ksen

Right, I mean there are NO examples of non-Christian historians/researchers covering stuff up or making things up out of whole cloth. . . correct?

graymouser

Of course Christians have a "place at the table" in research of the period. However biased their work may be, it should be judged as any such work should be, on how it relies on sound evidence and understanding of the historical record. You can't just level a grand ad hominem at all doctrinal Christian researchers of the Biblical era. Good research is good research, and bad research is bad research. (Now, I think they'd have to be in cognitive dissonance to maintain orthodox Christianity and do honest historical work on the period, but stranger things have happened.)

judge

If doctrinal Christians study Christian origins they seat themselves at the table. Unless you own all the seats :devil1:



Who is "we"? IIDB?

Actually millions of people have proved the truth of Christ's teaching. Christ invited people to empirically prove it for themsleves, in John 8:31-32

The historicity of individual events may be another matter.

People who think differently to oursleves have nothing of value to add, but they can help us become even more entrenched in our own dogma.

Been an awful boomerang for western civilisation, that one!

Again, who has the power to stop investigations? The KGB? :devil1:

If lucky they might drop one debilitating dogma and take up another.

Steven Avery

Or somehow missing the whole region of Arabia when they try to declare their 'historical' conclusion that they have looked everywhere and yet there is 'no archaeological evidence for the Exodus'.

Or somehow excluded the Bible's excellent geography and historicity when they struggle to declare that Nazareth was non-existent in the 1st century. And they cannot even come up with a coherent theory of its supposed non-existence and quick (re)emergence as a Jewish priestly-refuge town.

Or claimed that the Bible references to the Hittites were really only to some local Canaanite tribe that was unrelated to the Hittite kingdom .. in order to hand-wave the fact that archaeology demonstrated the Bible as true after skeptic harumphs.

(I am only taking from the last week .. this could go on and on.)

Shalom,
Steven

Jack the Bodiless

We have already discovered the fact that the Bible is false (to put it bluntly: it contains statements that are true, statements that are unverifiable, and statements that are false). So how could it be "discovered to be true" (in the sense that you seem to be implying: i.e. inerrant)? How could it be both errant and inerrant?

Inerrancy is about as absurd as its logical opposite would be (Jerusalem never existed, Israel never existed etc: everything mentioned in the Bible is assumed to be false). Nevertheless, a person committed to either extreme position might have a useful contribution to make.
Meanwhile, your evasion of the Flood-dating issue is indeed going on and on and on. A well-known phrase regarding pots and kettles comes to mind.

ksen

Please define "methodological naturalism?"

Is "methodological naturalism" even open to the possibility of supernatural events happening? Or does it a priori reject supernaturalism?

Riverwind

This is not the Peter Kirby I have been familiar with from the past...

Anyway, what is a "doctrinal Christian"?

Why can one not separate their faith from their historical inquiries?

It seems to me that those who have "faith" are in a perfectly good position for biblical research. "Faith" means that they do not need "proof".

I, personally, find it absurd to reject texts up front and decide based on our interpretations of archaeological data, etc., that the authors of those texts must have assuredly been incorrect.

aa5874

Another point, grossly overlooked, is that some doctrinal Christians expect to be rewarded handsomely, with eternal life and bliss, some even claim to be in contact with the character whose body was discovered missing according to the Bible.

It is absurd and even laughable for a person to claim to investigate the historicity of Jesus while they pray to him and even claim that Jesus talks to them everyday.

Doctrinal Christians represent the worst case of conflict of interest in history.

gurugeorge

I think that (if they are logically consistent) they are self-ejected from the historical study of Christian origins, since their worldview is necessarily supernatural and therefore cannot wholeheartedly indulge in the type of background acceptance of a physical universe upon which the study of history (as an objective study interested in the facts regarding physical events such as battles, economic exchanges, sayings, writings-down, etc., etc.) must necessarily rely.

It's not that Christians can't accept the materialist story, it's that they can't rely on it fully like the historian naturally will - at any moment there might be some supernatural "intrusion" into that realm of laws and rules, and there's no way of telling beforehand where or when that supernatural element might appear. With the doctrinal Christian, "all bets are off" so to speak, and that's no basis for doing history (or science of any sort, for that matter).

This doesn't mean a Christian can't be a good historian (or scientist for that matter), but while they are being a good historian (i.e. working solely within the terms of materialist laws and rules), they are not at that time, in the same breath, being a Christian with full acceptance of the possibility of the supernatural that being a Christian necessarily entails.

Of course most Christians aren't logically consistent in this way, so you get the weird spectacle of Christians fighting tooth and nail a rearguard action over minutiae that might just show a glimmer of possibility that some sort of actual living, historical person called "Jesus Christ", no matter how paltry the figure, must have existed; because of course already, long ago, the kind of historical proof that would have been necessary to show, in a true historical investigation, that the full-blown "Jesus Christ" of the gospels had existed (independent attestation of someone creating quite a stir in Palestine roundabout that time, working miracles, being crucified to the attendance of unusual and physically speaking incomprehensible meteorological phenomena, etc.) is wanting.

What's the point of such mummery? It's because doctrinal Christians are falling between two stools. There never has been the kind and degree of historical evidence that would be needed to show the existence of the full-blown Jesus of the gospels (particularly taking into regard the Humean maxim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence). Fair enough, one might say, one can still believe in Him in the absence of such evidence (it might after all have disappeared or been lost for some reason). The consistent doctrinal Christian would have to take this position and say "hang history, I believe in Him despite the absence of good evidence"; but because many doctrinal Christians are part of a culture in which doing objective history is a respected pastime, many feel the necessity to show some objective evidence of something, no matter how vaguely and poorly related to the full-blown god-man of the gospels.

Amaleq13

What Peter has written applies equally to any alleged scholar (Christian or atheist) who refuses or neglects to set aside personal preferences in his/her consideration of the evidence. That there are more Christian scholars making the error Peter described says more about the make-up of the population than anything else, IMO. There are certainly examples of non-Christian scholars who allow their personal preferences to unduly influence their consideration of the evidence but they just as certainly cannot be said to be sufficient in numbers to make a serious difference in the "general consensus".

That Peter only specifically mentions Christian bias shouldn't distract from the actual point of the OP though I can see where it might be taken so personally by those most obviously guilty of the described infraction that they would completely miss that point. :angel: