Equally, Baptists and other churches with a congregational polity believe that they discern 'the mind of Christ' collectively though the 'church meeting.'
Yes, I imagine there would be a rather lot of this going on - more so because of the stress large parts of the early church were under, with God occasionally nudging them individually or collectively, and very rarely nudging them much harder than usual.
There's also the geographical dispersion to take into account - which allows for a certain amount of distributed confirmation.
During the first three-four hundred years, the New Testament books were written, copied, haphazardly circulated and recopied, recopied and gathered again, recirculated, etc. carried throughout the known world—and eventually ended up as a more-or-less standard set of 27 books. Before I go any further, may I say that the thing that amazes me the most is the relative peacefulness of this whole process? I mean, I’ve watched the assembly of a denominational hymnbook from up close and personal, and there was practically blood on the floor at some points. (okay, slight exaggeration. But it wasn't when it came to the ... never mind). The formation of the New Testament canon is by comparison a Sunday school picnic in the park.
Basically what was going on was this. People—that is, the young Christian church—realized that a record of Jesus’ words and deeds was needed, the more the better; and also that the letters to the various churches which were in circulation from leaders like Paul, Peter, James, John, etc. ought to be preserved and circulated to other groups as well. And they recognized some of these writings as holy. Specifically, they began very early to recognize them as being not only human (and DEFINITELY human, including shouting and swearing at times, much to the delight of my young confirmands), but also from the mouth of the Holy Spirit, and therefore deserving faith and obedience. This viewpoint is a direct result of Jesus’ teaching the night before his death (and knowing him, said many times before that too) to the effect that
“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live…. “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.
This vision of a united, happy-clappy early church where no one disagreed (at least not seriously) about important religious matters is really only sustainable if you ignore a lot of other nominally Christian groups (Marcionites, Ebionites, various gnostic sects, etc.) that get written out of church history as heretics. The Marcionites are an interesting faction of early Christianity for this discussion since Marcion was the first person we know of to attempt to define a canon of Christian scripture. This was not an "official" canon, however you want to define "official", but was accepted as definitive by a large group of self-identified Christians at a time when no one else had a canon of scripture.
And that's without getting into the elephant in the room that is Christian anti-semitism. It's pretty clear that a lot of the early Church considered itself something new within Judaism, not something new and totally separate from Judaism. As such, I'm not sure we can place the sometimes violent clashes between early Christians and their Jewish contemporaries as an entirely external-to-the-Church matter without projecting backwards a Christian orthodoxy that did not at the time exist.
At best claims of early Christian unity on theological matters comes down to a claim that the sub-set of early Christian groups that would form the church as it exists today mostly agreed while the early Christian groups that disagreed were declared heretics and eventually went extinct. I'm not sure that's as miraculous a claim as you seem to think it is.
I've heard there were around 30 identifiable 'flavours' of early Christians, and orthodoxy / Orthodoxy gradually developed from all that tussling and creative tension.
Ok, we Big O Orthodox claim to be around from Day One, as it were but at the same time will certainly admit that there was development through discussion, hot debate, fall-outs and all the rest of it. I don't see how or why the respective understandings of @Crœsos and @Lamb Chopped have to be mutually or starkly exclusive.
I don't see how or why the respective understandings of @Crœsos and @Lamb Chopped have to be mutually or starkly exclusive.
Uh-oh, it's one of my 'both/and' things again ...
Most of what we know about a lot of the groups that ended up on the outside of the established church once the dust had settled and the church was indeed established comes from various critics denouncing the various heresies involved. We don't get to read what Marcion thought. We get Tertullian's five volume denunciation of Marcion as a heretic. In other words, the remarkable "unity" of the early church was the result of casting out dissidents, not some artifact of people never disagreeing about anything important.
tl:dr - History Scripture is written (and compiled) by the victors.
tl:dr - History Scripture is written (and compiled) by the victors.
The last time I invited JWs in for a bible study - once we had cleared up a slightly bizarre conversation-at-cross-purposes regarding Aryanism / Arianism - they made much the same point. Perhaps there's a home there for you!
I'm not sure whether Croesos has got the wrong thread (there is one where other people are making claims about early Christian unity, courage, etc.) or has somehow failed to read what I wrote here clearly, which acknowledged the divisions in the very bit he quoted ("relative" peacefulness, anyone?). I don't think it really matters, anyway--I'm not going to attempt to defend myself. Y'all can do the historical reading and decide where on the spectrum the early Christians fall between "see how they love one another" and "see how they hate one another" for yourselves. Me, I'm obviously impressed more by the former.
The antisemitic thing is a red herring that belongs on another thread. Feel free to start it, if you like! It has nothing I can see to do with "how we know what Jesus said and did" with any certainty.
In case anyone wonders, I chose Athanasius' letter for my "first official list of the canon" precisely because it was the latest possible date I could find for this. I don't want anyone thinking I'm not playing square with you all. Yes, Marcion and a host of others had lists of what they considered canon, but those lists are generally either private (that is, not endorsed by the church at large--and "what is canon" is the business of the whole church if anything is!--or else the contents of the lists are not available, such as the one Constantine ordered drawn up. So I gave you all the latest possible date to play fair with you. If anyone wants to argue that the canon was solidified earlier than that, I'll not complain.
I'm not sure whether Croesos has got the wrong thread (there is one where other people are making claims about early Christian unity, courage, etc.) or has somehow failed to read what I wrote here clearly, which acknowledged the divisions in the very bit he quoted ("relative" peacefulness, anyone?). I don't think it really matters, anyway--I'm not going to attempt to defend myself. Y'all can do the historical reading and decide where on the spectrum the early Christians fall between "see how they love one another" and "see how they hate one another" for yourselves. Me, I'm obviously impressed more by the former.
To the point that Scriptures were written by the victors, may I amend that to Scriptures were compiled by the victors. There were many books written around the same time, but only a few were accepted by the church at large. And even now, there remains some discussion about intertestamental books which are accepted by the Roman Catholics and Orthodox Communities and Protestants who at best call them interesting but not canonical. In some cases, it took only a few votes to have had other books included.
To the point that Scriptures were written by the victors, may I amend that to Scriptures were compiled by the victors. There were many books written around the same time, but only a few were accepted by the church at large. And even now, there remains some discussion about intertestamental books which are accepted by the Roman Catholics and Orthodox Communities and Protestants who at best call them interesting but not canonical. In some cases, it took only a few votes to have had other books included.
Compiled by the victors, from manuscripts themselves written - or in turn compiled - by the victors.
I don't know enough about the canonisation process of the Hebrew scriptures to comment at length on that. I have heard that the Jews may have been influenced by Christian attempts to regularise their own scriptures to attempt to define the boundaries of theirs.
From NT references it would appear that 'The Law, the Prophets and The Psalms' formed a recognised body of authoritative texts.
But as far as I understand it, rabbinical practice was more fluid and looser than we might expect. All those glosses and 'midrashes'.
Tradition is a dynamic thing. Or should be.
I'm often struck how we Orthodox don't hesitate to cite some extra-canonical sources such as the Proto-evangelium of James, whilst relegating others to being interesting but not for public consumption.
As far as the 'inter-testamental' books go, yes, we use those. I've not read all of them yet.
A couple of Esdras-es and three Maccabees. We also have more Daniel. Whether there are alternative versions of those, I don't know. Someone with a beard and funny hat might be able to put me straight.
A couple of Esdras-es and three Maccabees. We also have more Daniel. Whether there are alternative versions of those, I don't know. Someone with a beard and funny hat might be able to put me straight.
For reference, the Old Testament canon was closed around 90 CE but others claim it was closed in 300 BCE when the Septuagint was translated from Aramaic.
Technically, the New Testament has never officially been closed but several ecumenical councils have listed the common books.
A couple of Esdras-es and three Maccabees. We also have more Daniel. Whether there are alternative versions of those, I don't know. Someone with a beard and funny hat might be able to put me straight.
For reference, the Old Testament canon was closed around 90 CE but others claim it was closed in 300 BCE when the Septuagint was translated from Aramaic.
