real life wrote:The claims you identify as mine are not mine. They are the Bible. I referenced them as such.
If you want to dispute the Bible, I suggest you read it first. Examine the evidence presented thoroughly before you try to reach your conclusion.
Don't just cruise a few passages. That is like watching the 2 minute trailer to a 12 hour miniseries.
Read it all. I suggest more than once, since it is long and multifaceted and you will not be able to fully grasp the content in one reading.
Then perhaps you can frame a more relevant challenge to the Bible.
Oh, I've read The Bible - studied it rather rigorously, in fact, hermaneutically, exegetically, academically, and objectively, numerous versions, in several translations. And its history, its theology (from several perspectives), its canonical and ex-canonical components (by several different canons), its antecedents, its contemporaries, its outgrowths, and much commentary thereof, from Abrabanel and Aquinas through Zacharias Chrysopolitanus and Zwingli. I've discussed and debated the matter with widely acreditted, world-reknowned experts, published scholars, people of note and regard among various Abrahamic faiths and people not. Its long, long been a concern of considerable personal interest.
The writings central to religion always have fascinated me, and I've explored them in depth, with particular emphasis on those associated with or related to the Abrahamic traditions. I've even delved into Middle Eastern archaeology at some depth, if you'll pardon the pun. I would say my familiarity with the Judaeo-Christian mythopaeia, its origins, permutations, and ramifications is both far broader and much more solidly founded than is typical of most.
Some years back, Daniel Lazare, whose politics and mine do not coincide - stand in opposition, in fact, but no matter - wrote a dispassionate, objective, well researched, lengthy, highly detailed,
ARTICLE for
Harpers Magazine, in which is examined what is
known of The Bible as contrasted with what traditionally has been assumed or accepted. It is a fairly long read, but I recommend it highly. I doubt you will read it all, and I doubt you will accept any of it you read, however, it does sum up the current state of actual knowledge of The Bible and its origins.
To the interest of fairness and balance, I refer you to an
Article of countering perspective, written a couple years earlier by Stephen Goode (with whom I have slightly - but only slightly - more political affinity than with the aforementioned Lazare) for
Insight on the News. Of course, while in the end it comes to subjective evaluation, I find Lazare's piece - and its embodied thesis - by far the more persuasive of the two. Your mileage may differ.
While I don't know you, I would venture it a safe guess to postulate I've spent more time, all told, studying the subject than you have spent out of diapers. I've seen more than the trailer, I'm workingly familiar with the entire genre.
But thats neither here nor there. Lets get back to your claims - yes, your claims, since you are the one pressing them - even paraphrasing them, regardless from whence they originated. I submit that no circular, wholly internally referenced "Proof" is a proof at all, and I submit as well that such is the only forensic validation of The Bible. "The Bible is so because The Bible says so, and I believe that because I know God in my heart, as The Bible tells me is right" is a ridiculous defense. I submit yet further that most of what Bible proponents "Know" about The Bible simply isn't so.
