So how do you know what’s fact and what’ ‘poetic’? What the difference between ‘there was an earthquake and the dead got up and went to get coffee’ and ‘jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead and will be back soon’?
None. I think they are both non-factual, and am willing to bet as much, mainly because IMO dead people generally don’t get up.
My only point is that the fact that (say) an earthquake isn’t mentioned in the contemporary historical record isn’t proof of that non-factual status, because so very, very little detail from that time and place is mentioned in the contemporary historical record - including stuff you would naturally expect to see mentioned a lot - such as the doings of the Roman in charge of the place.
This doesn’t help in determining what is factual, it is merely a caution about the use to which one can put the contemporary historical record of a place and time like Judea in the 1st century.
A global flood - the exodus - Sodom/Ghomorah - any of jesus miracles - jesus raising the dead, being raised from the dead - Johah being swallowed (and regurgitated) by a whale - various mythological creatures in Isaiah.
All of these things are items the bible says ‘happened’ - to ‘falsify them’ - simply state them as having never happened (null hypothesis, if you will) and look for evidence that they did - having failed that test, they have been falsified.
Minor earthquake I can see. Zombies, not so much.
Reminds me of Rocky and Bullwinkle
Please note I’m not claiming that the invasion of holy zombies actually happened. Assuming it did, though, what exactly would you expect? Front page in the Roman Enquirer? 
Why would anyone make a particular deal about it, or even believe it, any more than we believe in Elvis having Bigfoot’s baby, unless they were there to witness it themselves?
There simply lack sources in which such stuff would be recorded. If one of the few guys who actually bothered to write about the place, and whose writings were painstakingly copied over the centuries by scribes, did not happen to himself make a note of it, it did not get recorded, and that is that.
Wishy Washy Liberal Protestant Christian speaking up here.
The Bible makes a huge number of falsifiable claims, many of them false.
The world was created in seven days. Lazarus was dead and then came back to life. Moses saw God, literally with his eyes. Jesus met with some people after he died and ate some fish. Etc etc.
I mean, just basically, turn to any page. With the possible exception of ethical claims, what sentence in the book isn’t falsifiable?
Yes, but the Bible actually refers to the evening and the morning even before God creates the Sun, so I’m not sure exactly how these evenings and mornings came about.
Earthquakes happen naturally. Zombies, no. One of the striking things is that after Jesus died hardly anyone in Jerusalem cared, and most of the growth was far away. You’d think that zombies would get someone interested.
Now, there being no record of the actual killing is perfectly reasonable, since executed rebels were a dime a dozen. Ditto Pilate - who remembers the average Roman governor?
Because it’s not meant to be taken literally…it can’t be. If you try to apply literalism to everything in the Bible, then the whole thing falls apart.
That, I realize, is the goal of some people.
Stated in other ways in this thread as well and nails it.
If the Bible is all claimed literal truth then there is much that is completely falsified and much else that is minimally inconsistent with other evidence, both in matters of science and in matters of history.
If the Bible is all metaphor then it is not falsifiable.
Of course few, including the religious and secular alike, treat the Bible as one or the other. Sure as a source of science only a few of a more fundamentalist or Orthodox bent would look to it for literal truth. But many do still look to it for some historical truth (and many would consider the burden of proof to be on the disproof of its record); it seems that very few would claim that none of the events of the Bible ever occured. The solution for many is merely to keep the borders between what is history and what is metaphor very fluid, moving more and more from literal to poetic as time goes on.
“So it goes.” - KV
Mark 11, telling the same story, adds the detail that it wasn’t even the proper season for figs, making the petulant curse of Jesus even more childish.
So he promises that believers will get ANYTHING they ask for, even something as stupid and useless as throwing a mountain into the sea, or something as petty and spiteful as killing a tree for not having fruit out of season. There is no condition about being noble, or unselfish, or according to God’s will.
This claim is eminently falsifiable, and is proven false every day. However, it is not testable by a third party, because it is impossible to find a Christian who is willing to prove that Jesus was not lying. Ask them to demonstrate the truth of this verse with a small miracle, and invariably, they will mumble something about not testing God, or Jesus isn’t your trained seal. The promise was completely unsolicited, and Jesus went out of his way to make it clear that you could ask for ANYTHING, but it’s somehow blasphemous to take it seriously.
Some grasp at the straw of people not having enough faith. But Jesus said (Luke 17:6) “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.” He said elsewhere (incorrectly) that a mustard seed was the smallest seed on earth, so he was saying that the tiniest speck of faith was sufficient to get whatever you asked for in prayer.
The same condition, i.e. belief, is what Jesus says is required for eternal life. So Christians who say this verse doesn’t work because people don’t have enough faith are saying that John 3:16 won’t work, either.
One of the most important, most pivotal events in the Bible is the enslavement of the Jews in Egypt, and their subsequent flight.
That simply didn’t happen. Archaeological evidence in this regard is pretty damning - few places are more archaeologically studied than Egypt - and this never took place.
To follow up in that, One big “I did not know that” came when I read a discussion on the tale of the Exodus and Moses in the SDMB. I always thought that there was some traditions coming from very early in the past and I expected some weak evidence to hold to the tale, but I did look on what the scholars reported… Not even that.
