EVIDENCE, MIRACLES AND THE EXISTENCE OF
JESUS[i]
Stephen Law
Abstract
The vast majority of Biblical
historians believe there is evidence sufficient to place Jesus’ existence
beyond reasonable doubt. Many believe the New Testament documents alone suffice
firmly to establish Jesus as an actual, historical figure. I question these
views. In particular, I argue (i) that the three most popular criteria by which
various non-miraculous New Testament claims made about Jesus are supposedly
corroborated are not sufficient,
either singly or jointly, to place his existence beyond reasonable doubt, and
(ii) that a prima facie plausible
principle concerning how evidence should be assessed – a principle I call the contamination principle – entails
that, given the large proportion of uncorroborated miracle claims made about
Jesus in the New Testament documents, we should, in the absence of independent
evidence for an historical Jesus, remain sceptical about his existence.
Introduction
Historians regularly distinguish two
kinds of claims about Jesus:
(i)
claims concerning Jesus’ existence and the
non-miraculous events in his life, such as his teaching and crucifixion.
(ii)
claims concerning Jesus’ divinity and the miraculous –
such as walking on water, raising the dead and, most notably, the resurrection.
Philosophical reflection has made
contributions regarding how we assess evidence for the latter – Hume’s writing
on miracles being perhaps the most noteworthy. Here, I explain how
philosophical reflection might also make an important contribution regarding
how we assess evidence for the former.
The
focus of this paper is solely on what history, as a discipline, is able to
reveal. Perhaps historical investigation is not the only way in which we might
come to know whether or not Jesus existed. Alvin Plantinga suggests that the
truth of scripture can be known non-inferentially, by the operation of a sensus divinitatis.[ii]
Here we are concerned only with what might be established by the evidence. The key question I address is:
is it true that, as most Biblical historians believe, the available historical
evidence places Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt? In particular, can we
firmly establish Jesus’ existence just by appeal to the New Testament
documents?
Sources of evidence
What
constitutes the pool of evidence on which we might draw in making a case for an
historical Jesus? The main source is the New Testament, and more specifically:
(i) The
Gospels, some written within a few (perhaps one or two) decades of Jesus’ death
(though probably not by first-hand witnesses).
(ii) The
writings of Paul – written perhaps within a
decade or two of Jesus’ life. Paul may have known some of those who knew Jesus
personally. Paul claims to have received the Gospel not from any human source
or teaching but by revelation from the miraculously risen Christ (Galatians
1:11-12, 15-16).
In
addition to the textual evidence provided by the New Testament, we possess some
non-canonical gospels, and also a handful of later, non-Christian references to
Jesus: most notably Tacitus, who writes about the Christians persecuted by
Nero, who were named after their leader Christus who suffered the “extreme
penalty” under Tiberius[iii], and Josephus, who makes
a brief reference to the crucifixion of Jesus[iv]. However, it is
controversial whether these later references are genuinely independent of
Christian sources (Tacitus may only be reporting the existence of Christians
and what they believed, and Josephus may be relying on Christian reports of
what occurred[v]).
There is also debate over the extent to which the Josephus text has been
tampered with by later Christians.[vi]
The Consensus
View
Historians
disagree over the extent to which claims about Jesus’ miraculous nature – and,
in particular, his resurrection – are supported by the historical evidence.
However, when we turn to the question of whether there was an historical Jesus,
we find a clear consensus emerges. The vast majority believe that Jesus’
existence and crucifixion, at least, are firmly established (one rare
exception being Robert M. Price)[vii].
Of
course, it’s widely acknowledged that the evidence for Jesus’ existence might
seem somewhat limited compared to, say, the evidence we have for the existence
of individuals from more recent history. But, when it comes to figures from
ancient history, the evidence is often rather restricted. That doesn’t prevent
historians building a good case for their existence.
In fact, it is often said
there is as much evidence for an historical Jesus as there is for the existence
of a great many other historical figures whose existence is never seriously
doubted. In A
Marginal Jew – Rethinking The Historical Jesus, for example, John Meier
notes that what we know about Alexander the Great could fit on a few sheets of
paper, yet no one doubts that Alexander existed.[viii] Greco-Roman
historian Michael Grant argues that
if we apply to
the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply
to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject
Jesus’ existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages
whose reality as historical figures is never questioned.[ix]
Biblical historian E. P.
Sanders writes:
There are no substantial doubts about the general
course of Jesus’ life: when and where he lived, approximately when and where he
died, and the sort of thing that he did during his public activity.[x]
According to Luke Johnson, a
New Testament scholar at Emory University,
Even the most critical
historian can confidently assert that a Jew named Jesus worked as a teacher and
wonder-worker in Palestine during the reign of Tiberius, was executed by
crucifixion under the prefect Pontius Pilate and continued to have followers
after his death.[xi]
My
concern here is with the claim that there
is, indeed, historical evidence sufficient firmly to establish the existence of
Jesus. Note that while I question whether there is, in fact, such historical
evidence, I do not argue that we are justified in supposing that Jesus is an
entirely mythical figure (I remain no less sceptical about that claim).
Miracles
One
difference between the historical claims made about Jesus and those made about
other historical characters such as Alexander the Great is the large number of
supernatural miracles in which Jesus is alleged to have been involved. By
supernatural miracles I mean miracles involving a suspension of the laws or
regularities otherwise governing that natural world (henceforth, I shall simply
refer to such events as “miracles”). Walking on water, bringing dead people
back to life and turning water into wine all appear to be miracles of this
sort.
This is not to say that miracles
were not also associated with other figures whose existence is not seriously
questioned – they were. Attributing miracles to major figures, including even
sporting heroes, was not uncommon in the ancient world. However, when we look
at the textual evidence for an historical Jesus provided by the New Testament,
we find an abundance of miracle claims. Somewhere in the region of thirty-five
miracles are attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. These miracles
constitute a significant part of the narrative. It is estimated that the
episodes reported by the Gospels (other than the nativity) occur in only the last three years of Jesus’
life, and that together they comprise just a few weeks or months. The supposed
occurrence of thirty-five or so miracles within such a relatively short period
of time is striking. Nor are these miracles merely incidental to the main
narrative. The pivotal episode – Jesus’ resurrection – is a miracle.
Evidence for the
miraculous
I begin
by focussing on evidence for the miraculous (the relevance of this will become
apparent later). It appears that, as
a rule, in order for evidence to justify the claim that something miraculous
has occurred, the evidence needs to be of a much higher standard than that
required to justify more mundane beliefs. Here is a simple illustration of this
point.
The Ted and Sarah case
Suppose I
have two close friends, Ted and Sarah, whom I know to be generally sane and
trustworthy individuals. Suppose that Ted and Sarah now tell me that someone
called Bert paid them an unexpected visit in their home last night, and stayed
a couple of hours drinking tea with them. They recount various details, such as
topics of conversation, what Bert was wearing, and so on. Other things being
equal, it is fairly reasonable for me to believe, solely on the basis of their
testimony, that such a visit occurred.
But now suppose Ted and Sarah also
tell me that shortly before leaving, Bert flew around their sitting room by
flapping his arms, died, came back to life again, and finished by temporarily
transforming their sofa into a donkey. Ted and Sarah appear to say these things
in all sincerity. In fact, they seem genuinely disturbed by what they believe
they witnessed. They continue to make these claims about Bert even after
several weeks of cross-examination by me.
Am I justified in believing that Ted
and Sarah witnessed miracles? Surely not. The fact that Ted and Sarah claim
these things happened is not nearly
good enough evidence. Their testimony presents me with some evidence that miracles were performed in their living room;
but, given the extraordinary nature of their claims, I am not yet justified in
believing them.
Notice, incidentally, that even if I
am unable to construct a plausible explanation for why these otherwise highly
trustworthy individuals would make such extraordinary claims – it’s
implausible, for example, that Ted and Sarah are deliberate hoaxers (for this
does not fit at all with what I otherwise know about them), or are the
unwitting victims of an elaborate hoax (why would someone go to such
extraordinary lengths to pull this trick?) – that would still not lend their
testimony much additional credibility. Ceteris
paribus, when dealing with such extraordinary reports – whether they be
about alien abductions or supernatural visitations – the fact that it remains
blankly mysterious why such reports would be made if they were not true does
not provide us with very much additional reason to suppose that they are true.
Consideration of the Ted and Sarah
case suggests something like the following moral:
P1 Where a claim’s
justification derives solely from evidence, extraordinary claims (e.g.
concerning supernatural miracles) require extraordinary evidence. In the
absence of extraordinary evidence there is good reason to be sceptical about
those claims.
The
phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is associated
particularly with the scientist Carl Sagan[xii]. By “extraordinary evidence” Sagan
means, of course, extraordinarily good
evidence – evidence much stronger than that required to justify rather more
mundane claims. The phrase “extraordinary claims” is admittedly somewhat vague.
A claim need not involve a supernatural element to qualify as “extraordinary”
in the sense intended here (the claims that I built a time machine over the
weekend, or was abducted by aliens, involve no supernatural element, but would
also count as “extraordinary”). It suffices, for our purposes, to say that
whatever “extraordinary” means here, the claim that a supernatural miracle has
occurred qualifies.
Some theists[xiii] (though of course by no
means all) have challenged the application of Sagan’s principle to religious
miracles, maintaining that which claims qualify as “extraordinary” depends on
our presuppositions. Suppose we begin to examine the historical evidence having
presupposed that there is no, or is unlikely to be a, God. Then of course
Jesus’ miracles will strike us as highly unlikely events requiring
exceptionally good evidence before we might reasonably suppose them to have
occurred. But what if we approach the Jesus miracles from the point of view of
theism? Then that such miraculous events should be a part of history is not,
one might argue, particularly surprising. But then we are not justified in
raising the evidential bar with respect to such claims. So theists may, after all, be justified in accepting such events occurred
solely on the basis of a limited amount of testimony, just as they would be the
occurrence of other unusual, but non-supernatural, events. The application
of Sagan’s principle that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”
to the Jesus miracles simply presupposes,
prior to any examination of the evidence, that theism is not, or is unlikely to
be, true. We might call this response to Sagan’s principle the Presuppositions Move.
That there is something awry with
the Presuppositions Move, at least as it stands, is strongly suggested by the
fact that it appears to license those of us who believe in Big Foot, psychic
powers, the activities of fairies, etc. to adopt the same strategy – e.g. we
may insist that we can quite reasonable accept, solely on the basis of Mary and
John’s testimony, that fairies danced at the bottom of their garden last night,
just so long as we presuppose, prior
to any examination of the evidence, that fairies exist. Those making the
Presuppositions Move with respect to religious miracles may be prepared to
accept this consequence, but I suspect the majority of impartial observers will
find it a lot to swallow – and indeed will continue to consider those who
accept testimony of dancing fairies to be excessively credulous whether those believers
happen to hold fairy-istic presuppositions or not.
I suspect at least part of what has
gone wrong here is that, when it comes to assessing evidence for the Jesus
miracles and other supernatural events, we do so having now acquired a great deal of evidence about the unreliability of
testimony supposedly supporting such claims. We know – or at least ought to
know by now – that such testimony is very
often very unreliable (sightings of
ghosts, fairies, and of course, even religious experiences and miracles, are
constantly being debunked, exposed as fraudulent, etc.). But then, armed with
this further knowledge about the general unreliability of this kind of
testimony, even if we do happen to approach such testimony with theistic or
fairy-istic presuppositions, surely we should still raise the evidential bar much higher for eye-witness reports
of religious miracles or fairies than we do for more mundane claims.[xiv]
So, my suggestion is that P1 is, prima facie, a fairly plausible
principle – a principle that is applicable to the testimony concerning the
miracles of Jesus. Note that P1 at least allows for the possibility that we
might reasonably suppose a miracle has happened. Of course, I do not claim to
have provided anything like proof of P1. But it does appear fairly accurately
to reflect one of the ways in which we assess evidence. We do, rightly, set the
evidential bar much higher for extraordinary claims than we do for more mundane
claims.
If we turn to the miracle claims
made in the New Testament concerning
Jesus – including the claim that he was resurrected three days after his death
– P1 suggests the evidence required to justify such claims would need to be much
stronger than that required to justify more mundane claims about ancient
history, such as that Caesar crossed the Rubicon. That we possess evidence
sufficient to justify belief in even one of the many supernatural miracles
associated with Jesus is clearly questionable. There is no consensus among
historians about that.
Of course, we should acknowledge
there are differences between the historical evidence for the miracles of Jesus
and the evidence provided by Ted and Sarah that miracles were performed in
their sitting room. For example, we have only two individuals testifying to
Bert’s miracles, whereas we have all four Gospels, plus Paul, testifying to the
miracles of Jesus. However, even if we learn that Ted and Sarah were joined by
three other witnesses whose testimony is then added to their own, surely that
would still not raise the credibility of their collective testimony by very
much.
Also note that the evidence supplied
by Ted and Sarah is, in certain respects, significantly better than the evidence supplied by the New Testament. For we are
dealing directly with the eye-witnesses themselves immediately after the
alleged events, rather than having to rely on second- or third-hand reports
produced two millenia ago, perhaps decades after the events in question.
The contamination
principle
I shall
now argue for a second principle.
Let’s return to Ted and Sarah. If
they tell me a man called Bert paid them an unexpected visit in their home last
night, I have every reason to believe them. But if they tell me that Bert flew
around the room by flapping his arms before dying, coming back to life and
turning their sofa into a donkey, well then not only I am not justified, solely
on the basis of their testimony, that these amazing things happened, I can no longer be at all confident that
any such person as Bert exists.
None of this is to say we possess
good grounds for supposing Bert doesn’t exist. It’s just that we are not yet
justified in claiming that he does.
Of course, if we are given video
footage showing Ted and Sarah welcoming someone into their house at just the
time Bert supposedly visited, well we now have much better grounds for
supposing that Bert is real. But in the absence of such good, independent
evidence, we are not yet justified in supposing there is any such person.
These observations suggest something
like the following principle:
P2 Where
testimony/documents weave together a narrative that combines mundane claims
with a significant proportion of extraordinary claims, and there is good reason
to be sceptical about those extraordinary claims, then there is good reason to
be sceptical about the mundane claims, at least until we possess good
independent evidence of their truth.
We might
call this the contamination principle
– the thought being that the dubious
character of the several extraordinary parts of a narrative ends up
contaminating the more pedestrian parts, rendering them dubious too.
Why does this contamination take
place? Because once we know that a powerful, false-testimony-producing
mechanism (or combination of mechanisms) may well have produced a significant
chunk of a narrative (e.g. the miraculous parts), we can no longer be confident
that the same mechanism is not responsible for what remains.
Ted and Sarah’s miracle reports, if
false, will be the impressive result of a powerful, false-testimony-producing
mechanism. We may not know what that mechanism is (hypnotism, L.S.D., or a
powerful desire to get themselves on daytime TV – who knows?). But, whatever
the mechanism is, it could, presumably, quite easily also be the source of the
remainder of their narrative. We can’t, at this stage, be confident that it
isn’t.
Principle P2 also has some prima facie plausibility. It certainly
explains why we are not justified in taking Ted and Sarah’s word for it that
Bert exists. However, I don’t doubt that P2 will be challenged, and I will
examine some likely objections later.
The bracketing
strategy
Note that
if P2, or something like it, is correct, then it rules out a certain approach
to assessing evidence for both the extraordinary and non-extraordinary claims
concerning Jesus, an approach we might call “bracketing”.
To make a case for the truth of the
non-miraculous parts of Ted and Sarah’s testimony, I certainly wouldn’t be
justified in saying: “Let’s set to one side, for the moment, Ted and Sarah’s
claim that Bert performed miracles. We still have the testimony of these two
otherwise sane and trustworthy individuals that someone called Bert drank tea
with them. Under other circumstances, we would be justified in taking their
word for this. So we’re justified in taking their word for it here, too.”
Intuitively, this would be a faulty
inference. We’re not yet justified in supposing Bert exists. The fact that a
large chunk of Ted and Sarah’s testimony involves him performing supernatural
miracles does not just slightly reduce the credibility of the rest of the
testimony about him – it almost entirely undermines it.
It would be particularly foolish of us to attempt to construct a two-stage case
for the miraculous parts of Ted and Sarah’s testimony by (i) bracketing the miraculous
parts to establish the truth of the non-miraculous parts, and then (ii) using
these supposedly now “firmly established facts” as a platform from which to
argue for the truth of the miraculous parts.
In the same way, we cannot
legitimately bracket the miraculous parts of the New Testament, and then insist
that, as the remaining textual evidence for Jesus’ existence is at least as
good as the textual evidence we have for other ancient figures whose existence
is beyond reasonable doubt (e.g. Socrates), Jesus’ existence must also beyond
reasonable doubt.
It would also be foolish to try to
construct a two part case for Jesus’ miraculous resurrection by (i) bracketing
the miraculous parts of the Gospel narrative and using what remains to build a
case for the truth of certain non-miraculous claims (about Jesus’ crucifixion,
the empty tomb, and so on), and then (ii) using these supposedly now “firmly
established facts” to argue that Jesus’ miraculous resurrection is what best
explains them (yet several apologetic works – e.g. Frank Morrison’s Who Moved The Stone?[xv] – appear implicitly to
rely on this strategy).
A sceptical
argument
Our two prima facie plausible principles – P1
and P2 – combine with certain plausible empirical claims to deliver a conclusion
very few Biblical scholars are willing to accept.
Let me stress at the outset that I
don’t endorse the following argument. I present it, not because I’m convinced
it is cogent, but because I believe it has some prima facie plausibility, and because it is an argument any
historian who believes the available evidence places Jesus’ existence beyond
reasonable doubt needs to refute.
1. (P1) Where a
claim’s justification derives solely from evidence, extraordinary claims (e.g.
concerning supernatural miracles) require extraordinary evidence. In the
absence of extraordinary evidence there is good reason to be sceptical about
those claims.
.
2. There is no extraordinary evidence for any of the
extraordinary claims concerning supernatural miracles made in the New Testament documents.
3. Therefore (from 1 and 2), there's good reason to be
sceptical about those extraordinary claims.
4. (P2) Where
testimony/documents weave together a narrative that combines mundane claims
with a significant proportion of extraordinary claims, and there is good reason
to be sceptical about those extraordinary claims, then there is good reason to
be sceptical about the mundane claims, at least until we possess good
independent evidence of their truth.
5. The New Testament documents weave together a narrative
about Jesus that combines mundane claims with a significant proportion of
extraordinary claims.
6. There is no good independent evidence for even the
mundane claims about Jesus (such as that he existed)
7. Therefore (from 3, 4, 5, and 6), there's good reason to
be sceptical about whether Jesus existed.
Notice
that this argument is presented in the context of a discussion of what it is or
is not reasonable to believe on the basis of the historical evidence.[xvi] The argument combines P1
and P2 with three further premises - 2, 5 and 6 - concerning the character of
the available evidence. These are the premises on which historians and Biblical
scholars are better qualified than I to comment.
Clearly, many historians also accept
something like 2 and 5. A significant number remain sceptical about the miracle
claims made in the New Testament, and so they, at least, are clearly not much
tempted by the Presuppositions Move outlined above (which involved the
suggestion that, for those coming to the evidence with Theistic
presuppositions, the New Testament miracle claims need not, in the relevant
sense, qualify as “extraordinary”). Michael Grant, for example, says:
“according to the cold standard of humdrum fact, the standard to which the
student of history is obliged to limit himself, these nature-reversing miracles
did not happen.”[xvii]. What of premise 6? Well, it is at least controversial
among historians to what extent the evidence supplied by Josephus and Tacitus,
etc. provides good, independent evidence for the existence of Jesus. Those
texts provide some
non-miracle-involving evidence, of course, but whether it can rightly be
considered good, genuinely independent evidence
remains widely debated among the experts.
So, our empirical premises – 2, 5
and 6, – have some prima facie
plausibility. I suggest 2 and 5 have a great deal of plausibility, and 6 is at
the very least debatable.
