- Humans acquire a vast amount of factual information through testimony, arguably more than they learn through experience.
- The extensive reliance on testimony is remarkable given that one often cannot verify testimonial information.
- What makes testimony distinct from storytelling is that it has an implicit or explicit assertion that the telling is true. The literary format and style of the Gospels is that of the ancient biography, a historiographic genre that was widely practiced in the ancient word. Thus, one can regard these accounts as a form of testimony.
A Natural History of Natural Philosophy (pp. 165-172)
A more plausible explanation is that young children are psychologically disposed to acquire knowledge through testimony and perception: the information received in this way is basic, in the sense that it is unreflective and not based on other beliefs. This leads them to the impression that they have always known these facts. Also, and perhaps more crucially, children do not make a distinction between knowledge acquired through testimony and knowledge acquired through direct experience.
…children treat testimony to scientific and religious beliefs in a similar way.
…children do not find religious testimony intrinsically more doubtful than scientific testimony.
The current empirical evidence indicates that testimony is a fundamental source of knowledge, similar to memory and perception (in line with antireductionism), but that children and adults are sensitive to cues for the reliability of informants (in line with reductionsim).
Books such as the recent Faith vs. Fact by Jerry Coyne rely on this to be the case [that testimony is a fundamental source of knowledge], while at the same time denying that such knowledge counts as knowledge. Sadly, some commenters here at TSZ believe that Coyne’s “way to knowledge” is “the only way to knowledge.” Taking Coyne’s word for it is hardly convincing.
Just a quick drive by note giving Patrick’s comment the utmost benefit of the doubt.
Again you are missing the background information that makes 1 striped of the zombie nonsense the more likely choice. Here is some of the context
1) Matthew was in a better position to know this detail that the other authors mentioned
2) There are very good reasons why the other authors might have chosen to not mention this event
3) This sort of phenomena is exactly what one would expect given the extraordinary circumstances at the time
4) Matthew’s testimony is demonstrably reliable in the details that we can check
5) The reliability of the periscope rests ultimately not on the truthfulness of Matthew but on the infallible truthfulness of the Logos
I understand that if you did not know or hold to this kind of collaborating evidence you might be skeptical of a proto resurrection occurring at that time.
That sort of tentative skepticism is good provided you are open to new information as it presents itself.
peace
That’s the rub, isn’t it?
We are all jurors being asked to judge testimony by the standards of common sense.
No epistemology or big wordology, but the way we would judge if, say, a Joseph Smith testified that he had received a new scripture. I see no reason the judge the Jewish or Christian scripture by standards other than those by which I would judge Scientology or Mormonism or Adventism or Islam or Hinduism or any other scripture.
On that we are in perfect agreement.
I would add that it would be important to use the same scales when evaluating all truth claims be they scientific, sensory or testimonial.
peace
Why do you believe this?
Matthew was not in Jerusalem at the time of the alleged zombie-saints rising.
If it did occur, there were witnesses, and it’s reasonable to suppose such witnesses would have repeated the story of their dead loved ones coming back to life (or appearing as new bodies, or as spirits, or whatever it was that they saw) many times to their descendants, and we can reasonably suppose that the story of that day’s event was passed from person to person for forty years until it reached one of the gospel-writers in 70CE.
But why do you assume Matthew was “in a better position to know this detail”? What was special about Matthew?
Why didn’t the exact same stories reach all four of the gospelers? They were supposedly close enough to use identical sources for other gospel details. Why not this one?
Right. So it’s reasonably probable that the exact same stories reached other gospelers besides Matthew, but they decided not to include this odd fragment for reasons. Good reasons. Hmm, what reasons?
What? EXACTLY WHAT ONE WOULD EXPECT? No, baby, NOT exactly “what one would expect”. Not remotely connected to any circumstances surrounding the supposed death of god on a cross. Lightning and thunder from heaven, yeah, sure. Rain of blood from the sky, why not. Earthquakes, gotcha. But why on god’s green Earth are some dead people going to suddenly rise up and visit their relatives just because Jesus died? You night as well say we would expect bottles of wine to fly around asking everyone if they’d like a drink.
