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) 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.
(b) Blatantly and evidentially false
The organisation Paul encountered over a generation before had nothing visibly to do with these people.
(c) 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.
(d) 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.
(e) 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.
(f) 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]
Good to see you.
(a) We have no idea who the first hand witnesses were to any interviewer. None of the writers identify themselves.
(b) In logical terms, how? Oh, that's just rhetoric.
(c) See (b).
(d) All the Gods justified here, apart from Love, are bastards. As your empty threat shows.
(e) No I'm certainly not at their educational and intelligence level, thank God. And none of what any of them say, especially Lewis, is evidence of divine intelligence. Just of evolved human fallibility, where false positives are an inevitable by-product of agency detection. Pigeons are superstitious too. These geniuses are just as bird-brained.
(f) The usually false psychological realisation of ones evil, the shame, is a factor in much conversion. The fallacy of that fantasy get out of jail free card is a reach beyond the grasp of it.
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.
But interest can be context dependent. For example, when hanging out with your fellow cultists it could very much be in your interest to claim to be Jesus' bestie and his most loyal apostle, but when speaking to authorities, or even just random strangers, it might be in your interest to say you don't know the man. Both of these statements would be considered in the interest of the declarant, it's just that the declarant's interest has shifted with the context.
We don't know the context of how the various accounts of Jesus' life were transmitted, but it seems likely it was a lot closer to "hanging out with your fellow believers" than it was to "being questioned by imperial authorities".
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.
But interest can be context dependent. For example, when hanging out with your fellow cultists it could very much be in your interest to claim to be Jesus' bestie and his most loyal apostle, but when speaking to authorities, or even just random strangers, it might be in your interest to say you don't know the man. Both of these statements would be considered in the interest of the declarant, it's just that the declarant's interest has shifted with the context.
Yes, and it’s pretty clear, at least to me, that @Lamb Chopped is talking about people speaking openly, knowing they are at risk of consequences from the authorities.
We don't know the context of how the various accounts of Jesus' life were transmitted, but it seems likely it was a lot closer to "hanging out with your fellow believers" than it was to "being questioned by imperial authorities".
If that’s your position, then it seems to me your challenge is to LC’s underlying assumption that the writers of the NT knew what they were writing and teaching could get them into trouble, not to her observation that “[w]e generally think that people who suffer for their testimony are more likely to be telling the truth—or at the very least, honestly mistaken.” The challenge seems to be one questioning whether that assumption should apply in the case of the NT writings, not an argument that people don’t generally assume that a statement against interest is more likely to be truthful.
And of course it’s all context dependent. I took that to be why LC listed 8 things that might be looked at to evaluate reliability. All of these things should be looked at together and in context.
But interest can be context dependent. For example, when hanging out with your fellow cultists it could very much be in your interest to claim to be Jesus' bestie and his most loyal apostle, but when speaking to authorities, or even just random strangers, it might be in your interest to say you don't know the man. Both of these statements would be considered in the interest of the declarant, it's just that the declarant's interest has shifted with the context.
Yes, and it’s pretty clear, at least to me, that @Lamb Chopped is talking about people speaking openly, knowing they are at risk of consequences from the authorities.
We don't know the context of how the various accounts of Jesus' life were transmitted, but it seems likely it was a lot closer to "hanging out with your fellow believers" than it was to "being questioned by imperial authorities".
If that’s your position, then it seems to me your challenge is to LC’s underlying assumption that the writers of the NT knew what they were writing and teaching could get them into trouble, not to her observation that “[w]e generally think that people who suffer for their testimony are more likely to be telling the truth—or at the very least, honestly mistaken.” The challenge seems to be one questioning whether that assumption should apply in the case of the NT writings, not an argument that people don’t generally assume that a statement against interest is more likely to be truthful.
And of course it’s all context dependent. I took that to be why LC listed 8 things that might be looked at to evaluate reliability. All of these things should be looked at together and in context.
This brings us back to Bernie Maddoff, someone who openly touted his fraudlent "investment" plan. You'd think he'd know that this put him at risk of consequences from the authorities, but that seems to have not been a consideration for him. Either that or the he decided the short term benefits outweighed the long term risks. Still, I don't think anyone is willing to simply assume that Maddoff was "at the very least, honestly mistaken" about the investment portfolio he was pushing simply because doing so put him at personal risk.
But interest can be context dependent. For example, when hanging out with your fellow cultists it could very much be in your interest to claim to be Jesus' bestie and his most loyal apostle, but when speaking to authorities, or even just random strangers, it might be in your interest to say you don't know the man. Both of these statements would be considered in the interest of the declarant, it's just that the declarant's interest has shifted with the context.
Yes, and it’s pretty clear, at least to me, that @Lamb Chopped is talking about people speaking openly, knowing they are at risk of consequences from the authorities.
We don't know the context of how the various accounts of Jesus' life were transmitted, but it seems likely it was a lot closer to "hanging out with your fellow believers" than it was to "being questioned by imperial authorities".
If that’s your position, then it seems to me your challenge is to LC’s underlying assumption that the writers of the NT knew what they were writing and teaching could get them into trouble, not to her observation that “[w]e generally think that people who suffer for their testimony are more likely to be telling the truth—or at the very least, honestly mistaken.” The challenge seems to be one questioning whether that assumption should apply in the case of the NT writings, not an argument that people don’t generally assume that a statement against interest is more likely to be truthful.
And of course it’s all context dependent. I took that to be why LC listed 8 things that might be looked at to evaluate reliability. All of these things should be looked at together and in context.
This brings us back to Bernie Maddoff, someone who openly touted his fraudlent "investment" plan. You'd think he'd know that this put him at risk of consequences from the authorities, but that seems to have not been a consideration for him. Either that or the he decided the short term benefits outweighed the long term risks. Still, I don't think anyone is willing to simply assume that Maddoff was "at the very least, honestly mistaken" about the investment portfolio he was pushing simply because doing so put him at personal risk.
No, it brings you back to Bernie Madoff, and again to making an absolute—he openly touted his fraudulent investment plan when he could go to prison, so per what @Lamb Chopped says, we should assume he was telling the truth—when LC did not suggest anything like that absolute view.
You seem unwilling to recognize that LC was describing multiple criteria that should be evaluated together and in context, even when she has specifically confirmed that was what she was doing.
I also pointed out that this is a soft science, not a hard and fast one. The results of applying these criteria are generally reliable, but who knows? If you dig hard enough in the history of the world, you may find the rare, rare case where someone’s testimony meets all these criteria and still turns out to be false in the end.
I’m not worried about that happening, though. It seems extremely unlikely.
You seem unwilling to recognize that LC was describing multiple criteria that should be evaluated together and in context, even when she has specifically confirmed that was what she was doing.
The problem is that we don't really have enough information to evaluate the testimony on the basis of most of these criteria. Take, for example, the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate. This is a fairly important part of Jesus' story. It's portrayed in all four gospels. And yet we have no idea who was the witness providing the details of this event. John's gospel claims that Jesus' Jewish accusers refused to enter Pilate's palace so even they weren't present for Pilate's questioning of Jesus. The other gospels do not include this detail but are written in such a way that neither excludes it nor requires it. At any rate, if we take John at his word the only people present for Pilate's trial of Jesus were likely:
Jesus of Nazareth
Pontius Pilate
Pilate's palace staff and guards
Maybe an interpreter, depending on how good both party's koine Greek was
That's just a guess based on the likely logistics of the situation. We don't actually know the details. So who is the source (or sources) for the inside-the-palace half of this account? And how do we assess their testimony using @Lamb Chopped's criteria if we don't know who they are?
1) Are there multiple eyewitnesses who corroborate each other’s testimony? We don't know. We have four Gospel accounts, but we don't know where they're getting their information from. If the author of John is to be believed he wasn't present for at least half the trial. (Pilate seems to go to-and-fro between the Jewish leaders outside his gates and Jesus inside his palace so it's possible one of Jesus' disciples was in the outside-the-gate crowd.) If the whole trial takes place inside the palace (as implied but not required by the other Gospels) it's likely no contemporary disciple of Jesus was present. So maybe the account is from some later convert from Pilate's staff? Or maybe this is an assumption by the author à la Thucydides of how the trail should have gone. We just can't say with the information available to us.
2) Are the eyewitnesses people of good repute? Since we don't know who the witnesses are, we can't say.
