I was hearing about the 'minimal witness' criticism of the reliability of the resurrection and was wondering if this might be something worth discussing here.
<snip>
Thoughts?
I wonder if I might venture a couple of thoughts on the OP theory.
At the forensic level, we can be sure (multiple attestation of sources and forms) that the appearances were to groups as well as individuals. In particular, there were appearances to the 11 main disciples. Other named people include a double Mary (Matt 28), Cleopas (Luke 24), Barsabbas and Matthias (Acts 1)...
However the more important question, and one which I would suggest challenges all alternative theories, is why a group of Jewish people insisted that the long awaited Kingdom of God (KoG) had finally arrived.
This was to be in C1 Judaism the Biggest Event Ever. For this, people had cried, prayed, killed and died. The time when God would finally fulfil His promise to Abraham, and return to His people to free them, and through them humanity, from the curse of sin and death. Jesus Himself talks a lot, lot, lot about it. Resurrection, by contrast, was a debated fringe topic in C1 Judaism.
Then suddenly this group of Jews burst onto the scene saying that it had all happened; according to the scriptures, yes, but in a totally different way to what people expected. God had come, arguments over resurrection were over, and the KoG was with us.
Compare the reaction to Lazarus return from the dead (John 11), and Herod's thoughts on the Baptist resurrected (Matt 14). No-one says “This is it, the KoG has arrived, God has returned to His People”. Surely the appearances of Jesus must have been so compelling and so unusual that they led the witnesses to the unavoidable conclusion that Jesus' resurrection had happened? And much more.
To me these are just assertions.
<snip>
In the context of this discussion, the debate is in reply to a Christian author who focused on these four named individuals who gave first-person accounts.
Many thanks for your reply. The comparison with Mormon is important. For me, the “what they did next” contrast between the two groups of earliest believers is very telling. However I agree that treacherous weeds should be avoided!
Assertions?
The OP suggestion that only a very few claimed to witness the resurrection runs into the unambiguous historical evidence that many did; as said above, the total refusal of these people to change their mind regardless of damage done to them is important.
Further, I posed a (lengthy!) question- how do you account for both the existence and beliefs of the Early Church?
They did not invent an empty tomb and meetings with the resurrected Jesus to explain a faith they already had. They developed that faith when a totally unexpected reality slapped them in the face with a huge fish.
On Good Friday, the disciples watched their dream die with Jesus- he was not the one to bring the long awaited KoG in. But a few days later they were yelling from the rooftops that the sins of humanity had been forgiven, the KoG inaugurated, and death defeated.
Further, I posed a (lengthy!) question- how do you account for both the existence and beliefs of the Early Church?
They did not invent an empty tomb and meetings with the resurrected Jesus to explain a faith they already had. They developed that faith when a totally unexpected reality slapped them in the face with a huge fish.
On Good Friday, the disciples watched their dream die with Jesus- he was not the one to bring the long awaited KoG in. But a few days later they were yelling from the rooftops that the sins of humanity had been forgiven, the KoG inaugurated, and death defeated.
Why?
I don't have to account for your faith positions. Any more than I have to account for the actions of Joseph Smith.
The facts that nobody can argue with are that the earliest written materials about "the event" date from at least a century after they were supposed to have happened. How these were generated, where they came from, what they mean etc are all points of conjecture and faith.
Again, believe whatever you like. But I don't have to account for all the impossible things you say you believe in.
The facts that nobody can argue with are that the earliest written materials about "the event" date from at least a century after they were supposed to have happened.
No. I think you are conflating the dates of available physical fragments with scholarly consensus on the date of composition of the texts. These are quite different, with some (genuine) early Pauline letters dating from around 50CE, Mark from around 70 CE and both Matthew and Luke around 90CE. Even the latest of the major NT texts - the Gospel of John - is dated to around 110CE. So all of them are dated much less than a century after the events described.
The facts that nobody can argue with are that the earliest written materials about "the event" date from at least a century after they were supposed to have happened.
No. I think you are conflating the dates of available physical fragments with scholarly consensus on the date of composition of the texts. These are quite different, with some (genuine) early Pauline letters dating from around 50CE, Mark from around 70 CE and both Matthew and Luke around 90CE. Even the latest of the major NT texts - the Gospel of John - is dated to around 110CE. So all of them are dated much less than a century after the events described.
I'm not conflating anything. The only thing that can be said with any certainty is about the age of the earliest fragments that still exist.
There is no consensus on anything else. There's plenty of opinions and conjecture and faith.
But positions which are offered without evidence do not have to be rebutted with evidence. That's it.
<snip>The facts that nobody can argue with are that the earliest written materials about "the event" date from at least a century after they were supposed to have happened.<snip>
The facts that nobody can argue with are as follows:
1 Corinthians - 20-25 years after the event
Mark - 30-40 years after the event
Matthew - 55-70 years after the event
Luke - 55-70 years after the event
John - 60-80 years after the event
The older I get the shorter these time frames seem. I have spoken with people who remember participating in events over 100 years ago now. (Within some of those time frames I can find living witnesses now to events that long ago.) If they had been events I had a particular interest in I could have spoken to more.
Paul’s list of resurrection appearances in 1 Corinthians 15 has a very strong “If you don’t believe me, check got yourselves.” vibe about it which is not easily dismissed.
<snip>The facts that nobody can argue with are that the earliest written materials about "the event" date from at least a century after they were supposed to have happened.<snip>
The facts that nobody can argue with are as follows:
1 Corinthians - 20-25 years after the event
Mark - 30-40 years after the event
Matthew - 55-70 years after the event
Luke - 55-70 years after the event
John - 60-80 years after the event
The older I get the shorter these time frames seem. I have spoken with people who remember participating in events over 100 years ago now. (Within some of those time frames I can find living witnesses now to events that long ago.) If they had been events I had a particular interest in I could have spoken to more.
Paul’s list of resurrection appearances in 1 Corinthians 15 has a very strong “If you don’t believe me, check got yourselves.” vibe about it which is not easily dismissed.
Papyrus 46 is the earliest serving fragment of 1 Corinthians.