When you say it was closed, who are you saying closed it?
And when you say "others claim" who are you talking about?
(I don't believe 'closed' is the right word for any of the processes whereby Christian or Jewish traditions settled which books were canonical. No tradition was saying we have been accepting new books every so often but now we're going to stop. In particular, the phrasing implies that the Septuagint is a shorter list, because it closed earlier, than the Protestant/Jewish list when in fact the Septuagint list is more inclusive.)
With the Old Testament, it was closed during the Council at Jamnia which was around 90 CE. It was closed to limit the Christian testimony of Jesus as the Messiah. However, this theory has been discredited. CF Bruce argued that it was closed by 150 BCE. The Septuagint was translated circa 350 BCE.
A couple of Esdras-es and three Maccabees. We also have more Daniel. Whether there are alternative versions of those, I don't know. Someone with a beard and funny hat might be able to put me straight.
C'mon, the Ethiopians have even more than us.
Can you have too much of a good thing? 👍
What's good about Daniel? About a pack of lies?
Well, I like the bit where it lists all those musical instruments. Again and again.
We've got Susannah and the Elders and Bel and The Dragon in our version. Don't be such a spoil-sport.
Okay, so let’s do something on memory and eyewitnesses. This is inevitably going to be the bit that causes the most arguing, because so little is actually proven about how memory works, and everybody has a theory, and most of us are convinced we are right. Yay. Let’s try anyway.
What Jesus said and did rests ultimately on the testimony of eyewitnesses. That is, people who heard him, who were close to him, who testified to what they experienced. As John put it in 1 John 1: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— 2 the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— 3 that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. 4 And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.”
This emphasis on touching and seeing and hearing comes up elsewhere. Jesus appeals to it in Luke 24:39-43 when his terrified disciples think they are seeing a ghost after the resurrection:
“’See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them.”
Similarly he says to Thomas, who refuses to believe without touchable proof:
“’Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.’ 28 Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ 29 Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’”
The resurrection appearances often begin as a matter of course with Jesus displaying his wounds, eating and drinking, urging them to handle him—anything to get them to believe. He doesn’t blame them for wanting that proof—he pushes it himself. So the emphasis on eyewitness and the proof of the senses is baked into Christianity from the beginning. Let me emphasize again: this is NOT a culture or a worldview that believes in maya, the world as illusion. No. “Taste, touch, handle, see for yourself”—these are the appeals of Jesus.
Similarly, you can see Paul appealing to the testimony of eyewitnesses when it comes to the Resurrection:
“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me” (1 Corinthians 15, 3-8).
Notice that Paul names the eyewitnesses, and remarks that most of them are still alive and able to be consulted. He doesn’t cast a single shadow of blame on anybody who wants to go consult them. Let them! That’s what they are there for. I get the sense he’d hand you over addresses and phone numbers if you wanted them. There’s not a shadow of spiritual guilt-tripping along the lines of, “If you had real faith, you wouldn’t need this testimony.” None of that bullshit. Call the witnesses and hear what they have to say.
You’ll even find this in minor matters, like the reference to Simone of Cyrene, who carried Jesus’ cross for a little ways. Mark 15:21 describes him as “the father of Alexander and Rufus,” who were clearly names well-known to the early church—so likely Christian believers of some reputation. Similarly the man whose ear got cut off in the garden of Gethsemane is named (John 18:10, “The servant’s name was Malchus”). The implication is that anyone who wants can follow this up and go talk to the man—who is probably now in the faith, which is why they name him with no further annotation.
The Nature of Memory
Now we all know that memory is imperfect. People can be fooled into remembering things that never happened, or into distorting memories of things that did happen. Sure that can happen. We’ve all seen it.
And yet—
And yet, human memory and eyewitness testimony is the foundation of our legal system, our history, and quite a lot of our scientific knowledge (which is why there’s such a hurricane of anger when a scientist is found to have created fraudulent data). It may not be perfect, but it works pretty well for the purposes we need it for.
When is it most reliable?
1) When there are multiple eyewitnesses who corroborate each other’s testimony, in the main points if not in every detail. In fact, we have a tendency to disbelieve people who’s testimony dovetails in every particular, because it looks rehearsed, made up. But when you’ve got multiple eyewitnesses who agree on the outline of a case, we usually consider it settled.
Note in this connection the fact that God gave us FOUR Gospels—an odd choice, if he wasn’t looking to bolster the testimony—and that they have considerable overlap, as well as plenty of minor points where people can argue about contradictions. For example, you can go round and round about the exact order of the Easter Sunday appearances; but everybody agrees that Jesus did appear, that he did it bodily, that multiple people saw him, and that the women and the disciples were among those who saw him. They also all agree that he appeared bodily, and that he bore the marks of his crucifixion.
2) When the eyewitnesses are people of good repute—not drunkards, not known to be mentally ill or addicted to something. And we give bonus trust to people who are testifying to matters that make them look bad (such as Peter’s many follies) or that make against their obvious interests (such as Paul, who threw away a promising career after Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus.)
3) When the witnesses are not people you’d normally choose for your case—for example, the witness of the women as the earliest to meet Jesus after the resurrection. If the early Christians had been looking to make up a story, they would certainly have chosen the first witnesses from a more reputable group than random female followers of Jesus, at least one of whom was known to have been formerly demon-possessed. As I understand it, the non-canonical early Christian writings don’t say a great deal about the women’s testimony, probably for patriarchal and sexist reasons. There’s no reason for the Gospels to mention it unless it happened.
4) When the witnesses pay with their lives, livelihood, or reputation for their testimony. We generally think that people who suffer for their testimony are more likely to be telling the truth—or at the very least, honestly mistaken. And we all know what happened to most of the early Christian witnesses.
5) When the witnesses don’t have a ton of natural connections between them that would lead you to believe in a conspiracy. The early followers of Jesus covered the social map—fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes—and Roman soldiers, Pharisees, and even members of the Sanhedrin. Education levels ranged from none to PhD+. Both genders are involved, all ages are involved, people of varying politics and social classes are in there, and families are split in their opinion of him. People of bad reputation sit beside people of sterling reputation. This is not a recipe for collusion, generally speaking. What else pulls them together but this single one thing, what they have witnessed of Jesus?
6) When the matter under discussion is momentous, strange, or otherwise the kind of thing that sears itself into the memory. Ask me what I had for dinner two months ago and I’ll not be able to answer you. Ask me what I had on my wedding night and sure, I can tell you. Ask me who drove the car ahead of me on the freeway on-ramp in 2005 and I’ll not be able to tell you, unless you’re talking about the woman forced my family off the road at high speed in an attempt to kill us. Oh, yes—I remember her very, very well.
Jesus’ words and actions by their very nature tended to be memorable—miracles, talkes calculated to stick in the memory, and odd social interactions (like forgiving adulterers and welcoming tax collectors into the ranks of his closest disciples). Certainly the stories that survive to form the Gospels are memorable—they’ve infiltrated Western culture and a lot of other cultures as well. People who don’t know Christ know his stories!
7) When the matter “was not done in a corner,” as Paul remarks to Festus and King Agrippa regarding Christ’s death and resurrection. When a thing is public and publicly discussed, it is that much harder to hatch up a ton of pure unadulterated bullshit and foist it off on people.
This, by the way, is the defense against the whole “Chinese whispers/telephone” theory which says that one person can say something and have it emerge completely distorted by the end of a fairly short sequence of re-tellers. That kind of thing only works when one teller speaks to another privately, who then passes it along privately, and so on, with no public discussion and no chance for earlier links in the chain to correct later distortions. If people are yakking about it on every streek corner, it becomes much more difficult to convince them that in fact Y is true and not X—after all, they’ve heard the X version for themselves. The New Testament accounts are quite early, and got disseminated broadly pretty early; these aren’t things that were hoarded up in a mountainous monastery somewhere in the clouds for 500 years before being let loose on a population where all the eyewitnesses had died out!
