The Case For Christ - A defence of Lee Strobel's 1998 apologetic book

[Koyaanisqatsi]

But you should at least acknowledge that if you don't know the identity of the Gospel writers, then you can't refute the claim that they were (in part) written by eye witnesses.

That fact that you knew you had to qualify the "(in part)" betrays the fact that you absolutely know that's unsupportable.

If I write something that includes sections I could not possibly have been an eyewitness to--and I do not qualify how I was able to relate the information I am relating, including verbatim quotes from people I could not have heard first hand--then you have no choice but to dismiss my entire story as being unverifiable.

Even if I were to add in the all important qualification of, "Now, I did not personally witness this next bit, but here is what I was told" you STILL could not consider my story to be anything more than hearsay at best.

How the fuck would you know what I was recounting or just paraphrasing or just making up? You could not.

So, again, you would have no choice but to treat my entire story to be apocryphal at best if not outright fiction. The very fact that I would claim to be an eyewitness accurately and historically recounting factual events only to then relate instances and spoken words that I did not actually witness or hear proves me to be an unreliable narrator at the very least.

 

[Learner]

Maybe you'd have a little more interest if you had three other writers that wrote the same thing they've seen or heard as you did.

I could believe you.

 

[bilby]

Maybe you'd have a little more interest if you had three other writers that wrote the same thing they've seen or heard as you did.

I could believe you.

I am sure you could. But a rational and reasonable person couldn't.

 

[Learner]

Maybe you'd have a little more interest if you had three other writers that wrote the same thing they've seen or heard as you did.

I could believe you.

I am sure you could. But a rational and reasonable person couldn't.

I could but not so easily of course. If you found 4 news paper front pages (without the modern photo pics), from different sources with similar editorials from a long ago past then I suppose that would apply too. I see your rationality there.

No author signature of the cuneform tablets or other similar ancient writings but we know about their history....or there abouts.

 

[skepticalbip]

Maybe you'd have a little more interest if you had three other writers that wrote the same thing they've seen or heard as you did.

I could believe you.

I am sure you could. But a rational and reasonable person couldn't.

I could but not so easily of course. If you found 4 news paper front pages (without the modern photo pics), from different sources with similar editorials from a long ago past then I suppose that would apply too. I see your rationality there.

No author signature of the cuneform tablets or other similar ancient writings but we know about their history....or there abouts.

I recall that many decades ago many news outlets (press and television) reported that the U.S. destroyer, the USS Maddox, was attacked and fired on by North Vietnamese patrol boats in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin... lots of photos and details. Turns out that it didn't happen.

We can accept the Sumerian tablets as reliable because they were not trying to convince others to believe something. They recorded commercial trades and told their legends so we can believe that they had commerce and had their cultural mythology. However this doesn't mean that we believe the stories their mythology relate, only that they had a mythology.

 

[Learner]

I could but not so easily of course. If you found 4 news paper front pages (without the modern photo pics), from different sources with similar editorials from a long ago past then I suppose that would apply too. I see your rationality there.

No author signature of the cuneform tablets or other similar ancient writings but we know about their history....or there abouts.

I recall that many decades ago many news outlets (press and television) reported that the U.S. destroyer, the USS Maddox, was attacked and fired on by North Vietnamese patrol boats in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin... lots of photos and details. Turns out that it didn't happen.

We can accept the Sumerian tablets as reliable because they were not trying to convince others to believe something. They recorded commercial trades and told their legends so we can believe that they had commerce and had their cultural mythology. However this doesn't mean that we believe the stories their mythology relate, only that they had a mythology.

It wouldn't be so easy to believe the unusual of course just as the thought that one of theses characters apparently existed - Gilgamesh or Nimrod (or both being the same person, some believe) and then there's Jesus under study.

The Sumerian tablets are reliable but then... what about the reliability with the history of the Israelites? The Bible is often used as a reliable reference for finding ancient sites by archeologists I believe, and parts of ancient artifacts have been found with biblical names inscribed, if properly under scrutiny and investigation that these are found to be genuine,I won't be sure till then, to be fair.

 

[Keith&Co.]

The Sumerian tablets are reliable but then... what about the reliability with the history of the Israelites? The Bible is often used as a reliable reference for finding ancient sites by archeologists I believe, and parts of ancient artifacts have been found with biblical names inscribed, if under scrutiny these are found to be genuine, to be fair.

When Louis Lamour wrotes a Western, he put in a lot of details on the setting. If he wrote that the characters rode three miles out of a named town and stopped at rock shaped like rabbit, you could travel to that town today and find the rabbit rock.

That fact does not mean any of the dialogue, gunfights, or crimes chronicled in the book evrr actually took place at the rabbit rock.

 

[skepticalbip]

I could but not so easily of course. If you found 4 news paper front pages (without the modern photo pics), from different sources with similar editorials from a long ago past then I suppose that would apply too. I see your rationality there.

No author signature of the cuneform tablets or other similar ancient writings but we know about their history....or there abouts.

I recall that many decades ago many news outlets (press and television) reported that the U.S. destroyer, the USS Maddox, was attacked and fired on by North Vietnamese patrol boats in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin... lots of photos and details. Turns out that it didn't happen.

We can accept the Sumerian tablets as reliable because they were not trying to convince others to believe something. They recorded commercial trades and told their legends so we can believe that they had commerce and had their cultural mythology. However this doesn't mean that we believe the stories their mythology relate, only that they had a mythology.

It wouldn't be so easy to believe the unusual of course just as the thought that one of theses characters apparently existed - Gilgamesh or Nimrod (or both being the same person, some believe and then there's Jesus).

The Sumerian tablets are reliable but then... what about the reliability with the history of the Israelites? The Bible is often used as a reliable reference for finding ancient sites by archeologists I believe.

You don't seem to understand how mythology works. For instance; there was certainly a George Washington however there has been stories about him that are obviously not true. He didn't throw a silver dollar across the Potomac River, it is several miles wide. There is no evidence or reason to believe that the chopped down his father's cherry tree, it was a tale exaggerating his honesty. etc.

And yes, the Bible can be helpful for archeologists in locating sites because the towns existed and were used as a background to spin tall yarns of heros. Just as real cities are used as backdrops for modern day super-heros to often do their amazing feats.

 

[Learner]

The Sumerian tablets are reliable but then... what about the reliability with the history of the Israelites? The Bible is often used as a reliable reference for finding ancient sites by archeologists I believe, and parts of ancient artifacts have been found with biblical names inscribed, if under scrutiny these are found to be genuine, to be fair.

When Louis Lamour wrotes a Western, he put in a lot of details on the setting. If he wrote that the characters rode three miles out of a named town and stopped at rock shaped like rabbit, you could travel to that town today and find the rabbit rock.

That fact does not mean any of the dialogue, gunfights, or crimes chronicled in the book evrr actually took place at the rabbit rock.

Well historians who take to the ancient writings may get better results with better methods to make the analysis.

Personally I'd probably consider "how much emphasis on being truthful would be in his book, as strongly as the emphasis of the must-do commands and consequences in the bible?"

 

[Learner]

You don't seem to understand how mythology works. For instance; there was certainly a George Washington however there has been stories about him that are obviously not true. He didn't throw a silver dollar across the Potomac River, it is several miles wide. There is no evidence or reason to believe that the chopped down his father's cherry tree, it was a tale exaggerating his honesty. etc.

So this was proven to be an exaggerating tale. What was the source of the tale? Is there an exaggerated equivalent discovery of the Hebrews story?

And yes, the Bible can be helpful for archeologists in locating sites because the towns existed and were used as a background to spin tall yarns of heros. Just as real cities are used as backdrops for modern day super-heros to often do their amazing feats.

Thats a good point, even though you describe a modern super-hero and city scenario as an analogy to the ancient Hebrews story. Other ancient stories wouldn't be quite as apt, I suppose.

 

[ruby sparks]

But I do find either this 'just so story' or the exaggerated mythical 'hero's journey' story more plausible than accepting the story told in the Gospels as literal truth.

Ok but those aren't the only two options.

But of the two, I agree it's an easy choice, because no matter how unlikely Atwill's theory is, it's not even a fair contest because the idea that the Gospels are a literal or true account is a complete non-starter. They are chock full of fiction and allegory and woo and goodness knows what. And they have probably been tampered with more than a few times, mostly to suit this or that cult agenda. And that's probably why they are the only 4 gospels that got into the bible we know today. Approximately 36 more didn't make the cut. Which is, incidentally, one reason (among many) that Atwill's theory is weak to say the least. Is Josephus supposed to have written all 40, in a range of writing styles and content, and then left nearly all of them out?

