Responding to Comments on My Bible Videos

so if you're a close follower of this channel you'll know that in addition to doing other videos this year i've also been slowly doing a series on biblical genealogy as you can imagine i've gotten a lot of comments now let me make this clear up front most of the comments have actually been very positive and i'm very grateful to all of you who gave me some really great encouragement but i thought it would be useful for me to address some of the other comments the ones that weren't so positive so that's what i'm going to do in this video first let me quickly recap the general point of view that this series has been based on from the very first episode i have put forward the idea that the bible is a mix of mythology legend and history so in other words we cannot say that every single character in the bible was a real person but neither can we say that every single character is fictional the bible is a mix of many documents so we have to go section by section and consider each part separately now keep in mind that this is not just my view it's the view of most professional historians so with that said let's pull up some comments here's one that says this video goes against christians muslims and jews and here's another one that says this video borders on heresy you must be an atheist i actually got quite a few comments in which the person simply assumed that i was an atheist now regardless of whether or not i am an atheist and i will address that in a bit what i want to stress now is that one simply cannot draw a conclusion about someone's belief or non-belief in god simply based on whether or not they view the bible in a literal way i cannot speak for muslims but having spent a lot of time around various types of christians and jews i can confidently tell you that there are a lot of people who believe quite strongly in god and who also agree that the bible is a mix of mythology legend and real history those two things can and quite often do go together so my video series does not go against christians muslims and jews it might go against some christians muslims and jews those who take the bible or the quran 100 literally but it certainly does not go against all of them i don't know what the exact stats are but i know that in europe it would be fair to say that the majority of christians understand the early parts of the bible in a non-literal way and in the u.s where reform judaism is the dominant branch it would be fair to say that the majority of jews understand the early parts of the bible in a non-literal way as well sure there might be differences of opinion on where to draw the various lines but my point is it's not just atheists who hold the position that i presented so if you happen to be the type of theist that views the bible in a purely literal way don't assume that anyone who disagrees with you is automatically an atheist they might be but they might simply be a theist who disagrees with you okay here's another one you shouldn't be teaching old testament history sorry but there are many great scholars and academics to teach this stuff properly you are not qualified to speak on this subject again i think there's a false assumption at work here i think the person who wrote this assumes that anyone who presents a view different from the one that they themselves hold must be lacking knowledge well this is not necessarily true it's also possible that the presenter in this case me is in fact quite knowledgeable but simply has come to different conclusions than the ones that you are used to hearing it's funny because if there's any topic that i am qualified to speak on it is in fact the bible although i'm more known for royal genealogy and for dabbling in a wide range of topics like general history linguistics and even science in most cases i comment those topics as a generalist which means that i'm someone with a hobby level interest whose main skill lies in knowing how to present information well but when it comes to the bible and religious studies i do actually have some pretty decent credibility i've never mentioned it before but my bachelor's degree is actually in theology and my phd is in the psychology of religion i can read both hebrew and greek and over the years i've spent a lot of time in a wide variety of different religious settings i was raised in an obscure religious group that mixed jewish practices with christian ideas and which taught the bible in a very literal way as a young adult i spent time in several more mainstream churches both on the evangelical side and on the more traditional protestant side i also spent 10 years living in south asia where i learned a lot about hinduism and buddhism and on top of all this because of my phd research i spent a lot of time in atheist circles hearing things from their perspective as well in more recent years having married a jew and having eventually converted to judaism myself i've spent time in jewish circles as well so basically i've been around the block i'm not saying i have all the answers but basically i have looked at the bible from just about every angle so there's really not many ideas or arguments that i haven't already heard for the record i am in fact a theist and would label myself as a progressive jew so if you were curious there you go but useful charts is not a religion channel it's a history channel and when it comes to interpreting ancient texts and sorting out what's historical and what's not i will unabashedly always rely on things like science and reason rather than faith so yeah feel free to disagree with me but don't say that i haven't looked into things carefully now speaking of interpreting ancient texts let's uh look at another comment and this is another theme that came up quite a bit this person writes it's ironic that you completely trust one source and completely rule out another is your basis for doing so because you are starting with a presupposition that the bible is untrue no i treat the bible just like i treat any other ancient text for example i don't assume that everything in the iliad and odyssey is true nor do i assume that everything in the hindu epic the mahabharata is true instead i asked myself when were these written what was going on politically when they were written how much time passed between the event described and the actual writing of the text what style of writing was used how does it compare to other styles of writing from other regions and other time periods from all of these clues we can get a good idea of what type of source we are looking at whether it's a section of the bible or a section of some other work of ancient literature once we know what type of source it is we can then decide how best to understand that source and how much weight to give it when comparing it to other sources so it's not that historians assume that the bible is untrue it's just that they don't give it any special treatment they look at the bible using the same criteria that they use for everything else so what about this comment then this person writes at the end of the day all history is just a recording of someone who may have recorded it correctly or incorrectly with an agenda or without an agenda how do you know caesar actually existed well like i said not all sources are the same the process that i described by which historians evaluate a source is called the historical method just like how most people would be able to tell the difference say between a newspaper article about a crime and a page taken from a mystery novel historians are trained to know the subtle differences between different types of ancient sources so for example when it comes to julius caesar we have texts written by contemporary historians that use a style of history writing that is quite similar to the way that historians record history today we also have personal letters that match a certain style of letter writing that was common at the time finally we even have sculptures of his face that date very close to when he lived the same thing cannot be said about any biblical character living before the period of the divided israelite monarchy before that period humans simply did not record history in a straightforward way not just in ancient israel but anywhere so the sources we have are either stories written down much later in the style of myth and legend usually um or whatever we happen to find by way of archaeology and generally speaking what we find by way of archaeology is given more weight and let me explain why let's say we're studying a city that existed around the year 1500 bc if we find a chunk of stone dating to 1450 bc with some information on it about the kings living at that time that's a difference of only 50 years sure the information could still contain propaganda and exaggeration but it's likely that the basic people names and place names are going to be accurate compare that to an oral story about the same kings that didn't get written down until the year 500 bc that's 1 000 years later if the two accounts contradict each other which one should we trust well generally speaking historians will trust the archaeological find over the literary text because the time difference between the event of the recording of the event is shorter and obviously the style is also quite different and they don't do this for just the bible they do this for any work of ancient literature so no history is not just whatever historians want it to be there are ways to find out who really existed and who did not sure it's not an exact science and yes there is some room for debate but please don't think that all sources are the same and that there is no way to properly evaluate any of it here's another phrase that came up uh quite a lot absence of evidence is not evidence of absence this is true but the thing is when it comes to much of biblical history we do not have an absence of evidence this is a point that i failed to make clear for example i made it seem as though the reason why i consider king solomon to be legendary is that we have not yet found any archaeological artifacts with his name on it let me clarify it's not just that we lack any archaeological verification for solomon it's that we do have archaeological data from the time when he lived and what we have does not match with what the biblical account says so according to the bible jerusalem was huge uh it was a huge extremely wealthy city during the reign of solomon it says that along with the first temple he also built a very large palace and in fact the bible describes both of these buildings and all the materials used to build them in quite a lot of detail if the biblical account were true there would have to be an extensive trade network and a large enough population to support all of this work and wealth so it's not as if archaeologists have dug and dug around jerusalem and simply not found anything yet that dates to the time of solomon it seems like some people think that there's just an absence of any data and that someday archaeologists could just stumble upon something major no obviously there still could be things to find but archaeologists have actually already found lots of evidence relating to what jerusalem was like around the supposed lifetime of solomon and the hard cold fact is the evidence simply does not support the biblical account according to what archaeologists have found jerusalem was still a small town at that time and could in no way have supported the kind of population and trade networks that would have been required for the kind of building projects that solomon supposedly undertook so even though experts are unable to dig directly under the temple of the rock they have been able to dig in enough other places to conclude that the city was simply too small at the time for the biblical description to make sense but remember legend is not the same as fiction i'm not saying that there was no king solomon or no king david in fact what i'm saying is that they probably did exist just not in the exact way that the bible describes on a related note i got several comments like this one stating that the reason why there is no evidence for the israelites leaving egypt is because the egyptians intentionally removed any records of the exodus it is in fact true that the egyptians sometimes try to rewrite history by destroying information about certain pharaohs after their death particularly if the next pharaoh had a very different political or religious agenda but the fact that we know that the egyptians often did this means that they weren't 100 successful for example they tried to cover up pharaoh akhenaten's attempt at a sort of proto-monotheism had they been 100 successful in destroying all the records we wouldn't know anything about akhenaten or his religious policies but we do why because although some records were destroyed they couldn't destroy all of them so even if the ancient egyptians tried to cover up the exodus it is extremely unlikely that they would have been successful in removing all traces of it according to the bible six hundred thousand israelite men left egypt and there would have been women and children too i'm by no means an expert in archaeology but trust me if several million people spend 40 years in a desert the size of the sinai peninsula there would be evidence lots of it and on top of this it's not just an absence of evidence in addition to the absence of evidence we actually have affirmative evidence based on things like linguistic comparison and material culture comparison that the israelites as a people were originally just one of the many canaanite tribes and that they very slowly took over the other ones to become the dominant group in other words no sudden conquest of course there were lots of fun comments like these ones that mentioned chariot wheels and horse skeletons being found at the bottom of the red sea or claims that noah's ark had been found on a mountain in turkey well i hate to break it to you but ron wyatt is not an actual archaeologist and the whole chariot wheel thing has been shown to be a hoax look there are a lot of people out there that claim to be experts on biblical archaeology but usually are just trying to sell you some kind of snake oil my advice to you is to always consider the source major discoveries or new groundbreaking theories are first of all always reported in peer-reviewed academic journals this allows fellow experts to check the data and confirm whether or not the discovery is real and or the idea is legit after this the information