The Absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence

s아래글은 "역사가 아닌 구약은 아무것도 증명하지 못한다" 라는 제목하의
모 기독 토론사이트 의 글에 대한 반론입니다.

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역사적 근거는 사실의 증명에 쐐기를 박는 역할을 합니다.
그러나 모든 사실에 역사적 근거가 100% 존재하는건 아닙니다.
한단계 더 나아가 우리는 100% 역사적 근거가 없더라도 간접적인 증거들를 통해 믿을수도 있읍니다.
제가 어릴적 개인적으로 목격한, 한 청년이 5명을 제압하는, 역사적(?) 사건은 신문이나 역사책에는 기록되지 않았지만 엄연한 사실이란는건 제가 누구보다도 더 잘 압니다. 또한 제말을 통해 그사건을 알게된 몆몆 친구들도 조금은 과장이 (예를 들면 주인공은 상처 하나 안나고 한방에들 5명을 다 눕혔다 등) 있을수도 있을것이라고 생각은 하겠지만 지금도 그 사건 자체는 의심치 않고 믿고 있읍니다. 그리고 그사건은 사실입니다.
님께서는 말씀하시기를 아담과 하와, 카인과 아벨, 노아와 그 세 아들, 아브라함과 이삭 야곱등 아브라함의 자식들, 롯, 여호수와, 모세, 사울, 다윗 솔로몬, 삼손, 이사야, 엘리야, 다니엘등등에 대한 역사적 근거가 단 한줄도 없다고 하셨는데 성경 이외의 일반 고문서에서 위에 열거한 인물에 대한 직접 간접 reference 는 꽤 있는 편입니다. (시간을 줄이기 위해 또 형식적인 cut/paste는 삼가기 위해 reference 링크들은 생략합니다)
한걸음 더 나아가 신약에서는 예수를 비롯하여 많은 저자들이 구약의 인물에 대한 직접적인 인용을 하고 있읍니다.
만일 예수를 포함한 이들이 구약의 거짓기록을 바탕으로 신약의 역사를 이어갔다면, 이처럼 허수아비 신앙이요 종교는 없을것이며 모래성 같은 결과가 나왔을법도 합니다.
우리가 모든 역사적 사건에 대한 명백한 증거와 사실적 근거를 요구하는것은 옳바른 자세이며 또한 지극히 당연한 태도 이겠지만 눈에보이는 (tangible) 증거가 없다고 하여 실제적 사실일수도 있는 사건들을 증거 불충분으로
부정적 결론 지을수 만도 없습니다.
우리가 잘 알고 믿고 존경하는 이순신장군도 그가 태어난것을 본 사람은 없으되 그 역사적 사실을 의심치 않음은
그에 대한 기록이 남아있기 때문인데, 그 기록한 저자들이 허구인물을 만들어내어 오늘날까지 우리들을 기만하고 있다고 공박하지 않음은 저자들및 기록에 대한 integrity 와 그 인물로부터 파국된 일련의 흔적들에 대한 beyond the reasonable doubt 에 입각한 신빙성 때문이 아니겠습니까.
고로 위에 열거한 인물들을 기록한 성경도 바로 이러한 standard 의 눈으로 보았을때 더 나으면 나았지 결코
열약한것은 아닙니다. 물론 이 모든것이 직접적으로 사실을 증명하는것은 아닙니다. 그러나 어느정도 지식수준을 가진 사람이라면 충분히 결론을 낼수 있는 정황입니다. 우리는 어디까지 직접적인 증거를 제시하여야만 이순신장군에 대한 기록을 1%의 의심도 없이 믿게 되는것입니까. 여기에, 성경은 당연히 영적인 요소도 있기에 개인적인 <믿음> 에 따라 결론이 쉽게 도달할수도 있는건 당연합니다. 제가 말씀 드리고자 하는것은 성경에 기록된 사실들을 볼때 지극히 closed 된 종교집단의 기록이라고만 보기 이전에 우리가 일반 역사책을 대할때의 기준과 같은 눈으로 판단해야 하는것이 합리적이요 객관적인 독자들의 태도라고 생각하는 것입니다. 허구를 사실로 기록했다면 아무리 고도의 치밀성을 가진 종교집단의 fraud 도 모든 사람의 진실의 눈을 속일수는 없는게 .. 역사에서 배우는 사실이 아닙니까.
고로 결론은 "역사가 아닌 구약은 아무것도 증명하지 못한다" 라는 말에 "역사의 정의 가 무엇인가" 라는 말로
여운을 남긴채 소견을 맺을까 합니다.

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence?
December 29, 2005

It appears that Steve sounds like one of card-carrying born-again/evangelical Christians in the US (40 percent in the Gallup Poll in 2001), who cut his teeth on evangelicalism at the mega-church.
The term “evangelicalism” originated in the Greek word evangelion, meaning “the good news” or more commonly “the “gospel”, and later Martin Luther during the Reformation adapted the term as his breakaway movement “evangelical church”.

A British historian, as we entered the 21st Century, described briefly the specific hallmarks of evangelical religion as follows: 1. Conversionism: the belief that lives need to be changed. 2. Activism: the expression of the gospel in effort. 3. Biblicism: a particular regard for the Bible. 4. Crucicentrism: a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
Steve here focused on the historical veracity of the Old Testament: Biblicism.

Steve argued in a nutshell that we should read the narratives of the Bible as comparable as if we read, understand, and validate the events of the secular history, even though the tangible evidence is hardly come by in the ancient history as if “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence;”

In short, Steve wants us to read the Bible in historical perspective…therefore, he advised us that all the narratives in the Bible were warranted to being occurred in the practical events in human world history…that is, Creation legend, Jesus walking on water, virgin birth, et al occurred historically in the ancient Palestine as if George W Bush today lied to lead Americans to the Iraq War in 2004.
I wonder loud how Steve reconciles with all the horrible stories in the OT of debauchery, massacre, rape, infanticide, incest, and violence sanctioned by Yahweh, the father of Jesus?

