Wow!! Italy next! I want your life lol. Hmm I'm not sure how I would process the family being super catholic, I think that I am less moved by things like that then you are, but I like trying to figure out what moves you. I never knew a postmodern like you, I know that you are too smart to write certain things off as completely useless and I am having fun trying to gauge how much weight you would or would not give to historical Jesus data. I like how you think a lot. But I will admit that I agree with you that historical evidence does have it's limits.
I think you might be referring to my enormous post reply to you and 2PhiloVoid about my epistemological relativism mental journey. Thank you for reading that! But I was actually referring to the one I posted after that one, after you were gone. Kind of a reply to when you said this...
Ok why don't I just post it now but please just take your time replying I know you're very busy, I don't care if it takes you an extremely long time to reply (after you're back). I'll just repost it the exact way that I originally posted it, and I would love to know how it registers with you as far as having any type of 'Evidence' substance to it. Talking with you has been the first time that I ever gained an appreciation to how postmoderns think...As you know the thread was almost flying off the rails with interpretation speculations, so this was my post...
I'm really enjoying the mental exercises in here, it's fun to brainstorm on different interpretations of data towards the New Testament! However, with all the interpretation breakdowns let's not lose site of the fact that historiography is a field that does employ some core objective standards of testing for authenticity for ALL ancient documents, not just NT documents. Being critical with the NT documents, as with all documents, may disappoint some Christians because we are not going to be able to confirm historical value from cover to cover, actually not even close. As with all historical documents it's not a blanket statement of 'Is this document reliable?' It may be reliable in some respects but not others. The question isn't a question of this divine Biblical inerrancy, that's a theological concern, rather the question is one of historical value.
Historians are not bothered when they uncover a document that contains errors or contradictions or mistakes. NO ancient historian would throw out some ancient document and say 'It's worthless' because she finds a mistake in it. That would completely destroy the study of history. Rather the very question that the historian faces is, how do I sift through these documents so as to pull out the historical kernel from the chaff that is unhistorical or legendary or embellishment, etc. That is why it is historical madness when the layperson believes they have found a contradiction and cries "The whole thing is unreliable, throw it out!" Some have this all or nothing mentality but no historian would treat their sources like that.
We need to have a much more careful and academic approach to these documents then what we have on the popular level. Critical historians use certain criteria to determine what aspects of these narratives are historically reliable and what parts you can't be sure of. This is common to all ancient history. Certain factors give historical accounts stronger ground to stand on, however, this doesn't mean that the parts of the NT that don't meet these standards are non-historical, just that they're harder to prove historically.
One such factor is multiple independent attestation. This is one of the most important in accessing historicity. If some saying or event in the life of Jesus is multiply attested in independent sources (which are early) than they're more likely to be historical because it's obviously more likely that the same story would not have been invented by different independent persons.
Another factor would be embarrassment. If there are sayings and events in the life of Jesus that would be embarrassing or awkward for the early church than these are more likely to be historical because it would be unlikely that this would be made up. An example would be Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist. Since John was baptising for remission of sins, it's very awkward that Jesus went to John to be baptised, this isn't something that the early church would have made up.
Other examples abound...Jesus was accused of being out of his mind and demon-possessed (Mk. 3:21-22), unable to perform mighty works in his hometown (Mk. 6:5), ignorant of the end time (Mk. 13:32). At a time when the witness of females was considered inferior to that of males, women were the first witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection (Matt. 28:1-10; Mk.16:1-8; Lk. 24:1-11; Jn. 20:11-18). If you were fabricating stories to promote the Christian faith it’s very likely that Peter the 'First Pope of the Church' would be your hero...the disciples however are time & time again buffoons and cowards...they fail to trust Jesus during the storm and Jesus rebukes them, Peter denies Jesus 3 times, Jesus rebukes Peter in the harshest of terms saying, “Get behind me, Satan!” When the disciples were commanded to pray they fell asleep...Jesus cries out against God the Father before finally dying on the cross. Etc...it's chock full of extremely strange things that the church would not make up.
Actually one of the embarrassment criteria bedrocks in regards to empty tomb evidence is the nearly universal agreement that the figure of Joseph of Aramathea, as a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin who voted to condemn Jesus, would not have been a Christian invention. Him being responsible for burying Jesus is very probable since a Christian fictional creation of a Jewish Sanhedris doing what is right for Jesus is almost inexplicable given the hostility towards the Jewish leaders responsible for Jesus' death in early Christian writings.
