I’m writing this post in response to something a fellow blogger has written about why the Bible is trustworthy (though I’ve lost the link to the post). He and I come down on different sides of this issue, and I thought the best way to tackle this would be to respond to each of his points in order.
1) We should treat the Bible like any other historical document.
Yes, we should, but this means different things to different people. When we read ancient historical texts, what do we think about the supernatural events that they relate? Many ancient historians talk about miracles, or attribute certain events to various gods — do we accept those claims? Of course not. We accept the events, like wars, famines, political upheavals, but we chalk up the supernatural claims to superstition.
However, when Christians ask that we treat the Bible the way we would treat other historical sources, they don’t mean it in the way I just described. They’ll say, “if you believe the histories about George Washington, why do you reject the stories of the Bible?” But this isn’t a true comparison. If we had an historical account that claimed George Washington could fly, we would dismiss it, even if everything else it recounted was factual.
There’s another difference as well. What we believe about George Washington has no real impact on the rest of our lives. However, most versions of Christianity say that if we don’t believe Jesus was the actual son of God, we’ll face eternal consequences. What could be more important than making sure we hold the correct view? So if God loves us and wants us all to believe, doesn’t it make sense that the “extraordinary claims” of the Bible would have “extraordinary evidence”? That’s the standard we would expect from any other historical document, and it’s the same thing we should expect from the Bible.
2) Witnesses for the Bible.
It’s often mentioned that the Bible was written over a period of 1500 years by 40+ authors. That timeline is not accepted by all scholars, but even if it were, this has nothing to do with whether or not it is accurate or inspired. In order for later authors to write things that fit with what came before, they only need to be familiar with those earlier writings. In other words, the Bible is much like fan fiction.
Paul says that Jesus appeared to 500 people after his resurrection, so some Christians point to that as evidence too. But who were these 500 people? Where did they see the risen Jesus? Was it all at once, was it 500 separate appearances, or was it something in between? This claim is so vague, there’s no way it could be contested. Even if a critic could have rounded up a multitude of people who all claimed to not have seen Jesus post-resurrection, Paul would only have to say, “It was 500 other people.” No, Paul’s 500 witnesses are completely useless. Instead of actually being 500 separate witnesses for the risen Jesus, this is just one claim — Paul’s. Plus, let’s not forget that Paul is telling this to fellow Christians, not skeptics. No one in his audience would be inclined to call foul anyway.
Sometimes it’s pointed out that the earliest critics of Christianity did not question Jesus’ existence or his miracles, but just claimed that he was one of many people who claimed similar things. But I don’t think we should really expect ancient critics to focus on his existence or miracles anyway. How do you prove that someone didn’t exist? And aside from Christian writings, we have no sources about Jesus anyway, so how could they disprove either his existence or his miracles? And these critics lived in a time in which the existence of miracles were almost universally accepted. So arguing from this point doesn’t seem very convincing to me.
When it comes to historical sources for Jesus, it’s true that Josephus probably mentions him. And there are a couple of other references by other historians within the first 100 years or so after his death. But these references tell us nothing about Jesus other than that he might have existed, and that there were people at that time who were Christians. These points are virtually uncontested — and they say nothing about who Jesus really was. It’s hard to count them as any kind of evidence in Jesus’ favor.
3) Archaeology
Christians will often cite the Bible’s agreement with archaeology as one reason to believe it may be divinely inspired. For instance, most historians used to believe that the Hittites never existed, since the only record of them came from the Old Testament. However, in the 19th and 20th centuries, evidence finally came to light that overturned that opinion, exonerating the Bible.
But does this agreement with archaeology really indicate that the Bible was divinely inspired? Many books have been written that seem to record accurate history — does this mean we should assume those authors were inspired by God? Of course not. While agreement with archaeology is a good sign, it’s not necessarily a reason to leap to the conclusion that God had anything to do with writing the Bible.
The story doesn’t end here, though. As it turns out, archaeology does not always agree with the Bible. The Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, for instance, has no archaeological evidence. While that is an example of missing evidence, we also have examples of contradictory evidence: archaeology indicates that Joshua’s conquest of Canaan did not actually happen, the kingdoms of David and Solomon appear to be far smaller than the Bible depicts, and the Book of Daniel contains several anachronisms, including its incorrect labeling of Belshazzar as Nebuchadnezzar’s son.
Examples like these show that the Bible’s agreement with archaeology is not nearly as strong as some would claim, making it very shaky grounds for staking the claim of inspiration.
In the next post, we’ll talk about other reasons that people give: prophecy and internal consistency.
Finding Truth 
Sorry the above should have read not separated from their land but separated from owning an controlling their land (as in nationhood status)
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RE: “I shall make a point of avoiding your blog for any sort of inspiration.” – likely an excellent idea, I use a considerable number of multi-syllable words on my website (not “blog“), and I know what difficulty you have with words that contain more than one.
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One wot?
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Exactly.
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Hey Howie, I’m reading bits and pieces of this thread, it’s pretty long! I do appreciate the positive things you and Ruth and Nate have said about engaging me, even in the face of stark disagreement. And, I get Arch’s point that sometimes I appear as sycophantic, I won’t deny that. I told my wife about this, and she said sometimes IRL I appear to say things insincerely or feel the need to buffer criticism with a nice comment, so she’s not surprised that someone would accuse me of being sycophantic.
I will consider touching on archaeology in a post at some point. Actually one of the problems I forgot to mention, a huge problem is that this whole thing is tied into literary analysis of the Pentateuch. Specifically the Documentary Hypothesis seems to fuel biases in archaeology. In fact, I was shocked to see this in an essay written 30 some odd years ago by the archaeologist who dug up Kadesh-Barnea. If this thinking is right, then the demon is in very deep.
