Old Testament

Should The Book of Enoch Be Considered Part of the Canon?

Published by Papa Giorgio

Why this post? I was in a conversation that took a turn to Enoch as a proof text for a theological viewpoint. I will include a section from it that gets to why I cobbled together the post following this dialogue excerpt. First, as I pickup the convo, STACY M. said that history and Scriptures were “scrubbed by Rome.” Keep that in mind as you travel through this convo:

RPT: So, explain [please], what have you “dug and found” that history has scrubbed?

Stacy M: Eye witness accounts to the armies in the sky. Evidence of highly advanced, free energy architecture. Evidence of the sun not giving it’s light for a whole year, as prophesied in Enoch. There’s so much to find.

RPT: Sounds a bit “New Age’ish” [….] especially with Enoch being mentioned. Do you have a book or article you would recommend?

Stacy M: Enoch isn’t “new age.” ? It was removed from the canon because it contains truths that go against the “Jesus is your savior” narrative constructed by Rome.

One channel that has lots of amazing research is The Unexpected Cosmology on YouTube. While I don’t agree with him wholly, he does deep dive extensively.

COMMENT ON REFERENCED RESOURCE: an unorthodox, almost cultic
reservoir of odd, far-fetched, flat earther, and wild eschatological stuff.

RPT: What is your evidence it was removed with a narrative constructed by Rome?

Stacy M: My evidence Enoch is removed by Rome is its not in any modern Bible.

RPT: That is a bit of circular reasoning. Like, red is the color red. Or, to put into a bullet point:

  • A is true, because B is true
  • B is true, because A is true

So, you may not know WHY the Old Testament canon is the way the Bible shows it today. I isolated and PDF’ed a section on this and uploaded it to my website to read online or download (and print out if that is easier). That is a better place to start than circular reasoning.

Stacy M: I know “why” the Canon is as it is…Yahushua took the whole house of Israel with Him at the destruction of the temple. All that was left was corruption.

RPT: Okay. So no answer is your answer. Just out of curiosity, if you were to join with others who think like you do… what is your religious group called?

Stacy M: There IS an answer. You just haven’t looked into it. Maybe start seeking. I gave you one resource. I prefer to jump off at HEARING the word… not trying to make the word fit into today.

I’m of no religion.

RPT:  “I’m of no religion” meetings must be lonely.

ERGO . . . .

Should Enoch be included in the Bible? How old is Enoch? Is there any truth in this book?

See my PDF excerpt take from EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT for how the Old Testament Canon was compiled. In a good post by CHRISTIAN QUESTIONS we see this short description:

The Book of Enoch was never considered authentic by the Jewish rabbis, and it was never included in the Hebrew Scriptures’ canon. There are twenty Book of Enoch manuscripts in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but all are in Aramaic, not Hebrew. Thus, they are not part of the Hebrew Old Testament. We have far less early manuscripts for the Book of Enoch than we do for the recognized canon. For comparison, we have a thousand manuscripts for each of the four Gospels, 500 for the book of Acts and the Epistles and several hundred for the book of Revelation. This indicates Enoch was not as acclaimed as the books deemed to be inspired. Throughout the Gospel Age, it was never up for consideration to be part of the Bible, including in the Catholic or Greek Orthodox Bibles.

[….]

The rules of canonicity were the general recognition of certain practical ideals, described in three principles:

  1. The writings had to be authored by a recognized prophet, apostle or someone associated with them.
  2. The writings could not contradict previously-accepted books of Scripture.
  3. The writings had to be widely accepted by the church and its leaders as inspired of God.

The Book of Enoch Would be Included In This List by James White

TRANSCRIPT of the ABOVE:

And so as we examined this issue this evening, my thesis will be very straightforward.

The Apocryphal books, including Tobit, Judith, the Maccabees, Sirach, along with the additions to the canonical books like Baruch, Bell and the Dragon and the Epistle to Jeremiah. Whatever it might be, they are not inspired Scripture. These books were not accepted as Canonical scripture, by the Jews, to whom the oracles of God had been committed as the apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 3 verse 2.

SCRIPTURE BREAK ~ ROMANS 3:1-2

(NCV) So, do Jews have anything that other people do not have? [….] The most important thing is this: God trusted the Jews with his teachings.

