Just recently, a new book came out entitled, Can We Trust the Bible on the Historical Jesus? It is essentially the transcript from a debate between Bart Ehrman and Craig Evans over the issue of the historical reliability of the Gospels concerning the life of Jesus. My only criticism of the book is that I didn’t look at the details on Amazon close enough to realize that $25 was way too much to pay for a book that had, in reality, only a little over 50 pages between the two scholars. So, if you are cheap like me, don’t buy the book. But if you want to know the arguments for and against the historical reliability of the Gospels that Ehrman and Evans put forth, you’re welcome—I’m here to help. I am going to write a short series on the pamphlet—I mean “book.” In this first post, I’m simply going to provide a bird’s eye overview of what both Ehrman and Evans argued in the debate. So, if you want to save $25, just read this post—you’ll get all the major points.
Bart Ehrman’s Main Argument
Ehrman began his argument by giving a brief background of himself. He was a “Bible-believing” Christian who attended Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and held to the verbal-plenary view of the inspiration of Scripture. He then attended Wheaton College to finish his college degree in English Literature, and eventually went to Princeton Theological Seminary for his graduate work in the Bible. It was there where he learned to read the Bible in a different way. When it came to the gospels, that meant reading each one and comparing them to each other—what he calls “reading horizontally.” When you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John “horizontally,” Ehrman claimed, you start to see numerous mistakes and discrepancies.
For the rest of his argument, Ehrman then put forth a number of examples from the Synoptic Gospels that bear this out. Let’s commence with the examples:
- The story of Jarius’ daughter (Mark 5:21-43/Matthew 9:18-26): In Mark, Jarius tells Jesus that his daughter is ill, on the point of death, and by the time Jesus gets to his house, the daughter is dead. Still, Jesus raises her up. In Matthew though, the leader of the synagogue (“Jarius” isn’t named) tells Jesus that his daughter had just died. Jesus then goes and raises her up. So which is it? Was she ill and then died, or was she dead from the beginning? As Ehrman puts it, “Somebody has changed the story. If they changed the story in little ways, how do you know they didn’t change it in big ways?”
- The Story of the Last Supper (Mark 14:30/Matthew 26:34): In Mark Jesus tells Peter he would deny him before the cock crows twice, whereas in Matthew he just says Peter would deny him before the cock crows.
- The Genealogies of Jesus (Matthew 1/Luke 3): They both claim to trace Jesus’ ancestry through Joseph, but they are completely different. Matthew says Joseph’s father was James, but Luke says it was Eli. Was Joseph’s grandfather Matthan (as in Matthew) or Matthat (as in Luke)? Why does Matthew’s genealogy go through the royal line of Davidic kings and Luke’s doesn’t?
- The Infancy Narratives (Matthew 1-22/Luke 1-2): In Luke, Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem from Nazareth because of Caesar’s census; Jesus is circumcised on the eighth day; then after they fulfill the rites of Mary’s purification (about 33 days), they return to Nazareth. In Matthew, though, no census is mentioned, they are already living in Bethlehem, and shortly after Jesus’ birth they flee to Egypt for a couple of years before eventually moving to Nazareth.
- The Events Surrounding Jesus’ Death: Mark and John imply Jesus died after the Passover Feast, but then John 19:14 says Jesus was crucified the day before the Passover was eaten. Matthew says Judas hanged himself, whereas Acts says he fell forward and his bowels poured out.
- The Resurrection Accounts: Who do the women see at the tomb? A young man? Two men? An angel? Are the disciples told to meet Jesus in Galilee (Matthew) or stay in Jerusalem (Luke)?
- Jesus’ Demeanor on the Cross: In Mark, Jesus is silent throughout most of the ordeal. As Ehrman says, “You get the sense in Mark that Jesus is in shock.” In Luke, though, Jesus isn’t silent on the way to the cross: he says some things to some women, he prays out loud for the Father to forgive his accusers, he has interaction with the two other men crucified with him. As Ehrman says, “In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is not in shock; he knows exactly what’s happening to him…why it’s happening to him…and what’s going to happen after it happens to him.”
Given those examples, Ehrman concluded that the Gospel accounts “are not interested in providing historically accurate accounts of what happened in the life of Jesus. These are Gospels; they are proclaiming good news. They are not histories. They are not objective biographies. They are filled with historical mistakes.”
Craig Evans’ Main Argument
Evans fashioned his argument for the historical reliability of the Gospels by focusing on four questions regarding how historians determine whether or not ancient documents in general are considered historically reliable.
The first question Evans answers considers is how the New Testament Gospels stack up to other ancient documents that are considered historically reliable?
- Herodotus’ History: The oldest manuscript we have dates to AD 800, 1,200 years removed from the original
- Thucydides of Athens’ History of the Peloponnesian War: The oldest manuscript dates to AD 900, 1,300 years after the war.
- Julius Caesar’s Gallic War: We have ten manuscripts dated to AD 850, 900 years after the war.
- Livy’s Roman History: Of its 142 books, we only have 1-10 and 21-45. Of those, the oldest manuscripts we have are of books 3-6, that date to about AD 350—again, hundreds of years removed from the events in the books.
Those works are considered historically reliable. When we then compare the Gospel manuscripts, this is what we have:
- Papyrus 45: Dated to the late 2nd-early 3rd century, contains large portions of all four Gospels.
- Papyrus 66: Dated to the late 2nd century, contains most of John.
- Papyrus 75: Dated to the late 2nd century, contains large chunks of Luke and John.
- Papyri 4, 5, 64, 67, 77, 90, 103, 104, 108, 109: All dated to either the late 2nd or early 3rd century, contain various fragments of all four Gospels.
- Papyrus 52: Dated to before AD 150, contains a fragment of John
- Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus: Date to about AD 340 and contain all four Gospels, minus Mark’s ending (16:9-20) and John’s story of the woman caught in adultery (7:53-8:11).
- Fifty other Manuscripts: Dated before AD 300.
It is also acknowledged by scholars that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were all written about 40 years after the life of Christ, and John was written about 60-70 years after the life of Christ. Therefore, when using the same criteria used for other ancient works, the Gospels stack up very favorably.
The second question Evans addresses is the question of whether or not the manuscripts were accurately copied and preserved. In the ancient world, texts were preserved in the libraries of often wealthy people who sought not only multiple copies, but also kept copies for a very long time—hundreds of years, in fact. What that means is, “…that the original copy of the Gospel of Matthew, let us suppose written and first circulated in AD 75, may actually have remained in use until the time when Papyrus 45 was copied.” And that lends credibility to copies, for the original would have been available to check the copy against.
The third question Evans addresses is this: “Do the New Testament Gospels Exhibit Verisimilitude?” What this means is, “Do they convey historical and cultural information that is reflective of that actual time period?” In a word, yes, they do. They name real people, real events, and real places. Compare them to the later gnostic gospels of Thomas and Peter, and there is no comparison. As Evans said, “Unlike the second-century Gospels, the first-century New Testament Gospels and Acts exhibit the kind of verisimilitude we should expect of writings written within a generation of their principal figure.” Simply put, because of this, both historians and archeologists “rightly regard the New Testament writings as early and generally reliable.”
The fourth question Evans addresses is the issue Ehrman brought up: that of the differences and discrepancies found within the Gospels. Evans said (obviously) that scholars and theologians have long known about the differences between the Gospels. It isn’t really “new news.” But the differences aren’t so much “mistakes” as they are clues to how each evangelist shaped the themes and theology of his given Gospel. This is what one should expect—Jesus taught his disciples, but his teaching wasn’t static and unchanging. It was expected that when they, in turn, went out to proclaim his teaching, that they would adapt and shape that tradition he handed down to them in order to better speak to their given communities. This was how pedagogy was done in the ancient world.
Evans also pointed to the work of Craig Keener regarding the three different versions of the life of the Roman emperor Otho. Each version was written by a different historian, and although there are differences and discrepancies between the versions, the points of agreement are “far more numerous”—so numerous that a reliable, historical portrait of the life of Otho is quite clear and convincing. No one doubts the life story of Otho is “historically inaccurate or unreliable” simply because the three different versions have some differences among them. The same applies to the New Testament Gospels’ portrait of Jesus.
Conclusion Thus Far
So, there you have it—the basic points of the arguments of both Bart Ehrman and Craig Evans regarding whether or not the Gospels are historically reliable and accurate when it comes to the life of Jesus. I have made it a point not to include any personal commentary or opinion at this point, and to just let each scholar speak for himself. Analysis of each scholar’s argument, and a look at each one’s response to the other, will begin in the next post.
Dear Dr. Anderson,
As usual, that was an interesting read. I look forward to this series. In the future, if possible, could you do a review of the atheist assyriologist Dr. Joshua Bowen’s book Does the Old Testament condone slavery?
Yours Sincerely,
The programming nerd
Carig Evans co-authored a book, *How God Became Jesus,* with Michael Bird and several other scholars, which answered Ehrman’s principal objections in his *How Jesus Became God.* I look forward to read the published debate (and your review of it) though I agree $25 is a little steep for so short a book.
