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Is Bible history fact or fiction?


eMTee

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So for Christians, the God of the Muslims is a competing god? I thought there was supposed to be only one.

 

That's an awfully simplistic reading for you, LG.

 

To Muslims, there's only one God, and many false Gods, which can be ideas, people, or whatever.

To Christians, there's only one God, and many false Gods, which can be ideas, people, or whatever.

 

The two just overlap differently.

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Surely that is beside the point. There was only one God of Abraham and Isaac, and both faiths sprang from that one faith.

 

Sprang from the same source- sure.

 

An analogy. I have a certain mental image of communism. So does a person from the old Soviet Union. Both of us have read the foundational documents, from which the majority of the philosophy sprang, so both of our ideas sprang from the same source.

 

Move ahead 50 years. I've lived in America, my friend has lived in the USSR. My mental image of communism is most likely very different then his. So different, in fact, they really are the same in name only. Both are systems of government, true, but individually, I have very different impressions and understandings.

 

I understand how somebody who sees religion as a simple belief structure in the social science sense would think they are equvalent because they came from the same source. It is interesting to note that Islamic beliefs appeared a while after Abraham (several thousand years). There is a big gap there, whereas Christianity has a pretty continuous string of knowledge through the Jewish religion. [correct me if I'm wrong, Tinny!]

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Now when it comes to the Creation story, it sounds so far fetched, that it can, and most likely be a made up story..and it is to most all people. no question about that...so I will not ask if anyone believes that or not.

 

I won't ask any questions about the flood either.

 

What about the story about the Jew's exit out of Egypt? considering that that story does not have anything to do with the creation( as far as I know), but it also has events that are also far fetched. and other stories like it (name if desired).

Actually, I believe there are some Egyptian records of some of these events occuring (i.e. death of first born children).

 

But I recently heard one of the strangest theories for Exodus. This was a ufological theory that said that they were actually led out by a UFO :). It seems pretty far fetched at first, but there is quite a lot of evidence supporting it. The lights that guided them, those are very similar to those described by UFO encounterers. :) ?

 

I don't actually believe this, but it's intresting.

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But I recently heard one of the strangest theories for Exodus. This was a ufological theory that said that they were actually led out by a UFO :(. It seems pretty far fetched at first, but there is quite a lot of evidence supporting it. The lights that guided them, those are very similar to those described by UFO encounterers. :) ?.

 

Maybe these were the same aliens who built the pyramids? ? :) :) :(

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they are both the God of Abraham. You need to read up on your religious history, eMTee.

This statment is correct in a way. the Musles believe that they worship the God of Abraham, and the Jews believe that they worship the God of Abraham...Ishmael was a decendent of Abraham, and he arose a great nation and along with that nation, a religion known today as Islomic/Muslem.

 

Isaas was also a decendent of Abraham, and he also arose a great nation known today as Israel. and Jewdism

 

the character of the God of the Bible, and the god of the Qu'ran are not the same...does the Qu'ran say that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, he is completely God in the flesh..he was the propiation for sin threw his death, burial and reserection...and that he was not not a prophet?

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This statment is correct in a way. the Musles believe that they worship the God of Abraham, and the Jews believe that they worship the God of Abraham...Ishmael was a decendent of Abraham, and he arose a great nation and along with that nation, a religion known today as Islomic/Muslem.

 

Isaas was also a decendent of Abraham, and he also arose a great nation known today as Israel. and Jewdism

 

the character of the God of the Bible, and the god of the Qu'ran are not the same...does the Qu'ran say that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, he is completely God in the flesh..he was the propiation for sin threw his death, burial and reserection...and that he was not not a prophet?

 

That would bring us round robin like in all these discussions right back to is the Bible true or not, or rather the inerrant camp versus those who find it purely a human written book.

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So for Christians, the God of the Muslims is a competing god? I thought there was supposed to be only one.

 

To a hard core christian the Muslim God is a false God and as such would be a religion sponsored by Satan. At least that is the normal line literalists tend to take. Personally, I see them as two religions that arose from a common origin that can at the very least be traced back to Babylon through Abraham who by the story came from Ur. In that sence they do tend to uphold different competing views today of the one original God which by some of the OT's own wording may or may not originally have been one deity. In fact, the original deity may have been simular to one Babylon had with 50 some odd names each denoting a somewhat different personality. Either way I suspect the origin of both is found in anchient pagan thought.

