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The religious right's hypocrisy now on full display

wakelaw13 said:
I don't know man, if I was writing a biography and the subject was born to a virgin, I think I'd include at least a footnote.
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deacdixieboy said:
It’s written in the style of an ancient biography much like other books of the day. I would consider the birth to be just about the least important thing in the whole story.
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a miracle conception during a time of mass infanticide
 
wakelaw13 said:
I don't know man, if I was writing a biography and the subject was born to a virgin, I think I'd include at least a footnote.
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Is the question whether Jesus was real? Or whether the story surrounding him is fact? Those are different questions.
 
There is a lot to unpack as it goes to the “infanticide” story. Herod died, if memory serves, a hand full of years B.C.E.. there is also no written evidence of said “infanticide”, but it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Just nothing that corroborates the story…if over 100,000-150,000 children were killed I feel there would be some reference, somewhere.
 
warak said:
There is a lot to unpack as it goes to the “infanticide” story. Herod died, if memory serves, a hand full of years B.C.E.. there is also no written evidence of said “infanticide”, but it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Just nothing that corroborates the story…if over 100,000-150,000 children were killed I feel there would be some reference, somewhere.
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You’re probably right. It’s the same reason why no one thinks the Exodus was real because there would be a record of it. But even if the beginning part of the story didn’t happen, that doesn’t mean Jesus wasn’t a historical person.
 
warak said:
There is a lot to unpack as it goes to the “infanticide” story. Herod died, if memory serves, a hand full of years B.C.E.. there is also no written evidence of said “infanticide”, but it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Just nothing that corroborates the story…if over 100,000-150,000 children were killed I feel there would be some reference, somewhere.
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Herod died in 4 BCE. Most scholars put Jesus’ birth at around 6 BCE. And due to the polemic nature of ANE histories, any infanticide, if historical, could easily been an exaggeration. If a ruler had ordered the death of all the children of a town for example, we might be taking 5 kids and that number is inflated for rhetorical reasons. And that may not have sown up in another historical record as it’s only relevant to the story told by the authors of the gospel.

This may have been a more common in the HB, where you often read recounts of battles where the enemy was utterly destroyed, yet they show up a gain a few passages later.
 
IamThunderbolt said:
Herod died in 4 BCE. Most scholars put Jesus’ birth at around 6 BCE. And due to the polemic nature of ANE histories, any infanticide, if historical, could easily been an exaggeration. If a ruler had ordered the death of all the children of a town for example, we might be taking 5 kids and that number is inflated for rhetorical reasons. And that may not have sown up in another historical record as it’s only relevant to the story told by the authors of the gospel.

This may have been a more common in the HB, where you often read recounts of battles where the enemy was utterly destroyed, yet they show up a gain a few passages later.
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Definitely common in the HB. The idea of herem is West Semitic, even seen in other inscriptions from the region like the Mesha Stela. The whole conquering of the land in Joshua, for instance, is entirely untrue. This is pretty verifiable based on the archaeological record where cities like Jericho weren’t even inhabited during the period where they were said to be entirely destroyed.
 
Seems like there are a lot of inconsistencies…
 
deacdixieboy said:
Of course there are. I’m not sure what you expect. There are inconsistencies in reporting what happened in the news today. That’s with video, phones, etc.
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And inconsistencies are only a problem if you are presenting Scripture as infallible in all matters (not just matters of faith, but science, history, biology, etc.) as literalists do or if you are trying to discredit Scripture as a whole by using an argument from ignorance (attacking the evidence) fallacy.

Both ignore features of the literary genres contained in Scripture (which range from histories to poetry to prophesy to Apology, etc. often in the same book) and ignore context trying to make the text do something it never intended to do and then deifying/condemning it accordingly.
 
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