terribleone

I'm very new to this site and have just read around a whole bunch but I would like some help with this debate I'm having with a friend.

She says that the Bible has been historically proven. I believe that some parts have been but still.... Can you guys give me some examples on how the Bible has been historically proven OR disproved? One of the things she claims to have been historically proven is that Jesus actually died and rose from the dead and that there were witnesses and that this whole deal is proven by history. I TOTALLY disagree but I need somewhere to look and find out for sure.


Thanks,
terribleone

TySixtus

That's simply a bald faced lie. There is no evidence (out side of the bible) that Jesus rose from the dead, that anyone saw him rise from the dead, or, indeed, that anyone ever even talked to the guy. Lies, lies, lies. Ask her what her sources are, where it's written down. Ask her for authors and origins of said 'historical proof'. I guarantee she hasn't a single shred of empirical evidence to support those claims. Because, quite simply, there isn't any.

Ty

The Evil One

The broader point here is that in history nothing can be proven or disproven to 100% certainty. It is more a question of how good the evidence for something is.

There are some historical claims in the Bible that have large quantities of evidence against them.

There are some historical claims in the Bible that don't much of any evidence agaisnt them, but don't really have any evidence in favour of them, either.

There are some historical claims in the Bible that have large quantites of evidence in favour of them.

So "The Bible has been historically proven" is a very broad statement which really needs to be broken down a bit. Which part of the Bible? "Proven" in what sense?



Just because I love using this link...

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...n/lecture.html

More generally, it is not completely established that Jesus actually existed as a historical individual. Most scholars conclude that he did, but an important minority think that he did not. The more interesting point, for my money, is that even granting that a Historical Jesus existed, we don't really have evidence for much more than that: we don't have any evidence, other than the Gospels, for who he was, what he said, what he did, where he went, or how he died.

And the Gospels are not good evidence: they are anonymous (sure, they CLAIM to be eyewitness accounts, but an unsupported claim and an empty sack is worth the sack), they appear to be religious propaganda, written well after the fact, which are clearly copying one another in some places yet contradict each other in others.

So in short - no, the Bible has not been "historically proven", except in the wet dreams of fundamentalist evangelical Christian preachers.


(another example that we talked about here recently was the ethnic history of the Hebrews. According to the Bible, they were a slave people in Egypt, escaped, and migrated to Canaan, which they invaded and took over from its people. Sadly for the Bible, there is no evidence that the Hebrews were ever in Egypt, no evidence that they left, and no evidence of a sudden displacement of population in Canaan - rather the evidence suggests that the Hebrews as a people emerged in situ in Canaan IE they didn't conquer the Canaanites, they were Canaanites).

Angrillori

In fact, I would be willing to bet large sums of money that to her, proven means:

They found the ruins of cities mentioned in the bible...therefore the bible is true.

Of course, I would also bet large amounts of money that she wouldn't understand the analogy that since we found a city named Los Angeles last time we were in California...therefore the television show Angel is true.

Nevertheless, ask her to show the difference. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe she'll get it.

MiddleMan

New site out there I found via a different online discussion list that talks about the unreliable aspects of the Old testament. Looks to still be under construction but I enjoyed it.

www.geocities.com/brettpalmer2000

This guy is very detailed and I haven't had time to completely read through all his stuff, but I think he's done a good job of debunking the literal reading of the Bible in the sense that it is entirely historically accurate. Might help you!

Toto

Welcome to the boards, terribleone.

You will find a lot of good information in the Infidels Library - click on the Library link.

The idea that there were witnesses to Jesus' existence or death or resurrection has no historical support outside of the Bible. People who claim that there is historical proof of any of this usually cite the Bible as proof, which is a circular argument, or they claim that the Bible should be accepted on the same basis as other ancient documents, which is just a slightly more sophisticated circular argument.

Your friend has probably read Josh McDowell's Evidence that Demands a Verdict. You can find a complete rebuttal of that book here.

The Evil One

Not necessarily. A lot of preachers seem to be including such overbloated historical claims in what they teach their flocks, from what I've heard form a source or two; the claims then get repeated unquestioningly by the acolytes.

Of course, ultimately, the claim still goes back to apologists like McDowell, but this means that the tripe gets spread around and repeated by Christians who may never have laid eyes on a copy of McDowell.

spin

Oh, terribleone, you can't totally disagree with anything with a good conscience if you don't know anything about it. (Forgive my candour and welcome aboard.)

Let me ask you whether you think an investigation of a criminal act should bring the opinions of the mother of the suspect's bookie into court? In trying to understand what happened, the police officer's job is to separate the facts from the opinions, to separate substantiable facts from other data (which may or may not be facts at all). If a datum cannot be related to the event under investigation, it cannot be admitted to have weight, can it? You don't want to convicct anyone on unverified information now do you?

We don't know where the gospels were written, nor do we know where or by whom, or even how the information was attained or why. The earliest fragments of gospels to have been found are from the second century, a century after the reputed time of Jesus. How can one relate the texts to any real events they might purport to have happened? A hundred years after the fact is not much use in verifying the quality of historical information religionists claim the bible contains. Our police officer would be laughed out of court.

Our xian brethren would claim that other texts vouch for the content of the gospels, such as the writings of the early church fathers, but these church fathers are just as much an unknown quality as the gospels. We are pointed to a few meagre citations in classical writers (Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny) about the existence of xians and the fact that they believed in a Jesus or a christ, but we already knew that, and one cannot assume, because these writers mentioned the beliefs of the xians in a Jesus, that this Jesus must have lived or done the things narrated in the gospels. At the same time, it may have been that some of these reports in classical writers were the work of the xian scribes who later maintained the texts. Remember the law found in the political novel, 1984: he who controls the present controls the past. The past can't come back to contradict you, if you cover your tracks well enough by eliminating all contradictory evidence.

They will mention that the ancient Jewish historian, Josephus, who was writing at the end of the first century, mentions Jesus twice. Though the text we have now does mention him twice, the evidence is against these citations being original to the author. this topic has been dealt with numerous times at II, the last being here.

With such lack of substantial evidence you'd never take the claims that have been made to you to court. One can happily laugh off the claim that "the Bible has been historically proven" as naive and ignorant of historical evidence. You have been absolved of your sins my child: say ten "I will not be so gullible"s and be on your way with the weight off your back.

Once one can show how such texts can be related to the time it deals with, you the can look at all the contradictions in the text, contradictions which are so often looked at here.


spin

terribleone

I give a hearty "Thankyou" to all who have helped as of now. I spoke with my friend again who has told me her sources. They were... A Case for Christ by Lee Strobel and none other than... the Bible and notes taken at church. I'm glad she's using unbiased material (sarcasm)!

I have a feeling that this debate will be fairly one-sided. For instance...

Me- "What documents actually prove these things?

Her- "I dunno exactly. I know they exist I just don't know what they are yet.'

That must be a total :banghead: !

The Evil One

Strobel is a poor apologist. He's been debunked repeatedly on the II website:

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode....shtml#strobel

Unfortunately, the detailed rebuttals are for The Case for Faith, not The Case for Christ, which only has a (relatively) brief review. I don't suppose the quality of argument in CFC is much better than CFF, however.

However, Earl Doherty has published a rebuttal of The Case for Christ:

http://pages.ca.inter.net/~oblio/StrobelIntro.htm

in a book which one can get from the following Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...ernetInfidels/

(hope I built the link right!)