Chapter Two Evidence

Chapter two unfortunately doesn't add a lot of evidence beyond chapter one. Mostly evidence is in the form of things for which there is no evidence, which is hardly helpful. Other evidence is circumstantial at best.

1. There is no evidence that the author's of the Gospels had bad intentions.
2. In the time of Jesus Jewish scholars were known for their memorization abilities.
3. Many disciples of Christ were willing to die for what they believed.
4. We have no evidence that the writers of the Gospels were dishonest.
5. There are discrepancies between the Gospels.
6. The Gospels contain stories of Jesus that show great admiration and love of Jesus.
7. There is "difficult" material included in the Gospels.
8. There is some outside corroboration for some Bible events.
9. There is no evidence of people saying that Jesus didn't perform miracles.

I'm surprised. I found my atheism in reverse. I was raised reading the bible and believing in Christ. Only later after much soul searching did I come to the conclusion that the foundation of my belief was shaky, and that I had to acknowledge the possibility that there is no God. Years later this changed to: there is no evidence of God. The whole reason I am reading Lee Strobel's book is because I had to admit that I unfairly discredited the bible as evidence for God, whithout really thinking much about it. But it is very surprising that what has been presented so far is THIS shaky. Lee Strobel's challenge was for me to draw my conclusions "based on the weight of the facts". Yet several things in the above list that he is presenting in chapter two is the absence of fact ... I'm curious to see how Lee Strobel in the end will shovel away this mountain of unkowns.

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.

The Adverse Witness Test

8. Are there any witnesses that spoke out against the gospels?

This tests suggests two conclusions can be drawn from the evidence:

1. because enemies do not deny that Jesus performed miracles, they implicitly admit that he did
2. if critics could have asserted that the claims of Jesus' followers were false they would have

Once again, the absence of evidence does not prove anything. Indeed, if it did, then the Bible would be a lot easier to refute. We can guess as to what critics thought, and why they said or didn't say such and such. Lee Strobel's witness might be right on both counts above. However, you must also allow for the possibility in light of no concrete evidence, that his witness is wrong. We don't know.

The Corroboration Test

7. Are there other sources that corroborate with information found in the gospels?

Lee Strobel says that this argument will be further researched, but I fail to see how corroboration alone is sufficient for the majority of stories that are found in the New Testament. Take for example the story of Jesus meeting the two demonics. There are facts in this story that can be substantiated:

1. Tombs may have been found outside of a city
2. Swine were herded so that they could feed
3. Herds of swine may have been large, requiring multiple swine herders

Unfortunately there are many more claims that can not be substantiated:

1. Demons existed
2. Demons could possess people
3. Demons could communicate
4. Jesus could cast out demons

Even if you presume the current existence of these facts, there is little evidence to support that the parts of the story that attest to these facts at the time of Jesus are true, outside of the story itself. Corroboration in part does not necessitate the accuracy of the whole.

In past posts I have posited that it is the inaccurate nature of ancient documents that helps to make the corroboration of their entire contents difficult. However, for Christians ancient documents can only be judged by ancient standards, and all other standards are unfair. I did a little digging into this issue and think that there is some truth to this. It definitely deserves its own post, but you'll have to wait till the last test is responded to.

The Cover-Up Test

6. Is there evidence that there was a cover-up or scrubbing of the gospels of information?

It is true, there is no evidence that there was a cover-up or scrubbing of the gospels of information. Based on this fact, here is the conclusion that is made:

if they didn't feel free to leave out stuff when it would have been convenient and helpful to do so, is it really plausible to believe that they outright added and fabricated material with no historical basis?

How can you jump from "there is no evidence" to "so because they could have in certain places, in my opinion, they definitely didn't". The correct answer is "we don't know."

One could have just as easily concluded: if they didn't feel free to leave out stuff when it would have been convenient and helpful to do so, it is really plausible that the things they did leave out were even more helpful and convenient to remove than the things which were left in.

