What parts of the Bible actually have some historical validity? I am told by a former teacher that the Bible holds a record of the accomplishments of notable individuals – monarchs, I believe. How much of the Bible is true historically? And how much of it is fiction? 
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Oh. I thought it had a definite answer. :rolleyes:
The OT was compiled around 500BC. Anything near that time period should be fairly informed (not necessarily honest, just informed). Anything more than a century or two before that, which is spoken of in the OT, is going to be sheer fiction or legend. The legendary stuff could have some basis in history, but the level of validity will vary widely.
The Gospels, in the NT, are also reasonably informed, but at a guess only about 10% of any of them is anything near truthful.
Well, IANABS, but from what I’ve read, everything from Genesis through Ruth is pure myth, cobbled together from other peoples’ myths and barely-remembered history, along with a fair number of traditional “just so” stories.
The books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles are more-or-less historical, in that there does appear to have been a united kingdom of Judah and Israel, and that most, if not all, of the kings were real people (including David and Solomon, but probably not Saul), though I wouldn’t trust any of the events or dates described. The closer one gets to the time these histories were written, around the 6th century BCE, the firmer the historical foundation becomes, though one must give considerable allowance for propaganda.
The prophets – Isaiah, Jeremiah, and all the others – were active in or after the tumultuous times decried in their books, but it’s hard to say what’s theirs and what’s not.
The invasions by Assyria and Babylon are well established, but the tales of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Daniel are in considerable doubt (though it’s clear that the second Temple was built, it’s not at all clear how). These books, and the accompanying parts of the Chronicles, were written well after the Babylonian Captivity, and are more expressions of faith (or propaganda) than history, and Ezra and Nehemiah, if they existed and weren’t the same person, were at most distant historical figures hung about with hagiographic embroidery.
You’ve probably read debates about the historicity of Jesus and the reliability of the Gospels and the Epistles, so I won’t get into that.
The rather excellent series of Straight Dope Staff Advisory Board articles called “Who Wrote the Bible?” discuss this in passing.
For example (from part 2):
You’re speaking of a book with dozens of different authors, written over the course of hundreds of years, translated by a wide variety of people, that discusses people who aren’t mentioned in any other written documents. There is no way to confirm the validity of most of it, hence placement of the question in Great Debates.
As with any ancient text, the only ways to test the historicy of the OT is by:
- Archaeological confirmation
- Confirmation by reference to other civilization’s sources
- Internal consistency and inherent reasonableness (albeit this acts in a negative manner - that is, supernatural events and impossibilities disprove, but lack of such factors does not prove).
The problem is that none of these methods are really determinative. To give an example, there is a live debate as to whether King David was a historical personage like Alfred the Great, or a wholly mythical personage like the medieval notion of king Arthur. Until recently those who thought he was wholly mythical were in the ascendant, but a reasonably recent discovery of an inscription written by an enemy of the Israelites and boasting about overcomming a (later) king from the “House of David” (that is, the second method above) makes it look more likely (albeit of course not certain) that a real “King David” existed.
Note how slight and flimsy the evidence is. The problem is that survival from that long ago is incredibly spotty, even for major civilizations, which that of the Israelites was not. So a truly pivotal and major figure in the OT - King David - is only attested to by a single broken inscription on a stele that survived only because its broken pieces were reused as construction infill by later folks.
But to answer the question in the OP - some parts of the OT are clearly intended to be historical chronicles and they are about as reliable, or not, as the historical chronicles of other civilizations at the time; you must take into account that they were written down by priests and reflect a priest’s world-view. The older the event chronicled, the more likely it is to be legendary …
And therein lies the problem.
The Bible is collection of stories which are all a mix of legend, propaganda, and historical events. The closer to the time of it’s writings the more nuggets of truth arise, but even these are often mired in superstition, and the subtle and not so subtle propaganda of the priests/kings/writers involved.
For example, recent archaeological evidence suggest, tentatively, that there might have been a real king David. However, established archaeological findings strongly suggest that the nature of the “kingdom” he ruled was NOTHING like the grandiose unified kingdom described in the Bible.
There is nothing whatsoever to indicate what king David’s kingdom was like (assuming he existed). What evidence there is, is based on the inference that had his (or more properly, his son Solomon’s) kingdom been as extensive or glorious as depicted in the OT, more evidence of it would have survived.
My guess is that the achievements of David & Solomon were heavily exaggerated and mythologized, but that they represent more or less real persons. My only evidence for this (aside from the Tel Dan stele) is that the account of David and Solomon as provided in the OT is a depressingly realistic one if you leave out the heroic achievements - definitely a “warts and all” account.
Well, yes. There’s plenty of evidence showing what it was NOT like. I’m not sure we’re disagreeing here, are we?
The two kingdoms were considerably different during that time period, with one being a more affluent and more agricultural society vs the other which was still very much a pastoralist society with little in the way of permanent settlements.
