How reliable is the Old Testament and the first books of the Bible

[Luke17:37]

You are welcome! : )



True - it either happened literally as literally described, or it has a deeper meaning.

Let's think about that a second in general. First, you recognize that we live on a globe, not a flat earth under a dome, right? And that geologists have long recognized that a literal flood of Noah never happened, right?

The scriptures, if read literally, clearly describe a flat earth, under a hard dome, under water, with the stars as little lights inside the dome. You can see the dozens of verses that say this, in post #3, here: http://www.christianforums.com/threads/wrench-in-the-gears.7949579/#post-69701869
Plus, biblical scholars have recognized this for centuries, and even Martin Luther rejected the idea of that earth went around the sun because it contradicts the scripture.

So do you think that because the scriptures "lied" about the earth and the flood, that they can't be trusted?

OR - that we were mistaking illustrative stories for literal history? I think that's a lot more likely. In the same way, deciding that the Exodus is a parable meant to convey a point (and not literal history) is very much in keeping with how you and I already approach sections of the Bibles - after all, we both know that the scriptures contain both parable and literal history. The only discussion point is deciding which sections likely fall in each category. Remember that Jesus himself is the author of our scriptures - and we know quite well that Jesus often taught in parables, right? Maybe seeing the Exodus as literal history is as silly as a person who got upset because someone said that the Good Samaritan might be a parable, and not literal history that really happened?



As pointed about above, it's not all literal vs. nothing literal. We both already know there is literal and non-literal stuff in the scriptures. We don't say "oh, because Exodus 19:4 says that the Jews were flown out of Egypt by giant eagles, and we don't think that literally happened, the whole Bible must be a lie!" - now do we? Stories make points - regardless of whether or not they literally happened.




Just as the realization that the earth went around the sun, in contradiction of scripture, wasn't a huge problem for Christianity in the long run (though it seemed like a big problem to many Christians at the time), I'm not so sure that this is a big problem that can't be ignored.

In Christ-

Papias

For people who don't think it's necessary to believe the Bible's accounts literally, there's a prophecy in 2 Peter.

2 Peter 3:3-9
3 knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, 4 and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” 5 For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, 6 by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. 7 But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
8 But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.

Armed with a foundation of rejecting the clear teachings of Scripture about the beginning, these scoffers will reject the clear teachings of Scripture about the end--the literal bodily return of Jesus Christ to earth. Because they don't believe God judged the earth in the flood, they won't believe in a judgment by fire. People who reject such doctrines as the creation and the global flood are at great risk of being deceived among these last day scoffers.

 

[Papias]

There is a distinction between our understanding of particular words and phrases from an ancient language and an entire collection of books being questionable. I haven't read anything that makes me think the sun moves around the earth or that the earth is flat and there certainly isn't volumes describing this in the Old Testament.

Did you not look at the sections of scripture I supplied? They range over more than a dozen books. That's a lot more books than the few involved in the exodus.

Yes, there are parables, and there is symbolic language in places, and there are people getting muddled over which is which. To say that the entire exodus account and all the associated events including the wandering in the wilderness, the conquering of the promised land, the receiving the of the law, plus much more, never happened and is just a parable puts the entire Bible into the category of "not to be taken literally".

Do you or do you not claim the flood to be literal history? That's a pretty important event as well, if it happened. If the exodus, which affected at most a tiny patch of the globe - a few hundred miles in size, has the impact you claim, then what about the entire globe, encompassing literally millions of square miles? I still haven't heard why you reject a literal reading of the scripture regarding a flood and a flat earth, yet have a problem with the comparatively smaller exodus story.

I would have thought people would be pleased to hear that there is a simple resolution to the problem of reconciling the biblical account of the exodus with archaeological evidence, but apparently not.

What "simple resolution"have you offered? It seems you are asking people to ignore what the evidence shows is true. If that's our approach, how can we be considered honest? how could we reconcile that with the commandment not to bear false witness?

In Christ-

Papias

 

[Verward]

Did you not look at the sections of scripture I supplied? They range over more than a dozen books. That's a lot more books than the few involved in the exodus.



Do you or do you not claim the flood to be literal history? That's a pretty important event as well, if it happened. If the exodus, which affected at most a tiny patch of the globe - a few hundred miles in size, has the impact you claim, then what about the entire globe, encompassing literally millions of square miles? I still haven't heard why you reject a literal reading of the scripture regarding a flood and a flat earth, yet have a problem with the comparatively smaller exodus story.



What "simple resolution"have you offered? It seems you are asking people to ignore what the evidence shows is true. If that's our approach, how can we be considered honest? how could we reconcile that with the commandment not to bear false witness?

In Christ-

Papias

The solution to the exodus question is very simple and I did explain that. Most Bible chronologies are not correct and when you fix the flaw in the chronology the new date for the exodus is 1602 BCE placing the exodus at a time when all the details line up exactly with archaeology.

