historical merits of the bible?

[The Grand Nudger]

Even so, being a large work generally well preserved in it's contents if not it's entirety - it still covers a stretch of time in which very little (if any) other sources of that kind of information remain (yes....biblenuts had a hand in that, but them's the breaks).

[FatAndFaithless]

Even so, being a large work generally well preserved in it's contents if not it's entirety - it still covers a stretch of time in which very little (if any) other sources of that kind of information remain (yes....biblenuts had a hand in that, but them's the breaks).

I suppose so. Much of it depends (again) on what exactly he means by historical merit. *shakes fist at OP*

[Wyrd of Gawd]

It's comparable to reading the Book of Mormon to understand Western Hemisphere history.

[ignoramus]

Sorry for the confusion guys. I truthfully don't have the vocab to express my thoughts properly.
Ok, eg, with lord of the rings, we love it because of the creative genius of Tolkien.
He defines with great detail the world in which the story unfolds.
We love it because he's not trying to insult our intelligence. He's not trying to prove to anybody that it actually happened.

What if Tolkien had actually used a real world backdrop to tell his fantasy story.
Real countries, real mountains, real people, together with imaginary places, wizards, warlocks, goblins, the "ring", etc.

Is the bible a bit like this? Can we decifer what is real in it's time and what isn't?
If any of the backdrop to the bible story is real, eg, people, mountains, towns, etc, has any of these facts been discovered by historians or archeologists as a direct result of the text of the bible. And only because of these texts.

That's what I mean by "merit".
I'd be surprised if some merit wasn't gained from it.

If I was to write about something miraculous, and expect the reader to believe it, I'd at least set the backdrop as
real, otherwise you wouldn't get your foot in the door.

Eg2, if I wanted you to believe in a real batman or superman, I wouldn't have then living in Metropolis or Gotham city. I would start with NY and Chicago.

[ThomM]

Guys, I really enjoy reading posts which dissect contents of the bible and analyse , scrutinize and find discrepancies.

Let's take away the sky daddy bits and all the morality and parables, etc.

What is left?
As a historical body of text, has it provided any historical or scientific information which is generally considered "fact" due to the empirical evidence noted in it, which cannot be validated by other writings of the time.

Eg: social migration, spread of ethnicities, topological accuracies, technologies of the period, etc.

This alone should give the bible "some" merit, albeit for all the wrong reasons for those who consider it sacred.

Thoughts?

Who cares?

I am pretty sure that there is an England - and in England there is A city of London

And yet - if you think that has merit enough to consider James Bond, or Harry Potter - Or Sherlock Holmes - or Peter Pan real - you would be WRONG.

People writing fictional stories often include real places - real things in their stories. The question is not if there are actual real things in the story - the question is - is the rest of the story real - and there are TOO many thing over the centuries =-that were considered to be real - that turned out NOT to be real. People lost their lives over this.

The bible is nothing more than just another collection of religious Myth - equal to the Koran - the Egyptian Book of the Dead - and even the Vedas.

[vodkafan]

I am a bit late on this one. I think ignoramus asked a good question worthy of looking at, even if I am not qualified to answer him properly. Of course there is valuable cultural history knowledge buried in there. Just dismissing the whole book as a pile of poo is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Leaving the God fairy tale aside (the bathwater) the problem is that not much is verified by other sources. Jesus and his brother James are mentioned in some Roman writings I think.

[DeistPaladin]

Jesus and his brother James are mentioned in some Roman writings I think.

Josephus, in the "Jamesian Reference".

It obliquely mentions "...the brother of Jesus, James..."

That's it. Just the name.

Later in that paragraph, he tells us which Jesus, "Bar Damneus" (son of Damneus).

Jesus was a common name.

[Angrboda]

Of course there is valuable cultural history knowledge buried in there.

The bible is unreliable as a historical text. It's also unreliable when it comes to the culture of the time. Nothing is what it seems. Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman make the case that the torah was codified in the 6th and 7th centuries B.C., yet it claims to describe a period long before then. In doing so, its authors appear to have created anachronisms by describing prior centuries using the context they were familiar with at the time they were writing. And examples such as the geographical mistakes in Mark make it clear that there is no part of the bible which is left untouched by persistent issues of unreliability. It's impossible to say which parts of the text are actually historical and which are merely fanciful, so the whole is useless for historical information.

[vodkafan]

The bible is unreliable as a historical text. It's also unreliable when it comes to the culture of the time. Nothing is what it seems. Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman make the case that the torah was codified in the 6th and 7th centuries B.C., yet it claims to describe a period long before then. In doing so, its authors appear to have created anachronisms by describing prior centuries using the context they were familiar with at the time they were writing. And examples such as the geographical mistakes in Mark make it clear that there is no part of the bible which is left untouched by persistent issues of unreliability. It's impossible to say which parts of the text are actually historical and which are merely fanciful, so the whole is useless for historical information.

Ah. I guess I stand corrected. Thanks for that !

[The Grand Nudger]

The bible is unreliable as a historical text. It's also unreliable when it comes to the culture of the time. Nothing is what it seems. Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman make the case that the torah was codified in the 6th and 7th centuries B.C., yet it claims to describe a period long before then.

We don't have to take it's claims about dates at face value to squeeze the juice from the lemon. The lemon says "try me, I'm an apple" - so I squeeze it, just to make sure the lemon isn't fucking with me for shits and giggles.

In doing so, its authors appear to have created anachronisms by describing prior centuries using the context they were familiar with at the time they were writing. And examples such as the geographical mistakes in Mark make it clear that there is no part of the bible which is left untouched by persistent issues of unreliability. It's impossible to say which parts of the text are actually historical and which are merely fanciful, so the whole is useless for historical information.

Yet we do conclude that Kings probably describes the sort of low lvl warfare that was common to the experience -of the author at the time of the work- fairly accurately. That prophets do seem to be inline with other surviving socio-political commentary and diatribes -of the time that any particular "prophet" was "prophesying". That both of these things are attested to by independent lines of verification. I wouldn't call it more or less reliable than any other book about ghosts, personally. They might get the part about ghosts wrong - but as human authors they will invariably tell us about the time in which -they- are writing. They can do this by accident, even if they don't intend to.