Why do christians use the bible as evidence of things in the bible?

Question

Before I explain, let me make the prediction that "Bob will live forever."

Have you ever heard of a contemporary external source? For example, all the prophecy nonsense. Just because it says it in one book in the beginning of the bible and it comes true in a later book of the bible, doesn't mean that it has been proven true. Why is there no secondary source proving that these things actually happened?

Bob will live forever! (Now that's proof.)

Answer 1

Unfortunately, Christian apologists, especially of the amateur variety always commit this fallacy of using circular logic. However, I think it is unfair to portray all Christian apologists this way. The more scholarly segment of Christian defenders do point to evidence that is contemporaneous and external to the biblical record to verify certain facts within the biblical record. Unfortunately, where even these more seasoned proponents of Christianity fall short is that they make leaps of logic by assuming that if good portions of the Biblical record are historically accurate, therefore the miraculous events also contained within them most also be assumed to be true.

Of course this sort of “logic”, to use the term loosely, can easily be dismissed. By that same notion every Christian must belief in Zeus and Hercules because even Greek mythology refers to real historical places and real historical events.

Answer 2

People have been using the Bible as an archeological source book for years. People said King David never existed, that he was a fairy tale like Robin Hood because the Jews needed someone to write stories about. Well, back in 1993 a couple of things were found talking about the House of David, and they weren’t even Jewish! They were Aramaian and Moabite! Things are being found all the time attesting to what happened in the Bible!

What about all those miracles? Well, let us take a look at Jericho. How Joshua’s battle plan, told by God, was to march around the city seven times and then yell at it. God also told them not to take anything from the city, but to burn it all as an offering to the Lord, and that no one would ever live there ever again. So they went through with the battle plan, and the walls fell outward. Well, they found the real city of Jericho recently, and they found that the walls of Jericho had indeed fallen outward. When you attack a city, the walls fall inward, don’t they? Hmm…Furthermore, they found the residue of burnt grain in all of the grain stocks. Whoever took Jericho, didn’t take the food, they burnt it all. AND, no one built there again. They built a new city about 10 miles away. Everything about that story was proved true!

You may ask, "How does this make it the word of God? How do we know it is Holy and not just a history book? How do we know Jesus was anything but just a cool teacher?" If all we had was bare fact, then maybe it would just be history. But we don't have that. We have predictive prophesy. In the OT there are 48 major predictions about the messiah, let alone the hundred or so others. How he would die, how he would live, where he was born, etc. Jesus fulfilled all of them. The odds of someone fulfilling any eight of these prophesies by accident is a hundred million billion to one. "This book tells the future and is right. Only God could pull that off!"

To the people who say, "I think people just invented this story. Jesus didn't really rise from the dead or perform miracles. People just made it up." The reason I know that's not true is this: All of those people who keep saying Jesus rose from the dead, most of them died for saying it. People don't die for lies.

Answer 3

Now you have to understand at what time the books were written in the Bible. The Bible is a collection of books all made into one book. And those books were all written at different times...meaning that those prophecies in the books were written long before those books where the prophecies come true. That's why we use other books to support things said in the Gospels (or even books in the old testament that are newer then others), because at the time those books were written the things in the Gospels had not come true yet. Do you get the point, even if you don't it is the point...and a pretty sharp point for sure.

Answer 4

-Just because it says it in one book in the beginning of the bible and it comes true in a later book of the bible, doesn't mean that it has been proven true.

The Bible was written by many different people at many different times. That one prophet says this will happen and it does a couple hundred or even a thousand years later contains more accuracy than the pollsters everyone seems so enamored with.

If George Washington said there will be another George who will be President who's father will be named George as well. If that were recorded in one book and later placed in a current histroy book would that make the history book wrong? Does that mean George Washington was wrong? I don't think so.

You say Bob will live forever. Who is Bob? And in what form will he live forever.

What is your real question? Does God exist? Was Jesus Christ real? What?

