Validity of differing eyewitness accounts in religious texts

I've answered this on this site already. One creation account is chronological, the other is a focusing on specific elements of it. They are not two different accounts. As with all such things in the Bible they either enhance one another or complement one another. There are not two different accounts of the Flood. One has Noah and his family entering the ark just as the rain starts and the fountains and heaven open up. The other says it took seven days for the flood to accumulate to covering the earth. If you look for contradictions you will of course find them by not being careful about the writer's meaning. That can be done with any piece of writing (and in fact is done with people's posts here too). But if you try in good faith to realize there are no real contradictions in the Bible you could yourself begin to read carefully enough to figure these things out. Yes, Genesis is a witness account. It is not a myth. Moses spoke to God. Moses had access to all the knowledge of His day. The stories had come down intact from Noah through the line of Shem to Abraham and Moses, and again, God spoke with Moses directly. Also it's a character issue: Moses would not dare to make something up. God punished him with not getting to see the Promised Land simply because he had a tantrum at the people for their stubbornness and disobeyed God's instruction. You think God would let him get away with making up lies that became scripture? There IS no other such document. I just clearly showed you the uniqueness of the Bible. And its greater authority is obvious: God Himself speaks in it. He speaks in that direct fashion NOWHERE outside the Bible, and nobody else has EVER claimed to speak directly with God in any of the other religions (up until very recently). Do you believe anything just because you believe it, or do you believe it because you think you have reason to consider it the truth? Same with me.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-25-2005 04:58 PM

It can't be an eye witness account.At best it is second hand information. You say it has validity because Moshe got it from GOD. Is that correct?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I've never read the Koran, but I've paged through it quite a bit, and this doesn't match my recollection. So I began reading from page 1 from an online copy (http://www.hti.umich.edu/k/koran/browse.html) and it appears easy to find recountings of events, though more minor than in the Bible. This is from Chapter 28, The Narratives, starting at 28.13, just a short portion to give the flavor. It's a story about Moses: We all recognize this, of course. It's the same story that appears in Exodus 2:11. By what criteria do you judge the relative authenticity of these stories?--Percy

Aren't all these events also in the Quran?PE

OK, I'll concede this or we'll be at it for days. Call it an authoritative account that has plenty of evidence of trustworthiness from Moses' credentials as testified to by other Biblical writers at the absolute minimum. There is witness evidence to Moses that establishes his credentials for writing such an account.

They do not occur within a historical framework but are just stuck in here and there, which I already pointed out, and many of them are lifted from the Bible and rewritten to suit Muslim prejudices and deny the original Biblical record. They teach nothing about the character of God and His relation to humanity, as the Bible history does, they are just there to convince Muslims the Bible is wrong and they are right.

Yeah, some of them are. They plagiarized them and rewrote them.

I thought they got them the same way Mary and Joseph got word?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

What makes you think the Bible stories aren't plagiarised?

Well, this isn't true for everyone. Many people can visit their great grandfather's grave (I can, and for my children it's their great, great grandfather), and many families have records and pictures and so forth. Your degreee of skepticism that a gravesite contains someone's great grandfather governs the amount of evidence required. If that degree of documentation is sufficient, then fine, but if you require eyewitnesses to the intervening copulations and fingerprints for everyone involved, that's another matter. I'm not saying this is reasonable, just making the point that the desired degree of certainty affects the amount of evidence you require.The longer ago something happened the less evidence there tends to be. In the case of all events in the Bible, they occurred about two or more thousand years ago, and few accounts were written by eyewitnesses. There is physical evidence for many Biblical places, but little physical evidence of any event. What level of certainty do you want to achieve for the stories in the Bible? If you set the level very low then you can accept them all, but if you apply, let's say, some fairly traditional standards of history, few if any of them can be considered as known to have happened.One good example of a Biblical event, series of events, actually, that we're almost certain happened is the seige of Jerusalem under King Hezekiah by Sennacherib of Assyria. Both the Bible and inscriptions by Sennacherib's own documentarians attest to what happened (there are some differences of detail, but the general outlines are the same), and archeologists have discovered destruction levels of the right age at sites of some cities that Sennacherib is supposed to have leveled before tackling Jerusalem. So historians are pretty sure this really happened.But what of Jesus's sermon on the mount? We have the Bible to tell us it happened, and that's it. The Bible says thousands were there, but anyone can write, "Thousands were there." By what criteria do you adjudge the account of the sermon on the mount credible and authentic?--Percy

So if I show you bits of the bible that are the same as earlier accounts?

I have no idea what you mean. They are clearly ripoffs of the Bible stories, retold with all kinds of unbiblical changes.

From where would they be plagiarized? Islam began 600 years after Christianity was established, and in fact displaced the Christians in the Middle East.

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YOu can't even prove the existence of your great grandfather. Same problem

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Actually Faith, your logic is grossly flawed in this assertion and is self-defeating, because,1. One doesn't need to prove the existence of his or her great grandfather. It is an obvious knowledge.2. However, if one choose to contest the existance of other's great grandfather; it may lead to a claim of virgin birth. That would be a problem for you, right? You don't want to see Jesus got comppetition.3. Therefore, we can conclusively agree that for humans to procreate, existance of previous generations is a must.CheckmateThis message has been edited by Checkmate, 04-25-2005 05:28 PM

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"An uninformed person cannot conceptualize the essence of knowledge nor its sublimity. One who fails to conceptualize something, its significance will never become rooted in the heart."

From earlier cultures, of course. Not sure what this has got to do with the Bible not being a plagiarism.PEThis message has been edited by Primordial Egg, 04-25-2005 05:34 PM