3) Are the witnesses not people you’d normally choose for your case? Again, we don't know. I will note that this seems to contradict criterion #2, where you want witnesses of good repute who presumably are the kind of people you'd normally choose for your case.
4) Did the witnesses pay with their lives, livelihood, or reputation for their testimony? Again, hard to say not knowing who the witness/witnesses is/are. If the witness is a later Christian convert from Pilate's staff you could imagine having this tale to tell would actually burnish their reputation among their new co-religionists, maybe enough to counteract the whole "you worked for Pontius Pilate?!?" thing.
5) Do the witnesses have a ton of natural connections between them that would lead you to believe in a conspiracy? Again, not knowing who is reporting these events (or how many people) makes this question impossible to answer. If we assume John's version, the connection is that everyone present for the inside-the-palace half of the trial had some connection to the household of Pontius Pilate.
6) Was the matter under discussion momentous, strange, or otherwise the kind of thing that sears itself into the memory? This one is a maybe. A large, angry crowd of Judean authorities showing up unexpectedly and demanding the execution of a local dissident probably wasn't something that happened at Pilate's palace every day. Yes, the Romans handed out a lot of death sentences, but this one seems to have been done outside the normal procedures for such a case.
7) Was the matter “not done in a corner”? In this case it kind of was. It would have been public knowledge that Jesus was tried before Pilate and what the sentence was, but for the reasons explained above the exact events of the trial itself were kind of "done in a corner".
8) Could the witnesses connive their way out of a paper bag? And again we're back to not knowing this because we don't know who is the actual eyewitness in this case.
So that's just one event, though it is a fairly important one that shows up in all four Gospels, and we are mostly unable to make any determinations based on @Lamb Chopped's suggested criteria.
You seem unwilling to recognize that LC was describing multiple criteria that should be evaluated together and in context, even when she has specifically confirmed that was what she was doing.
The problem is that we don't really have enough information to evaluate the testimony on the basis of most of these criteria. . . . .
Yes, these are all appropriate questions and challenges that actually engage with what @Lamb Chopped wrote.
It's virtually certain that in the case of consultations in the various buildings under Pilate, Herod, and the high priests, that our information is coming from later converts among the servants, guards, etc. There was very little expectation of privacy in the ancient world, and the servants etc. would have been ubiquitous for such people. As for the alternate idea that the Gospel writers simply "made it all up," a la Thucydides when he inserts stirring speeches into the mouths of his generals, etc. no. There is nothing to suggest that they would consider such a thing, and a lot against it.
From the History of the Peloponnesian War:
"In this history I have made use of set speeches some of which were delivered just before and others during the war. I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the speeches which I listened to myself and my various informants have experienced the same difficulty; so my method has been, while keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation."
The last bit is the troubling bit. Nobody is surprised to find speeches summarized or cut in an age where audiovisual recording is impossible; but making up shit because you want your generals to say uplifting and morally edifying things that you as author feel are "called for by each situation"--well, Thucydides obviously has more purposes than just recording what happened, and thinks himself justified. But the Gospel writers can't get away with that shit. Their stated purposes are as follows:
From Luke 1:
Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.
Luke is clearly concerned about truth here--not moral uplift or ennobling his readers or what have you. He wants his readers to have certainty.
From John:
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31)
As you can see, John' stated intention is that they may believe and have life--things that would be undercut if he were simply making up shit about Jesus. Faith and life must be founded on truth, or they are nothing but illusion.
This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true. Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. (John 21:24-25)
Again, we have a rather naive statement about the many, many things John has NOT recorded, offered I suppose to those who might attack him whining, "But why didn't you add this or that?" He tells us why, and emphasizes that what he HAS written is the absolute truth, and he is an eyewitness. We also get that emphasis on truth and eyewitness status in the weird little story about Jesus' piercing: "But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth—that you also may believe." (John 19:34-35).
So really, the Thucydides comparison is out of bounds. These men did their research, and they had years to do it in. As we know that early Christianity spread like wildfire among the lower classes--the servants, guards, tradesmen, women, etc.--it's super easy to see where they must have gotten their information.
Now you wish you had names and bios of the people the Gospel writers spoke to, so you could evaluate them--well, who wouldn't want that? So would I. But this is ancient history, and nobody gets that, more's the pity. We do the best we can with what we have. And we can use some of the criteria even on unknown witnesses in the mass. For example, assuming that the bulk of the trial information came from guards, servants, etc, that would mean that these are people who are a) exposing their connection to an unpopular figure in the early church, which is certainly not in their personal best interests; b) placing themselves at some potential risk, as I can't imagine Pilate, Herod, Caiaphas etc. being happy to find out they'd been spied on and reported; and c) these mostly-low-class, ordinary witnesses have no connection with one another except their employment and later faith in Jesus, which makes conspiracy unlikely. They're a motley group of people. What has a guard to do with Pilate's wife's maid, for instance? But both would be well-place to report on the events inside Pilate's fortress that day--the guard on almost anything, the maid on her mistress's dream and distress.
It's virtually certain that in the case of consultations in the various buildings under Pilate, Herod, and the high priests, that our information is coming from later converts among the servants, guards, etc. There was very little expectation of privacy in the ancient world, and the servants etc. would have been ubiquitous for such people. As for the alternate idea that the Gospel writers simply "made it all up," a la Thucydides when he inserts stirring speeches into the mouths of his generals, etc. no. There is nothing to suggest that they would consider such a thing, and a lot against it.
From the History of the Peloponnesian War:
"In this history I have made use of set speeches some of which were delivered just before and others during the war. I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the speeches which I listened to myself and my various informants have experienced the same difficulty; so my method has been, while keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation."
The last bit is the troubling bit. Nobody is surprised to find speeches summarized or cut in an age where audiovisual recording is impossible; but making up shit because you want your generals to say uplifting and morally edifying things that you as author feel are "called for by each situation"--well, Thucydides obviously has more purposes than just recording what happened, and thinks himself justified.
I prefer the Crawley translation, available at Gutenberg.
With reference to the speeches in this history, some were delivered before the war began, others while it was going on; some I heard myself, others I got from various quarters; it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one’s memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said. And with reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. My conclusions have cost me some labour from the want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrences by different eye-witnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other. The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.
I've highlighted the parallel text from your translation. In the absence of a recording or transcript, what is the problem with using words "adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said"? It seems the only real way to convey a speech if the exact words are no longer available. It should also be noted that classical Greece had a fairly well developed tradition of rhetoric, giving an authors standardized forms for speeches into which "the general sense of what they really said" could be shaped. (Kind of like the modern five paragraph essay.) Far from wanting his generals to "say uplifting and morally edifying", Thucydides is claiming to adhere to the spirit and meaning of the speeches conveyed while openly admitting that they are paraphrases, not transcripts. I'm not sure exactly what you want from him given the lack of AV recordings.
But the Gospel writers can't get away with that shit. Their stated purposes are as follows:
From Luke 1:
Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.
Luke is clearly concerned about truth here--not moral uplift or ennobling his readers or what have you. He wants his readers to have certainty.
I would argue (and have been arguing) that "truth" and "certainty" are not always the same thing. Luke says he's concerned about the latter, and regards the former as an instrumental means to achieve this end.
He is also a lot less forthcoming that Thucydides about his sources and methodology. I'm guessing that since, unlike Thucydides, he does not admit that any of his dialogue might be a paraphrase we should conclude he's presenting us with exact quotes of Jesus, who apparently (almost) always spoke in koine Greek.
So really, the Thucydides comparison is out of bounds. These men did their research, and they had years to do it in.
So did Thucydides, and he's a lot more forthcoming about his methodology than the authors of the Gospels, fairly clearly (by the standards of ancient historians) distinguishing between fact, inference, and conjecture. My comparison wasn't meant to be an insult, just a reminder that at least Thucydides is willing to admit that he's paraphrasing the people he portrays.
As we know that early Christianity spread like wildfire among the lower classes--the servants, guards, tradesmen, women, etc.--it's super easy to see where they must have gotten their information.
Now you wish you had names and bios of the people the Gospel writers spoke to, so you could evaluate them--well, who wouldn't want that?
Maybe they're filed with the video recording of the funeral speech of Pericles you seem to think Thucydides should have consulted. Seriously, if you're going to dunk on Thucydides for not having exact transcripts of the speeches in his History of the Pelopennesian War is it any less reasonable to criticize the Gospels for not appending an annotated bibliography of sources?
