A really, really, REALLY simple concept

[atheist buddy]

Eyewitness testimony: When a person writes down what he saw/heard/tasted/smelled/touched

Hearsay testimony: When a person writes down what another person told him


Here's an example of eyewitness testimony: "I heard the thunderstorm last night"

Here's an example of hearsay tesitmony: "My wife tells me there was a thunderstorm last night, although I slept through it and didn't hear anything".


Eyewitness testimony: I saw Steve kill Joe

Hearsay: When we talked to Steve, he told us that he killed Joe


Eyewitness: I went to Jesus's tomb and it was empty

Hearsay: Somebody told me that he went to Jesus's tomb and it was empty


Eyewitness: This book is an original document in which I wrote what I saw and heard

Hearsay: This book is a copy of a document in which somebody else wrote what they saw and heard. You cannot see the original, but trust me (even though you don't know who I am), it's pretty much the same as the original.


Question for debate: Is anybody even slightly confused about the fact that we have no eyewitness accounts of ANYTHING relating to Jesus's life?

[OnceConvinced]

By this standard, we don't have any eyewitness testimony of the life of Alexander the Great either. In fact, we don't have ANY eyewitness testimony to ANY historical event prior to the fall or Rome!

Methinks that either a) your definition of eyewitness testimony is too stringent, or b) eyewitness testimony is a sufficient condition but not a necessary condition for historically reliable testimony.

If someone told me I needed to worship Alexander the Great and that I should live my life based on his teachings and if I didn't he was going to torture me for all eternity, then I would expect more than just hearsay. I would want some real evidence that he existed and the stories about him and what he taught are true.

The question then becomes what degree of evidence you would be willing to accept. You can choose only to believe the autographs of eyewitness testimony. But in that case, you've effectively cut yourself off from the periods in history when God (if He exists and intervenes in history) would have been most likely to be active - those of greatest antiquity.

I don't know what degree of evidence it would require for me to believe, but I'm sure God would know exactly what level of evidence I need, as well as the level needed for everyone else on this planet. And if he loves us as he says he does, he would be eager to provide that evidence.

But really, if all I have is claims, why should I care really? People claim that Alexander the Great existed and he did certain things. Why should I care about that. Some guy called Jesus supposedly performed miracles and claimed he was the son of God. Why should I care about that? People make claims that I need to believe if I don't want to go to Hell. But why should I take them seriously? I'm sure that if God wanted me to believe in him and worship some guy called Jesus, he could let me know without having to send a whole lot of human beings all with different claims and different views. I'm sure God could provide me with more evidence than just eyewitness testimonies.

But seeing as no one is expecting any of that, I find it hard to care whether he was a real historical character or not. Same pretty much goes for many other historical characters from ancient history. Eyewitness accounts or not, you can not really know for sure whether everything that has been recorded is true or hasn't been altered in some way. But it really doesn't matter.

So when it comes to personally insignificant historical events, you're apathetic, and when it comes to potentially significant historical events, your skepticism dial is set to maximum?

You claim it to be a potentially significant historical event, but why should I take you seriously?

No, my skepticism dial is not set to maximum for that reason. My dial is set to maximum because the claims of Jesus are just so outrageous they simply can't be taken seriously. I would be just as skeptical if someone told me that Adolf Hitler performed miracles and rose from the dead. I am even more skeptical about Jesus personally because I went for 30 years believing this man to be the real thing but then finding that he wasn't all he was cracked up to be. 30 years spent worshipping and serving this guy. I think I have the right to be extra skeptical now.

[OnceConvinced]

So when it comes to personally insignificant historical events, you're apathetic, and when it comes to potentially significant historical events, your skepticism dial is set to maximum?

That seems like a rational position for one who is interested in truth and accuracy of statements they regard as important. With things that make little or no difference, why bother checking veracity. With things that are important it is wise to be careful to distinguish as well as possible between truth and non-truth, accuracy and inaccuracy, fact and fiction.

Good point. If the ramifications of disbelief are non-existent or minor, then why should anyone care? If however the ramifications of disbelief are major, then it would be sensible to look at the claims critically and with skepticism. If you're gonna make life changes because of something, it better be for something that's real and not something that's fantasy.

