I’m writing this post in response to something a fellow blogger has written about why the Bible is trustworthy (though I’ve lost the link to the post). He and I come down on different sides of this issue, and I thought the best way to tackle this would be to respond to each of his points in order.
1) We should treat the Bible like any other historical document.
Yes, we should, but this means different things to different people. When we read ancient historical texts, what do we think about the supernatural events that they relate? Many ancient historians talk about miracles, or attribute certain events to various gods — do we accept those claims? Of course not. We accept the events, like wars, famines, political upheavals, but we chalk up the supernatural claims to superstition.
However, when Christians ask that we treat the Bible the way we would treat other historical sources, they don’t mean it in the way I just described. They’ll say, “if you believe the histories about George Washington, why do you reject the stories of the Bible?” But this isn’t a true comparison. If we had an historical account that claimed George Washington could fly, we would dismiss it, even if everything else it recounted was factual.
There’s another difference as well. What we believe about George Washington has no real impact on the rest of our lives. However, most versions of Christianity say that if we don’t believe Jesus was the actual son of God, we’ll face eternal consequences. What could be more important than making sure we hold the correct view? So if God loves us and wants us all to believe, doesn’t it make sense that the “extraordinary claims” of the Bible would have “extraordinary evidence”? That’s the standard we would expect from any other historical document, and it’s the same thing we should expect from the Bible.
2) Witnesses for the Bible.
It’s often mentioned that the Bible was written over a period of 1500 years by 40+ authors. That timeline is not accepted by all scholars, but even if it were, this has nothing to do with whether or not it is accurate or inspired. In order for later authors to write things that fit with what came before, they only need to be familiar with those earlier writings. In other words, the Bible is much like fan fiction.
Paul says that Jesus appeared to 500 people after his resurrection, so some Christians point to that as evidence too. But who were these 500 people? Where did they see the risen Jesus? Was it all at once, was it 500 separate appearances, or was it something in between? This claim is so vague, there’s no way it could be contested. Even if a critic could have rounded up a multitude of people who all claimed to not have seen Jesus post-resurrection, Paul would only have to say, “It was 500 other people.” No, Paul’s 500 witnesses are completely useless. Instead of actually being 500 separate witnesses for the risen Jesus, this is just one claim — Paul’s. Plus, let’s not forget that Paul is telling this to fellow Christians, not skeptics. No one in his audience would be inclined to call foul anyway.
Sometimes it’s pointed out that the earliest critics of Christianity did not question Jesus’ existence or his miracles, but just claimed that he was one of many people who claimed similar things. But I don’t think we should really expect ancient critics to focus on his existence or miracles anyway. How do you prove that someone didn’t exist? And aside from Christian writings, we have no sources about Jesus anyway, so how could they disprove either his existence or his miracles? And these critics lived in a time in which the existence of miracles were almost universally accepted. So arguing from this point doesn’t seem very convincing to me.
When it comes to historical sources for Jesus, it’s true that Josephus probably mentions him. And there are a couple of other references by other historians within the first 100 years or so after his death. But these references tell us nothing about Jesus other than that he might have existed, and that there were people at that time who were Christians. These points are virtually uncontested — and they say nothing about who Jesus really was. It’s hard to count them as any kind of evidence in Jesus’ favor.
3) Archaeology
Christians will often cite the Bible’s agreement with archaeology as one reason to believe it may be divinely inspired. For instance, most historians used to believe that the Hittites never existed, since the only record of them came from the Old Testament. However, in the 19th and 20th centuries, evidence finally came to light that overturned that opinion, exonerating the Bible.
But does this agreement with archaeology really indicate that the Bible was divinely inspired? Many books have been written that seem to record accurate history — does this mean we should assume those authors were inspired by God? Of course not. While agreement with archaeology is a good sign, it’s not necessarily a reason to leap to the conclusion that God had anything to do with writing the Bible.
The story doesn’t end here, though. As it turns out, archaeology does not always agree with the Bible. The Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, for instance, has no archaeological evidence. While that is an example of missing evidence, we also have examples of contradictory evidence: archaeology indicates that Joshua’s conquest of Canaan did not actually happen, the kingdoms of David and Solomon appear to be far smaller than the Bible depicts, and the Book of Daniel contains several anachronisms, including its incorrect labeling of Belshazzar as Nebuchadnezzar’s son.
Examples like these show that the Bible’s agreement with archaeology is not nearly as strong as some would claim, making it very shaky grounds for staking the claim of inspiration.
In the next post, we’ll talk about other reasons that people give: prophecy and internal consistency.
Finding Truth 
If you could go back to when it was written, and you asked around, but couldn’t find the 500 people, would that mean they didn’t exist? Especially when they could have lived anywhere? And the fact that this claim was made at least 20 years after the event?
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Mike, why can’t we move onto something more substantive? Most of us here obviously don’t find the “500 witnesses” claim to actually count as 500 witnesses, since there’s no information given about who these people were. Maybe you don’t see it that way, but we’ve spent a whole lot of comments now going round and round over this. Why not move onto something else?
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“The way you phrased you posts does nothing to hide your bias.”
I’m not hiding anything.
I’m a very recent (and tentative) unbeliever, based on research. I am a lay person, not a scholar.
My theory is that the truth should be able to withstand scrutiny. I want to make sure I’m not missing anything, so I’m legitimately interested in seeing you make the best arguments you can, and in having them clearly understood.
In particular, I’m interested in putting my newfound views to the test. Since *you* are the one here making opposing arguments, I personally am most interested in understanding those arguments.
“According to you your friends are merely responding in kind (that was the “rest of your post) when in fact this is not my first time posting here. In the last thread during what I thought was a civil conversation one of them launched into name calling of asshole.”
OK, so say they started it. All the more opportunity for you to be the bigger person.
Now can we all focus on the issues at hand?
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“If I went back to when it was written I’d go to the place that the events of the resurrection were said to take place and ask around. Thats just common sense. Whats so difficult? ”
There were approx 600 witnesses on the Deally Plaza in Dallas to the Kennedy Assassination . If this is all you knew , how confident would you be of finding the majority of these witnesses the very next day ? How about 20 years later ?
What’s so difficult ?
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“If you could go back to when it was written, and you asked around, but couldn’t find the 500 people, would that mean they didn’t exist? Especially when they could have lived anywhere?”
Ridiculous reasoning Nate, They would not have lived anywhere but Israel unless you are making up your own narrative. If I went back to Jerusalem and found no one that could corroborate the story then that would be the end of the story since the church was supposed to be there. Thats precisely why apologists do bring it up because the non existence of a church at Jerusalem or of anyone that would corroborate the story WOULD logically tend to have hampered the growth of Christianity, It didn’t Which whether you like it or not is a point
“And the fact that this claim was made at least 20 years after the event?”
and? Did you even read the text? Thats specifically why he states the greater part were still alive
“but we’ve spent a whole lot of comments now going round and round over this. Why not move onto something else?”
Why tell me to move on right after asking me a question? Have I been conducting a conversations with myself or with people addressing me?
However I am more than willing. to your first point in the post,You seem to have a circularity to your argument regarding if a passage states anything supernatural it being therefore unreliable. Not an uncommon argument mind you but i would be interested to know your definition of supernatural and how you had come to the conclusion that whatever you claim as supernatural is in fact not believable
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I think whoever said it may be right – he’s SOM 2.0.
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“There were approx 600 witnesses on the Deally Plaza in Dallas to the Kennedy Assassination . If this is all you knew , how confident would you be of finding the majority of these witnesses the very next day ? How about 20 years later ?
What’s so difficult ?”
Your analogies are hopeless.
If you are not going to address the culture, time and geography of the text in questions your analogies will forever be as awful as they are now.
Dallas is very large
People move around much more than they did in the first century AD
Further if the 600 witnesses would regularly meet to in dallas every week to break bread they would be easy to find,
Again whats so difficult?
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Always an excuse. Never an answer …..
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“Always an excuse. Never an answer …..”
If you think that is an excuse you are just absolutely ridiculous and we need not continue any more dialogue on the issue.. Your analogy seeks to compare a modern city with a city that by todays standards would be considered small and rural AND it ignores that believers congregate together regularly.
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“Your analogy is poor and therefore the point is meaningless, the 12 is an identifier and the 500 are located in Israel and was surely part of the church at jerusalem. ”
“Dallas is very large”
“Further if the 600 witnesses would regularly meet to in dallas every week to break bread they would be easy to find,”
Now YOU are dreaming !!!
Jerusalem at the time of Jesus ‘ supposed resurrection was very conservatively 80,000 including pilgrims there for passover. Israel had between 500,000 and 600,000 .
For all you know, the majority of the 500 could have been visitors not regular attendees of the Jerusalem church which was actually many home churches not one big church.
You seem to be a minority of people who feel my analogies are “poor” and “meaningless”
Mike , your argument is weak at best. Sorry you don’t see it. Go feed your cat. He’s hungry.
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“Jerusalem at the time of Jesus ‘ supposed resurrection was very conservatively 80,000 including pilgrims there for passover”
sigh such VAST silliness. what does pilgrims have to do with going back and finding witnesses at another time? Look I am done with your foolishness. You want it spelled out its simple and easy. I would go back to Jerusalem NOT AT the passover (sheesh) I would ask about events at least some people would know of, ask residents about Jesus and the stories I had heard then I would ask for anybody who knows a believer ask them directly then ask them about the church’s leaders and then ask them for eyewitnesses. IF no one knew anything about what i was talking about I would write it down as a fraud
The end. So incredibly simple
“For all you know, the majority of the 500 could have been visitors not regular attendees of the Jerusalem church which was actually many home churches not one big church”
Yes of course kcchief Jesus made sure to show himself only to visitors. Plus no they could not be visitors Paul was referring to because he states to know they are still alive! what s the keyboard equivalent here that shows rolling eyes?
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“The end. So incredibly simple”
If it is so simple why didn’t his own race believe it and still doesn’t to this day ? It’s simple to those who have been indoctrinated .
Roll your eyes all you want. The late Geza Vermes, one of the foremost scholars on the subject of Jesus said this in his book, “The Resurrection”.
“To put it bluntly, not even a credulous nonbeliever is likely to be persuaded by the various reports of the resurrection: they convince only the already converted. The same must be said about the visions. None of them satisfies the minimum requirements of a legal or scientific inquiry. The only alternative historians are left with in their effort to make some sense of the resurrection is to fall back on speculation, hopefully on enlightened speculation. “
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You’re right, KC, he has nothing to offer – I’m reminded of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in which his character speaks of, “…a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.“
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“To put it bluntly, not even a credulous nonbeliever is likely to be persuaded by the various reports of the resurrection: they convince only the already converted.”
More VAST silliness…..upon the claims of your author I am supposed to ignore that hundreds of Millions have believed the Gospels through the centuries since the Bible was written? Some of them being the very founders of science? Please.
“If it is so simple why didn’t his own race believe it and still doesn’t to this day ? ”
Mentioning the Jews will only hurt your case more than you have already. After all they don’t deny his existence and in some of their writings they corroborate Jesus did miracles. Worse it makes Daniel 9 impossible for them to have included after the fact. Lastly there are many and growing messianic Jews today as there were in the first century.
and yes My eyes are still rolling. I’ll have to take a break from this blog to stabilize them.
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When a Mormon church elder told British writer and comedian Stephen Fry that he would be reunited with his entire family after death if he become a Mormon, he replied “What happens if you’re good?” He was asked to leave Salt Lake City immediately.
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The eye rolling and rhetoric here has been poured on very strong which is typical of apologists. Actually it is very apropos given the subject – what is it that convinces people to convert to a cause or religion? We have modern day examples that show that even in the face of strong disconfirming facts religions can still grow to very large followings. Rhetoric, charisma, and guilt along with many other psychological factors play huge roles in this
And Mike is right about several things – one of them being that we should also put this in the context of 1st century AD. With Corinth so far from Jerusalem and even across waters the time it would have taken for a Corinthian in that time period to travel there would have been way too long to expect that anyone was going back to check on the 500 claim. And the amount of money needed for that would also have made it impossible for many to do that – who was really going back and checking? Could someone have done that? – sure, but that is pure speculation in the face of what is more likely, which is why this claim is a weak argument for the resurrection.
Another interesting topic related to the resurrection proof texts is that Paul’s experience is listed along with all the other people who had experiences. I’ll leave people to think about what the implications of that might be.
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Good points Howie ! I am reminded of the Missionaries who would come to our church and tell outrageous stories of their experiences on the missions field. Never a way to confirm them.
Paul thought it was quite OK to tell a “whopper” if it promoted the “Glory of God”.
” More VAST silliness…..upon the claims of your author I am supposed to ignore that hundreds of Millions have believed the Gospels through the centuries since the Bible was written?”
Mike appears to have never read any works of Geza Vermes. If he was ever going to do a
serious study of the resurrection, Vermes writings would have to be on his list.
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Mea culpa:
I said:
“How quickly did they cast those lots to replace him with Stephen?”
I said Stephen when, in fact, it was Matthias. I misspoke. I should have referenced the passage before speaking. It’s been a little while since I read it. Stephen was, in fact, one of the first deacons.
Moving on to other points of the original article:
Extraordinary claims do require extraordinary evidence. The claims of miracles were common, not only by Jesus, but by other “deities” as well. We reject the notion of any other deities at this point. Belief in healing and other supernatural events was fairly widespread, not only within Judaism, but Greek and Roman practices as well. There are miracles recorded by the Romans and Greeks attributed to their various gods the we discount as miracles today because we know those gods don’t exist and never have.
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“And Mike is right about several things – one of them being that we should also put this in the context of 1st century AD. With Corinth so far from Jerusalem and even across waters the time it would have taken for a Corinthian in that time period to travel there ”
Yes Howie and since Rome was far further away from Jerusalem than Corinth it would be impossible for romans to be travel to Jerusalem….oh wait.
Corinth was a major hub.with a harbor. Boats Howie they go across water. Jews would return for Jewish observations and feast all the time. kcchief just finished mentioning pilgrims during the passover. If you are going to understand the context of another time you should do some research for goodness sake or how about looking at a map.
If you find apologists rolling their eyes at you a lot its probably for good reason more to do with you than them. The eye rolling is entirely apropos not for the subject but because over and over you guys demonstrate you do and did no research but run all over the internet form blog to blog. telling people how you were serious Christians not wanting to give up your faith but were forced by the facts. Your knowledge on very basic stuff prove otherwise. YOU need to be opposed forcefully because its quite clear you wish to get others to wash out of their faith based on your lack of any real research or study. I’ve said now countless times this 500 issue is not THE issue to convince people but that its a point. Nate says to move on but you guys hang on to it like a bone because I have demonstrated a ton of things you did not know some of them which any serious Christian having done any research would know.
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Mike, where does it say that the 500 were in Jerusalem? The text I have seems to just say that he appeared to 500 others. Paul is giving all of these “accounts” to bolster the faith in the resurrection. as if to say, “it’s not just us who saw it, 500 others did too, so you can know we’re telling the truth.”
the thing with this kind of argumentation when given to people who already believe in the end you’re validating, is that no one will try to verify the claim. But even so, god supposedly inspired Paul to write 1 Corinthians to all of mankind, not just those at corinth.
Paul can claim anything he likes, but just saying “500” saw jesus walking around after he died, just doesnt serve as evidence – at least no more in me claiming that 10 thousand saw jesus’ corpse rot on the cross like everyone else who was crucified by the romans.
So I dont even know what there is to talk about anymore.
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Ruth has already done a great job of addressing this point, but I’ll add one or two additional things. I’m not saying that the supernatural can’t happen, but by definition (something that violates the laws of nature) it would be very unlikely. Most people assume that a particular event has natural explanations unless they’re given extremely good evidence to the contrary.
This precedent is upheld in many Bible stories too. Before Moses believed that God really wanted him to go to Pharaoh, God performed several miracles for him. The 10 plagues were supernatural events that were supposed to convince Pharaoh that the Hebrew God was a force to be reckoned with. Many other characters in the Bible were given such signs: Gideon, Hezekiah, the disciples, Cornelius, etc. John 20:30-31 talks about the evidentiary value of miracles as well.
So I’m not saying they can’t occur — just that we should expect very, very good evidence if they did. We don’t accept them from any other ancient sources, or even modern ones (Sathya Sai Baba), just based on reporting.
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“Mike appears to have never read any works of Geza Vermes. If he was ever going to do a
serious study of the resurrection, Vermes writings would have to be on his list.”
Utter nonsense which is just a rhetorical device. the resurrection accounts have been with us for nearly two thousand years, written on by thousands, researched by thousands. the idea that one man has to be read to study it and the texts that give an account of it is just handwaving and vacuous nonsense. You appeal to him without indicating a single piece of evidence he puts on the table. Thats fallacious. Since you guys love wikipedia so often you can read about your fallacious reasoning here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
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You’re misreading things, Mike. I didn’t suggest moving on because you’re some master debater who has blown all our points out of the water. I suggested it because this has become so tedious.
If the 500 witnesses claim isn’t a huge point, as you just said, then there’s no point in going round and round over it. That doesn’t mean you’ve “won” — it just means that we’re not getting anywhere. What William said (as well as several others) is right: the 500 are not specified. I believe Ruth provided several quotes from scholars who think they were most likely centered around Galilee, not Jerusalem.
However, most skeptics don’t believe they ever existed in the first place. Paul was an outsider to the original disciples. It’s likely that this claim of 500 witnesses was something he heard about, not something he had independently verified. Now sure, if you’re assuming that Paul was completely legit and that he was actually inspired by God, then the 500 claim must be true. But no skeptic starts with that assumption, which is why we’re not going to get anywhere in this discussion.
Are you ready to “agree to disagree” for the sake of moving forward?
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and even with many of the jews travelling for feasts to and from jerusalem, what are they going to do? walk up to every person they see and ask, “were you one of the 500 who saw jesus after he rose from the dead?” – and that’s assuming they were even in Jerusalem too. why couldnt they have been in Galilee or somewhere else?
if they did ask everyone they saw, but couldnt find one of the 500, they could just chalk it up to bad luck – “the 500 must be among the number I wasnt able to question.”
The fact that paul said 500 people saw something isnt a big deal. It just isnt evidence for anything.
Mike, if you’re convinced by it, then cool. But I doubt this mention of 500 brought you from disbelief to discipleship. Instead, i’m assuming you already believed, and then believe paul’s 500 claim mostly because it’s in the book you already believe to be perfectly true – as well as dictated by god.
I, on the other hand, am not convinced by it, and cannot see where the mere mention of a large number adds any validity to the story.
We may as well move on.
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“Ruth has already done a great job of addressing this point, but I’ll add one or two additional things. I’m not saying that the supernatural can’t happen, but by definition (something that violates the laws of nature) it would be very unlikely. Most people assume that a particular event has natural explanations unless they’re given extremely good evidence to the contrary.”
Thanks for the reply Nate. I had feared my questions would be lost because I too wish to come off the 500 issue. However what I was asking was how do you define the supernatural. There is in atheist thinking a priori regarding the supernatural as if Science or nature has indicated it is extraordinary. The problem with priori is that they seldom have evidence to back them up.
Now you did say “violates the laws of nature” but thats fuzzy. What is a law of nature? In Quantum physics a great many things are highly improbably but not impossible and thats coming from atheist Quantum physcisist not theists. I’ve come to the logical conclusion that the supernatural is inescapable. that being the case its illogical to have apriori against it and its illogical to claim that it must have an extraordinary threshhold to prove. A solid threshhold but not necessarily extraordinary as Atheist beg for (and have no concrete criteria for which allows them to move the goalpost for repeatedly).
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