Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Gamera · 04-15-2008, 01:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

To show that discrepancies do not add to the veracity of of any statement, I will refer to the so-called last words of the NT Jesus.

Matthew 27.46, "Now about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Mark 16.34, "And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani? which is being interpreted, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Luke 23.46, And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thine hands I commend my spirit, and having said thus , he gave up the ghost.

John 19.30, "When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished, and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.

Three different versions of the last words of Jesus, and even though two of them appear to be identical, these very two and indeed all of them may not be true and it is not known which of these have discrepancies.

But this is just the kind of thing that is subject to a witness' contructive memory (not to mention changes via sourcing and mss traditions). One witness remembers Jesus said A first and B second. Another witness says it's B first then A. The next witness doesn't remember A or B, but does remember C. None of this matters if all you care about is that Jesus said A, B and C.

I ask you, can you remember the words to a conversation you used (much less overheard) in order from a year ago -- even a very important conversation. I suspect if I asked you to recount that conversation a couple times, you give different accounts and orders yourselve -- much less if I asked different witnesses.

Gamera · 04-15-2008, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamera

I'm not arguing there aren't major discrepancies (though what determines a major discrepancy in the context is a thorny issue; depends on the purpose of the narrative). All I am saying that you would expect some discrepancies in accounts of the same event by different witnesses, so the fact that there are such discrepancies in the gospels is not an index of forgery or fiction, but the opposite.

But, it is not the discrepancies of the same event, in some cases, that indicate the veracity of the story, it is the parts that are identical.

Witness A. John got shot at 2 pm.
Witness B. John got shot at 3 pm.

In this case the discrepancies may not alter the fact or belief that John was shot. However, the discrepancies have now put some doubt as to when exactly the shooting occurred.

It certainly would. But if when he was shot isn't relevant to the inquiry (the suspect had access to shoot him from 1 pm to 4 pm) then the discrepancies aren't really major.

Gamera · 04-15-2008, 01:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solo

No, what I would expect is that the story to be corroborated. I would not make anything of the witnesses saying the same thing of an event until I had a cause. You follow ?

The issue is what it means to corroborate given the limitations of witness memory, and you clearly haven't thought that trhrough

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No, you would not expect that. But you would not expect either three out of four witnesses say the preaching tour lasted one year.

Depends. If one of the four witnesses was only there for one year, yes.

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The twistedness of the argument that that somehow the lack of agreement guarantees verity because too close an agreement may be be proven to be falsified, should be apparent to anyone with a thinking head.

What you find "twisted" is in fact empirically verified. Actual witness simply do not remember the same event the same way. So if witness testify to the same event the same way, it is safe to conclude they are not testifying from memory, but from some other prompt (like coaching, fraud, etc.)

Quote:

One cannot employ a theory of "constructive nature of memory" to support the facticity of gospels because you can explain both the textual agreements and disagreements with it.

One can, and I have. If the issue is witness credibility then discrepancies in details don't really go to anything, and indeed suggest a lack of coaching or fraud. Of course you can just avoid this issue by claiming the gospels are not witnessed events. What you can't do is argue that discrepancies indicate some defect in eye witness accounts.

Quote:

But you claimed something different, to wit:

Yep, I've made a number of claims on this interesting and complex issue.

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I would be the first one to take on someone who would argue that the casting of lots for Jesus' garments is a proof positive that Jesus was not crucified because an expert psychological testimony established that the fulfilment of Ps 22:18 in Mark is evidence of impaired cognitive function common among people suffering from complex partial seizures. Even if this pattern of fulfilled prophecy is consistent, and Mark seems to be even aware of it (14:65), the literary fabrications may well relate to a real event, of which Mark have had some reports and which he adapted to his purpose.

But I would not argue from some patently false general statement, which misapprehends the application of expertise to a concrete situation under scrutiny.

I wouldn't either. Which is why I didn't. I argued from the empirically verified position that truthful witnesses of the same event invariable remember the event differently, so different accounts in the gospels of the same event are not per se evidence of falsity, fraud or fabrication. There may be other evidence of that, but not in this context.

mens_sana · 04-15-2008, 03:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Random Evil Guy

so if there were no inaccuracies, the bible would have been historically fraudulent? not to mention, how does one go from there, to claim that the opposite would be true as well. meaning, if there are inaccuracies, somehow that implies it is historically accurate?

No, no, no — if there were no inaccuracies, it would be proof of coaching (or copying) and therefore fraudulent . . . BUT . . . seeing as there are inaccuracies, it proves it is not "historical," and therefore is fraudulent.
:Cheeky:

aa5874 · 04-15-2008, 03:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

To show that discrepancies do not add to the veracity of of any statement, I will refer to the so-called last words of the NT Jesus.

