Clivedurdle

Another mistake on the internet to correct? Pharisees were very interested in practical justice - anti slavery, spirit of the law. It is xian propaganda "scribes and pharisees, hypocrites," that states the opposite of the truth.

Which leads to further questions about the purpose of the gospels.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...55129/Pharisee

ercatli

G'day. I see you come from the Mornington Peninsula, one of my favourite parts of the world. I spent time at Balcombe Army Camp way back when conscription was happening, and have been back to stay or visit in the area several times, including a quick visit to Mornington, Mount Martha and Flinders just a few weeks back while in Melbourne for a few days. Whereabouts are you from?

I guess it depends on what you regard as evidence and reasoned argument. My experience on forums like this is that people often argue round and round in circles ad infinitum, without anything being resolved, especially on topics like this. I don't really see that being very helpful, particularly as most people, myself included, don't have comprehensive enough knowledge to avoid using erroneous "facts" or making arguments that are actually wrong, or to identify the same in others' arguments.

So I have been trying a different approach. I defer to those scholars who do have the expert knowledge, and make my argument by quoting them. Building off the work of others is a necessary part of learning and of scholarship, and all of us do it all the time - see my post #192 to show_no_mercy about the Odyssey (towards the end).

People don't seem to like this approach, I guess because it presents less of a target, so they are left with besmirching the reputation and integrity of the scholars. So of course they point out that I'm not arguing. But no-one has yet convinced me that I should believe them or what they say more than I should believe the scholars and what they say.

So what is the stuff I discussed from the Charlesworth book, if it is not archaeology about an early source in John?

Thanks for your friendly response mate.

The Dagda

I don't think Jesus existed any more than Brian did personally. But them I am a bit Gnostic like that weirdly enough.

neilgodfrey

Have I answered all your questions or missed some? Let me know which ones I have missed.

But you don't have to "answer questions". Most are rhetorical. If you don't accept the logic of, or evidence cited for, what I am saying, tell me why.


Neil

ercatli

I can agree with that, though I think I'd phrase it this way: there's probably some misunderstanding here.

Dunno if I'd use the word "myth", but unlikely to be true, yes.

But this is the point, isn't it? I don't think Jesus is/was "fantastic", which infers a fantasy. I think on this occasion, the supernatural actually occurred. It occurred in a life lived by a person who was a regular person who breathed, ate, sweated, had emotions and died - a natural entity. But who also was something supernatural as well, at the same time.

Thus we can examine the natural aspects via history and determine if history indicates he really did exist, and what we can know about him. I think history says that, and the majority of scholars agree. And we can then assess the supernatural based on our historical assessment.

So, yes, most apparently supernatural events, or stories of them, did not actually happen, but Jesus is unique, because (IMO) it turns out to be true. No parallels with other untrue events are going to be all that relevent.

I know you don't believe that, but can you understand that I do, and your thought experiment doesn't really speak to my belief?

I wonder if you, and the others, realise what an amazing claim this is? Tens of thousands of scholars (historians, archaeologists, linguists, textual critics, anthropologists, theologians, sociologists, etc), a couple of hundred years, what scholars identify as no less then three "quests for the historical Jesus, archaeological digs, language studies, etc, etc, and you say "no appropriate historical research has been done'!

And how is this amazing conclusion reached? By saying that (1) all these scholars, all this investigation, has assumed or taken for granted the very thing they were investigating yet somehow they never noticed, (2) by saying that only historians (not all the other disciplines involved) can undertake the research (despite the fact that people here quote sceptics who have similar qualifications), and (3) by the enormous assumption of saying they're all christians and the enormous libel of accusing all these scholars, and the universities they work at, to be doing dishonest research, biased by their belief! And all this without any evidence of a worldwide two-century fraud, the scale of which would put The Da Vinci Code to shame!

I'll cop flak for this, but it sounds more like the way a Young Earth Creationist treats reputable biologists than "free thought and rationalism", and I think it is despicable. Please consider if you really want to suggest all this.

Au contraire mon ami, the absurdity is the enormous conspiracy theory that is required to justify not taking notice of the experts. I'd have to honestly say that this is the biggest thing I have learned from this discussion.

Best wishes.

* ercatli retreats into a distant mountain cave and waits for the tsunami to pass *

Doug Shaver

I agree that we should be consistently scientific in our analysis of all evidence pertinent to any historical question.

Steven Carr

Still not a shred of evidence from erclati.

He is still bluffing. He has only a pair of two's, but his 'experts' say it is a full house.

neilgodfrey

Just in passing, do you believe professors of biology and other competent scholars who say evolution is true?

Neil

ercatli

First, please note that all this discussion came about because I said (from memory) something like the historicity of the life of Jesus was supported by a small amount of archaeology. This is a pretty modest statement, and not key to my beliefs. But I am quite happy to defend it.

In itself, what you say above is correct, but don't you think that the scholars know what you have said? Surely that should give you a clue that the point is slightly different. I have suggested two things in support:

(1) There is a small industry on the internet arguing about whether Nazareth existed in Jesus' day or not. It isn't just academic, people think it's important because if they could show that it didn't exist, it would point out an error in the gospels and a reason not to believe them. I'm sure you've seen such arguments, in fact I bet I could find several threads on the topic right here on this forum. So I suggested that if that argument was valid, then the contrary would also be valid. If it is true that a lack of historical accuracy reduces the credibility of a document, then good historical accuracy at the very least makes it harder to make that argument. The main response has been to say that they don't agree with the Nazareth argument, which is fine, but the point is still valid for those who do believe it.

