I caught a large chunk of a show on the History Channel yesterday. They were reviewing the battles fought by the Children of Isreal during the conquest. They'd mapped out the battlefields and had computer-generated graphics to display how they think the battles were conducted.

Time after time Joshua, Gideon, and others employed superb tactics and overcame their enemies. The narrators took potshots at the Bible, making unsubstantiated claims throughout the show which dispute the accuracy of our record. For example they claimed that one battle against Canaanites was actually fought against Philistines. My point is that they are indeed hostile witnesses.

But my main point is that the testimony of these hostile witnesses is contrary to another set of hostile witnesses: the ones who claim these books were written by priests in the later times of the captivity. Such priests would surely be hard-pressed to gain familiarity with the terrain. They'd likewise be unlikely to devise sound (let alone superior) military strategy and tactics for any fiction they might attempt to create.

But if the history we have is not fiction written at a later time, what kind of basis can there be for claiming the Hebrews thought they were fighting Canaanites when they were really fighting Philistines? The scoffers just can't keep their stories straight.

They have some good shows, the history channel... but most of their stuff about christianity is very slanted toward mysticism and the occult from the ones I've seen.

But you know, a good amount of bias against christianity isn't really all that far off base if you consider the torture and bloodshed that went on in europe for a good thousand years, more, when the catholic church was in charge, and even for some time after since that type of rule had been established for so long. And even though what they practiced wasn't christianity by a far stretch perhaps by your or my standards, and obviously it wasn't considered christianity by the thousands upon thousands of christian 'heretics' who tried to leave that church or refused to convert and were burnt at the stake or killed in the public square, they called it christianity and they used the name of Jesus and they carried their bibles, and it wasn't all that long ago really... and in the minds of many people still, that is christianity and it really doesn't line up with what the bible teaches, and so, people scoff. Albeit, the scoffers may be as ignorant as the catholic inquisitors about christianity, but thinking in general simply has not come around to truth and probably never will as far as our culture is concerned because there's too much gore and bloodshed and powerlust in the way to ever permit it.

I think, truthfully, that ignorance was pounded into our culture for so very long, it'll be a very long time before it loses it's grasp. unless a miracle happens to change the human heart.