I just find it funny that there are people dumb enough to fall for this sort of thing:
KIBBUTZ MAANIT, Israel - A Texas oilman is using his Bible as a guide to finding oil in the Holy Land.John Brown, a born-again Christian and founder of Zion Oil & Gas of Dallas, can quote chapter and verse about his latest drilling venture in Israel, where his company has an oil and gas exploration license covering 96,000 acres.
"Most blessed of sons be Asher. Let him be favored by his brothers and let him dip his foot in oil," Brown quotes from Moses's blessing to one of the 12 Tribes of Israel in Deuteronomy 33:24.
Standing next to a 177-foot derrick at Kibbutz Maanit in northern Israel, Brown said the passage indicated there is oil lying beneath the biblical territory of the Tribe of Asher, where the agricultural community is located.
How absurd. The men who wrote the bible would not even have known what oil (petroleum, that is) was, nor, one would think, would they even have had a word for it. The Hebrew word in this passage is shemen. Strong's Concordance defines this word as "grease, especially liquid (as from the olive, often perfumed)", which is consistent with biblical notions of annointing and a culture in which washing and annointing one's feet was a sign of wealth. It has precisely nothing to do with petroleum. Proof yet again that PT Barnum was an optimist. Then again, I've always found it amusing that God allegedly led his "chosen people" to a "promised land" that just happened to be practically the only spot in the Middle East without any oil.
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Is it beyond reason to think that maybe the Israelis have spent a few decades making sure that there wasn't petroleum under the surface? This is just another one of those christian end times zealots trying to find a way to make the final days begin. I suspect his rebuttle to your critique would suggest that hidden in the hebrew scripts are numerological reference symbols to secret sacred revelations of god hiding these precious resources. Which, when spelled out sounds not too much different than those folk living in Pahrump Nevada.
Why is it that skeptics know the Bible so much more than people of check-your-brains-at-the-door-to-the-point-of-gullability faith?
BCH
In an April 1 2004 article in WorldNetDaily, Hal Lindsey wrote,
In a June 2004 article in his excellent blog called Bartholomew's notes on religion, the most excellent Richard Bartholomew pointed out that in 2004 one of the directors of Zion Oil and Gas was Zion shareholder Ralph F. DeVore, who was also a "director of Hal Lindsey Ministries", and who apparently was also a cousin to Mr. Lindsey.
Geological surveys and an attempt by an Israeli-based company to find oil at the same site 10 years ago, a venture he said was abandoned for lack of funds, led Brown to pick the spot where new drilling will begin this week.
There's a reasonable chance he'll find oil, since some real geology has been done and identified the site as a possible source for oil. That part will be forgotten, though, and it'll be a fabulous demomstration of the Truth (tm) of biblical prophecy.
See also Mr. Bartholomew's February 5, 2005 article, Hal Lindsey's Cousin Quits Zion Oil. (It's a doozy.)
Gods help the agricultural community there if he does find oil. kind of difficult to harvest if there's an oil derrick in your field.
Jean.
A number of years ago I heard a joke about this--it was from a Jewish comedian, so I wouldn't consider it anti-semitic. It went something to the effect that Moses wandered the wilderness for forty years and settled on the only part of the Middle East that didn't have any oil.
That's not entirely correct, of course. Lebanon doesn't have any oil, either. But the joke was somewhat funny.
BTW, if they want to find oil in Israel, they should plant olive trees. Lots of them.
On a more serious note, it's highly likely that the policies supported by conservative christians will destroy Israel. Of course, that is their intention. It would fulfill their prophecy.
Re Jean Dudley's comment:
You should take a drive through Alberta. There are crude oil pumps all over the wheat fields there.
I like how an "attempt to find oil" becomes a "reasonable" chance. Zion oil has links and funding from a number of interesting sources in the US evangelical community. Their ultimate goal is to first rid Judea of non-Jews, then rebuild the temple after they destroy all that is on that mount, bringing about the prophesied return of the messiah, who will invoke the last judgement, leading to the rapture of the true believers and the great war between the anti-christ and the army of archangels etc. yada yada blah blah. There are any number of the faithful there in Israel at this moment, complete with their versions of the "original plans" for the sacred temple. And they have some astonishing amounts of money behind them. The oil scam, which is what it really is, was put together to support the delivery of the construction infrastructure. These folks have a vision and are following it forward; and they are very very scary.
spyder, you said:
I like how an "attempt to find oil" becomes a "reasonable" chance. All I was pointing out is that they didn't throw darts at a map, and that some exploration has already been done. Maybe all they care about is that there's _some_ exploration behind the scam to help justify it to the wavering. I was thinking about the usual trick of shouting "God Told Me!" and then adding in a whisper, "and the numbers looked good, too."
You see a whole lot more in it than I do, and I expect you're better read on the topic than I am.
Just to let you know, there really are computer models that have been fairly successfull at identifying likely sources of undersea or underground petroleum. There really have been. I dealt with some models 15 years ago.
This really isn't what they used to refer to as "rocket science." But it is interesting science--it really is. And it's really interesting mathematics.
Great blog! I can't believe I am just now finding it. Anyway, I just added you to my BlogRoll at http://atheistrevolution.blogspot.com/
Keep up the good work!
ccc
Wouldn't we all be the "monkey" if oil is indeed found?
Robert Vahe wrote:
No, not really. It would hardly be a major shock if oil was found in Israel. After all, it's right next to the largest oil fields in the world. But if that happens, it will have nothing to do with this false interpretation of a bible verse and everything to do with geology.
Reply to Posted by Ed at April 8, 2005 04:17 PM RE:Maybe they did know. The men who wrote the bible would not even have known what oil (petroleum, that is) was, nor, one would think, would they even have had a word for it.
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/199404/bulls.from.the.sea.htm