Finessing Independent Attestation: A Study in Interdisciplinary Biblical Criticism

http://themelios.thegospelcoalition.org/article/finessing-independent-attestation-interdisciplinary-biblical-criticism

Gospel criticism

A common objection to the inerrancy or even general historical reliability of the Gospels is synoptic variants, where there are differing accounts of the same event (although in some cases these may be similar, but different events). One account words things differently from another account. One account contains details absent from another account.

Let's take a comparison. In this talk, Don Carson relates a personal anecdote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U21MquBWfag&feature=youtu.be&t=15m

The segment is between the 15-19 min mark. The anecdote is a combination of firsthand and secondhand information. He wasn't present when his wife prayed. Obviously, she was his unstated source of information for that. However, he personally knew the cancer patient and her husband. 

In addition, he has written about the same incident:

Not long ago in my church, a woman I’ll call Mary experienced a recurrence of cancer. Within a few months it had spread throughout her body, and despite treatment, she was very ill. The people in our church gathered for prayer. And although this is not a church from a charismatic tradition, the prayers throughout the day became more and more enthusiastic.

“Lord, you’ve said you will answer if two or three are in agreement. We have 287 in agreement, and we want you to heal her!”

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We want you to show that you are still the Great Physician!”

“Lord, will you not have mercy on her husband and her children?”

Finally it was my wife’s turn to pray (she who had almost lost her life to cancer twice) and she prayed, “Heavenly Father, we would love it if you would heal Mary. But if it is not your will to heal her, teach her to die well. She is going to die anyway, and so if the time is now, teach her to die well. Give her a joy of the Lord. Give her a heritage of godly faith, with one foot firmly planted in heaven, so that her husband and children will be stamped by it, and will look to Christ. We don’t ask that she have an easy time, but ask that she be so full grace, people will see Christ in her.”

Well, you could have cut the air with a knife. No longer were there 287 people agreeing in prayer. My wife’s prayer seemed to create a break in the chain. She was letting down her side. We found out afterward that some of Mary’s relatives rather wished my wife would go to heaven first so she would know whereof she was praying!

A few months later, Mary’s husband called me, and was desperate to talk. Mary’s health was going down and down despite every treatment conceivable. The church was wonderful, bringing in food, reminding them, “We’re praying for you . . . the Lord is faithful.” But he wanted permission to talk about his wife’s impending death. The heated atmosphere had made it impossible for them to talk in those terms, as if it would no longer be walking by faith. Mary couldn’t focus on eternity or talk about it, because there were so many Christians around her telling her she was going to be healed. D. A. Carson, "Dying Well," N. Guthrie, ed. Be Still, My Soul (Crossway 2010), 113-15.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/tgc-documents/carson/2010_dying_well.pdf

Compare and contrast these two accounts. Notice how the talk contains information omitted in the written version. This despite the fact that both accounts are from about the same time.  

Suppose we were to approach this in the same way critics approach the Gospels. Suppose we didn't know that both accounts came from the very same observer. And suppose there was a literary convention of writing in the third-person even though the narrator was an eyewitness to the event he relays. 

Imagine how critics would seize on the differences. Imagine how they'd ingeniously reconstruct the underlying sources. Imagine how they'd appeal to redactors to explain the variations. 

Takedown of Richard Carrier

Richard Carrier palms himself off as a probability theorist. If you don't mind the technicalities, here's a critique by a Cambridge educated cosmologist and physicist:

http://letterstonature.wordpress.com/2016/02/05/final-word-on-richard-carrier

https://letterstonature.wordpress.com/2016/02/01/richard-carrier-one-liners-part-3/

HT: Patrick Chan

Sources for Caesar and Jesus compared

"Sources for Caesar and Jesus Compared" by Darrell Bock.

Defining “Divine Revelation” in Roman Catholic and Protestant Polemical Discussions, Part 2: what it is not

http://reformation500.com/2014/02/19/divine-revelation-in-roman-catholic-and-protestant-polemical-discussions-part-2/

Now, while a lack of mention of King David did not “disprove” his existence, this archaeological find certainly provides strong confirmation for the truth of the accounts given in the Bible. (I would consider archaeology to be a component of “historical criticism”. In the same way that “grammar” and “other historical sources” lend credibility to an account and help us to understand “what the text actually says” and “what it meant for the writer and the original audience”, so too does this kind of archaeological confirmation provide key information for us as we seek to understand how “divine revelation” works).

