In the comment thread of my last post, some of us mentioned that it’s hard for us to understand the point of view of Christians who believe the Bible can be inspired by God, without holding to the doctrine of inerrancy. unkleE left the following comment:
How is it that in everything else in life – whether it be ethics, or politics, relationships, science, history, law, even disbelief – we are willing to make decisions based on non-inerrant evidence and reasoning, but when it is belief in God we require inerrant evidence? I reckon your first thought might be that the stakes are so much higher. But that logic applies to disbelief as well. If we applied that logic, no-one would be an atheist because they didn’t have inerrant knowledge for that conclusion. You would not have any belief either way until you gained inerrant knowledge.
He then suggested that I might want to do a post on this topic (you’re reading it!), but there were also a couple of other comments that I think are worth including here. nonsupernaturalist said this:
My answer would be that ethics, politics, relationships, science, history, and law do not involve supernatural claims. When someone makes a supernatural claim, the standard of evidence required by most educated people in the western world to believe that claim is much, much higher than a claim involving natural evidence.
Let’s look at “history”. If someone tells me that most historians believe that Caesar crossed the Rubicon or that Alexander the Great sacked the city of Tyre, I accept those claims without demanding a great deal of evidence. However, if someone claims that the Buddha caused a water buffalo to speak in a human language for over one half hour or that Mohammad rode on a winged horse to heaven, I am going to demand MASSIVE quantities of evidence to believe these claims.
I think that most Christians would agree with my thinking, here, until I make the same assertion regarding the bodily Resurrection of Jesus. Then Christians will shake their heads in disgust and accuse me of being biased and unreasonable.
No. I am not being biased and unreasonable. I am being consistent. It is the Christian who is being inconsistent: demanding more evidence to believe the supernatural claims of other religions than he or she demands of his own.
And it isn’t just supernatural claims. Most educated people in the western world would demand much more evidence for very rare natural claims than we would for non-rare natural claims.
Imagine if someone at work tells you that his sister just gave birth to twins. How much evidence would you demand to believe this claim? Probably not much. You would probably take the guy’s word for it. Now imagine if the same coworker tells you that, yesterday, in the local hospital, his sister gave birth to twelve babies! Would you take the guy’s word for it? I doubt it.
So it isn’t that we skeptics are biased against Christianity or even that we are biased against the supernatural. We are simply applying the same reason, logic, and skepticism to YOUR very extra-ordinary religious claim that we apply to ALL very rare, extra-ordinary claims, including very rare, extraordinary natural claims.
And Arkenaten said this:
I cannot fathom how you can disregard something like Noah’s Ark as nonsense and yet accept that a narrative construct called Jesus of Nazareth could come back from the dead.
Personally, I feel very much the same way that nonsupernaturalist does. The first part of unkleE’s question that I’d like to address is his statement about nonbelief:
If we applied that logic, no-one would be an atheist because they didn’t have inerrant knowledge for that conclusion.
I think this depends on what one means by “atheism.” I’m not really interested in trying to determine what the official definition of the term is; rather, I’d like to make sure we’re all talking about the same thing within the confines of this discussion. When I refer to myself as an atheist, I simply mean that I don’t believe any of the proposed god claims that I’ve encountered. I’m not necessarily saying that I think no gods exist, period. And if I were to say that, I’d give the caveat that I could easily be wrong about such a belief. This notion of atheism, the position that one hasn’t been convinced of any god claims, is often referred to as “weak atheism” or “soft atheism.” Personally, I think that should be everyone’s default position. No one should be a Muslim, a Hindu, or a Christian until he or she has been convinced that the god(s) of that particular religion exist(s). If we didn’t operate in this way, then we’d all immediately accept the proposition of every religion we encountered, until its claims could be disproven. This would make most of us Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, pagans, and atheists all at the same time. Obviously, that’s ridiculous. So on those grounds, I don’t agree with unkleE’s assertion that we would need inerrant information to not believe something.
