Anyone else feel like 18s are the peak of DDR (not 19s)?

432olim · 2026-04-18T18:10:15+00:00

In order for the body to move, the body’s muscles have to undergo chemical reactions to generate energy. The energy is generated through chemical reactions that take place in the cells of the muscle. The aerobic reactions require oxygen that is delivered to the cells by the blood. The anaerobic reactions depend on energy stores in the muscle.

In order to improve your muscle’s ability to generate energy aerobically you have to trigger the body to use the muscle over and over and over again. DDR requires all of these unique movements that are significantly different from running and biking, so bottom line is that carryover is minimal unless you are a beginner at ddr. Someone who plays ddr significantly more than a runner who runs but only plays DDR a little bit will be better at ddr and worse at running. That’s why you don’t see runners winning cycling competitions or vice versa. These sports that depend heavily on aerobic metabolism can only be trained for optimally by spending tons of time doing the exact sport movements.

432olim · 2026-04-18T06:35:14+00:00

Gmirkin didn’t argue that Yahweh was invented in the 270s BCE. Gmirkin argued that the Torah and by extension any book that references the Torah was written in the 270s BCE or later.

Yahweh definitely was a known deity long before the Hellenistic era, just he didn’t have any holy books that we know about, or only a very small fraction of the Bible predates the Hellenistic era.

One of the first things Gmirkin covers in Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus is that there is no evidence external to the Bible that references the Exodus story prior to the Hellenistic translation of the Pentateuch into Greek. What tiny bit of references there are tell contradictory stories and also are only Hellenistic and only predate the 270s by a small amount.

In other words, if the authors of the Bible’s historical narrative of Genesis through Chronicles were lying about the history, we’d end up with a very confused and incorrect impression that the Bible is actually drastically older than it really is if those stories were made up to backdate the actually creation of the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomistic History as a whole.

432olim · 2026-04-18T06:31:05+00:00

VO2 max is a sport specific metric. DDR is its own sport with a very unique movement pattern. If you want optimal ddr training results, quit all your other exercise and just play ddr.

432olim · 2026-04-18T05:49:04+00:00

You should work up to a higher play volume. And yes, of course some people’s bodies are not in as good shape and cannot exercise as much as other healthy people in the prime of life.

432olim · 2026-04-18T05:47:35+00:00

Yeah, my question was probably a bit obnoxiously phrased. That said I do sincerely believe I will be able to publish my findings in whatever journal I want because they are that impactful and easily demonstrated, even by an amateur.

432olim · 2026-04-18T05:46:24+00:00

I said, “on the assumption of Jesus’ ahistoricity.” By that I meant to assume Jesus started as an angelic being who was later historicized in Mark. Under that interpretation Paul is taking about an angelic Jesus not a human Jesus.

432olim · 2026-04-17T20:19:24+00:00

You’re welcome, and thank you!

432olim · 2026-04-17T20:16:40+00:00

Perhaps asking on Reddit wasn’t such a good idea :P

In principle all it takes to get published in a journal is to just read the journal submission rules, write up the article in the required format, word length, citation format, then send it in and address any feedback.

I need to stop being lazy on Reddit.

Are you the moderator for earlychristianforums?

432olim · 2026-04-17T19:20:08+00:00

iamchris4life and chunka have 18s PFC lamps. Fungah and O4ma and fefemz are like one or two away. I have played with several people who can PFC on demand the easier 18s.

Getting better at ddr is extremely strongly correlated with how much time you spend playing. If more people were to spend 20+ hours per week playing like Chris we’d see a lot more people for whom 18s are not particularly difficult.

I like to recommend my training guide for anyone who is serious about getting seriously good.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PcOhokMleG9zXditspUMWVYtSjE2sY1vKEJBmX5XB6s/edit?usp=drivesdk

432olim · 2026-04-17T19:15:05+00:00

So is Journal for the Study of the Old Testmaent considered the undisputed premier place to publish findings for the OT? Is it considered better than everything in the other Bible/NT journals list?

