Johnny Skeptic

At http://members.aol.com/SHinrichs9/rssrdeb.htm, a Christian says the following:

"Since the NT accounts were written while eyewitnesses were still around, the authors would have known if the accounts were real or not. This supports the view that Paul and his organization were an honest reliable group rather than some fraudulent propaganda team."

Readers, what are your comments about this claim?

Chris Weimer

It's a non sequitur. Paul didn't fit in with the pillars, the only people we can assume were eye-witnesses.

Codec

First its 40 years or so on, so the eye witness would be diminished in numbers.

Second, so what if they'd said the accounts weren't real? Unless they went and wrote their own accounts, how would we ever know?

James Brown

Could be looked at in different ways.

Assuming Paul's epistles were written while Jesus' contemporaries were still alive, then someone might have been able to make a fuss. However, Paul mostly wrote to people in far-off regions, who would be unable to verify claims about events that occurred in Jerusalem. Moreover, would they be motivated to verify the claims? See Richard Carrier's Kooks and Quacks in the Roman Empire to get a taste of how easily the comman man accepted dubious claims.

For the gospels, however, they were written decades after the events, which makes it less likely someone would stand up and say, "I was there and that's not how it happened."

Then again, perhaps that's exactly what happened. Pure speculation, I'll admit, but there must be some reason why, say, Rome became a Christian city and Jerusalem did not. Did the locals know something that far-off others didn't?

And even if someone did disagree with the NT claims, exactly how would they make this known? Put up a billboard? Write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper? Publish a book? Talk about it on their blog? Who's to say someone didn't denounce the claims but their efforts were suppressed/destroyed by politically savvy adherents at a later date?

And exactly what does it mean to know if an account is 'real' or not? A modern-day example: Alex Ross painted a graphic novel depicting Uncle Sam as an heroic action figure. So then, is Uncle Sam real? Well, we today know he's a symbol of the United States, an idealized embodiment of the country's principles, etc. So he's kind of real, but you'll have a hard time finding his birth records, voter registration cards, tax documents, etc. Is anyone taking the time to make sure that no one gets confused and think that Uncle Sam is an historical person? What if two hundred years from now a small core of Truly Faithful pray over the graphic novel and scour old newspapers for mentions of their savior, Uncle Sam?

And turn the question on its head: Joseph Smith had contemporaries, and they would have known if his claims were true or not, and that's during a period of hightened skepticism compared to first-century Palestine. Wouldn't they have ensured that Mormonism never took off? But it turns out that people did argue against Smith's claims from the very beginning, but that has had no bearing on the faithful. Not everyone from that time and place became a Mormon, obviously, but it doesn't take everyone to convert for a new religion to become established.

I'm always leery of "would've" statements. "If it was all lies, everyone 'would've' said something." Human history is hard to enough to figure out now without people importing hypothetical scenarios. My take is when someone makes a 'would've' statement, all they are saying is what they themselves would've done. Then they assume since they themselves are perfectly rational, then everyone would've done the same thing. And that's a position I'll never get on board with.

aa5874

Knowing whether the accounts were real or not does not determine that Paul and his organization were honest.

Many persons who know good and evil have chosen to do evil.

The NT contains many stories that appear to have been fabricated and were not seen by anyone. John 11:39, '.... Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, 'Lord, by this time he stinketh; for he hath been dead four days.

John 11:43-45, And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus ,come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus said unto them, Loose him and let him go.
Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him.

Could anyone have seen that event? The NT is not trustworthy. Paul and his organisation appear to be fictitious.

hatsoff

Well, there are a lot of stupid statements out there. I don't see much special about this one.

Gamera

I think the importance of Paul's relationship to Peter and James cannot be overemphasized as to the accuracy of the Paul's depiction of Jesus' claims about himself.

Specifically, there was a great deal of friction between Paul and Peter and James. Indeed, James sent his "agents" to counter Paul's teaching that the law didn't apply to gentile converts. Peter (briefly) joined the James' camp. So, one would expect that if Paul's writings made claims about Jesus that the other two disagreed with, they would have vigorously responded in their own epistles, saying Paul is wrong, Jesus was just a prophet, etc.

But no such epistles exist.

This suggest either that James and Peter in fact agreed with Paul's claims about Jesus, or their letters contra Paul were suppressed. The latter seems unlikely, since who ever wanted to suppress them would have had to have hunted down every copy throughout the known world. Just one surviving letter would debunk Paul. It's been 2000 years and no such letter has emerged.

My conclusion is Paul accurately depicted the claims Jesus made about himself, and Peter and James concurred on that (but disagreed with Paul on other matters)

This is not "evidence" that Jesus' claims about himself were true. There can be no real imperical evidence of that. But rather Paul accurate characterized Jesus's claims about himself, for what they are worth.

Johnny Skeptic

Yes, claims that God went out of his way to ensure that hundreds of millions of people would die without ever hearing. Will you please tell us what good a better covenant is for people who do not know about it?

Diogenes the Cynic

Paul made no claims about a physical resurrection. he made virtually no claims about a historical Jesus at all. He claimed that a "Christ" figure had "appeared" to some people but that's a long way from anything resembling the specific, historical claims made in the Gospels.

If Paul made no claim of a physical resurrection, and no claims about anything Jesus said when he was alive, then there would be no reason to expect the Pillars to disagree with him on those points. In order to pursue this angle, you would first need to demonstrate that Paul himself actually believed that Jesus was a historical person who died and was physically resurrected. Good luck with that.

Not that your argument would be a strong one in any case. There is no particular reason to believe that a couple of illiterate peasants heading up an obscure Jewish sect in Jerusalem would have the wherewithal or the faculties to publish and disseminate a bunch of epistles in a foreign language in foreign countries. There is also no particular reason to believe that the Paulines wouldn't have destroyed any such thng that did exist after 70 CE.

el creyente

This shit happens TODAY!

Lying Iraqi Woman

Here's the skinny: "In all of Iraq, Jumana Hanna was the bravest witness to the horror of Saddam's regime, telling the Americans of torture, rape, and mass murder. In Washington, Hanna became a potent symbol of Iraqi liberation, and the Bush administration brought Hanna and her children to the United States for their protection. Then the author discovered the really horrible truth."

Of course, the horrible truth was that she was making it all up. This was after a heart-rending story in The Washington Post, nine Iraqi officers falsely arrested on her testimony alone and New Jersey Supreme Court justices fawning all over her, saying things like ".....I found her story to be the most compelling and tragic I've ever heard." If the author of the article which appeared in Esquire hadn't have wanted to write a book about her experiences the true story may have never came out.

Was CNN reporting on every street corner 2000 years ago 24 hours a day? Were trained journalists investigating claims for books about Jesus? I find the above Christian view laughable.