Furthermore, when it comes to the claims of Christianity, I can accept or reject them completely independently of what I think about the existence of god(s). Many times, discussions about the evidence for and against Christianity slide into discussions about whether or not a god exists. People bring up the cosmological and teleological arguments. While those discussions can be important, I think they are really just distractions when we’re talking about a specific religion. I’m okay conceding that a god might exist, so I’d rather focus on the pros and cons of Christianity to see if it could possibly be true. After all, it could be the case that God is real, but Christianity is false.
unkleE’s comment started like this:
How is it that in everything else in life – whether it be ethics, or politics, relationships, science, history, law, even disbelief – we are willing to make decisions based on non-inerrant evidence and reasoning, but when it is belief in God we require inerrant evidence?
To piggy-back off the comments I just made, I don’t necessarily require inerrant evidence to believe in God. I think the necessity for inerrancy comes from the kind of god being argued for. The Abrahamic religions teach that there is one God who is supreme. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, completely just, etc. I know there are sometimes caveats placed on those labels. For instance, can God create a rock so large that he can’t lift it? Arguments like that illustrate that being all-powerful doesn’t mean he’s outside the laws of logic. And the same goes for all-knowing. It’s sometimes argued that he knows all that can be known… perhaps there are some things that can’t be known? The waters can get muddy pretty quickly, so I think it’s best to refer back to the religion’s source material (the Bible, in this case) to learn more about the characteristics of this god.
In the Bible, God seems to be big on proofs. When God wanted Noah to build an ark, he spoke to him directly. Noah didn’t have to decide between a handful of prophets each telling him different things — God made sure that Noah knew exactly what was required of him. The same was done for Abraham when God wanted him to move into the land of Canaan, and when God commanded him to sacrifice Isaac. When God called Moses to deliver the Israelites from Egyptian bondage, he also spoke directly to Moses. And on top of that, he even offered additional proofs by performing signs for Moses. And when Moses appeared before Pharaoh, God again used signs to show Pharaoh that Moses did indeed speak on God’s behalf. Miraculous signs were used throughout the period of time that the Israelites wandered in the wilderness. And we can fast forward to the time of Gideon and see that God used signs as evidence then as well. Throughout the Old Testament, signs were given to people to show God’s involvement and desires. There are even examples where God punished those who listened to false prophets who hadn’t shown such signs, such as the man of God who listened to the instruction of an old prophet who was actually lying to him. God sent a lion to kill the man (I Kings 13:11-32).
The New Testament is no different. Jesus and his apostles perform all kinds of miracles as evidence of Jesus’s power. When the Pharisees accused Jesus of casting out demons by the power of Satan, he pointed out how nonsensical that would be, showing that such miracles were intended as a display of God’s approval (Matt 12:24-28). And the Gospel of John also argues that these miracles were intended as evidence:
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
— John 20:30-31
Not only did Jesus and his disciples use miracles to make their case, they also appealed to Scripture. Throughout the New Testament, you find references to the Old: “as it is written,” “as spoken by the prophet,” etc. That in itself doesn’t necessarily make the case for inerrancy, but it at least shows that they expected the scriptures to be accurate.
If God cared so much during the time periods talked about in the Bible, why wouldn’t he care just as much today? How can Jesus say that “not one jot or tittle of the law will pass away” if God’s not really all that concerned about how accurate the “jots” and “tittles” are? And yes, like unkleE said in his comment, I do think the fact that the stakes are tremendously high on this question makes it that much more necessary to have good evidence. While the Bible gives us countless examples of those who received direct communication from God or one of his representatives, we find ourselves living in a time when we’re surrounded by competing claims about which god is true, and which doctrines are the right ones. I used to believe that the one tool we had to cut through all that noise was the Bible. It was the one source we could go to to find what God wanted from us. And we could trust that it was his word because of the amazing prophecy fulfillments that it contained and that despite its length and antiquity, it was completely without error. In other words, I thought it was a final miracle to last throughout the ages. And because of its existence and availability, we no longer needed individuals who went around performing miracles and spreading the gospel.
That’s how I saw the world. Of course, since then, I’ve discovered that the Bible doesn’t live up to that high standard. I have many other posts that deal with its various problems, so I won’t try to detail them now. But I simply don’t see how the God portrayed in the Bible, a god who is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, etc, would inspire individuals to write down his incredibly important message to all of mankind, yet not make sure they relay it completely accurately. It doesn’t always agree with itself, it contains historical and scientific mistakes, and sometimes it advocates things that are outright immoral. It’s understandable why a number of people would fail to be convinced by such a book; therefore, it would be impossible for an all-loving and completely just God to punish people when they’re merely trying to avoid the same fate as the man of God who trusted the old (false) prophet.