(CSB) So what advantage does the Jew have? [….] First, they were entrusted with the very words of God.

(SDNT) What then is the advantage of the Jew? [….] First indeed, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God. {Samuel Davidson, The New Testament: Translated from the Critical Text of Von Tischendorf [PDF, takes a bit to load]}

(MESSAGE) So what difference does it make who’s a Jew and who isn’t, who has been trained in God’s ways and who hasn’t? As it turns out, it makes a lot of difference—but not the difference so many have assumed. First, there’s the matter of being put in charge of writing down and caring for God’s revelation, these Holy Scriptures.

They were not a part of the books laid up in the temple and considered Holy, in Palestine, or anywhere else for that matter.

The books themselves refute the claim of their own canonical standing, either by containing clear and irreconcilable contradictions and historical errors, or by themselves making reference to the already closed canon of the Old Testament.

Likewise, the Lord Jesus and the Apostles, though surely aware — as we have seen — of these books and their contents, never once cite them with the authoritative phrases:

“it is written”

“thus saith the Lord”

All the typical phrases that are used to identify Scripture, which they do with the Old Testament books.

Nor do we find any evidence of disagreement on the extent of the cannon between the Lord and the Apostles and their Jewish opponents, for example, in the gospel narrative.

[BREAK]

We have what’s called a BARAITA. A Baraita is an ancient tradition. Many of these traditions go well beyond the time of the New Testament, even into the Intertestamental period. It is these writings which shed so much light upon the customs of the Jews that we see in the Gospels.

And there you have a listing given to us [of]19 books in the Old Testament, excluding the books of the law, which were of course five: 19 + 5 is 24 — and we consistently find one of two numbers in Jewish sources: 22 or 24.  And they’re not actually two different numbers. It depends on whether you, for example, attach lamentations, Jeremiah, how you count the books in that way.

Both numbers represent the same canon found in Protestant Bibles today, and this is found in a Baraita, an ancient tradition going back even before the time the New Testament.

Josephus, an excellent resource, Josephus the historian, refers to the practice that they had where they would “lay up scrolls of the Scriptures in the Temple.” And he makes reference to this; for example, a number of places in Antiquities [Dr. White goes through the reference list too quick] that they would lay these Scriptures up in the Temple. The Apocryphal books were never laid up in the Temple.

Why would they be treated differently by the Jews themselves?

We also read, for example, if as the tannaitic literature maintains, not just the law and the prophets, but also the Hagiographa, that is, the writings belong[ing] to the temple collection, those kept within the temple and by the end of the temple period had belonged to it for such a long time that it was no longer permitted even to bring in fresh copies of the books, let alone copies of fresh books. How can this be reconciled with the current beliefs that the Hagiographer were not formally recognized as canonical until the Senate of Jamnia held after the Temple had been destroyed.

Here, Roger Beckwith has fine work, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, demonstrates that the idea that the canon was still open and unknown at this time is simply against the factual evidence that we see in this particular situation.

Josephus again, in Against Apion 1:7, gives the number of books as 22. He specifically rejects those books written after Malachi. That is, the Apocryphal books. There is no reason to believe that Josephus’ cannon is recent. That is, as most believe today, he is referring to a cannon that had been in place for 300 years.

[BREAK]

Now time precludes our investing much more time in another important area relevant to our subject, that being the fact that the Apocryphal books simply do not measure up as Scripture regarding their historical errors.

The Book of Judith, for example, is a mishmash of historical errors so obvious, and so extreme, that defenders of its canonicity have been forced to say it is actually an allegory, or something along those lines; but there’s no evidence of this.

Likewise, you do not find canonical Scripture asking the readers to forgive the book of its shortfalls as you do in Second Maccabees chapter 15.

But what about Jamnia?  

What about this alleged closing of the Canon?

Well, actually, Jamnia was merely a Jewish college or academy founded by Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai. The date of the session may have been as early as AD 75 or as late as AD 117 as regards to the disputed books, the discussion was confined to the question of whether Ecclesiastes and the Song of Psalms, and possibly just Ecclesiastes alone, made the hands unclean.

When you would touch the scrolls of Scripture, it would make your hands unclean because they were Holy. That is, were they divinely inspired? That’s all that was discussed there. There was no discussion about the Apocryphal books being canonical because the Jews had not ever viewed them in that way.

And what about Jesus and the apostles? Well, as Beckwith says, “the undeniable truth is that the New Testament, by contrast with the early fathers and by contrast with its own practice in relation to the books of the Hebrew Bible, never actually quotes from or ascribes authority to any of the Apocrypha.”

Did they know of those books?

Of course they knew of those books.

But remember, they knew of a lot of books. Paul quoted from Pagan philosophers. Jude quotes from the Pseudepigrapha. That doesn’t mean they accepted those books as canonical, but they had read those books and were aware. Of their existence.

SEE ALSO:

BIBLE ASK goes over some of the issues with the Book of Enoch pretty well for a short clip to get the larger point across.

…. The book was not accepted in the canon of Holy books because of its flawed doctrines that don’t line up with Biblical truths. Here are some of the errors it contains:

The Book of Enoch claims that a demon named Gadreel led Eve astray. This demon later introduced weaponry to mankind. But the Bible states that the angel Satan is the one that used the serpent to deceive Eve in the Garden of Eden (Ezekiel 28:13).

Further, the Book of Enoch presents the story of how 200 angels, or Watchers, rebelled against heaven. Then, these fallen angels descended to the plains of earth, married human wives, and fathered the Nephilim. The union of these angles with women produced 450-feet tall giants (chapter 7:12-15).

These fallen angels asked Enoch to plead on their behalf with God after He announced their final judgement. However, this teaching is not scriptural. Jesus clearly taught that angels do not marry. We find this in Mark 12:25: “For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.”

Also, the first chapter of the book, which claims to have been written before the flood, describes summer and winter. However, the Bible says that the seasons came after the flood: “And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried… While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (Genesis 8:14 & 22). Before the flood the earth was watered by dew (Genesis 2:6).

[….]

The Book of Enoch was examined and tested by Bible scholars, who determined that it was not inspired or written by Enoch. As a result, this book was not included in the Holy Canon. It appears that the book was authored by someone else after the flood. Most Christian Churches exclude the Book of Enoch from the Bible. Yet, in spite of the evidence against its inspiration, some early Christian groups, like the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, still accept sections or all of 1 Enoch as inspired.

Ending with Inspiring Philosophy like I started.

Slavery and the Bible – Dennis Prager

Published by Papa Giorgio

On the Ultimate Issues Hour, Dennis Prager speaks about his upcoming book to be published and the topic of “Slavery and the Bible.” Previously I uploaded a shorter dealing with this topic, here: “Prager Deals with Three Misconceptions Obama & Liberals Have of the Bible“

Sargon of Akkad’s Skepticism Is Nothing Special

Published by Papa Giorgio

I was listening to Steven Crowder and “Sargon of Akkad” talk about various subjects… and then it got onto the Bible.

Typical things like presuppositions about miracles being impossible stated BEFORE saying the miraculous life of Jesus is impossible… but before getting into more of the miraculous and Mithra’ism, I want to deal with an issue of Sargon’s name and his affinity to Zeitgeist. Sargon of Akkad is said to be a story that many years later the Story of Moses in Exodus 2:1-10, which reads:

And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews’ children. Then said his sister to Pharaoh’s daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child’s mother. And Pharaoh’s daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it. And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.

This story is referenced in many atheist rejections of Scripture. Here is one post at Debunking Atheism that deal with the topic:

…it [the movie Zeitgeist — see my rebuttle to it here] goes on to make similar claims about the story of Moses,

There is the plagiarized story of Moses. Upon Moses’ birth, it is said that he was placed in a reed basket and set adrift in a river in order to avoid infanticide. He was later rescued by a daughter of royalty and raised by her as a Prince. This baby in a basket story was lifted directly from the myth of Sargon of Akkad of around 2250 b.c. Sargon was born, placed in a reed basket in order to avoid infanticide, and set adrift in a river. He was in turn rescued and raised by Akki, a royal mid-wife.

Zeitgeist makes the claim that the ancient king Sargon was placed in a basket to “avoid infanticide” and is later found by a royal mid-wife. The claim then becomes that since Sargon lived before Moses then therefore Moses must have plagiarized the story.

There is indeed a famous story of Sargon being left in a basket on the Euphrates river preserved in cuneiform tablets of Ancient Assyria. The cuneiform tablet says,

Sargon, mighty king, king of Agade, am I. My mother was a high priestess, my father I knew not; My father’s brothers live in the mountains; My city is Azupiranu, situated on the banks of the Euphrates My mother, the high priestess, conceived me, in secret she bore me; She placed me in a basket of rushes, she sealed the lid with bitumen; She cast me into the river which did not rise over me; The river bore me up and carried me to Aqqi, the water-drawer. Aqqi, the water-drawer, lifted me out as he dipped his bucket; Aqqi, the water-drawer, adopted me, brought me up; Aqqi, the water-drawer, set me up as his gardener. As a gardener, Ishtar, loved me; For 55 years I ruled as king.

The similarity to Moses is obvious to anyone who has read both the story of Moses and the legend of Sargon. But a carefull reading shows that the film, Zeitgeist, in its description of the similarities between the two stories is actually exaggerated.

The claim that Sargon’s mother placed him in the basket and set him adrift to save him from infanticide is actually unsubstantiated. Nowhere in the inscription does it say that she did it to save him from anything or anyone. It just simply says she set him adrift. And the way that the tablet says “she [his mother] cast me into the river” kind of gives the impression that this is a case of child abandonment rather than to save his life.

James Holding in his essay gives background information of the importance of Sargon’s mother being a high priestess. He points out that in order to maintain her position she had to avoid pregnancy. This therefore would account for her giving birth in secrecy and would indicate that she was just disposing of her unwanted newborn child.

The fact that the story says she set him adrift also indicates she didn’t care whether or not he survived. This is a major difference between the two stories. — Contrary to what Cecil B. DeMille’sThe Ten Commandments shows, even though Moses was placed in a basket on the Nile river, he was not set adrift. Exodus 2: 3, 4 says that he was placed at the edge of the river among the reeds and his sister “stood” at a distance to watch him. The reeds would have kept the basket from drifting away. He was meant to survive which is not seemingly the case with Sargon….

(read more)

Take note as well that Exodus is written well before the first accounts of this story that is supposedly plagiarized:

  • The date of the Biblical exodus-conquest is clear. 1 Kgs 6:1 and 1 Chr 6:33–37 converge on a date of 1446 BC for the exodus and the Jubilees data and Judg 11:26 independently converge on a date of 1406 BC for the beginning of the conquest. The 1406 BC date is further confirmed by archaeological data from Jericho, Ai (Kh. el-Maqatir) and Hazor. In the end, Hoffmeier’s response has served to reinforce my earlier conclusion that “there is no valid evidence, Biblical or extra-Biblical, to sustain it.” The theory is a scholarly construct popularized by William F. Albright in the mid-20th century. It is not supported by Biblical or extra-Biblical texts and has lost its presumed archaeological underpinnings, thus has no place in contemporary Biblical scholarship.

Here is another fine article about the dating of Exodus. Whereas the first known reference to Akkad’s story is found in fragments in the Library of Ashurbanipal from the 7th century BC. So much like you will see below with Mithra’ism… the legend POST-DATES the Biblical record and thus it is VERY possible that the plagiarism is the other way around.

Onto Miracles and other positions taken explicetly or implicetly by Sargon.

Miracles and Bias

Professor: “Miracles are impossible Sean, don’t you know science has disproven them, how could you believe in them [i.e., answered prayer, a man being raised from the dead, etc.].”

Student: “for clarity purposes I wish to get some definitions straight.  Would it be fair to say that science is generally defined as ‘the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us’?”

Professor: “Beautifully put, that is the basic definition of science in every text-book I read through my Doctoral journey.”

Student: “Wouldn’t you also say that a good definition of a miracle would be ‘and event in nature caused by something outside of nature’?”

Professor: “Yes, that would be an acceptable definition of ‘miracle.’”

