Tercel

Datheron,

But is any of that important? What makes me a Christian is not that I believe the Bible correctly states the size of an army in a battle, or that the number of angels present in some event was exactly as stated. I don’t even need to believe there was any battle or that there were any angels present. What makes me a Christian is my belief that Jesus was ressurrected from the dead as proof that he is the Son of God. The trustworthiness of the Bible in general is not really relevant therefore: only the trustworthiness of the parts which deal with Jesus. Hence why the example of Luke/Acts is so important. If the writer is an talented historian to the degree that he can accuracy record hundreds of details which are all but incidental to the story, then we can surely rest absolutely assured that he got the central points of the story accurate as well. The degree of effort that much have gone into the recording of some of these details is astounding, and if the writer puts that level of effort into researching the background details of his story how much more effort did he put into portraying accurately the important events of his story?
It’s not something that can simply be waved away. The archeologist William Ramsay of the late 19th century was the first to really investigate Luke’s accuracy. He began it in an attempt to prove Luke’s story completely false, but after finding Luke accurate in over 20 details he declared Luke one of the best historians ever, and became a Christian.

I am no Homer expert, but my understanding is that it is thought that the core events of Homer’s stories are true (I understand archeologists have located Troy) and that Homer (or whoever) merely made them more interesting by adding gods etc in to make a good story since he was (as I recall) a storyteller.

But of course they didn’t have radio, or any other forms of mass media. They had to rely on person to person communication which is a bit different because you can ask questions of the person who is telling you things.

But why would you write something like that? Answer: You wouldn’t. No one is going to go to the effort required (and there was significantly more effort involved in ancient times when they didn’t have the internet or other mass media at their fingertips to do the research for them) to write an extremely accurate historical account only to stick a made up story on the end of it. If their aim is to write an as accurate history as possible then that’s what they’ll do, and if their aim is to write a made up story then that’s what they’ll do.

I see. So perhaps Luke visited every one of the locations he wrote about, to get a feel for their atmosphere and customs and to research the names and titles of the rulers at the time he was going to set his story. Perhaps he travelled half-way across the Roman Empire doing this information gathering in order to get the details of his story as accurate as possible. But he actually never ever bothered to do any research whatsoever into the important parts of his stories. Or perhaps he knew the central parts of his story were false and he was writing his books to try and make them sound reasonable.
I see...

I’ve simply been concentrating on Luke here because it’s the most historically impressive and testable of our sources, but of course we still have the other three main Gospels, Pauls statements eg 1 Cor 15:1-8, and the various statements of the rest of the NT writers.

I had a browse: I must say I don’t think much of the theist’s arguments, although he does seem to be an inerrantist so that could explain it.
Anyway, so far as your point goes, Price seems to be an extremist. He says he thinks the Jesus Seminar are too conservative, and that is saying a lot since the Jesus Seminar comprises many of the worlds more radical scholars.

In the dialogue Price seems to simply state that the parallels between Jesus and archetypal mythical figures is very strong. Is this simply an argument from his own authority? Given he’s as extreme in his opinions as he is, does such an argument actually count for anything?
Anyway, if you are really interested in that sort of argument, I am given to understand (though I have not read them myself) that a book titled 'The Ritual Theory of Myth' by Joseph Fontenrose and especially an unpublished (and probably unobtainable) PHD thesis by the famous archeologist J.Z.Smith called 'The Glory, Jest and Riddle' do a thorough job of shredding the arguments put forward by Sir James Frazer (The founder and champion of the archetypical parallels).

I personally believe that all the apocryphal gospels (the debateable Gospel of Thomas included) are dependant on the canonical gospels.

I don’t think we need to do any falling back on the apocryphal gospels. The canonical ones are quite good enough. It’s merely that if you’re going to (unfairly) not allow the use of the Bible as evidence for Jesus, then the apocryhal stuff is still there.

Say what? The Church “picked” only that which it could trace to the apostles or the companions of the apostles. Unsuprisingly these coincided with the earliest of the Gospels. Others like the Gospel of Peter are the products of second century Gnosticism.

I’m not blaming you. I’m simply amazed that someone could actually write what that guy wrote as he clearly should know better.

