More on the gospels.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Spud,

People can pick out one or two details accurately, however much more they miss.
If there are multiple witnesses who notice different details you can build up a more composite picture, and that's what we get with the gospels.

Just like you do at a magic show then. 

[Roses]

People can pick out one or two details accurately, however much more they miss.
If there are multiple witnesses who notice different details you can build up a more composite picture, and that's what we get with the gospels.

Even if they were witnesses, it doesn't mean that what they claimed to have seen had any credibility. It is much more likely the gospel writers created the stories surrounding Jesus well after he was dead and gone.

[jeremyp]

If there are multiple witnesses who notice different details you can build up a more composite picture, and that's what we get with the gospels.

No it isn’t. There’s no evidence that the gospels are based on any eye witness accounts.

[Rosindubh]

Hi jeremyp,   Thanks for your post.
Surely the forensic style of the text itself and its accurate historical and geograhical detail is evidence that much of the Fourth Gospel is based on eye witness reports?

In particular, chapters 18 and 19 appear to be the personal eye witness report of the writer himself - not the Beloved Disciple (as alleged by Irenaeus), but a Roman official resident in Jerusalem at that time. 

Each of the other narratives appear to based on a specific witness, eg Nathanael in the case of the two miracles at Cana, Nicodemus in the case of information about the Pharisees, etc

God bless

[Walt Zingmatilder]

As long as those questioning the total corpus of the gospel apply there theories to the total corpus of history.I have no problem with them.I doubt though they are that rigourous or in fact particularly bothered about history.Those who have spoken about Bronze age goatherders and old books certainly aren't.........Modern age turdherders.

[Spud]

No it isn’t. There’s no evidence that the gospels are based on any eye witness accounts.

Not even John 20:4?

Even if they were witnesses, it doesn't mean that what they claimed to have seen had any credibility. It is much more likely the gospel writers created the stories surrounding Jesus well after he was dead and gone.

The likelihood of that is also zero, as most of them were martyred, and people don't die for something they know to be a lie.

All the possible explanations, have likelihoods of zero.

[Gordon]

The likelihood of that is also zero, as most of them were martyred, and people don't die for something they know to be a lie.

Just no, Spud: nobody has said that those martyred, or who knowingly killed themselves, for a cause think their cause to be a lie - they may well have sincerely believed their cause to be true and/or just.

That may say something about them, but it says nothing about the truth or justness of what they believed.

[Gordon]

Hi jeremyp,   Thanks for your post.
Surely the forensic style of the text itself and its accurate historical and geograhical detail is evidence that much of the Fourth Gospel is based on eye witness reports?

In particular, chapters 18 and 19 appear to be the personal eye witness report of the writer himself - not the Beloved Disciple (as alleged by Irenaeus), but a Roman official resident in Jerusalem at that time. 

Each of the other narratives appear to based on a specific witness, eg Nathanael in the case of the two miracles at Cana, Nicodemus in the case of information about the Pharisees, etc

God bless

Not sure what you mean by this part of the NT being 'forensic', but even if some of reports in it are geographically accurate or referred to real people, and could reasonably be regarded as being true, albeit trivially true since it wouldn't matter much if they were false, but even if these reports are true it doesn't follow that other related reports that claimed supernatural miracles can also be reasonably regarded as being true, since what is being claimed now isn't trivial.

For example: it is true that, as usual, I took my 3 year-old granddaughter swimming last Wednesday morning, though it wouldn't matter much if I was lying, but even if you accepted the truth of that claim I doubt that if I also said that while swimming I saw the ghost of a dead relative you'd accept that just as easily as you'd accept my claim to have gone swimming. I'd imagine that you'd at least consider that I could be honestly wrong or could be telling a lie, and that for the claim of seeing a ghost you'd require a higher standard of evidence than you'd accept for a trivial claim of having gone swimming. 

[Spud]

Just no, Spud: nobody has said that those martyred, or who knowingly killed themselves, for a cause think their cause to be a lie - they may well have sincerely believed their cause to be true and/or just.

That may say something about them, but it says nothing about the truth or justness of what they believed.

I was replying to floo's comment that the authors made the stories up. If that was the case then they did not believe their stories to be true, and would not maintain those stories' truth when under duress.
Your comment takes the view that they were mistaken - that Jesus somehow tricked them into thinking they witnessed miracles. This is equally unlikely, as in order for him to deceive the masses the disciples would have had to be complicit in the deception, which means they would know it was fake and then you are back to the answer I gave floo. The Indian magician berational mentioned wasn't able to perform his tricks without help from his assistants. Same would apply for Jesus.