is usually disseminated far and wide and can usually be confirmed by multiple well-known news organizations so if you hear a claim and you google it and you can only find articles about it on some pretty sketchy looking websites that's probably a good indication that the claim is bogus also if you come across a so-called expert who claims to have all the answers and their primary means of sharing that information is through a flashy two-hour video documentary rather than a book or an article published by a reputable academic publisher then you might want to take whatever that expert says with a big grain of salt now it feels kind of strange saying this because here i am talking to you on youtube and i'm admitting that video documentaries which is basically what youtube is are not the best source to go by well that's why in each of the episodes throughout this series i've included a list of books that you should check out if you want to dig deeper initially i had just recommended the one book but i've since added several more so be sure to check out the description on this video or any of the videos in the series for the full list here's another comment i want to address jesus literally says it's historical so if you don't believe it's historical i could only assume that you're an atheist so actually jesus never literally says i hereby declare that the entirety of the hebrew bible is a historical document and must be viewed as such he never says that what he does is he quotes the hebrew bible and he uses it to make theological points something that jewish rabbis continue to do to this very day but just because a jewish rabbi quotes the bible and uses it to make a point it doesn't mean that they are accepting it as a historical fact so i think it's possible for a person to be a christian in other words to believe in jesus but to not see genesis and other parts of the hebrew bible as literal history i don't think there's any conflict there anyways let's switch gears now and look at a comment from an atheist instead here someone writes question for theists if something in the bible is proven false which there have been many how can you believe anything that it claims well first of all the bible is not a single book but rather a collection of documents that have been edited together so really it's more like a mini library which means that a conclusion that you make about one part of the bible cannot necessarily be applied to another part because each part could very well have been written by a different author in a different genre hundreds of years apart but more importantly i think we have to define what we mean by the words true and false just because something is not literally true or scientifically true it doesn't mean that it's not true in some other sense human language evolved to be able to express things that were necessary for survival but is very limited when it comes to expressing certain other things things that we feel deep down inside in our intuition and that relate to more philosophical questions like why does the universe even exist in the first place or what is evil and how does it differ from good religious myths attempt to answer these questions but in a very indirect poetic sort of way there are many theists like myself who believe that books like the bible although they may not be literally true still contain some sort of hint at a kind of truth that simply cannot be expressed in black and white terms personally i see the bible as one of the greatest collections of literature ever put together and one that has been so intertwined with human history for so many centuries that it would be ridiculous to throw it away or to ignore it simply because we now have access to books about science and detailed charts about world history but that's just my opinion if you view the bible as 100 literal history that's fine i'm probably not going to change your mind or if you view the bible as 100 useless that's fine too the main point that i'm trying to make is that those are not the only two options before i go there is one last thing that i want to address i got a lot of comments about the artwork that i chose to use for the various bible characters on the poster version of the charts that i sell most of these comments came from people who i'm pretty sure are aligned with a certain fringe religious movement known as the black hebrew israelites and they said things like this you have to remember that all these people were black i feel really torn when i see comments like this because on one hand i agree that a lot of history has been whitewashed and that african history has usually been either ignored misrepresented or under appreciated and that this is all because of the systematic racism that exists in white european culture but the idea that judaism originated in black africa and that the kings of ancient israel and judah were all black is simply not true now it's also true that they were not white i totally agree that a lot of the paintings that were done by european painters over the centuries those that depict bible characters as if they were average european white people are also inaccurate the fact of the matter is that the ancient israelites were middle eastern and although we don't know exactly what they would have looked like they probably looked quite similar to middle eastern people today or at least more similar to middle eastern people than to either non-jewish europeans or to black africans on the chart i try to use a variety of art styles there's some renaissance art some byzantine art some early 20th century art but in most cases i tried to use examples where the characters looked as middle eastern as possible i would like to point out the images i use for moses and david as well as for aaron and samuel these four images come from the dura europas synagogue in syria which dates to the roman period and are the oldest known examples of jewish art in the world together with the early christian art found in the catacombs under rome they are also the oldest depictions of any uh bible character that we have okay so i hope you have been enjoying this series keep in mind that the categories that i've been using such as mythology uh legend and history um they're not um you know cut and dry categories there's some blending in between them especially between mythology and legend uh for example in in the first episode i labeled the exodus story as mythology some have argued that perhaps it's better to be classified as legend because there might be some sort of historical truth to it sure i have no problem with that um you know mythology and legend they kind of blend one into another and then legend blends into real history slowly so i don't see these as three exact categories but see them more as kind of shades that go you know from one to another okay so this series is coming to an end on christmas day uh that's when i'll be posting the seventh and final episode the one that will cover the genealogy of jesus i hope you'll enjoy it as always thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: UsefulCharts

Views: 451,944

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Id: M5mv3KtAvmw

Length: 29min 23sec (1763 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 27 2020