Lenardos Debate - Round 6
This is round 6 in the debate between Lenardos and Jacobsen on the topic, "Do Extraordinary Events Require Extraordinary Evidence?"
Lenardos - Round 6
Paul, although you have written 6 pages of text, you have still missed the problem. The question is not how “apologist count manuscripts.” Apologists count them the same way historians count them: one by one. It is true that some mss are better than others in helping us determine what the original text was, but that makes the others no less a manuscript. At some point all of them, even the late translations, can come into play to help us understand the movement of the text throughout time and over continents. And all of them can help us work backward to reconstruct the original text. Even the early papyri containing as little as only a few verses are extremely valuable for comparison purposes.
The question is not about the King James Version. When Erasmus came up with the Greek text that would eventually become Textus Receptus (The Greek text that the KJV is based on) he did it by going to several monasteries and hurriedly looking at mss they had there. After looking at them, he said to himself, “This one looks old!” And based on the handful texts he picked, he put together the Greek text that would eventually become know as Textus Receptus. Have we been able to put together better Greek texts now? Yes. Do they tell a different story? No! Even though the texts Erasmus used were Late Greek mss., they were all so good that it was hard for Erasmus to mess it too badly. Compare the Nestle-Adland text to Textus Receptus. You are not going to find huge differences in the story line. Get a hold of a parallel English NT. This usually contains the KJV, NIV and perhaps a couple of other English translations. You are going to have a hard time finding many significant differences. Examine the examples given in Tobin’s article. Most of them are laughable (in fact I did laugh when I read them).
The question is not whether having a lot of mss means that the NT is factual with regards to events. I never said that. F.F. Bruce never said that. Neither did Keynon, McDowell or Strobel. The only one making this absurd strawman argument is you. I have said from the beginning that the only thing the bibliographical test shows is that we have an accurate copy of what was written. It says nothing about the content of what was written.
The question is not about Tobin’s articles. Tobin offers no methodology for ascertaining the reliability of documents or events. His paper, like that of most atheists, simply come up with faux attacks on the NT without showing an objective criteria from which to judge the quality and quantity of evidence for documents and events from the period.
I will be happy to discuss any of these above points or any of the other red herrings you present in your response at a later time. But for now I must come to the real question. Until you answer this question you cannot even begin to discuss the previous questions.
The question is, do you or any of your atheist friends have a real methodology for historical investigation that is not based on logical fallacy, that is objective, has been used in historical investigation and when used across the board doesn’t destroy the vast majority of other history. So far you have offered no such methodology. You do tell us quite clearly your only methodology:
Paul, although you have written 6 pages of text, you have still missed the problem. The question is not how “apologist count manuscripts.” Apologists count them the same way historians count them: one by one. It is true that some mss are better than others in helping us determine what the original text was, but that makes the others no less a manuscript. At some point all of them, even the late translations, can come into play to help us understand the movement of the text throughout time and over continents. And all of them can help us work backward to reconstruct the original text. Even the early papyri containing as little as only a few verses are extremely valuable for comparison purposes.
The question is not about the King James Version. When Erasmus came up with the Greek text that would eventually become Textus Receptus (The Greek text that the KJV is based on) he did it by going to several monasteries and hurriedly looking at mss they had there. After looking at them, he said to himself, “This one looks old!” And based on the handful texts he picked, he put together the Greek text that would eventually become know as Textus Receptus. Have we been able to put together better Greek texts now? Yes. Do they tell a different story? No! Even though the texts Erasmus used were Late Greek mss., they were all so good that it was hard for Erasmus to mess it too badly. Compare the Nestle-Adland text to Textus Receptus. You are not going to find huge differences in the story line. Get a hold of a parallel English NT. This usually contains the KJV, NIV and perhaps a couple of other English translations. You are going to have a hard time finding many significant differences. Examine the examples given in Tobin’s article. Most of them are laughable (in fact I did laugh when I read them).
