Steven Carr

Which is an argument from silence.

And he uses argument from silences to help him establish this conclusion.

andrewcriddle

Arguments from silence i.e. arguments that if a claim was true then so-and-so would have mentioned it, are clearly sometimes strong arguments and sometimes weak arguments.

The argument that Paul did not date the death of Jesus to the governorship of Pilate just because he does not say so is IMO a weak argument.

The argument that the resurrection of Lazarus was not historically the reason why the Jewish leaders condemned Jesus to death, because there is no trace of this outside John is IMO quite a strong argument.

Andrew Criddle

Steven Carr

Casey claims 'The Synoptic Gospels are very short, so there is nothing inherently wrong in suggesting that some authentic traditions have been omitted from them and survived elswhere.'

So why is it a strong argument that something omitted from the synoptic Gospels cannot be an authentic tradition?

Or is this another case of Casey just making up whatever ad hoc rule gets him through that page, to be replaced in other pages by whatever ad hoc rule is needed to get him through that page.

The silence about Lazarus is part of the same silence Casey both scorns at when he says 'All this means is that Paul wrote epistles about the problems which he found in his (largely gentile) churches in the Graeco-Roman world, not an account of the life of Jesus, which the epistles take for granted. Consequently, they mention only a few main points, mostly when there was some point of controversy.' and uses when he claims 'His fate is not recorded because he was not an important figure.He does not turn up in Acts and he neither wrote nor figures in any epistle for the same reason'

So Casey both expects Lazarus to appear in Epistles if he was an important figure and expects the epistles to take for granted everything except 'a few main points'.

He doesn't expect them to mention Pilate, even if he was important, but he does expect them to mention Lazarus as he was important.

Casey uses arguments from silence,and also claims that ....arguments from silence are always perilous. This is not remarkable.'

Casey just uses ad hoc arguments. For example he claims that Jesus really did heal a person of a skin disease , because the story was translated from an Aramaic source. Yes, and Hitler really did write diaries, because they are in German....

AtheistGamer

I have thousands of posts all across the internet but I've never mentioned that I own a plastic cup. Therefore I must not own a plastic cup. *sips from his plastic cup*

hjalti

This post is clearly a forgery. If it were authentic, the author wouldn't add the bit about him sipping from his plastic cup, because the audience could simply see him sipping from his cup. But the forger has to give the reader the illusion of a real setting!

AtheistGamer

Exactly!

andrewcriddle

The Synoptic Gospels give quite a detailed account of the arrest trial and death of Jesus. If the controversy over the raising of Lazarus played an important role in the events leading to Jesus' arrest, then one would expect the synoptics to mention it.
I agree that the absence of any mention by Paul of Lazarus is not in itself a strong argument against the historicity of the account in John.

Andrew Criddle

James Brown

I would expect Lazarus to appear in Paul's epistles as an example of what happens when you are raised to life because of Jesus.

beallen041

Isn't a dead man coming to life a strong argument against historicity? Have these people never read Strauss? This sounds like someone is going back and rewriting Reimarus.

Toto

You would think so, but the historicists make arguments based on the prevalence of tales of faith healing and supposed resurrections today.