Is the Bible a pack of lies?

Great Debates
1

In a recent book, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (Free Press, 2001), two Israeli scholars, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, present a compelling case that, with respect to most Biblical events recorded as occurring prior to the reign of King Josiah (almost the last king of Judah), not only is there insufficient evidence that the event occurred that way, but there is sufficent evidence that it didn’t. Most of the Old Testament is a pack of lies, pure and simple. Not misinterpreted myths or garbled legends. Lies.

There was a House of David, but it ruled only the area immediately around Jerusalem. There was no united kingdom of Israel and Judah, ever. There never was an Exodus from Egypt. And Father Abraham never came up out of Ur of the Chaldees.
Most of these stories, apparently, were made up after the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and the Israelite priests and nobles fled south to Judah. They settled down in the court of King Josiah and then got started on a massive propaganda campaign to create a new national-religious myth. There’s even some question as to whether Israel or Judah really had a monotheistic religion before that time. Check out the March 2002 Harper’s Magazine – Daniel Lazare wrote an article about the book, “False Testament.”

Remember, we’re not talking about something like the creation account of Genesis, which could be squared with evolutionary theory by interpreting it as a poetic metaphor. We’re talking about historical events, involving human beings, that supposedly formed the Jewish religious world-view, and later the Christian and Islamic world-views. And the most important of those events . . . did not happen.

Does anyone have any contrary opinions?

2

Well, it has being known for sometime that the size of most of the kingdoms were grossly exaggerated in the bible from archealogical and other evidence. Also it is generally believed that early Judaism was polythesitic. But in alot of cases the bible is the only evidence left so it’s very hard to prove or disprove it.

3

Also the Eodus story does appear to be false, with secular historians believing that the exile only included the Jewish elite of the time rather thanthe whole population.

4

Define pack.
Define lies.

5

Really? Do you know what it is thought the other gods might have been?

6

Probably, part of a greater Babylonian parthenon in which ‘God’ would of been one of many.

7

MC, I think you are confusing the sojourn in Egypt, which purportedly lasted centuries, and did involve the entire Hebrew nation (that is, all the children of Abraham and Isaac), with the much later Exile to Babylon, which lasted only 40 years and probably did involve only the elite. The Babylonian Exile definitely did happen; no historian or archaeologist disputes that, so far as I know.

8

No, the Egyptia exile is doubted, because it would of been a complete departure from normal Egyptian tactics and is not mentioned in contemporary Egyptian sources at all.

9

Is the Bible a pack of lies? No. But neither is it the “inerrant Word of God”. The truth (as so often is the case) lies in between.

MC MoC correctly pointed out that

The most reasonable approach is to suspend judgement until and unless convincing evidence can be found for or against the Bible’s claims.

Of course, that doesn’t make for exciting debate, but there you have it.

MH

10

Tell you what. Take a 50yo US History Textbook. Find the lies, half-truths & misrepresentations. You might be surprised. Then, go back 4000 years, and read translations of period writings. The “truth” is even further away.

So, let us say that G. Washington didn’t really chop down a cherry tree. Is it a “lie” or a myth?

Abraham certainly can’t be disproved- could we expect to find records of one leader of a nomadic tribe? Hardly. How does one “disprove” this? :dubious:

The egyptians did keep many foriegners as “slaves”, and some of them around the period were “proto-isrealis” (or perhaps another related tribe, we don’t know). So maybe a tribe of them “escaped” and wended their way back. Could we expect to find archaelogical evidence of this? No. Thus, it is quite possible a story of a “tribes” wanderings grew into a myth that was much larger. Is it very doubtful that an “Exodus” of the size & length mentioned in the Bible happened that way. Sure. But knock down all the numbers by a factor of 10 or 40, and then you might have a peice of real history, blown up into a larger myth. Or not.
It is doubtless than many of the numbers presented are false- largely exagerated. It is also true that the area has been so populated, and the evidence before then is scant. However, it is very hard to prove that there was NOT a “unified Kingdom of Judah & Isreal”, and I’d love to see a cite as to how they managed to prove there wasn’t. Showing that there is no evidence there was one is another thing entirely. The archaeological records for that period are just simply not good enough to prove something like “The Unified Kingdom did not exist” or that “Abraham didn’t exist” or that “there was no exodus”. And that is not surprising, as proving a negative is pretty damn hard. OTHO, tell me that there isn’t a shred of evidence FOR Abraham, or the Exodus- and I’ll believe you. Go on and tell me that the evidence for the “house of David” is scanty, and it appears the early Kings are largely legendary- and you have me again.