The question is not whether having a lot of mss means that the NT is factual with regards to events. I never said that. F.F. Bruce never said that. Neither did Keynon, McDowell or Strobel. The only one making this absurd strawman argument is you. I have said from the beginning that the only thing the bibliographical test shows is that we have an accurate copy of what was written. It says nothing about the content of what was written.
The question is not about Tobin’s articles. Tobin offers no methodology for ascertaining the reliability of documents or events. His paper, like that of most atheists, simply come up with faux attacks on the NT without showing an objective criteria from which to judge the quality and quantity of evidence for documents and events from the period.
I will be happy to discuss any of these above points or any of the other red herrings you present in your response at a later time. But for now I must come to the real question. Until you answer this question you cannot even begin to discuss the previous questions.
The question is, do you or any of your atheist friends have a real methodology for historical investigation that is not based on logical fallacy, that is objective, has been used in historical investigation and when used across the board doesn’t destroy the vast majority of other history. So far you have offered no such methodology. You do tell us quite clearly your only methodology:
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“I've been told that it is often in the formative years of a religion that the writings of the ‘holy word’ receives the most revision. I don't know this for a fact, but it certainly seems reasonable. So it certainly seems quite within the realm of possibility that lots of revisions took place very early. Sure, that is pure speculation. I guess I'm just saying, ‘who knows’?”
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Logic students will quickly recognize this fallacy as argumentum ad ignorantiam, an argument from ignorance. This is because the conclusion that you are running with is not based on facts you know, but upon speculation that you don’t really know. The evidence all points in one direction, but your conclusion in the other. What we mean by “irrational” is a conclusion that goes against the evidence. This is what you are proposing. Why do you think that your premise “seems reasonable?” You offer no reason for it. It is a self-admitted, speculative story without foundation. It may seem reasonable because you like the conclusion, but that is pure subjectivism.
You also write:
You also write:
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“Lenardos keep saying that if I apply the same standards to all history, all history would be destroyed. And I'll keep responding the same: all history is subject to revision--and especially history that ancient. We often only have a few sources on something, and if those sources are wrong, then what we believe happened might not really have happened. That's just the nature of the beast. We make our best guess what happened based on the evidence we have, nothing is history that ancient is very certain.”
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You are quite right that history is subject to revision and that revision is based on the evidence. But you once again fail to tell us how that evidence is judged sufficient to overturn the current thought and make the revision. Without a methodology for determining the quality and quantity of the evidence at hand, how do you come to the conclusion that revisions should be made? Perhaps we should return to speculation?
As I said in my last post, if you can’t even show a methodology for judging ordinary evidence, how can you come up with one that is capable of judging extraordinary evidence?
Please don’t bother answering anything else in this post until you have dealt with this question. Until we are done here, the rest of your arguments are irrelevant.
Paul, I know I am being hard on you here. For that I apologize. But I need you to understand the basic problem and deal with it. Let me try it this way: You quote Tobin, but you don’t have the methodology down that lets you determine if he is right or just blowing smoke. You quote J.P. Holding in an article from the Tektonics web site, but you have no objective structure that allows you to filter his statements to determine their truth value. You claim to be a “mythist,” but until you can determine what counts as evidence and what does not, you have no intellectual right to your claim or anything that you say about Jesus. It all falls into your above admitted “speculation.” In other words, it is all based on blind faith.
Regards,
Brady
As I said in my last post, if you can’t even show a methodology for judging ordinary evidence, how can you come up with one that is capable of judging extraordinary evidence?
Please don’t bother answering anything else in this post until you have dealt with this question. Until we are done here, the rest of your arguments are irrelevant.
