Quote:Bauckham has surveyed every datum that suggests direct continuity between eyewitnesses of a historical Jesus and the New Testament Gospels,
demonstrating that a significant number of the proto-orthodox Christians known to us (e.g. Papias, Polycarp, the [final] authors of the Gospel of John
and the Gospel of Luke) attempted to inculcate among their followers a strong belief that such continuity existed. He concludes that the Gospel
narratives can be identified with a genre he calls ‘testimony’, and suggests that historians who require triangulation of independent streams of data
are overly sceptical.22 If the data include ‘participant eyewitness testimony’, the historian should suspend skepticism and trust the testimony. Bauckham
introduces testimonies from Holocaust survivors to illustrate his point, which is an unfortunate choice, since the example clarifies the fallacy he
commits.23 We trust the testimony of an Auschwitz survivor because similar atrocities are documented by other means (e.g. the facilities at Auschwitz,
Nazi records) and because the eyewitness testimony never invokes elements of the supernatural. The usual method of seeking triangulation from
independent streams of data is upheld, not undermined, in Bauckham’s example. By contrast, the New Testament narratives, if viewed as testimony,
ask us to trust a narrative for which there is no external evidence and which expects us to believe that a man was conceived by parthenogenesis, walked on water, rose from the grave and ascended into the sky on a cloud.
- K. L. Noll in "Is This Not The Carpenter's Son pg 239-40 (Bolding added)
And who is K. L. Noll?
Quote:K. L. Noll, is an American biblical scholar, historian, educator and author. He is currently Associate Professor and Chair of the Religion Department at Brandon University in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada where he teaches Judaism, Christianity, biblical languages and Islam. He holds a PhD and a Master of Theology from Union Theological Seminary in Virginia (now called Union Presbyterian Seminary), as well a Master of Arts (Honors) from Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg and a Bachelor of Arts (Summa Cum Laude) from Shippensburg University
He dismantles the silly jesus freak argument that the stories in their fucking bible should be taken at face value because they are based on "testimony."
