"But what about the moderates?"

[DeistPaladin]

Why do we need to know, for example, whether someone called Moses actually lead the Jewish nation out of Egyptian slavery? It doesn't affect at all my actions, or my decision to follow Jesus. It makes a crucial part of the meta-narrative, but that works whether or not it is wholly, partly, or not at all true. The historicity is irrelevant.

Should we disregard the 10 Commandments, then? If we can't be sure whether Moses existed, how can we be sure God truly wrote the 10 Cs that Moses carried down?

How about Genesis? I refer to the first three chapters. If Eden was a metaphor and evolution truly explains the diversity of life, then what is Jesus saving us from?

Evolution doesn't work without a cycle of birth and death. If death didn't exist until sin came into the world, evolution couldn't function before sin. Sin came into the world by Adam and Eve, so Adam and Eve could not have evolved from simpler life forms.

The way Christians explain how a good and perfect god can create the universe and yet the universe be so flawed is because we live in a "fallen world". This fall took place because of Adam and Eve's sin. They brought sin into the universe. Jesus came to save us from this sin and by his death on the cross brings us the possibility of salvation. But if there was no Eden and no Adam and Eve, there was no "fall" and thus nothing to save us from and thus Christianity collapses. If you have some way to salvage it while discarding the OT, I'm keen to hear it.

Where it becomes perhaps more significant is NT historicity.

Are all the books in the NT historically reliable? I'm curious how you feel about the Book of Acts in particular. Acts is drenched in supernatural fireworks, even by the standards of the Bible. One can barely turn a page in that book without reading some account of angelic intervention, the casting out of demons, faith healing or blinding, a booming voice with a bright light, and other overt supernatural displays.

Do you think all that really happened? If so, why has your god become so quiet since? Your god was not so concerned about "free will" (not that the Bible is either) that he restrained himself during the time of Acts. Why not now, especially when we have mass communication and the ability to record such events?

I think what impressed me the most when I read the Bible is when I contrasted the universe of these stories vs. the one I live in. When you put the Bible down, you see a supernaturally tranquil universe, one governed by predictable laws and best understood through science and reason. The contrast with the universe of the Bible could not be more stark.

But unless one wants to insist on the gospels as Jesus-cam transcripts, there is oodles of room for a mixed view on NT historicity, within a strong faith

I think we're back to "how much of it?" and "how can we tell?" questions.

Rest assured, I'm not one to pick at nits like "what color was Jesus' robe?" Whether it was "scarlet" or "violet" could be a matter of perspective. On the other hand, "what decade was Jesus born in?" is a question I should think eye-witnesses would have gotten straight.

Luke is praised by apologists like McDowell as having "incredible accuracy" as a historian. Putting aside we know next to nothing about Luke aside from him being allegedly a traveling physician and companion of Paul, I see his accuracy as leaving much to be desired.

Luke places the pregnancy of Mary during the life of Herod the Great (bold emphasis added).

Luke 1:5 There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth...
1:13 But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John...
1:24 And after those days his wife Elisabeth conceived, and hid herself five months, saying,
1:26 And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,
1:27 To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.
1:31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.
1:39 And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Juda;
1:40 And entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth.
1:41 And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost:
1:42 And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.

So we've established that Elisabeth conceived John the Baptist (JtB) during the reign of Herod the Great, who died in March of 4 BCE. Jesus was conceived six months later. So we've established the conception could have happened no later than the end of 4 BCE.

Then Luke tells us the birth of Jesus happened during the administration of Quirinius of Syria and the census of the Judean province of Rome.

Luke 2:1 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.
2:2 (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) ...
2:5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

Rome acquired Judea as a province in 6 CE. Prior to that time, it was a quasi-independent kingdom, specifically a tributary ally of Rome under Herod the Great. There would have been no Roman census since Rome didn't rule over it directly. However, once Rome acquired Judea, they were doubtless anxious to know its population and taxation potential.

So either Mary was pregnant with Jesus for 10+ years, and perhaps those Sons of God take longer to bake in the oven, or Luke goofed on how long a period it was between the death of Herod the Great and the Roman acquisition of Judea.

I can provide many more problems with the historicity of the Gospels but that gives you a small taste.

(many Xian scholars don't take the pastoral letters as being written by Paul, for example)

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Scholarship has doubts about half the Pauline epistles.

I believe firmly that history is the friend of Xianity, not its enemy.

I'm quite comfortable arguing to the contrary if you like.

I'm not sure what is meant by TF, and Google doesn't help.

My apologies. I'm used to exchanges with apologists who affectionately know the Testimonium Flavianum of Josephus as simply the TF.

The meta-narrative of the Bible coming to a climax with Jesus I believe to be true. Which “parts are contaminated” is therefore a non-issue.

I'm curious as to which parts of JC's story you take seriously or if the entire biography is allegorical and therefore slips into the cracks of our knowledge of history.