[Gordon]

Your comment takes the view that they were mistaken - that Jesus somehow tricked them into thinking they witnessed miracles. This is equally unlikely, as in order for him to deceive the masses the disciples would have had to be complicit in the deception, which means they would know it was fake and then you are back to the answer I gave floo. The Indian magician berational mentioned wasn't able to perform his tricks without help from his assistants. Same would apply for Jesus.

Nope: I'm not making assumptions about tricks or mistakes.

My position is simply this: since those, such as yourself, who are advancing the proposal that the NT accounts of miracles involving Jesus are factually true based on the anecdotal accounts in the NT seem unable to show how they've assessed the risks of mistakes or lies, which are known human traits, in these accounts so that these risks are shown to be minimal, then I can see no basis to conclude that the accounts or miracles in the NT are a serious proposition - since, as things stand, these accounts seem to be indistinguishable from fiction.

The burden of proof remains yours, Spud. 

[Roses]

I was replying to floo's comment that the authors made the stories up. If that was the case then they did not believe their stories to be true, and would not maintain those stories' truth when under duress.
Your comment takes the view that they were mistaken - that Jesus somehow tricked them into thinking they witnessed miracles. This is equally unlikely, as in order for him to deceive the masses the disciples would have had to be complicit in the deception, which means they would know it was fake and then you are back to the answer I gave floo. The Indian magician berational mentioned wasn't able to perform his tricks without help from his assistants. Same would apply for Jesus.

I am of the opinion the gospel writers exaggerated the life of Jesus to fit in with the so called 'prophecies'. All these centuries later it is hard to sort out the wheat from the chaff where they are concerned. But I am pretty certain the things recorded about Jesus, which aren't credible, didn't actually happen. Matthew 27v 51-53 claims the moment Jesus died the curtain in the Temple was torn, and tombs of the faithful were opened and they came back to life. One has to be pretty gullible to believe that to be true! 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Spud,

The likelihood of that is also zero, as most of them were martyred, and people don't die for something they know to be a lie.

But lots of people over the ages have martyred themselves for belief and causes they sincerely thought to be true but weren’t true at all. Relying on the motivation of the people concerned doesn’t help you at all.
 

All the possible explanations, have likelihoods of zero.

Of course they haven’t. There are several I can think of right off the bat, and you have no possible basis to assert them (and any others I haven’t thought of) to have a likelihood of zero. You might judge them unlikely, difficult to imagine, hard to pull off etc but zero is hugely to overreach. You know all this already though because you’re well aware that other religious faiths have miracle stories of their own that you find to be daft but that have also subsequently been written down in various accounts, that people have sincerely believed, that people have martyred themselves for etc. The exceptionalism of “OK, there’s the same epistemic basis for those ones as for mine but they’re false and mine are true” is a non-starter.

Why not be honest about this. Just say something like, “yes I have no frame of reference to evaluate a claim of the supernatural, and the evidence I have to support it is of such flimsiness that I reject it for similar claims from other traditions, but I choose to believe it as an article of faith anyway”? No-one would have a problem with that – it’d be a personal belief of no concern to anyone else. When you insist on overreaching into asserting it to be an objective claim of fact for the rest of us though, then you’ll keep crashing and burning as you have here. Sorry, but there it is.       
     

[Spud]

Gordon,
Mistakes.... Of course- I forgot that possibility. The obvious answer is that if enough people see something, you can be fairly certain it happened. We are not talking about ghosts, by the way, but something that could be touched. So if everyone at the pool had seen your dead relative and touched him, and was willing to confirm that under cross-examination, I would be more likely to believe it. What would convince me would be if those peoples' lives were changed, in the sense that they now know there is life after death. Also if there was some more evidence, such as your dead relative's grave was dug up and found empty.
With the disciples, you can as good as rule out mistakes because plenty of people would have exposed the mistakes, saying for example that they were drunk at the time and hallucinated. Jairus could have done that sort of thing.

Littleroses,
It's a logical thing to think, but had the disciples made the story to fit the prophecies that would come under the lies category, which has been dealt with.

Blue hillside,
See the above reply to Gordon re: the mistakes theory.

[Roses]

Gordon,
Mistakes.... Of course- I forgot that possibility. The obvious answer is that if enough people see something, you can be fairly certain it happened. We are not talking about ghosts, by the way, but something that could be touched. So if everyone at the pool had seen your dead relative and touched him, and was willing to confirm that under cross-examination, I would be more likely to believe it. What would convince me would be if those peoples' lives were changed, in the sense that they now know there is life after death. Also if there was some more evidence, such as your dead relative's grave was dug up and found empty.
With the disciples, you can as good as rule out mistakes because plenty of people would have exposed the mistakes, saying for example that they were drunk at the time and hallucinated. Jairus could have done that sort of thing.

