(6 votes, average: 4.83 out of 5)
Loading...Here’s a set of questions I get asked a lot, expressed here with particular clarity by someone on the blog a while back.
QUESTION:
What are presuppositions? Why do we all have them? And how do we make sure we have the right ones, or at least good ones. Having come out of Fundamentalist circles I heard so much about “presuppositions”, “worldviews”, “presuppositional apologetics” and so on. Seems the argument goes “Well, we all have presuppositions. No one is free of them. Therefore it is just as valid to come to historical and scientific issues with the presupposition that the claims are all true. Just as unbelievers come to the evidence with the presuppositions that there are no such things as miracles.”
And this is my…
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I want to have a Near Death Experience so I can ask my deceased Uncle Bob where he buried all those gold coins he was so fond of showing off when he was alive.
Of all the millions of reported NDEs, why is gold never found or unsolved murders (Who killed you Joe?) ever solved?
Ha! Yeah me too. But the problem is that invariably the experience involves moving toward the light and seeing someone (for Xns it’s Jesus) who offers them a chance to return to life; they accept, without getting to see the long lost uncle or anyone else.
Good question, “I mean what can we say – historically – about the traditions of Jesus’ resurrection?”
So, Dr. Preston Kavanaugh has a PhD in New Testament studies and he compares the traditions of Jesus’ resurrection to the Substitute King ritual here: http://biblicalscholar.org/excerpts/jesus-substitute-king.html
I’d like to know what you think about him Dr. Ehrman. I just found him today.
Are there any more scholars that examine the Jesus narrative as, just ‘rebel leader who survives via clever means’? Josephus’ books are loaded with stories about escapes via clever means.
Funded scholarship is so extremely valuable but often siloes by nature, and it may take a very wide overview to trace syncretic travelers.
I’m afraid I don’t know who he is or what he says. There are certainly things we can say about the resurrectino has historians — such as, some of the followers of Jesus claimed to see him alive after his crucifixion.
What a wonderful article.
Before engaging in arguments about the ‘historicity’ of Jesus’s resurrection, you should read it.
It’s going to help you save a lot of time.
“It is not appropriate for a historian to presuppose a perspective or world view that is not generally held by other historians or readers”, Dr. Ehrman, are you going to explain the value of minority viewpoints in scholarship in this context?
Considering that ANE mystery traditions like Gnosticism emphasized female knowledge, I wonder if there’s an unconscious gender bias in scholarship.
Female-gendered perspectives tend to piece together relationships in a very wide way. Yet there aren’t any cross-disciplinary positions in scholarship that I’m aware of that combine more than two of the three tradition sources evident in the Bible—that of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Levant.
I think you touch a weak point in his reasoning : in science ‘truth’ cannot be decided by consensus or voting. There must be a more fundamental criterium to exclude ‘non-truth’
“Female-gendered perspectives tend to piece together relationships in a very wide way.” I’d like to push back against the presupposition embedded in this comment, that there is such a thing as a “female-gendered perspective” in historiography.
Speaking as an ancient historian who is also female, I see no reason to think that there is any such thing as “female knowledge” or “female gendered perspectives.” Indeed, I find the whole idea that women have a different kind of “knowledge” from men to be pernicious. Historiography, the practice and study of history as Dr. Ehrman has described it here, is not gendered, and people of either sex can be historians. Whether they are competent or incompetent historians has nothing to do with which sex they happen to be.
Off topic: In Matthew 16:28 Jesus is quoted as saying “there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” This is one of the several cases where the gospels present a Jesus who does NOT know everything.
I just learned two new (new to me) things that apologists say about this mistake. One is that he was talking about John, who would live to see a Jesus vision and then write the Revelation. No, not the same guy.
The other is that he was prophesying that some would become immortal, at least until his return. The story is that this is proven by the tales of people like the Count St. Germaine, who was thought to live to more than 400, and may still be alive! I just had to laugh. Immortality seems like an obvious interpretation, but I never thought of it on my own.
Yup, one has to laugh some time. Even if he meant John, John is not “some” And becoming immortal, really? IN any event that’s not whta the Kingdom of God is.
Since about 95% of our thought processes are unconscious, our worldviews and presuppositions develop over time without our conscious awareness. These influences shape our understanding of history, the Bible, science, politics, and other subjects or areas. Therefore, regarding the interpretation of the Bible, no interpretation of a scriptural passage or book is objectively, universally, or timelessly true. The Bible doesn’t have a stable meaning or an objective interpretation. When we read the Bible, we do so through the lens of our own background, culture, faith, traditions, and reading community.
To ensure we have ‘good’ presuppositions, it’s important to critically examine our beliefs, seek diverse perspectives, and remain open to questioning our assumptions. This way, we can engage with evidence more thoughtfully rather than simply affirming what we already believe. The Bible can be understood in various ways, depending on individual perspectives, cultural contexts, and theological frameworks.
I find it helpful not to ask what the Bible means or if the miracle stories actually happened, but what it means for me, for someone else, and for my community. As some denominations recommend, “all of our interpretations should be in accord with the rule of love that commands love of God and neighbor.
“This means that the historian cannot establish that the angel Moroni really made revelations to Joseph Smith, as in the Mormon tradition. Such views presuppose that there are such things as angels, that Moroni is one of them, and that Joseph Smith was particularly chosen to receive a revelation from on high. These are theological beliefs, not based on historical evidence. Maybe there is an angel Moroni and maybe he did reveal secret truths to Joseph Smith, but there is no way for historians to establish any of that: to do so would require accepting certain theological views that are not held by the majority of other historians – for example Roman Catholics, Reformed Jews, Buddhists, and non-religious hard-core atheists. Historical evidence has to be open to examination by everyone of every religious belief.”
Surely we can consider whether Moroni revealed something to Joseph Smith based on the evidence rather than our religious and theological beliefs. For example, the fact that parts of the supposed translated work are essentially just KJV English plus a few extra ungrammatical “ye”s makes more sense on the explanation that Joseph Smith was a con artist rather than prophet.
Reading this excerpt, I recall thinking when ii originally read it that it was an excellent bit of writing about presuppositions and assumptions. Thank you for reposting.
Sorry, again, if off topic but I’m still struggling with the baptism of Jesus (from my comments in “How Strikingly Few Early Churches Were There? How Amazingly Many Christian Letters?”). I think John, in prison, tells his people to keep baptizing and I think Luke makes a case that one of them baptized Jesus. It seems that Luke and Matthew don’t like Q having John say to everybody coming to him “you brood of vipers…” because then he’d be saying that to Jesus. For Luke that’s not a problem if John didn’t baptize Jesus. Matthew solves this problem by changing `everybody’ to just the `Pharisees and Sadducees’ but Matthew’s change isn’t historical since Sadducees didn’t accept apocalypticism and therefore wouldn’t seek John’s baptism. It seems Matthew decided to use Mark instead of Q for the baptism story. Do you think Q or Luke has John the Baptist in prison when Jesus is baptized and what do you think of this possibility? Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
Luke definitely doesn’t, in my reading. 3:21 — Jesus is baptized when “all the people” (a reference back to vv. 7, 10, 15, 18 — same Greek word in 15, 18 and 21). vv. 19-20 are anticipatory of a later event. We don’t know if Q narrated a baptism. I don’t know of any indication in these accounts that John told his followers to keep baptizing while he was imprisoned.
Maybe it’s clearer in the Greek than in English translations. We do know that the followers of Jesus continued to baptize people after the death of Jesus (see ACTS). To me it seems reasonable that John’s followers would do the same; since John felt the apocalypse was imminent, he’d want his people to continue preparing the public for it even while he was in prison. It also seems reasonable that vv.21 could say that Jesus was baptized at a different time than “all the people” – (in English it seems that vv.21 could be read either way but maybe not in the Greek). I find it odd that Matthew 4:12 follows Mark 1:14 in having Jesus go to Galilee after John’s put in prison whereas Luke 4:14 omits it. Luke’s omission of it makes sense if Luke thought that John was already in prison in 3:20.
I agree that Dr. Ehrman’s explanation of how Historians rate the likeliness of whether reports events actually happened is quite logical, but there is an class of more events with religious associations that he doesn’t address, possibly because they occurred in modern, sometimes very recent times, not 2,000+ years ago. These are “hard to believe” events that are attested-to by multiple individuals, in some instances by hundreds or thousands. Three examples:
1. Sightings of the the Virgin Mary
2. Thousands of individuals dying or having their heart stop, their spirit/mind/soul left their body and rose, they saw their body, they met deceased relatives who reassured them that all was well, they felt happy, they saw images of their past lives, then a bright light appeared and told them they had to return.
3. Thousands report hearing children aged 2 to 6 report having lived previously elsewhere and dying. Thereafter all memory of the the earlier existence disappears. In some cases the child provides enough information (e.g., their previous name, location of death during a war) that all information can be verified.
The Division of Perceptual Studies at the UVA Medical School has extensive data. (Google: UVA DOPS)
Bill Steigelmann
Yes, I deal with the first of these in How Jesus BEcame God and the other two in Heaven and Hell.
This post on presuppositions is fabulous and the story about Oral Roberts was very interesting. In fact, the paragraph in this blog on Oral Roberts made me do some web browsing on so-called faith healers to see why people like Bart’s grandmother would believe in them. What I actually found was horrific: when more scientifically minded people follow up on these alleged healings, they find nothing but heartache and disaster. People literally die because of these so-called faith healers. Lots of videos show this but the one below is representative. This video exposes the horrific damage these people do, and I recommend everybody on this blog have a look at it. It’s unbelievable that people can get away with this stuff. It’s a tough video to watch so I suggest only watching it if you have a strong constitution. Bart, I know you’re busy and probably don’t have time to watch such a long video but if you can spend a few moments quickly scanning through it, I’d be interested if you think the alleged miracles of Jesus might be similar to these alleged healings. Anyway, below is the video link for the brave:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJOxn-LoMMs
We all should stop confusing ‘on the third day’ with three days later.