Historical Accuracy in Scripture

[Windwalker]

How do you think the world would be a better place to live: full of college students or full of Jehovah's Witnesses?

I prefer educated people over those who hide from knowledge. I prefer the curious and interested, instead of the fearful and wilfully ignorant. The latter tend to be disingenuous.

This people of Jehovah's Witnesses is a highly educated international community like the one you will not find any other. I am proud to be an active member.

Isn't this a contradiction to make it a choice between educated people and JWs, and then claim JWs are highly educated? Which is it?

One would think if they were highly educated, they'd be aware enough to know that education if good. Unless you wish to argue that having tasted the fruits of knowledge they now disavow and renounce their education?

That would at least make it consistent. Otherwise, are they claiming only the leadership should be educated and the followers remain uneducated? You don't see an issue there?

 

[Valjean]

I have not said the opposite. That is precisely what I have been saying. Neither is the Bible a Science book, nor does it include every aspect of Human History, but only what was related to the line that goes from Adam to Jesus, and then the first century followers of Jesus. But in that context we learn about Egypt, Babylon, the Medo-Persian empire, the Greek empire, and then the Roman empire. If you knew how much we Jehovah's Witnesses study these ancient empires and their different kings at different stages of the ancient history of God's people, you would understand what I mean.

The Bible is mythology, and you hold it to be axiomatic. It's teachings form the major premises in all your theology. As long as you refuse to entertain any non-biblical evidence you can't be taken seriously.
You believe despite contrary evidence, and you refuse even to look at the contrary evidence. That's intellectual abdication. That's delusion.

But most critics of Jehovah's Witnesses have no idea how educated we are in these topics. It's embarrassing to have to read them say so many things that they really don't know anything about, just in order to talk more. I feel sorry to see how many people have been indoctrinated to hate and despise believers without knowing anything factual about them.

How is ignoring evidence and refusing to examine 'facts' educated?
Unless you can defend your beliefs with real, empirical evidence they remain unconvincing, and when they can be undermined with actual, demonstrable facts, they may reasonably dismissed as false.

PS: Consult our official website and you will have just a little piece of our high education in dozens of scientific, social, historical topics, etc. Actually, it is the most translated website of the entire network: in more than 1000 languages, like no other website you may know, nor scientific, political, religious institutions... not even universities.

Until you know and understand the contrary evidence, and manage to provide some empirical, non-biblical evidence supporting your claims, how are we to take them seriously?

 

[Eli G]

...

That is exactly why so many atheists exist. You force them to throw out everything because it isn't 100% accurate about everything it says. That's a perfect recipe to destroy you own faith as well if you find even one error. Or, it makes you live in complete denial of facts because you are afraid to lose your faith, because you made it dependent upon such an impossible goal. That's not a good recipe for a healthy faith, when you have to deny reality in order to protect your ideas.

I'm sorry, but you're trying to make a psychological profile of someone you don't even know based on pure assumptions... For obvious reasons that's not going to work, just as it's not going to work for you to confuse reality with an imaginary scenario that you are trying to create.

Good night.

 

[Valjean]

True Christians are educated by Christ (which is why they bear his name), not by the world.

Mark 8:38 For whoever becomes ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

Denying the Flood as a real event is denying Jesus in order to side with the world and the false knowledge of it.

Matt. 24:37 For just as the days of Noah were, so the presence of the Son of man will be. 38 For as they were in those days before the Flood, eating and drinking, men marrying and women being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, 39 and they took no note until the Flood came and swept them all away, so the presence of the Son of man will be.

That attitude is very common in Christendom: to negate Jesus and posing as Christians.

So what's your point? The facts are what they are. There was no worldwide flood, there was no exodus from Egypt. These accounts are fables. If this upsets this or that religion's theology, that can't be helped.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Change the channel ... You are repeating yourself again and again ...

What will your rabbi say?

I notice that you neglect to reply to the substance of my remarks.

 

[Valjean]

We can know from Jesus learning from his words that are registered in the Bible

But that presupposes the accuracy of the Bible. Why do you assume this, especially in the light of so moch contrary evidence? Do you believe the Bible is more accurate than the Quran, Gita, Guru Granth Sahib or Popol Vuh? Why? Evidence, please.

Indigo said: The gospels are simply collections of legends about Jesus. The truth is, we really don't know the things Jesus said, since he never wrote them down.
Eli G replies:

That's exactly what atheists say about the Hebrew Scriptures.

But what's your point? Isn't that what scholars say about all folklore, religious or otherwise?
If you believe its not legends and folklore, defend your position. Provide some evidence that the Bible is different.

 

[Valjean]

Isn't this like saying that if someone was right about a lot of things, but wrong about some things, that therefore you shouldn't listen to anything at all that they say? How much sense does that make?

No. This is like asking for evidence, so we can sort the truth from the falsehood before we decide what to believe.
This seems a reasonable request.

That is exactly why so many atheists exist. You force them to throw out everything because it isn't 100% accurate about everything it says.

No, most atheists don't throw anything out. Most have nothing to discard.

