(November 30, 2014 at 5:47 pm)Lemonvariable72 Wrote: When I was in high school guitar hero was a insanely popular game, everyone loved it. But many in the music business soon found out that many in to guitar hero had a harder time learning real guitar. It was because they made assumptions about the song based on their guitar hero experience. Experience and assumptions they made about the song would be flatly wrong.
I wonder if archeology suffers from the same problem. Perhaps we have been assuming the bible is even remotely accurate. I would propose that we throw the book out wholesale and try to eliminate all assumptions of the ancient world based on the Bible. That way we can start with a clean slate, and draw our conclusions based on the historical evidence. If that eventually does prove the bible accurate then so be it.
All history is corrupted by the views of the people who record it, it's not a problem limited to Biblical studies.
A lot of Americans will tell you that the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary to bring the war to a conclusion. However, there are others who see America as the first and only country ever to use nuclear weapons against fellow humans and see it as a very evil act. The reality of the atomic bombs is relative to the individual, as is all history.
Historical and archaeological studies, by their nature, have highly subjective elements. Sections of the bible is known to be at least 2000 years old (the dead sea scrolls contain biblical fragments that can be dated to approx. 150 BEC), it is a viable historic document, same as the Rosetta stone or the Gilgamesh cuneiform. The story might not be real but the setting is informative.
MM
"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions" - Leonardo da Vinci
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
