re: King Herod’s 2,000-Year-Old Roman Basilica Uncovered in Ashkelon

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But Jesus most likely spoke Aramaic, and so probably His disciples as well. That’s what I’m saying. The Bible is absolutely the Word of God, but translated and re-translated, and also edited by fallible, imperfect man. Sometimes men with agendas, like King James

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Alexander the Great conquered Israel without firing a shot. The agreement between each defeated nation was financial as well as written records. The expanse of the empire required the use of Greek as the record keeping word. Anyone writing an eye witness account would have written either in Greek or Latin .....Latin for the Romans. Even Rome used Greek for a period.

The reason we have nails through the palms? No Greek word for wrists.

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Plus, one has to consider how much the Bible "borrows" from Zoroastrianism.

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Or how about how much Zoroastrianism borrows from the Bible? While Zoroaster was a real person who lived sometime around the year 1000 BC, the first manuscripts about his life weren't written until the fourth century AD, and no surviving texts of those documents are older than the 13th century.

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Herod wasn’t a good guy based on what we know about him, but it’s a historical smear campaign to assert he murdered a bunch of babies. There’s no historical evidence of that apart from the Bible (as opposed to the rest of his life for which there is extensive evidence). Such an event would have been extensively documented given the Roman occupation at the time and their meticulous, almost over the top detailed documentation for the time. Herod biographers, historians and regional archeologists nearly unanimously consider the event to be fable.

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You continue to prove yourself insufferable. Lol! Your pride and arrogance will be your undoing ….guaranteed…lol!

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Anyone writing an eye witness account would have written either in Greek or Latin .....Latin for the Romans.

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Not if they only spoke and understood Aramaic.

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The reason we have nails through the palms? No Greek word for wrists.

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Precisely what I am saying. Everything doesn’t translate between languages. Nails through the palms would not be the perfect Word of God, as it is almost certainly inaccurate. It is man’s imperfect translation, because that’s the best they could do.

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No, there's nothing wrong with saying that an oral history was transmitted imperfectly. It doesn't mean that the God of the Bible isn't the one true God.

But biblical literalism is a terrible idea and one that often flies in the face of what is known to be true.

Edit: if the Bible is literally true then the earth is ~6000 years old and the flood happened at such a time that megalithic structures all over the earth were somehow built by a handful of infants that decided to continue the old cultures of the new places they settled at.

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I enjoy these types of discussions. You'll get flamed and downvoted but I think it's good to have a back and forth about Biblical historicity. It's a discussion that very rarely takes place in our churches

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On the contrary, it is largely only insulated evangelical circles and certain Bible colleges (mostly in the evangelical south) that still maintain a scholarly attempt to defend the gospels as eyewitness accounts or that they date earlier than 70 AD or so. The books themselves were even called by their current names until between 150-200 AD.

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If one believes in God, and believes the Bible is his word, it’s a ridiculous position to assert he couldn’t keep it intact, and trustworthy.
Anyone in a seminary or who claims to be a Bible scholar but doesn’t believe God can preserve his word is simply fooling himself and not a true believer.

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Until about 1948 Pontius Pilot was considered to be nothing more than a literary figure.


This is completely false

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Completely false??

e.g. - John Warwick Montgomery in "The Jury Returns: A Juridical Defense of Christianity" ' Modern archaeological research has confirmed again and again the reliability of New Testament geography, chronology, and general history. To take but a single, striking example: After the rise of liberal biblical criticism, doubt was expressed as to the historicity of Pontius Pilate, since he is mentioned even by pagan historians only in connection with Jesus' death. Then, in 1961, came the discovery at Caesarea of the now famous "Pilate inscription," definitely showing that, as usual, the New Testament writers were engaged in accurate historiography. ' LINK or - "For years, skeptics have claimed that Pontius Pilate, the one responsible for Jesus' execution, was nothing more than a mythical figure." LINK or - "How can atheists deny that Herod and Pontius Pilate existed when there are coins that were issued by them ? I have seen them. When they say the Bible is fiction, they would have to also deny numismatic evidence. " LINK ... or - "When critics of the Passion of the Christ argue about Pilate not being historical and Caiaphas being too rabid, they are ignoring Biblical accounts and secular history because they don’t like the Biblical story." LINK

Your liberal biblical criticism is what’s completely false.

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That’s not what they believe. They believe the gospels are accurate reflections of oral tradition passed on from eyewitnesses, preserved by God. They just acknowledge the reality that there is no defensible means of arguing the writers themselves were eyewitnesses.

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You can’t both say they believe in the preserved word of God, and then deny the authorship which is stated in that same preserved word!

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You can’t both say they believe in the preserved word of God, and then deny the authorship which is stated in that same preserved word!

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I believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God. If I'm wrong then what have I lost? If they are wrong --- Oops!