Paul, I know I am being hard on you here. For that I apologize. But I need you to understand the basic problem and deal with it. Let me try it this way: You quote Tobin, but you don’t have the methodology down that lets you determine if he is right or just blowing smoke. You quote J.P. Holding in an article from the Tektonics web site, but you have no objective structure that allows you to filter his statements to determine their truth value. You claim to be a “mythist,” but until you can determine what counts as evidence and what does not, you have no intellectual right to your claim or anything that you say about Jesus. It all falls into your above admitted “speculation.” In other words, it is all based on blind faith.
Regards,
Brady
Jacobsen - Round 6
Lenardos apologies for being “hard on me”. Well, I’ve not been one to pull my punches either, so no need for apology… J And, as the reader will soon see, I clearly don’t pull no punches in this round…
Lenardos insists that apologists count manuscripts just like historians, "one at a time". As I've been trying to say, I doubt seriously any real historian would be so sloppy as to even discuss "manuscripts of the NT". The NT is NOT one book, it is many books by different authors that were initially distributed independently. A manuscript of, say, the Gospel of John, even if it is 100% complete, if it is only John, then it is only John. It ain't a "manuscript of the NT".
Also, I looked up the word "manuscript" at www.dictionary.com, which uses the American Heritage Dictionary:
1. A book, document, or other composition written by hand.
2. A typewritten or handwritten version of a book, an article, a document, or other work, especially the author's own copy, prepared and submitted for publication in print.
3. Handwriting
None of these definitions define how much of the work you need to have before it is called a "manuscript". Is one line? If I were to say that I was giving you a "manuscript of War and Peace" and I gave you two sentences, would you call that a manuscript? I think any idiot would say no, that is not a manuscript of War and Peace. One might say it is a manuscript fragment, but it ain't a manuscript. You could still argue that those one or two sentences could be useful in discerning the original words of the entire book, and it might have some use for that. But it still ain't a manuscript. The fact that Lenardos seems to have an irrational attachment to these manuscript counts is, to me, just one indication of how weak his argument is.
Once again, Lenardos insists that the modern research into the original texts have not revealed any significant discrepancies. Lenardos says he found the discrepancies Tobin mentioned in his article to be “laughable”. It is true that Tobin has a chart that lists numerous discrepancies, and I grant that most of them are very minor. In fact, I’d even have to agree that some of Tobin’s chart can seem “laughable”. But, Lenardos missed the point of the chart. The point of the chart was simply to indicate that there are more discrepancies than apologists’ claims of 99.5% accuracy. Even if the points are minor, there is still more than 0.5% discrepancies. Often, important church doctrine hinges on just a few key phrases, which I will get to. So even if some of Tobin’s entries look “laughable”—they may not be.
This will be the forth time I’ve mentioned the ending of Mark, to which Lenardos still remains silent. Note that what is now considered genuine has NO resurrection appearances. Now, if there were Resurrection appearances, would not have Mark mentioned them? Isn’t the very fact that somebody found it necessary to invent the ones in Mark good evidence that all the appearances in all the Gospels are likewise invented?
The other significant discrepancy Tobin mentions is what is known as the “Johanine comma”. The only scripture that explicitly teaches the doctrine of the Trinity, 1 John 5:7-8, isn’t genuine! How can Lenardos claim that there aren’t any significant discrepancies when the very doctrine of the Trinity is in dispute??? And, as I noted a paragraph above, sometimes important church doctrine hinges on very small amounts of scripture. Just a few words removed, and you got no Trinity. That is why Tobin’s chart of “laughable” discrepancies might not be so laughable.
In my last post, I speculated that perhaps the Gospels received many revisions in their early years, who knows? Lenardos says I’m using a logical fallacy, argumentum ad ignorantiam, an argument from ignorance. First thing to note is, I didn’t say it did happen, I didn’t say it didn’t. So, whether it did happen or not, I’m still right—I’m not making any positive claim one way or the other. The second thing to note is, IT IS UNKNOWN what happened in the very early years! There are zero manuscripts, until the first scrap of John around the year 125. So, for roughly the first fifty years, it is TOTALLY unknown what happened, period! I’m not making any positive claim on what did or did happen in the early years, I’m simply saying it is unknown because it IS unknown. You, on the other hand, are indeed making the positive claim that it did NOT happen—that there were indeed no significant revisions in the early years. You are making this positive claim based on no evidence as there are zero manuscript for the first fifty years. It is you that is making the positive claim, I’m not. It is you that have zero evidence for your positive claim, not me.
