Bible Facts or Bible Dogmas?  Not only am I a Jesus freak, but I'm also a Bible nerd. I think the Bible is the most fascinating book on this earth. And I know a lot of people disagree with me. So, I took it upon myself to find some really cool Bible facts so that you too can be a Bible nerd. >> All right, let's see it. >> Bible contains 66 books. >> Well, the Protestant cannon has 66 books. But there's no such thing as the single authoritative Bible. There are a variety of different biblical cannons. And that includes the Jewish cannon. that includes the Catholic or the Orthodox or Armenian or Ethiopian Orthodox Toakado cannon or others. There are a variety of different configurations of biblical books within a given group's understanding of what the Bible is >> written by 40 different authors. >> So, right off the bat, we're already clearly presupposing the historicity not only of everything that's stated in the Bible, but all the traditions about the Bible. For instance, the notion that Moses wrote the whole Pentatuk, that's not anywhere in the Bible. That's a post-biblical tradition. But not only are we presupposing that every word of the Penetuk is true and historical and even inherent, we're presupposing the inherency of post-biblical traditions about the Bible in identifying 40 authors. The reality is that there were hundreds of authors, editors, redactors and scribes responsible for composing or transmitting the biblical text down to us in the way they have come down to us. Just the penetuk itself has several different authors and several more times more editors and redactors. So again, this is presupposing a lot of things which means these are not facts. These are claims or these are dogmas that overwhelmingly are not actually supported by the data >> written on three different continents. >> So this is another claim that is not supported by the data because it is presupposing that every last word of the Bible is historical and that for instance the book of Exodus was written in Egypt and the data don't support that. We could conclude that parts of the Bible were written in Egypt if we assume that some of the letters of the New Testament could have been written in Alexandria Egypt. If that's true, then yes, it would have been composed across three different continents. But if that's not true, then no, it would have been composed across two different continents >> and spans 1500 years. So, usually when people say this part, they say that it was written over the course of 1500 years, which again is a claim that presupposes that every last word of the Bible is true and historical. And the data don't support that. The data indicate we probably have about,00 years during which parts of the Bible were being composed. Starting with the earliest poetic fragments of places like Judges 5 and Genesis 49 and Deuteronomy 32 and Psalm 68 and stuff like that which probably dates to around 1,000 BCE maybe a little earlier than that but certainly no earlier than 1100 B.CE. And then it goes down to the most recent books of the New Testament. Second Peter was probably composed somewhere between 120 and 150 CE. So we have about,50 years is what I would say is the high end of the window of time within which the biblical texts were composed. >> But there's not a single contradiction in the entire thing. >> So this is just laughably false. There are numerous different contradictions and numerous different kinds of contradictions in the Bible. This is another dogma that one asserts not because they've actually gone and interrogated every last potential contradiction in the Bible and have satisfied themselves that the evidence does not support the identification of any of them as contradictions. It's something that you assert to put on display to others that you are willing to tow the line and sign off on an identity marker so that you can show others that you belong. you're one of the good ones, you can be trusted. This is just an identity marker. This is not a fact in any way, shape, or form whatsoever. It's demonstrabably false. Uh it is just a claim that people make that is intended to resonate with other people who already agree with that claim. >> In his life, Jesus fulfilled over 300 Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah. Now, there's this guy who's like, "The odds of that must be super low." So, we did the math to see what the odds of a person fulfilling just eight of these Messiah prophecies were. And the odds of someone just fulfilling eight of these prophecies is one in 100 quadrillion chance. And Jesus fulfilled over 300. >> So these are more claims and dogmas that are not supported by any data. These are definitely not facts. But the notion that Jesus fulfilled over 300 prophecies or even just eight prophecies relies on a number of dogmatic presuppositions that again are not supported by the data, including the notion that every last word of the New Testament is inherent and historical. and univocal. And this runs us into all kinds of problems because most likely what we have going on here is authors telling their stories, crafting their stories precisely so as to have Jesus fulfill prophecies as they understood them. And we can see this happening because Mark is the first gospel that was written. And sure, Mark has Jesus fulfilling some prophecies in there, but Matthew comes after Mark and uses Mark as a source. And Matthew multiplies the number of prophecies that Jesus is fulfilling. And Matthew alters some of the stories that are told in Mark precisely so as to write into these stories the fulfillment of prophecies that are not in view in Mark's telling. They're intentionally altering the story so as to read the fulfillment of prophecy in. And it's prophecy as these authors understood it, not necessarily as it was intended. Because when you look at the list of eight prophecies that uh this mathematician Peter Stoner looked at, some of them aren't prophecies at all. They're lament poetry talking about stuff that already happened in the first millennium BCE when these things were written. And then later Christians after Jesus died and traditions began to circulate about his resurrection, they went back and they decided to renegotiate what they understood these texts to be and they read Jesus into them. And so either things that could have actually happened were superimposed upon texts that were not prophecies to reinterpret them as prophecies and read prophecy into texts that were never prophecy or the texts were being crafted precisely so as to write fulfillment of prophecy into them. This is what's most likely going on. That's not engaged in these claims. And Peter Stoner was not doing