Courtney Knowles
Relg 202-1: Vandergriff
January 13, 2015
Tuesday/Thursday 2:00 pm--3:20
Is the Bible True? By William C. Placher
Placher starts of his article with stating different claims that come with the Bible. The claims that we have heard our whole lives: what the Bible states is completely true – so we automatically believe it. It also states another claim is that everything stated in the Bible is true so we should be able to trust it. From my personal view I was brought up to believe these same things. Each story, song, etc. are all things I have shaped my life around and I believe. Yes, I believe that everything in the Bible is true. I trust the words in the Bible. I have begun to question small things since reading. How exactly do
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One thing that stood out to me was how he stats each Genre has their own ways of being recognized. Fairytales have the same beginnings as do watching a movie compared to the evening news. The Bible on the other hand has different Genres based on what book you are reading. You have some historical events that happen and then you have eyewitness events. Placher says that when we are working with a certain text from other cultures we may not have the easiest time understanding the genre. I have to completely agree with him. I find myself having to re-read things over and over when working with the Bible. It may be in English but it is based off an older language and with all the slang we are faced with today it just seems harder to break down. It makes you wonder if you are even reading the Bible right. Have I been reading the book that I was brought up by wrong my entire life? If I misunderstand the genre then I misunderstand the whole text, according to Placher. If I have to re-read something, then I may or may not have understood it …show more content…
Plachers says that for us to understand that the Bible is true we must understand the genres, know the historical details, and to realize the context in which it is written. I personally don’t think I know all the facts to believe the Bible is true, but I do. It is like going around a sharp curb, you don’t know if there will be a drunk driver coming around it but to get to your destination you just hope that there won’t be. The Bible is based on history, events, culture, and genres – genres I probably misunderstand. According to Placher we find trust in the Bible because it gives us a clear view of the world we live in. I agree with this claim, and most of all his claims. Yes, I trust the Bible because it does give me a guide on how to live my life. I find a sense of hope and faith when I read the Bible. I have trusted it for nineteen years, and until proven other wise, I will continue to do
In William C. Placher’s article “Is the Bible True,” he discusses the question of whether the bible is trustworthy or not. He goes about this by taking examples and arguments of other literary work and incorporating them into his article to make or prove a point. The thesis of his essay is, if we believe the bible to be true, then we must put in the work to understand the language. This will enable us to understand the Bible itself. Placher is basically trying to prove to us the Bible is true without turning to modern day themes and arguments to prove this. Hence, why he uses old texts from history and sections of the Bible in his article. He tells us in his article about how some of the topics he brings up from the Bible might not directly correlate with their modern day counterpart. Placher accomplishes this perfectly with his use of examples and the different texts he selects from the bible to prove his point. In all, this is a great article and Placher definitely accomplishes his goal of proving that the Bible is true.
John Oswalt, in his book The Bible Among the Myths, presents his position to the reader that the bible is different and separate from other writings of the Ancient Near East. He asserts the Bible is both historically accurate and theologically sound. He makes the defense the Bible was divinely inspired and revealed to humanity and unique from other Ancient Near East literature. There was a time when the Bible, and the Israelite religion was different from its neighboring societies. But as times have changed, many people now lump the bible with other Ancient Near East myths.
William C. Placher states a question about whether to believe the truth of the Bible in “Is the Bible True?” He, in this article, starts by asking a question whether the Bible is true. While reading the paper, readers know that Placher actually believes the Bible is true. However, not like other authors, he does not explain to readers which particular chapter or sentence in the Bible is true, but on the other hand, he looks from the genre, the culture and the language of the Bible. In this way, he helps readers to think the authenticity of the Bible in a different aspect.
Bruce Waltke begins his argument by establishing the opponent’s view. Waltke writes that forms of criticism hold “that most of the literature of the Old Testament had a long oral prehistory before being written down” (17). Waltke seeks to refute this claim by establishing that “biblical literature had a short oral prehistory
Award-winning journalist, Lee Strobel wrote The Case for Christ to retrace and expand his journey toward becoming a Christian. Strobel once declared atheist, and now Christian, shares how he began to look upon the Bible and God. As an atheist, Strobel lived the life of selfishness and only worried to please himself. When his wife began to go to church he wasn’t very pleased until after he saw the positive and attractive change in her. This is the start of his curiosity and investigation about Christianity. To relate with his wife he decided to study about this and attend church services with her. Strobel interviewed thirteen leading scholars who defended their views concerning the historical reliability of the New Testament.