I can remember my grandad telling me about his experiences in the trenches in WW1. That is now over 100 years ago.
And the current thread on the Heaven board, “Memorable historical events in your lifetime” gives many other examples of eyewitness accounts stretching back many decades - which adds further interesting context to the discussion here. On that basis many NT narratives could be dated to within the period of living witnesses, or one generation removed (to reinforce the point I think you are making).
Yes. I had several friends who lived through the 1918 flu and were traumatized by it. And one whose parents met at the St Louis World Fair in 1904 (she was born the next year). The composition dates are within living memory.
Papyrus 46 is the earliest serving fragment of 1 Corinthians.
175 AD at the earliest
And the oldest manuscript of Caesar’s Gallic Wars is late ninth century. Nobody suggests that the date of the oldest manuscript of an ancient literary work is any indication of the age of its contents, except to say, “It must have been earlier than that.”
My grandfather lived through a large earthquake in 1935. He spoke to me about it, he spoke to my mother about it. He wrote a memoir including some memories of it written 60 years after the events.
I can't remember the details of what he said. My mother has an extremely unreliable memory in her older age. Plus he didn't write much in his memoirs.
He was an eyewitness but 90 years later we can rely on my family for any useful details even though it was clearly a significant moment in my grandfather's life.
Papyrus 46 is the earliest serving fragment of 1 Corinthians.
175 AD at the earliest
And the oldest manuscript of Caesar’s Gallic Wars is late ninth century. Nobody suggests that the date of the oldest manuscript of an ancient literary work is any indication of the age of its contents, except to say, “It must have been earlier than that.”
Nobody thinks that Caesar's Gallic Wars are a record of impossible events.
The point is not about anything other than that 1 Corinthians could have been assembled at any point before the earliest known fragment.
Papyrus 46 is the earliest serving fragment of 1 Corinthians.
175 AD at the earliest
And the oldest manuscript of Caesar’s Gallic Wars is late ninth century. Nobody suggests that the date of the oldest manuscript of an ancient literary work is any indication of the age of its contents, except to say, “It must have been earlier than that.”
Nobody thinks that Caesar's Gallic Wars are a record of impossible events.
The point is not about anything other than that 1 Corinthians could have been assembled at any point before the earliest known fragment.
Faith and assertions are all there is.
There is a very considerable volume of historical scholarship on the dating of the New Testament, way beyond what can be posted in an online forum such as this, which you show no signs of having engaged with.
Papyrus 46 is the earliest serving fragment of 1 Corinthians.
175 AD at the earliest
And the oldest manuscript of Caesar’s Gallic Wars is late ninth century. Nobody suggests that the date of the oldest manuscript of an ancient literary work is any indication of the age of its contents, except to say, “It must have been earlier than that.”
Nobody thinks that Caesar's Gallic Wars are a record of impossible events.
The point is not about anything other than that 1 Corinthians could have been assembled at any point before the earliest known fragment.
Faith and assertions are all there is.
There is a very considerable volume of historical scholarship on the dating of the New Testament, way beyond what can be posted in an online forum such as this, which you show no signs of having engaged with.
It don't need to provide proof to not believe in the historicity of impossible events.
If it is enough for you to hang your faith on, that's great. Well done.
Papyrus 46 is the earliest serving fragment of 1 Corinthians.
175 AD at the earliest
And the oldest manuscript of Caesar’s Gallic Wars is late ninth century. Nobody suggests that the date of the oldest manuscript of an ancient literary work is any indication of the age of its contents, except to say, “It must have been earlier than that.”
Nobody thinks that Caesar's Gallic Wars are a record of impossible events.
The point is not about anything other than that 1 Corinthians could have been assembled at any point before the earliest known fragment.
Faith and assertions are all there is.
There is a very considerable volume of historical scholarship on the dating of the New Testament, way beyond what can be posted in an online forum such as this, which you show no signs of having engaged with.
It don't need to provide proof to not believe in the historicity of impossible events.
If it is enough for you to hang your faith on, that's great. Well done.
He's not discussing the historicity of the events, he's pointing to the consensus on when the documents about that event were written. If you're going to disregard that then you need a good reason to do so, other than "the event described couldn't have taken place." Sure, the event may not have taken place, but that has no bearing on when scholars agree the texts were written.
If a natural disaster was just that (not to minimise the impact and horror of such events) then maybe all the relevant details have actually been remembered.
Yet if there is anything extraordinary and unexpected in a story one remembers.
For example, 49 years ago an elderly friend told me that he was in his mother’s room when she died - he was just a boy - and her last words were ‘oh, what lovely angels’. More than 100 years from the event (and although one could argue the toss about what she was experiencing), I remember how moved he was as he remembered the scene, have no reason to doubt his account, and will never forget it.
Papyrus 46 is the earliest serving fragment of 1 Corinthians.
175 AD at the earliest
And the oldest manuscript of Caesar’s Gallic Wars is late ninth century. Nobody suggests that the date of the oldest manuscript of an ancient literary work is any indication of the age of its contents, except to say, “It must have been earlier than that.”
Nobody thinks that Caesar's Gallic Wars are a record of impossible events.
The point is not about anything other than that 1 Corinthians could have been assembled at any point before the earliest known fragment.
Faith and assertions are all there is.
There is a very considerable volume of historical scholarship on the dating of the New Testament, way beyond what can be posted in an online forum such as this, which you show no signs of having engaged with.
It don't need to provide proof to not believe in the historicity of impossible events.
If it is enough for you to hang your faith on, that's great. Well done.
He's not discussing the historicity of the events, he's pointing to the consensus on when the documents about that event were written. If you're going to disregard that then you need a good reason to do so, other than "the event described couldn't have taken place." Sure, the event may not have taken place, but that has no bearing on when scholars agree the texts were written.
Scholars don't agree. That's the whole point. There are theories and there are assertions. There is no agreement because there is no evidence.
I have no trouble at all accepting the reasonable dates of the NT texts. What makes them inarguable facts? What is it about the oldest century younger manuscripts that makes those dates so?
As @Thomas Rowans says, it’s not the events per se that I’m discussing. It’s the dating of the documents. Of course, if you’ve made an a priori decision that an event is impossible - just a matter of faith and assertions - then no amount of evidence will convince you otherwise.
