A Devotional Corner

It has also been argued that just because no witnesses came to refute the claims, it does not mean that the event did take place.

This poses a big problem. If someone chooses to take on this line of argument, it is possible to refute almost every historical record or event that ever took place or was ever written down.

I don't think it poses that problem because the argument is not intended as a refutation. The argument simply says that hypothetical witnesses that we know nothing about don't add any weight to either side of the scale. We have to rely on other evidence to reach our conclusions.

I make no assumption of silence in those thirty years. On the contrary, I assume that stories were told and retold. The lack of writings simply means that I do not know how they changed. As far as I know, thirty years was just as long a time period back then as it is today.

The fact we do not know anything about a witness does not make them hypothetical. Concluding that they are hypothetical witnesses purely on the basis that we have no information of them is really a stretch of an assumption now.

Let's take a recent example that everyone would recall: 9/11 attacks. I would almost be certain that America's coverage would be far greater than the coverage here down South. Assuming TV stations like CNN, would naturally interview eyewitnesses all over the street. Now CNN does not need to take each interviewee's CV Resume so that it gets recorded on file.

Now I have a few questions to ask from down South:

(1) Do I dismiss these so-called "hypothetical" witnesses simply because I have no background information of them?

(2) If that was the case, does it mean I have to wait for the official press release from the government of the day? That poses two questions: (a) I cannot trust the CNN report; and (b) How am I to be sure that it is not Government propaganda.

(3) How am I to be sure that this was not a Hollywood advertisement or a filming production?

I am sure you get my point.

The fact that they saw the event and was part of the scene would naturally be sufficient proof as a witness.

The questions go on:

(4) Do we start accusing CNN for producing a biased report for not interviewing the independent granny who happened to be in South Manhattan on that very morning of September 11 2001, who somehow was listening to her CD Discman so loud she did not hear the big bang, or perhaps not so ridiculous and far-stretched, that she simply did not see it with her very own eyes?

I think we just can't rely on the CNN report. CNN has reported what they perceive to be a fair report.

It is a perfectly legitimate point of view if you ask me, who lives half a world away from NY who has not visited NYC ever since 9-11 happened. I haven't had the opportunity to investigate with my eyes and lay my hands onto first hand evidence / eyewitnesses.

I mean I've seen images of the twin towers being rubbed off the Manhattan skyline, and I've heard reports, and I've seen yahoo websites go grayscale on 9-11 anniversary. But how am I to be certain that the incident simply occurred? I simply cannot conclude because I just haven't seen a fair report allowing that Granny to come and refute the other thousands of eyewitnesses who confirmed the event.

BUT, imagine the granny was allowed to be on air, what would be the reaction if we wind our clocks back for 6 years. People would probably say, ahhh, shut up granny, you don't know what you are saying.

So is the negative voice really that important? I guess so, if I really wanted to deny what occured to the WTC and insisted until I see the Granny's report, I will then be in a better position to conclude. Otherwise, everyone in Australia will still assume the twin towers still stand.

And using the 9-11 attacks further to respond to your second paragraph. Suppose I now concede that the twin towers did fall (which I, myself in reality have no doubt about), and we kept talking about the 9-11 attacks for years and years and years.

I don't think I could get away if we talked about it all this time, and I started writing something that everyone has experienced, and said two missiles was the cause of the fall of the towers (as opposed to the two aircraft), and as they were nuclear missiles fired by another country, it wiped of 1 million New Yorkers (as opposed to the 3000-odd).

Chances are, I could probably cheat my children who never witnessed the event, but certainly, you would either correct me or say that I am a lunatic when I tried publishing this report when we are still around in 30 years time. So silent or not silent during that period, I don't think it matters at all.

I think the attack on the Twin Towers is an interesting analogy because there are some people who believe that the United States government blew up the buildings in order to manufacture an excuse to start a war in the Middle East. They believe it fervently and sincerely and they have books, videos, and websites supporting their theories. They are completely undeterred by all the evidence to the contrary. They can and do succeed in convincing people they are right.

There are many people who deny the Holocaust. They have denied it for years despite all the eyewitnesses to the events who have contradicted them. They deny it despite the fact that it has been talked about for years and years. Every year, they succeed in convincing new people that it never happened. Both the Holocaust deniers and the 911 conspiracy theorists are adept at finding factual details that seem to support their position while ignoring all the evidence that shows that they are wrong.

The reason that I have confidence that conspiracy buffs are wrong is the existence of contemporaneous records. I can compare the various theories to mountains of evidence generated at the time of the events. I have a ton of data from people with all sorts of different perspectives.

