Does A Biblical Historical Record Exist?

Personally, I think the problem about the Bible and history is that many people are not really aware what history is.I always keep in mind that history is NOT what happened in the past, it is what we are told happened in the past. History is the words on the page, NOT the event. The past is gone forever, and ALL history is a construct of the human mind.Here is where we hit a problem between historians and non-historians, or people who know what history is and those that don’t.I am of the mind that the entire Bible is an historical record, however, remember that because all histories are constructed in the human mind, we need to have external evidence to gauge the accuracy of the claims made by this historical record. For example, to claim that the Israelites left Egypt in the mid 15th century BCE, you would need some external evidence to support this. Now, we don’t have ANY evidence outside of the Bible that this event happened, forget the excuses that Egyptians didn’t record defeats, or that evidence just haven’t been found yet, the state of things as we speak is that there is NO external evidence to support the mass Exodus of Israelites form Egypt in the mid 15th century BCE.With this in mind we can acknowledge that this claim in the Book of Exodus is historical, inasmuch as it is a narrative about a past event, but it is a false history, it didn’t happen.I think the problem Buz is that you and others appear to think that just because something is in the Bible it automatically becomes true, but it doesn’t. The Bible should not be treated any differently from any other ancient text, and just like any other ancient text the authors of the Bible were as likely to embellish or make up an event as anyone else. The authors of the Bible were as likely to produce a piece of propaganda as any other ancient people, and this is why we need to use external evidence to check the veracity of the history in the Bible.If you wish to argue that the Bible can be used to support an historical event that has no other support outside of the Bible then you are back to the world of circular reasoning.I think everyone is aware that there are many events in the Bible that have external evidence to support them, the Moabite stone is a good example of this. But the evidence for the books of Genesis through to Judges is practically non-existent, and furthermore, there are vast storehouses of evidence to contradict what the Bible claims happened in these books.So, the Bible is an historical record, but it contains a great deal of false history, and some reliable as well of course.I would stress, as William Albright and many other stress, that we MUST have external evidence for any alleged historical event, whether in the Bible or any other text. Without that evidence we cannot simply accept the texts as accurate just because it happens to be in a book we think is special in some way.

I would say that it is more to do with naivety about what historical verification is rather than blind faith, and the rest of your post just supports my stance. Yes there are problematic areas which leave questions just as with any ideology, but when you add up all of the verifiable corroborative data in the record See this is where I think the naivety comes in. To me this sounds as if you are saying that if some events in the Bible can be verified then this automatically means that everything else is true as well. This is obviously untrue, especially so with the Bible as it is a collection of texts and not the one book. But finding some verified events for one part of a book doesnt mean anything else in it is true. and add that to the social and spiritual benefits the book affords, blind faith as you have implied in your statement is just not what motivates us.As you know this has no bearing on historical accuracy of a text. I would say that the oppsite is true. It is only the people who havent studied the Bible to a great depth and havent studied ancient history that think the Bible is completely reliable.

But, despite all this, it was a fictional event.