aa5874

Whether or not historical writings are objective, they must contain, what I call, brute historical facts. The brute fact about an historical event is that it did occur at a specific time, the brute fact about a person of history is that the person did live at a specific time.

So whether one writes about the event or person from an American, Jewish, Roman or Russian perspective does not alter the brute fact that all are writing about some historical occurrence.

So, if an historian wrote that Vespasian was emperor when the Temple was destroyed, then we expect all historians of any nationality or philosphy to record the same, the details may vary but the brute facts remain the same, the temple was destroyed and Vespasian was the Emperor.

Now, the Bible, when studied carefully, appears to contain very little brute historical facts, it can scarcely answer the fundamental questions of history, without inconsistencies and contradiction, when did this event occur and when did this character actually lived?

When did creation occur?
When did Adam and Eve live?
When was the worldwide flood?
When did Noah live?
When did the Exodus occur?
When did Moses live?

I don't want the details, just the brute historical facts.

When was Jesus born?
Where did he live as a child?
How long did Jesus live after he was crucified?

The Bible is fundamentally weak on brute historical facts. I don't want to call it BS, although it does not seem like history, so I'll call it poetry.

Joan of Bark

No-one is more of a militant atheist than I am, but I find the Bible fascinating because the stories tell us a lot about what people have found important over the millenium during which it was composed.

Also, by analyzing the reactions and interpretations to Bible passages over the past two millenium, we can learn a lot of valuable history lessons. Compare how Christians see God now compared to how they saw him during the Middle Ages, and you can learn a lot about what people believed in that time. That IS history.

Geetarmoore

I think this requires too much abstract thinking for the OP to understand, honestly.

2CatLou

To Pete Brown and others -- I didn't mean to compare Constantine to Hitler. My point was, historians always manipulate facts to suit their theories, or agendas. Gosh -- if you want other examples I can give you plenty. Just look at the way history was presented in the former Soviet Union -- manipulation of photographs, distortion of facts, etc.... The historians who wrote biblical litlerature did similar things. I an not really a biblical scholar (my area is actually 19th century U.S. history), so there are many things that I do not know about biblical writing. However, I do know that there are many kinds of writing in the Bible: poetry, fiction, mythology and so on. And Pete, I will check out your writing -- as soon as I finish grading all my essays for the fall term. One of these days I'll learn not to assign long papers : )

aa5874

Well, maybe you could find out the names of the historians who wrote the NT and the historical facts that they distorted about Jesus, a figure with no verifiable history.

Julian

Some other observations on the term and practice of historiography. Before the writing of history became a science, or something akin to it considering its intrinsic lack of scientific rigidity, which was a rather recent shift, the writing of history was something else entirely. Two thousand years ago the writing of history was intended to enlighten, to educate, to impart a moral lesson. The writer meant for his audience to be instructed using object lessons of morality illustrated through historical examples. What has been referred to in this thread as 'brute historical facts' were a secondary consideration and to demand such nuggets of accurate information is to misunderstand the nature of an ancient historical text entirely. A modern reader will scan the pages for verifiable information, a pointless endeavor to an ancient, and if absent will condemn the work to the trash heap. I suspect that this is the reason that the majority of people invariably keep repeating the same idiotic blunders with distubing regularity.

No history is entirely free of errors, or what might be better termed as fuzzy events, and no conlusion can stand untainted by bias, incomplete analysis, and lack of complete knowledge. By placing an undue weight on infallibility such a reader must ultimately discard all works of history and proceed down the ages, blind and groping, slowly bleeding to death from the repeated impacts with predictable yet unforseen protrusions.

Like all historical books, the bible can be effectively evaulated in pieces and each piece assigned a level of probability. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is akin to a childish tantrum similar to what we expect to see from the fundamentalist literalists, their mirrored counterparts. This has nothing to do with atheism and everything to do with a lack of reason.

Julian

Pagandawn

1.It most certainly doesn't. If you (the bible). Want to to describe a red house being pink. You don't say that the sky (exemple Ceasar) is green?

2. Yep, that is what I am saying. The bible is not a book of historiography. It is a religious book. I think that the sane christians recognize this fact.

When it comes to historical facts. The bible has not one single iota of it.
This would not be a problem if not a couple of millions deluded American fundies thought so.

Pagandawn

Yes, that goes for me too.

Does this means that you agree with me? That xtianity is a alien and hostile culture to Europe? If so good!

I would've loved to read and learn about xtianity if it had stayed where it belong. In the middle-east.

The reason it is hostile is because it destroyed the original classical pagan high culture. A culture vastly superior to the little silly Jesus story on 20 pages.

Pagandawn

I am talking about the Assyrian AND the Egyptian state archives. None of them mentioning of Salomon, David or a Jewish kingdom.

This fact means if you are reasonable intelligent. That the bible stories are myths.

Mageth

No, I don't agree with the above.

IMO, the "Christianity" that we know today is largely the product of "Europe". What started in the Middle East moved into Europe, through Rome, 19 centuries or so ago, and evolved, for a large part in Europe, into what we recognize today as Christianity. (One also needs to consider the Eastern church in a historical assessment of Christianity).

And also IMO I would not go so far as to declare that the "original classical pagan high culture", whatever that is supposed to have been, was "vastly superior" to subsequent European or other cultures or modern European culture.

In any case, the displacement of other religions and cultures by Christianity/Christian culture in Europe happened a long time ago. It's hardly correct to label Christianity as "alien and hostile to Europe" today.