You stress the importance of memory. But don’t some scholars question the reliability of communities to transmit accurate information from generation to generation?
First, studies show that predominantly oral societies have ways of preserving accurately those traditions they wish to preserve, even across many generations. In this respect, they treat different sorts of traditions differently, and the question is: Did the early Christians want to preserve testimonies about Jesus faithfully?
Second, in the case of the Gospels, we are not really talking about traditions passed from generation to generation like folklore. The Gospels were written within living memory of the events. They are what historians in the ancient world regarded as the only sort of history that should really be written, that done while eyewitnesses were still accessible. They are what modern historians call oral history. The central thread through my book is my attempt to put the eyewitnesses of Gospel events back into our picture of how Gospel traditions reached the evangelists. The eyewitnesses (many of them, certainly not just the Twelve), I suggest, remained the authoritative sources and guarantors of the traditions they themselves had formulated. This is one way the transmission of the traditions was controlled, and it’s a key factor in the origins of the Gospels themselves.
Is there any possibility that the “eyewitness accounts” of the Gospels are merely a literary technique of the evangelists?
It’s not impossible. If you have conventional techniques for indicating sources, they can be used fictionally as well as authentically. But in this case, we can, as I’ve mentioned, test the authenticity of names and the way they occur in the Gospels. Random invention wouldn’t account for the specific names we have. Also, the naming of witnesses is more occasional and unobtrusive than we would expect if the device were used fictionally. Some of the later apocryphal Gospels (Gospel of Peter, Protevangelium of James) appeal to eyewitness testimony fictionally, and the ways they do so are blatant and obvious.
I was especially concerned to counter the common scholarly view that the Synoptic Gospels don’t indicate their eyewitness sources and thus are not concerned about eyewitness testimony. I wanted to show that they do have ways of indicating the eyewitness origins of their traditions.
I need this book.
One of the arguements for the authenticity of the Gospels is that the Twelve did not clean it up; they left their weaknesses in there.
I think I’m going to read this next, after I finish Pope Benedict’s new book.
One of the members of our parish is a retired law enforcement officer. He said that one way you know witnesses have cooked their stories is if they agree in all respects.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
This also dovetails with scholarly work of the ’90’s that proposed arguments for The Gospel of John as perhaps the most semitic of the four gospels bast on textual and linguistic analysis,
I heard a good overview on this by an associate priest from St. Pater’s Charlotte that agreed with thes conclusions in ’99.
The dedicated enlightment skeptic will never accept that there is any truth in the supernatural portions of the NT.
Oh, for Pete’s sake, how long are traditionalists going to keep up this fantasy, in which they look at oral tradition through rose-colored glasses?
The Bauckham article says: “It’s the same with witnesses in court. Testimony asks to be trusted, and it’s not irrational to do so. We do so all the time.”
Bauckham tells only a very small part of the story here. We trust testimony all the time, but only after first assaying it to get a sense of whether we ought to trust it.
In court, first the attorney presenting the witness must “lay the foundation” by eliciting testimony that the witness was in fact in a position to know what s/he was talking about — that she was actually there, that she was looking in the right direction at the right time, etc. And the opposing counsel might well go into those matters even more intensely on cross-examination. (Think of the scene in My Cousin Vinnie, where Joe Pesci cross-examines an elderly woman “eyewitness” to the crime, gently demonstrating that she was extremely unlikely to have seen it through some trees without her glasses.)
And in court we also apply the hearsay rule. We know, from thousands of years of experience, that stories get corrupted as they’re passed hand-to-hand. People don’t tell the story that actually happened, because they can’t: What they tell is the story they think they perceived, or they story they think they remember hearing. Very different — and there are modern studies aplenty that show this.
One reason stories get corrupted is that people have agendas to advance, and axes to grind, and reputations to protect, and scores to settle. We unconsciously tend to remember things the way we want them to have been, not necessarily the way they were. On this score, witness bias can enter the picture here, big time, without the witness even being aware of it. The factional disputes in the early church, not to mention the confrontations with “the Jews,” give us ample reason to be at least mildly curious about the objectivity of the NT authors and their sources.
(The Gospel of John in particular is rife with indications that its author was biased, e.g., the way he worked so hard to convince the reader that “the disciple whom Jesus loved” was the dominical favorite. The Synoptics hint too that John was something of a hothead and a wannabe bigshot — wanting to call down fire on an insufficiently-welcoming village, and asking for him and his brother to be named Jesus’ capi de tutti capi.)
Anyway, back to the courtroom: Assuming the witness gets past all these hurdles, the judge invariably instructs the jury that it must assess each witness’s credibility. Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling is sitting in a federal prison today because his jurors didn’t think he was telling the truth. OJ Simpson is a free man today because his jurors didn’t believe detective Mark Furhman and other prosecution witnesses were telling the truth.
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Bauckham writes: “… studies show that predominantly oral societies have ways of preserving accurately those traditions they wish to preserve, even across many generations.”
