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Criticism of the Bible is an interdisciplinary field of study concerning the factual accuracy of the claims and the moral tenability of the commandments made in the
Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus ...
, the
holy book Religious texts, including scripture, are texts which various religions consider to be of central importance to their religious tradition. They differ from literature by being a compilation or discussion of beliefs, mythologies, ritual pract ...
of
Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global popula ...
. Devout
Christians Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρ� ...
have long regarded their Bible as the perfect word of God (and devout
Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
have held the
Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' biblical texts to establish their origins (a related field of study known as biblical criticism) and validity. In addition to concerns about
ethics in the Bible Ethics in the Bible refers to the system(s) or theory(ies) produced by the study, interpretation, and evaluation of biblical morals (including the moral code, standards, principles, behaviors, conscience, values, rules of conduct, or beliefs conc ...
, about biblical inerrancy, or about the historicity of the Bible, there remain some questions of biblical authorship and as to what material to include in the
biblical canon A biblical canon is a set of texts (also called "books") which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as part of the Bible. The English word ''canon'' comes from the Greek , meaning " rule" or " measuring stick". The ...
.


Authorship

At the end of the 17th century, only a few Bible scholars doubted that Moses wrote the
Torah The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the ...
(also known as the Pentateuch, traditionally called the "Five Books of Moses"), such as
Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book '' Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influ ...
,
Isaac La Peyrère Isaac La Peyrère (1596–1676), also known as Isaac de La Peyrère or Pererius, was a French-born theologian, writer, and lawyer. La Peyrère is best known as a 17th-century predecessor of the scientific racialist theory of polygenism in the form ...
and Baruch Spinoza, but in the late 18th century some scholars such as
Jean Astruc Jean Astruc (19 March 1684, in Sauve, France – 5 May 1766, in Paris) was a professor of medicine in France at Montpellier and Paris, who wrote the first great treatise on syphilis and venereal diseases, and also, with a small anonymously publ ...
(1753) began to systematically question his authorship. By the end of the 19th century, some such as Julius Wellhausen and Abraham Kuenen went as far as to claim that as a whole the work was of many more authors over many centuries from 1000 BC (the time of
David David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...
) to 500 BC (the time of
Ezra Ezra (; he, עֶזְרָא, '; fl. 480–440 BCE), also called Ezra the Scribe (, ') and Ezra the Priest in the Book of Ezra, was a Jewish scribe ('' sofer'') and priest ('' kohen''). In Greco-Latin Ezra is called Esdras ( grc-gre, Ἔσδρ ...
) and that the history it contained was often more polemical rather than strictly factual. By the first half of the 20th century, Hermann Gunkel had drawn attention to mythic aspects, and Albrecht Alt, Martin Noth, and the tradition history school argued that although its core traditions had genuinely ancient roots, the narratives were fictional framing devices and were not intended as history in the modern sense. The modern consensus amongst Bible scholars is that the vast majority of the authors of books of the Bible are unknown. Most of them are written anonymously, and only some of the 27 books of the New Testament mention an author, some of which are probably or known to be pseudepigrapha, meaning they were written by someone other than whom the author said he was. The anonymous books have traditionally been attributed authors, though none of these, such as the "Five Books of Moses", or the four canonical gospels "according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John" have appeared to stand up under scrutiny. Only the 7 undisputed Pauline epistles appear to have most likely been written by Paul the Apostle, the Book of Revelation by John of Patmos (not by John the Apostle, nor by the author(s) of the other ' Johannine literature'). Scholars disagree whether Paul wrote the "Deutero-Pauline epistles" and whether Simon Peter wrote First Epistle of Peter; all other New Testament books that mention an author are most likely forgeries. Though, for the Pastorals, this can be a result of mainly a passing down the tradition of "scholarly consensus" vs. merited by the evidence. In the 2nd century, the gnostics often claimed that their form of Christianity was the first, and they regarded Jesus as a teacher or an allegorical figure. Elaine Pagels has proposed that there are several examples of gnostic attitudes in the Pauline epistles.
Bart D. Ehrman Bart Denton Ehrman (born 1955) is an American New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He has written and edited 30 books, includin ...
and Raymond E. Brown note that some of the Pauline epistles are widely regarded by scholars as pseudonymous, and it is the view of Timothy Freke, and others, that this involved a forgery in an attempt by the Church to bring in Paul's gnostic supporters and turn the arguments in the other epistles on their head.


