Peter Kirby

According to Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona:

"In the past, the Bible has demonstrated that its accounts are trustworthy as far as they have been verified. Moreover, the Bible has never been controverted by solid historical data. Therefore, the benefit of the doubt should go to the Bible in places where it cannot be verified, when there is no evidence to the contrary, and when it seems clear that the author intended for us to understand the event as historical." (The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, p. 31, emphasis mine)

Would anyone like to provide a counter-example to the bolded statement?

best,
Peter Kirby

Chris Weimer

Obviously, a massacre of all the children in Judaea under two would have been noticed, as well as a universal census at the time Luke mentioned, or the conquest of Canaan by Joshua, etc...

offa

Offa,

You have to read what is written. Josephus writes that Herod ordered
the children to be executed but his sister Salome released them after
Herod died. The "children" were adults, you know, we are all GOD's
children. They were imprisoned in the hippodrome (Herodium?) and
later released.

Mary gave birth to Jesus in 6/7 bc and he was two years old when the
children were ordered to be slain. Herodium is real close to
Bethlehem, BTW. When the census occurred in AD 6 Jesus was "born
again" through his bar miz. The 13 year old became a 1 year old
Child. Read Josephus and you will discover children in their teens
acting like adults. If you read King's II you will discover
princes becoming parents before puberty.

About Josua, I am not into the Old Testament per se. However, my
guess is that Lot and Josua are the same person.

Offa

Chris Weimer

Offa, this was a conversation about actual history, not your metaphysical outlook of the text. Two different subjects.

And no, Lot wasn't Joshua, even by taking your route, Joshua was the saviour of Israel, not the Jesus saviour (both names are the same) but the Paul, who conquered the pagan lands and spread his kingdom until the reached the promised land proper (Rome). Moses was the preJesus who brought the people out of their slavery (aka Judaism). Lot was way before, being the brother of Abraham, he saw his wife turn into a pile of salt for she looked longingly into the her past sins. (Hm, I could really get into this...)

Avatar

Then there's the problem of the town of Jericho turning out to have never had a wall around it in the first place, a total lack of evidence of a Hebrew migration from Egypt, no geological evidence of a Flood, no mention by contemporory historians of Jesus anyehre but in the Bible...

Chili

Correct and that is why it must be read as myth only that was attached to history so the preacher can "speak with urgency and conviction" (I love this line from dean Jocelin in "The Spire)."

The children were adults who were reborn from below (from their mothers womb untimely ripped) that were feared to mislead innocent believers by Herod who was the Inquisitor King of Judaism in Judea.

The problem will always be were to draw the line between physical and metaphysical if the metaphysical must he attached to the physical world for presentation. I am all myth and look for answers in the myth but appreciate history being presented here for my evaluation of the myth.

Ozymandias

Chris Weimer, Avatar ... How is having no evidence to prove any Biblical events proof that they never happened?

Chris Weimer

Actually, there's geological evidence against the flood, and the historical inconsistencies in the gospels alone is enough to expel it from being read as a history without careful revision. And then there's the archaeological data of the "conquest" of Canaan which speaks against the Bible. There are some things which are silent still, so we can't use it as evidence alone, especially since archaeology is still an on-going process, but there are other things which actually speak against the gospel altogether. Let me rephrase my above assertions: there was no universal census at the time Luke mentioned. About Matthew, the silence surrounding the massacre of infants would have made notice in at least one historian, so alone that wouldn't be enough to convict the Bible, but added in with the arguements against it and you have a solid rebuttal.

spin

Historical?

1. The Philistines arrived with a bang on the Levantine coast in circa 1170 BCE. Abraham had contact with them several centuries before.
2. The city of Pithom in Exodus was built by Necho II circa 610 BCE.
3. Togarmah (Gen 10:3), being post-Hittite in formation, didn't exist in the time attributed to Moses, neither did Riphath (Arpad).
4. Belshazzar was not the son of Nebuchadnezzar, but of Nabonaid (and while it is arguable that sons may be any descendents along the male line, the supposed connection through a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar doesn't cut it).
5. Ezekiel's prophecy against Gog of Magog, when Gugu of Mat-gugi (Gyges of Lydia) was long dead.
6. Ezra, who is the brother of the last high priest in Jerusalem at the time of Nebuchadnezzar accoring to his genealogy, returns to Jerusalem around 150 years after the fall of the Temple -- the 7th year of the reign of Artaxerxes.

Will that do?


spin

Steven Carr

The Bible claims in Mark's Gospel that Jesus was crucified ay the third hour, yet solid historical evidence (namely John's Gospel), says that the judgement was made at the 6th hour.