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Proving The Bible


Hornet

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Hornet,

 

Clearly, the 'truth claims' (i.e. factual, historical truth) are grounded in faith, not logic or empiricism. As an example, some of the same people who claim the inerrancy of the Scriptures are also zealous defenders of the King James Version of the Bible and reject later, more accurate translations. Of course, this faith can be extended to inspiration of the KJV vs. all other pretenders without regard to the underlying Hebrew and Greek texts.

 

George

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The Bible also makes that claim, but it does not teach that human language cannot describe God.

 

As long as one is looking for simple knock-down arguments that ignore the subtleties of context, we can say that the bible's claim that God is unsearchable stands irreconcilable with the claim that God can be found.

 

Peace,

Mike

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There are a couple of approaches that one could take. One could believe that the proposition "The 66 books of the Bible are Scripture" is a belief that requires no justification. A person who believes this could refute that other books are Scripture.

 

Someone else could find out if the 66 books of the Bible are Scripture by checking to see if the worldview affirmed by these 66 books is logical consistent, corresponds correctly to reality, and be practically lived out.

 

Hornet,

Yes, i agree one could take that approach which would lead one to refute that other books are scripture. However that certainly would, in my view, be an assumption that has been by my personal experience proven to be in error. However, i do not fault another if one chooses to accept such an approach in spite of evidence in my experiences to the contrary.

 

I do believe that there are those who as you say find the 66 books " logical consistent, corresponds correctly to reality, and (can) be practically lived out" but that is certainly not what i would consider logical or consistent with reality as i see it.

 

As always i find your point of view quite interesting and i hope you also consider the counter responses others have offered.

 

Joseph

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Someone else could find out if the 66 books of the Bible are Scripture by checking to see if the worldview affirmed by these 66 books is logical consistent, corresponds correctly to reality, and be practically lived out.

 

Are there 39 books in the Hebrew Bible?

There is not agreement among Christians and others about the number and shape of the books. So we are off to a bad start.

 

There are those who believe that the Bible is logical and consistent. I have seen recently how hard they work, for instance, to show that Micah has a coherency. For teaching and story telling purposes I will use the three oracles construct for an adult study but I am under no illusion that Micah had anything to do with it. What makes the most sense to me is that redactors, while in Exile, contemporarized Micah's text by adding a little here and a little there. But because Micah and the redactors lived approximately 200 years apart and in different situations they were answering different questions. So which snapshot of the Scripture do you take?

 

Scripture is worthy of study but, for me, it yields an understanding of how humans struggled to learn how to live together and what it meant to believe in God. If one doesn't wrestle with the issues at that level then we have --

 

To every season there is a Scripture - out of context. Want to beat your swords into plowshares read Isaiah and Micah. Want to beat your plowshares into swords read Joel. Yeah, yeah, I know: context, context, context. But that is not how most of us use Scripture when we seek to make the Scripture speak truth. When we look deeply at the context we find that Israelites had more than one answer to life's persistent questions:

 

What exactly does it mean to be God's people in history?

What kind of God did they serve?

What did God expect of his people?

Would they survive as a nation?

(from Dennis Bratcher)

The covenants have different ideas about these questions. The prophets had different ideas. The writers had different ideas. It is the questions, the struggle to answer them and the conversation, I think, that makes Scripture worthy of study.

 

Dutch.

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There are a couple of approaches that one could take. One could believe that the proposition "The 66 books of the Bible are Scripture" is a belief that requires no justification. A person who believes this could refute that other books are Scripture.

 

Someone else could find out if the 66 books of the Bible are Scripture by checking to see if the worldview affirmed by these 66 books is logical consistent, corresponds correctly to reality, and be practically lived out.

 

Is this your perspective? Do you find that the entire collection of [66 / 73] books to be logical, consistent and corresponds to reality? Can you practically live out the dictates of these books?

 

If so, I would find it instructive (if you don't mind) to have you take some time to explain how it is you can accomplish this task.