True enough, but for this to be relevant, the traditions have to be accurate to start out with, otherwise what’s being preserved is a distortion. (I’m old enough to remember the computer acronym GIGO, for Garbage In, Garbage Out.) Inaccurate traditions have a funny way of sticking around because they just seem to fit. For example, all kinds of evangelicals still think Cassie Bernal was killed at Columbine after bravely declaring her faith in God; the evidence, however, seems to be that things didn’t happen that way. Or as a trivial example, all kinds of people think Weird Al Yankovic is the son of the late Frankie Yankovic the Polka King; he’s not. And how many urban legends are still circulating by email long after being rebutted? The means of communication are faster these days, but we have no reason to think that people significantly different in this regard than in NT times.
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I’m certain some comment or another (Sarah?) will accuse me of totally disbelieving the Bible. Wrong. It’s not an either/or thing; I don’t have to choose between totally rejecting the Bible or totally accepting it.
There’s plenty of reason to think that many portions of the NT are reasonably accurate. The problem is, we can’t know for certain which portions those are.
And in any case, we’re not obligated to accept the NT authors’ explanations of phenomena that they perceived, but that they readily admitted they didn’t fully understand, any more than we have to accept their (presumed) notion that the sun revolves around the earth.
God gave us brains, and presumably expects us to use them. Traditionalists need to face the facts, and accept that their exaltation of the Bible is misplaced.
DC, I have actually read the book, have you? I would venture not on the basis of your above. You might try being a bit more with it and less 19th Century or even 20th Century if it’s not too difficult for you to look beyond your prejudices. Just a thought.
dwstroudmd – can I second your comment!
D.C. If you are going to make comments – particularly long and confident comments like your one above, it does pay to read the book first. Otherwise you come off sounding like a total ignoramus.
There are any number of reviews of this book – which is clearly destined to become one of the significant books of the decade so is being widely reviewed in most leading Journals of biblical studies. One such review, and other posters might know of others, is found here:
http://www.denverseminary.edu/dj/articles2007/0200/0204
I’ll admit that I have not read the book, but even if what Bauckham writes is true and the Gospels are built on a solid basis of eyewitness testimony, that still renders them what I have always regarded them as — historical documents, probably quite reliable ones as such things go, but no doubt containing many errors.
Being built on a foundation of eyewitness accounts by no means makes the Gospels unlikely to contain error — ask a court attorney sometime about the phrase, “Lies like an eyewitness.” Countless studies have proven that eyewitnesses — honest, careful witnesses, sincerely convinced that they are reporting exactly what they saw — are far more prone to error than one would think.
If you still doubt, read a newspaper article describing an event you witnessed yourself — odds are good you’ll find at least one thing you’re sure the reporter got wrong. And this is an account written within twenty-four hours of the event.
There seems every reason to be confident in the broad strokes of the Gospel story, and no doubt many of the sayings attributed to Jesus are things he really did say. But I’m also sure that there are many mistakes in detail and chronology, and probably some of the things Jesus is supposed to have said are things that sounded a lot like something Jesus would say.
One of my seminary profs, when the subject of the Jesus Seminar came up, said that his opinion of it was that they were missing the point. The analogy he used was looking at a painting by, say, Monet with a magnifying glass and asking, “This speck here — is that a Monet speck, or just a random bit of dirt?” Even if you can figure out an answer, and you probably can’t, it doesn’t tell you anything useful. It’s not until you step back and take a look at the entire painting that you see what Monet was getting at.
Similarly with the Gospels. If you focus in on any particular incident or sentence that Jesus is said to have said and ask, “Did this really happen?” then you’re asking a question that probably can’t be answered. But if you step back and take a look at the Gospels as a whole, then you can see a broad picture of Jesus’ life and it’s clear enough the kinds of things he said and did, and the kind of impression he left on people.
I have this book on order and very much look forward to reading it. Richard Bauckham is one of the most innovative thinkers and writers in NT studies, and I (a nobody in this area) would rate him above the redoubtable (and sometimes doubtable) Tom Wright. Read his ‘God Incarnate’ for a brief but incisive treatment of the divinity of Christ in Paul. And see his edited volume ‘The Gospel for all Christians’ which casts big doubts on synoptic theory. If he is right in this matter, we can pretty mcuh kiss form criticism goodbye.
This is a most significant work. It turns Bultmann on his head. Instead of assuming that unless proved otherwise, words and deeds of Jesus are really words of the early church, Bauckham would have us believe the early church treasured and passed on faithfully the Lord’s words and work. In one way this is so much commonsensical than the elaborate rationalizations of the higher critics. It also adds weight to the sense of continuity and authority which the apostolic and patristic writers accorded the New Testament.
Well, D.C., I have a feeling that, like all of us fallen sinners, the parts of the Gospels as well as the rest of Scripture that you suspect are not reliable are the parts that give you the most discomfort. How does one decide which parts of Scripture to ignore and which to affirm as true? By your paradigm, Jesus becomes a liar who said “Scripture cannot be broken” But the Gospels can be reliably placed as having been written during the lifetime of eyewitnesses to the events of the life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, and surely they would have contradicted inaccuracies and fabrications. Luke is widely recognized as the most accurate historian of that age and region, even by secular scholars. You seem to put the Gospel writers on trial for perjury or at least to discredit them as unreliable witnesses, but most of the Apostles died martyrs rather than deny what they had seen with their own eyes and handled with their own hands. Perhaps we should remember what Jesus quoted Abraham saying to the rich man who petitioned him from Hell: “If they do not believe Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe if someone comes back from the dead.”, and neither do you seem to believe today.