For the life of Jesus, I have no contemporaneous accounts. My earliest records are the letters of Paul written some twenty years after Jesus died. These contain very few details about his activities. The first accounts of Jesus life don’t appear for another ten years. I can not make any of the kind of comparisons between conflicting accounts that I can make for the Holocaust or 911. This does not prove the gospels false. It simply means that I lack reliable evidence.

I notice, amongst other things, from your hypotheticals such as your Battle of Gettysburg saying the four officers' accounts were the only 4 documents that exist in "vacuum"; and the fact that you have raised a number of times that there are no contemporaneous accounts on the life of Jesus, (one of which is raised in your final paragraph above), you seemed to be concerned that there are no non-Christian independent sources to cross-check with the more well known Christian sources to satisfy you with sufficient evidence to reject all the "conspiracy" theories that you have postulated.

Just to name a few pagan/Greco-Roman historians of the time that affirm the account of Jesus:

- Thallos in his third volume Histories mentions the darkness that coincides with the crucifixion of Jesus. Although the original text is now lost, but his views were quoted in Sextus Julius Africanus in History of the World. (Details of which I shall not go into, but to leave it to you to come to an independent conclusion)

- Cornelius Tacitus in his historiography Histories and Annals (in particular Annals 15.44)

and the list goes on ...

But in order for you to form an independent view on this, I do urge you to look into a thorough and balanced scholarly account of the non-Christian references to Jesus written by Robert Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to Ancient Evidence, (Eerdmans, 2000).

I believe when you have said: "I agree that history cannot be known with 100% accuracy", in light of my our-conversation-being-recorded- down-on-paper illustration, we can both concede that history will have NO possible way of proving what actually was done. While mainstream historians cannot say Jesus actually healed the sick, they can, and generally do, say that Jesus did things which those around him believed to be miraculous. (see John P. Meier's 500-page discussion on the mainstream historical assessment of Jesus's healings in A marginal Jew (Doubleday, 1994) at 507-1038).

I note that you "have confidence that conspiracy buffs are wrong is the existence of contemporaneous records". I hope with the sources that I have quoted above, it will open the doors to those "contemporaneous" records that you have claimed to be missing, but in fact, was only missed (or perhaps a better term, neglected) in our radars today simply because it has no news value for our media to report on.

If Thallus is at the top of your list, I do not believe that it can go on very far. I had never heard of him before, but my brief research indicates that there are no surviving texts of his work, it is not clear what he wrote, and it is not clear when he wrote. All we have is a ninth century reference in George Syncellus to a third century reference in Julius Africanus that attributes a report of an eclipse to Thallus. What connection Thallus made between that eclipse and the darkness reported in the gospels is not clear at all.

It seems to me that it is a disservice to both the idea of history and the idea of faith to compare this kind of third hand reference to the mountains of evidence we have for events like the 911 Attacks or the Battle of Gettysburg. Let Jesus be a figure of faith where he is second to none.

Your interpretation has distorted the intentions in my last comment. The point I was trying to make is that Jesus did NOT live in a vacuum where we are relying on only history written by Jesus's disciples. All I wanted to illustrate was:

(1) There is a list of non-Christian sources that you can look into;

(2) The list I showed clearly was not an exhaustive one;

(3) I never stated the strongest piece of evidence came from Thallos, but merely intended to show you by way of example;

(4) I would never try to provide an unrealistic summary and recreate the "mountain of evidence" in a short comment that did not exceed 500 words (just like you never brought on your "mountains" to prove your Battle of Gettysburg or 911. I was not expecting you to, and I trust there is a mountain of evidence on the basis of your passion on Civil War history). I was merely showing you the tip of the iceberg; and

(5) I did refer you to respected scholars, mainstream scholars to be more exact, who have written books (where I have listed at least two in my last comment and again, this is NOT an exhaustive list) who dedicated their research to show how big that "iceberg" or "mountain" really is.

One would think a brief research to highlight a potential credibility issue at the "tip" and dismisses or ignores the entire the unexplored "mountain of evidence" simply seems very unreasonable.

I misunderstood you when you mentioned the 30yr thing. I thought that you were implying that there was 30yrs of silence, and then suddenly the witnesses decided to write it down. That’s why you believe that the bible is unreliable.

The lack of writings simply means that I do not know how they changed.

I think I understand you now. You are trying to say that over the 30 years, truths in the accounts have been manipulated exaggerated mistranslated etc. Witnesses were alive at the time. Many many of them too. It's not like "chinese whipers" where you can't talk to the first person.

Thirty years is not a long time since most of the witnesses were still alive.

As far as I know, thirty years was just as long a time period back then as it is today.