Since Ehrman is a popular “agnostic with atheist leanings,” and critic maybe Books-A–Million will actually have this (they normally have anything new by him while occasionally having anything by Evans or other more conservative NT scholars) and I can use a coupon.
Pax.
Lee.
Christian apologists often like to compare the discrepancies in the Gospels with the discrepancies in the eyewitness accounts of a motor vehicle accident. If four people claim to have witnessed an accident, what should we expect to see when we compare their eyewitness statements? Will all the details be identical? Probably not. Why? Human beings are fallible. They remember things that weren’t there and they forget things that were. So some differences in the eyewitness testimony is to be expected. However, the principle facts should be the same. If three alleged eyewitnesses claim that the vehicles involved in the accident were both automobiles but one alleged eyewitness claims that the vehicles involved were an automobile and a huge semi-trailer truck, something is wrong.
So if the four accounts in the Gospels truly are identical to four eyewitness accounts of a motor vehicle accident, as Christian apologists claim, the same principles should apply, right? Differences in minor details are to be expected, but differences in the core facts should not be present. Is that true of the Gospels? Let me suggest several important central facts that I believe should be the same in all four accounts to believe that we are dealing with four eyewitness accounts:
–location of the first appearance to the male disciples.
–when was Mary Magdalene (the only person mentioned in all four accounts) informed of the resurrection of Jesus and who told her?
–were the disciples told to go to Galilee or to stay in Jerusalem?
When looking at these three core facts, remember this: One can harmonize ANY two claims if one tries hard enough. The question is: Is the harmonization reasonable or must one stretch the limits of credulity to believe it.
Well, Evans didn’t make that argument. And NO ONE believes all four gospels were written by eyewitnesses. So, your comment is flawed on two key points off the bat.
The central question of your post is: Are the Gospels historically reliable?
You are correct, the author of Luke admits that he is not an eyewitness and no one claims that Mark was written by an eyewitness. But many Christians believe that these two Gospels are still historically reliable because the sources of information were (allegedly) eyewitnesses even though the authors were not. However, these are assumptions and conjecture, the principal building blocks of the orthodox Christian belief system. The majority of scholars do not believe that the authors of the Gospels received their information directly from eyewitnesses. I realize that conservative Christians like yourself, Joel, dispute that majority position, but the fact that it *is* the majority position is not in dispute.
So the issue remains: Are the core facts the same in all four Gospels? That is the question every believer should investigate and answer for him or herself.
https://lutherwasnotbornagaincom.wordpress.com/2016/11/08/majority-of-scholars-agree-the-gospels-were-not-written-by-eyewitnesses/
Well, the majority of scholars acknowledge that Mark, Matthew, and Luke were all written somewhere around 40 years after the ministry of Jesus, and John around 60 years after the ministry of Jesus.
Given the fact that, as scholars like Rodney Stark estimate, the Christian movement probably totaled only around 10,000 by the end of the first century, and probably only around 5,000 by mid century, we’re not dealing with massive numbers here. So if the Synoptics were written around AD 70, and the entire Christian population was only slightly above 5,000 at that point, that pretty much narrows the possibility for where the source material came from. And therefore, it is by no means a stretch to think that much of the stories about Jesus came from eyewitnesses and the original disciples.
And given that, along with Evans’ argument, it is easy to conclude that they are historically reliable.
Another big assumption used by Christian apologists is this: First century Jews NEVER engaged in rumor or gossip. They were very level-headed people who maintained absolutely perfect accuracy of any and all stories told to them, which they would then pass along to others with not one jot or tittle changed. Therefore, all the stories about Jesus were handed down with the same accuracy as that of the temple scribes copying the Torah!
Yet…the Bible itself tells us that first century Jews were just as prone to telling and believing gossip as people in our own time (and all of recorded human history):
“King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’[c] name had become known. Some were[d] saying, “John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.” 15 But others said, “It is Elijah.” And others said, “It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.” 16 But when Herod heard of it, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.”
Gossip, gossip, legend, and gossip.
And John’s body was still warm in his grave!!! Just imagine what these same Jews could have done with another sensational story about another dead guy after FORTY years!
More hyper-skepticism and random, baseless speculation. Not an impressive line of argumentation.
“And given that, along with Evans’ argument, it is easy to conclude that they are historically reliable.”
Could you be more specific? Which stories in the Gospels are historically reliable?
–Is “Luke’s” claim that 3,000 Jews converted to Christianity on Pentecost in Jerusalem historically reliable? If so, please explain how that harmonizes with your scholar’s estimate that by circa 50 CE there were 5,000 Christians worldwide. If both are true, that means that Christianity increased by 3,000 people in 40 days after Jesus’ death, but then by only 2,000 in the next 20 years. Why the big slow down? Is this story realistic or was someone inflating his numbers? If so, what else did he inflate?
–Is “Matthew’s” story of an earthquake shaking people out of their graves to roam the streets of a major city historically reliable? If so, why do most scholars including some very conservative evangelical scholars doubt this event occurred?
–Is “Matthew’s” story of Roman guards at the tomb historically reliable? The overwhelming majority of scholars do not think so.
–Is “Matthew’s” story of the calling of the apostle Matthew historically reliable? Most scholars, including conservative scholar Richard Bauckham, believe that “Matthew” invented this story.
So if most scholars doubt the historicity of SOME stories in the Gospels, why should we believe in the historicity of the others? Yes, Pilate was governor of Judea at the time. Yes, Tiberius (?) was Caesar. Historical fictions often include general facts.
–Are we really to believe that the Romans stood by as thousands of Jews greeted Jesus on Palm Sunday as the new Jewish king? Preposterous. This event did not happen.
–Did Jesus really walk on water, turn water into wine, raise people from the dead? Let’s look at the story of Lazarus. According to the author of John, the chief priests complained that “all the world” was following after Jesus after the alleged raising of Lazarus. Yet…not ONE contemporary Jewish or Roman author mentions this fact. If the stories of Jesus are true, he performed more spectacular miracles and raised more people from the dead than all Old Testament prophets combined!!! Yet Philo of Alexandria says not ONE word about him.
Any Christian excuse to explain Philo’s silence is pure bs. If Jesus was the Jewish rock star that the Gospel authors made him out to be, Philo definitely would have mentioned him. He mentioned Pilate. Why not the great Jewish prophet whom Pilate executed? Even if Philo didn’t believe Jesus was the messiah, he was still a great miracle worker. But no. Not one word from Philo.
Come on, Christians. Look at the facts! Yes, Jesus probably existed. But he was a nobody. He was a minor messiah pretender who irritated the Jewish and Roman authorities and was quickly snuffed out. He didn’t become famous until years after his death. So when did the fantastical stories start circulating about him? We don’t know, but cumulative human history says these stories are probably legends.
There is no reason to doubt that there was a major event at Pentecost that year in which the numbers rose. Does anyone REALLY think that when Luke says 3,000 that they did a head count? No, of course not. And given the circumstances of what transpired shortly after, yes, it is entirely reasonable that by AD 50, the numbers were still very small.
I can go on, but why bother? You’re not throwing out these questions with the intention of actually listening.
GARY: So the issue remains: Are the core facts the same in all four Gospels? That is the question every believer should investigate and answer for him or herself.
LEE: Yes, every believer should ask himself/herself these questions. I did. And what I discovered is that the “core facts” *are* the same in all four gospels (though John admittedly differs in significant ways from the synoptics): Jesus is born in Galilee, conducts a some three-year ministry (with trips to Jerusalem as well) healing, preaching and teaching, has conflicts with the Jewish establishment in Jerusalem, is crucified, then three days later rises from the dead and is witnessed by the eleven disciples, the women, etc. All four gospels have women as the first witnesses to the resurrection, a fact not likely invented by the four evangelists as it hurt their credibility. All four gospels mention people, places and geography than can and have been verified in secular histories.
GARY: Another big assumption used by Christian apologists is this: First century Jews NEVER engaged in rumor or gossip. They were very level-headed people who maintained absolutely perfect accuracy of any and all stories told to them, which they would then pass along to others with not one jot or tittle changed. Therefore, all the stories about Jesus were handed down with the same accuracy as that of the temple scribes copying the Torah!
LEE: Actually what academic scholars say is that the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean (including the Jews) were oral cultures which placed more trust and emphasis on oral tradition, thus had safeguards in place to ensure a reasonably accurate transmission of that tradition. Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory Boyd have written a great book on this subject, *The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition*, which makes this very argument.
Basically, the tradents or story-tellers were free to edit and rearrange material but they *weren’t* free to just make stuff up or drop out important bits. And since the passing on such tradition was a community event, it was self-correcting all the way: if the tradent messed something up the community could/would correct them.
In I Corinthians 15:3-7 Paul writes:
“For I handed on to you as first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.” (NRSV)
The two words, *paradidomi* (“handed over”) and *paralambano* (“received”) were understood by Paul’s audience to mean he was about to pass on important oral tradition. And in fact, what Paul (writing I Cor. in ca. 55 AD) was handing on was an early Christian credal statement dated to the mid-late 30s AD, a mere 5-8 years after Jesus’ death, making it much too early for reports of Jesus’ resurrection to be a later invention.