I haven't looked into the flood account enough to answer that question. Looking into the exodus was hard enough. A localised flood affecting the Mesopotamia region is plausible, a global inundation covering the entire planet seems implausible. The question then becomes one of how is the biblical text worded and what does a phrase like "the whole earth" mean to people who have only seen a tiny fraction of the planet.

The exodus, the subsequent wanderings in the wilderness, and the conquest of the promised land are the topic of at least 5 complete books in the Old Testament, and the departure from Egypt is mentioned in more than a dozen other books. Then there are the many references to the passover in the old and new testament. The exodus is a pivotal moment in Old Testament history and the passover a fundamental of New Testament theology.

In Christ (literally)

 

[alexandriaisburning]

You write that the birth of the Jewish nation, from whom Christ descends (through Mary) is a lie, and you finish with In Christ?

The only person concluding that this interpretation would make it a "lie" is you. A lie is a reasonable conclusion if we assume that the authors wrote with the intention of deceiving. However, if they wrote what they did for reasons other than what the modern mind (with its blinding bias for "historicity") assumes it must have been, then it is certainly not a "lie". This is one of the flaws with modernistic assumptions regarding history: because we thoughtlessly equate "historicity" with "truth", we relegate to falsehood or a mythological caricature anything that doesn't live up to our standards of historical narrative...forgetting, of course, that the authors of Scripture most certainly did not share our philosophical biases or worldview.

In fact, according to your line of thinking, your faith is built on myths.

What is fundamentally wrong with myth? Why is "myth" held in such a pejorative light? I would argue that is more a product of the arrogance of the modern mind's preoccupation with "historicity" and has little or nothing to do with the actual, legitimate value and role of "myth" within the human experience. I, for one, fully affirm that there is a rich vein of mythos in the ancient narratives of Scriptures. Rather than blindly assuming that it must mean the Scriptures are "false" (since, after all, myth *must* be "false"...), I rather embrace it and use it to explore aspects of faith that are inaccessible through the lifeless assumptions of modernity.

 

[Papias]

The solution to the exodus question is very simple and I did explain that. Most Bible chronologies are not correct and when you fix the flaw in the chronology the new date for the exodus is 1602 BCE placing the exodus at a time when all the details line up exactly with archaeology.

No, the details don't line up with archeology then either. That's because there is no archeological evidence for any dates to line up with. you can put the chronology whenever you want - go ahead, and just make up dates wherever you want before Jesus. And there is no evidence of the Jews living in Egypt - ever. No evidence of thousands of people living in the wilderness. No evidence of the plagues, ever. No evidence of Moses. No evidence of practically any of the exodus story. Your "solution" doesn't help anything.

The objection that this is a bigger set of books is odd when you think about it. You are saying, in essence, that something isn't true *because you don't want it to be true*. Imagine applying that to anything else - "cancer doesn't exist. Why not? Because I don't like cancer.". "There is no way Alexander the Great existed. Why not? Because I don't like that history, so it must not be true." In any other area, persistent denial of evidence for the simple reason that you don't like it would be categorized as a delusional mental illness. Now, there may be reasons to believe or not believe something, but can we agree that "because I wish it weren't that way" is in no way a reason any sane person would give?

In Christ-

Papias

 

[Verward]

You are saying, in essence, that something isn't true *because you don't want it to be true*

That is a very strange interpretation of what I said, consistent I suppose with not taking things literally.

Perhaps you are right, the Bible can't be taken literally. That would suggest only the professionals can interpret the scriptures and the lay people need to defer to their better judgement. Much better then that there be no evidence for an exodus.

 

[juvenissun]

There have been a lot of questions about whether the events in Genesis and Exodus actually happened. Does the archaeology of ancient Egypt actually agree with the accounts of Joseph going down into Egypt, and the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt? There is an interesting new book on the subject called "Finding the Missing Exodus" in which it links the seven years of plenty and seven years of famine during the time of Joseph in Egypt, with recorded high and low levels of the Nile flood. It also identifies when the exodus really happened and shows there was massive political and religious upheaval in Egypt after the event. They even closed all the temples to the pagan gods after the plagues proved that the gods were useless.

Exodus or not, I like to know the answer of one question from Egyptian history:
Were there a significant amount of population of Jews in Egypt?

Is this a hard archaeological question?

 

[alexandriaisburning]

Perhaps you are right, the Bible can't be taken literally. That would suggest only the professionals can interpret the scriptures and the lay people need to defer to their better judgement. Much better then that there be no evidence for an exodus.

I don't think anyone would suggest that the Scriptures, as a whole, "can't be taken literally". The point being made here is simply that we can't blindly apply our modern assumptions about historicity to texts that were written by people separated from us (and our biases) by thousands of years and generations of philosophical evolution.