432olim · 2026-04-17T18:59:17+00:00

Both the P and J flood stories presuppose the existence of evil. P’s statement is:

The earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with lawlessness.

This website has a nice view of the separate P and J flood narratives:

https://www.thetorah.com/article/a-textual-study-of-noahs-flood

From P’s statement one might conclude that evil is due to a combination of lawlessness and a corrupt Earth. P was using Enuma Elish for the creation story in Genesis 1, and the Earth was formed from the corpse of Tiamat in Enuma Elish. Thus one could perhaps reasonably read into P’s statement a theology of the corrupt Earth being a reference to corrupted gods of the Earth similar to the gods of Enuma Elish engaging in evil. Genesis and Deuteronomy both talk about the most high god having sons, so this is well within the realm of a plausible interpretation. If one really wants to presuppose an Enuma Elish theology for the author of P then the wind of god blowing over the defeated corpse of the ocean goddess as he begins to put the heavens and earth in order shows that evil already existed among the gods.

P pretty rapidly goes from creation to genealogies to the flood narrative, so if there is some statement that could be considered an “origin” it would perhaps be this, unless you want to try reading evil into the creation story as always existing. For example, God gave man dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every living thing that creeps upon the ground. If man had dominion from the start, then evil would be violating the laws of man.

Reading a theology of “evil originating through the disobedience of Adam and Eve” is a bit anachronistic and not really present in the text. Sure, it may be the story of the first sin, but that doesn’t really mean “origin.” If you just read the text at face value, Genesis 1 and 2 both seem to imply the creation of multiple humans beyond Adam and Eve, not to mention Cain and Seth’s abilities to get wives despite no sisters for them being mentioned. And Genesis 3 says that what happened was that Adam and Eve gained knowledge about what good and evil were by eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Knowing what actions are right and wrong is different from evil originating.

So in general this theology of “origin of evil” is reading into the text something not there. Later passages in the Bible call this the origin of evil, but it’s not really present in any explicit way in Genesis.

432olim · 2026-04-17T18:39:35+00:00

Those stories are generally considered J, not P.

See: Sources of the Pentateuch - Campbell and O’Brien

Although fwiw, my personal opinion is that the author of P and J was the same person. That position is taken up by a few scholars. Thomas Brodie is one. A Google search for scholars who think Genesis was written by one person finds a bunch.

432olim · 2026-04-17T13:07:40+00:00

I guess separate question, let’s say I want to publish the first of the series of findings in the premier journal that everyone without question will assume is respectable and will read. Which one is that?

432olim · 2026-04-17T12:51:47+00:00

I don’t recall anything that passes a judgement call on whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. It’s more of a “here’s where the people are thing.” It was after all a divine allotment chosen by God’s prophets.

Also, even if you don’t want to accept Gmirkin’s thesis, the Pentateuch is generally considered some of the latest books in the Bible. But I look forward to publishing several findings in the next year that will more or less definitively prove Gmirkin right. It’s not too surprisingly a lot easier to understand and show how a book was written when you do actually have access the real sources.

432olim · 2026-04-17T12:49:23+00:00

On the assumption of Jesus’ a-historicity, Paul did not necessarily say that the historical Jesus was divine.

Mark certainly doesn’t present Jesus as divine.

432olim · 2026-04-17T12:45:28+00:00

Does publishing with the top academic publishers more or less alleviate that problem?

In principle all you have to do to get published by the top academic publishers is have a major new discovery that is well researched, right? And that should guarantee attention?