It's very interesting what you always find in passion plays. Do you notice who is always responsible for the burial of Jesus? Mary! His mother is always there, taking him down from the cross, and the women help to bury him...totally unhistoric, and EXACTLY what pious Christian fiction would invent!
Another factor would be dissimilarity. This says that if an event or saying attributed to Jesus is unparalleled in pre-Christian Judaism, and is not characteristic in post Jesus Christianity, then it's likely to have belonged to the historical Jesus. It's not something that was practiced or said by the early church, nor did it exist prior to Jesus. An example would be Jesus' use of the title 'Son of Man.' In the Gospels he continually calls himself the Son of Man, this is unprecedented in Judaism. Ezekiel referred to himself as 'A' Son of Man (meaning just a human being), but Jesus used the definite article 'THE' Son of Man. That refers back to the divine human figure in the 7th chapter in the prophecy of Daniel who comes on the clouds of heaven and is presented before God, into whom God gives all authority and power and dominion, and that all nations might worship him. Jesus calls himself Son of Man in the Gospels about 80 times.
But outside the Gospels this title is found only once in the book of Acts. It seemed to be a title that just didn't seem to catch on in the early church, therefore it is highly probably that Jesus was fond of saying this, that he used this title with respect to himself, he thought of himself and he called himself the Son of Man. Another example of this principle is his use of the phrase "Truly truly I say to you..."
The crucifixion of Jesus is so firmly anchored in history that words and sayings of Jesus can be assessed in terms of their historical credibility by their likelihood that they would lead to his crucifixion. One can not simply summarize Jesus as a great moral teacher who went around championing the poor & disadvantaged. Such a Jesus would threaten no one and therefore you must explain how he was given a sentence of capital punishment had he not claimed deity. This regard towards Jesus' crucifixion factor is another piece of criteria that historians look at. Outside of Jesus claiming to be the Messiah it is extremely difficult to explain what happened to him.
Another factor is coherence. This would be to say, how well does a saying or event in the life of Jesus cohere with the previous factors? A previous criteria has established that Jesus thought of himself as the Son of Man, he thought of himself as the Messiah...well then, his claims for example to forgive sins or to think of himself as God's Son in a unique sense tend to cohere nicely with the previous claims. However, it is incorrect historically to use the absence of the dissimilarity factor to disqualify Jesus. Because to claim that a statement from Jesus resembling a pre-Christ Judaism saying, or a post Jesus church saying would be grounds to disqualify him as the source would be absurd. What you'd wind up with is a Jesus who was utterly uninfluenced by the Judaism in which he was born & raised, and who had absolutely no impact on the movement founded by him. It doesn't work in reverse. The dissimilarity factor is only used to establish authentic deeds and sayings of Jesus, it is misused when it's used negatively to try to label his deeds or sayings inauthentic due to the absence of dissimilarity.
In regards to sections of the NT that are very hard to prove historically, you should factor in the credibility of the author. In other words if we take the approach that the credibility of each event should be weighed separately, then we might come to a conclusion that 'X' amount of events in Luke are historically sound, and 'X' amount are worthless because they are unprovable. But are they really worthless? Should the provable events in Luke just be looked upon as separate from the unprovable, or do the provable events do something to sort of bump up the historical credibility of the whole document? Some historians say that if you have a consistent pattern, where portion after portion this author is getting it right, that that DOES lend credibility to the author for events in which there isn't a strong historic foundation.
And then of course you can get into analyzing the NT for internal verifications, or harmonies/disharmonies...In
1 Corinthians 15: 3-5 we have very early source material that was written to describe events that were already known. The terms for receiving & transmitting tradition are the technical Rabbinical terms for the transmission of tradition. When Paul says "What I received as of first importance I also delivered to you" those are the technical Rabbinical terms for the passing on of tradition. There are many non-Pauline traits in the passage that then follow...the phrase "According to the scriptures" is non-Pauline, he does not typically write this, instead he says something like "As it is written" when he quotes the OT, but he doesn't use this phrase "According to the scriptures" other than here (telling you that this is tradition already in place when he is writing). Also the phrase "Has been raised" is a verb form that Paul typically doesn't use, it's only found in
1 Corinthians 15 and in
2 Timothy 2:8. Also the term "The twelve" is not an expression that Paul uses in his own writings that further suggests that he is passing on a tradition that he received.
