Diuretic said:
And what was the origin of the Old Testament? I'm pretty sure that much of it came from Judaism?
The Old Testament contains much of the same text as the Torah, which had the primary purposes of chronicling the history of the Isrealites and laying down the rules which they must follow.
And when were they written? How long after the events? Who wrote them? Don't take my questions as being attempts to dig at you, they're not. I'm just wanting to put things in perspective, not threaten anyone's faith.
And I'm more than happy to comply. The original date of the writing of the gospels is unknown, but is assumed to be sometime during the events listed in the book of Acts, as they were written by eyewitness accounts, something only available within about three to six decades of the events in question. The authors were also eyewitnesses who were executed or exiled, cutting the window short. The reason they're hard to pin down, though, is because, at that time, belief in Christ was a capital crime, so the gospels weren't able to be 'published.' The writings were hidden and passed around, copied and recopied one page at a time in order to hide them from the Roman Soldiers. Now, you'll hear many people site 325 AD at the Council of Nicea as the date the gospels were written, but that was merely the date when the first Christian Bible was assembled and published.
I don't. I'm interested in the representation of historical fact in The Bible. Given the origins of the Old Testament I would think that it's interesting just to read it because of its historical accounts and when scientific evidence is found to corroborate some of the accounts that's really interesting. The legends of the flood, for example, are found not just in the Old Testament but are in various cultures which means, for me at least, that there is something in it. However I wouldn't rely on it as a historically fully valid text.
Many things must be put in perspective. The flooding of the entire Earth is unlikely, as the water had to come from, and subsequently go, somewhere, added to the fact that all existing species of animal could not fit in a boat of the dimensions listed. What is more likely is that some sort of superstorm flooded the known Earth. Both are unlikely, but God is, of course, omnipotent, and given my observations of God and how he works, I am more likely to believe the latter. What you have to remember is that the people who wrote the words, while inspired by God, lacked the understanding of the Earth required to list a fully scientific account of what they saw, so they wrote the appearance.
Take, for example, the ten plagues.
The first plague is that the river turned to blood. If it was an exceptionally rainy season in the Ethiopian highlands, the Nile would flow high and gather up the reddish, clay heavy silt, causing the river to run red. The fish would have died as the bacteria and other animals that were washed downstream would have eaten up all their food. Leaving the mystique of the myth, it is still unexplained how Moses could have caused fresh water already in containers to 'turn to blood.'
The second plague is frogs. Just like the fish, the frogs would have no food, but unlike the fish, they would be able to hop onto dry land in search of more.
The third plague is the plague of lice, a mistranslation, as the word more likely refers to mosquitos, which would have thrived in the pestilent water.
The fourth plague is the plague of flies. Swarms of flies so thick that they can suffocate a man have been seen around the Nile before, and they would have been attracted to the dead fish.
The fifth plague strikes cattle dead. Chalking it up again to the high Nile, anthrax, a disease which strikes mainly cattle, would have thrived, likely causing these deaths.
The sixth plague is the plague of boils. When non-weaponized cattle anthrax hits human beings, it causes large, painful, disgusting boils on the skin.
The seventh plague is thunder and hail. Given how the seasons of the Nile follow, a season of exceptionally bad weather would follow from the same conditions that caused the high Nile in the first place, leading to severe thunderstorms and hail.
The eighth plague is locusts. Swarms of locusts routinely cross the Sahara and other Middle Eastern deserts. With heavy rains in other places thick with crops, the locust swarms would likely have followed the Nile north into Egypt after the hailstorms had passed.
The ninth plague is darkness. The clay dust kicked up in desert windstorms can entirely blot out the sun in affected areas, causing darkness.
The only things left unexplained within the scope of scientific evidence were the turning of a staff into a snake, Moses' prediction of the plagues, the incredible sequence of coincidences causing the plagues to hit in rapid succession, and, of course, the almighty tenth plague, death of the firstborn son. The full events would have been completely omitted from Egyptian histories as the history of ancient Egypt leaves out anything that made the Egyptians look bad, and the defeat of their divine Pharoah and his army by the god of the slaves would have been far too embarassing to want to remember.
