New Evidence the Gospels were Based on Eyewitness Accounts

[jeremyp]

I've done a bit more delving on the people's names thing and it falls apart.

The argument is that the names in the gospels match to the known most popular names in Palestine at the time - the inference being that there is a clear independent data source to compare to.

Williams gives his source - academic work entitled 'LEXICON OF JEWISH NAMES IN LATE ANTIQUITY, PART 1'.

Indeed this source exists - as luck would have it I've just downloaded a copy (the joys of academic life). The problem for Williams is that the name source for working out the popularity of names for this academic research is ... err ... the bible, including, of course the gospels. So in fact all we have here is a correlation between the popularity of names in the bible with a  paper which looks at the popularity of names largely in the bible.

It would be pretty astonishing if the main data source didn't correlate with ... err ... itself.

That wasn't his only source though. He also listed some stats from ossuary inscriptions. I'll have to go back and watch that bit again to see if the correlation works for ossuaries.

[jeremyp]

That wasn't his only source though. He also listed some stats from ossuary inscriptions. I'll have to go back and watch that bit again to see if the correlation works for ossuaries.

The above being said, it doesn't say much for his scholarship credentials if he failed to notice that his data set partly depended on itself. It's a pretty egregious error.

[Spud]

I've done a bit more delving on the people's names thing and it falls apart.

The argument is that the names in the gospels match to the known most popular names in Palestine at the time - the inference being that there is a clear independent data source to compare to.

Williams gives his source - academic work entitled 'LEXICON OF JEWISH NAMES IN LATE ANTIQUITY, PART 1'.

Indeed this source exists - as luck would have it I've just downloaded a copy (the joys of academic life). The problem for Williams is that the name source for working out the popularity of names for this academic research is ... err ... the bible, including, of course the gospels. So in fact all we have here is a correlation between the popularity of names in the bible with a  paper which looks at the popularity of names largely in the bible.

It would be pretty astonishing if the main data source didn't correlate with ... err ... itself.

The most popular male name amongst Palestinian Jews at the time was Simon/Simeon: 243 instances, 8 of which were in the NT, 29 in Josephus, 59 in ossuaries, and 72 in the dead sea scrolls.

In the table of the top 11 male names among Palestinian Jews, quoted from Bauckham, "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" (see 9 minutes in), each name occurs between 1 and 8 times in the NT, out of total numbers of occurrances between 40 and 243. So I shouldn't worry too much about the source including NT names.

[Spud]

"Son of Man" seems to have at least a couple of meanings. The first, used in Aramaic and Hebrew, seems to be a way of avoiding saying "I" directly, just as anyone of us might say "Yours truly had a really rough night - I'm sure the town foxes had a better sleep". The other sense, which Jesus may or may not  have used to refer to himself, occurs typically at Matthew 16:27, and obviously refers back to the Son of Man figure coming in judgment in the Book of Daniel. Since in neither sense is it a name, I don't see why the writers of the epistles or the early church fathers should have used the term much - by that time Paul and had decided that he was Jesus Messiah, Lord and Saviour, and the church fathers had decided that he was God the Son, second person of the Trinity.

It occurs firstly in Ezekiel, whom God calls "Son of man", when speaking to him. Daniel sees in his vision, 'one like a son of man' - hence, one like Ezekiel.

So Jesus is describing himself as like 'Ezekiel', which is probably to do with the role he played in prophesying the invasion of Israel by the Babylonians, which is mirrored by Jesus who is prophesying AD 70.

[Spud]

This chap may say this but on what basis should we regard him (or any Christian apologist) as being authoritative?

Don't be silly: in general conversation about politics if you said 'Boris' to most people in the UK they would know who you were referring to - but using a shortened version like this would make his lies no more or less believable than if you used his full moniker. Apparently 'Boris' refers to himself by another of his forenames when dealing with family and friends - so what?

If you mention just the forenames of made-up characters many people will be able to identify them and go on to describe them as having certain attributes even though they are wholly fictitious - try it with 'Harry' or 'Sherlock'.