So, I’ll definitely consider it! 🙂 One of the things I’ve been considering for a post is on naturalistic determinism and the blind watchmaker (i.e., they are not compatible). Either topic would be super interesting!
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Speaking of writing, you could take lessons from these gentlemen – kinsmen of yours, I believe: http://knowledgeguild.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/the-merchant-banker-2/#comment-7916
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@ Arch.
I hate smarmy gits like yuo…yu. yeu
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@Brandon – I SINCERELY hope you saw this —
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🙂
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In fact, Brandon, it might bring a smile to your wife’s face, to have a peek as well – just sayin’ — 😉
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She’s very objective when I ask her these kinds of questions, and I didn’t show her the dictionary picture, but we still had a good laugh over it and the face analysis. 🙂 And, the fact that she would be as objective as to not really make me feel any better about how people perceive me is helpful and sobering. To some I will appear this way, to others I will not. I guess that’s the nature of the conversation.
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She’s very objective when I ask her these kinds of questions, and I didn’t show her the dictionary picture, but we still had a good laugh over it and the face analysis.”
I did too. The juvenile nature of it can’t help but bring a smile to an adult. The lack of Photoshop skills was a bonus to the entertainment value as well.
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How fortunate you are Mike, that pretzel-making doesn’t require PhotoShop skills.
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Arch probably really does think I am smarmy and deep down an evangelist, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate how this view is expressed with Arch’s sense of humor and personality. Someday we’ll shake hands!
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“Someday we’ll shake hands!” – oh yeah, right after we start taking long showers together —
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@William – I know the weekend is your break from blogging but wanted to add this to my last comment to you. Actually your point may be more interesting than I had thought. I mean my last comment wasn’t wrong but I may have missed a bigger point you had made. If “a day is like a thousand years” can be applied to Genesis or the “second coming” like most Christians do then it does become questionable how one could interpret anything – in other words that kind of stuff gives great wiggle room for any kind of passage with length of time to be “massaged” to prove what you want. In fact Daniel 9 itself becomes more than 490 years by inserting a gap between the 69th and 70th week (although some don’t do that, but that brings in other issues). It’s actually as simple as driving to your local seminary and reading a bunch of different commentaries on the passage to see how many directions the interpretation can go. And the mainstream view may not be what most apologists would want (although mainstream views do seem to change a lot, so not sure where it is exactly right now on this passage).
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Anyone interested in a well-considered, well-presented response, could learn from reading rautakyy’s response to Brandon’s own site: http://anaivethinker.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/5/comment-page-1/#comment-476
Keep in mind that English is not even rautakyy’s first language – job well done, rautakyy!
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Meant to say, “rautakyy’s response to Brandon’s comment on Brandon’s own site” – mea culpa.
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We use a 365-day calendar. When we talk about a year, everyone knows it’s 365 days. If I talk about something happening 400 years from now, people know I’m referencing the year 2414. BUT, in actuality, our year is not exactly 365 days. Every 4 years, we have to add in an additional day to keep everything balancing out the way it should. But this would not cause someone to argue that 400 years from now will be the year 2414, even though if we counted up all the days it wouldn’t work out quite the same. A year is a year, whether it’s a leap year or not.
Intuitively, that’s how we treat the idea of “year,” and I think that’s how people would have understood Daniel’s use of the term as well. Of course, going by the normal definition of “year” doesn’t let you use Daniel’s prophecy for Christ. And since we can’t have that, we redefine what “year” means.
At this point, it’s very easy for an objective reader to say “Great, I guess the atheists are going to look at it one way, and the Christians are going to look at it another. How’s an objective person supposed to see this?”
Luckily, the Book of Daniel gives many more clues as to whether or not it’s legit. Instead of going into all of them right now, I’ll simply post the link to my series on its problems. If any of you are truly interested in whether or not Daniel 9 should be taken as a legitimate prophecy for Christ, I suggest doing some research on the problems in Daniel. These articles may help, but don’t stop there.
https://findingtruth.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/skeptical-bible-study-daniel-links-to-each-article/
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It becomes apparent with minimal cross-referencing of the OT that the NT writers shoehorned the prophecies into their ‘gospels’ and apologists have been squirming ever since the ban on reading/owning the bible was lifted.
The virgin birth prophecy is the most glaring example and Jewish scholars have been at pains to explain the meanings of the the words used in Matthew since forever, it seems.
This of course is notwithstanding the fact that the ‘prophecy’ referred to King Ahaz had nothing to do with anyone called Yeshua.
When one considers the shoddy way in which the NT was put together one wonders whether the compilers ever conceived of a time when the ‘Man in the Street’ would ever read the bible and interpret it himself?
However, once the man in the street began to read it, those ‘in charge’; of religion have been up Via Cloaca ever since.
Perhaps , one day, they will be honest enough to admit their subterfuge?
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“However, once the man in the street began to read it…”
The problem is that many true believers have never made a concerted effort to read the book they claim to follow from cover to cover, or with a critical eye. They’re exposure to the text is limited to the preselected verses read from the pulpit or presented in their daily devotional. And even then, the primary focus of those passages is centered upon ferreting out some spiritual deepity.
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“apologists have been squirming ever since the ban on reading/owning the bible was lifted”
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I did read it cover to cover as a believer, and it did not undo my faith. However, I did not do that reading with a critical eye–that is, not with a view toward even considering that it might not be divinely inspired.
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You’re correct. Reading it critically is the most important part. During my early teens, I was having doubts about God’s presence in my life. Both my parents and youth group encouraged me to read the scriptures for guidance. So I did…
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I had never read it until I was an adult. Then, later, I read it cover to cover.
It is a ridiculous piece of nonsense.
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