We start with a blank slate, and accept various facts, as evidence for them appears. There are "so many atheists" because we're still waiting for evidence for many of the various religious claims.

That's a perfect recipe to destroy you own faith as well if you find even one error. Or, it makes you live in complete denial of facts because you are afraid to lose your faith, because you made it dependent upon such an impossible goal. That's not a good recipe for a healthy faith, when you have to deny reality in order to protect your ideas.

Best to sort through each claim individually, and consider the evidence, then accept the well evidenced claims, and defer belief in the unevidenced or poorly evidenced ones.
That's what reasonable people do, not just "atheists."

 

[1213]

But the Bible is not good. It condones all sorts of behavior that would get you arrested today, if not in the docket at The Hague; behavior that everyone would agree was atrocious.
And it's clearly not truth. Much of its mythology is just flat-out wrong.

That reminds me of Covid and how world leaders acted against Nuremberg code with forcing people to get vaccinated. Bible tells we should love others as ourselves. Anyone who lives by that, lives without being atrocious.

Please give one example of what is wrong in the Bible, preferably the thing that you think is the worst wrong thing.

 

[blü 2]

Denying the Flood as a real event is denying Jesus in order to side with the world and the false knowledge of it.

I would make two points here.

The first is that the evidence against the Flood as an historical event as described in Genesis is overwhelming.

Had there been a real flood then we'd necessarily see around us ─

a universal single geological flood layer all over all continents, islands and the ocean floor, dated inside the last 10,000 years,

a genetic bottleneck in the genes of all land animals, all the bottlenecks according to a single date inside the last 10,000 years,

and one billion cubic miles more water than is presently on the earth,

but we find nothing of the kind or anything vaguely resembling it;

and as well there's a host of other kinds of necessary consequences that would be likewise inescapable today.


The second is that Jesus is not mentioned in the Tanakh and is not recognizable as a Jewish messiah, being neither a civil, military or religious leader of the Jewish people;

and that the consequence of linking the Jewish god to Jesus is that God, in breach of [his] covenant with the Jewish people, sent a 'messiah' whose religion has been responsible for two millennia of vilification, suppression, raiding, and often murderous persecution of God's chosen people ─ while no such systematic or dogmatic fate befell the followers of the world's other major religions.

 

[PureX]

I see nothing in religious scripture that would indicate that it should be taken as a historical exposition. Nearly all myth and fiction presents itself as being about "actual events" as part of it's mechanism for conveying insight about real life experience. And we are all willing to accept that deceit for the sake of that mechanism and the reward it can produce.

The only people pushing these texts as historical exposition are those that have chosen to presume it so for their own reasons. Which in no way lends any logical reason for the rest of us doing the same. The whole debate is a non-issue except to those who have personal reasons for accepting or rejecting it. In both cases people who are defending the insignificant because their need and egos won't let them drop it.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Does it matter if if the stories in religious scripture actually took place?

What is more important in scripture, historical accuracy or the lessons that can be learned from it?

Discuss.

Wouldn't it rather depend on which episode, and what "lessons" we suppose can be learned?

Take the case of the Levite and his concubine who, travelling through a Benjamite city are waylaid. The Benjamites want to gang rape the Levite (that would be homosexual rape, for those not paying attention), but the Levite instead offers up his concubine, who is raped until she is dead. The Levite is mighty POed by this, so he cuts her body into 12 pieces and sends them to the other tribes -- who all swear never to give their daughters to a Benjamite and go to war on them. (This is all from Judges chapters 19-21.) When the Benjamites are down to a mere 600 surviving men, the punitive expedition is overcome by remorse, fearing that it will cause the extinction of an entire tribe. To ensure the survival of the Benjamite tribe while still complying with their oath, the Levites pillage and massacre the city of Jabesh-Gilead, none of whose residents partook in the war or in the vow, and capture its 400 maidens as wives for the Benjamites. The 200 men still lacking women are subtly allowed to abduct the maidens dancing at Shiloh.

What "lessons" can be learned from these 3 entire chapters of the book of Judges? At what age do you suppose it should be taught to children?

Sure, Jesus teaches "love they neighbor" and "feed my sheep," but then along comes Revelation -- and what have today's millennialists learned from that? Why, that pretty soon a very small fraction of humanity will be "raptured" up to heaven! And if one of them happens to be flying a passenger jet, or driving a bus -- well the passengers are all going to die. What great fun. What lessons do you think Revelation really teaches?

 

[metis]

That's bahais' erroneus perspective.

Jesus said:

Matt. 24:37 For just as the days of Noah were, so the presence of the Son of man will be. 38 For as they were in those days before the Flood, eating and drinking, men marrying and women being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, 39 and they took no note until the Flood came and swept them all away, so the presence of the Son of man will be.

So, if there is someone who says that the Flood was not a historical event, he is not a follower of Jesus (for not believing his words) but a follower of Baháʼu'lláh or simply an atheist.

First of all, I'm not a Bahai, and secondly it appears you don't agree with Jesus on what he says about his Two Commandments.