But try & tell me that with the scanty evidence available, they have been able to prove a negative- and my bullshit sensors go up.

I have no doubt most of the earliest history of Isreal is more “myth & legend” than real history. Hell, even our American history from 225 years ago has a lot of “myths & legends”. Likely many of these myths & legends are based upon something historical. Some probably are not, however. (GW did exist. He was an honest man. So the fact there was no “cherry tree” doesn’t disprove the basic fact of the “honest George”. From some of these “revelations”, it seems that as soon as they prove there was no “cherry tree”, they have disproved George Washington. :rolleyes: )

Of course, note that the OT period that is covered by this new book- the part that is a “pack of lies”- is a rather small part of the OT. Thus “most of the OT is a pack of Lies” is a lie itself- especially as a good portion of the OT isn’t even history at all.

11

Pack: a group of dogs or wolves.
Lies: reclines; rests in a horizontal position.

Therefore the Bible is a sleeping dog. QED.

12

No more than any other religious book, IMO.

13

It’s both. It was invented by Parson Weems to BE a myth (and actually, it was barking the tree, not chopping it down.). Indeed, there was an actual movement to create American myth. People felt that because we were such a young nation, we needed some powerful patriotic myths to unify us as a nation.

The funny thing is that sometimes it works the other way around: people think that true things were myths. Uncle Sam, for instance, was a real person.
And sometimes what people think is authentic folklore isn’t. Paul Bunyan had barely an ounce of authenticity. He was no different than the Jolly Green Giant: a character created to advertise lumber.

Given things like this, in much more modern socieities full of professional journalists and historians all being critical and collecting evidence, it becomes very hard to support the idea that the ancient stories of a (granted, phenomenally literate) nomadic people are inerrant history.

I think one of the beefs people have with the Egypt story is that it contains elements that fit much better with the Babylonian episode (like brickmaking, which the Egpytians didn’t really do, but the Babs did), . That is, the Egypt story could have been most fully fleshed out at that time to fulfill a crucially important role in Israelite culture: to ground some present suffering, and perhaps some present hopes for freedom, in a past story of survival and freedom.

14

Actually, while their monumental building were always of stone, the preferred construction material for housing in Egypt was the sun-dried mud brick–just as in Mesopotamia.
(Scroll to Building Materials.)

15

I’d suggest those wanting to see evidence read the book. The conclusions are based on recent archeological evidence. For instance, many of the buildings attributed to Solomon were dated to after his period. Abraham was said to have camels, but camels were not domesticated until 1000 BCE.

The thesis of the book is that Josiah had the legends expanded to provide justification of Judea’s claim to the lands of both Israel and Judea, since the Davidic empire included both. I suspect many of the legends were pre-existing, since if tribal legend was that the tribe was founded by Abraham, it would be difficult to suddenly claim the tribe was founded by someone else.

Also, people in those days did not have quite the same notion of historical truth as we did. Pack of lies is pretty harsh - political and theological propaganda might be more like it.

This book was even disturbing to me as an atheist. I really believed in the Davidic empire. It was quite a shock to learn it didn’t exist.

16

Consider a case from history that has NO religious implications that I know of: The Persian War.

The Persian War and the battle of Marathon were of immense importance to the Greeks. They wrote about it, celebrated it, built monuments to it, treated it as if it were the most important event in human history.

Have historians found ANYTHING in Persia to suggest that a war of such magnitude ever took place? Precious little.

Now, I am NOT trying to say the Persian war or the battle of Marathon didn’t happen (there’s more than ample documentation to show that it did). I merely point out that different nations had VERY different perspectives on how important a given event was. To put it simply, the war that seemed so all-important to the Greeks was viewed by the Persians as a rather minor skirmish on the outer fringes of their vast empire. It hardly seemed worthy of songs, poems or monuments.

Similarly, a tiny kingdom like Israel was hardly important enough to interest large, powerful surrounding nations. Why would a mighty pharaoh CARE who David or Solomon were? Why would any Babylonian bother to record what went on in a tiny, insigificant neighboring land?