But the Gospels being what they are doesn't ultimately say much about whether or not they are about a man who existed.

 

[ruby sparks]

I'm not that familiar with first century magic men, but I know there are four contemporaneous attestations for Socrates.

Not even one for Jesus.

Yes but the important point is, we have to compare like with like as much as possible, and there aren't any contemporaneous attestations for any such people, and there were apparently plenty of them in that area around that (very agitated) time, and as I said, when we do hear of them later, at least one apparently had a bigger following than Jesus during their lifetime. Josephus merely refers to him as 'The Egyptian Prophet'.

So it's akin to special pleading to expect it for one of them, especially if he wasn't even the most prominent among several.

The expectation that we should have contemporary attestations falls at the first hurdle, because we have no good reason at all to expect it, in the circumstances.

 

[ruby sparks]

As I said earlier, the Epistles, for me, provide reasonably good evidence in favour of existence.

The writer is talking about someone. Who is it? That is arguably the key question, possibly effectively the only one in the end. That as far as we can reasonably tell, the letters were written not long after the supposed death of the supposed person being referred to is a big plus. 25 or so years would be nothing by the standard of attestations in ancient history. It would be almost contemporaneous, even though it's not quite.

Now, of course, there are all sorts of other possibilities. The writer could be talking about a celestial being (correction: an 'only ever' celestial being and not someone who had ever actually been on earth, since 'Paul' does obviously write about a celestial being) or he could have been talking about someone from the dim and distant past, or the letters could have been edited or even written later to make it look like he was talking about an actual person who lived recently, or 'Paul' may not have existed either, or he might have been a Roman spy, or.......

For me, in the end, and despite the shortage of biographical detail, there is still just enough in the epistles and enough reason to think it more likely they were written, by whoever, when it is generally agreed they were, to tip the balance slightly in favour of existence. Alternatives just aren't as parsimonious or coherent as explanations, imo. Some are just a stretch. A very appealing stretch, because hey, they make everything so much more interesting, possibly especially to those not enamoured by Christianity in the first place.

One thing I will say is that the person the writer of the epistles was (imo probably) writing about might have been very different from the person who later made it into the Gospels. Whoever 'Paul' was, I think it's possible he was only top guy in one (his, created by him) 'wing' of the early cult, and that there was an earlier, very small, more 'Judean, Jewish' wing in Jerusalem that 'Paul' was greatly at odds with, and may have more or less hijacked, or at least piggy-backed on, being the apparently ambitious narcissist that he seems to have been. And I think it's possible that the small, early, Jerusalem cult got more or less wiped out in the disastrous (for Judean Jews) war and in the destruction of Jerusalem in particular that very shortly followed, which may be why we are left today with the 'Pauline' (Hellenistic, diaspora) version, including, of course, the 4 canonical Gospels, not to mention Acts (of the Apostles).

We don't necessarily have to like anything about 'Paul', early Christianity or possibly even 'Jesus', just by thinking there was (probably) an actual cult-starter (nearly all cults have actual founders) just prior to 'Paul' who was a more-or-less-at-the-time insignificant Judean Jew in the 1st Century who met an untimely death. We can see it all as involving at least mostly stupidity, superstition, duping, chicanery, politics (possibly involving what we might today call Marxist tendencies, or at least nationalism) militancy, radicalism, possibly even insurgency, and so on and so forth. I'm not saying 'Jesus' (if he existed) had no redeeming features, but there don't have to be all that many, and possibly very few indeed, in some scenarios.

Some have suggested that if the early Judean cult followers were around today, they might look quite a bit like the Taliban. That may be going too far, but I personally don't think it's totally way off. Just look at what the zeitgeist was, what was going on in the country at that time. Heck, look at some of the names (Iscariot = Sicarii, quite possibly, see links below*). Also, he was supposed to have been crucified. That's quite something. Check out what the Romans usually crucified Jews for at that time (and don't do it by reading the Gospels, those other two guys either side of him, if they even existed also, were probably 'bandits' not mere petty thieves, and 'bandits' has particular connotations in that context, being a derogatory term for political rebels). The founder, whoever he was, may of course have been a relative moderate, by the standards of the time. There is evidence that some of these religio-political, anti-establishment (including anti-Jewish establishment) Jewish fringe cults/movements had in their hierarchy both a militant person and a preacher (see also: propaganda) person, not entirely like many religio-political movements since and even today, in secular terms (See: The IRA and Sinn Fein).

