Bible Skeptics and God Haters

"Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do." -1st Timothy 1:4
By Rick Dack | A.D. Communications
www.defendingthebible.com

"The Bible is a Fairy Tale"

Bill Maher, host of Politically Incorrect on ABC. August 22, 2001.
 

"The people who wrote the Bible...it was not meant to be history, it was not meant to be literal."

Bill Maher, host of Politically Incorrect on ABC. - CRI: 1-28-2002
 

"The Biblical tradition is a composite of..."legends that still may be regarded as containing moral truths but until now they must be regarded as uncertain historical provenance."

William Dever, University of Arizona, frequent Bible Archaeology Review magazine contributor (Digging for Answers).
 

Rabbi Sherwin Wine, founder of Humanistic Judaism, said that the Exodus was...

 "Created by priests in Jerusalem"

who used...

"A series of old legends and distorted memories which had no relationship to history."
 

Old Testament scholars N.P. Lemche and G.W. Ahlstrom said that the Exodus was...

 "Fiction"

 and that the author was...

"Concerned with mythology rather than with reporting historical facts."
 

CNN's power mogul, Ted Turner, in the early 1990's was such a critic of the Bible that at the 1990 Humanist Awards Association Turner called the Bible...

 "weird"

because it recounted a man who suffered and died on the cross so that our sins may be washed away and that he was proud of the fact that the more he "lost" his faith, the better he felt (Reel - Real). Turner then said in the Washington Post that...

 "Christians were poor, uneducated and easy to command."
 

To many people it seems remarkable that David and Solomon still remain unknown outside the Old Testament or literary sources derived directly from it. No extra-Biblical inscription, either from Palestine or from a neighboring country, has yet been found to contain a reference to them."

Kathleen Kenyon, former Jericho and Jerusalem Excavator (Price 1997, 162)
 

"Similarly, the David of the Bible, David the King, is not a historical figure."

Neils Peter Lemche (Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1997, 40)
 

"…of exuberant imagination."

J.A. Montgomery, in The International Critical Commentary, labeled the passages 1 Kings 6:20-22, 30 and 2 Chronicles 3:4-7 as products of myth concerning the inside of Solomon's Temple as being pure gold. (Bible and Spade, Autumn 1994, 97).
 

"Tom, I don't care in the least whether Solomon ever existed. I'm probably more of a disbeliever than you. I don't really care about the traditions. I don't believe any of the myths."

William Dever addressing Thomas Thompson. (Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1997, 33).
 

"I want to be sure you understand me about David and Solomon. For me, as an archaeologist, it's simple. I don't have to argue whether this Solomon existed. I do have to argue that somebody built these gates (at Gezer, Megiddo and Hazor) in a government that was highly centralized, and for me that means statehood. In other words its Solomon by another name. I don't care. I'm talking about centralization and the rise of the state. And I use the term Solomon as a kind of convenient short hand. And so therefore I would say a Solomon of sort existed but not necessarily the Solomon of fable."

William Dever, (Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1997, 40).
 

What is the Bible According to Hollywood?

The Bible According to Hollywood is a new addition to the ministry. In recent years, the respect for people of faith has turned from high opinion to disdain. A film on the life of Jesus in the 1950's carried some degree of acknowledged respect but today a new type of history is presented. These new historians (Hollywood and Documentary writers) have decided that only one view is the correct view (the liberal perspective) and the elimination of the conservative point of view is an absolute necessity.

Cable Stations such as A&E, The Learning Channel, The Discovery Channel, The National Geographic Channel and The History Channel have broadcast documentaries on the lives of not only Jesus but Job, Mary, David, Noah, Samson, Joseph and many others on a monthly basis. These documentaries typically interview academic liberals and rarely give the academic conservatives a voice. People such as David Vanderhooft, C. Lyon Batton, Alan Dundes, Paula Frederickson and the infamous John Dominic Crossan (Jesus Seminar) are the typical interviewees. Unfortunately, many viewers take their words as the viewpoint of all biblical scholars and that is tragic.

What the typical viewer does not know is that there are organizations such as NEAS (The Near East Archaeological Society), ABR (The Associates for Biblical Research) and IBA (The Institute for Biblical Archaeology) that are run by credentialed, conservative archaeologists but these organizations are rarely contacted by the press or producers of these programs.  Why is this the case?  The cable stations have an agenda and that is to discredit the Bibles historical reliability and present that belief unopposed.

We must expose these programs for what they are, a biased and one-sided scholarly interpretation of the Bible by those who hate God.


Television's Criticism and Mockery of the Bible

Celebrity opinion, religious bias, satirical abuse, and academic liberalism powered by the television networks has created an atmosphere of criticism and mockery of the Bible. This false information is pumped into homes via cable & satellite. Not once a year, not once a month, not once a week; but, EVERY DAY!

The conservative academic perspectives on issues related to the Bible’s historical and archaeological reliability are rarely heard on television > 85% (Liberal) to 15% (Conservative).  Cable and Network stations such as A&E, NBC, CBS, ABC, The Cartoon Network, FOX, The Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel and The History Channel have broadcast documentaries on the Bible.  The Bible is presented as either myth, an exaggerated/plagiarized text or it is mocked as comedy.

Below are the bizarre theories about Christmas and the Bible that congregants and students should be aware of.  Television over the holiday season is problematic.  Here are some examples of the beliefs pushed over the airwaves on cable documentaries about Jesus' birth.

These assertions that can be answered with scriptural and archaeological facts...

 

What Do Hollywood Academic Critics Believe about the Bible?