Finding Truth 
I think we may be getting closer to reaching agreement, or at least a better understanding.
You will note that throughout this and most threads I use the term, Jesus of Nazareth?
This character is a narrative construct for whom there is no supporting evidence whatsoever.
And I include the total lack of archaeological evidence here also, as I stated above.
That there may have been an itinerant first century eschatological Rabbi running around Palestine is eminently possible. Josephus mentions a few. That this character was crucified by the Romans for sedition is also eminently possible. That this figure is in some way responsible for the fictional character we read about in the bible is also a possibility and the spurious collection of sects this fictional character spawned is also quite likely.
And although there is no contemporary evidence for him at all I am quite prepared to give the relevant scholars the benefit of the doubt.
But to entertain UnkleE’s presentation including his archaeologically unsupported assertion of the ”Empty Tomb” is to pander to an almost disingenuous presentation of what historians will truly accept.
Thus, one must be careful that he not be allowed to include any vague allusions in his defense and make no sweeping assumptions on what the so-called consensus of scholars decree.
Hope I have cleared up any unintended misunderstanding, Jon?
Cheers.
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-The overwhelming majority of NT scholars are Christian believers.
-The majority of NT scholars believe in the Empty Tomb.
-The majority of NT scholars writing on the historicity of the Empty Tomb are most likely Christian believers. (We cannot say for sure because Habermas did not list the names of the authors he found in his literature search.)
Christian repeated appeals to Habermas’ literature search, which found that 75% of articles written by NT scholars over a 30 year period beginning in 1975 believed in the historicity of the Empty Tomb, is confirmation bias at best and blatant cherry picking at worst.
A literature search of articles discussing the historicity of the Book of Mormon claim that ancient Hebrews settled in North America would very likely demonstrate a majority of Book of Mormon scholars on this subject favor the historicity of this Mormon claim. Should you therefore believe that ancient sea-faring Hebrews crossed the ocean blue to settle on the shores of North America?
No.
It is biased “evidence”.
And the same is true for the Christian claim of the historicity of an empty grave in first century Palestine.
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Unklee
I would be interested in your view on the creation story and the Exodus. I don’t wish to antagonize, but I am curious how different Christians reconcile those things in their own personal belief systems.
I think Ehrman expresses the point well when he says that miracles are outside the scope of historians. Historians can only determine what is most probable, and supernatural intervention is by definition never “probable.”
Heck, I think William Lane Craig has made the point that, while a resurrection is impossible under natural circumstances, it is not impossible if God wants it to happen. That is a way of getting around the special pleading argument, because it introduces a unique mechanism for the resurrection. But God’s mind is entirely unavailable to field of history, and so historians cannot possibly incorporate that into history any more than physicists can call an anomaly (or weakly understood event) a miracle.
Scholarship simply doesn’t have the tools to reach the conclusion of “miracle”, so people shouldn’t misuse it towards that end. If a person accepts the resurrection, they do so on a personal, theological and faith basis, not on an academic basis. And that’s fine!
Habermas has been making the Minimal Facts argument in various forms since the 1970’s. His PhD thesis was a defense of the resurrection that incorporated many of the points he makes today, though of course he has extended them by now. In a 2012 paper, he said, “For more than 35 years, I have argued that, surrounding the end of Jesus’ life, there is a significant body of data that scholars of almost every religious and philosophical persuasion recognize as being historical. The historicity of each “fact” on the list is attested and supported by a variety of historical and other considerations. This motif began as the central tenet of my PhD dissertation.2 This theme has continued in virtually all of my other dozens of publications on this subject since that time.” He may not call it the Minimal Facts argument in each paper, but that is the name for the general form of the argument.
I’m unsure what your argument is here. My point is that we have no idea what kind of sources Habermas considers. Do papers published in the Journal of Biblical Literature count equally to papers published in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society? Does a paper by a Princeton/Oxford/Sheffield scholar count equally to a paper by a Pensacola Christian College grad?