8) I’m going to add this one, though I may regret it. When the witnesses obviously can’t connive their way out of a paper bag. I don’t know what impression you have of Jesus’ disciples, but “far-sighted conspirators and masters of the game” ain’t it, at least for me. They come off as idiots half the time, frankly—like most people. They mention things that at first glance harm their case, such as their own misunderstandings of Jesus, the fact that women were the first witnesses to the resurrection, the many scoldings Jesus gave them for being “slow to believe” and generally exasperating pains in the butt, and making generally dumb decisions like hanging out at a known location (Upper room in Jerusalem, well-known to Judas, whom they probably think is still alive at that point?) in the immediate aftermath of their Master’s judicial murder. There doubtless are people who are capable of carrying out complex conspiracies, but these men and women ain’t it.
Obviously you folks will all have different ideas about the extent to which memory and testimony can be trusted—this is a soft science, not a hard one. But Christianity isn’t asking you to throw your brain away when to comes to evaluating the testimony. Rather it asks you to use the same sort of consideration you would if you were making decisions about a personal commitment or a business matter—something that matters to you, that rests on human character and witness. The only thing any Christian can do is point you to the testimony and say, “Read it for yourself.” Then you must be the judge.
According to Wikipedia there is next to no evidence that there ever even was a Council of Jamnia; and that Jewish debates over canonicity in the period were limited to asking whether one should purify oneself after handling Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs.
A positive answer means they are sacred, but that doesn't necessarily imply that the sacred texts are thought of as comprising a canon of authoritative texts.
Christians never closed the New Testament canon because it was never deemed to be open. The list of accepted books is those books considered to be authenticated by those disciples who were eyewitnesses and received as such by the majority of churches.
I note that the books considered non-canonical tend to claim more authoritative provenance than the canonical books. Luke was a companion of Paul whom we know from a passing mention in one of Paul's letters and his own account in Acts. Mark, barring unfounded speculation, was apparently a companion of Paul then Peter. John was originally attributed to a a disciple rather than the Apostle. Only Matthew is attributed to a figure with any kind of leadership role in the NT. (I note that also the early Christian account of Matthew's provenance is a bit opaque.) If you get something called the Gospel of Peter it's almost certainly gnostic.
7) When the matter “was not done in a corner,” as Paul remarks to Festus and King Agrippa regarding Christ’s death and resurrection. When a thing is public and publicly discussed, it is that much harder to hatch up a ton of pure unadulterated bullshit and foist it off on people.
This, by the way, is the defense against the whole “Chinese whispers/telephone” theory which says that one person can say something and have it emerge completely distorted by the end of a fairly short sequence of re-tellers. That kind of thing only works when one teller speaks to another privately, who then passes it along privately, and so on, with no public discussion and no chance for earlier links in the chain to correct later distortions. If people are yakking about it on every streek corner, it becomes much more difficult to convince them that in fact Y is true and not X—after all, they’ve heard the X version for themselves. The New Testament accounts are quite early, and got disseminated broadly pretty early; these aren’t things that were hoarded up in a mountainous monastery somewhere in the clouds for 500 years before being let loose on a population where all the eyewitnesses had died out!
I'm not sure if I'm trimming the comments correctly and it seems a shame to break up the flow of this. However this point in particular is gibberish.
The NT itself clearly describes various groups who heard different stories and who believed different things about the resurrection. The idea that there was one story which was accurately passed on from ear to ear with correction is for the birds.
I'm not sure what you think you are proving with this wall of text other than you've persuaded yourself that it is true.
For a more detailed academic exploration of eyewitness evidence in the New Testament I thoroughly recommend Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
Also I like the way everyone seems to have skipped over the reality that the books in the NT were largely set by Marcion-the-heretic.
That seems to be a particularly loaded way of noting that Marcion was the first we have record of to try to write down a list of canonical texts. Marcion's list of 11 books (differing somewhat from the canonical versions) is a far cry from the 27 generally accepted. I think your claim that Marcion "largely set" the canon is unsupported by the evidence.
I love (8), and (1) to it is a fine defence if you, like the forty year old second hand account of witnesses, believe.
A complex conspiracy was only necessary by one man at most. Jesus. The idiots (and I give full good will to them and their brilliant reporters), like you and me, did the rest, all in good faith. Just look at the man described. Ecce homo. What a timeless genius.
The organisation Paul encountered over a generation before had nothing visibly to do with these people.
It's all a great believer's justification, but having deconstructed everything, I can't believe on the basis of it, because there is no basis for belief. Full stop. Because of the baggage in the story which feeds back with cognitive dissonance in to believing. Absurd and toxic baggage. Toxic damnationism from the man himself: any requirement of belief for salvation. And scandalously particular absurdity like God the Son.
The story contains no instance of the fingerpost. No still small voice of divine intelligence.
There is no way of shoe horning that in to meaningless infinity. Let alone the other way around. Even if it's all true. Even with the best of will, including nice liberal reconstruction of Jesus' hard, nasty sayings, bespeaking a vile, Loveless, incompetent God.
Also I like the way everyone seems to have skipped over the reality that the books in the NT were largely set by Marcion-the-heretic.
That seems to be a particularly loaded way of noting that Marcion was the first we have record of to try to write down a list of canonical texts. Marcion's list of 11 books (differing somewhat from the canonical versions) is a far cry from the 27 generally accepted. I think your claim that Marcion "largely set" the canon is unsupported by the evidence.
Mmm. So you don't think that there were a large number of texts around at the time of Marcion to choose from? And you don't think that Marcion's choices set the direction for other additions?
<snip>However this point in particular is gibberish.
The NT itself clearly describes various groups who heard different stories and who believed different things about the resurrection. <snip>
I'm not sure what you think you are proving with this wall of text other than you've persuaded yourself that it is true.
In any of the more literal meanings of gibberish your statement is plainly untrue. Which leaves only the denigratory sense - which only tells us, in unnecessarily offensive terms, that you disagree. If, as you say, ‘the NT itself clearly describes’, then contribute to the discussion by offer chapter and verse, otherwise all you’re doing is saying that you’re disagreeing. Likewise your final paragraph contributes nothing to the discussion beyond the fact that you disagree with @Lamb Chopped.
Also I like the way everyone seems to have skipped over the reality that the books in the NT were largely set by Marcion-the-heretic.
This seems to me to be a very idiosyncratic understanding of the formation of the canon of the NT. Marcion’s list is mostly a listing of writings already widely accepted by the church, and is mainly notable for what he excludes because of its inconsistency with his theology. The canon largely existed he was just the first, as far as we know, to codify it.
Also I like the way everyone seems to have skipped over the reality that the books in the NT were largely set by Marcion-the-heretic.
That seems to be a particularly loaded way of noting that Marcion was the first we have record of to try to write down a list of canonical texts. Marcion's list of 11 books (differing somewhat from the canonical versions) is a far cry from the 27 generally accepted. I think your claim that Marcion "largely set" the canon is unsupported by the evidence.
Mmm. So you don't think that there were a large number of texts around at the time of Marcion to choose from? And you don't think that Marcion's choices set the direction for other additions?
No, I doubt very much that Marcion's choices dictated those of his detractors.
<snip>However this point in particular is gibberish.
The NT itself clearly describes various groups who heard different stories and who believed different things about the resurrection. <snip>
I'm not sure what you think you are proving with this wall of text other than you've persuaded yourself that it is true.
In any of the more literal meanings of gibberish your statement is plainly untrue. Which leaves only the denigratory sense - which only tells us, in unnecessarily offensive terms, that you disagree. If, as you say, ‘the NT itself clearly describes’, then contribute to the discussion by offer chapter and verse, otherwise all you’re doing is saying that you’re disagreeing. Likewise your final paragraph contributes nothing to the discussion beyond the fact that you disagree with @Lamb Chopped.
Also I like the way everyone seems to have skipped over the reality that the books in the NT were largely set by Marcion-the-heretic.
This seems to me to be a very idiosyncratic understanding of the formation of the canon of the NT. Marcion’s list is mostly a listing of writings already widely accepted by the church, and is mainly notable for what he excludes because of its inconsistency with his theology. The canon largely existed he was just the first, as far as we know, to codify it.
I don't know what you think you are saying here. Have you read the book of Acts? It is literally a narrative about Paul going around correcting "false teachers". Have you read the Epistles? They are literally about various incorrect and false ideas of Christianity.
What do you want me to say? There is evidence within the text itself that there were various "Christianities" around, various ideas about Christ and various ideas about what had or hadn't happened.
This is just a fact. Hence the text itself disproves the idea that there was any consistency in believers ideas on practically everything.
<snip>However this point in particular is gibberish.
The NT itself clearly describes various groups who heard different stories and who believed different things about the resurrection. <snip>
I'm not sure what you think you are proving with this wall of text other than you've persuaded yourself that it is true.
In any of the more literal meanings of gibberish your statement is plainly untrue. Which leaves only the denigratory sense - which only tells us, in unnecessarily offensive terms, that you disagree. If, as you say, ‘the NT itself clearly describes’, then contribute to the discussion by offer chapter and verse, otherwise all you’re doing is saying that you’re disagreeing. Likewise your final paragraph contributes nothing to the discussion beyond the fact that you disagree with @Lamb Chopped.
Also I like the way everyone seems to have skipped over the reality that the books in the NT were largely set by Marcion-the-heretic.
This seems to me to be a very idiosyncratic understanding of the formation of the canon of the NT. Marcion’s list is mostly a listing of writings already widely accepted by the church, and is mainly notable for what he excludes because of its inconsistency with his theology. The canon largely existed he was just the first, as far as we know, to codify it.
I don't know what you think you are saying here. Have you read the book of Acts? It is literally a narrative about Paul going around correcting "false teachers". Have you read the Epistles? They are literally about various incorrect and false ideas of Christianity.
What do you want me to say? There is evidence within the text itself that there were various "Christianities" around, various ideas about Christ and various ideas about what had or hadn't happened.
This is just a fact. Hence the text itself disproves the idea that there was any consistency in believers ideas on practically everything.
A narrative in which Paul isn't mentioned for the first 8 chapters, which are Petrine, and continue to be for a while. And for the life of me I can't find a single account of "false teachers" in Christianity. Intermittently and late in Acts Paul confronts gentile and Jewish religion. But no false teachers of any kind.
I'm not sure what you think you are proving with this wall of text other than you've persuaded yourself that it is true.
This is a breach of Commandment 3. Attack the issue, not the person – Personal insults are only allowed in Hell. Attacks outside Hell are grounds for suspension or banning.
Do not use that tone against Shipmates in Purgatory in the future.
<snip>However this point in particular is gibberish.
The NT itself clearly describes various groups who heard different stories and who believed different things about the resurrection. <snip>
I'm not sure what you think you are proving with this wall of text other than you've persuaded yourself that it is true.
In any of the more literal meanings of gibberish your statement is plainly untrue. Which leaves only the denigratory sense - which only tells us, in unnecessarily offensive terms, that you disagree. If, as you say, ‘the NT itself clearly describes’, then contribute to the discussion by offer chapter and verse, otherwise all you’re doing is saying that you’re disagreeing. Likewise your final paragraph contributes nothing to the discussion beyond the fact that you disagree with @Lamb Chopped.
Also I like the way everyone seems to have skipped over the reality that the books in the NT were largely set by Marcion-the-heretic.
This seems to me to be a very idiosyncratic understanding of the formation of the canon of the NT. Marcion’s list is mostly a listing of writings already widely accepted by the church, and is mainly notable for what he excludes because of its inconsistency with his theology. The canon largely existed he was just the first, as far as we know, to codify it.
I don't know what you think you are saying here. Have you read the book of Acts? It is literally a narrative about Paul going around correcting "false teachers". Have you read the Epistles? They are literally about various incorrect and false ideas of Christianity.
What do you want me to say? There is evidence within the text itself that there were various "Christianities" around, various ideas about Christ and various ideas about what had or hadn't happened.
This is just a fact. Hence the text itself disproves the idea that there was any consistency in believers ideas on practically everything.
Not only have I read Acts, it was a module in itself in my first Theology degree, and I think your assessment of it is wrong. Paul plays no part in the narrative in the early chapter of Acts, and most of the contention within the Church in Acts is around the basis on which gentiles are to be admitted. There is contention with Judaism around whether Jesus is the messiah, and contention with Jews and gentiles about whether Jesus was raised from the dead. But I challenge you to show (rather than merely tell as you have done so far) where Acts shows Paul correcting false teachers.
With the epistles much of the focus is on the Jew/gentile issue within the Church, and particularly the place of Torah (Galatians and Romans both strongly reflect this.). There are also clearly issues around questions of ‘flesh’ v. ‘spirit’ and beliefs which share characteristics with Gnosticism. Sometimes it’s hard to determine whether Paul’s writing is responding to controversy within the Church, or pressures it is experiencing from the outside. Examples of this, in my view, include 1 Corinthians 15, and the Thessalonians material in life after death etc. Otherwise much of the material in the Epistles is more about Christian praxis than about major theological foundations of the faith.
Specifically there is very little foundation for your contention that
The NT itself clearly describes various groups who heard different stories and who believed different things about the resurrection.
and you have not produced anything in the way of chapter and verse to justify it.
To the point that Scriptures were written by the victors, may I amend that to Scriptures were compiled by the victors. There were many books written around the same time, but only a few were accepted by the church at large.
This gets to the point I was making. "The church" in this context is defined fairly narrowly and very deliberately excludes a lot of early Christian groups. Do Marcionites count as Christians (or "the church")? Nope. Gnostics? Gnope. Ebionites? Nazoreans? Docetists? Nope, nope, and triple nope!
In other words "the church" in these arguments is carefully constructed to exclude a lot of early Christianity based on ideological/theological/Christological grounds. Claiming that it's amazing how universal agreement was within early Christianity, so long as you define "early Christianity" narrowly enough to exclude most early Christians is kind of like expressing amazement about how universal support was for Comrade Stalin at the latest party congress. I'm not saying the proto-orthodox church used Stalinist tactics to stifle dissent, but if you draw boundaries based on excluding dissenters it's the exact opposite of amazing that there is so little dissent.
As I've noted upthread, I think, I've heard that at least 30 Christian variations / flavours have been identified. Heck, some may be mentioned in the canonical NT itself it would seem - if we interpret the 'Nicolaitans' mentioned in Revelation 2:15 as a reference to some kind of quasi-sectarian movement.
I've always thought that proto-orthodoxy emerged as a broad consensus as people grappled with what they'd been taught or heard and responded to challenges posed by the likes of Marcion or figures like Arius later on.
What were the various major Councils about if they weren't addressing issues of Christology or pneumatology in response to controversies of one form or other?
I don't have an issue with the eyewitness testimony emphasis that @Lamb Chopped outlined - so I don't count myself in with the 'you all' she keeps mentioning. That doesn't mean that everyone interpreted that testimony the same way. 'Some said it thundered.'
But yes, a consensus did emerge and yes it did exclude certain voices as the early Church sifted and assessed various ideas. That's how these things work.
This may sound counterintuitive but I don't put a great deal of store on some of the apologetic arguments that are often put forward. The disciples appear like idiots. They were too disorganised to concoct a reliable narrative by nefarious means. They listened to women.
That's not because I don't think these things have weight but I find it all a bit speculative. If other people find it helpful, then fine.
Perhaps my mind works differently but I'm not particularly interested in 'reconstructing' what may have happened with the dead people who apparently rose out of their tombs at the Resurrection - as was the subject of another apologetic style thread.
It puzzles me but it's not something I'd try to 'imagine' or account for in some way.
I've been told off before for teasing other posters that they are approaching these things in a very 'Western' and juridical kind of way. As if we are sat in a courtroom as members of the jury.
If Marcion came up with a list of what he considered canonical books, so what? That doesn't undermine or deflate subsequent attempts to agree a canon.
There's a line of thought that would argue that we should be grateful to heretical and heterodox ideas as they've enabled us to define a more orthodox/Orthodox approach.
1) When there are multiple eyewitnesses who corroborate each other’s testimony, in the main points if not in every detail. In fact, we have a tendency to disbelieve people who’s testimony dovetails in every particular, because it looks rehearsed, made up. But when you’ve got multiple eyewitnesses who agree on the outline of a case, we usually consider it settled.
Hath not Miss Hubbard seen Goody Proctor conversing with a tall man near the woods at dusk, and has not her shadow been seen where she was not, that we may know she is a witch?
4) When the witnesses pay with their lives, livelihood, or reputation for their testimony. We generally think that people who suffer for their testimony are more likely to be telling the truth—or at the very least, honestly mistaken. And we all know what happened to most of the early Christian witnesses.
I'm not sure I buy this. Using the same argument one could claim that Bernie Maddoff must have honestly believed his Ponzi scheme was a legitimate investment plan because he was willing to suffer reputational damage and go to prison for it. Sure, you can argue that Maddoff had a pretty clear motive (money), but we know from history that leading a cult of fanatical followers can also be highly motivating.
1) When there are multiple eyewitnesses who corroborate each other’s testimony, in the main points if not in every detail. In fact, we have a tendency to disbelieve people who’s testimony dovetails in every particular, because it looks rehearsed, made up. But when you’ve got multiple eyewitnesses who agree on the outline of a case, we usually consider it settled.
Hath not Miss Hubbard seen Goody Proctor conversing with a tall man near the woods at dusk, and has not her shadow been seen where she was not, that we may know she is a witch?
4) When the witnesses pay with their lives, livelihood, or reputation for their testimony. We generally think that people who suffer for their testimony are more likely to be telling the truth—or at the very least, honestly mistaken. And we all know what happened to most of the early Christian witnesses.
I'm not sure I buy this. Using the same argument one could claim that Bernie Maddoff must have honestly believed his Ponzi scheme was a legitimate investment plan because he was willing to suffer reputational damage and go to prison for it. Sure, you can argue that Maddoff had a pretty clear motive (money), but we know from history that leading a cult of fanatical followers can also be highly motivating.
You seem to be making an absolute of something @Lamb Chopped didn’t make an absolute. She said “we generally think,” leaving open the possibility in some circumstances of not thinking that people who suffer for their testimony are telling the truth.
You’re also talking about what people might claim or argue, while LC was talking about how claims might be evaluated.
And LC specifically said “we generally think that people who suffer for their testimony are more likely to be telling the truth.” Is there anyone who thinks Bernie Madoff suffered for his testimony, rather than for his actions?
I'm not sure I buy this. Using the same argument one could claim that Bernie Maddoff must have honestly believed his Ponzi scheme was a legitimate investment plan because he was willing to suffer reputational damage and go to prison for it. Sure, you can argue that Maddoff had a pretty clear motive (money), but we know from history that leading a cult of fanatical followers can also be highly motivating.
I rather think Maddoff expected not to get caught, which is a different kettle of fish from accepting that you're likely to get caught and punished but doing it anyway.
By church at large, I am talking about the churches that subscribed to the ecumenical councils prior to the Great Schism.
That's what I think of too, but then there are those who didn't accept the Council of Chalcedon.
There were some positive moves towards rapprochement and understanding between the Orthodox and 'Oriental Orthodox' a few years ago. As is the nature of these things, unfortunately, it was all left hanging in the air because we can't organise anything properly.
On the sort of issues we're discussing here both sides would pretty much be on the same page.
And LC specifically said “we generally think that people who suffer for their testimony are more likely to be telling the truth.” Is there anyone who thinks Bernie Madoff suffered for his testimony, rather than for his actions?
I'm not sure the word/action dichotomy is useful here. Most of the Christian witnesses who suffered for their faith also weren't being punished for their testimony per se but because they'd become a nuisance to various powers-that-be. Things like declaring that the gods of the state are actually demons or that no one should join the legions or whatever are definitely going to get you in trouble because the testimony tends to bleed into action.
To take a contemporary example, Donald Trump frequently gives (false) testimony about how the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" by Joe Biden. I suppose you could claim that Trump is suffering for his testimony, but I'd argue it's mostly because he used that testimony to whip up an angry mob to install him as dictator. Once again, the line between words and actions is not always clear (or useful).
I'm not sure I buy this. Using the same argument one could claim that Bernie Maddoff must have honestly believed his Ponzi scheme was a legitimate investment plan because he was willing to suffer reputational damage and go to prison for it. Sure, you can argue that Maddoff had a pretty clear motive (money), but we know from history that leading a cult of fanatical followers can also be highly motivating.
I rather think Maddoff expected not to get caught, which is a different kettle of fish from accepting that you're likely to get caught and punished but doing it anyway.
That's one of the things that always gets me about these high-end financial fraudsters. There never seems to be any thought of an exit plan. No notion that the fraud is unsustainable and can't go on forever. Maddoff could have had several fake passports/identities and a bunch of fancy condos in countries with no extradition treaties with the U.S. but as nearly as I can tell he made no arrangements along these lines. It's a bit of a contrast to lower-level con men who always seem to have a contingency plan for things going south, even if they don't always execute that plan in a timely manner.
In a similar manner, I'm not sure we can know the mindset and expectations of various Christian witnesses at this far a remove. Maybe, like Maddoff, they believed that they personally would never be caught, despite a lot of available evidence that this was a likely outcome.
And LC specifically said “we generally think that people who suffer for their testimony are more likely to be telling the truth.” Is there anyone who thinks Bernie Madoff suffered for his testimony, rather than for his actions?
I'm not sure the word/action dichotomy is useful here.
I think it’s an appropriate distinction when the statement you’re responding to is
When the witnesses pay with their lives, livelihood, or reputation for their testimony. We generally think that people who suffer for their testimony are more likely to be telling the truth—or at the very least, honestly mistaken.
Yes, such people are often pains in the backsides of those in authority for other reasons, but the claim made here was specifically that there is a general inclination to assume that people who know they are likely to face consequences for their testimony and offer that testimony anyway are not intentionally offering false testimony. The general assumption is that those pains in the backside who know they’re not being truthful will likely either recant or try to weasel out when faced with serious consequences.
What @Lamb Chopped is describing is essentially a “statement against interest,” per Rule 804(b)(3) (“Hearsay Exceptions; Declarant Unavailable”) of the (US) Federal Rules of Evidence and similar state evidence rules:
The following are not excluded by the rule against hearsay if the declarant is unavailable as a witness: . . .
(3) Statement Against Interest. A statement that:
(A) a reasonable person in the declarant’s position would have made only if the person believed it to be true because, when made, it was so contrary to the declarant’s proprietary or pecuniary interest or had so great a tendency to invalidate the declarant’s claim against someone else or to expose the declarant to civil or criminal liability; and
(B) is supported by corroborating circumstances that clearly indicate its trustworthiness, if it is offered in a criminal case as one that tends to expose the declarant to criminal liability.
Yes, that rule includes the need for corroborating circumstances. That seems to fit with LC’s “generally,” as well as the other relevant factors to be considered she listed.
I love (8), and (1) to it is a fine defence if you, like the forty year old second hand account of witnesses, believe.
The witnesses were first hand. Think of an affidavit. The person who records it or files it is not the witness , rather the person who makes the sworn statement contained in the medium is.
A complex conspiracy was only necessary by one man at most. Jesus.
Blatantly and evidentially false
The organisation Paul encountered over a generation before had nothing visibly to do with these people.
Assuming the people you mean here made up the first believers who included witnesses to the resurrection? If so, blatantly false as well.
It's all a great believer's justification, but having deconstructed everything, I can't believe on the basis of it, because there is no basis for belief. Full stop. Because of the baggage in the story which feeds back with cognitive dissonance in to believing. Absurd and toxic baggage. Toxic damnationism from the man himself: any requirement of belief for salvation. And scandalously particular absurdity like God the Son.
