“I ask myself ‘what would now allow me to believe the Bible is divinely inspired’?”
Hi Peter. I am saying that that isn’t an important question for anyone who isn’t a believer. I am saying just treat the books of the Bible as any other books written at those times, take what the consensus of scholars tells us and then form a judgment. If your judgment is to reject the reports of Jesus life and teachings, then who cares about it? Only if you, or I, decide the historical evidence is enough does the question of inspiration of the text become an issue, because then we have to decide our response.
So I think three positions are feasible:
1. Read Bible as history. Decide can’t believe in jesus. End of story.
2. Read Bible as history. Decide can believe in Jesus but can’t believe Bible is inspired. This person has belief but only Jesus’ words as determined by the historians have any importance for them.
3. Read Bible as history. Decide can believe in Jesus and can believe Bible is inspired. This person takes some greater notice of the text, depending on what they think “inspired” means.
Unklee, you leave out other possibilities, such as ;-
1. Believe the bible is true. Don’t read it. And pretend to have reasons to belief.
2. Believe the bible is true, read it and look for rationalizations to justify continued belief
3. Use the bible as a door stop
Hi Ark, thanks for your several replies. You seem to think you have defended your position, but I don’t see it. Let’s recap …
You said the “overwhelming” view of OT scholars is the minimalist position. (You didn’t define “overwhelming”, but perhaps we could say 90%?) I challenged you to demonstrate the truth of that statement.
Note I didn’t challenge you to show that some famous scholars were minimalists – I agree with that. I didn’t challenge you to show even that 50% of the scholars are minimalists – that may or may not be true for all I know. And I didn’t say I disbelieved the minimalist position and believed the maximalist position, for in answer to a previous question of yours, I said “I think it is generally safer to choose experts in the middle of the range, while acknowledging the full range”.
No, I asked you to demonstrate the truth that scholarly support for the minimalist position is “overwhelming”.
You haven’t done that.
It was simple request, made for a specific purpose. You and other make statements as if the minimalist position is true when I know that in reality it is still much debated, You may not like those who hold a non-minimlaist position, you may wish to denigrate them because you think they are biased, but they still exist. So I wanted to see if you could support your statement with evidence. And so far, although you made a few references, none of them support the “overwhelming” claim.
You have (now and earlier) shown that Finkelstein and Davies believe the minimalist position is true, but of course, they are minimalists!
You say: “I am not going to bother trawling through endless documentation simply to provide an indoctrinated Christian with the overwhelming scholarly and scientific view of the Pentateuch.”
In other words, you are not willing or able to actually justify your statement from evidence.
You quote Wikipedia, but it doesn’t say what you seem to want it to say. It says that information about the exodus is not recoverable (which is not the same as saying the story is fiction, rather saying that we can’t know either way). When it talks about “overwhelming” it says: “The opinion of the overwhelming majority of modern biblical scholars is that the exodus story was shaped into its final present form in the post-Exilic period” – so it is the date of the final writing of the story where there is “overwhelming” agreement, not the fictitious or otherwise nature of the story. And in the section you didn’t quote Wikipedia says: “How far beyond that [8th C BCE] the tradition might stretch cannot be told: “Presumably an original Exodus story lies hidden somewhere inside all the later revisions and alterations, but centuries of transmission have long obscured its presence, and its substance, accuracy and date are now difficult to determine.”
So even your own quote doesn’t support your statement, but supports my statement that there is a range of views, and scholars are generally agnostic about the story. Which Wikipedia also supports in my Dever reference. I have even seen a Finkelstein quote that he doesn’t rule out a historical Moses, he just thinks we can’t know anything about him.
Finally you say: “You have not, in fact, presented their view here at all,other than to state there is a middle view.”
But that is what I was trying to show – that contrary to your statement, there is indeed a middle view. So you have actually agreed with me here.
So let me conclude. You asked me some questions about the Pentateuch. I explained that broadly I accept whatever the scholars say, I wouldn’t really care if the minimalists or the maximalists were correct, but I’m inclined towards a midway position. So I am not defending any particular view, just arguing that there is less certainty than you have claimed. I think that is an important point to establish.
So far you have defended the view that the minimalist view is the true one with some good scholars supporting it, but you haven’t defended your statement that it is the “overwhelming” view, and your references actually support that there is a view less severe than the one you claim is “overwhelming”.
That was all I set out to do. And I am happy with the outcome. Do you wish to discuss further?
You have made a few more comments directed at me. The one thing you haven’t done is answer the question I asked. Of course you don’t have to, but it means I will sum up and leave it at that.
You came to my website and we discussed a lot of stuff. In the end I complained that you ignored evidence, made heaps of statements without any evidence, some of them easily shown to be factually wrong. So we stopped discussing.