At any rate, it's easy to make informed conjecture about where the Gospel writers got their information. This is very much not the same as being able to "see" this, and it seems super-easy to forget this distinction once the conjecture has been made.
I don’t think you understood me. I had been taught, rightly or wrongly, that Thucydides felt more freedom to make up appropriate sounding stuff for speeches and insert this into the mouths of his major characters, when existing and suitable material did not exist, and the translation I quoted confirmed me in this understanding. Of course if you know better, I will accept this. Why not? My personal acquaintance with Thucydides lasted a single semester. Since you appear to have a deeper knowledge of him, I thank you for sharing it.
I don’t think you understood me. I had been taught, rightly or wrongly, that Thucydides felt more freedom to make up appropriate sounding stuff for speeches and insert this into the mouths of his major characters, when existing and suitable material did not exist, and the translation I quoted confirmed me in this understanding.
Thucydides does feel freedom to make up dialogue that he feels "adher(es) as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said". He admits this himself. Otherwise you'd get passages like:
Perikles said some words at a military funeral. Such was the funeral that took place during this winter, with which the first year of the war came to an end.
Or
Reinforcements afterwards arriving from Athens in consequence, under the command of Philokrates, son of Demeas, the siege was now pressed vigorously; and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited the place themselves.
. . . without the previous section detailing the diplomacy and different positions of the Athenians and the Melians. Whether Thucydides felt more freedom to do this than the Gospel authors is debatable. We know that the Gospels include dialogue none of their authors were present to witness, like the aforementioned trial by Pilate or either of the Nativity stories or the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. The authors imply, but never outright state, that their record of these things is exact and infallible, but we are not given any hint as to their methodology or sources to judge for ourselves. Thucydides is at least that honest with his readers.
I have no doubt that Luke made thorough investigations and that the early Christians drew on the testimony of those involved with Christ and his disciples. Yet I see no need to compare Thucydides unfavourably with the Gospel writers. All were operating within a different histographical style and frame of reference than those we are used to.
That goes without saying.
'Thucydides felt free to make up shit. The Gospel writers didn't,' strikes me as over-stating the case so far as to begin to undermine it.
@Lamb Chopped makes some good points and has the grace to acknowledge that @Crœsos has the edge in terms of what Thucydides appears to have been doing rather than what she accuses him of doing. But the fact that she's argued as she has strikes me as overly defensive. 'Your guy is talking bollocks but my guys aren't.'
Come on, Lamb Chopped, I root for you a lot of the time but you can do better than that.
I inhabit a Christian tradition that has all sorts of extra-biblical stories and traditions that 'fill in the gaps' in some of the Gospel stories. That's part of its charm. But it can also be frustrating if we come at it in some kind of Mecanno-style approach of bolting all the parts together to make them fit.
'Aha! A serving girl must have overheard Pilate discussing Christ with his wife. She was secretly a believer and sneaked away afterwards to tell the disciples all about it ...'
I have no idea how the Gospel writers knew what Christ prayed in The Gethsemane. Perhaps he told them afterwards. Perhaps they second-guessed or added it for dramatic or theological purposes.
Who knows? I can live with not knowing or feeling the need to speculate. The whole edifice doesn't stand or fall on that.
What we have in the Gospels is a record of Christ's teachings. Not every single word he said. He may have had more parables for all we know. We also have accounts of his death and resurrection. Strange accounts. Not simply a resuscitated body but one that could apparently appear and disappear at will. A resurrected Christ who was sometimes recognisable and sometimes not. But witness accounts according to the writers.
We can accept their accounts or we can ignore or reject them. That much we know. I accept their account. 'Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief.'
How they came to hear about this, that or the other is pure speculation. Tacitus puts words in the mouth of Caractacus (Caradoc) when he's captured and taken to Rome. For all I know this could be based on something he actually said. He also attributes a speech to Calgacus, King of the Caledonians before his defeat by the Romans at Mons Graupius. It's the sort of thing he'd imagine he might have said. It doesn't mean that the battle never took place.
Was Herod actually 'struck by an angel' in a literal sense and was 'eaten by worms and died.' Or was he poisoned or suffered some singularly unpleasant fatal illness that carried him off remarkably quickly?
The whole thing doesn't fall apart if we concede that this was the way the early Christians interpreted his untimely death, as some form of almost instant divine retribution.
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.
I have no doubt that Luke made thorough investigations and that the early Christians drew on the testimony of those involved with Christ and his disciples. Yet I see no need to compare Thucydides unfavourably with the Gospel writers. All were operating within a different histographical style and frame of reference than those we are used to.
That goes without saying.
'Thucydides felt free to make up shit. The Gospel writers didn't,' strikes me as over-stating the case so far as to begin to undermine it.
@Lamb Chopped makes some good points and has the grace to acknowledge that @Crœsos has the edge in terms of what Thucydides appears to have been doing rather than what she accuses him of doing. But the fact that she's argued as she has strikes me as overly defensive. 'Your guy is talking bollocks but my guys aren't.'
Come on, Lamb Chopped, I root for you a lot of the time but you can do better than that.
I inhabit a Christian tradition that has all sorts of extra-biblical stories and traditions that 'fill in the gaps' in some of the Gospel stories. That's part of its charm. But it can also be frustrating if we come at it in some kind of Mecanno-style approach of bolting all the parts together to make them fit.
'Aha! A serving girl must have overheard Pilate discussing Christ with his wife. She was secretly a believer and sneaked away afterwards to tell the disciples all about it ...'
I have no idea how the Gospel writers knew what Christ prayed in The Gethsemane. Perhaps he told them afterwards. Perhaps they second-guessed or added it for dramatic or theological purposes.
Who knows? I can live with not knowing or feeling the need to speculate. The whole edifice doesn't stand or fall on that.
What we have in the Gospels is a record of Christ's teachings. Not every single word he said. He may have had more parables for all we know. We also have accounts of his death and resurrection. Strange accounts. Not simply a resuscitated body but one that could apparently appear and disappear at will. A resurrected Christ who was sometimes recognisable and sometimes not. But witness accounts according to the writers.
We can accept their accounts or we can ignore or reject them. That much we know. I accept their account. 'Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief.'
How they came to hear about this, that or the other is pure speculation. Tacitus puts words in the mouth of Caractacus (Caradoc) when he's captured and taken to Rome. For all I know this could be based on something he actually said. He also attributes a speech to Calgacus, King of the Caledonians before his defeat by the Romans at Mons Graupius. It's the sort of thing he'd imagine he might have said. It doesn't mean that the battle never took place.
Was Herod actually 'struck by an angel' in a literal sense and was 'eaten by worms and died.' Or was he poisoned or suffered some singularly unpleasant fatal illness that carried him off remarkably quickly?
The whole thing doesn't fall apart if we concede that this was the way the early Christians interpreted his untimely death, as some form of almost instant divine retribution.
Gamaliel, it desn't matter if you'rr rooting for me or what, though I appreciate it. What matters is the truth. And obviously you and I have different views on this.
I can't get on with "Hey, this prayer in John 17 really speaks to me, it tells me where I stand with the Trinity and what to expect of my future, and I'm a helluva lot less shaky as I walk down the road as a Christian believer" IF someone did not report it but rather "added it for dramatic or theological purposes." If the text is as shaky as all that, it almost comes to "why bother?" A wikipedia summary of Jesus' life would have done as well.
Not that my needs dictate reality. But I am not the only one in the human race who feels this way. I can make use of truth, I can make use of fiction, I can make use of truth in the form of fiction (parables etc)--but for God's sake let me know what I'm dealing with.
The quotes from the Gospel writers I cited up above say to me that they share my pre-occupation.
So, for that matter, does Jesus. Otherwise why does he build a towering theological structure (the resurrection of the dead) on a single Hebrew phrase--"I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob"? (Mark 12:26, referencing Exodus 3:6). That's a helluva lot to hang on one phrase, especially if you're overthrowing the main tenet of your ecclesiastical enemies.
And it isn't the only time. Again in Mark 12, you have Jesus hanging the riddle of the Incarnation on a single phrase uttered by David: "The Lord said to my Lord".
None of this behavior is at all sensible if the text of either Testament is as wishy-washy as you suggest, and the people of Jesus' day accepted it as such. Why argue at all if the other side can reasonably say, "Ah, it was probably just made up anyway" ? We've seen on the Ship what that leads to--people who break into every debate to tell you you're arguing about nothing, and why are you wasting your time? You'd be better off having a beer and forgetting the whole matter.
And if the people of Jesus' day did not accept their holy texts as such, but were hornswoggled into thinking it was trustworthy to the phrase and word level--well, then, our Gospel writers are frauds, and worse, and none of the characteristics of an honest witness can be safely ascribed to them. Best to leave them behind you in the dust. Because if they've made up shit to that level, at which point do you say, "Ah, but THIS part is true"?
No. I'm sorry, but it doesn't fit with what I've seen of their own reasons for writing, and of ancient Jewish behavior. Frauds they may be, truthtellers they may be, but this modern sort of "Who the hell really cares?" doesn't come into it.
Certainly. And I don't see why it shouldn't have been Jesus. He had to have been talking about something with his disciples, all those days walking the dusty roads of Judea and Galilee!
(Satan I wouldn't trust further than I could throw him... )
Croesus wrote: I would argue (and have been arguing) that "truth" and "certainty" are not always the same thing. Luke says he's concerned about the latter, and regards the former as an instrumental means to achieve this end.
Luke claims to holds himself to a high standard. He states he has made a thorough investigation. (He presumably interviewed lots of people.) The chap he writes for, Theophilus, could well be a wealthy Greek convert perhaps, maybe a patron? Who would know at this point in history but Theophilus, may well have other accounts with which to compare Luke's. The big point stands. Luke is concerned with certainty in order that his audience might know the exact facts about these events. One must assume he writes in good faith albeit from a Christian viewpoint. But why else would he take the trouble? He is also the only gospel writer that claims chronological order.
I'm an Orthodox Christian. These texts are authoritive.
The Church is 'the pillar and ground of the truth.' To unpack that would require another thread.
To say that the Gospel accounts are true doesn't necessitate there being a verbatim transcript of a conversation between Christ and Satan one Wednesday afternoon.
As for our Lord basing whopping big theological claims on single verses. Well yes, but that doesn't mean they were necessarily presented as single proof-texts in fundamentalist evangelical style.
Nor am I saying that John 'made up' the sayings attributed to our Lord in his Gospel. That doesn't mean they are verbatim 'witness-statements' made and recorded under police cross-examination.
I've got to be honest here, @Lamb Chopped I don't like your tone. It feels to me that you are accusing me of not acting in good faith and of playing fast and loose with the truth.
How dare you accuse me of having a different approach to the truth, implying - it seems to me - that I am indifferent to it.
If I've misunderstood you then fine, I apologise. I don't want to bristle, retaliate and let my own ego lead me into Hell calls and accusations I might then regret.
But please try to understand what I'm saying and not what you assume I'm saying. I'm not attacking your faith. I'm not trying to sow doubt and discord.
I'm not saying either as @MPaul suggests that the Gospel accounts don't bear the weight of scrutiny. It's not just the Gospel accounts themselves, of course, but the accumulated testimony of the early Church and churches and individual Christians down the ages. The scriptures don't stand alone.
Heck, I could understand your reactions if I'd said, 'The Gospel accounts are completely unreliable. We have no idea what Jesus said and did.'
But I didn't say that, did I?
The reaction I'm getting here is almost as if I'm doing a @Martin54. 'I don't believe this stuff any more so you shouldn't either.'
I've said nothing of the kind.
Yes, I waver, I doubt. We all do. But to imply that I'm acting in bad faith - as it appears to me that you have done and I stand to be corrected - is well out of order.
If I've posted something ignorant or inaccurate then please point out my error. Otherwise I'm afraid I'm still egotistical enough to request an apology.
Ok. Deep breath. I've cooled down a bit having re-read the posts I responded to.
On the Temptation. Sure, I see no reason why Christ couldn't have been the source of that. How 'literally' we take it is another issue, with Jesus teetering on the top of the Temple etc. Like the first chapters of Job.
On the Tacitus thing. I see no reason why there might not be similarly 'second-guess' attributions of comments etc in the NT. Why not? How does this diminish its veracity?
FWIW I accept the sayings of Christ in the Gospels as accurate reflections of what he taught and said, but not necessarily verbatim accounts.
Hence my use of the Herod example in Acts. How does Luke know that Hetod was 'struck by an angel'. Did the crowd see one? Or was he recording an interpretation of Herod's untimely death current among the early Christians?
...
The reaction I'm getting here is almost as if I'm doing a @Martin54. 'I don't believe this stuff any more so you shouldn't either.'
...
There is no should. No moral aspect to this. I don't believe anything, apart from my minimal subjective bag. I know infinity prevails. Believing it, feeling it gives me vertigo.
The quotes from the Gospel writers I cited up above say to me that they share my pre-occupation.
So, for that matter, does Jesus. Otherwise why does he build a towering theological structure (the resurrection of the dead) on a single Hebrew phrase--"I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob"? (Mark 12:26, referencing Exodus 3:6). That's a helluva lot to hang on one phrase, especially if you're overthrowing the main tenet of your ecclesiastical enemies.
A couple things about that. The resurrection of the dead was literally one of the biggest controversies in first century CE Judaism. It would have been much more surprising if Jesus had simply said "meh, whatever" and not touched the topic at all.
It's also interesting to see the Sadducees described as the enemies of Jesus. That job is usually assigned to the Pharisees. Of course, the Pharisees also believed in the resurrection of the dead so naturally this kind of questioning would be assigned to the anti-resurrectionist Sadducees. Jesus is, interestingly, taking a Pharisaical position here.
This passage of Mark is one of the very few times the Sadducees are mentioned without being followed by " . . . and Pharisees", which may be somewhat telling. This is a hint that at least some portions of Mark (or sources which Mark used) were probably composed prior to the destruction of the Temple. After that the Sadducees were no longer much of a factor in Judaism so the Pharisees get much more attention from the Gospel writers as the enemies of Jesus. There are a lot more mentions (very few of them positive) of the Pharisees that aren't preceded by "the Sadducees and . . . " than there are of the Sadducees alone.
On the Tacitus thing. I see no reason why there might not be similarly 'second-guess' attributions of comments etc in the NT. Why not? How does this diminish its veracity?
FWIW I accept the sayings of Christ in the Gospels as accurate reflections of what he taught and said, but not necessarily verbatim accounts.
I think it's a bit disingenuous of Crisis to introduce Thucydides to the conversation with the phrase "an assumption by the author a la Thucydides of how the trial should have gone"; and then, when Lamb Chopped responds by saying that Thucydides made things up but that doesn't mean the gospel writers did, upbraiding Lamb Chopped for saying that Thucydides made things up.
(Croesos also seems to imply that Lamb Chopped is somehow at fault for quoting from a translation other than the one Croesos prefers.)
If by "an assumption a la Thucydides of how the trial should have gone" Croesos meant to imply "adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what was really said" Croesos could have been clearer about it.
In my old job it was acceptable for me to write down a record of a conversation as soon as it was practicable. It was not possible for me to be to be 100% accurate. It was not acceptable for me to knowingly record something which I knew to be false.
That's the way I view the gospel accounts. Obviously not recorded as soon as practicable but essentially true
Who knows. Our best information is only about the date of the NT documents we now have. Who knows what was in the documents referred to in 2 Timothy 4.13 or how much of that sort of material there was.
Sure. As is the nature of these debates, both sides can sometimes over-react to what the other says. I do it all the time.
Croesus? What Crisis? 😉
British posters of a certain age will remember that allusion.
As I recall (from reading, not having been alive at the time) it was a classic example of tabloid fiction becoming received wisdom.
I was simply riffing with the way Croesus's name was misspelt upthread by using that well-known phrase, not making any political comment in favour of the way things were reported at the time.
The temptation is pure hagiography. Hagiography as a genre predates the gospels and this sort of idealisation is squarely within it. The Idea that the exchange ever happened is fanciful.
Okay, what I have for you today is very minor, but it comes up sometimes in connection with the New Testament, and it's a thing I can speak to as a writer. Occasionally you will hear things like "This Gospel emerged from the community of John" or some such, which in itself is not bad--but as you go on reading, you get the sense that the critic believes the Gospel just "evolved" or "emerged" semi-organically from the whole community, often by means of various oral units of text that later got amalgamated together. And so they end up treating John (or any other bit of the NT) as if it had no single author.
IMHO this is a mistake. Nothing as long and complicated as a Gospel just "emerges" from a community, even in separate units of text. Maybe you could have a nursery rhyme do so, though I tend to think those have actual single authors too. But something like Mark or Luke? No.
