"There were eye-witnesses"

[Zzyzx]

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Some bible stories are claimed to be truthful "because there were eye-witnesses". Does that establish the truth of the story?

If a person claims to have run a mile in two minutes and says "there were eye-witnesses" does that establish the claim as legitimate – if the witnesses cannot be identified – if no statements from witnesses are available – if credibility of the witnesses is unknown?

If there actually was a witness report of the water-to-wine incident, is there any assurance that what they saw was not an illusion (keeping in mind that illusionists even today can perform "magical" feats that convince many observers)?

If the claim defies what we know of the real world, does witness testimony (or claim "there were witnesses") override real world considerations? Is a two-minute-mile any less believable than "arose from the dead" or "walked on water" or "calmed storms by command?"

[ElCodeMonkey]

[Replying to post 1 by Zzyzx]

Eye-witness reports are the least useful thing someone can have in the court of law. The way memory works, none of us should trust ourselves in the slightest. We too quickly generalize what we see and store it to memory as facts. If we see a clown run through us shooting, everyone will generalize "clown" and make up "facts" that they generally relate to a clown. Some will add in the nose, the hat, the tie, the shoes, etc when in reality perhaps he only had rainbow hair and makeup. Our memories are TERRIBLE in such cases. I read that 25% of eye-witness accounts are faulty at determining who the culprit was. Terrifying concept. Even after 2 minutes of viewing a stabbing, 2 people seeing the same thing suddenly can't agree on if the person was Mexican or not, if he was wearing Jeans or Sweat pants, if he was 5 ft or 6 ft. Crazy.

Check out these tests and tell me that eye-witnesses see everything clearly and are perfectly reliable.

http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/videos.html

[Zzyzx]

[Replying to post 2 by ElCodeMonkey]
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In another thread I mentioned the unreliability of eye-witnesses demonstrated to a law school class when students were asked to write an account of an event that was presented in class. There was wide variation in almost every detail -- by people being trained in attention to detail and accuracy, and observing under near ideal conditions.

We should be careful with what we think we remember and should be very, very careful with what others say they remember.

In the case of the bible story "witnesses" it is even worse than memory problem when there NO accounts from actual witnesses -- only reference to there being witnesses -- he said she told him what so-and-so saw -- and the people are not even identified.

[bjs]

Once again we have a thread that comes down to little more than Z saying , “I’m a naturalist and my worldview does not allow for miracles.�

Obviously there are problems with historical accounts (eye-witness accounts and secondary sources). But that’s what we have. That’s how history works.

If we are going to discount eye-witness reports then we need to discount essentially all known history. No reasonable person will do this.

On the other hand, if we are discounting eye-witness reports because they are reports of the miraculous then we will need to have some evidence in favor of naturalism or some other worldview that precludes the miraculous.

[postroad]

To my horror I have come to the realisation that a large percentage of Christians do not need to believe that the stories are true in order to have faith.

I imagine that could have been the case 2000 years ago as well?

Does anyone realise the significance of this?

[Zzyzx]

Once again we have a thread that comes down to little more than Z saying , “I’m a naturalist and my worldview does not allow for miracles.�

Correction #1: We have Zzyzx stating that eye-witness accounts are unreliable.

Correction #2: Zzyzx self-identifies as a Non-Theist

Nothing in my post says or implies anything about not allowing miracles. Do you understand the difference between doubt and deny? Is it difficult to accept that one can doubt or question something without denying the possibility that it occurred?

Would you care to try to debate ideas rather than focusing on personalities?

Obviously there are problems with historical accounts (eye-witness accounts and secondary sources). But that’s what we have. That’s how history works.

Is the bible an historical document?

If we are going to discount eye-witness reports then we need to discount essentially all known history. No reasonable person will do this.

Note that there is a difference between discussion of religion and discussion of history (though either can contain some reference to the other).

Few, if any, scholars or theologians regard the bible as a historical document. However, uninformed or minimally informed believers often regard it as historical.

On the other hand, if we are discounting eye-witness reports because they are reports of the miraculous then we will need to have some evidence in favor of naturalism or some other worldview that precludes the miraculous.

I, for one, do NOT preclude "miracles" and am very open to accepting that such things occur IF they can be shown to actually occur. Tales of "miracles" by hearsay are no more convincing than the "miraculous" two-minute mile mentioned above.

Can anyone cite an example of a supernatural "miracle" (something other than an unusual event) that does not depend on testimonial by claimed witnesses?

