I'm want to study the origins, historicity and compisition of the bible. Is the bible a historical document as well as a religious book, inerrant, infallible book of literal truths? there needs to be some historical truth to it to accept the doctrines of christianity.
I believe that the Bible documents the history of man and our relationship with God. Our fall, God's faithfulness, and our salvation through Jesus Christ.
I understand some christians take all of the bible as historical, literal truth and some see parts of it as symbolic or not literally true, whats your opinion on this?
If the context supports their interpretation, then yes, but if it clearly does not, then no. For example, when the Bible records Jesus as "the good shepherd" we know not to take this literally because a: Jesus was
not a shepherd, and b: He was using it to draw parallels between a good shepherd and Himself, the character, and love He has for His people such that even if one strayed, He would leave the 99 and go out and bring them back. Common sense should tell people what the author intends to convey and how to interpret his writings. In fact, that is what the literal interpretation to Bible study is: unless the expression or the context implies other wise, we should take the Bible to mean exactly what it says - "If the literal sense makes sense then seek no other sense lest it result in nonsense." This means that poetry, symbolism, prophecy, and other literary technqiues are recognised and interpreted accordingly. To ignore them is called "idiocy."
I say "should," there are some people who - intentionally or otherwise - twist Scripture to fit what they believe. A prime example is Genesis where people claim that the first few chapters are a mythical story, yet there is no difference at all in the writing style from here through to the end of Genesis. Also, there is no difference between the style of the geneaolgies listed early and later in the same book written by the same author. If the latter are real people, then why are the former not? Perhaps the strongest evidence is the detailed description of the Genesis week: the author tells us that God did various things in the "nth" day, ignoring for now that the word "yom" can't mean a periods of millions of years, but goes further than this by saying "there was evening, and there was morning" that makes it undeniable that it was an ordinary day like what we see. This is further evident in Exodus 20:11 where God gives the justification for man's working week - six days God worked and the seventh He rested. It is clear from the New Testament that Jesus took Genesis seriously. Lastly, it would be pretty stupid and misleading (i.e. lying which equals sin) for God to state that this is how He made the universe if He never really did, and even more so for the book to be named "Genesis" which means "origin." If not even I am that stupid it is foolish to suggest that God is.
Those who say that the account of Genesis is mythical or a symbolic story - whether intentionally or out of ignorance - misinterpret the Bible. Further more, they don't understand that without a literal fall into sin terminated by death there is no need for a Saviour, hence the whole Gospel message has no foundation and is worthless. It's simple logic that atheists readily recognise, but such Christians are apparently unable or unwilling to understand. This is probably because of the cognitive dissonance that it would create. There are several ways to solve it: choose one of the alternatives, compromise, or simply ignore it. The latter two are what many Christians seem to do.
the genesis creation account, noah's flood, jonah's story and many other stories are mythological in nature and cannot literally be true
Says who? The evidence? It can't speak, can it? The evidence is just rocks, fossils, or whatever. Logically, for us to draw any inferences or conclusions from it
we have to
interpret it. Now this interpretation isn't objective. Unfortunately, the science that relates to the past isn't like the science that we do in the present that relates to the present where the inferences from the results of the experiments are closely related to those experiments with little room for speculation.
When trying to work out what happened in the past, science is limited because we cannot do experiments directly on past events, and history cannot be repeated. Observations that we make in the present are typically used to make inferences about the past, and the experiments that can be done in the present that relate to the past are limited, which inevitably and logically requires a deal of guesswork. The further in the past we go, the longer the chain of assumptions and inferences, and as such the more room there is for non-scientific factors to influence the conclusions (for example, the scientists religious belief or lack thereof).
The sad thing is that most people can't or don't understand the difference and seem to be under the opinion that the respect earned by success of operations science and the conjectural claims from origins science carry the same authority. Logically, they cannot and do not.
Even Stephen Jay Gould recognised this reality of science that deals with the unobservable past: "Facts do not 'speak for themselves;' they are read in light of theory. Creative thought, in science as much as in the arts, is the motor of changing opinion. Science is a quintessentially human activity, not a mechanised, robot-like accumulation of objective information, leading by laws of logic to inescapable interpretation."
It's ironic really, at university they teach students to think critically - to never accept anything as fact ... to question the validity of everything, to see and examine the underlying assumptions that the author of a study or theory has made, yet at the same time they seem unable to see the assumptions that form the basis of their interpretations of the evidence. You see a fossilised tooth and they are making up a whole story about this supposed ancestor. That one ended up being a pigs tooth. It never ceases to amaze me how you can make up such an elaborate story from a jaw, or a few fragments of fossilised bone. Sadly, many people and even educated students and lecturers seem unwilling to question the interpretations of the evidence given by scientists.
