Doug Shaver

If you thought I asked because I was unconvinced, then you missed my point entirely.

You do actually have reasons for regarding GWTW as fiction, do you not? There are facts about it, are there not, that you know and that you have good reason to believe would not have obtained had the author intended to write factual history? Can you answer that?

bacht

You're not going to convince me that supernaturalism is real, and I'm not going to convince you that it isn't. But this is another case where you're gambling on long odds. The vast majority of evidence points to consistency in our universe, at least on the Newtonian level of physics.

It's like the Creationist arguments. They will focus on some weird example or fuzzy analysis to insist that evolution isn't perfectly true, ergo the door is open a crack to allow divine intervention. Another long shot, another fringe approach that ignores the majority of evidence.

Responsible scientists never draw the kind of sweeping conclusions that are common on the faith side of things. They can't, because they are continually being tested and challenged by other scientists, and no theory remains static over time. Faith statements are meant to be accepted without question, and in extreme cases questioning can lead to inner disorientation or censure from religious authorities.

aa5874

And most important and must be noted is that faith statements may be the result of threats of eternal isolation from some God and eternal damnation in some place of torment.

bacht

I never thought much about this when I was a churchgoer, but now this sort of teaching disturbs me, especially its potential impact on children.

The idea that there's no way out, no escape from divine wrath, is deeply cynical or even nihilistic. I can understand its usefulness as a tool of social control, but then there's no longer anything "spiritual" in the message, just morally bankrupt authoritarianism.

Johnny Skeptic

How can Bible scholars, or anyone else for that matter, be reasonably certain that Jesus said anywhere near everything that the Gospels say that he said?

show_no_mercy

I think ercatli evades this question by appealing to authorities that agree with his views. Since they are authorities, we shouldn't question their methodology. :huh:

Amaleq13

Then you are guilty only of repeating their fallacious argument. As I've already suggested.

But you deny your own assertion in the post above:
Both conclusions above are fallacious. Neither a supported claim nor a debunked claim say anything about whether any other claim within a text is more or less likely to be true. All those supported or debunked claims deny are absolutist claims about the text (ie entirely accurate/entirely fiction).

Sixteen accurate descriptions of locations in a text tells us nothing about the accuracy of any other portion of the text. To suggest otherwise is to engage in fallacious thinking, at best.

Many scholars would disagree with that assessment and I certainly do but you would have to produce the specific evidence and argument Grant provides in order to have exactly why it is not credible explained to you. I suspect, however, that you haven't actually read the basis and have no genuine interest in challenging his conclusion.

That you start heading for the door when specifics are requested is a dead giveaway.

The number of unsupported conclusions offered is irrelevant. I've actually read the arguments, my friend, and found the conclusion to be unsupportable. The actual state of the evidence is a mess with unknown origins, unknown authors, and clear evidence of editing over time by others. But acknowledging that doesn't sell books. Claiming that this particular conceptualization is what Jesus was like sells books. Claiming that Jesus never existed sells books. You are taking firmly held but necessarily speculative conclusions as though they were solidly supported scientific facts. IOW, you are placing far too much faith in scholars when you should be applying more critical thinking to the basis for their claims. I see no evidence that you have done so or even that you are genuinely interested in doing so.

And I say this to those who embrace Jesus mythicism with equally misguided vigor as well.

I certainly agree there is some but "enough" for the sort of firm conclusion you are supporting is simply wishful thinking. And the same holds true for mythicists.

I would be interested in whether you would continue to do so after actually reading the basis for that conclusion. I certainly found it untenable after reading, for myself, the actual arguments that allegedly lead to it. Many speculative assumptions have to be accepted on the road to that conclusion, amigo. Too many to pretend anything near the certainty you attribute to these scholars.

Your challenge incorporated a straw man so I attempted to redirect your thinking to a more relevant question. Rejecting miraculous claims without substantial supporting evidence is, and always will be, entirely rational.

I am aware that this is an assumption many scholars make but I am only aware of a single effort to test this assumption and it failed (Crossan).

Vague appeals to unidentifiable and entirely speculative "oral sources" do not constitute a "half a dozen independent sources relatively close to the events".

You need to catch up on Q scholarship, amigo, it is not universally accepted.

And appeals to entirely speculative reconstructions of possible source texts does no better than appeals to unidentifiable and entirely speculative "oral sources" in identifying "half a dozen independent sources relatively close to the events".

Modern scholars continue to argue about whether Mark is independent of Paul.

Modern scholars continue to argue about whether John is independent of Mark.

Please name these sources or acknowledge you are just blindly parroting without a clue as to whether the claim has an legitimacy.