As @Thomas Rowans says, it’s not the events per se that I’m discussing. It’s the dating of the documents. Of course, if you’ve made an a priori decision that an event is impossible - just a matter of faith and assertions - then no amount of evidence will convince you otherwise.
I think that you'd agree that the sun stopping still and the dead rising out of graves are impossible events. Miracles are, by any normal definition, impossible events.
Papyrus 46 is the earliest serving fragment of 1 Corinthians.
175 AD at the earliest
And the oldest manuscript of Caesar’s Gallic Wars is late ninth century. Nobody suggests that the date of the oldest manuscript of an ancient literary work is any indication of the age of its contents, except to say, “It must have been earlier than that.”
Nobody thinks that Caesar's Gallic Wars are a record of impossible events.
The point is not about anything other than that 1 Corinthians could have been assembled at any point before the earliest known fragment.
Faith and assertions are all there is.
There is a very considerable volume of historical scholarship on the dating of the New Testament, way beyond what can be posted in an online forum such as this, which you show no signs of having engaged with.
It don't need to provide proof to not believe in the historicity of impossible events.
If it is enough for you to hang your faith on, that's great. Well done.
He's not discussing the historicity of the events, he's pointing to the consensus on when the documents about that event were written. If you're going to disregard that then you need a good reason to do so, other than "the event described couldn't have taken place." Sure, the event may not have taken place, but that has no bearing on when scholars agree the texts were written.
Scholars don't agree. That's the whole point. There are theories and there are assertions. There is no agreement because there is no evidence.
Scholars are in overwhelming agreement about these things. Just because some bloke needs tenure and so cooks up a theory to publish on doesn't mean that there isn't agreement.
ETA
Call the stories just that, stories. Fictions. Paul was a radical who swung from one thing to another, the gospel writers were crafting stories to live by like fan fiction or whatever, sure. But the dates are a different matter.
As @Thomas Rowans says, it’s not the events per se that I’m discussing. It’s the dating of the documents. Of course, if you’ve made an a priori decision that an event is impossible - just a matter of faith and assertions - then no amount of evidence will convince you otherwise.
I realise that of course. The content and its possibility is irrelevant, unless any of it couldn't have been written after the dates you and the consilient consensus reasonably ascribe. Which none does of course. What makes those dates inarguable fact?
As @Thomas Rowans says, it’s not the events per se that I’m discussing. It’s the dating of the documents. Of course, if you’ve made an a priori decision that an event is impossible - just a matter of faith and assertions - then no amount of evidence will convince you otherwise.
I realise that of course. The content and its possibility is irrelevant, unless any of it couldn't have been written after the dates you and the consilient consensus reasonably ascribe. Which none does of course. What makes those dates inarguable fact?
One can argue with anyone about anything. Philosophical skeptics can debate the existence of other minds. But if you're going to contravene the measured, sober judgment of hundreds of scholars of varied and no faith, then you ought to have good reasons other than "The events described couldn't have taken place." That may be true! But that has no bearing on when the texts were composed.
As @Thomas Rowans says, it’s not the events per se that I’m discussing. It’s the dating of the documents. Of course, if you’ve made an a priori decision that an event is impossible - just a matter of faith and assertions - then no amount of evidence will convince you otherwise.
I realise that of course. The content and its possibility is irrelevant, unless any of it couldn't have been written after the dates you and the consilient consensus reasonably ascribe. Which none does of course. What makes those dates inarguable fact?
One can argue with anyone about anything. Philosophical skeptics can debate the existence of other minds. But if you're going to contravene the measured, sober judgment of hundreds of scholars of varied and no faith, then you ought to have good reasons other than "The events described couldn't have taken place." That may be true! But that has no bearing on when the texts were composed.
Correct. So what is it about late C2nd manuscripts that makes the century earlier dates of composition of the originals inarguable fact?
As @Thomas Rowans says, it’s not the events per se that I’m discussing. It’s the dating of the documents. Of course, if you’ve made an a priori decision that an event is impossible - just a matter of faith and assertions - then no amount of evidence will convince you otherwise.
I realise that of course. The content and its possibility is irrelevant, unless any of it couldn't have been written after the dates you and the consilient consensus reasonably ascribe. Which none does of course. What makes those dates inarguable fact?
One can argue with anyone about anything. Philosophical skeptics can debate the existence of other minds. But if you're going to contravene the measured, sober judgment of hundreds of scholars of varied and no faith, then you ought to have good reasons other than "The events described couldn't have taken place." That may be true! But that has no bearing on when the texts were composed.
Correct. So what is it about late C2nd manuscripts that makes the century earlier dates of composition of the originals inarguable fact?
I asked the question because of what KoF said. It's more a rhetorical question, not a genuine one. Scholarly consensus is not a faith position in the way that KoF was using the phrase.
I don't have the time or inclination to go through how all of the New Testament writings are dated, but Anthony Thiselton in his commentary on First Corinthians in the New International Greek Testament Commentary lays out a good argument and good evidence for Paul being in Corinth in 52. From this, and other intertextual evidence, he arrives at a dating of between 53 and 55. This, he notes, is what most scholars agree on.
New Testament dating is a wonkish and complicated field, but it's open to anyone who is inclined.
As @Thomas Rowans says, it’s not the events per se that I’m discussing. It’s the dating of the documents. Of course, if you’ve made an a priori decision that an event is impossible - just a matter of faith and assertions - then no amount of evidence will convince you otherwise.
I realise that of course. The content and its possibility is irrelevant, unless any of it couldn't have been written after the dates you and the consilient consensus reasonably ascribe. Which none does of course. What makes those dates inarguable fact?
One can argue with anyone about anything. Philosophical skeptics can debate the existence of other minds. But if you're going to contravene the measured, sober judgment of hundreds of scholars of varied and no faith, then you ought to have good reasons other than "The events described couldn't have taken place." That may be true! But that has no bearing on when the texts were composed.
Correct. So what is it about late C2nd manuscripts that makes the century earlier dates of composition of the originals inarguable fact?
