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Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Where do you Draw the Line?

Here's a question for Christians, where do you draw the line between myth and history, with regards to the Old Testament?

Let me elaborate. (I discussed this in some depth last month, but this post is mainly to pose the question)

It is quite plainly obvious that the first few chapters of Genesis are entirely mythic in nature. In fact there are enormous problems with the rest of Genesis too, anachronisms in the patriarchal narratives, including place names that didn't exist at the time etc. We have similar problems with the exodus account, along with other problems including the fact that Egypt was in control of the entire Mesopotamian area. To compound that problem, there hasn't been any evidence uncovered that Hebrew speaking people were ever enslaved in Egypt, or that over a million people lived in the Sinai Desert for 40 years.

When it comes to the stories following Moses, about the conquest of Canaan etc. (I've done a post on this before) the problems become even greater. The Bible has the Israelites destroying cities that didn't exist at the time. To me, this is pretty convincing evidence that all of the Biblical 'history' up to this point is fiction.

Next is the Judges period, and then the United Monarchy under David and Solomon, which seems to me like it is mostly fictitious too. One lone inscription has been found mentioning the 'House of David' and no evidence has ever been found of Solomon's existence. In fact all of the evidence discovered thus far contradicts the idea of a United Monarchy altogether!

The later kings such as Ahaz, Hezekiah etc. are actually verified to have existed, though the Biblical account of them is rather biased and polemical, reporting victories when they were actually defeated, tainting successful kings with the 'evil' brush because they weren't monotheists and so on.

To me, it seems obvious that there is a blurry line somewhere between Solomon and the Babylonian exile. Though this would be a position that is unacceptable to a Christian, since without an actual Moses or Abraham, there is no first covenant, so Jesus' second covenant is meaningless. It would also mean that since there was no united monarchy of David, then the Davidic messiahship is also meaningless, and therefore Jesus could not be the Jewish messiah.

If there are any Christians reading this, I would like to know where you draw the historical line, and why.

4 comments:

  1. All of this debate, all of these questions, all of these facts, will eventually leave the believer with one defense: faith. Faith is not able to explain anything in your blog, but it is always the "last line of defense".

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  2. We could sit and discuss the validity of your "facts" and the historic record of the Torah and Bible for quite a while. However, I am more interested in why you appear to have such bitterness toward the Christian faith.
    I apologize for whomever hurt you or misrepresented the faith to you. If you truly want answers for your spiritual questions ask God to reveal them to you. But if your just in the mood to poke or cajole, most Christians just won't play that game.

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  3. I'm not bitter. I used to be a Christian. I was raised as a Christian. I think I understand the Christian faith quite well. Asking God didn't do me any good when I was a Christian, so I turned to reason, and it revealed to me that my religion was false.

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