Historical reliability of the 4 gospels

[patg]

buffalo:

Here you go:

Prophecies of the Old Testament Fulfilled in Jesus Christ

Ok, which one of these meets the criteria of speaking about Jesus and not speaking to the current group about the current situation? I haven’t found one yet.

The use of midrash - mining the old testament to find verses one can use to find meaning in a later, unrelated situation is just a fact of Jewish authorship. I’m not saying its wrong, and understanding it enhances our understanding of who they thought Jesus was - it does not diminish it, as many seem to think.

 

[patg]

buffalo:

Do you have an example of a holy man raising a man from the dead?

No, but I have read examples of every other miracle - they weren’t all that original.

Using this one from John is, of course, problematic. There can hardly be a more significant deed, and yet it is not mentioned anywhere in all the other writings by all the others who sought to describe his power. It also occurs in the gospel which is radically different from the others, probably written long after the others, and which presents a Jesus radically different from the others. While it is doubtful it is an historical event, it is definitely a powerful statement. And what happened to poor Lazarus? It would be pretty depressing to him and his relatives to have to die all over again…

 

[patg]

SFH:

The fallacy with this argument is that you are assuming what was going on in the mind of the prophet Isaiah–something neither you nor I know.

We do, however, know what he said and we know it applied to his current situation.

Unless you’ve talked to Isaiah recently, you really have no basis to say he wasn’t refering to Jesus Christ directly (i.e., this argument is just another example of the historical-critical method’s scientific dogmatism, which really isn’t very scientific at all).

This argument is just another example of not understanding the Jewish midrash writing styles so common at the time of Jesus.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

SFH:

The fallacy with this argument is that you are assuming what was going on in the mind of the prophet Isaiah–something neither you nor I know. Unless you’ve talked to Isaiah recently, you really have no basis to say he wasn’t refering to Jesus Christ directly (i.e., this argument is just another example of the historical-critical method’s scientific dogmatism, which really isn’t very scientific at all).

It’s because we have no access to the prophet’s mind, that we cannot take for granted that he meant to refer to Our Lord.​

And there is no evidence whatever that he intended to. OTOH, the oracle, with its mention of beings such as curds and honey, and Assyrians - there was a shortage of Assyrians in first-century Palestine , but not in the 8th and 7th century Near East, and certainly not in the diplomacy of the kingdom of Judah - does not fit an NT setting too well.

We have to take the text as it stands, in its context, without our own religious views stopping us seeing what it it is about.

When there is no reason in the text to refer it to Our Lord, & ample reason from history - including the history of ideas - to refer it to a setting in Judah in the 7th or 8th century: why refer it to Our Lord primarily ? The other suggestion makes Isaiah hardly different from Mystic Meg, talking to his contemporaries in terms they could not hope to understand. This is not the way of God with His people - there is no analogy for it in the Bible. It does not follow that because we don’t know about Assyrian kings and divine assemblies, holy hills and Sheol, & think Isaiah 14 was referring to the devil, that Isaiah 14 was indeed referring to the devil. People are addressed in their social context - not in that of readers 2500 years later.

He talks to them in terms they can understand - that’s why attempts to see prophecies of the USA in the Bible are doomed to failure, or descriptions of the Papacy: because neither of these things would have had any meaning to people who had never heard of either. ##

The only sure objective sense of the text that we can obtain is the one revealed through the Holy Spirit.

What is to stop the HCM being a gift of the Holy Spirit ?​

Since God was the author of the Sacred Text, that interpretation of the Sacred Text given by the Holy Spirit in a different part of the Bible (e.g., New Testament) is the only way we can “get into the mind” of the author–in this case God. Christ and the Holy Spirit have interpreted certain texts of the Old Testament and confirmed that they were direct references to Christ.

But they do not deny other fulfilments - BTW, this fails to reckon with the re-application of OT texts in the NT​

So yes, certain parts of the Old Testament make direct reference to Jesus Christ and are fulfilled in Him.

