NationStates Jolt Archive

My granddad has tried to tell me that archiologists have "proven" the bible. Anyone have links to this proof? I told him that you can prove King David existed, but not that he killed golieth or worked miracles. Still, I'd like to see this "proof"... from a non-religious source please

Ya the bible exists, I have copies at home that are almost 200 years old.

Or did you mean that the events in the bible are factual?

http://www.bib-arch.org/bswb_BAR/indexBAR.html
source sounds religious but they are pretty unbiased

http://www.wyattmuseum.com/
http://www.biblicalarcheology.net/

http://www.rense.com/general18/bible.htm

http://www.geocities.com/lost_bible/SYNOPSIS.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5784653/site/newsweek/

http://members.cox.net/labas/

Thanks a ton

He also claimed they found where Eden was? HE says it's a desert now, which begs the question how did they find it...

At least we know where the battle of Armageddon will take place ("Armageddon"= Mount Megiddo) :)

Thanks a ton

He also claimed they found where Eden was? HE says it's a desert now, which begs the question how did they find it...

Last I heard it was located at the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, which is indeed currently a desert. Of course I also heard that they did not find a Tree of Life nor an Angel of the East with a burning sword guarding the way, but as of late you can find the United States military there, does that count?

Thanks a ton

He also claimed they found where Eden was? HE says it's a desert now, which begs the question how did they find it...

'Eden' was supposedly in the Fertile Crescent, modern-day Iraq.

My granddad has tried to tell me that archiologists have "proven" the bible. Anyone have links to this proof? I told him that you can prove King David existed, but not that he killed golieth or worked miracles. Still, I'd like to see this "proof"... from a non-religious source please


I found similar proof (http://www.muenkermedia.com/worldheritage/featured4.shtml) of ancient Greek mythology.

True, the most they've found are correspondences to real world events and/or places. No one's really questioning that, I don't think. To say that it "proves" the Bible...well, your grandfather is stretching things a bit.

whether or not the Bible can be proven is not the point. it cannot be proven, but it can have an overwhelming amount of supporting evidence. the REAL question is whether or not you are willing to accept the Bible.

whether or not the Bible can be proven is not the point. it cannot be proven, but it can have an overwhelming amount of supporting evidence. the REAL question is whether or not you are willing to accept the Bible.

Heh, it also depends on evidence for what. There's no evidence whatsoever for a global flood as described in the bible... however there is evidence for local events in the Middle East region which may quite well have been the base of the various Deluge myths.

That's what my point was

he's a Jehovah's Witness, and his claims tend to be illogical, but, he's an old man, set in his ways. Still, I love a good debate

He tried to tell me the the Bible was older than the Torah

*facepalms*

"So are you telling me that the New Testiment is older than the Old Testiment?"
"No, but the Torah is what they worship NOW. They used to worship the BIBLE."
"Isn't the Torah the Old TEstiment?"
"No!"
"..."

whether or not the Bible can be proven is not the point. it cannot be proven, but it can have an overwhelming amount of supporting evidence. the REAL question is whether or not you are willing to accept the Bible.

Accept the Bible as what?

Heh, it also depends on evidence for what. There's no evidence whatsoever for a global flood as described in the bible... however there is evidence for local events in the Middle East region which may quite well have been the base of the various Deluge myths.

Too many cultures, especially in Mesopotamia, have strikingly similar flood myths for there NOT to have been some sort of great flood. The specifics of the myths, such as Noah's ark, however, are questionable.

If you will turn your Bible's to Ezekiel 26. It's a very narrow and specific prophecy that has come true. Here is what know.

1. Tyre will be destroyed.
2. Many nations will come against Tyre.
3. The walls will be knocked down scraped clean "like the top of a rock".
4. It shall never be rebuilt.
5. It will be a place for fishermen to spread there nets.

What happened.
1. After many years of laughter at the writings of very existance, it was discovered destroyed.
2. Nebuchadnezer and his underlings first attacked Tyre in 580-570 B.C, followed by the Persian conquest in 525 B.C. I believed they took the main city of Tyre, but the people escaped to an island off the coast. Alexander the Great finished the job. To get to the people on the island, he scraped the city clean and built a bridge out of the city to reach the island. This happend in 332 B.C. Tyre was destroyed and the "dust scraped off her."
3. It has not been rebuilt.
4. Guess what goes on there now? Fishermen spread their nets. for real.

Now, I'm going to study for my vector geometry exam like I'm supposed to. :)

whether or not the Bible can be proven is not the point. it cannot be proven, but it can have an overwhelming amount of supporting evidence. the REAL question is whether or not you are willing to accept the Bible.
I accept the bible as the book of fact based fiction which it is.

But try and tell me it's the word of God and I'll tell you you're full of shit.

If god exists, if he somehow placed as much importance on the affairs of man as we place upon ourselves, I doubt that 1) he'd publish and 2) allow the editing that the bible has endured.

whether or not the Bible can be proven is not the point. it cannot be proven, but it can have an overwhelming amount of supporting evidence. the REAL question is whether or not you are willing to accept the Bible.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. You can prove people and places did exist (well, for people as much as it can be done at a time when no records were really kept). You can even prove said places went boom, but you cannot prove they went boom due to divine intervention. That's where the faith part comes in.

After all I can prove Troy existed (until it was found, in the 70's if I remember correctly, it was assumed to be a myth). I can prove Troy was destroyed in a war, and from the evidence, it was probably with the Greeks. But I can only believe in the gods intervention and the damn horse.

And I'm really uncertian about that horse!

If you will turn your Bible's to Ezekiel 26. It's a very narrow and specific prophecy that has come true. Here is what know.

1. Tyre will be destroyed.
2. Many nations will come against Tyre.
3. The walls will be knocked down scraped clean "like the top of a rock".
4. It shall never be rebuilt.
5. It will be a place for fishermen to spread there nets.

What happened.
1. After many years of laughter at the writings of very existance, it was discovered destroyed.
2. Nebuchadnezer and his underlings first attacked Tyre in 580-570 B.C, followed by the Persian conquest in 525 B.C. I believed they took the main city of Tyre, but the people escaped to an island off the coast. Alexander the Great finished the job. To get to the people on the island, he scraped the city clean and built a bridge out of the city to reach the island. This happend in 332 B.C. Tyre was destroyed and the "dust scraped off her."
3. It has not been rebuilt.
4. Guess what goes on there now? Fishermen spread their nets. for real.

Now, I'm going to study for my vector geometry exam like I'm supposed to. :)

Of course, colonists from Tyre went on to found Carthage, which ended up having a similar destiny.

I also believe that information from the Bible led to the discovery of the Hittites in central Anatolia.

Too many cultures, especially in Mesopotamia, have strikingly similar flood myths for there NOT to have been some sort of great flood. The specifics of the myths, such as Noah's ark, however, are questionable.
As mentioned in the Biblical Flood Debate thread, Dr Robert Ballard has been doing underwater research (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the National Geographic Society) in the Black Sea and has come up with archiological (sp?) evidence of a massive flood that probably served as the basis for all the flood myths out there.

I accept the bible as the book of fact based fiction which it is.

But try and tell me it's the word of God and I'll tell you you're full of shit.

If god exists, if he somehow placed as much importance on the affairs of man as we place upon ourselves, I doubt that 1) he'd publish and 2) allow the editing that the bible has endured.

Well, can you accept that the Bible is inspired by God (like many religious texts from many faiths)?

Personally, I sort of agree with you. Given the history of the Bible, it seems highly unlikely that what we're looking at today is exactly what He may have laid down all those years ago. It's sort of like the proverbial whore with a heart of gold. Sure, it's been around, but in essence there's a lot of good in there.

Also, it seems to me that the idea of the Bible being the complete and unchanging word of God is in direct conflict with the idea that the Judeo-Christian God is alive. It's hard to credit that He's some sort of divine J.D. Salinger who drops a bestseller on us 2000 years ago and then is never heard from again. If He's there and He's alive, then surely he's capable of providing revision and updates. That's why, even though I'm a Christian, I tend to look at the Bible as less biography and more generous unofficial autobiography.

reguarding the torah, i think what your grandfather may be getting at is that the manuscripts for the torah are not available older than 500 or so ad (that is untill the discovery of the dead sea scrolls in the 1970's) whereas some manusripts of books of the new testement dating to before this do exist. the really interesting thing though, is that the dead sea scrolls which are very very old veryfy that the copies of the old testement that judaism recorded one generation at a time are very accurately matched and therefore very good records of what was orignially recorded. i would contend that editations to the bible are very small and for the most part do not change the message of the book or are obvious and only occur in certain translations of the bible.
the real question is not whether the bible is accurate but rather if you want to beleive what it says, if you dont than no amount of proof will change your mind. if you do than you do not need any proof.

Well, can you accept that the Bible is inspired by God (like many religious texts from many faiths)?

Personally, I sort of agree with you. Given the history of the Bible, it seems highly unlikely that what we're looking at today is exactly what He may have laid down all those years ago. It's sort of like the proverbial whore with a heart of gold. Sure, it's been around, but in essence there's a lot of good in there.

Also, it seems to me that the idea of the Bible being the complete and unchanging word of God is in direct conflict with the idea that the Judeo-Christian God is alive. It's hard to credit that He's some sort of divine J.D. Salinger who drops a bestseller on us 2000 years ago and then is never heard from again. If He's there and He's alive, then surely he's capable of providing revision and updates. That's why, even though I'm a Christian, I tend to look at the Bible as less biography and more generous unofficial autobiography.I can accept the Bible as inspired by Good, but since I don't hold the traditional concept of God, saying that it's inspired by God is pushing it.

My beliefs have evolved to be agnostic in nature. Specifically I find it insanely arrogant that mankind believes a supreme being would somehow hold his affairs as important as we do. I find it more believable that man created "God" in his image than the other way around. Man is a speck in the universe and if there is a god, we're probably barely on his radar.

At least we know where the battle of Armageddon will take place ("Armageddon"= Mount Megiddo) :)

Hang on a minute. I thought that Armageddon was a valley in northern Israel.

The Bible is not fiction.
Biblical archeology does not seem to prove miraculous events, what it does is study the historical political/social/economic situations that the Bible describes, digs up some dirt and finds that those situations were as the Bible says. Biblical archeology cannot tell you if Jesus turned water into wine or if there were angels.
We don't really know the precise location of the garden of eden in the bible. We just know it was placed between a couple of rivers whose names happen to be identical to those we know of today. It is assumed that the Bible means the garden of eden was in the middle east but we don't know that. Many think the garden of eden was in Africa or in the Amazon. It is entirely possible that what we call the Tigris and Euphrates today, were not known as such when the garden of eden would have existed.
As for the flood, every culture around the world has a story of the flood. And if you study these stories, they are all pretty much the same except for one or two minor details. These stories have been handed down for thousands of years as history. Geologists do have proof there was a glaciation. We also know there were cities in the mediterranean basin when it was flooded tens of thousands of years ago. In fact, even in the atlantic and on the bottom of the carribean and even off the west coast of south america, we are finding the remains of ancient cities and roads. Though these were formerly believed to be natural formations, undersea archeologists are finding clues that they may have been manmade. The best example being the road from the Yucatan peninsula to the top of Bimini and onward.
The other thing that people think is proof for the flood is a massive object shaped like a boat on the top of a certain mountain in Turkey. Photos from high in the air show a boat like shape but no has actually gotten close enough to actually inspect the object. The Turkish government was said to be preparing to airlift some people (its not accesssible by land), to the site but that was over a year ago and nothing's been said since. Until we get someone to inspect it up close, we don't really know if it is the lost ark. Another question being that if it is, how could have lasted this long without the wood rotting and breaking down? The wood is described as being petrified. But as far as I know, the only way for that to be so, is if the story of creation was different from what we believe today and for the earth to be much older than funy christians will accept it to be. It takes a heck of a long time for wood to become petrified. Of course, if the object does turn out to be the ark, it would overturn all of our modern belief systems whether christian or secular as both views could be completely overturned. Cause according to the secular view, there should not be a massive boat on the top of some mountain. But according to the christian view, the earth is not old enough for that same boat to have already been petrified.
The torah is held to be the same as the old testament.
The valley of mediddo is indeed a valley in Israel where battles constantly took place.

http://www.mustardseed.net/html/pmegidd.html

its also supposed to have been a city
http://www.bibarch.com/ArchaeologicalSites/Megiddo.htm]

http://www.bibleplaces.com/megiddo.htm

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/Megiddo.html

I've seen some things here and there. Usually a bunch of hooey.

