The book of Job in the Bible is one that has resonated with people for thousands of years. It confronts one of the enduring questions that continues to plague mankind: Why do the righteous suffer?
Elihu contradicts Job and his friends (Job 32). Wood engraving, published in 1886.
But how should we view this book? Is it a philosophical/theological treatise? Is it one man’s struggle in written form to come to grips with the question? Is it the work of many people over a period of centuries? Or is it the story and experience of a real human being struggling first-hand with major catastrophes in his own life?
The account of Joseph of Arimathea is very familiar. It is often read in churches at Easter time. It records how Joseph requested the body of Jesus from Pilate and buried him in a tomb at a known location. However, on the following Sunday, the body was gone, many were claiming to have witnessed appearances of the risen Jesus; and Jesus’ opponents could not produce the corpse. Thus the historicity of the burial in Joseph’s tomb is paramount to the central truth claim of Christianity.
The entombment of Christ by Caravaggio 1603-1604
However, Joseph is only mentioned during one cameo appearance and is not mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament, the location of Arimathea is not absolutely certain, and there are no references to this town in contemporary non-Christian sources. Thus, the brevity of the evidence has prompted some to challenge whether the event occurred at all. After all, isn’t absence of evidence the evidence for absence? So, is Joseph of Arimathea historical?
There are records in each of the four gospels that have some common material but are viewed from different perspectives. From these we can judge whether they are based on factual eye-witness testimony.
Kevin Rogers is the director of Reasonable Faith Adelaide. He is also a researcher, research supervisor and lecturer at the University of South Australia.
In the very dark days of World War 1, Britain made agreements with both the Arabs and the Jews regarding the land, then known as Palestine, to seek short term assistance to win “The Great War”. As an inevitable consequence, both Arabs and Jews believed they had received a promise that they would possess that land, but the contradictory promises resulted in growing anger and conflict between Arabs and Jews in that land. By 1947 Britain, so weary after World War 2, had had enough of this conflict and, on 29th November 1947, the United Nations agreed to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. The conflict has been going on ever since.
The story of Jonah is one of the better known tales in the Bible. The concept of a man being swallowed by a whale certainly piques the imagination, though there is more to it than that, but what are we to make of it?
Was it intended to be read as history, a fable, or something else? What was its purpose intended to be? And if it was supposed to be read as history, how much of it can we believe? How much of this story is actually historically plausible?
While Christianity is growing in non-Western countries, regular church attendance in Western countries has experienced steady decline over the last 100 years. Not only this, but Western social values have diverged from traditional Christian positions and Christianity is often scorned and ridiculed. Many are so prejudiced that they assume that Christianity is not worth considering. Any caring Christian should be concerned. What are the causes of this? Is it inevitable or what can we do about it?
The format of this meeting is slightly different. We have 2 speakers who provide complementary perspectives.
Dr Gordon Stanger
Gordon obtained his geology degree in University College London, and a PhD on ‘The Hydrology of the Oman Mountains. Since then he has worked for the Institute of Hydrology (UK), Flinders Uni (8 years), as a ‘Chief Technical Advisor’ (for the United Nations Development Program in Yemen), a stint as a visiting Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (Taiwan), and as a water resources and/or climate-change consultant in about 30 other countries.
Dr Kevin Rogers
Kevin Rogers is the director of Reasonable Faith Adelaide. He is also a researcher, lecturer and research supervisor at the University of South Australia.
Gordon and Kevin’s combined presentation is available on YouTube.
Various forms of human slavery have been practiced for thousands of years and professing Christians have practiced it as well. We know that devout Christian politician William Wilberforce led the British campaign to prohibit the export of slaves from Africa, so where did he find his mandate to take this stand – was it the Bible?
From ‘Gone with the wind’
Both the Old Testament (Jewish scriptures) and the New Testament (Christian scriptures) seem to accept slavery as part of the social order to provide labor for manual tasks. Is the Biblical perspective morally defensible?
Are Allah and the Christian God the same? That is a rather interesting question. Opinions are split and there are good arguments for both options.
Obviously Christianity and Islam are different, but they both claim that there is one God and only one God. So is this “one God” they each claim to worship someone totally different in each case? Or, if there IS only one, is it simply a matter of different perspectives, different interpretations, or different views of this one God?
We all know about the 10 plagues of Egypt, which are often the traditional perspective from our days at ‘Sunday School’. However, modern branches of science (especially hydrology, geology, Egyptology, and biology) put the Plagues of Egypt into a different perspective. There were certainly miracles, but the nature of these miracles may not be quite what you thought.
Theologically, the main theme was bringing God’s chosen people out of bondage and into freedom, with all the New Testament symbolism that this entails. In particular, the Passover has obvious parallels with salvation and the Church’s communion rites, but there is more to it than that. The ten plagues of Egypt were a slap in the face to Egypt’s pantheon of false Gods, and proclaim a strong Biblical theme of true versus false religion.
Gordon is a geologist, hydrologist, water resources specialist, and a climate-change impact analyst. He is semi-retired and is a keen advocate of ‘sensible Christianity’.
Form Criticism is a branch of Biblical Criticism that was highly influential within mainly liberal theological colleges from the early to late 1900s. The primary assumption of Form Criticism, as applied to the gospels, is that stories about the events and sayings of Jesus were passed on through many stages of oral re-telling and were progressively modified to suit the needs of the church at that time. The gospels that we now have are captured snapshots of the evolving oral tradition and thus have limited historical value.
This belies the claims of the gospel authors themselves and the testimony of the early church fathers. Are the gospels the result of an unreliable chain of oral tradition, or are they based on eye-witness accounts?
Kevin Rogers is the director of Reasonable Faith Adelaide and is a member of Ingle Farm Baptist Church. He is also a PhD student, research fellow and lecturer at the University of South Australia.
Some have cast doubt about many of the large numbers in the OT, as being absurd. In particular, use of the Hebrew word “aleph” as being translated 1000. E.g. ‘600 of aleph’ (600,000) as the number of Israelites of fighting age, implying that the total number of Israelites including old men, women and children, must have been about 2.5 to 3.0 million. This number is inconsistent with other passages of the Bible, which describe Israel as a ‘tiny nation’. There is a strong case that aleph = 1000 is a mis-translation, based upon internal (Biblical) and external (archaeological and scientific) arguments. This would bring many aspects of the Torah and Kings / Chronicles narratives into line with rationality, and hence believability.
Gordon obtained his geology degree in University College London, and a PhD on ‘The Hydrology of the Oman Mountains. Since then he has worked for the Institute of Hydrology (UK), Flinders Uni (8 years), as a ‘Chief Technical Advisor’ (for the United Nations Development Program in Yemen), a stint as a visiting Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (Taiwan), and as a water resources and/or climate-change consultant in about 30 other countries.
Dr Gordon Stanger
He has worked for AusAID (as was), World Bank, Asia Development Bank, and a large swag of development agencies, large and small. He has contributed to numerous books and international symposia, and am the author of ‘Dictionary of Hydrology and Water Resources’. He is currently working on his farewell opus; a trilogy called ‘sensible Christianity’. Most recently he became the project leader for ‘Climate-Driven Migration’ for an NGO called SafeGround (one time co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize).
