Selecting quoting Grant to support a narrow concern only invites people to research his fuller views. Your ability to focus on the incredibly narrow doesn't distract from this fact. Grant refutes nearly everything else Nomad says, including the way he proposes to do history. If you're going to accept Grant as an authority on aspect A of ancient history, you can't turn around and say he's not an authority on aspect B of ancient history.

In short, it's not my problem if Nomad foolishly quotes someone who clearly thinks he's not following an accepted historical method, and who clearly thinks the success of Christianity has to do with the conversion of Constantine, and not anything that happened in the first century or the first 300 years (which is what Nomad has been arguing). What I've been saying all along is that Grant refutes Nomad's argument, not that Nomad quoted him inaccurately. (Please note: the title of the thread was "Grant doesn't support Nomad" not "Nomad misquotes Grant"). For all the accusations you make about me "misquoting" Nomad, it would be real nice if you'd accurately address the issues in mine, instead of going off in irrelevant tangents.


In short, quit wasting everyone's time. I'm looking at Nomad's argument (which I've shown Grant not to support) and you're quibbling about details.

As for the other matter, you provided the quote from Grant. Your inability to interpret it correctly is not my problem.
(But considering your inability to grasp what I'm saying, it is not surprising.)

Nor is it surprising that you haven't answered my two questions. Of course, you can't, which is why you have to make your ridiculous accusations.

Now, I've tried to do this in the past, but I'm just going to have to go cold turkey. I've got a Senior Project that's due and I don't have time to defend myself from Layman's insanity anymore. If someone else wishes to pick up where I left off, be my guest. I'm simply going to have to stop coming here until my other responsibilities are concluded.

I accept Grant as an informed historian who is not as informed as those scholars who focus on New Testament studies. And do you have any idea how to do research? Did you tell your students that if they quoted from a source they had to agree with EVERYTHING the source said? That is just absurd. I accept Grant as a historian. I accept some of his conclusions and reject some of his conclusions.

You certainly went beyond just saying Grant supports your position more than Nomad's. You accused him of lying about what Grant said. You now realize you can't demonstrate that but refuse to retract your accusation that Nomad was lying. That is my concern. Grant is one of dozens of historians I've read regarding New Testament history. Many others have more radically questioned the historical Jesus than Grant has. My concern is not with Grant, but with your unsupported and demonstratably false representations that Nomad was lying.

You've attacked Nomad's character. I not consider rebutting this baseless and demonstratably false accusation to be a waste of time. But you can put it to bed and stop wasting everyone's time by just retracting it.

Weren't you the one claiming Nomad had no honor? Is it honorable to level an accusation, refuse to respond to a post clearly showing it to be wrong, and leave without defending the accusation?

So you will let the unsupported and demonstratably false accusation of lying linger?

[This message has been edited by Layman (edited April 16, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Layman (edited April 16, 2001).]

One point I need to clarify, that in my frustration I forgot about. Nomad said that Grant claimed that the formation of Christianity "in the first or second generations" is unprecedented. I've read through Grant's books on Ancient History and on Jesus. No where in those books was any such claim made. Perhaps it was made somewhere else, but neither Layman or Nomad has deigned to show us where. The argument he made in Ancient Historians strongly implies the opposite.

My point stands.

Your point has changed. Previous point upon which you based the lying accusation:

Dennis:

But again, I reiterate. I don't think this makes you a liar. It means that in the context of a heated discussion board you made a mistake and mischaracterized someone else's opinion. What is getting annoying is that you, so far at least, are unwilling to admit that your story is changing.

[This message has been edited by Layman (edited April 16, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Layman (edited April 16, 2001).]

While multiple attestation is the ideal in the study of ancient history, very often it is simply not possible. If we were to rely excessively upon this criteria, then much of what we take to be known about history would be worthless. For example, Homer is the only ancient to write about the Trojan War. We cannot compare his claims against those of other ancient historians because what we have from them was based on what Homer told us in the first place.

Quite simply, we get to use the criteria of multiple attestation in NT Biblical studies BECAUSE we have so much written material available to us from the authors of the NT Canons. With other works, like Homer, Josephus, Tacitus and the like, we are often compelled to rely on their testimony alone.