Who would dare?
Who would touch the personally endorsed and written words of the eyewitnesses to Jesus?
How could any distorter or axe-grinder get his or her emendations or changes accepted?
Just what is the likelihood that the 500 in the Upper Room on the day of Pentecost would not object, had some unnamed redactor modified or changed what Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John had written? Or is the arugment that they were illiterate savages?
It seems to me that the axe-grinders and revisionists of our present age are far more likely to have gotten it wrong than the eyewitnesses!
There are just too many references out there, dating from the first four centuries, for me to doubt the consistency, coherence, and reliability of the Gospels.
Especially when compared to the arrant nonsense in the pseudipigripha (sp?).
DC and Ross, prove Les Fairfield’s point. As an instrument of God’s revelation the Scriptures simpley aren’t good enough. There no quantum of proof that will ever convince them otherwise. Jesus summed it up well in the story of the rich man and Lazarus:
dwstroudmd [#8] writes: “I have actually read the book, have you? I would venture not on the basis of your above. You might try being a bit more with it and less 19th Century or even 20th Century if it’s not too difficult for you to look beyond your prejudices.”
You’re right, DW, I do have prejudices about this, and so do you in analogous areas. You’re a physician, right? Let’s try a hypothetical situation: Suppose —
* that your friends showed you an interview in which the author of a new book claimed — in the interview itself — that cholera, plague, etc., are caused by miasma after all, and that the “modernist” scientists who insist on the germ theory of disease are at best misguided;
* that you challenged the author’s interview comments, briefly summarizing how the germ theory has been convincingly proved to explain things far better than the miasma theory; and
* that your friends then criticized you for not having read the author’s entire book before daring to challenge his miasma-theory interview comments.
Without more, I doubt you’d bother reading the miasma-theory book; your friends would have to do more work to convince you it’d be a prudent use of your time. As a lawyer who spent many years doing technology litigation, I have pretty much that same reaction when laymen tell me I should read Bauckham’s entire book before challenging his interview comments about the alleged reliability of oral tradition.
(Some readers know that over the past couple of years I’ve written about the weaknesses of oral tradition on my own blog; there are links in the right-hand column of my blog.)
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Br. Michael [#16] writes that for people like Ross and me, “<em>at the bottom line, scriptures are not a product of the Holy Spirit and are unreliable in transmitting God’s revelation. At best they transmit 1st/2nd Century writers impressions and feelings about God, but what was true for them is not true for us. We are free to reinvent God to fit into our modern and superior way of doing things.”evil.”)
Ross, even accepting your premise that there are errors; why focus there? Why not look at the issues where there is Biblical unity; such as who man is ( sinful), who God is ( creator, redeemer, sustainer), and how man and God have been reconciled ( the cross). If you start with Biblical unity the so called errrors receed in importance; or possibly as the Bible becomes more authoritive in your life, you see other explanations for the supposed errors, and maybe they are not errors after all.
Remember the time honored guidelines for reading scripture; interpret the hard passages in light of the easy ones; interpret the few passages in light of the many.
In response to DC in 7, he uses the analogy of a trial court, after all I understand he is a trial lawyer. But may I suggest he is using the wrong analogy. You can not apply rules of a trial court to an event long past. The witnesses are all dead. We cannot bring Paul to the witness stand where he can be cross-examined.
I think a better analogy is that of an appellate court. An appellate court does not re-try a case. Rather they accept the facts in the case and rely on the “cold record” produced in the court below. Unless there is something “clearly erroneous” they do not go behind the record. Consequently we are reviewing a “cold record” the Holy Scriptures. We have very little ability to go behind the record to discover the “true” facts, rather we are limited to the facts contained in the record.
Now all analogies break down if pushed too far, but my point is that we can never retry this case to DC’s satisfaction. DC wants a trial de novo. But we can’t do that. We are limited to the existing record as is an appellate court. DC’s comment:
That is why an appellate court does not retry the facts of a case on the basis of a cold record. DC wants to retry the facts when he admits that it can’t be done. Thus I think that we are obligated to accept as true the facts presented in the Scriptural record. We are in no position to second guess otherwise we simple select the facts that we want.
Christians accept the fact that the Scriptures are human documents written in a variety of literary genres and that each genre requires a different reading strategy, but we also believe that the Holy Spirit superintended the entire process so that the Canon as set out in the Articles of Religion is a reliable record of God’s actions in History and that the Scriptures are, in fact, God’s word to us. Thus:
Note that I am assuming a Christian Theistic Worldview where God can and does intervene in human history in supernatural events. If you have a natural materialistic worldview then supernatural events are ruled out as a basic presupposition. Thus the Holy Spirit is not active in the writing of the scriptures and supernatural events recorded in the Bible are not true because that simply cannot happen.
Again, I think that Les Fairfield has done his usual superb job in describing this.
DC, if I have unfairly mischaracterized your position I do apologize. No desire to demonize was intended. Why don’t you give us a list of those parts of Scripture that you think are correct, inspired by the Holy Spirit (if different), and those parts that are in error? Maybe this would help us. Are only some parts, if any, inspired by the Holy Spirit and how do we tell which are which?
As you stated I do believe that, “the Bible is the totally-reliable word of God to which preemptive authority must be givenâ€. I do in fact acknowledge that other people have different point of views, but I don’t think they are valid Christian points of view. This understanding is important because it is useless to argue that something is right or wrong based on Biblical authority unless both parties have the same understanding of Scripture. Thus we argue past each other. If I say that you should do something just because the Bible (and by implication God) says so, you are not going to find that a persuasive argument.
You for example have openly stated that:
But again if I have misstated your beliefs I do apologize and ask that you correct my misstatements.
I am glad to see this discussed. Both oral tradition and Q are an argument out of nothing. They can not be disproven or proven. David McCullough has written an excellent book about Teddy Roosevelt whom he did not know. Josephus was not an eyewitness to much of what he wrote but he is considered as an authority. The advantage of the oral tradition is that it separates the writing from the events for as long as possible and thereby allows for speculation which masks as scholarship.
DC, miasma was a perfectly good explanation for its time, of course.
That was the point of noting you had not read the book. You are in a miasma of unknowing because you are stuck in 19th and 20th century scholarship. Get out more and take a breath of fresh scholarship, it’ll clear your vapors if you try it.
The argumentation against the standing scholarship are articulate, well-formulated and suggest a major paradigm shift. You are the loser if you don’t check it out. Please do.
Br. Michael [#19] writes: <i>”I think a better analogy is that of an appellate court. An appellate court does not re-try a case. Rather they accept the facts in the case and rely on the “cold record” produced in the court below. Unless there is something “clearly erroneous” they do not go behind the record. Consequently we are reviewing a “cold record” the Holy scriptures. We have very little ability to go behind the record to discover the “true” facts, rather we are limited to the facts contained in the record.govern anything (except the judicial system itself); that’s the job of other branches of government.
In contrast, each of us humans is engaged in a very long-term governance project, namely the conduct of our own lives. We can certainly look to the Bible for useful information and guidance. But it’s grossly irresponsible, I submit, to categorically rely on the scriptural authors’ weighing of the evidence and to give their conclusions preemptive authority no matter what. That’d be like the skipper of a merchant vessel insisting on giving primacy to Pauline-era navigational charts while bringing his ship into port in Syracuse — if the ship were to run aground, absolutely no competent mariner would consider that the skipper had acted responsibly.
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Br. Michael, you’re correct that we’re talking past each other. We see things so differently that you probably think I’m a fool (and I would not take that as being meant pejoratively, just as an honestly-held view.) I might well say the same about you except for one thing: I’ve been wrong often enough in my life that I can’t categorically rule out that you’re right (although I don’t think you are).
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I appreciate your suggestion that I make a list of which parts of Scripture I think are correct and which aren’t. But instead of trying to boil the ocean, let’s try another approach.
You quoted a list from one of my prior comments, setting out eight specific “Christian” beliefs that I don’t accept as true. For several of those items, I’ve explained on my own blog why I hold the views I do, either because the allegedly-supporting evidence is not probative or because the evidence actually points the other way. (See, for example “The Apostles’ Teaching Didn’t Seem to Include a Divine Jesus,” at http://www.questioningchristian.com/2005/05/the_apostles_te.html.)
Why don’t you pick one or two items from the list you quoted above and try to show that the traditionalist claims are indeed supported by competent evidence that would be persuasive to a nonbeliever or doubter? That would be a useful exercise for all of us.
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dwstroudmd [#22] writes: “miasma was a perfectly good explanation for its time, of course.”
It was not “perfectly good for its time,” it was just the best we could do at the time.
Few if any traditionalists would go to a miasma-theory physician to care for themselves or their families. It baffles me why they nevertheless insist on going, for their spiritual care, to what we might call miasma-theory religious practitioners.
#22 you are right about 19th and 20th century scholarship. It brought about a paradigm shift in the view of reality. For the first time in history humans saw them self on the top of a bottom to top view of reality. Previous human thought saw a top to bottom model. In order words much of the assumptions to include science and TEC is influenced by such thinkers as Marx, Darwin, Freud and Nietsche.
#19 Br. Michael says:
But again this is a false dichotomy. It is possible to believe that God does intervene in human history, but still not believe that the Holy Spirit was “superintending” the writers, editors, collectors, etc. of the books that eventually went into the Bible. Just because God can and sometimes does intervene does not mean that God has intervened in any particular case.
Actually, I would say that the Holy Spirit was active in those authors, but in the same way that it is active in you or I when we set out to write down, to our best ability, something that matters very much to us.
That hardly means I reject or deny Scripture. The people who wrote it were obviously thoughtful, devout, and prayerful, and were writing — often with great skill and passion — about profoundly important events. They produced what is, even by strictly secular standards, one of the most remarkable feats of the written word in history. I have enormous respect for the result of their labors.