At some point, somebody was forced to put pen to paper and write the thing down. And when that happened, the writer made choices--what to include, in what order, with what details, using what level and type of language, etc. etc. etc. These are authorial choices; and they come out of a single human brain. (You might get me to admit the possibility of dual authorship--I've known cases, though most of the time what happens is either the work gets divided between the two--"You do these chapters, and I'll do these!"--or else the work is largely written by one person and then edited by the other. The latter process is one I've actually been involved in, as a ghostwriter for a better-known pastor. The wording and most of the content originated with me; but he put his stamp of approval on it. His contributions consisted mainly of discussing possible ideas and subjects, and signing off on the final text.)
I am not sure that this approach to NT authorship is anything like as common as it was a few decades ago, but I thought I ought to mention it.
Now, as for the idea of oral text units getting assembled to form a written text--we can agree with this if we keep in mind that what we're describing is basically normal research by a different name. Take Luke, for instance. He's going around and consulting all the eyewitnesses he can find, and also listening to stories in the community (most likely with the intent of finding the first source, so he can check them up--you can see that concern for accuracy in his statement at the beginning of the Gospel). He is not simply taking units of pre-existing text and adding joiners to create a written text. Doing such a thing would result in really uneven text, because it's the equivalent of having a few dozen authors all crammed cheek by jowl, rather like an anthology of very short stories (Yes, I've read such anthologies). And that's not the effect we get in any of the NT books, as I read them.
I guess I'm just pushing back here against the idea (possibly taken over from evolutionary theory in biology) that the NT text basically self-assembled itself. It didn't. Texts don't do that, certainly not when they are as long and complicated as what we have before us in the NT. No, we must reckon with authors, and possibly with editors or secretaries (amanuenses).
Upthread someone mentioned (in the course of mocking me) that the NT is a translation. Let's be careful with this one! There are some folks who believe that a Hebrew or Aramaic version of Matthew's Gospel once existed, and then got translated into koine Greek, with the original being lost. I can't prove that didn't happen; but if it did, no proof has survived. And without proof, well... we find ourselves theorizing in a vacuum, rather than paying attention to the text before us. Entertaining, I suppose; but maybe not very helpful.
But someone will say, "No, I meant that Jesus and his disciples were speaking Aramaic, and that's what got translated!" Certainly, that's highly likely; although it is not 100% sure that Jesus never spoke Greek. After all, koine Greek existed precisely to be the language of the marketplace, where people of all backgrounds met and had to communicate with each other. A man who grew up a carpenter's son within reach of Herod's great building projects had some reason to learn koine Greek, even in Galilee; and someone who traveled as much as Jesus did also had reason. But let that go.
Let's assume that every word we have reported of Jesus was originally uttered in Aramaic. Where does that leave us, then? Does it mean that the koine Greek version we have is utterly untrustworthy and we should throw it out the window? (I'm obviously overstating the case here.) Of course not. Those who wrote the Gospels etc. were also bilingual to greater or lesser degrees and capable of producing a decent translation; and returning to the "woo woo" aspect of New Testament development, it has always been understood in the church that the Holy Spirit watched over this textual process just as he did all the rest of them. We take it that he safeguarded the translation process sufficiently that we are not getting nonsense or mistakes in what Jesus said, just because it is put into koine Greek instead of what was probably Aramaic. If you refuse to admit that the Holy Spirit exists or that he did this work, well, you do you. I did say that the Bible is both a human and a divine book, and the messiness of this is bound to offend people in places, and this is one of them.
There are those who become very, very interested in trying to back-translate Matthew (or what-have-you) into the supposedly-original Aramaic, and then drawing out theological conclusions from the result. This seems to me a rather unsafe endeavor, though entertaining. The text we have exists in Greek; reconstructing a putative Aramaic original should only be done with a great deal of humility and a willingness to admit that one might be wrong. (Of course, that attitude is necessary for anything we do with the NT text at all.) We are none of us native Aramaic speakers of Jesus' time, and Aramaic is a language that contains within it plenty of dialects that vary from place to place and time to time--and our knowledge of the differences is bound to be scanty, because we're going on what random texts survived 2000 years.
There are also some who take translation of the NT texts into languages other than koine Greek (such as the Peshitta, in Syriac probably of the fifth century) and lean very heavily on them to determine what Jesus really said. This sort of thing is not without merit, but the merit increases with the earliness of the translated manuscript, and also with the degree to which variant readings are supported by variants in existing koine Greek manuscripts. You're trying to fit the translation, whatever it is, into the manuscript tree to see how valuable it is; and once you've figured that out, you can estimate how much weight to give any oddities that crop up in the translation. What you don't want to do is just say, "Well, Syriac is a form of Aramaic, and so I'm going to run with this and not bother doing all that filiation work," while disregarding the manuscript's date and any differences in Aramaic of its own time and place versus those of Jesus' time and place. There's just no easy way around doing the grind work of collating variants and producing a manuscript family tree--translation or no.
Time for me to eat dinner. Is there anything else on this thread subject anyone would like to hear about? I'll tell you up front that I don't have the technical background to talk about the dating of when individual books were written; to do a decent job on that, I'd have to do a full survey of the existing manuscripts and also dig into other data that would frankly take me years I don't have at this point. I will say that it's never safe to set a Biblical text as "late" solely on the grounds that it contains prophecy in it (you know the sort of thing: "This section clearly refers to the fall of Jerusalem in the form of a prophecy of Jesus, but we all know true prophecy doesn't exist, so this must be spurious, composed by someone other than Jesus and put into his mouth; and it actually dates from some time after 70 AD"). To rely on that reasoning for your date-setting is to bow to your own anti-supernaturalist worldview (when dealing with an avowedly supernaturalist text!) and also rather lazy, unless you do the textual and cultural work you ought to do along with it.
Please note that by using "you" throughout, I am not trying to antagonize anybody; I'm using the general "you" in the hopes of avoiding convoluted phrasing and boring the socks off everybody too.
Umm, I am willing to refer to the Holy Spirit as "she" maybe even "it". English is not consistent in assigning gender designations to words, but in other languages almost all nouns are assigned a gender, as the Germans do with “der, die, das” for masculine, feminine, or neuter nouns. In Hebrew and in Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke), the word translated wind/breath/Spirit has the feminine gender (ruach). So, early Christians who spoke Hebrew or Aramaic, or the Syriac language derived from Aramaic, consistently considered the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit (ruach), as feminine. Early Christian writers in that language, both orthodox and Gnostic, used maternal images when speaking of the Holy Spirit for at least the first 400 years of Christianity. They also equated the Holy Spirit with divine Wisdom, as in Proverbs.
Comments
Good to see you.
(a) We have no idea who the first hand witnesses were to any interviewer. None of the writers identify themselves.
(b) In logical terms, how? Oh, that's just rhetoric.
(c) See (b).
(d) All the Gods justified here, apart from Love, are bastards. As your empty threat shows.
(e) No I'm certainly not at their educational and intelligence level, thank God. And none of what any of them say, especially Lewis, is evidence of divine intelligence. Just of evolved human fallibility, where false positives are an inevitable by-product of agency detection. Pigeons are superstitious too. These geniuses are just as bird-brained.
(f) The usually false psychological realisation of ones evil, the shame, is a factor in much conversion. The fallacy of that fantasy get out of jail free card is a reach beyond the grasp of it.
But interest can be context dependent. For example, when hanging out with your fellow cultists it could very much be in your interest to claim to be Jesus' bestie and his most loyal apostle, but when speaking to authorities, or even just random strangers, it might be in your interest to say you don't know the man. Both of these statements would be considered in the interest of the declarant, it's just that the declarant's interest has shifted with the context.
We don't know the context of how the various accounts of Jesus' life were transmitted, but it seems likely it was a lot closer to "hanging out with your fellow believers" than it was to "being questioned by imperial authorities".
If that’s your position, then it seems to me your challenge is to LC’s underlying assumption that the writers of the NT knew what they were writing and teaching could get them into trouble, not to her observation that “[w]e generally think that people who suffer for their testimony are more likely to be telling the truth—or at the very least, honestly mistaken.” The challenge seems to be one questioning whether that assumption should apply in the case of the NT writings, not an argument that people don’t generally assume that a statement against interest is more likely to be truthful.
And of course it’s all context dependent. I took that to be why LC listed 8 things that might be looked at to evaluate reliability. All of these things should be looked at together and in context.