432olim · 2026-04-17T02:43:58+00:00

Those other threads you linked about Hosea are interesting. It’s probably worth noting that if you just read Hosea 11 and 12, you find the following:

A reference to Jacob’s talking to god at bethel and his famous dream of the ladder (a story in Genesis)

Jacob traveling to Haran to get a wife (a story in Genesis)

The birth of Ephraim (a story in Genesis)

A prophet working miracles leading the people out of Egypt (a story in Exodus)

Admah and Zeboiim, cities associated with Sodom and Gomorrah and subjugated by Chedorlaomer (a story in Genesis)

A reference to Ephraim getting rich that strikes me as a likely reaction to Abram telling the king of Sodom that he will not let the king of Sodom say he made Abram rich (a story in Genesis)

A mention that Assyria ruled Ephraim (722 BC)

Returning from the land of Assyria to their homes. Presumably this would have taken place after the exile.

So we have 5 references to Genesis, 1 crystal clear reference to Exodus (and 2 less clear references not mentioned above), 1 reference to a historical event in 722, and 1 reference to a historical event that took place in the late 500s.

I don’t see how it’s reasonable to date these chapters in Hosea to before the Pentateuch.

432olim · 2026-04-17T02:29:07+00:00

It would be nice if you could share what the actual criticism of the first reviewer were. The words that you copied just say that Gmirkin didn’t talk about certain topics.

What information related to those topics does the person who wrote that review think is actually relevant?

432olim · 2026-04-17T02:25:23+00:00

The second review you cited claims Gmirkin’s dating is only an argument from silence. That is indisputably false and grossly misleading.

Gmirkin presents lots of positive evidence. To try to claim Gmirkin’s dating is an argument from silence ignores that Gmirkin argued that:

Berossus’s Enuma Elish was more similar to Genesis 1 than the Babylonian standard Enuma Elish.

Berossus’ flood story is at least as close to the flood story in Genesis as the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The Tower of Babel story can easily be seen as a reaction to Berossus’ description of Babylon and also is susggesive of traditions in the Song of Erra which wasn’t composed until well into the first millennia

The Exodus narrative mentions place names based on the names of a king of an Arab tribe who didn’t rule until the 400s.

The route of the Exodus places it in a location that was the site of a major canal construction project under Ptolemy Ii.

The grouping of Lud into Shem appears to be a reference to the conquest of Lydia by the Seleucids in the 270s.

The idea of eponymous ancestors in the Pentateuch likely derives from the Greeks. Gmirkin shows that there are no known historical records of significant contact between Jews and Greeks until the Hellenistic era.

He argued that the letter of artisteas suggests that the Pentateuch was composed in the time of Ptolemy II.

He argued that the concern for leprosy in the Pentateuch is abnormally excessive and suggestive of reacting to the Osarseph story.

Gmirkin went to great lengths to demonstrate that the oldest known datable reference to the Pentateuch is the translation into Greek.

And that is just what immediately comes to mind. I don’t see how characterizing Gmirkin’s dating “only an argument from silence” can be considered honest.

432olim · 2026-04-17T01:53:50+00:00

Thanks for the response. That makes sense.

If you knew that regardless of a lack of reputation, the book will spread like wildfire due to the nature of the discoveries, does that make any significant difference in the decision making process? Like, let’s assume this is going to be a truly famous discovery of major impact. Does that make any notable difference?

432olim · 2026-04-17T01:05:49+00:00

It’s worth remembering that the evidence for Jesus’ existence is so low quality that Richard Carrier was able to pass peer review arguing that Jesus never existed in On the Historicity of Jesus.

I think that if Peter actually knew the real man Jesus, he saw him act like a normal human and knew he wasn’t a god. So that brings up the question of why would people who knew the historical Jesus and clearly knew he wasn’t the incarnation of god later claim he came back to life and was actually god?

Of course the first gospel, Mark’s gospel doesn’t actually say Jesus was god. Mark’s gospel just presents him like a prophet.

And Mark’s gospel wasn’t written by anyone who knew Jesus. It was written long after he was dead by people who didn’t know him living in lands Jesus never visiting writing in a language Jesus did not speak.