But it’s true that I do not attribute to Scripture absolute or divine authority, because its authors were human. They could make mistakes, they could forget or misremember, they could wrongly interpret what they saw; and at best they would still write through the lens of a very different time and culture. They wrote the truth as they understood it. I, standing some thousands of years later and in a very different culture, must try to find truth as I understand it. Scripture is a great help and comfort in that task.
But it is a guidebook composed from notes left on scraps of paper by those who have wandered in this forest before me. It is not a satellite map.
DC, I do not think you are a fool. A determined skeptic maybe, but not a fool.
You suggest: “Why don’t you pick one or two items from the list you quoted above and try to show that the traditionalist claims are indeed supported by competent evidence that would be persuasive to a nonbeliever or doubter? That would be a useful exercise for all of us.”
I could attempt do that, but it would be on the basis of Biblical evidence which you reject.
As a short example you say that Jesus is not God incarnate. One example of support for this is the resurrection which you reject. Consider Mark’s story:
Jesus astounds everyone by purporting to forgive the man’s sins. The Pharisees are correct in their observation that only God can forgive sins because sin is an offense against God. In so many words Jesus says “You’re right I am God†and heals the man. What would you say if this story were true? But, of course you deny that the story is true because the only source we have for this story, the ”record on appeal†is rejected because you deem it untrustworthy.
I like my appellate court analogy because you reject the record. If an appellate court did that, it would have nothing with which to work. You are in the same position.
Ross you write:
<blockquote> But it’s true that I do not attribute to scripture absolute or divine authority, because its authors were human. They could make mistakes, they could forget or misremember, they could wrongly interpret what they saw; and at best they would still write through the lens of a very different time and culture. They wrote the truth as they understood it. I, standing some thousands of years later and in a very different culture, must try to find truth as I understand it. Scripture is a great help and comfort in that task.
#27:
Human reason, yes, and experience. Taking into consideration the tradition of interpretation as well, which is just the cumulative reason and experience of previous generations.
To save you the trouble of pointing it out, yes, human reason and experience are fallible. But that’s the hand we’ve been dealt, and so we play it. We’ve evolved some tolerable mechanisms for checking the results of reason for error, as best we can.
From where I’m sitting, it seems to me that many “reasserters” insist that there must be a source of absolutely reliable knowledge, or we can know nothing at all. I find this an odd claim. It may be true that we can know nothing absolutely, but we can know many things well enough. I can’t know that the sun will rise tomorrow morning, but I am confident enough in that prediction to plan on it.
Furthermore, there is an epistemological chicken-and-egg problem you must confront even if Scripture is divinely inspired and infallible: how would you know that fact? Either you reach that conclusion through reason — in which case you might be wrong, and you cannot rely on Scripture with any more certainty than the strength of your reasoning that Scripture is inspired — or you rely on a separate revelation from God, independent of Scripture, assuring you that Scripture is inspired. But if the latter, how do you know that that revelation is inspired?… and so on.
Ross [#28], very well said.
The question of the ‘authenticity’ of ‘John’ is a very interesting one. Just to simplify: it seems to me to cut both ways. At the end of the Gospel, it’s clear that the main authority of it, ‘the beloved disciple’, is either dying or dead. On the one hand, the fact (it seems to be a fact) that he knew Jesus confers authenticity. On the other hand, the fact that he’s dying or dead conflicts with one of Jesus’ claims, hitherto understood as meaning that that disciple would not die before the Second Coming, now (in the face of the fact that he was dying or was already dead) reinterpreted to mean that it didn’t matter if Jesus returned in the lifetime of that disciple. So it’s very close to Jesus but simultaneously raises a big problem about one of Jesus’ claims – and a claim that relates to what seems to have been one of his very biggest claims: namely, that the End was near. But it wasn’t.
28, 29 and 30, there you have it in a nutshell folks. Human reason and experiance trumps all and for JS, Jesus did not know what He was talking about. He got it wrong, it’s a fraud and a sham and if He got this wrong what else?
Blunt statements? Yes. But Paul was equally blunt when he said:
#31:
I never said that I didn’t believe Christ was raised from the dead. You seem to be asserting that the infallibility of Scripture is part-and-parcel with belief in God, in Christ, in the Resurrection, and a host of other beliefs; if you don’t believe in one, you can’t believe in any. I submit that this is demonstrably not true.
Since this discussion seems to have focused on the inerrancy of Scripture and now the accuracy of Jesus’ prophecies I would now refer all to two things, at the risk of steering you to ground with which you may be quite familiar. Those are the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, found, among other places, at:
http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/documents/icbi.html
and R. C. Sproul’s (www.ligonier.org) and Hank Hanegraaf’s (www.equip.org) reading of Jesus’ prophecies regarding His return and the coming destruction of Jerusalem and of Revelation’s prophecy of mostly the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the persecution by Nero (at least a partial predarist view) and partly of the end of time and the renewal of the earth and of the saved.
Ross, in your #25 above, you make this point:
<blockquote>But it’s true that I do not attribute to scripture absolute or divine authority, because its authors were human. They could make mistakes, they could forget or misremember, they could wrongly interpret what they saw; and at best they would still write through the lens of a very different time and culture.
Let’s see if I can get the blockquotes right this time!
