Yesterday I talked about arguments Muslims and Christians sometimes make about their written texts – that the only way to explain the preservation of the “originals” is that it was a divine miracle, with the corollary argument that for that reason, these writings really do contain the truth.  It is a very, very bad argument, for reasons I explained. A number of religious traditions also boast of the unbelievable accuracy of the oral traditions of their religion.  In this case, the claim is usually not made in order to prove that the tradition must have a divine origin, but to show that what is said in sacred texts found in writing today is exactly what was said back *before* there were any written texts, that the religion hasn’t changed an iota over all these centuries.   I am always entirely skeptical of these claims.  Then again, historians are always skeptical of claims and ask for evidence.  If there’s good evidence, then there’s no reason to be skeptical on principle.  But if historians simply accepted what “everyone [...]

Five years ago I received this question.  I still hear it!   And I would still answer it the same way.  A question that makes a lot of sense in one way actually doesn't make a lot of sense looked at in another way.  I suppose a lot of our questions are like that....   Here is the question and response.   QUESTION:   The one thing that I do not understand about you is that you have stated you have lost your faith. That being said, how do you continue to work in your field? Have you ever wanted to redirect your academic career to study other subjects? RESPONSE:  I get this question a lot.  On one level I understand it: if I don’t believe in the Bible, why would I dedicate my life to studying it, researching about it, writing about it, and teaching about it?   From the perspective of someone who has strong feelings about the Bible – for example, as a believer who holds that the Bible is the word of God or as [...]

The following post is for anyone interested.  You interested?  Join the blog.  You get five posts a week, each and every week of the year, on all sorts of intriguing topics connected with the New Testament and Early Christianity.   QUESTION: What do you have to lose by having faith and believing that Christ was born supernaturally as a result of a virgin birth to Mary, that Christ performed miracles, that Christ died by crucifixion and came back to life from the dead, and that Christ went back into heaven in a supernatural ascension into heaven?  I don't see any downside.   RESPONSE: I get this kind of question on occasion.  Usually when someone asks it they tie it to “Pascal’s Wager.”  In case you’re not familiar with it, Blaise Pascal (1623-1662 CE), mathematician that he was, thought in terms of percentages and odds.  And he applied it in a famous way to the question of belief – in an age when lots of intellectuals in Europe, and people they influenced, were having doubts about [...]