Littleroses,
It's a logical thing to think, but had the disciples made the story to fit the prophecies that would come under the lies category, which has been dealt with.

Blue hillside,
See the above reply to Gordon re: the mistakes theory.

Some people still claim the world is flat, others claim to have seen fairies. If something is not credible, like a truly dead person coming back to life, or the miracles it is claimed Jesus performed, they are either lying or very gullible.

[Gordon]

Gordon,
Mistakes.... Of course- I forgot that possibility. The obvious answer is that if enough people see something, you can be fairly certain it happened.

Then you've set the evidence bar so low as to be invisible: you seem unduly gullible when it comes to Christianity.

We are not talking about ghosts, by the way, but something that could be touched.

So the story goes, perhaps - but how could you ever know this?

So if everyone at the pool had seen your dead relative and touched him, and was willing to confirm that under cross-examination, I would be more likely to believe it.

What would be the basis of this cross-examination in terms of the criteria that would convince the jury that there was indeed a ghost, as opposed to those claiming there was making a mistake or lying?

What would convince me would be if those peoples' lives were changed, in the sense that they now know there is life after death.

So you'd discount that people can be motivated by something that inspires them despite them having no basis to establish the truth of what inspires them? That seems to be a recipe for treating personal biases and preferences as facts, which will be problematic for you where others hold the same personal convictions about other religious superstitions.

Also if there was some more evidence, such as your dead relative's grave was dug up and found empty.

So, are you suggesting that every ghost claim can be resolved by exhumation? If so, that does seem a tad OTT since it would imply illegal activity and a possibly a conspiracy among undertakers.
 

With the disciples, you can as good as rule out mistakes because plenty of people would have exposed the mistakes, saying for example that they were drunk at the time and hallucinated. Jairus could have done that sort of thing.

This sounds like special pleading coupled with hyper-gullibility.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Spud,

Mistakes.... Of course- I forgot that possibility. The obvious answer is that if enough people see something, you can be fairly certain it happened.

Like a glamorous assistant being sawn in two on stage in front of an audience you mean?

We are not talking about ghosts, by the way, but something that could be touched. So if everyone at the pool had seen your dead relative and touched him, and was willing to confirm that under cross-examination, I would be more likely to believe it.

Except of course deep coma (to take just one possibility) looks just like death, and even a modern person wouldn’t be able to tell the difference without tests and machines. Now think of a person some 2,000 years ago with the level of knowledge he’d have had. Now think of that person at a distance, rather than close to so he couldn’t examine or even necessarily identify with certainty the body at all. It’s all getting a bit thin isn’t it.     

What would convince me would be if those peoples' lives were changed, in the sense that they now know there is life after death.

Then is shouldn’t. That people sometimes change their lives because they believe something to be true tells you nothing at all about whether or not it actually is true. All you need for that to happen is the belief, nothing more

Also if there was some more evidence, such as your dead relative's grave was dug up and found empty.

Ah, the reveal. Just like, say, when the curtain is removed to that the magician is now out of the box?
 

With the disciples, you can as good as rule out mistakes because plenty of people would have exposed the mistakes, saying for example that they were drunk at the time and hallucinated. Jairus could have done that sort of thing.

Don’t be daft. Someone being sincerely mistaken doesn’t suddenly become not mistaken for no good reason. And even if he did, if Fred though he saw someone dead and then alive and he told someone else who told someone else etc until eventually decades later someone wrote it down it would still be written down the same way even if Fred had long since changed his mind.   

Blue hillside,
See the above reply to Gordon re: the mistakes theory.

I have. Can you see where you’ve gone wrong again?

[jeremyp]

Hi jeremyp,   Thanks for your post.
Surely the forensic style of the text itself

What is forensic about the style of the text? And which text? Each gospel has its own style (or so I have read - I don't read Koine Greek myself).

and its accurate historical and geograhical detail is evidence that much of the Fourth Gospel is based on eye witness reports?

Have you read Bernard Cornwall's Sharpe novels? Or the Cadfael novels? All rich in accurate historical detail but fiction, nonetheless.

In particular, chapters 18 and 19 appear to be the personal eye witness report of the writer himself - not the Beloved Disciple (as alleged by Irenaeus), but a Roman official resident in Jerusalem at that time.

How so? If they were an eye witness account, the eye witness was with Jesus at the garden of Gethsemene, in both Annas and Caiaphas's houses, with Peter as he denied Jesus three times, in Pilate's house when Jesus was there and present at the crucifixion. That doesn't seem likely to me.