Canonicity

Specific collections of biblical writings, such as the
Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Christian Bibles, are considered sacred and authoritative by their respective faith groups."Bible." ''The Crystal Reference Encyclopedia.'' West Chiltington: Crystal Reference, 2005. Credo Reference. 29 July 2009 The limits of the canon were effectively set by the proto-orthodox churches from the 1st throughout the 4th century; however, the status of the scriptures has been a topic of scholarly discussion in the later churches. Increasingly, the biblical works have been subjected to literary and historical criticism in an effort to interpret the biblical texts, independent of churches and dogmatic influences. In the middle of the second century,
Marcion of Sinope Marcion of Sinope (; grc, Μαρκίων ; ) was an early Christian theologian in early Christianity. Marcion preached that God had sent Jesus Christ who was an entirely new, alien god, distinct from the vengeful God of Israel who had created ...
proposed rejecting the entire Jewish Bible. He considered the God portrayed therein to be a lesser deity, a demiurge, and that the law of Moses was contrived. Religious Jews discount the New Testament and Old Testament
deuterocanonicals The deuterocanonical books (from the Greek meaning "belonging to the second canon") are books and passages considered by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the Assyrian Church of the East to be ...
. They, along with most Christians, also discredit the legitimacy of New Testament apocrypha, and a view sometimes referred to as Jesuism does not affirm the scriptural authority of any biblical text other than the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels.


Ethics

Elizabeth Anderson, a professor of philosophy and women's studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, states that "the Bible contains both good and evil teachings", and it is "morally inconsistent". Anderson criticizes commands God gave to men in the Old Testament, such as: kill adulterers, homosexuals, and "people who work on the Sabbath" (Leviticus 20:10; Leviticus 20:13; Exodus 35:2, respectively); to commit ethnic cleansing (Exodus 34:11–14, Leviticus 26:7–9); commit
genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the ...
(Numbers 21: 2–3, Numbers 21:33–35, Deuteronomy 2:26–35, and Joshua 1–12); and other mass killings. Anderson considers the Bible to permit slavery, the beating of slaves, the rape of female captives in wartime,
polygamy Crimes Polygamy (from Late Greek (') "state of marriage to many spouses") is the practice of marrying multiple spouses. When a man is married to more than one wife at the same time, sociologists call this polygyny. When a woman is marr ...
(for men), the killing of prisoners, and
child sacrifice Child sacrifice is the ritualistic killing of children in order to please or appease a deity, supernatural beings, or sacred social order, tribal, group or national loyalties in order to achieve a desired result. As such, it is a form of huma ...
. She also provides several examples to illustrate what she considers "God's moral character": "Routinely punishes people for the sins of others ... punishes all mothers by condemning them to painful childbirth", punishes four generations of descendants of those who worship other gods, kills 24,000 Israelites because some of them sinned (Numbers 25:1–9), kills 70,000 Israelites for the sin of David in 2 Samuel 24:10–15, and "sends two bears out of the woods to tear forty-two children to pieces" because they called someone names in 2 Kings 2:23–24. Anderson criticizes what she terms morally repugnant lessons of the New Testament. She claims that "Jesus tells us his mission is to make family members hate one another, so that they shall love him more than their kin" (Matt 10:35–37), that "Disciples must hate their parents, siblings, wives, and children (Luke 14:26)", and that Peter and Paul elevate men over their wives "who must obey their husbands as gods" (1 Corinthians 11:3, 14:34–35, Eph. 5:22–24, Col. 3:18, 1 Tim. 2: 11–12, 1 Pet. 3:1). Anderson states that the Gospel of John implies that "infants and anyone who never had the opportunity to hear about Christ are damned o hell through no fault of their own". Simon Blackburn states that the "Bible can be read as giving us a carte blanche for harsh attitudes to children, the mentally handicapped, animals, the environment, the divorced, unbelievers, people with various sexual habits, and elderly women". Blackburn criticizes what he terms morally suspect themes of the New Testament. He notes some "moral quirks" of Jesus: that he could be "sectarian" (Matt 10:5–6), racist (Matt 15:26 and Mark 7:27), and placed no value on animal life (Luke 8: 27–33). Blackburn provides examples of Old Testament moral criticisms, such as the phrase in
Exodus Exodus or the Exodus may refer to: Religion * Book of Exodus, second book of the Hebrew Torah and the Christian Bible * The Exodus, the biblical story of the migration of the ancient Israelites from Egypt into Canaan Historical events * E ...
22:18, ("Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.") which he says has "helped to burn alive tens or hundreds of thousands of women in Europe and America". He states that the Old Testament God apparently has "no problems with a slave-owning society", considers birth control a crime punishable by death, and "is keen on child abuse". Additional examples that are questioned today are the prohibition on touching women during their "period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19–24)", the apparent approval of selling daughters into slavery (Exodus 21:7), and the obligation to put to death someone working on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2).


