(13 votes, average: 4.69 out of 5)
Loading...It is flat-out amazing to me how many New Testament scholars talk about the importance of eyewitness testimony to the life of Jesus without having read a single piece of scholarship on what experts know about eyewitness testimony. Some (well-known) scholars in recent years have written entire books on the topic, basing their views on an exceedingly paltry amount of research into the matter. Quite astounding, really. But they appear to have gone into their work confident that they know about how eyewitness testimony works, and didn’t read the masses of scholarship that shows they simply aren’t right about it.
Here’s how I begin to talk about eyewitness scholarship in my book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2016).
******************************
In the history of memory studies an important event occurred in 1902.[1] In Berlin, a well-known criminologist named von Liszt was delivering a lecture when an argument broke out. One student stood up and shouted that he wanted to show how the topic was related to Christian ethics. Another got up and yelled that he would not put up with that. The first one replied that he had been insulted. A fight ensued and a gun was drawn. Prof. Liszt tried to separate the two when the gun went off.
The rest of the students were aghast. But Prof. von Liszt informed them that
Get access to Dr. Ehrman's library of 4,000+ articles plus five new articles per week about the New Testament and early Christianity. It costs as little as $2.99/mth and every cent goes to charity!
Unlock 4,000+ Articles Like This!
In addition to having recently read your book, Jesus Before the Gospels, I have heard Neal de Grasse Tyson criticize how the legal profession relies on eyewitness testimony.
First, in a legal context, any evidence, including flawed eyewitness testimony helps determine the facts. Thus, I don’t agree with a proposition that eyewitness testimony shouldn’t be considered.
Second, you describe the El Al Boeing 707 where people claim to have remembered a film that didn’t exist. In this post and elsewhere in your book, you explain the phenomenon whereby people “fill in gaps” based on what they would have expected. Such as remembering Grandma at Thanksgiving dinner last year, because Grandma usually comes for Thanksgiving dinner.
But isn’t this the basis of Contextual Credibility? Scholars accept or reject eyewitness accounts of an event because of it’s likelihood to have occurred in the historical context. So, if both eyewitness testimony and Contextual Credibility both involve “what we would expect to have happened,” between the two, which is more credible?
I don’t read this post as an absolute rejection of eyewitness testimony. But remember that Bart is applying the credibility tests specifically to the gospels, which were written 40-70 years after the events they relate. At that point, it’s not just the testimony of the eyewitnesses (if any) that is in question, but of those who heard the eyewitnesses and passed it on to the evangelists (Q, for example).
Bart doesn’t care much for Hume’s Maxim, but I like it. It says that extraordinary claims (walking on water, raising the dead) require extraordinary evidence. For those claims in particular, eyewitness testimony is especially suspect.
Not relevant to the present topic, but Bart(*) might want to comment on
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/07/opinion/religion-nones.html
(*) and others.
Others may! Go for it!
I think this points up the importance of scholars being eclectic enough in their reading to include scholarship that has what they might at first believe to be only a tangential relationship to their field of study. The literature of any scholarly field is too voluminous these days to become a polymath as in days gone by, but your example points out the ease with which even seasoned scholars can be hoodwinked by their own ignorance.
An off-topic question for you, Bart. When I was raised in a fundamentalist church, we were taught that following the 10 Commandments was essential to living as a Christian. Now I know that Paul said that Christians are not bound by the Jewish law, of which the 10 Commandments are an important part. Question: When did the 10 Commandments become important in the Christian church?
Paul himself maintained they were to be followed — except the Sabbath command. So too today, most people keep the Nine Commandments. (!) Paul’s view of hte law is highly complex, and he may not be consistent in the way he discusses it. But the short versoin is that he thought hte law was from God and good and righteous. the problem was it told people how to behave, but didn’t provide them the power to do so. Eveyone is enslaved by the power of sin which forces them into disobedience. Only Christ’s death can break the power of sin. When it does, it frees a person so they can obey God. But for Paul, some of the laws are meant only for Jews (circumcision, kosher, sabbath, etc.) Laws we would think of as “moral”/”ethical” though he did think were to be observed by all followers of Jesus.
ODB [Our Daily Bread] about 6 months ago.
Had a short when the presenter said: IT is OK to sin when walking in the Spirit.
for the 1st two times, my dad’s sister [aunt] who still belongs to that cult. And we have a definition Made by https://news.yahoo.com/sarah-palin-defines-cult-twitter-223122267.html
I learned growing up that we also had to be absolute obedient or at best.
That short reminded me of a German preacher in Shanghai’s expat church spouting: It’s OK to sin if your job requires That!!
Not to mention that back in Jesus’ day, folks didn’t have eyeglasses. At any distance with bad eyesight, you can see some weird apparitions.
A guy I know who teaches Evidence in law school always shows videos of people who swear they saw x even though it was really y.
Good point. My mother-in-law swore she saw me walking down the street last week when in fact I wsa somewhere else….disabledupes{c957aed334615ad729a3ef5190aa755a}disabledupes
Dr. Ehrman,
Is Genesis 46:30 in the LXX a valid example of heōraka being used to indicate objectivity and ordinary sight?
I believe it uses: ἑώρακα; but yes, that word frequently refers just so something that is seen. You were asking about the aorist passive in particular ωφθη…
I believe it uses: ἑώρακα; but yes, that word frequently refers just so something that is seen. You were asking about the aorist passive in particular ωφθη…
Professor Ehrman,
I must confess it is always intimidating to ask someone like yourself, who is highly educated, to enlighten me on the mundane questions that come out of the mind of someone who doesn’t grasp the Bible’s history.
Where did all these “fundamentalist” or “literal” beliefs about scripture come to be that I was taught and one can see or read about on any given Sunday?
Were all these “church fathers” who were laying the foundation of Christianity also literalist?
Were there any early scholars who, like yourself, evolved from an Evangelical/literal understanding of the Bible to where you are today?
Thank you for this forum,
Rob
Yup, lots of hisotrical scholars today started out as literal-reading evangelicals. Most of those who agree with me on this kind of analysis, though, continue to identify and practice as Christians. They simply have a highly informed understanding of the NT. The fundamentalist beliefs you (and I) were reaised on emerged especially at the end of the 19th century, as conservative Xhns realized they had to double down on the truthfulness of the Bible in response to developments in science (especially evoution and the age of the earth) and biblical suties in Germany. I explain a lot of that in my most recent book Armageddon.
Dr. Ehrman,
Some critics have said that Paul’s vision of the risen Jesus probably also included things like a heavenly army and Jesus beside the Throne of God, and so forth. I don’t see any hint of that (especially NOT from his own writings), so are these additional elements just speculation?
Yup.
Professor Ehrman,
Thank you for taking the time to shed light on my question.
I am reading ‘Armageddon’ for a second time because it touches on many things I was raised to believe were the “gospel.”
I was stunned when you wrote about some using the Bible as a sort of “Christian Ouija board.”
That was so powerful and sadly true on how I was taught to look at the Bible.
From Jack Impe to Hal Lindsey, I was brainwashed by a taught method of trying to match current events to Bible verses to validate my belief.
I was shocked to learn there is a name for that, “proof-texting.”
I wondered if you could share a word or two helping me to understand a tiny facet of the “Church Fathers” you refer to in your books.
At what point did these Church Fathers morph into what I would call the Catholic church with all the trappings involved in Catholic ritual?
Would the Church Fathers all been considered Catholics?
I know you are very busy, but is there a solid book you could recommend that a 70-year-old grandfather could read to enlighten me on this subject further?
Thanks, Rob
It’s a complicated question, depending on what we mean by “catholic.” The surviving authors have all been considered “catholic” traditionally. The term catholic means “universal” and is a reference to the kind of Xty that became dominant throughout the middle ages (The “Roman” Catholic Church then is that traditional church as it evolved in and about Roman Christianity.” But doctrine and practice and ritual never became completely standardized, and in the early centuries was certainly not what it was in, say the 11th century. So many of htese earliest fathers are often considered for-runners of orthodox/catholic Christianity. The biggest shift to “orthodox” writers is usually put in the fourth and fifth centuries, when the church was becoming the dominant religion of the west and teh doctrines of God and Christ and salvation were all developed most significantly.