FatherMithras

Not only that, it ignore the fact we have contemporary writings for Tiberius, and not for Jesus.

mountainman

Irrespective of its claims to legitimacy the book
was first bound together and thrust down the throat
of the Hellenic-Roman empire with effect from the
date of supremacy of its emperor-mafia-thug.

Consequently it was bound to be influential at the time
of the dictatorship. It serviced the empire then, and again
under the British, and now under the Americans, although
today there is far more religious toleration that a few
generations ago (Well, anyway, that's the theory of it).

Two immediate questions that need to be asked are

1) Was the fabrication of the Galilaeans a fiction of wicked men?
2) How many other books were burnt in the period following Nicaea?
(ie: A book can only be influential if it survives, and it's process of
survival was enhanced by a power structure that was set in place
at Nicaea, and survived a thousand years based at the City of
Constantine, the Byzantine capital of the Roman empire.).



Pete Brown

Doug Shaver

I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about. I assess the Bible's historical reliability by the same standards I apply to all other ancient writings.

If you want to try to catch me doing otherwise, ask me why I don't believe the resurrection really happened.

lpetrich

What, in particular, do you have in mind? And are you willing to accept that the Bible has even the smallest error?

You may want to read some of Richard Carrier's writings some time; he discusses historical method in some places.

The fact is, we don't uncritically accept everything that ancient historians say. We don't accept what Iamblichus says about how Pythagoras's biological father was the god Apollo, what Diogenes Laertius says about how Plato's biological father was also Apollo, what Plutarch says about how Alexander the Great's father was the god Zeus, what Livy says about how Rome's founder was the son of a god and a virgin, and what Suetonius and Tacitus say about how then-General Vespasian cured some people with salivary therapy. Even though we use Iamblichus, Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, Livy, Suetonius, and Tacitus as sources.

Etc. etc. etc.

Why be totally gaping-minded about the Bible and not about other sources?

And what was his evidence for that?

WHAT evidence? There is lots of counterevidence. In the Old Testament, the Dual Monarchy period is well-supported from outside sources, so the Bible is reasonably reliable there, even if rather editorially slanted. But before that, there is no historical corroboration. Kings David and Solomon supposedly had great empires, but their neighbors never referred to them, although they referred to King Omri and his successors. The Conquest never happened as described; cities were not destroyed at the appropriate dates. There is no trace of a big Israelite community in Egypt or the Sinai during Egypt's New Kingdom, and the stories of the patriarchs involve anachronisms like camels as pack animals. Noah's Flood never happened, and the Earth and the Universe are much more than 6000 years old.

And the Bible's writers have none of the critical sense that one sees in some Greco-Roman historians, who compare and discuss their sources and sometimes express skepticism. Instead, in the Bible, skepticism is considered something wrong -- consider the story of Doubting Thomas.

See above
Shall I count the ways? Genesis 30 tells us that it's possible to do genetic engineering by showing striped sticks to livestock animals. Leviticus, a book filled with nitpicky detail, implies that bats are birds and that grasshoppers have four legs. Jesus Christ had been an exorcist. The stars will some day fall out of the sky. There is a mountain from which one can see "all the kingdoms of the world". Etc.

Like Jesus Christ predicting that he will make his Second Coming within the lifetimes of those who heard him? Or the mistranslation of Isaiah's "young woman" as "virgin"? Don't make me laugh.

Why don't you use this messageboard's Search function to search for discussions of your favorite Bible features?

Gooch's Dad may well be correct about some Jesus mythers, but IMO there is a much better case to be made for Jesus mythicism than the one he describes.

And look at what those sources say about Jesus Christ. An important rule of doing history is to try to go back as far as possible. Which of our sources depend on other sources, and how far back can one go?

For Jesus Christ, our sources are Paul's letters and the canonical Gospels, and they say such disparate things that the don't seem to be talking about the same person. Also, Paul seems to know next to nothing about Jesus Christ's earthly career, and the Gospels contradict each other on important details. The Synoptics roughly agree, in large part because Matthew and Luke contain word-for-word copies of Mark; however their genealogies and birth stories are completely different. John differs from the Synoptics in how long Jesus Christ stayed in Jerusalem, how the authorities reacted to his Temple temper tantrum, etc.

Furthermore, Jesus Christ's biography closely fits Lord Raglan's Mythic-Hero profile, like Oedipus, Hercules, Romulus, Moses, and Krishna -- and unlike nearly all well-documented people.

So if there was a historical Jesus Christ, it's hard to say what is fact and what is fiction about him in the New Testament.

Doug Shaver

I have no idea what you're talking about. I evaluate the Bible's historical reliability by the same standards I apply to all other ancient documents.

If you want to try catching me doing otherwise, ask me why I don't believe the resurrection really happened.

hatsoff

Well, first of all, you must remember that not everyone here are very balanced or particularly educated. But there is a lot of knowledge to be found here, as you will no doubt find.

Comparatively little in the Bible has been proven. And even for those things which are probably true, there is always some measure of doubt, from the scientific to the philosophical. Besides, your problem is contradictory. People usually ignore "proven facts" because they are irrelevant to whatever the discussion is about at the time. Something cannot be proven and discredited at the same time, though people will often disagree. It is possible for a claim to be discredited, however, based on one or a few pieces of evidence; for it is not the raw quanitity but rather the weight and meaning of the facts which help us determine truth.