Thus as has been stressed at some length by Dr. Anderson and myself, each different gospel author–whoever they were–felt free to edit and shape his material to suit the needs of his particular audience/readership–much the same way modern biographers do. If you read different biographies of, say, Julius Caesar, they might not all proceed chronologically, and might not all include the exact identical details–though they’ll all likely include the major, important details of Caesar’s life.
This is much different than expecting four different ancient authors to produce carbon-copies of each others’ work. What would even be the point of that? Why should we expect four different authors with different theological agendas/needs to create carbon-copies of each others’ work? Nobody does that nowadays, less still in antiquity.
And as Dr. Anderson says, the gospels may not have been written by eyewitnesses they were written based upon the oral testimony of eyewitnesses. Eddy and Boyd postulate that at least one of Jesus disciples–Matthew–as a tax collector would’ve been literate and might have recorded some of Jesus’ teachings when he gave them, which became the “core” of the gospel of Matthew when its author collected those oral teachings and other Matthean material about Jesus into his gospel.
This skeptic idea, the old Walter Bauer thesis reborn, that there were originally all these competing Jesus groups but none of them cared very much to record precisely what the real Jesus said or did, but all these different “Jesus communities” were just inventing stuff willy-nilly has never made any sense to me because that’s counter to what would’ve really happened.
One reason the Jesus movement, unlike every other messianic Jewish movement in antiquity, survived the death of the founder for 2,000 years is *because* Jesus didn’t just do and say what every other/any other would-be Jewish messiah or rabbi said, but his teaching *was* unique enough that it *did* get recorded very early on.
Pax.
Lee.
Lee, I hope you have a microphone, so you can now drop it! 😉
Speculation, assumptions, conjecture, and minority scholarly opinion: the building blocks of orthodox Christianity.
It
is
a
tall
tale!
“Given the fact that, as scholars like Rodney Stark estimate, the Christian movement probably totaled only around 10,000 by the end of the first century, and probably only around 5,000 by mid century, we’re not dealing with massive numbers here.”
The author of Acts (whom most scholars believe was also the author of the Gospel of Luke) says that within FORTY DAYS of Jesus’ death, the number of Christians was at least 3,120. If this is true, then the conversion rate dramatically declined after Pentecost, if at mid century the total number of Christians was only 5,000.
“So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.”
So either your scholar is wrong, or “Luke” was inflating his numbers. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that “Luke” was a reliable historian.
You are grasping at straws. I know of no scholar who thinks that by the mid-first century that the “Jesus movement” numbered much more than somewhere between 5,000-10,000. Yes, Acts claims an initial acceptance in Jerusalem of about 3,000. But then it speaks of a subsequent pushback and an attempt to crush the movement, leading to arrests and deaths, and most of the “Jesus movement” fleeing Jerusalem. And then with Paul’s travels, yes, he established churches throughout Asia Minor and Greece, but only a fool thinks these churches were mega-churches! lol…These were small communities.
My point is solid. By the time the Synoptics were written, the movement was still very small. The idea that “stories” were just floating about, willy nilly, among thousands upon thousands upon thousands of believers saying whatever they wanted is just silly, uncritical, and unscholarly. The Gospels were written down within a generation of the actual events, and they were written within a very small community that had ties to the original community of beleivers.
Gossip and legend can occur within a small group of people. Anyone who has ever been a member of a Baptist church can tell you that! 🙂
Most scholars believe that the Gospels were written in lands far away from Jerusalem. How much contact did Christians in Corinth and Rome have with Christians in Jerusalem and Galilee? If the first gospel, Mark, was written after the Jewish wars had begun (mid 60’s), how many eyewitnesses were still alive to tell their stories??? Your entire premise depends upon the existence of living eyewitnesses at the time of the writing of the Gospels. What if they were all dead? You can’t prove they weren’t!
Assumptions and conjecture. Assumptions and conjecture.
Assumptions and conjecture–perfect summary of your claims.
1. Given the small numbers of the Christian community early on, yes, we can say they had contact with each other.
2. If you were a 25-30 year old follower of Jesus when he was crucified, you’d be a 60-65 year old when the Jewish War happened. So, yes, it is reasonable to say that many of the original followers were still alive in 66 AD.
Please name ONE of them and the evidence that they were still alive in 66 CE.
Okay, John. And we know James, Peter, and Paul were killed no earlier than 4 years prior.
YOU are the one suggesting it is inconceivable that anyone alive in AD 30 would still be alive in AD 66. You KNOW that such a claim is laughable. It is MUCH MORE reasonable to assume people alive in AD 30 would still be alive in AD 66, than to say ALL OF THEM WERE DEAD.
Utterly laughable. Sorry, reality hurts.
I never said that no one who was alive in 33 CE was still alive in 66 CE. Millions of people who were alive in 33 CE were probably still alive in 66 CE.
We are talking about the small number of people who claimed to have seen a walking, talking, into-the-clouds levitating corpse in circa 33 CE in the environs of Jerusalem. How many of THEM were still alive in 66 CE??
Answer: No one knows!
Please give the evidence that John the Apostle was still alive in 66 CE.
Well, according to Church Tradition, he was still alive in AD 90, so it is a good guess he was alive in AD 66.
But again, it is entirely reasonable that many believers who were alive in AD 30 were still alive in AD 66. There is nothing miraculous or extraordinary to that assumption. That lines up with reality pretty well.
Good grief. I am not talking about people in general or first century Christians in general. I am talking about alleged eyewitnesses to the resurrection; people who claimed to have personally seen Jesus’ walking, talking, levitating resurrected body!
How many alleged eyewitnesses were there? Were they all still alive in 66 CE?
Answer: No one knows!!!
You accept “church tradition” that John was alive in 90 CE as your only evidence that at least one eyewitness was alive in 66 CE? I have some land in the Everglades to sell you!
You asked for a name, and I gave you one, according to first century and early second century texts.
Historical texts are a bitch for hyper-skeptics! Lol
GARY: So either your scholar is wrong, or “Luke” was inflating his numbers. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that “Luke” was a reliable historian.
LEE: Medieval historians inflate the numbers of crowds, armies, etc. all the time, yet responsible scholars don’t chuck their histories out because of that. So even *if* Luke padded his figures for the Pentecost converts, that in itself wouldn’t invalidate the historical accuracy of the Pentecost event itself.
For example,you get vastly overrated or underrated figures from either English or French historians of the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, yet no responsible scholar would therefore argue that Agincourt never happened just because the medieval chroniclers inflate/deflate the numbers.
One thing I’ve learned by comments such yours above Gary is that most skeptics don’t actually understand how actual ancient historians worked, less still how modern historians assess the claims of ancient historians. It isn’t an “all or nothing” scenario at all.
Pax.
Lee,.
Plus you have the testimony of Polycarp and Papias, who were the disciples of John.
And again, the Jewish milieu out of which Christianity sprang was a literate one, whose faith, unlike those of the pagans, was based upon written texts. Christianity spread into the wider, (largely) non-literate world of Greece and Rome, which had safeguards in place to ensure the accurate transmission of important oral tradition. The idea that nobody within the earliest Jewish Jesus Movement could or would have bothered to accurately preserve what he said and did is really ludicrous.
With Jesus and the gospels, as Prof. JP Moreland says, this wasn’t simply what Joe was having for dinner Wednesday night.
Pax.
Lee.
“Plus you have the testimony of Polycarp and Papias, who were the disciples of John.”
The overwhelming majority of scholars do not believe that Polycarp and Papias were disciples of John, son of Zebedee.
“the Jewish milieu out of which Christianity sprang was a literate one,”
Nonsense. The overwhelming majority of Palestinian Jews in the first century were illiterate.
“The idea that nobody within the earliest Jewish Jesus Movement could or would have bothered to accurately preserve what he said and did is really ludicrous.”
Assumption and conjecture.
“With Jesus and the gospels, as Prof. JP Moreland says, this wasn’t simply what Joe was having for dinner Wednesday night.”
You are correct. Jesus was (according to the non-eyewitness authors of the Gospels) the greatest Jewish prophet of all time…but not one of Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries wrote one word about him.
Come on, Christians! Can’t you see tall tales when you read them! Don’t be so gullible!
“The overwhelming majority of scholars do not believe that Polycarp and Papias were disciples of John, son of Zebedee.” –Um, no.
“The idea that nobody within the earliest Jewish Jesus Movement could or would have bothered to accurately preserve what he said and did is really ludicrous.” Assumption and conjecture. –Your statement is contradicted by the fact that we have ancient historical biographies of Jesus that date to within a generation of Jesus. No serious scholar doubts the basic historical portrait of Jesus we find in the Gospels. Scholars like Ehrman, though, muddy the waters with uncritical speculation, and then that is picked up by kooky mythicists like Richard Carrier.