This brings us back to Bernie Maddoff, someone who openly touted his fraudlent "investment" plan. You'd think he'd know that this put him at risk of consequences from the authorities, but that seems to have not been a consideration for him. Either that or the he decided the short term benefits outweighed the long term risks. Still, I don't think anyone is willing to simply assume that Maddoff was "at the very least, honestly mistaken" about the investment portfolio he was pushing simply because doing so put him at personal risk.
You seem unwilling to recognize that LC was describing multiple criteria that should be evaluated together and in context, even when she has specifically confirmed that was what she was doing.
I’m not worried about that happening, though. It seems extremely unlikely.
The problem is that we don't really have enough information to evaluate the testimony on the basis of most of these criteria. Take, for example, the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate. This is a fairly important part of Jesus' story. It's portrayed in all four gospels. And yet we have no idea who was the witness providing the details of this event. John's gospel claims that Jesus' Jewish accusers refused to enter Pilate's palace so even they weren't present for Pilate's questioning of Jesus. The other gospels do not include this detail but are written in such a way that neither excludes it nor requires it. At any rate, if we take John at his word the only people present for Pilate's trial of Jesus were likely:
That's just a guess based on the likely logistics of the situation. We don't actually know the details. So who is the source (or sources) for the inside-the-palace half of this account? And how do we assess their testimony using @Lamb Chopped's criteria if we don't know who they are?
1) Are there multiple eyewitnesses who corroborate each other’s testimony? We don't know. We have four Gospel accounts, but we don't know where they're getting their information from. If the author of John is to be believed he wasn't present for at least half the trial. (Pilate seems to go to-and-fro between the Jewish leaders outside his gates and Jesus inside his palace so it's possible one of Jesus' disciples was in the outside-the-gate crowd.) If the whole trial takes place inside the palace (as implied but not required by the other Gospels) it's likely no contemporary disciple of Jesus was present. So maybe the account is from some later convert from Pilate's staff? Or maybe this is an assumption by the author à la Thucydides of how the trail should have gone. We just can't say with the information available to us.
2) Are the eyewitnesses people of good repute? Since we don't know who the witnesses are, we can't say.
3) Are the witnesses not people you’d normally choose for your case? Again, we don't know. I will note that this seems to contradict criterion #2, where you want witnesses of good repute who presumably are the kind of people you'd normally choose for your case.
4) Did the witnesses pay with their lives, livelihood, or reputation for their testimony? Again, hard to say not knowing who the witness/witnesses is/are. If the witness is a later Christian convert from Pilate's staff you could imagine having this tale to tell would actually burnish their reputation among their new co-religionists, maybe enough to counteract the whole "you worked for Pontius Pilate?!?" thing.
5) Do the witnesses have a ton of natural connections between them that would lead you to believe in a conspiracy? Again, not knowing who is reporting these events (or how many people) makes this question impossible to answer. If we assume John's version, the connection is that everyone present for the inside-the-palace half of the trial had some connection to the household of Pontius Pilate.
6) Was the matter under discussion momentous, strange, or otherwise the kind of thing that sears itself into the memory? This one is a maybe. A large, angry crowd of Judean authorities showing up unexpectedly and demanding the execution of a local dissident probably wasn't something that happened at Pilate's palace every day. Yes, the Romans handed out a lot of death sentences, but this one seems to have been done outside the normal procedures for such a case.
7) Was the matter “not done in a corner”? In this case it kind of was. It would have been public knowledge that Jesus was tried before Pilate and what the sentence was, but for the reasons explained above the exact events of the trial itself were kind of "done in a corner".
8) Could the witnesses connive their way out of a paper bag? And again we're back to not knowing this because we don't know who is the actual eyewitness in this case.
So that's just one event, though it is a fairly important one that shows up in all four Gospels, and we are mostly unable to make any determinations based on @Lamb Chopped's suggested criteria.
From the History of the Peloponnesian War:
"In this history I have made use of set speeches some of which were delivered just before and others during the war. I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the speeches which I listened to myself and my various informants have experienced the same difficulty; so my method has been, while keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation."
The last bit is the troubling bit. Nobody is surprised to find speeches summarized or cut in an age where audiovisual recording is impossible; but making up shit because you want your generals to say uplifting and morally edifying things that you as author feel are "called for by each situation"--well, Thucydides obviously has more purposes than just recording what happened, and thinks himself justified. But the Gospel writers can't get away with that shit. Their stated purposes are as follows:
From Luke 1:
Luke is clearly concerned about truth here--not moral uplift or ennobling his readers or what have you. He wants his readers to have certainty.
From John:
As you can see, John' stated intention is that they may believe and have life--things that would be undercut if he were simply making up shit about Jesus. Faith and life must be founded on truth, or they are nothing but illusion.
Again, we have a rather naive statement about the many, many things John has NOT recorded, offered I suppose to those who might attack him whining, "But why didn't you add this or that?" He tells us why, and emphasizes that what he HAS written is the absolute truth, and he is an eyewitness. We also get that emphasis on truth and eyewitness status in the weird little story about Jesus' piercing: "But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth—that you also may believe." (John 19:34-35).
So really, the Thucydides comparison is out of bounds. These men did their research, and they had years to do it in. As we know that early Christianity spread like wildfire among the lower classes--the servants, guards, tradesmen, women, etc.--it's super easy to see where they must have gotten their information.
Now you wish you had names and bios of the people the Gospel writers spoke to, so you could evaluate them--well, who wouldn't want that? So would I. But this is ancient history, and nobody gets that, more's the pity. We do the best we can with what we have. And we can use some of the criteria even on unknown witnesses in the mass. For example, assuming that the bulk of the trial information came from guards, servants, etc, that would mean that these are people who are a) exposing their connection to an unpopular figure in the early church, which is certainly not in their personal best interests; b) placing themselves at some potential risk, as I can't imagine Pilate, Herod, Caiaphas etc. being happy to find out they'd been spied on and reported; and c) these mostly-low-class, ordinary witnesses have no connection with one another except their employment and later faith in Jesus, which makes conspiracy unlikely. They're a motley group of people. What has a guard to do with Pilate's wife's maid, for instance? But both would be well-place to report on the events inside Pilate's fortress that day--the guard on almost anything, the maid on her mistress's dream and distress.
I prefer the Crawley translation, available at Gutenberg.
I've highlighted the parallel text from your translation. In the absence of a recording or transcript, what is the problem with using words "adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said"? It seems the only real way to convey a speech if the exact words are no longer available. It should also be noted that classical Greece had a fairly well developed tradition of rhetoric, giving an authors standardized forms for speeches into which "the general sense of what they really said" could be shaped. (Kind of like the modern five paragraph essay.) Far from wanting his generals to "say uplifting and morally edifying", Thucydides is claiming to adhere to the spirit and meaning of the speeches conveyed while openly admitting that they are paraphrases, not transcripts. I'm not sure exactly what you want from him given the lack of AV recordings.
I would argue (and have been arguing) that "truth" and "certainty" are not always the same thing. Luke says he's concerned about the latter, and regards the former as an instrumental means to achieve this end.
He is also a lot less forthcoming that Thucydides about his sources and methodology. I'm guessing that since, unlike Thucydides, he does not admit that any of his dialogue might be a paraphrase we should conclude he's presenting us with exact quotes of Jesus, who apparently (almost) always spoke in koine Greek.
So did Thucydides, and he's a lot more forthcoming about his methodology than the authors of the Gospels, fairly clearly (by the standards of ancient historians) distinguishing between fact, inference, and conjecture. My comparison wasn't meant to be an insult, just a reminder that at least Thucydides is willing to admit that he's paraphrasing the people he portrays.
Maybe they're filed with the video recording of the funeral speech of Pericles you seem to think Thucydides should have consulted. Seriously, if you're going to dunk on Thucydides for not having exact transcripts of the speeches in his History of the Pelopennesian War is it any less reasonable to criticize the Gospels for not appending an annotated bibliography of sources?
At any rate, it's easy to make informed conjecture about where the Gospel writers got their information. This is very much not the same as being able to "see" this, and it seems super-easy to forget this distinction once the conjecture has been made.
