ercatli

G'day again. Before I have a go at answering your questions, I would like to ask you one. The OP in this thread invited people to tell me why they thought I was in error. So far few have done that in any clear way - most, like you, have asked me questions and then criticised my responses. So, what evidence do you have for what you have said on this matter?

I think you have asked two separate questions - (1) What is the scholarly consensus and how do we know it? and (2) Why do they come to this view?

Re (1): I have read many books and online articles, including ones which set out either (i) what they regard as matters on which there is consensus and/or (ii) who they regard as the leaders in the field. I have also noted who is quoted most in books & articles I read, and I have asked several historians of different persuasions who they regard as the leaders in the field. Since peer review is a major part of any academic endeavour, this seems like a useful process. A summary of my conclusions is here.

There are two relevant outcomes of this:

(a) I have assessed the following to be the most respected by their peers: Crossan, Borg, Sanders, Meier & Wright, followed by Charlesworth, Vermes, Fredriksen, Evans, Dunn, Ehrman & Stanton. Among classical historians, the three I have found most quoted are Grant, Fox and Sherwin-White. I have read books by those shown in bold, and have read articles or online material by the rest. There may be some I have inadvertently omitted here, and there are undoubtedly others who I have not paid attention to (I only have access to a public library, I only buy a few books of my own and I don't read German), but that is an honest attempt to guide my reading and my conclusions.

(b) The conclusions I quote as consensus are taken from this reading, and most on the above list would agree - obviously Ehrman would not, and Crossan would be marginal, but I think the rest generally (as much as I have read enough to say). But more importantly, I have their own statements, of their conclusions, or those of the consensus. Here are a few examples:

• MA Powell in his book "The Jesus Debate" summarises the views of Wright and Sanders, who provide lists of what they regard as "proven" historically. I have also compiled a similar list from Grant's book "Jesus: an historian's review of the gospels". I have compiled these three into one list, here, recognising that Sanders' list is shorter than this.

• Many historians also make single statements of what they regard as the consensus conclusion on a given matter. For example, I have referred to a survey which showed that a vast majority of scholars accept both the empty tomb and some sort of appearances of Jesus (of whatever explanation) as being historical. I could give many individual quotes on the same subject. Ditto I could give quotes on other matters such as authorship, date, etc. But please only ask for these if you are going to look them up, and not just because you think I'm dishonest - it takes time which I don't have to do it, and so far I have provided references every time I have been asked, and can do so again.

• Many historians make it clear that they regard the issue of Jesus' historicity to be settled by the consensus of scholars - I have presented some of these here. There are many others.

So the scholarly consensus (i.e. majority) is there. The second question is why do they conclude this way? That would take a book (in fact, several books), so I'll leave you to read them yourself. My quick summary would be that they follow the historical method, they look at all the evidence and various hypotheses as the method requires, and they conclude that the explanation that these things are true is more probable than any other explanation.

You, if you frequent this forum a lot, may find that incredible, or you may not. But that is what the scholars say, in the main, and no-one has as yet given me a single valid reason to doubt them. (Yes, I am inferring that saying they are all biased, dishonest, haven't done their work, have just assumed everything, haven't asked the right questions, etc, is not a valid reason, at least not until some very good demonstration is offered.)

So that's my summary. Now can I ask again, what evidence do you bring to the table?

Thanks.

Toto

I have read a lot of the same authors, and I have never read one who used any sort of historical method. They generally assume that someone started Christianity and it might as well be Jesus. The whole premise of the Jesus Project was that the issue of the historicity of Jesus had never been explicitly addressed before.

It's not a matter of these scholars being biased or dishonest or lazy, although they may be - they are just not historians.

ercatli

It doesn't matter what the symbols stand for, the logic of the argument is the same. You just cannot go from a generalisation of what has always been observed to happen to a statement that that is what must inevitably happen.

You keep missing the point. The original claim was that dead people cannot come back to life. I never doubted that if only natural causes are operating, that is true. The question is, are only natural causes operating? You and others haven't proved that they're not, so you can't (yet) justify your view.

I have not argued that on this thread. I have simply said that until you disprove any claims of resurrection, especially the Biblical one, you cannot justify saying that dead people have never come back to life. (Those making the statement have to justify it. I have made no statement, just challenged you and others to demonstrate your statements. So far you haven't.)

So let me set a two part challenge for you Toto:

1. Logic.

You have in the above constructed a three step argument, as follows:

1. Most people, including everyone we have tested with modern science, have stayed dead once they died.
2. Therefore all people who have ever died have stayed dead.
3. Therefore dead people cannot under any circumstances (even if an interventionist God might exist) come back from the dead.

The challenge for you is to find a philosopher, I imagine there is one somewhere on this forum. Ask him/her to construct a proof for you that demonstrates propositions 2 & 3 from the premise #1 that we both agree on. Then report back here with the proof.