We could speculate all day. Unless the database is published, we really have no idea.
I do agree that somebody (or a team) should do a literature review or a survey of scholars to find out what views are held by biblical scholars. However, even that is fraught with problems. Who do you include and exclude? How do you incorporate confidence levels or minor variations? It’s tough to do. That’s why I’m a little disappointed that Habermas has not made his own research public.
It’s a great question. I don’t know the overall number, but I know it’s a real problem within many Christian seminaries. Google around and you’ll see a ton of them for many religious universities and discussion about their effects by some Biblical scholars.
At Liberty, where Habermas is employed, “All faculty members must agree with these doctrinal positions for employment.”
I think there could be a good argument to exclude scholars who work at institutions who restrict their academic freedom on theological grounds, but….that would also exclude a lot of very good, very qualified scholars. I’m not sure there is a good solution.
Good question. I don’t know. I mean, I enjoy Ehrman for his writing style and his ability to synthesize so many different things effectively. I enjoy Daniel B. Wallace’s writing style, as well. He has some great overviews of issues, albeit from an extremely conservative standpoint. I tend to read online a great deal, so while I’ve been exposed to many of the big names, it’s not always/often in long form. I’ve enjoyed Larry Hurtado, Michael Bird, Matthew Ferguson, Dale B. Martin and Christine Hayes (who do Yale’s NT and OT classes, available online), William Lane Craig (more of a philosopher and apologist, but still interesting to read/listen to), Mark Goodacre, Richard Bauckham, James McGrath, Craig Evans, James Crossley, and too many more to list. This is a very evangelical-heavy list, because those are the ones that come to mind quickly and because I try to do a lot of reading to see what their answers are to the more secular/mainstream positions. I also find it helpful sometimes to read patristic sources directly (albeit in english, of course), instead of just reading what people said about them.
Finally, I recommend this: https://www.reddit.com/r/academicbiblical
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https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2014/10/17/how-know-when-give-faculty-job-religious-college
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/14/can-statements-faith-be-compatible-academic-freedom
My highlight
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and …..
http://www.wheaton.edu/About-Wheaton/Statement-of-Faith-and-Educational-Purpose
etc ad nauseum.
A simple Google search should be enough ..
How is it possible for any scholar/professor to offer any genuine historical perspective that does not violate his employer’s Statement of Faith?
Furthermore, how is it possible for any historian who has any religious leanings to arrive at an objective conclusion uninfluenced by some measure of supernatural presupposition without becoming a non-believer?
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Sure. It sounds like you grudgingly accept the scholarly consensus on the historicity and basic characteristics of the Historical Jesus (as opposed to the Jesus of the Gospels and church tradition). My main beefs here are that you A) create unreasonable evidential demands (“verifiable historical evidence”, “contemporaneous evidence”, “archaeological evidence”, “Roman records”) that are inconsistent with reasonable expectations or historical standards, and B) you unnecessarily dismiss the textual evidence because it has legendary elements.
If you are arguing against a Christian, pointing out the unreliability of the Gospels is a valid point. But when it comes to the scholarship around the Historical Jesus, the unreliability of the Gospels is par for the course. Historians are not blessed with a whole lot of inerrant historical texts. The whole field of historical criticism (and source criticism) is about trying to glean the historical reality from texts of dubious reliability.
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Not grudgingly, Jon. I just do not agree with UnkleE’s presentation of the ”consensus”.
Asking for archaeological evidence for the burial tomb is not unreasonable.
Asking for at least one piece of contemporary evidence ( which could be verified is not unreasonable).
Asking for any non-biblical, non-christian evidence for the disciples and especially their claimed martyrdom is not unreasonable.
I understand what specific criticisms are Jon, thanks.
It is important that we do not allow the likes of unkleE and anyone with a vested interest to smudge the lines of these forms of criticism simply because we are dealing with a (Former) Sacred Cow.
And it is worth mentioning once more that, as the Pentateuch is considered Historical Fiction and it is the accepted scholarly and archaeological consensus that Moses is also a work of fiction; a narrative construct, as is the Exodus and all other facets of this tale, the relevance to the untenable position for claiming any veracity for the biblical character Jesus of Nazareth and the ramifications for christianity, must be challenged.