I can’t agree with this either, because we do not need the Holy Spirit to learn Hebrew, Assyrian history, the history of religious ideas in the Ancient Near East, or a dozen other things relevant to understand the OT text that can be learned by purely human means.​

Or do we ? In the same way as we need the Holy Spirit for anything else, most certainly we do - but not in any sense which presupposes these other means are useless. They aren’t - they are indispensable: just like the HCM itself.

If the oracle in Isaiah 7 is fulfilled in Christ, this is beyond the meaning of the text in Isaiah as it stands in its historical context. I have no difficulty in acknowledging the idea - but some people seem to be very shy of thinking that this OT passage could have had a more immediate fulfilment - and that is what I find puzzling. ##

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

SFH:

That is false and unbiblical. In the Pentateuch (i.e. first five books of the Old Testament), Moses instructs the people that they will be able to distinguish true prophets from false prophets because the true prophets will say something will come to pass and it will come to pass.

This assumes a Mosaic date for Deuteronomy 18 - and, makes difficulties for the genuineness of both Jeremiah’s & Ezekiel’s prophetic callings.​

Ezekiel 26 is a prophecy withdrawn in chapter 29

Ezekiel 32 contains an oracle against Egypt which was not fulfilled.

It because of these things that the critics have their ideas - it’s fine to insist on prophecy and on its fulfilment as a sign of a genuine prophetic mission: but when genuine prophets predict future happenings which don’t happen, there is problem.

So:

• Perhaps prophecy in the Bible is not predictive
• Perhaps the problem passages are interpolations
• Perhaps prophecy is not quite so straighforwardly predictive as one might think

Those who use the HCM may be mistaken - but at least they are not ignoring problems: they are raising problems which are implicit in the texts as understood traditionally, and as the texts stand; and seeking for adequate solutions to those problems. ##

Not only did prophets predict future events, but they were expected to come true. For example, King Achab and King Josaphat sought Micheas prophecy on the success of their pending battle. Micheas said the battle would result in defeat and the fulfillment of his prophecy revealed that he was a man of God.

It was not unusual for rulers to ask prophets about their prospects of victory - Zedekiah, & Micaiah, fit into a recognisable setting.​

 

[SFH]

patg:

Ok, ok… Maybe I should have been clearer here - they did not predict things that would happen far in the furture to other people - they predicted what would happen in the future which would affect the current group in their current situation.

That is still incorrect. For example, Jacob prophesied to his twelve sons about what would happen many centuries in the future. Similarly, Joseph prophesied that the Israelites would leave Egypt some 400 years later and take his bones with them. And many of the prophets prophesied about Our Blessed Lord and what He would say and do. Many of these prophecies related to events far in the future.

 

[SFH]

## This assumes a Mosaic date for Deuteronomy 18 - and, makes difficulties for the genuineness of both Jeremiah’s & Ezekiel’s prophetic callings.

Ezekiel 26 is a prophecy withdrawn in chapter 29

Ezekiel 32 contains an oracle against Egypt which was not fulfilled.

It because of these things that the critics have their ideas - it’s fine to insist on prophecy and on its fulfilment as a sign of a genuine prophetic mission: but when genuine prophets predict future happenings which don’t happen, there is problem.

So:

• Perhaps prophecy in the Bible is not predictive
• Perhaps the problem passages are interpolations
• Perhaps prophecy is not quite so straighforwardly predictive as one might think

Those who use the HCM may be mistaken - but at least they are not ignoring problems: they are raising problems which are implicit in the texts as understood traditionally, and as the texts stand; and seeking for adequate solutions to those problems. ##

It was not unusual for rulers to ask prophets about their prospects of victory - Zedekiah, & Micaiah, fit into a recognisable setting.​

Assuming that these prophecies were authored years later to describe current situations and given the name of a historical personage to lend them credibility–an unwarranted assumption I might add–these particular passages still demonstrate that the Jewish people considered the prophets as men and women who could predict the future and not just social justice agitators.

If you recall, the comment I was responding to was patg’s claim that the prophets did not predict future events. Regardless of your view on the authorship of the passages cited, they still demonstrate the Jewish mentality in the pre- and post-Exilic period, which did indeed consider prediction of future events as an element of the prophetic calling.

 

[SFH]

Gottle of Geer:

If the oracle in Isaiah 7 is fulfilled in Christ, this is beyond the meaning of the text in Isaiah as it stands in its historical context.

Again, you are speculating as to what the prophet meant. Keep in mind that Scripture has two authors–God and man. Without going into the different theories of how man cooperates with God to write the Sacred Text, it suffices to say that what the human author wrote could have a direct reference to a future event and what the divine author wrote could have a direct reference to a future event or they could both refer to the same event (e.g., as the evangelist writes, “this Isaiah wrote when he saw his glory,” referring to the prophet’s visions of Christ).

Could Isaiah, then, the human author, have meant his prophecy to refer directly to Achaz’s son, the great reformer of monotheistic Judaism? Absolutely. But do we know for certain who he, the human author, meant? Not really, we can only speculate because he’s not around for us to question. We do, however, know who God, the divine author, meant because He got back to us in a subsequent “letter from Heaven” and confirmed that He meant the passage to refer to the Blessed Virgin and Jesus Christ.

As an aside, I think what many of you are struggling with is the idea of a duality of truths, an idea advanced by pseudo-Averroes and pseudo-Avicenna and refuted by St. Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastics. The problem with the HCM argument advanced in this discussion–that there is a historical truth about the Gospel narratives and a different theological truth about the same narratives (i.e., historically speaking, the Magi never came, but theologically speaking, the Magi came) is that it relativizes the truth. The Magi either came or they didn’t come, Christ either rose from the dead or He didn’t rise from the dead.

Now a historical truth can have a theological meaning, but a historical truth cannot reach a different conclusion than a theological truth. In other words, faith and reason lead to the same truth; they do not contradict each other.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

SFH:

Assuming that these prophecies were authored years later to describe current situations and given the name of a historical personage to lend them credibility–an unwarranted assumption I might add–these particular passages still demonstrate that the Jewish people considered the prophets as men and women who could predict the future and not just social justice agitators.

I don’t recall suggesting they were that - FWIW​

If you recall, the comment I was responding to was patg’s claim that the prophets did not predict future events. Regardless of your view on the authorship of the passages cited, they still demonstrate the Jewish mentality in the pre- and post-Exilic period, which did indeed consider prediction of future events as an element of the prophetic calling.

But was this view right ?​

The trouble with it is, that it does nothing to explain what, by the argument adopted, makes Ezekiel an impostor - a false prophet. By the criteria in Deuteronomy 18, Ezekiel is not a true prophet at all.

Your argument depends on the use of Deuteronomy 18 as a litmus test of prophecy - by that test, Ezekiel fails miserably. The test was not mine: for several reasons, some of which have been indicated. The traditional argument - not the critical one - makes Ezekiel a false prophet.

Not only does Ezekiel fail this test - so does our Lord. Do you want to think of Him as an impostor ? I don’t. Yet he made prophecies (if they are to be so regarded, as some insist) which have not been fulfilled. His words in Matthew 24.34 are meaningless if not addressed to his own contemporaries - and they were not fulfilled. This is a stubborn fact, which one has no business to ignore. Therefore, it calls for explanation - as do other passages which do not do justice to the words of the texts.

