The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[Randy Carson]

I don't know if this has been answered with any degree of satisfaction: so what if he came back to life?

Well, that would lend some credibility to His claim to be God for one...

[quoteThis is assuming it wasn't a case of him not being dead in the first place,[/quote]

Swoon Theory. Refuted definitively in the 19th century and discarded by scholars today.

or the person being spotted as the "resurrected" Jesus being someone else,

Which requires that his closest friends, family members and his own mother did not recognize him.

or the whole thing being made up

Conspiracy theory.

, or people hallucinating, which are all far more likely explanations.

Hallucination theory. Yep, you covered them all. Shall we discuss them one by one in detail?

Because once you are out of plausible theories, what you are left with is the very real possibility that Jesus did rise from the dead. Which is probably why you DON'T want to delve to deeply into them individually. It's better to just leave them as an unexamined group to increase your odds of being right (in your own mind).

If he did come back to life, what is this supposed to prove? Answer this: if I said to you, "I'm going to die and Allah will bring me back to life, because I am the son of Allah. Islam is true, Christianity is a lie. I will come back to life in 3 days, and you will see me and you'll know God is Allah." Now, you see me die right in front of you. Let's say I get absolutely pulverised. I get thrown in a car squashing machine, I'm truly done. There's nothing of me left but giblets. But guess what? 3 days later I just turn up, and I'm alive again! What does this tell you about the truth of my claims about Allah? Answer the question, or else I put a random person in the squasher too!

If that happened and you came back to life three days later and this was beyond dispute, then yeah, you deserved an audience. I think millions would want to hear what you have to say.

I'll try one more time with the "die for a lie" thing, although I think the video I posted takes that argument apart pretty conclusively.

Let's say there was an event, E. It may be that in fact the event was nothing at all, or nothing out of the ordinary. It may be that E is something incredible. We have no way of knowing at this point. The facts about this event are F.

Now, this is again giving the benefit of the doubt that the gospels were written by eye witnesses which is an unbelievable stretch but I'll allow it for the sake of argument.

Ya know, Rob, considering that you have made no effort to disprove anything I've posted in this thread concerning the reliability of the gospels, you sure do assert that they are not eye-witness account quite frequently. Over and over and over, actually. Just sayin'.

Let's say our author claims to have experienced event E. He may have experienced it, he may not have even been there at all, we don't know yet. He holds belief B about the event. And let's say his conviction about the belief is C, which would range from say 60% up to 100%.

Actually, the authors claim to have knowledge (k) not merely B. Their C derives from their K not their B. Consequently, their C would have to be 100%.

There are three possibilities now:

B matches F exactly
B has some correlation with F but not entirely
B has no correlation with F

Again, we don't know which. Us, the readers, did not experience the event. We only have his beliefs to go by. So we don't know which of the above is the case.

Okay, I gotta stop this here. I skimmed what came next but the flaw is compounding. The authors (two of them at least) had K not B.

Now, sure, you can torture someone to the point that they will deny something that they know to be true. It happens and our military men and women are trained to accept the fact that if they are captured, they will eventually break under torture. Nothing to be ashamed of in that. But we have no record that any of the apostles did.

More significantly, none of them broke the code of silence and said, "Okay, you win. Peter and the guys put me up to this. We stole Jesus' body and buried it off-shore in the Sea of Galilee. The whole thing was just a way to meet the hot chicks in Jerusalem."

No offense, but there's just not much point in slogging through the rest of your post when the premise is so flawed.

Consider K and rethink your position.

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Ref. Post #488:  There's an excellent story about people holding on to their beliefs while being tortured in 2 Maccabees chapter 7.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se...ersion=CEB

In some cases the more force that is used to get people to change their minds only makes them more determined to hold on to their beliefs.  

Thank you for this example.

It has been acknowledged repeatedly by me and others that people are willing to die for their beliefs.

What is less certain is whether people are willing to make up a silly story and then die horrible deaths rather than deny the fiction.

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I see, thanks

I don't usually like discussing motivations of historical figures (real or in dispute) because I consider it a really unreliable way to get to the truth.

But let me play devil's arse hole anyway, if we're going to bring motivation into it: why would people die for the truth?

Most people would say that something they knew was true was actually false if it meant not being killed. I hope we can agree on that. So what would be the motivation for refusing to "admit" you are wrong, if your life is on the line?

To me, this implies that people's perceptions of your "belief" (true or professed) is more important than whether or not it is actually true. Because if something is evidently true, or well known to be true, then someone "admitting" under torture that it isn't true won't make any difference. If Stephen Hawking "admitted" that actually there is no sun, because he was being tortured until he said that, no one would change their beliefs based on this.

So my conclusion is that they thought one of the following:

1) They knew their version of events was false, but they felt it was very important to protect that fact. Maybe they felt it would be in everyone's best interests to share this false belief, for the greater good. Maybe there were further threats or implications involved in admitting it was false, so even if they knew it was false, they would not say so.

"For the greater good"? Of whom?

And further threats beyond death? Care to enumerate those?

2) They thought it was true, but they felt that the only way anyone else would ever believe the story is if they stuck to it. This suggests to me that the only way to  the "truth" of christianity is literally through the accounts of these few people. Clearly they didn't think the truth was self evident. So even now, the only way we have to truth is their testimony.

Nope. Jesus appeared to hundreds. They did "think it was true" they KNEW is was true. And that's very different.

Is this really so difficult? Sheesh.

Well, that was fun. Like I say, I don't take this kind of discussion too seriously, even when it works out in my favour.

The troubling thing is that you apparently AREN'T taking this very seriously; hence you don't even realize it when it does NOT turn out in your favour.

Tim O'Neill just killed the mythicist view in his article, btw, and you don't even know it...

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The Bible as a complete comprehensive book didn't exist until the English wrote it. There might have been bits and pieces of various scrolls as reference material for them to work with but the committee writers are the ones who wrote the current narrative.  They could have used oral stories to fill in the blanks.  But one thing is for sure and that is no complete scrolls written by Paul exist today.  So the conclusion must be that Paul didn't write a damn thing.  Someone else did.  

And be realistic about the whole thing.  The character supposedly wrote a lot of letters to various places around the Mediterranean Sea between 40-60 AD.  OK, it could have happened.  But is it likely that the recipients would have been able to have safe-guarded those scrolls through all of the wars and disruptions in the following centuries?  Some guys probably used them for toilet paper.  

It's time to start thinking like educated 21st Century adults instead of First Century illiterates.

The canon of scripture was established before the end of the third century and confirmed by various Church councils in the fourth and fifth centuries.

[Minimalist]

The canon of scripture was established before the end of the third century and confirmed by various Church councils in the fourth and fifth centuries.

Rather depends on which version of the holy babble you elect to consider "revealed," eh?

[DeistPaladin]

II.B.1. – Who Wrote the Gospels?


While the historical reliability of the New Testament is not dependent upon knowing with certainty who the authors of the gospels were, 

Actually, yes, it is. If the authors are unknown, it damages the credibility of what is supposed to be an eye-witness account. 

it is indisputable that if the gospels can be shown to be written by eyewitnesses or by men who had access to eyewitnesses, the argument for the reliability of the New Testament as a whole is greatly advanced.

Actually, no. Eye-witness testimony is the weakest evidence in a court of law and of no value whatsoever in science. Furthermore, this statement conflates eye-witness testimony with hearsay testimony (reporting what someone else heard or saw), the latter being totally inadmissible in a court of law. 

So, who wrote the gospels?

Authorship is established "by tradition" according to Bible scholars themselves. 

Both Blomberg and Healy offer questions which must be answered by those who deny the traditional authorship of the gospels including:

No, it's not true that I "must" do anything. 
As I've explained to you before, it is not my job as a skeptic to fill in all the blanks to your satisfaction and explain the universe to you. It is up to YOU to offer evidence for what you believe and why. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Claiming that I haven't offered you a good enough alternative is not sufficient reason for you to fill it in with Jesus because you want to. This is the logical fallacy "Argument from Ignorance".
You and other apologists also seem fond of the "Argument from Incredulity" fallacy. Example, "I can't imagine why they would have believed the resurrection if it hadn't happened." or "I can't imagine why they would use Matthew, a tax collector, if he really wasn't the author." This is not valid reasoning. Just because you can't imagine something happening doesn't mean it didn't happen. 

From the foregoing arguments and ancient testimonies, we can conclude that the synoptic gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and that these accounts were based on either direct or indirect eye-witness testimony.

How do you know this? What is your source? Irenaeus suggests that Matthew actually wrote first in Aramaic, so I'm curious as to why you hold this to be the case.

Every Bible scholar I know of says these are the dates. I've never heard this theory that Matthew was written first, and I have researched a great number of apologetic arguments. That Matthew is based on Mark seems undisputed. 

To be more precise, it would probably have been written BEFORE AD 70. If you're going to attempt to dismantle me in "bloody" fashion, I expect you to use that razor with great precision.

Most scholars do date Mark to around 70 CE, budging it a few years prior to about 65. After 70 CE is what's actually indicated, unless you want to propose that the future really was foretold. That being the case, the burden of proof is on you.

Ah, there you go. So, that's not quite the same as saying that "he heard a bunch of stuff from a bunch of places" now, is it?

Is there a part of "mostly" you don't understand? There are parts of "Mark's" Gospel that Peter could not have witnessed, and so we must look to other sources of information. So we have hearsay stacked on top of anonymous hearsay. 

Which is not terribly problematic when you actually THINK.

 
Get ready for it... Here it comes...

After the resurrection, Jesus spent 40 days with the disciples. And after the ascension, the disciples spent 10 more days waiting for Pentecost. What do you think the boys were discussing all during that time? So, apart from the fact that scripture says that Jesus was teaching his disciples, there is also the promise of the Holy Spirit to remind them of all that Jesus had said to them during his ministry.

Yes, MAGIC! Ladies and gentlemen, magic. That's the answer. Jesus told Peter because he rose from the dead. And we have the Holy Spirit filling in the blanks for them. 

The Pontifical Biblical Commission of the Catholic Church (which was there in the beginning) says it was Mark. My Ignatius Study Bible says the same. And I have Papias, Irenaeus and Origen among countless others, so I don't give a rip what the editors of the footnotes of your Protestant Bible have to say.

Well, do take it up with Oxford University then and tell them they got it all wrong. Let me know how that works out for you.

Are you suggesting that Mark was unaware of the resurrection after travelling with Peter and Paul all those years?   

I'm not speculating anything about what Mark was or wasn't aware of. I'm pointing out to you that chapter 16 of his Gospel was altered at a later time. The tale of the resurrection got better with the telling. This is not a point disputed by Bible scholars.

To properly review, Mark is:

• Written by the companion of Peter and Paul
  
• Written prior to AD 53
  
• Based upon the preaching and eye-witness accounts of Peter 
  
• "Mixed" with the eye-witness accounts of other apostles whom Mark would have heard during his travels with Peter and Paul
  
• Accurate up to and including the addition of the second ending
  

Respectively:

• Prove it
  
• Prove it
  
• Hearsay even if true.
  
• Hearsay even if true.
  
• Unproven and why the changed ending if he got it right the first time?
  

[IATIA]

I would have thought the resurrection would have been remarkable enough to mention in the first print rather than a postscript.

Oh yeah! By the way, jesus rose from the dead.

[DeistPaladin]

Hilarious. Does the term "criterion of embarrassment" mean nothing to you? Never mind.


The fact that the gospel written for a Jewish audience was attributed to a hated tax-collector and Roman-collaborator ought to give even the most strident anti-Christians pause. Why do that unless it was TRUE?  So, yeah, it does stick out a bit for that very reason, doesn't it?

Again, this is called "Argument from Incredulity". 

You can find better exegesis on any number of websites or in good books. I suggest you try to find some of them.

I've read more than a few and heard many others in debates. They usually run along the lines of "when the Bible say... it really means..." and laughably twisted interpretations ensue. Some of these efforts to square the circle don't even rise to that level but consist of bare assertions like "Isaiah 7 was a double prophecy". 

Since you can't be bothered to even try to post any yourself, I'm going to take your defense of Matthew's perjury to be "nuh uh uh". 





Got it. Let me know if you can ever do any better. 

Ironically, if such an event had NOT happened, then none of the citizens of Jerusalem would have let Matthew get away with asserting that it had. After all, the gospel was not preached in some obscure village in remote corner of Galilee. The apostles stood up in Jerusalem in the day of Pentecost and proclaimed that Jesus was risen from the dead. Funny how no one ran down to the tomb and produced the body to put an end to the discussion.

