presentation of the story of the discovery and his work upon it.’, Merkel, ‘Appendix: the ‘secret Gospel’ of Mark’, in Schneelmelcher & Wilson, ‘New Testament Apocrypha: Gospels and related writings’, p. 107 (1991).

[9] ‘The truth is that at least three other scholars and two members of the Greek Patriarchate handled the manuscript. The information obtained by various inquirers, moreover, corroborates Smith’s account that he left the book containing the manuscript among the seventy items that he catalogued in the library at Mar Saba.’, Brown, ‘Mark’s Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith’s controversial discovery’, p. 26 (2005).

[10] ‘It would appear, then, that the manuscript was found at Mar Saba in 1976 rather than 1977, or eighteen years after Smith photographed it, and it disappeared many years after the Archimandrite took it to Jerusalem and a librarian removed it from the book. These facts show how preposterous it is to suggest that Smith prevented other scholars from examining the manuscript.’, ibid., p. 26.

[11] ‘In view of what is known about the fading and browning of inks and the browning of paper in contact with ink, we can conclude that the photos depict a manuscript that looks like it is a few hundred years old.’, ibid., p. 28.

[12] ‘Brown’s research indicates that some formulas of iron gall inks result in writings that would turn brown quite rapidly through exposure to sunlight.’, ibid., p. 28; this would give the ink a false appearance of age.

[13] ‘There was a way of ageing paper artificially that was used in the 1960s by experienced researchers such as Barrow.’, ibid., p. 28; Brown questions whether Smith had the skill for such forgery.

[14] ‘It is also possible to age paper and ink using chemicals that oxidize the ink and paper.’, ibid., p. 28.

[15] ‘Some of the scholars Smith consulted in the 1960s thought the letter was an ancient forgery, although they had difficulty explaining how an ancient author would benefit by creating it. Smith dealt with their arguments in his book.’, ibid., p. 12.

[16] ‘However, the spectre of forgery came back with a vengeance in 1975, when two scholars offered influential arguments that the letter was a modern hoax.’, ibid, p. 12.

[17] Quesnell suggested that an erudite scholar who had access to Otto Stahlin’s 1936 index of Clement’s vocabulary and other modern studies of Clement’s style could have produced the document, especially if he had the help of someone skilled in imitating handwriting. Quesnell added that any scholarly apparatus Smith used to “authenticate” the document could have assisted a forger in imitating Clement. And he pointed out that Smith’s ability to gain access to the tower library at Mar Saba shows that a forger could have planted it there.’, ibid, p. 12.

[18] ‘According to Quesnell, Smith’s approach of not producing the original for scientific study and restricting his analysis to the content is congruent with the pattern of known forgers; that fact raises the possibility of recent forgery.’, ibid., p. 35.

[19] ‘many agreed with Quesnell that the manuscript should be subjected to forensic testing before it is deemed authentic.’, ibid, p. 12.

[20] ‘Their suspicions only increased when Charles Murgia offered arguments for modern forger based on the content of the letter. Murgia suggested that the letter consisted mostly of information that was suspiciously self-authenticating, and noted that the manuscript lacks the major errors that result from a long period of transmission.’, ibid, p. 12.

[21] ‘Murgia noted parallels between the letter and “Classical fakes,” which raised the possibility that this manuscript was written much later than it appears to be.’, ibid, pp. 28-29.

[22] ‘every sentence of the letter, other than the actual quotation of secret Mark, is admirably designed to provide A SEAL OF AUTHENTICITY for the passage of secret Mark. Great care is taken to convince the modern reader of why he has never heard of this gospel before.’, Murgia quoted in ibid., p. 29; Brown notes ‘Smith himself commented in 1976 that Murgia’s “theory of a ‘seal of authenticity’ is the strongest case I have seen yet for the supposition that the letter is a forgery”‘, but criticizes Murgia’s case, ibid., p. 29.