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If modern archeology, anthropology, and the analysis of writing experts strongly indicate that the Exodus, the Passover, Moses, and the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai were ancient folk tales—fiction, how do moderate Christians explain why Jesus, the alleged all-knowing Creator of the universe, believed these events to be real historical events?
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Hi Jon,
”Scholarship simply doesn’t have the tools to reach the conclusion of “miracle”, so people shouldn’t misuse it towards that end.”
I think this is the view of most scholars, regardless of whether they personally believe Jesus did miracles, or not. But I think maybe NT Wright argues for the resurrection on historical grounds in his book The Resurrection of the Son of God, but I haven’t read it.
”At Liberty, where Habermas is employed, “All faculty members must agree with these doctrinal positions for employment.””
To me, the crucial question is: Which institutions practically enforce their statements, and which scholars are prevented from expressing their genuine views? I don’t know that.
”Finally, I recommend this: https://www.reddit.com/r/academicbiblical”
Thanks for that link. Your list of authors is interesting, with a lot of commonality to mine, but a few differences. I too read quite a bit online. I even obtained two of Ehrman’s books online in PDF.
”I would be interested in your view on the creation story and the Exodus. I don’t wish to antagonize, but I am curious how different Christians reconcile those things in their own personal belief systems.”
No need to apologise, I don’t see that question as at all antagonistic. It’s not a short answer! 😦
I wasn’t brought up christian and God was hardly ever mentioned in our home. But I was sent to Sunday School because (I guess) it was the “right thing to do” back then (late 1940s, early 1950s), so I learnt all the stories, including Adam & Eve, Noah, Moses, etc. I came to a belief in Jesus in my mid to late teens when I was at university, and immediately started to read books on questioning and supporting my new faith. I was particularly influenced by CS Lewis. When I came across evolution, I thought it quite obviously silly and kept on believing Genesis, but I was seriously troubled by the killings later in the OT. But my understanding was evolving.
First I re-evaluated evangelical teaching on Jesus, realised it wasn’t well based on the gospels, and began to read NT scholarship, which continues to be my main interest, and the clear basis for my ongoing faith. But when I was maybe 30, I read Genesis 1-3 as part of my regular (or not so regular!) Bible reading and it was suddenly clear to me that this was a folk tale. And I read in CS Lewis’ letters that he believed (as an expert on ancient myth and literature, though not a Bible expert) that the OT began in myth and ended in history, and I was fine with that.
So for many years I accepted neither Genesis nor evolution as true, and didn’t think much more about it, because it wasn’t of any practical importance to me. And I could feel more OK about the killings because perhaps they were legendary too. It is only in the last decade that I have taken up the question a little more. I have read scholars like Peter Enns, Denis Lamoureux, Denis Alexander and several others, and they have helped my ideas to gel.
Basically, I accept evolution, I think the DNA evidence in particular is very strong. I never had much time for the doctrine of original sin and I think there are interpretations of The Fall that fit evolution just fine. I think Noah is a legendary tale probably built on a real local flood. From then on we have a mix of history and legend in proportions that we can’t possibly know – even the scholars are divided on this between the minimalists and the maximalists, as this recent academic book shows: Israel’s Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective.
I accept that scholarship, and accept Peter Enns’ advice that the majority of scholars are somewhere between the minimalists and the maximalists, to varying degrees. So I think we cannot know much history about the Patriarchs because there is virtually no corroborating evidence apart from understanding the background culture. The Exodus is similarly pretty much impossible to say one way or another because of lack of evidence one way or the other. The most problematic part of the OT is the conquest of Canaan, where there seems to be some reasonable archaeological evidence to suggest the conquest wasn’t nearly as complete as the OT says – though to be fair, there is also evidence within the OT to indicate this.
None of this bothers me very much, because Jesus makes perfect sense on either hypothesis, that the OT is literally true or it is total legend. Cultural myths and legends are formative and teach truths whether they are literally and historically true or not. I think that’s enough detail, but these two blog posts give more detail if you want it: CS Lewis on the Bible, history and myth and Myths, legends, history and truth.
