The evidence for the miracles of Jesus is superior to that for other acclaimed miracle legends, myths, prophets, heroes, etc.
As has been pointed out numerous times in previous posts.
The NT is a collection of STORIES.
Stories are ten a penny. Calling a small subset of stories 'unique' remains special pleading even if some people are not capable of thinking things through logically to reach that blindingly obvious conclusion.
But don't take my word for it; Simply point out the criterion by which we can see that the NT is unique, but which could not be equally well applied to a different, but similar set of stories.
"stories"? Like the story that Columbus crossed the Atlantic?
Couldn't a "similar set of stories" be Plutarch's Lives or Herodotus' Histories, along with Homer's Iliad, or the Book of Mormon
Aside from the fact that you mixed fiction with non-fiction, yes, a "similar set of stories" to Homer's Iliad or the Book of Mormon.
We assume works like these are fiction. Maybe they are. But there's also some fact, and also in many other "fiction" works.
If you're starting out from the basic premise that these and ALL such works are 100% fiction, and anything having any resemblance to them also is 100% fiction, then of course you can toss out virtually any literature you don't like, based on your emotional bias.
But not everyone else is required to accept this dogmatic premise you're imposing.
There are thousands of "narrative" works of literature which contain a mixture of fact and fiction, including "historical" writings. Some might resemble epic poetry in some ways, but that doesn't make them 100% fiction, as you are pretending.
There is nothing unreasonable about someone reading the Gospels as reports on 1st-century events which can be studied critically to determine what is fact and what is fiction in those accounts. It is not required by science or scholarship for everyone to reject them arbitrarily as 100% fiction as you're demanding.
It's reasonable to read the Gospels as partly fact and partly fiction, and compare them with other accounts of the historical events, rather than ban them from consideration as debunkers demand.
It's appropriate to place them alongside all other works of literature claiming to report historical events, including the official "historical" writings, and judge the content based on each item, each "story" or narrative or episode, considering that some of them might be partly true, or even totally true.
And yet almost certainly there is some fiction in these accounts, as there is some amount of fiction in virtually every ancient writing, no matter how reliable. So a reasonable person can analyze them piece by piece to separate the fact from the fiction, and believe some of it, or most of it, or only 10% or 5% of it.
If you can't stand people doing that, and insist that they must reject the Gospel accounts as 100% fiction, then that is your problem. They are not required to accept your bias, no matter how much you pound your fist on the table.
Given this freedom for each individual to do their own thinking, rather than yield to your dogma that these have to be 100% fiction, it's reasonable to place these writings, the NT, etc., alongside all the other literature, including Homer, the Book of Mormon, the Histories of Herodotus, the Gita, the Old Testament, Plato, Cicero, the Koran ---- there is virtually NOTHING in all the literature which they cannot be compared to, for trying to judge what is fact and what is fiction.
You can't just flush it all down the toilet saying it's all "fiction" -- It's a mixture of fact and fiction, and there's nothing wrong with thinking people going through any of the literature to try to figure out what really happened historically and what is probably just fiction.
. . . and thousands of other works which present "stories" of events which are said to have happened?
Do you comprehend which word in your sentence is the key? I'll give you a hint, it's "said."
Like Herodotus "said" the Persian Wars happened, yes. Those historians "said" a lot of things happened. Maybe most of it did happen, but we determine that by examining all the facts, not by arbitrarily putting some literature in the "really did happen" category and others in the "did not really happen" category. In all cases, someone "SAID" it happened.
We can look at ALL this literature, not just the ones approved by you -- i.e., ALL the ones in which alleged events are recorded, and we can make judgments about what really did happen and what did not.
This is the category the Gospel accounts belong in. I.e., the category of literature in which the writers claimed some events happened. Maybe they did happen, maybe not. Probably some did and others did not really happen. We can try to distinguish, and we'll never get it 100% correct. There will always be some guesswork.
And, after considering ALL the facts, it's not unreasonable to put the Jesus miracle acts into the "fact" category, though there is some doubt, as there is usually doubt about many of the ancient events.