You say, “the evidence all points in one direction, but your conclusion in the other.” One, I made no conclusion; and two the evidence points in no direction because there is no evidence at all. So, you got that doubly wrong. Now, even if you could prove your contention that there were no significant changes between the date of the first scrap of John (year 125) until modern times, that would still be no evidence for what happened in the first fifty years. You might say, “if nothing changed for a thousand years after the first fifty, why might there have been changes in the first fifty?” And the answer is, we don’t know. You might try to say I’m again guilty of argumentum ad ignorantian, but WE ARE IGNORANT. You basically are claiming that if no major changes happened in a thousand years after the first fifty, we can likely interpolate backwards that no major changes happened in the first fifty. But to make this claim, you are making a positive assertion that the situation for the first fifty years was the same as the thousand years after. But, if there is no evidence of what the situation was for the first fifty years, then you have no basis to make this positive assertion or to interpolate backwards.
Here would be an analogy. Say you somehow know a car has traveled 1000 miles on a trip. And let’s say you somehow know that the last 950 miles of that trip has been spent all on a straight line down Interstate 10. But, you have no evidence for what happened in the first fifty miles. You might argue, “well, if it went 950 miles down I10, it stands to reason that the first fifty miles were down I10 also”. But, if you don’t know what the original purpose of the trip was or who started it, then the extrapolation to the first fifty miles also being on I10 could be completely erroneous. Now, what if someone said, "gee, we've got 24,633 witnesses that all say the last 950 miles of that trip were down I10, surely with that much evidence of what happened for the last 950, we can interpolate backwards for the first fifty." And to the person who would make this assertion, I'd say the same thing: it doesn't really matter how many witnesses you have for the last 950 miles, if you don't know what happened for the first fifty, then you don't know. Its as simple as that. Again, you may say this is argumentum ad ignorantiam, but it’s not. It’s simply acknowledgement that we are ignorant, and our being ignorant is not justification for extrapolation.
So, now, you’ve insisted on me answering what I’d want for merely ordinary evidence. Well, okay, let’s see. I’d like to see writings of people that were indifferent, rather than convinced believers. Like maybe some Roman historian who was either indifferent, or even on the side of the Pharisees to report that there was some guy named Jesus causing a ruckus. And I’d like this person to be able to be a direct reporter of the ruckus, not somebody reporting somebody else’s report a hundred years later. So, I’m wanting historical references that are contemporary to Jesus, (living at the same time as him and directly able to investigate the reports) that is not a follower of Jesus. Note that Josephus doesn't count: first, its likely a forgery; and two, he wasn't born until after Jesus' purported death so he wasn't an eyewitness. You might say I’m wanting too much. That there are many events for which we generally accept as true, but don’t have that much evidence. To which I’d say, “so what?” As I said in my last post, history is about people that “make waves” while they are alive—that get noticed and written about by friends and enemies while they are alive. People that were so insignificant that they didn’t get noticed while they were alive simply don’t qualify as “historical figures”.
Okay, you demanded that I answer that question before continuing further. Okay, fine. I answered. Now I demand that you answer questions that I’ve raised time and again before you answer further:
Lenardos apologies for being “hard on me”. Well, I’ve not been one to pull my punches either, so no need for apology… J And, as the reader will soon see, I clearly don’t pull no punches in this round…
Lenardos insists that apologists count manuscripts just like historians, "one at a time". As I've been trying to say, I doubt seriously any real historian would be so sloppy as to even discuss "manuscripts of the NT". The NT is NOT one book, it is many books by different authors that were initially distributed independently. A manuscript of, say, the Gospel of John, even if it is 100% complete, if it is only John, then it is only John. It ain't a "manuscript of the NT".