I asked the question because of what KoF said. It's more a rhetorical question, not a genuine one. Scholarly consensus is not a faith position in the way that KoF was using the phrase.
I don't have the time or inclination to go through how all of the New Testament writings are dated, but Anthony Thiselton in his commentary on First Corinthians in the New International Greek Testament Commentary lays out a good argument and good evidence for Paul being in Corinth in 52. From this, and other intertextual evidence, he arrives at a dating of between 53 and 55. This, he notes, is what most scholars agree on.
New Testament dating is a wonkish and complicated field, but it's open to anyone who is inclined.
I beg your pardon. I see that your comment was in response to @KoF.
I'm certainly not inclined to question the reasoning of a scholar like Thiselton. I give good will to the historicity of NT characters, starting with Paul, whose writings seem equidistant between Jesus and the gospel writers.
Papyrus 46 is the earliest serving fragment of 1 Corinthians.
175 AD at the earliest
And the oldest manuscript of Caesar’s Gallic Wars is late ninth century. Nobody suggests that the date of the oldest manuscript of an ancient literary work is any indication of the age of its contents, except to say, “It must have been earlier than that.”
Nobody thinks that Caesar's Gallic Wars are a record of impossible events.
The point is not about anything other than that 1 Corinthians could have been assembled at any point before the earliest known fragment.
Faith and assertions are all there is.
There is a very considerable volume of historical scholarship on the dating of the New Testament, way beyond what can be posted in an online forum such as this, which you show no signs of having engaged with.
It don't need to provide proof to not believe in the historicity of impossible events.
If it is enough for you to hang your faith on, that's great. Well done.
He's not discussing the historicity of the events, he's pointing to the consensus on when the documents about that event were written. If you're going to disregard that then you need a good reason to do so, other than "the event described couldn't have taken place." Sure, the event may not have taken place, but that has no bearing on when scholars agree the texts were written.
Scholars don't agree. That's the whole point. There are theories and there are assertions. There is no agreement because there is no evidence.
There IS evidence. It's the typical historical evidence you'd expect, to wit, texts that claim to be by eyewitnesses. You may consider it unreliable, faked or otherwise falsified evidence, but it IS evidence by all the rules of history.
You claim that certain events are impossible. Fine. I hold that God may on rare occasions intervene in the natural order of things. Yours is a faith position just as much as mine is. Both of us get our pre-existing ideas (what is or is not possible) from somewhere other than the history we're judging.
You want to argue about miracles, you need to talk philosophy or some other -ology, probably metaphysical. History will tell you only what has happened, not what CAN happen--and even the record of what HAS happened will be rejected by any reader who comes at it with presuppositions that Events A, B or C "could never happen."
So why not leave off arguing history and move to metaphysics?
I would agree on the generally accepted dating of the New Testament writings; however, human memory is fallible. The fish gets bigger; the crowd gets larger. Then there are people's experiences of ‘after-death communications’ where they perceive someone, usually a loved one, who is dead. Some see it as actually a communication, others as psychological (and it is common enough that most psychologists don't consider it pathological). These experiences can be as dreams but some people have them as waking experiences.
In the Islamic tradition, it's said that Mohammed once split the moon in half, and on another occasion, he stopped the sun to delay the sunset. As a non Muslim I find these stories to be highly unlikely, but to the faithful, they're taken on trust. The Christian tradition asserts that Jesus was born of a virgin, and rose bodily from the dead. I don't think there's any more reason to take these as historical events than the legends about Mohammed, because none of those things happen. Personally I think there is as much legend in the New Testament as there is in the Old Testament and any other of the world's holt books. I think the NT explains what Jesus meant when He claimed to have no human father, and wasn't about biology.
I agree with Brojames that in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says that many witnesses to the Resurrection were still living, so go and check it out if you want. But again, it comes down to what he meant by resurrection. The fact that the disciples went from running away and hiding at the time of the Crucifiction, to fearlessly proclaiming Christ's message, and most of them dying a martyr's death, suggests that they had some experience of Jesus' continued presence after His death. Paul explains his encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus, and it seems he went on to have many more encounters, and receive direct, personal teaching from them. But he never claimed to see a physical body with nail and spear wounds that could appear and disappear, but could still eat. Nor a body that could fly off into the clouds. They are the parts, written many years after the events, that seem pious legends to me.
That Paul lists his encounters with the Risen Christ in the same context as that of the other appearances suggests to me that all his recorded Resurrection appearances were of the same order, ie mystical events. I have a great interest in mysticism, but it has it's dangers. It's no surprise that visions of the Virgin Mary usually happen to Catholics or that such experiences rarely happen to Protestants, because Luther rejected the monastic tradition he once belonged to in favour of a religion only of the mind. That the world's religions can come up with such different interpretations of mystical experience, usually based on their own culture demands caution. I have little doubt that Paul has numerous encounters with the Risen Christ, but I have certain doubts about how objectively they can be trusted.
When I was still at school my grandfather told me that his grandmother had shown him the medal her father received for bravery in 1829.
My grandfather (b. 1900) had known a woman, who had known another woman who, as a child, had seen the highlanders fleeing from Culloden - he died in 1987.
That Paul lists his encounters with the Risen Christ in the same context as that of the other appearances suggests to me that all his recorded Resurrection appearances were of the same order, ie mystical events. I have a great interest in mysticism, but it has it's dangers. It's no surprise that visions of the Virgin Mary usually happen to Catholics or that such experiences rarely happen to Protestants, because Luther rejected the monastic tradition he once belonged to in favour of a religion only of the mind.
This is a mischaracterization of Lutheranism--and especially odd in view of our teaching on the Eucharist.
Textual, linguistic, historic and cultural scholarship that places the source texts within a timeframe of reliable and accurate reporting of events? That deal with 2000 year differences in world view?
Author, Title, Publisher (if a book)/Publication (if in a periodical), (Volume, Edition) Year, page/s.
The one person in this thread, who I know produces sources for arguments, confounds the view I hope is true.
Textual, linguistic, historic and cultural scholarship that places the source texts within a timeframe of reliable and accurate reporting of events? That deal with 2000 year differences in world view?