“With Jesus and the gospels, as Prof. JP Moreland says, this wasn’t simply what Joe was having for dinner Wednesday night.” You are correct. Jesus was (according to the non-eyewitness authors of the Gospels) the greatest Jewish prophet of all time…but not one of Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries wrote one word about him. –Again, but you are missing the point. Jesus’ early followers certainly thought he was the greatest prophet and the Messiah. Because of that, they aren’t going to flippantly change things around at whim. They are going to stick to what was handed down, just as Peter and Paul say in their letters. They were fanatical about preserving the tradition that was handed down.
GARY: Nonsense. The overwhelming majority of Palestinian Jews in the first century were illiterate.
LEE: Sources for this? Maybe in the diaspora there was a higher degree of illiteracy, but in the homeland, in Palestine?
Nevertheless, Judaism was a religion based on TEXTS. Texts are useless unless someone can read them. Which the gospels do, presenting a Jesus at least literate enough to read from a Torah scroll.
At the same time that it was an at least semi-literate culture, based on texts, it was an oral culture, certainly in the diaspora, based upon oral tradition.
If Jesus was nothing more than an ordinary “marginal Jew” (to borrow a phrase from the title of Jesus scholar Fr. John Meier’s first book), as you and other skeptics insist, it strains credulity that we’d even be having this debate 2,000 years on.
You, the skeptic need to provide us with a plausible scenario that accounts for the fact “Jesus the Jewish Joe” got referenced at all if he was nothing more than an aqerage, ordinary Jew..
He wasn’t the typical messianic claimant because he refused to use violence to overthrow the Romans and inaugurate God’s kingdom on earth, which could hardly have made him a threat to Rome–as the gospels indicate by Pilate’s initial attempt to let him off with a flogging. It’s only when the Sanhedrin manages to convince Pilate that Jesus is a potential threat to Caesar and the Pax Romana, thus Pilate’s position as prefect, that Pilate feels compelled to act and have Jesus executed. Up until then Pilate wanted to rub the Sanhedrin’s noses in it and let Jesus off with a scourging.
I can’t fathom how a marginal Jew such as skeptics claim Jesus was, could still be remembered 2,000 years later. THAT Jesus *would* be forgettable. THAT kind of Jew doesn’t have a movement still going strong 2,000 after his shameful death on trumped-up charges of blasphemy, treason and sedition.
Talk about a fairy-tale!
Pax.
Lee.
GARY: Come on, Christians! Can’t you see tall tales when you read them! Don’t be so gullible!
LEE: If we were talking about the *Book of Mormon* I’d agree with you. Unlike with Jesus, there’s zero evidence, historical or archaeological, to corroborate anything in the BoM.
I’d say to skeptics, Don’t be so gullible as to believe Richard Carrier and Barth Ehrman just because they’re saying what you wanna hear. Can’t *you* recognize tall-tales when you read them?
Pax.
Lee.
I haven’t read all the comments here, so don’t know if this perspective has been addressed.
The key issue here for the historical reliability of the Gospels is miracles and supernatural events. Since people today do not have experiences that are legitimate miracles (note that many things people call miracles are actually natural events, such as the birth of a child), it is difficult to accept the testimony of others, especially unknown people from 2000 years ago, concerning miracles. Let’s face it, if you were on a jury and one of the witnesses claimed he observed a cat speaking perfect English, you’d be extremely skeptical, even if that witness had a reputation of being trustworthy. Even if several others testified to the same thing, you’d probably still have severe doubts of the truthfulness of the testimonies, especially if there were a few discrepancies between them. You’d probably be thinking, “Rather than depending on the jurors to believe their outlandish story based solely on their testimonies, why don’t they just bring that cat in here and prove to us it can speak English. Or, if that cat’s not available, at least produce another one with the same talents so we can know it’s possible for a cat to speak English.”
Yes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Julius Caesar, and Livy’s histories may be considered historically accurate, but if they had numerous supernatural events reported throughout their writings, I think their reliability would be questioned just as the Gospels are.
Exactly.
Randy, well, there are various “supernatural” things that are occasionally mentioned in the Roman histories, and that’s the point. Even for those who don’t believe in God’s existence or “supernatural” things, they don’t read those things in Roman histories and conclude they aren’t historically reliable. They just basically say, “Oh, that part, I don’t believe it.” But that isn’t really what many like Ehrman actually do–their rhetoric goes far beyond that, even though, in reality, by virtue of agreeing that the basic historical narrative of Jesus is reliable, they DO find the Gospels historically reliable.
Furthermore, the driving force behind the skepticism isn’t REALLY something like, “Oh, Mark says there was a young man at the tomb, but Matthew says it was an angel–that makes the resurrection account unreliable!” Whether it was a young man, an angel, or two men in white, is really irrelevant. If Mark, Matthew, and Luke all had “two men in white,” you still wouldn’t believe the resurrection account. The reason you don’t believe the resurrection account is because you don’t think resurrection is possible–the differences in the narratives of the Gospels is an irrelevant smokescreen. And that really is the main problem I have with Ehrman, his argument about how the differences in the different texts is why you can’t trust what the Gospels are saying is a smokescreen. At bottom, I’m sure the basis for his rejecting the veracity of the resurrection account isn’t a textual issue. It is that he just doesn’t believe it is possible for a man dead for three dies to resurrect.
Ehrman specifically states that Jesus existed, that he was crucified by Pilate, and that shortly after his death some of his followers believed that he appeared to them. Which specific story about Jesus found in the Gospels does Ehrman claim is not historical which you believe all historians should accept as fact?
Again, I’m objecting to his overgeneralized, over-heated rhetoric that we can’t trust the Gospels to tell us anything, that they aren’t history, that nothing is reliable.
Isn’t this scenario possible:
–Jesus was crucified circa 33 CE
–He was buried
–shortly thereafter his tomb was found empty.
–some of Jesus followers claimed he appeared to them
–within a short time a creed was formulated (the Early Creed in First Corinthians 15)
–circa 40-60 years later, Christian authors far from Palestine wrote Greco-Roman biographies about Jesus based on stories passed down orally over decades. The stories contained some facts but also contained some embellishments. In addition, the authors added their own embellishments to the Jesus Story, for literary and/or theological purposes. These two factors explain the differences in the details of the Gospel accounts. Since embellishments were accepted in that genre of literature, no reader would have been offended by these fictional details.
The problem is, how do people today determine which statements are facts and which are embellishments? The authors may have sincerely believed that Jesus appeared to his disciples, but were their stories of earthquakes, torn temple veils, and angels factual or embellishments to the original story??
The fact is, we cannot know which stories in the Gospels are true and which are fictional, and THAT is why the Gospels are NOT historically reliable sources of information.
Yes, it’s the supernatural claims that are at issue. Supernatural claims need to have abundant evidence. We cannot just believe any supernatural claim because we would be vulnerable to any charlatan that comes along.
I personally think the most likely chain of events is that initially the stories of Jesus’ ministry and parables were passed around by word of mouth. As the stories spread, legends built up around those stories; perhaps some supernatural legends. Then when the temple was destroyed, some recalled that Jesus had predicted it. This led to even more supernatural embellishments of Jesus. By the time the Gospels were written, all the supernatural elements were in place. But since the writers got their material from different narrative chains, the stories were slightly different. Since Mark was written first, there were still some stories not yet developed such as the birth narratives and the resurrection appearances. John was written late and appears to me to have come through the gnostic movement since it emphasizes special knowledge and Jesus seems to be an edgy philosopher.
You talk about historical accuracy in non-biblical histories vs the Biblical sources. But there is a big difference in the consequences of belief in the two. If we believe the Gettysburg address occurred and it really didn’t, it’s of no real import. We just go to our grave believing a lie. We all probably do that for many things we believe that are untrue. Of no consequence. But when it comes to the Bible, we are asked to believe that our faith in a supernatural event determines our eternal fate. That’s of real importance. Since there are a number of religions saying the same thing, we MUST GET IT RIGHT. it seems to me that history THAT important to our eternity should carry with it must more evidence of truthfulness than just regular old history that plays no role in our eternal destiny.
Randy, why should the claims of the NT be held to a higher standard simply because they purport to deal with eternal truths?
That kind of certainty is impossible. Every day of our lives we take a myriad of weighty and small matters on faith; for example, when Kathy brings you a cup of coffee you drink it based on the faith that she hasn’t poisoned you. You fly to your destination based upon your faith that the pilot is experienced and the plane in good mechanical shape to fly. You start your car based on faith that no one has wired a bomb to your ignition system. All acts of faitn, albeit not a blind faith, but a faith based upon previous experiences in each of these scenarios. Nevertheless, they still require a measure of faith.
Believing in the general reliability of the gospels doesn’t require blind faith, either. At the end of the day I can’t empirically prove Jesus’ dead body came back to life again, but I can critically examine the gospel accounts of the resurrsction (as Prof. NT Wright did in his 800+ p *The Resurrection of the Son of God*) and conclude that the resurrection is the solution that best accounts for all of the data–such as many of the questions we’ved raised here like why the gospel authors, if they were faking a religion, faked one calculated to turn off both Jews and Greeks by claiming their Messiah was crucified, then bodily resurrected. Or how, if Jesus was killed yet never ressurrected, his Jewish Messianic movement was the only such movement in antiquity on record which managed to survive the death of its founder. As NT Wright correctly states, without the resurrection the rise of the church is impossible to explain. Or why Jesus’ disciples were willing to risk death for a fairy-tale they *knew* was a fairy-tale.
