Episode 60 Call for Questions!

[ScottBarger]

Ok folks, it looks like we might combine the next three chapters of the book into one episode. The chapters are:

Chapter 9: Do we have early testimony about Jesus?
Chapter 10: Do we have eyewitness testimony about Jesus?
Chapter 11: Top ten reasons we know the NT writers told the truth.

I'll let you use your finely honed logic and perception skills to figure out how the authors answer the first two questions. But here is their list of ten reasons from chapter 11:

1. The NT writers included embarrassing details about themselves.
2. The NT writers included embarrassing details and difficult sayings of Jesus.
3. The NT writers left in demanding statements of Jesus.
4. The NT writers carefully distinguished Jesus' words from their own.
5. Th NT writers include events related to the resurrection that they would not have invented.
6. The NT include more than 30 historically confirmed people in their writings.
7. The NT writers include divergent details.
8. The NT writers challenge their readers to checkout verifiable facts, even facts about miracles.
9. The NT writers describe miracles like other historical events: with simple, unembellished accounts.
10. The NT writers abandoned their long-held sacred beliefs and practices, adopted new ones, and did not deny their testimony under persecution or threat of death.

I think we will easily be able to discuss chapter 9&10 in the next episode...but I am not sure about chapter 11. Well, anyway, that should give you enough fodder for questions.

Be fruitful and multiply!

[Lawrence]

The most you could hope to accomplish is to say that Jesus may have existed, there is clearly no reason to believe that he had special powers, was the son of God, or performed miracles. Even if it could be firmly established that Jesus, the man, existed, this would not be evidence for the extraordinary claims that make up the foundation of the Christian religion. The problem is that history is not and cannot be held to the same level of certainty as science.

Anyway my question: "If you accept that definitive proof of Jesus' divinity/historicity cannot be established anymore than Socrates, what impact does this have on Christianity, existence of God, or the message of Jesus?"

What I'm trying to hint at with my question is that this is a red herring, it doesn't affect anything important. Just like Socrates' existence doesn't negate his words: "There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance"

[ScottBarger]

Lawrence,

Good question. Remember, it is not only Jesus' words that are the foundation of Christianity, but his person and deeds.

[Lawrence]

Lawrence,

Good question. Remember, it is not only Jesus' words that are the foundation of Christianity, but his person and deeds.

In other words his character. This doesn't change whether he existed or not.

[Pseudonym]

I don't have a good, succinct question, but I'd appreciate some panel about Biblical criticism, namely textual criticism (lower criticism) and historical criticism (higher criticism), and how this impacts the arguments in these chapters of the book.

Not that I am not talking about groups like the Jesus Seminar here, but rather more mainstream critical analysis of the Biblical text. For example:

• The history of the New Testament text is somewhat complicated. There are known interpolations (e.g. the longer ending of Mark, the Pericope Adulterae). There are lots of known copying errors. The text we know today has been reconstructed from thousands of pieces of individual evidence, and even then, there are still passages where it's not known where they came from. To what extent do minor disagreements and/or evidence of work by later editors matter?
• Some of the stories recorded in the Bible don't appear to be primarily concerned with historical accuracy, but have a theological agenda behind them. This, of course, doesn't mean that they're complete fiction, and nor does it mean that the theological agenda is wrong. Nonetheless, does this matter?
• Does it matter that not all of the epistles attributed to Paul (notably 2 Thess, Hebrews and the pastoral epistles) were likely to have been written by Paul? (Even Luther disputed their canonicity, as well as that of Revelation.)

Actually, that raises another question of what books should be considered "canon" and the process by which they were chosen. What's special about "the NT writers"?

[ScottBarger]

Good questions so far. Keep them coming.

[crazylegsmurphy]

Hello,

I'm sorry, I'm behind on chapters. I'm visiting the UK at the moment for about 6 months and as you can imagine I've been out and about. I have done my best to catch up on the chapters when I get a second, but I am only about half way into chapter 9, so if my question isn't related to what is going to be talked about please feel free to skip it.

My question regarding Jesus is not whether he existed or not, but whether he really had the abilities written about in the bible.

I have always struggled with the idea that Jesus was nothing more than a Criss Angel, David Blaine, or David Copperfield of his time. Even today we see that street magicians can amaze people despite the fact we know this to be nothing more than slight of hand and mental trickery. In some countries however there are still forms of magic that are considered to be very true, and very powerful. A good example of this are people like Uri Geller who reached celebrity status doing ridiculous spoon bending tricks.

It would seem feasible based on all the examples we've seen in time, that Jesus was basically traveling the country with an entourage that benefited every time someone believed what they were claiming to be true. Food, women, shelter, riches....Jesus and friends didn't have to ask for any of this much like today's celebrities get much of their wealth through fans and supporters. In the days of Jesus this would have been the equivalent to being someone like Brad Pitt I suspect.

I think you all get my point. So the question is. How can we be sure that Jesus was nothing more than a street magician traveling around the country with an entourage of people who's job was marketing and promotion?

[scomsjw]

This chapter argues for the reliability of the gospels. Couldn't the mormons use the same arguments to defend the reliability of the book of mormon?

[scomsjw]

Is the reference to skeptic's believing that "history cannot be known" a straw man? Does anyone actually believe that? Is it more honest to say that some people think you cannot prove that miracles have ocurred using the historical method?

[Salwinder]

There are so many problems establishing the veracity of the New Testament it's hard to know where to begin. Here are but a few:

- The gospels were set down in writing decades after Jesus allegedly lived. Yes the gospel stories were passed down in an oral tradition - but we have no way of knowing how accurate this was or to what extent this developed into multi-generational "Chinese whispers".

- There are countless inconsistencies and contradictions in the New Testament which call into question the truthfulness or accuracy of any event contained in it.

- The New Testament as we know it is based on only selected scriptures chosen by politically motivated religious officials centuries after Jesus allegedly lived. For example the gospel of Mary Magdelene was excluded, probably due to the fact that it depicted Mary has a wise follower of Jesus rather than as a prostitute. This may have been too much for the entirely male religious orthodoxy to stomach - having Mary depicted as a wise follower or even an apostle was very likely unacceptable to them. So they decided to exclude her testimony altogether.

- For centuries after the "official" New Testament canons had been decided upon, anyone that questioned these canons or reminded people of the existence of rejected scripture was summarily killed, tortured or imprisoned (or all three). There has therefore been little opportunity over the course of history for the veracity of the New Testament to be validated - to this day people are often socially excluded for calling into question the integrity of the New Testament.

The Bilble is therefore a collection of SOME scriptures selected by politically motivated people centuries after Jesus died. These scriptures were themselves of dubious accuracy due to the nature of oral tradition and lack of contemporary primary source material. Just because some of these writings make reference to historical people or events that we CAN source definitively, this does not make the New Testament a reliable document of events in itself.

In all honesty, these criticisms of the veracity of the New Testament seem so glaringly obvious to me that I remain astonished that Christians continue to use it as "evidence" of their arguments for God and continue to quote it as if the more critical-thinking amongst us are supposed to accept it as historical fact.......

[ScottBarger]

Salwinder,

Perhaps you could validate some of your presuppositions here, it will make it easier to answer your questions. Why do you believe the "Gospel's were passed down in an oral tradition" and what do you mean by "oral tradition"? How many decades do you think passed between the time of Jesus and the writing of the Gospels?

Regarding the "countless inconsistencies and contradictions" are you talking about text variants or are you talking about contradicting reports (ie. how many angels were at the tomb)?

Could you explain why you believe the process of canonization happened "centuries after Jesus allegedly lived"?

Could you site some examples of people being executed for rejecting the "canons"? and to which canons you are referring? Protestant? Catholic? Eastern? In which context are people "socially excluded" for questioning the canon? What do you mean by socially excluded?

I am not questioning your conclusions as much as I want to know how you arrived at them. There are so many complicated issues related to the veracity of the NT and I have often found it helpful to discuss presuppositions and sources of information as part of the overall discussion.

[scomsjw]

I would be interested to hear your views on the tone of this book. Everytime I sit down to read it I feel as though I am being shouted at by someone who thinks I am an idiot. The way in which the arguments are made is almost dishonest. For example, surely its wrong to mention Josephus without commenting on the fact that many scholars since the 17th century have considered the key passage to be fake. Could Scott or Tony recommend an apologetics book that is a little more scholarly. I've heard that William Lane Craig is very good.

[scomsjw]

What do you think of the book's argument that the gospels were written too soon after the events to contain mythical elements? Sounds like nonsense to me. Surely even today myths spring up within a very short time of an important event. I would cite Roswell, the Kennedy assassination and 9/11 as examples. What about new religions like mormonism and scientology - it didn't take long for a detailed mythology to emerge there.

[scomsjw]

The important claim that the resurrected Jesus was seen by over 500 people at one time is based on this quote:

After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.

But that's it. We don't hear anything else about who these people were and none of them seem to have left any written record of the encounter. Isn't it a bit dishonest of christians to argue that this is known to be an historic event when the evidence is so paltry?

[Salwinder]

Salwinder,

Perhaps you could validate some of your presuppositions here, it will make it easier to answer your questions. Why do you believe the "Gospel's were passed down in an oral tradition" and what do you mean by "oral tradition"? How many decades do you think passed between the time of Jesus and the writing of the Gospels?

Regarding the "countless inconsistencies and contradictions" are you talking about text variants or are you talking about contradicting reports (ie. how many angels were at the tomb)?

Could you explain why you believe the process of canonization happened "centuries after Jesus allegedly lived"?

Could you site some examples of people being executed for rejecting the "canons"? and to which canons you are referring? Protestant? Catholic? Eastern? In which context are people "socially excluded" for questioning the canon? What do you mean by socially excluded?

I am not questioning your conclusions as much as I want to know how you arrived at them. There are so many complicated issues related to the veracity of the NT and I have often found it helpful to discuss presuppositions and sources of information as part of the overall discussion.

Scott,

I'm at work and so cannot give as complete an answer as I would like but here goes:

When I say "the gospels" were passed down by oral tradition, I should perhaps have been clearer. The "events contained in the gospels" were passed down by oral tradition before being set down in writing as gospel. By oral trdition I mean the passing on of information by word of mouth from one generation to the next, as was common in the Middle East at the time when literacy was rare. The whole field of Jahiliyah poetry (Arabian pre-Islamic poetry, often hundreds of lines in length) was created in the oral tradition and only set down in writing centuries later.

It is well known that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written several decades after the death of Jesus. You only need to refer to conflicting accounts of events contained in these scriptures alone to notice the myriad inconsistencies and differing accounts of events. Christians say that these inconsistences are irrelevant to the message as a whole, but how relaible can we take the whole to be when the parts of that whole are often at variance? These inconsistencies are not only evident in terms of describing events and people, but are also evident in terms of textual integrity. Early translations of scripture were rather poor in quality, and as such the nuances and finer meaning of scriptural content was lost or misrepresented. This was amended later on when King James commissioned some of the best translators in England to translate from Greek, Hebrew and Latin sources into English, but even this was done with a view to uniting England under Protestantism.

As for the selecting of New Testament scriptures occuring centuries after Jesus died - this is now widely accepted. Once Chrisatianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, it was decided that the Bible needed to be set down in writing once and for all to try to curb the increasingly varying accounts of Biblical events that were emerging due to the lack of a central Biblical source. A council was set up circa the fourth century to this end, comprising of high ranking religious officials. Forgive my lack of dates and specific terminology - I'll amend when I get home.

As for the persecution that befell those that questioned religious orthodoxy (within the spheres of Protestantism, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy) - there is no doubt that this occured. For instance, English scholars in thirteenth century England were threatened with execution for suggesting that the New Testament should be translated into English to make it accessible to the masses. Another example would be the Inquisition, which bred a culture of fear throughout Europe in an attempt to quell any questioning of religious scripture or orthodox belief or institutions. Within such an environment of intolerance of non-orthodox thinking, how could there possibly be a productive analysis of the veracity of the New Testament?

For me all this adds up to a whole mountain of questions regarding the veracity of the New Testament. There are simply too many questions to make me believe that it is a source sound enough to base a religion on or sound enough to quote from when arguing for the existence of God. It is certainly not sound enough to place itself as a conveyor of historical truth. Sorry....