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Post by curious on Sept 5, 2007 19:40:33 GMT -8
Wasn't the Bible written hundreds of years after all of the supposed events took place? And wasn't it written by a bunch of different people? I don't understand how with those two things against it that it could possibly be the truth about what happened.
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Post by Josh on Sept 7, 2007 16:01:03 GMT -8
Thanks for the questions. Since there are a couple parts, let's take one at a time.
First, let's establish some facts-- the basic data. How long of an interval is there between the events recorded in the Bible and when those events were written about?
I'm thinking a chart might be very helpful for this information, so I'll see if I can whip one up. In the meantime, and to get discussion started, let's put out some basic facts:
Dating the Old Testament books is complicated because there are 39 of them written over a time period of more than 800 years by about just as many authors as there are books. This is where a chart would come in handy.
When it comes to the New Testament, and this is very important, it is almost unanimously conceded by scholars that all of its books (27 by about 8 authors) were written by 100 AD, at a maximum of 70 years after the death of Jesus in 30 AD. However, there is excellent evidence that the entire New Testament (or virtually all of it) was complete by as early as 70 AD, within 40 years of the events the Gospels record. Beyond this, a large percentage of the New Testament (Paul's letters and Mark) are conclusively dated to within 30 years of Jesus' death, with several dated as early as the 50's AD.
I presume that part of what makes this question important to you is the idea that the more time that elapses between events and the recording of those events, the more possibility there is that errors or legendary elements might creep into the text. This is a valid concern. There are plenty of examples from history of this taking place... but not usually within the lifetime of the people who were involved in the events themselves- at least, especially not the kind of legendary elements that critics of the Bible might pinpoint (such as claims that Jesus was God or that He rose from the dead). For instance, within 20 years of Jesus' death, we have Paul's first letters which clearly articulate what you might call a "high Christology"- a well formulated system of beliefs about Jesus, from beliefs about his one-to-one identification with God (His divinity) to beliefs about Him raising from the dead and being the Judge of all Humanity. There is a creed of sorts (or a memorized oral tradition) contained in one of Paul's first books (1 Corinthians 15:3-8) that contains several of these key doctrines that surely dates back even further than his book, thus cutting the time from realization to writing down to within demonstrable years of Jesus' lifetime (and actually, logically, to within weeks of his death).
That's a beginning, more later. Any questions so far?
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Post by Josh on Sept 7, 2007 16:38:31 GMT -8
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Post by Josh on Sept 8, 2007 21:20:39 GMT -8
A bit more on the possibility of development of legends over a short span of years:
Though I stated this somewhat above, it's worth focusing in on further--while it is possible to imagine minor legendary material cropping up fairly quickly, we must remember that with Jesus we're talking about major claims such as:
1) he rose bodily from the dead 2) he is God 3) he will Judge all of humanity
Since Paul claims all of these things within years of Jesus' death and we have excellent evidence that Christians were claiming these things within months of Jesus' death (book of Acts, logical extrapolation) the option that these beliefs are legendary additions fades away and makes it look far more likely that the disciples are either a) telling the truth or b) making up blatant lies. If Jesus never claimed to be identifiable with God or to be the final judge of humanity, to be sure, the opponents of Christianity would have been quick to point this out. But they did not. They vigorously tried to silence Christianity not by reason, but by force. Reason would have worked a lot better, but, it appears they had no good reason with which to refute Christianity.
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Post by Josh on Sept 8, 2007 21:33:27 GMT -8
It's interesting that you assume here that multiple authors and multiple versions of a story is a strike against historical authenticity. Far from it, the more different but at least generally compatable versions and reporters of an event there are, the more likely it is that the event really occurred.
The Q'uran (the holy book of Muslims) had a single author (either Mohammed or God, depending on one's perspective). Muslims take this as a sign of it's validity. However, from a skeptics' perspective, is it better to believe the claims of one person or a multitude of witnesses?
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Post by moritz on Jul 15, 2008 13:03:09 GMT -8
I think this will be my next site of crime
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Post by Josh on Jul 15, 2008 13:38:16 GMT -8
Well, history is my main cup o' tea (where I feel most at home, especially 1st Century AD stuff), so that'd be fun for me.
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Post by moritz on Jul 19, 2008 8:41:54 GMT -8
I'd like to start my argumentation with a little anecdote:
A couple of years back I used to play soccer every day on a little pitch in our neighbourhood with my friends. We always had this habit of picking each other up and going to the pitch together. One day, when we arrived at the home of one of the guys living closest to the pitch, an ambulance was parking outside the door. What had happened. Our friend told us that his parents had hired a man in order to cut some branches of a big tree in the garden. This man accidently cut into his arm an was bleeding. It wasn't too serious, but the parents decided to call an ambulance anyway. So we went on to pick up the next kid together. A couple of neighbours were standing in a safe distance, obviously more than interested in what happened in the garden of our friend. As we walked out, a woman approached us and asked: "Is it true that a man cut off his arm?". My friend explained what had happened, then we went on. A block further the next boy to be picked up was living. His mother told us that he wasn't at home and then asked if it's true that a kid cut off his arm in the neighbourhood... When we finally approached the pitch, there was an old man walking his dog. He told us that in the neighbourhood a kid cut off his arm and died.
The End.
This is a true story. All of this happened within 15 Minutes. What I'm getting at with this is obvious: Hearsay is the death of a true story. I don't dare to imagine how much the fancy of the people in the biblical times exponentiates the falsification...
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Post by Josh on Aug 4, 2008 13:59:04 GMT -8
Your story is an improvement on the standard "telephone game"* objection because in your example the end result was a belief that was pretty radically different than the actual events and not at all trivial (i.e., that a kid had actually died). So, points for that. But, I have a couple rejoinders which I think shut down "chinese whisper"'s explanatory power when it comes to the New Testament/ early Christian beliefs. 1. More Time Scale InfoFirst off, how much time was there for a “Chinese whisper” to occur? I know you’re saying it can happen in 15 minutes, but I do feel the need to hammer down a little more on the time frame we’re talking about here first. Here’s a little more background and extrapolation on what I posted above to back this up: Most scholars admit the Jesus movement began almost immediately after the death of Christ. They do debate about whether it started with all it's major beliefs fully intact or whether those beliefs built up over a period of time. Scholars used to think that perhaps Christian beliefs blossomed over a large amount of time (100 years), evolving from very primitive symbolic ideas to increasingly literalistic stories. Now, with surer date ranges on NT documents as well as pretty solid logical arguments about how the time-table of the spread of religious beliefs around the known world in such a short time, that date range (as I said above) from the death of Christ to the earliest date we can prove (used in the sense of near proof, of course) that all the major beliefs of Christians were already intact is at the most around 20 years. But because those beliefs are presented intact in writing 20 years after Jesus as if they are already long-held beliefs (read the book of Galatians, dated around 50 AD, for instance, where Paul gives us a 14+ year history of his interactions with the church). 2. Clearing up a "Chinese Whisper" Secondly, on to your “Chinese Whisper” point directly. I note you ended your story with the words: The EndBut in actuality that wasn't the end of your story, right? Did the belief that the kid had died become the lasting belief of significant portion of your neighborhood? Did the old man with the dog persist in his belief that the kid had died? Why not? Because after some initial confusion, people had some time to get the story straight (or at least straight enough to resonate strongly with the truth). If the old man continued to tell people someone had died, at some point he would have been refuted by those around him. There was plenty of time for these sort of things to be sorted out after the gospel events as well, and plenty of hostile witnesses who would have attempted to do so if they could. 3. Unlikely Claims for Mistaken or Lying DisciplesThirdly, the belief that a kid had died in his yard isn't trivial, but it is common enough to be pretty easily believable. Thus, the threshold of skepticism was lower for the folks in the neighborhood. Now, imagine if someone tried to interject into the neighborhood story that the kid had died and risen from the dead. How many people do you think would believe that without strong evidence? What if the claim was that this kid not only rose from the dead, but was the personal representative/ embodiment/ equivalent of God Himself? What we have with the Christian story is more than a believable misunderstanding based on gossip. I know, based on what you said above, that you think the ancient mind more susceptable to supernatural explanations. And in many ways, I'd agree with you** However, the strange thing about the Christian story is that the beliefs of the early Christians were the least likely for them to either a) invent or b) be deceived into believing through suggestion or lies. Let’s look at their belief in a “resurrection” event. The Resurrection- Many Jews of Jesus’ day believed in a resurrection at the end of the world (Pharisees). Many believed in a future disembodied state, similar to the views popular among pagan cultures (Philo). Some denied or were agnostic about the afterlife altogether (Saducees). But none believed or expected the Messiah to physically/bodily resurrect ahead of the final resurrection. In other words, they didn't have a place in their theology for a Messiah figure to die and immediately rise from the dead. Jews in the first century honored the graves of their heroes and martyrs, tried to emulate them, believed they might appear as ghosts or apparitions even, and many Jews looked forward to their resurrection on the last day, but Jews didn't make up stories that their heroes had risen from the dead. They would have been laughed to scorn. This is why it doesn’t make sense that the early Christian either a) mistakenly assumed Jesus’ resurrection or, b) made up a lie like this. If we think that stories of resurrection appearances are the result of wish-fulfillment half-hallucination half-story telling, then we would expect their wishes to be in line with common expectations of jews in the 1st Century, but they’re not. If we think they were lying, they made up some pretty ridiculous lies considering their cultural context. The Resurrection of Jesus was bound to be hard to swallow to both Jews and pagans. For instance, these accounts are close enough to some pagan myths about “dying and rising gods” to not make sense/ be potentially offensive in a Jewish context. All the earliest Christians were Jewish and raised in a culture with a lot of antithesis toward and resentment of pagan Rome and Greco-Roman culture and religious beliefs. Jews couldn’t even eat with pagans. To deliberately borrow from Greco-Roman mythology would have been foolhardy. For the disciples to espouse beliefs that look to some degree on the surface like pagan beliefs is a mark of the authenticity of the events the early Christians are describing. For more on whether there’s any weight to the thought that the New Testament authors plagiarized pagan mythology, take this link to another post: Dying and Rising GodsOn the other hand, the resurrection account of Jesus is too Jewish to easily appeal (without substantiation) to Greco-Roman audiences who had no concept (let alone desire) of a bodily resurrection (see the response of many Greek thinkers to Paul at the end of Acts chapter 17). Greco-Romans would have more easily swallowed a symbolic story than insistence that the resurrection had occurred in real-time history. It strongly appears that something happened that was outside of the expectations of the disciples, it was a powerful enough experience for them to radically alter the trajectory of their lives, and their account makes more sense than group wish-fulfillment or lie. Obviously, this is a big discussion and more backing up of these claims can come through dialogue. *Americans call "chinese whisper" "telephone game" because we're apparently much more culturally sensitive ;D Just kidding. **With the exception that, of course, even most ancients separated out what phenomenon they thought had "natural" or "mundane" explanations from what was "supernatural" or "miraculous". Miracles, by definition even then, were things that didn't happen very often. Yes, I know this statement has some tension with my views of miracles, but that's a separate issue
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Post by moritz on Aug 4, 2008 16:14:27 GMT -8
First off, how much time was there for a “Chinese whisper” to occur? I know you’re saying it can happen in 15 minutes, but I do feel the need to hammer down a little more on the time frame we’re talking about here first. Here’s a little more background and extrapolation on what I posted above to back this up: Most scholars admit the Jesus movement began almost immediately after the death of Christ. They do debate about whether it started with all it's major beliefs fully intact or whether those beliefs built up over a period of time. Scholars used to think that perhaps Christian beliefs blossomed over a large amount of time (100 years), evolving from very primitive symbolic ideas to increasingly literalistic stories. Now, with surer date ranges on NT documents as well as pretty solid logical arguments about how the time-table of the spread of religious beliefs around the known world in such a short time, that date range (as I said above) from the death of Christ to the earliest date we can prove (used in the sense of near proof, of course) that all the major beliefs of Christians were already intact is at the most around 20 years. But because those beliefs are presented intact in writing 20 years after Jesus as if they are already long-held beliefs (read the book of Galatians, dated around 50 AD, for instance, where Paul gives us a 14+ year history of his interactions with the church). I don’t see how this is supposed to weaken the point of the telephone game. A couple of minutes are enough to spread a gossip. The people back then didn’t have no internet or newspapers or TV channels which could tell them what’s going on. Correct me if I'm wrong but word of mouth was the main medium to spread the word, wasn't it? Secondly, on to your “Chinese Whisper” point directly. I note you ended your story with the words: The EndBut in actuality that wasn't the end of your story, right? Did the belief that the kid had died become the lasting belief of significant portion of your neighborhood? Did the old man with the dog persist in his belief that the kid had died? Why not? Because after some initial confusion, people had some time to get the story straight (or at least straight enough to resonate strongly with the truth). If the old man continued to tell people someone had died, at some point he would have been refuted by those around him. There was plenty of time for these sort of things to be sorted out after the gospel events as well, and plenty of hostile witnesses who would have attempted to do so if they could. There might still be people in that neighbourhood who never got the real story straight, even if they all know today that no child died that day in my friend’s garden. But that’s not important. What’s important is this: The difference between the supposedly dead child and the resurrection is that the death of the child was something confirmable while the resurrection wasn’t. Who was supposed to tell the people what truly happened in that grave? Some people said they met the resurrected Jesus. But people make up the craziest stuff. Joseph Smith claims to have found the book of Mormon and apparently a couple of million people believe that to the present day. That’s no prove. Thirdly, the belief that a kid had died in his yard isn't trivial, but it is common enough to be pretty easily believable. Thus, the threshold of skepticism was lower for the folks in the neighborhood. Now, imagine if someone tried to interject into the neighborhood story that the kid had died and risen from the dead. How many people do you think would believe that without strong evidence? What if the claim was that this kid not only rose from the dead, but was the personal representative/ embodiment/ equivalent of God Himself? As if the people bought that story. Even when Jesus was alive most people didn’t buy his story. The majority of the people in the area where it all happened are Jews and Muslims today and don’t believe it to the present day! They did to Jesus what they did to all the other “pains in the asses”: they killed him. He was mocked and ridiculed by the crowd. It doesn’t seem as if too many people believed him. And as far as I know, Christians in Rome were persecuted and thrown into the Colosseum where they were killed in horrifying ways for the amusement of the citizens of Rome*. Why did the people do that to the Christians? Certainly not because they were convinced of the truth of Christianity! If that isn’t strong opposition to Biblical claims… If that doesn’t strongly indicate that for the contemporary witnesses Christianity wasn’t compelling at all… * I’ve been to Rome and visited the Colloseum last fall. A shiver ran down my spine considering what had happened in this ruines…. I know, based on what you said above, that you think the ancient mind more susceptable to supernatural explanations. Don’t understate this; the superstition of people has no limits even today. I could tell you the craziest stories**. The superstition in medieval times is legendary (“WIIIIITCH!!!!”). Just think of the things the Hellenists believed. Isn’t that enough for you to understand that you could and can always find an audience and fealty for all kinds of flapdoodle? Think about it. **I once was riding a taxi in Valencia/ Spain. The Taxidriver had a miniature statue of some saint fixed to his dashboard. He told me that people use to rub this statue for good luck at Bingo games! Don't tell me that only Catholics could do such things, I also know protestants with mojos... However, the strange thing about the Christian story is that the beliefs of the early Christians were the least likely for them to either a) invent or b) be deceived into believing through suggestion or lies. And apparently very little people believed in that story back than. As I said, even today hardly anybody believes the story in the promised land. Christianity is much more successful abroad. Let’s look at their belief in a “resurrection” event. The Resurrection- Many Jews of Jesus’ day believed in a resurrection at the end of the world (Pharisees). Many believed in a future disembodied state, similar to the views popular among pagan cultures (Philo). Some denied or were agnostic about the afterlife altogether (Saducees). But none believed or expected the Messiah to physically/bodily resurrect ahead of the final resurrection. In other words, they didn't have a place in their theology for a Messiah figure to die and immediately rise from the dead. … and they don’t believe it to the present day. This is why it doesn’t make sense that the early Christian either a) mistakenly assumed Jesus’ resurrection or, b) made up a lie like this. Why not? According to your last statement we should predict that no religious cult could ever come into being within a different belief system unless that cult is true. If we think that stories of resurrection appearances are the result of wish-fulfillment half-hallucination half-story telling, then we would expect their wishes to be in line with common expectations of jews in the 1st Century Huh? No! What kind of assumption is this? I’m sure Christopher knows a nice term to emphasize the fallacy of this statement. Christians were Jews with a a couple of add ons to their story. Not even really new ones. History shows how new cults like Islam can arise within a different belief system. If we think they were lying, they made up some pretty ridiculous lies considering their cultural context. The Resurrection of Jesus was bound to be hard to swallow to both Jews and pagans. I’ll repeat myself: Jews didn’t swallow it to the present day. It strongly appears that something happened that was outside of the expectations of the disciples, it was a powerful enough experience for them to radically alter the trajectory of their lives, and their account makes more sense than group wish-fulfillment or lie. Doesn’t that go for any religion that achieved to establish itself, even if it was just for a couple of hundred years? There is enough evidence in the history of the world that shows that a) people can believe in things which entirely contradict the beliefs of their social environment, b) new cults can sprout within opposing belief systems. The fact that Christianity got big (outside of Israel) isn’t proof for the truth of gospel claims, just as the rise of Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism isn’t any proof for their supposed truths. You didn’t harm the telephone-game-theory the least. The only thing that could do that would be heaps of eye-witnesses. Christopher repeatedly spoke of eyewitnesses in other threads. Let’s talk about that. Did somebody actually see Jesus rise from his grave? I ask seriously, I can’t remember. I think nobody saw him directly. I think somebody found an empty grave, right? He then appeared to a couple of people. Am I right so far? And those women who saw him first? Were they the authors of the gospel? Or did somebody else write down what they supposedly claimed? Can we know they weren't crackpots? Can we know beyond the shadow of a doubt they even existed? Back to you Josh!
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Post by Josh on Aug 4, 2008 17:03:17 GMT -8
Section 1 above, as I thought I indicated, was just more background information on how much time we're talking about here, not a real strike against your original post. It's just that in general one would expect fully fledged "new" religious belief systems to take a fairly long time to emerge "full grown". This was, in fact, the assumption of critical scholars 100 years ago until the dates got whittled down.
Admittedly, the resurrection of Jesus wasn't of course imminently provable (as the child would be if he walked through the neighborhood) to everyone- only some.
An investigation of the information we have about the original eye-witnesses to both the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances, does however stand out as markedly different than the stories of the first Mormon visions. Most notably, in the Mormon stories there was only one eye-witness of the first revelations, whereas with the resurrection of Christ we have numerous witnesses. More on that to come.
In regard to your remarks that few people believed the message, perhaps you didn't get my point, part of which was that if the disciples wanted to fabricate a successful new religion they would certaintly not have chosen the story they did relate.
In regard to your comments about whether novel ideas can originate in a cult that deviate from the norm in a religion, of course such things can happen. But historians of religion would postulate a reason for such changes. What reasons do you think the disciples would have had to "innovate" a completely new understanding of "resurrection"?- and let's take those reasons for a test drive.* My point is that choosing such an innovation did more harm to their case than good in the short run. Also, the early Jewish followers of Christ didn't see themselves as setting out to start a new religion anyway. They didn't have any reason to "buck the system" on something like a new perspective on "resurrection". They had no reason to "need the resurrection" as it were. It's cropping into the story seems as much a surprise to them as to any good Jew of the 1st Century. They were busy cowering from the authorities anyway, not looking for innovations. They could have looked for the next Messiah, revered Jesus' grave, even claimed He appeared to them-- but why insist on his bodily raising from the dead?
By the way, it would be helpful at this point to know if you lean more toward the disciples deceptively inventing a new religion in some kind of conspiracy, or whether you think the beginning of Christianity was an avalanche of incrimental misunderstandings/ misperceptions. If you think both aspects played a role, then can you lay out a hypothetical scenario? How much deception? How much wishful-thinking, etc..?
In my experience, alternative theories on the resurrection and the inception of Christianity never ring as true to the prepondersance of the evidence as the actual Christian story.
On to an analysis of witnesses?
*if we look at the rise of cult groups, for instance, we must ask why did they fixate on particular "innovations" to accepted teaching. In the case of Mormonism, the evidence points toward Joseph Smith's desire to create a system which would bring him power, acclaim, and authority and one that would tell others what they wanted to hear. There is plenty of evidence to suggest this, and very little evidence to substantiate that Smith had a genuine encounter with God.
The story of Joseph Smith from his nefarious beginnings to his numerous con-jobs, his intense efforts to avoid dying for his beliefs, and his convenient "revelations" allowing him to do whatever he wanted, speaks to the reasons for his innovations. They make sense in his culture.
But the Christian innovations are difficult to rationally explain without some real encounter behind them.
In other words, Smith was a great con-artist, but the disciples were lousy ones.
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Post by Josh on Aug 4, 2008 18:25:57 GMT -8
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Post by christopher on Aug 4, 2008 20:56:50 GMT -8
Mo wrote:
Actually, I really don't. It would be Ad populum (appeal to popular belief) if Josh were trying to prove Judaism, but he's not. The closest thing I can see to a possible fallacy would be False Induction (generalizing without sound reason). But I don't think that even applies because there is good reason to make the statement Josh made. The Jews were, for the most part, very proud of their heritage and committed to keeping the traditions of the elders. Most of them would need some very compelling reason to radically alter it the way Christianity did. It's not just a few "add-ons", it was radically redefining Judaism as finding complete fulfillment (and subsequently, obsolescence) in a suffering-servant, resurrected Messiah who just happened to be God in the flesh. The Jews would have been (and still are) appalled at the suggestion that God would actually become human. It's blaspheme to them.
I think the argument is a good piece of "evidence" (though agreeably not compelling by itself) given the persecution it would certainly invite for the disciples.
I also think it would be a False Analogy/Comparison to compare this with Islam because of the difference in reward vs. risk factor (motivation) between the disciples and Muhammed. I see Muhammed's story much like Joseph Smiths' where you have the claim of one eye-witness, with much to gain and little (comparably) to lose as well as convenient self-serving "prophesies". Juxtapose this with the early disciples who knew they had everything to lose (property, family, status, and life) by propagating the gospel and absolutely nothing substantial to gain.
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Post by Josh on Aug 6, 2008 21:02:51 GMT -8
Back to you, Mo.
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Post by moritz on Aug 7, 2008 0:54:07 GMT -8
Admittedly, the resurrection of Jesus wasn't of course imminently provable (as the child would be if he walked through the neighborhood) to everyone- only some. This is very important. Let’s not forget that. An investigation of the information we have about the original eye-witnesses to both the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances, does however stand out as markedly different than the stories of the first Mormon visions. Most notably, in the Mormon stories there was only one eye-witness of the first revelations, whereas with the resurrection of Christ we have numerous witnesses. More on that to come. Note that an eye-witness for merely an empty tomb can’t tell us anything about a possible resurrection. Only people who claim to have seen Jesus actually waking up and walking out of that tomb + the people who claim to have seen the resurrected Christ face to face are of interest here. My point of Mormonism isn’t a comparison of the actual events. My point is that people believed Joseph Smith regardless how flapdoodlish his story was and regardless the fact that he was the ONLY supposed eye-witness to his case. Please think about that for a minute in order to fully understand the implications of this! What does that tell us about the nature of belief? What does that tell us about the reason of the people? If ONE wacko or beguiler or brilliant treasure hunter (or whatever one wants to call Joseph Smith) can successfully found a new religion (or rearrange an existing religion) that persists to the present (against the ridicule and opposition of the dominant religion) day and even keeps growing considerably, there is apparently no need for compelling evidence for people to believe. If I got Christopher right, the credibility of Joseph Smith can easily be shattered with historical evidence about him. And yet this doesn’t harm Mormonism the slightest. Why? If people bought the story of Mormon, why wouldn’t they buy the story of Jesus? In regard to your remarks that few people believed the message, perhaps you didn't get my point, part of which was that if the disciples wanted to fabricate a successful new religion they would certaintly not have chosen the story they did relate. I once made an internship at the Chamber of Industry and Commerce here in Frankfurt. I interviewed the boss of the department which accredits business start-ups. He told me about the most grotesque business ideas he came across and how most of them ended in bankruptcy while some ended up being really successful. The reason why I tell you this: You said that the disciples wouldn’t have come up with such a story if they wanted to fabricate a successful new religion. This sounds as if they were Masters of Business Administration. You already set the premise that the disciples were intelligent or at least reasonable men. I’m telling you that people of all social stratums come up with the most absurd ideas in order to create something successful. Some of these absurd ideas actually succeed. The people behind the successful-absurd ideas are sometimes brilliant and sometimes lucky bastards. Bottom line? The disciples sure COULD have had exactly that plan even though it wouldn’t appear to be a good business plan at first glimpse. Yet, Religion isn’t mundane business. The record of irrational belief systems in the history of mankind shows how much affinity towards the unreasonable is in every one of us. Hence the chances for an appeal to the irrational to succeed aren’t half bad. In regard to your comments about whether novel ideas can originate in a cult that deviate from the norm in a religion, of course such things can happen. But historians of religion would postulate a reason for such changes. What reasons do you think the disciples would have had to "innovate" a completely new understanding of "resurrection"?- and let's take those reasons for a test drive.* We are entering the sphere of guessing here. I’m not sure how profitable this will be because I don’t know too much about those people and their possible motivations. I’ll give it a try though. Maybe they wanted to reform the Jewish belief for the better. Maybe they couldn’t identify with the wrathful God of the Old Testament and wanted to establish a reformed view of God within Judaism. Maybe they felt oppressed and wanted to fight or challenge the Pharisees or the Roman occupying force. Maybe they strived for some kind of power. Maybe they truly believed in what they said but were mistaken anyway. Maybe they took intoxicants. Maybe they were schizophrenic or paranoid or had any other kind of distortion of perception. Maybe they had something to gain. Maybe they were paid for. Maybe they underestimated what all this would cause. Maybe they predicted what it would cause and though they knew it wasn’t a true story they were willing to sacrifice themselves for that cause (just like so many people in the history of mankind*). Maybe they had no idea how much pain they would have to go through and would have blown it off if they had known. Maybe they actually tried to blow it off and that information never made it into any source that persisted. Maybe Peter tried to save his skin as he did before but the Romans preferred him dead and embezzled the information so they wouldn’t have to justify the murder, involuntarily creating a powerful martyr. Maybe the sources were faked**. Maybe the actual events were contorted by hearsay and oral tradition. Maybe there was a conspiracy. Maybe their motivation was a combination of several of the numbered motives. Maybe there's a dozens of reasons I can’t think of because I don’t know the people, the time and the society of that time. Josh, frankly, I don’t know. You can’t derive from the fact that you can’t think of a reasonable explanation for their motives, that what they claimed actually happened. It’s not as if they had claimed something ordinary. Their claims are so implausible, that any of the reasons I numbered rings more probable and plausible than an actual resurrection of a human after three days of decay. The testimony of the biblical events wasn’t given to you by your best friend or your parents, who wouldn’t lie to you (maybe they even WOULD lie to you). Not even by a person who you could ask about all the questions or details that remain open. A person who’s reliability could be put to the test. You are fully relying on an ancient source and ask something like “why should they lie?”. Josh, WHY DO PEOPLE LIE ALL THE TIME?? The specific reasons will probably never be uncovered (unless they dig out a policy paper by Peter or Paul or even Jesus). The biblical testimony isn’t worth a nickel. It goes down in the flood of testimonies for any kind of religion or alien invasion or astrology etc. You said: “In my experience, alternative theories on the resurrection and the inception of Christianity never ring as true to the prepondersance of the evidence as the actual Christian story.” The only kind of experience that would make a resurrection claim ring true would be having experienced or eye-witnessed a resurrection oneself. Have you experienced such a thing, Josh? * Back in the day when I was a paratrooper at the German army, I got to know more than one Atheist willing to give his life for the sake of freedom and democracy. After all, I was one of them too. **do you remember, I gave you an example in an e-mail of how I witnessed the faking of official documents once. I actually have more than one example for that. It happens all the time. My point is that choosing such an innovation did more harm to their case than good in the short run. They sure gained lots of attention, already in the short run. And they gained influence. For many people, that’s sufficient. (…) but why insist on his bodily raising from the dead? See above. By the way, it would be helpful at this point to know if you lean more toward the disciples deceptively inventing a new religion in some kind of conspiracy, or whether you think the beginning of Christianity was an avalanche of incrimental misunderstandings/ misperceptions. If you think both aspects played a role, then can you lay out a hypothetical scenario? How much deception? How much wishful-thinking, etc..? Again, this would be mere guessing from my part. There is nothing we could gain from my guesses. I’ll throw in one for you, but I don’t see the point. Let’s say Jesus was a normal man with unusual charisma. A teacher with unorthodox views on religion. He started to preach and to gather disciples. People wouldn’t care too much because they were just as used to kooks as we are today. But he kept gaining influence and started to challenge the religious authorities. When they noticed, that Jesus wasn’t a mere shooting star who would vanish as fast as he rose, they started to deal with him. When they noticed that they couldn’t get hold of his movement, they decided they had to get rid of him. Blasphemy would probably be a strong enough reason to be killed according to Jewish Law. So they accused him of blasphemy and said he claimed to be the messiah. The Romans weren’t interested in riots and thought it best to have that man killed. But the word of mouth had already started it’s spinning and the myths were spreading. Jesus became a legend – and a martyr. His death only increased his fame (something we can observe in multiple occasions, just think of Elvis). When he was finally being killed, the surviving disciples gathered in order to discuss what to do. They had gained influence and they were well aware that all the myths ranking around Jesus were there. After all, Peter had come from a regular fisherman to the head of a movement! So they decided to feed the myth, just like pop- and movie stars feed the gossips of the yellow press in order to promote their next project. They wanted their cause and Jesus’ cause to persist. They didn’t want his death to be in vain. They didn’t want to lose their influence and ranks either. They realized they had a chance. They knew that many of Jesus’ followers by now believed in Jesus’ divinity. So they made up the resurrection and all the miracles that happened before Jesus’ death. They went to his grave and removed his body and paid two women to testify that they had seen Jesus in persona. Etc. etc. etc.. By the time Peter had to go through martyrdom, the movement already was solid enough to persist and had developed considerable momentum. Peter, though not believing in Jesus’ divinity, believed that the cause was just and that the change was worth dying for, just like our soldiers believe democracy and freedom are worth dying for. When he was tortured, he gave it up, but it was too late. The gospels were written in order to keep the movement alive. Maybe the authors knew the story wasn’t true but deliberately wrote it down that way, or they merely wrote down all the myth they got to hear about Jesus story. I’m sorry, that got too long again. This is ONE story that came to my mind. There’s an infinite number of possible changes. IF the authors of the gospel deliberately wrote down what they knew was a lie, how are you gonna know? On to an analysis of witnesses? Okay. On to the witnesses. Let’s record, the first result of this discourse: The fact that hearsay is the death of a true story hasn’t been dismantled the least. The results of word of mouth are empirically testable. Neither Josh nor Christopher objected that oral tradition was the main medium of that time. The possibility of tremendous contortion in the gospel remains. To me, such contortion is more probable than a resurrection.
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Post by moritz on Aug 7, 2008 0:54:52 GMT -8
Chris, Actually, I really don't. Okay, so I had to look it up myself. Josh’s conclusion has the fallacy of excluded middle to begin with. He said: “If we think that stories of resurrection appearances are the result of wish-fulfillment half-hallucination half-story telling, then we would expect their wishes to be in line with common expectations of jews in the 1st Century”. I wouldn’t expect that, the variety of totally different cults, like alien-worship, evolving within Christian societies proves that the wishes of a sect don’t have to go along the lines of the culture they live in my opinion. That’s all. Apart from that, we could list a variation of the false cause fallacy. Or drawing the wrong conclusion. Not to name circumstantial evidence. You know what? I don’t even want to start to argue that way. I’ll sustain why in the other thread. Josh, forgive me. I take your arguments seriously and I think nothing of dismissing arguments by giving them fancy fallacy names. All I wanted to say is that I DO think that belief in resurrection could sprout within that society. After all, the vast majority of those who believed in the resurrection didn’t actually witness it. And that they believed it (even though it contradicted their socio-historical context) doesn’t mean that it actually happened. Just think of the people who believe in UFOs or in Islam. Christopher, no matter what risks Mohammed took he established a belief system opposing the existing belief systems, didn’t he? Juxtapose this with the early disciples who knew they had everything to lose (property, family, status, and life) by propagating the gospel and absolutely nothing substantial to gain. I think the disciples had a lot to gain too. Property and status and a better life for instance. Just because these things are at risk, it doesn’t mean that we don’t take the risk, right? Just think of the soldiers again, who have everything to lose. And there ARE atheists in foxholes too.
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Post by Josh on Aug 31, 2008 17:43:56 GMT -8
Ok, I kinda forgot about this thread. Bummer. Well, here's goes...
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