This is your real reason and often repeated claim that ‘God is a sod’ and so he cannot be real. That is a claim all who make it will have to justify if he is real but by then, it may be too late. “You pays your money..you takes your choice.” Pascal’s wager may seem tempting to some..
The story contains no instance of the fingerpost. No still small voice of divine intelligence.
Well, here, you have to face the history. The divine intelligence has in fact communicated itself to millions, great and small. The Lewises, the Muggeridges, Madame Guyon, the Cambridge Seven and the cleaner of widows in your block et al. You, of course are not currently one of them but maybe you still could be.
Even with the best of will, including nice liberal reconstruction of Jesus' hard, nasty sayings, bespeaking a vile, Loveless, incompetent God.
Maybe Augustine once thought that too. Lewis might have as well. They came to the conclusion though that like Paul,
‘Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.’
Corrected quoting codes throughput the post. BroJames, Purgatory Host [/sup]
Comments
Yes, I imagine there would be a rather lot of this going on - more so because of the stress large parts of the early church were under, with God occasionally nudging them individually or collectively, and very rarely nudging them much harder than usual.
There's also the geographical dispersion to take into account - which allows for a certain amount of distributed confirmation.
This vision of a united, happy-clappy early church where no one disagreed (at least not seriously) about important religious matters is really only sustainable if you ignore a lot of other nominally Christian groups (Marcionites, Ebionites, various gnostic sects, etc.) that get written out of church history as heretics. The Marcionites are an interesting faction of early Christianity for this discussion since Marcion was the first person we know of to attempt to define a canon of Christian scripture. This was not an "official" canon, however you want to define "official", but was accepted as definitive by a large group of self-identified Christians at a time when no one else had a canon of scripture.
And that's without getting into the elephant in the room that is Christian anti-semitism. It's pretty clear that a lot of the early Church considered itself something new within Judaism, not something new and totally separate from Judaism. As such, I'm not sure we can place the sometimes violent clashes between early Christians and their Jewish contemporaries as an entirely external-to-the-Church matter without projecting backwards a Christian orthodoxy that did not at the time exist.
At best claims of early Christian unity on theological matters comes down to a claim that the sub-set of early Christian groups that would form the church as it exists today mostly agreed while the early Christian groups that disagreed were declared heretics and eventually went extinct. I'm not sure that's as miraculous a claim as you seem to think it is.
Ok, we Big O Orthodox claim to be around from Day One, as it were but at the same time will certainly admit that there was development through discussion, hot debate, fall-outs and all the rest of it. I don't see how or why the respective understandings of @Crœsos and @Lamb Chopped have to be mutually or starkly exclusive.
Uh-oh, it's one of my 'both/and' things again ...
Most of what we know about a lot of the groups that ended up on the outside of the established church once the dust had settled and the church was indeed established comes from various critics denouncing the various heresies involved. We don't get to read what Marcion thought. We get Tertullian's five volume denunciation of Marcion as a heretic. In other words, the remarkable "unity" of the early church was the result of casting out dissidents, not some artifact of people never disagreeing about anything important.
tl:dr - History Scripture is written (and compiled) by the victors.
Yeah, Orthodoxy / orthodoxy won out and things could have turned out differently.
But they didn't. 😉
It's what we've got to work with or to react against.
The last time I invited JWs in for a bible study - once we had cleared up a slightly bizarre conversation-at-cross-purposes regarding Aryanism / Arianism - they made much the same point. Perhaps there's a home there for you!
The antisemitic thing is a red herring that belongs on another thread. Feel free to start it, if you like! It has nothing I can see to do with "how we know what Jesus said and did" with any certainty.
In case anyone wonders, I chose Athanasius' letter for my "first official list of the canon" precisely because it was the latest possible date I could find for this. I don't want anyone thinking I'm not playing square with you all. Yes, Marcion and a host of others had lists of what they considered canon, but those lists are generally either private (that is, not endorsed by the church at large--and "what is canon" is the business of the whole church if anything is!--or else the contents of the lists are not available, such as the one Constantine ordered drawn up. So I gave you all the latest possible date to play fair with you. If anyone wants to argue that the canon was solidified earlier than that, I'll not complain.
"Relative" is doing so much work in that sentence it should be earning overtime. "Relative" peacefulness includes accusations of heresy, excommunications, exile (once Christians had enough pull with the Emperor to accomplish such a thing), and maybe assassination. This may be "peaceful" relative to Roman imperial succession or the Borgia papacy, but not to most institutional processes.
Assembling hymnbooks must be really interesting.
Compiled by the victors, from manuscripts themselves written - or in turn compiled - by the victors.
Especially in the OT, I think.
From NT references it would appear that 'The Law, the Prophets and The Psalms' formed a recognised body of authoritative texts.
But as far as I understand it, rabbinical practice was more fluid and looser than we might expect. All those glosses and 'midrashes'.
Tradition is a dynamic thing. Or should be.
I'm often struck how we Orthodox don't hesitate to cite some extra-canonical sources such as the Proto-evangelium of James, whilst relegating others to being interesting but not for public consumption.
As far as the 'inter-testamental' books go, yes, we use those. I've not read all of them yet.
Ah, but how many Books of Esdras do you have, and how many Maccabees?
C'mon, the Ethiopians have even more than us.
Can you have too much of a good thing? 👍
Extra Esther? Any Enochs?
Technically, the New Testament has never officially been closed but several ecumenical councils have listed the common books.
What's good about Daniel? About a pack of lies?
And when you say "others claim" who are you talking about?
(I don't believe 'closed' is the right word for any of the processes whereby Christian or Jewish traditions settled which books were canonical. No tradition was saying we have been accepting new books every so often but now we're going to stop. In particular, the phrasing implies that the Septuagint is a shorter list, because it closed earlier, than the Protestant/Jewish list when in fact the Septuagint list is more inclusive.)
Well, I like the bit where it lists all those musical instruments. Again and again.
We've got Susannah and the Elders and Bel and The Dragon in our version. Don't be such a spoil-sport.
Okay, so let’s do something on memory and eyewitnesses. This is inevitably going to be the bit that causes the most arguing, because so little is actually proven about how memory works, and everybody has a theory, and most of us are convinced we are right. Yay. Let’s try anyway.
What Jesus said and did rests ultimately on the testimony of eyewitnesses. That is, people who heard him, who were close to him, who testified to what they experienced. As John put it in 1 John 1: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— 2 the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— 3 that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. 4 And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.”
This emphasis on touching and seeing and hearing comes up elsewhere. Jesus appeals to it in Luke 24:39-43 when his terrified disciples think they are seeing a ghost after the resurrection:
Similarly he says to Thomas, who refuses to believe without touchable proof:
The resurrection appearances often begin as a matter of course with Jesus displaying his wounds, eating and drinking, urging them to handle him—anything to get them to believe. He doesn’t blame them for wanting that proof—he pushes it himself. So the emphasis on eyewitness and the proof of the senses is baked into Christianity from the beginning. Let me emphasize again: this is NOT a culture or a worldview that believes in maya, the world as illusion. No. “Taste, touch, handle, see for yourself”—these are the appeals of Jesus.
Similarly, you can see Paul appealing to the testimony of eyewitnesses when it comes to the Resurrection:
Notice that Paul names the eyewitnesses, and remarks that most of them are still alive and able to be consulted. He doesn’t cast a single shadow of blame on anybody who wants to go consult them. Let them! That’s what they are there for. I get the sense he’d hand you over addresses and phone numbers if you wanted them. There’s not a shadow of spiritual guilt-tripping along the lines of, “If you had real faith, you wouldn’t need this testimony.” None of that bullshit. Call the witnesses and hear what they have to say.
You’ll even find this in minor matters, like the reference to Simone of Cyrene, who carried Jesus’ cross for a little ways. Mark 15:21 describes him as “the father of Alexander and Rufus,” who were clearly names well-known to the early church—so likely Christian believers of some reputation. Similarly the man whose ear got cut off in the garden of Gethsemane is named (John 18:10, “The servant’s name was Malchus”). The implication is that anyone who wants can follow this up and go talk to the man—who is probably now in the faith, which is why they name him with no further annotation.