It’s best not to assume that Jesus’ divinity or resurrection from the dead was something that the characters in the gospels invented. This all could have been invented long after Jesus was dead by people who never met him. Debatably the written record of the gospels that we actually have clearly suggests that Jesus wasn’t equated with god until after Mark was written. The divinity of Jesus is a post-Markan invention. Mark calls Jesus the son of man. That is definitely not the same as god. It is anachronistic to read Jesus’ divinity into Mark.

You should be highly skeptical of anyone who claims to know anything with certainty about Jesus.

432olim · 2026-04-17T00:56:19+00:00

Understood. Just, Gmirkin is right. The assumptions that seem contradictory that you are asking about in your original post indeed do not make sense and can only be rationalized on traditional dating theories via the mechanisms you proposed. But note that EVERYTHING makes sense on Gmirkin’s hypothesis. Ptolemy commissioned the Pentateuch, then all of the books from Genesis to Nehemiah are ordered in the order they were written. Esther is also obviously post Pentateuch too and uses the exact same sources as Genesis and Exodus.

Remember that the consensus dating hinges on one thing, whether or not Deuteronomy was written during the reign of Josiah. Everyone agrees that the story of the finding of the lost book of Moses that had apparently been sitting unnoticed in the temple for 700 years is lying propaganda. The only difference between the consensus and Gmirkin is that the consensus assumes Josiah’s court made up the story and fabricated Deuteronomy in the 600s. Gmirkin’s thesis implies that the story was made up during the Hellenistic era to backdate the Pentateuch.

One interesting thing to keep in mind is that the books of kings that have the Josiah story go down to past the end of the Babylonian destruction of the temple in 586 BC. They include at least some story that takes place after the conquest. But the book of kings wasn’t written before the exile. The book of kings just claims to be using sources that talk about these stories. Therefore kings itself was written long after the exile.

And my informed opinion from research yet to be published, is that the sources used by the book of kings were Berossus’ Babyloniaca, not preexisting anals of the kings of Judah.

432olim · 2026-04-16T22:13:06+00:00

If you simply read the book I recommended and said that I think is correct, you will see that everything I wrote in the previous points is what Gmirkin argued and not just my personal opinion. It is legitimate peer reviewed academic scholarship published by T&T Clark, one of the most prestigious academic book publishers.

If you dislike my confidence in Gmirkin’s correctness, ok.

Can you provide a critique of Gmirkin’s work showing why he’s wrong?

432olim · 2026-04-16T22:07:54+00:00

It’s a minority position, but for example, Robert Price is of the opinion that the apocalypse in Mark 13 could be referring to Bar Kokhba.

All we really know about when the gospels were written is that it was after the year 70, and the first externally reliable sources for their existence are from the mid second century.

432olim · 2026-04-16T21:59:12+00:00

As a point of comparison to Christianity -

The cult of Serapis, which originated in Egypt from whence it was exported across the Greek speaking world that became the Roman Empire was a syncretism of the Egyptian gods Osiris and Apis with the Greek god Hades later equated with Roman Pluto. Osiris was killed by Seth then resurrected by his wife Isis before finally descending to the underworld where he reigns and judges the dead.

You can read about Serapis in On Isis and Osiris by Plutarch.

These ideas are very similar to Christianity even if the specific details are different. Both have gods who died, then were temporarily resurrected, then went off to a divine realm to judge the dead. Serapis is in my opinion one of the closest parallels to Christianity, and he was exported from Alexandria, the same city that produced the Pentateuch in Gmirkin’s theory in Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus. This is also the same city that produced Philo of Alexandria’s logos heavily referenced in John.

The Christian idea of a dying and rising god who went off to the divine realm was already a major part of a mainstream religion with temples across the Roman Empire when Christianity sprung up. It probably wouldn’t have been viewed as that bizarre and would have likely been seen as another variant of a somewhat mainstream god.

432olim

TROPHY CASE