But on the other hand, “historical critical” methods can work to oppose an account as well. I’ve written in several places about both sides of this coin. While “historical criticism” as a methodology over the last 200 years has failed to exclude the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, they have on the other hand greatly strengthened the veracity of the New Testament accounts.

These same kinds of methods, however, have not only worked to exclude things like an “early papacy” (especially the kind of “early papacy” that I grew up believing in, and which was prevalent in Roman Catholicism for hundreds and hundreds of years), but it is also enabling us to reconstruct what the actual early church was like in its beliefs, worship, leadership structure, and more. That is the whole point behind Brandon Addison’s excellent article outlining Peter Lampe’s work.

While this phenomenon does not in and of itself confirm or deny “divine revelation”, it certainly comports with how most normal people, with a good understanding of how the world around them works, would tend to view things.

Richard Carrier - Wrong About History Again

http://www.increasinglearning.com/1/post/2014/01/richard-carrier-wrong-about-history-again.html

Jewish faith & criticism

I defend the historicity of Scripture all the time. The value of this article lies in given us a window into the state of modern Judaism–for better or worse:

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/144177/reconciling-biblical-criticism?print=1

Carving marble

A presupposition of the perennial quest for the historical Jesus is that we can't take the Gospels at face value. We can't accept the Gospels as is. Rather, we must go behind the Gospels to determine what really happened. The Gospels are like an archeological dig. You must scrape away layers of detritus and debris to uncover some shards of the historical Jesus. As best, the real Jesus is hidden somewhere in the Gospels, rather than out in the open, as they stand. 

But, of vary the metaphor, the exercise often resembles carving marble. Give Bernini and Michaelangelo the same slab of marble, tell them to carve the same thing (e.g. David), and they will come up with two completely different statues. That's because what they find in the marble matches the image in their heads. 

In the hands of more conservative questers, the results of the quest can be of some apologetic value. Often, though, this is not a bridge, but a destination. 

What is lost sight of is that Christians are obligated to believe in the Jesus of the four Gospels, not the reconstructed Jesus of any particular scholar. The quest for the historical Jesus is essentially misguided, not because we can't find Jesus, but because he was never out of sight. 

Has Historical Criticism Proved the Bible False?

Thomas Schreiner on the Historical Reliability of the Bible:

Historical criticism of the Bible began in earnest in the eighteenth century, flowered in the nineteenth century, and became the dominant approach to the Scriptures in the twentieth century. Historical criticism has at times been rejected by conservatives because it has called into question the accuracy of the Bible. For example, in the nineteenth century, most scholars delving into the life of Jesus provided rationalistic, not supernatural, explanations of Jesus’ miracles. New Testament scholar F. C. Baur argued that the theologies of Peter and Paul contradict one another if one reads the NT historically. Old Testament scholars, such as Julius Wellhausen, maintained that the Pentateuch (first five books of the Bible) was not actually written by Moses. Careful literary and historical study, it was claimed, indicated that the Pentateuch had various sources that were written over a period of hundreds of years and that the final document was put together by an unknown editor.

Still, it is important to recognize that the rise of historical criticism has also benefited the church. The Christian faith is rooted in history. God has manifested Himself supremely in the person of Jesus Christ. He lived and ministered in a particular time and place—in Palestine in the third decade of the first century. As Christians, then, we believe that our faith is historically rooted. Paul insisted that Christians were foolish to believe in the Christian faith if the resurrection of Jesus did not actually occur (1 Co 15:12-19). Hence, we have no fear of historical study but welcome it, for we believe historical research can assist us in understanding the message of the Scriptures.

The benefits of historical study are numerous. It has cleared up the meaning of obscure terms. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has cast light on the environment within which the NT was birthed. Study of the ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world has clarified the extent to which the Scriptures are similar to and dissimilar from documents that came out of surrounding cultures. Historical criticism has also demonstrated that some traditional views were not credible. It was once thought that the NT was written in a special “Holy Ghost” language, but study of sources from the era of the NT has demonstrated that the NT was written in the common Greek of the day. The King James Version of the Bible was an outstanding product of the scholarship in its day, but we now have many more manuscripts for both the NT and the OT, and hence our English Bibles are even closer to the original today because of recent manuscript discoveries and the careful work of scholars in text criticism....