My suspicion is that a significant
number of Biblical scholars and historians (though of course by no means all)
would accept something like all three empirical premises. If that is so, it then raises an intriguing question: why, then, is there such a powerful
consensus that those who take a sceptical attitude towards Jesus’ existence are
being unreasonable?
Perhaps the most obvious answer to
this question would be: while many Biblical historians accept that the
empirical premises have at least a fair degree of plausibility, and most would
also accept something like P1, few would
accept P2.
Assessing P2
Are there
cogent objections to P2? Presumably, some
sort of contamination principle is correct, for clearly, in the Ted and Sarah
Case, the dubious character of the extraordinary, uncorroborated parts of their
testimony does contaminate the non-extraordinary parts.
However, as an attempt to capture
the degree to which testimony concerning the extraordinary can end up
undermining the credibility of the more mundane parts of a narrative, perhaps
P2 goes too far, laying down a condition that is too strong?
After all, Alexander the Great was
also said to have been involved in miracles. Plutarch records that Alexander
was miraculously guided across the desert by a flock of ravens that waited when
Alexander’s army fell behind.[xviii] Should the presence of
such extraordinary claims lead us to condemn everything Plutarch’s has to say
about Alexander as unreliable? Obviously not. As Michael Grant notes:
That there was a growth of legend round Jesus cannot be
denied, and it arose very quickly. But there had also been a rapid growth of
legend around pagan figures like Alexander the Great; and yet nobody regards him as wholly mythical and fictitious.[xix]
However,
these observations should not lead us to abandon P2. For P2 does not require we
be sceptical Alexander’s existence. The miraculous claims made by Plutarch
about Alexander constitute only a small part of his narrative. Moreover,
regarding the miracle of the ravens, it’s not even clear we are dealing with a
supernatural miracle, rather than some honestly misinterpreted natural
phenomenon. Further, and still more
importantly, there’s good, independent evidence that Alexander existed and did
many of the things Plutarch reports (including archeological evidence of the
dynasties left in his military wake).
So the inclusion of a couple of
miraculous elements in some of the evidence we have about Alexander is not much
of a threat to our knowledge about him – and P2 does not suggest otherwise. The
same is true when it comes to other figures about whom supernatural claims were
made, such as Socrates (about whom we have non-miracle involving testimony
provided by Plato, Xenophon, etc.) and Julius Caesar (about whom we have both
non-miracle-involving testimony and other historical evidence). The problem
with the textual evidence for Jesus’ existence is that most of the details we
have about him come solely from documents in which the miraculous constitutes a
significant part of what is said about Jesus, where many of these miracles
(walking on water, etc.) are unlikely to be merely misinterpreted natural
phenomena, and where it is at least questionable whether we possess any good,
independent non-miracle-involving evidence of his existence.
An objection
Here is a
different suggestion as to how P2 might be challenged. Suppose we engage in a
survey of similar figures about whom a great many miracle claims are made. We
discover that, in the vast majority of cases, when we peel back the onionskin
layers of mythology, there’s an actual historical person at the core. If that
was established, then we might generalize, concluding that there’s probably an
historical figure lying at the heart of the Jesus mythology too. The fact that
many miracle claims are made about Jesus shouldn’t lead us to question his
existence.
But this begs the question - would
such a survey reveal that such narratives almost always have a real person at
their core?
Clearly, historical figures do
sometimes rapidly become the focus of many miracle claims. Haile Selassie,
Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930-1974, is an historical figure around whom an
astonishingly rich miracle-involving mythology developed even within his own
lifetime. If such a mythology could quickly build up around Selassie, then
presumably it could also have built
up around an historical Jesus.[xx]
However, when we peel back the
layers of mythology surrounding other figures, such as Jon Frum, figurehead of
the cargo-cult religions that developed in the 1930’s on the islands of Tanna
and Vanuatu, it is not clear that there is any historical core.[xxi] Not only are the various
amazing claims about Frum not true, it appears quite likely there was never any
such person. Other mythic narratives, e.g. concerning Hercules, also appear to
have no historical figure at their core. It is not obviously a rule that
mythical narratives into which are woven a large proportion of miracle claims
are, in most cases, built around real people rather than mythic characters. So,
while such a case for rejecting P2 might perhaps be developed, the prospects do
not seem, at this point, particularly promising.
The decontamination objection
Another challenge to P2 would be to
insist that while many unsubstantiated and extraordinary claims within a
narrative might contaminate even the mundane parts of the narrative, rendering
them dubious too, independent confirmation of several mundane parts might
serve, as it were, to decontaminate
the remaining mundane parts.
So,
for example, while the New Testament narrative combines both extraordinary and
mundane claims about Jesus, it also includes other mundane claims about for
which we do have good independent evidence. For example, the narrative makes
claims about the existence and position of Pontius Pilate, claims for which
there is independent evidence. If enough of these mundane claims were independently
confirmed, wouldn’t that effectively decontaminate the testimony regarding at
least the mundane claims about Jesus – such as that he existed, visited certain
places, said certain things, was condemned to death by Pilate, and so on?
I
don’t believe so. Suppose that in the Ted and Sarah case, Ted and Sarah’s
testimony includes various mundane details such as that Bert sat in a large
grey armchair, stroked their cat Tiddles, drank tea out of a blue mug, and so
on. On entering Ted and Sarah’s house, we are able to confirm that Ted and
Sarah do indeed possess a grey armchair, a blue mug, and a cat called Tiddles
who likes being stroked. Would this effectively decontaminate Ted and Sarah’s
testimony concerning at least the existence of Bert and other mundane claims
made about him, such as that he talked about the weather and wore a red bow
tie?
I
think not. Surely Ted and Sarah’s inclusion of the extraordinary and unverified
details that Bert flew around by flapping his arms, died, came back to life
again and temporarily transformed their sofa into a donkey continues to render
even the mundane claims made about Bert highly dubious. Dreams and
hallucinations typically involve various aspects of reality, including people
and places. Works of extraordinary fiction often locate their fictional
characters in real settings and may even have them interact with real people.
False witnesses typically weave true material into their testimony. So, once we
suspect that parts of a narrative (the extraordinary parts) are the result of
deception, hallucination or some other-false-narrative-producing mechanism, the
discovery that some mundane parts of the narrative are true hardly serves to
decontaminate the remaining mundane material. Because both true and false
mundane details are by no means unexpected within such narratives, the
discovery that several mundane parts are true is hardly a secure basis for
supposing that much or all of the remaining mundane narrative is likely to be
true.
Other reasons for
rejecting P2
Historians
may reject P2 on other grounds. They may suggest there are particular features
of textual evidence that can rightly lead us to be confident about the truth of
some of the non-miraculous claims, even if many uncorroborated miracle claims
are also made. Several criteria have been suggested for considering several of
the non-miraculous claims about Jesus to be established beyond reasonable doubt
by the New Testament documents.
The three most popular criteria are
the criterion of multiple attestation, the criterion of embarrassment, and the
criterion of discontinuity.
The criterion of multiple attestation
Several
historians (such as Michael Grant and John Meier) suggest that the fact that a
number of different New Testament sources make similar claims in different
literary forms gives us some reason,
at least, to suppose these claims are true. C. Leslie Milton goes further –
he argues that the New Testament gospels draw on
three recognised primary sources (Mark, Q and L), and concludes that:
If an item occurs in any one of these early sources, it has
a presumptive right to be considered as probably historical in essence; if it
occurs in two…that right is greatly strengthened, since it means it is
supported by two early and independent witnesses. If it is supported by three,
then its attestation is extremely strong.[xxii]
Milton
provides a list of non-miraculous claims that he believes pass this test of
“multiple attestation”, insisting they have a “strong claim to historicity on
the basis of this particular test, making a solid nucleus with which to begin.”[xxiii]
If we already know that Jesus
existed and is likely to have said at least some of what he is alleged to have
said, this criterion might prove useful in determining which attributions are
accurate. But what if we are unsure whether there was any such person as Jesus?
How useful is Milton’s criterion then? Consistency between accounts can
indicate the extent to which their transmission from an original source or
sources has been reliable, but it cannot indicate whether the source itself is reliable. As Grant notes about the
homogeneity of the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus:
one must not underestimate the possibility that this
homogeneity is only achieved because of their employment of common sources, not
necessarily authentic in themselves.[xxiv]
The criterion of embarrassment
One of
the most popular tests applied by historians in attempting to establish
historical facts about Jesus is the criterion of embarrassment. The Jesus
narrative involves several episodes which, from the point of view of early
Christians, seem to constitute an embarrassment. In Jesus: The Fact Behind The Myth, Biblical scholar C. Leslie Milton
claims that
those items which the early Church found embarrassing are
not likely to be the invention of the early Church.[xxv]
Milton supposes that reports of Jesus’
attitude to the Sabbath, fasting and divorce (in
contradiction to Moses’ authorization of it in certain conditions), his
free-and-easy relationships with people not regarded as respectable[xxvi]
all pass this test.
Michael
Grant also considers Jesus’ association with outcasts, his proclamation of the
imminent fulfilment of the Kingdom of God (which did not materialize), and his
rejection of his family ‘because he was beside himself’ embarrassing to the
early Church, and concludes these attributions are unlikely to be inventions of
early evangelists. Meier, too, considers the criterion of embarrassment a
useful if not infallible criterion. Regarding the baptism of Jesus by John the
Baptist – which raises the puzzle of why the “superior sinless one submits to a
baptism meant for sinners”[xxvii] – Meier says,
Quite plainly, the early Church was “stuck with” an event
in Jesus’ life that it found increasingly embarrassing, that it tried to
explain away by various means, and that John the Evangelist finally erased from
his Gospel. It is highly unlikely that the Church went out of its way to create
the cause of its own embarrassment.[xxviii]
The criterion of embarrassment is related to a further
criterion – that of discontinuity (they are related because discontinuity is
sometimes a source of embarrassment).
The criterion of
discontinuity
Many
historians and Biblical scholars maintain that if a teaching or saying
attributed to Jesus places him at odds with contemporary Judaism and early
Christian communities, then we possess grounds for supposing the attribution is
accurate. Again, Jesus’ rejection of voluntary fasting and his acceptance of
divorce are claimed to pass this test. Historian Norman Perrin considers the
criterion of discontinuity the fundamental criterion, giving us an assured
minimum of material with which to begin[xxix]. C. Leslie Milton
concurs that this criterion gives historians an “unassailable nucleus” of
material to work with.[xxx] John Meier considers the
criterion promising, though he notes that it may place undue emphasis on Jesus’
idiosyncracies, “highlighting what was striking but possibly peripheral in his
message”.[xxxi]
Are these
academics correct in supposing that the satisfaction, either singly or jointly,
of these criteria by the New Testament testimony is sufficient to establish
beyond reasonable doubt that many of the non-miracle-involving parts, at least,
are true?
A closer look at
the criteria of embarrassment and discontinuity
If we
know that Jesus existed, the criteria of embarrassment and discontinuity might
perhaps provide us with useful tools in determining which of his supposed
utterances are genuine. But let’s consider, again, to what extent these
criteria are helpful in determining whether there was any such person as Jesus
in the first place.
It’s suggested that a group of
religion-initiators is unlikely to create a narrative involving elements likely
to prove embarrassing to that religion, or which, by being radically out of
step with contemporary thinking, are likely to prove an obstacle to its being
embraced by others. But is this true? Consider:
(i)
What if the
religion-initiators themselves have developed certain radical views, views that
the religion is itself designed to promote? The fact that the radical nature of
these views might prove an obstacle to the religion’s success will be
irrelevant to the initiators, given that promoting
those views is actually part of what the religion is designed to do. It is,
I think, not implausible that if the
Jesus story is a myth, it is a story developed by myth-makers who had certain
radical ethical and other views (e.g. the Kingdom of God being imminent) that
they wanted others to accept. In which case, the fact that the Jesus narrative has Jesus saying and doing things
that are very much out of step with the thinking of his contemporaries is not
good evidence that Jesus is a real, historical figure.
(ii)
The existence of
embarrassing internal tensions or contradictions within a narrative is surely
not so unexpected, even if the
narrative is entirely mythical. We know that when stories are fabricated, they
do sometimes involve internal tensions or contradictions that are not
immediately apparent, only becoming an embarrassment for their creator later,
when, say, he is under cross-examination in the dock. But then the fact that
the Jesus story contains such initially unrecognised internal tensions or
contradictions is surely not particularly good evidence for its truth. Indeed,
ironically, the fact that a story involves apparent internal tensions or
contradictions is, under most other circumstances, actually taken to indicate
that the story isn’t true, not that
it is true. In reply, it may be said: but some of these tensions must have been
fairly obvious right from the start (the embarrassing tension Meier notes
between the baptism story and Jesus’ supposed sinless nature might, perhaps, be
an example). Why would such tensions deliberately
be introduced by myth-makers? One possible answer is: as a result of
compromise. When a myth is created, it may well be created to cater for several
competing interests or interest groups, each with a stake in the outcome. The
product may be an inevitably, and perhaps fairly obviously, flawed attempt to
cater for these conflicting interests within a single mythical narrative.
(iii)
Is it true that
initiators of new religions are unlikely to include in their mythical
narratives ideas and episodes very much out of step with contemporary thinking,
and/or likely to prove somewhat embarrassing to the religion? I am not sure a
survey of new religions bares this out. New religions and cults often promote
outlandish views significantly out of line with contemporary thinking. Consider
scientology. Scientology’s initiator, L. Ron Hubbard, apparently taught his
‘advanced’ followers that 75 million years ago, Xenu, alien ruler of a
“Galactic Confederacy”, brought billions of people to Earth in spacecraft
shaped like Douglas DC-10 airplanes and
stacked them around volcanoes which he then blew up with hydrogen bombs.[xxxii] These preposterous
claims predictably provoke much mirth at Scientology’s expense. Hubbard must
surely have known this would be the case (indeed, perhaps this why he attempted
to restrict the information to “advanced” students). Yet he nevertheless chose
to include them as part of his religion’s core (and, I take it, entirely
mythical) teaching.
To
summarize this section: we are looking at possible reasons for rejecting P2.
Given the many extraordinary and unsubstantiated claims made about Jesus in the
New Testament documents, P2 entails that, in the absence of any good
independent evidence to the contrary, we should be sceptical even about his
existence. I see, as yet, no reason to abandon this thesis. The three criteria
examined above – multiple attestation, embarrassment and discontinuity – may
provide us with useful tools in determining which attributions are accurate,
once we know that some probably are. But they do not, on closer examination,
appear to provide us with good reason to suppose that Jesus was not mythical in
the first place (which is, of course, not to say we yet possess good reason to
suppose he is mythical).
If you doubt this, then consider a
second thought experiment: the case of the sixth islander.
The case of the
sixth islander
Suppose
five people are rescued from a large, otherwise uninhabited island on which
they were shipwrecked ten years previously. The shipwrecked party knew that if
they survived they would, eventually, be rescued, for they knew the island was
a nature reserve visited by ecologists every ten years.
As the islanders recount their
stories, they include amazing tales of a sixth islander shipwrecked along with
them. This person, they claim, soon set himself apart from the others by
performing amazing miracles - walking on the sea, miraculously curing one of
the islanders who had died from a snakebite, conjuring up large quantities of
food from nowhere, and so on. The mysterious sixth islander also had strikingly
original ethical views that, while unorthodox, were eventually enthusiastically
embraced by the other islanders. Finally, several years ago, the sixth islander
died, but he came back to life three days later, after which he ascended into
the sky. He was even seen again several times after that.
Let’s add some further details to
this hypothetical scenario. Suppose that the five islanders tell much the same
story about the revered sixth member of their party. While differing in style,
their accounts are broadly consistent. Indeed, a vivid and forceful portrait of
the sixth islander emerges from their collective testimony, containing as much
detail as, say, the Gospel accounts do regarding Jesus.
Interestingly, the stories about the
sixth islander also include a number of details that are awkward or
embarrassing for the remaining islanders. Indeed, they all agree that two of
the surviving islanders actually betrayed and killed the sixth islander.
Moreover, some of the deeds supposedly performed by the sixth islander are clearly
at odds with what the survivors believe about him (for example, while believing
the sixth islander to be entirely without malice, they attribute to him actions
that are appear deliberately cruel, actions they subsequently have a hard time
explaining). These are details it seems it could hardly be in their interests
to invent.
Such is their admiration for their
sixth companion and his unorthodox ethical views that the survivors try hard to
convince us that both what they say is true, and that it is important that we
too come to embrace his teaching. Indeed, for the rescued party, the sixth
islander is a revered cult figure, a figure they wish us to revere too.
Now suppose we have, as yet, no good
independent evidence for the existence of the sixth islander, let alone that he
performed the miracles attributed to him. What should be our attitude to these
various claims?
Clearly, we would rightly be
sceptical about the miraculous parts of the testimony concerning the sixth
islander. Their collective testimony is not nearly good enough evidence that
such events happened. But what of the sixth islander’s existence? Is it
reasonable to believe, solely on the basis of this testimony, that the sixth
islander was at least a real person, rather than a delusion, a deliberately
invented fiction, or whatever?
Notice that the evidence presented
by the five islanders satisfies the three criteria discussed above.
First, we have multiple attestation: not one, but five, individuals claim that the
sixth islander existed (moreover, note we are dealing with the alleged
eye-witnesses themselves, rather than second or third hand reports, so there is
no possibility of others having altered the original story, as there is in the
case of the New Testament testimony).
Secondly, their reports contain
details that are clearly highly embarrassing
to (indeed, that seriously incriminate) the tellers. This raises the question:
why would the islanders deliberately include such details in a made-up story -
a story that e.g. is clearly in tension with what they believe about their
hero, and which, indeed, also portrays them as murderous betrayers?
Thirdly, why would they attribute to
the sixth islander unorthodox ethical and other views very much discontinuous with accepted wisdom? If,
for example, the sixth islander is an invention designed to set them up as
chief gurus of a new cult, would they attribute to their mythical leader views
unlikely to be easily accepted by others?
There is little doubt that there could
have been a sixth islander who said and did some of the things attributed to
him. But ask yourself: does the collective testimony of the rescued party place
the existence of the sixth islander beyond reasonable doubt? If not beyond
reasonable doubt, is his existence something it would at least be reasonable
for us to accept? Or would we be wiser, at this point, to reserve judgement and
adopt a sceptical stance?
A test of
intuition
What I am
presenting here is, in effect, a philosophical thought-experiment of the sort
standardly employed in philosophy (such as e.g. Putnam’s twin-Earth thought
experiment[xxxiii],
and trolley problems designed to test ethical positions). Such experiments
involve an appeal to our philosophical intuitions. What, intuitively, is the
right answer to the above questions?
It strikes me as pretty obvious that
the existence of the sixth islander certainly has not been established beyond
reasonable doubt. Indeed, it seems obvious to me that - despite the fact that the three criteria of multiple attestation, embarrassment
and discontinuity are all clearly satisfied - we are justified in taking a
rather sceptical attitude towards the claims that any such a person existed.
Yes it is possible there was a sixth islander. If we had independent grounds
for supposing the sixth islander existed, such as evidence from a ship’s log,
or a large number of witnesses from a neighbouring island who reported seeing
six islanders, then it would be reasonable to suppose the sixth islander
existed (whether or not he was a miracle worker).
But, while I acknowledge it might
even, at this point, be slightly more
reasonable than not to suppose there was a sixth islander, surely we would
be wise to reserve judgement on whether or not any such person existed. We
should remain sceptical.
In short, in the case of the sixth
islander, our three criteria produce the wrong verdict, and P2 actually produces the
right verdict.
Most of those to whom I have
presented this thought experiment have had similar intuitions to my own
(certainly, all the non-Christians have). Of course, appeal to thought
experiment and philosophical intuition is by no means an infallible guide to
truth[xxxiv]. But I suggest that we
have, here, a prima face powerful
objection to the suggestion that our three criteria, either singly or
conjunction, place Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt.
(Notice that, even if your
intuitions happen not to coincide
with mine regarding the sixth islander, if the intuitions of the majority do -
and that is my impression - that fact, by itself, would still raise a prima facie difficulty for the
suggestion that the New Testament documents alone suffice firmly to establish
the existence of an historical Jesus. It would be interesting to establish with
more precision just how the philosophical intuitions of Christians and
non-Christians line up regarding this thought-experiment, and, if they
significantly differ, to investigate why that should be so.)
Of course, it is possible we might
yet identify some relevant difference between the New Testament testimony about
Jesus and the testimony about the sixth islander that explains why, if we are
not justified in supposing the sixth islander exists, we are justified, solely
on the basis of the New Testament documents, in supposing Jesus exists. Identifying
such a difference is a challenge that those who take that view need to meet.
Here is one suggestion.
Does the cultural
difference matter?
Our
hypothetical islanders are, we have been assuming, contemporary Westerners, who
are not usually in the habit of concocting miracle stories. However, other
cultures are. Arguably, first century Palestine was such a culture. So, while
the fact that many miracles are attributed to the sixth islander should rightly
lead us to be sceptical about his existence, the fact that many miracles are
attributed to Jesus should not lead us to be sceptical about his existence.
We can adjust our thought experiment
to test this suggestion. Suppose our islanders are not, in fact, Westerners,
but come from a tribal culture known to be fond of myth-making.
Now ask yourself: does this really
make the existence of the sixth islander significantly more likely? Some may argue that this cultural difference
increases the probability that the islanders do sincerely believe at least the
non-extraordinary parts of their story, and so lowers the probability they just
made those parts up, thus increasing the probability that those parts are true.
But
why suppose it’s now significantly more likely that islanders do believe even the non-extraordinary
parts of their story? We know that sometimes, when a myth is invented, it is
made up about a real person – as in the Haile Selassie case. However, other
times even the central character is made up, as appears to be true of John
Frum.
So,
while we may know, given this culture’s penchant for myth-making, that this might be a Haile Selassie type case with
a real person at its core, surely we cannot be particularly confident that it
isn’t a John Frum type case with no such historical core. Particularly given
the very large proportion of extraordinary claims woven into the narrative.
Final worry re.
P2: what is a ‘significant proportion’?
A final
worry worth addressing concerning P2 focuses on the expression “a significant
proportion of extraordinary claims”. What is a “significant proportion”?
Doesn’t the hazy and impressionistic character of this phrase undermine the
practical applicability of P2?
I don’t believe so. Of course the
expression is vague. I also acknowledge that there are some subtleties
concerning contamination that deserve further unpacking. For example, it is
surely not just the ratio of
extraordinary events to non-extraordinary events that is relevant so far as
contamination is concerned. The character of the events also matters. Reports
of supernatural events that might easily turn out to be misidentified natural
phenomena (such as Alexander’s guiding flock of ravens) presumably have less of
a contaminatory effect (for it is less likely, then, that we are dealing with
the product of an exceptionally powerful false-testimony-producing mechanism or
mechanisms such as outright fabrication or fraud rather than, say, mere
coincidence or an optical illusion). Extraordinary events that are not
incidental episodes (e.g. a virgin birth tacked on to the beginning of a
narrative) but largely integral to the main narrative presumably also have a
stronger contaminatory effect, for it is less likely that they are merely later
adornments to an existing non-miracle involving, and thus far more trustworthy,
piece of testimony.
Nevertheless, the New Testament
testimony regarding Jesus manages to pack in the region of thirty-five miracles
into a total of just a few weeks or months out of something like the last three
years of Jesus’ life. Unlike Alexander’s guiding flock of birds, many of these
miracles do seem unlikely to be merely misinterpreted natural phenomena. And
many are integral to the main narrative (as I say, the pivotal episode is a
miracle). It seems to me, then, that the miracle-involving parts of the Jesus
testimony must have a fairly powerful contaminatory effect on what remains.
Indeed, suppose the testimony
concerning the sixth islander covers a few weeks or months out of the three
years the mystery islander supposedly spent with the witnesses, that the same
number of miracle claims are made about him as are made about Jesus, and that
the miracles are of much the same character. If the miraculous parts of our
five witnesses’ testimony concerning the sixth islander would lead us to be rather
sceptical about whether there was a sixth islander, shouldn’t the miraculous
parts of the Jesus testimony lead us to equally sceptical about whether there
was any such person? If there is contamination sufficient to throw the
existence of the miracle-doer into question in the former case, why not in the
latter?
So while P2 is vague and may require
some fine-tuning, it seems to me unlikely that even an appropriately refined
version will allow us to say that the New Testament testimony does, after all, place
the existence of Jesus beyond reasonable doubt.
Conclusions
This
paper, while relevant to Biblical history, is essentially philosophical in
nature. My focus has not, primarily, been on the historical evidence concerning
Jesus, but rather on the principles by
which that evidence is, or should be, assessed.
I draw three conclusions. The first
conclusion is a moral: it is important
not to overlook the effects of contamination – of the way in which the dubious
character of the uncorroborated miraculous parts of a piece of testimony can
render what remains dubious too. Many historians believe the New Testament
documents alone provide us with testimony (even if second- or third-hand)
sufficient to render the claim that there was an historical Jesus at least
pretty reasonable, and perhaps even sufficient to place it beyond any
reasonable doubt. We should concede that, other things being equal, testimony
is something we do, rightly, trust. As Richard Bauckham, Professor of New
Testament Studies, points out in Jesus
And The Eye-Witnesses: The Gospels As Eye-Witness Testimony:
An irreducible feature of testimony as a form of utterance
is that it has to be trusted. This need not mean that it asks to be trusted
uncritically, but it does mean that testimony should not be treated as credible
only to the extent that it can be independently verified.[xxxv]
Bauckham
immediately concludes that the:
Gospels understood as testimony are the entirely
appropriate means of access to the historical reality of Jesus.[xxxvi]
As
already noted, Biblical historian C. Leslie Milton also stresses the
presumptive right of testimony to be trusted. About the early Gospel sources,
he says:
If an item occurs in any one of these early sources, it has
a presumptive right to be considered as probably historical in essence; if it
occurs in two…that right is greatly strengthened, since it means it is
supported by two early and independent witnesses. If it is supported by three,
then its attestation is extremely strong.[xxxvii]
I would
agree that such testimony would have such a presumptive right, were it not for the significant proportion
of miracle claims woven throughout its fabric. The Gospels are littered
with around thirty-five miracle claims, many of a very dramatic nature. Nor are
these miracle claims incidental to the Gospel narrative. To a large extent, the
miracle stories are the narrative. Whether or not principle P2 is entirely
right, it does seem that some sort of
contamination principle must be correct, and such a principle might then well
then constitute a serious threat to such presumptions about the reliability of
New Testament testimony.
The second conclusion I draw
concerns the three criteria of multiple attestation, embarrassment and
discontinuity, criteria widely used to justify the claim that the New Testament
documents alone suffice to establish firmly the truth of various Biblical
claims, such as that Jesus existed. On closer examination, these three criteria do not appear (either singly or jointly), to
establish, by themselves, a core of material within the New Testament testimony
that we can justifiably consider “assured” (Perrin), an “unassailable nucleus”
(C. Leslie Milton) or “unlikely to be inventions of early evangelists” (Grant).
We tested these criteria by means of a thought-experiment: the case of the
sixth islander. The testimony concerning the sixth islander’s existence clearly
meets all three criteria, yet his existence, it seems to me, is by no means
firmly established. It is entirely possible that Jesus existed and was crucified.
I am not promoting, and indeed remain sceptical about, the claim that the Jesus
story is entirely mythical. However, I have questioned the extent to which the New
Testament documents provide us with good evidence for the existence and
crucifixion of Jesus. They provide some evidence, of course. They may even make
Jesus’ existence a little more
probable than not. But do they, by themselves, provide us with evidence
sufficient to establish the existence of an historical Jesus beyond any
reasonable doubt? I don’t yet see that they do.
The contamination principle, P2, is
a prima facie plausible principle
that, in conjunction with other prima
face plausible premises, delivers the conclusion that, in the absence of
good independent evidence for the existence of an historical Jesus, we are
justified in remaining sceptical about the existence of such a person. We have
looked at several objections to P2, including the suggestion that the joint
satisfaction of the criteria of multiple attestation, embarrassment and
discontinuity is sufficient to justify belief in at least some of the
non-extraordinary claims made in the Gospels, such as that Jesus existed.
However, as noted above, when we test this suggestion against the hypothetical
case of the sixth islander, the three criteria appear (to me, at least) to give
the wrong verdict, and P2 to give the right verdict. My third conclusion is
that P2 has not, so far as I can see,
been successfully challenged.
Heythrop College, University of London, Kensington Square,
London W8 5HN.
Notes
[i]
My thanks to Tim Mawson and Keith Ward. Also to Tom Flint and several anonymous
reviewers for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts. I should also
thank various anonymous contributors to my blog www.stephenlaw.org
who helped in the development of some of the ideas.
[ii]
See Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), chpt.
6.
[iv]
See Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews
18.63-64, and also 20.9.
[vi]
For examples of those questioning the authenticity of the Josephus text, see Jesus by C. Guignebert (University
Books, New York, 1956) and Ken Olson’s “Eusebius and the Testimonium
Flavianum”, Catholic Biblical Quarterly
61 (1999), 305-322.
[vii]
See Robert M. Price, The Incredible
Shrinking Son of Man (Amherst N.Y: Prometheus, 2003).
[viii]
John Meier, A Marginal Jew – Rethinking
the Historical Jesus, Volume 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 23.
[ix]
Michael Grant, Jesus, An Historians
Review of the Gospels (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977), 199-200.
[x]
E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London:
Penguin, 1993), 10.
[xii]
Sagan used it in an episode of the TV series Cosmos called “Encyclopaedia Galactica". Cosmos, PBS, 1980-12-14, No. 12, 01:24
minutes in.
[xiii]
For examples, see C. S. Lewis Miracles (new
edition) (London: Harper Collins, 2002), especially chapter one; also William
Lane Craig’s first rebuttal in the transcript of the debate with Bart D. Ehrman
“Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of
Jesus?” available on-line at www.freewebs.com/deityofchrist/resurrection-debate-transcript.pdf.
[xiv]
It may be said that there is a relevant disanalogy
between the application of the Presuppositions Move with respect to religious
miracles and to fairies. We have now acquired good empirical evidence that
there’s no such thing as fairies. Starting off an assessment of the empirical
evidence with the presupposition that fairies exist is one thing. Retaining
that presupposition in the teeth of empirical evidence to the contrary is quite
another. The Presuppositions Move surely requires
that we have come across no body of empirical evidence throwing into serious
doubt the existence of what we have been presupposing exists. This blocks
the application of the Presuppositions Move in defence of accepting testimony
regarding fairies. However, while there’s good empirical evidence that there’s
no such thing as fairies, there’s no such evidence against the existence of
God. Thus the Move can still be made
with respect to testimony of religious miracles.
An obvious difficulty with the above
suggestion is the evidential problem of evil (for an assessment, see my “The
Evil God Hypothesis” in Religious Studies
46 (2010), 353-373). Prima facie there is good empirical evidence that there
is no God. In which case, the above suggestion looks to be no less an obstacle
to the use of the Presuppositions Move with respect to religious miracles. So,
prior to employing the Move, those theists insisting on the above disanalogy
will need to come up with an adequate solution to the evidential problem of
evil (a solution not dependent on the truth of religious miracle claims) – not
an easy task.
[xv]
Frank Morrison, Who Moved The Stone?
(London: Faber and Faber, 1930).
[xvi]
As noted in my introduction, some maintain that, irrespective
of the quality of the historical evidence, we can nevertheless know the truth
of scripture non-inferentially, by way of the operation of a sensus divinitatis. However, it is the
strength of the historical evidence that concerns us here.
[xvii]
Michael Grant, Jesus, 39.
[xviii]
Plutarch’s Alexander The Great is
available on-line at http://www.e-classics.com/ALEXANDER.htm
[xix]
Michael Grant, Jesus, p 200.
[xx]
A point made by Edmund Standing in Against Mythicism: A Case for the Plausibility of a
Historical Jesus, available on-line at http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=378
[xxi]
For more information on Frum see, for example, http://www.nthposition.com/thelastcargo.php
[xxii]
C. Leslie Milton, Jesus: The Fact Behind
The Myth (Oxford: A. R. Mowbray and Co., 1975), 82.
[xxiii]
C. Leslie Milton, Jesus, 83.
[xxiv]
Michael Grant, Jesus, 203.
[xxv]
C. Leslie Milton, Jesus, 84.
[xxvi]
Ibid.
[xxvii]
John Meier, Jesus, 168.
[xxviii]
Ibid., 169.
[xxix]
Perrin, Rediscovering the Teaching of
Jesus (New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1967), 39-43.
[xxx]
C. Leslie Milton, Jesus,
84.
[xxxii]
See entry on “Xenu” on wikipedia.
[xxxiii]
See Hilary Putnam, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” in K.
Gunderson (Ed.), Language, mind and
knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975), 131-193
[xxxiv]
See, for example, Daniel Dennett’s “Intuition Pumps”, Minds and Machines 16, (2006), 81 – 86, and recent work on trolley
problem intuitions in e.g. Peter Unger, Living High and Letting Die (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1996).
[xxxv]
Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The
Eye-Witnesses: The Gospels As Eye-Witness Testimony (Grand Rapids,
Michigan: William Eerdman Publishing, 2006), 5.
[xxxvi]
Ibid.
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