Historicity

The historicity of the Bible is the question of the Bible's "acceptability as a history". This can be extended to the question of the Christian New Testament as an accurate record of the historical Jesus and the
Apostolic Age Christianity in the 1st century covers the formative history of Christianity from the start of the ministry of Jesus (–29 AD) to the death of the last of the Twelve Apostles () and is thus also known as the Apostolic Age. Early Christianity ...
. Scholars examine the
historical context Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians hav ...
of the Bible passages, the importance ascribed to events by the authors, and the contrast between the descriptions of these events and other
historical evidence Historical method is the collection of techniques and guidelines that historians use to research and write histories of the past. Secondary sources, primary sources and material evidence such as that derived from archaeology may all be drawn o ...
. Archaeological discoveries since the 19th century are open to interpretation, but broadly speaking they lend support to few of the Old Testament's narratives as history and offer evidence to challenge others.{{efn, 1="Biblical archaeology has helped us understand a lot about the world of the Bible and clarified a considerable amount of what we find in the Bible. But the archaeological record has not been friendly for one vital issue, Israel's origins: the period of slavery in Egypt, the mass departure of Israelite slaves from Egypt, and the violent conquest of the land of Canaan by the Israelites. The strong consensus is that there is at best sparse indirect evidence for these biblical episodes, and for the conquest there is considerable evidence against it.", Peter Enns{{sfn, Enns, 2013, p=unpaginated{{efn, 1="So although much of the archaeological evidence demonstrates that the Hebrew Bible cannot in most cases be taken literally, many of the people, places and things probably did exist at some time or another." Jonathan Michael Golden and Joseph Golden{{sfn, Golden, Golden, 2004, p=275 {{sfn, Grabbe, 2007 However, some scholars still hold that the overall Old Testament narrative is historically reliable. Biblical minimalism is a label applied to a loosely knit group of scholars who hold that the Bible's version of history is not supported by any archaeological evidence so far unearthed, thus the Bible cannot be trusted as a history source. Author Richard I. Pervo details the non-historical sources of the Book of Acts.