 

In appreciation,

 

NORM

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If God really did create nature, then why is it wrong for science to have more authority than the bible? The idea that an ancient book written decades ago in a pre-science era which claims that bats are birds, that insects have six legs, and that Earth is the center of the universe should have more authority than modern science which brought us the cure for polio and took us to the moon on a rocket ship sounds preposterous to me. Even most fundamentalist Christians who give lip service to the bible being more authoritative than science will still go to the doctor to cure their ailments instead of relying strictly on prayer to heal them and they use electricity which science gave us to power their churches' high-tech power point sermon presentations. To quote Thomas Paine from the Age of reason

 

According to some Bible translations, Leviticus 11:13-19 teaches that bats are a type of bird. The Hebrew word that is translated as "birds" is "'owph", which means creatures with wings. Those Bible translations should have said "creatures with wings" instead of "birds."

 

 

The Bible does not teach that the earth is at the center of the universe.

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As long as one is looking for simple knock-down arguments that ignore the subtleties of context, we can say that the bible's claim that God is unsearchable stands irreconcilable with the claim that God can be found.

 

Peace,

Mike

 

When the Bible teaches that God is unsearchable, it means that God cannot be understood fully or exhaustively. It does not mean that we cannot know anything about God at all or that it is impossible for human language to give any kind of description about God.

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When the Bible teaches that God is unsearchable, it means that God cannot be understood fully or exhaustively. It does not mean that we cannot know anything about God at all or that it is impossible for human language to give any kind of description about God.

 

If you afford the bible some leeway in nuance of interpretation and context, why not permit the same for Islam or other religious traditions? Why do you negate an entire theological tradition by taking one bare statement prima facie?

 

Peace,

Mike

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Is this your perspective? Do you find that the entire collection of [66 / 73] books to be logical, consistent and corresponds to reality? Can you practically live out the dictates of these books?

 

If so, I would find it instructive (if you don't mind) to have you take some time to explain how it is you can accomplish this task.

 

In appreciation,

 

NORM

 

I thought of a different approach. Rather than showing that the Bible is inspired by God by proving that the 66 books are logically consistent, correct in their correspondence to reality, and liveable by human beings, I would take a different approach.

 

After it is shown that the Bible is inspired by God, then one can say that the Bible is logically consistent, correct in their correspondence to reality, and liveable by human beings. One could show that the Bible is inspired by God by proving that Jesus fulfilled many of the OT prophecies.

 

The fulfillment of many OT prophecies by Jesus is good evidence that the Bible is inspired by God. This is not the same as saying the Bible is inspired by God because the Bible is inspired by God.

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If the findings of philosophical inquiry, history, and science are used to prove that the Bible is inspired by God, then would this mean that the findings of philosophical inquiry, history, and science have more authority than the Bible? If the answer is "Yes", then how would a person know that the Bible's claim to be the word of God is true?

 

I'm asking these questions because I've been thinking about the different approaches that evangelical Christians use to defend Christianity.

 

Hornet, going back to your original post to pick up something relevant here...

 

If in any way the findings of philosophical inquiry, history, and science are or are accepted as being of validity in "proving" anything about the bible, then it must also neccesarily be accepted those same things have validity for discrediting, disproving, the bible or any particular thing in it.

 

The major pass/fail point inherent in the bibical inerrancy is that effective discrediting, disproving, any single point, any single claim, made in the bible, discredits, disproves in entirety a claim to the bible's inerrancy. Since the very purpose and intent of the religious claim to biblical inerrancy IS "to prove God", without and apart from any other evidence of God, that "God proof" is invalidated along with invalidation of any component of what is contained in the bible.

 

When Christians set forth any "supporting evidence" from any outside source, whether from philosophical inquity, history, science, or just common sense and practical observation, the same authority they are granting that source becomes eaually valid in discrediting, to the same degree. And the simple fact is, there are many details in what is found in the bible that can easily be discredited by those outside sources, often by more than one.

 

In granting authority of God, and claiming the bible AS the only evidence or proof of God, the bible is effectively then placed BEFORE and OVER God. Disprove the bible=disprove God. This is the critical error, as I see it, in the position that the bible must be inerrant or we lose the only proof of God's existence. Is that not in effect placing the bible "as a God BEFORE God?"

 

Jenell

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The fulfillment of many OT prophecies by Jesus is good evidence that the Bible is inspired by God. This is not the same as saying the Bible is inspired by God because the Bible is inspired by God.

