Just Whose Land is It Anyway?

The Nugget:

Deu 32:43  Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people: for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful unto his land, and to his people. (KJV)

Deu 32:43 Tell the heavens to celebrate and all gods to bow down to the LORD, because he will take revenge on those hateful enemies who killed his people. He will forgive the sins of Israel and purify their land. (CEV)

My Comment:

Another person posted a comment on the Facebook discussion thread that my immediately preceding post addresses. In actuality, I have usually spent more time reading the arguments against what I believe than I have spent reading the sources that support what I believe. I learned to do that when I participated in high school and college debate teams and tournaments. I also have the most recent modern scholarship about the Bible that is available in my over 12,000 volume Logos Bible software library. I have a print library about the Bible that is almost that large and there is not much overlap or duplication between my two libraries.

The Challenge:

Here is the comment:

Jerome Smith, If you have studied scripture for numerous years, you should well know that it is majorly anonymous and the tales in the OT are stories lifted from prior religious sources and set to a Jewish backdrop. This in order to lift an encumbered nation to the status of its surrounding enemies. If you do NOT know this, all of your study is “Bigly”…(Bigly is a Trump-ism…LOL) under researched. Any scholar not given over to Christian funded support of their research will gladly inform anyone that asks of this, or these fact(s). The bible cannot carry the day on issues concerning “land”, “who owns it”, “who it is deeded to”, “manifest destiny”, etc. It is NOT a legally binding will or document, and should not be treated as such. Thanks.

My Response:

I have studied these matters long enough to know better than to believe the falsehoods you suggest above. If what you say above represents what you believe about the Bible, then it is clear to me that you have been deriving your information from what I call “poisoned wells” of information.

Now many years ago I read a book by Irwin H. Linton titled A Lawyer Examines the Bible. I wish this book were still available. It is timeless in the sense that the evidence it marshals in support of the historicity and accuracy of the Bible is irrefutable.
 
Mr. Linton was a lawyer who presented and argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. In his book, he comments that in all his experience he had never met an unbeliever who rejected the claims of the Bible who had ever read so much as a single classical work of apologetics devoted to its scholarly defense.
 
An interesting point he made that I shall never forget is that an old argument if valid is not diminished in its conclusive force because of the passage of time.
 
His book draws upon the classic writers who defended the truth of the Bible. I have, over many years, collected many of these long out-of-print books, and have been reading them carefully.
 
More recently, with the advent of more modern technology, I have found that many of these books are now available for free download from Google Books, which sure is a handy way to access these resources.
 
Some resources Linton names which I have liked include:
(1) Evidences of Christianity by Charles P. McIlvaine
(2) Leslie’s Short and Easy Method with the Deists by Charles Leslie (includes a remarkable discussion of historicity)
(3) Horae Paulinae by William Paley (who presents an argument that has never been refuted)

This entry was posted in Apologetics--Christian, Bible Historicity and Validity, Politics and the Bible and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

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