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[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This is F-grade bullshit. F-grade because it took about five seconds to disprove the whole argument.

The argument is that the ancient Biblical writers could not possibly have known that some jewels are isotropic and others are anisotropic because we've only just invented lasers recently. Wrong! False! Deceitful lies! You can see the effect in natural light, with your own eyes, no high tech lasers needed.

But fundamentally, even if we accept the premise that somehow John knew something about jewels that nobody in his day could have known, that hardly proves the entire Bible. That's a bullshit argument. Maybe it was aliens, or maybe people back then weren't quite as ignorant as we think.

John knew this one amazing thing about jewels, therefore Jesus walked on water and Moses spoke to a burning bush. Yeah, right.

By the way, it is clear as day that the stones were selected to make up a pleasing pattern of colours, starting with a dark opaque green and gradually going through blue, red, yellow and violet. We don't know for sure what the twelve gemstones of New Jerusalem are supposed to be, since many of the translations used for the ancient names are just best guesses. For example, the word "sapphirus" is sometimes translated as sapphire but was probably lapis lazuli. "Hyacinthus" may have been our sapphire, or maybe not. See also the various contradicting translations of the jewels in Isaiah 54:12.

There's also a strong argument that the first foundation of the city, described as "jasper", is what we today would call diamond. If that is that case, it would totally destroy this guy's argument, his argument relies on diamond not being included.

In modern language, jasper is an opaque variety of impure quartz, but in Revelations 21:11 the city is described as being built on a foundation of "jasper, clear as crystal". Jasper (that is, the gemstone we call jasper) is never clear. Whatever John meant by crystal-clear jasper, probably diamond, it isn't the modern gemstone we mean by it.

See also the twelve gemstones listed in Exodus 28:15, which is different again. The Hebrews loved numerology, they loved the number twelve, but the exact gemstones probably didn't matter too much so long as they were pretty and expensive.