 

Hornet, though I am a Christian, I don't think that what you assert here is good evidence for considering the Bible to be inspired by God, at least in the way that you seem to interpret inspiration.

 

For instance, the messianic prophecies said that the messiah would sit on David's throne and rule forevermore. Jesus did not do this. They say that the messiah would destroy God's enemies. Jesus never killed anyone. They seem to say that the messiah would be called Emmanuel. Jesus was called, well, Jesus (or Yeshua in Hebrew). They say that he would banish the war-horse and the chariot from Israel. Jesus didn't do this. They say that the messiah would restore Israel as the nation to rule the world. Again, Jesus didn't do this.

 

So I find it a bit of a stretch to imply that if we look at all the messianic prophecies that Jesus fulfilled, that this proves that the author of the Bible is God. Though the gospel writers certainly claim that Jesus fulfilled *some* of the prophecies, he certainly didn't fulfill *all* and, in fact, went against some of the major warrior-king prophecies predicted of the messiah.

 

To me, the question is not "Did the Bible come from God?" but, rather, does it point to God? Indeed it does if understood correctly and if we try to live out the teachings of Jesus.

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After it is shown that the Bible is inspired by God...

 

How can this be shown?

 

...then one can say that the Bible is logically consistent, correct in their correspondence to reality, and liveable by human beings.

 

I would still like to see how you are able to accomplish this.

 

One could show that the Bible is inspired by God by proving that Jesus fulfilled many of the OT prophecies.

 

The fulfillment of many OT prophecies by Jesus is good evidence that the Bible is inspired by God. This is not the same as saying the Bible is inspired by God because the Bible is inspired by God.

 

I don't think that the prophecy fulfillment alluded to in the Christian theme is legitimate (doesn't pass the proof test) because it would have been too easy to simply write or alter the stories in such a way as to complete a prophetic saying since the Tanakh was extant at the time the New Testament was written.

 

NORM

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Is this your perspective? Do you find that the entire collection of [66 / 73] books to be logical, consistent and corresponds to reality? Can you practically live out the dictates of these books?

 

If so, I would find it instructive (if you don't mind) to have you take some time to explain how it is you can accomplish this task.

 

In appreciation,

 

NORM

 

The truth claims of the Bible don't contradict each other and they do not contradict the facts of history and science. Extrabiblical historical sources and the findings of archaeology have verified many of the truth claims of the Bible. The Holy Spirit can give people the power to live by the Bible's moral values that are for us today.

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Hornet,

I think there is no extra-biblical archaeological evidence of any event before 5 years after Solomon 's death. I think it can argued that David's monarchy is more legend than reality. Joshua could not have fought at Jericho. The city was destroyed long before Joshua was supposed have been there. Interestingly making a lots of noise outside the walls is part of a military tactic.

 

If there were any conquest of the Promised Land one of the numbers of fighting troop size in Joshua are realistic. And the massacres of tribes in Canaan rival and motivated the reprehensible ,savage battles which wiped out native Americans. There is growing evidence that there was not an Exodus or conquest of Canaan. That those who became the nation of Israel were Canaanites who changed their self-identification and were able to organize during a time of government social breakdown in Canaanite societies.

 

How do you respond to the many laws in Leviticus that we do not follow and find repulsive?

 

Dutch

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The truth claims of the Bible don't contradict each other and they do not contradict the facts of history and science.

 

I don't think we are reading the same book.

 

The Tanakh I have on the shelf in my library tells me that I should take my rebellious children to the city gates to be stoned to death, and that women are "impure" during their menstrual cycle. It also says that homosexuals are "an abomination."

 

The New Testament next to it tells me that women should remain silent in public and that dead people can come back to life.

 

This is not a description of the world I know.

 

NORM

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I don't think we are reading the same book.

 

The Tanakh I have on the shelf in my library tells me that I should take my rebellious children to the city gates to be stoned to death, and that women are "impure" during their menstrual cycle. It also says that homosexuals are "an abomination."

 

The New Testament next to it tells me that women should remain silent in public and that dead people can come back to life.

 

This is not a description of the world I know.

 

NORM

 

Much of the law found in the Old Testament does not apply to us today such as stoning disobedient children or women becoming impure during their menstrual cycle. God intended that some of the Old Testament laws would apply only to the Jews.

