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Bryan –

You mentioned you were signing off but…

Why should it be only verifiable within your philosophic assumptions? It is verifiable through belief in a report, not through empiricism, which you are assuming is the only meaningful avenue through which knowledge can be obtained. I don’t need to assume your criteria that is limited by your worldview in order to hold my worldview and obtain knowledge through the criteria consistent with it.

If we are going to use the criteria of belief in a report, then non-belief in the report constitutes disconfirmation. That was easy.

Take care and enjoy your time off.

Ranger,

Thanks for the dialogue. When I was a Christian, I was a presuppositionalist after the mode of Van Til, Frame, Rushdoony, etc. When I taught apologetics, I used Norm Geisler’s book because it discussed the other apologetic methods used by Christians through the years. While I personally did not agree with Geisler’s Thomism, I still liked his book as a text. In my lectures, though, I argued that presuppositionalism is the correct method.

Much of what I disagree with today in apologetic writings goes back to what I taught years ago. In other words, evidentialism will never work because events have to be interpreted. The classic arguments for the existence of God, I don’t find convincing. And even if they were valid, they do not prove the God of Bible.

I agree that our presuppositions dictate how we interpret what we hear, see, etc. BUT our presuppositions can be changed. Mine changed. I am sure you are familiar with Thomas Kuhn’s classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He shows how paradigm shifts have occured in science. These shifts do not come easily and a lot of people are never able to change their worldview but slowly the new paradigm takes hold because it is a better hypothesis. This is similar to what happened to me.

AS for Avalos, I do not like the title of the book either. I am not sure Hector picked it, it was probably the publisher. But I do think he makes some excellent points in the book about how the Bible, even in secular universities, is often taught by people with a faith committment to what it teaches thus perpetuating “exceptionalism.” What he wants and I am in agreement is to treat the Bible as any other ancient writing. When you do that, all of the mystique disappears.

Ken

Hey Ken,
Thanks for a charitable and interesting response. This will probably be my only further comment since I don’t have time for these types of discussions online (I’ve got enough in person, haha).

To clarify, you said, “You seem to be skeptical of the Talmud’s record regarding the burial practices of Second Temple Judaism but I am not sure why.”

Actually, that’s not what I said nor implied. As in my comment above (#14), I think they give a good indicator for these practices, but I’m often skeptical of their discussions of individuals and events as they have undergone significant editing and revisions in the tradition prior to the 4th century…but that’s beside the point. In fact, what I actually said before mentioning their corruption was “These are important for interpreting 1st century Judaism since some goes back to the first century.” I see plenty of value, just not evidence that would cause me to take their general descriptions of general events over multiple specific descriptions of a specific event.

I’ve also met Avalos, and (like you and Hector) have degrees in Biblical Studies to hang in my office as well. Who cares? Avalos did not make a strong case in his work, and ultimately I agree with Kortner in RBL who says, “Schon deshalb ist es von Avalos wohl etwas voreilig, das Ende der biblischen Studien zu verkündigen.” Much too early indeed.

What’s much more interesting is your comment about circular reasoning and privileging the Bible over other texts. My point in the latter parts of my comments was restating what others have said about how our presuppositions guide our interpretation. That’s true of you and me both.

I gladly admit that I’ve been convinced through years of professional study and believe the Bible is the Word of God. Therefore, I’ve taken a different route than you. I’m a confessional scholar and make no qualms about it. That reality has made me more accepted in some circles and more scorned in others. I agree that my baseline presuppositions (Christian theism) are circular as are everybody else’s on the face of this earth. I’d suggest Dooyeweerd and more recently Roy Clouser (The Myth of Neutrality) for an analysis of this point.

Your personal rejection of theism also skews your work. If Christianity is true, then your assumptions are clearly misguiding your interpretations. As a former Christian you bring lots of baggage to the text whether you like it or not and that still affects your interpretation. In our post-Derrida/Rorty, et. al. world, there’s no such thing as objective, unbiased analysis of texts.

Three of the best Jesus scholars I know right now are Maurice Casey (an atheist), Dale Allison (a skeptical, lifelong Christian) and Craig Keener (an adult atheist to Christian convert). All three lay their assumptions on the table for everyone to read and then do the best historical research they can.

Thanks again for the manner in which you…

Ranger,

You say: “I (Ranger) have good reasons to believe that theism is true and thus God can interact in history.In conclusion, I see no reason to believe your statement that “based on human knowledge and experience, any one of the possible scenarios I laid out are more likely than a supernatural act.” 1. My knowledge and experience tells me that theism is true. 2. Thus, the primary evidence outweighs secondary evidence. 3. I believe it more reasonable to trust stories with evidence for the specific situation (unless there is better historical evidence against them) over stories with speculative secondary evidence.”

I understand your presuppositions about the truth of the Bible will lead you to accept what it says as true. (seems like circular reasoning to me). The ultimate question comes back down to whether your presuppositions that “God is there and he is not silent” (to quote Schaeffer) is defensible. You obviously think it is; I used to think it was but do not any more.

I think the academic study of the Bible has pretty much shown that the Bible is not unique and there is no good reason to believe its the Word of God than there is to believe the Book of Mormon, the Koran, the Vedas, or any other holy book is the Word of God. I would suggest the book by Hector Avalos (Ph.D. Harvard) entitled “The End of Biblical Studies.” I met Avalos recently. He is an interesting individual. Began life in a Pentecostal home, was a boy preacher and then later came to conclude that his beliefs were naive and uninformed.

Ranger,

You seem to be skeptical of the Talmud’s record regarding the burial practices of Second Temple Judaism but I am not sure why. What motivations would one have to invent the idea of a criminal graveyard? Even Jesus talked about Gehenna, so it seems you ought to at least believe that place existed. I don’t believe the Talmud speaks directly of the burial of Jesus but rather of the general burial practices of that period of time.

With regard to John the Baptist, a murder is not that unusual. Believe me, I live in Atlanta and every day on the news, the first 15 minutes is taken up with reporting the latest murders in our city. While obviously more people die of natural causes, we know that some die from murder. We don’t know that anyone has ever been raised from the dead.

With regard to Caesar? I am not expert in Roman history so I don’t know what other evidence there may be for the assassination of Ceasar. If all of the evidence is from Plutarch and Suetonius, then there may be reason to be skeptical. But once again, we know that political assassinations happen, so why not believe it happened then?

You say that there are other “one time events” like the resurrection and I don’t just wave them off. You would have to be more specific in order for me to deal with this point.

You say that “alternatives trump the primary evidence. Why? Because you see no reason to believe the underlying presuppositions are true. So what is the deciding factor in how you deal with the textual evidence when making abnormal, spectacular or even supernatural claims? It’s your assumptions about the text. ”

But the canonical books are not unique. There are all kinds of reports of the supernatural in the ancient world. You would probably reject all of them except for the ones recorded in your canon. That tells me that you presuppose the truth of the text. You treat the text differently than other books written during this time. I don’t. I treat them all the same.

Comparatively, I (Ranger) have good reasons to believe that theism is true and thus God can interact in history (there are countless other posts at this site dealing with this topic so I won’t get into it here).

Therefore, my syllogism looks like this:

1. I have no personal experience of seeing a resurrection, know nobody who has personally experienced a resurrection and history only has a few claims of people resurrecting. Therefore, the clear historical precedent is against people resurrecting.
2. Resurrections require all sorts of presuppositions
3. I have reasons to believe these presuppositions
4. All of the textual (let’s call it primary) evidence deals with this specific situation and it all points to some type of resurrection, and the writers clearly believed a resurrection had occurred.
5. Secondary evidence (which is indirect and doesn’t tell of the specific situation) tells us that these types of deaths/burials occurred in a similar but different fashion.

Therefore, I can follow the primary evidence where it points in this situation because I have different assumptions than you. Since I believe theism is true, I have no problems with the primary evidence in this situation.

In conclusion, I see no reason to believe your statement that “based on human knowledge and experience, any one of the possible scenarios I laid out are more likely than a supernatural act.” 1. My knowledge and experience tells me that theism is true. 2. Thus, the primary evidence outweighs secondary evidence. 3. I believe it more reasonable to trust stories with evidence for the specific situation (unless there is better historical evidence against them) over stories with speculative secondary evidence.

Thanks for a fun discussion Ken, and for a great response. I hope my perspective helps you better see where some of us are coming from to further your own thoughts on the topic.

Of course, we do have rare experiences that teach us that people occasionally die from stabbings or beheadings so the analogy to resurrection isn’t perfect. But the resurrection isn’t the only one time event that has happened in history. When you get specific enough, there are all sorts of events that only happened once with biased sources from long after the event. Most of these we take at face value or at least mostly true, because they don’t imply the supernatural, which seems to be the real issue that nobody wants to admit since they still believe the old modernist myth of objective neutrality.

Here’s how I see your methodology:

1. You have no personal experience of seeing a resurrection, know nobody who has personally experienced a resurrection and history only has a few claims of people resurrecting. Therefore, the clear historical precedent is against people resurrecting.
2. Resurrections require all sorts of presuppositions (as you listed above…although your last assumption concerning the theological interpretation of the event has nothing to do with the historicity)
3. You no longer have personal reasons to believe these presuppositions.
4. All of the textual (let’s call it primary) evidence deals with this specific situation and it all points to some type of resurrection, and the writers clearly believed a resurrection had occurred.
5. Secondary evidence tells us about death/burial practices that were more common.

Therefore, alternatives trump the primary evidence. Why? Because you see no reason to believe the underlying presuppositions are true. So what is the deciding factor in how you deal with the textual evidence when making abnormal, spectacular or even supernatural claims? It’s your assumptions about the text. These assumptions bias everything from texts, to videos to personal experience. As such, I don’t think it’s right for believers to claim unbelievers are overly biased or vice versa…we’re both so bound up in our presuppositions that it takes something miraculous to change them.

Ken,
Thanks for your response. I think you make the point clear about presuppositions that others have been making.

As you make clear, your naturalistic interpretations have no textual evidence, but are based on speculations from traditions written hundreds of years later that don’t deal with the specific situation (Mishnah – 3rd century and Gemera – 6th century). These are important for interpreting 1st century Judaism since some goes back to the first century, but they’ve also undergone centuries of transmission and editing with all the bias that you claim against the gospels.

Does the Talmud tell us about this specific situation? Probably not. The Yeshu narratives in Talmud Sanhedrin may be a reference to Jesus, but they are heavily corrupted and incorrect (the date is a century off, Jesus was hung vs. crucified, although you can work around this…He was apparently held for forty days while the Sanhedrin looked for defendants of him and found none, etc.). No living scholars thinks these stories (if referencing the historical Jesus) are more reliable than the passion narrative beneath the gospels.

So how would your method of arguing work with regards to John the Baptist, or Julius Caesar?

Let’s look at John the Baptist first. The vast majority of people living in the first centuries died naturally without being murdered. In my personal experience, most people I know have died naturally. Medical journals tell us that most people die naturally without being murdered. Unless there is some pretty extraordinary evidence, we should assume that both John the Baptist died of natural causes without being murdered.

Why would anyone think that John the Baptist died another way? Well, the gospels say that he did. But as we know the gospels (if they weren’t concerned with history) would have a vested interest in painting John the Baptist as a political martyr. So why should we trust the gospels in this situation against everything we know about how people typically die? As you imply above, we should distrust biased accounts for secondary evidence when the claims are spectacular.

How about Caesar? Our earliest sources for Caesar’s death are Plutarch and Suetonius, both writing 150 years later in documents that are extremely politically biased. Both would have clear reasons for making up Caesar’s assassination.

In both situations, our best sources were written long after the actual events by people with strong political/theological biases. So why trust either story against our common experience of people dying naturally without being murdered?

With a healthy dose of skepticism, you can write off just about any abnormal historical event, but a healthy dose of skepticism requires all sorts of assumptions as well (just as many as you gave in regards to supernaturalism).