No, it’s not. Sorry, archeology and history fail. There are details which could plausibly have occurred — but that’s just like trying to prove that Harry Potter is “reliable” because the books mention people going to the pub. Except for the nonsense miracles, there’s no particular reason to doubt Matthew, but there’s no point in pretending that his tale is “reliable”.
Yep, which is exactly why there are 30,000 different sects of christianity, because none of y’all can find any thing to agree on. Because the gospels aren’t actually “true”, but only “truth-ish” even to faithful christians – somehow you’re willing to cherry pick the parts you personally like and hold those parts to be actually “true” under the umbrella of “Logos”, while ignoring or discarding anything inconvenient or distasteful to you. That’s great, that’s fine, we think you should do much more of that! We think you should ignore and discard piece by piece until you’ve gotten rid of all the silliness. Let us know when you become a Unitarian.
No, you don’t understand at all.
Well, wake me up if you ever find any “new information” — other than that one line in Matthew which we already know is worthless as it stands alone — to suggest that there ever was a zombie-saint rising who “appeared to many”. Or that there ever has been a dead person supernaturally brought back to life, ever, anywhere. Don’t just limit your “new information” to Jerusalem circa 30CE.
Don’t keep saying there’s evidence out there somewhere. I’ve looked everywhere for gospel evidence for decades. Where are you hiding it? Bring it out!
Hotshoe against my better judgement I read your comment.
It contains lots of unsubstantiated truth claims from claims about who authored the first gospel to claims about my own opinions of what the Logos is.
why do you believe them?
peace
keiths, please see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
I don’t think he’s doing that at all. I think it was your original post on this matter above that committed that error. Facts are facts (not explanations) and theories are explanations and not facts (or at least different facts from those they are attempting to explain), Theories may be wrong, facts may not be wrong.
As people on this site like to say, there are territories and then there are maps of them. The maps may be mistaken but the territories never are.
Fifth, I have given you a ton of events that I would count as evidence for the claims you make being true. But you have told us of none that you would count as evidence for such claims being false. Are there any?
Mung:
Mung, please see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_dodging
I’ll repeat the question in hopes that Mung won’t avoid it this time.
keiths:
keiths:
Well, I certainly could be wrong about YOUR OPINIONS, since they are a) subjective, inside your own mind and b) not adequately explained (by any standard of conversation) here at this site; leaving me therefore to make a probable assessment based on tens of thousands of similar theistic opinions that are available for us to peruse in books, in blog comments, and in the words of the thousands of christians we know personally. That your opinion is surely a little special-snowflakey (that’s a hallmark of christian sectarianism, after all) has nothing to do with the truth of my point, which you apparently missed: that by definition every single christian alive cherry picks some parts of the bible and ignores or disregards the rest. You did in fact demonstrate that you are inherently willing to do that with Matthew when you admitted that the “reliability” of the whole shebang does not rest on the truthiness of Matthew (that is, on any one passage of any one of the books). But even if you hadn’t admitted it, we would already know that about you for certain, because your bible contains multitudes of things that no sane person believes in. Since we have reason to believe you are sane (just religiously off track) we also know thereby that you do NOT believe every word of the whole bible is literally real-world fact. Exactly as I said, you cherry pick.
It’s inevitable. It’s not a fault of yours, it’s actually a virtue, because the alternative would be the unsupportable craziness of biblical literalism.
So what I said is not an unsubstantiated truth claim at all, it is exactly the truth. Which makes your follow-up question just another parcel of your idiocy. I “believe” what I say because what I say is demonstrably the truth, and I have indeed demonstrated it.
keiths,
That is indeed a false dichotomy, mung. But the other possibilities aren’t much more favorable to Bible defense, I don’t think. I mean, maybe Matthew wasn’t “embellishing” but was mistaken. Or maybe the others were visited by a veil of sleepiness whenever that subject was brought up to them. Or maybe these undead wore a cloak of invisibility that didn’t affect anybody who wore the Ring of Gefilte, and Matthew had stumbled upon that precious piece of jewelry at a bazaar on his way home several weeks before the fateful day. Or maybe….
Doesn’t really matter if it’s a dichotomy, does it, mung? What’s a version that makes everything cohere nicely, in your view? Do you like Fifth’s analysis (Matthew was, like, way more reliable than the rest of those dunderheads!) of the sitch?
fifth:
The comment was from me, not Patrick.
