How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

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How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #1

Post by otseng »

From the On the Bible being inerrant thread:
nobspeople wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 9:42 amHow can you trust something that's written about god that contradictory, contains errors and just plain wrong at times? Is there a logical way to do so, or do you just want it to be god's word so much that you overlook these things like happens so often through the history of christianity?
otseng wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 7:08 am The Bible can still be God's word, inspired, authoritative, and trustworthy without the need to believe in inerrancy.
For debate:
How can the Bible be considered authoritative and inspired without the need to believe in the doctrine of inerrancy?

While debating, do not simply state verses to say the Bible is inspired or trustworthy.

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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #691

Post by Diogenes »

Certainly some tools are so prized they are turned into works of art, and honored as such, as symbols of TOOLS. That is the point; they are still tools, but go beyond utility and are more symbols than tools. So...? "A small proportion of them are highly symmetrical, finely finished and polished, much beyond what you would expect for purely practical purposes." [emphasis applied]
What is the point of this in regard to the supposed 'inerrancy' of the Bible?

Man is an artist. He venerates beauty as well as technology. He even tries to merge technology with beauty. We can appreciate beauty without gods cluttering things up.
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Tower of Babel Summary

Post #692

Post by otseng »

otseng wrote: Thu Jan 06, 2022 9:19 pm
TRANSPONDER wrote: Thu Jan 06, 2022 8:33 amUnless one denies science including history up to the tower of Babel which ... has nothing to do with why humans have different languages
OK, then how did all the languages develop?
I will now summarize my arguments why the existence of the tower of Babel and it resulting in the origin of subsequent languages is a better explanation than science.

The Bible claims all the subsequent languages of the world originated from a single source at the tower of Babel.

Gen 11:1-9 (ESV)
1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3 And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.
4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth."
5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.
6 And the LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech."
8 So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

According to Wikipedia, the dating of the tower of Babel is prior to the first written languages. So, this is consistent with the Biblical account.
otseng wrote: Mon Jan 10, 2022 12:06 am As for the oldest languages in the world based on the first written account:

Egyptian - 2690 BC
Sumerian - 2600 BC
Canaanite - 2400 BC
Chinese - 1200 BC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... n_accounts

"Some scholars use internal and external evidence to offer 3500–3000 BC as a likely range for the date of the tower,"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_ ... r_of_Babel
Further, regarding the timing, if homo sapiens came about 300,000 years ago, why would languages independently arise less than 5000 years ago?

But, the most damaging regarding the "science" of the origin of languages is there does not exist any viable naturalistic explanation for the origin of languages.
Diogenes wrote: Fri Jan 21, 2022 7:44 pm The truth is we don't know exactly how language developed.
otseng wrote: Tue Jan 25, 2022 12:42 am “The evolution of the faculty of language largely remains an enigma.”
https://chomsky.info/20140826/
We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved. We show that, to date, (1) studies of nonhuman animals provide virtually no relevant parallels to human linguistic communication, and none to the underlying biological capacity; (2) the fossil and archaeological evidence does not inform our understanding of the computations and representations of our earliest ancestors, leaving details of origins and selective pressure unresolved; (3) our understanding of the genetics of language is so impoverished that there is little hope of connecting genes to linguistic processes any time soon; (4) all modeling attempts have made unfounded assumptions, and have provided no empirical tests, thus leaving any insights into language's origins unverifiable. Based on the current state of evidence, we submit that the most fundamental questions about the origins and evolution of our linguistic capacity remain as mysterious as ever, with considerable uncertainty about the discovery of either relevant or conclusive evidence that can adjudicate among the many open hypotheses.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 00401/full
What we find also are elements in cultures around the world that share commonalities. If languages and cultures dispersed globally from the tower of Babel, then this would easily explain commonalities in cultures. The other alternative is cultures around the world just coincidentally sharing common similarities, with each independently coming up with shared details. However, as more commonalities are identified, the chance of all of them being just random coincidence becomes exponentially more improbable.