Historicity of Jesus

{{Main, Historicity of Jesus {{See also, Historical Jesus, Christ myth theory, Jesus in comparative mythology The validity of the Gospels is challenged by writers such as Kersey Graves who claimed that mythic stories, that have parallels in the life of Jesus, support the conclusion that the gospel writers incorporated them into the story of Jesus and
Gerald Massey Gerald Massey (; 29 May 1828 – 29 October 1907) was an English poet and writer on Spiritualism and Ancient Egypt. Early life Massey was born near Tring, Hertfordshire in England to poor parents. When little more than a child, he was made to ...
, who specifically claimed that the life story of the Egyptian god Horus was copied by Christian Gnostics. Parallels have also been drawn between Greek myths and the life of Jesus. The comparative mythology of Jesus Christ examines the parallels that have been proposed for the Biblical portrayal of Jesus in comparison to other religious or mythical domains. Some critics have alleged that Christianity is not founded on a historical figure, but rather on a mythical creation. One of these views proposes that Jesus was the Jewish manifestation of a pan-Hellenic cult, known as Osiris-Dionysus.
Christ myth theory The Christ myth theory, also known as the Jesus myth theory, Jesus mythicism, or the Jesus ahistoricity theory, is the view that "the story of Jesus is a piece of mythology", possessing no "substantial claims to historical fact". Alternatively ...
proponents claim that the age, authorship, and authenticity of the Gospels can not be verified, thus the Gospels can not bear witness to the
historicity of Jesus The question of the historicity of Jesus is part of the study of the historical Jesus as undertaken in the quest for the historical Jesus and the scholarly reconstructions of the life of Jesus. Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that J ...
.{{cite book, last=Evans, first=Elizabeth E., author-link=Edward Payson Evans#Elizabeth Evans, title=The Christ Myth: A Study, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OxU3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA17, year=1900, publisher=Truth Seeker Company, page=17, quote=There is evidence that all the Gospels were borrowed from an earlier source, but whether that source was history or romance, and whether the author or the later compilers dressed up foreign and ancient materials in local and contemporary attire, cannot be known. The earliest "Fathers" of the Christian church do not mention nor allude to any one of the Gospels, but they do quote from some other work or works in language similar to and in substance sometimes agreeing with sometimes differing from, the canonical Gospels. This is in contrast with writers such as David Strauss, who regarded only the supernatural elements of the gospels as myth, but whereas these supernatural myths were a point of contention, there was no refutation of the gospels' authenticity as a witness to the historicity of Jesus. Critics of the Gospels such as Richard Dawkins and Thomas Henry Huxley note that they were written long after the death of Jesus and that we have no real knowledge of the date of composition of the Gospels. Annie Besant and
Thomas Paine Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; – In the contemporary record as noted by Conway, Paine's birth date is given as January 29, 1736–37. Common practice was to use a dash or a slash to separate the old-style year from the new-style year. In th ...
note that the authors of the Gospels are not known.


Internal consistency

{{Main, Internal consistency of the Bible There are many places in the Bible in which inconsistencies—such as different numbers and names for the same feature, and different sequences for the same events—have been alleged and presented by critics as difficulties. Responses to these criticisms include the modern documentary hypothesis, the two-source hypothesis, and theories that the pastoral epistles are pseudonymous.{{rp, p.47 However, authors such as Raymond Brown have presented arguments that the Gospels contradict each other in various important respects and on various important details. W. D. Davies and E. P. Sanders state that: "on many points, especially about Jesus' early life, the evangelists were ignorant ... they simply did not know, and, guided by rumour, hope or supposition, did the best they could". Yet, E.P. Sanders has also opined, "The dominant view today seems to be that we can know pretty well what Jesus was out to accomplish, that we can know a lot about what he said, and that those two things make sense within the world of first-century Judaism." More critical scholars see the nativity stories either as completely fictional accounts, or at least constructed from traditions that predate the Gospels. For example, many versions of the Bible specifically point out that the most reliable early manuscripts and other ancient witnesses did not include {{Bibleref2, Mark, 16:9–20, i.e., the Gospel of Mark originally ended at Mark 16:8, and additional verses were added a few hundred years later. This is known as the "Markan Appendix".{{cite book, author=Guy D. Nave, title=The Role and Function of Repentance in Luke-Acts, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4CGScYTomYsC&q=%2B%22markan+appendix%22&pg=PA194, date=1 January 2002, publisher=BRILL, isbn=90-04-12694-5, page=194{{cite book, author1=Amy-Jill Levine, author2=Marianne Blickenstaff, title=Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B2lfhy5lvlkC&q=%2B%22markan+appendix%22&pg=PA175, year=2001, publisher=A&C Black, isbn=978-0-8264-6333-3, page=175


