Nuwanda

I'm thoroughly impressed with the devotion that many in here have given to the pursuit of denying the historicity of Biblical claims. My question is, is there any ancient text that you(whoever) feel should be taken seriously based on their historic claims?

As a follow-up question: are there any ancient texts that you would say without hesitation are reliable historic accounts?

Roland

It all depends on what you mean by "the historicity of Biblical claims." If you mean do I believe Jesus was born of a virgin or walked on water, I'd state categorically "no." If you mean did someone by the name of Jesus possibly inspire the Biblical tales, I'd say perhaps, except since we don't have any "story of Jesus" minus all the supernatural nonsense, I'm inclined to believe it's all so much poppycock.

I've never quite understood the line of thinking pursued in the opening comment. Whether other historical works are plausible has little bearing on whether the Bible is or not. The Bible was obviously written with a specific agenda in mind (that of converting people to this new-found religion), so I think we have good reason to be sceptical. It's not that writings about Alexander or Caesar Augustus didn't also have specific agendas to push, but there seems to be enough mundane, non-supernatural information included in them to make it likely that at least some of what is said about them might be truthful. I don't see that at all with Jesus, especially when virtually every aspect of his "life" can be traced back to Old Testament scriptures.

Moreover, historical accounts of figures like Alexander and Augustus are actually written like histories. Their authors are not anonymous and they usually declare right up front that they are writing history and often identify the sources for their information. The gospels, however, are written like STORIES, with characters holding conversations and with little moral lessons strewn along the way. Real historians, past and present, don't write history in that manner.

I think the better question would be are there other ancient "histories" of famous people that are written in the same style and form as the gospels?

Godless Dave

It depends what you mean by "taken seriously". I take Herodotus seriously if I want to learn about the ancient Greeks, but I know he wasn't always accurate, or even trying to be accurate. The doesn't mean you can't learn about the ancient Greeks by reading Herodotus, but you have to read it in context, and you have to examine other documents and archeological evidence too.

No.

I don't think they were even trying to be reliable. When you read Livy, for example, you read him with the knowledge that he was writing for a particular ruler and might have written in such a way as to make that ruler's family look good and their rivals look bad. He also had his own opinions about Roman society and society in general that found their way into his work. I don't think his contemporary readers expected him to be objective. Objectivity in historical accounts was just not something they valued.

mountainman

Yes, however one must first be very careful in attempting
to specify the claims of the text, with the maxim that the
greater the claims, the greater the need for evidence.

Ancient poets make little claims, in general across the board.
Those authors of mathematical works, or works of geometry
or physical "proto-science", have their claims out in the open.

Those authors whose claim it is that the omnipresent god of
the observable universe (and well beyond the hubble limit)
incarnated in the first century, along with Apollonius of Tyana,
perhaps even according to some chronologies in the same year,
need to perhaps show some form of extra-literary tradition
evidence. YES, we do have Eusebius claiming he had on his
desk a letter AUTHORED BY JESUS THE CHRIST (to Agbar)
but noone else spoke about it before Eusebius, writing his
stuff under "bullneck".

I recently made a post about "The Life of Demonax" by Lucian.
Is this an historic account of a man called Demonax? Perhaps it is.
What claims are made concerning Demonax? That he was not known
to subscribe to any particular "philosophy", that he was cheerful and
always ready with an answer, that he could quell argument in "the
senate" by his mere appearance, that he lived and died in peace.
These are human claims, reasonable, and in accordance to others
of the time --- other philosophers such as Secundus, Apollonius,etc.

I have no reason to disbelieve Ammianus Marcellinus. He also spoke
fairly and stated both sides to issues.

However literature and propaganda which is issued under the regime
of a malevolent dictator, or which is at the basis of social reforms on
a large scale, needs to be examined in that context.

Noone has yet conceded that the "holy bible" was first published
and bound together in the rule of a malevolent dictator, for example.

Johnny Skeptic

You are not comparing apples to apples. Secular history happens every day all over the world. There is no credible evidence that supernatural history has ever happened anywhere, and where it is claimed to have happened, for some strange reason it happened mostly in the Middle East, right?

Now why do you think God doesn't want to make it much more obvious than he has that supernatural history occured? All that he has to do is show up and perform some supernatural events, for instance, calling a new galaxy into existence, and then we can stop wasting time arguing about whether or not any being in the universe can call a new galaxy into existence. If God exists, he has gained nothing at all from being shy, and mankind certainly hasn't either.

I am thoroughly impressed that many if not most Christians believe that skeptics are not honestly searching for the truth. Why wouldn't skeptics want to know the truth?

robto

I'm impressed with how little interest most Christians seem to have in historical issues. After all, if you believe that the object of your devotion really walked the earth 2000 years ago, why wouldn't you be interested in what history has to say about him and his times and his followers? But if you ask about the authenticity of the Josephus passages, or the question of who wrote the Pastoral epistles and when, 9 out of 10 Christians have no idea what you're talking about.

(OK, I made up that statistic, but I'm just talking about my general impression here.)

hatsoff

You've packed a lot here into a few sentences. Let's take them one at a time.

Really? Most former adult Mormons who have turned to orthodox Christianity seem to hold a special interest in refuting Mormon perversions, if you will, of their newfound evangelical faith. You apparently were quite young when you escaped it, so this analogy may not work quite as well in your case, but, even so, do you not feel similarly? Do you not have a sort of tight-lipped irritation over Mormon efforts to persuade yourself and your Trinitarian peers that their way is the truth and yours is a lie?

