Vulpine wrote:clrkbar wrote:Hadn't heard of him before. 1,300 pages is a bit long for me to read...
What events were you thinking of that don't posses validity?
Pretty much all of Genesis, for one. If all human life descended from a single man and woman from the proposed period of time, geneticists would be screaming about it. The Flood story is another. A world-wide deluge could not have happened. A much more plausible explanation would be a localized flood in what would have been considered "the world" at that time. There's also the animals aboard the ark. The Gospel of Mark is also known to have been written in a manner which shows a complete lack of knowledge concerning the geographical and political landscapes of Palestine at that time. David and Solomon have no evidence to support their existence (tombs have supposedly been turned up in Jerusalem, but nothing has been substantiated yet). There's also nothing to substantiate Sodom and Gomorrah. Geologists have even confirmed that the lands in which they are said to have been located have not experienced any volcanic activity for the last 4000 years, so even a natural cataclysm explanation is tossed out the window.
Do you have sources for these ideas? Please don't think I am demanding sources. I almost never source my ideas because I can't normally remember exactly where I learned what I have learned. But if you have them, I would like to research them. Anyways...
I may be ignorant, but what do you mean when you say "genetics would be screaming about it"? Why is a world-wide flood not plausible? What about the animals? Yes, I agree, this all seems a bit far-fetched and fantastical, but go with me here for sake of testing ideas. I am capable of thinking as best I can from a non-believing point of view.
Why does Mark not knowing his geography very well matter? I suck at spelling, maybe Mark was bad at names and remembering places. The book of mark is the shortest of the gospels and is kinda a quick run-through of Jesus' life. It's not for recording facts, but for summarizing Jesus' ministry, just hitting the important highlights. If you want good, solid, recorded facts, look to the gospel of Luke. He was that kind of meticulous person. Does lack of evidence for David and his son mean it is historically accurate? Come on, you guys have gotten mad at me on other posts for saying stuff like that.