[atheist buddy]

[Replying to DanieltheDragon]

Well the claim from the Bible is that there are eye witness documents in it. It appears objectively untrue to say otherwise.

Naturally we have our agendas and weigh the evidence accordingly.

Right, but a document that claims to be an eyewitness account, but in reality isn't... is not an eyewitness account.

For example:

This document was written on October 14th 2014 "This is an eyewitness account. Last night, I met Frank Sinatra in a bar in chicago".

It claims that it's an eyewitness account, but it's physically impossible that it is, because Frank Sinatra had been dead for 16 years when this document was written.


Similarly:

This document was written in 200 AD "I saw Jesus walking on water".

It claims that it's an eyewitness account, but it's physically impossible that it is, because Jesus has been dead for 170 years when this document was written.

At BEST, it's a copy (of a copy, of a copy, of a copy) of an eyewitness account. Do you know what the name is for a copy of an eyewitness account: Hearsay.

[OnceConvinced]

Christianity wasn't designed for people who think like robots, after all. It was designed for people who think like people.

People do not think like robots. They think like people. It's just that some are more structured and rational in their approaches than others. That's who they are, it's the way they were born. So if Christianity was not designed for people like that then it was only designed for certain people who think a certain way.

I think the above statement deserves its own topic so I have started one.

http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 808#681808

[Korah]

Question for debate: Is anybody even slightly confused about the fact that we have no eyewitness accounts of ANYTHING relating to Jesus's life?

I'm confused by the fact that have not noticed my claims in "How can we determine which parts of scripture are true?" that there are seven written gospel eyewitnesses (as sources).
Refer to my list at Post #155:
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... &start=150
I'm confused why you hide your debate point in a thread with no connection whatever to your stated "Question for debate", on top of which your real agenda seems to be to deride hearsay testimony. For these reasons I don't propose to enter more posts in this mislabeled thread. If you wish to debate me, please go to the linked thread.

[atheist buddy]

Question for debate: Is anybody even slightly confused about the fact that we have no eyewitness accounts of ANYTHING relating to Jesus's life?

I'm confused by the fact that have not noticed my claims in "How can we determine which parts of scripture are true?"

Well, don't be confused. The reason I have not noticed your claims is because I have not noticed you. I'm sorry, but there are lots of members on this forum and I'm new here. I have no idea who you are, never read ANY of your posts. I was not even aware of your existence until you posted on my thread.

there are seven written gospel eyewitnesses (as sources).

That's just patently not true. The people who wrote the Bible you read today were born decades after Jesus had died. It's impossible to be an eyewitness to something that happened before you were born.

Refer to my list at Post #155:
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... &start=150

No thanks.

I'm confused why you hide your debate point in a thread with no connection whatever to your stated "Question for debate"

Well. I can't help you with your confusion, because it's not derived from anything I wrote. All my posts on this thread have been in relation to the stated question for debate.

on top of which your real agenda seems to be to deride hearsay testimony.

If by "deride" you mean specify that hearsay is not eyewitness testimony, then I guess I'm deriding it. Of course, that definition completely secedes this conversation from reality, but oh well.

I am no more deriding hearsay testimony by saying it's different from eyewitness testimony, than I am deriding an apple by saying it's different from an orange.

For these reasons I don't propose to enter more posts in this mislabeled thread.

Great. I appreciate that.

If you wish to debate me, please go to the linked thread.

No thanks.

[David the apologist]

Eyewitness: This book is an original document in which I wrote what I saw and heard

Hearsay: This book is a copy of a document in which somebody else wrote what they saw and heard. You cannot see the original, but trust me (even though you don't know who I am), it's pretty much the same as the original.

By this standard, we don't have any eyewitness testimony of the life of Alexander the Great either. In fact, we don't have ANY eyewitness testimony to ANY historical event prior to the fall or Rome!

Methinks that either a) your definition of eyewitness testimony is too stringent, or b) eyewitness testimony is a sufficient condition but not a necessary condition for historically reliable testimony.

b) is correct.

Hearsay testimony is less reliable than eyewitness testimony, which is less reliable than empirical evidence. Nonetheless, you are right that hearsay testimony can at times be sufficiently reliable to base our understanding of history on it - as long as it doesn't directly conflict with more reliable forms of evidence such as eyewitness testimony or empirical evidence.

