Evidences of History

Since I am in a quandary of what to do with my next installment on the Pagosa Springs vacation in 2009, I’ve decided to write of something that came to mind the other day. If I can do this right, perhaps I can create some parallels that may benefit someone.

History has a way of being an account of some fable or perceived event that goes for a long time as an unproven occurrence. That is, until someone comes upon something in the way of evidence to prove the accounts of history. After all, mankind seems to have always wanted to “record” events that they had witnessed.

We can go “way back” and find petroglyphs in both this country and Europe as well. So, we know that some early, early “ancestor” wanted to show on the wall of his cave that he had a hand. Or perhaps, he drew the story of a successful hunt. While some scholars somewhere had the belief that such a group or tribe existed, it isn’t until they find the “writing on the wall” to prove their theories.

People might want to question the existence of a civilization in South and Central America, but the discover of the Mayan and Inca temples and other structures leads to actual evidence that those peoples existed and even that they seemed to thrive pretty well. At least up to a point, and then they disappeared in a mysterious way.

We have long heard the stories of the Anasazi peoples, first as stories told by the earlier tribes speaking of “those that came before,” and then as actual writings. Many times, the actual writings come about because someone discovered a monumental find such as cliff dwellings.

So, not only have we heard the stories of the peoples themselves, we also hear (or read) of the stories of the discoveries of evidence of their existence in the form of their “home structures” and their clay pots and other tools. Even as a child, I used to find arrowheads in the Panhandle of Oklahoma, proving beyond a doubt that Indians once roamed that area in spite of the lack of readily available water.

Following the work of Charles Darwin with his book “The Origin of the Species,” he had been in conversation with or wrote to other individuals, some of whom wrote of Darwin’s statements. In those writings, Darwin himself professed that if evidence could be found that the basic structure of life turned out to be more complex than he envisioned or that no fossil evidence could be found of “transitional creatures,” then his theory could be proclaimed as false.

So far, both of those suppositions have come about. There is evidence found with electron microscopes that the human cell is very complex and is in fact a small manufacturing plant. In addition, no fossil remains of transitional creatures have been found.

Darwin’s early statements were that they had not had enough time since the professing of his theory to find those remains. Now, there has been more than 150 years that have gone by, but no archeologist has ever discovered the necessary evidence. At one time, some folks proclaimed that “The Piltdown Man” was that evidence, but it was later proven that “he” was a hoax.

By contrast, in spite of those that profess that God does not exist and that the story of Jesus Christ is just part of a “good book,” evidences are found by archeologists to give some confirmation to the stories. It does take a discerning individual to ferret out the stories of those evidences.

Use your internet search engines and look for “archeological evidence of the Bible” and you will get numerous internet sources to check out. Rather than try to point out specific websites, I’ll let you readers look and decide for yourselves as to what seems to be evidence. Obviously, those professing belief will be those that are Christian, and those professing disbelief will be non-believers.

The majority of what I have found is that those professing that the Bible is accurate seem to have better arguments for their faith in the evidence than those that argue against it. They tend to find corroborating evidence for their arguments with the writings of early historians.

Those arguing against it seem to be of a notion of trying to prove a negative by simply saying the evidence doesn’t exist. Yet, they cannot produce anything, other than professing doubt, that the Bible is wrong.

So, since we as modern mankind have not seen any Mayas, Inca, and Anasazi peoples, we have to accept that they did exist because of the archeological discoveries that proved the early stories of their existence. Likewise, we should carefully examine the archeological evidences of the “stories” of the Bible to ascertain whether God and his Son, Jesus Christ even existed.

I think that anyone doing a careful enough study will find more evidence of truth in the Bible than will find evidence against it. As for me, I’ve been a believer since a very young child because I was raised in a Christian family. As an adult, I’ve always tended to question things related to faith and Biblical writings.

My early beliefs were, and still are, that for the best information, I would need a Bible that was as close of a translation of the original languages as I could find. Originally, I always thought that the King James Version was that Bible version because it was translated much closer in time to the actual biblical events.

Since then, I’ve learned that the New International Version also incorporates the writings found on the Dead Sea Scrolls. One of our church elders told me that the best version for the closest to “word for word” was the American Standard Version of 1901

I looked high and low for a copy and found that only one publisher still publishes the 1901 ASV, and that publisher is Star Bible. However, one can find the 1901 American Standard Version at Bible Gateway.com and in an Android phone app called MySword.

If you would like to read more about why I prefer the American Standard Version, then you can check out my early post at the following link. Down towards the bottom of that posting, you can find more evidences of why I firmly believe that the ASV is closest to word-for-word.

http://ignoringthebarkingdogs.blogspot.com/2011/01/religious-beliefs.html

Now, after all that is said, I am hopeful that I can look at my next vacation topic which was a hike along the Piedra River, and end my quandary. I just have to figure out which of 271 photos I want to show in that posting. The daunting task will stay with me throughout the rest of the vacation posts because I took more than 3200 photos in that two week period.

Pray for me, please.   I need all the help I can get with the posts yet to come, including one day at Mesa Verde and one day on the Durango/Silverton Railroad.

Now, for your enjoyment, a picture of irony.  Check out the sign.