I've pointed out similarities exist of a great flood across cultures:
otseng wrote: Tue Jan 04, 2022 11:22 pm "Flood stories pervade hundreds of cultures and there are striking similarities to many of the accounts. It seems that at least some of these stories could be based upon actual events."
https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blo ... d-stories/

"A good deal of similarity exists between several of the flood myths, leading scholars to believe that these have evolved from or influenced each other."
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Great_Flood

"There are many sources of flood myths in ancient Chinese literature. Some appear to refer to a worldwide deluge."
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/en ... lood#China
Another "coincidence" among cultures is similarities in constellations:
otseng wrote: Mon Jan 24, 2022 12:19 am "The extant record indicates that astrological interpretations of celestial patterns date to ancient Mesopotamia."
https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/en ... ient-world

"Norris has worked with Indigenous Australians and learned many of their sky stories, including those of different groups who identify the Pleiades as seven girls being chased by the constellation Orion, who is a hunter in these tales. This storyline is extremely similar to the one in ancient Greek legends about these constellations."
https://www.livescience.com/pleiades-co ... story.html

"A significant number of Native American tales, told by peoples spread across the North American continent north of the Rio Grande, have a very similar setup for the Big Dipper — including the bear, hunters and steering bird, he added. Given that a great deal of other evidence shows that humans migrated over an ancient land bridge in the Bering Strait between modern-day Russia and Alaska thousands of years ago, Schaefer thought it was much more likely that these Big Dipper stories share a common origin."
https://www.livescience.com/pleiades-co ... story.html

"The Chinese system developed independently from the Greco-Roman system since at least the 5th century BC, although there may have been earlier mutual influence, suggested by parallels to ancient Babylonian astronomy."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_constellations

"But around the world and throughout history, we find remarkably similar constellations defined by disparate cultures, as well as strikingly similar narratives describing the relationships between them."
https://phys.org/news/2019-08-cultures- ... tions.html

"Human cultures can see the world through very different lenses, but the way we sort stars in the night sky is surprisingly universal.
Even when separated by vast differences in time and space, many of the same constellations stand out time and time again in human history, albeit with different names and stories behind them."
https://www.sciencealert.com/there-s-so ... t-cultures
Another similarity across cultures are structures that are ziggurat-like.
otseng wrote: Fri Jan 14, 2022 10:32 am No one yet has excavated any ruins of the tower of Babel, so we don't have any physical evidence of what it looked like. But, pretty much consensus view is that it was a tall ziggurat.

"The biblical account of the Tower of Babel has been associated by modern scholars to the massive construction undertakings of the ziggurats of Mesopotamia"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat

Image

Marten van Valckenborch the Elder - The Tower of Babel
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... roject.jpg
otseng wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 10:14 pm Some more ziggurat-like structures found around the world:
And most likely the Egyptian pyramids were influenced by the ziggurats.

"The design of Egyptian pyramids, especially the stepped designs of the oldest pyramids (Pyramid of Zoser at Saqqara, 2600 BCE), may have been an evolution from the ziggurats built in Mesopotamia."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat
otseng wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 7:25 pm It would be quite strange that Egyptians, who is one of the closest neighbors of the ziggurat builders of Mesopotamia, would not know about ziggurats, whereas other civilizations would. I believe at a minimum, the Egyptians were influenced by ziggurats. ("That's a pretty impressive monument you got there, but we are going to build a bigger and badder one than that.")
Another interesting artifact that is found common around the world is the Acheulean biface (or hand axe).
otseng wrote: Tue Jan 25, 2022 8:43 pm
Image

"Although everpresent in stone age culture, the exact purpose and use of this tool remains a mystery."
http://world-history-education-resource ... -hand.html

"There is a tool that has been around for over million years, that archaeologists keep finding in caves, ditches, wells, and prehistoric settlements. They’re older and more ubiquitous than wheels, than pottery, than pretty much anything else. They’re everywhere, but nobody can agree what they’re for."
https://jon-farrow.com/2017/02/20/a-mil ... d-mystery/

"No academic consensus describes their use."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_axe

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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #693

Post by TRANSPONDER »

Ok. Before I address that, suppose I get the Genesis -based history sorted?

Creation c. 8,000 B.C.E?
Eden c 6,000 B.C E ?
Flood, perhaps controlled by Yu, founder of Xsia dynasty in China and therefore not totally global or wiping out all creation c 4,000 B.C.E?
One people in Mesopotamia OR various parts of the world but speaking 'Mesopotamian' (Sumerian)
Ziggurats including or beginning with the tower of Babel c 3,500- 3000 B.C.E
Ziggurat - inspired building all over with stone 'hand axes' as religious icons. 2,600 B.C.E?
'confusion of languages' in Genesis which seems to translate into diversity of languages, first writing c 2,500 BCE?
spread of ziggurat/pyramid building all over (e.g Maya temples) (after 2,500 BCE)

Is this pretty much the time -line in accordance with Genesis? Can you comment on the proposed dates? Once I get a clear idea of the Genesis -model and perhaps dates (I believe that you did buy into c3,500 -3000 BC as the rough date of Babel.