Did it occur really and was it accepted by God?

To prove his argument, he raised two episodes: first, he talks about his personal experience that most of people hardly believe about the scuffle, in which he witnessed a superman reducing five men to pulp without any scratch to him…To Steve, the scuffle occurred with 100 % accuracy even it did not enter the historical record.

Secondly, he brought out the saga of Admiral Lee Soon Shin, a legendary hero during the “Im-Jin-Wae-Ran”, whose identity was recorded in the historical book…To Steve and most of Koreans, it is the historical fact “beyond the reasonable doubt’ that Admiral Lee existed and fought against Japanese invading forces.

In the first case of his personal experience, I agree with him that the scuffle really occurred in front of him, but when I talk about the scuffle to Mr. A, the scuffle becomes a hearsay…and it all becomes the hearsay when A talks to B, B to C, or C to D.
In other words, Steve can live in his personified world of events without any prejudice, but he cannot argue that others should live by the same world of his stories, whether it is spiritual or historical because the story is only true to him but others.

Again, the Admiral Lee’s story is surely authentic for Koreans, but there were allegations by the scholars that he exists only in the Korean folklore because there was not an iota of historical residues of his famous and erstwhile turtle ship.
In other words, for Steve and most of Koreans, Admiral Lee existed in history “beyond the reasonable doubt”, but for others who doubt the authenticity of the turtle ship, could also raise the issues of historical authenticities about Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Iusa (Jesus), Musa (Moses), Saul, David, Samson, Isaiah, Elijah, Daniel, et al.

In order to counter his argument, we should look at the question of how the Bible came into being…specifically in the historical perspective as our Steve wishes.

The word “bible” is from the Greek word biblia, the plural of biblion, “a little book”, and it is an anthology that was canonized over several centuries by the institutional church and state after a collection of disparate manuscripts was composed, edited, copied and translated by multiple human hands.
In other words, the narratives of the Bible are NOT a record of the human history or the news stories that we read in our history class at school or hear in radio or TV at the dinnertime every evening.

In addition, we should not forget to understand that the Bible was written solely for the audience in the early centuries who thought the earth is flat and you fly into heaven when you die, and the KJV, one of the Bibles (there are many Bibles unbeknownst to most Christians) was translated, compiled, and redacted for the society where people believed that a unicorn, one-eyed and horned horse, really exists.
Obviously, we, the 21st Century people, were not the “target audience”, when the ancient authors introduced their knowledge into the narratives of miracles, myths, and other phenomena in their social, cultural, and political ambiences specifically.

Most importantly, the Bible was canonized by the bishops, archbishops, and Roman Emperor, who decided which book is palatable or heretical ideas to them; in this canonization process, many books were discarded, destroyed or burned to ashes
Again, the narratives of the Bible were arbitrarily selected according to the pleasures and whims of bishops and Emperor, and others like the Gospel of Thomas or Q were ordered to be destroyed by the church.

Since Thomas’s Gospel ignores the virgin birth, miracles, or the Trinity, it became a non-entity in the collection of the Bible.
Thomas’ was not palatable to the institutional church because its narratives butt head with John’s Gospel (incidentally, John’s was least historical among the canonized Gospels)…in John’s, Jesus is a divine savior who could forgive sins and promise the eternal life, while Thomas’ Jesus is a wandering mystic who was harsh on the rich and called for voluntary poverty.
In other words, John’s was more attractive to the society of early Christians than Thomas’s, so that the church and state selected John’s Gospel and destroyed the Thomas’s.
And we, 21st Century men, were forced to accept and blindly follow the ideas of early Christian bishops and emperor as the words of God and the wisdom of daily life.

Probably now, we, “ the Joe Blows who have an average level of knowledge” as our Steve indicated, may be able to come to the conclusion how we read the narratives of the Bible: should we read it literally and historically as a record of history or metaphorically and allegorically as a collection of the ancient episodes.
Centuries of blissful ignorance about the Bible went by due to our pastors, priests, and bishops who “cherry-pick” the narratives of the Bible and hide the absurdity from their pews of multiple errors, contradiction, debaucheries, massacres, and violence in it.

I think the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith are two separate things…you can have the latter, mystic Christ, without the former, the earthly Jesus, likewise as millions of people become Christian when they were baptized being held helplessly in their parent’s arms or brainwashed and implanted in a sea of academic, social, cultural and political ambience that sanctions and promotes both the history and the faith of Jesus Christ are one and same.

Doubt is a great weapon for the emphatic seeker of truth.
You don’t have to toe the line with the traditional, popular, orthodox, and official version of the truth all the time, since there is no absolute truth in human society where truth evolves according to the wavelength of human knowledge.
Carl Sagan, the late physicist said: if the ascension of Jesus Christ to Heaven is real, he must still be traveling in the millions of light-years in the space.
You can be either a doubter, living a life as an incessant truth-seeker who unlearns the conventional wisdom or a ditto head institutional Christian who lives, eats, procreates, prays, wishes, and the next day you are gone and never seen again.
Be alert!

P.S. (In John’s Gospel, “Doubting” Thomas doubted Jesus’ resurrection until he saw the scar on Jesus’ hands, and Thomas claims to be Jesus’ twin as Thomas is Aramaic word for twin. It is a question that this Thomas is the same Judas Thomas, whom Mark and Matthew mention as the brother of Jesus or the author of the Gospel of Thomas.)