Thucydides does feel freedom to make up dialogue that he feels "adher(es) as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said". He admits this himself. Otherwise you'd get passages like:
Or
. . . without the previous section detailing the diplomacy and different positions of the Athenians and the Melians. Whether Thucydides felt more freedom to do this than the Gospel authors is debatable. We know that the Gospels include dialogue none of their authors were present to witness, like the aforementioned trial by Pilate or either of the Nativity stories or the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. The authors imply, but never outright state, that their record of these things is exact and infallible, but we are not given any hint as to their methodology or sources to judge for ourselves. Thucydides is at least that honest with his readers.
I have no doubt that Luke made thorough investigations and that the early Christians drew on the testimony of those involved with Christ and his disciples. Yet I see no need to compare Thucydides unfavourably with the Gospel writers. All were operating within a different histographical style and frame of reference than those we are used to.
That goes without saying.
'Thucydides felt free to make up shit. The Gospel writers didn't,' strikes me as over-stating the case so far as to begin to undermine it.
@Lamb Chopped makes some good points and has the grace to acknowledge that @Crœsos has the edge in terms of what Thucydides appears to have been doing rather than what she accuses him of doing. But the fact that she's argued as she has strikes me as overly defensive. 'Your guy is talking bollocks but my guys aren't.'
Come on, Lamb Chopped, I root for you a lot of the time but you can do better than that.
I inhabit a Christian tradition that has all sorts of extra-biblical stories and traditions that 'fill in the gaps' in some of the Gospel stories. That's part of its charm. But it can also be frustrating if we come at it in some kind of Mecanno-style approach of bolting all the parts together to make them fit.
'Aha! A serving girl must have overheard Pilate discussing Christ with his wife. She was secretly a believer and sneaked away afterwards to tell the disciples all about it ...'
I have no idea how the Gospel writers knew what Christ prayed in The Gethsemane. Perhaps he told them afterwards. Perhaps they second-guessed or added it for dramatic or theological purposes.
Who knows? I can live with not knowing or feeling the need to speculate. The whole edifice doesn't stand or fall on that.
What we have in the Gospels is a record of Christ's teachings. Not every single word he said. He may have had more parables for all we know. We also have accounts of his death and resurrection. Strange accounts. Not simply a resuscitated body but one that could apparently appear and disappear at will. A resurrected Christ who was sometimes recognisable and sometimes not. But witness accounts according to the writers.
We can accept their accounts or we can ignore or reject them. That much we know. I accept their account. 'Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief.'
How they came to hear about this, that or the other is pure speculation. Tacitus puts words in the mouth of Caractacus (Caradoc) when he's captured and taken to Rome. For all I know this could be based on something he actually said. He also attributes a speech to Calgacus, King of the Caledonians before his defeat by the Romans at Mons Graupius. It's the sort of thing he'd imagine he might have said. It doesn't mean that the battle never took place.
Was Herod actually 'struck by an angel' in a literal sense and was 'eaten by worms and died.' Or was he poisoned or suffered some singularly unpleasant fatal illness that carried him off remarkably quickly?
The whole thing doesn't fall apart if we concede that this was the way the early Christians interpreted his untimely death, as some form of almost instant divine retribution.
Oh all right.
Gamaliel, it desn't matter if you'rr rooting for me or what, though I appreciate it. What matters is the truth. And obviously you and I have different views on this.
I can't get on with "Hey, this prayer in John 17 really speaks to me, it tells me where I stand with the Trinity and what to expect of my future, and I'm a helluva lot less shaky as I walk down the road as a Christian believer" IF someone did not report it but rather "added it for dramatic or theological purposes." If the text is as shaky as all that, it almost comes to "why bother?" A wikipedia summary of Jesus' life would have done as well.
Not that my needs dictate reality. But I am not the only one in the human race who feels this way. I can make use of truth, I can make use of fiction, I can make use of truth in the form of fiction (parables etc)--but for God's sake let me know what I'm dealing with.
The quotes from the Gospel writers I cited up above say to me that they share my pre-occupation.
So, for that matter, does Jesus. Otherwise why does he build a towering theological structure (the resurrection of the dead) on a single Hebrew phrase--"I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob"? (Mark 12:26, referencing Exodus 3:6). That's a helluva lot to hang on one phrase, especially if you're overthrowing the main tenet of your ecclesiastical enemies.
And it isn't the only time. Again in Mark 12, you have Jesus hanging the riddle of the Incarnation on a single phrase uttered by David: "The Lord said to my Lord".
None of this behavior is at all sensible if the text of either Testament is as wishy-washy as you suggest, and the people of Jesus' day accepted it as such. Why argue at all if the other side can reasonably say, "Ah, it was probably just made up anyway" ? We've seen on the Ship what that leads to--people who break into every debate to tell you you're arguing about nothing, and why are you wasting your time? You'd be better off having a beer and forgetting the whole matter.
And if the people of Jesus' day did not accept their holy texts as such, but were hornswoggled into thinking it was trustworthy to the phrase and word level--well, then, our Gospel writers are frauds, and worse, and none of the characteristics of an honest witness can be safely ascribed to them. Best to leave them behind you in the dust. Because if they've made up shit to that level, at which point do you say, "Ah, but THIS part is true"?
No. I'm sorry, but it doesn't fit with what I've seen of their own reasons for writing, and of ancient Jewish behavior. Frauds they may be, truthtellers they may be, but this modern sort of "Who the hell really cares?" doesn't come into it.
(Satan I wouldn't trust further than I could throw him...
Luke claims to holds himself to a high standard. He states he has made a thorough investigation. (He presumably interviewed lots of people.) The chap he writes for, Theophilus, could well be a wealthy Greek convert perhaps, maybe a patron? Who would know at this point in history but Theophilus, may well have other accounts with which to compare Luke's. The big point stands. Luke is concerned with certainty in order that his audience might know the exact facts about these events. One must assume he writes in good faith albeit from a Christian viewpoint. But why else would he take the trouble? He is also the only gospel writer that claims chronological order.
Not false. That is where you pass go and pick up your $200...if you so choose of course.
"All have sinned" Ro 3:23
I'm an Orthodox Christian. These texts are authoritive.
The Church is 'the pillar and ground of the truth.' To unpack that would require another thread.
To say that the Gospel accounts are true doesn't necessitate there being a verbatim transcript of a conversation between Christ and Satan one Wednesday afternoon.
As for our Lord basing whopping big theological claims on single verses. Well yes, but that doesn't mean they were necessarily presented as single proof-texts in fundamentalist evangelical style.
Nor am I saying that John 'made up' the sayings attributed to our Lord in his Gospel. That doesn't mean they are verbatim 'witness-statements' made and recorded under police cross-examination.
I've got to be honest here, @Lamb Chopped I don't like your tone. It feels to me that you are accusing me of not acting in good faith and of playing fast and loose with the truth.
How dare you accuse me of having a different approach to the truth, implying - it seems to me - that I am indifferent to it.
If I've misunderstood you then fine, I apologise. I don't want to bristle, retaliate and let my own ego lead me into Hell calls and accusations I might then regret.
But please try to understand what I'm saying and not what you assume I'm saying. I'm not attacking your faith. I'm not trying to sow doubt and discord.
I'm not saying either as @MPaul suggests that the Gospel accounts don't bear the weight of scrutiny. It's not just the Gospel accounts themselves, of course, but the accumulated testimony of the early Church and churches and individual Christians down the ages. The scriptures don't stand alone.
Heck, I could understand your reactions if I'd said, 'The Gospel accounts are completely unreliable. We have no idea what Jesus said and did.'
But I didn't say that, did I?
The reaction I'm getting here is almost as if I'm doing a @Martin54. 'I don't believe this stuff any more so you shouldn't either.'
I've said nothing of the kind.
Yes, I waver, I doubt. We all do. But to imply that I'm acting in bad faith - as it appears to me that you have done and I stand to be corrected - is well out of order.
If I've posted something ignorant or inaccurate then please point out my error. Otherwise I'm afraid I'm still egotistical enough to request an apology.
On the Temptation. Sure, I see no reason why Christ couldn't have been the source of that. How 'literally' we take it is another issue, with Jesus teetering on the top of the Temple etc. Like the first chapters of Job.
On the Tacitus thing. I see no reason why there might not be similarly 'second-guess' attributions of comments etc in the NT. Why not? How does this diminish its veracity?
FWIW I accept the sayings of Christ in the Gospels as accurate reflections of what he taught and said, but not necessarily verbatim accounts.
Hence my use of the Herod example in Acts. How does Luke know that Hetod was 'struck by an angel'. Did the crowd see one? Or was he recording an interpretation of Herod's untimely death current among the early Christians?