 

When the New Testament talks about women remaining silent, it is talking about the principle that women should not lead worship services in the context of a church.

 

Dead people can come back to life. Jesus rose from the dead and there is plenty of evidence that attests to this fact. For example, His disciples saw Him. 500 people saw the risen Lord. The Jewish leaders at the time of Christ's resurrection did not want to admit that Jesus rose from the dead so they bribed the guards into saying that Christ's disciples stole Christ's body.

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Hornet,

I think there is no extra-biblical archaeological evidence of any event before 5 years after Solomon 's death. I think it can argued that David's monarchy is more legend than reality. Joshua could not have fought at Jericho. The city was destroyed long before Joshua was supposed have been there. Interestingly making a lots of noise outside the walls is part of a military tactic.

 

If there were any conquest of the Promised Land one of the numbers of fighting troop size in Joshua are realistic. And the massacres of tribes in Canaan rival and motivated the reprehensible ,savage battles which wiped out native Americans. There is growing evidence that there was not an Exodus or conquest of Canaan. That those who became the nation of Israel were Canaanites who changed their self-identification and were able to organize during a time of government social breakdown in Canaanite societies.

 

How do you respond to the many laws in Leviticus that we do not follow and find repulsive?

 

Dutch

 

The walls of Jericho were breached about 1400 B.C. so Joshua lived during that time.

 

The following is a quote from the book, Bible Archaeology, by Alfred Hoerth and John McRay on page 108:

 

"In the 1930s an archaeologist claimed that he had found the walls brought down by Joshua, but these were subsequently found to date to a much earlier period. Later it was claimed that, contrary to the biblical account, Jericho was uninhabited at the time of the conquest. In the 1990s, after a reexamination of the excavation records done by Dame Kathleen Kenyon, it was concluded that she misread certain evidences and that Jericho's walls had, in fact, been breached about 1400 B.C."

 

Not all of the laws in the Book of Leviticus apply to us today. Some of the laws applied to the Jews living during the Old Testament.

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In the 1990s, after a reexamination of the excavation records done by Dame Kathleen Kenyon, it was concluded that she misread certain evidences and that Jericho's walls had, in fact, been breached about 1400 B.C."

 

Is this the same archaeologist about whom the Wikipedia article says, "Kenyon's work has been cited to support the Minimalist School of Biblical Archaeology that argues the pre-586 BCE. Old Testament historical account was highly exaggerated."

 

The wonderful thing about apologetics is it starts with a presumption of historical accuracy and looks around until it can find anything that might support the presumption. Apologetics is not an objective evaluation of the body of evidence: It selectively accepts anything that supports the presumption and rejects anything that refutes it.

 

The truth is, the Bible is not a book of factual history and science. It wasn't intended so, and it isn't.

 

George

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The walls of Jericho were breached about 1400 B.C. so Joshua lived during that time.

Hornet, This creates problems for purported evidence for the Exodus, Judges and Kings and is not generally agreed on today.

 

Not all of the laws in the Book of Leviticus apply to us today. Some of the laws applied to the Jews living during the Old Testament.

Then you are a dispensationalist?

 

Dutch

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Hornet,

You speak of Jesus being seen after his death by 500. It seems to me because a book (the Bible) testifies of itself does not make it so. To assume such can be applied to any any religious book, or book, whose only evidence of some matters consists of its own declarations. Your claim of Jesus rising from the dead is such a declaration supported only by its own statements. Yet even more unbelievable would be this verse in Mathew 27:52-53. And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints that slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

 

Now, to my mind, this would be a far greater miracle than one man raising from the dead. Here we have graves (plural) being opened and many bodies being raised and appearing to many. An undeniable miracle that i would think could not be silenced as could the reported appearance of one man. Yet where in any of the other books of the NT or in any writings of historians do we hear of such a monumental event? How can such a thing be hid? Can logic or rational thinking overlook such inconsistencies or problems such as this when examining evidence?

 

Joseph

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Hornet,

Any and all argument or "evidence" to support any particular element or supposed event account within the bible as being factual isn't relevant to the matter of "prooving" the bible. Even acknowledged works of fiction usually contains many verifiable "facts", often describing a setting or series of historical events with accuracy. even if we know its a fictional story. No matter how many elements can be verified as being accurately factual, it only takes the invalidation of any one element, the prooving of only one error, in order to disprove and discredit the inerrancy claim made of the whole.