Also, I looked up the word "manuscript" at www.dictionary.com, which uses the American Heritage Dictionary:
1. A book, document, or other composition written by hand.
2. A typewritten or handwritten version of a book, an article, a document, or other work, especially the author's own copy, prepared and submitted for publication in print.
3. Handwriting
None of these definitions define how much of the work you need to have before it is called a "manuscript". Is one line? If I were to say that I was giving you a "manuscript of War and Peace" and I gave you two sentences, would you call that a manuscript? I think any idiot would say no, that is not a manuscript of War and Peace. One might say it is a manuscript fragment, but it ain't a manuscript. You could still argue that those one or two sentences could be useful in discerning the original words of the entire book, and it might have some use for that. But it still ain't a manuscript. The fact that Lenardos seems to have an irrational attachment to these manuscript counts is, to me, just one indication of how weak his argument is.
Once again, Lenardos insists that the modern research into the original texts have not revealed any significant discrepancies. Lenardos says he found the discrepancies Tobin mentioned in his article to be “laughable”. It is true that Tobin has a chart that lists numerous discrepancies, and I grant that most of them are very minor. In fact, I’d even have to agree that some of Tobin’s chart can seem “laughable”. But, Lenardos missed the point of the chart. The point of the chart was simply to indicate that there are more discrepancies than apologists’ claims of 99.5% accuracy. Even if the points are minor, there is still more than 0.5% discrepancies. Often, important church doctrine hinges on just a few key phrases, which I will get to. So even if some of Tobin’s entries look “laughable”—they may not be.
This will be the forth time I’ve mentioned the ending of Mark, to which Lenardos still remains silent. Note that what is now considered genuine has NO resurrection appearances. Now, if there were Resurrection appearances, would not have Mark mentioned them? Isn’t the very fact that somebody found it necessary to invent the ones in Mark good evidence that all the appearances in all the Gospels are likewise invented?
The other significant discrepancy Tobin mentions is what is known as the “Johanine comma”. The only scripture that explicitly teaches the doctrine of the Trinity, 1 John 5:7-8, isn’t genuine! How can Lenardos claim that there aren’t any significant discrepancies when the very doctrine of the Trinity is in dispute??? And, as I noted a paragraph above, sometimes important church doctrine hinges on very small amounts of scripture. Just a few words removed, and you got no Trinity. That is why Tobin’s chart of “laughable” discrepancies might not be so laughable.
In my last post, I speculated that perhaps the Gospels received many revisions in their early years, who knows? Lenardos says I’m using a logical fallacy, argumentum ad ignorantiam, an argument from ignorance. First thing to note is, I didn’t say it did happen, I didn’t say it didn’t. So, whether it did happen or not, I’m still right—I’m not making any positive claim one way or the other. The second thing to note is, IT IS UNKNOWN what happened in the very early years! There are zero manuscripts, until the first scrap of John around the year 125. So, for roughly the first fifty years, it is TOTALLY unknown what happened, period! I’m not making any positive claim on what did or did happen in the early years, I’m simply saying it is unknown because it IS unknown. You, on the other hand, are indeed making the positive claim that it did NOT happen—that there were indeed no significant revisions in the early years. You are making this positive claim based on no evidence as there are zero manuscript for the first fifty years. It is you that is making the positive claim, I’m not. It is you that have zero evidence for your positive claim, not me.