Translation issues

{{Main, Biblical manuscript, Textual criticism, Biblical inerrancy Translation of scripture into the vernacular (such as English and hundreds of other languages), though a common phenomenon, is also a subject of debate and criticism. For readability, clarity, or other reasons, translators may choose different wording or sentence structure, and some translations may choose to paraphrase passages. Because many of the words in the original language have ambiguous or difficult to translate meanings, debates over correct interpretation occur. For instance, at creation ({{Bibleref, Gen, 1:2), is רוח אלהים (''ruach 'elohiym'') the "wind of god", "spirit of god"(i.e., the Holy Spirit in Christianity), or a "mighty wind" over the primordial deep? In Hebrew, רוח (''ruach'') can mean "wind", "breath" or "spirit". Both ancient and modern translators are divided over this and many other such ambiguities. Another example is the word used in the Masoretic Text {{bibleref2c, Isa, 7:14 to indicate the woman who would bear Immanuel is alleged to mean a ''young, unmarried woman'' in Hebrew, while {{bibleref2, Matthew, 1:23 follows the
Septuagint The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond t ...
version of the passage that uses the Greek word ''parthenos'', translated ''virgin'', and is used to support the Christian idea of virgin birth. Those who view the Masoretic Text, which forms the basis of most English translations of the Old Testament, as being more accurate than the Septuagint, and trust its usual translation, may see this as an inconsistency, whereas those who take the Septuagint to be accurate may not. More recently, several discoveries of ancient manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, and
Codex Sinaiticus The Codex Sinaiticus ( Shelfmark: London, British Library, Add MS 43725), designated by siglum [Aleph] or 01 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts), δ 2 (in the von Soden numbering of New Testament manuscript ...
, have led to modern translations like the '' New International Version'' differing somewhat from the older ones such as the 17th century
King James Version The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of K ...
, removing verses not present in the earliest manuscripts (see List of omitted Bible verses), some of which are acknowledged as interpolations, such as the
Comma Johanneum The Johannine Comma ( la, Comma Johanneum) is an interpolated phrase (comma) in verses of the First Epistle of John. The text (with the comma in italics and enclosed by square brackets) in the King James Bible reads: It became a touchpoint f ...
, others having several highly variant versions in very important places, such as the resurrection scene in Mark 16. The King-James-Only Movement rejects these changes and upholds the King James Version as the most accurate. In a 1973 '' Journal of Biblical Literature'' article, Philip B. Harner, Professor Emeritus of Religion at Heidelberg College, claimed that the traditional translation of John 1:1c (“and the Word was God” and one of the most frequently cited verses to support the doctrine of the Trinity) is incorrect. He endorses the New English Bible translation of John 1:1c, “and what God was, the Word was.”