 

As noted already, statements found in the bible cannot be used as valid evidence for the purpose of bearing testimony to the bible itself. It reads in the bible that 500 people saw the risen Jesus, and many dead people rose out of their graves and were seen walking around, but there is no supporting evidence of that outside the bible's own mention of it. You would think events like that, with so many supposed witnesses, would have been remarked upon in some source of literature from the period somewhere other than just in the biblical accounts. To say that 500 people "witnessed" those events on nothing more than the statement of the very source in question, the bible, with no other supporting evidence, is, to be honest, silly. We have no more evidence of those 500 people witnessing anything than we do of the events they supposedly witnessed.

 

To be honest with you, with all respect, Hornet, I'm wondering if you are being honest with us, when you state in your orginal post, your intent in this discussion as being how to counter the arguments used by those that claim the bible to be authored by God, thus is God's Word itself (which claim is not even made within the bible itself) and to be inerrantly accurate and true. It sounds more to me like you believe that yourself, and are trying to convince us of that claim.

 

Jenell

 

Edited with strikethrough... JosephM as Mod

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Much of the law found in the Old Testament does not apply to us today such as stoning disobedient children or women becoming impure during their menstrual cycle. God intended that some of the Old Testament laws would apply only to the Jews.

Jesus says in Matthew chapter five that he came not to abolish the Jewish law but to fulfill it and that the Jewish law still applies to the end of the world. The notion that Jesus came to abolish the Jewish law comes only from the apostle Paul who didn't even meet Jesus in person when he was alive. Who do you believe in more? Jesus or the apostle Paul?

 

When the New Testament talks about women remaining silent, it is talking about the principle that women should not lead worship services in the context of a church.
The Pastoral epistles never make this distinction between church life and social life. Even if it did, it would still be unjust and sexist to forbid women from having leadership roles within the church. That would be like banning all blacks from having leadership roles in the church because the bible says slaves should obey their masters but it's ok because it's only in the church that you're banning it. Furthermore, the Pastoral's ban of women preachers contradicts 1 Corinthians in which Paul approves of women prophets speaking in tongues and in Romans Paul references a female apostle, Junia, as being foremost among the apostles.

 

Dead people can come back to life. Jesus rose from the dead and there is plenty of evidence that attests to this fact. For example, His disciples saw Him. 500 people saw the risen Lord. The Jewish leaders at the time of Christ's resurrection did not want to admit that Jesus rose from the dead so they bribed the guards into saying that Christ's disciples stole Christ's body.

The apostles never witness the resurrection of Jesus in the earliest manuscripts of Mark's gospels and in fact the women keep the resurrection a secret to themselves. We don't know that 500 people saw the risen Jesus. We only have the letters of Paul claiming 500 people saw the risen Jesus but then Paul turns around in 1 Corinthians 15 and explicitly states physical resurrections of the dead are impossible and that the resurrection of Jesus was a spiritual resurrection, not a literal one. According to Matthew's account, the guards were all killed when the stone was rolled away, so how do you know if they saw the risen lord if they were killed?
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Much of the law found in the Old Testament does not apply to us today such as stoning disobedient children or women becoming impure during their menstrual cycle. God intended that some of the Old Testament laws would apply only to the Jews.

 

Really? Who told you this?

 

The TALMUD provides a reason for disavowing those awful commandments, but I'm not aware of any Christian Bible verse that says specifically that the Laws of Moses are null and void.

 

 

When the New Testament talks about women remaining silent, it is talking about the principle that women should not lead worship services in the context of a church.

 

Still a deal breaker for me. Society has evolved past such things.

 

Dead people can come back to life.

 

Yes, in a metaphorical sense, as in "his work lives on..." But certainly not in a real, physical sense. That's just nonsense to me.

 

The other posters are correct; were there really such events (Jesus rising from the dead in front of 500 witnesses and the zombies in Jerusalem), there would certainly be notation of it in other texts from the time. Even Josephus, who believed in such metaphysical type stuff, is silent on these "events."

 

NORM

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