Adam & Eve, Noah - mythical? The only reason there is no outside record of this is because it was so long ago. Before the flood!. Luckily God wrote down the beginning of the human race in Genesis.
now there's an educated opinion. your faith in a book known to be historically inaccurate is hardly a representation of it's historical accuracy. it's nice that you believe it, but the question is: did it happen? and did the people who wrote it even believe it happened? or is it abstract allegory? (and god didn't write the bible)
This goes also for Noah who played a huge part in the repopulation of mankind after the flood.
the epic of gilgamesh, a babylonian epic poem, predates genesis by about a thousand years and contains a flood story much like noah's. the hebrews lived in babylon around the earliest dates we have for genesis. 2+2=?
Abraham - mythical?. The forefather of both the Jews and the Arabs, are you sure?. Seems like a denial of history in order to not believe in the Bible.
but the question is if there is any record of him?
Joshua - The successor of Moses. The New Testament mentions his leading the Israelites into the promised land (Acts 7:45). Acts of course being the history of the early church.
uhh, the book of joshua would be better evidence of his existance than something written at least a thousand years after his death.
David - David was the second and greatest king of Israel (1010-970BC). Whose dynasty ruled over Judah for over four hundred years.
ding ding! the only one we have ANY independ evidence of! and it's rather minimal, just a vague reference on a stone to someone being of the family of david, dating around the time he was said to rule israel.
Solomon - Solomon was the third and last king of united Israel, and reigned for 40years (970-930BC). He wrote Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, The Song of Solomon, Psalms 72 & 127 and over one thousand songs. Very much a man of history.
attributed authorship does not equate to existance. besides, i thought god wrote the bible? or is that just genesis?
Iliad by Homer is second with just 643 manuscripts that still survive. To deny the historicity of the NT is to throw away all classical antiquity as no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically.
no one is claiming that achilles really existed. in fact, for years, no one even claimed that the trojan war really happened, or that TROY even existed. until they found it, destroyed by war. archaeological evidence suggests that it didn't happen the same way as homer recorded, and that it was not one long war of ten years that lead to its downfall, but a bunch of little ones that eventually wore away enough defenses.
the situation is similar with the bible. places and trace evidence has been found, but suggest things happened a little differently. sometimes, a lot differently. however, there is a lot more evidence for the trojan wars than say, the hebrew exodus.
if the bible is a literal account, well, the god had another, achilles, who was impervious to attack and could not be killed, except with an arrow to the heel.
The number of manuscripts, of early translations, and of quotations from it from the oldest writers of the church is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world.
this is a mistaken viewm, common to christians. the new testament is not ONE book, but about 5 (luke and acts were probably one book), and a collection of letters that make no historical claims. luke states in the opening that it is an attempt to reconcile the many gospels floating around.
we've found probably about three times the number of gospel accounts contained in the nt, some of them fragments. the mroe interesting ones, you may have heard of: thomas and magdalene. a staggering realization will come to you if you read them carefully. none of the gospels line up perfectly. many are copied off the same source. some, are just really, really out there. with good reading skills and a little bit of thought, it's quite obvious the gospels were written as propaganda devices, not historical records. i mean, just read them, and think about it for a second.
The Bible contains history like no other. From the beginning of the humanrace all the way to Jesus and early church history.
flavius josephus is far more reputable. well, except for the parts forged by christians. his work is what a history should look like. the bible looks like a tradition, not a factual account.
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