Since this discussion seems to have focused on the inerrancy of Scripture and now the accuracy of Jesus’ prophecies I would now refer all to two things, at the risk of steering you to ground with which you may be quite familiar. Those are the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, found, among other places, at:
http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/documents/icbi.html
and R. C. Sproul’s (http://www.ligonier.org) and Hank Hanegraaf’s (http://www.equip.org) reading of Jesus’ prophecies regarding His return and the coming destruction of Jerusalem and of Revelation’s prophecy of mostly the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the persecution by Nero (at least a partial predarist view) and partly of the end of time and the renewal of the earth and of the saved.
Ross, in your #25 above, you make this point:
<blockquote> But it’s true that I do not attribute to scripture absolute or divine authority, because its authors were human. They could make mistakes, they could forget or misremember, they could wrongly interpret what they saw; and at best they would still write through the lens of a very different time and culture.
Milton:
Yes, I’ve seen the Chicago Statement before — and in reference to this comment in another thread, I’m amused to see the provision in Article XIII about “round numbers” — but, as you might expect, I can’t agree with the Statement. In fact, I think I can affirm many of the “We deny” statements, and deny most of the “We affirm”-s 🙂
Milton [#34], I’ve reproduced below Articles IV, VI, and IX of the Chicago Statement, and have thrown in Article V for good measure:
It’s a fitting occasion to propound My Favorite Theological Question #1: And how, exactly, do you [or they] know that?, which also implicates Ross’s epistemological chicken-and-egg problem in #28.
When you drill down into the answers we usually get from traditionalists, the bottom-most turtle amounts to, Because we say so!
To which the response must be: Explain why your say-so is entitled to more authority than that of, say, Joseph Smith, or Muhammad, or Sun Myung Moon.
DC, your view of oral tradition and the compilation of the Gospels is what is miasmic! That was the point. But you have to read the book to get the argumentation and supporting data. Then, come back and let us know what you think about your current paradigm and its errancy or inerrancy. That was the origin of the thread.
And, most people in the world still go to miasmic or humoural physicians on a quantitative basis, of course. Relatively few have access to allopathic physicians. You and I may know what is the current “best” medicine in our situations, of course. But please note that naturopathy and chiropracty and any number of “natural” medical routes are available.
On the grounds of that analogy, read the book and see if you are an allopathic at heart or a naturopath. Reason will lead you to the former though you need not lose all the values of the latter if you reflect.
#31
Dear Br Michael,
I fear that yet again you misrepresent me. Nothing I say means I think ‘it was all a fraud, a sham’. There is a difficulty about Jesus’ prophecies about the imminence of the End. The difficulty is that the End was not imminent. It hasn’t happened yet, has it? And according to science, we have approximately 16 billion years to go. You may dismiss that, but I see no reason to do so. I know all about inaugurated eschatology. There are perfectly reputable NT scholars who in their private lives are completely orthodox Christians (I know some) who think Jesus got this wrong.
As for prophecies about the destruction of Jerusalem, the evidence is strong that Jesus made them, though it is also the case that some of the NT references (esp. Luke) ‘touch up’ these prophecies in the light of history. That, too, is completely non-controversial NT scholarship.
I do think you have a Christian duty not to misrepresent people like me in the way you sometimes do. It distresses me because I believe that we have a genuine regard for each other. And it is of course part of a much larger question: how reasserters and reappraisers talk to each other. I haven’t the slightest desire to ‘convert’ you through our ‘conversation’. I do have the strongest possible desire that we should all remain in the great and good Anglican Communion.
John.
John, I do not not mean to misrepresent you. Please correct my errors. Please tell me where Jesus got it wrong. This is quite important. You want to remain in communion? Then answer the question that Jeus posed, “Who do you say that I am?”
I am tired of beating around the bush. I am trying to cut to the essence of what you are saying. Are the Gospels right, wrong, kind of right, kind of wrong, Jesus kind of what He claimed to be, mistaken or what. YOU are the scholar, I am only a lay Franciscan.
You say: “There are perfectly reputable NT scholars who in their private lives are completely orthodox Christians (I know some) who think Jesus got this wrong.” I say, if Jesus got this wrong what else did he get wrong? Please tell me. I do want to know.
But I do say belly up to the bar.
A very interesting discussion — but I think until a few folk have read the book they are talking through their ignorance.
It is interesting how the various changes in the balance of evidence on the credibility of scripture over the last half-century have by-passed those who think they are so up-to-date and “scientific”. The person, and I forget who it was, who suggested that folk update themselves really is giving extremely good advice. Some of the debate here is SO old-fashioned!
Others have apologized very well in their posts. I thank God for their witness.
I believe fully everything I say in the Creed. That was settled in my heart and mind before my First Holy Communion.
After reading some write about Jesus as though He is an abstract distant concept all I want to do is receive Him in the Eucharist. I need the reality of the physical to anchor me in the sea of theories. I need the raw miracle of the body and blood soul and divinity of Our Lord. It sure would clear my head of the muddles left by reading some of these posts.
Jesus made up prophecies about the destruction of Jerusalem! What then happened in the summer of 70 A.D.? The surest indication of false prophecy is exact detail written after the fact.
#7. For people who have never come across oral testimony or tradition, it is easy to dismiss this as hearsay. In societies where oral tradition or testimony is the primary means of passing knowledge and history from one generation to another, great care is taken to ensure the accuracy of the knowledge and geneaology passed which is the point Richard Baukham makes in the interview. Take the case of Alex Haley in “Roots” – oral tradition and testimony of a griot enabled him to find his ancestors in West Africa, centuries after his father was taken as a slave to the US. To discount oral tradition and testimony is short sighted at best. Modern historical scholarship is slowly coming to this conclusion.
In my opinion, what Baukham has done is to question the validity of the existence of “Q”. Why should a document called “Q” exist when there is a vibrant oral tradition and testimony that can stand in for “Q”?
I also question the “objective” nature of the current Biblical scholarship especially of the Jesus Seminar variety. The new “objective” is to usurp the claim in the Nicene Creed – one should be able to deny the divinity of Christ to be “objective” but still be considered a “Christian”. Why this view should be more “objective” than the traditional view is anybody’s guess.
#39
Brother Michael,
Thank you. I am a ‘scholar’ (I don’t like the word or the concept) but not in the NT. I find all this very difficult from every conceivable point of view. People here were debating about R. Bauckham’s claim that the Gospels are based on eye-witness testimony. Debate got to John. I’m interested in John for various reasons. As I pointed out, John has the best claim to be directly eye-witness based. But the very passage where this emerges poses a problem – and what evidently was a problem for his followers – because Jesus repeatedly said the End was near. On any normal calculation, he got this wrong (that’s the thing those perfectly reputable NT scholars agree on). I’m not saying this invalidates everything. I do think this sort of thing has to be factored in to one’s conception of the Incarnation. Of course, if this is true, it is relativising to some degree.
My answer to your directly posed question is: I try to believe Christian orthodoxy. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. The fact that sometimes I don’t does not mean that I want Christian orthodoxy diluted. I have no interest whatever in Cupitt or Spong. They may or may not be right but they are not useful.
I do think you should be less hostile to (not the right word – less disturbed by, less dismissive of?) ‘liberal’ Christians such as D.C., Bob from Boone, Ross or me (who actually encompass a very wide range of views). I know it’s facile to say: ‘we’re all on the same side’, but I believe that when you look at ‘the other side’ or ‘the other sides’ it is true.
I think the Gospels are ‘kind of right’. That’s certainly my hope. But of course this does mean, for me, you have to make allowance for historical circumstance, cultural perspective, etc. even in the case of Jesus himself. I know that’s difficult, messy, indeterminate. I don’t remotely accept it’s arrogant, illegitimate, secular, post-modern, hybristic, etc. etc.
I’ve exposed my belly. Not a pretty sight.
Best, John.
JGeorge [#43] writes: “… In societies where oral tradition or testimony is the primary means of passing knowledge and history from one generation to another, great care is taken to ensure the accuracy of the knowledge and geneaology passed which is the point Richard Baukham makes in the interview. Take the case of Alex Haley in “Roots†– oral tradition and testimony of a griot enabled him to find his ancestors in West Africa, centuries after his father was taken as a slave to the US. To discount oral tradition and testimony is short sighted at best.”
Let’s be clear: It’s not always unreasonable to (cautiously) rely on oral tradition. Family- or village history would seem to be areas where this makes sense: Families and small villages tend to be close-knit environments where “informal controlled oral tradition” might well operate as NT Wright claims — individuals who live and work together in close proximity for long periods would seem more likely to correct each others’ deviations from the accepted version of a story (and also, importantly, to accept such corrections when offered).
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Consequences matter in this regard. When we decide to take an action, we rely on various sources of information. How much we’re willing to rely on any given source will depend in large part on the significance of the action, and on the potential consequences of error in the information.
Example: If it turned out that Alex Haley actually was not descended from the African tribes that he found, that would not have been a life-or-death matter. On the other hand, it might well be a life-or-death matter in the legal system, which uses a hearsay rule there because the actions we take there are significant, and the consequences of error in the relevant information could be tragic.
Traditionalists are demanding that the church take significant actions in reliance on information offered by New-Testament authors. The potential consequences of error in that information are serious.
If the NT authors were wrong that Jesus was raised from the dead, and/or if the trads are wrong that his raising helps tell us he was the Creator of the Universe made flesh, then —
* to worship Jesus as God would be idolatry; and
* to prohibit same-sex homosexuals from marrying each other, on the basis of an inflated view of Scripture erroneously grounded in Jesus’ alleged divinity, would be to inflict considerable harm on innocent people for no good reason.
So back to the question: Is the NT authors’ information reliable enough to justify our worshiping Jesus as God, or prohibiting same-sex homosexuals from marrying each other? My own view on this point (unavoidably informed by my professional training and experience with certain varieties of oral tradition) is that the answer must be “no, the NT authors’ information is not sufficiently reliable for those purposes.”
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The foregoing analysis raises a follow-up question, of course: Should we reexaminers not set aside our personal views, and accede to the collective thinking of the worldwide church? On this point also, my own view is that the answer must again be no. The church has never competently addressed the problems with oral tradition (and claims of the church’s protective inspiration by the Holy Spirit are insufficiently supported). Consequently, it seems to me, there is no reason for reexaminers to defer to the worldwide church’s collective thinking on this issue, as traditionalists would have us do.
#45. Like I said in my earlier post, the problem is that you compare oral tradition and testimony to hearsay and then claim that because of your training and experience with hearsay, you discount oral tradition. I would agree with #13 (Stephen Noll’s post). To me, hearsay and oral tradition are not the same – not only is this like comparing apples to oranges but it also projects a law formed in the 17th century to a different community and culture that also did not recognize oral tradition as hearsay. The Informal Controlled Oral Tradition can be found here.Something about a person having a hammer and every problem becoming a nail comes to mind.
For a culture and time that values oral tradition over written records because a vast majority of their people are illiterate, how will you apply the hearsay rule? What if the written record actually contains an error but the oral tradition, because it was easier to correct, was correct? How would you apply the hearsay rule then?
To come back to Alex Haley’s situation, if the record of the griot is wrong, it would matter a lot to Alex Haley – it may not matter to you.
Traditionalists are demanding that the church take significant actions in reliance on information offered by New Testament authors. The potential consequences of error in that information are serious.
This is how the church “corrects” heresies. When the church has already established the accuracy and validity of NT authors, new “theories” that challenge the authority of the NT authors and the teaching of the church should be examined in the light of tradition and reason. Unfortunately TEC failed miserably in convincing the rest of the Church of the validity of its claims and has asked TEC to correct itself which it has refused.
Should we reexaminers not set aside our personal views, and accede to the collective thinking of the worldwide church?…The church has never competently addressed the problems with oral tradition
If you were to start your own church and teach these, really no one would care. The problem here is that as a member of the Anglican Communion, the teaching of the Church in question is contrary to the teaching of the Anglican Communion. TEC is free to chose to walk apart but doing so will endanger the legitimacy the TEC leadership craves. What problems of oral tradition has the church not addressed?
JGeorge [#46] writes: “To me, hearsay and oral tradition are not the same – not only is this like comparing apples to oranges but it also projects a law formed in the 17th century to a different community and culture that also did not recognize oral tradition as hearsay.”
JGeorge, you sound like a liberal relativist. Your particular “true for you but not for me” argument, in respect to the legal rules about witness testimony, seems to be that in the first-century church —
* people (allegedly) didn’t misperceive things;
* they didn’t tend to fill in the blanks of a story with details that they were in no position to know but that in their minds just “had” to be that way;
* they didn’t tend to remember things the way they wanted to remember them, which is not necessarily the same as the way they actually are;
* they didn’t “spin” their stories, or even outright lie, to advance an agenda, or build a reputation (or protect one), or grind an ax, or settle a score;
* stories didn’t thereby mutate, even in the very first retelling.
We know, beyond any possible shadow of a doubt, that all these distortions happen today, in abundance. We have every reason to think such distortions happened in NT times, too. For example, we have no idea where the NT writers got their information about the dialog between Jesus and Pilate, so we have no idea how reliable their accounts are. As another example, one of Paul’s epistles (I forget which one, and am too lazy right now to search my notes) alludes to other letters being circulated in his name that he didn’t write — in other words, evidently someone was forging Paul’s name to their own views. (I’ve identified many other examples in my own blog postings; see the list of links in the right-hand column.)
These sources of story distortion are hard realities of life. The legal rules about witness testimony aren’t a product of cultural relativism; they were developed to guard against the potentially-serious effects of such distortions. They’re no more “true for you but not for me” than is the medical profession’s rule about washing hands before delivering a baby, to guard against potentially-fatal infections.
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JGeorge writes: “The Informal Controlled Oral Tradition can be found here.”
This is a piece by one Kenneth Bailey, which I read long ago. Bailey’s scholarship is the subject of a withering critique by theology professor Ted Weedens.
Prof. Weedens examines Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Corinthians. Those letters complained that those churches were deviating from the “true” gospel. Weedens points out that those deviations show the uncontrolled mutation of oral tradition. Paul, he says, was forced to try to undo the mutations through written corrections.
Prof. Weedens also thinks Bailey misrepresented his sources when he gave examples of controlled oral tradition. Bailey cited a book by Rena Hogg, the daughter of a Christian missionary in the Middle East. He said the Hogg book confirmed various stories about Hogg’s father that were still being told in the villages where her father had served. But Weedens says that Rena Hogg’s book not only didn’t confirm some of the stories, as Bailey claimed, but flatly contradicted them. (I’ve never been able to find a copy of Rena Hogg’s book to look for myself.)
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JGeorge writes: “If you were to start your own church and teach these [problems with oral tradition], really no one would care. The problem here is that as a member of the Anglican Communion, the teaching of the Church in question is contrary to the teaching of the Anglican Communion.”
If you’d been a doctor 100+ years ago, JGeorge, back when much of the medical profession taught that yellow fever was caused by noxious air, I very much doubt you would have rejected evidence that it was transmitted by mosquitoes just because the evidence went against the received teaching of the profession. If you want to claim that it should be different for the church, I think you have to justify that claim.