But first, we have to recognize that the Gospels go into this category of literature which claims certain particular events happened in history. Right along with all the other literature making such claims, including Homer and Tacitus, poets and "historians" and orators like Cicero and hundreds of others. It's not true that ONLY Herodotus and Thucydides are sources for the historical events. There are many NON-historians who are also legitimate sources for the events, including some religious writings, and political propagandists, and philosophers, and prophets, etc., who were on a crusade for this or that.
Just because they had a bias, or a slant, like most of the "historians" did, does not mean they are unreliable as sources for the events of the time.
If the Gospels are basically a "collection of stories" and that's all
The question isn't whether or not it's a "collection of stories." That's merely tautological. We all know the NT is a collection of stories.
Yes, claims that certain events happened. Like the claims of "historians" who are sometimes right and sometimes wrong in their claims of what happened. They all have their "stories" to tell, some of it factual, some of it fictional.
The question is whether or not the magical events/people/situations depicted in the stories actually happened.
Some of it did and some did not. For the "miracle" claims we need extra sources.
Well then, if you want to get serious and narrow it down from simply a "set of stories" to something more specific
To something that would prove the claims of magic were actual and not simply made up cult bullshit like thousands of other cult claims before and after.
These are "stories" claiming something happened, just like the "stories" of the historians are claims that something happened. We have to understand by "stories" that this includes both the true stories as well as the fictional ones. All of them are CLAIMS that something happened. And at the outset we cannot arbitrarily dismiss any of them as fiction.
We have to examine ALL the claims to determine what really did happen. And in many cases we cannot figure it out, but in other cases we can make a good judgment.
You cannot arbitrarily INSIST that these accounts cannot be compared to the accounts of the historians. We have to put BOTH into the same category, as claims about events which happened, and one by one determine in each case which claim is likely true and which one fiction.
E.g., this "set of stories" in the Gospels reports events said to have happened at a particular point in history, giving the date and location of the events. I.e., in the 1st century in the area of Galilee-Judea, and it names certain historical figures, like Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas and John the Baptist, thus placing the reported events into a particular time and place.
Yeah, again, we know. This doesn't make them unique at all. Every Stephen King novel gives the date and location of the events and the names of certain historical figures, like Presidents and Celebrities, thus placing the reported events into a particular time and place.
So there's evidence that the particular Stephen King events really did happen? And it's corroborated in multiple sources, like the miracles of Jesus are reported in 4 (5) sources? He names who and where and when it happened? Do you want to give an example? If the evidence is all there, then maybe the event really did happen. You'll have to supply us with the example.
Does he say President Clinton was pounced on by a monster and eaten, and the "Bill Clinton" we saw later was really an impostor? planted by aliens from somewhere? What's the scenario? If there's evidence that it happened, then give us the evidence. Where are the accounts of it?
2000 years ago there were no Stephen Kings to provide such stories. The ancient history examples we're considering happened at a time when only .0001% of the "stories" were published that are published today. (Maybe only .0000000001%.) It's rather pointless to compare modern published stories today to the ancient published accounts. Today EVERYthing is published by comparison to ancient times when there was no publishing industry, and no bizarre stories published like they are today.
So if you want to get serious, you'll offer us something from ancient times, rather than modern examples which are so dissimilar and unuseful for our topic here.
And not a single Stephen King novel begins with, "Although this is a work of fiction..."
How do you know the "novel" is not true? The ancient Alexander Romance is called a "novel," and yet most of the stories in it contain more historical fact than fiction.
Iow, every Stephen King novel is identical to what you are talking about.
If you're serious, you'll give us an example. Tell us the event he claims happened, and when and where it happened. He names real people? says bizarre things happened to them? on certain dates at certain places he tells in the story? Maybe it really happened, if you're so sure that he gives all the evidence. And if he says it really happened. Based on what you're saying, there's no reason we should dismiss it as fiction.
And not ancient legends, but reported RECENT events (i.e., recent to the date of the writing)
Again, identical to any Stephen King novel.
Then you're saying the events in Stephen King novels really happened. You're saying all the evidence is there, the names and dates, all corroborated, and from multiple separate sources, like we have 4 (5) sources for the Jesus miracle acts? If his novels are simply reports of bizarre events which he claims really happened, and all supported by evidence, then they must have happened, according to you. You're saying there's no difference between his reported events and those reported on the Nightly News.