Feel free to correct this until we all get pretty much what your Genesis -based timeline is so that it can be tested against the evidence. Fair warning that the palaeolothic stone tools are pretty firmly associated with hominids why really aren't yet human as per Genesis -creation and there are C14 -datable organic remains. You may want to bear that in mind when deciding where they (as a global thing that humans did) fit into the timeline.

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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #694

Post by brunumb »

otseng wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 12:22 am "5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.
6 And the LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech."
8 So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city."
I really don't understand God's motivation here. People were cooperating with each other in order to achieve things and God decided to wreck that. Why? There is no indication that they were doing anything wrong or threatening God in any way, if that is even possible. Why impede cooperative behaviour? They were allegedly given different languages and dispersed to make things difficult for them. God's action makes no sense, particularly given that new groups of people, all speaking the same language, would end up in pretty much the same situation as before.
otseng wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 12:22 am Further, regarding the timing, if homo sapiens came about 300,000 years ago, why would languages independently arise less than 5000 years ago?
That only refers to written language. We obviously have records of written language by virtue of its very nature. But, back then, there was no way of recording spoken language so we have nothing to examine. It is believed that spoken language originated around 50 000 to 150 000 years ago although we will never be able to definitively establish exactly how and when. There are numerous theories floating around, some of them relating to how other animals communicate by making sounds. That may have been how humans began communicating and with the growth of intelligence so did the sophistication of oral communication.
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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #695

Post by TRANSPONDER »

Exactly. There is absolutely no basis for supposing that when writing first appeared there wasn't already a spoken language or languages, which is why I argued the point that continual pre -literate cultures implies that the language was spoken long before it was written which is (on evidence) long before any (poposed) date for Babel, never mind the idea that all the world spoke one language and then the fall of Babel suddenly had them speaking different languages. I almost feel the Unwritten Rule (Creationist apologetics have to work without magic) waiting in the wings.

The unwritten bottom line :D is of course who has to prove what (sometimes called Bias or a closed mind) and that depends.

A Genesis literalist will say 'Babel happened' and all they need to do is dismiss or ignore any refutations and they win.

But all I have to say is:

"Genesis is a collection of Myths. The Flood is obviously based on the Mesopotamian Flood and I reckon the Law (Leviticus, Numbers) were the first books giving or laying down the law, and Genesis and Exodus came later to explain how the Jews were God's chosen people, and were written in Babylon during the Exile (1). The explains the use of the Babylonian Flood and the use of the ziggurat of Babylon (I heard that it might have been in need of repair at the time) was made a part of a post -creation myth (how the descendants of Man speaking 'Adunaic' came to speak different languages) and no way does an actual Babel event fit ionto what we know of history and archaeology."

That's all I have to say and laugh at the denial of languages being spoken before they were written, or that pyramids or Maya Temples are anything to do with ziggurats or even if they were, that in any measure supported a tower of Babel or its' collapse, let alone that the event was done by any god, never mind the God of the Bible. And the less said about stone axes as evidence of the tower of Babel, the better.

That's all I have to say and the case for Babel fails for me or for any other doubter.On several levels, it doesn't fit history or archaeology, it doesn't make sense and it doesn't have to be God's doing even if it was true. It only works if you believe Genesis is true to start off with.

(1) I also get niggling hints that Exodus was also written to follow from Genesis as a creation of Israel myth, because Moses in the Bulrushes has so striking a similarity to the take of king Sargon of Akkad, that one suspects a pinch, and one gets a post Ramesses date for the Exodus because Moses avoided the Philistones, which didn't exist in the time of the Ramessids - which is odd because the Merneptah stele (I think he was the son of Ramesses II) mentions that Israel existed already.