So the Bible’s description here is wrong, almost certainly a fabrication (but roughly based on legend possibly an oral and/or written tradition) in order to advance one particular monarch’s ambitions.
Are you telling me that the things that I’m liable to read in the Bible ain’t necessarily so?
I’ve always felt it a little odd that one of the books that has the most real historical significance – Maccabees – was relegated to the apocrypha.
(While, alas, one of the books that has the least historicity – Daniel – is still quoted for literal truth by Bible radio preachers on a daily basis in the U.S.)
The old saying “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” has application in the archaeology of the ancient world. The problem with the Kingdom of David and Solomon is an almost complete absence of evidence as to their existence. One can draw the inference from that absence that they never existed (or that they were not as grand as stated in the OT) and the latter is I think a very reasonable inference, but I’d hesitate to make any definitive pronouncements about the Kingdom of David - for example, whether there really was a split in a formerly-united kingdom under Rehoboam - or whether a past unity was wholly legendary.
There are certainly parts of the Old Testament that are about as historically accurate as any other record we have from the time. Others have put out some good examples, so I’ll just add another: the Mesha Stele is a Moabite record that describes the events of II Kings 3:4-27 with pretty good agreement on events. While any given event in the OT may be untrue, we can probably assume that some books are written as histories, and since those books are the largest and most complete surviving written record of Near East politics in the first millenium B.C.E., historians do treat them as valuable sources.
As to the New Testament, well, it depends on the book. The Gospels definitely relate some information that’s verifiable elsewhere, like who the Emperor was, which Romans governed which parts of Palestine at which times, and that Jewish society was divided into groups like Pharisees and Saducees. Much of the specific information about Jesus’ life is contradictory or silly, but where the Gospels agree, historians are more likely to think that they do represent real events. For instance, it’s usually agreed among among secular historians that Jesus was probably baptized by John, that he traveled around in the hinterlands of Palestine for a few years before coming to Jerusalem, and that he was executed by the Roman authorities by means of crucifixion. Some scholars contend (and I agree) that the incident with the moneychangers in the Temple may have really happened. The information related in Acts is a little more suspect simply because there aren’t many corroborating sources, but it’s pretty well agreed that Saul of Tarsus did persecute the apostles before his conversion experience, whereupon he and the other apostles mucked around in Palestine for a while before Paul went off to proselytize to the Gentiles, primarily in Greece and Asia Minor.
Paul’s undisputed letters (Romans, I and II Corinthians, I Thessalonians, Phillipians, Philemon, and Galatians) disagree with Acts on some points but agree on the broader point that Paul was indeed a post-Easter convert who ministered mostly to the Greeks. Paul’s disputed letters (Colossians, Ephesians, and II Thessalonians), upon which scholars are still closely divided about authenticity, also agree with that basic narrative. The remaining Pauline letters (Titus and Timothy) are usually dated by historians to at least 100 C.E. and sometimes as late as 200 C.E., and few, if any, scholars believe they’re authentic, though they’re useful historically in trying to understand second century Christianity, as they’re crucial in forming the early Church. The Epistle to the Hebrews, sometimes attributed to Paul, is certainly not written by him, and doubts about the authorship have been raised since the early third century. It may shed some light on the beliefs of early Jewish Christians, though. All of the other epistles are probably not written by their purported authors, though they might have been written during or shortly after their purported author’s lives and again possibly in the communities where their purported author’s lived.
John’s Revelation, unsurprisingly, is not very useful historically in a names-and-dates sense. It does give you some sense of what early Christians expected to happen at the end of the world, though.
It’s a shame Diogenes the Cynic isn’t around; he’s quite well-versed in NT stuff.
Well wiki has a list of artifact which either confirm and or support Biblical accounts.
Is there really no evidence of an actual Egyptian captivity? I was under the impression this particular point was not controversial.
The 2000 BC stuff tells us that the OT stole from Babylonian mythology and law.
Everything up to 900 BC tells us that there were various tribes of various names in the region. (Some of which may or may not actually be the ones that we hope them to be.)
In both of these cases, the artifacts do more to disprove the Biblical accounts than to prove them. Everything in the Torah is, effectively, fiction.
There is no evidence of an Egyptian captivity. The best guess as to where Exodus comes from is the merging of two historical events:
The Hyksos (probably Amorites or Canaanites displaced by the Amorites) took over Northern Egypt around 1700. Around 1500, the Egyptians took the North back and chased the Hyksos out. It’s possible that some of these people remained, mistreated, for some time after. It’s also likely that bands of them fled back across the Sinai peninsula towards the Northern coast of the Gulf of Aqaba (which is where the Midianites, Moabites, and the early Israelite kingdoms all existed, according to archaeology).
The OT was largely influenced by the Babylonian Captivity, which occurred roughly 1000 years later. That may well have caused them to recast whatever lingering legend remained about the Hyksos expulsion to match the Babylonian Captivity.