Raphael Haim Golb

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
User avatar
spin
Posts: 2146
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 10:44 pm
Location: Nowhere

Re: Raphael Haim Golb

Post by spin »

John T wrote: Tue Oct 17, 2017 5:05 pm "The chief corollary of the [Golb] hypothesis is that the Essenes had nothing to do either with the Qumran settlement - a fortress in Golb's opinion - or with the manuscripts."....Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English pg. 19-20.

Considering all the recent discoveries in DNA and archaeology evidence of Qumran and the DSS, what would be the point to go over Golb's half-baked idea once again? :tombstone:

John T
There's a reason scholars don't cite Vermes' translation: it is tendentious shite.

As to the archaeological evidence a good place to start if Magen and Peleg's report on their 11 years of research there. No trace of Essenes.
Dysexlia lures • ⅔ of what we see is behind our eyes
User avatar
John T
Posts: 1567
Joined: Thu May 15, 2014 8:57 am

Re: Raphael Haim Golb

Post by John T »

Secret Alias wrote: Tue Oct 17, 2017 6:56 pm
what would be the point to go over Golb's half-baked idea once again?
But what's with the personal attacks? If the theory sucks demonstrate that it sucks. It really astounds me how prevalent this methodology is even in mainstream scholarship. I was watching a Facebook take down of Richard Carrier where dozens of 'real scholars' were bringing up personal attacks to dismiss Carrier. It started with Morton Smith and now these sorts of things have gone mainstream.
Already asked and answered.
What is the point of rehashing/debunking Golb's half-baked idea yet again?

Besides, your hypocritical comments against personal attacks is like the pot calling the kettle black, e.g. your nasty personal attacks on Robert Eisenman's theory of "James the Brother of Jesus" being an Essene is just one example of many.

What you should be doing is trashing my half-baked idea that John The Baptist was an Essene. :whistling:
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."...Jonathan Swift
Secret Alias
Posts: 18362
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: Raphael Haim Golb

Post by Secret Alias »

What is the point of rehashing/debunking Golb's half-baked idea yet again?
I know you are Trump-guy and are acclimatized to the idea that you can just make bold assertions without doing the necessary steps to transform them to something substantial. So let's start again. What are the ideas of Golb's that you think have been debunked? You've not even attempted to speak rationally or reasonably.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
User avatar
John T
Posts: 1567
Joined: Thu May 15, 2014 8:57 am

Re: Raphael Haim Golb

Post by John T »

Secret Alias wrote: Wed Oct 18, 2017 10:22 am
What is the point of rehashing/debunking Golb's half-baked idea yet again?
I know you are Trump-guy and are acclimatized to the idea that you can just make bold assertions without doing the necessary steps to transform them to something substantial. So let's start again. What are the ideas of Golb's that you think have been debunked? You've not even attempted to speak rationally or reasonably.
Let's review how we got here in the first place, o.k.?

I did not start this O.P., Peter did.
I did not give it the title, Peter did.
My post was cut & pasted and transferred here by Peter.

It originally was about how to improve this forum. Specifically, on how things are regressing on this forum due to hypocrisy and trolling by pseudo-intellectuals using Golb jr. like tactics.

With that, thanks for confirming my point, dittos for Spin.

So, if you want to dig up a dead (Golb) horse just to beat it some more, by all means go ahead and perhaps Peter will join you. However, I don't care to debate it once again with someone who is incapable of discussing anything and I mean anything, in a civil manner.

Best of luck.

John T
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."...Jonathan Swift
User avatar
Peter Kirby
Site Admin
Posts: 8015
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 2:13 pm
Location: Santa Clara
Contact:

Re: Raphael Haim Golb

Post by Peter Kirby »

To avoid the beat-a-dead-horse experience you're complaining about, don't bring a dead horse to the party.

Feel free to go back to the original thread and make whatever point you'd like.

It will be split only if there is a digression that clearly is its own topic at some point. Like this one.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
Steven Avery
Posts: 987
Joined: Sun Oct 19, 2014 9:27 am

Re: Golb

Post by Steven Avery »

spin wrote: Mon Oct 16, 2017 6:39 pm Golb Jnr's problem was that he chose to break the law in his efforts... Raphael Golb chose desperate methods that landed him in jail.
The law had to be turned upside down, however, and a good chunk of the upside down law by which he was convicted was stricken as unconstitutional.

I remember when Golb did some sock-puppetry on a forum. Nothing illegal in that. And trivially easy for moderators to control.

And I went to one of the legal things at the NY Court of Appeals and saw a bit how the game is played.

He put out that comic caricature of Lawrence Schiffman from the library, using a spoof email. No harm caused, and if there was danger of any harm, a simple fifty-word statement saying something like "that email was not me, my email is ___" would have sufficed.

They had to stretch all sorts of concepts like some ethereal "benefit" and "gain" which can be simply scoring a debating point. The whole thing was more a stain on his accusers (one of whom now is big-wig in SBL) than anywhere else, and has allowed the potential for much heavier intrusions of criminal law by those who are well-connected (like Schiffman with the NY DA) against satire and internet speech.