The Bias Test

5. Were the gospel writers biased to the point of not being trusted?

The primary argument that Lee Strobel's expert uses to pass this test is his personal opinion that because the writers of the gospels loved Jesus they were prompted to record his life with great integrity. This is conjecture, and isn't backed up with evidence. You can look at the writings about Jesus and conclude that the writers loved Jesus, with some degree of certainty. However, it is not certain that accuracy was within their ability. Also, while it is certainly possible that their love lead them to do the best they could, in modern times we see the opposite often happen. After all, isn't one of the hallmarks of small religious sects is that their members do not question dogma and tradition enough? However, in my opinion, we really can't say one way or another.

The Consistency Test

4. Are the gospels consistent enough with one another to be believable?

There is disagreement between the gospels, and Christians themselves do not agree on how best to resolve disagreements. Disagreements do not indicate that the gospels are wholly false, but certainly they do not provide evidence as to their accuracy either. What is most interesting to me is the Christian obsession to explain away inaccuracies saying it MAY have been because of such and such, with little if any evidence that such and such was indeed the cause. If your belief is independent of coming up with these explanations that are based mostly on conjecture, why waste the time?

For example, take the difference between Mark and Luke saying that demons were driven into swine at Gerasa, while Matthew says that this even occurred in Gadara. Blomberg's first explanation was that it was "possible" that one was a town and the other a province. Lee Strobel, who I must say at that very moment appears quite the skeptic for the first time in the book, points out to Dr. Blomberg that Gerasa the town isn't anywhere close to the Sea of Galilee, which is where supposedly the event took place. Here is Dr. Blomberg's response:

"But there have been ruins of a town that have been excavated at exactly the right point on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. The English form of the town's name often gets pronounced 'Khersa,' but as a Hebrew word translated or transliterated into Greek, it could have come out sounding something very much like 'Gerasa.' So it may very well have been in Khersa--whose spelling in Greek was rendered as Gerasa--in the province of Gadara."

Dr. Blomberg may be right. However, if there is a possibility that he may be right, or as he says if it "may very well have been," then there is also a possibility that one of the accounts, or possibly both are wrong. Does this prove that Jesus didn't throw out demons and place them into a herd of swine? Of course not! Yet it doesn't give us any increased confidence in the three different accounts, either.

Blomberg also tackles the lineage of Jesus which differs greatly between Matthew and Luke. Once again, he can only deal in possibilities. No one knows for sure why the lineage of Jesus is different in Matthew and Luke. Blomberg gives two possible explanations, but then has this added advice:

"...there are occasions when we may need to hold judgement in abeyance and simply say that since we've made sense out of the vast majority of the texts and determined them to be trustworthy, we can give them the benefit of the doubt when we're not sure on some of the other details."

Why does Lee Strobel include advice like this given his challenge? To me this sounds like I'm being asked to set aside my commonsense and logic. It seems to say "if something doesn't fit the picture, don't worry about it, because most of it does." Finding possible ways to have multiple accounts be consistent with one another does not prove the validity of the stories and beliefs that they contain. I can see how such advice can calm doubts in the believer when examining inconsistencies between in-errant texts, but it does not provide much help to me, the skeptic.

The Character Test

Where the gospel writers truthful?

Dr. Blomberg implies that the honesty of the gospel writers is supported because they are not shown to be dishonest. Were it a formal argument this would be a logical fallacy. It may be that the gospel writers were honest people, but it may also be that they were not. Could they have perpetrated a great hoax, or perhaps a small hoax of embellishing history? It may be unlikely, but it is possible. For example there is no historical reference of Jesus that Lee Strobel mentions that was written while Jesus was alive. All writings regarding Jesus were written after his death. Why is it impossible that later references refer to an established hoax? However, I'm willing assume that Dr. Blomberg mentions the lack of negative information about the gospel writers not to convince us of their honesty, but only as fact.

