The Bilble the oldest living form of written history we have

[Brian37]

Yes, I know that's what you were saying, I'm suggesting that you've got that wrong.  

Isaiah, for example, doesn't pepper in real places or people or events to lend the false appearance of credibility.  The real places people and events were there, exile was on the horizon. That's why it was credible.  The prophets of the ot were writing social and political commentary as believers - not engaging in some vast conspiracy to fool a reader hundreds of years into the future.

You keep missing my point. If one is writing a story, or movie script, or even starting a cult, and you want attention for it to give it appeal, even if you truely believe that shit, it is going to motivate you to write the story in retrofit it with real people and real places. 

We cannot crawl into the minds of the writers and determin their motivation. That is not what I mean by "false sense of credibility". Knowingly or unwittingly, the goal of the writers was to attract people to the stories. 

"False sense of credibility" can include fooling onself. One can truely believe a falsehood and it still can be false at the same time.

L Ron Hubbard started a religion, but it took others buying his garbage and perpetuating it as a reality for it to grow to what it is today. L Ron Hubbard employed tactics of psudo science and mythology of prior religious motifs to appeal to others. 

The Jesus mythology was merely simply another competition between religions. Like Coke Vs Pepsi. Soda is real for sure, but it doesn't mean soda can magically turn you into a frog. It doesn't matter if someone can point out that Coke is real, or it's CEO who started the company was a real person, people writing about that Company after the fact would not get away with trying to claim Coke has magic powers.

[The Grand Nudger]

The ot prophets werent starting a cult. They didn't need to borrow any credibility. They were speaking to people who already believed about events that were happening.

[vulcanlogician]

You're a history buff. Did the Christians (historically speaking) do unto others as they wished to be done unto them? Or did they treat people cruelly and persecute them, all while lamenting every bit of persecution that came their direction?

This is the contradiction at the heart of Christianity.  There is the meek and mild Jesus preaching tolerance, as well as the Jesus teaching fire and brimstone.

For reals. 

I think if you take the Sermon on the Mount at its word (and it may have been composed by Jesus, or it may have been composed by some jewish guy putting words into the mouth of Jesus) but whoever composed it, they made a serious moral argument for pacifism). But any time you bring up pacifism to a Christian, they immediately bring up a list of excuses why they don't have to be pacifistic. DESPITE what is written in their holy book... words that they presume come from the mouth of God. All they have are excuses. Not one of them wants to support the radical pacifism that is advanced by the author of the Sermon on the Mount.

They use it when they want to portray their religion as compassionate, but what they really think is worth practicing is the opposite. Smoke and mirrors. Slippery evasion. That's what you get when you discuss nonviolence with a Christian. Typically, anyway. I don't want to pigeonhole anyone. There are exceptions to this rule. But I'm just pointing out the rule. And how it is the rule.

[Jackalope]

I believe that the OP is an atheist in precisely the same way that I believe I am a fire truck..

[Brian37]

The ot prophets werent starting a cult.  They didn't need to borrow any credibility.  They were speaking to people who already believed about events that were happening.

The only difference between a religion and a cult is popularity and political power. 

Ultimately all religions that rise, are mixtures of of competing with prior and surrounding religions, full of motifs borrowed or stolen from surrounding or prior religions. It is like that old game where you sit in a circle, tell a story, and by the time it gets back to you it is deluded with the imput of those it was passed to. 

Buddhism is a spin off of Hinduism. Islam is a spin off of the Abrahamic traditions, and Christianity is a spin off of Jewish and Jewish are a spin off of Canaanite polythiesm. Even the Rasta Religion is a spin off of African Christian/Jewish traditions.

And there is no such thing as a "Prophet". "Prophet" is simply a superstitous word like Oracle or Soothsayer or Seer. 

All religions that have arrisin in human history are not started by humans with magic super powers to predict the future. They are started by mere humans who either fool themselves or deliberately con others into convincing them that they have some divine power.

[The Grand Nudger]

That's all well and good, but, again, still suggesting that you're wrong. Whether you choose to call them a cult or a religion - and regardless of your issues with calling them prophets...


.......they weren't trying to and didn't have to convince anyone that their religion or cult or prophecy were true by peppering in real geography and history-as-motif.

The people they were speaking to were already in, and the events were happening to them in that then-present. OT prophecies are explications of the perceptions of a group of believers in the face of current, impending, and complete disaster. They didn't need to have superpowers to notice or predict that a relatively small society fractured by internecine conflict pressed between military juggernauts would not survive the ensuing war - a war in which they weren't the targets, merely in the way on the road between targets. Lo and behold, that's exactly what happened.

[Jehanne]

So knowing that we have lots of historicity in the bible and can learn about the regions of the world and cultures, don't throw the whole book out just b/c your an atheist.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is the (second) oldest surviving document from the ancient World:

Epic of Gilgamesh

Here's a list of the New Testament documents:

Early Christian Writings

[Fake Messiah]

Talking about "histories" of the world, Carl Sagan mentioned in his show a "history" of the world written by Berossus which had in its first volume span of over 400k years from the creation to the great flood or over 100 times longer than the old testament chronology.

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