Boris isn't a common name, neither is Sherlock. So neither have to be disambiguated by adding their other name. I had to think which Harry you meant, because I don't read or watch Harry Potter.

The four gospel narrators initially disambiguate Jesus' name, eg Matthew 1:1, Mk 1:9, Lk 1:32, Jn 1:45.

From then on, the narrators call him just, Jesus, or 'he', since the reader knows who he's talking about. However, in quoted speech, his name is qualified. Jesus was a common name, so the other characters would have had to qualify it when talking about him or to him.

I think the point is that someone writing a long time later in a neighbouring country, would not necessarily have known that 'Jesus' was such a common name, and therefore would not have been so thorough in the disambiguation of his name in quoted speech.

The same with Simon, which is also disambiguated because it was a popular name. Simon Peter, Simon the Leper, Simon the Tanner, etc.

If the narrators did write their gospels while outside Israel and some time later, we can infer that they would not have written this way unless they were recording what was actually said.

[Gordon]

Boris isn't a common name, neither is Sherlock. So neither have to be disambiguated by adding their other name. I had to think which Harry you meant, because I don't read or watch Harry Potter.

Come to Scotland, have a conversation with someone about politics and mention 'Nicola'.

The four gospel narrators initially disambiguate Jesus' name, eg Matthew 1:1, Mk 1:9, Lk 1:32, Jn 1:45.

From then on, the narrators call him just, Jesus, or 'he', since the reader knows who he's talking about. However, in quoted speech, his name is qualified. Jesus was a common name, so the other characters would have had to qualify it when talking about him or to him.

I think the point is that someone writing a long time later in a neighbouring country, would not necessarily have known that 'Jesus' was such a common name, and therefore would not have been so thorough in the disambiguation of his name in quoted speech.

The same with Simon, which is also disambiguated because it was a popular name. Simon Peter, Simon the Leper, Simon the Tanner, etc.

So what? Bearing in mind the character of 'Jesus' is the key player in the story, had they called him 'Big J', or even just 'J', the reference would be clear - but no matter how they referred to him that alone would not make any anecdotal claims about him true.

If the narrators did write their gospels while outside Israel and some time later, we can infer that they would not have written this way unless they were recording what was actually said.

You can't infer that at all: it could just as easily be fictitious propaganda to convince the gullible, and all you can really infer that they wrote it that way because that is the particular story they wanted to tell: but that doesn't mean that the story is free of mistakes or lies, and then there are the additional problems of uncertain and timely provenance, along with possible bias.

In other words the NT comes with risks attached, and without a basis to address and negate these risks the key details involving Jesus being divine, doing miracles and being resurrected etc are indistinguishable from fiction.   

[jeremyp]

So I shouldn't worry too much about the source including NT names.

Yes we should. The fact that he makes the basic mistake of counting the New Testament names twice is a sign of poor scholarship. It doesn't necessarily mean he is wrong, but it is an indicator that he is careless about his methodology. It means we c an't take what he says at face value.

[ProfessorDavey]

Yes we should. The fact that he makes the basic mistake of counting the New Testament names twice is a sign of poor scholarship. It doesn't necessarily mean he is wrong, but it is an indicator that he is careless about his methodology. It means we c an't take what he says at face value.

Indeed - and there is a further problem with Williams' argument relating to another of the major sources, Josephus.

Williams claim is that because the gospels weren't written in palestine and weren't written at the time they must have been based on eye witness accounts due to the 'correct' use of names. But along with the NT itself the other major source of the names information is Josephus which also wasn't written in palestine and indeed was written for the communities which likely also included the writers of the gospels. And indeed written at very similar times.

So in reality the gospel 'correlation' here is largely with itself and another document written at the same time and in a similar distant location to the actual place the events took place.

[ProfessorDavey]

Boris isn't a common name, neither is Sherlock. So neither have to be disambiguated by adding their other name. I had to think which Harry you meant, because I don't read or watch Harry Potter.

