For Atheists: Is the Bible a good source for historical information?

Question

How about scientific information?

Is the Bible an adequate guide to good morality?

Answer 1

"The Bible" is actually several books written over time by many different people with different agendas. The short answer to your questions is no, no, and no.
The long answer is you could spend a the time necessary to get a BA and a MA or a MDiv at a University to understand the questions you ask and my short answers to it.
A better answer is that People of ancient times thought differently than we did. Historical accuracy could easily be sacrificed for a good story or to make a point and the audience understood that.
Not like today when we expect facts to be reported on as true and only in novels to be told stories.
Scientific thought was not something most of the writers of the Bible would concern themselves with or even knew about. The story of creation in Genesis is so obviously a poem, with its rich language and it's repetition of "and it was evening and morning the first..2nd...whatever day" That it is silly to consider it a "eyewitness news" report or a lab report.
As for morality, which part? The part where Jesus says "suffer the little children to come unto me or the part where Elijah has the kids who were teasing him torn apart by bears?
go figure.

Answer 2

People who study the Bible from a non-religious standpoint have been able to find reference in it to events that are of interest scientifically and historically.

If you look at it rather like a historical novel, one which takes some real historical events and embellishes upon them while weaving a plot and characters throughout, you get the idea. Some of the events are real, some of the characters are real. And, because there is a limited amount of information available to scientists and historians from the eras the Bible makes reference to, particularly Old Testament times, it has value, like any other recorded information from those times.

Did you see the news article recently, about earthquake activity over time causing a division in the Red Sea? That's a perfect example. While the Bible attributes it to supernatural forces, it describes a prior incidence of the same type of geological activity scientists are observing now, and gives them a timeline for when it previously occured. To a geologist, or archaeologist, that's invaluable information.

Morality--well, depends on your viewpoint, I guess, and whether or not you refer to Old or New Testament morality. Remember, it was written by people who trying to create a societal order, and they were laying out rules upon which to base that society, believing obedience to them would allow it to survive. Didn't work so well, but some of the ideas, particularly those behind the 10 commandments, are just good common sense. Societies tend to crumble if there are no laws against killing or stealing, if no one takes care of the aged, etc.

Answer 3

Good - no, does it have it's value? - sure

You can certainly get information on the time a certain scripture was written just from the issues it addresses, the mindset it reflects, the locations it describes, etc. That kind of information can be very useful to archaeologists and anthropologists. (Uncovering the changes that have been made and the reasons behind them is interesting and informative, also.) However, to try to take facts from what the Bible tells us is very difficult. The writers most likely did not have the expertise to tell us about exact locations, geographical characteristics, etc. Plus, their info is biased by a lack of scientific advancement. For example, the prevailing idea that the world was flat could bias their account of things.

The Bible can give clues to inform history, science, etc. But again, these people did not have the education or expertise to give us this info.

The Bible has many stories from which useful lessons can be learned. However, it also tells us to follow laws that are debatable at best and simply ridiculous or impossible to follow at worst. It is not a one stop shop for "good morality". It does, like I said, hold some valuable lessons.

So: no, no, and no, but it does have some value outside of religion. Hey, you can learn from anything.

Answer 4

The bible is a source of history. But not a great one. It contains a lot of the oral history of a group or groups of people. As such it contains a lot of embellishment for the benefit of the group, a lot of inaccuracies compounded over time. But it is at least a portrait of how these people thought of their history. It's also an ancient writing so it gives us a glimpse of what life was like at the time and what concerned them and how they viewed the world. but with millenia of subsequent attempts to make it relevant to people's lives the original meanings are difficult to discern.

Scientific information? no. These people didn't use the scientific method and they were not all that observant. They were smart, people are, and they knew a lot about their world. But people that thought there were 4 legged insects, for instance, weren't scientists. People who thought that rain came from opening the windows in heaven weren't very good at describing scientific reality.

Morality. Tough question. Anything is a good source of morality if you concentrate on it enough. You can read the stories and draw your own moral conclusions and the act of reading it and thinking about it can help you develop moral views. But it's not all that good. Some moral views are pretty universal- don't murder, don't steal, show hospitality, etc. But so much of the moral teachings are aimed at telling you that you must do the will of God or he'll destroy you. Fear of that sort isn't a good moral basis. God wipes out innocents to punish the guilty. Bad lessons. I find so many morally ambiguous or downright awful lessons in the Bible that I don't find it a better source of moral teaching than other holy texts. Good people can find good lessons in the Bible. Judgmental, hate filled people can find those moral messages in the Bible. You get out of it what you put into it, but to see it as primarily good morally you have to ignore a lot of the plain meaning of it.

Answer 5

Combined with other historical references and using as early a text as possible (to avoid the corruption found in subsequent translations which make people's claims that their edition is *the word of God* outright laughable), biblical texts might be a decent source of historical information. Standing on its own, I probably wouldn't rely on it for that.

Scientific information probably doesn't exist in it at all; there was a paucity of science of any sort before 1800 anyway, so I can't imagine that such old texts would have any scientific value. Their lack of wholesome preservation make any "events" mentioned therein unreliable as a cross-reference.

As a moral guide, it is essentially a confusing mess and not worthy of the time spent trying to ascertain a core moral message. There are better moral guides that hit on its few worthy points and go much further.

Answer 6

The Bible is a usefull source to corroborate SOME historical information, but it also contains historical errors/inventions.

It's generally useless regarding scientific information. That should be no surprise, it was written before the age of science.

Regarding morality, it's not a good guide at all, since it contradicts itself left and right (and please no crap about 'you just have to read the whole Bible', I have, more than once). It has antiquated morals we would consider barbaric, such as slavery, and discriminates based on religion, race, age, and sex - all things considered abhorrent today (except among religious fanatics).

Answer 7

THe bible is not a good source for historical information bc much of it has no evidence.
I guess weird phenomena for the scientific information.

Some stories are good and others bad. A good story from the bible would be that one about Samuel telling the people not to have rulers bc they would be miserable. Boy, was he telling the truth. A bad one would be Moses. Talk about psychotic. The whole New Testament just gets weird and many of its followers don't follow it.

Answer 8

After the reign of King Solomon then the Bible record begins to correspond with archeological record. Before then it cannot be trust as historical; after then it can be trusted as history up to the last book in the Old Testament, Malachi. The New Testament is a different kettle of fish, can of worms, Pandora's box. The historicity of the gospels is unreliable. The authors of the other books are indeterminate. Paul wrote some. Others were written in the name of Paul. Look. it's an unreliable history book.

Answer 9

Accually it is a good historical source, it tells about the culter way back when. Scientific information, defying the laws of physics doesn't really give us much science as they don't tell us how, a good morality? Some stories, but some stories are nothing but garbage, and I note all those fables are mostly fiction.

But I like the first answer, ((I congratulate you, good point)) wars have been faught over this.

Answer 10

As a former born again christian who is now an atheist I would definitely say no. Yes I have read the bible cover to cover at least a dozen times so it is not for a lack of knowledge as someone else thought it might be. It is a book of fables and half truths.