If you don't believe in the Holy Bible to educate you about the Ancient World....?

Actually, there's quite a bit about the ancient world that the Bible never talks about. The Bible focuses on one small group of people. Precious little is mentioned about Egypt, for example, except for the period the Jews were there, and even that has precious little about Egypt itself.

I had a long talk with an agnostic who has atheistic friends and supports the godless ACLU. They generally believe that (or he does) the Bible has ancient history that is valid but they don't accept the supernatural things, the miracles. They have the idea the miracles were added to the story which is totally ridiculous because they cannot be separated from the history. What I mean is they think the history of the Jewish people in the Bible was a mixture of fact and fairy tales. This is simply the sin of unbelief. They don't accept the Bible as the word of God. I have no respect for that false belief.

I think some aspects in the bible are true. It tells you about traditions and feelings in the ancient world, but it is too opinionated. It was passed down orally, then written then edited. And the Bible wasn't written 6000 years ago. More like 2000. The oldest was found in the dead sea scrolls found in 1946. Unless you count the rosetta stone... Which is another thing. Hieroglyphics tell you about ancient times. So does the Mayan calender. THere are plenty of resources besides the Bible, but the bible is more well profound.

"If we did not have the Holy Bible would we really know about the history world from the last 6000 years?"

We would have a far better idea of the ancient world if the invasions of Egypt firstly by Christianity and later by Islam had not destroyed the Library of Alexandria.

Not too clear on how actual historians work, are you?

See, it's like this: things are judged by "levels of confidence." One story of a person or event from the past doesn't give much to go on. If nobody else ever recorded that person or event, our confidence in that one story is very low. If the person that recorded it was not an eyewitness to the person or event, our confidence is even lower -- we can't really say that the story has any validity in that case.

How do we raise our confidence in past people and events? By having eyewitness sources that recorded them. By having multiple sources, from different points of view (if 3 people, all from different cultures and "belief systems" record an event or person, and their accounts all substantially agree, our confidence goes up considerably). By having recorded events/people match up with archeological evidence. Those things are give us greater confidence that we know what happened in the past.

Say you have 4 stories about a guy doing magical miracles 2,000 or so years ago (like the gospels); the 4 stories don't agree (they contradict each other), none of the story writers were eyewitnesses to the events described, no archeological evidence backs up the stories, and other groups present who *should* have been eyewitnesses (Jews, Romans, etc.) never recorded the stories -- our confidence in those stories would be extremely low, and it wouldn't be possible to say with any confidence at all that the things in them happened. That's exactly what we have with the bible gospels; non-eyewitness accounts, contradictory accounts, no independent corroboration, and no supporting archeological evidence.

The bible adds almost nothing to our knowledge of history. Other than the last few generations of some Jewish kinds in the OT, and a few place names, historians have no confidence in any of it (and have, in fact, shown that large parts of it are shown to be incorrect by large amounts of evidence).

We have a great deal of information about world history without the bible -- from many other cultures and civilizations, and our confidence in that knowledge is much higher than for the bible, because of eyewitness accounts, corroborating stories, and archeological support. The bible contains simply the mythical tales concerning one small group of people over a very short period of time. It's of very little use historically.

Peace.

The bible is not history it is religious fable and of course we know a lot about the history of civilizations for the past 6000 years. That's how we know that the bible is not factual. I hope you are very young, my dear, otherwise there is no excuse for your ignorance. Go to your local library and actually check out a book on ancient history for starters.

*face-bludgeon* The stupid! IT BURNS!!

I have read many books about the ancient past, but I don't believe on what they say. I accept them with the objective evidence they have which the Bible doesn't. Not only that, but the Bible is biased and contains the supernatural.

The Bible helps some and history books and archeology helps some. The miracles of the O.T. are, I believe myth

We have evidence of what life was like back then. Our museums contain artifacts and relics from those times. We have been able to translate their writings. We can "read" the bones we have dug up. There is ample evidence of live and how people lived back in the ancient times.

The bible is a very bad source of information about the ancient world. It's been translated and edited so many times that any truth has been clouded over with layer upon layer of BS. And any document that asserts itself to be absolute truth with punishment for those who reject it, is by defintion a bad source of information.