Robert Byers

Yes it is true of any accounts that they are legitamate as a witness. Not that one must accept the witness but until proven otherwise they are a witness in good standing.
Robert Byers

Robert Byers

Thats my point.
I don't have to add other evidence for the bible to be a witness in good standing.
You have to show it isn't before it loses credibility for those who believe.
Rob Byers

Dogfish

If it were only that easy.

Hex

Okay, so what is it with -this- argument, Robert? You've just used it to answer several different questions, even when they blatantly contradict the answer you give. Look: (Note: Bolding mine in all quotes that follow)


Now, from Merriam-Webster online:

You seem to be using the word witness to mean definitions 1, 4 or 5a; that implicitly the Bible holds 'truths' that need not be corroborated because they are a trustworthy source which (who?) records (was actually present?) at the events.

But then, you're also implying that it should be viewed as a witness as understood by definition 2, as if it is evidence to be weighed in a court of law.

And, I suppose, the combination of the two views is fine if we have no other witnesses who can give evidence. However, also up on the stand to give an account or evidence of these events are such globally proven and reputable witnesses as geology, genetics (human and non-human), archaeology, and a wealth of documents (including inscriptions and depictions not all from the same sources) which all bear each other out and do not uphold the 'testimonial evidence' of the Bible.

As such, when you say:

What you mean is something more like:

Please, if you are going to try and use a 'courtroom' analogy as a defense for the Bible, please remember that people can use the same analogy and run it out a step farther. We'll be looking at the testimony of -all- the witnesses that come onto the stand and, as they contradict -your- witness and back each other up, your witness gets discredited more and more until there's no way the jury will be convinced that your witness has -any- validity.

Even more, if you are looking to the courtroom analogy, I posit that the other witnesses are likely to be viewed as 'expert witnesses' while yours is more likely to be viewed as a noted 'teller of tales'.


Again, where's the corroborating evidence that will make your witness one -worth- listening to? (ie. Flood, Plagues, Exodus) :wave:

Thanks,

- Hex

-Jay-

From "...it must of [sic] created a stir in the Egypt of the day..." to "It should of [sic] created a great stir..." in the space of six posts. Amazing.

Robert, the archaeology (among other lines of evidence) demonstrates unequivocally that the Bible is not a "witness in good standing" to the presence of Israelites in Egypt.

It takes stronger evidence to convict someone of littering than the Bible gives for Israelites in Egypt and the whole Bondage/Exodus cycle.

It's usually at about this point in discussions like this where someone trots out the canard of "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence." Sometimes they reword it a little, but the claim decays to "you unbelievers can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that X didn't happen, so that means that X could have happened."

It doesn't work that way.

I'm going to pick on Hex. Hex is an archaeologist by training and profession. Read some of his posts. He's very clear at explaining that if something (like the Exodus, with the attendant population of a couple of million refugees) had occurred, there are very clear signs that we would expect to see. Remnants of camp sites (though I'd argue that a "camp" of 2 million people isn't a camp - it's a nation), waste pits, burial sites, and such are readily identifiable. We don't find those things with respect to the Exodus.

When we don't find things that we expect to find -particularly when we're looking in the places they're supposed to be, and the Bible is pretty damn clear on where the Israelites were supposed to have camped for 38 years - we've got a pretty strong warrant to conclude that the event didn't happen.

These concepts aren't that difficult, Robert. Take the time to learn them.

regards,

NinJay

Diogenes the Cynic

If it "suddenly appeared" in whose literature?

The books of the Torah were not like Harry Potter books. They were not part of some worldwide publishing phenomenon that everybody was buzzing about on CNN. They were only locally important, mostly (if not entirely) unknown, uncopied and undistributed outside of Palestine. It was local legend and propaganda, which everybody had and which never agreed with anyone else's local legend and propaganda. Nobody cared what somebody else's propaganda alleged. The vast majority of people (including most Jews) could not read anyway. Also it's not like the average Egyptian would have known or cared exactly which discrete Canaanite groups had ever been in Egypt centuries before.

The Exodus story is almost certainly a local rendition of the Hyksos Expulsion, heavily tweaked and distorted for political reasons. Any Egyptian educated enough to read and comment on Exodus would have probably just dismissed it as a backwater garbling of the Hyksos events and they would have been right. It would have caused no "stir" because Judah would have been seen as a weak, much battered state of no consequence.
What is your basis for this rather extraordinary claim? This is certainly not a standard held by historians.
What do you mean by "witness" and who do you think holds to this standard?

Doug Shaver

Professional historians don't seem to think so, according to everything I've read.

But let's go with it for a moment. Suppose I'm looking at a book that tells of certain events that occurred during the American Civil War. What sort of evidence do you think would constitute proof that it was not a legitimate witness to those events?

Robert Byers

Hex.
I'll write here as the other is getting long.

I'm not asserting here the bible is true.
I'm only asserting the bible is a witness in good standing for events in the past.
Yes under cross-examinination you can bring other witnesses or just plain dismiss the bible as a witness.
Yet before this takes place it is a legitamate witness to its claims.
As for all these other "experts" well we dismiss them as incompetent and/or biased.
This is not the point however here.
The point is the bible can be seen as a authority on the events it claims are true by those willing to see it as so. If anyone wants to challenge this authority then they must first accept the bible as a good witness and then proceed to dismiss it as accurate.
Rob byers

Robert Byers

The criticisms of why the bible is wrong on exodus was not my point.
I was saying the bible is a witness in good standinmg and so can be used by those who believe it as a source. In fact if you wish to say the bible is wrong you must first accept it as a witness and then proceed to attack it.

For the record there is never evidence of armies or anyone in most areas of the world as all decays.
I would have to think what evidence there would be if it was true.
Where the jews traveled is in dispute by Christian scholars as place names have changed so much.
Rob Byers

Robert Byers

What I'm simply saying is that the author, We say god, of the accounts in the bible is to be received as truthfull in relaying these accounts of past events. If your going to question the truth of the bible you must first accept it as a witness in good standing. Then you may attack.
You guys are trying to say the bible starts out as unreliable and we must first establish why it has any merit as a witness.
Rob byers