On How to Write a Gospel Account

This is a challenge emailed to me from Johnny Pearce. It's interesting:
John,

I think it helps contextualize how impossible reliability must have been for the Gospel writers. Some of the premises are rough around the edges, and need tweaking, or may be fallacious (eg time frame of 70 years), but the gist is there.

I get frustrated that apologists seem to think the speeches that Jesus made were accurate, and that his actions were accurately reported, when constrained by those sorts of criteria.

The challenge:

I challenge you to write an accurate history of Karl Dane, a 20th century Danish man.

This person spoke a different language than you, and never wrote anything down, and lived in a different country to you.

you are writing about him some 70 years after his death.

you cannot use the internet.

you cannot use the library.

you cannot use any book, since no other book has ever been written about him.

you cannot use the telephone.

you might be able to write some letters, but the reliability of them and time taken for delivery is highly suspect, plus knowing where the people live you need to speak to are is also a problem.

there may be some people alive who knew him, but they live in denmark, and contacting them is nigh on impossible as you don't know who they are or where they live, and transportation must be done by boat or donkey.

you have no idea of exactly what he said, other than by (possibly, if you could meet any contemporaries) asking people for oral recollections.

you speak a different language than any of his contemporaries, even if you could meet them.

traveling for any research purposes would require donkey / sail boat.

any information you get from others must come from people that haven't used the internet, books, libraries etc.

etc etc

do you think you could write an accurate biography of this man now? could you accurately find out exactly what Karl Dane said when he said those things 70 years ago?

Just thought this might be an interesting line to take with some theists.

Regards

Johnny

80 comments:

D.L. Folken said...

The gospels were written by the eyewitnesses and their contemporaries.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John did not live in the United States. Instead, they lived in the world where the apostles were preaching about the risen Christ.

The post implies that distance is a problem to be overcome; however, distance was not an issue for the writters of the gospels so the argument is invalid.

God Bless...

Walter said...

The gospels were written by the eyewitnesses and their contemporaries.

No. The Gospels are literary creations based on oral traditions written down after the first Jewish-Roman war. Any eyewitnesses were probably dead or MIA.

Samphire said...

Zdenny, please remind me which of the gospel writters were witnesses to the annunciation, nativity or the flight into Egypt.

D.L. Folken said...

Walter, I guess you would need some evidence for your claim that the eyewitnesses were 'probably' dead or MIA. John for example claims to be the writer of John. All NT Scholars believe that Paul wrote Corinthians and even Paul informs us that the eyewitnesses of the resurrection were still alive. In fact, Paul met with them.

I never find the atheistic arguments very convincing because of their poor critical abilities

Samphire then continues it by saying, "which of the gospel writers were witnesses...of the nativity or flight into Egypt."

ZD: Mary was a contemporary who also was present at the death of Jesus. I stated, "the gospels were written by the eyewitnesses and their contempories." Mary is a contemporary who the eyewitnesses and other contemporaries had access to.

John's post is just another red herring. He has a ton of them. He only tries to change the structure of the debate rather than dealing with the substance of the arguments.

John has no evidence that the Biblical accounts are not true. In the court of law, you have to accept a testimony as being true unless a person can give credible reason it should be rejected. John does not have any credible reason grounded in history or in fact. He only has conjectures and speculations rather than any real substance.

Jonathan MS Pearce said...

this little thought experiment was borne out of conversations about supposed accuracy and reliability of the gospel accounts. this is with particular attention to speeches: there are countless speeches that Jesus makes that are recorded that demand the question 'how do we know what was said?' Whether it be the conversation with pontius pilate or other private conversations, or the sermon on the mount, how do we know what was said, who recorded these speeches and so on. i cannot remember a single thing i said from only 10 years ago, let alone someone else from 40 years ago.

we have thousands of words that jesus spoke - who recorded them? who recorded the private conversations with a vast variety of different people? especially when the gospel writers wrote in greek and jesus almost certainly spoke in aramaic.

none of the gospel writers were eyewitnesses.

i take a markan priority, and think mark is around 70ad and so the time lag above should be about 40 years.

we could confuse matters with Q, but you get the general gist - accuracy of events of something that happened in another language and place (mark was probably written around rome)to someone you didn't know, without the use of previous written sources, ease of communication and research, and without the ability to corroborate oral historical claims for accuracy (would you travel all the way to galilee to check whether jesus actually turned water into wine? where are all the witnesses who saw this amazing thing - surely they would have formed an instant cult?!) make the accuracy of the gospels a dubious thesis indeed.

as i have said, some of the parameters may need tweaking, but i think it id a useful thought experiment.

johnny pearce

Anonymous said...

ZDENNY said: "In the court of law, you have to accept a testimony as being true unless a person can give credible reason it should be rejected."

Even if they say an angel spoke to them? Or they were abducted by aliens?

In the real world, we wait for evidence before accepting someone's story, especially if it involves the supernatural, paranormal, miracles, etc.

Unless....oh!

Hey, I've got a holy relic, guaranteed to cure any disease. I'm looking to sell it for a low low price of $1,000. You don't even have to rely on old documents or second hand stories. You can talk to me, right now, today. You should accept what I'm saying, yes? Interested?

Jonathan MS Pearce said...

"Mary is a contemporary who the eyewitnesses and other contemporaries had access to."

eh? how do we know that? where is any mention of mary - surely she should be the most prominent existent eyewitnesses at the time - in any of paul's writings? why did he not communicate with her?

"John has no evidence that the Biblical accounts are not true. In the court of law, you have to accept a testimony as being true unless a person can give credible reason it should be rejected. John does not have any credible reason grounded in history or in fact. He only has conjectures and speculations rather than any real substance."

on this logic, you would accept arthurain legend as fact, the qu'ran as fact, vedic scriptures as fact etc etc. huge logical issues there. in a court of law, proving that jesus D~ID say exactly what was accounted 40-150 years after his death would actually be impossible.

Jonathan MS Pearce said...

DID, even. my spelling is rubbish when i type fast...

James F. McGrath said...

I like the thought experiment, but the major difference I see between this scenario and the Gospels is this: I don't get the impression that the Gospel authors wrote because someone challenged them to write biographies of someone they had never heard of.

