I see your point but .......
The bible is different then any other book, story, or oral tradition in that it was inspired of God. I beleive that God has the power to keep the stories intact and factual. The dead sea scrolls attest to the accuracy of current translations of the books of Isaiah and Ezekiel. If those books were not changed by human intervention over the 2,500 plus years since they were written what makes us think that any other book of the bible was changed.
I don't know of any bible character who has been proven to exist in any other time period other than that given in the bible account. I will grant that there are characters or events that can not be proven by current archeological knowledge but that does not mean they did not exist.
Case in point, Daniel wrote that Belshazzar, a "son" of Nebuchadnezzar, was ruling as king in Babylon when the city was overthrown. Critics long asailed this point for Belshazzar's name was nowhere to be found outside the bible. Instead, ancient historians identified Nabonidous, a successor to Nebuchadnezzar, as the last of the Babylonian kings. Thus, in 1850, Ferdinand Hitzig said that Belshazzar was obviously a figment of the writer's imagination. This opinion strikes me as being rash, after all, would the absence of any mention of this king really PROVE that he never existed? At any rate, in 1854 some small cylinders were unearthed in the ruins of the ancient babylonian city of Ur in what is now southern Iraq. These cuneiform documents from King Nabonidous included a prayer for "Bel-sar-ussur, my eldest son". Even the critics had to agree: This was the Belshazzar of the book of Daniel.
As far as loosing the correct pronunciation of the name of God - it is a result of an ancient jewish tradition that forbade using the name for fear it would be used in vain (and anger God). The ancient hebrews do not include vowels in their writing thus we don't no if it is Jehovah, Yahweh or something else. I choose to pronounce it Jehovah for that is the most common and recognized by more people than Yahweh. The jews knew how to pronounce God's name but chose not to because of this ancient tradition, one that is unscriptural I might add. |