Answer 5

There is something you and all who seek to disprove The Bible do not understand. The Faith of The True Christian Faith is based on Fact. The Fact of The Truth Of the Salvation experience. Those of the Christian Faith Know, for a Fact, that they are saved because it is a direct, one-on-one and personal, connection to God. This is an inner knowledge that can not be shared, only experienced first hand. With this experience of The Truth comes the assurance of The Truth of God's Word. Which can still be found in The Bible. Note, I did not say all of the Bible. Because not all of what we now have, and call The Bible, is God's Word. But, That which is God's Word is only made clear by the leading of The Holy Spirit.

It is clear thay you have not had The Salvation experience. If you had then you would be saved and would know and would not pose the argument you do. Thus, you can not experience The Truth of The Bible.

I accept honest questions concerning The Christian Faith. Or, you can check me out at:

http://pages.zdnet.com/mikevanauken/mikesinternetoutreach/

All honest seekers welcome

Answer 6

Assume for a minute that the bible can be considered a historical book and that the writers wrote what the saw (which is what they did, or took the stories that were handed down to them) and put a religious spin on it after they saw it. Which is technically what happened. Some of the early writers heard prophecies or saw certain events and wrote them down. Later, new writers wrote new events that they saw and it happens that it fulfilled earlier prophecy. It isn't so much that they looked back and fit things to the prophecy (though in some cases it is believed it happened, like Jesus completely fitting the bill for the messiah from the Old Testament), but they wrote what happened down and what happened usually fit prophecy.

Now as far as Jesus, some believe his "history" was rewritten later with the prophecies in mind, others believe it wasn't. And there is evidence for both ideas, mostly circumstantial evidence in both directions. So as far as that, it goes to a matter of faith, you must decide on Jesus, but the Old Testament is history. The New Testament is prophecy, you must decide whether you will believe it can and will come true or not.

Answer 7

If you're familiar with the Dead Sea Scrolls, they are one of the reasons we can do this.
You are right in saying that what it says in the beginning of the book correlating to what it says at the end doesn't mean it's true.
In 1947 the dead sea scrolls were discovered. They were a collection of biblical manuscripts, mostly the book of Isaiah, which were dated to way back around the time the books were originally written. The book of Isaiah contains many prophecies, including those of Jesus' birth, life, crucifixion, and resurrection.
There ARE external sources we can get information from. For instance, the ancient Jewish historian Josepheth wrote about Jesus and wrote a lot of things about him (as historic fact) that are also found in the Bible.

The dead sea scrolls allows us to see how closely the Bible we have now remains to the originaly text. If I remember correctly it's better than 99% correct.
With external historic sources and discoveries like the Dead Sea Scrolls, we are realizing more and more the level of integrity found in Biblical texts.

Answer 8

Bob will live forever, but WHERE is the real question.

Christians use the bible as evidence of things in the Bible, because it was written over the course of hundreds of years, by numerous Authors, who all contribute to the great body of knowledge we have. The Old Testament(or Hebrew Bible), is almost completely a prophetic work to us Christians, it predicts and gives evidence that Jesus is the true Messiah.

Answer 9

There are outside sources for some of the evidence.

A good book to read is "Eyewitness to Jesus", by a Swiss papyrologist dealing with manuscripit evidence, written by Carsten Peter Thiede and Matthew D'ancona. This book is
remarkable for showing how external sources work in the research of old manuscripts, in this case a portion of Matthew.

As for using the Bible for evidence, this kind of evidence is called internal evidence and it is a valid part of the science end of examining any manuscript. It is used not just for the Bible for many other works of literature.

Answer 10

You first have to establish chronological order and then you would say at the end, bob has lived forever. Otherwise you're still predicting at the end.
And, who knows what the reasoning behind christian arguments is. Very little of it is actually logical reasoning, and the little that is is usually based on debatable or untrue(as far as I'm concerned) premises, like-there is a universal moral code that people know to be true.
If you are going to spend your days trying to make sense of it, good luck.
The weirdest part, is when they dismiss things as illogical, and sometimes they're right! It leads me to believe that christians must have some sort of logic circuit in their brain that works, but doesn't override any emotional circuits they may have.
Then in order to appease their desire for logic, they make absurd circular arguments. Constantly. As you point out above.