The challenge for historians investigating Jesus is not a large gap in time in which most important details could be forgotten, but rather a continuous retelling in the intervening decades, during which stories and sayings are not only remembered and forgotten but altered and adapted, with new material sometimes being created as well.

I think a more useful thought experiment could focus on John F. Kennedy, asking someone in their early twenties now to write about him without looking things up in texts or online or in movies. Even if the individual has seen JFK or another movie, or already read something, I suspect that their result, when compared with what is known historically, will still contain a mixture of fact, mistake and legend that would bear some resemblance to what we find in the Gospels.

Jonathan MS Pearce said...

@James

some really good points there. i think that would be getting towards what the gospel writers might have been facing.

however, you would also have to add into the mix that the biographer of jfk would have also believed jfk to be god / son of god / resurrected. thus, all of their writings about the miraculous aspects of him would be less questioned, and more likely to be believed at face value.

Walter said...

ZDENNY says:Walter, I guess you would need some evidence for your claim that the eyewitnesses were 'probably' dead or MIA. John for example claims to be the writer of John. All NT Scholars believe that Paul wrote Corinthians and even Paul informs us that the eyewitnesses of the resurrection were still alive. In fact, Paul met with them.

First of all Paul's writings are not the Gospels, and his claim of 500 witnesses sounds hyperbolic to me. Who were these 500? What were their names?

The scholarly consensus is that the earliest Gospel(Mark) was written around 70 CE, ie around the time of the destruction of the Jewish Temple. The later Gospels show reliance upon Mark's Gospel. According to Church traditions Peter and Paul would have already been executed by Nero by the time of Mark's literary creation.

The Fourth Gospel does claim to be penned by an eyewitness, but this claim is found in the twenty-first chapter and is believed to be a later interpolation. The twentieth chapter seems to be the original ending of the Fourth Gospel.

Further, the long-winded speeches placed on the lips of Jesus in John's Gospel sound just like 'John' does in his epistles and their historical veracity is questionable. The short, pithy sayings of Jesus found in the Synoptic Gospels are more likely to be closer in historical accuracy.

There is simply no solid evidence that eyewitnesses had anything to do with our four anonymous Gospels. They are more likely stories based on oral tradition written down to engender religious faith.

Paul's writings are a different discussion.

J. K. Jones said...

You guys need to get out more.

Try "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" by Baucham. Oral tradition is stronger than you let on, and the gospels are much earlier than you think.

Jonathan MS Pearce said...

oral tradition is ever defended by christians, but if you look elsewhere, the results are far more varied (such as native american oral traditions etc).

bauckham has his detractors (don't we all) and his early dating is highly generous leaving out lots of contentious contradictory issues (though i haven't read it myself). this review is harsh but telling:

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Eyewitnesses-Gospels-Eyewitness-Testimony/product-reviews/0802831621/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_pop_hist_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addOneStar

and

http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0802863906/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_pop_hist_2?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addTwoStar

christians will defend his work, because he is christian and backing up the message with typical bias. "His abuse of evidence is scandalous." and "This work by Bauckham is speculation that parades as fact. Such pretense is unfortunately common in scholarship, so the work's reviews have generally downplayed or even ignored this actually fatal failing."

there is also a lonk to a chapter by chapter critique:
http://vridar.wordpress.com/tag/book-reviews/bauckham-jesus-and-the-eyewitnesses/

your opinion is fine. but it is just that - opinion, as is ours. we must all be wary from whence we derive our opinionfacts.

Walter said...

Try "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" by Baucham. Oral tradition is stronger than you let on, and the gospels are much earlier than you think.

My book list is full at the moment. What evidence can you present for early dates for the Gospels?

To me the best evidence for late authorship is that there were no direct quotes from the Gospels until Justin Martyr ca. 150 CE. I believe Clement of Rome quoted some sayings that sounded similar to Matthew's Gospel but he could have been passing on what he heard from oral tradition.

If the Gospels were written early, then they seem to have been overlooked until the mid second century.

Jonathan MS Pearce said...

and if mark is so accurate too, why all these romanesque mistakes?:

mark was written by a roman, and contained errors about jewish literature and so on, because the author did not have good local knowledge. Matthew sets out to correct these. Eg mark 1:2 when not edited in, say, the kjv, incorrectly references malachi 3:1 as Isaiah. Mark 2:7 also says only god can forgive the sins of men, but jewish law says that people can forgive each others’ sins. Mark mentions Gadarenes as being near a large lake. Matthew changes all these points, for example, saying Gadarenes is actually Gergesenes which IS near a lake. Matthew corrects mark’s statement that synagogues had multiple rulers, when there is almost always 1. He changes mark’s having jesus ridiculing jewish food laws set out by moses etc. Mark has jesus misquoting one of the commandments (10:19 defrauding). Mark refers to David as ‘our father’ which is something jews would never do since they are not all descended from david. Matthew corrects this too. Matthew omits mark’s mistake of getting the Passover date wrong. Matthew drops mark’s having a man carry a pitcher of water, as this is clearly woman’s work. Matthew omits mark saying the night before the crucifixion was the night before the Sabbath, because for jews, the night before is actually the start of the Sabbath. Mark has joseph of arimethea buying linen to wrap jesus in on the Sabbath. Matthew drops this as this would be impossible in jewish law. Mark mentions the fourth watch of the night, which is incorrect because jews only had 3 watches in a night. 4 is roman. There are a few more minor ones.

so eyewitness, no. reliable, no.

James F. McGrath said...

I think the last comment just illustrates what we already knew, that we're dealing with material passed on orally. They could rarely if ever have looked up passages from the Jewish Scripture, and few of those who passed on the tradition knew the geography of Palestine. And so errors just show what historians and most people apart from fundamentalists know: the Bible, like other writings, doesn't get everything right.

But neither does it get everything wrong, and the fact that it retains some details (who the high priest was and who the prefect was at the time when Jesus was crucified) shows that some material was preserved - these details couldn't just be looked up on WikiPedia or in some other source.

And so the Gospels are neither pure myth nor inerrant truth, but that combination of fact, myth and error that is typical of ancient sources. The only reason some tend to assert extreme views is because of the religious claims fundamentalists and other religious conservatives make.

One last point: Bauckham's book argues against the standard view of oral transmission and seeks to substitute eyewitness testimony.

Mike D said...

ARGH!

People bickering about when the gospels were written and whether they were written by "eye witnesses". Who cares?

Today, there are people who think John Edward can telepathically talk to their dead relatives. People who think Benny Hinn and Sathya Sai Baba can magically heal their diseases. People who think astrology and homeopathy are real. And this is TODAY, in our technologically advanced society where we have lots of ways to independently verify and scrutinize claims like that.

Why would people 2,000 years ago be less gullible? Less prone to turn a dead guy into a god?

And you know what else? There's a difference between eyewitness testimony in a court and the gospels. Which is that if someone was testifying in court, you'd probably be a little skeptical if they claimed that the crook got away by jumping on his flying broomstick or that he magically revived his accomplice after he got his brains blown out.

It's one thing to say, "I saw my friend go into the store". It's a whole other thing to say, "I saw my friend float into the store and lift things off shelves with the power of his mind." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Christianity FAIL.

Unknown said...

Mike,

I agree with you completely. There's a basic assumption behind historicity of Jesus arguments that if someone can be shown to have said something then he must be telling the truth no matter how ridiculous his story is.

Rob said...


Paul informs us that the eyewitnesses of the resurrection were still alive. In fact, Paul met with them.

I never find the atheistic arguments very convincing because of their poor critical abilities


*facepalm*

I'm out of my scholarly depth, I'm sure, but- even granting authorship- why would you believe what Paul heard from self-claimed eyewitnesses? And you're shocked at others' poor critical abilities?

It reminds me of a story I recently read where Liberians told a visiting American that they had personally seen expert hunters turn into animals. Reliable, I'm sure.

In what other ancient books would you allow hearsay from eyewitneses to count?

Steven Carr said...

The Gospels were written by people using the same methods Joseph Smith and Muhammad used.

Miracles and the Book of Mormon gives all the gory details - details which only Muslims, Christians and Mormons can deny.

Although as outsiders to the other religions, they naturally accept that the other religions used frauds and lies.

But not theirs....

Steven Carr said...

MCGRATH
I think a more useful thought experiment could focus on John F. Kennedy, asking someone in their early twenties now to write about him without looking things up in texts or online or in movies. Even if the individual has seen JFK or another movie, or already read something...

CARR
James is on to an analogy I use a lot.

The Gospels are just like the people who claim a second gunman shot JFK.

There was a government conspiracy to hide this, just like the authorities tried to cover up the resurrection of Jesus.

But some people found out about this coverup, just like the anonymous author of Matthew found out about the cover up by the authorities of his day.

Of course, the analogy with JFK breaks down in other ways.

We don't have early members of the JFK fan club claiming gunmen only take out bad,corrupt leaders, in the way that Paul says the authorities only punish the wicked .

We don't have early members of the JFK fan club claiming that the Old Testament has revealed to them details about the life of JFK, in the way that Paul claims time and time again that his Christianity comes from the Old Testament.

Paul is so vocal about where his Christianity comes from, that historicists have to say that Paul is silent. (As historicists claim Paul is silent, they no longer have to listen to him explain that the Law and the Prophets are what tesify to this new righteousness)


And Paul claims Jews don't believe , either because they have never heard of Jesus ,or rejected Christian preaching about Jesus.

We don't have letters by Americans claiming other Americans have never heard of JFK....

Steven Carr said...

MCGRATH
And so the Gospels are neither pure myth nor inerrant truth, but that combination of fact, myth and error that is typical of ancient sources.

CARR
The Gospels are typical of Christian writings, which happily made up stories of the infant Jesus killing people,and all sorts of things that not even James can sell to himself.

But he can sell the Gospels to himself, so he has no need to produce evidence for his claims that they contain facts.

James F. McGrath said...

Steven, we've had this conversation before, and here once again you've missed the point that separates historical study from the pseudohistorical approach of mythicism. Historians know full well that there is made-up stuff in the Gospels, as in other historical sources. That doesn't mean that nothing is historical. This all-or-nothing approach is typical of apologists, but not the way academic study of history works.

Steven Carr said...

Still not a single bit of evidence from James that Mark was intended to be as factual as ,say, 'A Tale of Two Cities' is factual.

James will be claiming soon that the stories of the second gunman who shot JFK are factual, because there really was a city called Dallas.

After all, people who say that these conspiracy theories about JFK are non-factual simply don't understand how history works :-)

Just because the stories of a second gunman are made up,doesn't mean that *everything* is made up.

That would be an 'all-or-nothing' approach, which James would scorn.

The stories of a second gunman could well be as factual as the Gospels :-)

But so far, James has not even managed to prove the Gospels are as factual as the claims that a second gunman shot JFK in Dallas...

James F. McGrath said...

Steven, we have the same conversation over and over again, but the problem is that (1) history doesn't deal with "proofs" as math does, but with probability, and (2) no matter how much evidence is presented that the existence of Jesus is more probable than his non-existence, you try to change the subject and pretend we were discussing the historicity of Mary Magdalene. It is very tiresome!

Steven Carr said...

I see.

So this thread is about the historicity of the Gospel accounts, and James complains that I am questioning the historicity of Joseph of Arimathea, Mary Magdalene and Judas!




But James has no more evidence for their existence than he has evidence for the second gunman who shot JFK.

James continually refuses to say why historians think Judas existed,when nobody mentioned him for 30 years after his alleged death.

Because that would at once expose the nature of Biblical scholarship.

The Gospels are historical , or else there would be no point in James having a job examining the historicity of the Gospels.

Therefore, that cast of Gospel characters had to have existed, even though there is no evidence of their existence.

Steven Carr said...

James still never explains why Paul claims Jews had either never heard of Jesus, or rejected Christian preaching about Jesus.


James continues to have this non-conversation time after time after time where he never attempts any dialogue in the conversation.

Jonathan MS Pearce said...

i think the counterpoints to paul's idealogies came after paul's writing. i think matthew does a good job of 'answering' jewish arguments for the christian claim of an empty tomb, by adding in soldiers gaurding the tomb, to counter claims that the body must have been stolen. matthew does this and other things to counter emerging jewish criticisms - essentially inventing history.

i would posit that the jesus movement was probably not established enough for paul to need to answer jewish criticisms. he concentrated more on answering criticism of his fellow jesus movement followers who were trying to get to grips with what christianity was all about. for example, they were wondering why the second coming / end times hadn't happpened yet (our generation etc) and paul spent his time answering internal criticisms such as these.

one has to wonder why he includes so little of jesus life or miracles since they would be powerful in persauding his letter readers on x, y and z. the argument from silence is never stronger then here.

Steven Carr said...

Paul isn't silent.

Paul is very clear about where his Christianity comes from - it comes from the Old Testament, or revelation from the Lord.

The Law and the Prophets testify to this new righteousness.

Paul expects his readers to also get their Christianity from the Old Testament, which is what Paul uses for exposition and proofs of what he says.

Paul is not at all silent. People only invented the 'argument from silence' because they want Paul to be silent.

If Christians had been hammered for decades with charges that the disciples had stolen the tomb, then presumably Mark wanted his fellow Christians to be killed.

Mark explains that people could get into the tomb easily enough if they were strong enough to roll away the stone.

And that the tomb had already been opened by persons or persons unknown.

Imagine if a group had been charged with stealing money from a bank.

And their first statement on the matter is that they were wondering how to open the vault, but found that the vault was already open when they got there and all the money had already been taken. And the guards? Who said anything about it being guarded? Not us...

Clearly Mark either was very dumb, or had no idea that there were anti-Christian charges that the disciples had stolen the body.

Steven Carr said...

Why would Paul mention any miracles of Jesus?

Jews were demanding that Christianity produce stories of miraculous signs, and Paul scoffs at such demands.

1 Corinthians 1
Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified.

Jews were demanding a religion that had stories of miraculous signs.

Paul was clearly exasperated by such unreasonable demands from the Jews. What did the Jews want? A Jesus who walked on water or something?

Aquinas said...

A lot of comment here!

I know John P in real life--hi John!

I won't put much here because he already wastes far too much of my far more valuable time already ! ;)

I tend to go with the idea that the gospels were written somewhere between the largely consensus dates Mark earliest c. 50-70 ad and John c. 95 ad.

I think J.A.T. Robinson's arguments retain their validity for at least some books (perhaps not John) in that it would be strange for Mark and Matthew to have been written after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple ( 70 ad) and there still be approval of payment of the Temple Tax (recall incident/ story of the fish with coin) since after that date the money was sent to the Temple of Jupiter in Rome ! Its an argument from silence but some silences have purchase!
I also suspect Luke was written prior to Paul's death which Acts does not record---and thus I'd date Luke-Acts before 62 ad--albeit with some retouching after.

ZDenny---Luke says overtly he wasn't an eyewitness surely by virtue of the fact that he tells us he uses eyewitnesses!

I like John P's comment about how we know what Jesus said "in camera" as it were---a number of gospel passages are intriguing from that point of view---eg when the apostles are asleep but we have an account of what Jesus prayed--unless of course, Jesus discussed it with them after the resurrection---certainly a solution we can't rule out. Of course the gospels relate that there was a woman (supporter) who worked in Pilate's court---so we'd have a source in there---although...again...it could be argued Jesus discussed it with the apostle post-resurrection. Our already-given beliefs will determine what we will accept on that score.

PS Walter...that's a way-out view on dating and gospels as (mere?) literary creations---even Liberals accept a great deal of their historicity. 150 is too late...and don't forget scholarship has moved in the opposite direction and dating has become earlier rather than later.

Ciao

Anonymous said...

I've been reading this and so as not to let James McGrath out on a limb here I'll state for the record that I agree with him. He's being honest as a historian about what the evidence can show us.

And I just heard that Dr. Maurice Casey has written a book called Jesus of Nazareth due out in September dealing with the question of the historicity of Jesus. He'll be taking on the Mythicists.

It should be interesting. I don't know how much it will cost.

Steven Carr said...

Casey can even tell you the Aramaic of what was said at the Last Supper.

How do you do that? When we have no Christian document from the first century written in Aramaic?

Bart Ehrman told me they doubt the authenticity of the words attributed to the Lord in 1 Corinthians 11.

Anonymous said...

Steve, why are you more passionate about this question than anything? I mean really, for the last three years this has become your one note song, or at least it seems to me. I remember when I first started Blogging I was attacked on everything I had argued for by presuppositionalists who would continually ask me what standard I had for this or that. No matter what I wrote that was their one note song.

I don't see why some people on both sides use one argument over and over again when there are many more to learn and to argue for.

So why this passion of yours? It seems as if you come out to make this case whenever you can as if repeating these statements might somehow sink in to the rest of us.

Make a different case about something else okay? There is so much you and I agree on it reminds me of church all over again where people will start new churches over a slight difference such as whether they ought to have communion once a week, once a month, or once a year even though they agree on everything thing else.

Jonathan MS Pearce said...

hi rob
of course this email was originally sent to you before john as a challenge to you, so good to see you here.

paul is interesting as is mark. mark, as far as we can definitely tell (ie Q) qould have started the ball rolling wrt christianity, and the jews would have counter argued the points he brought up, like an empty tomb. then matthew acts to correct mark's mistakes, as mentioned before, and answer the jewish criticisms by inventing other failsafes that were not in the original mark story.

paul seems to confirm the storyness of the gospels by effectively saying 'there are no miracles' and asking people to look to the OT. jews and probably non-eyewitness christians were unhappy about this, and hence myths of jesus' miracles were born.

how to write a religion in 5 easy steps.

Steven Carr said...

Didn't John read my other postings on this blog, about the miracles and my pointing out to Mr.Watts all the Biblical accounts of his god's murders?

Or has John read my blog

I guess John hasn't read those posts of mine, for John declares I only post on this one particular subject, even though I don't.

Anonymous said...

What is there about this kind of argument that some skeptics are so passionate about they don't argue about anything else.

Hell, I don't go over to the FRDB board anymore because THAT is their one not song too. And it's not just them. Even though we're on the same team these skeptics dismiss my work and what I'm doing, even though what I'm doing is actually much more effective.

Sorry, I've been to church. It demands conformity. I left that years ago. These skeptics are myopic. They are so wrapped up in this question they don't realize they are spinning their wheels and talking to themselves. Maybe that's what frustrates them. But then there just might be a reason why they are frustrated and James McGrath just told you.

Cheers.

Anonymous said...

We cross-posted Steve.

Okay, point taken with you. I was wrong.

My apologies.

Steven Carr said...

Thanks for the apology. It is appreciated.

Keep up the good work.

As it happens, I am British and you are not, so I am perhaps more familiar with Benjamin Creme and his mythical Maitreya.

It did make a big impression on me when I saw him interviewed and it was obvious that his Maitreya did not exist,although Creme claims the Maitreya is a real person living in London.

There are a lot of parallels between this and (my reading of) Christianity.

Perhaps Creme is not as well known on the other side of the pond.

Walter said...

@Aquinas

PS Walter...that's a way-out view on dating and gospels as (mere?) literary creations---even Liberals accept a great deal of their historicity. 150 is too late...and don't forget scholarship has moved in the opposite direction and dating has become earlier rather than later.

I did not claim that the Gospels were written around 150 CE; I said that they were not directly quoted until around that time. I also do not accept an early dating for Luke-Acts based on the silence of Paul's death. I believe that Paul's death did not fit the theme of Acts so was not mentioned. Plus the 'Acts' genre of literature really begins showing up in the second century. Luke-Acts is probably dated close to the turn of the century, if not later.

PS - When I say the gospels were literary creations I mean that there was serious legendary embellishment as Dr. McGrath has already mentioned. Sure there may be some history in there somewhere; we may never know how much.

Cheers.

James F. McGrath said...

Steven, how can you possibly know that no one mentioned Judas for 30 years between the crucifixion and the writing of the Gospel of Mark? That's pure speculation. All we have is the mention of him in the first narrative account of the life of Jesus, and in Q we have a saying attributed to Jesus in which he predicts that the Twelve will sit on Twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Do you really think that it is more likely that Christians invented Jesus, invented Judas, and attributed to Jesus a prediction that the one who they claimed betrayed Jesus would be rewarded with a throne?

Steven, just for once, can you not merely offer rhetorical questions and sarcasm, but a detailed treatment of relevant evidence - and not just evidence that suits your preconceptions?

Steven Carr said...

I see James is now ignoring the data that we have no mention of Judas in the 30 years before the anonymous author of Mark wrote a novel with him in.

James just ignores data and calls this scholarship.

Of course, he cannot produce any evidence that Judas existed, so he is left on the fall-back position that Judas is in the Gospels , so he must have existed.



As well as Judas, the cast of Gospel characters that appear for the first time in Mark include Thomas, Joseph of Arimathea, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Salome, Mary, Joseph, Barabbas, Simon of Cyrene, Bartimaeus etc etc. Too many to list.

Not even Christians wrote documents in the first century naming themselves as ever having seen those people.




There is no evidence for these people, so James, please step up the sarcasm and declarations of prejudice to cover this all up.

If you don't step up the rherotic, people are going to notice the lack of evidence for these people.

Or produce evidence that the anonymous author of Mark had heard of these people, before he invented them, like he invented Jesus swapping Bible passages with Satan in the desert.

James F. McGrath said...

Steven, that's a serious accusation. My writing on the subject of the historical Jesus has passed peer review and been published in scholarly journals and books. Has yours?

Before we move on to anything else, let's start with your earliest claims/assumptions. You call the Gospel of Mark a "novel." This may be quite apt, and many ancient writings in this genre fit what we'd call "historical fiction." The Acts of Thomas is another example I've published on. It is largely fictitious - but even so includes some information that is likely to be historical.

You seem to be assuming not only that the Gospel of Mark is a "novel" but also that, if it is a novel, all its characters and events must be fictitious. Even if we granted this claim, you would then have to explain how within such a short period of time a religion that supposedly invented a mythical figure of Jesus then wrote novels about him and somehow everyone misunderstood them to be historical narratives. I would welcome your presentation of that scenario, so its plausibility could be evaluated in detail.

But I don't serious expect that from you. You make accusations but don't respond to them. You claim that those who publish scholarly works on the historical figure of Jesus are part of a conspiracy but don't offer a serious alternative to the viewpoint you dismiss without ever addressing the points that are made.

So I guess there is nothing to do now but wait for your next multi-comment flood of sarcasm and rhetorical questions. But if you want to discuss this subject with a scholar, then you will be expected to do so in a scholarly way and not simply waste time that could be spent on trying to make progress on some things that are still unclear, rather than explaining the basics over and over and over again.

Jonathan MS Pearce said...

all of this wonderful verbal battling aside, can someone please tell me how the gospel writers had access to accurate representations of what jesus actually said, not to mention the conversations he had in private!

the implications are that, for example, he spoke to pontius pilate alone. how do we know what he said?

the gospel writers can't even agree on what his last words on the cross were, let alone accurately portraying what was talked about all throughout his ministry.

if the gospel writers had access to mary magdalene, for example, a long time after paul wrote, then why did paul not mention her / have access to her?

highly dubious.

James F. McGrath said...

Johnny, that's a good question, and all mainstream historians who are not driven by a conservative religious agenda (and even some who are but are nevertheless honest) distinguish between things which Jesus would have said publicly and things to which no one in the Christian movement is likely to have had access: the "trials" of Jesus (many historians doubt whether Jesus would have received anything that could be called a "trial" either at the hands of the Romans or before Jewish authorities), words from the cross (those few who were present are said to have watched from a distance) and so on.

So you are right, there is reason for skepticism about such matters.

Jonathan MS Pearce said...

the issue is, no other history books that i have ever looked at, read, or studied, have ever included speech or dialogue, apart from the very occasional famous one liner ("somebody rid me of this turbulent priest" which is dubious anyway).

thus, we have to look at the gospels, just with regards to any other history book ever written, as not being a history book.

if we establish this as the case, then what is it if not history? or is it historical fiction? from thence, we have to seriously doubt all of what is wriiten therein as historically dubitable, on the basis that it would be arbitrary to decide what was reliable and what was not.

i know people have looked at the words jesus said, and analysed what they think were his actual words, but if you look at the methodology behind this sort of work, it is often fallacious, and very shakey.

thus, as you say, history wrapped up in myth and embellishment and conjecture. is that a worthy enough basis for a religion and worldview? i, for one, demand much more credibility to something before i devote my life to its cause. i don't do that to any other aspect of my life, so why, based on shakey scripture, should i be expected to do that with christianity?

James F. McGrath said...

Johnny, your points are good ones. It is precisely among the "one-liners" that most of the sayings most universally regarded as authentic are to be found. They often are memorable. Some, like the famous "strain out a gnat but swallow a camel," make reference to specific details of traditions of Jewish legal interpretation from the time period and even include puns when translated back into the language Jesus would have spoken, Aramaic (between galma and gamla, gnat and camel).

But historical study is never going to provide a basis on its own for a way of life today. And so for me as a Christian, my perspective is shaped not only by history, but by the experience of putting teachings into practice and finding out what "works," as well as having had a life-changing religious experience mediated through the Christian tradition (although I have no reason to think that Christianity is the only religious tradition that can facilitate such positive spiritual experiences).

Claims to base a worldview on Scripture are misleading at best - no one reads the texts in question without being shaped by upbringing, culture, community and countless other influences, and so there is no way that one can claim to "just read without interpreting" and give the text genuine priority. But that doesn't mean that one can't adopt an outlook that makes room for spirituality, ethics, and other aspects of life than science and history - while trying to do justice to the latter in the process.

Steven Carr said...

JOHNNY P
the issue is, no other history books that i have ever looked at, read, or studied, have ever included speech or dialogue, apart from the very occasional famous one liner

CARR
I have no doubt whatever that historicists will be along to give you plenty of examples of accurately recorded speech of people who lived 2,000 years ago.

It is not as though historicists have one set of rules for Jesus, while historians have another set of rules for everybody else who lived 2000 years ago.

JOHNNY P
i know people have looked at the words jesus said, and analysed what they think were his actual words, but if you look at the methodology behind this sort of work, it is often fallacious, and very shakey.

CARR
But the same methodology has been tried and tested on other people who lived 2000 years ago.

Exactly the same methodology that was used to determine that Jesus often used the phrase 'Son of Man' about himself, has been used successfully in other cases.

Hasn't it?

Steven Carr said...

I get the logic used.

Jesus spoke Aramaic.

A saying makes sense in Aramaic.

Therefore, Jesus spoke it. It has been proved to be authentic.

No wonder there has been a century of failure of mainstream Biblical scholarship in its quest(s) for the historical Jesus, when they are actually proud of that sort of logic.

James F. McGrath said...

Steven, the "logic" you project onto historians is simply the antithesis of your own "logic" and not what historians actually do.

There is no "proof" in history in the strict sense. There are only probabilities. A saying in the Greek Gospels that seems to reflect an original in Aramaic is more likely to be traditional than to have been invented by the Greek-speaking Gospel authors. Whether it is authentic or not cannot be "proven" the way one proves things in math. One can only assess probabilities.

When are you going to grasp how historical study works? When are you going to discuss some of the sayings that are judged to be more likely authentic than inauthentic, rather than always changing the topic to ones that are more likely to be inventions of the church? No one seriously doubts that the latter exist, but they don't settle the question of whether other sayings may be authentic.

Anonymous said...

In my opinion these are some of the same questions historians of philosophy have with assessing what Socrates taught. They can be as skeptical to think he never existed too. But rather than do that they separate Plato's works into earlier, middle and later periods where the earlier period more accurately reflects what Socrates taught and the later period is where Plato used Socrates voice as a way to justify his own thoughts.

Steven Carr said...

I knew James would never dream of answering the question of what other person of 2000 years ago these methodologies have been tested upon, to determine which sayings were authentic and which were not.

Perhaps if I gave him something to cut and paste, it would cut down on the effort needed for him to do that.

'The criterion of embarrassment means we know XXXX said AAA and that XXXX did not say BBB,as that was a later invention'

All James has to do know to show his mainstream scholarship is real historical research , like the methods historians use, is to cut and paste that paragraph, proving that he actually does history,as a historian would recognise it.

Unless his history has its own rules that other historians would never dream of using?

James F. McGrath said...

Steven, thank you for illustrating once again why mythicism is dismissed as comparable to young-earth creationism, holocaust denial and other forms of pseudo-science and pseudo-history.

Even if it were true (it isn't) that I never answered your questions, blogs are not the place where matters of science or history are investigated in a methodologically rigorous fashion. That's what books, peer reviewed articles and other academic publications are for.

I've written things in such forums. From the things you post, it doesn't seem like you've even read these sorts of publications.

Steven Carr said...

John is right, but Plato claimed to have known Socrates personally.

As did Xenophon.

No such named witnesses exist for the sayings of Jesus.

Anonymous said...

But Steve how can you verify the existence of Plato or Xenophon by the same historical standards? John the Baptist said he knew Jesus personally too.

Anonymous said...

Steven, not to gang up on you but I know you've subscribed to this thread where I demolished the "common sense" arguments of conspiracy theoricist Geoff Hudson.

What I think we have to do, and what I did for chapter 12 in The Christian Delusion, is place the story of Jesus into a Jewish context. If and when we do that we see that the mythicist position, at the least, is not as cut and dried as you think it is. Then perhaps you might possibly see why such a position is not taken seriously by professional historians such as McGrath.

Jonathan MS Pearce said...

some interesting and fairly reasonable comments from james. i admire his rationality on these matters!

i would posit that, on the evidence of pauline epistles, and the jesus movement shortly after his crucifiction, sorry crucifixion, i would imagine that a real jesus did exist. he just didn't rise from the dead and fly up into the clouds.

what he did in his life and what he said would be(logically to me)very largely embellished fiction.

AndyPJ said...

Gents a mostly enjoyable discourse. A pleasure to see my fellow 'Tippling Philosophers' (Johnny P & Aquinas) mixing in such erudite company!
We've debated Historicity of Jesus at length on & off over the past 7 years & have consequently read broadly (including present company! :-) )
A comment/question as follows:
A key & contentious area is dating of the various Canon texts & Apocrypha.
Having researched G o Thomas & John in particular at length, my conclusion is that those (subjectively or otherwise) putting a case for early or late dating invariably have a strong case, and much hot air is wasted on this type of debate. The good reason being that (I'm sure with out exception) these ancient writings are an amalgamation of words penned (or passed on orally) by multiple authors over a span of time. There for some reason seems a reluctance to accept this fact & analyse the data at a subsequent different level. What say you guys?

Monsignor Scott Rassbach said...

i cannot remember a single thing i said from only 10 years ago, let alone someone else from 40 years ago.

1) You were most likely raised in a modern, western environment. Our abilities to remember are a pale shadow of what ancient people, who had no writing (or for whom writing was not common due to the lack of raw materials upon which to write), no television, no computers, and training in the art of rhetoric would have been able to do. Their memories were the primary method of data storage.

2) I'll bet that if you had a professor or a teacher who made an extreme impression on you, you'd remember what they said. You may not remember it verbatim, your brain might fill in the gaps, your experience may alter the message slightly. But you still remember.

3) Your experience is not a valid basis for comparison. There are people who remember conversations verbatim for 40 years. My mother-in-law, for example.

Steven Carr said...

Gosh, those fishermen must have had amazing memories,almost as good as Muhammad's when remembering the Koran.

Those people saw Jesus feed 5,000 with a few loaves of bread.

And then in Mark 8,they forget all about this amazing miracle.

During those days another large crowd gathered. Since they had nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him and said, "I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way, because some of them have come a long distance."

His disciples answered, "But where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them?"

If only the feeding of the 5,000 had made any sort of impression on them....

James F. McGrath said...

Claims are often made about the remarkable ability of people in pre-literate or primarily oral cultures to retain things verbatim. Few of those claims resist close scrutiny. The whole notion of "verbatim" in the modern sense depends on writing, and where there was verbatim memorization it usually was aided by a text.

In the absence of a recorded account, it is unclear how anyone could ever claim to know that something was being recalled verbatim.

Having said that, it is likely that the disciples of Jesus, who held him in such esteem that even his being crucified by the Romans didn't dissuade them of his being the Messiah, would have remembered the gist of many things he said, and certain particularly memorable saying which had rhyme or other features that serve as mnemonic aids may have been recalled verbatim in some cases.

Monsignor Scott Rassbach said...

In the absence of a recorded account, it is unclear how anyone could ever claim to know that something was being recalled verbatim.

In the presence of a recorded account, it is unclear how anyone could ever claim that something is being recalled verbatim. It's one of the limits to epistemology. To riff on the trickster point in another post, there's always a possibility of mistake or deception. Even Herodotus noted this, that he could only record what he was told, and made no claim as to the veracity.

My main points are simply that extrapolating the abilities of present humans in a modern, western environment to those in a 1st century, Greek and Roman influenced one, is not a valid comparison. If nothing else, English is a slippery language, while Greek and Latin are a bit more precise in some ways.

I took issue simply with the OP's comment that he couldn't remember a conversation from 10 years ago as a valid rejection of the memories of others.

As to the veracity of the gospels, I make no comment. Personally, I'm inclined to take a more allegorical/literary/inspirational view than a strict historical one. I have no proof either way, it's simply my approach.

Steven Carr said...

Yes, new Christians would have been instructed in all those oral traditions, the life and works of their Lord and Saviour.

What else would they have demanded to know,or been given as instruction when they converted to worship of this Messiah, who had made such an impression on everybody?

1 Corinthians 3
Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly — mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it.

Naturally, all that oral tradition and teaching about the life of Jesus was mere 'milk' and Christians had to wait before getting the good stuff.

They had to wait before getting to learn the mind of Christ.

1 Corinthians 2
This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.....The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment:
"For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.

The mind of Christ was taught by words from the Spirit, not by words taught by humans.

Paul is clear about where his Christianity comes from.

Not from oral tradition about the life of Jesus.

James F. McGrath said...

Rare occasions do occasionally present themselves, such as when European anthropologists have visited an oral culture and made recordings of their epics or folklore at an interval of decades. Some of the early research on and attempts to record European folklore (Herder's work on Latvian traditions, for instance) are also relevant. And so there have been opportunities to test the capacity of oral tradition in a way that did not immediately interfere with the flow of that tradition in the process. But in the long term, the recorded versions intended to document the tradition tended to result in a normalizing of the oral tradition to conform with one or more of the published versions, so publication can domesticate an oral tradition in the longer term.

Anyway, I don't have the impression we disagree on any issue of substance - but this topic interests me a lot and is one of the next big research projects I have lined up, and so it seemed appropriate to comment on it! :)

Monsignor Scott Rassbach said...

@James, No disagreements of substance on this topic, at least. :)

Steven Carr said...

The only disagreement is with the earliest Christians who were clearly not demanding to be told the 'solid food' of what their Lord and Saviour had done and preached.

They were being fobbed off with 'milk', to use Paul's word to describe what 'infants in Christ' were taught.

Monsignor Scott Rassbach said...

@Steve, to me this speaks to the mystery religion construction of early Christianity. There were levels of initiation, and without attaining those levels, all you could get was 'milk', or the easily digestible ideas, some of which probably veiled the difficult truths of which the early initiates would have learned.

The true messages of spirituality are never fit for the uninitiated, 'do not throw your pearls before swine.'

Steven Carr said...

I see.

'Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.'

So ordinary Christians , like these Corinthians, were 'not yet ready' for the 'solid food' of the oral traditions of what their Lord and Saviour had done and taught?

In fact they were quite happy being Christians although denied the 'difficult truths' of what Jesus had said and done.

Unless the oral traditions of what Jesus had said and done was the 'milk',not to be given to the unintiated, as that be throwing 'pearls before swine'

Let's face it.

Paul couldn't have passed on oral traditions of what Jesus had said and done and then called them 'milk'.

Either these oral traditions were only told to initiates or they did not exist at all.

Monsignor Scott Rassbach said...

Either these oral traditions were only told to initiates or they did not exist at all.

Exactly. Only told to initiates, or did not exist at all.

There are still truths that are only taught to initiates. They're not as flashy as the televangelists and the prosperity gospel, but they endure.

Steven Carr said...

So these oral traditions about the life and teachings of Jesus were not passed on to new converts,to the 'infants in Christ', who were given milk instead?

'Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly — mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.'

Monsignor Scott Rassbach said...

So these oral traditions about the life and teachings of Jesus were not passed on to new converts,to the 'infants in Christ', who were given milk instead?

Definitely not, in certain groups. There may have been some groups (Irenaeus, et. al) who passed everything they knew along. They may not have known it all. In Irenaeus' case, I'm almost certain he didn't know it all.

Again, this is my surmise, based on a number of traditions surrounding Christianity at the time, my readings of scripture and other related documents, certain scholars, etc. I'd have to find citations if you insist, but we should probably take it off line.

Jonathan MS Pearce said...

vansina, hartland, van gennep and lowrie and others point towards the fact that oral tradition is not in any way reliable. the main point is that oral tradition does not have historical reliability as one of its aims.

no one passes on traditions such that the most important aspect are the conversations between various people, and the exact chronology of micro events.

the gospels in their massive amounts of apparent facts and dialogues are a complete world apart from, say, passing on the creation myths of an aborigial tribe.

the types of things necessitating memory are completely different. people would not have had to memorise such things as entire conversations between people and countless different occasions down to the finest details.

that is not oral tradition and never has been.

Steven Carr said...

1 Corinthians 4
Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, "Do not go beyond what is written'

All those oral traditions about Jesus? And then Paul warns people not to go beyond what is written?

So what was the point of the oral traditions about Jesus, if Paul trashes oral traditions as not written ie not in the Old Testament?

Monsignor Scott Rassbach said...

the gospels in their massive amounts of apparent facts and dialogues are a complete world apart from, say, passing on the creation myths of an aborigial tribe.

The cultures of 1st century Palestine are also a complete world apart from the world of an aboriginal tribe.

Australian Aboriginal tribes have a completely different social structure, primarily based around familial connections*. Greek and Roman law was complex, and arguments in a court of law had to be done from memory. These are different orders of memory work, so the place of memory, the detail, the training, were probably also of different orders.

I'm not saying that every person in Judea had an eidetic memory, simply that the memories of people in 1st century Palestine were probably much different than what we have experience with. A culture with fairly complex data requirements, yet expensive and uncommon methods of recording that data, would develop a tradition of remembrance that is different than modern memory traits (with our easily available props) or tribal aborigines (with fairly simple requirements).

Again, the idea that they COULD NOT have remembered long conversations with a certain degree of accuracy does not hold up. I'm not saying the gospels ARE an accurate transcription of those conversations. However, To rule out the possibility of it out based on the examples given (personal modern experience, aboriginal culture) seems to be going too far.

Classical literature does have reference to prodigious feats of memory. The story of Simonides of Ceos comes to mind, not just his trick of remembering where the guests are seated, but the feat of remembering his odes. We mustn't think of the early christians as aboriginals with an oral tradition, but as greeks and romans with a tradition of poets and lawyers.

*Aboriginal tribes have unique and complex memory requirements of their own, but verbatim conversations are probably not among those requirements. As a people, they're not nearly as wordy as the Greeks or Romans.

Monsignor Scott Rassbach said...

@Steve what translation are you using? The Greek of 1 Corinthians 4:6 actually seems to point toward an oral tradition.

The KJV translates it as: "And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes; that ye might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written"

To me, it seems a warning to not seek knowledge beyond your ability to handle it, as evidenced by your initiation.

The line before (1 Cor 4:5) talks about what is made hidden being revealed when the Lord comes again. The Lord comes during the Eucharist, which would have been a rite only for the initiated in the 1st Century Roman Empire. Again, pointing towards initiation. It's very symbolic language.

Jonathan MS Pearce said...

"memories of people in 1st century Palestine were probably much different than what we have experience with. A culture with fairly complex data requirements, yet expensive and uncommon methods of recording that data, would develop a tradition of remembrance that is different than modern memory traits"

i can't really argue too much with that since it is pure conjecture.

however, i can say that we have no evidence of these gospels being orally transmitted accurately - they just pop into being. luke gives us a little insight - but there is no methodolgy or testable historicity.

it still remains a guessing game of what was accurate, what was embellished, and what was downright made up (matthew's tomb guards).

Steven Carr said...

It remains to be shown that the very earliest Christians really did have an oral tradition of what Jesus said and did.

Bart Ehrman doubts the authenticity of what the Lord allegedly said in 1 Corinthians 11.

And Ehrman writes about Paul and early Christians 'So it's hard to know how interested either he or they were in knowing these traditions -- as counterintuitive as that might seem.'

It is counterintuitive that early Christians were not interested in being told all about what their Lord and Saviour said and did.

Almost as though there had been no Lord and Saviour doing and saying things.

That is a lot easier to understand than the bizarre spectacle of whole groups of converts not being interested in the person they worshipped. That is 'counterintuitive'.

But Paul is vocal about where his Christianity comes from. It came from the Old Testament.

Steven Carr said...

ROSSBACH
The line before (1 Cor 4:5) talks about what is made hidden being revealed when the Lord comes again. The Lord comes during the Eucharist, which would have been a rite only for the initiated in the 1st Century Roman Empire.

CARR
'Comes again'? Where did that word 'again' come from?

'Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes.'

No word 'again' in there....

As you point out, the cult already had the body of Jesus. It was in the Eucharist.

Jonathan MS Pearce said...

james,

i am having a debate with a friend on the matthew tomb guards, and general historicity of things that are ahskily asserted by craig to help create his forceful conlusions, and i came across your blog and book about jesus' burial. looks interesting - i mighgt have to add it to the list. i don't like that way many apologists arbitrarily assert that the burial was honourable, when it is more likely to have been quite the opposite.

a more historical approach to the gospels in refreshingly honest and ... historical, from a christian!

James F. McGrath said...

If you read it, do let me know what you think of it!