Board index ‹ Miracles

[jimwalton]

> Yes, which are the only parts about Jesus and miracles.

The mention of Jesus and his miracles are likely the authentic parts. It's the "if indeed one ought to call him a man," "He was the Messiah," and "restored to life" that were added later.

> Especially the parts you're trying to cite here.

Now you're just getting snarky. Do you want to have a reasonable discussion or don't you?

> Right, which means that "You don't know that.". You can speculate it, but you don't know it. The evidence we have at hand is insufficient given the extraordinary nature of the claim.

With evidence like this (a cold case), we don't deal in certainties but in plausibilities and probabilities. The evidence at hand is sufficient but not proof.

>>>>> The Gospel accounts have not be proved wrong at any point
>>> You're shifting the burden of proof here. The gospel accounts have never been proved correct. They have never been demonstrated to be true. They haven't met their burden of proof.
>> "The Gospel accounts have not be proved true at any point, so we have no reason to give them credibility."
> Fixed it for you.

You didn't fix it, you took it out of the logic it belongs in. The Gospel accounts have been proved to be true at hundreds of points. Hundreds. So you did fix anything, you just denied the evidence at hand.

> you really went all in on this shifted burden of proof fallacy. Do you think that a court room would find someone guilty because there's no competing hypothesis?

What I have consistently claimed, and is proven, is that the Gospel accounts have been proved reliable at hundreds of points. When we have a document that has been found to be reliable, if you contend it is not reliable, then the burden of proof is on you to (1) refute the reliability of the Gospel documents, (2) give evidence to that extent, and (3) present a credible alternative.

In a court of law, the burden of proof is on the affirmative, the prosecution. In a debate, the burden of proof is on anyone making a claim. So support your claim that "The Gospel accounts have not be proved true at any point, so we have no reason to give them credibility."

> The evidence you have is a story in a book, a story that was verbally passed along verbally for decades before it was written down.

You seem to misunderstand the milieu of oral communication. When the memory is trained from birth by culture to retain and communicate truth, the reliability factor is high—especially when dealing with a subject of royal or divine importance.

The only biographies we have of Alexander the Great were all oral traditions assembled not decades but CENTURIES later. Do we toss those?

> When it was written down, it was written in a now dead language.

This is incorrect. It was written in koine Greek, which has evolved into modern Greek. It's like saying Shakespearean English is a dead language. No it's not; it evolved as do all languages.

> We don't even have the originals, we have copies of copies of translated copies of copies.

We have so many copies of copies, that we can reassemble the original with better than 99% accuracy. We have no reason to doubt the text we have.

> We don't even know who wrote them.

The evidence for the traditional authors is far stronger than the evidence against. I would say that we can quite plausibly and even probably know who wrote them: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But obviously this is a much bigger discussion. We can have it if you wish. The weight of logic and evidence is largely in favor of the traditional authors.

> Nice, but that evidence doesn't lead anywhere, because it hasn't met its burden of proof.

It has. We have 4 accounts of provable reliability, of known provenance, of external corroboration, and of historical accuracy. If we are weighing the evidence, we can use abductive reasoning to infer the most reasonable conclusion and come to a conclusion of not only plausibility but also probability about the historicity, reliability, and authenticity of the texts and their accounts.

>> It shows from an extrabiblical source that Jesus had a reputation for special powers, and that's the point.
> Does it?

Yes, it does. The stated point is that Jesus had this reputation. The evidence shows us an extrabibilical source to that effect. I get the idea that you're deliberately obfuscating because you're reluctant to admit there is meritorious evidence.

> There is no extra biblical writings about Jesus that are contemporary.

You mean aside from the one I just mentioned? It's almost like CNN refusing to admit that Tara Reade has a legitimate accusation.

I hope you also realize how many 1st-c. works have been lost. We have only half of Tacitus's work. All but a fragment of Thallus's Mediterranean History is gone. The writings of Asclepiades of Mendes are gone. Nicholas of Damascus (the secretary of Herod the Great) wrote his Universal History in 144 books: none have survived. Papias's work is lost. Josephus's originals are gone (except for what we have through Eusebius). Quadratus wrote to Emperor Hadrian—all lost.