Author, Title, Publisher (if a book)/Publication (if in a periodical), (Volume, Edition) Year, page/s.
The one person in this thread, who I know produces sources for arguments, confounds the view I hope is true.
I’m not sure what this means. Are you saying you want a bibliography for dating each text? The Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels and the Dictionary of Paul and His Letters both provide these. They’re published by IVP. The New International Greek Testament Commentary series, the Yale Anchor Bible series, and the Hermeneia Commentary series are all good on technical stuff without getting too lost in the weeds.
The fact that the disciples went from running away and hiding at the time of the Crucifiction, to fearlessly proclaiming Christ's message, and most of them dying a martyr's death...
I think if you look into this claim more deeply, you'll find that "most" of the disciples did not, in fact, die a martyr's death. We have reasonable evidence to believe that Peter, James (Zebedee), James (Jesus' brother) and Paul did, but the rest can be said to be legendary/'tradition' at best.
I think you mean to say, "We have no absolute proof that most of them died a martyr's death." Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and all that.
To the best of my understanding, what you are calling "tradition" is in fact based on written texts from the early church fathers, just ones that are not "real time" with the events they describe--which is precisely the situation we have with almost all ancient events of any sort whatsoever, religious or non-religious. There is a gap of decades or centuries and then the appearance of the first surviving text on that subject. This is normal for history of all sorts.
Oh hell, you've triggered the geek in me again.
Look, you can divide human history (keeping in mind that "history" is defined as what we have records of!) into several broad categories. There is prehistory, which is what you get before writing. There is the age of manuscripts and inscriptions, which is what we're talking about when we discuss the Bible or really anything up to the fifteenth century. There is the age of print, which starts with Gutenberg in the Western world (not sure on the Chinese dates for block printing). And there is the digital explosion of the late 20th century, which continues today.
Each of these ages is going to produce exponentially more "historical" evidence, not only because the time-to-present is shorter (and therefore more objects such as manuscripts have a chance to survive) but because public ordinary-folks access to publishing (that is, communicating your narrative) opens up.
During the age of manuscripts, it was a rare person indeed who could publish, since this required a) a written form of their language--much of the world is still oral only; b) enough education to be able to write; c) access to the tools of writing and publication, here pen and ink and expensive papyrus or vellum, etc. most of the time; and d) whatever odd chance leads others to be interested in the single manuscript you produce enough that they choose to go to the trouble of hand-copying it. A very high bar, don't you think? And that is what you are facing when you demand contemporaneous evidence for anything biblical or early Christian, because that is what you face with the whole age of manuscripts--Caesar et al included.
The age of printing opened this up quite a bit, though it's still a pitifully small number of people who can record a story and get it out to the small reading public who could access and afford printed books. A huge improvement on what went before, but still... And we're not talking the huge print runs of the late 20th century here. We're talking maybe a few hundred, or thousand if you're very lucky. Distribution? Well, if you pass the print shop, you might walk in and pick up the new book. No Amazon in that day!
The slow improvement in publishing ability increases hugely when you get photography, audio, video, various forms of ditto machine, and then photocopying capability. Suddenly quite ordinary people with no special skills or large amounts of money are able to record their thoughts and provide them to rather large audiences. Still pitifully small by 21st century standards (try researching early Star Trek fanzines sometime. In terms of scarcity you're closer to Caesar or the apostles than to today.)
And then you get the digital explosion, where any fool can go on Twitter, or upload video to YouTube, or write a blog instantly, with no ability or access needed other than a cellphone and internet. You needn't even be able to read and write to communicate to a million people within a day. And how quickly we've grown used to the idea that we can learn whatever we want about an event in real time, watching the insurrection in the capitol and understanding what is happening even before the participants do, sometimes!
This IMHO is where you're going wrong. You are taking your 21st century assumptions (mostly unconscious) about how communication works and applying it to Jesus' day. It wasn't like that.
It just wasn't.
ETA: And since somebody wanted sources, let me recommend Walter Ong, S. J. on the subject of how communication has opened up, and what you can reasonably expect from people in any given time period. Some of his books are Literacy and Orality (wonderful) and The Presence of the Word. He's probably the foremost scholar on the subject, and I was privileged to be in some of the last courses he ever taught.
Just one quibble with Lambchopped's exposition: vellum and parchment are really expensive. Papyrus is cheap. It also doesn't survive well, outside the special climate of Egypt (and not brilliantly there). It survives much worse in book form than in scroll form; for whatever reason early Christians seem to have been enthusiastic early adopters of the book form.
Thank you. I wasn’t speaking of them in comparison to each other, more in terms of how likely a common person was to be able to purchase and use such materials. Since papyrus was both handmade and imported, I’d expect it was a bit on the expensive side for most ordinary people in comparison of what modern paper is today.
I think you mean to say, "We have no absolute proof that most of them died a martyr's death." Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and all that.
To the best of my understanding, what you are calling "tradition" is in fact based on written texts from the early church fathers, just ones that are not "real time" with the events they describe--which is precisely the situation we have with almost all ancient events of any sort whatsoever, religious or non-religious. There is a gap of decades or centuries and then the appearance of the first surviving text on that subject. This is normal for history of all sorts.
Oh hell, you've triggered the geek in me again.
I mean my responses in the friendliest of ways, including that I think you mean to say, "I've triggered the geek in me again." I'm perfectly happy with your definition of tradition in this case -- at some point, somebody somewhere wrote something down about someone who lived/something that happened long before. I just don't take the gigantic next step that assumes or claims the post-event retelling is for all intent and purposes just as good as the history of that event itself (not that you did), which is why I always appreciate it when people make the careful distinction that their faith tradition teaches yadda, yadda, yadda... instead of matter-of-fact regurgitation. Your "absence of evidence" point is duly noted: just b/c we can't absolutely know that most of the disciples died martyrs' deaths doesn't mean most didn't. The simpler point to me, however, is that we can't know. Some will accept not knowing and believe in one direction, and some will accept not knowing and believe in the other. See, I know (to a certain layperson's extent) that @pablito1954 doesn't have any information that I don't have about the martyrdom of the 12 disciples. So there's a choice happening in there somewhere that's not based on knowing. That's all. That's fine. Just say as much, then.
Look, you can divide human history (keeping in mind that "history" is defined as what we have records of!) into several broad categories... Each of these ages is going to produce exponentially more "historical" evidence, not only because the time-to-present is shorter (and therefore more objects such as manuscripts have a chance to survive) but because public ordinary-folks access to publishing (that is, communicating your narrative) opens up.
During the age of manuscripts [...]
The age of printing [...]
The slow improvement in publishing ability increases [...]
And then you get the digital explosion [...]
And how quickly we've grown used to the idea that we can learn whatever we want about an event in real time[...]
You are taking your 21st century assumptions (mostly unconscious) about how communication works and applying it to Jesus' day. It wasn't like that.
It just wasn't.
Though a musician, I'm quite fond of History as a subject. I have my lay understandings about History as many do, and I also have my opinions and biases as many do. One of my understandings is that when current historians deal with antiquity, they are most often dealing with a continuum of probability that is bounded by many of the things you mentioned in your detailed paragraphs above. Returning to my earlier post, I think that's where we are with the four cases of martyrdom I identified. Scholars have determined that there is a moderate to strong probability that they were killed for their beliefs and/or for preaching them publicly. Beyond those four, however, I think we ought to acknowledge that we slip beyond the bounds of probability, and wander into the fog of plausibility. If I'm making any assumptions, they're along those lines. Is that in part because we don't have secondary and tertiary independent contemporary sources for the same information? Sure. Is that a very high bar? I'd concede that it is. Does that mean we should simply take the 'tradition' of the early church fathers as good enough? Personally, I don't think so (and I'm not suggesting that's what you've said!).
I understand that we 21st century humans, not matter how much we may enjoy contemplating the historical, can't actually know much beyond a certain point. We don't know exactly what Jesus actually said, for example. One is perfectly able to believe that the Bible tells us that with reasonable precision, but to me that's a faith exercise. Are the Biblical accounts of Jesus' words enough to understand something about his ethos? Sure. Is that more important, at this point, than his exact Aramaic grammar? Arguably. We don't know exactly what Socrates said either, but we have had his method handed down to us, for which many are grateful, and would prefer to have more than his explicit verbiage. Maybe that's a human tendency -- appreciating the imperfect utility of something good more than the perfect understanding of its origin. Someone else's next thread topic, perhaps.
Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes used to say 'When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'
Which is ironically completely wrong. Fatally wrong - it is impossible in most circumstances to "eliminate all that is impossible" and human nature tends to fill in the gaps with story.
And then we get the situation where impossible things get explained and where whole forms of scholarship are based on supposition, interpretation and faith. Where the "absence of evidence" is somehow used as the strength of a historicity argument and tradition is used as a trump card (even when in other circumstances the same tradition is explicitly denied).
It's not just Christianity of course, the same process is happening in many faiths.
Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes used to say 'When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'
Which is ironically completely wrong. Fatally wrong - it is impossible in most circumstances to "eliminate all that is impossible" and human nature tends to fill in the gaps with story.
And then we get the situation where impossible things get explained and where whole forms of scholarship are based on supposition, interpretation and faith. Where the "absence of evidence" is somehow used as the strength of a historicity argument and tradition is used as a trump card (even when in other circumstances the same tradition is explicitly denied).
It's not just Christianity of course, the same process is happening in many faiths.
Zero probability = an impossibility. It's working out the leap from low/least probability to truth that keeps us reading.
The facts that nobody can argue with are that the earliest written materials about "the event" date from at least a century after they were supposed to have happened. How these were generated, where they came from, what they mean etc are all points of conjecture and faith.
Again, believe whatever you like. But I don't have to account for all the impossible things you say you believe in.
Comments
Many thanks for your reply. The comparison with Mormon is important. For me, the “what they did next” contrast between the two groups of earliest believers is very telling. However I agree that treacherous weeds should be avoided!
Assertions?
The OP suggestion that only a very few claimed to witness the resurrection runs into the unambiguous historical evidence that many did; as said above, the total refusal of these people to change their mind regardless of damage done to them is important.
Further, I posed a (lengthy!) question- how do you account for both the existence and beliefs of the Early Church?
They did not invent an empty tomb and meetings with the resurrected Jesus to explain a faith they already had. They developed that faith when a totally unexpected reality slapped them in the face with a huge fish.
On Good Friday, the disciples watched their dream die with Jesus- he was not the one to bring the long awaited KoG in. But a few days later they were yelling from the rooftops that the sins of humanity had been forgiven, the KoG inaugurated, and death defeated.
Why?
I don't have to account for your faith positions. Any more than I have to account for the actions of Joseph Smith.
The facts that nobody can argue with are that the earliest written materials about "the event" date from at least a century after they were supposed to have happened. How these were generated, where they came from, what they mean etc are all points of conjecture and faith.
Again, believe whatever you like. But I don't have to account for all the impossible things you say you believe in.
No. I think you are conflating the dates of available physical fragments with scholarly consensus on the date of composition of the texts. These are quite different, with some (genuine) early Pauline letters dating from around 50CE, Mark from around 70 CE and both Matthew and Luke around 90CE. Even the latest of the major NT texts - the Gospel of John - is dated to around 110CE. So all of them are dated much less than a century after the events described.
I'm not conflating anything. The only thing that can be said with any certainty is about the age of the earliest fragments that still exist.
There is no consensus on anything else. There's plenty of opinions and conjecture and faith.
But positions which are offered without evidence do not have to be rebutted with evidence. That's it.
1 Corinthians - 20-25 years after the event
Mark - 30-40 years after the event
Matthew - 55-70 years after the event
Luke - 55-70 years after the event
John - 60-80 years after the event
The older I get the shorter these time frames seem. I have spoken with people who remember participating in events over 100 years ago now. (Within some of those time frames I can find living witnesses now to events that long ago.) If they had been events I had a particular interest in I could have spoken to more.
Paul’s list of resurrection appearances in 1 Corinthians 15 has a very strong “If you don’t believe me, check got yourselves.” vibe about it which is not easily dismissed.
Papyrus 46 is the earliest serving fragment of 1 Corinthians.
175 AD at the earliest
And the current thread on the Heaven board, “Memorable historical events in your lifetime” gives many other examples of eyewitness accounts stretching back many decades - which adds further interesting context to the discussion here. On that basis many NT narratives could be dated to within the period of living witnesses, or one generation removed (to reinforce the point I think you are making).
I can't remember the details of what he said. My mother has an extremely unreliable memory in her older age. Plus he didn't write much in his memoirs.
He was an eyewitness but 90 years later we can rely on my family for any useful details even though it was clearly a significant moment in my grandfather's life.
Nobody thinks that Caesar's Gallic Wars are a record of impossible events.
The point is not about anything other than that 1 Corinthians could have been assembled at any point before the earliest known fragment.
Faith and assertions are all there is.
It don't need to provide proof to not believe in the historicity of impossible events.
If it is enough for you to hang your faith on, that's great. Well done.
He's not discussing the historicity of the events, he's pointing to the consensus on when the documents about that event were written. If you're going to disregard that then you need a good reason to do so, other than "the event described couldn't have taken place." Sure, the event may not have taken place, but that has no bearing on when scholars agree the texts were written.
Yet if there is anything extraordinary and unexpected in a story one remembers.
For example, 49 years ago an elderly friend told me that he was in his mother’s room when she died - he was just a boy - and her last words were ‘oh, what lovely angels’. More than 100 years from the event (and although one could argue the toss about what she was experiencing), I remember how moved he was as he remembered the scene, have no reason to doubt his account, and will never forget it.
Scholars don't agree. That's the whole point. There are theories and there are assertions. There is no agreement because there is no evidence.
I think that you'd agree that the sun stopping still and the dead rising out of graves are impossible events. Miracles are, by any normal definition, impossible events.
Scholars are in overwhelming agreement about these things. Just because some bloke needs tenure and so cooks up a theory to publish on doesn't mean that there isn't agreement.
ETA
Call the stories just that, stories. Fictions. Paul was a radical who swung from one thing to another, the gospel writers were crafting stories to live by like fan fiction or whatever, sure. But the dates are a different matter.
I realise that of course. The content and its possibility is irrelevant, unless any of it couldn't have been written after the dates you and the consilient consensus reasonably ascribe. Which none does of course. What makes those dates inarguable fact?
The methods for dating the texts are not based on faith positions, so one could have no possible reason to accept that proposition.
One can argue with anyone about anything. Philosophical skeptics can debate the existence of other minds. But if you're going to contravene the measured, sober judgment of hundreds of scholars of varied and no faith, then you ought to have good reasons other than "The events described couldn't have taken place." That may be true! But that has no bearing on when the texts were composed.
Why do you ask that question?
Correct. So what is it about late C2nd manuscripts that makes the century earlier dates of composition of the originals inarguable fact?
I asked the question because of what KoF said. It's more a rhetorical question, not a genuine one. Scholarly consensus is not a faith position in the way that KoF was using the phrase.
I don't have the time or inclination to go through how all of the New Testament writings are dated, but Anthony Thiselton in his commentary on First Corinthians in the New International Greek Testament Commentary lays out a good argument and good evidence for Paul being in Corinth in 52. From this, and other intertextual evidence, he arrives at a dating of between 53 and 55. This, he notes, is what most scholars agree on.
New Testament dating is a wonkish and complicated field, but it's open to anyone who is inclined.
I beg your pardon. I see that your comment was in response to @KoF.
I'm certainly not inclined to question the reasoning of a scholar like Thiselton. I give good will to the historicity of NT characters, starting with Paul, whose writings seem equidistant between Jesus and the gospel writers.
There IS evidence. It's the typical historical evidence you'd expect, to wit, texts that claim to be by eyewitnesses. You may consider it unreliable, faked or otherwise falsified evidence, but it IS evidence by all the rules of history.
What did you expect, videotape?
You claim that certain events are impossible. Fine. I hold that God may on rare occasions intervene in the natural order of things. Yours is a faith position just as much as mine is. Both of us get our pre-existing ideas (what is or is not possible) from somewhere other than the history we're judging.
You want to argue about miracles, you need to talk philosophy or some other -ology, probably metaphysical. History will tell you only what has happened, not what CAN happen--and even the record of what HAS happened will be rejected by any reader who comes at it with presuppositions that Events A, B or C "could never happen."
So why not leave off arguing history and move to metaphysics?
I agree with Brojames that in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says that many witnesses to the Resurrection were still living, so go and check it out if you want. But again, it comes down to what he meant by resurrection. The fact that the disciples went from running away and hiding at the time of the Crucifiction, to fearlessly proclaiming Christ's message, and most of them dying a martyr's death, suggests that they had some experience of Jesus' continued presence after His death. Paul explains his encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus, and it seems he went on to have many more encounters, and receive direct, personal teaching from them. But he never claimed to see a physical body with nail and spear wounds that could appear and disappear, but could still eat. Nor a body that could fly off into the clouds. They are the parts, written many years after the events, that seem pious legends to me.
That Paul lists his encounters with the Risen Christ in the same context as that of the other appearances suggests to me that all his recorded Resurrection appearances were of the same order, ie mystical events. I have a great interest in mysticism, but it has it's dangers. It's no surprise that visions of the Virgin Mary usually happen to Catholics or that such experiences rarely happen to Protestants, because Luther rejected the monastic tradition he once belonged to in favour of a religion only of the mind. That the world's religions can come up with such different interpretations of mystical experience, usually based on their own culture demands caution. I have little doubt that Paul has numerous encounters with the Risen Christ, but I have certain doubts about how objectively they can be trusted.
But I can see what you are getting at.
Textual, linguistic, historic and cultural scholarship that places the source texts within a timeframe of reliable and accurate reporting of events? That deal with 2000 year differences in world view?
Author, Title, Publisher (if a book)/Publication (if in a periodical), (Volume, Edition) Year, page/s.
The one person in this thread, who I know produces sources for arguments, confounds the view I hope is true.
