Dr. Ehrman’s book, “Jesus Before The Gospels” has really gotten me interested in the epistemology of history: what can we really know about the past, and how do we know that we know it? The problems of memory suggest it is extremely problematic to recreate the past. There’s more problems than memory.
Consider attempts to recreate the historical Jesus and the historical context of the genesis of Christianity: the data we have is very limited, and what we do have is problematic (e.g. the Gospels were written decades after the alleged events, by anonymous Greek speakers in another land). I know that historians, like Dr. Ehrman, work to determine what is most probable – but reality doesn’t always conform to the most probable. Further, there are many credible historians examining the same data a Dr. Ehrman and everyone comes up with a somewhat different theory. These suggest to me that it is a futile exercise: we really can’t know. There are aspects of the past that are simply lost to us.
I participate on William Lane Craig’s “reasonable faith” forum, engaging with Christians. One criticism I’ve often seen of both Ehrman and some of his readers is that they seem to put too much confidence in Dr. Ehrman’s theories about Jesus. What I tell them I have learned from reading Ehrman (and some others, like E.P. Sanders, Dale Allison, and Dominic Crossan) is NOT that some specific theory is true, but rather – I’ve learned that there are multiple ways that the data can be coherently interpreted, and it is therefore not possible to have a justified belief (in the epistemological sense) in any specific one.
Just curious what others think about this. I would particularly be interested in Dr. Ehrman’s thoughts, if he happens to read this.
I found your notes to be true for me about determining what is possibly true or not in the past. Growing up and still living in the South – I think it is easier for most people to just believe what they have been told. Thinking and reasoning is difficult and scary…. But I’m on the try and figure it out path. I also looked at William Lane Craig’s website. Not so sure about that guy – Southern Baptists scare me a bit with their strict adherence to the ‘right’ doctrine. We currently live in the Billy Graham corridor of America and the SB here are a little overwhelming…
Apologist Michael Licona refers to the “spectrum of historical certainty.” Michael R Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus 120 (InterVarsity Press 2010). Historians use different terms to indicate a range between utterly certain and certainly false. Id. at 120-22. Prof. Ehrman has a similar standard for describing degrees of probability. Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God 145 (HarperCollins 2014).
For my money, we can be reasonably certain that Jesus existed, he had followers, he was crucified and his followers started Christianity. Beyond that, seems to me that we get into the uncertain side of the spectrum fairly quickly.
Just for fun, I have to chime in. I recently read about an idea that some minimalists have about the middle east, specifically Mesopotamia, the Levant, and the Egypt.
There is the idea that most of what we know about the region is simply their fiction. They had a great fictional narrative and ti got written down as history. So what about the Mesha Stele that mentions the House of David and corroborates part of the book of Kings? Both are a part of the area’s great narrative fiction that are written down!
The Babylonian King mentioned on actual king lists as well as in the Great Flood? Fiction! The Egyptian Moses? Fiction! The ISraelite Moses? Fiction!
Not sure how or when they determined that anything at all that was written was accurate, but any statue or Stele relating events… fiction! LOL.
fred wrote
Dr. Ehrman’s book, “Jesus Before The Gospels” has really gotten me interested in the epistemology of history: what can we really know about the past, and how do we know that we know it? The problems of memory suggest it is extremely problematic to recreate the past. There’s more problems than memory.
Lawyerskeptic wrote
For my money, we can be reasonably certain that Jesus existed, he had followers, he was crucified and his followers started Christianity. Beyond that, seems to me that we get into the uncertain side of the spectrum fairly quickly.
Yes I think this gets to the heart of the issue. The question of Jesus’ historicity is a subset of the meta-question, how can we know anything at all about ancient history?
I don’t have time now dangit but I want to get further into this issue. One thing I will say is my chief objection to Jesus mythicism is not just their arguments but the fact that their arguments are either, based on a lack of understanding of how the study of history actually works, or, rest on questionable assumptions about how we can know what we can know. In the end it’s not just a historical problem (it is that) but also a philosophical problem.
Understanding what really happened in history can be difficult. The further back we go the more difficult it is to come to conclusions .
For example, an event that happened 15 years ago is usually better attested than a event that happened 150 years or 1500 years ago. Take for example the events of September 11th 2001. We have video, audio , eyewitness testimony( some of them still alive and we know their names) that can be cross examined , physical evidence and thousands of documents that pertain to the event. We have a pretty good idea what happened that day in New York , Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Something that happened 150 years ago is more difficult to determine what the facts are. There is no video or audio, no living eyewitnesses that we can cross examine. We may have some photographs, written documents, written eyewitness testimony and physical evidence . How much of this evidence we have will determine our confidence in what had happened. The probability will no be as high as the September 11th event but that is just the way it is.
Now something that happened 2000 years ago like the resurrection of Jesus is much more difficult to determine what happened. We do not have video, audio, photographs or eyewitness testimony. We have very few documents written around that time and hardly any physical evidence at all.
On top of all of this we all look at the evidence through our personal biases and presuppositions that can and will affect the way we view evidence and the interpretation of it.
I am not a professional historian. My knowledge of what probably happened in the past for certain events is based on what the majority of scholars with degrees in the related field think what had happened based on their investigation. These scholars have different biases and presuppositions like the rest of us but they know far more about a particular subject than we will ever know. When the majority of these scholars agree on something it is probably right with the possibility of revision in the future based on new evidence.
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