Evidence for the Biblical Record

Generally speaking Buz the problem is twofold. Firstly your evidence - even when it is untainted by justified suspicions of fraud or by misrepresentation - is superficial and weak. Secondly you often ignore evidence that contradicts your desired interpretations.

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I have cited prophecies of a tiny nation of identifiable people who the prophets declared to be dispersed to the Gentile nations. That has happened

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You mean like the "prophecy" in Luke ? A "prophecy" only found in a second-hand (at best) account written after the fact ? A "prophecy" NOT found in the parallel accounts in the older Gospels of Matthew and Mark ? Do you not understand that THIS evidence calls into question the idea that it is a genuine prophecy at all ?

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OT and NT prophets including Jesus prophesied that this widely scattered little dispersed identifiable people would emerge from many nations to restore their kingdom in this tiny little place called Israel.

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The OT prophets appear to be referring to the Babylonian Exile. The only NT prophecy is the suspect one in Luke, which was meant to occur within a generation of the exile (21:33). So you've got a prophecy that is likely written after the events it "successfully" predicted and got future events badly wrong. That's not exactly evidence FOR the Bible.

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During the dispersement the land was desolate just as the prophets stated when in fact there was no reason for it to be desolate being that it was a good productive land when the Jews and the Caananites had it. But the prophets said it would be a desolate wasteland until the Jews returned and that it would be surrounded with hostile nations. This all happened. History is the evidence.

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This is highly exaggerated. While Israel has made massive investments in some desert areas, the land was hardly a wasteland before.

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We know as well that according to the prophecies it did not happen in ancient days because the prophet Ezekiel in chapter 38 said that the restore nation would be a land where the citizens would dwell in unwalled villages. T

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If you read it in context it is seen as a sign of peace - and of weakness. Neither is the case in modern times when unwalled villages are the norm. And of course you ignore Ezekiel 38:4 which tells of the armament of the invaders: Yet one more piece of evidence that you have to deny to maintain your claims.Look, your "evidence" is just a repeat of arguments that have already been debunked on this very forum. You haven't even attempted to fix them. So of course they will be rejected again - but not because of any bias on the part of your opponents.

Hardly.This was a self-fulfilling prophecy, at best, about the land that arabs lived on for the last 2000 years or so at least quite happily.You'll find, if you care to look, that hardcore zionist jews from about 1850 onwards were travelling to the region and declaring it their own, causing all sorts of troubles for the administering Brits by angering the arabs.they caused so much grief that the UK declined to further administer the region after world war 2 and pulled out when their mandate was up, an action which culminated in the six day war (after a couple of others) in 1967.The land wasn't desolate, and expelling over 250,000 arabs from lands they'd been inhabiting will tend to make the nations around you rather hostile, yes...I'm not saying the arabs don't carry part of the blame, but this was no magical sky-daddy restoration (the new Israel isn't even in the same place as the original), this was a calculated effort by jews - aided and abetted by extremist christians in the US and UK who wanted to bring about the end of the world.

I would. If any evidence were actually cited. Your interpretations of prophecy are not evidence. Are you 100% sure this is what meant there? Has god told you this? It could not refer to any future event that still has to pass? This is the problem with this cited "evidence" of yours. It's just your interpretation.Care to come up with some actual evidence?

It's like the Gozer worshipers from Ghostbusters!...except they're real, and serious.

Huntard, it's like any history book or text book. For the most part, there's nothing to interpret. You read the words and they mean what they say. If the writer says Mt Sinai is in Arabia, the land of Midian, etc, what's there to interpret? If he says Israel will be restored and invaded as a land of unwalled villages and ungated, what's there to interpret? In ancient days they needed the walls. In these latter days, city walls and gates are irrevelant, so you read, think and go figure.Creationists regard your interpretation of what is observed on earth and in the cosmos as faulty but when it comes to wording, in most cases you read it and apply it at face value.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Grayseal, for the most part of the centuries of dispersement, what is called Palestine was a land of relative desolation compared to when the Jews occupied it before and after the dispersement.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Paul, no matter how you cut it, the Gentiles occupied and now they're out at a time when other cited corroborated unusual events are being observed. This all after the prophecy was spoken by Jesus but not until our times. No, they're not. The OT prophecies and the NT prophecies have too many events in them that in no way applied to ancient days, such as the unwalled and ungated villages in Israel, the promise that after this return the would be at peace and never be removed, that all nations will acknowledge Jehovah, that a messiah figure would rule forever and much more.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

The story of Babel most certainly is based on fact which is confirmed by history, archaeology and folklore.
North of the Marduk temple in Babylon once stood a huge tower, and in this area archaeologist George Smith discovered a tablet with an account about the confusion of languages. The table reads in part: The building of this illustrious tower offended the gods. In a night they threw down what they had built. They scattered them abroad, and made strange their speech. Their progress they impeded. This wasnt a bible tablet, it was a babylonian one.And the folklore found in various nations provide further evidence that the story was not only a bible story because many of these nations did not have the bible. These tower stories do vary among themselves, but the fact that they all say there was a tower and that men’s tongues were changed is noteworthy and gives the authentic Bible record support.Modern linguists have also created a chart of human language and they've found there there are parent languges from which all other languages are derived. This is in harmony with the bible account.Here is some more info which shows that the evidence is against any evolutionary origin of speech or of ancient languages: Before 1993, there was no proof outside the Bible to support the historicity of David but in 1993 archaeologists uncovered a basalt stone called the Tel Dan Stele, dating back to the 9th Century B.C. that experts say bears the words House of David and king of Israel.the thing about this stone is that it wasnt made by the isrealites but is actually a victory monument erected by the Aramaeans.

Source Peg? You didn't pull it from Wiki Answers, did you? funny how it is WORDED EXACTLY THE SAME. For shame. Such dishonesty. Let me see what else I can dig up from your post. Should I bother?

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"Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Othersfor example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einsteinconsidered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws."-Carl Sagan"Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God." -Desmond Tutu

Which just shows where Israel stole the Babel story from, the Babylonians who were no more advanced in humanism & science than were the Israelites. Mythology is mythology no matter where the source is.

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

Well i certainly didnt make it up myself.The evidence is out there and its just funny that when such evidence is hightlighted, the focus suddenly shifts to the dishonesty in where it came from.I'm not George Smith, so does that mean that i cant use his discoveries to provide someone with the evidence they seek??

They didnt 'steal' anything. The isrealites were not the only nation involved when the languages were confused so its only natural that many different nations have the same story.It actually proves the so called 'myth' rather then disproves it.

No, Peg. You pulled an answer from Wiki Answers, then claimed you got it from the Encyclopedia. THAT is dishonest. Do you have an encyclopedia to verify this fact? How can we be sure you aren't quote mining (which you've been prone to do in the past)?

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"Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Othersfor example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einsteinconsidered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws."-Carl Sagan"Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God." -Desmond Tutu

This statement is not true according to modern linguists.For just one single example, Euskara, the ancient language still spoken by some Basques, no prior root language has even remotely been agreed upon by any purported 'modern linguists.'See: Basque language - Wikipedia

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All hypotheses on the origin of Basque are controversial, and the suggested evidence is not generally accepted by most linguists. Some of these hypothetical connections are as follows:

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* Iberian: another ancient language once spoken in the peninsula, shows several similarities with Aquitanian and Basque. However, there is not enough evidence to distinguish areal contacts from genetic relationship. Iberian itself remains unclassified. Eduardo Ordua Aznar claims to have established correspondences between Basque and Iberian numerals[9] and noun case markers.
* the Ligurian substrate hypothesis proposed in the 19th century by d'Arbois de Joubainville, J. Pokorny, P. Kretschmer and several other linguists encompasses the Basco-Iberian hypothesis.
* Georgian: Linking Basque to South Caucasian languages is now widely discredited. The hypothesis was inspired by the existence of the ancient Kingdom of Iberia farther east in the Mediterranean. According to J.P. Mallory, in his 1989 book In Search of the Indo-Europeans, the hypothesis was also inspired by a Basque place-name ending in -adze.
* Northeast Caucasian languages, such as Chechen, are seen by the French linguist Michel Morvan as more likely candidates for a very distant connection.[10]
* Dene-Caucasian superfamily: Based on the possible Caucasian link, some linguists, for example John Bengtson and Merritt Ruhlen, have proposed including Basque in the Dene-Caucasian superfamily of languages, but this proposed superfamily includes languages from North America and Eurasia, and its existence is highly controversial.[2]
* Vasconic substratum hypothesis: This proposal, by the German linguist Theo Vennemann, claims that there is enough toponymical evidence to conclude that Basque is the only survivor of a larger family that once extended throughout most of Europe, and has also left its mark in modern Indo-European languages spoken in Europe.[11]

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I can come up with other examples but even just one refutes your assertion.Remember you have been shown your statement is false, but that may be due to ignorance of fact. However, if you later willfully repeat the same statement after being shown it is false, you will be guilty of violating God's Commandment against bearing false witness.Edited by anglagard, : Add willfully for emphasisEdited by anglagard, : Add quote for those who, when contradicted, suddenly can't push the left button on a mouse.

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The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.
Salman RushdieThis rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. - the character Rorschach in Watchmen

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Paul, no matter how you cut it, the Gentiles occupied and now they're out at a time when other cited corroborated unusual events are being observed. This all after the prophecy was spoken by Jesus but not until our times.

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The evidence suggests that Jesus DIDN'T say it, as I have pointed out. And you haven't had much success pointing to other "unusual" events either - and even if you did the timescale would still be massively wrong/It's quite telling that the only bit of the Olivet discourse you think worth anything was probably invented 40 years or more after Jesus died and even that has to be taken out of context.

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No, they're not. The OT prophecies and the NT prophecies have too many events in them that in no way applied to ancient days, such as the unwalled and ungated villages in Israel, the promise that after this return the would be at peace and never be removed, that all nations will acknowledge Jehovah, that a messiah figure would rule forever and much more.

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There's nothing impossible about unwalled villages in ancient times. Not building a wall is hardly difficult ! Your only other objections are based on the fact that the prophecies - or elements of them - did NOT come true in ancient times. Since assuming that the prophecies MUST come true begs the question, that simply isn't a legitimate argument.