Are the gospels reliable historical documents? // YES

[sun rise]

Sure Luke had one (or few) details wrong vs hundreds of details corrrect.......therefore the text is a reliable historical document.

Some of the discussion is based on different assumptions of the motivation behind calling something 'reliable'. Reliable for what purpose? Clearly by modern historical standards, it's not a reliable biography because of the lack of corroboration, disagreement with some known historical facts and so forth.

So for you, what does reliable mean?

Not familiar with Babylon 5 sorry.

It's a TV series.

 

[leroy]

As many have already mentionned and anbody with cursory knowledge of Ancient Rome and Judea knows, the Gospels aren't historical text nor are they reliable historical text. The authors are unknown as are the sources of those authors. There are no corroboration of the events of the Gospels outside of an off mention in Tacitus of a man named Jesus, crucified by Pontius Pilate, being the first leader of the Christians. The Gospels themselves contain several historical and geographical innacuracies and contradict each other on several points. The idea of presenting the writtings of unkown authors based on unknown sources without outside corroboration and with several key errors in datation and geography as an accurate historical source is simply ridiculous.

The Gospels are legends and myths that are probably based on a true story but is about as accurate as the movie Braveheart is when it comes to Scottish history or the legend of King Arthur about the history of 6th centry Britain.

That in red is simply factually wrong.

Paul and tacitus: corroborate the crusifiction

Josephus corroborates that there was a Caephas a Peter a James etc.

The villages and toes where real, we can very for example that there was sea in galley,

Josephus corroborates the political structure of Jerusalem


Etc

Only someone with access to good sources would know all this

 

[McBell]

That in red is simply factually wrong.

Paul and tacitus: corroborate the crusifiction

Josephus corroborates that there was a Caephas a Peter a James etc.

The villages and toes where real, we can very for example that there was sea in galley,

Josephus corroborates the political structure of Jerusalem


Etc

Only someone with access to good sources would know all this

perhaps if you were to read the rest of the sentence you quote mined....

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

You don't need to know who the author was in order to know that;
1 The author intended to report what actually happened.
2 the author had access to good sources.

No. YOU don't need to know, because you simply make it up and cling to it as a matter of faith. But once you confuse articles of faith with articles of fact you cross a line. And to claim that

"you don't need to know who the author was in order to know that ... the author had access to good sources"
​

is to take a pathetic swan dive down the rabbit hole.

 

[leroy]

It appears to be more the mark of a good story teller. And not a particularly great one.

Well academics accept it as a criteria for authenticity of a document

The criterion of embarrassment is one point listed in the Criteria of Authenticity used by academics,

Criterion of embarrassment - Wikipedia

But if it appears* to you otherwise then you most be correct and academics are obviously wrong....

 

[shunyadragon]

Sooooo which of the 3 points in the OP would you reject and why?

ALL, no known evidence of original provenance nor authorship of gospels, nor evidence or texts within 50 years of the life of Jesus.

Those that compiled, edited and redacted the gospels were literate and worldly for time and, of course , had knowledge of the world at the time of Jesus.

 

[leroy]

No. YOU don't need to know, because you simply make it up and cling to it as a matter of faith. But once you confuse articles of faith with articles of fact you cross a line. And to claim that

"you don't need to know who the author was in order to know that ... the author had access to good sources"
​

is to take a pathetic swan dive down the rabbit hole.

Again you don't need to know who the author is, in order to conclude that a document is reliable.

 

[leroy]

ALL, no known evidence of original provenance nor authorship of gospels, nor evidence or texts within 50 years of the life of Jesus.

Those that compiled, edited and redacted the gospels were literate and worldly for time and, of course , had knowledge of the world at the time of Jesus.

Interesting but none of that makes any of the 3 ,points wrong.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Well academics accept it as a criteria for authenticity of a document

Criterion of embarrassment - Wikipedia

But if it appears* to you otherwise then you most be correct and academics are obviously wrong....

Hardly, the supposed scholars that accept this appear to be very limited.:

". Certain Biblical scholars have used this as a metric for assessing whether the New Testament's accounts of Jesus' actions and words are historically probable.["

Certain Biblical scholars. That should tell you something.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Again you don't need to know who the author is, in order to conclude that a document is reliable.

And one does not need to know the author to conclude that it is not.

 

[leroy]

Some of the discussion is based on different assumptions of the motivation behind calling something 'reliable'. Reliable for what purpose? Clearly by modern historical standards, it's not a reliable biography because of the lack of corroboration, disagreement with some known historical facts and so forth.

So for you, what does reliable mean?



It's a TV series.

So for you, what does reliable mean?

That the information of the documents is likely to be true.

 

[shunyadragon]

Interesting but none of that makes any of the 3 ,points wrong.

Sure does, with nothing dated before 50 AD, actually the first fragments of the gospels are dated much later, therefore no basis for your claims. As I said, who ever wrote, edited and redacted the gospels were obviously knowledgeable about the history and Palestine.

With no evidence your assertions are based on 'faith.'

 

[Subduction Zone]

Interesting but none of that makes any of the 3 ,points wrong.

There is no need to "prove them wrong". That is the typical error of the believer. All that needs to be shown is that the the three points are not justified and that has been done.

 

[leroy]

Hardly, the supposed scholars that accept this appear to be very limited.:

". Certain Biblical scholars have used this as a metric for assessing whether the New Testament's accounts of Jesus' actions and words are historically probable.["

Certain Biblical scholars. That should tell you something.

Yes that is true....why would I trust biblical scholars?,..... next time I will trust you instead......is there any other thing that biblical scholars say that you reject?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Yes that is true....why would I trust biblical scholars?,..... next time I will trust you instead......is there any other thing that biblical scholars say that you reject?

Oh my!! You do have a problem understanding your errors. Certain biblical scholars that already want to believe the mythos use this as an excuse. Now if real scholars, historical scholars, used this then you might have a point. Many scholars will simply laugh at such a claim.

 

[epronovost]

That in red is simply factually wrong.

Paul and tacitus: corroborate the crusifiction

Josephus corroborates that there was a Caephas a Peter a James etc.

The villages and toes where real, we can very for example that there was sea in galley,

Josephus corroborates the political structure of Jerusalem


Etc

Only someone with access to good sources would know all this

Not really no. Tacitus does confirm the crucifiction, but not anything else in the Gospel and certainly not the resurrection nor the content of Jesus' preachings. Paul never met Jesus and can't confirm anything about his life or his death since he was never there in the first place. Paul can be considered mildly useful to know more about the early Christians and fellow Jewish reformers and more importantly, Paul doesn't directly quote nor is part of any of the Gospels. Paul was not interrested in demonstrating the historical accuracy of the events in the Gospels. Paul is thus not a historical source for Jesus' life.

The political structure of Jerusalem as some areas in the region are common knowledge. Spiderman is in Queens, New-York City and accurately describe the existence of mayors, governors, US Presidents and a variety of police officials and the structure of some media corporations and even some historical events and social upheavals. Spiderman comic books aren't historical documents.

 

[Clara Tea]

The reason I would argue that the Gospels are reliable from a historical point of view is because I belive that points 1,2 and 3 are ture:

1 the authors intended to report what actually happened

2 The authors had access to reliable sources.

3 So if an author tries to be accurate and has reliable sources it follows (inductively) that his work is reliable.

if you disagree with ether 1,2 or 3 please let me know why you disagree.




1 the authors intended to report what actually happened

Given the literary genera of the text (Greco roman biography) and the fact that the gosspels are fool of embarrassing details* it seems probable that point 1 is true

2 The authors had access to reliable sources.

Given that most of the political, historical, demographic and geographical details** in the gospels are accurate … it seems probable that the authors had access to good sources, otherwise they would have not known those details.

---

*Embarrassing details: Jesus had a humiliating death, Peter denied Jesus, The empty tomb was discovered by woman, he was buried in the tomb of a Jewish Sanhedrin, Jesus had limited knowledge, etc. all these details represented obstacles for the early Christians, (things would have been easier without those embarrassing details)

** There really was a Pilate, there really was a Caiphas, the ratio of common names vs uncommon names are consistent, there really was a Jewish Sanhedrin that had some power and influence over the romans, they villages, towns cities etc. really excisted…………onlyh someone who was there or who had acces to reliable source could have known all these.

Harcourt Fenton Mudd programmed robots to serve him. Spock said "logic is a little bird tweeting in a tree" and in another show, asked them to compute the last digit of pi (there is no last digit). Mudd said "everything I say is a lie" (robot responded..."but if everything you say is a lie, and you are lying when you say that, then everything you say is the truth."

What the poor robot didn't understand is that sometimes we can lie and sometimes we can tell the truth.

Some things in the bible are completely accurate. For example, the bible speaks of cities that exist no longer. Yet, when we use the bible to trace where they might be, we often find them. So, the bible has been shown to be historically accurate about the location of ancient cities.

The apostles all died out by the time the bible was written, some 100 years or more after the death of Jesus. So they could not have all gotten together to give their versions of events for the bible 100 years or so after everyone was dead.

But we could argue that the bible was written to be perfect by divine intervention (God telling the author or guiding the hand of the author).

Yet , many parts of the bible have errors, so, if it was divinely inspired, it must be perfect, yet it has errors, so it must not have been entirely divinely inspired.

Example of a bible error:
Gen 1:25: Man created before animals..
Gen 2:18: Man created after animals

Also, kings and clergy changed certain passages of the bible. So we know that mankind, with an agenda, which redacted the words of God, must be wrong. So the bible is wrong. Since the only thing that we know about God is contained in the bible(s), we can't trust our belief in God.

However, there is a way to get the truth. We could get the truth directly from God, himself.

Writhing on the floor, speaking in tongues, lkjlsdfjsljflsdkj, there you have it, the truth, directly from God.

Or, you can go to a psychic and see what the real truth is.

But, you would have to go to a psychic who is reliable.

Before the war in Iraq, God gave divine insight to the world's best psychics. They predicted all of the things that were predicted in Revelation. Revelation said not to attack Iraq. Apparently God was right and President W. Bush was wrong....Iraq was completely innocent of terrorism. Revelation also said that W. Bush was the beast and Bush senior (his father) was the dragon, and that both the beast and dragon are Satanic demons from the bottomless pit of hell.

So, if you believe that Satanic beings were supported by the Religious Right, and elected to the presidency, then you can believe in God. Otherwise, you cannot.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Not really no. Tacitus does confirm the crucifiction, but not anything else in the Gospel and certainly not the resurrection nor the content of Jesus' preachings.

I seem to recall that people were getting executed somehow every couple pages, in Tactius.. so that becomes a bit of a generality in that context

 

[Dawnofhope]

1 the authors intended to report what actually happened

That was likely part of the author’s intention. However we can not be certain of who wrote each of the Gospels, at what time and for what purpose. It seems likely the accounts were written to meet the needs of the church at a time of intense social turmoil of the Jewish people.

2 The authors had access to reliable sources.

The sources were most likely based on stories passed down through word of mouth or preaching. The authors may have been second or third generation Christians. There may have been written stories already in circulation at the time the Gospels were written.

3 So if an author tries to be accurate and has reliable sources it follows (inductively) that his work is reliable.

The stories are very unlikely to be historically precise though would very likely contain useful historical and biographical information. They are probably embellished accounts like other Greco-Roman biographies at the time. The addition of unverified miraculous events conveyed hidden spiritual truths, just as Jesus taught through parables.

The historical information that can be reliably corroborated would include Jesus being an itinerant Jewish Preacher who was baptised and eventually crucified.

That is how I see it.

 

[firedragon]

The reason I would argue that the Gospels are reliable from a historical point of view is because I belive that points 1,2 and 3 are ture:

1 the authors intended to report what actually happened

2 The authors had access to reliable sources.

3 So if an author tries to be accurate and has reliable sources it follows (inductively) that his work is reliable.

if you disagree with ether 1,2 or 3 please let me know why you disagree.




1 the authors intended to report what actually happened

Given the literary genera of the text (Greco roman biography) and the fact that the gosspels are fool of embarrassing details* it seems probable that point 1 is true

2 The authors had access to reliable sources.

Given that most of the political, historical, demographic and geographical details** in the gospels are accurate … it seems probable that the authors had access to good sources, otherwise they would have not known those details.

---

*Embarrassing details: Jesus had a humiliating death, Peter denied Jesus, The empty tomb was discovered by woman, he was buried in the tomb of a Jewish Sanhedrin, Jesus had limited knowledge, etc. all these details represented obstacles for the early Christians, (things would have been easier without those embarrassing details)

** There really was a Pilate, there really was a Caiphas, the ratio of common names vs uncommon names are consistent, there really was a Jewish Sanhedrin that had some power and influence over the romans, they villages, towns cities etc. really excisted…………onlyh someone who was there or who had acces to reliable source could have known all these.

Great topic.

1. The authors are unknown, and though you could say they were trying to write history looking at the way they are written, they are also theological books. Nevertheless, there is no way to determine who they were, or if they were actually writing history, and what their sources were.

2. a. Criterion of Embarrassment in Textual Criticism to me is acceptable. But this criterion in affirming historicity is invalid in my opinion. A reason is, you take a book, you know it is written like 40 years after an event, you dont know who wrote it, but since it has an embarrassing event that took place it is true? This could also be the flip side. Lets say something truly embarrassing is written in one of the books, and you take it as valid simply because it is "embarrassing", but did you think if the author had a "more embarrassing" occurrence that he was covering up with a "less embarrassing" story?
b. There are many movies today with lets say "Barrack Obama" speaking on the TV. Obama is a historical figure, that does not mean this movie is historical. Of course there could be a scenario where the New Testament book you refer to was written centuries later but got an ancient event exactly right and the correct discovery was only made in the 21st century (as an example), that's a whole other argument to take into consideration.