[Ryantology]

I'm really not sure that's the case at all.

Why do we need to know, for example, whether someone called Moses actually lead the Jewish nation out of Egyptian slavery? It doesn't affect at all my actions, or my decision to follow Jesus. It makes a crucial part of the meta-narrative, but that works whether or not it is wholly, partly, or not at all true. The historicity is irrelevant.

It is absolutely vital to know if Genesis 1-3 represent historical fact. If they didn't, not one single word in the Bible is relevant or valid. The entire meta-narrative falls apart if the Original Sin is a mere metaphor.

If Moses is a fictional legend, God might be, too.

[The Grand Nudger]

Would it be less true if none of it happened, or equally as true?
(more true?)

-personally, I can't see how any of it having been actual events is a requirement or even a modifier.

[dyresand]

Would it be less true if none of it happened, or equally as true?
(more true?)

-personally, I can't see how any of it having been actual events is a requirement or even a modifier.

The flood myth has to many holes even moses parting the sea has issues.
Also a man living for hundreds of years not likely to happen back then if this was true what the hell did we do to live a shorter life.

[robvalue]

If the bible is not divinely true, then it must be assessed with regular historical rigour. In that case, the best you can confirm actually happened from the bible is a few non supernatural historical events. They do nothing to support God being real, or jesus, if there was one, doing anything special at all.

If you want to just believe all the supernatural stuff anyway, that's up to you, but it isn't a position that can be defended as logical in my opinion.

The New Testament has non-eye witness accounts of hearsay regarding jesus. Plus forgeries. So the best you could ever get out of this is what the authors believed that other people believed. What eye witnesses believe is not equal to truth, so what a second hand person believes about those beliefs is certainly no where near truth.

As a normal historical account, we would reject all of the NT as hearsay and we're left with nothing regarding any kind of claims about Jesus being anything more than "some guy" at best.

You're welcome to assume more, or give the evidence extra weight, but if you want anyone else to take it seriously, you need more than that.

If other sources existed which could confirm any of it beyond general history, that would be a start. But there isn't. And even if there was, you cannot prove supernatural claims with text.

[Whateverist]

Perhaps the bible isn't divinely inspired but only divinely inspiring. Kind of like when we all clapped to keep Tinkerbell alive as kids.

The Peter Pan story didn't work for everyone. Not everyone helped little Tinkerbell out in her hour of need either. Likewise some of us are just unmoved by the bible. Died for our sins? Yeah, whatever.

[robvalue]

Exactly. If people kept telling you Santa was real all your life, and scolded you or worse if you said otherwise, then guess what would happen? Add in threats of torture and it really makes no difference what they are coercing you to believe.

Eventually you make yourself believe it.

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Evidence I hear you say?

Strong correlation between place of birth and religion. Generally you accept, or are forced to accept, the most popular religion of the country you live in. Most christians would be muslim now if they were born in an islam country, and vice versa.

Certainly not what you would expect if either of them were actually true.

[xpastor]

If the Bible is "inspired" or "metaphoric", then we must have some means of discerning which parts are divine and which parts are human in origin.

I'm really not sure that's the case at all.

Why do we need to know, for example, whether someone called Moses actually lead the Jewish nation out of Egyptian slavery? It doesn't affect at all my actions, or my decision to follow Jesus. It makes a crucial part of the meta-narrative, but that works whether or not it is wholly, partly, or not at all true. The historicity is irrelevant. ...

Because of my personal history I find the question of biblical authority quite interesting. IMO it inevitably leads to an irreconcileable dilemma.

When I became a Christian as a young undergraduate, I was originally quite liberal, but I moved in a conservative direction and here is why.

Back then in the 1960s Situation Ethics was a much debated topic. In particular I remember one example a writer gave. Some noble crusading liberal politician is worn down by his struggle, but his batteries are recharged to fight the good fight by shagging his assistant. So obviously cheating on his wife was Ethically Right. I thought then—and still do—that this little story was incredibly bathetic.

It started me thinking along the lines that there must be a Rule of Faith and Life, and where would it be found if not in the Bible? I have since come to think of this as the conservative critique of liberal Christianity, and I still think that it holds water as a piece of formal logic.

Of course I was woefully ignorant of the unsavoury parts of the Bible. I stuck to the warm and fuzzy texts cited by the apologists along with the simple straightforward morality. As I have confessed many times, for years when I read the Bible, especially the Old Testament, I read it with my mind on cruise control, speed reading the words but not digesting the content (except for the warm and fuzzy parts). The truth is that all the ritual, dietary laws and wars in the OT are desperately boring, so it's hard to pay attention to the meaning.

Eventually I became a minister around age 40. Terrible mistake, but it didn't last very long. It slowed down my Bible reading. I often tried to stumble through a text in the original Greek or Hebrew.

