A Devotional Corner

If I claim that the sausage roll incident occurred thirty years ago without giving the date of the game, how are you going to find an eyewitness who can say definitively that it did not happen?

Thanks for your question. It is very interesting indeed.

Perhaps the situation may have changed a little. In my entry, I said something along the lines that if I tried fabricating a story that occurred in the most recent event, people may quickly come and disprove it.

Now if I had been silent about it and I came and did this report some 30 years later, I would need some strong evidence to support my case that it did occur, by finding eyewitnesses to prove that it did occur.

I would not go and find an eyewitness to say definitely that it did not happen. I would really be shooting myself in the foot, because I have just got someone to disprove my claim!

It does go a little beyond the scope of my entry if we do go into "bribing" or "choosing" my witness to support my claim, but to end my comment here, I would like to conclude that it is simple nature that I could not get someone to lie for me or anybody unless there is some sort of personal benefit derived from lying. If I wanted witnesses to lie to help me support my case and I they have no personal gain out of it, why would he/she do it? If we assume that eyewitnesses are not "bribed" to lie, the doctrine of multiple attestation would apply to support the claim. Or else, all of them who was not bribed would all be lunatics.

To bring it back to the bible, the four gospels were written independently at different times and different places by different people. Luke was a physician who was well known to do independent research into the history and interviewed people before he came up with the gospel.

Vinny, I did assume your question did not mean how, in wearing our detective hat are, we able to locate eyewitnesses (whether for or against our 'hypothetical' claim) some 30 years later.

One tradition has it that Mark wrote his gospel in Rome after Peter died. Let us suppose that he remembers Peter telling a story about many people being fed miraculously one day so he writes it down as best as he recalls it.

Let us further suppose that there was a man living in Galilee who remembered a time thirty years earlier when a group of people were listening to an itinerant preacher named Jesus. The people grew hungry but no one seemed to have any food except one boy who offered to share. However, it turned out that many people had brought food for themselves. The other people were shamed by the boy’s generosity into sharing their food and there was enough for all.

My question is this: How is this man in Galilee to know what Mark is writing in Rome? Even if he were to know that some Christians had told a story about Jesus feeding thousands, how could he be sure whether it was simply an exaggeration of the incident he had witnessed? Moreover, how do we know that he didn’t tell someone his version of the events?

My point is that we have no basis to conclude that no one came out to refute the story or that anyone ever had the opportunity to do so. We have no evidence on the question

You may think that one man in Galilee who tells story about feeding thousands is only an exaggeration. Now there is another man who is not related to the 1st man in Galilee who also tells story about Jesus. Many other mans claim they are the eyewitnesses of those events. And because of their claim, they are sentenced to death. I wonder if these 'stories' are in fact a lie, why these people are willing to die for a lie?
Paul is a good example. He persecuted and killed early Christians. And yet he had become a Christian who proclaimed the good news about Jesus and hence was put into prison and was finally killed because of that. He had such a big change because he saw Jesus and Jesus is the Lord and the Son of God. If Paul did not see Jesus, the 1st and the 2nd man lied or they were not certain about the fact, or Jesus is not the Son of God, how can you explain why the early Christians were willing to die for the Christ?

Perhaps you would think that there were people who claimed to be God and many people died for this person. For example, Jim Jones, Leader of Jonestown, and David Koreshl, leader of the Branch Davidians. But when you look back into history, they are insignificant religious leaders and their stories end once the cult leaders was dead.
How many people who claim to be God has become a world religious leader or teacher?

Lets assume that the works of Jesus has been spreading like wild fire since first day Jesus had been doing miracles. People have been talking about it for 30 yrs, and then someone finally had time to sit down and write it on "paper".

So Vinny, you hold the assumption that miracles do not happen, and there are flaws in the bible since it cannot possibly record exactly what Jesus said and did? Sounds like Jesus Seminar approach.

I am only addressing the argument that the gospel stories are historically reliable because no eyewitnesses came forward to refute them. It is an argument I see made frequently and it is an argument that I believe to be faulty.

Suppose I went to a party and told the story that my dog could turn on the television. If my wife did not contradict my story you might conclude that she believed the story if several additional conditions were also met: (1) My wife had the same opportunity to observe the dog as I did. If my wife was at work at the times I claimed the dog did his trick, she would not be in a position to contradict me even if she thought the story unlikely. (2) My wife was at the party when I was telling the story. If she did not hear me tell the story, you could not conclude anything from her failure to contradict it. (3) Most obviously, you would have to know in fact that my wife did not contradict me. It would not be enough that you did not know whether she said anything at all.

With regard to the supposed eyewitnesses who could have refuted the miracle stories: (1) we don't know that there were any eyewitnesses who observed every day of Jesus' three year public ministry such that they would be in a position to state definitively that any particular event had never occurred; (2) we don’t know that any such witnesses were around at the time any of the gospels were being written; (3) we don’t in fact know that no eyewitnesses ever came forward to refute the stories, we simply don’t have any record of a contrary version of events.

My problem is that I do not have any way to know what happened to the stories in the thirty years between the original events and the time that they started being written down. That neither proves nor disproves the truth of the stories or the accuracy of their transmission. It simply means that I lack information. Unfortunately, hypothetical eyewitnesses who hypothetically never refuted the stories don’t provide much corroboration.

I've put my reply on a new post.