About other gods-question for theists

[Jenny A]

Just because you can look on the net and see two sides to a question doesn't mean that the both have an equal claim to truth. Here's the particular discrepancy you tried to answer:

The Bible says Jesus was born during Census of 6-7 CE and reign of Herod. Sometime after Jesus' birth, Joseph takes Mary and Jesus to Egypt and stays there with them until Herod dies. Jesus is supposed to have died in Jerusalem in about 32 CE.

The problem is that there is no King Herod or even a combination of Herods that squares with the 6-7 CE birth date.

Again, I find two sides to the story. Check out these.

http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/200...px#Article

Why do you totally trust Josephus?

http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/201...ensus.aspx

You tend to trust secular historical evidence as factual and biblical evidence as non-factual.

Why do I trust secular historical evidence more than the Bible? Not so much because it is secular, but because unlike the Bible it is not the only history we have from the time period. When looking at historical sources, whether it is contemporary; whether it is corroborated by other contemporary sources; whether it has a motive political, religious, or otherwise; what we know about the author; how reliable our copy is all matter.

Josephus is corroborated by other sources. The Bible is not though there are many places where one would expect there to be corroborative evidence but there isn't. There are places the NT Bible is corroborated. We are really sure both that John the Baptist and Paul existed because they are corroborated. Jesus is not. But those are few and far between. More often the Bible is contradicted by contemporary sources.

We do not know who wrote the gospels. They are written by anonymous, thirty to 60 years after Jesus' death. They contradict one another. With the exception of stone engravings, we mostly know who our secular sources were.

Also, various parts of the Bible are written to show the fulfillment of OT prophecy. Many of the contradictions are found in the NT Bible revolve around this issue.

This does not mean all religious sources should be tossed out. Kings and Chronicles in the OT are to some extent collaborated elsewhere, and are therefore more believable. This is not true of the rest of the OT despite various places where there ought to be Egyptian corroboration.

Also much of what we know about the social and local history of the Middle Ages comes from monks. But they are contemporary accounts and they do independently corroborate each other and are corroborated by secular documents. That is an advantage they share with Josephus, but not the Bible.

With regard to miracles, like the virgin birth, I am extremely skeptical, because extra ordinary events require extra ordinary proof. The Bible with it's 30 year later anonymous authors does not nearly reach that level of proof.