The Bible and science

{{Main, Christianity and science {{See also, Biblical archaeology Common points of criticism against the Bible are targeted at the Genesis creation narrative,
Genesis flood myth The Genesis flood narrative (chapters 6–9 of the Book of Genesis) is the Hebrew version of the universal flood myth. It tells of God's decision to return the universe to its pre- creation state of watery chaos and remake it through the micro ...
, and the Tower of Babel. According to young Earth creationism,
flat earth theory The flat-Earth model is an archaic and scientifically disproven conception of Earth's shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat-Earth cosmography, including Greece until the classical period (5th century BC), th ...
, and geocentrism, which all take a literal view of the book of Genesis, the universe and all forms of life on Earth were created directly by God roughly 6,000 years ago, a global flood killed almost all life on Earth, and the diversity of languages originated from God confusing his people, who were in the process of constructing a large tower. These assertions, however, are contradicted by contemporary research in disciplines, such as
archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsc ...
, anthropology,
astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, g ...
,
biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...
,
chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the elements that make up matter to the compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, proper ...
,
geoscience Earth science or geoscience includes all fields of natural science related to the planet Earth. This is a branch of science dealing with the physical, chemical, and biological complex constitutions and synergistic linkages of Earth's four sphe ...
, and
physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which ...
. For instance, cosmological evidence suggests that the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old. Analyses of the geological time scale date the Earth to be 4.5 billion years old. Developments in astronomy show the Solar System formed in a protoplanetary disk roughly 4.6 billion years ago. Physics and cosmology show that the Universe expanded, at a rapid rate, from quantum fluctuations in a process known as the Big Bang; contemporary research and models postulate that the universe may even be infinite in terms of
size Size in general is the magnitude or dimensions of a thing. More specifically, ''geometrical size'' (or ''spatial size'') can refer to linear dimensions ( length, width, height, diameter, perimeter), area, or volume. Size can also be me ...
and age. Research within biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, and geology has provided sufficient evidence to show life originated over 4 billion years ago through chemical processes. Countless fossils present throughout the fossil record, as well as research in molecular biology, genetics, anatomy, physiology, zoology, and other life sciences show all living organisms evolved over billions of years and share a common ancestry. Archaeological excavations have expanded human history, with material evidence of ancient cultures older than 6,000 years old. Moreover, 10,000 years is not enough time to account for the current amount of genetic variation in
humans" \n\n\n\n\nThe robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the site they are allowed to visi ...
. If all humans were descended from two individuals that lived less than 10,000 years ago, it would require an impossibly high rate of mutation to reach humanity's current level of genetic diversity.{{cite web , title=Evangelicals Question The Existence Of Adam And Eve , author=Barbara Bradley Hagerty , work= All Things Considered , date=August 9, 2011 , url=https://www.npr.org/2011/08/09/138957812/evangelicals-question-the-existence-of-adam-and-eve {{Blockquote, The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion, misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the ideas of their opponents., ''
Bully for Brontosaurus ''Bully for Brontosaurus'' (1991) is the fifth volume of collected essays by the Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. The essays were culled from his monthly column "This View of Life" in '' Natural History'' magazine, to which Gould contrib ...
'' by
Stephen Jay Gould Stephen Jay Gould (; September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Goul ...
Evolutionary creation, the religious belief that God created the world through the processes of evolution, seeks to reconcile some of these scientific challenges with the Christian faith. According to one of the world's leading biblical archaeologists, William G. Dever,
Archaeology certainly doesn't prove literal readings of the Bible...It calls them into question, and that's what bothers some people. Most people really think that archaeology is out there to prove the Bible. No archaeologist thinks so. ... From the beginnings of what we call biblical archeology, perhaps 150 years ago, scholars, mostly western scholars, have attempted to use archeological data to prove the Bible. And for a long time it was thought to work. William Albright, the great father of our discipline, often spoke of the "archeological revolution." Well, the revolution has come but not in the way that Albright thought. The truth of the matter today is that archeology raises more questions about the historicity of the Hebrew Bible and even the New Testament than it provides answers, and that's very disturbing to some people.
Dever also wrote: {{Blockquote, Archaeology as it is practiced today must be able to challenge, as well as confirm, the Bible stories. Some things described there really did happen, but others did not. The biblical narratives about Abraham, Moses, Joshua and Solomon probably reflect some historical memories of people and places, but the 'larger than life' portraits of the Bible are unrealistic and contradicted by the archaeological evidence.... {{Blockquote, I am not reading the Bible as Scripture… I am in fact not even a theist. My view all along—and especially in the recent books—is first that the biblical narratives are indeed 'stories', often fictional and almost always propagandistic, but that here and there they contain some valid historical information... According to Dever, the scholarly consensus is that the figure of Moses is
legend A legend is a genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived, both by teller and listeners, to have taken place in human history. Narratives in this genre may demonstrate human values, and possess ...
ary, and not historical. William G. Dever "What Remains of the House That Albright Built?", in George Ernest Wright, Frank Moore Cross, Edward Fay Campbell, Floyd Vivian Filson (eds.) ''The Biblical Archaeologist'', American Schools of Oriental Research, Scholars Press, Vol. 56, No. 1, 2 March 1993, pp. 25–35, p. 33: "the overwhelming scholarly consensus today is that Moses is a mythical figure." However, he states that a "Moses-like figure" may have existed somewhere in the southern Transjordan in the mid-13th century BC.{{cite book, last1=Dever, first1=William G., title=What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?, date=2002, publisher=Eerdmans, location=Grand Rapids, Mich. .a.isbn=9780802821263, pages=98–99, edition=Paperback, title-link=What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? Tel Aviv University archaeologist Ze'ev Herzog wrote in the '' Haaretz'' newspaper: {{Blockquote, This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel, YHWH, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai. Israel Finkelstein told ''
The Jerusalem Post ''The Jerusalem Post'' is a broadsheet newspaper based in Jerusalem, founded in 1932 during the British Mandate of Palestine by Gershon Agron as ''The Palestine Post''. In 1950, it changed its name to ''The Jerusalem Post''. In 2004, the pap ...
'' that Jewish archaeologists have found no historical or archaeological evidence to back the biblical narrative of the Exodus, the Jews' wandering in Sinai or Joshua's conquest of Canaan. On the alleged Temple of Solomon, Finkelstein said that there is no archaeological evidence to prove it really existed.{{cite web, url=http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/news/middle-east/2705-senior-israeli-archaeologist-casts-doubt-on-jewish-heritage-of-jerusalem, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110929142605/http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/news/middle-east/2705-senior-israeli-archaeologist-casts-doubt-on-jewish-heritage-of-jerusalem, archive-date=2011-09-29, title=Senior Israeli archaeologist casts doubt on Jewish heritage of Jerusalem, website= Middle East Monitor, date=9 August 2011 Professor Yoni Mizrahi, an independent archaeologist who has worked with the International Atomic Energy Agency, agreed with Finkelstein. Regarding the Exodus of Israelites from Egypt, Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass said: {{Blockquote, Really, it's a myth ... This is my career as an archaeologist. I should tell them the truth. If the people are upset, that is not my problem.