Pax.
Lee.
Lee
Basically, I am just asking God to provide me with the same level of proof of the resurrection of Jesus as he supposedly provided his disciples according to the Gospels. I am no different than the apostles are portrayed to be. They did not believe the women, whom they knew personally, when they claimed Jesus was raised. They required an actual appearance. Thomas did not believe his traveling companions of three years until he saw with his own eyes. Likewise, I do not believe until given similar proof. Please read this article I wrote 20 years ago for a fuller explanation. http://www.rcfinch.com/philosophy/TheApostlesAreOurExample.pdf
GARY: The fact is, we cannot know which stories in the Gospels are true and which are fictional, and THAT is why the Gospels are NOT historically reliable sources of information.
LEE: With certainty? No. But then, we can’t have degree of certainty you seem to require for most of the events in recorded history. Based upon your stringent criteria we can’t know with any degree of certainty much of anything historical. It’s all conjecture.
Yet as I keep saying we can establish *probabilities* and the *likeliness* that given historical events occurred.
Even if you had a time machine to time-travel back in history and film Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address skeptics could (and probably would) simply claim you’d faked it.
Pax.
Lee.
Once again, you exaggerate.
We have excellent evidence, from multiple sources for the Gettysburg address. We have ONE account, from an author whose identity is at best disputed, writing in a genre of literature which allowed embellishments, for the alleged ascension of Jesus in front of his disciples from a mountain near Bethany.
Please tell me that you can see the massive difference in the strength of the evidence for these two claims!
The only reason you say it is an excellent sources is because they don’t contain supernatural events. You just assume that naturalism is true and then accuse anyone who says supernatural events occured as embellishing stories.
Second, this idea that science is the best way to discern truth from reality is just myth. Philosophers of science have been unable to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. In his paper the demise of the demarcation problem, Dr. Larry Laudan wrote “We live in a society which sets great store by science. Scientific ‘experts’ play a privileged role in many of our institutions, ranging from the courts of law to the corridors of power. At a more fundamental level, most of us strive to shape our beliefs about the natural world in the ‘scientific’ image. If scientists say that continents move or that the universe is billions of years old, we generally believe them, however counter-intuitive and implausible their claims might appear to be. Equally, we tend to acquiesce in what scientists tell us not to believe. If, for instance, scientists say that Velikovsky was a crank, that the biblical creation story is hokum, that UFOs do not exist, or that acupuncture is ineffective, then we generally make the scientist’s contempt for these things our own, reserving for them those social sanctions and disapprobations which are the just deserts of quacks, charlatans and con-men. In sum, much of our intellectual life, and increasingly large portions of our social and political life, rest on the assumption that we (or, if not we ourselves, then someone whom we trust in these matters) can tell the difference between science and its counterfeit”.
Dr. Laudan continues “For a variety of historical and logical reasons, some going back more than two millennia, that ‘someone’ to whom we turn to find out the difference usually happens to be the philosopher. Indeed, it would not be going too far to say that, for a very long time, philosophers have been regarded as the gatekeepers to the scientific estate. They are the ones who are supposed to be able to tell the difference between real science and pseudo-science. In the familiar academic scheme of things, it is specifically the theorists of knowledge and the philosophers of science who are charged with arbitrating and legitimating the claims of any sect to ‘scientific’ status. It is small wonder, under the circumstances, that the question of the nature of science has loomed so large in Western philosophy. From Plato to Popper, philosophers have sought to identify those epistemic features which mark off science from other sorts of belief and activity.”
“Nonetheless, it seems pretty clear that philosophy has largely failed to deliver the relevant goods. Whatever the specific strengths and deficiencies of the numerous well-known efforts at demarcation, it is probably fair to say that there is no demarcation line between science and non-science, or between science and pseudo-science, which would win assent from a majority of philosophers. Nor is there one which should win acceptance from philosophers or anyone else…”.
One criterion proposed is observability but this criterion fails as it would render some scientific fields useless. Deist physicist Dr. Paul Davies notes this as he says “At the heart of the scientific method is the construction of theories. Scientific theories are essentially models of the real world (or parts thereof), and a lot of the vocabulary of science concerns the models rather than reality. For example, scientists often use the word ‘discovery’ to refer to some purely theoretical advance. Thus one often hears it said that Stephen Hawking ‘discovered’ that black holes are not black, but emit heat radiation. That statement refers solely to a mathematical investigation. Nobody has yet seen a black hole, much less detected any heat radiation from one.”
“…So long as scientific models stick closely to direct experience, where common sense remains a reliable guide, we feel confident that we can distinguish between the model and the reality. But in certain branches of physics it is not always so easy. The concept of energy, for example, is a familiar one today, yet it was originally introduced as a purely theoretical quantity in order to simplify the physicists’ description of mechanical and thermodynamical processes. We cannot see or touch energy, yet we accept that it really exists because we are so used to discussing it.”
“The situation is even worse in the new physics, where the distinction between the model and reality sometimes becomes hopelessly blurred. In quantum field theory, for instance, theorists often refer to abstract entities called ‘virtual’ particles. These ephemeral objects come into existence out of nothing, and almost immediately fade away again. Although a faint trace of their fleeting passage can appear in ordinary matter, the virtual particles themselves can never be directly observed. So to what extent can they be said to really exist”?
This does not mean that naturalism is invalid as it is defended by atheist philosophers like Drs. Graham Oppy, Quentin Smith, Paul Draper etc. However, this idea that we need to “test” supernatural claims is absurd and will have to question some scientific fields that use models rather than testing to explain the laws of the universe.
Anyone who believes that the evidence that supports the Gospels’ claim that the first century peasant Jesus entered Jerusalem to the acclaim “Hail the new king of Israel” on Palm Sunday is equivalent to the massive quantity of evidence supporting the historicity of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is not worth debating or even speaking to because either he lacks critical thinking skills or he is not dealing with a full deck of cards.
Gary, you have zero credibility. You are holding up a cheap B-movie caricature of the Gospels and only attack that. I know of no scholar who disputes that Jesus came to Jerusalem for the Passover (either AD 30 or AD 33), ran afoul of the Temple establishment, was arrested, and then crucified by Pilate. He was a messianic figure. Passover celebrated God freeing his people from oppression. When he came into Jerusalem, it is entirely reasonable to think his followers welcomed him in that way. And again, the Gospels do NOT say thousands of Jews did this. When you read the account, it is clear you are imposing on it a caricature of the event that has been undoubtedly shaped by cheezy Jesus movies and bad church Easter pageants.
The Gospel of John, chapter 12:
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him….
9 When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 10 So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, 11 since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.
12 The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 13 So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting,
“Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—
the King of Israel!”
14 Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written:
15 “Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion.
Look, your king is coming,
sitting on a donkey’s colt!”
16 His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him. 17 So the crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to testify.[d] 18 It was also because they heard that he had performed this sign that the crowd went to meet him. 19 The Pharisees then said to one another, “You see, you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him!”
Gary: “the whole world has gone after him”. Yet Joel claims it was a small group of Jews huddled off in a corner, whispering “Hosanna…the King of Israel” under their breath, speaking so quietly that the Romans never heard a word.
Nonsense.
This story is NOT historical. The Romans would NEVER have tolerated a “great crowd” proclaiming a Galilean peasant as King of the Jews. Caesar was King of the Jews. To try and reinvent the meaning of “great crowd” to maintain believability for this tall tale is absolutely ridiculous. Christians would not tolerate Muslims, Mormons, or Hindus using such silly rationalizations for claims in their holy books, yet they do it with a straight face for theirs! Shameful.
SMH…this is why I say you read like a fundamentalist.
Anyone who believes that a “great crowd” of Jews greeted Jesus as the new King of Israel at the gates of Jerusalem during Passover—a time of year when Pilate would move his troops from Caesaria to Jerusalem specifically to prevent a Jewish uprising—is the EPITOME of a fundamentalist.
This story was most probably written for theological purposes. The author probably never intended it to be understood literally. His first century readers would have known better. For you to demand that we accept it as an historical fact is fundamentalist in the extreme.
And that answer is why I laugh at you.
Gary, my point is that nobody can PROVE with 100% certainty that EITHER event actually occurred. All we have are probabilities, which, granted, for the Gettysburg Address may be much higher than for Jesus “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem, but short of your actually being there you can’t be CERTAIN, you just have to take historians’ word for it happening.
Yet when you examine it critically–something you’ve obviously never really done–Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as reported in the gospels is extrememly probable.
If they were making it all up, why didn’t someone who was alive in AD 30/33 and hostile to the Jesus Movement call them on the lie and say, “I was there on that Passover, and Jesus was not hailed as Messiay by anyone.” Again, for liks the hundredth time, WHY would they make up lies that anybody who was really there could expose as lies?
Pax.
Lee.
Just as we have multiple, independent, ancient sources attesting to Jesus’ death and reported ressurrection: 12 or 13 of Paul’s letters (disregarding for the moment the question of which ones are geuninely by Paul. They’re all really early attestation to Jesus); four gospels (you do know there are four, not just one, right?); Josephus; Tacitus; etc.
In fact, we have more, and earlier, thus better, sources for Jesus of Nazareth than for many other ancient figures/events no skeptic seriously challenges.
Pax.
Lee.
Keep laughing…as younger generations of Christians continue heading for the exits of your belief system.
Your blatant evasiveness and use of “spin” is apparent to everyone reading this blog. You can’t answer a simple question. You can’t and won’t answer because it would exposure just how profoundly your belief system is a house of cards: based on nothing but conjecture and assumptions.
I shared two links to two posts explaining what Matthew was doing with his quote of Isaiah 7:14. But apparently that was too difficult for you to grasp.
Gary, these rants aren’t fooling anyone, This is the typical evasive tactic of a skeptic who’s backed into a corner, and hopes that if he changes the subject we’ll forget about his inability to answer the initial question.
Why not just admit you’re out of your depth?
Pax.
Lee.
Gary –
You’re saying “The Romans would NEVER have tolerated a “great crowd” proclaiming a Galilean peasant as King of the Jews. ”
The Gospel of John says that Jesus entered Jerusalem five days before the Passover.
Could you please share your research as to when Pilate actually arrived for the Passover?
Also, if you don’t mind, please provide your research showing how many soldiers were actually present in Jerusalem, five days before the Passover, and whether there is any indication that any soldiers of “rank” (ie, higher than the average foot soldier) would have likely been present at the gate that Jesus entered at?
You see, I’m not even sure there was anything more than perhaps 500 Roman soldiers garrisoned at Jerusalem at the time, and I’m certainly not sure that a “great crowd” outside the city walls – of people coming to the Passover (for God’s sake) – would even have drawn notice from a Roman guard: they would be *expecting* “great crowds”. I mean, the “median estimate” of scholars is that the Passover gathered a good quarter-of-a-million “pilgrims” each Passover. So, this was routine. Happened every year at about the same time.
And I have serious doubts that the average Roman auxiliary would have even known what “Hosanna” meant.
So, I’d really love to see your research on this to demonstrate your statement that “The Romans would NEVER have tolerated a “great crowd” proclaiming a Galilean peasant as King of the Jews. “
Is it possible that a “great crowd” of Jews welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem as their new Jewish king during the Passover week in circa 33 CE and no Roman soldier heard about it? Sure! Is it possible that Pilate and his troops from Caesarea didn’t show up until the next day? Sure! Is it possible that when the author of John says a “great crowd” he really meant just a few dozen people who whispered “King of the Jews” under their breath as Jesus passed through the gate? Sure!
Anything is possible!
Do you Christians really think that you are the only religionists who play this game? Don’t you realize that Muslims, Mormons, and Hindus are just as adept at inventing rationalizations and harmonizations for the preposterous claims in *their* holy books?
When DNA evidence proved that Native Americans are *not* descended from ancient seafaring Jews as the Book of Mormon says, did the Church of Latter Day Saints fold up shop and call it quits? Of course not! They simply reinterpreted the text!
You Christians have had TWO THOUSAND years to rationalize (explain away) and reinterpret the preposterous, silly claims in your ancient holy book. Why stop now!
But the problem for you is this: Internet-savvy younger generations are not buying your “spin”. That is why the membership numbers of most Christian denominations in North America are in steep decline. So it isn’t just me who thinks your explanations are silly, so do a lot of young Christians. That is why they are LEAVING in droves!
WASHINGTON, D.C. — …Gallup finds the percentage of Americans who report belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque at an all-time low, averaging 50% in 2018.
U.S. church membership was 70% or higher from 1937 through 1976, falling modestly to an average of 68% in the 1970s through the 1990s. The past 20 years have seen an acceleration in the drop-off, with a 20-percentage-point decline since 1999 and more than half of that change occurring since the start of the current decade.
The decline in church membership is consistent with larger societal trends in declining church attendance and an increasing proportion of Americans with no religious preference.
This article compares church membership data for the 1998-2000 and 2016-2018 periods, using combined data from multiple years to facilitate subgroup analysis. On average, 69% of U.S. adults were members of a church in 1998-2000, compared with 52% in 2016-2018.
The decline in church membership mostly reflects the fact that fewer Americans than in the past now have any religious affiliation. However, even those who do identify with a particular religion are less likely to belong to a church or other place of worship than in the past.
…Another obstacle churches face is Americans’ eroding confidence in the institution of organized religion. While organized religion is not the only U.S. institution suffering a loss of confidence, Americans have lost more confidence in it than in most other institutions.
In addition to the ongoing trends toward declining religiosity, Americans who are religious may also be changing their relationship to churches. They may not see a need to, or have a desire to, belong to a church and participate in a community of people with similar religious beliefs.
These trends are not just numbers, but play out in the reality that thousands of U.S. churches are closing each year. Religious Americans in the future will likely be faced with fewer options for places of worship, and likely less convenient ones, which could accelerate the decline in membership even more.
Source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/248837/church-membership-down-sharply-past-two-decades.aspx
OK. So, no info, no research. Got it. thanks.
Right. Gary, you dodged ftbond’s legitimate questions, just as you do mine and Dr. Anderson’s when you don’t have an answer.
For now no one cares about the numbers of “internet savvy” kids who may or may not be abandoning organized Christianity–although what I read a few years ago seemed to point in the opposite direction. Regardless, leaving organized religion doesn’t equal leaving the Christian faith. I know lots of Christians who don’t attend organized religious services yet still believe in Jesus and his resurrection.
That you can’t answer our questions says a lot. It says you need to reexamine your atheism. From what you’ve shated in this forum it’s built on some very shaky ground.
Your coment above demonstrates that you have no real idea how academic history works. Sure, anything’s *possible*, but not everything is *likely* or *probable*. Academic historians deal in *probabilities,* not certainties, and they certainly NEVER say “anything’s possible” when faced with the kind of question ftbond posed to you.
IF “anything” really is possible, then it’s possible that the episode of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem occurred pretty much liks the gospels say it did. Ti accept the gospel acc9unts as essntially factual don’t take any rationalization.
Pax.
Lee.
There seem to be many comments and replies here that are STILL sitting in Moderation waiting approval… or perhaps they have been deleted, censored by Mr. Anderson???
Time will tell. (tick tock tick tock tick tock…) Do you censor different opposing view Mr. Anderson? Show us you do not.
Nothing showed up.
Randy, I read your article. I, too identify with the 11 disciples in their doubts. The question, it sems to me, is what caused them to doubt that Jesus would, not only be crucfied, but then bodily raised from the dead?
To answer that you have to know a bit about first century, Second Temple Mesianic Jewish expectations. Not all ancient Jews believed in a coming Messiah, but those Jewish sects
that did tended to have certain basic asumptions about what Messiah would do/be when he showed up. The precise detaIls varied, but all expected him to cleanse/restore or rebuild the Temple, gather an army and make war on the Romans, driving them back to Italy, then reestablish the Davidic monarchy and reign from Jerusalem as God’s Anointed King. Five hundred years of Jewish mesianic thought said that that’s how God’s kingdom was supposed to come to earth.
What *none* of these groups expected was for the Messiah to actually *be* YHWH incarnate. The closest you get to that concept is the Son of Man figure from the OT book of Daniel to whom God gives all authority over the earth and whom the nations worship. However the text never explicitly calls this figure YHWH (although Jesus at his trial before Caiaphas alludes to being this figure, causing the High Priest to yell “Blasphemy!”).
What absolutely *nobody* expected was for Messiah to be executed–certainly not by crucifixion, since Torah was clear that anyone who was crucified was cursed by God. Thus in the minds of other pious Jews, claiming that Jesus had to die was all the proof they needed that Jesus of Nazareth was *not* the Messiah. You see this in Luke 24 when the resurrected Jesus encounters the two disciples returning to Emmaus. He asks them why they’re sullen and downcast, and, not recognizing him, they basically respond with “Where have you been for the past week not to know what’s bein going on in Jerusalem? Don’t you know that we thought we’d found the Messiah? Only, the Romans killed him so obviously we backed the wrong horse!”
And the male disciples don’t believe the women that Jesus has been raised because they, too were convinced at that point that he had been a fake, or he wouldn’t have been executed.That’s why Peter draws his sword when Jesus is arrested because he thought the Messiah’s battle against Rome was finally about start. I can see why the male disciples all (save John) fled; their would-be Messiah had just rolled over and cried “uncle!”
Also, for those Jewish sects which believed in the resurrection of the body, it was a peripheral, belief inm future pevent, in which, when YHWH’s kingdom was fully inaugurated, all of his faithful would be resurrected at once. Nobody wss looking for *one* guy–and certainly not a false messiah!–to be raised *in the middle of history *before* everyone else.
Couple all of that with the fact that the testimony of women in religious and legal matters wasn’t regarded as reliable, and you see pretty quickly why the disciples were incredulous. And remember–the women didn’t expect him to be resurrected, either. Mary Magdalene (also not recognizing Jesus) asks the man she believes is the groundskeeper to tell her where they’ve moved the corpse to.
So that in the 180s AD, pagan skeptics like the philosopher Celsus were still making fun of Christianty a) for insisting that God would ever incarnate as the human child of obscure peasants in a backwater province, b) that said god-man would purposely let himself be killed c) claiming said god-man was raised from the dead three days later d) insisting that the chief witness to this central (yet ludicrous) miracle was, in Celsus’ words, “a hysterical woman.”
As I’ve argued to Gary, all of the above facts argue *against* the disciples of Jesus simply making this stuff up, because no pious Jew faking a Messiah would insist that their messiah had to die, nor that his disciples at every turnappear clueless as to his true aims.The gospels portray the pre-Easter disicples as ignorant bumpkins. Why make themselves look like idiots?
These all fall under what professional historians call the criteria of embarrassment meaning that people don’t normally make up lies thst could damage their credibility–which these claims of the gospels were calculated to do.
Obviously none of his in any way proves the resurrection. But it does help to explain why Jesus’ own followers had trouble wrapping their minds around it. Even when they saw him enter the room Thomas still needed to touch his body to be certain it was realy him.
As for Jesus’ miracles, even most skeptic NT scholars admit that Jesus did things that people believed were miraculous. That’s a far cry though from them seeing the dead raised on a daily basis. Furthermore, the gospels portray the disciples as unable to perform the miracles Jesus did, such as exorcisms.
As I keep saying, if f the gospel authors were inventing a messiah they hoped to sell to the Jews snd Greeks, they did a singularly bad job of it.
So I take heart from Thomas, who needed proof to believe Jesus was resurrected. I think God is much more pleased with sincere doubt than mere blind faith. I can’t tell you exactly why God doesn’t provide absolute proof, but I know that even if he did some people would still refuse to believe. But again, we rarely have absolute proof for anything in life, and we routinely take certain things for granted. On faith. Such as the belief of atheists that matter is all there is. That takes faith. In my humble opinion, a lot of faifh.
The pre-Easter disciples couldn’t fathom a crucified, resurrected messiah. The post-Easter apostles risked their lives–and indeed, all save John–died for their belief in that crucified, resurrected Messiah. They still needed faith, evdn after seeing and touching Jesus, that his plan for them to evangelize the Roman Empire would be at least marginally succesful, that he would kep them alive long enough for that to happen, etc.
Obviously at the end of the day it comes down to faith, but not a blind faith.
Basically, if your world-view allows for the existence of dimensions of reality outside the space-time universe, accepting the resurrection wil be somewhat easier. Personally, I have a really difficult time believing that matter and the space-time universe are all there is. I defnitely have a hard time believing the space-time universe came into existence from absolutely nothing. Nothing comes from nothing. The cosmological principle states rhat anything which had a beginning had to have a cause. We know the hniverse had beginning, therefore the universe had s cause. You can argue about what/who that cause was/is, but it’s real.
Well, I’m sure that probably didn’t answer your question but perhaps in some small way provided fod for thought.
Pax.
Lee.
Thanks for all that, but the bottom line is that the disciples, for whatever reason, were not willing to accept eyewitness testimony concerning a resurrected Jesus. At least according to the NT. Jesus did not simply wait for them to believe those testimonies by faith. He provided PROOF. This tells me that if these stories are true, then Jesus will provide PROOF when asked. Given he has never provided that proof to me even though I’ve asked many many times tells me he either doesn’t want to provide the proof or the stories are untrue and there is no living Jesus.
Well said, Randy.
Gary and Randy, as members of an ancient oral society, the disciples would typically have put more faith in oral tradition or eyewitness testimony–unless such testimony directly contrdicted five hundred years of Jewish religious tradition about the Messiah, and furthermore was told to them by a group of emotional, flighty, confused women.
Since, if he was really the Messiah, Jesus’ death was inconceivable to them, for the women to then claim he’d been resurrected was equally problemmatic, since, in their minds, they were being asked to believe that a false messiah cursed by YHWH had then been raised by YHWH. I probably wouldn’t believe the women, either, without seeing for myself.
Yet the gospels don’t promise that kind of absolute certainty to anyone; remenber how Jesus said to Thomas, “blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.” Yet notice Jesus didn’t scold Thomas for not believing. He invited him to touch him.
For whatever reason, only five hundred people were allowed to meet the resurrected Jesus in person. Possibly THEY needed that kind of proof if the evangelium were ever going to get off the ground and get going, as many of thee people would be the new faith’s messengers.
And while the people the gospels were originally written to may have been generally more open to the supernatural than we are, in our rationalistic, post-Enlightenment, cynical, almost paranoidally skeptical, “show me the money” society, nevertheless they knew as well as we do that dead bodies normally stay dead. The four evangelists understood what they were asking people to believe, and in this case it *definitely* wasn’t simply what Joe was having for dinner Wednesday night.
I think Dr. Anderson is right. It comes down to your world-view. If a person has a materialistic world-view which will not allow for any realms or dimensions outside the observable, space-time universe, then no matter how good the evidence might otherwise be they’re not going to believe it on those grounds. I’ve met skeptics who wouldn’t believe even IF Jesus appaared in the flesh to them because their atheism is simply too entrenched. But maybe they’re unable to see what’s right in front of them because of their die-hard pre-commitment to atheism?
I can’t speak for Randy or Gary or anyone else; all I know is that in my case, I simply don’t have enough pure blind faith to be that kind of atheist, thus, for multiple other intellectual reasons, my investigation into the truth-claims of the gospels over the past thirty years or so has pretty-well convinced me of their overall reliability. Do I have all the answers, understand everything perfectly? Nope. But even though I’m the kind of person who as a public historian necessarily deals with the “who”, “what”, “when”, “where” and “why”, I’m okay with still having certain questions unanswered.
Pax.
Lee.
Let’s assume you are correct. The apostles were doing the same thing I am doing, but for different reasons. They were saying, “It’s highly unlikely that Jesus was the Messiah because he did something that was highly unlikely: go to his grave without first overthrowing the Romans.” They had a particular worldview that would not allow the Messiah to be something other than what they believed he would be…without lots of evidence. I say, “It’s highly unlikely that Jesus was the Messiah because he did something that was highly unlikely: resurrect from the grave.” My worldview does not allow for supernatural events…without lots of evidence. The apostles did not come to their worldview on a whim, but was based on years of learning about the Messiah. I did not come to my worldview on a whim either. It’s based on years of experience as well as others’ experiences and a severe lack of proof that supernatural events occur in nature. So, my desire is that God would provide me with the same level of proof that Jesus was the Messiah that he allegedly provided them. Assuming, of course, Jesus really IS the Messiah.
A few observations.
I do not get the impression that the women in the Gospel stories were emotional, flighty, and confused.
Note that Thomas had more eyewitnesses than just the women. He had 10 other apostles. Were they also emotional, flighty, and confused. Is that why he didn’t believe them also. The stories read more like they simply did not believe Jesus was resurrected because it was an event that defied nature rather than that Jesus did not fulfill their idea of a Messiah.
You mention that Jesus said to Thomas, “blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.” The writer HAD to include that. The writer had to have realized that most people, like me, would hear the resurrection story and then demand the same level of proof the apostles demanded. He had to somehow have Jesus condoning and blessing the action of believing without visual proof.
With my current state of knowledge, I too do not have enough faith to be an atheist. The best explanation for the existence of the Universe is that some type of eternal intelligence created it. However, more evidence could refute that. But evidence also suggests that that creative intelligence is not the God of the Bible. Or any religion for that matter.
Randy, when I said the women were flighty, emotional and confused what I was trying to say is that that is how women were generally regarded in the patriarchal socities of the ancient Mediterranean, and one hundred and thirty years later the pagan philosopher Celsus objected to Christianity in part because the chief witness to its central miracle was, in his words, “a hysterical woman.” That’s one reason that if these stories were simply made up they would never invent women as the first witnesses to the resurrection. And you’ll notice that in the creed Paul recites in I Cor. 15:3-7, the women are omitted from the list of witnesses the resurrected Jesus appeared to, because having women listed alongside men might cause problems for the uninitiated in the patriarchal society of Corinth reading that credal statement for the first time.
As for Jesus’ disciples, their view, based on some 500 years of Jewish Messianic tradition, was pretty unequivocal that Messiah would perform miracles like healing the blind and the lame, but–more importantly–he would cleanse/restore/rebuild the Temple after delivering Israel from bondage to Rome, then would bring God’s kingdom to earth and reign from Jerusalem as the new David. According to the gospels many people felt that Jesus fit some of those criteria with his miracles and his cleansing of the Temple, but no one in AD 30 was prepared for Jesus to insist that Messiah had to die by crucifixion, because of what Torah says about crucifixion victims being cursed. Jesus’ eventual resurrection with all the other righteous believers at the end of time wouldn’t have been a problem for anyone. But his death. That was the big obstacle. Yet in Acts 2 Peter says the resurrection is the proof that Jesus really was the Messiah, was God’s vindication of his whole ministry.
