Validity of Written Documents

Quite some time ago, a biographer of sorts wrote about the establishment and growth of a family from the 1760's through the 1870's. He did a great deal of research to document the historical context in which this family grew from one poor orphaned teen to a large and politically powerful group.
The details provided of the battles (Revolutionary, Civil War...etc) in which they fought have been verified many times hence. Conversations from the political boardrooms where they gained emmminence have been also confirmed from documents not directly related to the biography.The biography was called "The Kent Family Chronicles".Now, using only the methods that Faith has put forth for determining the validity of the Bible, can we determine the validity of this volume of work?Admittedly I am not completely clear on the application of those methods. Perhaps Faith can explain their full usefulness.However, it is my contention that we cannot tell if "The Kent Family Chronicles" is biographical history or fiction, given those limitations on the investigation of validity.

I'm not at all sure where this might go or what the point really is. Can you perhaps edit the original to make it clear what you're suggesting? Also, add a comment to let us know where you think this might fit.

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My point was to have some more focused discussion on the methods which Faith put forth, for determining the validity of the Bible. She made the statement the an objective person could just read a piece of literature and make judgements on its validity. We got mired down in the last thread on the differences between religious texts (thanks Checkmate) and lost focus on the topic of discussion.
Perhaps it is a waste of time since Faith is suspended and noone else stepped up to provide support for her methods.Bible inerrancy perhaps?

Answer the following with a yes or no,You want to debate exactly what makes any document (Bible,newspaper,biography,etc...) valid or invalid?This is for the purpose of creating a clear starting point.

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Yo soy BoriCua Pa Que tu lo Sepas

No. I want to debate whether any particular document, within itself, can provide enough evidence for a rational person to make an accurate judgement of the validity of that document.

Ok clear enough

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Yo soy BoriCua Pa Que tu lo Sepas

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

I am aware of the biography that you are refering to - it is a powerful piece and as far as I can tell, it seems to be confirmed by other historical documentsof the time.It would seem to met the criteria that you are outlining in the op.I will lurk with interest on this thread.

Hi Linear,You simply cannot use a document to validate itself, even if you believe that the claims in the text are rational, you are relying on external data to come to your conclusion.For example, take Solomon's building of the first Temple. Now, it isnt impossible for there to have been a King Solomon who initiated the building of a Temple, but to validate this requires external data. You cannot use the Bible to validate the Bible, or use any other text to validate itself. If this was possible then every Holy Book would contain the Truth.There always needs to be external data, if any alleged historical event is to be considered valid it has to be placed within an historical context. Only then can it be compared with what we already know of that historical situation and either rejected or accepted as *plausible*. Remember that any claim made by an historian is never proven, it is the same as a scientific theory, it is only a theory because it is the best explanation at that time for the evidence avaliable. All historians know that their theory may be falsified with the finding of other evidence.This idea of a document validating itself is extremely popular in Christian circles. Asked for evidence to support the prophecy of a particlur Old Testament verse coming true, they invariably point to another Bible verse and very seldom to external data. Most cannot see how this is a circular argument and they also see this as wonderful confirmation of how accurate a document the Bible is!Look at THIS page and see if you can spot any 'fulfilled' prophecies that are not simply circular arguments.Take this one at a basic level:The Messiah will be born in Bethlehem: "But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity." (Micah 5:2 NASB)

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Fulfillment: "Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea." (Matthew 2:1)Here is a prime example of a document that validates itself. How do we know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, well another part of the SAME book tells us so. Is there any external support for Jesus being born in Bethlehem, no there isn't. This does not, of course mean that Jesus wasn't born in Bethlehem, but it does mean that what evidence there is, is circular.A document cannot validate itself, regardless of how reasonable its claims appear.Brian.

I have to agree with part of that. The determination of "reasonableness" of the text is a judgement by the reader based on personal experience of what is reasonable.However, both works in question (Bible, Kent Family Chronicles) are in a historical context. There is archeological data that provides support for both. There seems to be more historical data to support the Kent biographies than that for the Bible. At least, Kent is more true to the observed history than the Bible seems to be.So, then, what do we have left besides the content of the text itself? How do we determine the validity of either document? Do we assume they are works of fiction?These are the ways that others have put forth for determining the "truthfullness" of a document.
1. Looking at the plausibility of the story.
2. Looking at the presentation of the story, or tenor of the writing for the "ring of truth".
3. Noting the numbers of people that believe in the truthfullness of the document.
4. Noting the length of time that some people have believed in the truthfullness of the document.Admittedly 3 and 4 are outside of the document.1 and 2, however should be looked at more closely to see if they actually could be utilized for validating text. What would be the telltale signs of this "ring" of truth, within the text?

Hi Linear, As I haven’t read the Kent family Chronicles I can only really comment on the Bible. One of the problems with the Bible as a reliable historical source is directly related to what you point out, historical context. The problem being that much of what the Bible gives us in relation to historical context actually reflects an historical context of a much later period of time than the period of time than Bible claims certain stories were set.For example, take the story of Joseph and his adventures in Egypt where he rose from a lowly slave up to the second most powerful man in Egypt. Now, by Bible chronology, Joseph should have been set in the context of the 19th century BCE, but when the texts are examined there appears to be a few problems with context.Joseph is known for his ability to interpret dreams, and it was the ability to interpret the pharaoh’s dreams that enabled Joseph to climb the ladder of success. There is a problem here though as the king of Egypt was never referred to as a pharaoh before the reign of Thutmosis III (1490-1446 BCE) (McCarter, P. K. The Patriarchal Age in Shanks (Ed) Ancient Israel: A Short History from Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple, Prentice Hall: Biblical Archaeological Society, Englewood Cliffs; Washington DC. page 27).McCarter also lists some other problematic information:Some of the personal names in the story are Egyptian. Joseph’s wife is called Asenath (Genesis 41:45), a name with parallels beginning in the middle of the 20th Dynasty (about 1184-1070 B.C.), thus about 1100 B.C. The name of Asenath’s father is Potiphera (Genesis 41:45), and this name has been found on an Egyptian stele dating to the 21st Dynasty (about 1070-945) or later. The name of Joseph’s Egyptian master Potiphar (Genesis 37:36) is probably a shorter version of the name Potiphera. Joseph’s own Egyptian name, Zaphenath-paneah (Genesis 41:45) has no exact parallel in extant Egyptian records, but names with a similar structure are attested to from the 21st Dynasty (about 1070-945 B.C.) and later. (ibid:27)The information contained in these texts suggests that the Joseph stories were written after 1000 BCE, which is into the period of the United Monarchy. The late construction of the texts means that, if a historian is going to find any authentic history in the Joseph story, then they will have to filter the text considerably to discover it. The late composition of a text also detracts from its value as a reliable historical source, as all written histories are influenced to some degree by the interests of the society in which they were written (Knauf, (1991) From History to Interpretation in Edelman 1991, The Fabric of History: Text, Artifact and Israel's Past, Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield. 26-6426). This could lead to the possibility that the history under scrutiny is entirely false, and was produced to give some sort of validation for an action, or to explain why certain laws were initiated, or even to explain why certain groups should always be considered enemies.
This would bring in another angle to the debate, namely, what was the apparent intent of the author? I know it is difficult, if not impossible to conclude exactly what the intent of the author was, if that author is making claims that could be extremely beneficial to the society in which the author was writing, then that also cast a shadow of doubt over the truthfulness of a text. But, historical context is vital, and the Bible invariably fails in its rendering of an accurate historical context. But is there archaeological data that contradicts both? The problem with the biblical texts here is that what we know from archaeology essentially falsifies great chunks of the Bible. Now, I can only comment on the ‘primary history’ books of the Old Testament and how they fit in with what is known from Syro-Palestinian archaeology (the almost dead discipline of Biblical Archaeology). Archaeology and the Bible really is about the Patriarchs through to the founding of the United Monarchy under David, this is the core of the subject, although it does stretch beyond David but not to the same degree. It can be said without fear of contradiction that the biblical texts here are completely at odds with the external data, there is no way to harmonise them, so the texts are unreliable if we are looking to build up an accurate history of the ancient near east. So, I don’t know if archaeology contradicts anything in the Kent book, but it undermines the Bible to a great extent. So, archaeology is not a great support for the validity of the Bible. Yes, external data must be used to see if what we know contradicts what is being claimed in each text. The Bible does not fit in very well with what we know from external sources. An example of this would be when the Israelites are said to have conquered Canaan and settled in the land. By Bible chronology this would be around 1400 BCE. At this time we know that Canaan was little more than a province of Egypt and remained so until about the end of the 13th century BCE, when Egypt’s grip loosened. But, the Bible authors seem blissfully unaware that there was a massive Egyptian presence in Canaan at this time, thus external texts, archaeological data, and inscriptions all suggest that the bible’s historical background, in this case, is inaccurate. The Bible only really has the faith of its readers to maintain its accuracy, because every discipline known to man undermines the text at face value. This requires quite an extensive answer; I will try to give one tomorrow as it is getting late here. I wouldn’t personally do that. I would, in regard to the Bible, eliminate any supernatural claims before examining what was left. I would then look at what we already know about the time and place that a certain event was said to have happened in and then come to a conclusion. I would eliminate 3 and 4 anyway as they have no bearing on the accuracy of the text. This is a big question too because different people have different ideas of what constitutes the ‘ring’ of truth. Of course, ‘plausibility’ doesn’t make a text accurate either, I am a great believer in what William Albright preached: the ultimate historicity of a given datum is never conclusively established nor disproved by the literary framework in which it is embedded: there must always be external evidence. (Albright, W. F. (1939) The Israelite Conquest of Canaan in the light of Archaeology, BASOR 74 11-23. page. 12)I’ll post more tomorrow as I need to go offline.Brian.

