Curious reasons for the NT Gospels being non-fiction

PhillyChief
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Curious reasons for the NT Gospels being non-fiction

I've already responded to the person posting these 7 reasons for believing the gospels are true. I'm curious how some of you would respond to these. Note - I think they come from JP Holding.
1) They're Greco-Roman bioi, which usually are not fictitious.

2) They do not claim to be fiction. Like it or not, that counts for something.

3) The authors of the New Testament left in embarrassing details about themselves, things they would be unlikely to invent if it were fiction. This criterion is called by historians "the principle of embarrassment." Not only that, but they left in the embarrassing details and difficult sayings of Jesus.

4) The authors carefully set apart Jesus's words from their own. In that day, it would have been easy to put words in his mouth. But whenever they mention that it's their own opinion, they clearly state it. Notice how Jesus doesn't mention important church issues like circumcision, which would have certainly been included if it was invented to solve to problem.

5) The Gospels and Acts include a whole lot of historically confirmed people and events.

6) The authors challenge their readers to examine the evidence themselves.

7) The disciples died for what they wrote, unlikely if it was fiction.
Thanks in advance for any and all responses to these "reasons" Smiling


Textom
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1) Error of composition.

1) Error of composition.

2) They also don't claim to be historical, so argument from ignorance.

3) Calling something a "principle" as defined by historians leads to a misplaced sense of the importance of the observation. So improper appeal to authority (and who are these historians anyway?). Even if the embarrassing parts were known to be true, the conclusion that the rest of a gospel is therefore true is an error of composition.

4) I think this reason is riddled with factual errors. Collections of sayings of prophets were common. There are non-canonical collections of Jesus's sayings where he does say things that would be heretical. Anyway the absence of any evidence that the authors either did or did not alter the sayings makes this an argument from ignorance.

Also Jesus did express opinions on all the important church issues of his day--but his church was the Jewish church, and he was trying to reform *that* religion. So circumcison was not an issue. Paying taxes with an idolatrous image of Augustus Caesar on it or picking grain on the sabbath were.

5) Error of composition. "Gangs of New York" and "Titanic" contain a lot of historically confirmed people and events too.

6-7 Assume that the authors of the Gospels either (1) intentionally wrote fiction with full knowledge that the facts were false or (2) actually faithfully recorded historical events. This is a false dilemma because it ignores the third possibility: (3) they believed what they wrote was true, but it was not.

Since the authors themselves got the stories at least second-hand, and because our oldest manuscripts are several generations (of copies) removed from what the authors originally wrote, it's very likely that what is Gospel in the canon today contains both (1) things that were made up or adopted from other sources, but the fact that they were made up was not known to the copiers (i.e. the story of the woman taken in adultery) and (2) things where the authors or copyists were just wrong about what actually happened because of poor memory or confirmation bias or other natural explanations.

 

Oh, and on 7, I don't remember any evidence of the authors of the Gospels dying for what they wrote. Some of the apostles to whom some Gospels are wrongly attributed died in ways the Bible tells about, but not the acutal authors. Paul died for what he wrote, but he didn't write any gospel.

...and 6 begs the question of its own veracity. 

"After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up." -Stephen Colbert


PhillyChief
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1, 5, 6 and 7 you and I wre

1, 5, 6 and 7 you and I wre of the same mind. Your answer to #2 is probably better than mine. I just questioned if someone who was writing fiction would they say it was if they intended it to be read as non-fiction. For #3 I merely asked which embarrasing details he meant, like apparently not knowing the geography of Palestine very well? #4 I simply ignored.
Thanks for the detailed response. 


JeremiahSmith
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PhillyChief wrote:

PhillyChief wrote:
I1) They're Greco-Roman bioi, which usually are not fictitious.

What is a bioi, and why do the Gospels fit into that category? Is it possible that the authors of the Gospels wanted to mimic a Greco-Roman writing form for credit?

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2) They do not claim to be fiction. Like it or not, that counts for something.

Neither do "The Andromeda Strain" or the pilot episode of "The X-Files", both of which claim to be based on true events. ("The Andromeda Strain" has an entire preface devoted to the ruse.)
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3) The authors of the New Testament left in embarrassing details about themselves, things they would be unlikely to invent if it were fiction. This criterion is called by historians "the principle of embarrassment." Not only that, but they left in the embarrassing details and difficult sayings of Jesus.
The authors never left any details about themselves; the Gospels are anonymous. When apologists apply the embarassment criterion to events and sayings of Jesus's life, it usually turns out that the people the Gospel was written for -- the early Christians -- probably wouldn't have been embarassed at all.
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4) The authors carefully set apart Jesus's words from their own. In that day, it would have been easy to put words in his mouth. But whenever they mention that it's their own opinion, they clearly state it. Notice how Jesus doesn't mention important church issues like circumcision, which would have certainly been included if it was invented to solve to problem.
Unless, of course, the person writing Jesus's words didn't give a shit about circumcision, or felt that there was no argument that needed to be clarified. And where do the Gospels authors state that something is their own opinion?
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5) The Gospels and Acts include a whole lot of historically confirmed people and events.
So do "Cryptonomicon", "The Hunt For Red October", and "Saving Private Ryan", but they're still fiction.
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6) The authors challenge their readers to examine the evidence themselves.
No they don't. The criteria for truthfulness, in the early Christian world, were pretty lax. At no point does the New Testament recommend that physical evidence be checked or stories be crossexamined. The "examination" usually consisted of observing the morality of your teachers and seeing if a document correlated with what you already knew. In the eyes of much of the populace in the Roman era, teacher who was moral could never be wrong. (Read this, and then the rest of the excellent article here.)
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7) The disciples died for what they wrote, unlikely if it was fiction.
I dealt with this a week or so ago in another thread, but basically the error with this is that we don't know if the disciples were actually martyred (if they existed at all), what they were martyred for, or anything else about their deaths. The only information is unsupported church tradition. Edit: Goddammit, "Titanic" is such a much better example for number five. I'll have to remember it. 

Götter sind für Arten, die sich selbst verraten -- in den Glauben flüchten um sich hinzurichten. Menschen brauchen Götter um sich zu verletzen, um sich zu vernichten -- das sind wir.