Is there anyone out there ? (part 2)

The Bible - full of fables or facts fulfilling ?

We have discovered (though I'm sure you already knew it before) that, according to the Bible, God chose Abraham as a person and the Jews as a people. Now, we may believe or not believe the Bible but the fact remains that Jews during Bible times believed it (or what they knew of it). They believed that they had some purpose in life and that they were chosen to be separate from other people.

They also believed in God, although they often angered him and had the odd fling with a pagan deity. He was very real to them both in the blessings that he provided them with and in his wrath that they often provoked. The manna from heaven was real, as were the incredible military feats (the Six Day War was childs-play compared to some of these!). The exiles and defeats were also painfully real.

There comes a point in time when Biblical history becomes (what secular historians would call) real history. This is when events in the Bible agree with the records of the historians of the day.

We may say that the earlier stories in the Bible, those involving Abraham, Moses or David, would not fall into that category but, when we reach the later times of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, we start to see other historians writing about events and people who also appear in the Bible.

One such historian is Josephus. He not only wrote about events from the time of Antiochus Epiphanes (the Greek tyrant who was the chief baddie in the Hannukah story) to the fall of Jerusalem by the Romans (which he personally witnessed), but he also wrote about earlier Biblical stories, from the story of Creation onwards.

So here we have a non-religious historian, a Jew who defected to the Romans, writing meticulously about events from his present and recent past, but also corroborating events from the Bible itself. He had no axe to grind, if anything he would have been hostile to his Jewish past, in order to please his new Roman masters.

There must come a point when we are willing to say, "OK, I believe that happened". Do we believe in the Battle of Hastings, the Magna Carta, or the Wars of the Roses? We accept these as historical facts, because they are formative events in the life of our country. If we are willing to believe in the Battle of Hastings, then what about the Fall of Rome, or the events in the life of Roman Emperor, Nero (the fiddler)?

We are travelling back in time, now. Have we any cause to doubt that Nero ever existed? If we believe that, then we've got no reason to doubt that Josephus existed, as they were around at about the same time.

Having accepted the man, then what about his writings? At the very least, we must accept that his eye witness account of the Fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. was correct. Then what about the time of Judas Maccabee and the rededication of the temple, a couple of centuries earlier? Both of these historical events are recounted in his book, Wars of the Jews. Is it too much to admit that these events could actually have happened?

So perhaps we can both agree that there are at least some Biblical events that are verifiable and that actually happened. If you follow my (cunning) logic then you probably know what's coming next ...

If the Maccabee stories happened ... then what about the Jewish exile to Assyria and Babylonia, Biblical events that took place a little earlier.

These are biblical events and are very reasonable explanations for the presence of Jewish communities in these other Middle Eastern countries.

Then there are the exploits of David, Moses, Jacob and Abraham. On what basis do we reject them? Isn't it just possible that these people actually existed?

So the Bible must have at least some truth within its pages.

It is from the pages of this book that we see not only the history of the Jewish people (i.e. events that have already happened) but also events in the future of the Jewish people (i.e. events yet to happen)! If we ignore the countless prophecies that were made and fulfilled within its pages, how about looking at the prophecies that were made but were yet to be fulfilled. Let's look at what it says about Jewish history after 70 C.E. Remember, we are looking just at the Jewish Bible (the Old Testament), which has now been proven to have been completed in its finished form much earlier than this date. Thanks to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940's and 1950's and their remarkable corroboration with Biblical texts, we can say with total accuracy that none of the Jewish Bible was written after this date (70 C.E.).