Posted on 01/26/2005 8:44:58 PM PST by blam
Please add me to this list, Thanks!
You need to understand what "history" implies. PS: I have posted many things from the bible - pro - bible and rspectful of the New Testemant - that is.
But I am not a fundamentalist in that I don't think every thing in the Bible is to be taken literally. Much is allegory.
"But I am not a fundamentalist in that I don't think every thing in the Bible is to be taken literally. Much is allegory."
Yes, those evil fundamentalist. You are brainwashed!
I am not brainwashed - I follow original, orthodox and pure Christianity directly linked to to the Apostles.
Actually, the more they learn about the Late Bronze Age, the more they realize how many little details Homer got right (there are also some little details about features of LBA ships that appear in the Odyssey, for example). While that doesn't prove the Olympians were real gods, it does suggest that there can be a firm historical grounding and firm historical details in ancient accounts of what happened, even when they've been passed down verbally for many generations.
I, personally, believe that the Old Testament was heavily editorialized and do believe that some amount of ancient Near-Eastern and Middle-Eastern mythology and speculation may have found it's way into the Bible (e.g., the Tower of Babel, the Flood, etc.) and are not literally true. I don't find that particularly shocking or problematic, nor do I have any particular axe to grind with those who do believe they are literally true.
As for miracles in general, Timothy Luke Johnson makes an excellent point about that in his book The Real Jesus : The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels. If you exclude all of the miracles in the Gospels as myth, you shouldn't be surprised if you wind up with a Jesus who is just a man. Basically, you wind up excluding the evidence that could create a different conclusion. In a broader sense, if you insist on viewing everything in the Bible through a secular lens in which miracles and anything having to do with God is rejected, of course you can create an interpretation that's free of God and miracles. It's simply the flip side of the claim that people who are religious find God because they want to -- perhaps non-religious people don't find God because they don't want to.
The "Old Testament" was meant to teach the religion of God.. Judaism, and used myth, allegory, and symbolism to do so..
We know that Hittite and Sumerian legends of the creation were incorporated into the first book of Genesis..
Proceeding books looked at historical events ( i.e., current events to the Israelites ) and interpreted them in their religious context to build upon the lessons God was trying to teach his "chosen people"..
While occassionally historically significant events were recorded, it was their religious significance that was emphasized.. ( what lesson does this event teach about God's will ? )
Not necessarily. Pick up the soundtrack CD of a movie sometime and then pick up a CD of music "inspired" by that movie. There is a big difference between the Word of God and the Word of God filtered through fallible human authors who introduce their own opinions, world view, interpretations, and errors into the mix.
One problem with modern copies of ancient texts is that they often give the false impression that there is one difinitive and correct copy of ancient texts. Heck, read the introduction to a book containing the collective works of Shakespeare, written far more recently, and you'll see that not only isn't there one difinitive version of many Shakespeare plays but that the spelling has been regularized and edited. Similarly, if you go back and look at Biblical texts, including those found at the Dead Sea, you'll find that they don't always agree 100% (hence the footnotes in some translations). Does that mean that the Bible is riddled with errors? No. But it does mean that it's also not 100% perfect, either. And I honestly don't see why that's a problem for so many people. If you are basing your entire faith on the meaning of one word, phrase, or even story in the Bible, I think you are missing the forest for the trees.
EXACTLY
If literalists are going to accept the dating of the Edomite fortress, then they can accept the dating of a fire pit in a cave in france to 30,000 years B.C., and the great coal seams of the Permian Age., approx. 280 million years ago.
The story of Jericho is thought to be myth because the destruction layers found at Jericho are dated at a time that doesn't match the currently accepted chronology for the Israelites in Canaan. That is why this finding is so significant. It has the potential to alter the accepted chronology of the Israelites, so that the Biblical accounts of Israel align up well with archeology, including Jericho.
The whole idea behind the OT is that God revealed Himself to Israel through their history. If the history wasn't accurate how could the lessons learned also be accurate? If the OT isn't historically accurate it is largely worthless. Likewise the NT is also worthless since it assumes the OT is historically accurate.
Passages that exist in newer manuscripts but not older ones may certainly have been introduced later (and I'm especially inclined to believe that they were when the grammer, vocabulary, style, or other details point to the hand of a different author) but some also could have come from an oral tradition or other even older manuscripts that no longer exist to compare against. There is a lot of oral mythology built into the interpretation of many Bible stories that are not clearly supported by the text. They could be later additions or could very well be based on authentic oral history or earlier variants. For example, I'm not entirely convinced that a "Q" existed or that Mark, per se, was a major source for the other Gospels. As the non-canon Gospel of Thomas shows, the sayings and acts of Jesus travelled around verbally in many forms, just as the Quran did. We don't know what all of the original sourses were and there may have been even more material that once existed that has now been lost. The similarities and differences could simply reflect was different communities remembered.
I hope it does.
Is this also how you feel about those 'evolutionary tree of life' claims?
How do you know?
A true historian would not have prejudged hostility to the bible nor will he try and protect the bible's accuracy.
Nope.
But it certainly provides proof to refute the theories that Troy never existed.
"And because everything that takes place in the Middle East inevitably is political, the minimalist argument is seen as weakening modern Israel's claim to Palestine."
This really blows a hole in the minimalist argument. What will the Palestinians do now? Oh, right keep right on killing Jews.
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