I really hate to say this—but Byers™ Point exceeded. (@Dan_Eastwood, do you want to record the official time of my expiration? You can enter for Cause of Death: “acute exasperation”—even though my spell-checker insists on exacerbation, although there is an element of truth to that.)
I’m heading to the dugout for the seventh-inning stretch. (And I’m telling the coach that this is a good time to send in a rookie who needs some game time.)
AND now you see why I think it’s not a useful argument. A scholar with whom you could have a really deep discussion is put off by your approach, leaving you to argue with those who have no idea what they are talking about.
Peaceful Science is NOT FaceBook. We have a broad mix of scientists and Bible scholars and most everyone in between. We try to find common ground to build further discussion. Of course it doesn’t always work that way, but we do a lot better than those FaceBook groups playing non-stop Brockian Ultra-Cricket.
I do OK. It doesn’t hurt that my job involves helping people understand science too.
History professors that I had discussed how to tell historical figures from mythical ones. For example we have good evidence that Plato existed and that Socrates is a mythical character, a mouthpiece for philosophers to give their own ideas authority. It’s the same with Jesus and Paul, literary inventions to give weight to the worthless ideas of theologians. The epistles are not letters to actual churches. They are carefully constructed forgeries intended to give authority to the early Church. It’s the same with the gospels and especially the Acts of the Apostles. For anyone who thinks that book tells the actual history of the emergent Christian Church I have a bridge in New York for sale cheap.
When “peer-reviewed” means reviewed by people who believe in Satan, demons, that unclean spirits cause disease, dead people came back to life and faith is a way of knowing, I’ve read plenty of that and it’s nuts. Again, that might be your idea of scholarship but it isn’t mine.
A professor once told me I am a very forceful writer. You can go to my Facebook page where I have posted a few dozen of my college assignments and look them over when you have time. You can also listen to a couple of Christian radio broadcasts on which I was the only guest for an hour.
Oh they try to make a connection between biblical studies and history and they can fool some of the people some of the time, including themselves. This discussion about whether Adam and Eve were real people illustrates the absurdity of trying to connect the Bible with history. Adam and Eve were the Egyptian gods Geb and Nut. Their children were the earth and heavens. And that is mixed up with the Babylonian creation story involving Tiamat. Some scholars are honest enough to admit that these stories are repurposed pagan literature. Others however, are not.
So gods have to be real for there to be temples built to worship them? Using your logic we should assume Dagon, Apollo, Zeus, Chemosh, Baal must all have really existed. Is that what you’re saying?
No. I’m not discussing any deities as such. I’m responding to your sweeping assertion that Paul did not exist, which goes beyond saying he existed but was mythologized or some such.
Someone had to author the epistles. Why is it so incredible that it was Paul for at least some of them, but completely credible that it was some other random dude who wanted to remain anonymous? There was nothing in it for his efforts and talents, because he is lost to history as well.
Anyways, I have no desire to engage in endless further discussion on this, so feel free to have the last word and chalk it up as another win for your awesomely forceful writing.
Are you saying that those who engage in biblical studies do not employ history in their study of the Bible?
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Yes they don’t. The Bible is not a history book.
Your post is a great example of the literal mind’s approach to the Bible. Reading the Bible as history makes it tedious and boring which is why people don’t read it. Before assuming that episodes and scenes that structure the story of Jesus’ life are based on actual events, we need to look at the function of the stories in antiquity. The magi-star story is joined with the Joseph (the supposed father of Jesus who is modeled after the Joseph of Genesis, who had similar dreams) and Herod story as King Herod plays the roles of Balak and then Pharaoh when the magi give him the bad news.
Saying “Well it could’a happened” is a sure way to miss the purpose of the text and blinds people to the truths they could otherwise receive.
But it does contain some history, and that history is used by bible scholars. We know when Tiberius was Caesar and when Quirinius was governor of Syria. We know where the Hittites lived and when. Separating the bits that are history from the bits that aren’t (or at least lack historical evidence) seems a useful task. What makes you think they don’t do that?
Do you realize that your second sentence in no way supports your first?
Do you realize that scholars, even those who are atheists or agnostics, do a lot of work to understand the historical contexts in which the parts of the Bible were written?
Um, why would we need to do that if history and biblical studies
We don’t see literary critics poking around trying to understand the historicity of Sherlock Holmes because it has an historical setting or Brave New World because it mentions several real people. This would be a fool’s errand and it’s equally ridiculous when so-called Bible scholars engage in this fanciful waste of time an energy. The historical setting of the Bible has nothing to do with history and everything to do with theology.
The question was do they “employ history in their study of the Bible?” If they do they are not employing any historical method I’m familiar with by uncritically accepting what seems to line up with the Bible and automatically rejecting what doesn’t. I think they learn to do this after they graduate and go into a field like apologetics.
I’d like to connect my response to your post to my response above to Michael Okoko and hopefully John Mercer will read this too. No it’s not a useful task to try to separate bits of the text into history and non-history. The picture of Israel that comes from trying to harmonize archaeology with the biblical tales does not line up with the Bible’s view. Removing the unbelievable and impossible, correcting what is wrong and then reconstructing what remains is not useful. Removing the miracles from the stories does not help the historian, it only destroys the narratives. We can’t arrive at an accurate, viable history with that approach and we shouldn’t be trying to. Three different books of the Bible have at least three different stories about how Israel came to possess Jerusalem. That’s a mystery when you’re trying to interpret the Bible as history. But it makes perfect sense that the city that is the center of a tradition would attract so many stories each with it own theological meaning.
The truth is that they do all of the time, but you seem to have trouble admitting that you grossly overstated your point.
Not relevant to my question.
Now you’re jumping from history to archaeology to avoid addressing the question.
Not relevant to my question, which is completely independent of your opinion of utility or agreement with the conclusions of such research.
Not relevant to my question.
Not relevant to my question. Nice straw man, though!
And biblical scholars’ analysis of history during that time explains a lot of those differences, completely independent of your opinion of utility or agreement with the conclusions of such research.
Not relevant to my question, as using history to study the Bible does not require interpreting the Bible as history.
Yes, historically, but the history is much richer and more complex than that. Therefore we agree that your claim that biblical studies and history have “nothing to do with each other” is false.
I’ve taken those courses and some of my assignments are posted on my Facebook page. We never “employed history.” The stories are given a historical setting and that is as far as it goes. Therefore we don’t agree because you don’t know what you’re talking about.
I’m not sure why you’re using the first person, as I would never consider you to be a biblical scholar.
Here’s just one of hundreds of examples of biblical scholarship that employs history:
Again, whether you agree or disagree with the conclusions is completely irrelevant.
Its mere existence (and that of many, many others) completely falsifies your claim that biblical studies and history have “nothing to do with each other.”