Then when we met on Nate’s blog, we discussed and I found the same thing occurring. Finally I explained (using satire in the hope of making a bigger impression) six common problems I found with your answers, which again led me to feel that discussion with you was a waste of your time and mine.
(You seem to have been offended by this, for which I am sorry. But your comment this time (May 2, 2015 at 11:59 am) only illustrate what I was saying. You call it a diatribe, but don’t mention that I made six observations about inaccuracy in your comments and gave examples of them – and you have never defended those observations. But even more telling, you say that I called your comments “silly”, which is another word for “stupid” with “silly in quotes inferring that was how I described you.
But the word “silly” doesn’t appear in that comment of mine! You have again been inaccurate, misrepresenting me.)
Despite all this, you kept asking me to reply to you on many and various matters. At first I declined, for the reasons I’ve given. Finally, I thought i would try once more, asking you to justify your statement about how harmful christian faith was. I asked this because I already know the answer from history, sociology and psychology. I wanted to see (i) if you would actually attempt to defend your statement by doing some serious search of evidence, and (ii) if you did the search, would you then withdraw the statement once you found out the answer? If you were wiling to search for evidence and change your mind because of it, then I should be willing to answer your questions.
But you declined to reply on that matter.
So now you have your answer, I’m sorry. You are free on Nate’s blog to say whatever he allows you to say (though I note you have even tested his tolerance a little). And I am free to comment as much or as little as he allows. But I will continue to choose to ignore and not reply to someone who makes false quotes about me, makes apparently objective statements without evidence and contrary to evidence, and who gives the impression that they don’t care about evidence at all.
So please feel free to keep asking me questions and demanding I answer them. But if you would really like an answer, please give me some indication that you are willing to stop these practices which are anti-evidence and discussion killers. Answering my recent challenge would be a good place to start.
“This would be a great help in understanding where you are coming from.”
Hi John, I haven’t seen you for a while.
I have explained my position on this matter several times, but here is a brief summary.
1. I accept the views of the experts when they are in agreement. If they are not in agreement, I try to find the middle ground between the extremes.
2. On this matter, there is clearly no consensus, so I am comfortable with any of the views, but I think somewhere between the minimalists and the maximalists seems most defensible.
3. My disagreement with Ark was never about his view that the minimalists are right, for I have no objection to that view. My disagreement was with his inference that there was basically no other view among respected archaeologists and historians, when manifestly there are other views, as I have demonstrated.
I have listed some of the archaeologists and historians who hold non-minimalist views – Dever (PhD from Harvard, at University of Arizona and Lycoming College), Kitchen (Uni of Liverpool), Enns (PhD from Harvard, at Eastern Uni), Hoffmeier (PhD Uni of Toronto, currently at Trinity Divinity School), and there are of course many more. You (and others) may say you don’t agree with any of these, you may claim they are all christian s defending their turf if you like (although that statement isn’t correct), but none of that alters the fact that there is a range of views.
So I can say I haven’t read more than a couple of academic papers and a few books. The matter isn’t highly important to me, so I haven’t given it a lot of attention beyond reading a few books and websites, and checking the current academic situation before I raised the matter.
I hope that helps you understand where I’m coming from. Thanks.
“I see that your debating style, Unk, doesn’t prohibit you from dealing in half-truths:”
Hi Arch, “half truths” is an interesting accusation. I said he was an atheist and you admit he is an atheist. 100% truth!
If we accept your justification of my statement about Dever only being a half truth – namely that “it is impossible to entirely rid oneself of early childhood propagandizing” – then it is only a “half truth” that most of you guys here are atheists! Anyone here happy to accept that?
I think we can ignore that little jibe of yours as being a non-truth! 🙂
“Dever could well be considered a maximalist ….. Finlelstein states that Dever has moved ever closer to the minimalmist position”
He says quite clearly he is NOT a maximalist. he may well have changed his position a little, but that’s what thoughtful people do when the evidence points that way. I have sen statements about Finkelstein saying he has moved a little away from minimalism, but that also means very little.
” Possibly you should rethink your use of Dever as a witness for your side.”
I think you are under a misapprehension about my views. I don’t have a “side”, and my view is certainly not maximalist as you seem to be inferring. My only point in this was to challenge the view stated confidently by Ark and you that minimalism was [pretty much the only view. That isn’t the case.
“Unklee, you leave out other possibilities, such as ;-
1. Believe the bible is true. Don’t read it. And pretend to have reasons to belief.
2. Believe the bible is true, read it and look for rationalizations to justify continued belief
3. Use the bible as a door stop”
Hi Makagutu, yes you are right, I did omit a few possibilities! I’m sorry, how could I have missed those? 🙂
So far you have defended the view that the minimalist view is the true one with some good scholars supporting it, but you haven’t defended your statement that it is the “overwhelming” view, and your references actually support that there is a view less severe than the one you claim is “overwhelming”.
