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Author | Topic: Validity of differing eyewitness accounts in religious texts | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
But then there is a problem. If you are talking about eyewitness testimony of events, then the Bible is certainly flawed. Genesis 1 contradicts Genesis 2. There are two different eyewitness reports of the Flood and they contradict each other. I've answered this on this site already. One creation account is chronological, the other is a focusing on specific elements of it. They are not two different accounts. As with all such things in the Bible they either enhance one another or complement one another. There are not two different accounts of the Flood. One has Noah and his family entering the ark just as the rain starts and the fountains and heaven open up. The other says it took seven days for the flood to accumulate to covering the earth. If you look for contradictions you will of course find them by not being careful about the writer's meaning. That can be done with any piece of writing (and in fact is done with people's posts here too). But if you try in good faith to realize there are no real contradictions in the Bible you could yourself begin to read carefully enough to figure these things out.
And on and on. There is no eye witness account of creation. There is no eye witness account of what lead to the alleged flood. No eye witness accounts of what happened in the Garden. Yes, Genesis is a witness account. It is not a myth. Moses spoke to God. Moses had access to all the knowledge of His day. The stories had come down intact from Noah through the line of Shem to Abraham and Moses, and again, God spoke with Moses directly. Also it's a character issue: Moses would not dare to make something up. God punished him with not getting to see the Promised Land simply because he had a tantrum at the people for their stubbornness and disobeyed God's instruction. You think God would let him get away with making up lies that became scripture?
How can you assign greater authority to the Bible than any other such document? There IS no other such document. I just clearly showed you the uniqueness of the Bible. And its greater authority is obvious: God Himself speaks in it. He speaks in that direct fashion NOWHERE outside the Bible, and nobody else has EVER claimed to speak directly with God in any of the other religions (up until very recently).
It's fine to say "That is what you believe" but that is simply a statement of belief, no more, no less. Do you believe anything just because you believe it, or do you believe it because you think you have reason to consider it the truth? Same with me. This message has been edited by Faith, 04-25-2005 04:58 PM
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
It can't be an eye witness account.
At best it is second hand information. You say it has validity because Moshe got it from GOD. Is that correct? Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
The Eastern documents only record philosophical discussions, and their religious import is in their wisdom, the wisdom of their author or authors. The Koran is more like these except it seems to focus heavily on commands and threats of dire consequences, not to the believers, but to the unbelievers. I've never read the Koran, but I've paged through it quite a bit, and this doesn't match my recollection. So I began reading from page 1 from an online copy (http://www.hti.umich.edu/k/koran/browse.html) and it appears easy to find recountings of events, though more minor than in the Bible. This is from Chapter 28, The Narratives, starting at 28.13, just a short portion to give the flavor. It's a story about Moses:
So We gave him back to his mother that her eye might be refreshed, and that she might no grieve, and that she might know that the promise of Allah is true, but most of them do not know. And when he attained his maturity and became full grown, We granted him wisdom and knowledge; and thus do We reward those who do good (to others). And he went into the city at a time of unvigilance on the part of its people, so he found therein two men fighting, one being of his party and the other of his foes, and he who was of his party cried out to him for help against him who was of his enemies, so Musa struck him with his fist and killed him. He said: This is on account of the Shaitan's doing; surely he is an enemy, openly leading astray. We all recognize this, of course. It's the same story that appears in Exodus 2:11. By what criteria do you judge the relative authenticity of these stories? --Percy
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Primordial Egg Inactive Member |
The Bible's religious import, however, is maybe 80% in the historical events, or to be conservative, at least 50%, and most of the teaching passages refer back to those events anyway, such as in the psalms and the prophets. Events such as God's calling Abraham out of Ur. That's an event, not a teaching. The writing about it is a witnessing to it, just as the oral telling of it was previously a witnessing to it. Also everything recounted about Abraham's sojourns. Events such as his pre-empting God's plan by having a child with Hagar. Events such as his going to sacrifice Isaac on God's command. All the events of Isaac's and Jacob's lives, and Israel's twelve sons' lives. Events such as Moses' leading the Israelites out of Egypt. Events such as Moses' getting the Law straight from God on Sinai, not just sitting down and thinking and discussing it out as the Eastern wise men do. Events such as all the miracles. Aren't all these events also in the Quran? PE
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
It can't be an eye witness account. At best it is second hand information. You say it has validity because Moshe got it from GOD. Is that correct? OK, I'll concede this or we'll be at it for days. Call it an authoritative account that has plenty of evidence of trustworthiness from Moses' credentials as testified to by other Biblical writers at the absolute minimum. There is witness evidence to Moses that establishes his credentials for writing such an account.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
We all recognize this, of course. It's the same story that appears in Exodus 2:11. By what criteria do you judge the relative authenticity of these stories? They do not occur within a historical framework but are just stuck in here and there, which I already pointed out, and many of them are lifted from the Bible and rewritten to suit Muslim prejudices and deny the original Biblical record. They teach nothing about the character of God and His relation to humanity, as the Bible history does, they are just there to convince Muslims the Bible is wrong and they are right.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Aren't all these events also in the Quran? Yeah, some of them are. They plagiarized them and rewrote them.
