Thread by @JamesBejon

THREAD: Some time in October, @UnbelievableJB hosted a discussion between @DrPJWilliams and @BartEhrman (cf. below). The subject matter was Peter Williams’ most recent book, namely, ‘Can We Trust the Gospels?’.

Before it fades into ether, I thought I’d jot down a few of my notes/thoughts on it.

First up, a very brief overview of both men’s cases.

Williams’ central argument (as I understood it) was as follows.

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The Gospels contain numerous signs of trustworthiness.

Their authors can be shown to have a detailed knowledge of:

a] the lay of the land in Israel (e.g., the climate, contours, and environs of Israel’s cities),

b] the vocabulary employed in Israel at the time (e.g., בת = βάτος = ‘bath’: a measure of liquid mentioned in Luke 16.6),

c] how the teachers of Jesus’ day typically taught (e.g., in parables),

and d] which personal names were popular in Israel in Jesus’ day.

None of these things individually *prove* the Gospels’ claims to be true,

but, considered as a whole, they give us good reason to trust the Gospels,

especially when we consider how specialised some of the Gospel-writers’ knowledge is.

Or, to frame the argument another way: simple explanations are preferable to complex ones,

and the facts outlined above are explained most simply by the hypothesis they are accurate accounts of historical events.

Other explanations are possible, of course, but they typically involve a number of independent and co-ordinated elements--e.g.,

a committee who credit Jesus with ingenious parables and proverbs,

a selective corruption mechanism which corrupts a story’s central plot yet accurately preserves its details, etc.--,

which soon becomes overly convoluted.

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Ehrman’s case/response consisted of three main components.

The first was an undercutter of Williams’ central argument.

The accuracy of a story’s geographical details, Ehrman claims, is irrelevant to its trustworthiness (cp. 29:50ff. in the video).

A story can be entirely accurate as far as its details are concerned, yet completely mistaken/fictitious as far as its main content is concerned.

Indeed, oral traditions are known to produce precisely such stories.

Peripheral details are accurately preserved, while major elements of the plot evolve, as has been demonstrated by multiples studies on oral traditions.

Hence, what Williams proffers as reasons to trust the Gospels are actually nothing of the kind.

The second component of Ehrman’s case was an argument against the reliability of the Gospels.

Acc. to Ehrman, many aspects of the Gospels contradict one another.

Take, for instance, the death of Judas (cf. 42:30ff.).

Matthew has Judas hang himself in a field purchased by the chief priests,

while Luke’s account ends with Judas’s body burst open in a field purchased by Judas himself (cp. Matt. 27.3–8, Acts 1.18–19).

These accounts can’t both be true.

In at least some cases, then, the Gospels clearly *can’t* be trusted.

The final component of Ehrman’s response was a *general* undercutter of Williams’ position.

For Ehrman, theology and history don’t mix (cf. 52:30ff.).

When you come to the Gospels already convinced of their accuracy, you’re not engaged in history;

you’re engaged in theology (cf. 1:24:30ff.).

If you want to do history, you have to be prepared to change your mind, traumatic though it might be.

You have to commit to go ‘wherever the truth/evidence leads you’, which people who are committed to Biblical inerrancy don’t do.

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So then. What are we supposed to make of the above claims and counterclaims?

Well, I do not claim to be unbaised in the matter. But, while I was initially impressed with Ehrman’s case, I ultimately found it to be quite weak.

Consider, for a start, Ehrman’s undercutter of Williams’ central argument.

The premise of Ehrman’s undercutter is unobjectionable: an author *could*, in theory, get the details of a story right and yet its plotline could still be ahistorical.

But what *could*, theoretically, happen is not really the issue here.

All sorts of things *could* happen in the preservation of a story. Indeed, the exact opposite of what Ehrman suggests could happen. That is to say, an author *could* get the peripheral details of a story wrong and yet accurately record its central events.

Would Ehrman dismiss such inaccuracies as ‘irrelevant’?

I doubt it.

Suppose, for instance, Luke had the Passover celebrated in the 4th month of the Jewish calendar.

And suppose Mark had etrogim brought to Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion.

And suppose Matthew had Jesus buried half a mile north of Jerusalem in a city named Be’er-Sheva.

Would Ehrman dismiss such errors/implausibilities as irrelevant to the question of whether the Gospels’ accounts of the resurrection can be trusted?

I’d be surprised if he did.

If we test the peripheral details of an author’s claims and find them to be implausible, then we have reason to be sceptical of the other claims he makes.

We lose confidence in him as a witness/source.

On pain of consistency, then, if we find the details of his claims to be plausible, then we have a reason--ceteris paribus--to *trust* his other claims.

The same principle is routinely applied in legal matters.

Suppose a witness claims to have seen an accident take place.

And suppose the witness is questioned in order to determine if the details of his story stack up, i.e., to determine if he saw what he *would* have seen had he been where he claimed to be.

If the details of the witness’s testimony are found to be implausible,

then it will not do much good for a lawyer to stand up and say,

‘Well, okay, my star witness might not look like very reliable as far as the *details* of his testimony are concerned, but he *could* nevertheless be right about the main substance of it’.

It’s a matter of credibility. Witnesses need to demonstrate they are trustworthy.

Consider the issue in probabilistic terms. Suppose we have assigned an author’s claim a prior probability of 0.5.

And suppose we then find the author to have been untrustworthy in a related matter.

What should we do? We should revise our probability downwards, right?

On pain of consistency, then, we should revise our probability *upwards* if we find the author to have been *trustworthy* in a related matter.

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We therefore come to the matter of oral tradition.

Oral tradition, Ehrman says, has been shown to accurately preserve a story’s peripheral details and yet allow major elements of its plot to change/evolve.

Hence, what Williams proffers as reasons to trust the Gospels are nothing of the kind.

What can be said by way of assessment of Ehrman’s claim?

Much in every respect.

Let me briefly, however, make two points.

First, Ehrman’s claim seems overstated.

As Williams points out, we don’t *know* the Gospels are the product of oral traditions, nor do we *know* how long after Jesus’ death they were composed.

More problematically, it is not always clear what Ehrman means by the term ‘oral tradition’.

At one point, Ehrman raises the issue of how Luke compiled his gospel. Williams says Luke could have interviewed people, which Ehrman classes as a reliance on ‘oral sources’ as if to suggest Luke should therefore be seen as the recipient of an ‘oral tradition’.

This, however, seems too broad a definition of the term ‘oral tradition’ to mean much. (If I hear, say, a news reporter quote an eye witness statement, am *I* the recipient of an oral tradition?)

As a result, it is unclear whether the studies cited by Ehrman are relevant to the Gospels.

Second, oral traditions have been shown to corrupt personal names (so Bartlett), yet the Gospels have been shown to *preserve* personal names--a point with which Ehrman agrees.

We therefore have reason to think the Gospels are *not* in fact the product of the oral traditions discussed by Bartlett (or have been ‘protected’ from the usual effects of such traditions).

In sum, then, Ehrman’s undercutter of Williams’ argument seems weak.

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That brings us on to the issue of contradictions.

Ehrman considers the Biblical accounts of Judas’s death to be irreconcilable,

which Williams has addressed in the thread below:

https://twitter.com/DrPJWilliams/status/1189664253877374979

...and which I plan to address (from a different perspective) in an article soon.

Suffice it to say, I ultimately find the Biblical accounts of Judas’s death to be complementary rather than contradictory, since each account ties up a loose end in its counterpart.

Consider Matthew’s discussion of the Field of Blood. If it wasn’t permissible for the chief priests to bank Judas’s blood money, then why was it permissible for them to possess a field bought with it?

Implicit in Luke’s account is a possible answer: it *wasn’t* permissible, which is why the priests bought the relevant field in Judas’s name.

Luke’s account, however, includes a loose end of its own,

since to find a body burst open in the middle of a field was not (one would assume) an everyday occurrence in 1st century Judah.

As such, Luke’s account requires Judas’s body to have fallen from a height (as Williams points out).

Yet why would Judas’s body have been raised up from the ground in the middle of a field?

Matthew provides the answer: because Judas hung himself, presumably from a tree.

I therefore find the Biblical accounts of Judas’s death to be complementary rather than contradictory.

Indeed, if Matt. 27 and Acts 1 are among the most awkward passages in the NT to reconcile, then the Gospels and Acts are in good shape.

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Finally, then, we come to Ehrman’s general undercutter of Williams’ position.

If you want to do history, Ehrman says, you have to commit to go ‘wherever the truth/evidence leads’. You can’t approach the issue with your mind already made up.

As Williams points out, however, life is not so simple.

We all believe what we believe for a whole range of different reasons,

and we all try to synthesise what we believe into a coherent worldview.

As a result, none of us come to the Bible ready/primed to change our minds.

We bring a raft of presuppositions to the text--some good and some bad--, and we proceed in light of them.

Just as a Christian has a default response when he is confronted with, say, an apparent contradicition in Scripture (i.e., to explain it in light of his worldview),

so a skeptic has a natural inclination when he is confronted with an account of a miracle in Scripture (i.e., to explain it as a lie/embellishment).

That’s simply how life works.

Even in highly evidence-driven fields of enquiry (such as science and economics), it’s unusual for a single data-point to overturn an established theory.

Ehrman’s claim to be ready to ‘follow the evidence wherever it leads’ therefore strikes me as overly simplistic.

We all evaluate evidence in light of what we already believe.

And, ironically, many Christians may be in a better position to evaluate evidence than many skeptics.

Why? Because many Christians do not claim (or think it wise) to follow the evidence where it leads in each and every situation.

For instance, given the evidence currently available to me, it seems (to me) as if the chronology of Luke 2 is mistaken.

But, on the basis of my Christian commitment/worldview, I take Luke’s chronology to be accurate, and I assume Luke’s chronology will sync up with the relevant extra-Biblical evidence once that evidence has been correctly understood.

I wonder, however, whether many skeptics are prepared to affirm similar claims, e.g.,

‘Given what I presently know about the Biblical text, the evidence for the resurrection seems impressive, but I am personally disinclined to believe it for other reasons’.

Ultimately, all of us have our biases and pre-commitments.

The best thing we can do is lay them on the table so people are aware of why we believe what we do.

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It only, therefore, remains for me to thank Peter Williams and Bart Ehrman for their studies and discussion, and to thank Justin Brierley and the folk at Premier Christian Radio for its broadcast.

Sustained consideration of the Gospels in all their glorious detail can only ultimately be of benefit.