2. Scientific.

Challenge 2 is to give details of a scientific proof (not just an assumption) that the space-time universe is a closed system, so that either there is no supernatural to cause a miracle such as the resurrection, or the supernatural cannot possibly act within the world.

You are likely to respond that it is up to me to make the case, but I have not made the strong statements on this matter. You and others have, and if you want them to be more than personal belief, it is up to you to defend them. I have provided evidence on what the scholars say when asked, perhaps you can rise to these two challenges.

Thanks, and best wishes.

ercatli

Why are the Gospels alone not sufficient? The Historical method, as summarised on Wikipedia, includes this criterion: "If a number of independent sources contain the same message, the credibility of the message is strongly increased." Some of the Gospel sources are independent of each other.

ercatli

Thank you Doug, that I think is the first time anyone on this forum has given me credit for anything. I am happy to wait.

ercatli

Toto, this is getting boring. You offer very little in the way of evidence and reasoned argument, and spend most of your time nit-picking and trying to catch me out on something, jumping in to make unsubstantiated allegations about my integrity, and never acknowledging when I provide a satisfactory explanation. I can assure you I will begin to ignore you soon if you can't lift your game.

Let's take this case. I came across a reference to this survey in the sources I gave you. I didn't know who had done it. When you told me Habermas had done it, I searched a bit more, eventually finding out that we were indeed talking about the same survey. My comment that you now accuse me of was this: "You will be aware of the survey of 2000+ writings by NT scholars (Toto tells me it was done by Gary Habermas, but I found it elsewhere ..." I didn't say it was a separate source as you suggest, I said it was the same source, I just found it elsewhere - which was also the truth, because I found the information first on the blogs I quoted, and was only able to trace it further after you gave me the name Habermas.

So will you now please retract the insinuation that I misrepresented the facts?

Please show me where you have demonstrated this quite serious charge.

I bring him up because he is a non-believing historian who gives me information. The more relevant question is why do you so dislike my bringing him up? And as for the further serious charge that his "claims" (I think conclusions would be a fairer word) are wrong, please show me where that is demonstrated.

Another nasty and unsubstantiated charge. You are a Moderator remember, on a website with a fine reputation for fairness. It is your task to uphold that reputation, not trash it with ad hominems and nasty statements. I invited challenge, and I have consistently pleaded with you to present some rational arguments rather than nit-picking. I ask you again.

I seriously regret the line you are taking, and wish it could be different. I have several times indicated I would choose to cease discussing with you if you cannot present something more worthy of your position here. I'll say it again and say also that this is the last time I'll make that plea. I would like to be friends rather than bickering enemies, but it takes two to tango.

Over to you.

Zenaphobe

http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/t...Note_War_6.21a

In spite of all observations to the contrary, must we accept that heifers may give birth to lambs?

We have it on a historians say so that it happened and no one can prove that it is impossible for a heifer to bear a lamb.

By what standard should we judge such a claim? Does the fact that no one has ever witnessed such a thing have any bearing on the plausibility of Josephus' claim?

aa5874

It cannot be shown that there are any independent Gospel sources that are historical.

We can go through each main event in the Gospels with respect to Jesus.

1.The conception of Jesus.

2. The temptation by the Devil for forty days and nights.

3. The miracles where Jesus healed people by spit and raised the dead.

4. The transfiguration.

5. The trial and crucifixion.

6. The resurrection.

7. The ascension.

No Gospel source can be shown to be independent and to be credible.

And once the Gospels are questioned, they cannot be corroborative sources of themselves.

Now, please name the independent source of any Gospel writer and the veracity or credibility of the independent source?

youngalexander

My argument is that your implication of the possibility of supernatural events is false.
The ancient world (& regrettably to some extent the modern) is rife with claims of supernatural events. We can only investigate current events. However, in so doing, we can state that supernatural events do not occur.

The inference is that they never did!

ercatli

Thank you Tharn for that grace. And so, in return, I am not (yet) prepared to say that you also are making your response in bad faith. I was tempted to think that, for you used a number of large words and difficult concepts in places where it seemed to me that (1) simpler words would have sufficed, and (2) once stripped of their complexity, the arguments seemed to me to be not relevant to the question under discussion. It felt like you were trying to intimidate me or "snow" me. But I will be as gracious as you, and overlook my suspicions, as you have done.

I wouldn't know, I have never studied apologetics. Pretty much all of my comments come out of my own desire to believe the truth. It is only when confronted with something new (as you have presented me with here) that I have to do some original thinking. I have, after all, been a believer for many decades and have come across most arguments before.

Fortunately I have not relied upon apologetics for the ability to think clearly. It seems to be something I was blessed with in my genes, honed perhaps a little through university study.

