On The Reliability Of The Old Testament

Viktor

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Sep 21, 2013
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Robot Check

"In a detailed, comprehensive, and entertaining manner, Kitchen draws on an unprecedented range of historical data from the ancient Near East -- the Bible's own world -- and uses it to soundly reassess both the biblical record and the critics who condemn it. Working back from the latest periods (for which hard evidence is readily available) to the remotest times, Kitchen systematically shows up the many failures of favored arguments against the Bible and marshals pertinent permanent evidence from antiquity's inscriptions and artifacts to demonstrate the basic honesty of the Old Testament writers.

Enhanced with numerous tables, figures, and maps, On the Reliability of the Old Testament is a must-read for anyone interested in the question of biblical truth."
 
The old and New Testament books and letters are primary sources of witnesses and the compiled accounts the Apostles composed.

Secularists cannot accept them because they contin Supernatural references that might not be so 'Super' any more with QM.
 
Lot's of good wisdom in there. Unfortunately the meaning for the most part has been lost through time.
Some things have been lost, like the Aposlte Peters reference to Christ going to Hell to preach to the damned, but I think most of it is fairly well understood due to the centuries of commentaries going back to Jerome at least and Origen.
 
Robot Check

"In a detailed, comprehensive, and entertaining manner, Kitchen draws on an unprecedented range of historical data from the ancient Near East -- the Bible's own world -- and uses it to soundly reassess both the biblical record and the critics who condemn it. Working back from the latest periods (for which hard evidence is readily available) to the remotest times, Kitchen systematically shows up the many failures of favored arguments against the Bible and marshals pertinent permanent evidence from antiquity's inscriptions and artifacts to demonstrate the basic honesty of the Old Testament writers.

Enhanced with numerous tables, figures, and maps, On the Reliability of the Old Testament is a must-read for anyone interested in the question of biblical truth."
The OT (like the NT) is theology first and foremost and only incidentally historical. The Israelites had their legends and heros like every other culture, probably based on real people and events, with a bit of 'God was on our side' thrown in. There probably was a Moses but too many legends grew up around him for us to ever know the real Moses. His birth story is a good example of embellishment to support a theology. In short, the OT is like every other work of man or in this case, many men.
 
Lot's of good wisdom in there. Unfortunately the meaning for the most part has been lost through time.
Some things have been lost, like the Aposlte Peters reference to Christ going to Hell to preach to the damned, but I think most of it is fairly well understood due to the centuries of commentaries going back to Jerome at least and Origen.
I have my doubts that the meaning of the first 11 chapters of Genesis was lost even before Moses recorded it.
 
Lot's of good wisdom in there. Unfortunately the meaning for the most part has been lost through time.
Some things have been lost, like the Aposlte Peters reference to Christ going to Hell to preach to the damned, but I think most of it is fairly well understood due to the centuries of commentaries going back to Jerome at least and Origen.
I have my doubts that the meaning of the first 11 chapters of Genesis was lost even before Moses recorded it.
I think the meaning of the first part of Genesis indeed is lost. It's history, of course, but it doesn't chronicle natural origins; it chronicles covenant origins.
 
Lot's of good wisdom in there. Unfortunately the meaning for the most part has been lost through time.
Some things have been lost, like the Aposlte Peters reference to Christ going to Hell to preach to the damned, but I think most of it is fairly well understood due to the centuries of commentaries going back to Jerome at least and Origen.
I have my doubts that the meaning of the first 11 chapters of Genesis was lost even before Moses recorded it.
I think the meaning of the first part of Genesis indeed is lost. It's history, of course, but it doesn't chronicle natural origins; it chronicles covenant origins.
My two pet hermeneutical theories about the first third of Genesis is that:
1) It is largely allegory and not to be interpreted literally. There is core theological Truth involved, God created the universe fo mankind, and we do have a moral purpose and a moral Truth to guide us. Nihilism is thus invalid in the light of Genesis. It is interesting to read Genesis and then the Ecclesiastes book of nihilistic whining.

2a) To the degree that there is literal objective phenomena recorded in Genesis, it is not the traditional interpretation. I think the first two chapters record oral traditions about the struggle to survive the Toba event and its attendant four year volcanic winter. The passages describe the revival of the Earths ecology, not a creation of everything from nothing. The creation of everything from nothing is all in the first verese.

