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The Bible is only a book of faith.

Alvin J. Schmidt

To say that the Bible is only a book of faith categorizes every person in place in the biblical record as fictional.

There is ample archaeological evidence for things named in the Bible, including the City of Ur, the Hittites, the Pool of Bethesda, and many other sites and people.

Criticizing faith itself fails to account for the historical evidence on which Christian beliefs are based, particularly belief in the resurrection of Jesus.

This statement, the Bible is only a book of faith has become a cultural cliche in recent years.

When seized voiced in religious and non-religious media, an editorial in biblical archaeology review, July and August 2010, stated,

facts are facts and faith has no business dealing with the world of facts.

Similarly, an editorial in the economist, July 2, 2016 commented on the newly constructed Bible Museum in Washington, D.C., arguably even talking about the facts of the Bible is a statement of faith.

In short, both editorials say that the Bible is only a book of faith.

This indicates that biblical faith is not based on historically verifiable evidence and therefore is not factually true or correct.

Proponents of this statement argue, as did biblical criticism that began in the 1800s, that faith rather than facts prompted biblical writers to cite certain demographic, geographic and human biographic information.

These critics did not accept biblical information as historically authentic when it was not also found in extra-biblical publications.

Thus their argument, the Bible is only a book of faith has a long history, along with at least three significant flaws.

The first flaw. This flaw pertains to the statement's words only a book of faith. The word only makes the statement dogmatically absolute. It implies that all named cities and geographic sites in the Bible are merely items of faith rather than empirical locations.

This, of course, is nonsense. Countless modern tourists have visited places like Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River, all mentioned in the Bible.

Similarly, if the Bible is only a book of faith, then all named individuals such as Caesar Augustus, Herod the Great and the Apostle Paul are also just names of non-evidential faith rather than real persons.

The second flaw. This flaw ignores the role of archaeology in corroborating the existence of numerous demographic and geographic data cited in the Bible.

Critics once dismissed these as items of mere faith rather than accepting them as historical facts. Here are a few examples of how numerous archaeological discoveries have shown the Bible critics to be wrong.

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