The four gospel narrators initially disambiguate Jesus' name, eg Matthew 1:1, Mk 1:9, Lk 1:32, Jn 1:45.

From then on, the narrators call him just, Jesus, or 'he', since the reader knows who he's talking about. However, in quoted speech, his name is qualified. Jesus was a common name, so the other characters would have had to qualify it when talking about him or to him.

I think the point is that someone writing a long time later in a neighbouring country, would not necessarily have known that 'Jesus' was such a common name, and therefore would not have been so thorough in the disambiguation of his name in quoted speech.

The same with Simon, which is also disambiguated because it was a popular name. Simon Peter, Simon the Leper, Simon the Tanner, etc.

If the narrators did write their gospels while outside Israel and some time later, we can infer that they would not have written this way unless they were recording what was actually said.

I'm sorry this is just non-sense and also the nonsense that Williams uses.

If you are writing a narrative and you are telling stories that include more than one person with the same name you will need to do something to clarify which one you are talking about to make the text make sense. It tells us nothing about the accuracy of the narrative whatsoever.

And I suspect this is merely a requirement for the narrative to make sense - I doubt the people at the time did the same. Do you really think that someone in 1stC Palestine would have have walked up to someone they knew and said 'Good morning Simon the Tanner' - of course not, they'd simply say 'Good morning Simon'.

[jeremyp]

Indeed - and there is a further problem with Williams' argument relating to another of the major sources, Josephus.

Williams claim is that because the gospels weren't written in palestine and weren't written at the time they must have been based on eye witness accounts due to the 'correct' use of names. But along with the NT itself the other major source of the names information is Josephus which also wasn't written in palestine and indeed was written for the communities which likely also included the writers of the gospels. And indeed written at very similar times.

So in reality the gospel 'correlation' here is largely with itself and another document written at the same time and in a similar distant location to the actual place the events took place.

There are claims that Luke knew Josephus and that he got some of his historical information from Josephus' writing. If that is the case, then the Gospels aren't independent of Josephus.

[Outrider]

I seem to recall that one of the signs that someone is lying is that they embellish otherwise unimportant elements of the tale, and sell short the focal issues - having precised details of exact names of individuals might be considered to be an example of trying to hard to establish authenticity...

O.

[ProfessorDavey]

There are claims that Luke knew Josephus and that he got some of his historical information from Josephus' writing. If that is the case, then the Gospels aren't independent of Josephus.

Which was exactly my thought that the two may have borrowed from each other.

[ProfessorDavey]

I seem to recall that one of the signs that someone is lying is that they embellish otherwise unimportant elements of the tale, and sell short the focal issues - having precised details of exact names of individuals might be considered to be an example of trying to hard to establish authenticity...

O.

A view which Williams completely ignores.

His argument is effectively - if they got names right, and places and knew the type of tree that grows in the area qv what they say about miracles must be correct too. That is errant nonsense of the first order.

There are countless 'legends' which do exactly the same in terms of small details of places people, times of year etc etc that are much more easily verified than for the gospels. Yet that provides no credible evidence that an incredible and implausible claim in those legends is actually true.

And while I'm not sure I'd describe it as lying - it is an excellent approach if you want to persuade someone that something is true to embed it in narrative that is inherently plausible.

Once you strip away the clunky and non justified argument of Williams that effectively says because the gospel writers were correct that sycamore trees grew in Jericho they must have also been correct that Jesus made dead people come alive again, what are you left with. Well the notion that the gospels are probably based on accounts of events that took place in a particular time (early 1stC) and place (Palestine) that arose at that time and place but were not written down in a form we have until decades later in a different place. Big deal - we can all agree on that - but none of that provides one iota of justification that the claimed miracles etc in the gospels are true.

And there is, of course, the elephant in the room. Williams argument is all about the credibility of eye witnesses. So using his argument that because they were right about trees and names etc their witness of miracles must be correct too why on earth didn't those eye witnesses (the people in that time and place) accept the miracles, which we know they didn't as Christianity failed to gain a foothold in that time and place. The actual eye witnesses, the people around at the time (by and large) rejected the claims in the gospels. Had they accepted them they would have surely have rejected Judaism and accepted Christianity - but they didn't.

