The minimalist position is one of the most popular among atheists and agnostics because in many ways it undermines the validity of the biblical text. Despite our best efforts there is not a lot of corroborating evidence with the text’s historicity. An exiled people cannot take everything for their journey which takes them the 400 miles to Babylon so they most certainly took the texts that mattered most to them. They probably left behind objective histories because the scrolls that would later become the Old Testament already contained the stories. Furthermore they understood that history for the masses is best kept in stories, legends, and narrative than in objective facts which bore most people. The predisposition of denying anything without scientific evidence is alluring for those who put their faith in man, but science is not the only norm for truth. Not only does the biblical text tell us the beliefs of the Israelites, but it also tells us their stories of their origins. Operating with the starting position that the biblical text is pure myth does not take into account the consequences of that position. By presuming our ancestors are ignorant of reason we fail to realize the persistence of the faith of both the Jews and Christians threw centuries of fierce challenge must give validity to its possibility. Once denial of historical documents begins it carries forward with a denial of everything.
