Dargo

A 4th century Christian is quoting a 3rd century Christian who is allegedly quoting a 1st century pagan author. If you had a 10th century Muslim quoting a 9th century Muslim allegedly quoting a 7th century Christian, wouldn't you be a little bit skeptical? We unbelievers look at all supernatural claims with equal skepticism.

Skeptical

Not to mention that the actual dates of Thallus are unknown since what little evidence we have for the dates of his writings disagree by centuries. Quoting "52 A.D (C.E.)" is nothing more than a WAG (Wild Ass Guess), it is quite likely either he wrote much earlier than this or much later. (see Carrier's analysis, Carrier leans toward the latter)

On top of this, Thallus is not "quoted", since what he is reported to have said is only a vauge reference to an eclipse and it is not even clear that Thallus was talking about the gospel's "darkening of the sun" in the first place.

No world wide eclipse is mentioned for this time frame by any other author from any non-Christian source, which means flatly that it did not occur. Period. That's not even going into the question of whether an eclipse during that time would have violated the laws of nature, even if a "miracle" had occured we would have a lot more sources that mentioned it. (even assuming that Thallus wrote about it for this time period, which as noted is extremely doubtful)

And for the record, triple hearsay not subject to any exception and violates best evidence rule. Extraordinarily weak evidence, inadmissable in any US court. Obvious, but heading off any further "court" references.

Julian

The ones who do not have too much of an agenda and do not report miraculous events as though they were factual. Caesar's writings are quite good but it must be remembered that he wrote mostly to promote himself, so there is some evident bias. He also reports some non-sense but much of what he writes can be corroborated from other contemporary sources. He is better than the gospels but still leave a lot to be desired.

I like a lot of medieval chroniclers, especially those of the crusades. They were surprisingly honest about what happened even if they present it in the viewpoint of a medieval christian.
Others have responded to this so let me just add the most damning strike against them. They are contradictory without the use of apologetic, mental contortions, misrepresentations and outright lies. No, they would never do as witnesses, any lawyer could discredit them in a heartbeat.

Notice the bias you reveal here: "As a christ follower..." So you need to be a christ follower before you can believe the gospels? Doesn't that seem a bit backwards to you? It's like the old slip, "I'll see it when I believe it."

Sorry, but your standards are simply not high enough for someone who doesn't already believe.

Julian

Nuwanda

This one is interesting. So you won't accept testimony of a miracle as evidence of a miracle, plus you would discount any historian who did report a miracle. So in other words, miracles, by definition, are outside the realm of natural science (otherwise they would not be miracles); so labratory science cannot prove them. The only other avenue we have are testimonies. But, as you said, we must not believe any testimony of a miracle.

Do you agree that this is circular reasoning?- Miracles do not exist, therefore testimonies of miracles are false, therefore miracles do not exist.

This is the typical reasoning against miracles as set forth by Robert Green Ingersoll in 'Why Am I Agnostic.' He wrote at a time when the classic Newtonian argument for natural law as a closed system was popular. However, since the time of Einstein, physics has openned up the universe to endless possibilities. It seems closed minded to presuppose all claims of miracles to be false based on little more than atheist/agnostic philosophical dogma. You're perfectly free to stick with Newton if you like, but a fair, modern, sckeptic would keep an open mind to the possibilities of miracles.

Julian

Okay, you're not quite following this. A report, i.e. a witness, is not enough to prove a miracle. We have people today who see ghosts, alien visitors, bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster and President Bush making coherent statements. Are we to believe them all just because they claim it? Obviously not. For extraordinary claims we need extraordinary evidence. Give me a supernatural event under controlled circumstances. Until that happens I shall continue to view the universe with a rational mind and a skeptical eye. My mind is open but not so open that my brains fall out. If you tell me that you have a tree in your backyard, I would believe that without any further evidence as it is a very reasonable and commonplace event. If you tell me that it floats three feet off the ground and sings christmas psalms in a screechy voice, I'm afraid that I shall be needing more evidence, much more evidence. "A fair, modern, skeptic" does keep an open mind toward all things, but he requires evidence commensurate with the claims. I wish everybody would be like that.

Also, Einstein's theories did not open the universe up to "endless possibilities." Many new theories, especially quantum mechanics, have shown that a purely deterministic concept of the universe may be unrealistic. I do not understand what you see in modern science that somehow allows one to multiply fish on command.

Julian

Nuwanda

The floating tree part was funny, good form. I don't think I'm missing it here. I simply believe your rational against miracles to be circular, and you have not demonstrated why it isn't. Nor have you produced an example of an ancient historian you claim to put full 'faith' in.

Your new argument against miracles calls for a controlled environment under survey in order to verify it as a miracle. A very scientific approach, which is fine but I already conceeded that science will probably not give you proof of a miracle in this manner for the same reason evolution cannot be measured in this way. And not to get off topic, but if you applied these same rules to evolution - "controlled environment" "eyewitness" much of the theory is easily disputed. The natural defense is that evolution requires millions of years to play itself out and prove itself, despite the astronomical odds against such.