Matthew 27.46, "Now about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Mark 16.34, "And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani? which is being interpreted, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Luke 23.46, And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thine hands I commend my spirit, and having said thus , he gave up the ghost.

John 19.30, "When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished, and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.

Three different versions of the last words of Jesus, and even though two of them appear to be identical, these very two and indeed all of them may not be true and it is not known which of these have discrepancies.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamera

But this is just the kind of thing that is subject to a witness' contructive memory (not to mention changes via sourcing and mss traditions). One witness remembers Jesus said A first and B second. Another witness says it's B first then A. The next witness doesn't remember A or B, but does remember C. None of this matters if all you care about is that Jesus said A, B and C.

Of course it matters. To this day it cannot be determined if Jesus said anything at all, and there are four so-called authors with three different accounts.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamera

I ask you, can you remember the words to a conversation you used (much less overheard) in order from a year ago -- even a very important conversation. I suspect if I asked you to recount that conversation a couple times, you give different accounts and orders yourselve -- much less if I asked different witnesses.

Of course not. I would not be able to remember alot of the words and the order of the words.

Yet in the NT, The author of gMatthew wrote, not twenty-four (24) consecutive words of Jesus, but approximately two thousand four hundred (2400) consecutive words of Jesus in gMatthew chapters 5,6 and 7, and this author is estimated to have written no less than 30 years after the event.

Now this is incredible.

I wonder if the four officers ever read gMatthew chapters 5,6 and 7. If they had done so, maybe they could have launched an appeal, based on the assumption that it has been documented that an author of the NT recorded about 2400 consecutive words of the son of god, at least 30 years later, and by this Holy Book we swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Solo · 04-15-2008, 04:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamera

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solo

No, what I would expect is that the story to be corroborated. I would not make anything of the witnesses saying the same thing of an event until I had a cause. You follow ?

The issue is what it means to corroborate given the limitations of witness memory, and you clearly haven't thought that trhrough

Quote:

Gamera: Like I say, complex events (say three years in the life of an itinerant preacher) are very unlikely to be described by different witnesses exactly the same way.
Solo: No, you would not expect that. But you would not expect either three out of four witnesses say the preaching tour lasted one year.

Depends. If one of the four witnesses was only there for one year, yes.

And I suppose you think you thought that one through.

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The twistedness of the argument that that somehow the lack of agreement guarantees verity because too close an agreement may be be proven to be falsified, should be apparent to anyone with a thinking head.

What you find "twisted" is in fact empirically verified.

And you have read and understood the sentence to which you are reacting, right ?

Quote:

One cannot employ a theory of "constructive nature of memory" to support the facticity of gospels because you can explain both the textual agreements and disagreements with it.

One can, and I have. If the issue is witness credibility then discrepancies in details don't really go to anything, and indeed suggest a lack of coaching or fraud. Of course you can just avoid this issue by claiming the gospels are not witnessed events. What you can't do is argue that discrepancies indicate some defect in eye witness accounts.

Gamera, you are hallucinating: the discrepancy in the gospel "events" does not in any way guarantee that these are "witnessed" events, at any rate, in the conventional meaning of the word "witness". Many of the similarities in the pericopes come from straighforward copying of sources, to which then detail has been added or from which detail has been subtracted by later gospellers and editors of the gospels. The plurality of the gospel accounts does not point to plurality of independent eye-witnesses who remembered things a little differently. To think that way is soooo... naive and retrograde.

Quote:

Solo: But you claimed something different, to wit:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamera

In my view the "errors" and differences in the gospels are signs of veracity, not the opposite.

Yep, I've made a number of claims on this interesting and complex issue.

Seems like you want to tell me you have made some better ones.

Quote:

I would be the first one to take on someone who would argue that the casting of lots for Jesus' garments is a proof positive that Jesus was not crucified because an expert psychological testimony established that the fulfilment of Ps 22:18 in Mark is evidence of impaired cognitive function common among people suffering from complex partial seizures. Even if this pattern of fulfilled prophecy is consistent, and Mark seems to be even aware of it (14:65), the literary fabrications may well relate to a real event, of which Mark have had some reports and which he adapted to his purpose.

But I would not argue from some patently false general statement, which misapprehends the application of expertise to a concrete situation under scrutiny.

I wouldn't either. Which is why I didn't. I argued from the empirically verified position that truthful witnesses of the same event invariable remember the event differently, ....

You are being absurd but that's your business. I stick to common sense which says that if you have two accounts (or versions) of a single historical event, which fail to corroborate one another, then at least one is factually wrong.

Jiri

xaxxat · 04-16-2008, 05:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamera

Generally, you weigh the credibility of witnesses by listening to them answer questions. It is a complex determination.

Do the judges know about this extraordinary talent that you have? Surely you could reduce the court's backlog by pre-screening all witnesses and determining the veracity of their statements before trial...

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