So perhaps it is because Jesus' followers were willing to die for their beliefs? There are other possibilities to consider: the person may not know that what they believe is false, the liar may prefer death than to have the truth disclosed, the consequences of either disclosing the truth or maintaining the lie are equivalent, or some combination. In any event, someone enduring unspeakable hardships because of their professed beliefs does not necessitate the validity of those beliefs. Since you can find religious people of other faiths being persecuted terribly for their beliefs, perhaps the Christian may agree that the willingness to endure suffering and death due to firmly held beliefs does not necessitate the truth of those beliefs.

So once again, this test gives us no more or less information than we had before as to the validity of the beliefs held by the writers of the gospels, nor their written word. Some parts may be true, some parts may be false, some may be a mix.

The Ability Test

Is it possible that information in the gospels was accurately preserved before it was recorded?

Lee Strobel's expert, Dr Blomberg, makes one primary argument in defense of this test.

A. Jewish scholars were used to memorizing huge amounts of scripture
B. Jewish scholars could accurately retell scripture from memory
C. ancient middle eastern retellings differ one from another by about forty percent
D. the gospels differ one from another on any given passage by about forty percent

Therefore, it is likely that early Christians engaged in the same kind of retelling practices.

Even if you ignore the admission of doubt signaled by the use of the word "likely," such an argument is almost impossible to defend. There is so much that we don't know. We don't know how many of the pre-gospel early christians were Jewish scholars and could have participated in accurate memorization, or been available to check the accuracy of other's retelling of scripture. More over, even if this practice was done, and we had concrete proof, we wouldn't know for which parts of the gospels it was used, and to what rate of success.

We know that there are chiasms in the New Testament, but we don't know if these are there because the material was passed orally and then written, or written to facilitate oral tradition, or both. We are left with the same dilemma, some parts of the gospels may go on a fact pile, and other parts may not. However, I still see no way to determine one from the other. In any event this test and accompanying argument do not convince me that accurate oral traditions were used to communicate facts about Jesus from the time the occurred to the point when they were related in the Gospels. But does it convince you?

The Intention Test

Was the intent of the gospel writers to accurately preserve history?

In the case of the gospel of Luke Blomberg, Lee Strobel's expert, uses Luke's own words. However, in the case of Mark and Matthew Blomberg's evidence is a little sketchy: "they are close to Luke in terms of genre, and it seems reasonable that Luke's historical intent would closely mirror theirs." Perhaps it is reasonable, but it is also reasonable that their investigation efforts were not as careful. There is no way of knowing for sure, is there?

For John there is also a weak conjecture argument that if theology is to be believed it is important that the history is accurate. I really don't believe that this is a tautology. If it is meant to be, then it certainly needs to be supported much better than to simply state it.

So what do we know of the intent of the authors of the Gospels? We know that at least one of them, Luke, has stated a clear intent to be accurate. A careful reading shows Luke's concern in context: "an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down." His aim therefore is not to play the sceptic: to determine whether or not events happened based on the supposition that they didn't happen. Rather his writing arises from the view that these things did happen, and to be accurate to the story as it was handed down.

Unfortunately, careful presentation of a case does not guaranty its accuracy. For example, it is the intent of prosecutors and the judicial system in which prosecutors play a role not to put innocent people behind bars, which is why our judicial system is founded on a innocent until proven guilty premise. However, unintended mistakes can happen. Often the more careful a prosecutor was in preparing and presenting a case, the more difficult it has been to identify and reverse mistakes. How does this happen? It happens because the prosecutor, like Luke has to rely on other people to make his case, whose intent may be unknown, or who may not be as careful as the prosecutor. In the case of a well established myth the origin may be impossible to determine, and hence the original motivation equally as impossible to know. Luke did not have the benefit of a snopes.com.

So it may be that the things that Luke writes about did happen, or it may be that they did not happen. Since bible accuracy is not an either or proposition, both may also be the case.