njlauren
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quote:
ORIGINAL: RedMagic1
quote:
ORIGINAL: SweetAnise
science has helped prove some occurrences in the bible. We know that Noah's Ark does exist and where. We know that Jesus did exist. We know Babylon existed. We also know that the old testament is based on Hebraic heritage. Jewish tradition. We know that Christianity wasn't started until the New Testament after Jesus died. Yes we know that slavery existed during that time based on the cultural traditions of that time. Greeks had slaves. Romans had slaves. Hebrews had slaves. Hebrews were slaves.
I won't argue your faith, but your assertions in this paragraph about scientific knowledge are false.
1. About Noah's Ark and Flood
The overwhelming scientific consensus about a worldwide flood is that there is no evidence of it happening. When you say "we know when and where" you may be referring to the claims of a single researcher -- someone who needs to be taken seriously, because he discovered the Titanic -- that there appears to have been a rapid water rise in an area of the Black Sea. His hypothesized explanation is that this may be the origin of the Noah's Flood story. Link here:
http://www.weather.com/travel/noahs-ark-flood-proof-20121212
While this is interesting, the historical fact remains that there were similar flood stories in other religions predating the writing of the Old Testament, so the simplest explanation is to apply what happened with the holy writings of other religions: they borrowed from previous creation stories and disaster stories.
2. Existence of Jesus
There is no hard evidence that Jesus existed. There is some historical evidence, but historical evidence is not the same as hard evidence. Remember that he was supposedly born into a poor family. Records of such people were not kept. So the lack of evidence does not argue for his nonexistence, so to speak, because you can barely prove anyone except emperors and generals existed in that time period. But there is absolutely nothing rising to the level of "21st century court of law evidence" that indicates Jesus really lived. For example, the people who wrote the Gospels were not even Palestinian. The main "non-Christian proof" mentioned for the existence of Jesus is his mention in a book by Josephus. However, many scholars believe that was forged, i.e., included by a scribe long after the original book was written, because of possible linguistic discrepancies.
Point being, the jury is out, and it probably will never come in. To expect scientific precision about a poor person thousands of years ago is probably too much to hope for.
By contrast, incidentally, there is good evidence that Pontius Pilate existed. He was mentioned independently in books by historians of the time. No reference to Jesus in those books, btw.
3. Jews as slaves in Egypt.
There is absolutely no evidence for this, despite the great interest in the subject. Points (1) and (2) do have scientists and historians who believe something like them is true. There is no scientific, historical or archaeological basis for (3) at all. Of course, that doesn't prove it didn't happen, but you were asserting that science proves it, which is false.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Egypt#Genesis_and_Exodus
Your three points are valid. Flood myths exist in the mesopotamian region, the Sumerian gilgamesh predates the Noah story by at least a thousand years, and others have flood tales. The Mesopotamian flood plane (tigris/euphrate river basin) was prone to floods, and these likely are the basis for the myths including Noah. To the people there, it looked like the world had flooded....
And yep, there is no direct evidence of Jesus existing (I think he did exist, for a number of reasons, but there is no proof). Josephus is problematic, and as far as I know there are no Roman accounts of his crucifixion, official ones, so it is very hard to figure out if he existed from them. Likewise, other stories of Jesus, the killing of the 3 year old, the census that supposedly sent Jesus' parents to Bethlehem, have absolutely no historical records, either.
And the story of Exodus, or mass keeping of Jews as slaves in Egypt, has no history either, the egyptians kept very detailed records and histories, and there is no mention of any sizable population of Jews living in Egypt, or being slaves there. Some theories had Jewish slaves building the pyramids, which is even more off the wall, because they were built long before the story of exodus (and we now know they were not built by slaves at all).
Some things in the bible have been verified, soddom and gomorrah existed (no signs of any kind of major wipeout, though), Jericho existed (was sacked several times over the course of centuries), there is some history in there, mixed with all the religious stuff.
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