That was all I set out to do. And I am happy with the outcome. Do you wish to discuss further?
Of course there is a ”view less severe”. I do not recall saying there was not. But the overwhelming majority of scientists & scholars consider Moses, the Exodus and conquest – which you avoided any reference to – to be fiction.
That you reference Kitchen as one of you ”middle ground” archaeologists and dd not research his credentials is somewhat surprising. One would be forgiven for thinking you do have an agenda in this regard unless this was simply an oversight on your part?
Wiki: Kitchen is an evangelical Christian and has published frequently from that background on questions relating to the Old Testament. His publications in this area have consistently defended the historical books of the Old Testament as an accurate record of events, i.e. as history. Kitchen is an outspoken critic of the documentary hypothesis. He has produced various written works including articles and books upholding this viewpoint. He cites several types of proof for this theory, including that the depictions in the Bible of various historical eras and societies are consistent with historical data on these areas. [6]
Wiki. A century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has found no evidence which can be directly related to the Exodus captivity and the escape and travels through the wilderness,[5] and most archaeologists have abandoned the archaeological investigation of Moses and the Exodus as “a fruitless pursuit”.[6] A number of theories have been put forward to account for the origins of the Israelites, and despite differing details they agree on Israel’s Canaanite origins.[26] The culture of the earliest Israelite settlements is Canaanite, their cult-objects are those of the Canaanite god El, the pottery remains in the local Canaanite tradition, and the alphabet used is early Canaanite, and almost the sole marker distinguishing the “Israelite” villages from Canaanite sites is an absence of pig bones, although whether even this is an ethnic marker or is due to other factors remains a matter of dispute.[27]
Which Finkelstein has explained.
Are you still going to maintain that the scientific and scholarly opinion in this regard is not overwhelming?
And that someone like Kenneth Kitchen, an evangelical Christian , is truly representative of genuine archaeology pertaining to this subject?
Conclusion:
You may feel I have not demonstrated my position adequately enough regarding ”overwhelming”.
I believe it is not necessary and the opening sentence of the Wiki quote is evidence enough of this position, and I can assure you John Zande, based upon his extensive research, will likely demonstrate this for you with enough data to make your head spin.
That you still try to find a way to maintain some facade of biblical credibility is telling, but at the same time a little sad. Albright was the same.
Unklee, you are quite entitled to your view, truly, and while you may well wish to consider this view helps to maintain the fiction of your belief, which you will promote in any way you see fit, the reality speaks for itself, and especially the relevance of its likely (eventual) impact on Christianity.
Ark, thanks for continuing to discuss, but really, you continue to misunderstand and misrepresent what I said.
“That you reference Kitchen as one of you ”middle ground” archaeologists”
I do not reference him as a middle ground archaeologist, I reference him as a non minimalist archaeologist with some standing – I said that quite clearly. My disagreement with you remains your statement that the overwhelming majority of archaeologists and scholars are minimalists, when this is clearly not true. As I have shown and you continue to not refute.
“A century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has found no evidence which can be directly related to the Exodus captivity and the escape and travels through the wilderness”
This again irrelevant to what I have disputed with you. I know this is true, and I have already said this is part of my understanding. The fact that there is no evidence of such a long time ago event is suggestive but not anything more. So there are many scholars who disagree with your statement about minimalism.
Again, you fail to actually address my objection that your statement about the overwhelming support for minimalism is an overstatement.
“you are quite entitled to your view, truly, and while you may well wish to consider this view helps to maintain the fiction of your belief”
And a third misrepresentation. I said in answer to your original questions that I didn’t have a particular view on this, though I tended to favour the middle ground, and I said it wasn’t at all important to my belief.
So that makes three times in one comment when you argue against something that I don’t think, and fail to defend the statement I objected to.
Why do you continue to do that unless it is because you don’t want to admit that you can’t defend the statement I objected to?
There is really no point in a discussion if someone refuses to defend their statement and constructs straw men as a diversionary tactic. I’m not saying that is what you are doing, but it is looking like that. Hopefully your next response will address the statement of yours I am contesting. Thanks.
is unklee ever going to answer the question, what is the strong evidence of jeezzuuusss resurrection, or is he just going to continue to be a condescending a-hole?
It seems to me that we’re going down a rabbit hole that doesn’t even deal with what’s important to each side.
Ark, what you really want to know is why unkleE remains a Christian, despite knowing that there’s probably very little historical core to the OT stories. At least those that predate the separate kingdoms of Israel and Judah. It’s obvious that his beliefs don’t require those stories to be literally true, so you’d like to understand why, right? Isn’t that the main issue you’re getting at here?