The Nature of Memory
Now we all know that memory is imperfect. People can be fooled into remembering things that never happened, or into distorting memories of things that did happen. Sure that can happen. We’ve all seen it.
And yet—
And yet, human memory and eyewitness testimony is the foundation of our legal system, our history, and quite a lot of our scientific knowledge (which is why there’s such a hurricane of anger when a scientist is found to have created fraudulent data). It may not be perfect, but it works pretty well for the purposes we need it for.
When is it most reliable?
1) When there are multiple eyewitnesses who corroborate each other’s testimony, in the main points if not in every detail. In fact, we have a tendency to disbelieve people who’s testimony dovetails in every particular, because it looks rehearsed, made up. But when you’ve got multiple eyewitnesses who agree on the outline of a case, we usually consider it settled.
Note in this connection the fact that God gave us FOUR Gospels—an odd choice, if he wasn’t looking to bolster the testimony—and that they have considerable overlap, as well as plenty of minor points where people can argue about contradictions. For example, you can go round and round about the exact order of the Easter Sunday appearances; but everybody agrees that Jesus did appear, that he did it bodily, that multiple people saw him, and that the women and the disciples were among those who saw him. They also all agree that he appeared bodily, and that he bore the marks of his crucifixion.
2) When the eyewitnesses are people of good repute—not drunkards, not known to be mentally ill or addicted to something. And we give bonus trust to people who are testifying to matters that make them look bad (such as Peter’s many follies) or that make against their obvious interests (such as Paul, who threw away a promising career after Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus.)
3) When the witnesses are not people you’d normally choose for your case—for example, the witness of the women as the earliest to meet Jesus after the resurrection. If the early Christians had been looking to make up a story, they would certainly have chosen the first witnesses from a more reputable group than random female followers of Jesus, at least one of whom was known to have been formerly demon-possessed. As I understand it, the non-canonical early Christian writings don’t say a great deal about the women’s testimony, probably for patriarchal and sexist reasons. There’s no reason for the Gospels to mention it unless it happened.
(continued)
4) When the witnesses pay with their lives, livelihood, or reputation for their testimony. We generally think that people who suffer for their testimony are more likely to be telling the truth—or at the very least, honestly mistaken. And we all know what happened to most of the early Christian witnesses.
5) When the witnesses don’t have a ton of natural connections between them that would lead you to believe in a conspiracy. The early followers of Jesus covered the social map—fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes—and Roman soldiers, Pharisees, and even members of the Sanhedrin. Education levels ranged from none to PhD+. Both genders are involved, all ages are involved, people of varying politics and social classes are in there, and families are split in their opinion of him. People of bad reputation sit beside people of sterling reputation. This is not a recipe for collusion, generally speaking. What else pulls them together but this single one thing, what they have witnessed of Jesus?
6) When the matter under discussion is momentous, strange, or otherwise the kind of thing that sears itself into the memory. Ask me what I had for dinner two months ago and I’ll not be able to answer you. Ask me what I had on my wedding night and sure, I can tell you. Ask me who drove the car ahead of me on the freeway on-ramp in 2005 and I’ll not be able to tell you, unless you’re talking about the woman forced my family off the road at high speed in an attempt to kill us. Oh, yes—I remember her very, very well.
Jesus’ words and actions by their very nature tended to be memorable—miracles, talkes calculated to stick in the memory, and odd social interactions (like forgiving adulterers and welcoming tax collectors into the ranks of his closest disciples). Certainly the stories that survive to form the Gospels are memorable—they’ve infiltrated Western culture and a lot of other cultures as well. People who don’t know Christ know his stories!
7) When the matter “was not done in a corner,” as Paul remarks to Festus and King Agrippa regarding Christ’s death and resurrection. When a thing is public and publicly discussed, it is that much harder to hatch up a ton of pure unadulterated bullshit and foist it off on people.
This, by the way, is the defense against the whole “Chinese whispers/telephone” theory which says that one person can say something and have it emerge completely distorted by the end of a fairly short sequence of re-tellers. That kind of thing only works when one teller speaks to another privately, who then passes it along privately, and so on, with no public discussion and no chance for earlier links in the chain to correct later distortions. If people are yakking about it on every streek corner, it becomes much more difficult to convince them that in fact Y is true and not X—after all, they’ve heard the X version for themselves. The New Testament accounts are quite early, and got disseminated broadly pretty early; these aren’t things that were hoarded up in a mountainous monastery somewhere in the clouds for 500 years before being let loose on a population where all the eyewitnesses had died out!
8) I’m going to add this one, though I may regret it. When the witnesses obviously can’t connive their way out of a paper bag. I don’t know what impression you have of Jesus’ disciples, but “far-sighted conspirators and masters of the game” ain’t it, at least for me. They come off as idiots half the time, frankly—like most people. They mention things that at first glance harm their case, such as their own misunderstandings of Jesus, the fact that women were the first witnesses to the resurrection, the many scoldings Jesus gave them for being “slow to believe” and generally exasperating pains in the butt, and making generally dumb decisions like hanging out at a known location (Upper room in Jerusalem, well-known to Judas, whom they probably think is still alive at that point?) in the immediate aftermath of their Master’s judicial murder. There doubtless are people who are capable of carrying out complex conspiracies, but these men and women ain’t it.
Obviously you folks will all have different ideas about the extent to which memory and testimony can be trusted—this is a soft science, not a hard one. But Christianity isn’t asking you to throw your brain away when to comes to evaluating the testimony. Rather it asks you to use the same sort of consideration you would if you were making decisions about a personal commitment or a business matter—something that matters to you, that rests on human character and witness. The only thing any Christian can do is point you to the testimony and say, “Read it for yourself.” Then you must be the judge.
A positive answer means they are sacred, but that doesn't necessarily imply that the sacred texts are thought of as comprising a canon of authoritative texts.
Christians never closed the New Testament canon because it was never deemed to be open. The list of accepted books is those books considered to be authenticated by those disciples who were eyewitnesses and received as such by the majority of churches.
I note that the books considered non-canonical tend to claim more authoritative provenance than the canonical books. Luke was a companion of Paul whom we know from a passing mention in one of Paul's letters and his own account in Acts. Mark, barring unfounded speculation, was apparently a companion of Paul then Peter. John was originally attributed to a a disciple rather than the Apostle. Only Matthew is attributed to a figure with any kind of leadership role in the NT. (I note that also the early Christian account of Matthew's provenance is a bit opaque.) If you get something called the Gospel of Peter it's almost certainly gnostic.
I'm not sure if I'm trimming the comments correctly and it seems a shame to break up the flow of this. However this point in particular is gibberish.
The NT itself clearly describes various groups who heard different stories and who believed different things about the resurrection. The idea that there was one story which was accurately passed on from ear to ear with correction is for the birds.
I'm not sure what you think you are proving with this wall of text other than you've persuaded yourself that it is true.
That seems to be a particularly loaded way of noting that Marcion was the first we have record of to try to write down a list of canonical texts. Marcion's list of 11 books (differing somewhat from the canonical versions) is a far cry from the 27 generally accepted. I think your claim that Marcion "largely set" the canon is unsupported by the evidence.
A complex conspiracy was only necessary by one man at most. Jesus. The idiots (and I give full good will to them and their brilliant reporters), like you and me, did the rest, all in good faith. Just look at the man described. Ecce homo. What a timeless genius.
The organisation Paul encountered over a generation before had nothing visibly to do with these people.
It's all a great believer's justification, but having deconstructed everything, I can't believe on the basis of it, because there is no basis for belief. Full stop. Because of the baggage in the story which feeds back with cognitive dissonance in to believing. Absurd and toxic baggage. Toxic damnationism from the man himself: any requirement of belief for salvation. And scandalously particular absurdity like God the Son.
The story contains no instance of the fingerpost. No still small voice of divine intelligence.
There is no way of shoe horning that in to meaningless infinity. Let alone the other way around. Even if it's all true. Even with the best of will, including nice liberal reconstruction of Jesus' hard, nasty sayings, bespeaking a vile, Loveless, incompetent God.