Student: “But since you do not believe that anything outside of nature exists [materialism, dialectical materialism, empiricism, existentialism, naturalism, and humanism – whatever you wish to call it], you are ‘forced’ to conclude that miracles are impossible”

Norman L. Geisler & Peter Bocchino, Unshakable Foundations: Contemporary Answers to Crucial Questions about the Christian Faith (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2001), 63-64.

This commitment to materialism is referenced in one of the best books about the Jesus Seminar:

Philosophical Naturalism and the Modern Worldview

The second modern factor that has contributed to the widespread understanding that religious belief is private, practical, and relative, and need not be related to truth and reason is the widespread acceptance of philosophical naturalism as an expression of scientism. Philosophical naturalism is the idea that reality is exhausted by the spatio-temporal world of physical entities that we can investigate in the natural sciences. The natural causal Fabric of physical reality within the boundaries of space and time is all there is, was, or ever will be. The supernatural doesn’t exist except, perhaps, as a belief in people’s minds. On this view, religious beliefs are simply ways of looking at things in our search for meaning and purpose; they are not ideas that correspond to a mind-independent reality.

Philosophical naturalism is an expression of an epistemology (i.e., a theory of knowledge and justified or warranted belief) known as scientism. Scientism is the view that the natural sciencesare the very paradigm of truth and rationality. If something does not square with currently well-established beliefs, if it is not within the domain of entities appropriate for scientific investigation, or if it is not amenable to scientific methodology then it is not true or rational. Everything outside of science is a matter of mere belief and subjective opinion, of which rational assessment is impossible. Applied to the question of the historical origins of Christianity, scientism implies that since we live in the modern scientific world where the sun is the center of the solar system, the wireless is available for our use, and the atoms power has been harnessed, we can no longer believe in a biblical worldview with its miracles, demons, and supernatural realities.

Obviously, it is impossible in the brief space of an introduction to critique adequately scientism and naturalism. Still, a few cursory remarks need to be expressed.

(1) Scientism is simply false for three reasons. (a) It is self-refining, i.e., it falsifies itself. Why? Scientism is itself a statement of philosophy about knowledge and science; it is not a statement ofscience itself. Moreover, it is a statement of philosophy that amounts to the claim that no statements outside scientific ones, including scientism itself (because it is a statement of philosophy), can be true or supported by rational considerations. (b) Science itself rests on a number of assumptions: the existence of a theory-independent external world, the orderly nature of the external world, the existence of truth and the reliability of our senses and rational faculties to gather truth about the world in a trustworthy manner, the laws of logic and the truths of mathematics, the adequacy of language (including mathematical language) to describe the external world, the uniformity of nature, and soon. Now, each one of these assumptions is philosophical in nature. The task of stating, criticizing, and defending the assumptions of sci­ence rests in the field of philosophy. Scientism fails to leave room for these philosophical tasks and, thus, shows itself to be a foe and not a friend of science. (c) There are many things we know in religion, ethics, logic, mathematics, history, art, literature, and so on that are simply not matters of science. For exam­ple, we all know that two is an even number, that Napoleon lived, that torturing babies for fun is wrong, that if A is larger than B and B is larger than C, then A is larger than C, and so on. None of these items of knowledge are scientific in nature, and scientism is falsified by their reality.

(2) Philosophical naturalism is false as well. For one thing, philosophical naturalism rules out the existence of a number of things that do, in fact, exist. And while we cannot defend their existence here, suffice it to say that, currently, a number of intellectuals have offered convincing arguments for the reality of universals and other abstract objects such as numbers, the laws of logic, values, the soul and its various mental states (including the first person point of view), other minds, libertarian or full-blown freedom of the will, and so on. None of these items can be classified as mere physical objects totally within the causal fabric of the natural spatio-temporal universe. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that there is not a single issue of importance to human beings that is solely a matter of scientific investigation or that can be satisfactorily treated by philosophical naturalists.

(3) Philosophical naturalism fails to explain adequately the fact that there are a number of arguments and pieces of evidence that make belief in God more reasonable than disbelief. Some of this evidence actually comes from science: the fact that the universe had a beginning based on the Big Bang theory and the second law of thermodynamics, the existence of biological information in DNA that is closely analogous to intelligent language and that cannot arise from the accidental collisions of physical entities according to laws of nature, the reality of the mental and of free will according to a number of emerging psychological theories of the self, the delicate fine-tuning of the universe, and so on.”