===================

Raphael Golb Is Facing Jail Time — For Parodying a Dead Sea Scrolls Scholar
Arthur S. Hayes - Oct 12, 2017
http://forward.com/opinion/385050/rapha ... s-scholar/

"... Accordingly, Golb never should have had to face criminal charges. Civil court was the proper venue. There, he would have been allowed to argue that his emails did not make false accusations — the strongest argument a libel defendant can make — something the criminal law trial judge did not allow him to do.

Here in the U.S., particularly in New York, no critic should serve prison time because he intended to, or in fact did, disparage others, even if he does so by posing as someone else. That is a reasonable principle to draw from more than fifty years of First Amendment jurisprudence. Yet, partially exonerated Raphael Golb still fights to stay out of prison."

==================

Comment - David Schiff

"Anyway the DA seems a lot more interested in spending millions of tax dollars going after a prankster blogger trying to tell truth to power than in prosecuting Weinstein, Strauss-Kahn, or the Trumps."

==================

Steven Avery
https://raphaelgolbtrial.wordpress.com/ ... /#comments

"Yes, it does appear quite clear that the pushers of this whole prosecution entered the whole enterprise with unclean hands, that personal positioning .. or governmental (authoritarian) motives .. were manipulating the judicial process (“good” cases making bad law). Something has been fishy"

And then some 2013 conversation with Raphael Golb. There are a number of spots on the net that have excellent analysis.

==================

The whole prosecution was slick and sick. We should be supporting Raphael Golb's freedom.

Cargill, Schiffman and others should simply write letters to the sentencing judges saying "es suficiente". Cargill, however, clearly smellled some potential $ at the end of the rainbow.

Steven
User avatar
John T
Posts: 1567
Joined: Thu May 15, 2014 8:57 am

Re: Raphael Haim Golb

Post by John T »

Oh, I'm sorry.

I didn't know that all that Golb did was post a harmless silly cartoon.

I always thought he was convicted for his extensive campaign in an online aggravated harassment scheme involving identity theft, criminal impersonation, email forgery and unauthorized user of a computer in hopes of getting people fired for daring to question his father's crackpot theory.

My bad.
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."...Jonathan Swift
Steven Avery
Posts: 987
Joined: Sun Oct 19, 2014 9:27 am

Re: Raphael Haim Golb

Post by Steven Avery »

Did you follow the actual trial?

Most all of your concern is the one email he sent out from NYU, using a new account he set up on Gmail which looked like Lawrence Schiffman, which was dumb, but affected nothing at all. It was, perhaps a legitimate civil case, (maybe a ban from the NYU library) but the problem was that then the actual facts and beliefs could be presented on both sides. In the criminal case, that was prevented.

The key point is that there was no tangible "gain" or "benefit", so that concept was stretched to where it means that if you smile or laugh, you have benefited. This makes the law capable of being wielded against anybody. This is a key part of laws that differentiate pranks and satire from criminal conduct, and they had to mangle the law and procedures to get any convictions.

Bringing a criminal case on this, with tons of felony counts!, rather than personal contacts (a phone call to Norman Golb would have made sense) or a civil case, really was a terrible use of the law. Maybe there could be a misdemeanor charge, but remember, there was no real harm and no real gain from all this. Fortunately, it did lead to most of the bad law to be called unconstitutional, so it had benefits. However, Raphael still faces jail time for a harmless prank that affected nothing (even by Schiffman's account) and some annoying sock-puppetry that any decent moderator can handle in 15 minutes.

Personally, I don't care if Norman Golb's theories are viewed as crackpot or not. That could have been rebutted in a civil case. He is an established scholar. My view is that, to an extent, "all scholars are plagiarists" so that there probably was not too much to the accusations against Schiffman. But, again, this is techie stuff, that does not need search warrants and guns and jails. Today Raphael, tomorrow many others, like all the "crackpot" "conspiracy buffs" or the vaccination resistance. There are many who are looking for legal clubs, beyond the current mode of corporate and government pressure upon Youtube, Facebook, etc. (Google is pressured to rig the search results, too, often they are far too willing to do such rigging.)

I'm amazed that the actual active internet community seems mostly clueless on this. Fortunately, there was some very, very astute commentary on the legal side by a number of sites.

Steven
User avatar
John T
Posts: 1567
Joined: Thu May 15, 2014 8:57 am

Re: Raphael Haim Golb

Post by John T »

No. I did not closely follow the trial.
I only read a few articles regarding the trial.

You seem to know/care quite a bit about Norman.
Do you know if he is still in prison?
Is Norman banned from internet sites like this one?

John T
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."...Jonathan Swift
Steven Avery
Posts: 987
Joined: Sun Oct 19, 2014 9:27 am

Re: Raphael Haim Golb

Post by Steven Avery »

He has not been in prison, they are taking it to the Supreme Court :). (I just called the lawyer to check.)

And I am not sure of the internet status. There was some sort of court decree years ago that created limitations, offhand I do not know if they are active or valid today.

These sites have very solid methods of self-policing, if they need to use them. Even if he did show up on a site, his legal counsel would probably tell him to be quite reserved. He has posted on his own blog, occasionally.

Steven
Post Reply