horhang

My mother in an ongoing effort to save my soul has finally hit on the appeal to history and geology. She has given me a book, "The Defense Never Rests", by Craig Parton, which argues several points. Before I begin on the huge amount of research I need to do to answer it, I was wondering if anyone could help direct my reading.
He starts his argument by stating that the gospels have a shorter time span from time of composition to earliest documents than any other documents of the ancient period; in evidence he cites the time lapse of Josephus to the earliest dated manuscript, among others.
He also cites geographical references in the gospels as evidence of their early and eyewitness testimony.
He also uses the rules of legal evidence, since he is a lawyer, to argue that the gospels are valid evidence for the birth and resurrection and hence the divinity of Christ.
This is not a search for debate on the historicity of the gospels. While that would not be in the least unwelcome, especially if it included references, what I am looking for is to shorten my search relative to the argument being put forth. Essentially are the gospels among the most closely temporal of documents of the age, and are they accurate geographically?
Any help would be appreciated. This is going to be an ongoing enterprise, and I will try to keep this updated, depending on time devoted to research.
Thanks again for any help offered, from either side.

Toto

I haven't read this book, but the arguments sound like standard apologetics.

You will probably find many of them discussed in The Jury is In

I'm not sure what this means - that the gospels are closer to the events, or that the manuscripts are closer to the earliest manuscript?

There are notorious geographical errors in Mark.

Vorkosigan

Any document from the hand of its writer would be closer in time than the gospels. Numerous documents were composed by the authors shortly after events there were involved in -- Caesar's account of his wars, Themosticles' account of the Athenian Wars he was involved in, Epictetus' life by his secretary, Josephus, etc. We have scores of diaries recovered from the tombs of their owners in China from this period and over the next couple of hundred years. And of course, the papyri from Egypt that range from legal documents to private letters are from the hand of the writer. The way I understand it, your lawyer has no case.

But bring him here. We'll be happy to set him straight.

Michael

horhang

Thanks for the reply, and I will be reading the book you referenced.
To clear up the confusion, the arguement seems to be that the ealiest dated manuscript i is closer to the date when the individual lived than any other accepted manuscript of the era. I dont knoe if that clears it up for you, if not I can reread and try to clear it up, but my responses will be slow as I am trying to research this.
Thanks for the short cus on the search.

darstec

Somewhere I have an article I wrote on the comments by some of the early Church writers commenting on the geography found in the gospels. Among those questioned were Cana, Nazareth, Bethany and wherever those poor pigs were possessed with demons.

I don't see even the earliest of the epistles or gospels written before 135 CE. That would hardly constitue writing close in time to the events. Pompeii wrote about Alexander about 40 years after the fact whereas the gospel and even Paul about 100 years. But then for most historical persons, we have no idea what might have been written contemporaneously. It isn't like today with books being printed in runs of 100,000s or millions. If some historical book or pamphlet was written back then, how many might have been made? Even those considered scripture might be lucky to have one copy per village, and without a dedicated patron (and the religious scribes fill that position) there would not be anyone to insure a new copy was made when the old wore out. Most writing until the invention of the printing press had a very short lifespan unless it was recopied one edition at a time.

To futher complicate matter, we have a tendency to say, "Josephus wrote this" or "Ignatius wrote that" or "Papias had this to say" when what we mean is that our copy of a copy of a copy (probably not predating the 11th century CE or supprisingly much later) which we attribute to such and such an author had this to say.

horhang

The point the lawyer is making is that the earlist datings of the gospels is closer to the life of the individual writnig them than of the earliest datings of Josephus or any other early writer. To simplify: his case is, the earliest we can date manuscritps of Josehus (for example, and not being specificbecause the book is not in front of me) is 300 years after he lived, but we can date manuscripts of the gospels to within 100 years ( again I dont have the book in front of me): therefore the gospels are more reliable as historythan Josephus.
These are the thinges I am looking for sources to check on.

horhang

Many thanks to the wonderful moderators who managed to link the book I referenced, and the response, if they did that also.

Vorkosigan

It's still bullshit. There are zillions of documents from antiquity that are from much closer to their actual date. Consider the papyrii we have from Egypt:

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/

that come from the hand of the original writer.

or cuneiform tablets from Bablyon that cover royal decrees, etc.

http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i11/11a01401.htm

or any kind of inscription on stone from antiquity which would automatically come from the time of the inscriber.

Your friend is clueless.

Vorkosigan

In any case a closely dated fiction is still a fiction.

Killer Mike

The fundamental problem is in taking the Gospels as "evidence". The Gospels are neither histories nor biographies. They contain much myth and legend. For example, written on Urgatic texts in Egypt about 5000BC are stories of a Virgin Mary, of a death and resurrection, of a Jesus, belief in heaven and hell, etc.. While the names and some of the details are different then in the Gospels, the basic themes are all the same. Other stories of miraculous births are common in ancient Paganism.

Im sure one can find stories of Sherlock Holmes, or even Santa Clause that mentions names and places of real locations and people that really existed, but that of course does not mean Santa has rain deer that can fly :Cheeky: