Are you suggesting that accounting ledgers and invoices are not interesting and that I’ve wasted much of my life? Harumph! Indeed, HARUMPH!
Another answer to this:
If you think applying a historical-critical method to the ancient world will leave you with a world that is barren and devoid of the supernatural, you have it exactly backwards. The wider ancient Mediterranean world, at the time of Christ, is steeped in the numinous. It’s stuffed with the miraculous. It has the supernatural and the religious coming out the wazoo. There are shamans and fortune tellers, holy men and miracle workers, healers and mystics. There are sacred bulls and prophetic chickens. There are oracles and auguries. There are mystery cults. There are deified emperors and semi-divine kings. There are lots and lots of gods, and they’re always all around you. You can feel and smell them around every corner.
It’s all very wonderful.
What do you do with all this? As I said, you live with it, and very happily. As far as I’m concerned, for all practical everyday purposes, the Oracle at Delphi was as real as an oracle can be, and the miracles of Jesus were as miraculous as they come.
And I know what you’re thinking: “Wait, MB, isn’t this contradicting what you’ve been saying for this whole thread?” No, I don’t think so. Not at all. Hang around that world a bit, and you’ll get a feel for what I mean.
I think this is a false distinction. Something can be a historical text and a religious text at the same time: in other words, the text can set out to tell you what really happened, as well as drawing conclusions as to what these events mean. Likewise, if a farming manual (in the course of discussing agronomic material) discusses how the Haber process was developed or how sweet potatoes were introduced to China, I don’t see why we would consider those historical discussions untrustworthy. If anything, in some cases Josephus might be less reliable than John, since he doesn’t even claim to be a witness to all of the events he’s discussing (although he was certainly a witness and participant in a lot of them).
Luke and John, at the very least, explicitly note that their purpose is to ‘set out what happened’. John draws a lot of theological conclusions as well, Luke really doesn’t, but they are both clear about their intent to portray historical fact.
It’s true that ‘genres were different’ then, but it’s also clear that the Gospels don’t fit well into the ‘mythology’ genre, and the genre I’ve heard them most commonly ascribed to is ‘historical biography’, e.g. the kind of thing that was written about Roman emperors and other public figures. In any case, hand waving about different literary genres doesn’t really provide a positive case for your argument that the Gospels narrate things which are substantially not true. What do you think is clearly not true in the Gospels, and why? Thus far you seem to be arguing that the Gospels are ‘obvious bullsh*t’ because miracles happen, well, rarely. This is true, but you can’t really apply probability after the fact in that way, especially when you don’t have a good background estimate for what the prior probability of miracles really is. Rare events still happen, all the time. As Alfred Russell Wallace noted, arguments that miracles are inherently unlikely therefore any given miracle story is necessarily false, would if applied more generally mean that we shouldn’t believe in the existence of flying fish or platypuses.
Yes, it might not have happened that way. I think the chances of that explanation being true are quite low, however.
The gospels might be accurate… and so might the Koran, various Buddhist and Hindu texts, and the Raelian prophecies. Why would I accept that the gospels are more likely to be 100% accurate than these others? To me, they all have about the same likelihood in terms of the accuracy of the supernatural claims they make (miracles and the like) – very, very low. I don’t see why the gospels (or any other Christian claims of miracles) are better than all these other claims.
Just as an example, the loaves and fishes story – why is a miracle a more likely explanation than someone sneaking in extra bread and fish into the crowd, or the story being exaggerated, or even wholly invented?
My understanding is that the Quran is a work of theology primarily and history secondarily, whereas the Gospel of John is (e.g.) the opposite, primarily an account of what happened and secondarily an account of what they mean. The better analogy to the Gospels would be the hadith- which are also purportedly historical accounts. My understanding is there was a reasonable amount of care taken to verify the events in the Hadith, establish chains of transmission, and so forth, so I’m certainly open to the possibility that some or most of the events in the Hadith did occur. (I would disagree with Muslims about what they mean, or whether they were of divine origin). It also rests entirely on the testimony of one man to whom it was revealed- if you disbelieve in Muhammed, then the Quran stands or falls based on that. The events of the Christian story, on the other hand, rest on multiple semi-independent sources. Even the historico-critical account of the New Testament posits multiple sources (Mark, Q, special Luke, etc.), and then there are probably some extrabiblical apocrypha that date from the first or early second century as well (Gospel of Thomas, Ascension of Isaiah, etc.). And finally I think there are both incoherencies both logical (strict monotheism doesn’t work as a description of a loving God), and moral (the Koran holds that the Mosaic law is still in effect, and I think the Mosaic law is unacceptable) which in my view cast doubt on the Koran as an inspired text.
Having said all that, I’m not familiar with the text itself, so if you can cite specific examples of miracle claims from the Quran or Hadith, in context, I can tell you if I find them plausible or not.
I’m more familiar with the Hindu texts, and there the case is simpler: for a start, the Hindu epics (which are probably the latest material, and the most ‘historical’) were written further away in time from the events, by (again) singular narrators, and their chronology really does conflict with what archeology tells us.
But aren’t non-supernatural explanations (e.g. the reported witnesses were mistaken, or tricked, or the writer lied, or exaggerated, or there’s a natural explanation, etc.) for the miracles in reported in the gospel more likely to be true than the supernatural (miraculous) explanations for any particular account of a miracle, whether in the gospels or from a nun in Lagos?
We can haggle over the details and the bookkeeping on this, but I don’t think that the basic point is really up for debate. There are documentaries, re-enactments, found footage, “found footage”, the news, the phone book, and Harry Potter. It might be handy to keep an eye on which of those one is dealing with at any one time. It’s also important to note that while we keep those strictly separated, we can’t automatically assume that everyone else does. You might find an ancient phone book, and now and then there’s some ancient Harry Potter between M and N. You can be a biblical literalist, or any kind of literalist, but you run a very real chance of ending up looking like a damned fool. And who wants to look like a damned fool?
If you’re a Herodotus-literalist (everyone take a shot), you might jump in a time machine, visit Herodotus, and ask him: “Hey, you know that thing you said about the childhood of Cyrus? You don’t expect me to buy that, do you?” There’s a very real chance that he might look at you like you’re a damned fool, and say: “Of course not. It was just the funniest story I heard all week.”
Say you’ve read some Thucydides. You jump in your time machine, and go say to him: “Boy, you sure are the prototypical scientific historian. How did you put together that Melian Dialogue? Did you bug the room? Those are direct quotes, right?” And he’ll look at you, and say: “You damned fool, I *told *you. I did research, and figured out more or less what happened. Then I invented the speeches.”
Or, you may visit Plato, and ask him: “Wow, was Socrates just like that? Did he say this, that, and the other thing?” And Plato will look at you with disgust, and say: “Oh, you of little genre-savviness. Those are Platonic dialogues.”
As for Luke, whomever or whatever Luke is, I’m dying to know what he might say. But “yup, that was exactly what happened” might not be his exact words. First of all, he’ll tell you: “Look, this is a religious text! Did you just arrive here in a time machine, or something?” And who wants to be told off by Luke? Heck, that’s the kind of thing that might break a person’s heart.
You do know what the problem with being a biblical literalist is, right? They do still teach you that in Bible school? It’s not just that you’re now a biblical literalist, which doesn’t sound like the most fun thing to be. It’s also that the people who wrote this stuff in the first place probably weren’t exactly biblical literalists. There is truth, and there are facts. There is also people making things up. (Once in a while, there might even be some Christian over in the corner, whistling, trying to hide some scissors, a pen and a bottle of white-out, and with a look on his face like he just totally doctored a passage in Josephus, and now he’s hoping that no one will notice. That kind of thing really screws up the whole equation for everyone, so please, at least knock it off with that. But now I digress.)
One thing that is for sure is that after a while, the whole concept of “generally reliable” is something you start cutting people slack on. You should probably consider Tacitus generally reliable, but you don’t take his word for everything he says about the Julio-Claudians. Some of it is the sort of thing that ends up in I, Claudius, if you know what I mean. Let’s just say that even the most generally reliable writers sometimes put their party hat on. My uncle may be generally reliable. But just now, I ran into him at the pub, with his pants on his head. I’ll take financial advice from him again when he sobers up, with until then, well, maybe nor quite so much. That’s just what my uncle is like, I can’t change him. My aunt divorced him, but his new girlfriend accepts him for who he is. Everyone is much happier now, all around.
These are ancient writers. They don’t sit still and behave the way you want or expect them to. Once in a while, it’s even like being on a different planet, where miracles happen. If you find yourself anywhere between about about 600 BC and 600 AD, you kind of just have to roll with the punches.
BTW:
I have something to say about this. You know why magic is a sin, right? It’s because if you didn’t outlaw it, people would be doing it all the time. It’s their second favorite thing, after sodomy.
As I said, the ancient world was steeped in the numinous and the miraculous. And guess who ruined the party for everyone? It sure wasn’t historians. That’s right, Sunshine, it was the Christians. Frankly, I think you owe me and everyone else an apology on that one.
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I’m waiting.
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holds breath
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passes out
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I’m still not seeing why the distinction between ‘agricultural manuals’, ‘histories’ and ‘religious texts’ is necessarily relevant here. These are all different kinds of books with different purposes, but there can still be sections of an agricultural manual or an architectural book that are attempting to describe historical events in an accurate fashion, e.g. to present historical facts about a particular crop or fertilization process, or about a certain architectural style. I’ve certainly gained historical knowledge by reading agricultural manuals, I’m not sure why we would expect otherwise. Historians rely on this kind of thing (primary sources which are not themselves historical texts) all the time.
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That having been said, you’re wrong about the genre that Luke purports to be. It’s a religious text only because Christians have assigned it a religious significance. Luke does not, himself (unlike John, and for that matter unlike the authors of the apocryphal gospels), make any claim to be writing a ‘religious text’, and unlike John, again, he doesn’t claim to be telling us who Jesus really was. He claims to be writing history. Here’s what Luke says about the purpose of his book, my italics:
“Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed. There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth…”
You can certainly argue that Luke was falsely claiming to write accurate history, and that he was making up a fiction. I find that unconvincing, but that’s fine. What you can’t do is argue that Luke was writing theological treatises which he didn’t expect his readers to take literally, as you suggest of Herodotus. Because his prologue (as well as a number of comments in John) make clear that was not their stated purpose.
You know that you can snip quotes, right? You don’t have to quote the whole thing every time. It’s not a massive deal, but it’s doing a number on my scroll wheel.
Regarding your more general points, Martian Bigfoot:
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The genre of a book doesn’t preclude it from containing genuine historical fact, intended to be taken as factually true, and it doesn’t (or shouldn’t) preclude us from relying on it as a historical source, even if it is an agricultural manual, architecture textbook, or a religious text.
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Luke and John explicitly, and other NT authors implicitly (in particular the author of the Letters of John) claim to be writing literally true history.
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I don’t know what ‘biblical literalist’ precisely means in this context, since the Bible is a library, not a single book, and the books that make up the Bible have varying degrees of credibility. I am not a Biblical literalist, and I disagree with many things that the Biblical authors (especially in the Old Testament, but to some degree in the New) said, both theological and historical. I’m making a much more limited claim, that the Gospel accounts of Jesus are generally historically reliable, and I am not convinced that the purported discrepancy in Luke about the date of Jesus’ birth is a genuine historical error or contradiction.
If “eye witness account” is your criterion for reliability, everyone can go home right now, including yourself, and you damned well know it. FWIW, my uncle was once an eye witness to an alien abduction. He swore up and down that it happened. Anyway, that’s enough about my uncle.
Coming from it from the other direction, you may walk up to history on your first day and think “oh boy, I can’t wait to read all those eye witness accounts.” Then you find yourself reading Plutarch on Caesar (or on whomever) and Arrian on Alexander. You look at history, with a look on your face like it just ran over your puppy, and say: “Look, these are from centuries after the fact. You’re kidding me, right?” Then history looks at you, takes a deep breath, and says: “Yeah, about that. Look, we need to talk. This whole thing doesn’t exactly work the way you think. Do you want a drink? I’m sure having one.”
BTW, that didn’t actually happen with my uncle. He never actually claimed to witness an alien abduction. I just made that up right now, to illustrate a point. Still, I do have an uncle. In fact, I have several. I could give you their addresses, but I don’t hand out things like that on the internet.
How “generally reliable” do you consider me to be right now?
And another BTW, this one about “claiming to write actual history”. There’s a book I’d like to introduce you to. It’s called the Augustan History.
Who wrote it is unclear. When it was written is unclear. Just what the heck is at all is unclear. And boy howdy, is there ever some strange things going on there. Whenever that’s your main source on a Roman Emperor, you want to call up Suetonius, cry on the phone, tell him everything is forgiven, and ask if you could please get back together.
That damned thing, whatever it is, is what the Gospels look like, as far as “claiming to be history” goes. I mean, if we’re being very charitable to the Gospels. So, let’s not kid ourselves here. Maybe you’re in an anxiety-filled marriage with the Gospels, and have been ever since they took your virginity. You may secretly cry, late at night, after they’ve been out on the town, but then forgive them the next morning. When someone asks how your marriage is going, you’ll swear that everything is fine, and that the black eye is just from walking into a door. But talk to someone who once dated the Augustan History. He’ll look at any Bible scholar, smell the roses, and give them the number to the domestic abuse hotline.