Point being that the Exodus is not reliable history but looks invented and never really happened. Indeed the Archaeology suggests that the Hebrews emerged from the Northeastern hills (along with Edom and Moab) after the Bronze age collapse of the 11th c BC. And I'll add my own Pet Theory that 'Moses' leading the Hebrews out of Egypt into Canaan is garbled history of Ahmose 1st kicking the Hyksos out of Egypt into Canaan where they came from. But if this was done with Theist -think..."if you can't disprove it 100% and get me to admit it, then it must be true."

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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #696

Post by TRANSPONDER »

Ok the timeline from the 'standard' view.

The old stone age tools from a few million years ago to 50 thousand with the New stone age sees very primitive stone crushing tools through hand axes to spear and arrow heads. From rather crude to very sophisticated and smoothed and polished in the New stone age. The similarity speaks more to evolution (like Ichthyosaurus, sharks and dolphins adapted the same shape because of the job it needed to do, not because of a common origin), and there's enough use of them as tools to make the idea of them being religious images a non - starter.

Around 5 - 3,000 years BC the copper/bronze age which is when ziggurat building started. Stone tools were pretty much obsolete by that time. the earliest slab tombs (Sahara) are 4,700 BC and the link of Saharan culture to predynastic Egypt has evidence. The pyramids and ziggurats are about the same time (2,600 BC) but the purposes are different, One is a tomb and one a temple. There is no stair access on the outside of a pyramid suggesting any function as a temple. Visual similarity aside, the pyramid evolved from a flat tomb to a pile of brick slabs to the familiar pyramid -shape. There needn't be any dispersal of technology, let alone language because on all evidence Egyptian was the language that was eventually written down that was what they had been using for centuries.

Maya building is hard to link to the Ziggurats, even though temples are what they are and there is a basic similarity rather than resemblance. Again because of the needs and the requirements of what construction will work. But, that said, the dates are AD 250 from the original flat slabs to the classic temples ending around 1200 AD.
I wouldn't want to propose any diaspora -link from Mesopotamia or Egypt or anywhere else outside central America to the Maya, even if one rejected all ancient history - dating.

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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #697

Post by otseng »

TRANSPONDER wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 7:13 amFair warning that the palaeolothic stone tools are pretty firmly associated with hominids why really aren't yet human as per Genesis -creation and there are C14 -datable organic remains. You may want to bear that in mind when deciding where they (as a global thing that humans did) fit into the timeline.
I think what you are basically driving at is if I believe in a young earth or an old earth. I'm currently a young earth proponent.

As for exact dating, I don't claim to know any specific dating. I don't even claim to believe in Ussher's chronology. But, I do believe the earth is on the order of thousands/tens of thousands years old and not on the order of millions/billions of years old. Likewise, I do not believe humans have existed for hundreds of thousands of years, but several orders magnitude less than that.

As for C14-dateable remains, what evidence are you referring to?
brunumb wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 8:23 am I really don't understand God's motivation here.
I don't claim to know that either. But, whether we understand it or not does not affect the argument I posted.
But, back then, there was no way of recording spoken language so we have nothing to examine. It is believed that spoken language originated around 50 000 to 150 000 years ago although we will never be able to definitively establish exactly how and when.
If you have nothing to examine (that is you have no evidence), on what basis do you believe language existed 50,000 to 150,000 years ago?
There are numerous theories floating around, some of them relating to how other animals communicate by making sounds. That may have been how humans began communicating and with the growth of intelligence so did the sophistication of oral communication.
OK, please provide your evidence that human language originated from animal sounds.

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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #698

Post by brunumb »

otseng wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 11:50 pm
brunumb wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 8:23 am I really don't understand God's motivation here.
I don't claim to know that either. But, whether we understand it or not does not affect the argument I posted.
I don't believe there ever was a Tower of Babel. To me the story is just another primitive attempt to explain why there are people in different parts of the world speaking different languages. Back then there was no such thing as the scientific method and the evaluation of data. It was all simply speculative wondering about the world people inhabited and tall tales grew taller with every retelling over many generations.
otseng wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 11:50 pm
brunumb wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 8:23 am But, back then, there was no way of recording spoken language so we have nothing to examine. It is believed that spoken language originated around 50 000 to 150 000 years ago although we will never be able to definitively establish exactly how and when.
If you have nothing to examine (that is you have no evidence), on what basis do you believe language existed 50,000 to 150,000 years ago?
I don't actually know. I am only repeating what I have read about the subject written by people who are experts in the field and whose endeavors it is to try and determine how language evolved.
otseng wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 11:50 pm
brunumb wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 8:23 am There are numerous theories floating around, some of them relating to how other animals communicate by making sounds. That may have been how humans began communicating and with the growth of intelligence so did the sophistication of oral communication.
OK, please provide your evidence that human language originated from animal sounds.
I am not claiming that is how human language evolved. As I said above, I am only relating a little of what I have read about the subject. It's not hard to find different theories along with the pros and cons associated with them. I find, however, that they are all far more plausible than God tweaking the brains of people so that they no longer speak the same language and then scattering them over the world. The original premise doesn't even make any sense, particularly when God is supposed to be the ultimate in intelligent beings.
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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #699

Post by TRANSPONDER »

otseng wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 11:50 pm
TRANSPONDER wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 7:13 amFair warning that the palaeolothic stone tools are pretty firmly associated with hominids why really aren't yet human as per Genesis -creation and there are C14 -datable organic remains. You may want to bear that in mind when deciding where they (as a global thing that humans did) fit into the timeline.
I think what you are basically driving at is if I believe in a young earth or an old earth. I'm currently a young earth proponent.

As for exact dating, I don't claim to know any specific dating. I don't even claim to believe in Ussher's chronology. But, I do believe the earth is on the order of thousands/tens of thousands years old and not on the order of millions/billions of years old. Likewise, I do not believe humans have existed for hundreds of thousands of years, but several orders magnitude less than that.

As for C14-dateable remains, what evidence are you referring to?
[quote/]
(apologies for clip - I just answer the question to me)
Direct Radiocarbon Dating of Late Pleistocene Hominids in Eurasia: Current Status, Problems, and Perspectives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 February 2016

Yaroslav V Kuzmin
and
Susan G Keates

...
Abstract
The corpus of radiocarbon dates run directly on Pleistocene-age human remains in Eurasia (∼120 values, with ∼80 of them found to be reliable) is analyzed and interpreted. The latest Neanderthals are dated to ∼34,000–30,500 BP (∼38,800–35,400 cal BP). They probably coexisted with the first modern humans at ∼36,200–30,200 BP (∼42,500–32,800 cal BP) in the western and central parts of Europe. The earliest direct 14C dates on modern humans in Eurasia are ∼34,950–33,300 BP (∼40,400–37,800 cal BP). A paucity of 14C dates corresponding to the LGM is evident for Europe, but Asia perhaps had larger populations during this timespan. The main criteria for the selection of bone/tooth material for direct 14C dating as now widely accepted are (1) the collagen yield (generally, 1% or more) and (2) the C:N ratio (within the 2.9–3.4 range).


It comes down to this. One either accepts that C14 (Radiocarbon) dating is broadly valuable in dating organic remains or one rejects the validity of the method. The above was the first website dealing with this (and the Qora answers made the mistake of referring to fossils rather than organic remains. Fossils, being stone, cannot be C14 dated but organic remains, not yet fossilised, can be radiocarbon dated. Human bones, teeth, wood samples and of course animals preserved in ice, water, or tar pits are still organic and can be C14 dated. The radiocarbon dating as well as dating of fossils by the strata they are in (by rock dating methods) makes it clear that these remains (and the stone tools associated with them) are many tens of thousands and indeed millions of years old, in some cases.

Science firmly accepts the validity of Radiocarbon dating for organic material and (e.g) potassium argon dating for mineral remains. One either accepts the science or not.

p.s I'm not sure what 'BPO' is, I presume years, but I'll check.

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Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #700

Post by TRANSPONDER »

Ah Hah! :D

Before Present (BP) years, or "years before present" is a time scale used mainly in archaeology, geology and other scientific disciplines to specify when events occurred before the origin of practical radiocarbon dating in the 1950s. Because the "present" time changes, standard practice is to use 1 January 1950 as the commencement date (epoch) of the age scale.[a] The abbreviation "BP" has been interpreted retrospectively as "Before Physics",[1] which refers to the time before nuclear weapons testing artificially altered the proportion of the carbon isotopes in the atmosphere, making carbon dating after that time likely to be unreliable.[2][3]

In a convention that is not always observed, many sources restrict the use of BP dates to those produced with radiocarbon dating; the alternative notation RCYBP is explicitly Radio Carbon Years Before Present.


Of course this date will change year by year but for such ancient dates, it doesn't make so much difference. We are still talking about tens of thousands of years.

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