“By the opening of the 20th century the stories of the Creation, Noah’s ark, and the Tower of Babel – in short, chapters 1 to 11 of the Book of Genesis – had become subject to greater scrutiny by scholars, and the starting point for biblical history was regarded as the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and the other Hebrew patriarchs. Then in the 1970s, largely through the publication of two books, Thomas L. Thompson’s The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives and John Van Seters’ Abraham in History and Tradition it became widely accepted that the remaining chapters of Genesis were equally non-historical. At the same time, archaeology and comparative sociology convinced most scholars in the field that there was equally little historical basis to the biblical stories of the Exodus and the Israelite conquest of Canaan.[4]” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Minimalism)
2 points stick out in the wiki paragraph above.
“it became widely accepted that the remaining chapters of Genesis were equally non-historical.”
“At the same time, archaeology and comparative sociology convinced most scholars in the field that there was equally little historical basis to the biblical stories of the Exodus and the Israelite conquest of Canaan”
does widely accepted, most = overwhelming ? I guess it would be subject to interpretation.
That could be why there are over 50 different versions of the Bible in English alone.
The fact that Ark and unkleE are exchanging comments, and in a civil manner could ALMOST convince me to believe in a personal God, again. 🙂
I listened to an hour long lecture by (evangelical Christian) Egyptologist, Hoffmeier. This is the kind of evidence that he would give for the historicity of the Exodus:
“Look, city X, mentioned in the Biblical story of the Exodus, has recently been unearthed. It existed! This is strong evidence that the story of the Exodus is historical truth!
How is that any different from a Mormon saying the following:
Look! Our holy book says that ancient Hebrews sailed the oceans and arrived in North America. Look! North America exists! Therefore the story must be true!
The “evidence” used by Christians to prop up their House of Cards is absolutely flabbergasting!
Gary, I agree. They unearthed Troy too, is Zeus real since Homer wrote about both in the same book?
I get that the bible and the Iliad are different, but why would the argument only work for the bible? how is that objective?
but the same with god… if everything in existence needs a creator and a designer, then why doesnt god? and whatever reason believers create and imagine as why it doesnt apply to god, is only conjecture, and besides that – why couldnt those made up reasons also be made up for anything else; like the universe, or other gods, or… anything else?
“Hi Arch, “half truths” is an interesting accusation. I said he was an atheist and you admit he is an atheist. 100% truth!” – The half you omitted was his heavy Christian background and all of the baggage that that entails.
“…then it is only a ‘half truth’ that most of you guys here are atheists! Anyone here happy to accept that?” – Some of us have not been raised in a religious atmosphere, and others only to differing degrees, but likely none were so heavily indoctrinated as Dever, coming from a multi-generational theistic household and attending, as he did, so many religious intitutions.
“I don’t have a ‘side’” – I don’t believe that for a second.
As Ark has asked, and I have also, can you please provide the list of peer reviewed papers you have read which support your position on the historical validity of the Pentateuch, and give the journals in which these papers were published and the dates of publication.
Could you give me a brief of what the major findings of these papers were, and references to the digs and hard data accumulated.
Providing this information will help me (and Ark) understand what you are basing your beliefs on.
As far as I can see you have presented nothing of note, just a quote from Dever, taken from the 90’s. Dever (now retired) knows fully well the truth, and has said:
“Scholars have known these things for a long time, but we’ve broken the news very gently.”
So, again, please list the papers you’ve read which support your claims.
I wouldn’t spend too much time debating the historicity of the Old Testament with a Marcionite. At the end of the discussion, even if you have proven your point to the satisfaction of 99% of an objective audience, the Marcionite will simply shrug his shoulders and say, “It doesn’t matter. There is strong evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. That is all the evidence I need to believe the Bible is trustworthy and accurate.”
Gary M is right when he says , “I wouldn’t spend too much time debating the historicity of the Old Testament with a Marcionite”
I think unkleE correctly summed it up on his own blog, “I now think it is clear that the argument for the historicity of the resurrection is strong enough to stand on its own. It won’t convince anyone who is strongly committed to naturalism and won’t accept the possibility of miracles, but I think for most people it adds to the evidence that Jesus was the “son of God”.
The reason I deconverted from Christianity was simply that I no longer believe in the possibility of miracles. And as unkleE so rightly pointed out , you can’t accept the evidence he provides unless you do believe in the possibility of miracles.
but even if miracles were possible, what about a historic location or a historic figure in a book of larger than life claims proves those miracles?
as others have pointed out, other religions have their historic figures and their historic places, but they dont accept that those miracles happened, and they dont think a scholar’s opinion that some other religious figure was an actual person is enough to believe in that religion’s miracles…
to me, they still appear to invent special reasons why “possible miracles” should be trustworthy in the bible’s case,. but dismissed in others.
are miracles possible? why not. Muslims certainly think so… but they dont believe the bible either.
Finding Truth 
“I ask myself ‘what would now allow me to believe the Bible is divinely inspired’?”