This is my complaint against the notion of long-range interpretation: it ignores the detail of the texts, for the sake of an interpretation which owes much more to piety than to looking at what the words actually mean. It is not as though the Church, or Christian tradition, or anything outside the texts, had said that it was illegitimate to resort to textual criticism, or to suggest that that text had been interpolated, or that every passage ascribed to hagiographer X was his, and could not be hagiographer Y’s. In fact, when it suits them, the anti-critics are quite happy to resort to these things: as long as the result is what they want it to be. And that is not honest

The trouble with the long-range prophecy idea is that there is no basis for it apart from traditional assumptions: when there was no reason to think it was invalid, it was useful - now that there is no reason to think it is valid except for custom, the texts can only be distorted if they are forced into an interpretation which does not fit them: which requires ignoring details that don’t fit them. This would be like saying that, apart from the minor detail that Edinburgh in Alabama is not in Scotland, those who write about the place in Alabama really mean to refer to the Scottish city. But this would mean ignoring all the details that are true of the place in Alabama, but not of the Scottish city. The logic is the same - I have already indicated how the traditional interpretation and the newer might be reconciled: my suggestion does not involve squeezing texts into a preconceived interpretation. ##

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

SFH:

Again, you are speculating as to what the prophet meant. Keep in mind that Scripture has two authors–God and man. Without going into the different theories of how man cooperates with God to write the Sacred Text, it suffices to say that what the human author wrote could have a direct reference to a future event and what the divine author wrote could have a direct reference to a future event or they could both refer to the same event (e.g., as the evangelist writes, “this Isaiah wrote when he saw his glory,” referring to the prophet’s visions of Christ).

Could Isaiah, then, the human author, have meant his prophecy to refer directly to Achaz’s son, the great reformer of monotheistic Judaism? Absolutely. But do we know for certain who he, the human author, meant? Not really, we can only speculate because he’s not around for us to question.

Fair enough - but the HCM idea does at least deal with the detail of the text.​

St.Paul is not around either - nor does Our Lord ratify every detail of Catholic teaching. The obscurity is not for the critic alone - it is a shared problem: we all have to rely on faith, human or Divine. If the “two truth theory” is objectionable, so is fideism. Faith is not our only means of understanding the texts - nor does it abolish the need to understand the text in its setting. Does one have to be St. Paul to understand Galatians ? Then neither does one have to be Isaiah, or to speak with him, to understand his texts. ##

We do, however, know who God, the divine author, meant because He got back to us in a subsequent “letter from Heaven” and confirmed that He meant the passage to refer to the Blessed Virgin and Jesus Christ.

That tells us what the passage was used to mean in the NT contexts in which it appears - not what it meant in Isaiah 7.​

As already said, the Bible is re-read by different authors and is applied to their own times: as in Acts 15, or in 1 Corinthians 1: sometimes with startling alterations of the sense they have in the books from which they are quoted. ##

As an aside, I think what many of you are struggling with is the idea of a duality of truths, an idea advanced by pseudo-Averroes and pseudo-Avicenna and refuted by St. Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastics.

Not me - though sometimes I wonder if the Church does not believe this ​

What I do believe, is that the message in the Bible is incarnate in the culture in which it appears, so that it speaks to those then living, rather than being more or less incomprehensible to them. And I believe that the Incarnation is the supreme Exemplar of this pattern. I try to draw this idea from how the texts function - and not to start with it as an unquestioned axiom. ##

The problem with the HCM argument advanced in this discussion–that there is a historical truth about the Gospel narratives and a different theological truth about the same narratives (i.e., historically speaking, the Magi never came, but theologically speaking, the Magi came) is that it relativizes the truth. The Magi either came or they didn’t come, Christ either rose from the dead or He didn’t rise from the dead.

This is not quite what is being said:​

The difference is between saying the Magoi came

and

saying the account of their coming is not true as historical fact, and is instead a narrative composed to bring home a theological truth.

Specifically, that the narrative is prompted by the application of such a passage as Psalm 72 to Christ, to emphasise the truth of His universal kingship - which kingship, is as factual as anyone could wish. ##

Now a historical truth can have a theological meaning,

Full agreement there​

but a historical truth cannot reach a different conclusion than a theological truth. In other words, faith and reason lead to the same truth; they do not contradict each other.