(2) Early documents (closer to the events) are more likely to be reliable, other things being equal, than later ones. This too is the basis for criticism of the gospels, John especially. So when archaeologists find John quite accurate about a number of locations and conclude that of the two main sources believed to be in John, the narrative source is early, that changes how we must view John. Not because he mentioned some actual places, as you and others keep on suggesting, but because it indicates the source is early.

I'm not sure if I inferred that genre was reliable on its own. If I did, then let me correct that impression. I think genre is one of many criteria historians and textual critics use.

And I am quite comfortable with the idea that they contain reliable history, plus "theological" reflection and other elements.

I agree totally, so you don't need to press me on this. That is not something I have the skills to do, which is why I read what the best scholars say and accept the consensus I find there. They of course do exactly what you say here, although my observation (and those of real historians) is that they do it more critically. For example, a historian friend of mine said:

"There are no documents for which the provenance has been more closely examined than the Gospels. Any textbook on the NT contains loads of stuff about where the Gospels came from etc. They have been examined far more rigorously than anything else. Historians use methods to try to get to the truth. My opinion is that they tend to be more sceptical about the Gospels than comparable documents."

But there are others here who need to be convinced of your statement "We need to apply the same standards re sources for the history of later periods to the ancient era." and understand that that includes the gospels.

I hope this has cleared up a few things. Best wishes.

neilgodfrey

Thanks for the response. I have read quite a few of "the scholars" in question and I do not resile from my statement. Many of those scholars are theologians first, and historians second. Many are priests, preachers, believers. That fact does not disqualify any of them from writing history, but they have an intellectual responsibility (I have rarely seen it lived up to) to make it absolutely clear to readers that their judgements are influenced by their personal faith. (If I were home now I'd be able to cite names, titles and pages.)

No no, your converse does not logically follow.

If A equals B,
then
not-A equals not-B

This is the logic of your argument and expressed this way I think you can see its error.

A judge may excuse a witness for a faulty memory, but accuse two witnesses if they agree too closely. The same in history. Faulty recollections are understandable and acceptable, but too close an agreement may well mean "cheating", or copying, and not necessarily a more reliable overlay of a narrative.

Your initial proposition is mistaken. Lack of historical accuracy (meaning setting details being wrong) can have many explanations. Much will depend on the extent of the innacuracies -- are they occasional slips or part of a pattern; are they excusable anachronisms and mistakes or something blatant, etc?

Your second proposition does not logically follow. Accuracy in setting of itself can never mean anything more than the author "got the setting right". Nothing more.

Your opening sentence here is confusing two different things. Yes, it is a truism that documents closer to a source of an event are to be preferred as a rule by historians.

But what were the authors of the sources recalling? Human events primarily or geographical setting? If the historian judges his source to be primarily expressing an interest in a human event, then he will forgive it if it makes some error of secondary importance to do with the time or place setting. I make errors in where I left or when I last saw things all the time. Well, sometimes at least.

Richard Dawkins in a recent publication described a psychological test where volunteers were asked to look intently at a movie and look for and count specific events in that movie. At the end, when asked if anyone had seen the gorilla waltzing across the scene in the middle of the action, many had to confess failure. They only saw what they were looking for. This is how we work. We tend to see (only) what we are looking for.

But if I was a novelist or movie producer who wanted to establish the veracity of a scene for my audience, I would go to great pains to be sure I got every detail of place, period-costume, customs, right. They didn't have movie producers then of course, but they did have literary hobbyists and professionals. Schools taught the art of creating realistic scenes in word pictures. I mentioned the personal letter genre in a previous post as one example of where this training came into effect.

Simply finding an accurate geographical setting means nothing about the historicity of the narrative, and although some scholars write in a way that implies this is not so in the case of the gospels, I have never seen it used as a criterion in any non-biblical topic of history. Literary frauds (diaries, telegrams, etc) are subject to scrutiny before being accepted as genuine. Detail of place and time is important, but it cannot of itself establish genuineness in non-biblical/non-canonical topics.

From what you have said it is clear you know this, but for some reason are attempting to make exceptions to the rule, or to say the rule is not really applicable and something else is sort of meant, in the case of the gospels.

You quote your historian friend:

This is a disingenuous and misleading claim. Note the author does not say that provenance has been determined and is beyond dispute, and a firm basis from which to make judgements. Nope, the reality is that provenance is discussed so much because no one knows what it was. It is all a matter of conjecture, some more persuasive than others, but still conjecture.

Elsewhere I quoted Robert Funk's Honest to Jesus:

"biblical scholars . . . have learned to live in a limbo between the heaven of the knowledge we possess and the hell of the ignorance we have taken oaths to dispel . . . by cultivating ambiguity . . ." (pp. 54-55).

Your quotation about the scholarly exploration of the provenance of the gospels would appear from the context in which you cite it to be a classical illustration of Funk's complaint.

Neil