Mmm. So you don't think that there were a large number of texts around at the time of Marcion to choose from? And you don't think that Marcion's choices set the direction for other additions?
No, I doubt very much that Marcion's choices dictated those of his detractors.
I don't know what you think you are saying here. Have you read the book of Acts? It is literally a narrative about Paul going around correcting "false teachers". Have you read the Epistles? They are literally about various incorrect and false ideas of Christianity.
What do you want me to say? There is evidence within the text itself that there were various "Christianities" around, various ideas about Christ and various ideas about what had or hadn't happened.
This is just a fact. Hence the text itself disproves the idea that there was any consistency in believers ideas on practically everything.
I was surprised by how engaging I have found your writing - normally longer posts quickly feel tldr in this format, but not so this time.
A narrative in which Paul isn't mentioned for the first 8 chapters, which are Petrine, and continue to be for a while. And for the life of me I can't find a single account of "false teachers" in Christianity. Intermittently and late in Acts Paul confronts gentile and Jewish religion. But no false teachers of any kind.
@KoF .......
This is a breach of Commandment 3. Attack the issue, not the person – Personal insults are only allowed in Hell. Attacks outside Hell are grounds for suspension or banning.
Do not use that tone against Shipmates in Purgatory in the future.
North East Quine, Purgatory host
Hostly hat off
(ETA formatting, DT, Admin)
Not only have I read Acts, it was a module in itself in my first Theology degree, and I think your assessment of it is wrong. Paul plays no part in the narrative in the early chapter of Acts, and most of the contention within the Church in Acts is around the basis on which gentiles are to be admitted. There is contention with Judaism around whether Jesus is the messiah, and contention with Jews and gentiles about whether Jesus was raised from the dead. But I challenge you to show (rather than merely tell as you have done so far) where Acts shows Paul correcting false teachers.
With the epistles much of the focus is on the Jew/gentile issue within the Church, and particularly the place of Torah (Galatians and Romans both strongly reflect this.). There are also clearly issues around questions of ‘flesh’ v. ‘spirit’ and beliefs which share characteristics with Gnosticism. Sometimes it’s hard to determine whether Paul’s writing is responding to controversy within the Church, or pressures it is experiencing from the outside. Examples of this, in my view, include 1 Corinthians 15, and the Thessalonians material in life after death etc. Otherwise much of the material in the Epistles is more about Christian praxis than about major theological foundations of the faith.
Specifically there is very little foundation for your contention that and you have not produced anything in the way of chapter and verse to justify it.
This gets to the point I was making. "The church" in this context is defined fairly narrowly and very deliberately excludes a lot of early Christian groups. Do Marcionites count as Christians (or "the church")? Nope. Gnostics? Gnope. Ebionites? Nazoreans? Docetists? Nope, nope, and triple nope!
In other words "the church" in these arguments is carefully constructed to exclude a lot of early Christianity based on ideological/theological/Christological grounds. Claiming that it's amazing how universal agreement was within early Christianity, so long as you define "early Christianity" narrowly enough to exclude most early Christians is kind of like expressing amazement about how universal support was for Comrade Stalin at the latest party congress. I'm not saying the proto-orthodox church used Stalinist tactics to stifle dissent, but if you draw boundaries based on excluding dissenters it's the exact opposite of amazing that there is so little dissent.
I've always thought that proto-orthodoxy emerged as a broad consensus as people grappled with what they'd been taught or heard and responded to challenges posed by the likes of Marcion or figures like Arius later on.
What were the various major Councils about if they weren't addressing issues of Christology or pneumatology in response to controversies of one form or other?
I don't have an issue with the eyewitness testimony emphasis that @Lamb Chopped outlined - so I don't count myself in with the 'you all' she keeps mentioning. That doesn't mean that everyone interpreted that testimony the same way. 'Some said it thundered.'
But yes, a consensus did emerge and yes it did exclude certain voices as the early Church sifted and assessed various ideas. That's how these things work.
This may sound counterintuitive but I don't put a great deal of store on some of the apologetic arguments that are often put forward. The disciples appear like idiots. They were too disorganised to concoct a reliable narrative by nefarious means. They listened to women.
That's not because I don't think these things have weight but I find it all a bit speculative. If other people find it helpful, then fine.
Perhaps my mind works differently but I'm not particularly interested in 'reconstructing' what may have happened with the dead people who apparently rose out of their tombs at the Resurrection - as was the subject of another apologetic style thread.
It puzzles me but it's not something I'd try to 'imagine' or account for in some way.
I've been told off before for teasing other posters that they are approaching these things in a very 'Western' and juridical kind of way. As if we are sat in a courtroom as members of the jury.
If Marcion came up with a list of what he considered canonical books, so what? That doesn't undermine or deflate subsequent attempts to agree a canon.
There's a line of thought that would argue that we should be grateful to heretical and heterodox ideas as they've enabled us to define a more orthodox/Orthodox approach.
Hath not Miss Hubbard seen Goody Proctor conversing with a tall man near the woods at dusk, and has not her shadow been seen where she was not, that we may know she is a witch?
Multiple witnesses agreeing on a general outline of facts is not always a good indicator of truth.
I'm not sure I buy this. Using the same argument one could claim that Bernie Maddoff must have honestly believed his Ponzi scheme was a legitimate investment plan because he was willing to suffer reputational damage and go to prison for it. Sure, you can argue that Maddoff had a pretty clear motive (money), but we know from history that leading a cult of fanatical followers can also be highly motivating.
You’re also talking about what people might claim or argue, while LC was talking about how claims might be evaluated.
And LC specifically said “we generally think that people who suffer for their testimony are more likely to be telling the truth.” Is there anyone who thinks Bernie Madoff suffered for his testimony, rather than for his actions?
I rather think Maddoff expected not to get caught, which is a different kettle of fish from accepting that you're likely to get caught and punished but doing it anyway.
That's what I think of too, but then there are those who didn't accept the Council of Chalcedon.
There were some positive moves towards rapprochement and understanding between the Orthodox and 'Oriental Orthodox' a few years ago. As is the nature of these things, unfortunately, it was all left hanging in the air because we can't organise anything properly.
On the sort of issues we're discussing here both sides would pretty much be on the same page.
I'm not sure the word/action dichotomy is useful here. Most of the Christian witnesses who suffered for their faith also weren't being punished for their testimony per se but because they'd become a nuisance to various powers-that-be. Things like declaring that the gods of the state are actually demons or that no one should join the legions or whatever are definitely going to get you in trouble because the testimony tends to bleed into action.
To take a contemporary example, Donald Trump frequently gives (false) testimony about how the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" by Joe Biden. I suppose you could claim that Trump is suffering for his testimony, but I'd argue it's mostly because he used that testimony to whip up an angry mob to install him as dictator. Once again, the line between words and actions is not always clear (or useful).
That's one of the things that always gets me about these high-end financial fraudsters. There never seems to be any thought of an exit plan. No notion that the fraud is unsustainable and can't go on forever. Maddoff could have had several fake passports/identities and a bunch of fancy condos in countries with no extradition treaties with the U.S. but as nearly as I can tell he made no arrangements along these lines. It's a bit of a contrast to lower-level con men who always seem to have a contingency plan for things going south, even if they don't always execute that plan in a timely manner.
In a similar manner, I'm not sure we can know the mindset and expectations of various Christian witnesses at this far a remove. Maybe, like Maddoff, they believed that they personally would never be caught, despite a lot of available evidence that this was a likely outcome.
What @Lamb Chopped is describing is essentially a “statement against interest,” per Rule 804(b)(3) (“Hearsay Exceptions; Declarant Unavailable”) of the (US) Federal Rules of Evidence and similar state evidence rules: Yes, that rule includes the need for corroborating circumstances. That seems to fit with LC’s “generally,” as well as the other relevant factors to be considered she listed.
‘Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.’
Corrected quoting codes throughput the post. BroJames, Purgatory Host [/sup]