Friday, September 15, 2006

The Gospels As Historical Accounts

Bill Curry has written a reply to my response to him that I posted Wednesday. He writes:

"Ironically, I agree that legend has not 'prevailed' over the core historic tradition in case of the Gospels. I think the core that has been preserved is the fact that there was an apocalyptic prophet named Jesus who claimed to be the messiah who was crucified."

You're telling us that you accept some of what was widely believed about Jesus early on, but much more was widely believed than what you mention. Concepts such as Jesus' performance of apparent miracles, the empty tomb, and the disciples' belief that they saw Jesus risen from the dead, for example, were widely accepted early on and were considered foundational to the movement.

You write:

"However, I don’t think that Craig (or White) have demonstrated their claim that legend doesn’t typically overcome core historic fact within three generations."

I understand that you reject their position, but I don't think you've given a sufficient explanation as to why you reject it. I haven't given much thought to what the outer limit ought to be for the number of generations. I don't know about "within three generations", but I do accept the general principle applied within one generation at the least. If a generation is defined as a unit as small as 30 or 40 years, for example, then I would accept at least two generations. One of the primary issues is how long eyewitnesses and contemporaries were still alive.

You write:

"Even more significant they have not shown that a surviving report within 50 years of the reported event is evidence for historicity."

I don't know why you're framing the issue in that manner. I don't think people like William Craig have ever argued that "a surviving report within 50 years" alone is sufficient to prove historicity. But the earliness of the report is one significant factor among others. You cited Craig's appeal to A.N. Sherwin-White, and that argument involves more than the earliness of a report.

You write:

"What was striking to me is that Herodotus recording of the temple of Delphi’s defense of itself (within 55 years of the recorded event) didn’t serve to qualify the statements that Craig makes."

Are you suggesting that what Herodotus reported was a core fact that prevailed? I doubt that people had much interest in it. The issue here isn't whether any false reports can exist early on. Craig's argument is more nuanced than that.

Even if we were to conclude that Herodotus or some other source offers an exception to the principle Craig advocates, the principle is still generally applicable. I haven't done the research of Herodotus and other relevant sources that A.N. Sherwin-White did, but I consider the general principle Craig is deriving from him credible, even if we were to conclude that some exceptions exist.

You write:

"The legendary developments associated with the events at Roswell seem to be about a perfect match for the timelines of the gospels."

Again, the issue Craig was addressing was the prevailing of core facts. The claims about Roswell that you're objecting to are widely disputed. They haven't prevailed. They also differ from the gospel accounts in many other ways.

You write:

"It seems extremely unlikely that such earth shattering events [Matthew 27:45-54] would have been unmentioned by Seneca, Pliny, Josephus, and other historians of the era."

That's a different issue than what you initially raised. The readers should understand that I've been composing my responses based primarily on the issues you've chosen to address. The portion of William Craig's work that you quoted only represents a fraction of the evidence he cites, and I would cite a lot of other evidence as well. If you want to expand the discussion into other considerations, then you're going beyond the original discussion and would need to take Craig's other evidence into account as well.

I don't know why all of the events you're referring to above would be "earth shattering" or why you'd expect each of the sources you've named to mention the events. None of those sources attempted to record every earthquake that occurred, for example, and none of them would have wanted to give much attention to any purported supernatural event associated with Christianity. Josephus refers to Jesus as a miracle worker, but doesn't go into detail. He would have been in a position to know some details, but he wasn't a Christian and didn't desire to further the Christian cause. Julius Africanus refers to attempts made by non-Christian sources to explain the darkness at Jesus' crucifixion, so the darkness didn't go unmentioned. Pliny the Elder rejected the supernatural, so I don't know why you'd expect him to mention events that had supernatural associations. It's not something we should expect. He didn't attempt to document all purported natural events, much less did he attempt to include all purported supernatural occurrences. All of these writers were selective in what they addressed, and we don't know that they had access to all of the data in question anyway. Even many Christian sources who had access to the New Testament documents would discuss Jesus' life and other relevant subjects at length without mentioning some of the supernatural elements of the gospels. Even Christian sources who knew of these reports were selective in discussing them.

We see much the same with purported natural events. An example is the life of Paul. We know from his writings, the ones accepted as authentic across the scholarly spectrum, that Paul traveled widely, was involved in many highly public events, claimed supernatural power and was believed by others to possess such power, was one of the foremost leaders of early Christianity, etc. Yet, none of the earliest extant non-Christian sources mention Paul. On the selectivity of ancient sources on other issues, Craig Keener writes:

"Without immediate political repercussions, it is not surprising that the earliest Jesus movement does not spring quickly into the purview of Rome’s historians; even Herod the Great finds little space in Dio Cassius (49.22.6; 54.9.3). Josephus happily compares Herodotus’s neglect of Judea (Apion 1.60-65) with his neglect of Rome (Apion 1.66)." (A Commentary On The Gospel Of Matthew [Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999], p. 64, n. 205)

Of all the events mentioned in the passage you've cited from Matthew 27, the darkness probably had the most potential for being seen by non-Christians as something supernatural that was associated with Christianity. (We don't know how many non-Christians, if any, saw the people who rose from the dead.) And the darkness was discussed among non-Christian sources. When Josephus, the Talmud, and other non-Christian sources make general references to Jesus as a miracle worker, magician, etc., we don't know what details they had in mind, but the events of Matthew 27 (in part or in whole) might have been included. See also J.P. Holding's comments here.

You write:

"Now Jason is presenting why he thinks why it is sensible for the chief priest to need Judas."

No, that's not what I said. What do you mean by "need"? If Judas offered to help them accomplish their ends in exchange for money, he would be helping them without their needing him.

And what do you think they needed him for in the gospel accounts? In your last article, you mentioned their alleged need of Judas to identify Jesus, but none of the gospels make that claim.

You go on to raise other objections to the accounts of Judas' betrayal, which means that you're going beyond your original argument. I think you realize that your original objection wasn't sufficient.

You write:

"Before accepting Judas’ help, it must be kept in mind that Judas could have potentially betrayed the chief priest as well. This is all the more likely since he was known to be a member of Jesus’ inner circle."

What danger would be involved for the religious leaders? How would Judas betray them? They were in high positions of authority. They had influence with government officials and could produce the sort of armed force that accompanied Judas to Gethsemane. Besides, the early movement surrounding Jesus wasn't known for carrying out deceptive campaigns like the one you're imagining. Betrayers like Judas are unreliable in the sense that they're betraying another person, but that unreliability doesn't prevent people from using betrayers to accomplish something. If you know that you have something the betrayer would want, you can trust him to do something to get what he wants, even if you wouldn't want to have him as a friend. This happens a lot in life.

You write:

"The information Judas was providing doesn’t seem to me to have that much value relative to the risk incurred. Keep in mind that there were many who had debated Jesus and would have are able to identify him. To think that they were all unavailable seems implausible."

What risk are you referring to? And where do the gospels claim that nobody other than Judas would have been available? They don't. What the gospels tell us is that the religious leaders were becoming increasingly concerned about Jesus, yet they knew that He often had crowds around Him, and they wouldn't have known where He was at all times. The gospels also tell us that Judas was looking for an opportunity to do what he did. Jesus was away from the crowds at night, at a time when the religious leaders were especially concerned about Him, and Judas took advantage of the opportunity. The religious leaders didn't need Judas, but he offered to help when they wanted it, it didn't cost them much, and they probably found the concept of getting Jesus through one of His disciples appealing. The betrayal by Judas is widely reported early on by credible sources (in all four gospels, in Paul without Judas' name, etc.). I see no reason to reject it.

You write:

"If Mark were using Homeric epic as inspiration, it is not surprising that he would write that account regardless of what it did to the believability of his account."

Mark was a first century Jew writing a Greco-Roman biography. He was writing in a context in which God was believed to give revelation through historical events, and the early Christian community was highly concerned with historical information and eyewitness accounts in particular. We know how other sources around Mark's time interpreted his work. They didn't interpret it as a non-historical account "using Homeric epic as inspiration". And eyewitnesses and contemporaries of Jesus and the apostles (and Mark) were still alive when Mark was first being interpreted. Mark himself probably didn't die upon finishing his gospel. He would have been alive for a while to correct any misconceptions.

See the critiques of Dennis MacDonald here, here, here, and here. See also David Wood's comments here about Richard Carrier's inconsistencies in appealing to the work of MacDonald. Elsewhere, Wood comments:

"Many times, MacDonald has to strain and contort the text to find his parallels, especially when he comes to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. In the Iliad, Hector’s body is burned and his tomb holds his remains forever, while Jesus body is resurrected three days later. Resurrection is mentioned three times in the Iliad; twice regarding its impossibility and once as a metaphor for Hector’s survival [avoidance] of certain death. Moreover, Mark differs in many ways from Homer. In order to account for this, MacDonald claims that 'Mark hid his dependence by avoiding Homeric vocabulary, transforming characterizations, motifs, and episodes, placing the episodes out of sequence, and employing multiple literary models, especially from Jewish scriptures' (170). In other words, MacDonald is claiming that all of the characteristics the historian would look for in order to show a borrowing are absent because Mark changed everything intentionally to keep from being detected!" (note 16 here)

Robert Rabel notes how MacDonald goes back and forth, from one work to another, trying to find parallels, paralleling Jesus with one figure at one point and with another figure at another point:

"As Mark approaches his account of Jesus' death, he switches from the Odyssey to the Iliad as his primary source. Jesus imitates Achilles in his predictions of his imminent death (Chapter 17), but otherwise he resembles Hector: both meet violent deaths (Chapter 18) and have their corpses rescued for burial -- by Priam in the Iliad and Joseph of Arimathea in Mark (Chapter 20). Finally, the young man at the tomb on Easter morning in Mark is said to imitate -- or rather 'emulate' (166) -- Elpenor from the Odyssey (Chapter 21)....Chapter 19 ('Hydropatetics') finds Jesus walking on the water in imitation of the god Hermes, who flies over the water in both the Iliad and Odyssey....According to MacDonald, Mark based the death of Jesus on the death of Hector and then conflated the Iliad with the Odyssey by weaving in elements from the tragic story of Elpenor. Turning these tragic stories into a climactic tale of resurrection, Mark is supposed to have transvalued Homer, performing 'a remarkable demonstration of literary dexterity'(167). This argument relies upon the most procrustean and reductive methods of interpretation....One can discern literally hundreds of close parallels between the Iliad and, say, Clint Eastwood's hero's tale Unforgiven."

Bill, do you actually find this sort of speculative paralleling convincing? I don't, and neither does modern New Testament scholarship.

You write:

"Jason has not (yet) disputed my assessment of the initial implausiblity of the resurrection."

It wasn't my intent to interact with everything you've written relevant to the resurrection. I was using your article as an illustration of how putting bad numbers into Bayes' Theorem produces bad results. I've addressed issues such as initial probability in other contexts, such as in my discussions with your brother on Greg Krehbiel's board last year. I've also posted a large amount of material on other subjects relevant to the resurrection at Triablogue. See also Steve Hays' recent posts on initial probability and other relevant issues, as well as his recent book on the resurrection.

4 comments:

  1. Jason, I want to make sure that my claims are not taken too far. For example, you state “to conclude Mark is unhistorical on the basis of this Judas thing doesn’t make sense.” I am not arguing that Mark is unhistorical simply because of this event. I am considering how well each hypothesis fits the data. I think that there is legendary growth in Mark. I presented one datum that supports the hypothesis. That is not the same as coming to a conclusion.

    Concepts such as Jesus' performance of apparent miracles, the empty tomb, and the disciples' belief that they saw Jesus risen from the dead, for example, were widely accepted early on and were considered foundational to the movement.

    For this to count as evidence for the resurrection, not only would you have to explain what you mean by “early on” and how their likelihood compares to the likelihood that beliefs of legend could gain the same acceptance. Keep in mind that your statements are not obviously true. The earliest Christian writing we have (Paul’s epistles) do not mention the empty tomb, nor do they give examples of the miracles of Jesus.

    Curry: "However, I don’t think that Craig (or White) have demonstrated their claim that legend doesn’t typically overcome core historic fact within three generations."

    Engwer:I understand that you reject their position, but I don't think you've given a sufficient explanation as to why you reject it.


    Do you think that Sherwin-White has made a sufficient case that “even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythic tendency to prevail over the hard historical core of oral tradition”? Even Sherwin-White says “Certainly a deal of distortion can affect a story that is a given literary form a generation or two after the event, whether for national glorification or political spite, or for the didactic or symbolic exposition of ideas” (From the Empty tomb pg 168). Does Sherwin-White analyze more than a single case to obtain his conclusions?

    There is good reason to think Craig’s is incorrect here. Tacitus writes “that everything gets exaggerated is typical for any story” and “all the greatest events are obscure—while some people accept whatever they hear as beyond doubt, others twist the truth into its opposite, and both errors grow over subsequent generations” (ET pg 170). Jon has mentioned the case of Saint Genevieve where the legendary development occurred within 10 years of her death. No one wrote anything to challenge it.

    The issue here is that in order for Craig to make his case, he needs to be able to estimate the ratio, P(T| Historicity)/P(T|Legend), where T is in the range of 50 years. When I say they haven’t done that, it isn’t merely that I disagree with their conclusions; I don’t think they have done the work necessary to make their case. Craig is putting this forward as a reason to believe. He has a certain burden to meet. Characterizing the ratio seems like part of the burden.

    ..but I do accept the general principle applied within one generation at the least. If a generation is defined as a unit as small as 30 or 40 years, for example, then I would accept at least two generations.
    Again, I don’t know why you would accept this. I think there is adequate reason to believe that legends can arise quickly with no competing accounts.

    Are you suggesting that what Herodotus reported was a core fact that prevailed? I doubt that people had much interest in it.
    I am suggesting that no one challenged the report; there is no other surviving account. This seems like an obvious counterexample to Sherwin-Whites claim as characterized by Craig.

    Curry: "It seems extremely unlikely that such earth shattering events [Matthew 27:45-54] would have been unmentioned by Seneca, Pliny, Josephus, and other historians of the era."

    Engwer: That's a different issue than what you initially raised. The readers should understand that I've been composing my responses based primarily on the issues you've chosen to address.


    The evidential value is the ratio P(T | Historicity)/P(T|Legend). It is true that I focused mainly on Craig’s characterization of the denominator, but since I gave an overall assessment, I think it is perfectly reasonable to focus on the numerator as well. I don’t expect that either you or I will preemptively deal with every possible retort. I do try to make my responses relevant, and I think this issue is.

    I welcome an expanded assessment of this piece of evidence. However, if it is to be relevant it should be clear how the evidence will affect the ratio I posited. I know that Craig has written prolifically on the subject. But my goal is to be able to get a handle on the assessment. There is a lot of evidence that is offered, and it is tough to manage without a framework. Assigning numerical values to the assessment is a straightforward way to help this.

    I don't know why all of the events you're referring to above would be "earth shattering" or why you'd expect each of the sources you've named to mention the events.
    Well Matthew claims the earth shook and the rocks split. Don’t you think that numerous saints rising from the dead and visiting a major city would cause some historian to take note? Again I am not saying it is impossible that none would, but the apparent implausibility certainly this enters into my assessment.

    What danger would be involved for the religious leaders?
    With regard to numerator here, do you think the chief priest would have had no reason to suspect an ambush? The Sadducees were supported by the Roman authorities. You think that there is no possibility of an ambush? Do you think Jesus was able to draw crowds of thousands? From the chief priest’s perspective, Judas was saying Jesus was only with the 11, but if there were an ambush planned it seems very likely that Judas would have been lying. In addition terrain can be an incredible force multiplier. The claim to messiah is claim to kingship. King’s often have armies. Even Luke mentions arms.

    We know how other sources around Mark's time interpreted his work. They didn't interpret it as a non-historical account "using Homeric epic as inspiration".
    Keep in mind that they question is “How well does this observation fit each hypothesis.” That people of the time would have all sort of manners of belief about an ancient document would not surprise me. (Again, you could develop an evidence term for people’s beliefs’, and it could be relevant as another datum.)


    If students of the Greek language were taught to imitate Homer even when writing other subjects, what would you expect to see? Some differences, but other stunning similarities. Paul's claims precede the gospels, so we expect Mark to incorporate Christian themes around the Homeric template. Those themes will result in differences. Is this a slam dunk case, maybe not, but think it is noteworthy.

    Bill, do you actually find this sort of speculative paralleling convincing? I don't, and neither does modern New Testament scholarship.

    Jason, I would expect that you don’t accept the contemporary New Testament scholarship on many issues. I would expect you would hold the 2 Peter and 2 Timothy are authentic despite the consensus of the scholarly community. There are many things that can affect the conclusion of scholars that has little to do with evidence. This is not to say that scholars can’t overcome their biases. But I would be careful appealing to scholarly consensus.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bill Curry wrote:

    "I think that there is legendary growth in Mark. I presented one datum that supports the hypothesis. That is not the same as coming to a conclusion."

    There's no way for me to know how confident you are in your conclusions. But you're writing articles for a web site that wants to "debunk Christianity", and you repeatedly suggested that Mark wasn't giving a historical account of the events surrounding Judas and that other details in the gospel could be dismissed in a similar manner. You cited Richard Carrier and Dennis MacDonald, both of whom argue for the non-historicity of much more than a few details related to Judas.

    You write:

    "For this to count as evidence for the resurrection, not only would you have to explain what you mean by 'early on' and how their likelihood compares to the likelihood that beliefs of legend could gain the same acceptance. Keep in mind that your statements are not obviously true. The earliest Christian writing we have (Paul’s epistles) do not mention the empty tomb, nor do they give examples of the miracles of Jesus."

    Everything I referred to occurred when eyewitnesses and contemporaries of Jesus and the apostles were still alive. I've addressed issues such as the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances in depth in many places on this blog and elsewhere. See, for example:

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/04/empty-tomb.html

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/05/hallucination-theory-and-non-pauline.html

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/07/did-resurrection-accounts-develop-over.html

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/09/does-vague-appeal-to-visions-overcome.html

    Your comment about "the earliest Christian writings we have" assumes a dating of the documents for which we don't have much evidence. The ending of the book of Acts, the lack of citations of Paul's letters, and other evidence suggests that both Luke and Acts were written when Paul was still alive (see, for example, the relevant sections at http://www.christiancadre.org/Acts%20Article.DOC), and 1 Timothy 5:18 seems to cite Luke's gospel as scripture. Paul would thereby be indirectly supporting the empty tomb account contained in that gospel. It's unlikely that Luke would have known about the empty tomb account while Paul, who was more prominent in the church than Luke, would be ignorant of it. The Pauline churches were highly networked. They were frequently in contact with each other and with other churches. The concept that Paul was ignorant of the empty tomb traditions is highly implausible. Luke and Mark were disciples of Paul, and Matthew and John were co-workers with him, and they all knew of the empty tomb and details like its discovery by female disciples and its association with Joseph of Arimathea. Paul likely would have known about this sort of information that his disciples and co-workers knew about.

    Paul believed in a resurrection that involves the transformation of the body that dies (http://www.christianorigins.com/resbody.html), so an empty tomb would have been assumed in his references to the resurrection. There's no place in his writings where he should be expected to mention the details of the empty tomb. He was writing to people who were already Christians and who would have already been instructed in the basics of Christian belief. Paul was writing letters, not Greco-Roman biographies.

    You write:

    "Does Sherwin-White analyze more than a single case to obtain his conclusions?"

    I haven't read the book in question. I was responding to your criticism of William Craig, who cites Sherwin-White. But Sherwin-White, as a historian, would have been familiar with far more than "a single case". If you're interested in other studies of a similar nature, one of my articles mentioned above (http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/05/hallucination-theory-and-non-pauline.html) cites Craig Keener discussing the reliability of early preservation of teaching, which is another category, but is relevant.

    As I said before, a general principle can have significance even if it has some exceptions or if we don't know whether it has exceptions. The fact that early accounts are sometimes wrong doesn't change the fact that earliness adds significant credibility to a case as a general principle. We would have to go on to consider other factors as well, as William Craig and other Christians do. But the fact that an early account can be wrong doesn't justify the sort of minimal weight you gave to earliness in your original article, especially in comparison to the greater weight you gave to your argument about Judas.

    You write:

    "There is good reason to think Craig’s is incorrect here. Tacitus writes 'that everything gets exaggerated is typical for any story' and 'all the greatest events are obscure—while some people accept whatever they hear as beyond doubt, others twist the truth into its opposite, and both errors grow over subsequent generations' (ET pg 170)."

    Again, Craig was addressing the prevailing of core facts. Tacitus' references to what "some" people or "others" were doing doesn't overturn Craig's argument.

    You write:

    "Jon has mentioned the case of Saint Genevieve where the legendary development occurred within 10 years of her death. No one wrote anything to challenge it."

    I've already responded to that example, which you cited earlier from Richard Carrier. Why would we expect anybody to have written an extant response to what somebody else wrote about Genevieve? The writer in question was anonymous. Genevieve was highly regarded in some circles, but she was nothing like a parallel to Jesus, and the document by an anonymous writer that you're citing is far from comparable to the gospels. I don't know the details of the document Richard Carrier is citing, but David Farmer writes:

    "the Life which purports to be contemporary was written some centuries after her death. Consequently little can be asserted about her [Genevieve] with certainty" (Oxford Dictionary Of Saints [New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997], p. 201)

    The Oxford Dictionary Of The Christian Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) comments:

    "The historicity of her Life, at one time fiercely contested, has recently been defended by competent scholars." (p. 662)

    Thus, not only is the work anonymous and not only were its views of Genevieve not prevailing core facts, but the dating of the document is significantly questioned as well. Once again, you're using a bad example to support your argument.

    You write:

    "The issue here is that in order for Craig to make his case, he needs to be able to estimate the ratio, P(T| Historicity)/P(T|Legend), where T is in the range of 50 years. When I say they haven’t done that, it isn’t merely that I disagree with their conclusions; I don’t think they have done the work necessary to make their case."

    Considering that billions of people have lived throughout history, you can always appeal to the possibility that William Craig, A.N. Sherwin-White, or anybody else commenting on the subject might arrive at different conclusions if he took more data into account. But Sherwin-White was a historian who had a lot of knowledge of ancient history, and the principle under consideration has logical force without our doing the sort of more extensive research you're suggesting. If you can assign a number to the value of the earliness of the Christian accounts, in order to put that number in Bayes' Theorem, then I think that a historian like Sherwin-White can make credible judgments about the value of the earliness of historical accounts. If Sherwin-White hadn't done enough research to justify his conclusion, he at least did more than you have.

    You write:

    "Craig is putting this forward as a reason to believe. He has a certain burden to meet."

    If you haven't read the work of Sherwin-White that Craig cites, then how do you know that his citation of that work is insufficient? If you can make a judgment about the value of the earliness of the Christian accounts, and use that judgment in Bayes' Theorem in a public article you've written, then I think that Craig can make the same sort of judgment in his article that you quoted. At least Craig supports his conclusion with more evidence than you've cited to support your conclusion.

    You write:

    "Again, I don’t know why you would accept this. I think there is adequate reason to believe that legends can arise quickly with no competing accounts."

    You keep mischaracterizing Craig's argument. The issue is the prevailing of core facts, not just "that legends can arise quickly with no competing accounts". If a five-year-old child writes a story for one of his classes in school, we don't expect anybody to write a refutation of it, no matter how unhistorical it is. The fact that an unhistorical story exists doesn't prove that the story consists of core facts that are prevailing.

    And I'll repeat another point you seem to keep overlooking. As I said earlier, and as an article I linked to in my original reply explained, the issue here is probability, not certainty. A general principle doesn't have to be proven to be universal in order to have some significance.

    You write:

    "I am suggesting that no one challenged the report; there is no other surviving account."

    It doesn't therefore follow that Herodotus' account was a prevailing core fact. See my school child example mentioned above. There are all sorts of creation accounts, apocalypses, and other documents that have survived in the historical record without any extant documents challenging what those other documents state. Neither Craig nor Sherwin-White or the others who use the argument in question would claim that a report is to be accepted if there's no extant challenge to it. With something like Jesus' performance of apparent miracles or the empty tomb, we have evidence of widespread acceptance of the belief and evidence that it was considered an issue of high importance. We don't accept such accounts only because they're reported without being challenged. Other factors are being taken into account as well.

    You write:

    "Well Matthew claims the earth shook and the rocks split. Don’t you think that numerous saints rising from the dead and visiting a major city would cause some historian to take note?"

    You aren't interacting with what I said. I addressed all of those issues in the first post in this thread.

    You write:

    "With regard to numerator here, do you think the chief priest would have had no reason to suspect an ambush? The Sadducees were supported by the Roman authorities. You think that there is no possibility of an ambush?"

    Judas wasn't a Sadducee. And why would the chief priests think that Judas was setting up an ambush? The issue isn't what's possible. All sorts of ridiculous scenarios are possible, but we don't conclude that the leaders Judas approached would therefore have taken such scenarios seriously.

    You write:

    "The claim to messiah is claim to kingship. King’s often have armies. Even Luke mentions arms."

    Jesus had defined His concept of Messiahship during His public ministry, and He wasn't preparing people for a military conquest. The religious leaders of Israel would have known that Jesus was in no position to carry out a successful military campaign, and they would have known that His character and teachings were of such a nature that the sort of scenario you're proposing would be highly unlikely. You're trying to avoid giving up an argument you should have given up long ago. You don't have any good reason to reject the historicity of Judas' betrayal of Jesus.

    You write:

    "That people of the time would have all sort of manners of belief about an ancient document would not surprise me."

    I didn't say that people had "all sort of manners of belief" about Mark's gospel. None of the early sources, Christian or non-Christian, interpret Mark's gospel the way Dennis MacDonald suggests. That's one of the reasons why New Testament scholars didn't believe in MacDonald's theory before he wrote his book and haven't believed the theory since the book was published either. MacDonald isn't a New Testament scholar, and his theory is highly speculative. Even Richard Carrier has distanced himself from it. Matthew, Luke, Papias, and the other early sources who interpret Mark's gospel interpret it as a historical account, not something "using Homeric epic as inspiration" in the sense you've suggested. And the internal characteristics of the gospel are consistent with the historical genre of Greco-Roman biography. If the document presents itself as a historical account, and the earliest interpreters read it as such, then it makes no sense for you to respond with a comment like the one quoted above.

    You write:

    "Jason, I would expect that you don’t accept the contemporary New Testament scholarship on many issues. I would expect you would hold the 2 Peter and 2 Timothy are authentic despite the consensus of the scholarly community."

    Your comparison is fallacious. Given the liberal tendencies of modern New Testament scholarship, the popularity of theories of pseudonymous authorship is something that would be expected. The rejection of MacDonald's theory is significant in that the rejection has occurred among people who have a high degree of willingness to accept speculative theories that undermine Christianity on other issues. Furthermore, recent scholarly views of the authorship of books like 2 Peter and 2 Timothy are just that: recent views. Unlike MacDonald's theory, which was unknown throughout church history, there was widespread support for the authenticity of 2 Peter and 2 Timothy up until modern times. And though the authorship of those books is now widely disputed, the traditional position still has far more support than MacDonald's theory has. The traditional view of 2 Peter and 2 Timothy is supported by much better evidence, was widely supported by scholars prior to modern times, and is still supported significantly more than MacDonald's theory about the gospel of Mark.

    You write:

    "But I would be careful appealing to scholarly consensus."

    I didn't just appeal to scholarly consensus. I appealed to evidence, then referred to how modern scholarship, despite its liberal tendencies, supports my view.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jason,

    But Sherwin-White, as a historian, would have been familiar with far more than "a single case".

    The question remains, did he analyze more than a single case to arrive at his conclusion? If he didn’t (or you don’t know) why would you have confidence in his conclusion (more accurately, Craig’s characterization of it)? We all know that historians have biases. It is possible that Sherwin-White was hasty in is conclusion and that Craig overextended the conclusion. Remember that this is put forward a positive evidence for the resurrection.

    ”It doesn't therefore follow that Herodotus' account was a prevailing core fact.”
    If the time of the report is to count as evidence for the resurrection, I think you need to explain why your rebuttals to my examples don’t result in a tautology. If I give an example of a legend without a competing claim, you can say something like since we know it’s a legend, it hasn’t overcome the core historical truth or we don’t know it’s a legend. Further, you would need to flesh out how the historical is distinguished from the legendary accretion.

    Thus, not only is the work anonymous and not only were its views of Genevieve not prevailing core facts, but the dating of the document is significantly questioned as well. Once again, you're using a bad example to support your argument.
    Are you suggesting they synoptic Gospels weren’t anonymous?

    And why would the chief priests think that Judas was setting up an ambush? The issue isn't what's possible. All sorts of ridiculous scenarios are possible
    This is exactly the sort of scenario that resulted in an IED attack on my unit. It sure doesn’t seem like a ridiculous scenario to me.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Bill Curry wrote:

    "The question remains, did he analyze more than a single case to arrive at his conclusion? If he didn’t (or you don’t know) why would you have confidence in his conclusion (more accurately, Craig’s characterization of it)?"

    As I explained in my last response, the argument has logical force without the sort of study that Sherwin-White and others have done on the subject. When I also know that Sherwin-White was a well qualified historian, and that other scholars familiar with the same or similar material have reached similar conclusions, I have good reason to think that the principle in question is valid. As I said before, you can always appeal to the possibility that there are some exceptions or that taking in more data would significantly change my conclusion, but raising such possibilities doesn't overturn my position. The same sort of possibilities could be raised against the principles that you apply in reaching your historical conclusions

    You write:

    "We all know that historians have biases. It is possible that Sherwin-White was hasty in is conclusion and that Craig overextended the conclusion."

    The issue isn't what's possible. It's possible that Richard Carrier is unreliable in a lot of the claims he makes, and you've already used a lot of bad arguments based on your reading of his material, yet you continue to trust him and cite his material. My trust of sources like Sherwin-White and Craig makes more sense than your trust of sources like Dennis MacDonald and Richard Carrier.

    And I didn't say that I'm only going by what Sherwin-White and Craig have argued. I've also read a lot of other relevant material, including thousands of pages of the early Christian literature.

    You write:

    "If the time of the report is to count as evidence for the resurrection, I think you need to explain why your rebuttals to my examples don’t result in a tautology. If I give an example of a legend without a competing claim, you can say something like since we know it’s a legend, it hasn’t overcome the core historical truth or we don’t know it’s a legend. Further, you would need to flesh out how the historical is distinguished from the legendary accretion."

    I've explained why the examples you've cited are problematic. Instead of interacting with what I've said about those examples, you're asking me questions about the general principles involved. I've addressed the general principles in my responses to your examples.

    If you give me "an example of a legend without a competing claim", then you aren't addressing William Craig's argument or mine. As I explained earlier, the prevailing of core facts involves more than the existence of an account without competing claims. I gave you a few examples in my last response: a story written by a child, ancient creation accounts, and ancient apocalypses. The fact that such accounts exist without "a competing claim" doesn't prove that they meet Craig's standard.

