Quote:
Originally Posted by T@T
Twice in one bloated response you bring up history. I actually love history.
World wars, inventions, politics..etc are history, the bible is not history unless you put it with all the other fairy tales and call fiction books history. The only part of history the bible should be known for is the countless deaths it caused over the years.
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WRONG. History is the re-presentation of past events according to the collective memory of a given community, institution or society. In accordance with that definition history includes but also extends much further beyond isolated events like wars and "interventions," and beyond targeted systemic activities like those that constitute politics. Because religion is a human phenomenon, and because religion and religious texts have had such a profound and wide-ranging impact on social development, whether you like it or not, ALL religious texts, are a part of historical discourse, and many of them—like the Bible—are indispensable resources.
The importance of religious texts is even more pronounced the further back you wish to engage with history, necessarily because the divisions in the fabric of society between "religion," "culture," and "politics" are nearly impossible to see. Within Ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman society, "political literature" is ALWAYS ensconced in religion. And for certain cultures, this is still the case even today. You yourself acknowledged that the current discussion in this thread concerns a
religiously motivated conflict that is wrought on by a group who does NOT readily draw sharp distinctions between "religion" and politics. How can we hope to understand what is going on in the Middle East right now without engaging with their own set of ideals and beliefs, which are virulently religious?
So then, what of the Bible? Yes, it is inflated by myths and fictions, but this is in part because most of this literature pre-dates anything that even closely resembles modern historical method. It is still one of the most important historical documents pertaining to the emergence of Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Roman societies. It would certainly be great to have better resources, but we don't. It's what we have to work with.