I’m not sure what this means. Are you saying you want a bibliography for dating each text? The Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels and the Dictionary of Paul and His Letters both provide these. They’re published by IVP. The New International Greek Testament Commentary series, the Yale Anchor Bible series, and the Hermeneia Commentary series are all good on technical stuff without getting too lost in the weeds.
I think if you look into this claim more deeply, you'll find that "most" of the disciples did not, in fact, die a martyr's death. We have reasonable evidence to believe that Peter, James (Zebedee), James (Jesus' brother) and Paul did, but the rest can be said to be legendary/'tradition' at best.
To the best of my understanding, what you are calling "tradition" is in fact based on written texts from the early church fathers, just ones that are not "real time" with the events they describe--which is precisely the situation we have with almost all ancient events of any sort whatsoever, religious or non-religious. There is a gap of decades or centuries and then the appearance of the first surviving text on that subject. This is normal for history of all sorts.
Oh hell, you've triggered the geek in me again.
Look, you can divide human history (keeping in mind that "history" is defined as what we have records of!) into several broad categories. There is prehistory, which is what you get before writing. There is the age of manuscripts and inscriptions, which is what we're talking about when we discuss the Bible or really anything up to the fifteenth century. There is the age of print, which starts with Gutenberg in the Western world (not sure on the Chinese dates for block printing). And there is the digital explosion of the late 20th century, which continues today.
Each of these ages is going to produce exponentially more "historical" evidence, not only because the time-to-present is shorter (and therefore more objects such as manuscripts have a chance to survive) but because public ordinary-folks access to publishing (that is, communicating your narrative) opens up.
During the age of manuscripts, it was a rare person indeed who could publish, since this required a) a written form of their language--much of the world is still oral only; b) enough education to be able to write; c) access to the tools of writing and publication, here pen and ink and expensive papyrus or vellum, etc. most of the time; and d) whatever odd chance leads others to be interested in the single manuscript you produce enough that they choose to go to the trouble of hand-copying it. A very high bar, don't you think? And that is what you are facing when you demand contemporaneous evidence for anything biblical or early Christian, because that is what you face with the whole age of manuscripts--Caesar et al included.
The age of printing opened this up quite a bit, though it's still a pitifully small number of people who can record a story and get it out to the small reading public who could access and afford printed books. A huge improvement on what went before, but still... And we're not talking the huge print runs of the late 20th century here. We're talking maybe a few hundred, or thousand if you're very lucky. Distribution? Well, if you pass the print shop, you might walk in and pick up the new book. No Amazon in that day!
The slow improvement in publishing ability increases hugely when you get photography, audio, video, various forms of ditto machine, and then photocopying capability. Suddenly quite ordinary people with no special skills or large amounts of money are able to record their thoughts and provide them to rather large audiences. Still pitifully small by 21st century standards (try researching early Star Trek fanzines sometime. In terms of scarcity you're closer to Caesar or the apostles than to today.)
And then you get the digital explosion, where any fool can go on Twitter, or upload video to YouTube, or write a blog instantly, with no ability or access needed other than a cellphone and internet. You needn't even be able to read and write to communicate to a million people within a day. And how quickly we've grown used to the idea that we can learn whatever we want about an event in real time, watching the insurrection in the capitol and understanding what is happening even before the participants do, sometimes!
This IMHO is where you're going wrong. You are taking your 21st century assumptions (mostly unconscious) about how communication works and applying it to Jesus' day. It wasn't like that.
It just wasn't.
ETA: And since somebody wanted sources, let me recommend Walter Ong, S. J. on the subject of how communication has opened up, and what you can reasonably expect from people in any given time period. Some of his books are Literacy and Orality (wonderful) and The Presence of the Word. He's probably the foremost scholar on the subject, and I was privileged to be in some of the last courses he ever taught.
I mean my responses in the friendliest of ways, including that I think you mean to say, "I've triggered the geek in me again."
Snipped a bunch of paragraphs to save characters.
There's nothing quite like irony, is there.
Though a musician, I'm quite fond of History as a subject. I have my lay understandings about History as many do, and I also have my opinions and biases as many do. One of my understandings is that when current historians deal with antiquity, they are most often dealing with a continuum of probability that is bounded by many of the things you mentioned in your detailed paragraphs above. Returning to my earlier post, I think that's where we are with the four cases of martyrdom I identified. Scholars have determined that there is a moderate to strong probability that they were killed for their beliefs and/or for preaching them publicly. Beyond those four, however, I think we ought to acknowledge that we slip beyond the bounds of probability, and wander into the fog of plausibility. If I'm making any assumptions, they're along those lines. Is that in part because we don't have secondary and tertiary independent contemporary sources for the same information? Sure. Is that a very high bar? I'd concede that it is. Does that mean we should simply take the 'tradition' of the early church fathers as good enough? Personally, I don't think so (and I'm not suggesting that's what you've said!).
I understand that we 21st century humans, not matter how much we may enjoy contemplating the historical, can't actually know much beyond a certain point. We don't know exactly what Jesus actually said, for example. One is perfectly able to believe that the Bible tells us that with reasonable precision, but to me that's a faith exercise. Are the Biblical accounts of Jesus' words enough to understand something about his ethos? Sure. Is that more important, at this point, than his exact Aramaic grammar? Arguably. We don't know exactly what Socrates said either, but we have had his method handed down to us, for which many are grateful, and would prefer to have more than his explicit verbiage. Maybe that's a human tendency -- appreciating the imperfect utility of something good more than the perfect understanding of its origin. Someone else's next thread topic, perhaps.
Which is ironically completely wrong. Fatally wrong - it is impossible in most circumstances to "eliminate all that is impossible" and human nature tends to fill in the gaps with story.
And then we get the situation where impossible things get explained and where whole forms of scholarship are based on supposition, interpretation and faith. Where the "absence of evidence" is somehow used as the strength of a historicity argument and tradition is used as a trump card (even when in other circumstances the same tradition is explicitly denied).
It's not just Christianity of course, the same process is happening in many faiths.
Zero probability = an impossibility. It's working out the leap from low/least probability to truth that keeps us reading.
No! Part of St John's Gospel in the Rylands Library is earlier than that see https://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/rylands/visit/visitor-information/explore/st-john-fragment/