[23] ‘The only manuscript (actually, a photograph of a manuscript) seems to derive from a different provenance than the monastery where it was supposedly found, and evidence seems to suggest that it appeared at the monastery only in recent times. Its attribution to Clement is stylistically open to quesiton;117 it also clearly presupposes modern idiom and perhaps modern custom.’, Keener, ‘The Historical Jesus of the Gospels’, p. 60 (2009).

[24] ‘Attempts to argue that the Secret Gospel of Mark is older than canonical Mark3 are clearly mistaken, and have been judged so by a majority of scholars.4 The most important reason for this judgment is that the material alleged by Smith appears in no other church father and in none of the thousands of ancient manuscript witnesses to the Gospel of Mark. Furthermore, that Secret Mark is a later addition to canonical Mark is virtually proven by the fact that “they came to Bethany” is a glaring anachronism in the text of Mark since Jesus and the disciples have not yet come to Jericho (Mark 10:46), and Bethany lay beyond Jericho. Finally, the Carpocratians mentioned by Theodore to Clement did not arise until the mid-second century, that is, a full century after the composition of Mark.’, Edwards, ‘The Gospel According to Mark’, Pillar New Testament Commentary, p. 512 (2002).

[25] ‘Even if we accept the authenticity of the letter of Clement and grant that he knew a ‘Secret Gospel’, it suffices to posit a mid-second-century date for its composition.’, Klauck, ‘Apocryphal Gospels: An introduction’, p. 35 (2003).

[26] ‘Over against the linguistic indications which speak for authenticity, differences of substance as compared with the rest of Clement’s writing have been noted. Finally, it is striking that the text contains none of the errors typical in manuscript traditions.’, Merkel, ‘Appendix: the ‘secret Gospel’ of Mark’, in Schneelmelcher & Wilson, ‘New Testament Apocrypha: Gospels and related writings’, p. 107 (1991).

[27] ‘the lack of serious errors indicative of transmission weighs in Murgia’s favour’, ibid., p. 33., Brown, ‘Mark’s Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith’s controversial discovery’, p. 8 (2005).

[28] ‘Very few scholars believed that LGM 1 or 2 [the two texts of ‘Secret Mark’] can tell us anything about the historical Jesus or ventured to use this story to reconstruct the tradition that lay behind John 11.’, ibid., p. 11.

[29] ‘Accordingly, everything points to the view that the ‘secret Gospel’ is an apocryphon resting on the foundation of the canonical Gospels. On this ground alone any conclusions relating to the historical Jesus are not possible. The time of origin of the ‘secret Gospel’ probably lies not before the middle of the 2^nd century.’, Merkel, ‘Appendix: the ‘secret Gospel’ of Mark’, in Schneelmelcher & Wilson, ‘New Testament Apocrypha: Gospels and related writings’, p. 107 (1991).

[30] ‘Even if the letter is authentic, however, we can deduce no more than that an expanded version of Mark was in existence in Alexandria about A.D. 170. When Smith seeks to go back to the last years of the 1^st century for the composition of the expanded Mark, that rests on pure speculation.’, ibid., p. 107.

[31] ‘By the end of the 1970s, New Testament scholars still mentioned “secret” Mark in an incidental manner, but were generally reluctant to take the gospel too seriously and risk looking foolish should it prove to be a fake.’, Brown, ‘Mark’s Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith’s controversial discovery’, p. 14 (2005).

[32] ‘The novelty value of this text and of the reporting of its find justifies the mention of it in this collection, but its antiquity and genuineness are questioned by many scholars.’, Elliott, ‘The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation based on M.R. James’, p. 148 (1993).

[33] ‘There can be little question that the extract produced by Smith considerably postdates Mark. On the whole, so-called Secret Mark appears to be a forgery, although whether modern or ancient is difficult to say.’, Edwards, ‘The Gospel According to Mark’, Pillar New Testament Commentary, p. 512 (2002).

[34] ‘If the jury is still out, it is seeming more and more likely that their verdict will be that the work is a modern forgery or hoax.’, Collins, & Attridge, ‘Mark: A Commentary on the Gospel of Mark’, Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible, p. 493  (2007).