17

I think that, like with many human endevors, there is a kernel of fact behind a wide load of BS. From what I’ve read and seen on the history channel and other programs dealing with Biblical Archeology, the various archeologist camps are split on biblical fact verse fantasy, so its definitely not cut and dried. I’ve seen respected archeologists on both sides of the fence, and enough evidence to indicate that at least SOME of the events in the bible might actually have happened (I’m speaking of the more mundain things, not the fantastic stuff). Knowing that the bible started out, most likely, as an ORAL tradition, I can see how things would be distorted in a few hundred/thousand years before they sat down and finally put it all together. Doesn’t make it ALL a ‘pack of lies’…

-XT

18

Well, I personally doubt if the Solomon/David “empire” was anything as “great” as the OT alludes to- but in whose eyes? In the eyes of nomadic tribesmen, it might be awe inspiring- but compared to the other great empires of the time, it was anything but.

But if someone brings up this as a GD, we need to see quotes & cites- not just “read the book”.

Yeah, sure- I am not shocked at all that some of the buildings attributed to Solomon he likely had no hand in. Does this prove he didn’t exist? Or does this tell us there is little evidence for his “empire”. I’ll buy the second, not the first. Again, I have no doubt that the “glories” of the Solomon/David “empire” are blown out of proportion, but that’s a far cry from saying “it is all a pack of lies”.

Camels? So that maybe proves Abraham didn’t have 'em- are they a major part of the legend? I don’t remember them, but I am no bible scholar. And, there is a huge difference between “camels were not domesticated until 1000 BCE” and “we have no evidence that camels were domesticated before 1000 BCE”. If the authors claim the first- they are taking educated guesses and turning them into hard facts. If so- they are so full of shit it is squirting out their ears, and I don’t have to read their book. :dubious: But even so- does the lack of camels prove there was no Tribal founder called Abraham? Sure, it casts grave doubts on the literal 100% truth of the Bible, but few cling to that notion.

Like Astorian pointed out- those events were really only important to the Isralis & a few other small tribes & kingdom. We only thing they had some significance because of the Bible- which happens to be one of the largest depositories of “period” histories. How “true” those histories are is a matter of debate- ranging from (in the eyes of reasonable archaeolgists) “based on real history” to “mostly myths & legends”.

19

The Bible was written hundreds of years after David, so it is possible that “everyone knew” that the Davidic empire was great. It is not unknown for kings to magnify the greatness of the founders of their dynasty, after all. So, what people thought of the Davidic “empire” at the time of David isn’t that relevant.

Are request for a cite would have been perfectly okay. Some posters seemed to think that there is no evidence either way outside of the Bible, which is incorrect.

My sense was that the authors certainly thought that Solomon existed. There is the evidence that David did. And you did notice that I disagreed with the assessment of the Bible as a pack of lies, didn’t you?
**

Haven’t spoken to many Baptists lately, have you? Anyhow, are you aware of any non-Biblical evidence for the existence of Abraham? The camels aren’t the only thing, the Bible mentions the existence of places in the story not founded until long after the supposed time of the story. Given the unreliability of the sole source of information about Abraham, I think the burden of proof rests on those claiming he did exist. It is quite hard to prove that someone didn’t exist 3500 years ago, after all.

All ancient histories have to be evaluated for accuracy, and cannot be taken at face value. Caesar’s history of the Gallic War is known to be inaccurate, I believe. However, since no one’s religion depends on this, it is not a big deal. The Bible adhered to commonly accepted standards of accuracy at the time, (ie, not very concerned with accuracy) so calling it a pack of lies seems a bit harsh.

20

I believe fully that the bible has many lies in it. I mean… Adam and Eve? were all sleeping with our own distant cousins then? then the neanderthal evidence is automatically disproved as fake perhaps? Then there was no human life before, what, 6000 bc (i dont know exact date)?

most of the bible is just plain bullsh!t if you logical think about it. The part about jesus doing his deeds and stuff in the buybull i believe was written some 40 years after it all really happened by people who heard the storys and just jotted them down. Storys get diluted as they go from one person to the next. And one idea i heard from a comedian (yea… getting ideas from people whos main job is to say stupid things to make people laugh…) was that if the things were written not by jesus himself, but by his friends, they would get the story semi wrong and exaggerate it, like:
“yea, and he was walking on water!”
“no, he was walking through a mud puddle, and that was with his huge platform sandles.”
so yea, basically, i find the bible a load of crap. And if you dont think so, maybe you should logically think about it again.