If I can establish that you intended to accurately convey those accounts and that you had to ability to accurately record those accounts then I can conclude that when I read your work I am indeed reading an accurate recording of those accounts. Whether I believe the accounts themselves is another matter.
In the case of UFO’s, I take the pragmatic position that -since my belief or disbelief in them is not going to effect my life in any significant way in the forseeable future- I don’t care. They might, they might not and I don’t care beyond a mild curiousity which is very mild indeed so far as to be nonexistent. As a kid I used to be fascinated by UFO stories and was fairly convinced they existed, but it’s something I’ve grown out of and now I don’t even care enough about their existence to even look at the evidence.

The apocryphal literature in general is mostly late second century pretty suspicious looking stuff. Calling it “records” is a bit generous. As your quote pointed out, the main use of the apocryphal gospels is not for their factual value but to tell us what some of the unorthodox sects of Jews or Christians believed in the second and third centuries AD.

Why? Unorthodox Christian sects wrote their own gospels. Orthodox Christians had their four main gospels. No one else particularly cared as Christianity was just seen publically as another of the many Jewish cults.

Why? Rare does not mean non-existent.

Nowdays, writing a book about your experiences is something that is quite often done. But in an age where the printing press didn’t exist and illiteracy was comparitively high, people people hardly decided to write books at the drop of a hat. Unless you were a historian or religious writer (those with religious training tended to be more highly educated as they needed to understand and interpret their scriptures etc) you probably talked to people about what you saw rather than wrote it down. Oral traditions were a lot more common.
Of Jesus’ onlookers, the main groups that were literate and likely to write books were the Jewish Pharisees and Scribes. The Gospel’s portray Jesus as being not particularly nice to them and so it’s hardly suprising that they didn’t immediately grab quill and papyrus and start busily writing what a wonderful guy this Jesus was. When the Jewish Talmuds finally get written a couple of hundred years later, we do finally get a few not very nice references to Jesus and accusations of him doing miracles by the power of the devil.

I’m not a latin expert. I was thinking of the very early fathers, prior to and contemporary with Celsus. My “denounciations” of Celsus’ claims are merely what seems to be generally thought by scholars about the subject.
The difference between the fathers and Celsus is that the fathers presumably are somewhat knowledgeable about the tradition they’ve been brought up in, presumably having access to older documents and being able to trace themselves back to the apostles with only one or two generations in between. Celsus on the otherhand is a presumably a complete outsider to the Church and so has no likely reason to be in any sort of position of knowledge compared to the fathers. Any claim on his part to have real evidence is going to be dubious at best.

According to the Gospels, it seems the Pharisees got around this one by accusing Jesus of doing miracles by the power of the devil.

Tercel

Datheron

Tercel,

Then what's the point of compiling the Bible itself? Why not shorten it to just the resurrection, and leave everything else, as it is unimportant?

Well, for one, I recall a certain Biblical passage that has Jesus saying that all of the OT is to be trusted. For another, the resurrection itself is not that well recorded; the cruxification, there has been a few independent sources that hint at a Jew killed by the Romans, but the cruxification itself is not recorded anywhere other than from Church sources. Just based on this alone, it is hard to believe anything. Hence, we go and compile a big list of stories, some of which are historically accurate, others far-fetched.

My point is that if you want to take out everything but the portion that makes you a Christian, then your story becomes even more unbelievable.

I'm not too sure whether he was a storyteller; even if he was, then the fact that he used history shows that storytellers can become historians when the situation requires of them. My point was, though, that his stories did hold some truth to them - as you mention, Troy appears to have actually existed. It's just that the more outrageous parts (the Trojan Horse was not a gift from one of the Gods...) are obviously not true to us as unbelievers, but certainly acceptance to those who already worship the ancient Greek Gods. I find the situation very much the same here.

I would argue that person-to-person communication is even worse, because that means in order to have wide coverage (as with Jesus), the story must have went through many more layers of retelling, hence making it so much more susceptible to change and exaggeration.

Then what of Homer? He went through all the effort required to write up a fictional account, with historical events. True, it is unlikely that people would be so determined to make up a lie that they'll go out of their way to make authentic everything around that lie; but then again, in modern times, we have people training for years to do some near-impossible feat just so that their names can be entered into a big book of records (I'm thinking of Guinness here).

Another possibility is that all of the authors ernestly sought to record history, but the fact that their sources were unreliable makes their history unreliable. I have established this position before, so I don't think I'll repeat it again here.

