This is pretty interesting. I wanted to see what they said about John. I did a "skip through" method in which I listened to a few minutes at a time throughout the talk. Kept hearing nothing about John. Finally I got to minute 44 (out of 47), and Darrell Bock says explicitly that they *have not talked about John*. Implication is that they literally haven't mentioned John up to that moment (which squares with what I was seeing in sampling). Neither positively nor negatively. At that point Bock explains that this is because skeptics are skeptical about John *specifically because* Jesus in John is more (relatively) explicit and clear in his claims to deity, so they don't grant John's historicity on this point. So Bock just says it's a strategic move to argue from the synoptics only. And then one of the other guys chimes in about how this is kinda like Jesus, because when Jesus was answering the Sadducees he quoted portions of the Old Testament that they acknowledged.
Anyway, no statement *themselves* on the historicity of the passages in John. Just a purely strategic statement. It would have been interesting for them at least to acknowledge that there are *evangelical* scholars who question the historicity of those portions of John and to bother to give some sort of statement about whether they think there are good, objective reasons (not just theological a priori assumptions) for taking John to be more reliable than the skeptics (and those evangelicals) believe him to be.
IMO this sort of "purely strategic" move tends to lull people to sleep on the very serious questions that are being raised about historicity. Tacitly an idea arises in the minds of an audience that it isn't *possible* to defend whatever the skeptic cannot *grant*, even though that isn't what these guys are saying. But phew! It doesn't matter, because we don't need John anyway, etc., etc. It is, however, the kind of thing Craig Evans is strongly implying about the unique sayings in John--that they are not historically defensible.
BTW, the Podcast comes with a transcript. I think the transcript is automatically generated, but despite some transcriptional errors, that's one way of scrolling through. And for quotation purposes, it saves having to play/replay/manually transcribe
Lydia I appreciate your full defense of the gospels. Hopefully, we are seeing a turn away from the overuse of the minimal facts approach to the issue of the resurrection. I always took the minimal facts approach to be an over emphasis on defending the strongest points of the NT witness, but just because they are the strongest doesn't mean that the rest of it is weak. Christians have bowed their heads to skeptics and critics for too long.
Thanks, Blake. Looks like we're also going to have to start talking about the "minimal facts approach to the deity of Jesus" as well!
I have to admit (I hope this won't be a threadjack) that it isn't clear to me that the minimal facts approach to resurrection is even emphasizing the strongest points. For example, it's never been clear to me why the empty tomb is considered so incredibly strong *if* one sets aside any notion of defending the authenticity of the resurrection accounts as going back to the earliest putative witnesses. Once one allows the skeptic to say that Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John might have all made up their resurrection narratives to such an extreme extent, what then becomes of the supposed strength of the case for the empty tomb? I think most people who do that think that "multiple attestation" will save them, but if what we have is some ill-supported tradition that Jesus rose again coupled with the gospel accounts *making tons of stuff up*, then the differences among the accounts could just be a matter of people's riffing imaginatively on a common (unreliable) tradition that included the empty tomb. Which is the wrong kind of "multiple attestation."
This is pretty interesting. I wanted to see what they said about John. I did a "skip through" method in which I listened to a few minutes at a time throughout the talk. Kept hearing nothing about John. Finally I got to minute 44 (out of 47), and Darrell Bock says explicitly that they *have not talked about John*. Implication is that they literally haven't mentioned John up to that moment (which squares with what I was seeing in sampling). Neither positively nor negatively. At that point Bock explains that this is because skeptics are skeptical about John *specifically because* Jesus in John is more (relatively) explicit and clear in his claims to deity, so they don't grant John's historicity on this point. So Bock just says it's a strategic move to argue from the synoptics only. And then one of the other guys chimes in about how this is kinda like Jesus, because when Jesus was answering the Sadducees he quoted portions of the Old Testament that they acknowledged.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, no statement *themselves* on the historicity of the passages in John. Just a purely strategic statement. It would have been interesting for them at least to acknowledge that there are *evangelical* scholars who question the historicity of those portions of John and to bother to give some sort of statement about whether they think there are good, objective reasons (not just theological a priori assumptions) for taking John to be more reliable than the skeptics (and those evangelicals) believe him to be.
IMO this sort of "purely strategic" move tends to lull people to sleep on the very serious questions that are being raised about historicity. Tacitly an idea arises in the minds of an audience that it isn't *possible* to defend whatever the skeptic cannot *grant*, even though that isn't what these guys are saying. But phew! It doesn't matter, because we don't need John anyway, etc., etc. It is, however, the kind of thing Craig Evans is strongly implying about the unique sayings in John--that they are not historically defensible.
BTW, the Podcast comes with a transcript. I think the transcript is automatically generated, but despite some transcriptional errors, that's one way of scrolling through. And for quotation purposes, it saves having to play/replay/manually transcribe
DeleteOh, yeah, I gotta find that.
DeleteLydia I appreciate your full defense of the gospels. Hopefully, we are seeing a turn away from the overuse of the minimal facts approach to the issue of the resurrection. I always took the minimal facts approach to be an over emphasis on defending the strongest points of the NT witness, but just because they are the strongest doesn't mean that the rest of it is weak. Christians have bowed their heads to skeptics and critics for too long.
DeleteThanks, Blake. Looks like we're also going to have to start talking about the "minimal facts approach to the deity of Jesus" as well!
DeleteI have to admit (I hope this won't be a threadjack) that it isn't clear to me that the minimal facts approach to resurrection is even emphasizing the strongest points. For example, it's never been clear to me why the empty tomb is considered so incredibly strong *if* one sets aside any notion of defending the authenticity of the resurrection accounts as going back to the earliest putative witnesses. Once one allows the skeptic to say that Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John might have all made up their resurrection narratives to such an extreme extent, what then becomes of the supposed strength of the case for the empty tomb? I think most people who do that think that "multiple attestation" will save them, but if what we have is some ill-supported tradition that Jesus rose again coupled with the gospel accounts *making tons of stuff up*, then the differences among the accounts could just be a matter of people's riffing imaginatively on a common (unreliable) tradition that included the empty tomb. Which is the wrong kind of "multiple attestation."
Thanks, that saved oodles of time.
ReplyDeletehttps://voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast/historical-jesus-divine/