I’l just finish by saying I have been a christian now for something like 54 years, I started as a reformed evangelical, I am now something different, but my belief in Jesus hasn’t faded at all through researching all these matters. In fact, getting a more scholarly view of Jesus has really helped. Thanks for your questions. I’d be interested in how you see things if you want to share.
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unkleE, as you know from past experience, we don’t always see eye-to-eye and our personalities tend to clash a bit.
However, putting that aside for a moment, I’m curious about something. You have indicated you more or less discard the OT as myth, yet you have a firm belief in the person of Jesus. I find this a bit puzzling.
Throughout the Hebrew bible, there was talk about the mashiach and the role he would play at some future date. Do you disregard all of this? Because if you do, then your belief in Jesus (at least to me) seems to be unwarranted. While it’s true that most of the Jewish people do not accept Jesus’ role as the mashiach, many did … including Paul, who, as you know, played a major role in establishing the beliefs of Christianity today.
So I guess what I’m asking is … are you primarily discarding the major “events” of the OT (Exodus, flood, original sin, etc.) yet still giving credibility to the parts that Christianity claims are related to Jesus?
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“I think maybe NT Wright argues for the resurrection on historical grounds in his book The Resurrection of the Son of God, but I haven’t read it.”
I read Wright’s book. It is over 800 pages long.
Wright’s primary evidence for the believability of the Resurrection is this: No first century Jew (or pagan) would have ever invented the bodily resurrection of one individual. Such a concept was not within the realm of possibilities in that time and culture. Something dramatic (like seeing a walking/talking dead body) must have happened for anyone to have believed this story.
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Whoops! Forgot to turn off italics after the first mashiach. 😦
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“unkleE, as you know from past experience, we don’t always see eye-to-eye and our personalities tend to clash a bit.”
Hi Nan, I have the same memories as you and I am sorry for any clashes. I am very happy to put all that aside if you are, and happy to answer your questions.
“You have indicated you more or less discard the OT as myth”
No, I’m sorry if I gave that impression. It is always hard on blog comments to balance brevity with accuracy. I think that Genesis 1-11 is myth. Technically myth doesn’t necessarily mean unhistorical, but I think there is very little history in 1-11, though as I said, scholars think there was really a devastating local flood that triggered the Gilgamesh/Noah stories.
From then on I think it is a mixture of history and legend/myth in proportions that I don’t think we can always know. That’s why I said I’m with Peter Enns in between the minimalists and maximalists. But by the time we get to David, we have pretty much history, though obviously slanted in the lessons it draws. This is all the view of CS Lewis some 60 years ago, though I don’t know exactly where he stood on details.
But Lewis made a key point, which you can see in both the blog references I gave, that God can reveal through myth (just like parable) and these are God-inspired myths. Pretty much all myths around the world tell what the culture thought were important truths, whether they thought the stories were literally historical or not, so all the more can we see the OT as teaching truths.
But most of the important stuff about the Messiah comes after David when we are pretty much in the realm of history. There really was an Isaiah, and he really did write the messianic prophecies in chapters 7-11. And either he or someone else historical wrote the messianic prophecies in Isaiah 53 etc.
So the whole OT is a revelation of God, just using different writing forms – myth, history, poetry, prophecy, etc. We can only understand Jesus in his context if we understand the OT. But that is true regardless of which bits we think as being history and which are not. Jesus was a man of his time, he didn’t profess to know everything, and he spoke in the language, religion and culture of his day. The fact that I believe he was God incarnate doesn’t change that – if he had known everything he would have needed a bigger brain than any human could have and he wouldn’t then have been incarnate = in a human body. As Philippians 2 says, he had to empty himself to become human.
OT prophecy was not like we moderns may tend to think – detailed accurate predictions akin to the predictions of a scientific hypothesis. They were more cryptic, they could point to more than one event, they spoke in poetic language that sometimes used hyperbole for emphasis, etc. And the NT characters, including Jesus, didn’t interpret it like modern evangelicals do either, but were much more flexible and creative. (I can give you more details on all of this if you want.) The result is that some of the NT applications of OT passages are not in context. That is how 1st century Jews did things. But if we accept that flexibility, then I think there is no difficulty in accepting those prophecies.