Though evangelical scholars have often solved problems raised by historical critics, conservatives have not solved them all. This does not mean that the Scriptures are inaccurate in such instances but instead that we could resolve such problems if we had enough information. To make such a claim is not a sacrifice of one’s intellect. Comprehensive answers are lacking in every historical discipline since the evidence is fragmentary. We can be grateful to historical criticism since it has helped us understand the Scriptures better. But we must also be on our guard. Often historical criticism has veered off into unsubstantiated allegations about the accuracy of the Scriptures, and it has routinely approached the Scriptures with an antisupernatural worldview. Historical criticism has not demonstrated the Bible to be false. The Bible, rightly interpreted, has stood the test of time.

Daniel in the lion den

Unbelievers reject the traditional date and authorship of Daniel.

i) In theory, Daniel could be written much later, and still be historical, as well as prophetic. By way of comparison, take Donald Weinstein’s recent biography of Girolamo Savonarola, Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet (Yale University Press, 2011).

Imagine a “skeptic” using the following argument:

Since this “biography” was written centuries after the fact, the Quattrocento setting is obviously fictional. Likewise, since the book was published in 2011, the prophecies attributed to Savonarola are clearly vaticina ex eventu.

Indeed, on linguistic considerations alone, this is fictional. After all, it’s quite impossible that a 15C Italian monk spoke English, yet all of the sayings attributed to Savonarola are in English!

ii) But let’s examine the liberal objection from another angle. If Daniel is really about events during the Maccabean period, why would the author situate the story during the 6C Babylonian Exile?

One liberal explanation might be that it would be politically hazardous for the writer to directly attack the Seleucid regime. That would be seditious. That would expose him and his readers to reprisal on a charge of high treason. So he veils his attack as a political allegory, set in a bygone era.

iii) At first blush, that seems logical, but it’s immediately beset by problems when we compare the liberal explanation to the actual text. For Dan 1-6 doesn’t read like a political allegory of the Antiochean crisis. According to extrabiblical sources–the very sources which unbelievers rely on to “disprove” Daniel–Antiochus ordered the destruction of the Hebrew Scriptures, forbad circumcision, kosher food, and Sabbath-keeping. On top of that, he desecrated the Temple by sacrificing pigs on the altar.

But if Dan 1-6 constitute a political allegory of the Antiochean crisis, then we’d expect the narrative to have a central, juicey villain who does things comparable to Antiochus. Yet Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, and Cyrus are depicted in a fairly sympathetic light. Hardly the arch-villain of Antiochean proportions. The only bad guy is Belshazzar, and his career is cut short.

For his part, Nebuchadnezzar isn’t attempting to suppress the Jewish religion. That didn’t even occur to him. The command to prostrate oneself before the golden statue doesn’t specifically target the Jewish captives. Rather, it’s directed at Babylonian bureaucrats, as a way in which his official subordinates pledge their fealty to the monarch. Daniel’s friends are swept up in this because they happen to be courtiers, and not because they are Jewish, per se.

Chaps 1-6 contain other examples of palace intrigue, but that cutthroat treachery is pretty generic for life at court.

In fact, liberals like Collins and Goldingay admit that chaps 1-6 don’t mesh with a Maccabean sitz-im-leben. They date that to the Persian period.

Put another way, they dispute the unity of Daniel. They think chaps 1-6 were composed independently. But other issues to one side, if chaps 1-6 aren’t allegorizing the Antiochean persecution, then that dissolves the rationale for a fictional, Babylonian setting, at which historical distance the author can safely critique the contemporary policies of Antiochus Epiphanes.

What Hath Cambridge to Do with Sunday Morning?

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/05/16/what-hath-cambridge-to-do-with-sunday-morning/

Reviewing Who Wrote the Gospels?

http://rdtwot.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/who-wrote-the-gospels-why-new-testament-scholars-challenge-church-traditions/

An illustration of the way that critical scholarship is confirming the details of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, while denying an early papacy

An illustration of the way that critical scholarship is confirming the details of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, while denying an early papacy.

The question is, “John, how can you accept the work of scholars who don’t believe everything that conservative evangelicals believe? You’re inconsistent to ‘pick and choose’ only among the scholars who agree with you.”