In Greek the terms "And that" is left out in English translations and tells us that the tradition is broken up into 4 distinct events, "That Christ died for our sins," "And that he was buried," "And that he was raised," "And that he appeared."
You have Semitic expressions in the tradition itself, such as the expression "On the third day" is probably a Semitism going back to an Aramaic original or at least it's Greek that's composed in Aramaic style. Also the use of the name Cephas is Aramaic (rather than using the name Peter).
Paul goes on in
1 Corinthians 15:11 to say "Whether that it was I or they thus we preached and thus you believed." Telling us that this tradition was common property to all of the apostles, all of them preached it, it was not something that was unique to Paul.
There is remarkable concordance between this tradition and the preaching in Acts. This is one of the cases where what Paul says in verse 11 is confirmed. In verse 11 Paul says that this message was preached by all the apostles. It correlates very closely to the apostolic sermon in the book of Acts (the very preaching of the apostles that Luke records). In Acts 13: 28-31 Luke says...
"Though they found no cause for death in him, they asked Pilate that he should be put to death. Now when they had fulfilled all that was written concerning him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead. He was seen for many days by those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem who are his witnesses to the people"
There you have exactly that 4 fold sequence from Paul! Also always keep something in mind...if something that one NT author writes loosely parallels and confirms another NT author, the non-Christian doesn't like that! You're reaching!! But, if something matches up too closely, the non-Christian doesn't like that either!!! It's collusion! It's copying! LOL.
So when did Paul receive this tradition? We know from Paul's letter to the church of Galatia, chapter 1 verse 18, that 3 years after his conversion on the Damascus road Paul was in Jerusalem for 2 weeks on a fact finding mission. The verb he used in
Galatians 1:18 is unique to the NT, it is the word that is used in Greek literature outside the NT to indicate fact finding missions to places of historical significance. We get our word 'History' from that Greek word. And whom does he meet with? He says in Galatians that he meets with Cephas and James, the very 2 people who are mentioned in
1 Corinthians 15: 3-8 as recipients of resurrection appearances of Jesus. Therefore it's highly likely that Paul received this information at this time. This is why some claim that the tradition can be traced back to within 5 years of Jesus' death.
Paul himself knew the stories that stood behind the traditions that he delivered. In
1 Corinthians 11: 23-24 Paul says that the last supper occurred on the night in which Jesus was betrayed. Here Paul hands on the ancient traditions about the Lord's last supper (with the cup and with the bread). But what is interesting about this tradition as Paul hands it on is that he identifies this event as occurring on the night in which Jesus was betrayed, yet that betrayal is not part of the last supper story! That shows that Paul knew not simply the story of the last supper, but he knew the context of these traditions that he handed on. There doesn't seem to be any other point in the career of Paul at which he might have received these traditions later than his trip to Jerusalem. Paul became a teacher in Antioch. Later on with Barnabas, and in that capacity he would have been the teacher not the student.
In Acts when Paul mentions the appearance to over 500 at one time he says that most of them are still alive. There would be no point in mentioning that most of them are still alive unless Paul was saying 'The witnesses are there to be questioned if you should want to.' It is not impossible that this appearance could have been the appearance narrated in
Matthew 28: 16-17. It is interesting that in all of the resurrection appearances narrated in the Gospels that this is the only one that is by appointment. An appearance like this (500) would have to take place outdoors. And it was in Galilee where thousands of people used to gather on hillsides to hear Jesus preach. And in this Matthew account it says that "When they saw him they worshiped but some doubted." Who were these some people who doubted? It sounds like a plethora of people were there!!
In Acts (9, 22) when Luke describes Paul's companions on the Damascus road the original Greek translation says that the people with Paul were not able to make out the person who was there but they saw light, and that they heard sound but were not able to make out the words. The Greek words used is a clear distinction between hearing sound and making out specific words. So the point of the Acts 9 & 22 passages is that even the people with Paul were directly effected objectively by something happening outside of Paul, so it can't be summed up as a subjective Paul vision (and of course Luke was Paul's companion).
Again remember we are dealing in the category of ancient documents. Disharmonies arising out of ancient documents comes with the territory. But like it was already stated, at which point do you find enough verification of core historical credibility before you start granting some credibility to the authors themselves as being trustworthy??
Thanks, Uber.