I do agree that John's account is more credible than the synoptic accounts. For a start, it all takes place on the day before the first day of Passover not on the first day of Passover when prominent Jewish priests would have been observing the Sabbath rather than holding trials  but that doesn't mean it is or isn't fiction.

[bluehillside Retd.]

A quick thought experiment for you Spud,

Imagine if you will that you were an alien who’d flown far cross the universe and landed on Earth. You’d never heard of Christianity, but there to meet you was Spud. Once the formalities were complete, (a cup of tea and a nice garibaldi biscuit for example) you then said, “So tell me Spud, why do you believe that a man/god existed who was alive, then dead for a bit then alive again?”

And then Spud laid it out for you: “Well, we have ancient texts see with accounts from before people could read and write and had only the most basic medical knowledge. And somebody said he saw it happen, and that person told his pal and so on until eventually it was written down. Only it was written down several times by different authors in texts that draw heavily on the prior ones, but that change some of the details along the way. Oh, and all this happened when numerous miracle stories were accepted in the absence of more rigorous explanations, and the death/re-birth one in particular cropped up in countless other faith systems too.”

Now let’s say too that you were a well-brought up alien who didn’t want to cause offence, so rather than burst out laughing instead you said something like, “but that all seems very flimsy to me Spud, as I’m sure it does to you when the same evidence is used to support miracle stories from different faiths that you don’t think are true (nice biscuit by the way). I’m not saying that your story necessarily isn’t true you understand but why on Earth (see what I did there?) would you think that it is true given all the other naturalistic possible explanations?”

And you would say something like, “but the chances of all those other ones are zero, albeit that I have no way to demonstrate that.”

Now I ask you – as an honest alien and on that basis would you think, “Oh OK then, sounds fair enough to me”, or would you sneak another garibaldi and back away thanking Spud profusely but suddenly remembering another appointment you were already late for, gosh is that the time already etc”? 

Be honest now.       

[Spud]

Gordon,
Yes I know my last post looks hyper gullible. However, the gospels anticipate the accusation of mistakes, being very clear that Jesus was fully dead, and that he was really alive again. If they were "honestly mistaken" then they lied about the details they give, and thus would have broken under torture.

[Roses]

Gordon,
Yes I know my last post looks hyper gullible. However, the gospels anticipate the accusation of mistakes, being very clear that Jesus was fully dead, and that he was really alive again. If they were "honestly mistaken" then they lied about the details they give, and thus would have broken under torture.

You don't know that they were tortured. Just because something is stated in the Bible doesn't mean it is true.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Spud,

Yes I know my last post looks hyper gullible. However, the gospels anticipate the accusation of mistakes, being very clear that Jesus was fully dead, and that he was really alive again. If they were "honestly mistaken" then they lied about the details they give, and thus would have broken under torture.

Ah, the old "this book is true because this book says it's true" line. Haven't seen that for a while.

Have a garibaldi.

[Gordon]

Gordon,
Yes I know my last post looks hyper gullible. However, the gospels anticipate the accusation of mistakes, being very clear that Jesus was fully dead, and that he was really alive again. If they were "honestly mistaken" then they lied about the details they give, and thus would have broken under torture.

This post also looks hyper-gullible, Spud, as well as involving circularity and argument from authority, topped off by a dash of special pleading.

[Spud]

The fact of the matter is, the gospels record many miracles and were written within the lifetimes of the people who met Jesus. If the gospels were mistaken, they would have been refuted.

[Aruntraveller]

The fact of the matter is, the gospels record many miracles and were written within the lifetimes of the people who met Jesus. If the gospels were mistaken, they would have been refuted.

Really, have you seen how easy it is for Trump to get away with telling porkies. He is frequently refuted and yet some people believe him.

I see naïve people. Everywhere.

[Gordon]

The fact of the matter is, the gospels record many miracles and were written within the lifetimes of the people who met Jesus.

Possibly, but not certainly: and even if they were that says nothing about whether what they recorded was true or that anecdotal claims can ever be sufficient evidence for a miracle, given the risks of human artifice.

If the gospels were mistaken, they would have been refuted.

Given the importance of these miracle claims as articles of religious faith, and given that they were written by and have been subsequently maintained in use by supporters of Jesus, that would seem unlikely. In any event refuting these anecdotal miracle claims can be done today by simply pointing out that since the risks of mistake or lies can't be excluded there is no sound basis to consider these miracle claims as being historical facts - which is why more nuanced Christians treat them as articles of personal faith.