Oh, and King David never performed miracles.

I find it more believable that man created "God" in his image than the other way around. Man is a speck in the universe and if there is a god, we're probably barely on his radar.I think it's actually the truth. Men wrote the Bible and created God in their image. And if He does exist, why the heck is he allowing terrorism, destruction, natural disasters, war, suffering, pain, and evil?

I think God, if He exists at all, is paying no attention to the human race or else is a sadist who enjoys watching their pain, apology to devout biblicalists.

Too many cultures, especially in Mesopotamia, have strikingly similar flood myths for there NOT to have been some sort of great flood. The specifics of the myths, such as Noah's ark, however, are questionable.
Too many people have seen UFOs, Ghosts, bigfoot, the Jersey devil, little people, mothman, sea serpents, and other crazy stuff to deny it's reality too.

I'm not saying that there may have been a flood in that region at some time, but not a global one. Why should a regional flooding event impress us? Floods happen all the time. Even so, a major flood would leave some evidence other than a few stories.

Too many people have seen UFOs, Ghosts, bigfoot, the Jersey devil, little people, mothman, sea serpents, and other crazy stuff to deny it's reality too.

I'm not saying that there may have been a flood in that region at some time, but not a global one. Why should a regional flooding event impress us? Floods happen all the time. Even so, a major flood would leave some evidence other than a few stories.
Jesussaves was much funnier :cool:

Last I heard it was located at the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, which is indeed currently a desert. Of course I also heard that they did not find a Tree of Life nor an Angel of the East with a burning sword guarding the way, but as of late you can find the United States military there, does that count?

lol.

Jesussaves was much funnier :cool:
The mods don't want funny.

Last I heard it was located at the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, which is indeed currently a desert. Of course I also heard that they did not find a Tree of Life nor an Angel of the East with a burning sword guarding the way, but as of late you can find the United States military there, does that count?
:p close enough

Too many people have seen UFOs, Ghosts, bigfoot, the Jersey devil, little people, mothman, sea serpents, and other crazy stuff to deny it's reality too.

I'm not saying that there may have been a flood in that region at some time, but not a global one. Why should a regional flooding event impress us? Floods happen all the time. Even so, a major flood would leave some evidence other than a few stories.


You are thinking on a present day mindset, caring only about what you now know. these people only knew of the fertile cressent region fo the world and thus their world was fully covered by the flood. try thinking like those who wrote the manuscripts instead of those reading and trying to decipher them.

also we are talking of large nations of people who are all believing in this flood, not pockets of hundreds of citizens seen as insane or delusional by their own communities.

how do you have proof of the bible? You dont need prof that it exists you can see it anyway. What's inside it however is in my opinion is rubbish.

how do you have proof of the bible? You dont need prof that it exists you can see it anyway. What's inside it however is in my opinion is rubbish.
Since everything in the bibile is rubbish or fiction,
Egypt is a figment of our collective imagination. As is the red sea. The people claiming to be jews are actually suffering from mass pyschosis cause they aren't really jews. The ruins of the cities of Ur, Babylon, and even Jerusalem are mirages and when we feel them we are hallucinating.
Niether the nile nor the tigris or eurphrates are really there. The Roman Empire never really existed since, as some here have posted, everything in the Bible is a myth. And while we are at it, since everything the Bible talks about is a myth, we are not really descended from just one individual being. Hence there is no such thing as a mitochondrial eve.

Too many people have seen UFOs, Ghosts, bigfoot, the Jersey devil, little people, mothman, sea serpents, and other crazy stuff to deny it's reality too.

I'm not saying that there may have been a flood in that region at some time, but not a global one. Why should a regional flooding event impress us? Floods happen all the time. Even so, a major flood would leave some evidence other than a few stories.