As I pointed before, the greatest miracle is in reality how the scholar interviewed manages to skillfully throw so many bones to the believers in the audience while telling them that it may had been just a few people involved and other tribal leaders that originated the tale rather than **the **Moses.
Still, it does remain a very important tale that is a good counterpoint to the “slavery is normal or good” (one of the most important things that we should remember it should never be accepted again as a good claim coming from the books) seen elsewhere in the bible.
Yes, it is.
It’s not proof, but it’s evidence. In the case of something like an obscure village mentioned in Genesis, whose ruins have not been discovered by archaeologists, it’s pretty weak evidence.
But in the case of a worldwide census that requires everyone to travel to where their ancestors lived a thousand years earlier, when there’s no mention of it in the list of censuses (item 8) written by Augustus Caesar himself, then it’s very strong evidence.
Great. How do you tell the difference between the literary parts and the true parts? For instance, we didn’t know the Exodus didn’t happen and the Flood is impossible until fairly recently. Were people 500 years ago stupid to believe in those parts?
I have no problem with the Bible as literary fiction. Knowing the Bible is essential to understanding our culture. But people who buy into any other type of literary fiction as much as people buy into the Bible would be considered quite eccentric.
What part of the Bible do you buy into, and how come God didn’t do a better job inspiring. There is the concept of willing suspension of disbelief. If an sf writer writes a book with a bunch of scientific howlers, lots of people don’t buy the rest of it.
That’s actually not true. There is an issue with marrying Biblical dates to actual dates as even “only historical” texts of the ancient world tend to fudge “years past” but there is a period when the Canaanite (what Isreal accreted out of) political entity held tremendous control over Egypt.
I had to go look up a reference (As my memory is hazy on this) and the following passage can be found in the book “The Oxford History of the Biblical World” edited by Michael D Coogan:
While this isn’t the Israelites per-se, it could have been an historical account attributed them to by later authors of the Bible. While the story of Joseph’s ascent to power is a virtuous tale, there is an underlying factoid of truth to the enterprise. I’m sure the tale of their downfall was an equally…artistic deviation from the truth.
As for the accretion of the Israelites from the Canaanite traditions, the father of Baal was El. Baal began to be worshiped by the Canaanite population, but left the steppes region of Canaan out of the transformation. This largely rural area, still worshipping El, is what eventually became Israel. The original form of “Israel” which was “Yisra’el” means “El Contends”. The first time that God refers to himself as Yahweh in the scriptures is in Exodus 6.2 and 6.3:
In this case, the original Hebrew reads “Yahweh” for “the Lord” and “El Shadday” for God Almighty.
This was an overt disconnect that from their ancestral religion, which is why the early parts of Genesis and Exodus have odd imagery that doesn’t occur later on.
A period of extended control over Egypt by a loosely related dynasty is not evidence for 400 years of Hebrew slavery in Egypt.
This is a clue to the great age of god, because he was senile even then. He had evidently forgotten about Genesis 28:13, when he told Jacob, “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac.” The original Hebrew is “Yahweh,” just like in Ex 6.
Even atheists can easily accept that events that occurred near the time the Bible was being written are more or less accurate. We can tell this because the moral lessons of the events kind of get lost, unlike that of the earlier, mythical tales. Good kings die, evil kings prosper, and the writers gamely try to explain it away.
I disagree that the burden of proof lies on those not accepting these historical events at face value. That is not the case for any other source document. We must be skeptical of events of the life of a king whether they are written by an ally or an enemy, and we need to look for supporting material. Heck, we need to do the same thing for political memoirs which are not 100% true. Why not treat the Bible like any other historical document. Anything else is special pleading.
Unfortunately, then, this thread is all about proof.
Not sure I get what you are trying to say Voyager …
No question that “even atheists” can easily accept that some things are presented more as history than as moral fables. Such does not in any way mean that it is accurate. Nor is there any broad agreement on what is purely moral fable, completely metaphoric, what is a version of historic events (whether accurate or not), and what is historic event presented with much poetic license and/or used/modified to illustrate a moral point.
Not sure what you are disagreeing with. As a historical document I place the Bible as a very poor source. My view is that the Bible is a combination of poetic fables and historic fiction with some of it loosely based on actual events in the service of creating a mythic history illustrating the “greater truths” as understood by the cultures that use the texts.
Personally my default is not being curious about what can be falsified (the default being that it is at most loosely based on actual events in some portions) but wondering which portions are actually historically based and how the versions of those events in this text diverge from versions that emerge from other records of the events. My personal standard is that it is myth other than what is proved to be otherwise and that the myths are pretty interesting and often still relevant. They are great stories with lessons for how to live our lives today. In that sense it is very different than “any other historic document” because its purpose is not to provide accurate history. Accurate history may be in there, on occassion, at least in parts, because those portions of real historic events serve the narrative and the mythos that the texts created.
My point is that many other people do not view it the same way. Items presented as history are believed to be historic until clearly falsified and then viewed as metaphors instead. That’s the mindset you get with “revealed truth.”
My suspicion is that a request for portions of the Bible (both Torah/Old Testament and New Testament) that have been verifiably proven to have occured by historians without a religious agenda would be a pretty short list.