Like it or not, a significant and growing number of scientists, historians of science, and philosophers of science see more scientific evidence now for a personal creator and designer than was available fifty years ago. In light of this evidence, it is false and naive to claim that modern science has made belief in the supernatural unreasonable. Such a view can be called ostrich naturalism—a position that requires its advocate to keep his or her head in the sand and not to acknowledge real advances in science. The plain truth is that science itself makes no statements about all of reality anyway, nor does science itself offer any support for philosophical naturalism. What does support philosophical naturalism are the ideological claims of naturalists themselves regarding what science ought to say if we assume philosophical naturalism to begin with.

In sum, it matters much that our religious beliefs are both true and reasonable. Moreover, there simply are no sufficient reasons for not believing in the supernatural, and there are in fact a number of good reasons (including but going beyond scientific ones) for believing in the supernatural. As we have said, space considerations do not permit us to defend this last claim here. But we will list some sources in the bibliography that adequately justify this claim. If you are an honest inquirer about the truth of religion, moral and intellectual integrity unite in placing a duty on you to read these works as a sincere seeker of the truth. It is well past time to rest content with the politically correct, unjustified assertions of scientism and philosophical naturalism. University libraries are filled with books that show the weaknesses of these views, and the fellows of the Jesus Seminar show virtually no indication that they have so much as interacted with the arguments they contain, much less have they refuted their claims.

Regarding Jesus of Nazareth, all of this means the following: Prior to inves­tigating the historical evidence about his life, deeds, sayings, and significance, there is no good reason to bring to the evidence a prior commitment to naturalism. As later chapters will show, such a commitment is Procrustean in that it often forces the evidence of history to fit an unjustified anti-supernatural bias. But when the evidence is evaluated on its own terms, and when such an evaluation is combined with the rigorous case for supernatural theism already available in the literature, then the claims of historic, orthodox Christianity can be reasonably judged to be true.

Michael J. Wilkins, ed., Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 8-10.

Mithraism

Another small point made (Mithraism is stated specifically later in convo) was about mythical religions being the source of much of Christianity. This is the “Zeitgeist” Effect, and is easily disproved… which I have posted a rebuttal of here. But to correct Sargon’s use of Mitrhaic religion… it post dates Christianity. Here is a good short refutation showing that there is no historical evidence to prove Mithraism as Sargon postulates PRE-DATES Christianity:

The most popular hypothesis holds that Roman soldiers encountered this religion during military excursions to areas known today as Iran and Iraq. For many years scholars believed that the Roman mystery cult was based on the ancient Persian god, thus predating Christianity. This assumption begins with early twentieth-century Belgian archaeologist and historian Franz Cumont (cf. Cumont’s book The Mysteries of Mithra).

While Cumont’s work is regarded as pioneering in the field, many recent scholars have challenged his assumption. According to John Hinnells at the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies held in 1971, “We must now conclude that [Cumont’s] reconstruction simply will not stand. It receives no support from the Iranian material and is in fact in conflict with the ideas of that tradition as they are represented in the extant texts. Above all, it is a theoretical reconstruction which does not accord with the actual Roman iconography” (John R. Hinnells, Mithraic Studies, vol. 2, “Reflections on the bull-slaying scene”).

Manfred Claus, a professor of ancient history at the Free University of Berlin, also supports this position: “The mysteries cannot be shown to have developed from Persian religious ideas, nor does it make sense to interpret them as a forerunner of Christianity” (The Roman Cult of Mithras, p. 7).

(JONSORENSEN.NET)

In the link leading to my post on this stuff I have pages from a book showing the dates of the VERY popular reliefs used by skeptics to show that Christianity stole from Mithraism… the only proble? The POST-DATE Christianity:

If one reads that scholarly chapter they will come away with a changed position via historical evidences and not the slush found on skeptical websites. However, I just wanted to note Sargon’s reference to Second Kings 18:13 by having professor Archer lay out the issue referenced:

Second Kings 18:13 in the Masoretic text states: “Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them.” Since Sennacherib’s own record in the Taylor Prism establishes 701 B.C. as the date of that invasion, the four¬teenth year of Hezekiah would mean that he did not ascend the throne until 715 B.C. Yet 2 Kings 18:1 (the very same chapter, be it noted) states that Hezekiah became king in the third year of Hoshea king of Israel—which comes out to 729 or 728. This would have been the year in which he was crowned as subordinate king, under his father Ahaz (who did not die until 725). The Masoretic text of 2 Kings 18:13 therefore stands in clear con¬tradiction to 18:1,9, and 10, which confirm that Hezekiah’s fourth year was Hoshea’s seventh and that Hezekiah’s sixth was Hoshea’s ninth (i.e., 722 B.c.).

