Occasionally, I get mail. The following are a couple of questions sent to me on behalf of someone asking about the historical reliability of Scripture. I am a systematic theologian, and not primarily a biblical scholar or a historian, and people trained in these areas could no doubt address these issues with more sophistication. At the same time, one of the things that theologians do is to try to address the questions that ordinary people ask, and this notion that the Bible is historically unreliable, closer to “fairy tales” than history, seems to be common in contemporary secular culture these days.
I am not a biblical scholar myself, but I read people who are, and, at the least, I can pull together what others who are more competent than myself have said about this topic. Perhaps ordinary lay people will find this helpful. The footnotes and bibliography will provide some guidance for further exploration.
If the Bible contains some truths and some stories, how do you determine which is which and who is the arbitrator of that “truth”? What is the evidence? I understand from a religious standpoint, this is a very dangerous and slippery slope that you may not want to explore, but I believe there are significantly more stories and embellishments in the Bible that render it essentially more philosophical or historically unreliable rather than factual.
Can Christianity exist if Judaism is proven false? In my mind, it seems I have a near-logical proof (at least to a degree of reasonableness) developing that indicates that the basis for Judaism is not valid (not dissimilar to the origin of Mormonism). If true, what are the implications?
History or “Story”?
The question needs to be more carefully put.
As stated, the question seems to equate “truth” with “factual” or “philosophical,” and “stories” with “historically unreliable.”
The real concern seems to be about the historical reliability of the Biblical narratives specifically as historical accounts. To address that question, it is necessary to provide some preliminary clarification. “Narrative” is probably a better word in this regard than “stories” because “stories” (as used here) seems to be equated with non-factual fiction. However, it is even misleading to equate “fiction” with “untrue.” Fiction can be “unhistorical,” and yet, in its own way, address issues of “truth.” For example, Aesop’s Fables are fictional accounts that communicate moral truths.
Narrative covers several possible categories.
