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From: christian@topaz.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.religion.christian
Subject: Re: What we know. . .
Message-ID: <10735@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Sun, 5-Apr-87 02:11:49 EST
Article-I.D.: topaz.10735
Posted: Sun Apr  5 02:11:49 1987
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> What we know of the Gettysburg Address comes to us in the same way as
> our knowledge of Jesus -- as the testimony of eyewitnesses, preserved in
> writing.  If we are to know anything at all about history, we must depend
> on the testimony of those who were contemporary with the people and
> events in question.

I agree with much of what Steve says about historical evidence, but
there are some problems with his analogy between our knowledge of
Lincoln and our knowledge of Jesus.

First, as far as I know, no serious scholar contends that we have
*any* writings about Jesus by anyone who met him.  This is much
different from the case of the Gettysburg Address, where we have the
notes of someone who was there, and who wrote it down at the time
before he could forget what was said.  We would *like* to rely on the
testimony of eyewitnesses in learning about the life of Jesus, but
unfortunately none of the eyewitnesses bothered to write down their
observations.

This is a serious problem.  A good historian will always go back to
the contemporary sources, rather than relying on the works of later
writers.  But when studying Jesus, there *are* no contemporary
sources.  We can still try to piece together the story of his life,
but the results are bound to be somewhat speculative.


Second, the analogy between Lincoln giving a speech and Jesus rising
from the dead ignores the medical evidence that people do not rise
from the dead.  Allegedly Jim Jones sometimes gave speaches to his
followers.  Allegedly he also caused people to return from the dead on
occasion.  Which claim do you believe?

To state the problem generally, any historical analysis has to depend
upon assumptions about the way people act, in order to resolve the
ambiguities in the historical evidence.  One of the apparent constants
of human behavior is that once people die, they stay dead.  It would
take strong evidence, stronger than historical evidence usually is, to
show that this general rule did not apply in a particular case.

Of course when an alleged miracle occurs today, it is frequently well
documented.  Eyewitnesses write down what they see, or run off to talk
to reporters.  Even better, there are people like Uri Geller who
demonstrate their miraculous powers live on national TV.  Perhaps
a case can be made for taking these modern "miracles" at face value.
(I don't think so.)  But the evidence for the resurrection is not
this good.  I don't see how any reasonable evaluation of this
evidence could lead to the conviction that Jesus rose from the dead.

Given the very limited evidence available, we must rely extensively on
assumptions about how people behaved back then.  If an assumption like
the assumption that people don't rise from the dead was violated, we
simply cannot discover this because the evidence is not good enough.
A point for Christians to ponder is that, according to Christian
belief, God must have been able to arrange for better evidence to be
preserved but for whatever reason chose not to.


I am not hostile towards the Christian faith, although I don't believe
in it myself, and I hope that this article is not interpreted as an
attack on Christianity.  I do object when Christians force historical
evidence to correspond to their religious preconceptions.  This is
really a pro-intellectual postion rather than an anti-Christian
position, as is made clear by the fact that many Christians as well as
non-Christians object to "scientific" creationism.
					Kenneth Almquist