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[Chef Random]

Ehrman is an imminent New Testament scholar. He knows his analysis. I suspect that there are naturally many who disagree with the the analysis, however the analysis is not lacking.

> The veracity of the NT text is evidenced by the sheer number of eyewitnesses (for instance, 500...

And yet not one affidavit. This is nothing by hearsay.

For whatever reason the authors wrote the fact is their sources are not in evidence outside of basically copying Mark and Q into Matthew and Luke. I don't think there is any reason to trust these authors above any other authors other than they appear in a certain collection of books.

As to eyewitness in court:

Since the 1990s, when DNA testing was first introduced, Innocence Project researchers have reported that 73 percent of the 239 convictions overturned through DNA testing were based on eyewitness testimony. One third of these overturned cases rested on the testimony of two or more mistaken eyewitnesses.

As for oral cultures there is no evidence that their stories don't change overtime. Given human nature one would expect that stories would change overtime. In fact repeating stories over time can and does induce false memories. Just asserting that they don't or didn't isn't sufficient. It should be researched. As it happens it has been researched. Ehrman provides some of the research into this method of memory which has found the stories do change in oral cultures.

[jimwalton]

Ehrman is a formidable scholar, but his bias has knocked him to the side. His weakness (or one of them) is to pick on the parts of Scripture that are known to be not part of Scripture (Jn. 8.1-11; Mk. 16.9-20) and use them as straw men to disabuse people of their Christian faith. His work is routinely disemboweled by other scholars, despite his being held in such high regard by the atheist community looking so desperately for a hero. Many of his hypotheses lack substantiation by any actual data, and some of his critiques are just flat out wrong. Scholars like he and Richard Carrier keep peddling their wares to the gullible crowds despite academic refutation.

> And yet not one affidavit

What is it you are requiring here—a legal stamp of approval? Then you need to throw out most of what we know of ancient history. Are you claiming that multiple attestation is the only criterion for truth? Again, you may have to throw out much of ancient history. Do we look for extra-Egyptian corroboration before we accept what the Egyptian historians have written? We're pretty thrilled to get it, but often there just is no such extant document. So also Assyrian, Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Greek, not to mention Chinese, Indian, etc. Often we're pleased to have one source. What are you demanding for the Bible that's not a double standard?

"We complain about the culture, but the culture gets its heartbeat from the people in it." I didn't reveal my source—does that make my statement untrue?

> I don't think there is any reason to trust these authors above any other authors other than they appear in a certain collection of books.

We come to trust authors on a broad spectrum of criteria. The Bible doesn't get a special pass, but it also needs to be evaluated on the same criteria as other historical and literary documents. You seem to be content to throw it out on inadequate bases (because they didn't reveal their sources; because some copying occurred—neither of which are legitimate bases for claiming them to be fictional).

> As for oral cultures there is no evidence that their stories don't change overtime.

That's why a chain of custody is so important. Any investigator wants to know "Where did you get that information?", and then he talks to that source, and to the source behind him, and to the one behind him. The gospel message has such a chain of custody. There is a solid chain of custody from the Apostles through Ignatius, Papias, Palycarp. Irenaeus, etc. There is a chain from Peter to Mark to the first five African bishops, all the way to Eusebius of Caesarea. We can trace the story back to the eyewitnesses to discover what consistencies and what changes, and yet what the examination of the Gospels brings to light is consistencies.

[The Prophet]

> The creed of 1 Cor. 15.3-7 was an extremely early creed that had been passed on verbally for decades before Paul committed it to writing.

We don't know that the Corinthians creed is actually pre-Pauline, but there are solid arguments that it is, so I'll grant that it's possible he didn't come up with it. However, I'll note that Paul himself would insist that he didn't learn it from anyone; he claims quite strenuously in Galatians that "the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ."

We certainly don't know that it was "passed on verbally for decades". The earliest evidence we have of it is 1 Corinthians; even if an argument can be made that it predates Paul, there's no way to know by how much it predates Paul. Most importantly, though, bringing it up is a non sequitur. You can't cite orally transmitted doctrinal creeds to support the existence of orally transmitted biographical narratives. 1 Cor 15 begins with Jesus' death and resurrection (known, by the way, "according to the scriptures", not according to any historical source), and does not relate anything he said or did.

> Instead, Mark was gathering his evidences and resources to portray Jesus as Mark and thousands of others were truly convinced he was: the Messiah, the incarnation of God himself.

I don't dispute that he was doing just that (although I'm not sure on the "thousands" part). But as I've stated, that is a very good motive for making up the stories. Indeed, it's a better motive for fabrication than it is for accurate recording, as reality is typically far more mundane.

> This is odd for you to say since previously you said "he's a terrible historian."

Not at all. One can be excellent at faithfully and accurately copying what others have written, and incredibly skilled at finding the relevant documents, and still be a terrible historian.

> Paul's story is the theological sequel, not a biographical redux.

This still misses my point, particularly since Paul shows no knowledge of the biographical details in the first place. Yes, Paul was writing doctrinal letters, not telling the story of Jesus' life. I get that argument. But why would those biographical details never come up?

Pliny the Younger wrote a lot about Pliny the Elder. Tacitus was interested in the elder Pliny, so he wrote a letter to his friend the younger Pliny asking for details about his uncle's heroic death, the circumstances of which were "so memorable that it is likely to make his name live forever". So Pliny the Younger wrote back, giving an extensive eyewitness account of about 1500 words. (About half the length of Galatians, one of Paul's shortest letters.) We learn that Pliny the Elder died of respiratory failure after breathing the ash from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. He gives as much detail as he himself witnessed, and what those present told him. Tacitus was intrigued, so he asked more questions and wrote again, asking what the younger Pliny did in the following days. Pliny the Younger obliged with another detailed letter.

That's what letter writing about a famous person looks like. Humans are curious about their heroes, and want to know things about them. We know that people were eventually curious to know things about Jesus, because we have over 40 gospels, hundreds of forged letters, and half a dozen Acts, the vast majority of which are universally considered inauthentic. Indeed, the letters of Paul are overflowing with interest in Jesus' death, and what it accomplished, and what words Jesus revealed to his apostles; it beggars belief that Paul and his congregations were interested in that and nothing else.

You'd expect something to come up just by happenstance. Paul reveals, as minor asides, things like baptizing the dead (1 Cor 15.29), fear of what angels might do if Christian women don't cover their hair in church (1 Cor 11.9-10), or the fact that Christians will one day judge the angels (1 Cor 6.3). We can learn countless incidental details about early Christian belief from Paul, not because he was focused on telling us about such things, but because you can't avoid passing references like that in correspondence. Those kinds of details pop up for all kinds of subjects, but not for the life of Jesus, which is improbable unless Paul knew no such details.

[jimwalton]

> the Corinthians creed

First, the Corinthians creed has terminology (for our sins, according to the Scriptures, he has been raised, on the third day, he was seen, and "by the twelve") in it not used anywhere else in Paul's writings, indicating that Paul is quoting another source.

Secondly, he specifically admits that he received it from a human source (1 Cor. 15.3). The verb he uses (παρέλαβον) is a technical term used by Jewish rabbis for the transmission of sacred tradition. Paul is admitting that the creed is not his own but it was passed to him by others.

When he says in Galatians that he received the gospel directly from Jesus, he is not saying that everything he knows about Christianity he got directly from God, but the message of salvation by grace through faith. That doesn't pertain to what he is writing here in 1 Cor. 15.3-6.

The question remains: Did Paul have any knowledge of the biographical details of Jesus' life? While there is a chance he had met Jesus (Paul was probably about Jesus' age, had been instructed by Gamaliel, possibly in Jerusalem, and may have been acquainted with the members of the Sanhedrin), there is no record of hint of such. But did he know anything about the details of Jesus' life? There's every likelihood that he did; Paul was a dedicated student, and not a slacker scholar. He would have pursued learning about Jesus.

1. Paul was acquainted with what Christians believed, and was persecuting them for it. It's without doubt that he heard the stories of things Jesus said and did, without a doubt. (Acts 8.3. He was going from house to house. Are you claiming he knew nothing of Jesus, his teachings, his miracles, or any basis for what the people whom he was persecuting believed?)

2. S/Paul was present at the stoning of Stephen. He was even possibly on the Sanhedrin that was hearing so many stories about Jesus (Acts 6.14). Are we to assume that studious Saul knew nothing of the life of Jesus Stephen was preaching, but giving to his approval to Stephen's execution? That hardly seems reasonable.

3. Immediately upon his conversion (Acts 9.20), S/Paul began to preach that Jesus is the Son of God. If S/Paul only knew Jesus from the vision, he would have used a different term, maybe that Jesus was God, or an angel. This was a Gospel term for Jesus, not a Pauline one. S/Paul had spent several days with the disciples in Damascus after his conversion, before he started to preach. Are you claiming they didn't tell him anything about who Jesus was, what he said, or anything he did? Highly unlikely that Paul "knew no such details."

4. In Acts 9.22 S/Paul "baffled the Jews by proving that Jesus was the Messiah." He would have had to have known many details about Jesus' life to do this convincingly.

There is every reason to believe Paul knew many details of Jesus' life, but they weren't part of his message. His message was salvation by grace through faith, not rehearsing Jesus stories.