We’ll see about that.
It’s not a “detail”. If it had actually happened, everyone in the region would have known about it.
And those “very good reasons” are?
What extraordinary circumstances?
Nobody but the author of Matthew mentions this. Nobody.
That is pure inerrantist Kristian Kool-Aid. You have drunk deeply, fifth.
It’s worse than a mere “proto-resurrection”. Read the passage again:
The moment Jesus died, the tombs split open and the dead were raised, but they waited for three days to come out of the tombs? The author of this passage was apparently not the sharpest tool in the biblical shed.
If you have any “new information”, present it! Only the gullible would buy this story based on what’s been offered so far.
keiths, in case it escaped your attention, I emphatically rejected #1 (The Jewish Zombie Thesis). And the other option you offer, option #2, is not the only remaining option. You can pretend all you like that the alternative I offered still involved zombies and I cannot stop you from doing so. You are, after all, entitled to your own facts.
I see. I avoided the question by answering it. When you are in this mode it’s pretty pointless to try to have a discussion with you, so don’t be too surprised if I don’t try.
I apologize if you’ve already given your theory here. Would you mind repeating it or linking to it? Thanks. I’ve only seen Fifth’s (which didn’t do too much for me TBH).
Tee hee.
“dunderhead”.
I did wonder why Firthmonarchyman is willing to slag off the other gospel-tellers, seems a kind of losing strategy in the long run.
Well, we can really really believe this one guy, because reasons. Reliability. But those other guys, don’t fall for them hook lock and sinker. Known to be not totally reliable.
Dunderheads, indeed. 🙂
keiths logic:
None of the other Gospel writers mention this event. Therefore it is more likely that the writer of the Gospel of Matthew embellished the story than that it really happened. But keiths would have it that there was no story to be embellished.
So no. Even keiths’s option 2 is silly. No story to embellish means no embellishment of a story.
No, it isn’t.
I agree it is not science. It is philosophy which Coyne grants the status of knowledge. Whether it is all good philosophy is open to discussion. See my long reply to Walto in other thread for more details.
walto,
hotshoe_, do you have a theory as to why the Gospel of John is not counted among the Synoptic Gospels?
John? Or Matthew?
Mung,
Thanks. I take the problem with that suggestion to be its ad hocness. I mean, anything in the Bible (or any other book) could be explained in that fashion, couldn’t it? E.g., if one of the Gospels said, And then for the next seven hundred years every item in Galilee became purple and smelled like old socks , but nobody in the history of the world ever noticed this weirdness but say, Luke, couldn’t you give the same sort of explanation? When would a defense of that type NOT work?
Mung, in case it escaped your attention, I referred to your “watered-down version of #1” . You presented it in an earlier comment:
You believe that they were actually raised from the dead and that they appeared to people in Jerusalem. That is “laughably naive”, to use your phrase.
Why would you believe something so ridiculous when there’s a perfectly sensible alternative explanation: namely, that the author of Matthew embellished the story?
Do you really think the other gospel writers would have failed to mention such a fantastic miracle had it really happened?
hotshoe_,
That “we” does not include me.
I’m agnostic about that. 🙂
There are lots. I’ll give you a few.
1) If it was established that our senses were not general trustworthy it would mean that we could not rely on any claims about what people saw or heard.
2) If it was established that the witnesses had incentive to lie about what they saw.
3) If it was established that the witnesses did not view dishonesty as a moral failure that merited punishment
4) If it was established that the records we have were altered in a wholesale fashion
5) If it was established that the accounts were written many decades after the events by folks with no knowelege of what actually happened
6) If it was established that the universe could arise and continue to exist without The Christian God
This list just scratches the surface. But I hope you get the point
peace
walto, I gave reasons. Perhaps you just didn’t get the references.
Don’t falter now, Mung.
You started a thread to discuss “reliance on testimony to miracles.” We are doing just that.
Why do you find the author of Matthew to be credible on the mass resurrection of the saints and their appearance to people in Jerusalem? The alternative hypothesis — that the author succumbed to the temptation to embellish the story — makes much more sense.
