The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[Minimalist]

[Wyrd of Gawd]

OK, suppose Jesus did exist and that he did run around the Middle East blabbling about this and that. What did he say that was so important? Based upon the dialogue countless other people have said far more important things about all kinds of issues.

[Longhorn]

If I get nailed to a tree, will they worship me in 2,000 years too? Cos I gotta weigh the costs and benefits before I make some rushed decisions

[Jenny A]

Jenny-

Until I've been a member for 30 days, I'm not permitted to counter your Wikipedia links with links of my own.

However, I own and have actually read books that would call much of what the Wiki article says into question. So, I could provide plenty of sources for the view I have laid out in the OP.

You actually read books?  What a coincidence, so do I.  And so do many others here.  Why we might all be intellectual twins.

Seriously I do both read and own books.  Some of them are even about Biblical and Christian history (such as it is) and Christian theology, as well as books concerning The Reformation, a little Aquinas, a little C.S. Lewis, etc.  All told perhaps three three foot long shelves full.  But I also have books about atheism, Buddhism, Mormonism, and Judaism.  Not to mention several of the Great Courses series on the topic.  I know much less about Islam. 

Lest that seem like an obsession with religion let me assure it is not.  We own about 288 linear shelf space of books, much of it double shelved, and that doesn't count what we have on Kindle.  And while I haven't read every book on those shelves, between my husband and I we have.   When decorating I think of it as thick wallpaper.  

But let's say for arguments' sake that you're right. the first gospel, Mark(?), was written around AD 70. So what? In the cultural context of Judaism, that would be NOTHING for the disciples to contend with.

What do you mean in the cultural context of Judaism?  Jews didn't live any longer than anyone else.  Forty years during a time period when the average person lived to something under forty is not a short period of time.   Ten years would probably be way too long to expect an eyewitness account.  And even in the extremely unlikely event a disciple lived that long, why would he wait forty years to write it down assuming he could write.   The whole idea is highly improbable.
Add to that the he didn't sign his work, or say it was eyewitness and it becomes more improbable yet. Add that he wrote it a long long ways from home in a foreign language and were beginning to beat a dead horse, a very dead horse.

See, it's your assertion that the Gospels cannot be reliable. And in order to discredit them, you have to accept the idea that no one could possibly have gotten the story straight after xx years. Unfortunately, this flies in the face of what we know of oral cultures, of the ability to memorize huge amounts of data and to recall it accurately, and of the role that the community of believers would have played in keeping the Jesus story within very narrow boundaries. IOW, I like the fact that the eye-witnesses wrote early and often, but I'm not dependent upon that fact. It's just another piece of circumstantial evidence that may help skeptics overcome their doubts if they think it through.

Actually, oral cultures are no better at remember events than the rest of us.  

Be honest, if you had been a witness to something significant, and later you heard someone telling a false version of the event, you, as a living witness, would be in a position to call that person on the carpet for their additions, omissions and errors, wouldn't you?

Sure, but stories spread fast and change often, and it's not as if I would have read it in a newpaper.  And the gospels were written after the disciples were most likely dead.   And historically, he who writes first wins.

But you won't concede that ability to the early Church. Nooooo, they were all biased and eager to expand the notion that Jesus was God. So, they just kept piling one miracle on top of another until the man became the God.

(The fact that there is no evidence that the Gospel changed over the course of time, is a problem, but why let that spoil a good thing? Just ignore it.)

Why would it matter that the gospels stayed essentially the same over time if they weren't accurate to begin with?

NOW

It is true that I don't think the gospels are particularly trustworthy.  But suppose for an instant that they were written by eyewitnesses and that those witnesses at least were attempting to tell the truth.  Suppose that they wrote it all down on note pads while following Jesus around.  I still would not consider the gospels proof of the supernatural.  

Why not?  Because extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.  Were I to accept god on earth, miracles, and the resurrection on that basis I'd have no reason not to believe in UFO abductions, ghosts, big foot, Nessy, ESP, Mormonism, and a variety of other things that I'm pretty sure you don't believe in either.  I don't believe in Christianity for the same reason you don't believe in those things.

Which is not to say I think the gospels are pure fabrication.  I'm pretty sure a man named Jesus, lived, was born in Galilee (not Bethlehem) to a woman named Mary, was baptized by John the Baptist, preached, and was crucified.  I'm also sure his mother was not a virgin and did not think she had born the son of god (ask me why and I'll show you the gospel text).   I'm less sure, but still think that he told people he could perform miracles only for believers (an early gospel but anti John stance) and that preached that the kingdom of god was coming to earth within his own life time.

[Dystopia]

The bible and the New Testament in particular are history - Arguably one of the most influential books of all time... But historically reliable? No, that's the conclusion bible academicians have been reaching for decades.

[TimOneill]

Another fun fact about Tim O'Neill: like Jesus, he karate chopped some ass here,

Oh, yeah.... whatever happened to that idiot?  They come and go so quickly!

Wow.  "That idiot"? Big, tough words.

He came in here and tried his best to convince us, and he got as far as Jesus having a brother called James who got executed, and that was about it. A few other mundane facts. He made some good points, and also overreached badly with fallacies aplenty.

More tough words.  Present some examples of me "overreaching" and show us these so-called "fallacies" that were allegedly "aplenty".  Let's see if you can be as blithe to my face as you are when you think I'm not looking.

