>>16380

Literally because of the religion.

If you suddenly made a new religion and started worshiping Karl Marx's writings people would immediately disregard it.

The Bible is most likely as historically accurate as can be expected for a work of the time
However, you can't really cite it as a source because it contains material other than history itself, true chronicles of history shouldn't contain a significant amount of religious rhetoric and/or claims

Because it's an anthology that collects ancient myths and less ancient genealogies and slightly more recent letters spanning around a 2000 year period written by over 40 people in 3 languages. You have to evaluate each book independently as a historical document.

Because much of the bible contradicts everything we know about history.

But no, it's because guys in fedoras are suppressing the truth.

>>16585
>le funny hat meme
Funny how you can basically dismiss the arguments of non-theists these days just by mentioning a type of dumb hat.

>>16585
>the bible contradicts everything we know about history
Not really. There are some parts of the Bible which validate the existence of other independent historical figures, Augustus Caesar for example.

>>16380
Well it is wrong on major issues. For instance the Jews were never slaves in Egypt, they were local Canaanites. There was no census taken which required people to return to their places of birth, so the story about Jesus being born in Bethlehem is wrong as well.

Just two examples.

>>16380
It's studied as a historical source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_studies

>>16750

I mean that's a hypothesis - and not one without its own bias's. Reaching that far back into history is always a problem, whatever the culture/religion, but Cannanite pottery is not proof that the Hebrew people were Cannanites...

>>16680
Reading comprehension is your friend

>>16750
Oh and the census bit:

In studying this problem, there are two main solutions that Christian scholars offer, and each has some good merit. The first point is the terminology Luke uses when writing about Quirinius' governorship over Syria. In stating that Quirinius controlled the Syrian area, Luke doesn't use the official political title of "Governor" ("legatus"), but the broader term "hegemon" which is a ruling officer or procurator. This means that Quirinius may not have been the official governor of Judea, but he was in charge of the census because he was a more capable and trusted servant of Rome than the more inept Saturninus.
Justin Martyr's Apology supports this view, writing that Quirinius was a "procurator", not a governor of the area of Judea.6 As Gleason Archer writes, "In order to secure efficiency and dispatch, it may well have been that Augustus put Quirinius in charge of the census-enrollment in Syria between the close of Saturninus's administration and the beginning of Varus's term of service in 7 B.C. It was doubtless because of his competent handling of the 7 B.C. census that Augustus later put him in charge of the 7 A.D. census."7 Archer also says that Roman history records Quirinius leading the effort to quell rebels in that area at exactly that time, so such a political arrangement is not a stretch.
If Quirinius did hold such a position, then we have no contradiction. The first census was taken during the time of Jesus birth, but Josephus' census would have come later. This option seems to me to be entirely reasonable.

>>16380
it has the same historic value as tolkien books

There is no record of the plagues of Egypt or Moses' exile.

>>16380
the same reason we regard most things from hat time as reliable.
the majority of Roman writers for example just outright made shit up for poetic license, not a lot of it is 100 percent reliable but at least the bible has a long recorded history and apocrypha which backs it up as at least legitimate and from a set time period.