Your evidence, my friend, would be very persuasive in a court of law - until scholars representing other schools of thought were brought in and put on the witness stand and given their chance to interpret your evidence according to their own lights. Then the jury would be left with the task of forming an opinion based on their own lights.
Which means that all your evidence really serves to give credence to my main point, since that which you presented as fact is, actually, the opinion of scholars of a certain school of thought regarding your evidence. Other scholars will point out quite as demonstratively that it "should be obvious to anybody with any sense" (quoting Thomas Cahill here) that the Pentateuch is a compilation of numerous writings from numerous periods of time, organized for the best and most useful presentation.
If you deem it necessary to cast aspersions on the faith of the scholars of schools of thought other than that to which you adhere, I imagine they would take great umbrage and say as courteously as they know how that you speak out of a (sometimes called 'fundamentalist') triumphalism that they find ignores too much of the evidence; and then they would insist that their faith in Jesus is every bit as legitimate as yours, regardless of their opinions concerning the Scriptures.
So, in the end, we come back to the leap of faith that we all take. You must falsify all other options, not merely "prove beyond a reasonable doubt", because 'a reasonable doubt' in terms of faith is a highly subjective thing.
[ June 24, 2002: Message edited by: littlemanpoet ]
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