OSH;1437456 wrote:The problem with a lot of people who don't want to believe the Bible -- it was written for historical purposes too. Why shouldn't it be used for historical facts? If it is an accurate historical book, then quoting the Bible can be true.
Not even mentioning the theology behind it, just the historical perspective.
I agree with that aspect of things -- it's just a matter of divorcing the "god has his finger on EVERYTHING" parts of the Old Testament where entire books basically were saying that "when kings came along that worshipped our god, everything was great; when kings got into the idol-worship, it all went to shit"; where you could, at best, say it's history modified by personal bias.
Back in college, I took an early christianity history course where one of the books we used was by a Roman christian of the early christianity time period. It was a history book (much like the bible is at points), but was extremely biased due to the beliefs of the writer. He loved certain Roman emperors who are generally classified as weak and pitiful because they were open to the new religion and didn't persecute them. Meanwhile, ones who are generally considered the strongest and greatest in the empire's history were completely vilified for the simple reason that they loved the old gods and wanted to cull the belief in a new one.
Of course, you could say similar things about any history book -- that they're written with a particular agenda in mind and have an inherent bias. In the case of history books with a religious theme, that bias is towards illustrating how the god of choice has a hand in everything and its side is the side of good. Which leads to the challenge of determining what is accurate history and what is "take with a grain (or shaker) of salt" history.