2b) The fall of mankind is an allegorical record of mans conversion from hunting gathering life to agricultural life. Cain likely feared Able and killed him pre-emptively thinking ABle would do the same, as Able was a hunter.
 
Just because parts of the texts are obviously allegorical doesn't mean people are free to make up whatever they want it to say. They meant to make specific points, which is why one reads the entire 'books', not just single out verses, and the four 'voices' are important as well.
 
I missed the part where Adam and Eve hunted and ate animals while in the Garden. I'll have to look that up.
 
Much of the Old Testament is deep and hidden Scripture, if the five books of Moses were passed down orally during the 430 years of bondage in Egypt, and even the Kings and Chronicles may have been subtly altered under the Babylonian captivity. And the four major prophets, and twelve minor prophets, had to survive the destruction of Jerusalem and the persecution of the Maccabees, although their recordings of Scripture including the Wisdom of Solomon, were not accepted by the Jewish establishment.

The concept of "eternal life" as such was not foreign to the Hebrews in the land of Goshen in Egypt, although it was heavily censored during certain periods of time much later on.
 
Much of the Old Testament is deep and hidden Scripture, if the five books of Moses were passed down orally during the 430 years of bondage in Egypt,
Only Genesis could have been passed down like that, dude.

Not true; they had several sophisticated memory devices they implemented, and like today in certain Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox communities scholarship is a full time and lifetime long career. Look up 'Chiastic Structures', for starters. The language itself is a partial memory device, even individual letters have symbolic contexts, and of course numerology also. Allegory and other literary devices, such as poetry, is also a tool for conveying multiple meanings to words and writings efficiently. It's actually pretty cool stuff considering it was developed in such ancient times. It's scrolls and then books that have made people lazy. The Greek language made it even easier among scholar in the immediate pre-Christian era, especially in translating to other languages.
 
Much of the Old Testament is deep and hidden Scripture, if the five books of Moses were passed down orally during the 430 years of bondage in Egypt, and even the Kings and Chronicles may have been subtly altered under the Babylonian captivity. And the four major prophets, and twelve minor prophets, had to survive the destruction of Jerusalem and the persecution of the Maccabees, although their recordings of Scripture including the Wisdom of Solomon, were not accepted by the Jewish establishment.

The concept of "eternal life" as such was not foreign to the Hebrews in the land of Goshen in Egypt, although it was heavily censored during certain periods of time much later on.

Such Christian beliefs as faith healing begins with Exodus, as well. Many non-Jewish people accompanied the Jews in their travels, and were 'there' when Moses handed down the laws on the Mountain.
 
Robot Check

"In a detailed, comprehensive, and entertaining manner, Kitchen draws on an unprecedented range of historical data from the ancient Near East -- the Bible's own world -- and uses it to soundly reassess both the biblical record and the critics who condemn it. Working back from the latest periods (for which hard evidence is readily available) to the remotest times, Kitchen systematically shows up the many failures of favored arguments against the Bible and marshals pertinent permanent evidence from antiquity's inscriptions and artifacts to demonstrate the basic honesty of the Old Testament writers.

Enhanced with numerous tables, figures, and maps, On the Reliability of the Old Testament is a must-read for anyone interested in the question of biblical truth."
I started reading the Old Testament since the first of the year.
Right now Im in Job. Going thru it line by line and verse by verse makes it a tough load
 
Such Christian beliefs as faith healing ...
I refuse to patronize unfaithful doctors who promote and compel adultery and wholesale prostitution through birth control, abortion, circumcision, the routine extraction of wisdom teeth, and other brutal and unnecessary carnage of human flesh.

If only doctors had the faith to refrain from actively inflicting harm on their patients through unnecessary drugging and butchery, then half the battle would be won, and healing would indeed begin to take place in faith.

But the works done by doctors without faith are irremediably harmful and hurtful to the human body with whose care they are charged.

Philosophers, for example, are educated in the human condition, and in human processes of thought, and are quite capable of telling us, up to acceptable differences of opinion, if something is wrong with our thinking or not. Doctors view the human brain only as a lump of fatty tissue to be lobotomized for profit at the request of an unloving, abusive, and faithless family, without respect for the patient's own wishes, desires, and well-being.
 

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