Why don't you get serious and offer us something from past history, so we have something for a legitimate comparison? Why can't you do that? We're talking about events 2000 years ago, when there was no publishing industry. If the Gospel accounts were possible back then, there ought to be other accounts also, similar to them. So we have a legitimate example for a comparison.
That you can't offer anything else but a 20th- 21st-century example is further evidence that the Gospel accounts describe a unique event, where miracles really did happen, and that this was extremely rare in history. If it's not unique as a case of real miracle events which happened, then you should be able to offer another example from the ancient world, instead of having to fall back on modern publishing, where every miracle claim imaginable has been published 100 or 1000 times.
And further, the date of writing has to be somewhat near to the time of those reported events, like no more than 100 years later.
Why would that make any difference?
All historians agree that written accounts closer to the actual time of the events reported are more reliable. You should be able to figure this out on your own.
I.e., not 1000 years later. or 500 years.
Oh, right, special pleading.
Just chanting "special pleading" and other meaningless slogans doesn't resolve anything. Why are you unable to give us an example from ancient times of a miracle story written reasonably close to the time the event allegedly happened? There's nothing wrong about asking for this. Just because you're asked to provide something that has credibility does not mean there's a "special pleading" fallacy happening.
No, that's acceptable, for something close to the actual event. You're saying he wrote his account of Bill Clinton being eaten by a monster -- or whatever event you're talking about -- and this was reasonably soon after the bizarre event.
In the ancient world it was very normal for historical events to first be recorded 50-100 years later. So within 100 years is a reasonable time span maximum between the alleged event and the first written account of it.
But the inadequacy of your Stephen King example is that it's not comparable to literature written 1000 or 2000 years ago, an example of which would be much more appropriate (and honest of you) to offer for comparison.
Then get serious and give us a good example of something similar for comparison.
ANY STEPHEN KING NOVEL.
That you can't give an ancient example for comparison proves you have nothing serious to offer.
If there's nothing reasonably close, then the Gospel documents really are UNIQUE
How in the world does having been written within 100 years of the events make the claims of the events and magical attributes of the characters in the NT stories "unique"?
It shows that the miracle stories in them are not a result of legend-building or mythologizing, as miracle legends always require longer than that. No? Then give an example of miracle legends which developed in a shorter time period than that.
That is quite possibly one of the most transparently ridiculous claims I'm yet seen and that's saying a LOT.
Other miracle legends are the Apollonius of Tyana legend, the Simon Magus legend, the Hanina ben Dosa legend, the Honi the Circle-Drawer legend. Not to mention the Hercules and Apollo and Zeus legends, pagan heroes, etc. All required centuries to develop.
Why can't you come up with one which emerged in LESS than 100 years?
. . . and NOT MODERN writings, but before 1500 (1600) AD. Also, we're not talking about the 20th century.
Why not? Oh, right, special pleading.
No, in modern times EVERYTHING gets published, as I pointed out before. It's the extreme availability of modern publishing, a million copies per minute, at so little cost, that makes it so easy to explain the emergence of modern bizarre tales and miracles beyond limit.
So, just for the sake of controlling all the variables, what's wrong with you offering an example from the ancient world, or prior to 1000 or 1500 AD, so we can have a better comparison and eliminate all those variables we can't keep track of?
Why can't you come up with such an example? You have a problem?
By the way, we don't have any physical evidence that the gospels were written during those time periods; those dates are surmised by scholars, not based on papyrii that have dated to those time periods.
It's reasonable to accept the consensus of scholarship on the dating of the documents. If your theory requires that we reject the findings of scholarship, it's not a reasonable demand. You can't demand that we all reject scholarship in order to make room for your theories about what should or should not have happened in the 1st century.
To be serious you have to go back a few centuries to find something comparable.
Oh, to "be serious" we have to do that? Ok, got it. And why exactly do we have to "go back a few centuries"?
To avoid all the variables due to the huge volume of modern publishing in contrast to the very small volume in the 1st century. Or in the 10th century.
What is your problem with coming up with an earlier example than Stephen King, for which there is nothing comparable in the 1st century? Why are you so handicapped in your thinking that you can't come up with an example? Is your theory so warped and twisted that it relies on false comparisons? If it has any legitimacy you should be able to offer an example.
What difference would it make if we were to compare a Stephen King novel written forty years ago to one that was written yesterday?
No, to one written 500 years ago. Give us a document at least that far back, when there was much less publishing. Probably no author like Stephen King could have gotten published that long ago.
We can explain the existence of bizarre stories today, with modern publishing, in contrast to 1000 or 2000 years ago. As we come to more recent times, we see a greater volume of goofy and bizarre stories getting published.
So, what's wrong with eliminating such a variable as this, and using examples from the ancient world for comparison to the miracle stories in the Gospels? What's your problem with meeting this reasonable request? Doesn't it expedite the "debate" to eliminate unnecessary variables like this one?
We have to go back to a period when publishing was much more costly and much less got published, for reasons of economic limits and lack of resources
Why?
To find examples comparable to the Gospel accounts, written during a time when so little was published and there were no Stephen Kings.
You're claiming there is other literature "similar" to the Gospels and which apparently have to be fiction. But all you have to offer is Stephen King, which is not really an example of "similar" literature.
A 20th-century spook story is not "similar" to a 1st-century claim of a miracle-worker healing the blind and lepers and rising from the dead.
Even if there is a theoretical "similarity," there are too many variables, such as the extreme vast volume of wild stories in modern times which get published vs. zero such stories being published in the ancient world.
If there is something from the ancient world which is comparable, then why can't you offer it for comparison? Why do you insist that only a 20th-century story can be found to compare the Gospel accounts to?
The vast differences, the huge cost of publishing in the 1st century vs. today, all these variables make such a comparison ludicrous. What is your problem that you refuse to offer an ancient example for comparison? If your theory is legitimate, why can't it offer an example which would eliminate these unnecessary variables.
The more you refuse to offer any, the more obvious it is that you have nothing to offer and that your theory is without substance.
So, what example of literature, a few centuries back or earlier, do you have in mind for comparison?
The Torah.
OK, finally! (It takes an Act of Congress to make you finally get serious.)
The Torah won't do, because all the miracle stories in it were not recorded until many centuries later after the alleged event. 500 years or longer for all those stories of Moses and Elijah etc. This was much longer than necessary for legend-building to have occurred, which would explain where these fiction stories came from.
This site
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitra_(Vedic) identifies Mithras with Varuna, some kind of sea or sky god dating back to the Creation of the Universe. Certainly thousands/millions of years prior to the writings. Like Krishna and the others who might have been historical are 1000+ years earlier than the writings, or thousands of years earlier.
But it's confusing to determine what events happened with Mithras, i.e., his miracle deeds as particular acts, like the Jesus acts happening near 30 AD. If you want to tell us which particular miracle legend you have in mind, and give us the date of it and the earliest written record of it, we could take you seriously. But this looks like another phony example of ancient tales for which there is no document anywhere near the time of the alleged event.
It's not clear what miracle act Mithras did, or when it happened. Is this the same character who slaughtered a bull and sprinkled its blood around? Anyway that itself is not a miracle act. We need an example of what miracle deed he performed. You need to dig that up and get back to us. How many centuries of time elapsed between his miracle deeds and the written accounts of it?
The Jesus miracle legend began at about 30 AD, when he lived, and the written accounts we have are from about 55 AD to 100 AD. See? That's all we need from you. Tell us when Mithra lived, what he is said to have done, and when the written accounts are dated. It's not rocket science.
It is so ludicrous to compare the Jesus stories in the Gospels to ancient legends like this one for which there is no serious evidence. Is this all you can come up with?
Maybe some of them are true. But we can dismiss the miracle stories, because there's no source for these until 400+ years after the alleged events.
But there's no reason to dismiss "King Arthur" as fictional. Maybe he did exist, but under a different name. This example shows that many of the legends can be partly factual as well as fictional. They are not 100% fiction.
But the "King Arthur" sources are too far removed to be taken as serious evidence for miracle claims.
Every story to have ever been told about any of the Greek and then Roman gods, Egyptian gods, . . .
All these too are far removed, as possible real events, from the written record about them. At least 1000 years for all of them. Maybe several thousand years. It's very difficult to establish the likely date of the events, if they happened. They might be partly true stories, but we have no serious evidence for the miracle events. They are laughable as comparisons to Jesus in the Gospel accounts.
The Jesus miracle events, if they happened, took place at around 30 AD, and we have written sources for these events from 55 AD to 100 AD. A total of 4 (5) separate sources.
This is the kind of information we need from you about these other miracle events you claim we have evidence for in the ancient world. So far you're "O for 5."
"O for 6."
All the miracle stories about the Buddha were written at least 300 years later than the alleged events happened. These (fiction) miracle claims can be easily explained as a result of legend-building over that time span.
Whatever literature it might be, the Gospels should be placed alongside it and judged by the same standards and given the same presumption of credibility/non-credibility, for that "genre" of literature
It is. They are all mythological; fictions--just like every Stephen King novel--that may borrow real life names and figures and places, but which depict fantastical, magical events/attributes that are fictional; did not actually happen; lies; whatever other word you want to use for "This event never really happened and/or this person does not actually have any supernatural abilities" etc.
You know, just like a Stephen King novel?
So you admit that your theory falls flat without using the 20th-century example of Stephen King as your only example.
You're saying that if Stephen King had lived in the 1st century, we today would have scrolls of his, reporting similar miracle stories to those in the Gospels, and millions of believers in the Stephen King miracle stories would have formed various religious cults, similar to "the Church" over these 2000 years.
A much better theory is that "Stephen King" did exist in the 1st century (and 2nd and 3rd, etc.), but such potential writers never got published, because most people didn't believe such sensationalist stories -- like they don't today, but in those days such stuff did not get published, unlike today when every imaginable bizarre story gets published. 2000 years ago they did not have the luxury to publish such entertainment.
That's a better explanation of the Stephen King literature as fiction which could be published in modern times but could never have been published in ancient times.
That's why we need a serious example from you, taken from ancient times rather than the 20th-/21st-century.
So, once you've identified an example of "similar" literature, then we can figure out what the "special pleading" rhetoric is about
It's painfully simple and does not require any such examples.
translation: you have no serious examples to offer.
Special pleading is when you say that YOUR shit doesn't stink while everyone else's does, just because you say so.
No. MY "shit" is ancient accounts of events, identified to be at a certain time and place in history, for which we have legitimate written accounts, like we have for many historical events. But "everyone else's" is lacking in evidence, as you have shown.
You're pretending to give comparable examples and obviously have none. Your only examples are of reported miracle events many centuries prior to any written account of them, always leaving a long period during which mythologizing could easily occur and create the miracle legends.
So your definition of "special pleading" is that there is evidence for one, but no evidence for the other, and the side having the evidence is thus engaging in the sin of "special pleading." Well, I plead guilty to the sin of offering evidence for my belief in those events and citing the lack of evidence for the other beliefs, such as the examples you have offered.
What reason is there to exclude ANY literature from this category
From "fiction"?
No, from the category of all literature making claims about past events having happened. There are millions of such documents claiming something happened in the past. All those documents should be considered together, including the Gospel accounts, which make such claims, and they should all be considered and critiqued and studied to determine which events really happened and which reported events are fiction.
But for some reason you want to arbitrarily exclude from this consideration and criticism this one group of documents, the Gospels, suppressing anything they claim, excluding them from the discussion, censoring their content as out of bounds, because they have to be fiction only, regardless of any evidence which might show otherwise.
No reason at all, as that is what it is.
So these accounts must be condemned as fiction, out-of-hand, regardless of any evidence, and censored from any discussion of what events happened 2000 years ago.
We should rely on ALL such documents for history, and then, in particular cases we can still judge that this or that claim in the document is erroneous. And there are NO documents which are 100% reliable.
"Reliable" as in "the claims of magical beings and magical attributes are real"?
Some of the events may have really happened. Others not. We can look at each one to determine the truth in each case. We don't need to censor the whole document and suppress everything in it because of your dogmatic premise that it all has to be fiction, because it's dangerous to probe into such questions and to doubt the debunker-pundits who are authorized to prescribe to us what is wholesome for us to believe and what is not.
No, there are none. Magic isn't real.
Clear?
Yes, don't ask questions, don't probe any further, accept the debunker dogma about these ancient accounts which say some things which are not supposed to be said.
Got it.