[ElCodeMonkey]

If we are going to discount eye-witness reports then we need to discount essentially all known history. No reasonable person will do this.

We don't need to discount them, but we need to keep in mind the inaccuracies of them. Knowing the human mind, there is absolutely no reason to assume that the stories are inerrant by any stretch of the imagination. Even of our own history, people contort it to skew minds. Last I heard, the Germans don't really get much teaching in the ways of the Holocaust. I'm sure there's much we don't learn either. History is fallible. The History in the Bible gives no reason to believe it's beyond the corruption of man.

Just maybe if Jesus were reported as having said "all this will be written down and God will ensure they don't mess up for 2000 years" then maybe there'd be a case for it (even though it would still be circular reasoning). It would have to be a miracle in and of itself for all the writings to be perfectly inspired by God, but even in the writings themselves we don't have such a prophecy or intent of God to do such a thing. Only a quip in Timothy that "ALL" scripture is God-breathed and good for teaching. But that clearly accounts for a heck of a lot more than just the Bible. Or else the intent of it meant solely the Torah which includes nothing of Jesus and is the least inspiring of all the parts of the Bible (being filled with all kinds of evils commanded by a loving God and all).

[Korah]

To my horror I have come to the realisation that a large percentage of Christians do not need to believe that the stories are true in order to have faith.
....

I have to admit that faith was not enough for me, so I have spent a lifetime finding evidence for the gospels. To my horror I have not found that anyone else, believer or non-believer, is interested in my results. Not even here in Debating Christianity, in which my Post #60 in "Why are the scholars changing their minds..."
listed links to the two popular websites in which I have posted my "Gospel Eyewitnesses" with its thesis that there are seven written eyewitness records to Jesus in the gospels as sources therein. (Not to mention that I posted this on two other websites now inaccessible, Theology Web and FreethoughtandRationalismDiscussionBoard.)

We can discuss this here or in either of the two links in that Post #60:

http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... h_passwd=1

[postroad]

To my horror I have come to the realisation that a large percentage of Christians do not need to believe that the stories are true in order to have faith.
....

I have to admit that faith was not enough for me, so I have spent a lifetime finding evidence for the gospels. To my horror I have not found that anyone else, believer or non-believer, is interested in my results. Not even here in Debating Christianity, in which my Post #60 in "Why are the scholars changing their minds..."
listed links to the two popular websites in which I have posted my "Gospel Eyewitnesses" with its thesis that there are seven written eyewitness records to Jesus in the gospels as sources therein. (Not to mention that I posted this on two other websites now inaccessible, Theology Web and FreethoughtandRationalismDiscussionBoard.)

We can discuss this here or in either of the two links in that Post #60:

http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... h_passwd=1

You have to understand where I am coming from. I was brought up in a fundamentalist environment. The Bible was the Word of God. The concept that somebody would tamper or make up stories in the word of God was completely foreign to me.

Of course it became evident that there existed fatal discrepancies in the accounts. So now I am thinking "bunch of liars" made the whole thing up.

But no, they do not even have to be "liars" I have to incorporate the concept of a "moral story" and tradition.

Now the idea seems alien to me. But apparently that is a result of my upbringing.

There seems to exist people who without any cognitive dissonance, are able to glean spiritual truths from admittedly non historical literature and tradition.

Also apparently it was common in the past to create for a better term "pious frauds" embellishing a common tradition and without any intellectual discomfort attribute them to historical figures.

In short they accepted fables as moral and spiritual instruction

Now from that perspective, what is the point of presenting moral fables as factual records? The same readers that accepted the four gospels happily accepted many more gospels attributed to Mary and Judas,Thomas and others.

If they in the Spirit accepted these gospels as worthy, by what standard where they declared unworthy hundreds of years later?

I imagine the standard was their ability to be reconciled to each other and the prevailing doctrine of that day.

So by that standard I can imagine that they would contain or were made to contain some corroborating textual content.

In short the evidence presented must still include all the texts that the early believers accepted and not just those that were declared by majority vote to be cannon IMO

[Overcomer]

bjs wrote:

If we are going to discount eye-witness reports then we need to discount essentially all known history. No reasonable person will do this.

You've hit the nail on the head! If we didn't use eyewitness accounts, much of history would be lost to us.

I think it's important to note that historians in the day and age in which the gospels were written considered eyewitness accounts the best source of information (See Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses).

And we also need to consider that students of a particular teacher often took notes to help them memorize their teacher's sayings. Ancient schools often preserved teachings for the next generation.

It's also noteworthy that memorization was key in the learning of students, Jewish or Roman, in that day. For example, Pythagorean students had to repeat back their teacher's lectures from the previous day before getting out of bed in the morning (See Craig Keener's Bible Background Commentary). Would we expect Jesus' disciples to be any less stringent re: his teachings?

Writing for different audiences (Matthew for Jews, Mark and Luke for Gentiles, John for believers, both Jewish and Gentile), we shouldn't be surprised that they chose to highlight different things and rearrange the sayings to suit them -- the latter being perfectly acceptable in biographies of that time.

Also bear in mind that Jesus probably spoke Aramaic and the gospels are in Greek. That means that his sayings wouldn't be translated identically by everyone just as any work we might read in English that has been translated from French, Spanish or German wouldn't be identical in wording. But the meaning would remain the same.

I find that people often create differences between the gospels that aren't really there. They're usually the result of simple misunderstanding or because a text has been taken out of context and the meaning has been changed in result.

Given that the gospels were written within two generations of Christ's death and resurrection, there would be all kinds of people still alive to know whether the gospel writers got it right or not. Think of the thousands of people who heard his sermon on the mount. Think of the Roman soldiers present when he was arrested, tried and crucified. Think of the people he healed and their families.

J. Warner Wallace is an ex-atheist. As a cold case homicide detective, he has an interesting perspective on eyewitness evidence. He talks about the "chain of evidence" for the gospels here:

http://pleaseconvinceme.com/2012/marks- ... -of-peter/

Zzyxz wrote:

Note that there is a difference between discussion of religion and discussion of history (though either can contain some reference to the other).

Few, if any, scholars or theologians regard the bible as a historical document. However, uninformed or minimally informed believers often regard it as historical.

When it comes to the Bible, history and theology are intertwined. They cannot be separated. The Bible is about God who gets involved in the history of humanity. It is grounded in history, something that cannot be said about the holy books of other religions or about Ancient Near Eastern mythologies.

And the existence of theology does NOT negate the truth of the history it contains. Archaeology continually supports its contents. It contains accounts of real people, real places, real events.

I also question your statement that few scholars or theologians regard the Bible as a historical document. I think it is what a logician would call a "hasty generalization". In John Dickson's The Christ Files, he explores what mainline historians think of the Bible -- mainline meaning those historians who are neither atheistic or Christian and have no vested interest in whether Christ died and rose from the dead, but are interested in history for history's sake. They do indeed consider the books of the Bible history.

As for theologians not believing it's history, you and I must be reading different ones because the ones I read do indeed consider it such -- people like Darrell Bock, Craig Blomberg, F. F. Bruce, Gary Habermas, Dan Wallace, Craig Keener, Craig Evans -- just to name a few.

I recommend Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith? edited by James K. Hoffmeier and Dennis R. Magary. You can read a review of it here:

http://www.apologetics315.com/search?q= ... r+to+faith

postroad wrote:

The same readers that accepted the four gospels happily accepted many more gospels attributed to Mary and Judas,Thomas and others.

Where is your evidence for that? Those other gospels were written from the late second century to the fourth century. They weren't considered for the canon because they were not written by people who knew Jesus or by people who knew people who knew Jesus. That was the primary consideration for entry into the canon, that is, eyewitness accounts.

Several years ago, a movie came out about Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer. We know Lincoln was real. We are pretty sure he didn't hunt and kill vampires. Consider the gospels of Mary, Judas, Thomas, etc. as similar. They may have used the names of real people, but there's no indication that their audience ever thought they were the truth of God. Based on their content, it seems they were meant to entertain, not testify to the truth of God. They are all available online and, by just reading them, you can see that they are nothing like the Biblical gospels. They couldn't be considered biographies by any stretch of the imagination.

korah wrote:

I have to admit that faith was not enough for me, so I have spent a lifetime finding evidence for the gospels.

First of all, your statement suggests that the Christian faith isn't based on any evidence. But it is. Secondly, I have spent a lifetime finding evidence for the gospels -- and more -- and it is the evidence I have found that makes me such a strong follower of Christ.

I wonder where your research led you. I have found that some people feed their doubt rather than their faith by reading only those things that speak against God, the Bible and Christianity. They do not entertain the other side of the picture at all because, in reality, they don't want to believe and they go looking for excuses not to. I am not saying you are one of those because I don't know you, but I have seen numerous cases of that.