Then I'm afraid your very first assertion is wrong, regarding my religious beliefs and many of my other working beliefs also.

In all things I do, including metaphysics and the historical Jesus, I try first of all to get the facts and apply reason. But few things in life can be resolved by those things alone. We are human, we are imperfect, we have valid emotions, we don't know everything, somethings are unknowable or subjective, etc. So when I make decisions about relationships, politics, ethics, aesthetics, even the football team I support, I apply evidence and reason as far as I can, and then I move forward using other aspects of human thinking. It is the same with my beliefs about Jesus, as I have explained to others - I start with the historical facts as I can ascertain them, and then I make decisions on what I can belief as a result.

I'm sure you are correct in most of what you say here, but I have to ask you what you mean by induction. The word seems to be used in two senses:

(i) One online dictionary says induction is: "A way of forming reasonable conclusions by gathering evidence and then forming principles based upon them."

(ii) However the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says: "An inductive logic is a system of reasoning that extends deductive logic to less-than-certain inferences. In a valid deductive argument the premises logically entail the conclusion, where such entailment means that the truth of the premises provides a guarantee of the truth of the conclusion. Similarly, in a good inductive argument the premises should provide some degree of support for the conclusion"

You seem to be using it in the first sense, which I found a little confusing at first, but I'm assuming (please correct me) that you are talking about how we relate to the world around us on a day-to-day basis, constantly adjusting our thoughts and actions as new sensory experiences are received.

You therefore seem to be comparing a metaphysical statement about resurrection with a day-to-day statement about ice on roads, and saying that, just as we don't and can't prove the ice on roads statement by a formal argument, neither can we prove a metaphysical argument that way.

Now this is exactly the point I was making. The resurrection of Jesus (which is how this topic was raised - pardon the pun!) if it occurred at all, was a one-off event. No amount of induction (in the first sense) will be able to demonstrate it or disprove it. If I made a statement like "the resurrection is a provable historical fact" I would not be able to justify it. But I didn't. In fact, others have made the equally dogmatic statement "dead people cannot rise", and while it is normally the case that dead people don't rise, induction cannot tell us whether in this one case God may have performed a miracle, and so they are equally unable to justify their statement.

So, if I have understood you, we are in agreement against the statement under discussion. But I'm sure that wasn't the result you were looking for, so await your further correction.

You are changing the subject here. I have never invoked the miraculous for the historical questions under discussion. It is only the statement "dead men can't rise" that I am challenging.

Some of these were unfamiliar terms to me, but I looked them all up on Google, and I think I have some sort of handle on them. I found the following:

From here: "The content of an utterance using “I” or “you” is determined by contextual facts about the utterance in accord with their meaning. Such expressions we call indexicals."

And from here: "Nomological possibility is possibility under the actual laws of nature."

So I'm sorry but I still fail to see your point re "indexical conclusion for a nomological induction". These appear to be simply big words for saying "you can't draw a conclusion about yourself from a law of nature." But I wasn't doing that. I was constructing two arguments that have the same structure (they reduce to the same when you replace the details with symbols), and showing that one is clearly illogical, indicating that the other is also. Please see my recent post to Toto.

I am surprised you "no idea what a "natural process" is". The definition I obtained for "nomological" above relates to "actual laws of nature". That is what I meant - processes conforming to actual laws of nature.

But the rest of what you say here, about parsimonious (a big word which in this case I am familiar with!), is irrelevant, for you are talking about natural processes and the subject is the resurrection, which no-one, least of all me, suggests is a natural process.

Again, this is not relevant to the argument for two reasons.

(1) We are talking about the resurrection, not everyday events.
(2) We are not discussing what I believe about the resurrection, but the statement that "dead men can't rise". We are agreed that they don't usually, and that is as far as the "parsimonious" discussion can take us.

Again, this is not the subject under discussion, and I have made no claims for miracles in the discussion on the documents. Let's either deal with historical questions about documents, or the current question, whether it is impossible for dead men to rise under any circumstances.

I'm sorry, but actually it is not obvious to me. I believe the evidence points to the existence of a God, and therefore that miracles may indeed be possible, but I don't claim they can be proved. Others have claimed they are impossible. Such a strong statement requires demonstration, and I don't think they can demonstrate the truth of that claim.

I'm glad you ended up on this, because this is where I'd like to end also. There is one case (at least) where the claim is that a dead man was observed to come back to life. I am not arguing the truth of that claim here, I am just arguing that if you want to make that statement, you owe us a demonstration.

My summary of your post is that it is an elaborate discussion of why you cannot actually offer a proof of the statement under discussion. In this post I offered Toto two challenges, one logical, one scientific. If you support the statement as a matter of fact and not opinion that "dead men cannot rise", then I invite you to join him in that challenge. That way we might settle the matter.

Thanks.