I believe Jesus brought the truth, and he brought it in the context of first century Judaism, but that doesn’t mean we have to accept the OT as entirely literal history. Rather, we need to understand it as Jesus understood it, and as the scholars understand it today, and combine those two understandings.
Does that make sense? What do you think? Thanks.
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Thanks unkleE. Although I feel you have a rather distorted view of Christianity, if it works for you that’s what counts.
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Hi Nan, thanks for that. But of course I am not just looking for what works for me, but what is true, as much as I can know it. I have been following Jesus for about 54 years, and I think I am reasonably orthodox in my beliefs apart from the OT myth stuff, so I don’t think my view is “rather distorted”. I would be interested to know what and why you think that, if you feel like telling me, and I am happy to commit to not arguing back if you would prefer. Either way, thanks again.
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I’m sorry, but this is simply utter garbage from top to bottom.
How dare this man write this nonsensical diatribe and try to pass it off as some sort of scholarly influenced view?
There most certainly is evidence and this evidence shows conclusively that there was no Exodus and no conquest of Canaan.
This has been pointed out to unkleE on several occasions ( I am being generous as none of my comments are allowed on his blog anymore and he refuses to respond here or anywhere else).
I am fairly sure John Zande has also informed unklee of the current archaeological position and he has conducted extensive research into this specific topic for the past two to three years, including ongoing correspondence with some of the top Israeli archaeologists at Tel Aviv university and other relevant institutes.
Specifics:1.
The entire region during the time of this supposed Exodus and conquest was under Egyptian rule.
This is undisputed.
There was no Egyptian Captivity as per the bible tale. This too is undisputed except for people like Kitchen and Wood who are evangelical fundamentalists and have no evidence to support their claims of biblical innerancy on this or any other regard.
There was no Exodus (as described in the bible)
And there was no conquest of Canaan.
However, there is archaeological evidence that shows a completely different history for the Israelites and it was, by and large internal.
Specifics 2.
The Israelites were supposed to have spent 38 years at Kadesh Barnea.
Read that again and allow it to sink in 38 years.
There is not a scrap of evidence to indicate any form of long term settlement in this area.
Even if we were to accept that the numbers were wrong try to imagine what this place would have had to be like supporting a population the size of a small; city?
Even if they spent the entire 38 years in tents!
Simply consider the impact.
Unklee is trying his hand waving minimalist / maximalist nonsense once more.
But at least with this particular comment his disingenuity is exposed.
And excellent post explaining Kadesh Barnea.
https://thesuperstitiousnakedape.wordpress.com/2016/06/26/kadesh-barnea-gaza-the-exodus/
I feel sure John Zande will want to explain further with comprehensive details from the best archaeologists in the world.
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Here is the first paragraph from the above link on Kadesh Barnea.
The Jewish origin tale recounted in the Pentateuch is a work of geopolitical fiction. This is the uncontested consensus of biblical archaeologists and bible scholars. It has been the consensus position amongst professionals for nearly three generations now, but as the Chief Archaeologist at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum, Professor Magen Broshi, explained: “Archaeologists simply do not take the trouble of bringing their discoveries to public attention.” So solid is the consensus, and so definitive the evidence supporting it, that in 1998, the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), the primary American professional body for archaeologists working in the Middle East, changed the name of its professional publication from Biblical Archaeologist to Near Eastern Archaeology simply because the bible had been determined to be (beyond all doubt) an entirely unreliable historical source to direct research into the early Jews, pre-Babylonian captivity. Indeed, in that same year, even Christianity Today’s Kevin D. Miller conceded: “The fact is that not one shred of direct archaeological evidence has been found for Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob or the 400-plus years the children of Israel sojourned in Egypt. The same is true for their miraculous exodus from slavery.”
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@ UnkleE
Regarding the Exodus:
We’ve been through all this before, I have detailed at length the myriad of evidence compiled in the last 100 years against the Exodus narrative, so rather than traversing known ground (ground you have, of course, willfully ignored so as to maintain your cartoon version of history) how about you present the supporting evidences (actual evidence, published and verified, not the unfounded opinions of evangelical Christians) you have for the Exodus.
