So... people saw these amazing things, reported it, were brushed off, and everyone just shut up about it for the next 30-40 years before someone thought to write about it? That explanation doesn't sound a bit suspicious and self-serving to you?
What Does The Organization Really Teach?
by Sea Breeze 43 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Halcon
Tonus-So... people saw these amazing things, reported it, were brushed off, and everyone just shut up about it for the next 30-40 years before someone thought to write about it?
According to the gospels, Jesus' very own people were skeptical. He WAS the son of a carpenter after all, was he not? If those people actually walking next to him had serious doubts, what makes anyone believe that Senators, philosophers and historians in Rome had more faith than they?
These 'amazing' things that Jesus did are always interpreted by us in the present thru the very swayed and elaborate presentation of them in art and modern movies for example. We speak of them considerably after the fact. But how consequential were these events to distant people in distant lands in the very moment they were actually happening?
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TonusOH
I'm wondering how consequential they are to the people who supposedly witnessed them, that they were so easily put off from speaking of them or recording them for decades, if at all. More than that, I'm thinking that, if we are admitting that these things were poorly attested to, if at all, isn't it more likely that they were made up?
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Touchofgrey
You can't report on something (miracles)that never happened. So no historical accounts will exist.
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Halcon
Touchofgrey-You can't report on something (miracles)that never happened. So no historical accounts will exist.
Are you sure about this?
Not long before Christ, Julius Caesar had written his own Commentaries on the Gallic wars. His own first hand account of his victories on behalf of the Republic, with plenty of witnesses and historians that were right there in his camp writing on the events.
In his Commentaries, he claimed that at one battle his legions faced 430,000 Gauls...and defeated them... without losing ONE SINGLE Roman soldier. After their defeat, Julius claims the remaining Gauls were so emotionally defeated that most proceeded to commit suicide thereafter.
These amazing feats were written down and delivered in chapters and posted on the Forum for all of Rome to read in awe of Julius prowess. Not only that, these Commentaries were considered infallible by historians all the way up until the 20th century, when these claims were finally refuted.
Written history, it seems, is not quite so black and white.
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Touchofgrey
So julius caesar made up events and told lies, I see a pattern forming here .
Thanks for clearing that up for me, the death and resurrection account is a made up event and a lie and then embellished decades later by the anonymous authors of the four gospels and yet sadly people today still believe it to be true.
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Halcon
So julius caesar made up events and told lies, I see a pattern forming here.
Imagine that, the most powerful and advanced nation in the world.... making stuff up. What hope was there for little ole Judea?
If written history and 'witness' accounts can't be trusted (you can argue that this is more true today than ever) then you're left with having to make your own call.
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TonusOH
I think what you're saying is, just because there's no evidence doesn't mean something did not happen. That's true. But the possible unreliability of contemporary accounts doesn't apply to a situation where there are no contemporary accounts.
In a situation where the only accounts are of undetermined origin, where the original accounts have not been found, where the only copies are literally that- hand-copied accounts that come with the caveats of such a process... it is natural to express doubts, even if those accounts reported normal or mundane happenings.
If these accounts also report on supernatural events, possibly involving actual deities, our skepticism must be ratcheted up. Otherwise, we are left with many, many such claims from people throughout the past that are suddenly possible.
I'm not sure that the gospels would fare as well as, say, Joseph Smith's accounts, if we decided to create a "minimal facts approach" for the latter.
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Halcon
Tonus-In a situation where the only accounts are of undetermined origin, where the original accounts have not been found, where the only copies are literally that- hand-copied accounts that come with the caveats of such a process... it is natural to express doubts, even if those accounts reported normal or mundane happenings.
This is precisely why we are left with having to make our own call.
If these accounts also report on supernatural events, possibly involving actual deities, our skepticism must be ratcheted up. Otherwise, we are left with many, many such claims from people throughout the past that are suddenly possible.
Yes, and this is where we reach that additional layer of consideration that we call faith.
It is a unique layer because it now involves our personal life experience. As you indicated above, when the accounts seem scant you either believe or not. What will determine which? Your personal life experience. You'll look at your life and see none of the gospels in it, or you'll see enough of them to compel you to believe.
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TonusOH
I think it's more useful to have some kind of system where we can make more reliable determinations. They won't always be perfect, but there should be ways that we can separate claims. Going by what we want to believe would leave us with an endless list of claims for almost every possible event from the past. And it seems to me that historians are not that scattered in terms of what is considered reliable or not.
I think our personal experience does help, if we take into account how we deal with such claims in our day-to-day lives and in other facets of our lives. How willing are we, normally, to lend credence to claims that have little to no corroboration? Do we approach similar claims differently based only on which ones we favor? We should be able to establish a pretty comprehensive sets of norms that most people can easily agree on.