Judging by Ancient Standards

Test number four and test number seven raise an issue that was touched on in the comments of the Chapter One Summary:

My own conviction is, once you allow for the elements I've talked about earlier--of paraphrase, of abridgment, of explanatory additions, of selection, of omission--the gospels are extremely consistent with each other by ancient standards, which are the only standards by which it's fair to judge them.

What does it mean for something to be judged according to ancient standards? There are some non-biblical references to "judging by ancient standards" in which historians say they will overlook small scribal errors and inconsistency in favor of broader concepts and ideas. Armed with this direction you can now look at the biblical story of Legion mentioned by Lee Strobel and pull out the common ideas.

• Jesus was in a boat with his disciples.
• Jesus came to shore.
• Jesus met at least one man who was possessed by demons.
• Because he was possessed, the man could break chains and fetters
• The man lived outside of the city, among the tombs.
• The demons asked Jesus to be cast into a large nearby herd of pigs.
• Jesus did the bidding of the demons.
• The large herd of pigs killed themselves.
• The pig herders went into town and reported the events.
• Town people came out, were afraid, and asked Jesus to leave.
• Jesus told Legion to go home and tell others what happened.
• People who heard the story were amazed.

You then have something that contains the main ideas of the story, presumably as it was passed down to the writers of the gospels. Some may say that there is a possibility that the story was invented by the authors as a hoax, and that there was collusion. Others posit that the story is an allegory. However there is no evidence of this, so we must acknowledge the possibility this is how the story was told to the authors.

But there is some information that is missing:

1. Who is the original teller of the story?
2. Were there other eyewitnesses?
3. Were the disciples present?
4. Did Jesus ever hear the story told?

Without answers you don't know the first thing about how the story was originated. Was it one of the pig herder's tales that took hold and was spread? Was it one of the disciples who memorized the details of the event and gave careful attention to their accuracy? Did Jesus have any input on the story, correcting parts that were not up to snuff? Or are the individual gospel accounts independent compilations of several different versions of the story? There is no way to tell, and without even the most basic information about how the story originated, who wrote it, and why, it is hard to make any determination on the claims that can't be substantiated based solely on the account. Therefore, even if you examine gospels by ancient standards, how can this help reveal anything to you about their potential veracity?

More importantly this has connotations for all of Chapter Two in the Case for Christ. The chapter is about testing the evidence--the contents of the gospels presumably. Half of the tests however focus not on the content, but on the writers themselves, specifically: the intention test, the ability test, the character test, and the bias test. The people we really want to be applying these tests to are those who originally authored the stories, or provided testimony. However, we cannot even begin to guess as to the pig herder's bias, character, ability, and intention, when we don't even know whether or not they were the source of the story. It may be accurate, or, as is often the case in a small religious sect comprised of devout believers willing to die for what they believe, it may not have been sufficiently questioned. Either way, we don't know.