Brown and published by Westminster John Know Press is a book that provides basic information
The Church bible was written for centuries, and it is believed by many to be God’s words written by humans. People have belief and faith in that book, and they strongly agree with the scripture in the bible. From Inherit The Wind, Drummond says, ‘‘The Bible is a good book. A good book. But it’s not the only book.’” (98) Drummond believes in Darwin’s, theories of evolution that humans gradually evolved from other species, not by God creation as descripted in Genesis. In the play Inherit The Wind, there is a controversy between the religious community and supporters of evolution, and Drummond indicates many logical fallacies in the Bible. Therefore, he demonstrates that everyone has the right to make critically think about his or her beliefs, and he exposes the community’s first fallacy, that scripture is to be taken literally
The final part of the introduction deals with a serious claim. Oswalt strongly expresses that religious claims are unable to be separated from historical claims. He basically says that the trustworthiness of the religious issues is contingent upon the trustworthiness of the historical claims. If the historical claims are clearly false, then no belief should be given to the religious legal statements. However, if the historical descriptions are agreeing with what is known, then the religious issues should be taken seriously by the reader of the Bible.
When studying the Bible, one encounters different details from seemingly identical narratives and passages. These narratives and passages are called doublets. In biblical scholar, Richard Friedman’s book Who Wrote the Bible?, he states that a “doublet is a case of the same story being told twice” with variations in specific details (22). Some examples of doublets in the Bible are two different stories of creation, the covenant between God and Abraham, Joseph sold into slavery and more. The doublet focused on in this paper is the stories of creation. Instead of being spread apart in separate books of the Bible or being completely intertwined, these narratives are told right after the other.
The thought of the Bible being considered a myth has changes over the years. The though went from God and Bible not being able to be considered a myth, to mythical literature being at the center of the Israelites faith. The data has not changed, instead it is the perspective of scholars. This raises a question asked by younger scholars about accepting the Bible as truth if the history surrounding it is false. The definition of myth has been broadened over recent years to include the Bible. Oswalt discusses how a myth cannot be whatever a person decides it can be. It also cannot not be too broad that it could really be very many different things.
Second: to offer that the Bible is true is to say that we can faith in its content; we believe it to be guide to our faith. We would have to embrace the notion that there are specific assertions about Gods faithfulness and how we should live our lives and reciprocate. These contentions may appear somewhat intricate, but recognizing its intricacies is a way not of evading commitment to the Bible 's truth however of fully addressing to the complex ways in which the Bible is true. Let’s contemplate the rapport between truth and meaning: the truth of a testimonial or a book hinges on what it means. Countless biblical scholars have worked for eons to scrutinize and appraise the text of the Old Testament, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament.
Many of us go to church every Sunday and pray before we go to bed every night. We do not think of reading the Bible very often. The Bible is the reason why we go to church and why we pray. I think that the Bible is true. Although there are some things in the bible that make us skeptical, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. There are a lot of facts that can prove that the Bible is true. I grew up and still am Catholic. I was raised to believe in the bible and I still do to this day. I will explain that the bible is true because of what the bible actually says the way the bible was written and because of the way I was taught growing up.
The book of Romans is considered, by many in Christianity, to be the greatest book comprised in the Holy Bible. This is a very strong view to hold, considering the great details of Jesus and His ministry that are given in the book of Luke, the direct, to the point style of truth written by James, and the great lessons of faith in Hebrews. The other books in the New Testament are all great within themselves also but, Romans is very distinctive in itself. Written by the Apostle Paul, Romans can be viewed as the Christian Life handbook or the Christianity 101 manual. When we read Romans, we can see that Paul took every thought and possible counter thought by any
"You can 't trust the Bible. I 's full of all kinds of contradictions and errors". This is a very common charge made against the Bible today. You may have heard this kind of thing from a friend or coworker. Maybe you have even heard this kind of things stated on TV, but is it true? Is the Bible an unreliable book full of errors and contradictions? To answer this question let us look at some of the more commonly cited proofs for this assertion.
This topic has been studied on for a long period of time already. Thus, resulting to a lot of articles on the internet or in books that prove that the Bible really is reliable. Despite it being about thousands and thousands of years old, it is still consistent and very up to date.