[pocaracas]

Wow.... I didn't know we had a TimOneil around here, too!
Welcome!
A catholic guy was just saying on another thread you debunked the possibility that part of the canonical life of jesus was... borrowed... from the Teacher of righteous described in the Dead sea scrolls.
He seems to think very highly of your knowledge of the ancient world, so I guess you are some sort of authority on the matter, huh?

In my ignorance, all I got going for the "claim of borrowing" is the wiki article on the teacher where a guy named Wise claims that the scrolls present a picture of a messiah that rattled the established religious leaders and got crucified as a result... there's also a mentioning that his followers expected that "the Teacher would return to judge the wicked and lead the righteous into a golden age, and that it would take place within the next forty years." This return never happened, obviously... but it is reminiscent of how christians are waiting for their messiah to return... at first, it would be within their lifetimes (close to the 40 years).... then it became "soon"... it's been "soon" for 2000 years, and counting.

How does your scholarship on the subject analyze this possibility of borrowing of a theme?
Was it a common theme for supposed messiahs to pop up, disturb the clergy, get whacked and have a following anticipating their return from the dead within some large portion of time? ("large", in comparison with the average life expectancy, which, at the time, was... what?... 40? 45?)
Or was Wise just full of crap and desiring his own reading of the scrolls to debunk christianity?

[robvalue]

Tim: that was very rude of me, I apologize. Even if I held that opinion, I shouldn't have put it in such blunt terms.

I shall see if I can dig out what I was talking about, but I don't particularly want to hash it all out again because we already thrashed it all to death.

[TimOneill]

Tim: that was very rude of me, I apologize. Even if I held that opinion, I shouldn't have put it in such blunt terms.

I shall see if I can dig out what I was talking about, but I don't particularly want to hash it all out again because we already thrashed it all to death.

Well, yes it was rude.  But what I care about is the inaccuracy.  I've just read over our last exchange and it was full of you asking me some reasonably sensible questions, thanking me profusely for my responses and telling me how valuable my input was.  If you were also thinking I was "overreaching" and that what I said was full of "fallacies aplenty", you were hiding it extremely well.

[robvalue]

Indeed, I should never have said that. I did enjoy and appreciate your input, and I should have stressed that more. Please accept my apologies. I had mixed opinions of you, you had some very good points and what I considered to be some mistakes. But it's just my opinion, I'm not the god of logic.

And "aplenty" was unnecessary again. I apologize, it was an exaggeration I should not have made. It was a throwaway line I wrote without a lot of thought, and you're damn right, I wouldn't have written it had I known you were watching so that's my bad again. I spent like 10 seconds writing it, it wasn't a pre-meditated character assassination, and I regret writing you off without thinking about what I was saying properly and checking my facts. I'm always beating myself up for being rude, even when I'm not, this time I was.

I've picked out some below, I don't want to get into a massive fight about it but these are in my opinion examples of poor logic. I don't expect you or anyone else to agree with me on that.

Some of them are involved in our PM exchanges I think because I can't find them on the forum, and I don't want to post PMs as well unless it's important to you. I can PM them back to you if you want with commentary, I remember at least 2 more.

But again, what I said was out of order and way over the top. Looking back over what you have written, my memory of our exchanges is not accurate and you made much better cases than I gave you credit for. I was not holding such a logical grudge as my memory served me, I had already pointed out where I disagreed, I believe.

If it's any consolation, I'm going to be beating myself up all day for this now.

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He may well have been a nazarene at one point then the wine stuff was added later to the story, and no one noticed the problem.

Why go to all this effort to come up with a Jesus who wasn't from Nazareth, was a Nazarene and yet somehow this got forgotten and then Nazareth gets invented? Why not just accept a much more parsimonious reading of the text - that he ... was from Nazareth?

Is there some reason this is not likely? I've never seen it.

And if Nazareth was invented as a way of explaining Ναζαρηνός after it was (somehow) "forgotten" that this meant he was a Nazarite (why?), then it's very strange that a town of that name appears in the late first century, given we have an inscription detailing how a course of priests was settled there in the wake of the Jewish War. Co-incidence?

This whole tangled mess is simply unnecessary. Why was he called Ναζαρηνός? Because he was from the village of Ναζαρέτ/Ναζαρὲθ . Simple - no convoluted and unnecessary suppositions and tangled "what ifs" required. Occam's Razor applied.

Appeal to motivation. We have no idea why including this detail may have been so important, I don't see why it indicates it is true.

What I want to know is who wrote the damn things.

I’d like to know that about many anonymous ancient sources. I’d also like more sources, closer sources to the events in question and sources with better indications of where the ancient authors got their information (footnotes would be nice as well). Unfortunately, I’m unlikely to get any of these things. Welcome to the study of ancient history.

Being in the third person, it appears to be someone either making it all up, or following some dude around and writing about him. It seems very unlikely to me it would be the named guy writing it.

What “named guy”? None of the gospels name their writers – those are later editorial additions.

Or maybe just hearsay about people who may or may not have existed.

Most ancient sources are what you keep calling “hearsay”. That’s just the nature of the material we have. And “may not have existed” is not the default position. “Probably existed, though we can’t be certain” is.

Incorrect default position (in my opinion). The sceptical approach is not to believe anything without good reason.

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