I think I didn’t write clearly enough. In terms of the transmission of information, the time it takes for information to be transmitted from one part of the world to another is measured in seconds. I am talking to you from the other side of the globe. If this conversation took place two thousand years ago, I think I would still be waiting for your first reply.


The argument simply says that hypothetical witnesses that we know nothing about don't add any weight to either side of the scale. We have to rely on other evidence to reach our conclusions.

I understand that your problem is with the argument about hypothetical witnesses. I don’t quite understand what hypothetical witnesses you are referring to. In my earlier comment, I argued that if someone saw Jesus feed five thousand from a few pieces of food, then they would be a witness for Christians and not for the opposition. If someone didn’t see the event take place, then they can’t be a witness for the event.

You argue that the five thousand people actually bought food themselves. Well that is hypothetical. If you apply this line of reasoning, then you would have to hypothesise, an explanation for every one of those miracles recorded in the bible. You would be in effect calling the thousands of witnesses liars.

This is only one piece of evidence in the entire case for Christ. You need to view the case in its entirety and not a single piece on its own.

Judging from the material written by the gospel witnesses, we can see their genuineness. We can see their firm belief in love, truth, righteousness and God. From reading their accounts, we will not conclude that they are criminals or evil people. We can see what they believe in and stand for. As was pointed out before, people don’t die for lies they create.

From all the comments you have made, I gather that you do not believe that there is a strong case for the events recorded in the bible. I want to ask:
If Jesus did perform miracles, what sort of evidence will compel you to believe that Jesus performed miracles?

If Jesus did perform miracles and was who he claimed to be, then I believe that exactly what happened would have happened. That is, Christians will record it in written form. Churches will be established, and the other evidence that Mr Strobel states is in existence.

If you say Jesus is just a figure for faith, why not believe in Buddah or Joseph Smith or Muhammud? What makes Jesus' story superior to all the others?

What do you believe in? Who do you believe Jesus is? Why do you believe that?

If Jesus really fed five thousand people by supernaturally creating food out of thin air, there would indeed be thousands of witnesses. However, if he did not do so, there would be no witnesses. Moreover, the only witness who could definitively testify that he had not fed five thousand supernaturally on some occasion would be one who had been with him throughout the entire three years of his public ministry and knew what he had done every day.

The point is that I cannot use those thousands of witnesses as proof of the truth of the story because their existence depends in the first place on the truth of the story. Nor can I point to the lack of rebuttal witnesses as proof of the story’s truth because that depends on the truth of the story as well. I first have find satisfactory evidence to establish the truth of the story before I can say that there would or would not have been witnesses on either side.

The lack of rebuttal witnesses is not even one piece of evidence if it is not a valid piece of evidence. Nor does it become a valid piece of evidence by combining it with the rest of the case. By the same token, if the references to Thallus are unsubstantiated and inconclusive, then combining them with similar references from antiquity does not build even an ice cube, much less an iceberg.

Vinny, before we continue, I'd really like to know

If Jesus did perform miracles, what sort of "satisfactory evidence" will compel you to believe that Jesus performed miracles?

Let's not use the feeding thousands miracle since you do not know when the event occured. Lets use the resurrection miracle since its timing is well documented in the gospels.

I suppose that I would want to see a number of detailed contemporaneous accounts from eyewitnesses who had a verifiable reputation for objectivity.

So how do you define "verifiable reputation for objectivity". Do you mean a person who has written other pieces of writings backed up by other eyewitnesses?

What kind of verifications do you reqire?

Say if a person witnesses the miracles of Jesus and writes them down, what else must he do to satisfy your criteria?

Can you give me any persons from antiquity that meets your criteria? and what he did to meet your criteria?

I need to understand what your standard for eyewitness is before we can continue.

I have known people who see God’s miraculous intervention in every unusual event that occurs in their life. My wife once met a woman who claimed that God had made her invisible when she went to visit a friend in the hospital. It seemed that the hospital had a rule that only allowed relatives to visit in that particular unit. Nevertheless, the woman was able to walk past the nurses’ station unchallenged and sit with her friend unnoticed so she concluded that God had made her invisible. I would be concerned with any account of a miracle that the eyewitness was the kind of person that preferred supernatural explanations for events that could be explained naturally.

I guess what I have in mind is historians with a verifiable reputation for objectivity. For example, an historian who is meticulous in documenting his sources and honest about evidence that might undermine his conclusions. A historian like that who investigated the eyewitness claims with a skeptical eye would go a long way towards persuading me that some thing extraordinary had occurred. Unfortunately, I have not read enough ancient history to say which historians might meet those standards.