The Testimony of the 3 and 8 Witnesses to the BoM
Brian Malcolm errancy@infidels.org
Sat, 12 Jun 1999 12:56:04 -0700 (00929235364, NABBKAPJPFCPHHCMJOKNCEOLPAAA.brianm1@home.com)
POOBAH (past)
On what should we judge the claims of the BoM & the Bible, pray tell?
<snip>
Matthew Bell
Those would be many. A primary factor would be whether the claims made in
the book could be shown to be false, especially when speaking of ordinary
matters. An example with the two mentioned books above would be the
testimony of archaeology, which has verified parts of the Bible, but
little, if any of the details in the BoM. If you want to test such, all you
need to do is some research into the coinage mentioned in the Bible and
verified by archaelogical finds and compare such with the complete absence
of such with the coinage in the BoM.
POOBAH
And how is it that you know that the Bible is accurate in matters of
numismatics? If you say archeology and or examination of historical texts,
I'm going to point out that archeology also shows that the world is older
than six thousand years, that there was no flood four thousand years ago,
the pyramids were not granaries, there is no evidence of an exodus, no
evidence of Solomon or his Temple, no evidence for Darius the Mede, nor was
he the conqueror of Babylon, Balthazzar was not the son of Nebechanezzar, no
evidence for an empire-wide census, no evidence of the slaughter of the
innocents, no evidence for the "darkness over the land" and the earthquake,
and I would consider these more weighty objections than whether someone
referred to a "shekel" properly, and so why do you engage in pick & choose
archeology & textual criticism?
If we find that a book gets its historical details right, that still doesn't
move us beyond the level of a John Grissham novel.
Where we have miraculous claims in the Bible, where do we have evidence for
them?
Just because a King Arthur romance correctly places Stonehenge on the
Salisbury plain doesn't mean that Merlin magically transported it there from
Ireland.
B.