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Although I respect and defend UnkleE’s right to believe as he chooses, his belief system is classic “moderate” Christianity. While fundamentalists defend all the supernatural claims of the Bible, and the most liberal of Christians deny them all except for the existence of a Creator, moderates pick and choose which supernatural claims to believe and which to not believe based on the most puzzling (to me) of logic.
If God can raise a man from the dead, give him the ability to teleport between cities, walk through walls, and levitate into space, he surely can create a universe in six literal days just as Genesis 1 and 2 state, but make it look like he did it over billions of years. He surely can cause a world wide flood without leaving geological traces of it. He surely can cause several million ancient Hebrews to exodus Egypt and wander in the Sinai for forty years but not leave a single trace of their presence.
So why latch onto to one supernatural claim (the Resurrection) as historical fact, but chalk most of the others up to “myth”?
I believe it is for one reason: Without the Resurrection, there is no longer an explanation for that still small voice that you hear talking to you in your head all day long; there is no explanation for your feelings of security, peace, and comfort. There is no explanation for the “miracles” you experience other than random chance.
You latch onto the Resurrection because without it your entire worldview collapses. You don’t need the Creation or World Wide Flood Story to be true to believe that Jesus is God, but you damn for sure need the Resurrection…and that is why moderate Christians so desperately cling to it based on the flimsiest of evidence.
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@John
I doubt Unklee has the integrity to respond honestly to your request, any more than he will address the archaeological evidence already produced.
As nonsupernaturalist points out – The Resurrection or bust – thus, he can argue the toss on every other subject ’til the cows come home and when shown his comments are nothing but nonsense he will either offer some put-down style comment he is so well known for and then slink off after bemoaning that ”some” skeptics are like a metaphorical bunch of amateur backwoods hicks for not accepting the ”scholarly view” while completely failing to mention that as far as Exodus goes we do in fact accept the consensus scholarly view.
I have a sneaking suspicion unklee actually enjoys all the attention.
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An expanded version of the summary in my last statement:
I believe that moderate Christians such as UnkleE latch onto the Resurrection claim while denying many other fantastical supernatural claims in the Bible for one reason:
Without the Resurrection, there is no longer an explanation for that still small voice that you hear talking to you in your head all day long…other than that voice being YOU; there is no explanation for your feelings of security, peace, and comfort…other than your creation of an imaginary friend. There is no explanation for the “miracles” you experience…other than random chance.
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Once, for a few hours one morning, my granny thought god was talking in her ear and playing her favorite music.
She was more than a little miffed when he stopped chatting, and more so when she discovered the small earpiece from an old miniature transistor radio she had put in her ear during breakfast.
😉
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unkleE, you wrote: I am reasonably orthodox in my beliefs apart from the OT myth stuff
This is exactly why I said your view is somewhat distorted (perhaps a better word in “unconventional’). The “average” Christian pretty much accepts the entire OT, warts and all. They are convinced God did everything the bible says he did … including Genesis 1-11.
Also, in my limited experience, I find few believers relying on what the “scholars” say. They tend to believe what comes from the pulpit and rarely do outside research. The fact that you do has apparently changed your views. Whether this is good or bad is not my place to say, although I do tend to agree with others that it may have colored your perspective in some rather non-conformist ways.
But we are all different and we all come into this with different mindsets. Through personal study and research, I do tend to support the non-believer viewpoint and find little veracity in what the theistic community has to say.
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“I believe Jesus brought the truth, and he brought it in the context of first century Judaism, but that doesn’t mean we have to accept the OT as entirely literal history. Rather, we need to understand it as Jesus understood it, and as the scholars understand it today, and combine those two understandings.”
So Jesus understood that much of the Old Testament was fiction; that Abraham, Isaac, and Moses did not exist; that there was no Passover; there was no Exodus…but Jesus pretended as if they did…to “fit in” with first century Judaism???
The ultimate in Christian spin.
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@Nonsupernaturalist.
Reading unkleE’s comments is like listening to William Lane Craig try to justify Divine Command Theory.
You reach a point where your brain is yelling ”WTF!” every few seconds or in the case of WLC you simply want to punch him in the face just so he will shut the hell up spewing such vacuous, revolting nonsense.
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