Is the Holy Spirit Misleading You?

[Astonished]

But He really meant it when He said it about the Amalekites !!

Except there is no historical or archaeological evidence for any "Amalekites."  They were sort of like the Klingons of their day.

That doesn't mean they didn't exist.  We had no evidence of the existence of the Hittites until the mid 1800s.  Many scholars denied their existence until archaeologists discovered evidence for it.  Now we know they did exist.

Oh, for fuck's sake. What significance is the proof of a civilization with similar attributes if it can't be confirmed to have conformed to whatever events described about them in a book full of demonstrable falsehoods? Abraham Lincoln existed, doesn't mean he was a fucking vampire hunter.

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I don't know of any.  Of course, none believed that King David existed until recently either, but we have now discovered that a King David did exist back then.  We have limited historical evidence from those times and are learning more through archaeological discoveries as time goes on. As far as I'm concerned the book is still open on the exodus, but at the same time, I'm not naive enough to believe that the bible events are blow by blow historical accounts.  I don't think that is its purpose.

I don't know of any scholars, certainly, a majority, who ever denied the existence of King David.  But, your abandoning of Biblical historicity is certainly a rupture with traditional Christian thought, which held the Bible to be completely historical.

There has always been different lines of thought concerning biblical interpretation within the church going all the way back to the church fathers.  When the Catholic church became "the church" they squeezed out most of the differing positions held by many sincere christians.  These are only my thoughts and I wouldn't want any christians reading this to form opinions based on my thoughts stated here, but rather verify for themselves.  One issue I have been looking at is whether the old testament is a literal historical account of events or whether it is a retelling of events passed down orally by the Israelite people.  I see the purpose of the old testament as telling the story of creation, our alienation from God, and of the people who carry the seed of the messiah looking forward to his coming.  People in those times didn't record detailed histories as we do today.  This isn't traditional thought, just my thought.

Again, of what significance is this if the vast majority of content in any of these texts is either demonstrably untrue or utterly irrelevant to anything? It's not like there is any wisdom within it that can't be found elsewhere or that all of the advice it offers is completely flawless.