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
They plagiarized them and rewrote them. I thought they got them the same way Mary and Joseph got word? Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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Primordial Egg Inactive Member |
What makes you think the Bible stories aren't plagiarised?
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
Faith writes: YOu can't even prove the existence of your great grandfather. Same problem. Well, this isn't true for everyone. Many people can visit their great grandfather's grave (I can, and for my children it's their great, great grandfather), and many families have records and pictures and so forth. Your degreee of skepticism that a gravesite contains someone's great grandfather governs the amount of evidence required. If that degree of documentation is sufficient, then fine, but if you require eyewitnesses to the intervening copulations and fingerprints for everyone involved, that's another matter. I'm not saying this is reasonable, just making the point that the desired degree of certainty affects the amount of evidence you require. The longer ago something happened the less evidence there tends to be. In the case of all events in the Bible, they occurred about two or more thousand years ago, and few accounts were written by eyewitnesses. There is physical evidence for many Biblical places, but little physical evidence of any event. What level of certainty do you want to achieve for the stories in the Bible? If you set the level very low then you can accept them all, but if you apply, let's say, some fairly traditional standards of history, few if any of them can be considered as known to have happened. One good example of a Biblical event, series of events, actually, that we're almost certain happened is the seige of Jerusalem under King Hezekiah by Sennacherib of Assyria. Both the Bible and inscriptions by Sennacherib's own documentarians attest to what happened (there are some differences of detail, but the general outlines are the same), and archeologists have discovered destruction levels of the right age at sites of some cities that Sennacherib is supposed to have leveled before tackling Jerusalem. So historians are pretty sure this really happened. But what of Jesus's sermon on the mount? We have the Bible to tell us it happened, and that's it. The Bible says thousands were there, but anyone can write, "Thousands were there." By what criteria do you adjudge the account of the sermon on the mount credible and authentic? --Percy
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CK Member (Idle past 4158 days) Posts: 3221 Joined: |
So if I show you bits of the bible that are the same as earlier accounts?
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
They plagiarized them and rewrote them.
quote: I have no idea what you mean. They are clearly ripoffs of the Bible stories, retold with all kinds of unbiblical changes.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
What makes you think the Bible stories aren't plagiarised? From where would they be plagiarized? Islam began 600 years after Christianity was established, and in fact displaced the Christians in the Middle East.
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Checkmate Inactive Member |
quote: Actually Faith, your logic is grossly flawed in this assertion and is self-defeating, because, 1. One doesn't need to prove the existence of his or her great grandfather. It is an obvious knowledge. 2. However, if one choose to contest the existance of other's great grandfather; it may lead to a claim of virgin birth. That would be a problem for you, right? You don't want to see Jesus got comppetition. 3. Therefore, we can conclusively agree that for humans to procreate, existance of previous generations is a must. Checkmate This message has been edited by Checkmate, 04-25-2005 05:28 PM "An uninformed person cannot conceptualize the essence of knowledge nor its sublimity. One who fails to conceptualize something, its significance will never become rooted in the heart."
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Primordial Egg Inactive Member |
From where would they be plagiarized? From earlier cultures, of course.
Islam began 600 years after Christianity was established, and in fact displaced the Christians in the Middle East. Not sure what this has got to do with the Bible not being a plagiarism. PE This message has been edited by Primordial Egg, 04-25-2005 05:34 PM
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