Hi Ichthus,
Your test for plausibleness seems a little lax for my taste. You say;
quote:
However, this doesn't mean that these stories are false in any way. The Iliad turned out to be quite plausible....
Hmm. Which bits of the Ilaid do you find most plausible? This bit?
Homer writes:
Venus now went back into the house of Jove, while Juno darted
down from the summits of Olympus. She passed over Pieria and fair
Emathia, and went on and on till she came to the snowy ranges of
the Thracian horsemen, over whose topmost crests she sped without
ever setting foot to ground.
or this bit?
Homer writes:
Thus did he pray, and Apollo heard his prayer. He came down
furious from the summits of Olympus, with his bow and his quiver
upon his shoulder, and the arrows rattled on his back with the
rage that trembled within him. He sat himself down away from the
ships with a face as dark as night, and his silver bow rang death
as he shot his arrow in the midst of them. First he smote their
mules and their hounds, but presently he aimed his shafts at the
people themselves, and all day long the pyres of the dead were
burning.
I really like this bit;
Homer writes:
then Neptune and Apollo took counsel to
destroy the wall, and they turned on to it the streams of all the
rivers from Mount Ida into the sea, Rhesus, Heptaporus, Caresus,
Rhodius, Grenicus, Aesopus, and goodly Scamander, with Simois,
where many a shield and helm had fallen, and many a hero of the
race of demigods had bitten the dust. Phoebus Apollo turned the
mouths of all these rivers together and made them flow for nine
days against the wall, while Jove rained the whole time that he
might wash it sooner into the sea. Neptune himself, trident in
hand, surveyed the work and threw into the sea all the
foundations of beams and stones which the Achaeans had laid with
so much toil; he made all level by the mighty stream of the
Hellespont, and then when he had swept the wall away he spread a
great beach of sand over the place where it had been. This done
he turned the rivers back into their old courses.
Now those are just a few passages I took from
this on-line version of the Iliad. I didn't have to look very hard, because there are quite a lot of ridiculous and fantastical passages to choose from. I am aware that such passages are probably not the ones that you were thinking of. Some bits of the Iliad are indeed a great deal more plausible. The point is that the least plausible sections are the ones where supernatural deities perform miraculous feats.
The same is true of the Bible. The bit where a supernatural entity floods the entire world has to count as one of the least plausible bits, however many other passages are supported by evidence.
I believe that Troy was probably a real place because Schliemann found it, or at least an ancient city that could well have been Troy, using the Iliad as his guide. We have tangible evidence for its existence. It's not 100% convincing, but at least it's evidence. It is however, important to note, that evidence for the existence of Troy, even if that evidence were incontrovertible, does absolutely nothing to back up any of the fantastical stories presented above.
If you can provide genuinely plausible evidence of a worldwide flood, and also explain away the wealth of geological evidence that contradicts a flood, feel free to start a thread. If your evidence is strong enough, who knows, you might rewrite the geology textbooks. Just remember;
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." - Carl Sagan
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