I am unwilling to accept any scholar's view if I do not find it sufficiently supported by evidence or established by a logical argument. Of course, that requires more work than skimming over the text or just reading a cover blurb or internet review...

Yes, you have been given the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, I see no indication that you have any genuine interest in challenging your existing conclusions. Instead, you've done nothing but engage in logical fallacies that appear intended to do nothing but allow you to retain your beliefs.

Very few of the arguments put forth by your scholars require specialized knowledge to be understood (eg ancient languages). I encourage you to truly challenge your currently held beliefs and read their works with a critical eye toward what actual evidence supports each assumption upon which the ultimate conclusion is founded. It takes courage and effort but I think it will be worth it if only for an improved ability to defend your beliefs.

Trust me when I tell you that you need that improvement.

ercatli

Show No Mercy, thanks so much for going to this trouble. This is what I originally had in mind in my OP, but you are really the first person to attempt something like this.

I have made notes on every one of your 21 points but I will not attempt to respond to each - many of them could justify a new thread on their own. My intention all along was to read the best you guys had to offer, respond briefly, and learn (and hope maybe the process would lead to you all learning too), not get into deep debate over matters which will never get resolved this way. So I will respond in a general way, referring along the way to some/many of your points.

(i) Having thanked you for going to the trouble, I now have to be less complimentary (I'm sorry) and say that I was rather underwhelmed by this list. There is very little there to shake anyone's faith.

A very few points might upset someone who believed the NT was inerrant, though I would imagine scholars like Craig Blomberg have easy answers for most of your points. But I said at the start I didn't believe in inerrancy. So I am evaluating the Gospels, initially, as history. And such relatively minor inconsistencies are not very significant. For example, #6 about Gerasa. Yes, the town most commonly identified with Gerasa is some distance from the lake, but (1) there is another possible town close to the lake, (2) the text says the region or country of the Gerasenes, not the city, and (3) there are several variant names all indicating a location in that general area. It looks like a very minor error, which no-one except an inerrantist would care about, and even an inerrantist could easily explain.

Few of the points are new. I certainly knew things like your 1, 2, 10, 13, 14, 16, 19, 20 several decades ago. I have seen many responses to them. They are hardly likely to make a difference at this stage in my life. For example, #2 is well known and says nothing about accuracy of reporting. In fact it illustrates something that is true for the Gospels and less true for most other documents of similar age - we only have these "problems" because we have multiple sources and many texts - which makes the Gospels more sure than many other documents, not less.

Many of the points (e.g. 4, 5, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18) are based on the sort of supposition and weak arguments that I don't find convincing at all. In many cases the "problem" is a pseudo problem, and there are many alternative explanations that are just as probable. For example, #18 about John's education. This comment requires a string of suppositions about what John might or might not have be capable of doing, and there are many questionable links in the chain - (a) did John write it or was it compiled by others?, (b) Zebedee had hired hands so he was a business man and not necessarily illiterate, (c) Greek was the trade language (that's why the NT was written in Greek) and many people could speak it, and (d) John lived for a long time after he left fishing, so who knows what he learnt in that time? And #12 (about Barabbas) is so weak you would laugh out of court a similar argument was used in favour of christianity.

(ii) Some of your points (4, 5, 6, 9, 13, 15, 16, 17, 21) appear to me to be erroneous, some based on misunderstandings. An example is #15, where you say that no known characters understand who Jesus is. But in 5 minutes I came up with these:

Peter (Mark 8:29): "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" Peter answered, "You are the Christ."
James and John (Mark 10:37): "Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory."
Bartimaeus (Mark 10:47): When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"
The crowd (Mark 11:9-10): Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted, "Hosanna!" "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" "Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!" "Hosanna in the highest!"
The High Priest (Mark 14:61): Again the high priest asked him, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?"

(iii) Some points (1, 2, 9, 13, 19, 20, 21) just seem to me to be inconsequential. I don't see how they have any bearing on the accuracy of the Gospels. e.g. what does it matter if Daniel is not seen as a prophet (though the book of Daniel is included with the Prophets) and if Psalms is not labelled as a "prophetic" book? What difference does that make? Besides, once in my misspent youth I did some formal OT study specialising in some of the prophets, and prophecy is a much more complex thing than your comments suggest.

(iv) So I think you only a few raise issues that I feel are significant. Here are the ones I think worth mentioning:

• There are a few where you infer anachronism or lack of familiarity with first century Judaism, but with little justification. e.g. #5 about the Pharisees seems quite wrong to me. I always knew the Sadducees were the ruling clique, but the Pharisees were more numerous and cared more about the issues. So they engaged more. #7 is partially wrong - there are documents showing that many Jews, not just priests, washed their hands before meals. It is true that "all the Jews" is an exaggeration, but exaggeration is part of the style of some Gospel writers - see e.g. Mark 1:5 where "all Judea" went out to see John the Baptist. I think your objection is nit-picking.