All four gospel writers attest to the resurrection of Jesus, as does Paul. So you believe that Jesus was actually raised from the dead?
If not, what’s your point? That if one or more of the other gospel writers fails to mention something it probably never happened?
John Nolland in The Gospel of Matthew (New International Greek Testament Commentary) points out that Matthew says many were raised and that they appeared to many.
off the top of my head
Mark is written as a gospel tract to non Jews based chiefly on the teaching of Peter it leaves out lots of details that Peter would not have first hand knowelege of or not utilized in his preaching.
Luke is a part of a legal defense of the Christian faith as a universal movement that is non threatening to the government status quo in Rome. To mention a temporary proto resurrection of some Jews that not that did not involve Romans/Gentiles in any way would be counter productive to those ends.
John already has a proto resurrection ( Lazarus of Bethany) to mention another one that is only temporary in nature and that did not have much lasting impact or additional theological importance would be redundant in a book that is highly selective in it’s content .
quote:
Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
(Joh 21:25)
end quote:
hope that helps
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
Thanks for this list, Fifth. I want to discuss them. Gotta go to bed now though. Hope we can tomorrow, because I’m off for a week on vacay early Mon. AM.
Anyhow, that’s a solid, honest list, which I appreciate.
Matthew was the only one who mentioned that Jesus rode two asses at once on Palm Sunday.
Considering his powers of observation, how are we really to doubt anything that he (whoever “Matthew” was) wrote?
We should just marvel and believe the testimony. After all, we believe Newton’s testimony. Is that any different? Seems to be the OP’s message, anyhow.
Glen Davidson
Wouldn’t those same sorts of reasons be available to defend any imaginable claim in any book?
And now you’re a mind reader. Actually, I used that title because that’s the title of the section in the book from which the quotes in the OP were taken. The text of the OP itself doesn’t mention miracles. The OP was about testimony as a source of knowledge.
Matthew’s account is not contradicted by any of the other authors. At best you have an argument from silence. And you have given me no good reason to believe that your “embellishment theory” makes more sense. It makes more sense than what?
Oh. Yes, your embellishment theory makes more sense than your Jewish Zombies theory. I will grant you that. Some victory.
Sorry
Didn’t mean to step on your or anyone’s toes.:)
From the OP, in case you issed it:
The current empirical evidence indicates that testimony is a fundamental source of knowledge, similar to memory and perception…
If you have evidence to the contrary please share.
So you can’t tell the difference between accepting Newton’s well-corroborated testimony and that of some unknown religious proponent in the first century?
Nobody here was claiming that testimony is not a fundamental source of knowledge. There are different kinds, however….
Glen Davidson
What do you mean, John or Matthew?
You mean which one is telling the truth? You mean which one uses prettier language? You mean which one probably collected a bunch of scraps of actual three-decades-old letters and absorbed some of the (possibly quite correct) oral transmission of the Jesus tales, and which one lied about being written by an actual disciple? You mean which one guy Fifthmonarchyman thinks is “the more reliable” one? Tell me on what grounds I should prefer one to the other and then I’ll tell you whether I agree.
Fine, I don’t believe either of them are telling “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”. If I believed any of them, I would be some flavor of christian. I think John’s “In the beginning was the Word” is an ergot-induced hallucination. I’ve had similar,myself.
It’s okay, since I’m not a believer, that I notice how inconsistent in viewpoint (and sometimes downright contradictory) the various NT books are. Inconsistencies don’t surprise me — we expect them, not just on the basis of unreliable eyewitness testimony and the passage of at least one generation before the tales were recorded in “gospel” form, but also because the authors were indeed human and had their own idiosyncratic interests which they wished to illustrate with Jesus’ supposed life story. What surprises me is that Fifthmonarchyman is willing to throw them all under the bus except dear old “more reliable” Matthew, and all in the name of defending some stupid point about Matthew’s zombie-saint rising. So Luke is less reliable, and Mark is also less reliable … and John isn’t even within sight of the others …
No pain no gain. Y’all finish working it out, kill off the heretics or whatever y’all do nowadays to shut them up without church-sanctioned murder, y’all hammer a scholarly-plus-popular agreement as to which exact lines are the literal truth, which are metaphorically true, which are honest human mistakes and which are interpolations by the devil to sow confusion among the faithful.
