TRANSPONDER wrote: ↑Fri Sep 24, 2021 7:18 am
To me, that's the whole question of Faith vs ..science, really. As a kid with a fascination with astronomy and later a teen with a fascination with archaeology, I thought the right way to reason was to pick a theory (hypothesis) and then argue for that theory (personal preference-bias) until the Authorities finally decided which answer went in the text books. And teachers didn't help as they just downloaded the textbooks into our heads and hadn't time or inclination to 'teach the controversy'.
It wasn't (shockingly) until I started on apologetics (following a challenge by a work colleague to 'really read the Bible' and the rise of the internet coinciding with Creationism) that I came across critical thinking and the idea of not investing bias into a favoured theory or belief but saying 'I don't know' and being able to assess the evidence as it looks and what it indicates without making the credibility -cut to investing belief in this or that theory/hypothesis/explanation.
So this is a way of looking at history books. And history is a bit dodgy. But what are you going to do? Put the battle of Kadesh in the history books or leave it out because we only have Ramesses IInd's propaganda proclamation about it? We have to use what info we have and indirect clues (the treaty he made with the Hittites throws light on who really won that one) and come to some provisional conclusions and let the debate go on. But what goes into the textbooks isn't the ongoing debate,c but what we can be sure of - neither side conquered the other... and let the debate go on.
This is relevant because the Bible apologetic side can make a case for regarding as history some questionable and even dubious stuff. For a long time, the Saxon invasion was taken as gospel but now the debate is more about cultural change in Europe from Roman style to Germanic. Yes, science is changing its' mind on that one, but that the cultural change happened and you can put it in the text books.
So what about the Bible? The Bible is not a history book. So what? What is in it and what claims it makes and what the internal text analysis tells us and what light history sheds on it counts more than sticking labels on it. Especially those designed to exempt it from critical analysis
At one time 19th c archaeology illustrated (it was thought that confirmation was hardly required
). the Bible. Babylon and Assyria was dug up and Jericho was there, collapsed walls and all. And so Biblical archaeology was evolved. But science, yet again, kept throwing up evidence that undermined the Bible. Tyre was rebuilt. Babylon was never really destroyed. Jericho's collapsed walls were not of 'conquest' date. The geological and palaeontological evidence did not support a Creation nor Flood and more recently, the building-work of David and Solomon look more like later work, maybe Omri's time. Pilate wasn't really like the guy in the gospels. There were no new tombs in Jerusalem in Jesus' time, and there are doubts that a Nazareth big enough to merit a synagogue even existed in the 1st c AD.
Biblical archaeology like the evidence of palaeontology has changed from digging up evidence that confirms the Bible to the Christian apologists trying to Interpret the evidence dug up to make it support the Bible when really it doesn't. 'Teach the controversy' doesn't extend to teaching the kids that Paul, not Jesus, is now thought to be the originator of Christianity.
We know how that works. Faith -based support for the Bible tries to explain away doubts. It's not easy to put aside bias on either side, but one can still explain the implications. I well remember
the Talpiot tomb flurry. A tomb (way south of Jerusalem, I believe) was found with sarcophagi with the name of Jesus and companions on them. The believers went mad with excitement. Final proof of Jesus!
Final proof, we (bibleskeptics) said, that he was dead and his body remained dead. The following silence was deafening.
I won't further try your patience, friends and folks, with parallels from the Babylonian flood and Ark, or Arthur and Troy, but would just observe that the truth will out in the end and even the debatable like whether the lack of a Passover release custom means that the trial story is a crock means that the believer can believe on Faith but also there is good reason for the doubter to doubt on evidence.
It may enable an individual to keep their faith by fiddling or denying the evidence, but it's a loss for Biblefaith if people look in and see that dismissal of evidence as 'mere Opinion' is not going to sway the jury.