Those are hundreds of people. Flood stories permeated cultures, meaning hundreds of thousands of people experienced them. And there is evidence, such as the displacement of settlements, that indicates a great catastrophe affected the region.

how do you have proof of the bible? You dont need prof that it exists you can see it anyway. What's inside it however is in my opinion is rubbish.

That's exceedingly ignorant. There is a great deal of historical truth in the Bible. Just because some of the more fantastical elements are likely untrue does not make the entire Bible false.

I think this summed it up pretty well:

http://www.selectsmart.com/DISCUSS/read.php?f=33&i=125386&t=125386

If you will turn your Bible's to Ezekiel 26. It's a very narrow and specific prophecy that has come true. Here is what know.

1. Tyre will be destroyed.
2. Many nations will come against Tyre.
3. The walls will be knocked down scraped clean "like the top of a rock".
4. It shall never be rebuilt.
5. It will be a place for fishermen to spread there nets.

What happened.
1. After many years of laughter at the writings of very existance, it was discovered destroyed.
2. Nebuchadnezer and his underlings first attacked Tyre in 580-570 B.C, followed by the Persian conquest in 525 B.C. I believed they took the main city of Tyre, but the people escaped to an island off the coast. Alexander the Great finished the job. To get to the people on the island, he scraped the city clean and built a bridge out of the city to reach the island. This happend in 332 B.C. Tyre was destroyed and the "dust scraped off her."
3. It has not been rebuilt.
4. Guess what goes on there now? Fishermen spread their nets. for real.

Now, I'm going to study for my vector geometry exam like I'm supposed to. :)

http://www.cresourcei.org/ezekieltyre.html

Hang on a minute. I thought that Armageddon was a valley in northern Israel.
Maggedo (sp?) = ruins of a fort on a hill in northern israel (at a major road intersection .
Ar = hebrew for hill
Ar + Maggedo = Armaggedo = Armageddon :eek:

We don't really know the precise location of the garden of eden in the bible. We just know it was placed between a couple of rivers whose names happen to be identical to those we know of today. It is assumed that the Bible means the garden of eden was in the middle east but we don't know that. Many think the garden of eden was in Africa or in the Amazon. It is entirely possible that what we call the Tigris and Euphrates today, were not known as such when the garden of eden would have existed.
Assuming an actual universal Deluge, actually, it's most likely that places like "the middle east", "Africa", and "the Amazon" didn't exist at the time of the Garden. A cataclysm of that magnitude would have completely reshaped the land, so that the world afterwards would have looked much different than it had before (after all, it was YHWH's stated purpose to destroy the entire known world, sans Noah, three of his kids, and their wives). Modern-day geological features (like the T&E rivers, for one) that bear names akin to antediluvian ones are simply named after them for reasons known only to the early postdiluvians.

It takes a heck of a long time for wood to become petrified. Of course, if the object does turn out to be the ark, it would overturn all of our modern belief systems whether christian or secular as both views could be completely overturned. Cause according to the secular view, there should not be a massive boat on the top of some mountain. But according to the christian view, the earth is not old enough for that same boat to have already been petrified.
Again, assuming that that really was Noah's ark (which, contrary to popular misbelief, would not have been boat-shaped, but rather, just a really big box--see Gen. 6:14-16), that's not necessarily what would happen. What would happen is one of the following:
Creationist religion adapts in the face of changing circumstances, to accept that the world might be older than it previously had claimed; or
Evolutionary science adapts in the face of changing circumstances, to accept that the process of petrification might not take as long as it thought; or
Neither side willing to budge, everyone just writes it off as not really the ark.
Oh, yeah, my money's on the second option.

That seems right. As for the god or no god debate, can we prove if there really is a deity or not? Not until we die and find out for ourselves since those who claim that he spoke to them obviously had the devil or brain-condition talk to them and not god, otherwise, they wouldn't go and shoot people.

You cannot see bad stuff happen and assume that there is no deity. Think of life on earth as a test and god as the teacher. God gave you all the information by informing some who informed you. Now you are taking the test. Will god come and tell you that the answer to #4562 is B? Of course not. If you lead a good life and obey his rules, you go to heaven. If you fail, you either drop out and work for the devil or you retake the test. I really don't know because I don't eat breakfast.