Brian,Your explanation of the multiple anachronisms in the Genesis stories is quite enlightening. I knew there were some historical placement problems but I thought they dealt mainly with word usage or place names. This seems much more disconcerting for the literalist. Couldn't those anachronisms have been the result of the oral tradition of the Torah prior to them being written down? Perhaps as a way of providing an understandable frame of reference for the younger generation, modern (in a relative sense) terminology was incorporated and location names were changed. That might be something akin to saying that Lewis & Clark started in Missouri and traveled to Washington state in their trip to map the Louisianna Purchase. Obviously, Washington State did not exist then but is a good frame of reference now.However, my concern was the methods that believers were using to champion the validity of the Bible despite the historical context evidence, so called, that stands against it. There has to be some logic that used to make that kind of determination. The Kent documents are used as an example that those methods can be performed on to test their ability to discern truth. Throw out supernatural claims? To what purpose? It is those very claims that we are trying to substantiate by demonstrating the validity of the rest of the Bible. Besides, the supernatural may have left a mark that can be found.edited to provide clarification on the possible use of anachronisms.This message has been edited by LinearAq, 05-11-2005 10:30 AM

There are a great deal more historical placement problems in the Hebrew Bible, too many to list here. And there is also the problem of the reworking of the same story by different authors as well, it makes the Bible quite difficult to place in an accurate context. You would imagine so. However cognitive dissonance is common place in the literalist camp, they are not known for their critical approach to the text, and they will never admit that there is a problem to being with. Some can be explained this way yes, but isn’t this an inaccurate account just the same. For example, Exodus 1:11 says that the Israelites helped build the store cities of Pithom and Rameses, yet the text of 1 Kings 6:1 places the Exodus about 150 year before any Pharaoh Rameses was around. But this is not just one anachronism because the city of Pithom was never occupied at the same time as the city of Rameses!Pithom means ‘the house of Atum’ and was only used as the name of a city in the Saite period (7th century B.C.E.), although the name was known before the Saite period as the name of temples and temple estates, the name was never had any connection with cities (Lemche, N. P. and Society for Promoting Christian, K. (1999) The Israelites in history and tradition, SPCK : Westminster John Knox Press, London ; Louisville, Ky. 1999: 398) Thus, the archaeological evidence does not support the two cities in Exodus 1:11 as ever being occupied, or even existing, at the same time, with one part of the reference appearing to belong to the 2nd millennium B.C.E. and another one to the 1st Millenium B.C.E. (Miller, J. D. and Hayes, J. H. (1986) A history of Ancient Israel and Judah, SCM Press, London.68).There are no extant contemporary texts either that place the Israelites in Egypt, so it looks as if the external data still undermines the Bible here. Granted, anachronisms do not invalidate a claim, but they do suggest that the claims could be distorted through time. Yes, could be, but then we would still be looking for the external data to validate the corrected anachronism! The example of the City of Rameses is a prime example of this and this city has been identified as Avaris (Tell el Da’ba), which has been extensively excavated by Manfred Bietak. But, there is still no external support for the Israelites, and there is a great amount of contrary evidence, so the external data does not support the text, thus I would reject the claims made by this part of the text. Logic doesn’t need to have valid premises though. The logic adopted by a believer isn’t the same as that adopted by the critical researcher, they are approaching the subject with different methods and intentions. But I do know what you mean because one of the arguments used by believers for the validity of the text is that there are 20 000 plus extant NT documents from the early first millennium and they all agree with each other! They do not seem to realise that 20 000 copies of a fairytale still means that it is a fairytale, the accurate copying and distribution of a text doesn’t mean it is accurate. Yep. So we can attempt to build an accurate background from what is left. This is also an erroneous proposition. If a book happens to have, say for the sake of argument, 80% of its contents verified by what we know from external sources, it doesnt mean that any of the remaining 20% is also accurate, each individual claim needs to be examined by itself and on its own merit. Especially with the Bible as we can have three or four different authors from a different time and place woven into the same chapter.Each claim needs to be taken individually. For instance, we know that there was a King Omri because we read about him in the Bible and in the Moabite stone, does this automatically mean that everything associated with Omri is true? Of course it doesn't.We also need to remember that supernatural events are beyond the scope of historical enquiry, you cannot test for the supernatural, thus we cannot assign any intervention to it. Any examples, one even?

Nice reference to fulfilled prophecy.At least they got the first one right.

quote:

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1. The Messiah will be born of a woman:

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Would have been kinda hard to miss on that one don't you think? LOL

there is a bit of a problem.the bible is not a document. it's MANY documents. not only is it many documents, but it's many documents are composed largely of collections of other documents.so the bible cannot and should not be treated as a single consistent source by either side of this debate. suggesting that it's a single document does in fact rob it of some validity. of course, if it's one book, it'd be valid in it's own terms. but if it's one book, no one human wrote it.but even still the fact that multiple documents confirm each other (and this point is VERY disputed regarding the bible) is not a suprise. nothing exists solely in a vacuum, eprived of all other material. instead, what's happening is that sources are citing other sources. these texts are partially interrelated, but not totally.so when they agree, it is not saying something MUST be accurate, but it is just slightly in the favor of accuracy.i suggest we find a more appropriate analogy. like greek tragedies, or urban legends, or the collected works of tolkien and son.

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