Separating History from Fiction When They’re Both Present in the Bible or Another Document
Kevin R. Henke
October 23, 2022
In Henke (2022bh) and Henke (2022b), I stated the following:
“In Lundahl (2022d), Lundahl (2022f), Lundahl (2022b), and in several of his emails, Mr. Lundahl makes a totally unwarranted assumption that if the earliest known audience believed that Genesis 3 or another claim in an ancient text was historically true, then the claims must be true. Of course, this assumption is nonsense for the following reasons:
1. People lie and make up stories.
2. People misinterpret natural events and sometimes credit them to supernatural forces (e.g., volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, severe storms, draught).
3. The history of Mormonism, Scientology, etc. demonstrate that lies can become accepted by thousands or even millions of gullible people in a short amount of time, perhaps in no more than decades or a century.
4. Even if ancient historians (such as the five ancient biographers of Alexander the Great, Section 6.0) were sincere and honest, they still may have included inaccurate information, false rumors and misinterpretations in their works.
5. We don’t know who wrote Genesis 3 and when it was written.
6. The Dead Sea scrolls have the oldest known fragments of Genesis. This was about 1,000 years after Moses supposedly wrote the book. So, how could the writers of the Dead Sea scrolls have reliably known anything about events that occurred perhaps a thousand or more years earlier? How does Mr. Lundahl know that Genesis 3 is not a fabrication that may have been additionally altered or rewritten long before the Dead Sea scrolls? Why should anyone trust the claims in Genesis? Lundahl (2022c) assumes that God would have protected Genesis from corruption, but this assumption is totally without merit.
7. The biology of snakes is incompatible with them talking and there’s no evidence of either a supernatural or biological Talking Snake ever existing.
8. As further discussed in Section 5.0 and Henke (2022a), Hypotheses #3 and #4 on the origin of the Genesis 3 Talking Snake are rational, but Hypotheses #1 and #2 are not.
9. Mr. Lundahl has the burden of evidence to demonstrate that the claims in Genesis 3 and elsewhere in the Bible are factual.” [emphasis in original; my emphasis in italics]
Lundahl (2022t) is largely a response to my nine points. Actually, Lundahl (2022k) earlier responded to these same nine points when they were originally listed in Henke (2022b). I previously responded in Henke (2022bj) and Henke (2022ij through Henke 2022in) to his comments on the first point in Lundahl (2022k) and Lundahl (2022t), respectively. Here are Mr. Lundahl’s comments in Lundahl (2022t) on my italicized point #2:
“Such cases are occasions when historicity of text does not get a full match from factuality of detail.
For instance, Hercules, Theseus and Romulus being sons of Jove, Neptune and Mars is to my mind very clearly a false induction from superhuman strength (for the first two, like for Samson and Beowulf). Or from other extraordinary achievements (for the third). But the falsehood of that assumption doesn't invalidate the general historicity of the text.
So, very far from refuting my actual point, Henke is helping me to make it.”
No. Anytime a “historical” text contains obvious mythology, then the rest of the “history” in the text becomes highly questionable. Furthermore, no historical claim should be trusted without archeological or other external confirmation (e.g., Henke 2022a, Henke 2022b; Henke 2022ex). As I have said many times, skepticism must be the first reaction to any claim and each claim in a text must be individually confirmed for accuracy (Henke 2022dv). Our skepticism should definitely apply to the Bible. We should not take any claim in the Bible or any other document at face value. As examples, we should not accept the claims about Samson anymore than Hercules, or that Jesus was the son of a supernatural being anymore than Hercules or the Nephilim of Genesis 6. Again, each claim in the Bible or another document must be individually evaluated and confirmed before it can be designated as history. Nevertheless, I fully recognize that it’s usually not possible to confirm every single claim in a document. So, after several claims in a document have been verified and as long as no significant errors have been discovered, we can cautiously have somewhat greater, but never absolute, confidence in other claims made in the document. Thus far, the Bible has failed to meet this threshold (e.g., Loftus 2010).
Reference:
Loftus, J.W. (ed.). 2010. The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails, Prometheus Books: Amherst, NY, USA, 422pp.