Reliable history in the Bible

wow. i like this argument. allow me to attempt to destroy it, just to see what it's worth.let's suppose for a second that we're not talking about jesus, but one particular instance of jesus's renown. say, raising lazarus, or some other miracle. now, we have no evidence (outside of the gospel) that such a miracle ever happened. but we have even less that it did not happen. so, the simplest explanation (as per ockham) is that a successful miracle won sufficient renown to be recorded.why does this argument not work? because "that jesus existed" is a reasonable assumption, but "that jesus performed miracles" is not? the evidence is exactly the same, however. we have only the gospel for "yes" and nothing for "no." if the reliability of the gospel is to be suspect, why only partially? we are told in gospels that jesus existed. but are told by the existance of the gospels that an author or authors and editors exist. we know someone wrote the words, that much is certain. with shakespeare, we call that person "shakespeare." but jesus was not the author of the gospels. so the analogy isn't perfect, is it?all we really know is that "matthew" and "mark" and "luke" and "john" existed, even if those were not really their names. isn't matthew, mark, luke and john a simpler explanation than matthew, mark, luke, john and jesus? shouldn't sir william of ockham shave jesus out of the picture?

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*i* didn't bastardize occam's razor. this colloquial missuse of it is the bastardization. sir william of ockham wrote:

quote:

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entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.

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neccessity is the key. he phrased in terms of scientific and mathematic problems -- coefficents and variables that bear almost no impact on the outcome of the equation should be discarded. to apply it to mean "simplest explanation" is simply misunderstanding what the rule means. the correct spelling of "ockham" was a clue to go look it up.applied to jesus, the question of whether or not he exists certainly does have some relation to outcome of the question of whether or not the bible is reliable. jesus's existance is not an extraneous variable that can be removed. we have zero evidence for jesus's existance. why should we?Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

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please provide such evidence. they do it at hospitals all the time. if we are basing the argument on the reasonableness of the assumption implicit in accepting the text, isn't "lazarus wasn't totally dead" every bit as reasonable an assumption as "jesus existed, but not exactly as the bible says?" in neither instance we are totally trusting the text to be entirely perfectly accurate, and making reasonable inferences.

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the argument above is, essentially, that the bible is based on kernals of truth which have been greatly exagerated. the questions, "why not the miracles, also?" no more so than "jesus existed" eliminates the miraculous events. the jesus supposed by archer's argument is obviously not the same jesus as the bible -- who walked around performing miracles, and rose from the dead. if that didn't happen, can we really say that jesus is based on a real person? those are fairly integral parts of the story. inductively, if all the particulars are irrelevent, isn't the whole argument? ok, pick something that is -- say jesus's own resurrection.

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someone was not following too closely, as this argument started as a "devil's advocate" position for me to test the merit of an argument i liked, and thought sounded reasonable. all of which wrote well after his supposed lifetime, in a manner severely resembling propaganda. they're not good evidence for his existance for the same reason the statements of the pope today are not. the identity of john is highly questionable (there seem to be THREE johns), and neither luke nor paul knew jesus during his life. there are two entries commonly referred to in flavius josephus's works. one is forged. the other is highly suspect. no. evidence supporting the bible is the question. "the bible" does not count as evidence supporting the bible. we need real and external evidence. for instance... ...nebuchadnezzar left monuments to his name all over sumeria. we have a lot more than just the bible to tell us he existed. on the contrary, your reasoning is circular: supporting the bible with the bible. whatever that's supposed to mean.Edited by arachnophilia, : typo

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yes, and evidently, one who never knew him. that's why it matter which john. one reportedly knew jesus personally (though this is highly suspect), and the other two did not.if i wrote a book about jesus, would it be evidence that he existed? why or why not? please search the forums a little. it's been discussed a number of times. within reason. the books that seem to be history (ie: kings) can be used as support, sure. but the books that seem to be fable (ie: genesis) cannot. fundamentalists may not recognize the difference, but scholars certainly do. actually, some of the books cite or refer to other books in the bible. for instance, kings cannot be used to support chronicles, or vice versa, because one is largely derived from the other. and again, only within reason -- based largely on style and content and context. claims of jesus are all highly propagandistic, which is why they're doubted in the first place. if every time you hear a certain story, somebody's trying to sell you something, and you never hear the story in any other context, you might be skeptical too. no, but it certainly helps! you indicated that all we know of nebuchadnezzar was from a written document, and implied that it was the bible. this is certainly not true -- nebuchadnezzar left many documents, written personally by him, and attached to giant ziggurats all over babylonia."oops, i was wrong" would suffice here. not exactly. for instance, we have a ton of independent writings about superman, the last son of krypton. in fact, i'll wager that we have more documents about kal el in the last 50 years than we have about jesus christ in the 50 years after his death.how do we know clark kent isn't a real person, but jesus christ is? argument from incredulity. and misplaced incredulity at that. a number of jesus's teachings come from something called the old testament. why one man?

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the issue that i have is that entire passage hinges on one single phrase, which would have been a rather easy insertion. if you take out "who was call christ" it still makes sense, only there's one jesus instead of two. i find a passage suspicious if the cited instance and the general context minus the instance seem to say two different things.really, i'm not especially hot for the circular logic. i do believe that jesus was almost certainly a real person, and i would frankly really, really like some good historical evidence that he was. i do follow the basic argument that i began arguing against (diablo advocati), which spawned this subthread: the null assumption is that the nt is not a total work of fiction. i'd also like some evidence for david -- i think he probably existed too. though i doubt moses did.

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brian,what do you make the texts that appear to be written in the style of a history, such as kings? it is well known that they are biased and dishonest about a few matters -- but so are a lot history texts.

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