From: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: An open question...
Date: 26 Aug 92 07:56:34 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

tom@tredysvr.Tredydev.Unisys.COM (Tom Albrecht) writes:

>What about the folks who are part of the so-called Jesus Project, who have
>been telling us that much (most?) of the gospels are not the words of
>Jesus, and therefore not historically accurate?

They are either wrong or rabble-rousing.  That is, everyone
understands that we don't have the exact words of Jesus.  I think even
conservatives understand that, or they'd have trouble with the fact
that the Synoptics use different wording for what seems pretty clearly
the same statements.  A lot of what we hear about the Jesus project
comes from what looks to me like advertising copy.  I'd need to see
what they meant by "not the words of Jesus" in order to evaluate.  If
they are saying that we don't have his statements exactly as if
recorded by a tape recorder, I think everybody knows that.  If they
are trying to gauge the amount of rewording and reorganization that
was done by the Gospel writers, I might have no problem with what they
are doing.  If they are saying that most of quotations from Jesus in
the Gospels differ substantially from what he meant to teach, then I
think they're barking up the wrong tree.

>It seems to me that as soon as you admit error, it becomes very difficult,
>2000 years removed from the actual events, to decide which statements about
>Christ and His ministry are true and which are not.  If you admit to error
>in the NT, there is absolutely no reason to believe in the supernatural
>events, i.e., the resurrection.  If you admit to error in the NT, the an
>objective basis for faith disappears, and true faith soon disappears as
>well.  The gospel narratives becomes just so much whimsy, tossed about
>by the lastest pontifications from higher critical blowhards and others
>in the theological establishment.

I think your argument makes no sense at all.  If I took it seriously,
I would be unable to take any actions at all based on information from
other people, unless I could do enough investigation to be absolutely
sure for myself of the accuracy of what they are saying.  That's
silly.  The idea that the resurrection vanishes if there's any
legendary accretions anywhere in the NT seems to me like a slippery
slope argument gone wild.  It's like saying that because historians
keep coming up with new interpretations of the 16th Cent., Martin
Luther might be a mythological character.  There are degrees of
uncertainty, after all.

We know from Paul's writings and others than the resurrection
constituted the heart of the faith.  If you take the early sermons in
Acts seriously (and I do), it was that way from the beginning.  It
seems clear that people put a lot more effort into validating that
than into other aspects of Jesus' life.  Paul lists a zillion
witnesses for it.  We get it from every tradition represented in the
NT.  Given that you assume the people involved in constructing the NT
are basically reliable (which I do), then I don't see that there's any
doubt.  I also think it's obvious that Jesus was a miracle worker.
The fact that in a few places people's memories may have allowed a
miracle to get embellished doesn't mean we have to think that the
whole thing is wrong.

Your position looks to me like an amazing overreaction to overly
sceptical scholarship.  A bunch of scholars whose noses have been in
their books for too long start claiming that the New Testament is an
allegory for existentialist theology, and half of Christendom insists
on claiming that even works like Jonah (which was obviously intended
as a novelette) is inerrant history.  Both sides seem equally absurd
to me.  I resent being put in the position of having to choose between
two absurdities.  I believe the Bible is the product of godly (but
fallible) men who have encountered God and written about it.  I don't
see that we need any more than that.

The personal problem I have with your claim is that if you're right, I
can no longer use the Bible as the basis for my beliefs.  I know how
to deal with normal products of human beings.  I do it every day.
People are well adapted to making decisions under uncertainty.  So I
know the sorts of things I can look at to see whether the accounts are
plausible, and to assess the kinds of limitations that the writers
might have.  (Biblical scholars are a help with this, but frankly I
take their work with a reasonable amount of scepticism.  If I really
care about identifying exactly how Jesus' teachings might have been
reworded and why, and exactly where accretions are most likely to have
occured, I'll look at them.  But I'm not sure how important that is,
and the history of literary critcism doesn't cause me to put a lot of
confidence in many of the detailed judgements of the scholars anyway.)
But the moment you claim they are inerrant, you move it out of the
realm I know how to assess.  Now my beliefs are no longer based on my
reaction to the Bible.  Instead I've got this extra step I've got to
go through before I can look at the Bible: your proof of its
inerrancy.  No offense, but I find your proofs of the Bible's
inerrancy a lot weaker than the Bible itself, even when understood as
the product of normal human writing.