Hi Peter. I am saying that that isn’t an important question for anyone who isn’t a believer. I am saying just treat the books of the Bible as any other books written at those times, take what the consensus of scholars tells us and then form a judgment. If your judgment is to reject the reports of Jesus life and teachings, then who cares about it? Only if you, or I, decide the historical evidence is enough does the question of inspiration of the text become an issue, because then we have to decide our response.
So I think three positions are feasible:
1. Read Bible as history. Decide can’t believe in jesus. End of story.
2. Read Bible as history. Decide can believe in Jesus but can’t believe Bible is inspired. This person has belief but only Jesus’ words as determined by the historians have any importance for them.
3. Read Bible as history. Decide can believe in Jesus and can believe Bible is inspired. This person takes some greater notice of the text, depending on what they think “inspired” means.
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Unklee, you leave out other possibilities, such as ;-
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Hi Ark, thanks for your several replies. You seem to think you have defended your position, but I don’t see it. Let’s recap …
You said the “overwhelming” view of OT scholars is the minimalist position. (You didn’t define “overwhelming”, but perhaps we could say 90%?) I challenged you to demonstrate the truth of that statement.
Note I didn’t challenge you to show that some famous scholars were minimalists – I agree with that. I didn’t challenge you to show even that 50% of the scholars are minimalists – that may or may not be true for all I know. And I didn’t say I disbelieved the minimalist position and believed the maximalist position, for in answer to a previous question of yours, I said “I think it is generally safer to choose experts in the middle of the range, while acknowledging the full range”.
No, I asked you to demonstrate the truth that scholarly support for the minimalist position is “overwhelming”.
You haven’t done that.
It was simple request, made for a specific purpose. You and other make statements as if the minimalist position is true when I know that in reality it is still much debated, You may not like those who hold a non-minimlaist position, you may wish to denigrate them because you think they are biased, but they still exist. So I wanted to see if you could support your statement with evidence. And so far, although you made a few references, none of them support the “overwhelming” claim.
You have (now and earlier) shown that Finkelstein and Davies believe the minimalist position is true, but of course, they are minimalists!
You say: “I am not going to bother trawling through endless documentation simply to provide an indoctrinated Christian with the overwhelming scholarly and scientific view of the Pentateuch.”
In other words, you are not willing or able to actually justify your statement from evidence.
You quote Wikipedia, but it doesn’t say what you seem to want it to say. It says that information about the exodus is not recoverable (which is not the same as saying the story is fiction, rather saying that we can’t know either way). When it talks about “overwhelming” it says: “The opinion of the overwhelming majority of modern biblical scholars is that the exodus story was shaped into its final present form in the post-Exilic period” – so it is the date of the final writing of the story where there is “overwhelming” agreement, not the fictitious or otherwise nature of the story. And in the section you didn’t quote Wikipedia says: “How far beyond that [8th C BCE] the tradition might stretch cannot be told: “Presumably an original Exodus story lies hidden somewhere inside all the later revisions and alterations, but centuries of transmission have long obscured its presence, and its substance, accuracy and date are now difficult to determine.”
So even your own quote doesn’t support your statement, but supports my statement that there is a range of views, and scholars are generally agnostic about the story. Which Wikipedia also supports in my Dever reference. I have even seen a Finkelstein quote that he doesn’t rule out a historical Moses, he just thinks we can’t know anything about him.
Finally you say: “You have not, in fact, presented their view here at all,other than to state there is a middle view.”
But that is what I was trying to show – that contrary to your statement, there is indeed a middle view. So you have actually agreed with me here.
So let me conclude. You asked me some questions about the Pentateuch. I explained that broadly I accept whatever the scholars say, I wouldn’t really care if the minimalists or the maximalists were correct, but I’m inclined towards a midway position. So I am not defending any particular view, just arguing that there is less certainty than you have claimed. I think that is an important point to establish.
So far you have defended the view that the minimalist view is the true one with some good scholars supporting it, but you haven’t defended your statement that it is the “overwhelming” view, and your references actually support that there is a view less severe than the one you claim is “overwhelming”.
That was all I set out to do. And I am happy with the outcome. Do you wish to discuss further?
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Hi Gary,
You have made a few more comments directed at me. The one thing you haven’t done is answer the question I asked. Of course you don’t have to, but it means I will sum up and leave it at that.
You came to my website and we discussed a lot of stuff. In the end I complained that you ignored evidence, made heaps of statements without any evidence, some of them easily shown to be factually wrong. So we stopped discussing.
Then when we met on Nate’s blog, we discussed and I found the same thing occurring. Finally I explained (using satire in the hope of making a bigger impression) six common problems I found with your answers, which again led me to feel that discussion with you was a waste of your time and mine.