Get back to me with your results, whenever.
Mung,
Consider the following scenario:
Let’s suppose that Mortimer missed the Republican debate on Thursday. The next morning, he reads an account by I. M. Meshuga — a rabid Donald Trump supporter — which includes the following tidbit:
This is clearly big news, so Mortimer immediately checks some other news sources. None of them mention the remarkable healing.
Mortimer concludes that the story was embellished.
Later that day, he mentions this to his friend Earl, an enthusiastic Trump supporter. Earl says “Meshuga’s account is not contradicted by any of the other news outlets. At best you have an argument from silence. And you have given me no good reason to believe that your “embellishment theory” makes more sense.”
Most people would consider Earl’s argument to be ridiculous. Wouldn’t you?
Beliefs mung, testimony is a fundamental source of beliefs. Your two sources are not using the term in the same way. You should first start by determining how either source defines their terms before you try to compare them.
You are told and you then believe. That doesn’t mean you know. Go back and read my very first post in this thread, you have yet to respond to it. In fact I’m detecting a pattern here where you have a hard time finding, reading and responding to my posts.
WJM gave a nice explanation for this phenomenon earlier too. Was he wrong?
I’d say that true testimony is a source of knowledge, whereas false testimony is a source of mistaken belief.
fG
It makes more sense the it not being recorded elsewhere! I agree with keiths, if this had happened (many people back from the dead trot into town for a coffee) it would have made the news and been recorded and made it back to us here and now.
Many trivial things we know from the time, but no records of the first zombie invasion? Seems unlikely…
If Matthew had been female she would not have been taken seriously, unless perhaps there were two Matthews. Is there a reason God doesn’t seem to leave tablets and revelations to women?
Classics graduate, Matthew Ferguson has some thoughts about authorship of the gospels.
A more current and better in my opinion take on the authorship of the first gospel
I don’t want to get into a war of links but there is mountains of similar scholarly stuff that actually looks seriously at this stuff.
I am often surprised at the shallow level of liberal scholarship. It’s as if folks like Ferguson live in an echo chamber and are not even aware of alternative views. It’s certenly clear that they don’t interact with them.
Usually what folks like me do when discussing gospel scholarship with skeptics is fall back on the least common denominator of scholarship that is usually the liberal view.
However the liberal view is by no means automatically the one best supported by the evidence
peace
Well, we liberals have a hard time taking some of this stuff seriously. Ferguson makes a good point about how the alleged authors, being illiterate – uneducated – Aramaic speaking, were able to produce texts in elegant Greek.
here is a post from a liberal who does take some of the more recent scholarship seriously
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/2013/12/were-the-gospels-originally-anonymous.html
like I said there is plenty more out there
peace
But indulge me for a moment. Do you see there is an issue regarding the alleged authors of the gospels producing works in very well written Greek rather than their native language?
How does Ferguson know that the alleged authors were illiterate – uneducated and Aramaic speaking?
It’s this sort of question that is never asked in liberal circles
peace
Based on the summary I have access to, and the interviews with the authors, I suspect the books claim is more nuanced than that quote might indicate.
The issue: what is the difference between knowledge and belief? The standard answer from epistemology (look away, Neil) is that knowledge requires justification (and truth).
So in what circumstances does testimony provide justification? There are two ways of answering this. Cognitive science describes what people actually do. Philosophy tries to provide norms for what people should consider justification.
The book is first and mainly about the cognitive science of justification, I believe.
Specifically, I think the book is primarily about the cognitive processes individuals follow in assessing whether testimony provides justification (with some later discussion of philosophy). But although the processes people do follow are generally reliable about everyday things, they can fail. That is one reason why science was invented.
I think the book also discusses why people might continue to accept testimony in cases where a more scientific approach would discount it.
For an example of applying a scientific-style analysis to biblical testimony, see Alan Foxes linked article on the authorship of the NT
It’s a reasonable assumption from the little that’s claimed to be known of the lives of these alleged authors.
Well, the authorship really doesn’t concern me that much. That they are late compilations of earlier stories and fragments is fairly obvious. It’s the “miraculous” content that undermines the integrity for me. The water-into-wine nonsense for example.