I’m not quite sure of your meaning in the first sentence. As to the second, I distrust judgements which are *a priori *- simply because the facts are not always as tidy as one might think or want. The question is - what is that truth ? In science, it is not always what “the Church” might think - and it is not always what the investigators might think. It is - whatever it is. And this is not always easy to discover: which is why I’m not easy with the idea. Is all truth a reflection of God the First Truth ? Yes - just how, is where the complications begin.​

 

[patg]

SFH:

That is still incorrect. For example, Jacob prophesied to his twelve sons about what would happen many centuries in the future. Similarly, Joseph prophesied that the Israelites would leave Egypt some 400 years later and take his bones with them.

I don’t know the details of those, but I’ll take a look.

And many of the prophets prophesied about Our Blessed Lord and what He would say and do.

I would like for someone to reference a few of those because I’ve never read one. Even some prophecies attributed to Jesus himself did not come about and even when the Jews talked about a messiah, that person was nothing at all like Jesus.

 

[Writer]

patg:

There are as many opinions about the historicity of the gospels as there are people who care about the subject.

Basically, the gospels are NOT history as we know it - they are a reflection of the writers’ belief in the divinity of Jesus. They are full of historical errors and inconsistencies but they are telling the “truth” in a way that is not concerned with history.

The church acknowledges this in several papal documents and actually requires belief in very little of the “history” presented in the gospels.

I personaly find Strobel a very poor presenter of balanced scholarship and prefer a catholic writer, scholar, and teacher such as Margaret Ralph.

I would point out, however, that it is those inconsistencies which strengthen the overall Gospels as true reflections, since different witnesses always recall details of their accounts slightly differently. If they were all alike, we might have more reason to suspect a problem–a human as opposed to divine origin.

 

[Writer]

patg:

I don’t know the details of those, but I’ll take a look.

I would like for someone to reference a few of those because I’ve never read one. Even some prophecies attributed to Jesus himself did not come about and even when the Jews talked about a messiah, that person was nothing at all like Jesus.

A good book about the OT prophecies is *Salvation is From the Jews by Schoeman. *It is a powerful read.

 

[The_Augustinian]

If you believe that Jesus Christ was a real historical figure, who was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and buried, and finally resurrected from the dead…if you believe that all these things really happened, then I don’t find speculation to be too much of a problem.

On the other hand, a tendency to divorce historicity from the Gospel accounts is dangerous, because it divorces God from history. Obviously we can’t examine Jesus before His ressurection and find some part of Him that showed His Godhood, much like we can’t examine a consecrated host under a microscope and find the Body and Blood of Christ. However, we believe these things because of what we are told.

History is based on witnesses. It is not a science like astronomy or physics. So, we can argue until Kingdom Come about the historical truth of the Gospels. I myself have heard of some who doubt the historical reality of much of written history, claiming that it was all a perpetrated hoax by a select few taking advantage of an illiterate populace. The historical fact that Caesar crossed the Rubicon is based upon the accounts that we heard of it happening, since we were not there at the riverbank to see for ourselves.

Thus, history is based on a kind of human faith in human witnesses. Religion is based on faith in a divine witnesses. The Christian faith is an inherently historical religion. If Siddartha Gotama never existed, it would not faze Buddhists, because to them there are many Buddhas, and the Buddha himself said to his first disciples to “look not to me, but to my teachings.” But, if Jesus Christ never existed, or that He never was born of the Virgin Mary, or was crucified, or was raised from the dead, then our faith is in vain, and we are to be most pitied. This is why it it necessary to believe in the Gospels as history: because if they weren’t records of what really happened, if even one point of the creed is off, then despite all our wishful thinking and happy thoughts we will still be in our sins.

Pax et Bonum,

The Augustinian