(You seem to have been offended by this, for which I am sorry. But your comment this time (May 2, 2015 at 11:59 am) only illustrate what I was saying. You call it a diatribe, but don’t mention that I made six observations about inaccuracy in your comments and gave examples of them – and you have never defended those observations. But even more telling, you say that I called your comments “silly”, which is another word for “stupid” with “silly in quotes inferring that was how I described you.
But the word “silly” doesn’t appear in that comment of mine! You have again been inaccurate, misrepresenting me.)
Despite all this, you kept asking me to reply to you on many and various matters. At first I declined, for the reasons I’ve given. Finally, I thought i would try once more, asking you to justify your statement about how harmful christian faith was. I asked this because I already know the answer from history, sociology and psychology. I wanted to see (i) if you would actually attempt to defend your statement by doing some serious search of evidence, and (ii) if you did the search, would you then withdraw the statement once you found out the answer? If you were wiling to search for evidence and change your mind because of it, then I should be willing to answer your questions.
But you declined to reply on that matter.
So now you have your answer, I’m sorry. You are free on Nate’s blog to say whatever he allows you to say (though I note you have even tested his tolerance a little). And I am free to comment as much or as little as he allows. But I will continue to choose to ignore and not reply to someone who makes false quotes about me, makes apparently objective statements without evidence and contrary to evidence, and who gives the impression that they don’t care about evidence at all.
So please feel free to keep asking me questions and demanding I answer them. But if you would really like an answer, please give me some indication that you are willing to stop these practices which are anti-evidence and discussion killers. Answering my recent challenge would be a good place to start.
Thanks.
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“This would be a great help in understanding where you are coming from.”
Hi John, I haven’t seen you for a while.
I have explained my position on this matter several times, but here is a brief summary.
1. I accept the views of the experts when they are in agreement. If they are not in agreement, I try to find the middle ground between the extremes.
2. On this matter, there is clearly no consensus, so I am comfortable with any of the views, but I think somewhere between the minimalists and the maximalists seems most defensible.
3. My disagreement with Ark was never about his view that the minimalists are right, for I have no objection to that view. My disagreement was with his inference that there was basically no other view among respected archaeologists and historians, when manifestly there are other views, as I have demonstrated.
I have listed some of the archaeologists and historians who hold non-minimalist views – Dever (PhD from Harvard, at University of Arizona and Lycoming College), Kitchen (Uni of Liverpool), Enns (PhD from Harvard, at Eastern Uni), Hoffmeier (PhD Uni of Toronto, currently at Trinity Divinity School), and there are of course many more. You (and others) may say you don’t agree with any of these, you may claim they are all christian s defending their turf if you like (although that statement isn’t correct), but none of that alters the fact that there is a range of views.
So I can say I haven’t read more than a couple of academic papers and a few books. The matter isn’t highly important to me, so I haven’t given it a lot of attention beyond reading a few books and websites, and checking the current academic situation before I raised the matter.
I hope that helps you understand where I’m coming from. Thanks.
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“I see that your debating style, Unk, doesn’t prohibit you from dealing in half-truths:”
Hi Arch, “half truths” is an interesting accusation. I said he was an atheist and you admit he is an atheist. 100% truth!
If we accept your justification of my statement about Dever only being a half truth – namely that “it is impossible to entirely rid oneself of early childhood propagandizing” – then it is only a “half truth” that most of you guys here are atheists! Anyone here happy to accept that?
I think we can ignore that little jibe of yours as being a non-truth! 🙂
“Dever could well be considered a maximalist ….. Finlelstein states that Dever has moved ever closer to the minimalmist position”
He says quite clearly he is NOT a maximalist. he may well have changed his position a little, but that’s what thoughtful people do when the evidence points that way. I have sen statements about Finkelstein saying he has moved a little away from minimalism, but that also means very little.
” Possibly you should rethink your use of Dever as a witness for your side.”
I think you are under a misapprehension about my views. I don’t have a “side”, and my view is certainly not maximalist as you seem to be inferring. My only point in this was to challenge the view stated confidently by Ark and you that minimalism was [pretty much the only view. That isn’t the case.
Thanks.
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“Unklee, you leave out other possibilities, such as ;-
1. Believe the bible is true. Don’t read it. And pretend to have reasons to belief.
2. Believe the bible is true, read it and look for rationalizations to justify continued belief
3. Use the bible as a door stop”
Hi Makagutu, yes you are right, I did omit a few possibilities! I’m sorry, how could I have missed those? 🙂
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Hey Arch ! I’ve been great ! Just a little busy. Good to see you are not letting people here have an easy pass. 🙂
Thanks Mak !
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Of course there is a ”view less severe”. I do not recall saying there was not. But the overwhelming majority of scientists & scholars consider Moses, the Exodus and conquest – which you avoided any reference to – to be fiction.