And Christianity is alone amongst the major religions in failing to persuade those about in the time and place of its forming that their religion was correct. 

[Outrider]

A view which Williams completely ignores.

His argument is effectively - if they got names right, and places and knew the type of tree that grows in the area qv what they say about miracles must be correct too. That is errant nonsense of the first order.

I'm not sure it's even that robust, given that there is no way of being definitive on whether the names are genuine or not - it seems as though the argument is that because the names are plausible there must be a degree of truth to the claim.

O.

[ProfessorDavey]

I'm not sure it's even that robust, given that there is no way of being definitive on whether the names are genuine or not - it seems as though the argument is that because the names are plausible there must be a degree of truth to the claim.

O.

Indeed - which brings me back to my necessary, but not sufficient statement. Were the details of names, places, trees etc to be all wrong (or not plausible) then we wouldn't get over the necessary hurdle. But just because they are right (or plausible) that provides no justification that the stories or claims are true.

The world is full of works of fiction which are meticulously accurate in every detail of place, time, people etc - yet are entirely works of fiction.

[Spud]

Indeed - and there is a further problem with Williams' argument relating to another of the major sources, Josephus.

Williams claim is that because the gospels weren't written in palestine and weren't written at the time they must have been based on eye witness accounts due to the 'correct' use of names. But along with the NT itself the other major source of the names information is Josephus which also wasn't written in palestine and indeed was written for the communities which likely also included the writers of the gospels. And indeed written at very similar times.

So in reality the gospel 'correlation' here is largely with itself and another document written at the same time and in a similar distant location to the actual place the events took place.

The data for ossuaries and the dead sea scrolls is significant on its own, though: For Simon, ranking first: NT - 8; Ossuaries - 59; DSS - 72

[Gordon]

The data for ossuaries and the dead sea scrolls is significant on its own, though: For Simon, ranking first: NT - 8; Ossuaries - 59; DSS - 72

In what way significant?

[Spud]

A view which Williams completely ignores.

His argument is effectively - if they got names right, and places and knew the type of tree that grows in the area qv what they say about miracles must be correct too. That is errant nonsense of the first order.

There are countless 'legends' which do exactly the same in terms of small details of places people, times of year etc etc that are much more easily verified than for the gospels. Yet that provides no credible evidence that an incredible and implausible claim in those legends is actually true.

And while I'm not sure I'd describe it as lying - it is an excellent approach if you want to persuade someone that something is true to embed it in narrative that is inherently plausible.

Once you strip away the clunky and non justified argument of Williams that effectively says because the gospel writers were correct that sycamore trees grew in Jericho they must have also been correct that Jesus made dead people come alive again, what are you left with. Well the notion that the gospels are probably based on accounts of events that took place in a particular time (early 1stC) and place (Palestine) that arose at that time and place but were not written down in a form we have until decades later in a different place. Big deal - we can all agree on that - but none of that provides one iota of justification that the claimed miracles etc in the gospels are true.

And there is, of course, the elephant in the room. Williams argument is all about the credibility of eye witnesses. So using his argument that because they were right about trees and names etc their witness of miracles must be correct too why on earth didn't those eye witnesses (the people in that time and place) accept the miracles, which we know they didn't as Christianity failed to gain a foothold in that time and place. The actual eye witnesses, the people around at the time (by and large) rejected the claims in the gospels. Had they accepted them they would have surely have rejected Judaism and accepted Christianity - but they didn't.

And Christianity is alone amongst the major religions in failing to persuade those about in the time and place of its forming that their religion was correct.

He does state that it's not conclusive proof.

In what way significant?

Simon is a common name in the NT (8 people) and is common in the extra-NT sources.

[Spud]

I'm sorry this is just non-sense and also the nonsense that Williams uses.

If you are writing a narrative and you are telling stories that include more than one person with the same name you will need to do something to clarify which one you are talking about to make the text make sense. It tells us nothing about the accuracy of the narrative whatsoever.

And I suspect this is merely a requirement for the narrative to make sense - I doubt the people at the time did the same. Do you really think that someone in 1stC Palestine would have have walked up to someone they knew and said 'Good morning Simon the Tanner' - of course not, they'd simply say 'Good morning Simon'.

You miss a second point he makes: the disambiguation of common names is not just for intratextual clarification. It occurs in dialogue where there are lots of people present. When blind Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus and a crowd is present, he adds Son of David. If the author made it up, he was clever enough to anticipate that there were possibly other people called Jesus in the crowd, and that in real life the man would have added something to distinguish Jesus from any others with that name. Not just in this example, but this happens in every similar situation recorded. I may be wrong, but I wouldn't expect an author who invented the story to think to do this.

[Walter]

Indeed - which brings me back to my necessary, but not sufficient statement. Were the details of names, places, trees etc to be all wrong (or not plausible) then we wouldn't get over the necessary hurdle. But just because they are right (or plausible) that provides no justification that the stories or claims are true.

The world is full of works of fiction which are meticulously accurate in every detail of place, time, people etc - yet are entirely works of fiction.

as in the ITV long running drama Coronation Street

( which I thought was a documentary for many years ) 😉

[Roses]

You miss a second point he makes: the disambiguation of common names is not just for intratextual clarification. It occurs in dialogue where there are lots of people present. When blind Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus and a crowd is present, he adds Son of David. If the author made it up, he was clever enough to anticipate that there were possibly other people called Jesus in the crowd, and that in real life the man would have added something to distinguish Jesus from any others with that name. Not just in this example, but this happens in every similar situation recorded. I may be wrong, but I wouldn't expect an author who invented the story to think to do this.

Many authors have very good imaginations.

[Dicky Underpants]

It occurs firstly in Ezekiel, whom God calls "Son of man", when speaking to him. Daniel sees in his vision, 'one like a son of man' - hence, one like Ezekiel.

So Jesus is describing himself as like 'Ezekiel', which is probably to do with the role he played in prophesying the invasion of Israel by the Babylonians, which is mirrored by Jesus who is prophesying AD 70.

Oh, cummon! This instance of 'Son of Man' is just another colloquial use of the phrase in Hebrew and Aramaic. It means nothing more than 'human being', Joe Bloggs, John Doe etc. There's nothing special about it. Jesus' use of it is obviously two-fold, and neither have anything to do with Ezekiel. One is an Aramaic colloquialism, the other refers to the passage in Daniel, which simply says that "one like a Son of Man" ,whoever this judgmental figure "appearing in the clouds" might be, bore the appearance of a human.

[Gordon]

You miss a second point he makes: the disambiguation of common names is not just for intratextual clarification. It occurs in dialogue where there are lots of people present. When blind Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus and a crowd is present, he adds Son of David. If the author made it up, he was clever enough to anticipate that there were possibly other people called Jesus in the crowd, and that in real life the man would have added something to distinguish Jesus from any others with that name. Not just in this example, but this happens in every similar situation recorded. I may be wrong, but I wouldn't expect an author who invented the story to think to do this.

Let me get this straight: you doubt that an author creating an account that they want to be convincing (whether it is true or not) couldn't also ensure that any names used were convincing in relation to the context of the story?

Really!!

[jeremyp]

In what way significant?

He hasn't answered yet, but I think he means statistically significant.

[jeremyp]

You miss a second point he makes: the disambiguation of common names is not just for intratextual clarification. It occurs in dialogue where there are lots of people present. When blind Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus and a crowd is present, he adds Son of David. If the author made it up, he was clever enough to anticipate that there were possibly other people called Jesus in the crowd, and that in real life the man would have added something to distinguish Jesus from any others with that name. Not just in this example, but this happens in every similar situation recorded. I may be wrong, but I wouldn't expect an author who invented the story to think to do this.

Why not?