But at least do not confuse saying that some fanatical nutter may have been going about in Judea in the 1st C with necessarily saying anything much in favour of him or the woo, end-of-the-world-is-nigh cult he might have been part of.




* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicarii

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_Iscariot#Name_and_background

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Very nicely stated, ruby sparks.

Obviously the most satisfying element about the christian godman legend is that we can all invent a humanity based on our personal tastes. Literally, nothing has changed on this point over many centuries.

When I first became interested in the subject decades ago, precisely because a priest in his homily insisted that Jesus's rising from death was a "historical" fact, I naturally discovered the ebionites, then gnostics then the plethora of academia on the subject. I have never encountered, however, your version of historicity.

There have been many discussions about the "historical" jesus on this board since I joined which is why today I simply assign the story to fiction. The fiction then got historicized. The most interesting part of the discussion for me has never been about the character of jesus but about the authors. GMark is the most interesting story because it is so easily identifiable as likely a piece of prose fiction, a bit of a closet novel. And it contains anomalies that just don't fit, as if it was never intended to talk about the protagonist except in inititiate language.

 

[Horatio Parker]

To my mind it's bizarre to consider the epistles evidence for HJ, considering the total absence of references to Jesus' earthly ministry. Granted, the couple of instances usually offered ("James the brother of the Lord") may indicate a real person. But the very paucity of evidence suggests otherwise to me.

 

[ruby sparks]

To my mind it's bizarre to consider the epistles evidence for HJ, considering the total absence of references to Jesus' earthly ministry. Granted, the couple of instances usually offered ("James the brother of the Lord") may indicate a real person. But the very paucity of evidence suggests otherwise to me.

Yes but you also think we should expect contemporary attestation, so I would have to query whether what you expect is reasonable or not in this case.

 

[ruby sparks]

Very nicely stated, ruby sparks.

Obviously the most satisfying element about the christian godman legend is that we can all invent a humanity based on our personal tastes. Literally, nothing has changed on this point over many centuries.

When I first became interested in the subject decades ago, precisely because a priest in his homily insisted that Jesus's rising from death was a "historical" fact, I naturally discovered the ebionites, then gnostics then the plethora of academia on the subject. I have never encountered, however, your version of historicity.

There have been many discussions about the "historical" jesus on this board since I joined which is why today I simply assign the story to fiction. The fiction then got historicized. The most interesting part of the discussion for me has never been about the character of jesus but about the authors. GMark is the most interesting story because it is so easily identifiable as likely a piece of prose fiction, a bit of a closet novel. And it contains anomalies that just don't fit, as if it was never intended to talk about the protagonist except in inititiate language.

I'll be honest, one of the reasons I'm (at least currently) leaning slightly towards existence is that as a rational skeptic, I like having stronger, more defensible arguments. It's not that the mythicist case(s) is/are indefensible, it's just that they're not as defensible, imo. Like it or not, 'they' (Christians) have the evidence here, and in this case it's got nothing to do with the supernatural. 'We, the doubters' can only challenge it.

Now, I'm not especially anti-religion, so I'm not simply seeking to put the boot into Christianity or cut its legs out from under it, but if I were discussing this with a well-informed theist, or just someone who really knew their onions, regarding both the material and the historic context, such as R Joseph Hoffmann (who I have in fact discussed this with at length, and he is someone who once leaned away from Jesus being historical and then leaned the other way) then I don't like to take the weaker position, either in evidence or parsimony or even historiographical terms. For example, as far as I can tell, there is hardly a more ropey and embarrassing position than that set out in Atwill's 'Cesar's Messiah' and imo it has no business being taken seriously, especially here in Talk Freethought.

Also, the 'Jesus' who existed, if he did, may be far more interesting, and the origins of Christianity far more intriguing, than any myth, imo. And at the same time in one way more boring. Some guy probably existed. So what. Get over it already.

