When I was a teenager my father gave me a book written by a archeologist
(translated into Spanish from German I think) called (tranlating here) "And
the Bible was right". This amazing book looks at a great number of small
evidences that corroborate the Bible narratives. By no means all things were
cooroborated, only a bunch. The wall of Jerico fell inward, hasn't that been
corroborated? I think that the evidences for the Bible are outrageously great
in number and importance, more than with any other ancient text. While people
continue to base their faith is a scientifically correct Bible, their faith
will be stumbling all around because science changes all the time, sometimes
drastically and radically, is that what you want to base your faith on?
> Re: Importance of the Flood
>
> George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
> Mon, 20 Oct 1997 07:43:17 -0400
> Glenn Morton wrote:
>
> > Let's get to the issue that really bothers me: the flood. Do you view it as
> > poetry, history, exaggerated history, fiction or theological reflection?
>
> I wouldn't separate "exaggerated history" & "theological
> reflection" - the exaggeration (relative to historical events) is
> theologically motivated. This is what seems to happen with Sam/Kings &
> Chronicles, where the huge figures for money & army sizes in the latter
> helps to transform the historic kingdom of Judah into the ideal
> Messianic realm.
> Probably the same is true of the Flood. Certainly there were
> huge floods in Mesopotamia (as at Ur) & other flood stories (e.g.
> Gilgamesh). Gen.6-9 has expanded this tradition to speak of God's
> cosmic judgment on evil.
>
> > Can one find evidence of the flood in the geologic strata? One might find evidence of the historic precursors of the Flood.
>
> >And why do you
> > feel it falls into the category that it does? For one thing, there was no flood in historic terms which
> literally covered the whole earth.
>
> > How about Joshua which seems to have similar problems with observational
> > data as does Genesis 6-9. Can one find objective evidence of the Exodus?
> > What category does it fall into? And what happens to Judaism and
> > Christianity if the Exodus wasn't real?
>
> There were Hebrew slaves who escaped from Egypt, though the huge
> numbers (2-3 x 10^6 with women & children) seem exaggerated. In
> principle one should be able to find evidence of camps in the Sinai &c,
> but whether this is possible in practice I don't know.
> Joshua pictures what follows as a straight & pretty thorough
> conquest, a picture that doesn't square with, among other things,
> Judges. There is some archaeological support for Joshua - e.g.,
> destruction layer at Hazor (N.B. I'm working from memory here), but also
> good reason to believe that invaders joined with indigenous people of
> Canaan, perhaps Hebrews who never left there. & careful reading of
> Joshua (e.g., Rahab & the Gibeonites) indicates that too. So again, I
> think we have "theologized history".
> In fact, all the history in the Bible is theologized - to a
> greater or lesser degree. The historical character of God's action
> which culminates in Jesus is crucial to Christianity, but that doesn't
> mean it must be recorded entirely in accounts of "history as it really
> happened"
> George