• #8 about the reality of the temple incident shows little awareness of the findings of historians. This incident is one of the events of Jesus' life most accepted as historical by scholars of all types. Most see it as highly symbolic, just like Jesus' entry into Jerusalem which preceded it. I don't think I ever thought it involved the invasion and complete takeover of a "fortress" like your point claims, but more of a protest and prophetic enactment.

• #10 - of course the trial was irregular, contrary to the rules and illegal. I thought that was common knowledge, in fact that is the point.

• #11 is based on a common but cursory reading of history. Craig Evans has looked at this in more detail and shown convincingly (to me at least) that Pilate's actions are consistent.

• It is clearly difficult, but not impossible, to reconcile some details of the Easter story, as your #14 says. This is hardly news and has been much discussed. But (a) most historians say the disagreement about some details reinforces the independence and hence historicity of the core of the stories, (b) there were traditions about the empty tomb before Mark, they were just oral (most historians I have read believe the empty tomb story is very early and accept it as historical), and (c) they have found contemporary tombs that fit the Gospels' descriptions.

(v) In conclusion, I think there is only one of your 21 points that is substantial (the conflicting Easter narratives), many of them are inconsequential, or rely on speculation, or are based on historical misunderstandings. They haven't prevented scholars from drawing historical conclusions from the Gospels. The main scholarly concerns about the historicity of the Gospels is built around matters of how the oral stories might have been modified by later reflection, than about such minor details.

If you find these points convincing, then you can only go with that, but I feel otherwise. In fact, they look to me more like a list someone put together to make as many points as they could, regardless of historical understandings (quantity rather than quality), than real reasons why a person might change their mind.

I'm sorry to be so dismissive of your efforts when you have been kind enough to take the trouble. I have tried to be gentle and fair, but of course I also have strong opinions on this, as I presume you do. I am very grateful for your preparing this.

This comment illustrates what I have most learnt from this whole discussion, and what I think is most anti-intellectual about the views many of you express. To parody a common saying, those who ignore historians are condemned to keep on repeating the same mistakes. The historians have argued over the genre of the gospels, and it is ignoring the evidence to say they read like entertainment. Yes, they contain viewpoints (theology if you like), but most historical documents did. They also read like reportage. And most of all, they read like biography, which of course would contain reportage and viewpoints. So much of what you have said in this post, and so much of what is said on this thread, reflects a lack of understanding of the findings of historians, not just their conclusions about the historicity of the texts, but the background to them.

I don't determine which parts of the gospels are history. I don't have the capabilities to do that with any certainty. (Would that others here would recognise the same about themselves!) I trust the historians to do that. Of course, I try to understand their methods (which are the standard approaches of historians) and their conclusions. But the historians can only establish a lowest common denominator of historical fact (which I accept, but many of you don't). That is enough to provide a solid intellectual basis for belief and then the remaining material can be accepted (or not) without major implications. Whether a particular detail such as the story in John 8 was part of the original John (I doubt it) or actually occurred (I think so) is not crucial.

Thanks again. I hope this is a reasonable response to your post. I don't think arguing about details is likely to be fruitful, but I'm happy discuss further anything you think important.

Best wishes.

Petergdi

Hold on a second, Spin.

I tried to find someone who would fit Toto's requirement of someone with a Phd in History who wrote on the Historical Jesus. So I went to the Library of Congress catalog and went through a couple of pages of titles under the subject heading "Jesus Christ - Historicity". I then googled the authors to see what they did their doctorates in. There were a couple whose PhD thesis titles suggested that they were about the history of Second Temple Judaism. One was certainly from the Religion department of a secular university, for the other I could not easily determine the department involved, but it probably was from a Religion department too. I did not actually read these theses, so I can not comment on the methodology used. I was simply looking for something that might meet Toto's requirements.

Peter.

spin

Although I can appreciate the effort, I don't think that the process you've gone through would necessarily find historians.

If I teach a course about the history of the cosmos from our point of view, starting with cosmogenesis and going through galactic and planetary formation, does that make me a physicist? If I'm a stamp collector and I do a PhD in British postal marks of the 19th century, does that mean I'm a historian? If I'm a biblical text critic and I write a PhD on the history of the temple as seen in the narrative parts of the bible, does that make me a historian?

You have to get your hands dirty here. You need to know how history works (or doesn't work) in order to deal with the efforts of people who are not coming from a historian's background, eg through seminaries and religious studies schools, who indulge in writings that they label history that are read by dissertation examiners within their schools.


spin