That you reference Kitchen as one of you ”middle ground” archaeologists and dd not research his credentials is somewhat surprising. One would be forgiven for thinking you do have an agenda in this regard unless this was simply an oversight on your part?
Wiki:
Kitchen is an evangelical Christian and has published frequently from that background on questions relating to the Old Testament. His publications in this area have consistently defended the historical books of the Old Testament as an accurate record of events, i.e. as history. Kitchen is an outspoken critic of the documentary hypothesis. He has produced various written works including articles and books upholding this viewpoint. He cites several types of proof for this theory, including that the depictions in the Bible of various historical eras and societies are consistent with historical data on these areas. [6]
Wiki.
A century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has found no evidence which can be directly related to the Exodus captivity and the escape and travels through the wilderness,[5] and most archaeologists have abandoned the archaeological investigation of Moses and the Exodus as “a fruitless pursuit”.[6] A number of theories have been put forward to account for the origins of the Israelites, and despite differing details they agree on Israel’s Canaanite origins.[26] The culture of the earliest Israelite settlements is Canaanite, their cult-objects are those of the Canaanite god El, the pottery remains in the local Canaanite tradition, and the alphabet used is early Canaanite, and almost the sole marker distinguishing the “Israelite” villages from Canaanite sites is an absence of pig bones, although whether even this is an ethnic marker or is due to other factors remains a matter of dispute.[27]
Which Finkelstein has explained.
Are you still going to maintain that the scientific and scholarly opinion in this regard is not overwhelming?
And that someone like Kenneth Kitchen, an evangelical Christian , is truly representative of genuine archaeology pertaining to this subject?
Conclusion:
You may feel I have not demonstrated my position adequately enough regarding ”overwhelming”.
I believe it is not necessary and the opening sentence of the Wiki quote is evidence enough of this position, and I can assure you John Zande, based upon his extensive research, will likely demonstrate this for you with enough data to make your head spin.
That you still try to find a way to maintain some facade of biblical credibility is telling, but at the same time a little sad. Albright was the same.
Unklee, you are quite entitled to your view, truly, and while you may well wish to consider this view helps to maintain the fiction of your belief, which you will promote in any way you see fit, the reality speaks for itself, and especially the relevance of its likely (eventual) impact on Christianity.
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Ark, thanks for continuing to discuss, but really, you continue to misunderstand and misrepresent what I said.
“That you reference Kitchen as one of you ”middle ground” archaeologists”
I do not reference him as a middle ground archaeologist, I reference him as a non minimalist archaeologist with some standing – I said that quite clearly. My disagreement with you remains your statement that the overwhelming majority of archaeologists and scholars are minimalists, when this is clearly not true. As I have shown and you continue to not refute.
“A century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has found no evidence which can be directly related to the Exodus captivity and the escape and travels through the wilderness”
This again irrelevant to what I have disputed with you. I know this is true, and I have already said this is part of my understanding. The fact that there is no evidence of such a long time ago event is suggestive but not anything more. So there are many scholars who disagree with your statement about minimalism.
Again, you fail to actually address my objection that your statement about the overwhelming support for minimalism is an overstatement.
“you are quite entitled to your view, truly, and while you may well wish to consider this view helps to maintain the fiction of your belief”
And a third misrepresentation. I said in answer to your original questions that I didn’t have a particular view on this, though I tended to favour the middle ground, and I said it wasn’t at all important to my belief.
So that makes three times in one comment when you argue against something that I don’t think, and fail to defend the statement I objected to.
Why do you continue to do that unless it is because you don’t want to admit that you can’t defend the statement I objected to?
There is really no point in a discussion if someone refuses to defend their statement and constructs straw men as a diversionary tactic. I’m not saying that is what you are doing, but it is looking like that. Hopefully your next response will address the statement of yours I am contesting. Thanks.
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Peter,
Your feelings of reading Gen 1 as a non-believer is exactly how I felt.
Good point, and i’m with you.
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is unklee ever going to answer the question, what is the strong evidence of jeezzuuusss resurrection, or is he just going to continue to be a condescending a-hole?
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unkleE, Ark, Arch, et al:
It seems to me that we’re going down a rabbit hole that doesn’t even deal with what’s important to each side.
Ark, what you really want to know is why unkleE remains a Christian, despite knowing that there’s probably very little historical core to the OT stories. At least those that predate the separate kingdoms of Israel and Judah. It’s obvious that his beliefs don’t require those stories to be literally true, so you’d like to understand why, right? Isn’t that the main issue you’re getting at here?
