From: utzoo!decvax!decwrl!sun!megatest!fortune!hpda!hplabs!sri-unix!hss
Newsgroups: net.religion
Title: Re: Genealogy - (nf)
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.5437
Posted: Sat Mar 26 21:37:24 1983
Received: Mon Mar 28 01:46:47 1983

#R:teklabs:-182300:sri-unix:15700003:000:2938
sri-unix!hss    Mar 24 11:30:00 1983

Re: Non-biblical references to Jesus

To be charitable, Josh McDowell is not a very good historian. He never 
examines his sources with a modicum of skepticism. Even when he does
admit that some of his material is a bit questionable, he refuses to
discuss opposing points of view fairly. He's quite aware of what 
conclusions he wants his audience to reach. Some examples:

1.  McDowell's most famous quotation is attributed to Flavius Josephus:
    "Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful
    to call him a man..." McDowell describes the passage as being
    "hotly contested" but doesn't go into detail. He also points out
    that the passage is included in the most recent Loeb edition of
    the works of Flavius Josephus. McDowell failed to point out that
    there were also several lengthy (and critical) footnotes. It's
    obvious to most scholars that the passage is a Christian interpolation.
    (It'd be embarrassing if Josephus' detailed history of the times
    were to neglect mentioning Jesus.)

2.  McDowell also quotes Suetonius. "Punishment by Nero was inflicted
    on the Christians. McDowell never tells the reader that the sentence
    is sandwiched between a regulation concerning cooked foods at cabarets
    and a mention of a crackdown on the abuses of chariot drivers. The
    paragraph dealt with minor police reforms. This is another Christian
    interpolation.

3.  Some of McDowell's funnier mistakes involve a couple of pagan writers,
    Thallus and Phlegon. McDowell attempts to show that the Romans knew of 
    the unnatural darkness at noon that is recorded in Matthew. Thallus'
    "writings have disappeared and we only know of them from fragments 
    cited by other writers. One such writer is Julius Africanus, a Christian
    writer from about 221 A.D." Aside from the fact that a Christian writer
    would be tempted to commit a pious fraud, McDowell apparently doesn't
    know that most of Africanus' works have been lost too. Indeed, the remark
    in question comes from Africanus' history of the world, a work that 
    survives in the form of fragments scattered through a history (Eusebius' 
    Chronicle) that was written much later.

    McDowell quotes "Phlegon, a first century historian," as writing that
    "during the time of Tiberius Caesar, an eclipse of the sun occured 
    during the full moon." (This, of course, would be a miracle.) 
    Unfortunately for McDowell, Phlegon was really a writer of the second
    century. Phlegon's most famous work is a history of the Olympics. It
    covered up to the 229th Olympics, that is, A.D. 137. (This is another
    quotation that survived after being filtered through a couple of 
    Christian writers.)

    So much for McDowell's accuracy.

I have to admit that this is McDowell's worst evidence. But rest assured,
the rest of it isn't much better.

			    Harry Sameshima
			     HSS@SRI-UNIX