Hello @barncat.First of all, thank you for taking the time to comment and may I offer my apologies for not replying earlier.
To answer the points you made.
“Everything you posted is a lie. For example, the gospels are historical documents.”
Well, no and no.
You point to the beginning of Luke as evidence that the author of Luke is writing history. This is very problematic. Unlike other historians of his age, the author of Luke does not discuss his methods or name any sources. Neither does the author cite his credentials or even his name. It is also well attested that the Gospel of Luke is heavily plagiarised from Mark and probably Matthew; two sources full of fictions and that in no way claim to be historical (for more on how Luke lifted from others.
(see my post:- Luke).
There is another way that Luke 1:3 could be interpreted. The New International Version has translated ά νωθεν as “from the beginning” when the literal meaning is actually “from above”. This would tie in nicely if, like Paul, Luke’s author is receiving knowledge of Jesus from his ‘direct channel to the divine’.
(see my post on Paul).
Luke – as are the other gospels – is simply awful as a historical source.
As to your using archaeology as proof. While it is certainly true that the Bible uses real places and names actual persons in its stories you cannot say that archaeology has proved the scriptures. It is like saying that a Spiderman comic depicts a real character just because the setting of New York actually exists. It is a fact that the sources you state have in many incidences been totally discredited. Archaeology since the 1970’s and especially work done in the 1990’s, has totally overturned most of the earlier 20th-century view that archaeology had confirmed Bible events. Recent archaeology has rendered almost all works before 1970 obsolete.
As an example of the bias used by many biblical archaeologists in the past, the following has been taken from The Archaeology of Nazareth: A History of Pious Fraud? By René Salm / SBL: November 17, 2012.
In 1930 six oil lamps were discovered in a Nazareth tomb, lamps which have been used in the scholarly literature as proof of a village in Hellenistic times (as early as the third century BCE). In fact, all six lamps date from the Middle Roman to the Late Roman periods, in some cases long after the time of Christ. ……… The error, in other words, amounts to about 500 years in the case of some of these lamps. Nor can all these oil lamps be lumped together into the same category—an elementary error that no archaeologist would conscientiously make. Nor does any one of these lamps date as far back as Hellenistic times. Nevertheless, this complex of errors has allowed the word “Hellenistic” to be falsely used in connection with Nazareth evidence for many decades. My book shows that this gross misdating is neither unique nor unusual in the Nazareth literature.
Rene Salm also has this to say about one of the principal archaeologists of Nazareth, Father Bellarmino Bagatti.
(Bagatti) is also hardly beyond suspicion. In his 325 page book, Excavations in Nazareth, Bagatti repeatedly asserts the all important presence of Hellenistic evidence at Nazareth. When I carefully examined his tome I discovered that his alleged Hellenistic evidence boils down to no more than a single shard. That’s right—a single shard. If this were not surprising enough, I then discovered that the shard in question is in fact the nozzle of a Roman oil lamp, as verified through studies by Nurit Feig and others (MoN 111-19). In other words, Bagatti’s claim of Hellenistic evidence at Nazareth is totally fraudulent.
Much has changed in the world of so-called ‘Biblical’ archaeology in recent times. The article you link to is very much an apologetic's one.
Thank you for engaging with me in a discussion. You are the only Christian who seems prepared to defend their faith.