Sorry, but the Bible alone is no more evidence of Yahweh than the Iliad is evidence of Zeus and Athena.
You have to treat ancient manuscripts with skepticism.
Thank you for sharing your opinion. Please don’t try to play this game with me. I can respond and I am not l;ost for words. I unfortunately do not always have the time to respond in much detail all the time.
Many doubt the historical reliability of the Old (and New) Testament. Nothing new. Some objections are often just silly as if they are dealing with fools.
Firstly, the New Testament (Jesus and other authors) written years later supports it. That is a major argument which cannot be wiped off the table and that alone is enough for me already.
For example, the Apostle Paul wrote, . . . from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” 2 Tim 3).
Jesus and the apostolic writers of the New Testament consistently taught or assumed the historical reliability of the Old Testament. This includes everything from God’s creation of the world to the patriarchs, to Moses, to the conquest and occupation of the land, to the period of the kings and prophets, and to the Babylonian exile and restoration, and points along the way.
There is, however, now also substantial external ancient and Near Eastern historical and archaeological backing for a lot of it as well.
And yes, much of what the Old Testament presents as historical has no direct confirmation in external sources. That is not proof that it did not happen, though.
Anyway, one could logically not expect, for example, that we would find the person of Abraham, for example, in all the textual or archaeological records of the ancient Near East. That would not be a rational expectation.
But we can show that his way of life is plausible for the time and place in which the story is set. Many ancient documents, confirm the sequence and dating of many of the kings of Israel and Judah, for example.
Most scepticism about Old Testament is, therefore, misplaced and often aggressively so.
As I have said, there are much external evidence for much of the events mentioned in the OT. Pharaoh Merneptah’s victory stele (ca. 1209 BC, perhaps around the time of the judge Deborah), for example, offers external verifiable evidence of the existence of a people called “Israel” in the hill country of Palestine in his day. There are many, many more examples to be seen in the British Museum in London for the whole world to see. That cannot be denied.
Lo and behold, there are still some who deny it, ignore it, or somehow reinterpret it because it does not fit with their scepticism. Historical “minimalists” consider the Old Testament to be fictional literature. The minimalist agenda will eventually defeat itself because it cannot stand up to the accumulating data against it.
Let's move on, please.
