Reliable history in the Bible

Since The Book of Genesis makes exactly the same claim, and this is a thread about the reliability of the Bible, you will have evidence to support:Genesis 2:7 then the LORD God formed the man of dust A living man, complete with emotions and intelligence came from dust, how crazy is that? Brian.

Hi,I realise that you may be busy, but I would like an answer to how you can claim that life cannot come from non-living matter, yet you believe that Genesis is accurate, and it states that life did come from non-living matter.Brian.

Any luck with the evidence of living matter coming from dust?Brian.

It is fact that the bible has some historical documents.Every document in the Bible is historical, but that doesn't mean that anything in those docs actually happened.

Hi Arach,Well at least when we get to Kings we enter an era where there are external texts and other evidence to support parts of the books.They are certainly written more in the style of what we would call a history, rather than the 'prehistory' books that are written more as mythologies and aetiologies etc.As you say though, most of the 'histories' of this era are biased and dishonest, no one was writing anything approaching a critical history until Hecataeus, Polybius, and Thucydides came along.Personally, I define history as 'any text about a past event that has been created by the human mind.' For me, history is not what happened in the past, it is what someone has told us happened in the past, and because all histories are created in the human mind then they are subject to the baises and worldview of the writer. History is what is written on a page, not what happened in the past.Brian.

Hi T,If I remember correctly the opening post was a sort of continuation of several discussions, and I had just been discussing several events/archaeological evidence with posters (Jugs was mentioned in the post) on other threads who were aware of the issues surrounding the post.The post was asking people who claimed that the Bible is reliable in relation to history, and I had heard this so many times that I was asking this claim to be supported.In regard to providing resources, the point of the thread was to coax believers into studying the bible in an historical context to discover just how accurate the reliability claim was. I was hoping that by starting at Genesis and ticking off what they could support as reliable history that they could see just how silly the claim that the Bible is historically reliable actually is.Over the last few years I have provided reams of evidence that undermines alleged historical events in the Bible, is there anything in particular you would like some resources for?Brian.

There's no better motivation for anyone than to prove a smart arse wrong. Sometimes people take a while to catch on to my tactic, especially on forums, but I am much nicer to my students. (I think)And if you are annoyed, just think how poor Cold Foreign Object feels!Brian.

I think part of the problem that certain Christians (such as Buz, Ray, and Lysi)have is that they think people such as myself completely reject everything in the Bible as unhistorical, and this isnt the case at all. Sure we have rejected a great deal of it, such as the face value biblical Exodus and Conquest, but we, at least I do, acknowledge that the Bible starts to become accurate the closer we get the the exilic period.Personally, I think there is a lot of reliable history in the Bible, but I also think that from Genesis through to the end of Judges there just isnt very much that is reliable.After the book of judges, it starts to improve a little.

What is it in particular that impresses you?

Of course this is a possibility.However, part of the problem with the prehistory books of the Bible is the complete absence of evidence for many events, add to this the mythical tales, aetiological tales, and a host of absurdities, then it is difficult to take these early books seriously.No historian should claim absolutes about their theories, personally if I am writing a formal piece I always use words such as 'unlikely' or 'it is difficult to imagine', or it is 'reasonable to assume', and other non absolute claims. We never know what may be found on the future, so we really cannot say this or that definately didn't happen.