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Maybe. But those pagans were all polytheists. Abraham somehow made the bold move toward monotheism. I wonder why.
I think he felt it was politically expedient. Look where it got him though....

 

Cheers,

Buffy

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I think he felt it was politically expedient. Look where it got him though....
So, let me get this straight. Abraham leaves Ur. He has abandoned a reasonably technically advanced civilization . He, presumably following his father, goes out camping with his family. His dad dies in Haran on the way to Canaan. He finds himself in charge of the entourage. Then he thinks to himself, gee, I can add some stability to this environment by inventing monotheism.

 

That's certainly what I would have done. Right after inventing espresso.

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That's certainly what I would have done. Right after inventing espresso.
See? He has his priorities COMPLETELY backward.... :) Of course had it been me, I'd have gone with "matriarchal society" right after the espresso machine...

 

Cheers,

Buffy

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what about Saddam and Gamora?
I'm pretty sure that in spite of his ego, Saddam Hussein was not in the Bible, and the famous Toho Films costar to Godzilla was probably Shinto, not Jewish or Christian.

 

Cheers,

Buffy

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what about Saddam and Gamora?

 

I'm pretty sure that in spite of his ego, Saddam Hussein was not in the Bible, and the famous Toho Films costar to Godzilla was probably Shinto, not Jewish or Christian.
I think you misunderstood me..I am talking about the two cities mentioned in Genesis, where Abraham's nephue Lot was in, and fled out of with his wife and two of his daughters, as the cities burned.

 

Do you think that the two cities where real, and that they burned to the ground with fire and brimstone?

 

Note: Jewish is a nationality. like russian, Asian, and Jananese, Korian, Cuban..Jewan just doesn't sound all that right.

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I think you misunderstood me..I am talking about the two cities mentioned in Genesis, where Abraham's nephue Lot was in, and fled out of with his wife and two of his daughters, as the cities burned. Do you think that the two cities where real, and that they burned to the ground with fire and brimstone?
Oh, you mean Sodom and Gamorrah. Lots of debate on this one, with many archeologiests fairly certain that the cities are located near a place known as Bab-edDrah, but the carbon dating of the ashes found there do not match any dates that would coincide with when the Bible says this event occurred, so the leading proponent of archeological confirmation of the event has found a place where there have been only a handful of artifacts found, but ash that is aged to the correct date. This fellow is Ron Wyatt and a review in Biblical Archeological Review had this to say about the documentary on his research:
"Ron Wyatt claims to have discovered Noah's Ark, the remains of Sodom and Gomorrah, the 'real' Mount Sinai (the one in Saudi Arabia), chariot wheels from the Red Sea, the Ark of the Covenant - well, you name it . . . We respond that we - and the academically trained archaeologists we deal with - give Wyatt little credence. If it sounds too good to be true, we say, it probably is. Wyatt is an amateur archaeologist; he makes his living as an anaesthetist. Wyatt calls himself a 'Biblical archaeologist' but he would be more at home in the 19th century."
You'll note he's the only source of several of the "facts" you quoted above. Its also been noted that there are enormous quantities of naturally occurring sulfer surrounding the entire Dead sea area, and it is known for both deposits of natural gas and has numerous active earthquake faults, all of which point to a natural event that parallels a highly "enhanced" myth that showed up in the Bibles. In addition, my reference above to salt pillars was a direct reference to Lot's Wife: the area is filled with salt pillars due to the slow drying up of the salt water-filled Dead Sea.

 

Lots of archeologists concur that many major cities came and went in this area and there is evidence that they encountered catastrophic natural or man-made (war in those days remember usually involved pillaging followed by burning entire cities--which were pretty small in those days--to the ground) disasters. Inconveniently for those seeking "proof" of the Bible, the dates and locations don't quite match up, and the miracles do all seem to have non-miraculous explanations--as long as you don't insist that the Bible must be right and the evidence is wrong....

 

Cheers,

Buffy

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