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“By the opening of the 20th century the stories of the Creation, Noah’s ark, and the Tower of Babel – in short, chapters 1 to 11 of the Book of Genesis – had become subject to greater scrutiny by scholars, and the starting point for biblical history was regarded as the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and the other Hebrew patriarchs. Then in the 1970s, largely through the publication of two books, Thomas L. Thompson’s The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives and John Van Seters’ Abraham in History and Tradition it became widely accepted that the remaining chapters of Genesis were equally non-historical. At the same time, archaeology and comparative sociology convinced most scholars in the field that there was equally little historical basis to the biblical stories of the Exodus and the Israelite conquest of Canaan.[4]” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Minimalism)
2 points stick out in the wiki paragraph above.
“it became widely accepted that the remaining chapters of Genesis were equally non-historical.”
“At the same time, archaeology and comparative sociology convinced most scholars in the field that there was equally little historical basis to the biblical stories of the Exodus and the Israelite conquest of Canaan”
does widely accepted, most = overwhelming ? I guess it would be subject to interpretation.
That could be why there are over 50 different versions of the Bible in English alone.
The fact that Ark and unkleE are exchanging comments, and in a civil manner could ALMOST convince me to believe in a personal God, again. 🙂
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Ken, maybe if you are open to miracles, they actually do happen
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Haha! I was just thinking the same thing as I read, kc.
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I listened to an hour long lecture by (evangelical Christian) Egyptologist, Hoffmeier. This is the kind of evidence that he would give for the historicity of the Exodus:
“Look, city X, mentioned in the Biblical story of the Exodus, has recently been unearthed. It existed! This is strong evidence that the story of the Exodus is historical truth!
How is that any different from a Mormon saying the following:
Look! Our holy book says that ancient Hebrews sailed the oceans and arrived in North America. Look! North America exists! Therefore the story must be true!
The “evidence” used by Christians to prop up their House of Cards is absolutely flabbergasting!
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“3. Use the bible as a door stop”
Best comment today!
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Thanks arch
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Gary, I agree. They unearthed Troy too, is Zeus real since Homer wrote about both in the same book?
I get that the bible and the Iliad are different, but why would the argument only work for the bible? how is that objective?
but the same with god… if everything in existence needs a creator and a designer, then why doesnt god? and whatever reason believers create and imagine as why it doesnt apply to god, is only conjecture, and besides that – why couldnt those made up reasons also be made up for anything else; like the universe, or other gods, or… anything else?
why does the bible get special treatment?
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“Hi Arch, “half truths” is an interesting accusation. I said he was an atheist and you admit he is an atheist. 100% truth!” – The half you omitted was his heavy Christian background and all of the baggage that that entails.
“…then it is only a ‘half truth’ that most of you guys here are atheists! Anyone here happy to accept that?” – Some of us have not been raised in a religious atmosphere, and others only to differing degrees, but likely none were so heavily indoctrinated as Dever, coming from a multi-generational theistic household and attending, as he did, so many religious intitutions.
“I don’t have a ‘side’” – I don’t believe that for a second.
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UnkleE
As Ark has asked, and I have also, can you please provide the list of peer reviewed papers you have read which support your position on the historical validity of the Pentateuch, and give the journals in which these papers were published and the dates of publication.
Could you give me a brief of what the major findings of these papers were, and references to the digs and hard data accumulated.
Providing this information will help me (and Ark) understand what you are basing your beliefs on.
As far as I can see you have presented nothing of note, just a quote from Dever, taken from the 90’s. Dever (now retired) knows fully well the truth, and has said:
So, again, please list the papers you’ve read which support your claims.
Thanks.
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I wouldn’t spend too much time debating the historicity of the Old Testament with a Marcionite. At the end of the discussion, even if you have proven your point to the satisfaction of 99% of an objective audience, the Marcionite will simply shrug his shoulders and say, “It doesn’t matter. There is strong evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. That is all the evidence I need to believe the Bible is trustworthy and accurate.”
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Gary M is right when he says , “I wouldn’t spend too much time debating the historicity of the Old Testament with a Marcionite”
I think unkleE correctly summed it up on his own blog, “I now think it is clear that the argument for the historicity of the resurrection is strong enough to stand on its own. It won’t convince anyone who is strongly committed to naturalism and won’t accept the possibility of miracles, but I think for most people it adds to the evidence that Jesus was the “son of God”.
The reason I deconverted from Christianity was simply that I no longer believe in the possibility of miracles. And as unkleE so rightly pointed out , you can’t accept the evidence he provides unless you do believe in the possibility of miracles.
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but even if miracles were possible, what about a historic location or a historic figure in a book of larger than life claims proves those miracles?
as others have pointed out, other religions have their historic figures and their historic places, but they dont accept that those miracles happened, and they dont think a scholar’s opinion that some other religious figure was an actual person is enough to believe in that religion’s miracles…
to me, they still appear to invent special reasons why “possible miracles” should be trustworthy in the bible’s case,. but dismissed in others.
are miracles possible? why not. Muslims certainly think so… but they dont believe the bible either.
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