You'll find that as you begin to examine the issue that it isn't as black and white as that, for example, one of the main foundations of modern geology is the uniformitarian principle - that is, that all processes have been going one for eons of years as they are today. It is important, and hopefully obvious, to realise that this is merely an assumption that they have made. We look, for example, at the devastation and geological landforms and features caused by the erruption and flows of Mount St. Helens happened in a matter of hours or a few days ... landforms (like the Little Grand Canyon which is about 30m deep and wide and has many features that are reminisent of the Grand Canyon) that scientists would presume took hundreds or thousands of years to form.
Similarly, scientists also make assumptions when using radiometric dating methods (such as a closed system, the ratio of parent/daughter elements, the rate of decay, etc..). Even when tested on rocks of
known ages they give [often contradictory] dates that are, in some cases, 99.99% off; one classic example of such inaccuracy has been where a rock has been radiometrically dated to be millions of years old. The only catch is that the wood, which is encased by the rock, still has radiocarbon in it! Carbon dating is limited some thousands of years - not millions. Even just with these few examples (there are many more) you have to question that if we can't trust dating methods on rocks of known ages and the fact that many methods contradict each other, on what
logical basis should we trust them on rocks of unknown ages?
I guess the point of this has been to try and show you that just because scientists say so doesn't make it true. There are often assumptions involved and it is our job to identify them and then critically evalute the validity of them. For me personally, I find the assumption of uniformitarianism to be a faulty assumption, as observations in the present (such as the rapid formation of geological features caused by Mt. St. Helens erruption) clearly contradict this idea that the rate of the processes (such as erosion) that we observe in the present have always happened in the past.
does this bring other parts of the bible into question?
That would be the logical question to ask. The conclusion is self-evident (as partly described above). In addition to that, if God never told the truth from the start then when did He start? How do we know that the Bible is telling the truth about Jesus' life and death? About judgement? Without the authority of the Bible being true from the very first verse you simply cannot be sure. Most Christians can't or are unwilling to follow their beliefs through to the ultimate conclusion.
Also whats the historicity of the new testament, its authorship, composition and origins how it came to be etc? I'm interested to see opinions but want to approach this matter purely on objective basis and on evidence only
The evidence for the New Testament's record is very strong. I suggest that you read Lee Strobel's book
The Case For Christ on that issue as he interview the most respective academics on the various issues raised by the New Testament, such as it's reliability, the truth about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. At the time of writing the Bible he was much of a sceptic, but his research led him to an interesting, and perhaps unexpected, conclusion for him. The book itself is quite cheap at any Christian bookshop.
As for the authorship of the Gospels, there is no dispute that Matthew, John Mark - a companion of Peter, and Luke are the authors of their respective books. There are no known competitors for authorship of those Gospels. There is a question whether John the apostle or John the Elder wrote the Gospel according to John (as referred to by Papias in 125 A.D.), but the evidence from the account itself strongly suggests that John is based on an eye-witness testimony with John the Elder perhaps finialising the concluding verses and possibly creating a consistent style of the testimony.
Many historians, both liberal and conservative, recognise that Luke in particularly very accurate and one of the best historians. He writes like an educated man, and time and time again archaeological discoveries are showing that he is right in what he writes (for example, an inscription from the time of Tiberius (from 14-37 AD named Lysanias as tetrarch in Abila near Damascus, just as Luke had written in 3:1 - it turns out that there were two government officials named Lysanias, one of them was a ruler of Chalcis about 50 years earlier). The discovery of the pool of Bethesda reinforced the accuracy of exactly what John and Mark had said. With each new discovery, archaeologists are beginning to admit that the Bible is a source of accurate historical record. World class scholar Bruce Metzger states that there is an unprecedented number of New Testament manuscripts that can be dated extremely close to the original writings, and that the New Testament is 99.5% free of textual discrepancies, with no major Christian doctrine in doubt.
Anyway, it's getting late here, but there is another thread on the topic of the composition and authorship of the New Testament on the Exploring Christianity forum, so to avoid the hastle of replication, you can see some of the responses there. Suffice to say that Paul began writing his letters extremely early, even before the Gospels had been written, that collaborated the life, death, resurrection, and character of Jesus, so early that it is not reasonable to claim that they were distorted by legend development. We can be confident that the books we have in the New Testament are reliable in their authorship, authority, and truth.