Various
attacks on
historical reliability of the New Testament record.
A direct quote from Jim Walker makes several statements about
not having artifacts or direct evidence, contemporary evidence, and
charges the
evidence we have is based on fraud, interpolations, based on
hearsay. http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm
These statement simply arent true and Walker makes several
mistakes in chronology--specifically regarding the dating of the
documents. Walker
presupposes a very late dating for the gospels. Yet the vast majority
of scholars conclude
that there is an early dating for these records, and certainly early
enough for
the
original eyewitnesses to these accounts to compile or contribute to
them (Habermas,
1996, pg 35. Also see Appendix 2 for examples of scholars and sources
for
gospel dating). For example, Mark is dated 60-70 AD (Habermas, 1996, pg
42). Additionally,
what Walker fails to mention is that many of these documents (gospels
and
epistles) contain creeds, oral traditions, or fragments from earlier
oral and
written sources which date back to the earliest times of the church
(mid 30Ad
to 70AD), which I have already summarized.
By addressing the "late dating," this effectively
refutes many of the issues regarding "hearsay." Additionally, there are
number of notable exceptions to the hearsay rule including
contemporaneous
writing, emotional utterances, business documents, and witness
unavailability. I
will leave it to the
reader to further investigate these exceptions http://www.courts.state.nh.us/rules/evid/evid-804.htm.
Where there are exceptions to the hearsay rule, we have allowances for
the jury
to come to its own conclusion about the reliability of the evidence
after
cross-examination. For example, investigative reporting is by its very
nature,
"hearsay evidence." So are research papers and books. In fact we
could call Price's entire book "hearsay" and just be done? However, I
would be ridiculous. We take the credibility of the source from which
we
receive the information. For example, in Paul's statement in 1 Cor 15,
he
restates an early creed (likely from < 40 CE), that was
constructed from
eyewitness accounts, he provides a list of the many eyewitness
themselves (to
site his sources, so to speak) and then goes on to point out, that at
the time
of his writing, many of the witnesses were still alive, and available
for cross
examination. This is not inadmissible hearsay!!! This is a reliable and
credible
reporting
of the events, with a well established list of sources
which contemporary readers of 1 Corinthians could have double
checked the
sources for
validity. In fact, this is the stated intention of Luke, to personally
validate
and double check the earlier teachings "so that you may know the
certainty
of what you have been taught." (Luke 1:4).
Regarding the statement, "no one has the slightest
physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no artifacts,
dwelling, works
of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts." I "beg to differ." We have a number of items.
According to
gospel accounts, Jesus lived with Peter for a time in Capernaum.
The following link describes the
house which was later enshrined in a church.
Capernaum--The
Church of the House of Peter.
The "alleged" house where
Mary lived is also
enshrined:
The
Basilica of Annunciation
The synagogue in Nazareth
where Jesus preached:
Synagogue
Church
Also, the jury is still
out on the shroud of Turin.
Shroud
of Truin open issues
And it is
also
still to be determined the authenticity of a sample of Jesus blood:
Sudarium_of_Oviedo
Albeit some of these items are controversial the jury is
still "out", so it is very much a stretch to say we have not the
"slightest physical evidence." Additionally, we don’t have any
reports from Pilot's hand during his administration over Judea.
Does that mean he didn't exist? By no means. We know that Pilot existed
because
of a recently found inscription (Piolot
Inscriptionm).
How could that be? There could be any number of reasons: They could
have been
destroyed. There could have been political and religious motivations to
suppress information. A major tenant for historical study is not to
speculate
on silence (hereafter referred too as "argument from silence"). The lack of a chair made
by Jesus does not
disprove Jesus anymore than saying, "We haven't seen a white rabbit,
and
therefore a white rabbit doesn't exist." The question is: What do we do
with the evidence that we do have (which I will summarize further down
in this
document)?
Walker
also says "All documents about Jesus got written well after the life of
the alleged Jesus from either: unknown
authors…" This is simply not true. As one example, I present
the
gospel of Matthew, who as a direct follower of Jesus is an eyewitness
to the
events he presented in his gospel account. Albeit, written anonymously,
this
does not mean we can not determine its origin or authenticity. We have
strong
evidence that the gospel according to Matthew was indeed written by
Matthew. This
is established by scholarly examination using internal textual
criticism as
well as the testimony and corroboration of others who could vet the
facts and vouch
for Matthew's accuracy (see appendix
1 for Matthew authorship).
Textual
Reliability in general:
At
this time, I want to address what I perceive to be an
"a priori" (that is being without examination or analysis) rejection
of the New Testament documents. The New Testament documents are
relevant to our
discussion precisely because they are the closest reference to our
topic available,
and their authors knew the subject matter best. Moreover, the New
Testament is
a set of a set of ancient documents which can be subjected to
historical
scrutiny like any other accounts from antiquity (Strobel, 2007 pg113).
More
than five thousand Greek copies of the original
manuscripts have been found, the earliest which date to somewhere
between one
hundred and one hundred fifty AD, which places it between twenty and
one
hundred years later than the original. Manuscripts in other languages,
including Latin, Ethiopian, Slavic, and Armenian, bring the total to
about
twenty-four thousand manuscripts (Strobel 1998, 79-81). These copies
also
contain only a few minor discrepancies. These are so rare and minor
that
scholars Norman Geisler and William Nix concluded that 'The New
Testament,
then, has not only survived in more manuscripts than any other book
from
antiquity, but it has survived in a purer form than any other great
book - a
form that is 99.5 percent pure (Stobel 1998, pg 85).' 'The textual
evidence
decisively shows that the Gospels were written and circulated during
the
lifetime of those who witnessed the events. Since there are so many
specific
names and places mentioned, eyewitnesses could have easily discredited
the
writings. The New Testament would have never survived had the facts
been inaccurate
(Zukeran, 2003) (quote Taken from Minich).
So,
it is astonishing that while Greco-Roman historians have
been growing in confidence, the twentieth century study of the gospel
narratives, starting from no less promising material, has taken so
gloomy a turn
in the development of form-criticism…that the historical Christ is
unknowable
and the history of his mission cannot be written . This seems very
curious (AN
Sherwin-White 1963, 187) (Note: quote taken from Habermas, 1996, p52).
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