I still have qualms about the actual history of the Bible itself. Like I said, the fact that all these historical accuracies have very little to do with the actual life of Jesus is rather suspicious. As you say, just because some parts of the Bible are false, does not make the entire Bible untruthworthy. I can make a similar argument in this situation: just because the Bible records a few accurate historical events, it does not mean that the rest of its unproved claims are true.

Alright; I'm not really trying to forward the entire argument (and in the process probably just doing a poor man's version of masters' theses anyway), but rather acknowledge the fact that they do exist and that I find them plausible to an extent. I'll definitely keep my eye out for this book, though, and see how the counterarguments stack up.

How is that unfair? Historical events usually have multiple perspectives, and I'd expect these perspectives to be thoroughly represented in order to give consideration to the event itself. When Marco Polo journeyed to the Orient, not only do we have records of Polo's adventures, but we also have evidence of his commission, as well as the Chinese's reception. All in all, we have all possible perspectives of his entire ordeal, which all add up to building a plausible case.

On the other hand, we have very little of Jesus's life other than what the Church has collected. These four authors decide to go on a journey record history and the son of God, and that is all we hear about Jesus himself; most of the reckus that he caused is not verified by independent sources that are themselves verified by history.

In other words, the ones that it thinks is the actual recordings of research, not the ones that try to guess and copy after the fact.

So, can I take it that you're an agnostic in this matter?

What if I say that if you don't believe in them, then you're going to get fried, probed, and become the newest delicacy on the fifth planet from Cygnus?

You can see where I'm coming from - the fact that the believe/disbelieve in UFO's does not transpare in any serious consequences makes them just an interesting thoery on the backburner; not important at all. Furthermore, even when I make unasserted threats about them, you could care less, as I have not established that they exist, hence making uncertain whether they'd have the power to cook you. By the same token, I can distrust the accounts of the Gospels themselves, and realizing that the Christian God hasn't done anything that makes me believe that he exists, I can also care less. Now, if only the Christians would be more passive like the UFO'ists, then we wouldn't try to disprove each other.

Whether they cared or not is another matter - what is important is why this was ignored if it actually took place in history. All we have flowing from the books of history (including the Gospels, it seems) are tales told from onlookers, which were passed by word-of-mouth.

...but not in numerous quantities, especially considering that as you mention, lots of writing was produced afterwards, correct? In this scenario, having maybe just one or two more trustworthy sources would be even more advantageous, as it makes more sense considering that writing was not a common skill. Having four individuals go around collecting stories, plus hundreds more guessing about it afterwards, whereby there is very little record of it outside this little circle of believers? Hm...

You don't have to being writing a biography about the guy. Rather, I would like to see a few notes taken about Jesus in skepticism during those times when he did perform those miracles - perfectly acceptable and logical given the way Jesus treated them. Having the Talmuds spectulate about Jesus's powers a few hundred years later isn't exactly that convincing.

But in my position, having access to older documents does not give the Church fathers an advantage because the documents themselves are in question. Once again, I'm seeing a somewhat subtle attempt to rely on authority here - since the Church was the only credible authority on the matter that it is devoted to, we have no choice but to trust it on these matters. Whether the Church itself was right is not being questioned, and I have a problem with precisely that.

And in modern times, we see an analogy to this with people exclaiming that they'd believe in their Bibles if science did find a way to disprove it. Just goes to show how belief overtakes rational thought.

Anyway, it seems like my point stands - spectulation of psychological motives are usually dubious.

Tercel

My understanding is that Tacitus’ reference implies death by crucifixion. Tacitus says that Christ suffered “the extreme penalty” which is often translated as “execution”, seems to be more probably a reference to death by crucifixion since that was the most extreme penalty under Roman law.

Books didn’t just appear out of nowhere and get adopted instantly by all Churches throughout the world. It wasn’t that hard to keep a track of who wrote what and hence which books were authentic and which weren’t. The Church didn’t simply take a wild guess when deciding the canon but based it on what tradition could trace to the apostles or their companions.

Datheron

Tercel,

Hm.....that just seems a bit too much interpretation on your part. I count perhaps three levels of implication to get to such a conclusion, so forgive me if I'm not convinced.

I'm not saying that there is some mistake in the Church's decision to pick the Gospels out of the mess of literature written for Jesus; rather, I'm pointing out the fact that there is a lot of literature written, which is suspicious in itself (the story doesn't match up...I presume you have read my previous post for elaboration), and that we can only point to a few definite sources, which themselves can be questioned.