For example, picture this scenario:

Your friend Steve says "My cousin George told me today, in the year 2014, that his neighbor was told by his cousin that she was told by her college roommate that her friend Jennifer, who is 24 years old now, met John Lennon befor ehe died". That is hearsay testimony.

But it goes directly against empirical evidence, and logic. Namely, John Lennon died in 1980, if she's 24 today, she was born in 1990, therefore it's IMPOSSIBLE that she met John Lennon.

If your friend Steve had said that his friend Jennifer was 50 years old, then the hearsay testimony would not have contradicted with empirical evidence, and would have been admissible as a tool for historic scholarship. But because it conflicts with much more reliable evidence, it's automatically discarded. You understand that, right?

But this isn't what was going on in the early church at all.

We start with Jesus. He gets a substantial following (who knows what for, nobody seems to be able to come out and say exactly how), then the Jewish and Roman leaders start disliking him and proceed to have him crucified. This much is historically certain, unless you're some kind of Christ-myther, in which case I will discontinue this discussion immediately as the only crackpots I'm willing to debate are YEC's (and even that's only because I used to be one).

Then, a couple of months after the political and religious authorities had Jesus killed, a dozen or so people from his inner circle start proclaiming that he had been raised from the dead, and was thus the Messiah (Christos) and Lord (Kyrios). To complicate matters, the corpse of this newly proclaimed Christ was missing from the temporary tomb it would have been stored in for about a year after his execution. This is, while perhaps not undeniable, more probable than any alternative scenario for the early church.

Now, the testimony from the early fathers paints a fairly consistent picture of how the gospels came to be.
Quoting Papias (himself quoted in Eusibius, and before you start blathering about hearsay again, take note that this is the only way we know ANYTHING about the pre-Socratic philosophers):
'Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately everything that he remembered, without however recording in order what was said or done by Christ. For neither did he hear the Lord, nor did he follow him; but afterwards, as I said, (attended) Peter, who adapted his instructions to the needs (of his hearers) but had no design of giving a connected account of the Lord's oracles. So then Mark made no mistake, while he thus wrote down some things as he remembered them; for he made it his one care not to omit anything that he heard, or to set down any false statement therein.'

And elsewhere, Papias said:
'So then, Matthew composed the oracles in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could.'

Quoting Irenaeus:
'Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.'

Now, I'm not going to defend the Apostolic authorship of John, as it seems that it could just as easily be a "John the Elder" as "John the Apostle," according to some conservative scholars anyways. When I get the book "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" after Christmas, I'll be able to talk about something other than the synoptics.

At any rate, we have a scenario going something like this:
The Apostles start preaching a message that, when understood in its cultural context, may well be the most counterintuitive doctrine in the history of religion. Then Matthew the Apostle starts writing down some of the "Oracles" of Jesus in either Aramaic or Hebrew (being a tax collector, he had probably started taking notes on Jesus' message long before) sometime in the 60's AD while Peter was in Rome. This material would be firsthand. Meanwhile, Mark pieces together a gospel from what Peter preached, also sometime in the 60's AD. This material would be secondhand. Then, after those two, Luke assembles a third gospel after having made note of the other accounts circulating and interviewing eyewitnesses - particularly women, if we look at the distinctively Lucan material in his gospel. This also would have been secondhand. This is all from second century sources - sources that themselves would have been third-hand or fourth-hand relative to Jesus, something no modern critical scholar can claim - and I have yet to see any reasons for doubting the picture in its broad outlines.

But even more than the accuracy of what these people from the second century have to say, we have to take into account two key facts about the early Christian movement: first, it started as a Jewish sect, and even the radical Paul was utterly obsessed with how the Torah and the Patriarchs related to what he had become a part of. Second, it took advantage of the Pax Romana and used epistles to keep everybody updated on what was going on.

The relevance of the first is this: to the Jews, oral memorization was everything. I remember a quote from some piece of Jewish literature to the effect of "the person who leaves out a word of his Mishnah is counted as one who leaves out his soul." Rote memorization was vital because only about 10% of the population was literate. Moreover, in oral traditions generally, the community knows the story and prevents embellishment of core details. There's really no parallel in modern Western society, where a combination of general literacy (if it's important, just about anybody can write it down) and individualism (no community to keep you "in line") allow "urban legends" to develop just about overnight. The contemporary Jewish organizations of the period cared about accurate preservation of core doctrines, and the same held true of early Christians like Papias, Irenaeus, and Tertullian. Why should we think that the communities that came "in between" would have been any less fastidious?

The relevance of the latter is that it renders "Pauline Hijacking" hypotheses relatively improbable. Leaving aside the fact that we have no first century documents that even hint at a dispute between Paul and the rest of the church over miracles or Christology, we have the obvious fact that Paul wrote letters to the churches he founded. Surely, they would have notice Paul's deviant message and sent epistles of their own (and the words of someone like Peter or James would have had a LOT of clout in the early church) to correct Paul's mistakes? People would have listened to "those esteemed as pillars" as Paul himself calls them in Galatians (!). So even outside the Christian community in Palestine, these "checks and balances" would have been present, and would have preserved the message of the Apostles.

So this "Steve said that a friend of a friend⁵ saw someone who was demonstrably dead and buried at time t" is completely irrelevant to the question of Gospel reliability. First, you have the fact that the person proclaimed to be alive was NOT demonstrably dead and buried, but whose body was missing and who proclaimed to be alive after his execution. Second, you have the fact that the probable authors of the gospels (on the basis of second century testimony, which is incalculably more reliable than twenty-first century speculation) were in direct contact with eyewitnesses. Third, you have the fact that the early Christian community possessed a system of checks and balances that would have preserved the Apostolic message, a system that has no parallel in a modern Western society.

If you could find somebody from the first generation of the Christian community (30-70 AD) who can attest to the occupancy of the allegedly empty tomb, or can show that we have reason to doubt the second century testimony to the authorship of the Gospels (something that easily passes the empirical sniff test, even if we were to grant that the Gospels themselves don't), or can show that there is reason to think that the early Christian community broke with both the Jewish culture that preceded it and the Christian culture that came after it in terms of respect for tradition and authority, then I'll be impressed.

Similarly picture this other scenario:

Some anonymous scribe says "Another anonymous scribe that I never met, writes in his book, that some other anonymous scribe wrote in his book that somebody told him about some guy who knew a girl who's friend saw Jesus turn water into wine". This is hearsay testimony.

Scribes in the ancient world were even more fastidious than oral memorizers.

At any rate, we have pretty substantial chunks of the gospels from the later half of the second century, and they match up EXTREMELY well with what we have today. That leaves about a century for your (mythical) scribes to make up the gospels, and after they had finished, whatever documents they started with would still have been available (in a historically realistic scenario, anyways) at the time. In the heterogeneous and often internally conflicted mess that most critical scholars like to make pre-Nicene Christianity out to be, any doctrinally significant deviations found in the gospels would have been put to polemic use, and SOME kind of RESPONSE to that polemic would have been left behind even after the alleged Constantinian revisionist period took care of the original polemics. And that's assuming that there even WAS a Constantinian hijacking (how many times was Christianity hijacked, anyways? Once a generation until the creeds?), which is far from clear.

But it goes directly against empirical evidence, and logic. Namely, the laws of physics tell us that it's impossible to turn water into wine. Therefore it's impossible that Jesus did it.

Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that common knowledge in the ancient world as well? I mean, it's not like these people were complete idiots. Sure, their astronomy and geography was total BS, but I'm pretty sure that they noticed the conspicuous lack of virgin births, resurrections, and transformations of water into wine. They weren't that stupid. So the question becomes: why did they come to believe that it happened?

Appeal to pagan myths won't help you. I admit that the transformation of water into wine had occurred in Greek myth. It seems likely, however, that no true virgin births occurred in Greek myth (though the gods of their myths certainly did impregnate their fair share of females), and it seems almost certain that no real resurrections happened in pagan mythology. The alleged "dying and rising gods" of pagan myth never actually rose. Osiris? He got mummified, not resurrected. Hercules? His mortal body got burned away and he never had anything to do with it ever again. Baal? The poem is incomplete at the crucial "dying" portion, but it looks like he impregnated a cow and went into hiding, possibly after using his bovi-god offspring to appease Death's demands (ANE mythology was freaking jacked-up).[/url]

[David the apologist]

Because the earlier He intervenes, the more people will come to know Him. Intervening today leaves far fewer people in a position to come to know Him than if He had intervened 2000 years ago ....

Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. 2000 years ago there were only about 50 million people on the planet. Today there are over 7 billion.

But you have to sum over the entire history of the planet. Over the history of the human race, there have been more than 100 billion people, something like 45 billion of which had already come and gone by the time of Jesus' birth. The only reason Christianity passes the test is because it traces back to Judaism, which claims to trace its line back to Abraham, who (if he lived at all) lived sometime prior to 1500 BC.

Besides, for very good reasons today we tend to put all those old stories about mighty men and fantastic deeds into the same dust bin. TODAY is when a real supernatural event would have great effect. Trouble is, it never happened way back when, and it isn't going to happen today. This has nothing to do with 'God' planning things and everything to do with the fact we have a more sophisticated audience today . . . well, except in some circles.

A "more sophisticated audience"?!

Withholding assent from a creed that demands belief in virgin births and resurrections is hardly bourgeois!!

[David the apologist]

.

Because the earlier He intervenes, the more people will come to know Him. Intervening today leaves far fewer people in a position to come to know Him than if He had intervened 2000 years ago - or even earlier.

Of course. That makes sense IF "God" has limited ability that must be conserved by contacting people during certain periods and not others.

A God with unlimited ability would not need to ration its contact.

The universe is like a work of art, an epic poem. In order for it to count as a poem at all, it has to have a certain sort of metre and rhythm to it. In other words, it has to have laws of nature. And it's obvious that these laws can't be broken willy-nilly - it destroys the unity of the work. However, at certain key moments, a great poet will purposefully alter the rhythm of his poem in order to enhance the dramatic effect. At the climactic moment, this deviation from the normal course of the poem is more than merely permissible, but desirable. This doesn't make deviation from the normal course of the poem permissible in less important parts of the work. A good poet is one who deviates from his normal framework selectively. The same is true of a good Creator.

[atheist buddy]

Eyewitness: This book is an original document in which I wrote what I saw and heard

Hearsay: This book is a copy of a document in which somebody else wrote what they saw and heard. You cannot see the original, but trust me (even though you don't know who I am), it's pretty much the same as the original.

By this standard, we don't have any eyewitness testimony of the life of Alexander the Great either. In fact, we don't have ANY eyewitness testimony to ANY historical event prior to the fall or Rome!

Methinks that either a) your definition of eyewitness testimony is too stringent, or b) eyewitness testimony is a sufficient condition but not a necessary condition for historically reliable testimony.

b) is correct.

Hearsay testimony is less reliable than eyewitness testimony, which is less reliable than empirical evidence. Nonetheless, you are right that hearsay testimony can at times be sufficiently reliable to base our understanding of history on it - as long as it doesn't directly conflict with more reliable forms of evidence such as eyewitness testimony or empirical evidence.

For example, picture this scenario:

Your friend Steve says "My cousin George told me today, in the year 2014, that his neighbor was told by his cousin that she was told by her college roommate that her friend Jennifer, who is 24 years old now, met John Lennon befor ehe died". That is hearsay testimony.

But it goes directly against empirical evidence, and logic. Namely, John Lennon died in 1980, if she's 24 today, she was born in 1990, therefore it's IMPOSSIBLE that she met John Lennon.

If your friend Steve had said that his friend Jennifer was 50 years old, then the hearsay testimony would not have contradicted with empirical evidence, and would have been admissible as a tool for historic scholarship. But because it conflicts with much more reliable evidence, it's automatically discarded. You understand that, right?

But this isn't what was going on in the early church at all.

We start with Jesus. He gets a substantial following

We don't know how substantial

(who knows what for, nobody seems to be able to come out and say exactly how)

Probably in the same way that Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Mithra, Zaratustra, Mohammed, Lao-Tzu, Ghandi, SaiBaba, L. Ron Hubbard, Charles Manson, and Kim Kardashian got a following. People tend to follow other people.

Then the Jewish and Roman leaders start disliking him and proceed to have him crucified. This much is historically certain

That's not accurate. It's historically more likely than not. It's not certain. It's the best hypothesis we can come up with based on what scant evidence we have. don't misunderstand me, put a gun to my head and ask me what my opinion is, and I'll agree that Jesus did exist and was crucivied along with dozens of others. But it's inaccurate to say we are certain. With ancient history very little is certain.

unless you're some kind of Christ-myther, in which case I will discontinue this discussion immediately as the only crackpots I'm willing to debate are YEC's (and even that's only because I used to be one).

The only evidence of crapottery would be if anybody insisted that the historical facts about Jesus are certain.

Then, a couple of months after the political and religious authorities had Jesus killed, a dozen or so people from his inner circle start proclaiming that he had been raised from the dead, and was thus the Messiah (Christos) and Lord (Kyrios).

We have no idea how many months years or decades after Jesus died, people started proclaiming he was the Messiah.

To complicate matters, the corpse of this newly proclaimed Christ was missing from the temporary tomb it would have been stored in for about a year after his execution. This is, while perhaps not undeniable, more probable than any alternative scenario for the early church.

I disagree wholeheartedly with the notion that the corpse was missing is the most probable alternative. The entire notion could just as easily have been fabricated. In fact, given the illustrious amount of fabrication sorrounding Jesus and the gospels, I'd say that fabrication in this instance as well is more likely than not. But this is a point I'm happy to agree to disagree on.

Now, the testimony from the early fathers paints a fairly consistent picture of how the gospels came to be.
Quoting Papias (himself quoted in Eusibius, and before you start blathering about hearsay again, take note that this is the only way we know ANYTHING about the pre-Socratic philosophers):
'Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately everything that he remembered, without however recording in order what was said or done by Christ. For neither did he hear the Lord, nor did he follow him; but afterwards, as I said, (attended) Peter, who adapted his instructions to the needs (of his hearers) but had no design of giving a connected account of the Lord's oracles. So then Mark made no mistake, while he thus wrote down some things as he remembered them; for he made it his one care not to omit anything that he heard, or to set down any false statement therein.'

And elsewhere, Papias said:
'So then, Matthew composed the oracles in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could.'

Quoting Irenaeus:
'Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.'

Now, I'm not going to defend the Apostolic authorship of John, as it seems that it could just as easily be a "John the Elder" as "John the Apostle," according to some conservative scholars anyways. When I get the book "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" after Christmas, I'll be able to talk about something other than the synoptics.

At any rate, we have a scenario going something like this:
The Apostles start preaching a message that, when understood in its cultural context, may well be the most counterintuitive doctrine in the history of religion. Then Matthew the Apostle starts writing down some of the "Oracles" of Jesus in either Aramaic or Hebrew (being a tax collector, he had probably started taking notes on Jesus' message long before) sometime in the 60's AD while Peter was in Rome. This material would be firsthand. Meanwhile, Mark pieces together a gospel from what Peter preached, also sometime in the 60's AD. This material would be secondhand. Then, after those two, Luke assembles a third gospel after having made note of the other accounts circulating and interviewing eyewitnesses - particularly women, if we look at the distinctively Lucan material in his gospel. This also would have been secondhand. This is all from second century sources - sources that themselves would have been third-hand or fourth-hand relative to Jesus, something no modern critical scholar can claim - and I have yet to see any reasons for doubting the picture in its broad outlines.

But even more than the accuracy of what these people from the second century have to say, we have to take into account two key facts about the early Christian movement: first, it started as a Jewish sect, and even the radical Paul was utterly obsessed with how the Torah and the Patriarchs related to what he had become a part of. Second, it took advantage of the Pax Romana and used epistles to keep everybody updated on what was going on.

Why are you writing all this. It's all hearsay. Wha'ts the problem. This guy wrote that this guy wrote about what this guy wrote, ont he basis of what he heard from this guy who heard it from this other guy who was friends with someone who knew Jesus.

This is hearsay.

I'm not saying we shouldn't believe it because it's hearsay.

I'm just saying that's what it's called when you read a document written by someone who didn't witness the events he's writing about with his own eyes. Hearsay. Period.

The relevance of the first is this: to the Jews, oral memorization was everything. I remember a quote from some piece of Jewish literature to the effect of "the person who leaves out a word of his Mishnah is counted as one who leaves out his soul." Rote memorization was vital because only about 10% of the population was literate. Moreover, in oral traditions generally, the community knows the story and prevents embellishment of core details. There's really no parallel in modern Western society, where a combination of general literacy (if it's important, just about anybody can write it down) and individualism (no community to keep you "in line") allow "urban legends" to develop just about overnight. The contemporary Jewish organizations of the period cared about accurate preservation of core doctrines, and the same held true of early Christians like Papias, Irenaeus, and Tertullian. Why should we think that the communities that came "in between" would have been any less fastidious?