If you take the bible to literally, you can be convinced that everything in there is fake and that we are rally particles of nothingness floating in deep space becuase the bible says that there is an earth and that there were people on it that lived and breathed and existed. Maybe we shouldn't try to decipher the kinda cryptic bible with a modern mindset and try to read it like you are a person from that time. Language evolves constantly. Gay went from meaning happy and joyous to meaning homo. Good Afternoon no longer means goodbye. Those are examples of change during just the last 250 years. Was there really a man who lived to be over 900 years old? Well, since the calenders were different, it might have been 800 years in our years. Will there really be a beast at the end of the world? Or is the beast really a very evil person? They didn't write the bible for those who would watch tv and play video games. They didn't even think that those things would ever exist. They wrote it in a way that those who lived in that time period would understand because that was the only way they knew how. Will we be able to write something that those living in the year 10,000 would understand? Most likely not. Languages evolve. We evolve. Evolve doesn't have to mean the evolution Darwin came up with. It means change, so we did evolve. Try to keep an open mind. I do. I may believe that the bible is a work of nonfiction, but I can understand why people could ever feel differently. Try to not take everything literally, or else everything will be a lie to you.

Assuming an actual universal Deluge, actually, it's most likely that places like "the middle east", "Africa", and "the Amazon" didn't exist at the time of the Garden. A cataclysm of that magnitude would have completely reshaped the land, so that the world afterwards would have looked much different than it had before (after all, it was YHWH's stated purpose to destroy the entire known world, sans Noah, three of his kids, and their wives). Modern-day geological features (like the T&E rivers, for one) that bear names akin to antediluvian ones are simply named after them for reasons known only to the early postdiluvians.


Again, assuming that that really was Noah's ark (which, contrary to popular misbelief, would not have been boat-shaped, but rather, just a really big box--see Gen. 6:14-16), that's not necessarily what would happen. What would happen is one of the following:
Creationist religion adapts in the face of changing circumstances, to accept that the world might be older than it previously had claimed; or
Evolutionary science adapts in the face of changing circumstances, to accept that the process of petrification might not take as long as it thought; or
Neither side willing to budge, everyone just writes it off as not really the ark.
Oh, yeah, my money's on the second option.
Looks like we are on the same page.

That seems right. As for the god or no god debate, can we prove if there really is a deity or not? Not until we die and find out for ourselves since those who claim that he spoke to them obviously had the devil or brain-condition talk to them and not god, otherwise, they wouldn't go and shoot people.

You cannot see bad stuff happen and assume that there is no deity. Think of life on earth as a test and god as the teacher. God gave you all the information by informing some who informed you. Now you are taking the test. Will god come and tell you that the answer to #4562 is B? Of course not. If you lead a good life and obey his rules, you go to heaven. If you fail, you either drop out and work for the devil or you retake the test. I really don't know because I don't eat breakfast.

If you take the bible to literally, you can be convinced that everything in there is fake and that we are rally particles of nothingness floating in deep space becuase the bible says that there is an earth and that there were people on it that lived and breathed and existed. Maybe we shouldn't try to decipher the kinda cryptic bible with a modern mindset and try to read it like you are a person from that time. Language evolves constantly. Gay went from meaning happy and joyous to meaning homo. Good Afternoon no longer means goodbye. Those are examples of change during just the last 250 years. Was there really a man who lived to be over 900 years old? Well, since the calenders were different, it might have been 800 years in our years. Will there really be a beast at the end of the world? Or is the beast really a very evil person? They didn't write the bible for those who would watch tv and play video games. They didn't even think that those things would ever exist. They wrote it in a way that those who lived in that time period would understand because that was the only way they knew how. Will we be able to write something that those living in the year 10,000 would understand? Most likely not. Languages evolve. We evolve. Evolve doesn't have to mean the evolution Darwin came up with. It means change, so we did evolve. Try to keep an open mind. I do. I may believe that the bible is a work of nonfiction, but I can understand why people could ever feel differently. Try to not take everything literally, or else everything will be a lie to you.

As with the other guy, we are on the same page here.