At 02:36 AM 10/23/1999 EDT, PHSEELY@aol.com wrote:
>Actually, even with historical documents that are unrevealed, a person has
>every right to receive them as valid historical documents IF the sources are
>reliable. And, in spite of the fact that naturalistic historians write them
>off a priori insofar as they speak of miracle, even most of them have been
>willing to write some kind of a history of Jesus based on the gospels. F. F.
>Bruce made the case for the reliability of the gospels in his book, Are the
>New Testament Documents Reliable? My starting point, therefore, is outside
>of my faith in Christ; and is, therefore, not tautologous.
There are only 2 mentions of Jesus outside of religious documents. One is
Josephus which says he was a teacher and Christ. But there have been some
suggestions that this was a later addition to his manuscript. The other was
by Tacitus and he was condemnatory of the whole thing. What other
historical documents aside from the Bible are you using as your basis?
Without something else, I don't think there a way to avoid the tautology.
>
><<Then precisely where is the 'Divine' in the divine revelation? If all we
>have is human sources producing, via human authors, a human book about a God
>who won't correct even the most egregious errors in the account about Him
but
>who 'makes concessions' to the human's ignorance, what then is so special
>about the Bible?…>>
>
>Note: I did not say or even imply that _all_ we have is human sources. I
>said the history qua history and science qua science in the Bible make no
>biblical claim to be revealed.
Your response really didn't answer the question of what it means to be
inspired. If God doesn't correct science and doesn't correct history
(except corrections where the resurrection is concerned) then what do we
get from inspiration?
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution