Saturday, September 30, 2006

Where Jon Curry's "Honesty" Has Led Him

For those who are interested, I just posted another reply to Jon Curry in one of the older threads. It's lengthy, but some of you may be interested in some of the issues discussed.

I'll give some examples of the claims Jon Curry made. Regarding the early Christians' judgments about the books of the New Testament canon, he wrote:

"As far as their concern for apostolicity, this also is bogus. They say they are concerned that the writing be apostolic. But how do they know something is apostolic? Is it a matter of textual criticism? Of course not. It starts with how widely accepted a writing is and also touches on other factors, such as whether or not the writing is orthodox. I'm not impressed by people saying 'Only apostolic writings count, and since I want certain books it must be that those books are apostolic.' That's not demonstrative of high moral standards."

Regarding the moral standards of the earliest Christians, Jon wrote:

"The issue is your claim to 'high moral standards' amongst early Christians. If early Christians engage in widespread forging of documents, why should we accept your claim to high moral standards? That's the relevance of the issue. As to how I know it, it's just apparent. I've cited many examples. Forged documents represent a very large proportion of early Christian writings and a very low proportion of books on the bookshelf at Barnes and Noble....It's rare enough [for forgeries to occur today] that it is news."

When I told Jon that if a document attributed to Paul didn't begin circulating until after Paul and those who knew him were dead, then that lateness would itself be a major difficulty for any forger to overcome, he responded:

"How so?"

Since he wanted me to explain it to him, I did. But while Jon is so skeptical of arguments for the traditional authorship attributions of the Bible, he doesn't seem to be nearly as skeptical about alleged internal evidence against the traditional authorship attributions. He even refers to how he has "suspicions" about documents like 1 Corinthians and Philemon, which are accepted across the scholarly spectrum. He writes the following about passages in which Paul comments on his own handwriting and passages that use the phrase "I, Paul" (1 Corinthians 16:21, Galatians 6:11, Colossians 4:18, Philemon 19, etc.):

"These are all cause for suspicion of these documents. 'I Paul' references are also suspicious as they are in many pseudonymous works as a dead give away to forgery."

And Jon has taken up an argument that's popular in online skeptical circles regarding how Eusebius of Caesarea supposedly advocated lying. Roger Pearse discusses and refutes the argument here. I've added some comments of my own in response to Jon Curry, including some citations of other scholars commenting on the subject (Roger Pearse cites some scholars as well).

Anybody interested in any of these issues can find my responses to Jon Curry here. The more Jon attempts to justify his rejection of Christianity, the more he has to propose theories of widespread ignorance, widespread forgeries, widespread apathy, etc. In his recent responses to Steve Hays and other posters here, Jon has commented on how "honesty" led him to where he is. Read his comments in the thread linked above and ask yourself whether it seems likely that it's honesty that's led him to the left of the Jesus Seminar.

4 comments:

  1. The problem here is of course that M. Curry has assumed his conclusion. Now, M. Curry, will, of course reply, that I have also assumed mine. Maybe so, but my assumptions are somewhat more charitable.

    For the record, I believe the vast majority of atheists are honest people, although I also believe they are wrong (and they pay me the same compliment). It is foolish to heap abuse on the fathers of the faith, if you want to engage in dialogue.

    M. Curry, you may believe that the documents were 'forged'. There is a difference between known pseudonymity and passing off a document as the real deal. So, for example, when Michael Foot wrote 'Guilty Men' under the name 'Cato,' no-one thought that he was actually pretending to be the Roman statesman. When Iolo Morgannwg wrote numerous poems in medieval Welsh and attributed them to Dafydd ap Gwilym, that was forgery. See, the writing of books under names other than that of the author is not the same as the printing of banknotes.

    If I print a banknote, I am guilty of forgery. If I wrote a book under the name of Herbert M. Vaughan, one of my favourite authors, attacking the social order in Wales, then issued it, the Welsh political community would know that Herbert M. Vaughan was a critic of Welsh radicalism, and would understand the author name in that light.

    If I attempted to sell it to a publisher as a genuine work of H.M. Vaughan, then I would be a fraud.

    Intent must be understood before accusations of forgery are flung about. And, please, 'let holy charity/ mine outward vesture be'

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  2. "As far as their concern for apostolicity, this also is bogus. They say they are concerned that the writing be apostolic. But how do they know something is apostolic? Is it a matter of textual criticism? Of course not. It starts with how widely accepted a writing is and also touches on other factors, such as whether or not the writing is orthodox. I'm not impressed by people saying 'Only apostolic writings count, and since I want certain books it must be that those books are apostolic.' That's not demonstrative of high moral standards."

    This comment only displays manifest ignorance of this period of church history. In the Ante-Nicene era, they didn't need to use "text criticism" for the same reason we don't need text criticism today to tell us the authorship of every book on our bookshelves. Mr. Curry has forgotten that the people making the earliest claims about the authorship of these works were living during a time when the authorship could be verified by those who were still living who knew them.

    Let's take 1 Corinthians. I Clement mentions the Corinthian letters. Clement of Rome was living on the cusp of the first and second centuries, writing the very church that received the Corinthians letters. If he was incorrect, then why expect the Corinthians to accept that Paul wrote the letters by the same name?

    This is why Mr. Curry has to run away to 400 ad and after for his claims about the external evidence for the authorship of the books. You're right. In doing so, he moves left of the Jesus Seminar itself.

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  3. Gene uses a good illustration that I want to expand upon:

    "Let's take 1 Corinthians. I Clement mentions the Corinthian letters. Clement of Rome was living on the cusp of the first and second centuries, writing the very church that received the Corinthians letters. If he was incorrect, then why expect the Corinthians to accept that Paul wrote the letters by the same name?"

    Clement doesn't just mention 1 Corinthians, but also refers to its authorship by Paul, its Divine inspiration, and its historical circumstances:

    "Take up the epistle of the blessed Apostle Paul. What did he write to you at the time when the Gospel first began to be preached? Truly, under the inspiration of the Spirit, he wrote to you concerning himself, and Cephas, and Apollos, because even then parties had been formed among you." (First Clement, 47)

    If Paul didn't write to the Corinthians, or didn't write under the circumstances described, wouldn't the Corinthians be likely to know it? Clement himself probably was a disciple of the apostles, he was part of a church that had recently been in contact with more than one apostle, and Irenaeus comments that there were "many" alive in Clement's day who had known the apostles (Against Heresies, 3:3:3). Here we have a probable disciple of the apostles in an apostolic church writing to another apostolic church at a time when contemporaries and eyewitnesses of the apostles were still alive. This sort of process would have occurred many times and in many places.

    If Christians of the second century are in widespread agreement about the authorship of the gospels, Acts, Paul's letters, etc., and they were willing to acknowledge questions and disputes about some books, what's the most likely explanation? Do we conclude that a document like 1 Corinthians is "suspicious" because it uses the phrase "I, Paul" and because it has Paul referring to his own handwriting (1 Corinthians 16:21)? Do we conclude that Christians across the world were wrong about the gospel of Mark, the gospel of Matthew, 2 Thessalonians, etc.? Is it probable that all of these people forgot about or lied about the origins of these documents and replaced the true accounts with agreed upon false accounts? If they did that with documents like Mark and 1 Peter, then why didn't they do it with disputed documents like 2 Peter and 3 John?

    The sort of minimizing of external evidence that theories like Jon Curry's require is absurd. Humans are fallible and sometimes have bad motives, but suggesting that something like 10, 15, 20, or more of the New Testament documents are wrongly attributed goes far beyond common human fallibility and common bad motives.

    And what do these theories accomplish? Most people who propose such theories still accept the authenticity of at least some New Testament documents. 1 Corinthians is among the most widely accepted. Even somebody as critical of Christianity as Bart Ehrman will acknowledge that "No one doubts, however, that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians." (Misquoting Jesus [San Francisco, California: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005], p. 183) Apparently, Ehrman wasn't taking Jon Curry and his "suspicions" about 1 Corinthians 16:21 into account. If a critic rejects the authorship attributions of, say, 20 of the 27 New Testament books, and he only accepts the 7 most widely accepted Pauline documents, he still has to explain the resurrection appearances of 1 Corinthians 15. He still has to explain Jesus' apparent prophecy fulfillments (the timing of His life, His descent from David, etc.). Even if you reject the large majority of the New Testament document attributions, you're still left with a core of evidence that's better explained by the traditional Christian view of Jesus than the non-supernatural views.

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  4. Evan, I answered your buried comment back at my blog. Next time, post in the more current comments... it makes it easier for me to answer questions and complaints.

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