    And if we "don’t know it’s a legend", then that's a valid consideration to be taken into account. Are you suggesting that we should ignore the fact that we don't know whether something is a legend? If you think that an account is a legend, nobody's preventing you from offering evidence to that effect. It's not as if my saying that we don't know whether an account is a legend prevents you from offering an argument to the contrary.

    You've been making a lot of historical judgments, even assigning numbers to your judgments and placing them in Bayes' Theorem, without "fleshing out how the historical is distinguished from the legendary accretion". You keep raising questions about why we should trust the historical conclusions of A.N. Sherwin-White and how I know what's historical and what isn't, for example, without applying the same standards to your own arguments. You haven't been questioning the sources you cite in the manner in which you question somebody like Sherwin-White, and you haven't given us any detailed explanation of how you determine what's historical and what isn't. If you were as concerned about such issues as you profess to be, I think that you would have applied these standards to your own posts, which you haven't done.

    Distinguishing between historical accounts and "legendary accretion" involves a lot of different factors, and what we would look for would vary from one context to another. This is a subject that could be covered at book length. I can't go into much detail in a post like this. The past isn't something that we can directly examine, so we apply general principles and make judgments based on apparent probabilities. If a historical figure was in a position to know something, he seems to have had no sufficient reason to lie, and he meets other standards that suggest that his testimony should be accepted, then we can conclude that his testimony probably is correct. If, on the other hand, his testimony contradicts the testimony of other people who seem more credible, then we can conclude that his account is unhistorical. All of these judgments are matters of probability.

    What you seem to be suggesting in the quote above is that there's no way for you to falsify the argument of Craig and Sherwin-White or my version of it. But this sort of argument is falsifiable. You can argue against it in principle (what I've called the "logical force" of it). Or you can argue against it by citing contrary historical examples. You've attempted the latter approach, but the examples you've chosen so far have been insufficient. It doesn't therefore follow that finding sufficient examples isn't possible. If you could show that one core belief prevailed 5 years after the purported event, then a contrary core belief prevailed 10 years after that, then such a scenario would weaken my argument. (It would refute my argument if I was making a universal claim, but I'm not. I'm arguing for a general principle.) In more recent times, something like a video tape could be set against widespread human testimony. If it's common for false core beliefs to prevail early on, then you should easily be able to cite many examples. Instead, you seem to have only a small handful of examples you got from Richard Carrier and whatever other sources, and none of those examples have held up to scrutiny so far. There may be some examples available somewhere, but I don't think you're likely to overcome my appeal to probability given how much difficulty you're having finding even one example.

    You write:

    "Are you suggesting they synoptic Gospels weren’t anonymous?"

    The relevant manuscripts that we have (excluding ones that are fragmentary) carry the authors' names. The authorial names of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are reported early and accepted universally and are consistent with the internal evidence. See, for example, Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels And The One Gospel Of Jesus Christ (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 2000). See also my article on some more general reasons for trusting the New Testament authorship attributions:

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/06/was-large-percentage-of-new-testament.html

    You write:

    "This is exactly the sort of scenario that resulted in an IED attack on my unit. It sure doesn’t seem like a ridiculous scenario to me."

    There's no way for me to know what happened "in an IED attack on your unit". You haven't given us the relevant details. But I have given you some relevant details about why the religious leaders of Israel wouldn't have had reason to think that it was probable that Judas was setting up an ambush. You need to interact with those details I mentioned.

    Since it was possible for people to ambush your military unit, should we conclude that your claim that you were ambushed is unhistorical? After all, if the religious leaders of Israel surely wouldn't have worked with Judas, since an ambush was possible, then, by the same logic, surely your military unit wouldn't have worked with somebody who could have led them into an ambush. Why should we believe your account, then?

    Your original argument was that the religious leaders wouldn't have needed Judas to identify Jesus for them. Since that argument has been shown to be bad, you've replaced it with the argument that Judas could have been setting up an ambush, so that it's unlikely that the religious leaders would have worked with him as the gospels describe. But you haven't shown that the religious leaders would have had any reason to think that such a scenario was probable. Anybody who would attack the men who went with Judas would meet a response not only from the Jewish leadership, but also from the Romans. Who was prepared and willing to do that?

    Using your reasoning, we should reject all such accounts of one person or group working with another person or group, since an attempt to set up an ambush would always be possible. Therefore, we have to reject all historical accounts of groups formerly opposed to each other joining forces to fight a common enemy. And we'll have to reject all historical accounts of government officials using defectors to do something for them. There's a lot of commonly accepted history that we'll have to revise under your reasoning. But let's start with your own historical claims. Stop telling people that your military unit was set up for an ambush. Obviously, your unit would never have trusted such a person, so your account isn't reliable.

    ReplyDelete