The Bible's knowledge, What makes it a reliable source of information? Options

[hilaryhashandcuf...]

I took a Bible as literature class last year and I have to say, I was not impressed by my teacher's going on about how good a historically accurate source the Bible was.

I myself am not a Christian, but instead consider myself Gnostic (meaning "seeking truth" )

My question is, since the bible is so religiously biased, what do you guys think on the issue of using the bible as a historical document to find information?

[Kontroll]

There is alot of history in the Bible. Just because it's in story form doesn't mean it's not history.

I can't name any off the top of my head, but if you really research it there is definitely history in there.

Jesus Christ for starters. Whether divine or just purely human, he is apart of history as recorded in over 150 other books of that time.

You're not going to get alot out of the Bible if you're hearing it from a secular source. Yeah, they have their own opinions, but a Christian is the best person to hear it from. You wouldn't ask a Buddhist to tell you why Christianity is a valid religion, would you?

If you're going to criticize the Bible, and any other religious work with out really researching it, then go burn in hell. Ignorant bastards.

[brooklyneast05]

Whether divine or just purely human, he is apart of history as recorded in over 150 other books of that time.

lol
i hope you'll go into more detail about those 150 books of that time. as far as i know all writings that aren't christian writing of jesus come well AFTER the alleged life of jesus. not to mention a good number of them have been disproved as frauds with mentions of jesus added in well after the actual document was written. which really sucks, because by the church doing sneaky little things like that and getting caught they've only made it worse on themselves.

the jewish histories josephus is the earliest non christian account of jesus as far as i know. his birth is well after jesus' crucifixion, so the earliest accounts are of course not eye witness. just even moer information that's pretty much hearsay.

the majority of all these supposed outside sources don't name him as jesus either i don't think. apologists see the name christus, or chrestus and that's good enough to say we have to be talking about jesus.

it would be great if we had the roman record that recorded pontius pilot actually executing a man named jesus, but of course we don't. we don't have anything that isn't written years and years after his death. there's probably plenty of debate about that though.

but if you know of 150 books of that time that record him then i wanna know, because i'm apparently way off in my research.

it's so strange to me that a man supposedly this great and this well known is a complete mystery and his life is debatable. it's amazing to me what people didn't write about him in his life time. i'm not saying i necessarily disbelieve that he existed as just a man, but i think people would be justified in that belief probably.