In the same way, many of us here are former Christians turned atheist or agnostic, who, just like the ex-Mormons turned Christian, are literally quite irritated that Christians have invested so much energy in denying the natural world (e.g. miracles, prophecy), perverting modern scientific method (e.g. creation science, naivety in historical inquiry) and generally confusing the poor souls who don't know any better. So it should be no suprise that any non-Christian should be enthusiastic about denying Christian claims.

Yet I think your accusation goes beyond that. In the eyes of many Christians, any assertion which even seems to contradict a Christian tradition (especially those found in Bible) is immediately construed as born of anti-Christian sentiment. For example, if a scholar decides that the Pastoral Epistles originated in the second century, he is often labelled as biased against Christianity, when, in reality, he's probably striving for the truth with standard historical and textual methodology. In the same way, if anyone on this board argues, say, that Josephus never mentioned James, the brother of Jesus, I bet you'd assume he was doing so out of a sort of spiteful hostility against your religion.

My own reasons are actually quite simple: I was raised as a very strong Christian, studying the Bible night and day in the years preceding my loss of faith. However, even after I turned to agnosticism, that enthusiasm and interest remained, still fueled by childhood indoctrination. Unlike many, I hold no resentment, but that I no longer believe what I have been taught does not mean I have forgotten the daily pounding of Christian teachings into my mind over the first twenty-three years of my life. And thus I continue my pursuit for Christian knowledge--except this time I do not shy away from naturalistic interpretations. I suspect a great many on this board find themselves in a similar situation.

Absolutely. Even the canonical Gospels should be given their due attention. However, they must be treated as what they are: mythical religious texts.

The short answer is a simple "no." For an explanation, I think Richard Carrier put it best:
Evangelical apologist Craig Blomberg argues that one should approach all texts with complete trust unless you have a specific reason to doubt what they say (The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, 1987, pp. 240-54). No real historian is so naive (see Bibliography). I am not aware of any ancient work that is regarded as completely reliable. A reason always exists to doubt any historical claim. Historians begin with suspicion no matter what text they are consulting, and adjust that initial degree of doubt according to several factors, including genre, the established laurels of the author, evidence of honest and reliable methodology, bias, the nature of the claim (whether it is a usual or unusual event or detail, etc.), and so on... Historians have so much experience in finding texts false, and in knowing all the ways they can be false, they know it would be folly to trust anything handed to them without being able to make a positive case for that trust. ...the implicit distrust of texts entails that belief in any nontrivial historical claim must be based on a whole array of evidence and argument. So it is no coincidence that this is what you get in serious historical scholarship.
--Did Jesus Exist? Earl Doherty and the Argument to Ahistoricity (2002)

Nuwanda

I've appreciated all the replys thusfar. In summary, most of you would agree that all ancient documents recounting a specific history must be received with caution, if received at all.

Second, any ancient text recounting stories involving the super natural must be rejected out right due to the limits placed on the Naturalist worldview - nature is a closed system. Therefore, the naturalist must conclude that there has been no evidence of miracles because any testimony of a said miracle is not considered. However, if a miracle were to happen, like "calling a new galaxy into existence" (Johnny Skeptic) it would have a corresponding scientific explaination which would remove it from the classification of "miracle" and therefore the nature vail need not be pierced.

I would only have one follow-up question from this summary (excuse me if I left out any points): Hypothetically, since I understand that the Naturalist must not consider any question of God with any hint of seriousness, but hypothetically, if God did exist what exactly would He have to do to convince you of His existence? (I don't seek to convince, only to clarify)

Since all historical record of miracles attributed to Him must be denied, and since any present day testimony is rejected out right, and since any cosmological event will find it's corresponding scientific theory, what would He have to do?

hatsoff

All texts have some value, even if it is insignificant. But yes, ancient documents must be "received with caution."

You're close, but I don't think you have quite the right idea, here. What one labels "supernatural" or "divine" may yet be compatible with naturalism. It is possible, naturalistically speaking, that Jesus did turn water into wine--just extremely, extremely implausible. However, since such claims have zero precedent, and moreover violate known laws of physics, historians (barring religious bias) reject them, for all practical purposes, outright. Still, nothing is absolute.

In my opinion, there is an impermeable epistemological barrier between religion and naturalism, and so any claims of supernatural intervention cannot ever be naturalistically verified. Doubtless some would disagree with me; you may well get a radically different answer to that question from every person here.

You must remember that the events aren't always rejected; rather, it is the divine explanation for those events with which naturalism finds such trouble. For example, many would not dispute that Paul wrote Galations, but no naturalist would attribute his writing thereof to God's inspiration.

Gamera

It's as easy (or as difficult) to deconstruct Thucydides or Heroditus as it is to decontruct Luke. The are all narrative and narratives, as Hayden White points out, are a form that comes with its own content (beginning, middles, ends, betrayals, reversals, comedy, tragedy, etc) -- as opposes to annals or chronicles, which lack narrative form.

I see no substantial difference between the gospels and other biographies from antiquity, except that the gospels have a religious agenda and other texts from the time have political texts. I think a political agenda is more likely to distort events than a religious agenda, and a religious agenda is more likely to supernaturalize events.

The mss history of the gospels is superb compared to Greek and Roman secular histories; but there was probably more motive and opportunity to redact the gospels for later religious agendas.

So basically, I find the NT narratives as reliable or as unreliable as the secular texts, depending on how you want to put it.

What I find irksome are detractors who use one standard to judge the historicity of the NT texts, and another to judge secular texts (or rather just assume the reliability of the secular texts while blissfully unawared of their problematic mss and political context). It's naive.