good mathematics. Peter Stoner asked his undergrad students to just spitball the probability of certain things happening and then he averaged the results and that's how he came up with these numbers. But again, it's entirely dependent not only on presupposing the inherency, the historicity, the univocality of the biblical text, but also traditions about how we interpret the biblical text. Again, this is all dogmatism. None of these are facts. >> The name Yahweh is the personal divine name for God. And it's used almost 7,000 times in the Old Testament. But the Jewish people said that this is the divine name of God. And it's too personal and too divine to even be spoken aloud. So instead of saying Yahweh, they said the name Adoni. Now when it was being translated into English, instead of writing Yahweh, they translated it into Lord, all capital letters. So when you read the word Lord, capital letters in the Bible, the name that was there was originally Yahweh. This is more or less accurate. >> This one's really crazy. Back in Genesis, the devil is cursed to eat dust the rest of his life. And what was man made from? Man was made from dust. So when we serve our flesh and when we feed our flesh, we're actually feeding the devil. But when we starve our flesh and deny our flesh, we're starving the devil. What? >> So this is really just kind of a homalytic reflection on what's going on in Genesis 3. and it's presupposing the accuracy of a post-biblical theological innovation, namely the identification of the serpent from the Garden of Eden as Satan or the devil. There's no part of the Bible, Hebrew Bible or New Testament, that actually identifies the serpent from the Garden of Eden as the devil. And in my recent book, the Bible says so, uh, chapter 9 talks about Satan, including why Satan is actually not identified with the serpent from the Garden of Eden anywhere in the entire Bible. >> The word Bible actually means books, plural. And so when someone says, "Go read your holy Bible," they're actually saying, "Go read your holy books." >> So the word Bible as it is used today does not mean that. But etmologically, it does come from a plural noun that does mean books. But it is the etmological fallacy to suggest that the etmological origins of any given word are being transmitted anytime anyone uses that word whether they are aware of that etmological origin or not. >> In Matthew 26 when we're reading about the last supper Jesus says one of you will betray me and all of the disciples respond saying surely it's not me Lord and they call him Lord but Judas the one who betrayed Jesus says surely it's not me rabbi which means teacher. So all of the disciples call him Lord, but Judas calls him rabbi. All of them see him as a Lord, but Judas only sees him as a teacher. >> Again, this is kind of homalytical. This is reading stuff into the text that may or may not have been intended by the author. But Judas does only ever refer to Jesus as rabbi in the two instances where anybody calls Jesus rabbi, it's Judas doing it. So that is certainly a plausible reading. >> The Bible was originally written in three different languages. is the Old Testament was written in mainly Hebrew and a little bit of Aramaic and the New Testament was written in Greek. >> That is entirely accurate. >> Last one that I have for this video is the plagues in Egypt weren't random. They were actually intentional and challenged each of the Egyptian gods and their powers and showed the Egyptian people that their gods had no power and only Yahweh had power. >> So, this is not accurate. I've heard this claim many times. I've never seen any evidence provided for it. Now it is true that scholars have pointed out for a while now that there are certain broader themes in some of the plagues that overlap with the domains of some of the main deities of the Egyptian pantheon. For instance, uh Gary Rensburg and Benedict Lemline and others have pointed out that the theme of darkness seems to be directly relevant to one of the main deities of the Egyptian pantheon, Rah, the god of the sun. So there is some overlap in that sense. But if the argument is that each of the plagues is intended to individually respond to the specific domain of each of the 10 deities of the Egyptian pantheon, that's just not true. That's not supported by any data. Now, the other part of this was the notion that this was intended to show that they had no power or that that they were not powerful. And sometimes people say it's intended to show they don't exist. And none of that's true. It is intended to show that Adonai is more powerful. It is intended to be Adonai judging the gods of Egypt. And this is explicit in the text. In Exodus 12:12, we read, "I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from human to animal, and on all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgments. I am the Lord." In this time period, every nation was understood to have its own patron deity or sets of patron deities. and Adonai left their own purview to go into the purview of other deities in order to pass judgment on them. Adonai is successful in the story of the Exodus. If we go to 2 Kings 3, we have an example where Adonai is unsuccessful, loses homecourt advantage and loses the game. But here the point is to show that Adonai is more powerful, not to show that the gods of Egypt are powerless or that they don't exist. And one of the ways we know that is because it's explicit in the text as well. For instance, in Exodus 7:10-12, "So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did as the Lord had commanded. Aaron threw down his staff before Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. Then Pharaoh summoned the wise men and the sorcerers, and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did the same by their secret arts. Each one threw down his staff, and they became snakes. But Aaron's staff swallowed up theirs. In other words, the God of Israel is more powerful. It's not saying the gods of Egypt have absolutely zero power or don't exist. It's just saying Adonai is better than them. That is the point of the story of the Exodus. >> Come on, you can't tell me this stuff isn't cool. If you have any really cool Bible facts or just niche things or nerdy things that you're like, you would love this, please let me know. I would agree that the Bible is the most fascinating book on earth. However, most of these are not facts at all. Most of these are just claims. They're just dogmas. And if you do want interesting actual facts about the Bible, uh I've got thousands of videos on my channel. and the fit for this video., Bible Facts or Bible Dogmas?, YouTube, 01keyafx15v7h9exy5z9e0djaf.