Gary Habermas has been studying what “critical scholars” have been saying about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and he has been noting confluence on an amazing range of details. Here are a couple of paragraphs from one of his recent articles:

As an example of these recent trends, I will compare briefly the ideas of two seemingly different scholars, John Dominic Crossan and N.T. Wright. We will contrast some of their views on Jesus’ resurrection, following the specific list of topics that we just provided. This will indicate some of their major differences, but perhaps some unexpected similarities, as well. Such will serve as a sample demarcation from the recent theological scene, as well....

Both Crossan and Wright agree without reservation that Paul is the best early witness to the resurrection appearances. They both hold that Paul was an eyewitness to what he believed was a resurrection appearance of Jesus. Further, they share the view that Paul recorded an account in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 that he had received decades before writing the letter in which it appears, and that the apostle probably learned it during his early visit to Jerusalem, just a short time after Jesus’ death.[67]

Perhaps most surprisingly, both Wright and Crossan embrace the claim that the earliest Christian teachings taught that Jesus appeared in a bodily manner. This is the case for several reasons, such as this being the predominant Jewish view at the time. Most of all, this was the clear meaning of the terms. ...

Lastly, both Crossan and Wright readily agree that the resurrection of Jesus in some sense indicates that the truth of Christian belief ought to lead to its theological outworkings, including the radical practice of ethics. As Crossan states, “Tom and I agree on one absolutely vital implication of resurrection faith . . . that God’s transfiguration of this world here below has already started . . .” To be sure, Crossan’s chief emphasis is to proceed to the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection in the world today, contending that we must live out the literal implications of this belief in “peace through justice.” Just as Jesus’ appearances inspired the disciples’ proclamation of God’s victory over sin and the powers of Caesar’s empire, we must “promote God’s Great Clean-Up of the earth” and “take back God’s world from the thugs.”[75]

Wright argues that, for both the New Testament authors like Paul and John, as well as for us today, the facticity of Jesus’ resurrection indicates that Christian theology is true, including doctrines such as the sonship of Jesus and his path of eternal life to those who respond to his message.[76] The resurrection also requires a radical call to discipleship in a torn world, including responses to the political tyranny of both conservatives as well as liberals, addressing violence, hunger, and even death. As Wright says, “Easter is the beginning of God’s new world. . . . But Easter is the time for revolution. . . .”[77]

So there is at least general agreement between Crossan and Wright regarding most of the individual topics which we have explored above. There is at least some important overlap in each of the six categories, except for the historicity of the empty tomb. The amount of agreement on some of the issues, like the value of Paul’s eyewitness testimony to a resurrection appearance, his report of an early creed that predates him by a couple of decades, as well as his knowledge of the message taught by the Jerusalem apostles, is rather incredible, especially given the different theological stances of these two scholars. The emerging agreement concerning the essential nature of Jesus’ bodily resurrection, especially for Paul and the New Testament authors, is a recent twist that would have been rather difficult to predict just a few years ago. And both scholars argue for the believer’s literal presence in righting the world’s wrongs, because of Jesus’ resurrection.

So, here are two different scholars, from two different backgrounds, both of whom I would disagree with on a number of things. But there is a general confluence of agreement over some of the facts. Important facts.

I know the specific points on which I’d disagree with both Crossan and Wright. None of that diminishes the facts upon which these two agree.

You don’t see this kind of agreement among contemporary scholars saying “Peter was the first pope, Linus was the second, Clement was the third, and on and on through a divine succession of history”. In fact, you see a confluence in quite an opposite direction.

Historical Criticism, Act I: Jesus and the New Testament

In 1787, the year that the first states ratified the U.S. Constitution, Johan Philipp Gabler (1753-1826) “made a most far reaching contribution” to the development of the discipline of “historical criticism” of the Bible, in a lecture at the University of Altdorf, when he provided a definition that separated the text of Scripture from its divine teaching. Gabler noted, “Biblical theology possesses a historical character, transmitting what the sacred writers thought about divine matters; dogmatic theology, on the contrary, possesses a didactic character, teaching what a particular theologian philosophizes about divine matters in accordance to his ability, time, age, place, sect or school, and other similar things” (Gerhard Hasel, “New Testament Theology: Basic Issues in the Current Debate,” Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, © 1978, pgs. 22-23). According to Gabler, here, divine inspiration of the texts was to be separated from the text itself.