Jabu Khan

The Exodus.

andrewcriddle

Luke not Mark (and unsuccessful attempt to throw over cliff)

Andrew Criddle

Roger Pearse

Do we know that they did not? If not, does the above have any meaning?

To answer these questions, we need only ask what proportion of all literature written between 30 and 40 AD in the Roman empire (all of it) survives.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

DanBZ

Roger, absence of evidence (especially where one would expect evidence) is evidence of absence. One cannot use the fact that little literature survives to prove that an event with no other corraboration is true.

mens_sana

I'm not sure what you plan on proving. That the Bible is a history or science book? It isn't. That a book with errors in it somehow invalidates the faith that attends it? No, that doesn't work either. All you'll show is that the "doctrine of biblical inerrancy" is errant. That myth cannot have a historical foundation? Please reread the Iliad and a Schliemann biography. Why does the Sermon on the Mount have to involve a physical location? Why not just a "literary location"? Why do you say that Nazareth could not have existed just because there are no extrabiblical records? Livy tells us that Romulus ascended to 'heaven' while his Roman troops surrounded him. Do you believe Livy? Of course not. But Livy is a respected historian! Can't the gospels also contain some historical information, at least "accidentally" — especially since respected archaeologists are certain of the site? By the way, what is the biblical reference for Mary's ascension — and why do you think having followers is the same as being "worshipped"? Perhaps the goals of your talk are a bit wide. :devil3:

mens_sana

But one can use abrogation of natural law as evidence that an event did not take place — or, at least, that it did not take place exactly as described.

Keith&Co.

Hmmm. The original question was a difference between the bible as history and nonbiblical history.

Whether or not the walk of the dead saints was talked about, written about, sung from coast to coast in musical theatre in the first century, there is a distinct lack of any record of the event outside of the Bible. Whether it's a lack of any record, or a lack of any surviving record is a meaningless distinction at this point.
There is no historical corroboration of the biblical description of the event.
Any sort of 'the check was in the mail' suggestion that it MIGHT have had corroboration lost in the depths of time doesn't actually provide any corroboration.

It's more of an IOU for a secular reference.

Roger Pearse

Well, I'm afraid that the archaeologists will tell you otherwise. Such a proposed strategy relies on near-100% survival of data and near-100% retrieval of it.

I quite agree -- one must argue from what evidence there is --, although I don't quite see how that bears on the point here. But if little of the literature has reached us, can we really argue from the failure of much literature to reach us to show that therefore that literature did not exist?

We can argue, in our modern society, that when a crooked banker cannot produce the deeds to the land which supposedly covers his mortgage, that his inability to produce them is strong evidence that in fact no such property exists. But that's because we are awash with data. Whereas the only estimate for the survival of classical literature known to me (that of Pietro Bembo, endorsed by Nigel Wilson in our day) is that 99% is lost.

Since we know of only one literary text surviving from the entire Roman culture written between 40-50 AD, the fables of Phaedrus, such an estimate seems really rather reasonable, and perhaps optimistic. What historians wrote between 30-40? Velleius Paterculus was dead by AD 30, or so I am told.

Which reduces the proposition above to a statement that, if it wasn't written in our solitary text from a period, it didn't happen. This sounds very like nonsense, to me at least.

Just my two-pence worth, of course.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Malachi151

How, exactly, does finding evidence of earlier settlement on a place that is currently called Nazareth prove anything at all, other than proving that that location had prior settlement?

The question is "Nazareth". For all we know some random town decided to adopt the name the Nazareth around 100 CE.

The fact that there was something in that location earlier proves nothing at all. The question is about the NAME of the place, and the NAME of the place NEVER appears in the many catalogues of place names that we have covering the region.

There was a town that recently changed its name to "Dish" in order to get funding from Dish network. If someone comes along 1,000 years from now and determines that the town currently (then) called Dish had people living in it since 1700, does that mean that a town called "Dish" existed since 1700?

No, of course not.

gstafleu

I'm sure I will be rapidly corrected if I'm wrong here, but it is my impression that there is not one single historical document extant of a case where the bodies of dead saints rose from their graves and walked around the city. If it did indeed happen in this case, it would therfore be highly unsual, nay unprecedented (I have always wanted to get a "nay" into an argument).

So the absence of surviving documentation would not be a case of losing an obscure record of yet another dead-guys-walking event. It is not as if this would have been yet another boring case of the usual dead suspects getting up and doing their walkabout gig. No, it would rather have been a totally unique and no doubt shocking (if perhaps not awing, given the no doubt advanced state of saintly decay) happening.

The chances that all documentation of such an event would have been lost in a relatively well documented era (we know e.g. quite a bit about people like Herod, Herod, Herod and Herod, not to mention and Pilate) must be seen as vanishingly small. It can be compared to losing all documentation of the 9/11 attack. So in this particular case the absence of evidence is most definitely evidence of absence.