Notable critics

* Richard Dawkins *
Matt Dillahunty Matthew Wade Dillahunty (born March 31, 1969) is an American atheist activist and former president of the Atheist Community of Austin, a position he held from 2006 to 2013. Between 2005 and late 2022, Dillahunty was host of the televised webcast ' ...
*
Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theor ...
* Sam Harris * Christopher Hitchens * Robert G. Ingersoll *
Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...
''Thomas Jefferson's Abridgement of the Words of Jesus of Nazareth'' (Charlottesville: Mark Beliles, 1993), 14. *
Thomas Paine Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; – In the contemporary record as noted by Conway, Paine's birth date is given as January 29, 1736–37. Common practice was to use a dash or a slash to separate the old-style year from the new-style year. In th ...
* Bertrand Russell * Mark Twain * Voltaire


See also

* Antisemitism in Christianity * Bible conspiracy theory * Biblical criticism * Bibliolatry * Christian terrorism * Christian views on slavery * Christianity and violence *
Christianity and domestic violence Christianity and domestic violence deals with the debate in Christian communities about the recognition and response to domestic violence, which is complicated by a culture of silence and acceptance among abuse victims. There are some Bible verses ...
* Criticism of Christianity * Criticism of Jesus * Criticism of the Book of Mormon * Criticism of the Quran * Criticism of the Talmud * Historical criticism (higher criticism) * '' Misquoting Jesus'' * Tahrif *
The Bible and violence The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament both contain narratives, poems, and instructions which describe, encourage, command, condemn, reward, punish and regulate violent actions by God, individuals, groups, governments, and nation-states. Among th ...
* Women in Christianity


Notes

{{Notelist


References

{{Reflist


Sources

*{{cite book, last=Anderson, first=Elizabeth, author-link=Elizabeth S. Anderson, chapter=If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?, title=The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever, title-link=The Portable Atheist, editor-last=Hitchens, editor-first=Christopher, editor-link=Christopher Hitchens, year=2007, publisher=Da Capo Press, location=Philadelphia, isbn=978-0-306-81608-6 *{{cite book, last=Blackburn, first=Simon, author-link=Simon Blackburn, title=Ethics: A Very Short Introduction, year=2001, publisher=Oxford University Press, location=Oxford, isbn=978-0-19-280442-6 *{{cite book, last=Blackburn, first=Simon, author-link=Simon Blackburn, title=Ethics: A Very Short Introduction, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tKBnw7BKe-UC, series=Very Short Introductions, publisher=OUP, year=2003, isbn=9780191577925, author-mask=1 *{{cite web , last=Enns , first=Peter , title=3 Things I Would Like to See Evangelical Leaders Stop Saying about Biblical Scholarship , website=Peter Enns , date=10 January 2013 , url=https://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/01/3-things-i-would-like-to-see-evangelical-leaders-stop-saying-about-biblical-scholarship/ , access-date=10 December 2020 *{{cite book, first1=Jonathan Michael, last1=Golden, first2=Joseph, last2=Golden, title=Ancient Canaan and Israel: New Perspectives, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yTMzJAKowyEC&pg=PA275, year=2004, publisher=ABC-CLIO, isbn=978-1-57607-897-6, page=275 *{{cite book , last=Grabbe , first=Lester L. , title=Understanding the History of Ancient Israel , chapter=Some Recent Issues in the Study of the History of Israel , publisher=British Academy , date=25 October 2007 , isbn=978-0-19-726401-0 , doi=10.5871/bacad/9780197264010.003.0005 * {{cite book , last=Thompson , first=Thomas L., year=2014 , title = Biblical Narrative and Palestine's History: Changing Perspectives 2 , publisher=Routledge , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NVt_BAAAQBAJ&q=%22the+bible%27s+acceptability+as+history%22&pg=PA164 , isbn=978-1317543428


Further reading

* ''The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy'', by C. Dennis McKinsey (Prometheus Books 1995) * ''The Historical Evidence for Jesus'', by G. A. Wells (Prometheus Books 1988) * ''The Bible Unearthed'', by I. Finkelstein and N. Asherman (Touchstone 2001) * ''David and Solomon'', by I. Finkelstein and N. Asherman (Freepress 2006) * ''The Jesus Puzzle'', by
Earl Doherty Earl J. Doherty (born 1941) is a Canadian author of ''The Jesus Puzzle'' (1999), ''Challenging the Verdict'' (2001), and ''Jesus: Neither God Nor Man'' (2009). Doherty argues for a version of the Christ myth theory, the thesis that Jesus did no ...
(Age of Reason Publications 1999) * ''Not the Impossible Faith'', by R. Carrier (Lulu 2009) * ''
BC The Archaeology of the Bible Lands ''BC: The Archaeology of the Bible Lands'' was a BBC television series from the 1970s. It investigated the archaeology of the Bible lands. It was presented by Magnus Magnusson. The consultant on Biblical archaeology was James B. Pritchard of ...
'', by Magnus Magnusson (Bodley Head 1977) * '' Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists'', by Dan Barker (Ulysses Press 2008) * ''Why I became an Atheist'', by
John W. Loftus John Wayne Loftus (born 1954) is an American atheist author. He has written five books, and edited seven others. Early life and education Loftus was born on September 18, 1954. He earned a bachelor's degree from Great Lakes Christian College in ...
(Prometheus books 2008) * '' The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution'', by Richard Dawkins (Blackswan 2007) * ''101 Myths of the Bible'' by Gary Greenberg (Sourcebooks 2000) * ''Secret Origins of the Bible'' by Tim Callahan (Millennium Press 2002) * ''The Origins of Biblical Monotheism'' by
Mark S. Smith Mark Stratton John Matthew Smith (born December 6, 1956) is an American biblical scholar, anthropologist, and professor. Early life and education Born in Paris to Donald Eugene Smith and Mary Elizabeth (Betty) Reichert, Smith grew up in Washing ...
(Oxford University Press 2001)


External links

{{Wikiquote
Bible Research
��The Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy

Internet Infidels website {{The Bible {{Criticism of religion {{The Bible and history {{Authority control {{DEFAULTSORT:Criticism Of The Bible