But it turns out we still have 4 very early works attesting to Jesus's life and works. Why does it have to be extrabibilical to be believable? That's like saying we can't trust anything about COVID coming out of the hospitals; we'll only trust extrahospitular testimony. It makes no sense.

> Even the bible writings, the earliest of which happened decades after his death.

Decades is nothing. Let's see, 30 or 40 years ago is Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, Ronald Reagan, Madonna, Cindi Lauper, Nirvana, and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. It's still SIMPLE to get truth about these things. Simple.

[jimwalton]

> Now you're just getting snarky. Do you want to have a reasonable discussion or don't you?

Sure, but you keep trying to smuggle in Josephus as a viable bit of evidence about Jesus. It simply isn't. There's no debate. Not even Christian historians give it any credibility.

> With evidence like this (a cold case), we don't deal in certainties but in plausibilities and probabilities.

So then you acknowledge its not sufficient evidence to justify belief in supernatural claims.

> The evidence at hand is sufficient but not proof.

I stand corrected. You acknowledge its not good evidence, then argue that its sufficient to justify claims of the supernatural, something that has never been demonstrated to exist. This is why this evidence doesn't stand up to good standards, such as those used by science. So while you may think unfalsifisble stories are good evidence for the supernatural, science doesn't, our legal system doesn't, and you probably don't if it's a claim that contradicts your religious beliefs.

> You didn't fix it, you took it out of the logic it belongs in.

No, I changed to words to make it so it puts the burden of proof where it belongs.

> The Gospel accounts have been proved to be true at hundreds of points.

Just because a story mentions ordinary events or locations that may be true, doesn't make the extraordinary parts somehow true, nor does it change the likelihood of them being true, nor does it justify belief that they're true.

None off the supernatural claims have ever been demonstrated to be true. The entire concept of supernatural has never been demonstrated to be true.

> you just denied the evidence at hand.

I denied the fact that a story in a book, is good evidence for extraordinary claims.

> What I have consistently claimed, and is proven, is that the Gospel accounts have been proved reliable at hundreds of points.

I mean, you might believe this, but you haven't demonstrated it. And if you're talking about ordinary claims, then so what. Nobody is disputing most ordinary claims.

Again, nothing extraordinary in the bible has ever been demonstrated to be true. You can change my mind if you link to a properly peer reviewed paper. Something falsifiable that can be fact checked.

> In a court of law, the burden of proof is on the affirmative, the prosecution.

Yes, and you are just trying to assert that the supernatural claims in the bible are true. You haven't shown your evidenced, and from my own time on this subject, I've yet to see any.

> You seem to misunderstand the milieu of oral communication. When the memory is trained from birth by culture to retain and communicate truth, the reliability factor is high—especially when dealing with a subject of royal or divine importance.

Can you demonstrate this accuracy? No. Can you demonstrate that these stories were considered important enough at the time to train people to remember them word for word? Can you demonstrate that three written stories are the same as those remembered by the specially trained remembered? Can you demonstrate that these stories were remembered by trained remembered?

No, no, and no. These stories were told by regular people to other regular people. At some point, some people got together to write them down.

> This is incorrect. It was written in koine Greek, which has evolved into modern Greek. It's like saying Shakespearean English is a dead language.

Not to belabor the point, but from wiki:

Biblical languages are any of the languages employed in the original writings of the Bible. Partially owing to the significance of the Bible in society, Biblical languages are studied more widely than many other dead languages.

The dead languages part there means that people don't speak those language... Here's the rest of that paragraph from wiki:

Furthermore, some debates exist as to which language is the original language of a particular passage, and about whether a term has been properly translated from an ancient language into modern editions of the Bible. Scholars generally recognize three languages as original biblical languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek.

It really highlights all that we don't know about the originals.

> We have so many copies of copies, that we can reassemble the original with better than 99% accuracy. We have no reason to doubt the text we have.

Except we can't. This sounds like a post hoc rationalisation, or a defense of a belief, once again you've made a claim without providing anything to back it up.

> The evidence for the traditional authors is far stronger than the evidence against. I would say that we can quite plausibly and even probably know who wrote them: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Yeah, you can't even give me any last names. Those are pretty anonymous, aren't they?

> It has. We have 4 accounts of provable reliability, of known provenance, of external corroboration, and of historical accuracy.

Give me your one best single most convincing bit of evidence that demonstrates anything supernatural, or that Yahweh or Jesus is a god who can do supernatural stuff. Let's focus on your one best one.

> The stated point is that Jesus had this reputation.

I get that that is the stated point, but you can point to a hat made today that says Jesus is Lord. That doesn't count as extra biblical evidence. That just shows that the religion had a believer who could make a bowl and could write.

>>There is no extra biblical writings about Jesus that are contemporary.

> You mean aside from the one I just mentioned?

Was it contemporary? No. There's nothing about that that demonstrate someone outside of the bible stories also saw Jesus do any magic.
all lost

Then by definition, they aren't evidence.

> Why does it have to be extrabibilical to be believable?

If there were other accounts of Jesus and what he did, that weren't related to building a narrative about him, they would serve as corroboration of the stories. They would show that there were others, at the time, who may have witnessed and observed the accounts. This all adds to the narrative and makes anything more believable.

I didnt say in the absence of corroboration that it isn't believable, I'm saying that believing the extraordinary claims on the available evident, isn't justified. Corroboration would help, but for things such as a resurrection, it still wouldn't be enough. It would show that many people might have actually believed it, but doesn't mean that what they believe has the actual explanation that they accept.

> That's like saying we can't trust anything about COVID coming out of the hospitals

It's nothing like that at all. If the only evidence we have for covid are stories coming out of a single hospital, no other evidence, nobody missing, getting sick, or dying, but we had some people from a hospital telling stories, then yeah, I wouldn't believe it.

>> Even the bible writings, the earliest of which happened decades after his death.

> Decades is nothing. Let's see, 30 or 40 years ago is Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky

We have contemporary news footage of everything that happened there, and multiple sources corroborate it. There are countless books, magazine articles, video footage, radio programs, actual witnesses that can recount their stories, and we have books, magazine articles and video and audio of witnesses who have recounted their stories. All contemporary.

> Ronald Reagan, Madonna, Cindi Lauper, Nirvana, and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. It's still SIMPLE to get truth about these things. Simple.

Yes, as explained above. We have tons of contemporary accounts of all of those things, including millions of copies of records for the musicians you listed.

For Jesus and his stories, we have a single source, the bible.

[Tarnished]

> Now you're just getting snarky. Do you want to have a reasonable discussion or don't you?

Sure, but you keep trying to smuggle in Josephus as a viable bit of evidence about Jesus. It simply isn't. There's no debate. Not even Christian historians give it any credibility.

> With evidence like this (a cold case), we don't deal in certainties but in plausibilities and probabilities.

So then you acknowledge its not sufficient evidence to justify belief in supernatural claims.

> The evidence at hand is sufficient but not proof.

I stand corrected. You acknowledge its not good evidence, then argue that its sufficient to justify claims of the supernatural, something that has never been demonstrated to exist. This is why this evidence doesn't stand up to good standards, such as those used by science. So while you may think unfalsifisble stories are good evidence for the supernatural, science doesn't, our legal system doesn't, and you probably don't if it's a claim that contradicts your religious beliefs.

> You didn't fix it, you took it out of the logic it belongs in.

No, I changed to words to make it so it puts the burden of proof where it belongs.

> The Gospel accounts have been proved to be true at hundreds of points.

Just because a story mentions ordinary events or locations that may be true, doesn't make the extraordinary parts somehow true, nor does it change the likelihood of them being true, nor does it justify belief that they're true.

None off the supernatural claims have ever been demonstrated to be true. The entire concept of supernatural has never been demonstrated to be true.

> you just denied the evidence at hand.

I denied the fact that a story in a book, is good evidence for extraordinary claims.

> What I have consistently claimed, and is proven, is that the Gospel accounts have been proved reliable at hundreds of points.

I mean, you might believe this, but you haven't demonstrated it. And if you're talking about ordinary claims, then so what. Nobody is disputing most ordinary claims.

Again, nothing extraordinary in the bible has ever been demonstrated to be true. You can change my mind if you link to a properly peer reviewed paper. Something falsifiable that can be fact checked.

> In a court of law, the burden of proof is on the affirmative, the prosecution.

Yes, and you are just trying to assert that the supernatural claims in the bible are true. You haven't shown your evidenced, and from my own time on this subject, I've yet to see any.

> You seem to misunderstand the milieu of oral communication. When the memory is trained from birth by culture to retain and communicate truth, the reliability factor is high—especially when dealing with a subject of royal or divine importance.

Can you demonstrate this accuracy? No. Can you demonstrate that these stories were considered important enough at the time to train people to remember them word for word? Can you demonstrate that three written stories are the same as those remembered by the specially trained remembered? Can you demonstrate that these stories were remembered by trained remembered?

No, no, and no. These stories were told by regular people to other regular people. At some point, some people got together to write them down.

> This is incorrect. It was written in koine Greek, which has evolved into modern Greek. It's like saying Shakespearean English is a dead language.

Not to belabor the point, but from wiki:

Biblical languages are any of the languages employed in the original writings of the Bible. Partially owing to the significance of the Bible in society, Biblical languages are studied more widely than many other dead languages.


The dead languages part there means that people don't speak those language... Here's the rest of that paragraph from wiki:

Furthermore, some debates exist as to which language is the original language of a particular passage, and about whether a term has been properly translated from an ancient language into modern editions of the Bible. Scholars generally recognize three languages as original biblical languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek.


It really highlights all that we don't know about the originals.

> We have so many copies of copies, that we can reassemble the original with better than 99% accuracy. We have no reason to doubt the text we have.

Except we can't. This sounds like a post hoc rationalisation, or a defense of a belief, once again you've made a claim without providing anything to back it up.

> The evidence for the traditional authors is far stronger than the evidence against. I would say that we can quite plausibly and even probably know who wrote them: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Yeah, you can't even give me any last names. Those are pretty anonymous, aren't they?

> It has. We have 4 accounts of provable reliability, of known provenance, of external corroboration, and of historical accuracy.

Give me your one best single most convincing bit of evidence that demonstrates anything supernatural, or that Yahweh or Jesus is a god who can do supernatural stuff. Let's focus on your one best one.

> The stated point is that Jesus had this reputation.

I get that that is the stated point, but you can point to a hat made today that says Jesus is Lord. That doesn't count as extra biblical evidence. That just shows that the religion had a believer who could make a bowl and could write.

>>There is no extra biblical writings about Jesus that are contemporary.

> You mean aside from the one I just mentioned?

Was it contemporary? No. There's nothing about that that demonstrate someone outside of the bible stories also saw Jesus do any magic.
all lost

Then by definition, they aren't evidence.

> Why does it have to be extrabibilical to be believable?

If there were other accounts of Jesus and what he did, that weren't related to building a narrative about him, they would serve as corroboration of the stories. They would show that there were others, at the time, who may have witnessed and observed the accounts. This all adds to the narrative and makes anything more believable.

I didnt say in the absence of corroboration that it isn't believable, I'm saying that believing the extraordinary claims on the available evident, isn't justified. Corroboration would help, but for things such as a resurrection, it still wouldn't be enough. It would show that many people might have actually believed it, but doesn't mean that what they believe has the actual explanation that they accept.

> That's like saying we can't trust anything about COVID coming out of the hospitals

It's nothing like that at all. If the only evidence we have for covid are stories coming out of a single hospital, no other evidence, nobody missing, getting sick, or dying, but we had some people from a hospital telling stories, then yeah, I wouldn't believe it.

>> Even the bible writings, the earliest of which happened decades after his death.

> Decades is nothing. Let's see, 30 or 40 years ago is Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky

We have contemporary news footage of everything that happened there, and multiple sources corroborate it. There are countless books, magazine articles, video footage, radio programs, actual witnesses that can recount their stories, and we have books, magazine articles and video and audio of witnesses who have recounted their stories. All contemporary.

> Ronald Reagan, Madonna, Cindi Lauper, Nirvana, and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. It's still SIMPLE to get truth about these things. Simple.

Yes, as explained above. We have tons of contemporary accounts of all of those things, including millions of copies of records for the musicians you listed.

For Jesus and his stories, we have a single source, the bible.

[jimwalton]

> Sure, but you keep trying to smuggle in Josephus as a viable bit of evidence about Jesus. It simply isn't. There's no debate. Not even Christian historians give it any credibility.

Josephus is often accessed by historians. No one throws it all away. No one, except maybe you, I guess. Josephus is a questionable source in some cases, but deemed reliable in others. We have to be discerning rather than dismissive.

> You acknowledge its not good evidence, then argue that its sufficient to justify claims of the supernatural, something that has never been demonstrated to exist.

No, I argue instead that it is good evidence, and that it is sufficient, but it's not 100% proof.

The supernatural has been demonstrated to exist an abundance of times through history. It's just that these demonstrations don't leave behind material remains to be studied in future generations.

> This is why this evidence doesn't stand up to good standards, such as those used by science.

History and literature are evidenced differently than science is. Since the past is forever gone, it can neither be viewed directly nor reconstructed precisely or exhaustively. It cannot be subject to scientific observation and experimentation. Our knowledge of it comes exclusively through incomplete, selective, and even biased sources. The past comes to us fragmented. Our link to the past is always through the eyes of someone else. You can't legitimately put any of it to scientific methodology. That's not how it works.

> Just because a story mentions ordinary events or locations that may be true, doesn't make the extraordinary parts somehow true

You didn't specify the extraordinary parts. Your statement was "The Gospel accounts have not be proved true at any point," which is just as false as false gets.

> Can you demonstrate this accuracy [of oral communication]? No.

Only from the testimony of the scholars who spend their lives studying it, and quotes from people like Socrates:

Socrates: "Words put into writing are incapable of being clear and are only useful to remind someone of what they have heard."

Socrates: "Written words cannot be defended by argument and cannot teach truth effectively."

Socrates: "Written words are of little value unless an author is able to back them up by explanation."

> Can you demonstrate that these stories were considered important enough at the time to train people to remember them word for word?

Yes. They considered Jesus to the God the Son, the Messiah who was promised from antiquity. It was a history-changing moment.

> Can you demonstrate that three written stories are the same as those remembered by the specially trained remembered?

In the Jewish culture, all the boys were rigorously trained to read the Torah and in memorizing large portions of it.

>> we can reassemble the original with better than 99% accuracy.
> Except we can't. This sounds like a post hoc rationalisation, or a defense of a belief, once again you've made a claim without providing anything to back it up.

There is so much evidence to back it up it takes a book to post it. The scholarly work on these texts is going on 2000 years now. We have close to 6000 ancients manuscripts and fragments, far surpassing what we have for any other ancient document. Our knowledge of the text is thorough, and the resultant text was have is guaranteed to be 99%+ accurate.

> you can't even give me any last names. Those are pretty anonymous, aren't they?

Last names? You're joking, right? Last names are a thing of later eras, not of theirs.

> For Jesus and his stories, we have a single source, the bible.

And a reliable one at that.

[Tarnished]

> Josephus is often accessed by historians

Not as evidence for Jesus

[jimwalton]

Yes, as evidence for Jesus. Josephus referred to Jesus twice, once in the Testimonium Flavianum (Antiquities 18.33) and once in Antiquities, book 20, where Jesus and James are identified as brothers. Since both James and Jesus were common names, Josephus specified which Jesus he was referring to by adding, "who is called the Messiah (Christos)." This extraneous reference to Jesus would have made no sense if Jesus had not been a real person. Few scholars have ever doubted the authenticity of this short account. On the contrary, the huge majority accepts it as genuine.

It is generally recognized that almost everything in Antiquities comes from other sources, but by and large Josephus handled his sources according to the best standards of his day. In other words, he writes as a good Hellenistic historian (a different standard of historiography than that of our modern world).

It is also generally recognized that Josephus at times took liberties to invent stories and change his source material. His accuracy is challenged at various intersection points with what is known from other sources.

However, since Jesus is mentioned in two places, one with a reference to his crucifixion under Pilate and one to his brother James, it is not doubted that Josephus is corroborating the existence of Jesus, along with a few historical tidbits, including that He was known as a man who performed surprising deeds.

[Tarnished]

> Yes, as evidence for Jesus.

Perhaps we're losing sight on what we are talking about when we say evidence for Jesus. We're talking about his miracles.

From wiki, and this does align with what you are saying, but I should have been more accurate in my words.

The first and most extensive reference to Jesus in the Antiquities, found in Book 18, states that Jesus was the Messiah and a wise teacher who was crucified by Pilate. It is commonly called the Testimonium Flavianum.[1][3][4] Almost all modern scholars reject the authenticity of this passage in its present form, while the majority of scholars nevertheless hold that it contains an authentic nucleus referencing the execution of Jesus by Pilate, which was then subject to Christian interpolation and/or alteration.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] The exact nature and extent of the Christian redaction remains unclear, however.[11][12]

Modern scholarship has largely acknowledged the authenticity of the second reference to Jesus in the Antiquities, found in Book 20, Chapter 9, which mentions "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James."[13] This reference is considered to be more authentic than the Testimonium.[14][1][15][16][17][18]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus

Here's my first problem, the part that is accepted doesn't recount any miracles, which is what op is talking about.

The second problem, is that these writings aren't contemporary. How do we know he wasn't just mentioning Jesus as the character he's read or heard about?

it is not doubted that Josephus is corroborating the existence of Jesus,

Neither I nor the op are questioning the existence of a person who was known as Jesus. It's the supernatural stuff that's in question. The miracles.

[jimwalton]

> Neither I nor the op are questioning the existence of a person who was known as Jesus. It's the supernatural stuff that's in question. The miracles.

Yeah, I get that.

> the part that is accepted doesn't recount any miracles,

The problem here is that there is still quite a bit of disagreement over which parts of the Testimonium Flavianum are authentic and which were redacted.

There are obvious Christian redactions in the phrases that are obviously Christian:

• "if indeed one ought to call him a man"
• "He was the Messiah"
• "for on the third day he appeared to them restored to life."
• "the prophets of God had prophesied this and countless other marvelous things about him"

These are almost universally agreed to be later additions by eager Christians. The rest of it, however, reads like this:

"Around this time there lived Jesus, a wise man. For he was one who did surprising deeds, and a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who in the first place came to love him did not give up their affection for him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, have still to this day not died out."

These segments fit the vocabulary and style of Josephus known from the rest of his writings. The text appears to be pure Josephus. As a Romanized Jew, he would not have presented these beliefs as his own, nor would he have any particular agenda to make Jesus look better than was generally affirmed.

> The second problem, is that these writings aren't contemporary. How do we know he wasn't just mentioning Jesus as the character he's read or heard about?

He was clearly not a contemporary of Jesus, but he was a contemporary of Jesus's known associates, the apostles. He is writing second hand about Jesus, and yet what he says accords with every other source (Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny, the Gospels)

• He existed as a man
• His personal name was Jesus, but He was called "Christos" in Greek
• He had a brother named James
• He won over both Jews and Gentiles
• He was known for his ability to do miracles (the bowl)
• the Jewish leaders of the day had unfavorable opinions about him
• He was crucified by Pilate

At what point do you choose to reject Josephus's account, and on what basis?

> The miracles.

In addition to Josephus, even if you choose to reject that, we have the magician's bowl showing Jesus to have been famous for his works of "magic."