IMO, it is likely that the biblical Flood narrative was allegorical to counter the Babylonian polytheistic narrative, and it originally may have been written following an oral tradition. So many focus on "is it historically true" while ignoring the basic theological implications. It's that latter that leaves us with basic moral Jewish teachings that's useful today.

 

[metis]

Change the channel ... You are repeating yourself again and again ...

What will your rabbi say?

With posts like the above, I get the strong impression that you're far more into yourself than Jesus and what he taught. What arrogance you're displaying here, sorry to say.

 

[metis]

That reminds me of Covid and how world leaders acted against Nuremberg code with forcing people to get vaccinated.

Getting vaccinated was and is a sign of respect for others as one is not only trying to save their own lives but also the lives of others with the vaccine. We don't need to litigate this again as the research on this is very clear.

 

[Audie]

True Christians are educated by Christ (which is why they bear his name), not by the world.

Mark 8:38 For whoever becomes ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

Denying the Flood as a real event is denying Jesus in order to side with the world and the false knowledge of it.

Matt. 24:37 For just as the days of Noah were, so the presence of the Son of man will be. 38 For as they were in those days before the Flood, eating and drinking, men marrying and women being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, 39 and they took no note until the Flood came and swept them all away, so the presence of the Son of man will be.

That attitude is very common in Christendom: to negate Jesus and posing as Christians.

Anyone who is educated- including those educated
in the ways of common sense- is aware there was no flood.

 

[PureX]

Take the case of the Levite and his concubine who, travelling through a Benjamite city are waylaid. The Benjamites want to gang rape the Levite (that would be homosexual rape, for those not paying attention), but the Levite instead offers up his concubine, who is raped until she is dead. The Levite is mighty POed by this, so he cuts her body into 12 pieces and sends them to the other tribes -- who all swear never to give their daughters to a Benjamite and go to war on them. (This is all from Judges chapters 19-21.) When the Benjamites are down to a mere 600 surviving men, the punitive expedition is overcome by remorse, fearing that it will cause the extinction of an entire tribe. To ensure the survival of the Benjamite tribe while still complying with their oath, the Levites pillage and massacre the city of Jabesh-Gilead, none of whose residents partook in the war or in the vow, and capture its 400 maidens as wives for the Benjamites. The 200 men still lacking women are subtly allowed to abduct the maidens dancing at Shiloh.

What "lessons" can be learned from these 3 entire chapters of the book of Judges? At what age do you suppose it should be taught to children?

Sure, Jesus teaches "love they neighbor" and "feed my sheep," but then along comes Revelation -- and what have today's millennialists learned from that? Why, that pretty soon a very small fraction of humanity will be "raptured" up to heaven! And if one of them happens to be flying a passenger jet, or driving a bus -- well the passengers are all going to die. What great fun. What lessons do you think Revelation really teaches?

No words in any book ever "taught" someone to kill themselves or others. All the words can ever do is give clarity and validity to ideas that people already hold. And that goes for all the good ideas as well as the bad, which you seem to want to focus on exclusively.

Which is why it doesn't matter in the least whether the stories and songs and poems and parables in scripture are historically accurate or not. Because that was never why anyone read them, and it's not why anyone reads them, now. And your objection to their "teaching" is misplaced. They aren't "teaching" anyone anything they don't already know, or want to believe is do. That isn't how mythical texts work.

 

[Audie]

Huh? What's an 'atheist post', and what are atheists saying that you disagree with?
What are these insults you speak of? Are they false?

Isn't this like saying that if someone was right about a lot of things, but wrong about some things, that therefore you shouldn't listen to anything at all that they say? How much sense does that make?

That is exactly why so many atheists exist. You force them to throw out everything because it isn't 100% accurate about everything it says. That's a perfect recipe to destroy you own faith as well if you find even one error. Or, it makes you live in complete denial of facts because you are afraid to lose your faith, because you made it dependent upon such an impossible goal. That's not a good recipe for a healthy faith, when you have to deny reality in order to protect your ideas.

Maybe some few atheists.
Shallow minded ones.
It's not hard to learn that such are
regressive anti intellectual sects,
that there are dangerous sects, and lunatics
bearing the christian banner, who
in no way are representing the inherently
noble faith.
No more than if like minded people
carried their national flag.

 

[Audie]

No words in any book ever "taught" someone to kill themselves or others. All the words can ever do is give clarity and validity to ideas that people already hold. And that goes for all the good ideas as well as the bad, which you seem to want to focus on exclusively.

Which is why it doesn't matter in the least whether the stories and songs and poems and parables in scripture are historically accurate or not. Because that was never why anyone read them, and it's not why anyone reads them, now. And your objection to their "teaching" is misplaced. They aren't "teaching" anyone anything they don't already know, or want to believe is do. That isn't how mythical texts work.

Um...
Nobody?
it's exactly how they are read by millions.

 

[PureX]

Um...
Nobody?
it's exactly how they are read by millions.

No it isn't. Not any more than any other historical fiction is. It's read just the same as any James Mitchener novel.

 

[Audie]

No it isn't. Not any more than any other historical fiction is.

Just for clarity-
you are stating that nobody actually believes
that Genesis is literally true?
No flood, none of it?