luvluv

Perhaps if you read the 700-plus pages leading up to these statements, your questions would be answered?

In this thread I'm really not seeing much disputing Wright's methods or arguments, only his conclusions. Is he not worthy of respect simply he thinks the Ressurection is possible, and that's a cultural and philosophical no-no?

Vinnie

lubvluv, you keep throwing out variations of the "argument via book" tactic.

Someone who has read the books please state the following three:

Tom's dating of Early Christian writings (all of them). What books does he use? Does he accept the two source theory?

I don't need the episltes really, just GThomas, the four Gospels, Q if applicable. Also is John dependent or indepednent?

Authorship: Does he accept traditional authorships? If so all or which ones?

Reliability: On what grounds does he argue the Gospels are basically reliable? Rabbinic transmission a) is disproven by a synopsis, abd b) doesn't apply to the passion anyway.

I think an argument for "reliability" (in a VERY general sense) can be made for the transmission of pre-Gospel pericopes and teachings. The exact words and nuance were not preserved even here though so "relaible" in what sense? But for the most part Jesus teachings were handed down with variations. In most cases we simply can't recover the exact saying. But most of them are nothing like what we see in the Passion or Infancy narratives. They also developed independently.

basically I also note that Wright reconstructs a mentally insane portrait of Jesus. For example, suppose, without any Christian baggage, one of your friends did the two following things

1. Claims to be God, God's Son and Speaks on Behalf of God.

2. Man also claims he is a special agent, pre-ordained from eternity past who has to go commit suicide and singlehandedly die for the world's sins and inaugurate a new era in the universe.

Such a man would be viewed as bonkers and locked away today. If you think you are God, you are not. On historical grounds, I see Tom Wright as offering the world a mentally retarded image of Jesus as none of the miracles (aside from placebo ones) can be proven on historical grounds. If Tom Wright is right Jesus was nots. Maybe thats why his family tried to detain him in Mark. Maybe thats why he was acccused of being a drunkard. Maybe thats why he was accused of casting out spirits by the Power of Beelzebub. Maybe thats why Judas betrayed him. Maybe thats why he was actually crucified. I tend to doubt all this though.

Vinnie

luvluv

Vinnie, I'm not engaged in any argument by book. I'm asking for opinions, and trying to gauge the familiarity of this forum with the extended case of their opposition. Again, for the points I intended this argument to be about, Wright would be an ally to your position (which, IIRC, is for some kind of Historical Jesus).

But when Vork et. al describe NT Wright in some rather dismissive tones, I wanted to know if this was because of Wright's use of evidences and arguments or because of Wrights philosophical presuppositions don't jibe with scholastic "orthodoxy" (regarding the impossibility of miracles, etc.)

In short, methinks thou dost protest too much.

To all

Again, I'd appreciate it if you folks did us the favor of divulging your level of training and/or expertise in the fields involved. I've noticed that there are a lot of "internet experts" out there who really have no formal education in the fields in which they proclaim expertise. Not that this will disqualify the position of any knowledgeable person (I find many of Layman's arguments rather convincing, despite the fact that he wears his laymanship on his sleeve). But if anyone is going to make a dogmatic statement that a scholar in his field is "wrong", that person should display his credentials to make such a statement, and/or show why he believes said scholar is wrong.

Bernard Muller

Greg wrote Greg, this is not my quote!!!
:banghead:

Anyway, on this page, I spent some time into analysing the business about resurrection (as understood in the 1st century) and I responded to a major argument from N.T. Wright which I got through Layman.
Open that page, and then search on > resurrection < to get at the start.

Best regards, Bernard

Family Man

If history is defined as the study of natural, human events that happened in the past, and miracles are defined as supernatural events, how can miracles be considered historical events? Please note, luvluv, that this argument does not consider miracles to be necessarily impossible -- that is a typical theistic strawman. But they are outside the realm of historical study. Thus, the resurrection can not be said to be a historical event. It may be a real event, but that is a matter of faith, not of historical conclusion.

There has to be standards for making analysis. Not all claims made in ancient texts are equally valid, and one of the decisions scholars routinely make is to discount tales of the supernatural. (There are other, more worldly, claims that are frequently discounted also.) This has nothing to do with "scholastic orthodoxy". It has everything to do with the nature of the subject matter being researched.

In other words, if Wright is using the supernatural claims of the Bible to support his positions, he is not making a historical argument. Not having read Wright, I'm not about to say that's what he's doing. But as a knowledgeable amateur, I am comfortable saying that the resurrection is not a historical event. I'm just not going to say that it definitely didn't happen either.

luvluv

Family Man:

But this seems a rather arbitrary and nonsensical requirement unless one is convinced that miracles are either impossible, infrequent, or unimportant. If the historian grants that miracles are possible, that they can be evidentially supported, and that they can play a substantial part in human affairs, why would he think he could leave them out of his inquiry into the past and come up with anything like an accurate picture of what has actually happened?

Consider this scenario. Suppose a man had claimed to be capable of parting the the Atlantic Ocean and walking across it to England. Thousands of newscameras and reporters showed up, as well as millions of eye-witnesses. To their shock and awe, the man actually was able to perform the event. The Atlantic Ocean actually parted, and within a few months, the man actually walked through the "partation" and reached England. Now, let us suppose that this miracle was not only recorded in it's entirety, it was also documented by millions of eye-witnesses and vetted by hundreds of scientists, none of whom could find a plausible naturalistic explanation for the event. Let's say, in other words, we had a bonified, documented case of a supernatural occurance. Should this event be recorded in history books or not? Obviously this event would have a massive affect on the beliefs of billions of people throughout the world. History would suddenly record philosophers and scientists of all stripes giving up their beliefs in supernaturalism. Now, would it be good historical scholarship to ignore the video-tape and testimonial evidence of the Atlantic Ocean parting and instead propose "naturalistic" counter-explanations for this sudden ressurgence of belief in the supernatural?

The exclusion of the supernatural from historical consideration is simply ridiculous unless the exclusion is made on the basis of the philosophical impossibility of the miraculous. If the historian admits that the miraculous is possible, yet miraculous occurances can be ignored, then that historian has essentially given up on giving an accurate representation of what has happened in history.

I can understand the need for methodological naturalism in science, but why in history?

I haven't read any of his books myself, but in listening to some of his speeches and reading some of his articles, he seems to be using historical evidences (as he sees them) to support the supernatural claims of the bible, not the reverse.

Toto

luvluv

First of all, I am not a professional historian. But I feel that I can identify logical fallacies and bad arguments.

The problem with your first statement is that, according to the Amazon reviews, in order to really appreciate this 700+ page book, you have to have read the preceding two books in the series. From what I have read of Wright, he likes to overwhelm the reader with verbiage - well written verbiage, but still overwhelming, with a lot of appeals to "this must have been true." I think it is a little disingenuous of you to hint that there is some answer to any question that one might have in the preceding 700+ pages. Have you read it? Is in impossible to say definitely that he supports his conclusiona and solves any problems? Is it impossible to summarize?

The problem with your second statement is that some of the preceding comments have in fact disputed Wright's methods. I don't think that anyone here has stated that since Wright accepts the historical resurrection of Jesus that his opinion on whether the apostles thought that Jesus was bodily resurrected is not worthy anything. I would accept that a Bishop in the Anglican Church is under some compulsion to support traditional Christian doctrine, and look at whatever else he had to say.

Steven Carr

I quoted Wright and explained why he was wrong, or at least , asked for clarification of what I see as problems in what he wrote.

What more do you want?

For example, when wright said ''Furthermore, had they been attempting to speak of continuity and discontinuity between the present body and the risen one within the framework of biblical reflection common to mainstream first-century Judaism, they could have reached for an obvious solution, based on Daniel 12: while the present body remains non-luminous, they could have had the risen body shining like a star.', I pointed out that shining had already been done at the Transfuguration, so why was wright laying that down as a red herring.

I haven't noticed a single defense by you of Wright's claims , except to note the number of pages in his book. Presumably if Wright's book was only 600 pages long, there would be no evidence for the resurrection, as the fact that he managed to get to 700 pages is your only argument so far.

Toto

Isn't this a good argument against the idea that Jesus performed miracles and rose from the dead? If there actually had been a verified resurrection, why was the Christian movement so small? Why is there so little mention of it in the first century? Why did not every resident of Jerusalem immediately convert to Christianity? Why did Christianity stay so small and only grow at the rate of other new religions?

luvluv

Well, sue me for proposing the radical idea that in order to dismiss a person's arguments you might actually be required to first read them. I don't know where I picked up such a silly idea. I'm sure that when you are asked in a debate for your opinion on how Wright's work impacts your opinion, everyone will accept "Wright's books are too long and wordy" as an intellectually satisfying rebuttal to Wright's conclusions.

You, my friend, have obviously not been to an Anglican church lately.