Gleason L. Archer, Encyclopedia of Biblical Difficulties (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1982), cf. 2 Kings 18:13, 211.

BEFORE I go any further… I want to point out how minor this mistake (and subsequent correction) is. It does not do anything to the integrity of the Bible, its message, or it’s historical soundness. Even someone who is seen as dealing the biggest blow to textual studies as of late, Bart Ehrman, even he acknowledges nothing he has written deterioates the main theisis and message of Christianity or the Bible:

In the appendix to Misquoting Jesus, added to the paperback version, there is a Q&A section. I do not know who the questioner is, but it is obviously someone affiliated with the editors of the book. Consider this question asked of Ehrman:

  • Bruce Metzger, your mentor in textual criticism to whom this book dedicated, has said that there is nothing in these variants of Scripture that challenges any essential Christian beliefs (e.g., the bodily resurrection of Jesus or the Trinity). Why do you believe these core tenets Of Christian orthodoxy to be in jeopardy based on the scribal errors you discovered in the biblical manuscripts?

Note that the wording of the question is not “Do you believe…” but “Why do you believe these core tenets of Christian orthodoxy to be in jeopardy…?” This is a question that presumably came from someone who read the book very carefully. How does Ehrman respond?

  • The position I argue for in Misquoting Jesus does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger’s position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament.

Suffice it to say that viable textual variants that disturb cardinal doctrines found in the NT have not yet been produced.

Daniel B. Wallace, Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregal Publications, 2011), 54-55.

Again, many skeptics do not get Bart’s work in total (see: Agnostic -Bart Erhman- Debates Atheist About Jesus’ Existence).. that aside, let’s explore a simple explanation. Here Dr. Geisler explains:

PROBLEM: 2 Kings 18:13 claims that “in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.” Since archaeological evidence has established Sennacherib’s invasion at 701 B.C., this would mean that Hezekiah became co-regent with his father Ahaz in 719 B.C., and sole ruler of Judah in 715 B.C. However, according to 2 Kings 18:1, Hezekiah became co-regent in 729 B.C., and he became sole ruler of Judah when his father died in 725 B.C. This is a discrepancy of ten years. Which account is correct?

SOLUTION: The claim that Sennacherib invaded Judah in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah is clearly a copyist error. Sennacherib actually invaded Judah in the twenty-fourth year of the reign of Hezekiah of Judah. The error is easy to explain since the difference between the two numbers is a single Hebrew letter. The Hebrew consonants for “fourteen” are rb srh, while the Hebrew consonants for “twenty-four” are rb srm (the ancient manuscripts did not write the vowels, see Appendix 2). The final letters are the only difference in the written text. In fact, the words are the same, only the word “twenty” is simply the plural form of the word “ten.” We might express the way the Hebrew is written as “four ten,” or “four twenty.” It is simply a case where a copyist miscopied the form from “four twenty” to “four ten.”

Norman L. Geisler and Thomas A. Howe, When Critics Ask : A Popular Handbook on Bible Difficulties (Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books, 1992), 197.

If a skeptic thinks this interferes with inerrancy… they are sadly mistaken. And of course Crowder is correct to point to the discoveries from archaeology that support the Bible… this set of verses are not excluded from this either. Much like my other examples of challenges… they fall woefully short of the simple beginning bias/presuppositions of those like Sargon’s — a presupposition not unlike Dr. Lewontin’s:

Naturalism and materialism are not scientific conclusions; rather, they are scientific premises. They are not discovered in nature but imposed upon nature. In short, they are articles of faith. Here is Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin: “We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a priori commitment, a commitment — a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great about Christianity (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2007), 161.

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