'Some said it thundered.'
There is no should. No moral aspect to this. I don't believe anything, apart from my minimal subjective bag. I know infinity prevails. Believing it, feeling it gives me vertigo.
The apology is mine. I'm sure I've let it show. It's not justifiable. We can't help how and what we believe.
A couple things about that. The resurrection of the dead was literally one of the biggest controversies in first century CE Judaism. It would have been much more surprising if Jesus had simply said "meh, whatever" and not touched the topic at all.
It's also interesting to see the Sadducees described as the enemies of Jesus. That job is usually assigned to the Pharisees. Of course, the Pharisees also believed in the resurrection of the dead so naturally this kind of questioning would be assigned to the anti-resurrectionist Sadducees. Jesus is, interestingly, taking a Pharisaical position here.
This passage of Mark is one of the very few times the Sadducees are mentioned without being followed by " . . . and Pharisees", which may be somewhat telling. This is a hint that at least some portions of Mark (or sources which Mark used) were probably composed prior to the destruction of the Temple. After that the Sadducees were no longer much of a factor in Judaism so the Pharisees get much more attention from the Gospel writers as the enemies of Jesus. There are a lot more mentions (very few of them positive) of the Pharisees that aren't preceded by "the Sadducees and . . . " than there are of the Sadducees alone.
I've never really understood that either, especially for a work that is widely acknowledged as a translation. I'm don't get the reasoning that if Jesus said "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's" then God's in his heaven and all is right with the world, but if Jesus actually said "So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s" or, even worse, "Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τῷ θεῷ", then Christ is not risen, our hopes are in vain, and we are of all men most to be pitied.
(Croesos also seems to imply that Lamb Chopped is somehow at fault for quoting from a translation other than the one Croesos prefers.)
If by "an assumption a la Thucydides of how the trial should have gone" Croesos meant to imply "adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what was really said" Croesos could have been clearer about it.
Croesus? What Crisis? 😉
British posters of a certain age will remember that allusion.
That's the way I view the gospel accounts. Obviously not recorded as soon as practicable but essentially true
As I recall (from reading, not having been alive at the time) it was a classic example of tabloid fiction becoming received wisdom.
I was simply riffing with the way Croesus's name was misspelt upthread by using that well-known phrase, not making any political comment in favour of the way things were reported at the time.
IMHO this is a mistake. Nothing as long and complicated as a Gospel just "emerges" from a community, even in separate units of text. Maybe you could have a nursery rhyme do so, though I tend to think those have actual single authors too. But something like Mark or Luke? No.
At some point, somebody was forced to put pen to paper and write the thing down. And when that happened, the writer made choices--what to include, in what order, with what details, using what level and type of language, etc. etc. etc. These are authorial choices; and they come out of a single human brain. (You might get me to admit the possibility of dual authorship--I've known cases, though most of the time what happens is either the work gets divided between the two--"You do these chapters, and I'll do these!"--or else the work is largely written by one person and then edited by the other. The latter process is one I've actually been involved in, as a ghostwriter for a better-known pastor. The wording and most of the content originated with me; but he put his stamp of approval on it. His contributions consisted mainly of discussing possible ideas and subjects, and signing off on the final text.)
I am not sure that this approach to NT authorship is anything like as common as it was a few decades ago, but I thought I ought to mention it.
Now, as for the idea of oral text units getting assembled to form a written text--we can agree with this if we keep in mind that what we're describing is basically normal research by a different name. Take Luke, for instance. He's going around and consulting all the eyewitnesses he can find, and also listening to stories in the community (most likely with the intent of finding the first source, so he can check them up--you can see that concern for accuracy in his statement at the beginning of the Gospel). He is not simply taking units of pre-existing text and adding joiners to create a written text. Doing such a thing would result in really uneven text, because it's the equivalent of having a few dozen authors all crammed cheek by jowl, rather like an anthology of very short stories (Yes, I've read such anthologies). And that's not the effect we get in any of the NT books, as I read them.
I guess I'm just pushing back here against the idea (possibly taken over from evolutionary theory in biology) that the NT text basically self-assembled itself. It didn't. Texts don't do that, certainly not when they are as long and complicated as what we have before us in the NT. No, we must reckon with authors, and possibly with editors or secretaries (amanuenses).
(continued)
Upthread someone mentioned (in the course of mocking me) that the NT is a translation. Let's be careful with this one! There are some folks who believe that a Hebrew or Aramaic version of Matthew's Gospel once existed, and then got translated into koine Greek, with the original being lost. I can't prove that didn't happen; but if it did, no proof has survived. And without proof, well... we find ourselves theorizing in a vacuum, rather than paying attention to the text before us. Entertaining, I suppose; but maybe not very helpful.
But someone will say, "No, I meant that Jesus and his disciples were speaking Aramaic, and that's what got translated!" Certainly, that's highly likely; although it is not 100% sure that Jesus never spoke Greek. After all, koine Greek existed precisely to be the language of the marketplace, where people of all backgrounds met and had to communicate with each other. A man who grew up a carpenter's son within reach of Herod's great building projects had some reason to learn koine Greek, even in Galilee; and someone who traveled as much as Jesus did also had reason. But let that go.
Let's assume that every word we have reported of Jesus was originally uttered in Aramaic. Where does that leave us, then? Does it mean that the koine Greek version we have is utterly untrustworthy and we should throw it out the window? (I'm obviously overstating the case here.) Of course not. Those who wrote the Gospels etc. were also bilingual to greater or lesser degrees and capable of producing a decent translation; and returning to the "woo woo" aspect of New Testament development, it has always been understood in the church that the Holy Spirit watched over this textual process just as he did all the rest of them. We take it that he safeguarded the translation process sufficiently that we are not getting nonsense or mistakes in what Jesus said, just because it is put into koine Greek instead of what was probably Aramaic. If you refuse to admit that the Holy Spirit exists or that he did this work, well, you do you. I did say that the Bible is both a human and a divine book, and the messiness of this is bound to offend people in places, and this is one of them.
There are those who become very, very interested in trying to back-translate Matthew (or what-have-you) into the supposedly-original Aramaic, and then drawing out theological conclusions from the result. This seems to me a rather unsafe endeavor, though entertaining. The text we have exists in Greek; reconstructing a putative Aramaic original should only be done with a great deal of humility and a willingness to admit that one might be wrong. (Of course, that attitude is necessary for anything we do with the NT text at all.) We are none of us native Aramaic speakers of Jesus' time, and Aramaic is a language that contains within it plenty of dialects that vary from place to place and time to time--and our knowledge of the differences is bound to be scanty, because we're going on what random texts survived 2000 years.
There are also some who take translation of the NT texts into languages other than koine Greek (such as the Peshitta, in Syriac probably of the fifth century) and lean very heavily on them to determine what Jesus really said. This sort of thing is not without merit, but the merit increases with the earliness of the translated manuscript, and also with the degree to which variant readings are supported by variants in existing koine Greek manuscripts. You're trying to fit the translation, whatever it is, into the manuscript tree to see how valuable it is; and once you've figured that out, you can estimate how much weight to give any oddities that crop up in the translation. What you don't want to do is just say, "Well, Syriac is a form of Aramaic, and so I'm going to run with this and not bother doing all that filiation work," while disregarding the manuscript's date and any differences in Aramaic of its own time and place versus those of Jesus' time and place. There's just no easy way around doing the grind work of collating variants and producing a manuscript family tree--translation or no.
Time for me to eat dinner. Is there anything else on this thread subject anyone would like to hear about? I'll tell you up front that I don't have the technical background to talk about the dating of when individual books were written; to do a decent job on that, I'd have to do a full survey of the existing manuscripts and also dig into other data that would frankly take me years I don't have at this point. I will say that it's never safe to set a Biblical text as "late" solely on the grounds that it contains prophecy in it (you know the sort of thing: "This section clearly refers to the fall of Jerusalem in the form of a prophecy of Jesus, but we all know true prophecy doesn't exist, so this must be spurious, composed by someone other than Jesus and put into his mouth; and it actually dates from some time after 70 AD"). To rely on that reasoning for your date-setting is to bow to your own anti-supernaturalist worldview (when dealing with an avowedly supernaturalist text!) and also rather lazy, unless you do the textual and cultural work you ought to do along with it.
Please note that by using "you" throughout, I am not trying to antagonize anybody; I'm using the general "you" in the hopes of avoiding convoluted phrasing and boring the socks off everybody too.