I love trivia. I'm a big trivia buff. But it doesn't change one simple fact: It was all hearsay.

The relevance of the latter is that it renders "Pauline Hijacking" hypotheses relatively improbable. Leaving aside the fact that we have no first century documents that even hint at a dispute between Paul and the rest of the church over miracles or Christology, we have the obvious fact that Paul wrote letters to the churches he founded. Surely, they would have notice Paul's deviant message and sent epistles of their own (and the words of someone like Peter or James would have had a LOT of clout in the early church) to correct Paul's mistakes? People would have listened to "those esteemed as pillars" as Paul himself calls them in Galatians (!). So even outside the Christian community in Palestine, these "checks and balances" would have been present, and would have preserved the message of the Apostles.

I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I DON'T CARE.

The only purpose of this thread is to establish that the Bible is hearsay testimony, not eyewitness. You're just trying to convince me of how trustworthy this hearsay tesitmony is. But I don't care. that's not what this thread is about.

I'm just trying to establish that it was hearsay. Please STOP what you're doing and do only one of these tow things:
1) Agree that the Bible is hearsay testimony
2) Present an arugment for why it's eyewitness testimony

So this "Steve said that a friend of a friend⁵ saw someone who was demonstrably dead and buried at time t" is completely irrelevant to the question of Gospel reliability.

I'M NOT DISCUSSING GOSPEL RELIABILITY. I'm just saying that however reliable or unreliable you think it may be, it's hearsay. HEARSAY. Reliable hearsay? Unreliable hearsay? Whatever. Nonetheless, H E A R S A Y.

First, you have the fact that the person proclaimed to be alive was NOT demonstrably dead and buried

Are you saying that any historical figure not demonstrably dead should be considered alive?

but whose body was missing and who proclaimed to be alive after his execution

According to 300AD documents, yes.

Second, you have the fact that the probable authors of the gospels (on the basis of second century testimony, which is incalculably more reliable than twenty-first century speculation) were in direct contact with eyewitnesses.

False on all counts. The probable authors of the Gospels were, as per the scholarship of most serious historians, people who had never met Jesus. But had heard the story as told by people that had heard it told by people that had heard it told by people that may or may not have ever met Jesus. The people who knew Jesus didn't know how to write. Nobody even STARTED writing anything about Jesus until DECADES after his death. Please don't procalim as probable, that which we know is not true.

Third, you have the fact that the early Christian community possessed a system of checks and balances that would have preserved the Apostolic message, a system that has no parallel in a modern Western society.

The early Christian community was controlled by clergy who instituded a law whereby for anybody other than the clergy to own a Bible was a crime punishable by death.

What system of checks and balances are you talking about? A society in which about 5% of the people knew how to read, the message would be in the hands of the powerful to a degree that would make Fox News drool and go green with envy.

If you could find somebody from the first generation of the Christian community (30-70 AD) who can attest to the occupancy of the allegedly empty tomb, or can show that we have reason to doubt the second century testimony to the authorship of the Gospels (something that easily passes the empirical sniff test, even if we were to grant that the Gospels themselves don't), or can show that there is reason to think that the early Christian community broke with both the Jewish culture that preceded it and the Christian culture that came after it in terms of respect for tradition and authority, then I'll be impressed.

I'm not trying to impress you. I'm not even trying to argue that there wasn't an empty tomb.

I'm just saying this is all hearsay, and that I don't care about all the other stuff you're cutting and pasting from your Christianity 101 textbook.

Similarly picture this other scenario:

Some anonymous scribe says "Another anonymous scribe that I never met, writes in his book, that some other anonymous scribe wrote in his book that somebody told him about some guy who knew a girl who's friend saw Jesus turn water into wine". This is hearsay testimony.

Scribes in the ancient world were even more fastidious than oral memorizers.

I don't care. It still remains hearsay. That's ALL I'm saying.

At any rate, we have pretty substantial chunks of the gospels from the later half of the second century, and they match up EXTREMELY well with what we have today.