The modern reader approaches any literature with the appearance of "narrative" and immediately imposes a valuation of the text based on how it aligns with (our assumptions regarding) the possibility and verifiability of the narrative with "historical" events. Despite this blind application of bias, however, we must ask ourselves whether the authors of the ancient narratives shared the same understanding and valuation of "history" that we do. If they do share our assumptions, then we would have to read their writings as pure fiction. If, however, they have a different conception of the meaning and nature of "history" than the modern reader would assume, then the judgment of "fiction" is not necessarily appropriate, and we would be forced to do the hard work of trying to interpret the narratives while concomitantly suspending our natural biases regarding the modern notion of historicity. Since this work is too hard for most people (since it calls into question a lot of assumptions people take for granted), we instead fall back on lazily categorizing the narrative as "literal" or "figurative", not realizing that it may very well be "literal" in the original author's intentions, even if the nature of that literality doesn't align with our assumptions about the same.

 

[Hieronymus]

Exodus or not, I like to know the answer of one question from Egyptian history:
Were there a significant amount of population of Jews in Egypt?

They left.

 

[Hieronymus]

I don't think anyone would suggest that the Scriptures, as a whole, "can't be taken literally". The point being made here is simply that we can't blindly apply our modern assumptions about historicity to texts that were written by people separated from us (and our biases) by thousands of years and generations of philosophical evolution.

The modern reader approaches any literature with the appearance of "narrative" and immediately imposes a valuation of the text based on how it aligns with (our assumptions regarding) the possibility and verifiability of the narrative with "historical" events. Despite this blind application of bias, however, we must ask ourselves whether the authors of the ancient narratives shared the same understanding and valuation of "history" that we do. If they do share our assumptions, then we would have to read their writings as pure fiction. If, however, they have a different conception of the meaning and nature of "history" than the modern reader would assume, then the judgment of "fiction" is not necessarily appropriate, and we would be forced to do the hard work of trying to interpret the narratives while concomitantly suspending our natural biases regarding the modern notion of historicity. Since this work is too hard for most people (since it calls into question a lot of assumptions people take for granted), we instead fall back on lazily categorizing the narrative as "literal" or "figurative", not realizing that it may very well be "literal" in the original author's intentions, even if the nature of that literality doesn't align with our assumptions about the same.

Evidence for a literal reading is still growing.
Evidence for it to be allegory is absent.

 

[Luke17:37]

Exodus or not, I like to know the answer of one question from Egyptian history:
Were there a significant amount of population of Jews in Egypt?

Is this a hard archaeological question?

I encourage you to watch Patterns of Evidence: Exodus. There is archeological evidence for them (in great numbers), just not during the time liberal scholars say they were there (which also doesn't match the Bible's account, timewise).

 

[vinsight4u]

/

 

[alexandriaisburning]

Evidence for a literal reading is still growing.
Evidence for it to be allegory is absent.

"Literal" for whom?
"Allegory" for whom?

 

[Hieronymus]

"Literal" for whom?
"Allegory" for whom?

The reader obviously?

 

[alexandriaisburning]

The reader obviously?

But which reader? The one who brings modern assumptions about historicity to the interpretation of the text, or an ancient reader who more than likely did not share these assumptions? Or something in between?

Interpretation is hard work. We cannot so easily distinguish between literality and figurative language, given that there are complex philosophical baggage that goes into determining how we think about these concepts.

 

[Hieronymus]

But which reader? The one who brings modern assumptions about historicity to the interpretation of the text, or an ancient reader who more than likely did not share these assumptions? Or something in between?

Interpretation is hard work. We cannot so easily distinguish between literality and figurative language, given that there are complex philosophical baggage that goes into determining how we think about these concepts.

I go with the evidence.
That means the earth is not flat, but the rest is probably literally true.
This is obviously not in harmony with the mandatory naturalistic models and pseudo-rationality (i.e. modern assumptions), and sometimes simply very hard to believe or imagine.

 

[juvenissun]

I encourage you to watch Patterns of Evidence: Exodus. There is archeological evidence for them (in great numbers), just not during the time liberal scholars say they were there (which also doesn't match the Bible's account, timewise).

For this issue's sake, I don't need to read any book, and I don't really care about the time.
If there were great number of Jews in Egypt before, then why aren't they there now?

 

[Hieronymus]

For this issue's sake, I don't need to read any book, and I don't really care about the time.
If there were great number of Jews in Egypt before, then why aren't they there now?

They left.

 

[juvenissun]

They left.

You said it twice, and I agree.
That is the historical evidence of the Exodus.

 

[Hieronymus]

You said it twice, and I agree.
That is the historical evidence of the Exodus.

I would also recommend watching "Patterns of Evidence: Exodus"
(Still have to watch it myself by the way..)