Talk:Dating the Bible/archive

This is an archive page, please do not update it. Text and history moved from the main talk page as it was 44 KB (see article size) and the last contribution over six months ago. All new discussion should go into Talk:Dating the Bible. Andrewa 18:43, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

I think this material would be better presented in the articles of the various books of the Bible, where in many cases, there is already a far more thorough discussion of the various thoughts on the authorship and timing of the Bible.

Amen! Talking about the 'date' of "the Bible' is not unlike discussing the 'date' of the 'library.' No sensible conclusions can be reached. (The proof is everywhere in Wikipedia.) By taking up individual books and looking at them the way one always looks at any ancient books— the relation of their manuscripts to one another, their sources as revealed in the texts and as illuminated by texts outside the manuscripts, and so on&mdash one can come to some reasonable, though still not unanimous, conclusions. Anything else is either theology and dogma (very interesting historical developments in their own right) or crackerbarrel religion, with a little crackerbarrel pseudohistory (less interesting, except to the arguers).

Sensible analysis of the textual traditions, book by book, should appear in the individual entries of each book and of the books that are variously judged Apocrypha, a term that itself is an opinion, and not NPOV).Wetman 01:58, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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Some controversial Bible scholars think that Moses never existed. However the general consenseus it that the first part of real history is the story of Abraham. The real difficulty with this is that Abraham is the founder of the Jewish faith. -- I deleted this because (1) it concerns the accuracy of the Bible not its date, (2) the last part doesn't make any sense, (3) the claim about consensus is wrong. -- zero 10:37, 10 Sep 2003 (UTC)

--- I removed this: For another example, according to ?