Beyond the "Argument from Incredulity", here is the classic assumption by apologists that the ancient world was populated by fact checking commandos that, had the Gospel authors been lying, would have descended upon them like a team of ninjas to cry "false!" and presumably this pwnage would have survived Christian pyromaniacs and been preserved through the ages. 

But when we discuss the complete absence of any corroborating evidence for Jesus, the answer is "c'mon, whatdaya want, CNN footage? Nobody wrote anything down back then. Nobody paid any attention to some preacher who was just another doom crier. What are you expecting?"

[robvalue]

Thank you for answering my questions Randy I don't feel it is worth carrying them on at present so I will leave them. I'll keep an eye out for any new developments here that I might comment on.

[Edit, never mind. Ack, I just can't help myself!]

[Cyberman]

You might as well put your eye back in, because there won't be any.

[DeistPaladin]

Luke: Fan Fic Writer Pretends to be a Historian

Is that what experts say? Let's see...

Based on his accurate description of towns, cities and islands, as well as correctly naming various official titles, archaeologist Sir William Ramsay wrote that "Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy... [he] should be placed along with the very greatest of historians."

Professor of Classics at Auckland University, E.M. Blaiklock, wrote: "For accuracy of detail, and for evocation of atmosphere, Luke stands, in fact, with Thucydides. The Acts of the Apostles is not shoddy product of pious imagining, but a trustworthy record... it was the spadework of archaeology which first revealed the truth."

Nope. Guess not. Guess atheists shouldn't pretend to be experts on subjects they know nothing about.

Like Matthew, Luke tries to elaborate on Mark, fleshing out a story of Jesus' birth and a bit of his childhood. He also gives us a number of milestones to offer more of a historical setting. Many Christian apologists such as Josh McDowell, praise the "incredible accuracy" of Luke as a historian. 

Evidently, McDowell read a different Gospel then the rest of us did.

No. He just actually read it.

Like Mark, Luke is a companion of Paul and not an "eye witness". He admits in his opening of his Gospel that he has stitched together the different accounts he has heard, acting as if he were a historian.

What Luke admits is that he has done his homework...something that your forum mates do not want to credit him with at all. So, watch your back...you've just given away the store.

I'll finish this tomorrow.

Oh, well, a bunch of Christian apologists say Luke was a great historian. I guess that makes him one then. And it completely makes up for his 10 year pregnancy goof. 

[dyresand]

I would have thought the resurrection would have been remarkable enough to mention in the first print rather than a postscript.

Oh yeah! By the way, jesus rose from the dead.

Damn magical zombies they should stay dead. 

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Is that what experts say? Let's see...

Based on his accurate description of towns, cities and islands, as well as correctly naming various official titles, archaeologist Sir William Ramsay wrote that "Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy... [he] should be placed along with the very greatest of historians."

Professor of Classics at Auckland University, E.M. Blaiklock, wrote: "For accuracy of detail, and for evocation of atmosphere, Luke stands, in fact, with Thucydides. The Acts of the Apostles is not shoddy product of pious imagining, but a trustworthy record... it was the spadework of archaeology which first revealed the truth."

Nope. Guess not. Guess atheists shouldn't pretend to be experts on subjects they know nothing about.



No. He just actually read it.



What Luke admits is that he has done his homework...something that your forum mates do not want to credit him with at all. So, watch your back...you've just given away the store.

I'll finish this tomorrow.

Oh, well, a bunch of Christian apologists say Luke was a great historian. I guess that makes him one then. And it completely makes up for his 10 year pregnancy goof. 

Remember now Luke is strong with the force that one. 

[robvalue]

You might as well put your eye back in, because there won't be any.

Indeed. Unfortunately for Randy, I have heard nothing here that I haven't heard hundreds of times before. I suspect the same is true for everyone.

I'm not picking on Randy in particular here, but I wonder why God would send apologists out to try and convince atheists on a forum but not give them anything new to work with? He is setting them up to fail by just endlessly heating up the same bag of rice that we refused to eat the last 10 times it was offered to us. And presumably, he knows they will fail too.