Solitary Man

Robert Byers should note that the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Quran, the Chinese Classics, Homer, and Hesiod are all veritable witnesses along with the Bible. Miracles exist from every God, from Vishnu, to Yehowah, to Zeus, to Caesar.

-Jay-

Patently untrue. The lack of observed genetic bottlenecks ~4000 years ago in all species fits this nicely if by "not true" you mean "not 100% scientifically and historically accurate". If by "not true" you mean "if anything isn't true, nothing is true", then you're trying to argue a non-sequiter.

Please don't invoke the argument that all interpretations are equally valid. It's simply not true. Your use of the term "dealt with by Christians" means nothing more than "handwaved away with the hope that the faithful don't bother to fact-check and learn about some things for themselves."

1) Lack of genetic bottleneck (see above - this has been addressed recently in E/C)

2) Lack of archaeological evidence for the Exodus, including the 10 plagues, but especially the failure to detect 38 years of camping at Kadesh-Barnea

3) Archaeological evidence in favor of an origin of the ancient Israelites from indigenous Canaanite populations.


4) The failure of archaeological and historical evidence to support the Biblical traditions of (in no particular order):

4a) The United Monarchy of David and Solomon as recorded in the Bible

4b) The Biblical destruction of Jericho

4c) Herod's slaughter of the innocents

4d) The conquest of the Canaanite peoples by the Hebrews.

5) Biological evidence of extremely ancient organisms such as filoviruses, that require a host to reproduce that is utterly destroyed in the process. (Have you ever seen what Ebola does to a person, Robert? An Ebola victim essentially melts internally and drains from every natural orifice. Reconcile that with "omnibenevolent".)

5a) Any obligate parasite.

6) Carnivores.

7) Four mutually contradictory Resurrection narratives.

8) Two mutually contradictory Nativity narratives.

9) Incorrect citations of the OT(attributed to Jesus, no less), in the NT.

I could go on. Pick one. We'll start a new thread.

regards,

NinJay

Minimalist

*
I just happen to have handy a copy of Amnon Ben Tor's Ancient Israel. In it is a section by noted Israeli Archaeologist, and somewhat conservative scholar...at least more conservative than Finkelstein, Amihai Mazar. About the bolded section, Mazar writes:

Robert Byers

Your just wrong.
Of course a witness is in good standing before men until questioned by someone who strives to show their not.
To use your example. The Judge or lawyer can only dismiss the witness as NOT in good standing after cross-examination or investigation.
Until then the witness is legitamate. It is never neutral. It doesn't need a thumbs up to begin.
Compare it to your own life. You don't presume someone is a false witness or treat them as neutral in anything but only come to that conclusion after examination.

You are trying to say in a odd line of reasoning that the bible can't claim to be a witness to the events it proclaims as witnessing.
It can be a witness and so is a witness to be used until someone shows it isn't a accurate/honest witness.
They are like someone telling you something. They are in good standing until shown otherwise. The bible is pledging its integrity behind its claims.
I'm not saying you must accept it as a true witness. Yet you must accept it being used as a true witnes in any discussion.
Rob byers

Robert Byers

Simply. The bible is like someone telling you something they saw. Likewise it is with any account/book.

I don't see why I need to answer why something is not a accurate account. This is off point at this point.
Rob Byers

Robert Byers

I said three. THESE are your killer points. On the surface they seem impoverished as even ordinary points.
You put a lot of stock in the small circles of diggers and thier ideas of what they do or don't dig up. Written accounts have priority.
For the record Jericho has great evidence of fallen walls. in fact they have to dismiss these walls as due to earthquakes.
Rob Byers

spin

Until the person has been established as a witness, they cannot be held in good standing. The first thing that the introducing lawyer does is to try to establish the good standing. And this is what historians do with literary sources, ie show that the writer was in a position to know what s/he was talking about.

In my life I judge everyone by what they say and what they do. Everyone does so more or less. Mother says not to listen to strangers. We have a system of trust levels. Regarding things of little importance, we have low needs for trust.

People can claim anything. If what they claim is important to us then they have to earn our trust.

Of course any text is a witness in some way to its own time. However, with the bible we don't know what the relevant times were because there are no clear indicators. With regard to Exodus for example two Egyptian cities are mentioned, Raamses (named after Ramses II) and Pithom (built by the pharaoh Necho at the end of the 7th c. BCE). The latter is a clear indicator that the name didn't come from the time the text is dealing with, suggesting that the text was written after the construction of Pithom.

A person comes to you and says, "I haven't got any money and I need to buy breakfast." You normally don't trust them on their statement. The first thing you do is start evaluating their claim.

In our trial, when one validates the witness as having something to say, then you listen to their testimony. "Where were you on the night of the fifth?..." and the various bible texts usually tell you they were elsewhere, as in the case of Pithom.

(This doesn't stop someone casually analysing what they have to say anyway for whatever reasons, but that has nothing to do with their witness status.)


spin

-Jay-

Then pick three. Go for one of the easy ones, if you want, but for goodness' sake don't act indignant that I gave you more than three. If I'd wanted to spend more than five minutes on it, I could have given you dozens more.

Robert, any one of these points, if you actually understand them, disconfirms the Bible as a uniformly accurate "witness", to use your term.

Here. I'll pick one that's relevant to the thread, and that Minimalist poked at:

Robert, explain please, in your own words, why there is nary a shred of evidence of a 38 year encampment of a population numbering between half a million and two and a half million people at Kadesh-Barnea.

Yes, Jericho has walls that fell down, which are dated outside of the range given in the Bible. Do a little research. Dame Kathleen Kenyon did the definitive work on Jericho in the 1950s, so this isn't new material.

You appear toput a lot of stock in a relatively small circle of apologists and their often whimsical ideas concerning what evidence can and cannot be construed as supporting. You're handwaving, and not especially well.

regards,

NinJay

Toto

Robert Byers: many Christian apologists who visit us seem to have a strange idea about burdens of proof and witnesses, perhaps because they heard something about that book by Greenleaf.

If you are an eyewitness, you can give testimony in court, but the judge or jury can reject it as unreliable or improbable. There is no burden on anyone to rebut that testimony. We know now that eyewitnesses are often wrong.

From an essay that discusses the issue
Expert testimony, however, needs to have a foundation laid before it can even be admitted (and even then the testimony can be rejected.)
The Bible, however, is not even a witness - it is a document.

-Jay-

Greenleaf? I'm not familiar with this. Would you mind posting the title?

regards,

NinJay