Of course, and people on both sides are guilty of this. Very guilty.

Christians are biased because it cuts to the heart of everything they believe. Admitting, say, that Matthew didn't write Matthew, can affect a Christian very, very deeply. It can shake their faith, and on some unconscious level they will probably it like the plague. I'm not sure what drives some atheist zealots. Perhaps they're just responding in kind to the bullheadedness of Christians. Or maybe they're ex-Christians who feel like they've been lied to and have a vengeful axe to grind. In any case, there are strong feelings on both sides.

Personally, I would guess that agnostics and atheists seem to be more fair-minded, generally speaking, than are Christians. However, this is just a guess on my part, based on the fact that all Christians have an obvious bias, whereas agnosticism and atheism have no inherent opposition to religious-related history.

That's not what he said at all. That's what some goofy web site paraphrased him as saying, probably mistakenly. More importantly, though, he does not appear to be a "secular" historian, having a lengthy Roman Catholic education. From what I can tell of his writings, he was another of many Christian scholars, subject to extreme bias.

It's not accurate at all, and certainly not profound. The New Testament is often held to the same textual and historical standards as any other ancient document, but in some cases it is and must be treated differently for its unique content and origins. Of course, the reasons for these differences of treatment are usually very natural, and obvious to observers.

There's so much wrong with this statement I cannot hope to refute it all in this post.

I certainly wouldn't call the Bible "mythical garbage," but much of it is clearly false and/or unverifyable. Some people do get carried away in rejecting every last word of it, though, as worthless or harmful.

For the most part it is held to the same standards. However, we sometimes treat the texts differently because they are the products of different sources with different biases.

Niles was talking about the historical Jesus debate, which is a separate (if related) issue from Biblical criticism. And secular scholarship generally agrees Jesus did exist, which is not in conflict with Christian tradition. Niles was arguing (and poorly) against the minority who advocate a mythical Jesus.

Other texts are indeed criticized. The works of Homer, for instance, are of questionable unity.

What you've presented is a tiresome Christian argument based on flawed logic. Even if the premise was sound (and it is certainly not), it still doesn't help the case for Biblical authenticity.

spin

Before you start talking about double standards, I'd like to know what you refer to as "proven facts about the Bible". What are these proven facts?

I don't believe this last statement is either fair or true. First, there is a high level of critical analysis of non-biblical sources, though most people are unaware of it. People actually doing historical analyses based on non-biblical sources do make their sources undergo harsh treatment. Second, one's received presuppositions need to be brought out into the open and paraded for all to see. Most apologists -- and most christians who come here are apologists -- who come here are very quick to cry foul because the people here do not accept those presuppositions. Third, in the field of biblical analysis, there is a lot of hard cruel analysis going on, though apologists aren't too aware of what happens in academia.

It's too easy to bleed as so many have that there are double standards when one is not necessarily aware of what the standards should be.

Durant had a penchant for oversimplification.

Knowing a lot of the material that might touch on these opinions, I don't believe many are based on evidence at all.

I do not consider that the bible is "mythic garbage", but I certainly don't think that much in the way of history or science can be extracted from it either. The biblical works were written long before these notions had become well known andf they evince this fact. They don't give one much idea of either history or science. They give a vast amount of tradition.

Now answer this: how do you extract history from tradition?

Would you accept for some legal case testimony from someone who cannot be placed at the evidents to be judged, nor at the time of the events, nor who the witnesses actually were, nor their backgrounds for making their statements were? If you answer in the positive, I wouldn't want to be answerable to your judiciary system.

Judging from your speed to judge, would there be much of value behind this judgment?

This is particularly silly claptrap obviously written by someone uninformed of the reality of what they are trying to talk about. How many statues of Jesus and his family from his lifetime have survived? How many inscriptions from his lifetime report of his doings? How many coins 1) did he mint and 2) refer to him? How many of his actions left archaeological traces form during his lifetime? The answer to each is "not one". The written sources are actually considered secondary in that they fill in the gaps left by the archaeological and epigraphic record.

History is an intricate web of corroboration: the archaeological and epigraphic records support the literary evidence which ties in with other archaeological and epigraphic records. When archaeological and epigraphic information about Sejanus reaches us they fit into the web that deals with Tiberius and support the web.

As you hadn't noticed, it is used that way. Historians have hauled the major sources for the Julio-Claudian dynasty, sources like Suetonius and to a lesser extent Tacitus over the coals as to their biased reporting of the history.

If you think there has been unfair analysis of the biblical literature as history on this forum could you elucidate please so we can understand what you are on about? Your post has been heavy on criticism and vacuous on tangible demonstration of your ideas.


spin

gregor

Vork

Nice to read a 'familiar face' posting again.

Gregor

Roger Pearse

A look in google groups will reveal that people pretending that Jesus never existed routinely use as their justification lack of any contemporary pagan source.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

For the master of the Roman world? I should hope so. But of course we learn most about him and his policies from Tacitus.

All the best,

Roger Pearse