You say, “the evidence all points in one direction, but your conclusion in the other.” One, I made no conclusion; and two the evidence points in no direction because there is no evidence at all. So, you got that doubly wrong. Now, even if you could prove your contention that there were no significant changes between the date of the first scrap of John (year 125) until modern times, that would still be no evidence for what happened in the first fifty years. You might say, “if nothing changed for a thousand years after the first fifty, why might there have been changes in the first fifty?” And the answer is, we don’t know. You might try to say I’m again guilty of argumentum ad ignorantian, but WE ARE IGNORANT. You basically are claiming that if no major changes happened in a thousand years after the first fifty, we can likely interpolate backwards that no major changes happened in the first fifty. But to make this claim, you are making a positive assertion that the situation for the first fifty years was the same as the thousand years after. But, if there is no evidence of what the situation was for the first fifty years, then you have no basis to make this positive assertion or to interpolate backwards.
Here would be an analogy. Say you somehow know a car has traveled 1000 miles on a trip. And let’s say you somehow know that the last 950 miles of that trip has been spent all on a straight line down Interstate 10. But, you have no evidence for what happened in the first fifty miles. You might argue, “well, if it went 950 miles down I10, it stands to reason that the first fifty miles were down I10 also”. But, if you don’t know what the original purpose of the trip was or who started it, then the extrapolation to the first fifty miles also being on I10 could be completely erroneous. Now, what if someone said, "gee, we've got 24,633 witnesses that all say the last 950 miles of that trip were down I10, surely with that much evidence of what happened for the last 950, we can interpolate backwards for the first fifty." And to the person who would make this assertion, I'd say the same thing: it doesn't really matter how many witnesses you have for the last 950 miles, if you don't know what happened for the first fifty, then you don't know. Its as simple as that. Again, you may say this is argumentum ad ignorantiam, but it’s not. It’s simply acknowledgement that we are ignorant, and our being ignorant is not justification for extrapolation.
So, now, you’ve insisted on me answering what I’d want for merely ordinary evidence. Well, okay, let’s see. I’d like to see writings of people that were indifferent, rather than convinced believers. Like maybe some Roman historian who was either indifferent, or even on the side of the Pharisees to report that there was some guy named Jesus causing a ruckus. And I’d like this person to be able to be a direct reporter of the ruckus, not somebody reporting somebody else’s report a hundred years later. So, I’m wanting historical references that are contemporary to Jesus, (living at the same time as him and directly able to investigate the reports) that is not a follower of Jesus. Note that Josephus doesn't count: first, its likely a forgery; and two, he wasn't born until after Jesus' purported death so he wasn't an eyewitness. You might say I’m wanting too much. That there are many events for which we generally accept as true, but don’t have that much evidence. To which I’d say, “so what?” As I said in my last post, history is about people that “make waves” while they are alive—that get noticed and written about by friends and enemies while they are alive. People that were so insignificant that they didn’t get noticed while they were alive simply don’t qualify as “historical figures”.
Okay, you demanded that I answer that question before continuing further. Okay, fine. I answered. Now I demand that you answer questions that I’ve raised time and again before you answer further:
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Is not the ending of Mark being in dispute a significant issue? If you accept that the ending is fraudulent, then you have to admit that people did doctor the Gospels. And that the earliest Gospel really ends with no Resurrection appearances. And once you admit doctoring and forgeries happened, are you not left without any reason to assert any of it is true?
This one is not a repeat, but I’m adding to the list: Is not also the “Johanine comma” that shows that the Doctrine of the Trinity is not genuine also significant? If Christianity can’t even depend on the Doctrine of the Trinity to be genuine, how can anything else be depended on? Back from my old list: If I said I walked to the store, or I said I flapped my arms and flew to the store, would you not want more evidence for the latter? And if so, would you not be affirming that extraordinary events do indeed require extraordinary evidence? Since we both agree that there is good evidence that Constantine was indeed Emperor of Rome, would you bet your eternal soul on it? If the answer is no, but you would bet your soul that Jesus was resurrected, then would you not be admitting that in fact we really aren’t talking about historical evidence at all—and therefore your entire argument about historical evidence has been just a rouse and a farce? |
So, until you answer these questions, any other arguments you might present are moot.
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