False. There are a lot of forgeries and additions. Everything in Mark after Chapter 16, the whole story about the adulterous woman and the whole "not casting the first stone" thing. A LOT of errors, a LOT of forgeries, a LOT of additions.

That leaves about a century for your (mythical) scribes

Not mythical. Factuals.

You believe in zombies. Please don't describe historically inevitable 3rd and 4th century scribes as mythical.

to make up the gospels, and after they had finished, whatever documents they started with would still have been available (in a historically realistic scenario, anyways) at the time.

Yes, they would be available to the 5% who knew how to read, who would overwhelmingly be part of the ruling class in anewly converted roman empire, and would have every interest in conforming to whatever changes were instituted by the clery for the very purpose of consolidating the sociopolitical control of the literate ruling class.

In the heterogeneous and often internally conflicted mess that most critical scholars like to make pre-Nicene Christianity out to be, any doctrinally significant deviations found in the gospels would have been put to polemic use, and SOME kind of RESPONSE to that polemic would have been left behind even after the alleged Constantinian revisionist period took care of the original polemics. And that's assuming that there even WAS a Constantinian hijacking (how many times was Christianity hijacked, anyways? Once a generation until the creeds?), which is far from clear.

Right, the free press being so active at the time, and the punishments for heresy being so relaxed, there was nothing stopping a free flow of information, and for an honest debate between competing versions of the gospels. It's not like competing christian sects were exterminated or anything...

Come on, David! Let's get real.

But it goes directly against empirical evidence, and logic. Namely, the laws of physics tell us that it's impossible to turn water into wine. Therefore it's impossible that Jesus did it.

Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that common knowledge in the ancient world as well? I mean, it's not like these people were complete idiots. Sure, their astronomy and geography was total BS, but I'm pretty sure that they noticed the conspicuous lack of virgin births, resurrections, and transformations of water into wine. They weren't that stupid. So the question becomes: why did they come to believe that it happened?

For the same reason many believe in the virgin birth of Buddha, and in Mohammed's flight on the back of a winged horse. For the same reason people in the 21st century believe in alien abductions and scientology. For the same reason some people today believe the earth is flat.

Let me ask you a really really simple question: Do people TODAY, believe incredibly stupid fairy tales and absurdities that nobody in their right mind should believe? YES

So if they believe superstitious nonsense now, why would they not believe it back then?

Appeal to pagan myths won't help you. I admit that the transformation of water into wine had occurred in Greek myth. It seems likely, however, that no true virgin births occurred in Greek myth (though the gods of their myths certainly did impregnate their fair share of females), and it seems almost certain that no real resurrections happened in pagan mythology. The alleged "dying and rising gods" of pagan myth never actually rose. Osiris? He got mummified, not resurrected. Hercules? His mortal body got burned away and he never had anything to do with it ever again. Baal? The poem is incomplete at the crucial "dying" portion, but it looks like he impregnated a cow and went into hiding, possibly after using his bovi-god offspring to appease Death's demands (ANE mythology was freaking jacked-up).[/url]

Who cares!

Virgin births, copulations between humans and Gods, Leprechauns, talking snakes, talking donkeys, flying horses, flying reindeer, superhumans, healers, miracle workers, voodoo, juju, witchcraft, necromancy, omeopathy, crystal medicine, tarot cards, astrology, curses, love potions, spirits of the forest, fairies, pixies, imps, demons, angels, centaurs, minotaurs.

People have made up a lot of stuff, and people have BELIEVED a lot of stuff, that is actually total and complete fantasy.

Let's say that your completely counterfactual statement that there was no virign birth myth prior to Jesus's tale, is actually accurate. This is a statement that is about as far from the truth as anything can be. But let's say it's true.

The first time a virgin birth story was told, was for Jesus. That doesn't mean that therefore it happened for real!

There was a first time the "woman flying on a broomstick" story was told. Was it for real for that first time?

There was a first time a bigfoot sighting story was told. Was it real for that first time?

Every fairy tale ever told, WAS TOLD A FIRST TIME, before being told subsequent times.

That doesn't mean it was real the first time and fictional subsequent times.

I don't get it. I truly don't get it. How can you make such an argument, read it back to yourself, and STILL BELIEVE IT?

I don't get it.