I began to see how laughably primitive the ritual was. The priest is to smear the blood of the sacrifice on his right ear lobe, his right thumb and his right big toe. And there are the mistaken scientific assumptions: Joshua commands the sun to stand still although it is the earth that moves. Far more chilling, it became obvious that the God of the Old Testament was a genocidal maniac. In dozens of passages God exhorts the Israelites to slay all of their enemies, men and women, children and infants.

And that is the liberal critique of conservative Christianity, which is certainly valid. To summarize, the religious views of the Bible are too primitive and barbaric, the world-picture is too contradictory of modern science, and above all else the morality is so evil, that it cannot in any way be considered a source for a Rule of Faith and Life.

A word about historiciyy. It is the view of modern critical scholars that few, if any, of the genocides narrated in the Bible actually happened. Rather they were patriotic lies concocted by the authors of the OT writing centuries after the supposed events. Of course that doesn't let Yahweh off the hook. He is represented as ordering genocides.

I think if Christians honestly examine the facts they will find that their moral intuitions trace back not to their religion and the Bible but rather to the Enlightenment of the 18th century, which did so much to civilize the Christian God and his followers.

[Vicki Q]

But if there was no Eden and no Adam and Eve, there was no "fall" and thus nothing to save us from and thus Christianity collapses. If you have some way to salvage it while discarding the OT, I'm keen to hear it.

(Chokes a little. Spittle flies off in various directions.) Discard the OT? Absolutely not! It's an essential part of Christianity.

Perhaps some form of summary might help here. The Bible has a meta-narrative of 'Sin, exile, forgiveness, restoration'. Thus we have the story of Adam (the Hebrew word for humanity), gone wrong. We have a creation gone wrong. We have a nation, Israel, charged with sorting out the problems of humanity (the promise to Abraham), but also they kept going wrong.

And then you have Jesus. As Israel's Messiah, he accomplished Israel's rescue from it's own plight. As Israel-in-person he completed Israel's vocation to rescue humanity. As the truly human one, he re-established God's rule over the cosmos. Three stories, one meta-narrative.

I'm curious how you feel about the Book of Acts in particular.

Since I owe the above to N.T.Wright, I might as well just go for a quote here- “None of this means that Acts can be used naively as it stands as a historical source. But it means that we must hold off from dogmatic negativity, and look at the actual evidence afresh...nothing massive will rest on Acts.” There's history there, some of it is just plain accurate, but best not to use it uncritically.

Science studies the repeatable; history bumps its nose against the unrepeatable.

There would have been no Roman census since Rome didn't rule over it directly...Luke goofed on how long a period it was between the death of Herod the Great and the Roman acquisition of Judea.

There's plenty of room for such a census (if Rome wanted one, a wave of a sword would have done the trick). However perhaps Luke's point is being missed- the census was set at the time of the great revolt of Judas the Galilean. Luke knows of the revolt, and allows Gamaliel to compare the Jesus movement with that rebellion. Luke is aligning Jesus with the Jewish kingdom movements, with their motto “no king but God”.

I believe firmly that history is the friend of Xianity, not its enemy.

I'm quite comfortable arguing to the contrary if you like...

I'm curious as to which parts of JC's story you take seriously or if the entire biography is allegorical

The questions of history supporting Xianity and NT accuracy would require very long answers. My new years resolution for 2014 was to do shorter posts; and while there's still time...

For the latter, there are a range of historical tools available (e.g. criteria of continuity/discontinuity). For my general line on the former, other posts I've made on this forum should enlighten and confuse equally.

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.....
I think if Christians honestly examine the facts they will find that their moral intuitions trace back not to their religion and the Bible but rather to the Enlightenment of the 18th century, which did so much to civilize the Christian God and his followers.

I feel guilty about not giving this important post a (proper) reply. Experience has shown that engaging with one person properly is far better than trying to engage with several.

I might risk the wrath of the mods by resurrecting this after Xmas.

[The Grand Nudger]

Perhaps some form of summary might help here. The Bible has a meta-narrative of 'Sin, exile, forgiveness, restoration'. Thus we have the story of Adam (the Hebrew word for humanity), gone wrong. We have a creation gone wrong. We have a nation, Israel, charged with sorting out the problems of humanity (the promise to Abraham), but also they kept going wrong.

A poor narrative from the word go. "Captain Save a Ho" doesn't save the ho..and bonus, we're all ho's. Despite masterful strokes of brilliance in any single narrative the entire tome, taken as a whole, is less than compelling...even as fiction. You have a habit, btw, of intrinsically evasive positions regarding the historicity of the bible - and the importance of that historicity. It is not - to my mind- important that the bible be historically accurate in the least....but I think that it's myth. Anyone who imagines some kernel of truth in christ is not going to be able to lean on such a forgiving position. That "some of it is true" business....nonsense Vicki.

See you after christmas.