Why are people intent on lying for God?
I was browsing the web one day when I happened upon a site called ‘answers.org’ which looked like it deserved a quick once over.
One item caught my eye, something about archaeology confirming the Bible yet again. Now as archaeology is germane to my area of study and I know that archaeology proves very little of the bible, I thought it deserved a look.
Imagine my surprise when I read the following passage:
"Ignorance of the facts concerning the trustworthiness of the Bible can be embarrassing for critics. For example, for many years doubters disputed the New Testament accounts concerning Pontius Pilate. No historical sources outside the New Testament mentioned him, so they considered him a fictional character. Then, in 1961, archaeologists unearthed an early first century theater inscription at Caesarea Maritima in Israel, dedicated from "Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea," to "Tiberius Caesar." What the Christians had preserved in scripture and the historic creeds ("suffered under Pontius Pilate), the liberal critics admitted in 1961."
After reading this passage a few times, to make sure I was reading it correctly, I was totally lost for words!! (for once)
The author was seriously saying that there were no non-biblical mentions of Pilate in any other historical sources until the inscription at Caesarea was found, and that this was another embarrassing example for bible critics.
At the time I came up with three sources off the top of my head, Philo, Josephus and Tacitus who ALL mention Pilate, so what could this person be on about.
Then I got it; maybe the author meant that there was no direct non-biblical evidence for Pilate, like a letter from Pilate or some archaeological evidence like the aforementioned inscription.
There was a contact addy on the home page, so I sent off an e-mail asking for clarification of the passage cited whilst pointing out the references in Philo, Josephus and Tacitus.
After over 7 weeks of waiting, I got a reply saying that they had noticed the error and I was quite correct in my assumption that it should have read that there were no archaeological sources until the find in 1961, and that they will edit the page as soon as possible.
I thought, fine, these things happen, we all make mistakes, so I thought no more about it. Then guess what happened 3 months later, sorry no prizes on offer. I got an email informing me that my opinion that the bible is not an historically accurate book is wrong because. ROFLMAO Yes you guessed it, the Pilate inscription quoted verbatim from the very site I contacted!!
Now in my original mail to them I said that a totally innocent reader of the site may actually quote this ‘evidence’ of Bible perfection to a sceptic and be shown how erroneous this claim is.
So I fired off another email asking them if or when they are going to remove the misleading passage, so far I haven’t had a reply. It has now been over 6 months since I first informed this site, and today it remains unaltered.
Why are people determined to lie for God?
Notice the first line ‘Ignorance of the facts concerning the trustworthiness of the Bible can be embarrassing for critics’ It appears that the facts aren’t sensational enough for the owners of this site, they have to make ‘facts’ up to make the bible look good.
One thing for sure, ignorance of the facts can be particularly embarrassing for the layperson that quotes moronic sites like this one when debating educated non-believers.
Then they claim: ‘For example, for many years doubters disputed the New Testament accounts concerning Pontius Pilate’
No references to who these ‘doubters’ are, probably because there weren’t any.
Does anyone else have a similar story, that they informed some site of an error, had that error recognised by the site and then nothing was done about it?
If members do have some examples, maybe a good idea would be for a group of us to target each site and keep emailing them about their error(s) until something is done?
Anyway, I look forward to reading some similar stories, if any.
Best Wishes
Brian
P.S. I have just sent another email to remind the site owner about the lack of action regarding the erroneous claim.
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Remembering events that never happened is a dangerous thing!
™ Version 4.2