And as I said, one could still hate, or just be unsympathetic to or critical of, both him (or 'him' as described) and Christianity, if one wanted to.

 

[Atheos]

It is exceedingly difficult for a believer influenced by confirmation bias to read the epistles without assuming the writer already knew the stuff written in the gospels / Acts. One of the (I think deliberate) deceptions caused by arranging the canon with the 4 gospels (and Acts) first followed by the epistles is that it seeds a first impression the gospels came first. This first impression is difficult to forget, especially if one has no inclination to do so.

The most likely scenario is that Paul invented (and marketed) Christianity just as Joseph Smith invented and popularized Mormonism. I personally think there was a Jesus, a charismatic itinerant who had gathered a modest following for himself but who suddenly died, leaving a disappointed group of followers. He might have even got whacked by jealous temple leaders. Along comes Paul the mystic, who convinces these zealous followers that he was in communication beyond the grave with Jesus. He might have even fabricated the story of being part of the conspiracy to "off" Jesus earlier but that Jesus had visited him post-death to get him to change his ways. It is clear that Paul knew little (if anything) about any details of the life of this preacher, and was careful to speak only of his personal communications post-death with him. He gains their trust and gets them to pool their money to fund him in mission trips to spread the gospel to other places.

As time passed and this franchise was spread to far away cities (through Paul's efforts) people wanted to know more about who Jesus was, so anecdotes were fabricated and passed around orally. Eventually many of these were collected and structured by editors living in Rome. This effort produced the first canonical gospel, GMark, circa 75 C.E. But it needed work. Not only was the ending unsatisfactory (because Jesus just disappears from the tomb and is never seen again) but it needed more pizzazz at the start with a Mythic Hero-style birth narrative complete with infancy menace and link to royal blood, exile to a foreign land and at least one childhood feat of wonder. So along came revisions GMatt and GLuke.

The Jesus craze was a hit, and copycat gospels began appearing everywhere. Eventually GJohn (written around 90-120 C.E.,) managed to gain wide enough acceptance to make it into the canon.

This seems to me to be a fair representation of how we got where we are now. It fits all of the evidence and has the benefit of being consistent with what we know about how cults develop. We have a vast amount of examples of cults to use for reference.

 

[James Brown]

I find it curious that in the epistles that have been confidently identified as being written before any of the gospels were written, we find zero mention of Jesus "returning" or "coming again." They only mention that one day Jesus "will come" or "is coming".

I Thess 4:15, 5:23; 2 Thess 2:1, 2:8; Heb 10:7; James 5:7-8; I Pet 1:13, 1 Jn 2:28

That's what we would expect to find from a group of people who are looking forward to the first appearance of Christ on Earth.

 

[ruby sparks]

I find it curious that in the epistles that have been confidently identified as being written before any of the gospels were written, we find zero mention of Jesus "returning" or "coming again." They only mention that one day Jesus "will come" or "is coming".

I Thess 4:15, 5:23; 2 Thess 2:1, 2:8; Heb 10:7; James 5:7-8; I Pet 1:13, 1 Jn 2:28

That's what we would expect to find from a group of people who are looking forward to the first appearance of Christ on Earth.

But there are also references to him having been (past tense) born a human*, a Jew, in Judea, and having died and been raised from the dead. And the writer equates his (human) audience with this 'redeeming human', telling them that they are like him, and will rise from the dead, like him. In other words pretty much the same thing will happen to them as happened to him (ie cheating death) because they're (currently) human and so was he (for a while at least, or at a stretch, apparently human).

They just weren't going to get the comfy chair beside his daddy like he did. But the basic sales pitch wouldn't even work if he hadn't supposedly already done what they are being promised in their turn, and soon. 'Subscribe now, this offer is only available for a very limited time' and all that. Turned out to be bollocks, of course. And people started to twig, even in 'Paul's' time. 'Hey Paul, some believers here in Thessalonia are already dying and staying dead?'. But then he (in his second letter to them) and later Christianity generally, just gradually moved the imaginary goalposts, eventually more or less to where they still are now.

*The Koine Greek term for human (anqropoß, 'anthropou') is used. 1 Corinthians 15:21 for example. There would seem to be very little ambiguity about the meaning of that term.