Applying that defense to miracles, you cannot, with any authority, rule out miracles until you have every last witness or recorded account of miracles and scrutinize them according to historical analysis not classroom science labs.

You also argue from a position of natural law. Sure you can trust in what is normal, like your tree example, but that does not rule out the improbable just because the numbers are against it. For example: Do you doubt that it is possible on your first try to roll 3 dice and have them all land on 4? The odds of this happening on the first try is 1,635,013,559,600 to 1.

Nuwanda

For all the posts attacking Biblical historicity: It was my fault. I only mentioned in passing the Biblical witness, I did not want the topic of this thread to chase that never ending bunny. There are plenty of other threads addressing each of your claims. I'll go there to argue your points.

Nuwanda

Okay fine. Which of the ancient historians do you approve of based on your list.

Julian

I think I already stated that none of them deserved full 'faith.'
Well, you're wrong. Evolution happens in labs every day all over the world. It has been hypothesized, a theory was formed, it was then predicted and, finally, observed. If you could do the same for a miracle, outside of a lab, that would certainly convince me. The odds of evolution happening are obviously 1. Not a good analogy.
I can and I do. What if I say that I have magical fairies living in my house. The are neon green and speak only backwards. You cannot completely, totally rule out that it is true, therefore you should be open to the idea. The same goes for any other crackpot story I can come up with. You see your dilemma here? Using your rules, one would have to accept, or at least be open to, every possibilty and thought. It doesn't make any sense.
Your math is also faulty. Rolling three dice and having all three come up on 4 gives you odds of 6^3 (or 216) to 1.

Besides, probablity has very little to do with it. The improbable happens all the time if it is given enough chances to happen. Like, say, the lottery... Which still doesn't contradict the laws of physics.

Julian

Skeptical

I'm not sure what you mean by "approve". I don't "approve" of any of them if your asking which ones do I think are beyond reproach. If your asking which writers are more likely to be factually accurate than the unknown authors of the gospels, that is an entirely different question.

Like I said, all ancient historians likely fail some of these criteria. Pliny is at least someone we can locate in history, if you want a list of some that meet more of the criteria than the unknown gospel authors, a few off the top of my head are:

1) Thucydides
2) Tacitus
3) Livy
4) Herodutus

As I said, all of them probably fail some of the criteria in some ways, but they at least pass criteria 6, they are known persons who can be situated in a particular historical context. This allows us to do some analysis for their background and potential biases. Without knowing who the author of a work is and being able to situate them in a social context, that is impossible.

I'm not going to undertake an analysis of each of them on each point, that is OT and a waste of time. I'm not sure what exactly what the point would be in any case.

If your trying the old "if you believe these authors then why not believe the gospels" line don't waste your time. It's a false dichotomy and its tired and played out.

It's not an either/or question of "if these authors are reliable then these others must be reliable too", that is what is commonly known as the fallacy of the excluded middle. Any writer on any subject is open to question, there is a gradient going from the completely unreliable to the almost surely reliable on most facts. Since the gospel authors are unknown, we have no original copies, the fragments we have show evidence of re-writing certain passages, the stories are unverifiable, the stories speak of fantastic occurences that are not seen today and the stories have some parallels with earlier and contemporaneous stories that almost everyone agrees are mythical, this puts them toward the bottom of the sliding scale from an EVIDENTIARY standpoint.

They may speak volumes from a religious standpoint, that is an entirely different question and it is usually why believers take issue with this analysis. Saying the gospels fail on an evidentiary basis says nothing about whether they "speak to you" religiously or not. That is up to you. All I can tell you is from an objective analysis, they do not withstand critical analysis as historical records. You can consider what the role of faith would be if they did on your own time.

Other ancient writers probably fall between the scale of the gospels and the middle, recent works of known origin and verifiable facts fall towards the top but even then are not beyond reproach. We are consigned to live in a probabalistic world.

If the question is then, "what parts of these historians should we believe?", then the answer is those parts that are mundane or verifiable through archeology or subsequent events. The idea that Alexander road a horse is mundane, he might not have but so what, who cares. The idea that Alexander conquered the entire known world is not mundane, but subsequent events would be impossible if this weren't true and we have archeological evidence to support it. The idea that Alexander was the son of a god is not Mundane. Even though it was not an unheard of claim in the ancient world, the ancient writers tended to believe or report lots of things we now believe were supersitions or based on ignorance. Therefore, absent a whole lot of additional evidence, no reason to believe those sorts of claims.

I will close by saying that any ancient claim to a "miraculous" event by any ancient author is automatically suspect and rightly considered highly dubious. No one gets a free pass just because they might be reliable on other accounts. So don't bother posting excerpts from any of these authors about miraculous events, I'm aware of them and no, they don't deserve us giving them credence any more than the stories in the gospels.