Jesus and the NT evangelists also argue that prophecies of the Messiah’s death and resurrection were right there in the OT all along. Their task was to get potential Jewish converts in particular to see those prophecies and how Jesus’ death and resurrection fulfilled them.
Messianic Jews, which included the Pharisees, took the eventual resurrection of the body for granted. The story of the Maccabean martyrs who told their Syrian torturers to do their worst because God would one day restore their missing limbs at the resurrection was one text Messianic Jews would point to. They were expecting all God’s faithful to be resurrected together at the end of history, but were not prepared for one man to be resurrected in the middle of history. And as scholar NT Wright notes, Christians, too incorporated the resurrection of the body into their faith but made it a much more central, defining belief.
Plus, even Jesus’ critics did not question that he performed miracles–their only question was where his power to do them came from, God or Satan (they said Satan).
So for first century Jewish converts, Jesus’ resurrection wasn’t a huge hurdle once they understood those OT prophecies pointing to the Messiah’s death and resurrection. It just took the disciples seeing him in the flesh before they could really believe he was the Messiah. Thus the obstacle for them wasn’t a predisposition to naturalism, like most modern skeptics, but was rooted in their preconceived ideas of who/what Messiah would do/be.
Ancient socities were generally much more open to the supernatural. It’s only really in the past 250 years or so, with the advent of the Enlightenment in the late 17th-early 18th century, that Western society has had this almost paranoid skepticism regarding anything supernatural. It isn’t that modern people are somehow more rational than previous eras, just that we’ve traded one worldview which allowed for the existence of the supernatural for another worldview which doesn’t. NT Wright’s recent book *History and Eschatology: Jesus and the Promise of Natural Theology* examines the mixed bag that was the Enlightenment and how certain Enlightenment presuppositions have negatively impacted the world, in particular how modern academic historians tend to approach history.
Plus, I guess it depends upon what a person considers convincing evidence. There may not be irrefutable proof but there’s a mountain of circumstantial evidence which, taken together I find persuasive. (It doesn’t hurt that people much smarter than I am, such as former atheist and Oxford and Cambridge medievalist Prof. CS Lewis, biochemist Alister McGrath of the UK, and former Human Genome Project director Dr. Francis Collins [now head of the NIH] have also found that evidence persuasive.)
Sorry for going long again.
Pax.
Lee.
You are correct in that it does depend on what evidence one finds persuasive. That’s why we have hung juries sometimes. If I came to you and said, “Last night a man came to my house who had three missing fingers on this right hand due to trying to clean the underside of a lawn mower while it was running. I prayed over him and watched as all three fingers grew back to their full length.” What type of evidence would it take for you to believe my story? Is my word sufficient? How about before and after photos of the man’s hand? Would you need to see another person have their fingers grow back? Well, I had a friend from college tell me that story. He was a Catholic in college, but became an evangelical afterwards. He was working at a campus ministry when the alleged event occurred.
If I had known you for over thirty years (I actually have) and knew you would never invent such a story, and that, furthermore, you were not mentally ill, then, based upon my worldview, which allows for the existence of the supernatural, I would have to take your word for it, despite my never having seen anyone spontaneously regenerate severed body parts.
I’ve actually had to do this with my grandmother Blair (mom’s mom), who claimed to have not only seen a paralyzed arm healed in a hospital room, but also to have participated in an exorcism of her then housekeeper. The best way to describe my grandmother is as a “born again charismatic Episcoplian”; nevertheless she was one of the most practical, level-headed people I ever knew, not prone to seeing miracles everywhere. My mom claims to have witnessed the exorcism, and she’s never read *The Exorist*–or even seen the movie–thus wouldn’t know to describe what she did the way she did, which was a textbook case (though not quite as dramatic as the one in Blatty’s book, or what hapened to Linda Blair in the film).
So becase my prior worldview already allows for the existenne of the supernatural, I wouldn’t automatically conclude my grandmother and mother were nuts.
It seems to me that what’s at issue is a person’s underlying worldiew. Based upon my reading I conluded long ago that a purely materialisic closed system cannot account for everything humans experience in life, that there are facets of reality best explained via the supernatural. The modified deism I grew up with in the Church of Christ argued that miracles had once occurred but no more. The modified deism of much of the rest of Protestant Christianity asserts that miracles are possible, but are occasional interruptions by a distant, faraway God into the natural world. Neither is an accurate description of what the Bible says abouttge supernatural or miracles or “wonders.”
Pax.
Lee.
“Wow” to all that about your mother and grandmother. My mom and other family members also told me of some weird things that happened to them as well.
Back to my three fingers growing back. Rather than telling you that I personally saw those fingers grow back, what if I told you that it’s an event that actually happened about 40-50 years ago. The story had been passed down over the years until it reached me. I wrote it down for posterity. Now, what kind of evidence would you need to believe the story? Now, suppose I told you that actually that story was written down almost 2000 years ago about an event that took place 40-50 years before that. Now what kind of evidence would you need?
Randy, I think I know where you’re going with your scecond scenario. In modern America, we no longer have the ability to accurately pass on oral traditions the way the ancient cultures which produced the NT could. I see this on the job in family genealogy all the time, in mine and other families, in which some or many of the stories passed down turn out not to have hapowned at all, or at lest not the way they were/are told. In most cases no dishonest motives are involved, but people no longer have the ability to sort fact from fiction, and in some cases want to expunge embarrassing skeletons from the family closet.
However, being largely iliterate cultures, the ancient societies which produced the NT gospels necessarily put much more stock in the oral transmission of important events. They had safeguards in place to ensure that important material was accurately recorded and pased down. For one thing it was a community endeavor, with the whole community invested in making sure the tradents accurately passed on the tradition. Studies have been done over the past fifty years which demonstrate the ability of many modern oral cultures to pass down oral tradition basically unchanged for several generetions. Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory Boyd wrote a book in 2007 called *The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition*, which cites a number of those studies.
Plus, as Dr. Anderson and I have said repeatedly to Gary, the authors of the gospels, while admittedly having an evangelistic agenda, nevertheless also insist that Jesus ministry, death and resurrection occurred at a precise moment in actual space-time history, thus mention real historical people and places. Where these people, places and events can be corroborated they show that the authors of the gospels generally record accurate history. In my humble opinion, that overall historical reliability regrding events which can be cheked in itself should give skeptics pause beforec they chuck the gospels out as total fictions.
That plus the fact that the authors of ths gospels knew as well as we do that normally, dead bodies remain dead. They knew resurrection was going go be a hard sell to Greeks and Romans, many of whom as committed Platonists, viewed the intangible realm of the Forms as more real than the physical, the very idea of bodily resurrection was, at best distasteful (for the 2nd century Gnostic heretics, who believed matter was actually evil, the idea of resurection was downright offensive).
Adding further credbility to their story is the fact that none ofJesus’ disciples expected him to die, an event which contradicted everything Mesianic Jews believed about the Messiah. As I’ve ponited out to Gary, in every other case in antiquity, when a would-be Jewish Messiah was killed by the Romans, no one claimed Judas the Galilean or Simon Bar Kochba were resurrected. No, their movements died with them and after the fiasco with Simon in the 130s AD, which saw both Simon and his Pharasaic sponsor Rabbi Akiba executed and Jerusalem again totally devastated, the Jewish rabbis made it taboo to talk about the Messiah and armed revolution. From now on, what really mattered, what made a faithful Jew, was a strict Torah observance, not Temple sacrifice in the messianically restored Temple and deliverance from bondage. This was the beginning of modern Rabbinic Judaism. How to be Jewish without the Temple or the Messiah (though many modern Orthodox and Hasdic Jews are still looking for a future Messiah).
None of which, obviously, proves what the gospels say about Jesus’ resurrection–that still boils down to your worldview and whether you believe resurrection is possible–but it does lend credibility to the argument that they weren’t simply making it all up on the fly and demolishes the old canard that they weren’t able or interested in accurately pasing down what happened.
Again, I would heartily recommend *The Jesus Legend* by Eddy and Boyd if you haven’t already read it. They address these and lots of other points.
Pax.
Lee.
Perhaps they were good at passing down information accurately. But it still boils down to this. Which is easier to believe? (A) a bodily resurrection occurred, or (B) legends got introduced into the stories of Jesus, including his resurrection. Since we don’t know who all the stories were passed through, it seems highly likely that they passed through a number of people who had no problem embellishing the stories. At least that seems much more likely to me than that a resurrection occurred.
Dear Dr. Anderson,
Out of curiosity, what book are you reading in your website profile picture and will you review it?
Yours Sincerely,
The Programming Nerd
It is John Anthony McGukin’s A New History of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
I might get around to reviewing it. I really like it so far.