Here are we talking about ancient or modern events? Tacitus, for example is the one to tell us about Vespasian healing a blind man and a cripple. I do not believe Josephus or any other contemporary historian recorded this event, yet it is accepted that the men were probably healed (although we don't really know how sick they were, or how dramatic the actually healing was that took place).

Other miraculous claims are generally rejected because they are recorded so long after the fact that they are considered complete historical legend making (i.e. anything attributed to Alexander the Great is rejected because we have nothing written about him until 400 years after his death).

Hmm... still obsessing about me eh? Perhaps you should relax a bit.

On the other hand, you are correct Dennis. I do not think any miraculous event can be established as being historically certain, although many non-miraculous or extraordinary events can be treated as near certain based on the available evidence.

Agreed. And many of the claims in the Bible are equally as ordinary. I hope you are not going to question them just because we find them in the Bible. That would be very prejudicial of you don't you think?

Nomad

To both turtonm and layman,

I just wanted to say that my comments on this thread were out of line.

I humbly submit my apologies.

Apology accepted. Sorry to have needlessly provoked.

actually, I respect him for trying, for carrying the banner of the REs when no one else would. I respect McDowell for the same reason, but his true place is counciling teens to wait until they get married, not really in Biblical Scholarship.

Craig is not a Bible scholar by trade so one can expect him not to be that deeply into the subject, for a layman out of his field he's ok. Not great, but ok.

He is,however, a highly qualified philosopher. yes, he actually does have a real Ph.D. In Philosophy and I think he's pretty good on the cosmological argument. That's his real forte. For my money Koons is better, but he's pretty good. So that crack about not going is deep must be qualified.

Meta =>I believe I said there was! But if you think that this means that Bible scholars just live in their own little world, your right. But if you think that means that their methods aren't valid, that's nusts. Because most of the textual critical methods employed by historians and lit crit people began with Bible scholars. As I said and people keep ignorning me; The term "multiple attestation" is properly used of manuscripts! It means we have x nubmer of Ms of some text, John let's say, from before a certain date. But the concept of attestation is used by all histoirans of course!

2. Is there any instance of it used outside of Biblical scholarship to confirm a miraculous event has occurred.


No of course not! What secular hisotiran would try to prove the existence of miracles? Why would that ever come up?


Meta =>Acutally I didn't say that of it merely being a fact, I said it of the statement that it is "the most verified hisotircal event in history" or words to that effect.


Meta =>acutally I've never known Nomad to not do well in debate.

But Nero burning down Rome, however poorly attested, hardly constitutes a miraculous event.


Meta =>Hey why don't people listen to me when I wtire stuff? I have a Masters degree in Theology, I know a thing or two about it. You guys keep ignoring everything I say. First, it's not a question of proving miracles. No one can prove any historical event. We can't go back in time and see what happened so all history is probablity and conjecture. Miracles are even harder of course because people sometimes don't believe they can happen, so it's doublely hard because even if you have a source that say it lots of people wont believe it.

for that very reason the Resurrectoin argument cannot proceed along the lines of "is this an historical event?" It can't be "historical" because it's excluded from the nature of history by ideolgoical bias gained in the enlightenment when history first began to emerge as an acdemic subject. But clever thinkers have gotten around this. See the book by a major German liberal Theologian Jurgen Motlmann. it's called Theology of Hope. We change the rules on the nature of historical inqurry.

That is, we dont talk about proving the historical event, we talk about the "history making event." It's up to you to believe it or not but because the belief shaped history it is, not historical, but history making. that means we talk about the probability in such as a way as to show the validity for the basis of the facts that would allow for such an event. Than it's up to the reader to decide for himself/herself as to what is actually the case.

But none of that means that the basic historical facts around the belief don't warrent the belief.

Bede

It seems that basically what we have in Grant is an atheist historian who:

- grants Jesus existed;
- taught;
- was crucified under Pilate;
- whose tomb was empty;
- and whose disciples claimed was resurrected;
- whose post mortem success is remarkable.

All this without even using mutliple attestation! Quite frankly, I do not know what else a Christian could possibly ask for from an atheist. If Grant any further he'd cease to be an atheist at all.

But since we all accept Grant as an authority, even if we don't accept every word he says, can we at least put the stupid 'Jesus never existed' argument to bed now? And can we stop hearing that the empty tomb is obviously a myth when we have an esteemed atheist historian who accepts it was historical?

Thanks.

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason